"A thief," said the man holding him. "Caught him reaching for the pot. Guess he thought I was asleep."
"His bad luck you weren't." The other's voice was thick with drowsiness. "He get anything?"
"No."
"Good. We won't have to slice off a foot so as to make it up. Just teach him a lesson and let him go."
Harsh times and harsh justice and the lesson wouldn't be easy to take. The terror mounted as his hand was forced closer to the fire, closer until he felt the burning kiss of flame, the searing of his skin, the agony which flowed from the spot.
One small against the possibility of what could happen if his captor chose.
A finger burned to the bone. A hand burned to the wrist.
"God! God! God, please God! Make him let me go!"
Then his free hand dipping, plunging into the soup, lifting from the seething liquid to splash the near-boiling wetness into his captor's face. Freedom as the man cried out and then the running, the hiding, the plunging of burned hands into the snow. The luck as a rodent, startled by his action, crashed from hiding to land against his chest.
"No," said Dumarest. "No."
"Earl?" Melome's face was a blur before him. "Do you want to stop?"
"The wrong time. Too early." Dumarest heard his voice, thick, mumbling. "Try again. Later. Later."
"You should rest." Shakira's voice held a genuine concern. "Take a glass of wine."
Sit and talk and waste the time that was left. To squander the precious minutes and lose the chance of learning what he had to know.
"Keep going."
"But-"
"Do it!" A burned hand, a night of fear and terror which had happened long ago. A thing he could live with and already it was fading. "Try again, Melome. Again."
And the pipe, the drum, the wailing song with its soaring cadences which held a rare and unusual magic. One which worked as he listened. As the girl changed, the room in which he sat.
One to turn into the round dial of an instrument set against a wall. The other into a cabin.
Dumarest felt his stomach churn as he listened to the sound of approaching footsteps.
They would find him and take him before the captain and he would be punished as they had said others had been. Taken and flogged until his bones showed through the lacerated flesh or sealed in a suit and evicted into space with an hour's air. Or put into the generator where invisible energies would rot his bones and send him blind and turn him into a thing of horror.
Threats whispered in idle hours. Tales of torments done and stories woven from sick minds and fevered imaginations. The fruit of loneliness and frustration to be showered on an ignorant boy.
He turned, seeking employment for his hands, a visible task to justify his presence in the cabin. An added defense should anyone look in. A duster was to hand and he used it, nearing the table, the book resting on it. A fat volume, the pages open, sheets bearing rows of the captain's script.
Dumarest looked at it as he plied the duster. Hearing the footsteps outside the cabin fade into silence. Seeing the pages thin and vanish as the moment of terror ebbed away.
"Success," said Shakira. "There is nothing so satisfying. Come, Earl, let us drink to it."
The wine he served was rich and darkly red, the same as he'd produced before. Then it had reminded Dumarest of blood, now it held the acrid taste of defeat.
"It was success, Earl?" The circus owner's voice sharpened as he saw Dumarest's unfinished wine. "Melome said you had returned to the right time. She was sure of it."
"She was right."
"Then-"
"You want to share my knowledge. The bargain we made." Dumarest reached for a sheet of paper. "I went back and I saw the book. This is what I read."
He wrote and passed the sheet to Shakira who picked it up and held it before his eyes.
"The cargo we loaded on Ascanio was spoiled and had to be unloaded at a total loss," he murmured, reading. "A bad trip with no prospect of improvement so I took a chance and risked a journey to the proscribed planet. A waste of time-the place is a nightmare. God help the poor devils who lived here. Those remaining are degenerate scum little more than savage animals. Found a stowaway after we'd left, a boy who looks human. He claims to be twelve but looks younger and could be dangerous. Decided to take a chance and kept him but if he shows any sign of trouble I'll have to-"
Shakira looked at Dumarest. "Is this all?"
"Yes."
"But you were so sure there would be more."
"I was wrong." Dumarest gulped at his wine. "The book was a journal, not the ship's log. A private diary of events. And I could only look at it. I couldn't turn the pages. The coordinates could have been written plain on the previous sheet but I'll never know. Not even if I went back could I ever know."
"And you can't go back. Terror, relived, loses its impact. You could try for a dozen years and never again hit that exact period. But it lives in your mind. Your memory. Perhaps-"
"The facts remain," said Dumarest. He was curt. "I saw the book, remembered what it said, wrote it down. You have it in your hand. All of it. Useless rubbish!"
Words for which he had risked his life. Once they had him in their power the Cyclan would not be gentle. They would sear his brain with electric probes, test him with endless pain, tear him apart cell by cell in order to regain their lost secret. And time was running out.
"Wait!" Shakira lifted a hand as Dumarest rose to his feet. "Disappointment has blunted your natural shrewdness. The coordinates are lacking, true, but still you have won information. The name of a world, Ascanio. It must be relatively close to the proscribed planet. Earth? But why should it be proscribed? And by whom? And the rest? That about the boy who was found- you?"
"It has to be."
"A strange description. Malnutrition would account for your size, but why should he think you dangerous? Sit, my friend, take some more wine, let us consider this. You may have gained more than you realize."
Shakira brooded over the paper as Dumarest followed his suggestion. A few more minutes against what the other's fresh viewpoint could gain. Extra danger set against the possibility of winning gold from apparent dross.
"Proscribed," murmured Shakira. "Set apart. Outlawed. Banned. Incredible that a world should be so treated. But by whom? And how to enforce the proscription?"
Questions which hung in the air as he considered the matter. A silence broken by an imperious knocking at the door.
"Who is it?" Shakira's tone held anger though his face remained as placid as before. "I gave orders that on no account should I be disturbed." The paper fell to the table as the knocking was repeated. "Who is there?"
The answer stepped through the opened panel, tall, thin, glowing in a scarlet robe. One adorned with the Seal of the Cyclan.
"Cyber Tron." Pushed Shakira had fallen back to the support of the table. Now he stood, hands lifted, facing the intruder. "What do you want here?"
"You know the answer to that." Tron lifted his hand, the gun it held. One like that used by Valaban. "Do not waste time calling for help. Those you set on guard have been taken care of." The guard moved to point at Dumarest, the wide orifice aimed directly at his face. "You are to come with me. Unless you obey me implicitly I shall fire. The shot will not kill you but your face will be ruined, your eyes. Even in the open a blind man cannot get far."
And in the maze of the circus it would be impossible. Dumarest froze where he sat, hands on the table, one close to the glass holding his wine. Across the board Shakira faced the cyber, hands still lifted in his pathetic gesture of appeal or surrender. An act? One to cover his betrayal? The face remained a mask and gave no hint as to the answer.