"Wait!" He softened his tone. "I'll admit you are more expert than I, but even so things follow a regular pattern. In the arena it pays to take time to assess the opposition. To study the opponent in order to plan your own defense, your own attack. To hurry without decisive action is to ask for disaster." Pausing he added, "And you gain simply because others expect you to act. Your lack of response can upset their own plans."
Good advice-but this was not an arena with men facing each other with naked blades. Fighters held in a ring and surrounded by watching faces. And yet was it so different? The pain and death would be metaphorical but the tension was the same. The hurt. The disgrace. The sweet taste of success, the sour bile of failure. But to go against the conditioning of a lifetime was hard; every instinct urged her to take an active part in what was happening.
"Here!" Vardoon had made tisane and she took the steaming cup as he offered it. As it left his hand their eyes met and she saw a common understanding, a mutual sympathy. "Drink this," he urged. "And relax. Earl knows what he's doing."
She wished she could share his conviction. Already she had yielded too much; to bathe and dress and come fully awake before answering the alarm. To resist the initial impulse to buy and sell and share in the trading. To wait in a room lined with mirrors which caught the glow of flashing lights and splintered them into dancing rainbows.
Watching, Dumarest admired her calm even as he noted her mounting tension, which he could understand. To fight was one thing and that held basic similarity but the game she played was not that simple. Simulated war fought on a planetary board with three thousand counters of constantly shifting values against a hundred and forty-six opponents.
No wonder she could win at chess!
Vardoon joined him, handed him tisane. The steam held a pungent perfume, the flavor was that of honey and spice. A fluid which yielded a comfort and a mild stimulation.
"She's like a ship on the field with engines running and the drive ready to go." Vardoon looked at the woman's reflected likeness. "She won't wait much longer, Earl."
Dumarest said, "Read me the board."
"Kalova's buying holdings and pressuring others into forced auctions. That means a shift in assets and he's using others' weaknesses to his advantage. Against him are strong blocks; Arment, Chargel and Helm have the largest holdings. But if he's after Fiona why the hell doesn't he make a direct attack?"
"Change the situation-would you?"
"A fort on a hill," mused Vardoon. "I want it but if I concentrate all my forces I leave myself open to attack from flanks and rear. It's strong so it will take time to wear down and, if it costs me too much, I'll be liable to injury from those waiting to pounce. I see what you're getting at."
And there was another facet he hadn't mentioned-the love of a cat for tormenting a mouse. Kalova hated Fiona as Dumarest had learned. A hate born of her casual rejection of his offer. An affront which he had chosen to regard as an insult and which he found impossible to swallow. Now, determined on revenge, he was prone to error.
But if Zao was advising him, there could be only one outcome.
Dumarest finished the tisane and rose to pace the floor. Swaths of color painted his neutral gray with transient glory, shifting, changing as the signals changed, glowing from the mirrors all around. Catching the face of the woman as she sat, hands clenched, sensing her world edging toward ruin.
If she lost it would she search for it as he did Earth?
Pacing, he remembered the dream, the golden egg teeming with life which had died and the life with it. A dream born of his conversation with Marc Bulem and his supposed ravings. A man tormented with delusions, hopelessly insane and lost in a world of fantasy-according to his brother. But some of what he'd said was familiar to Dumarest-and what if the rest had a grounding in truth?
Had all men originated on one world?
An apparent fallacy as Melvin had said-men came in all shades and styles of hair and nostrils and build. Effects caused by wild radiations or local environments as any intelligent man would swear. How else to account for skins as pale as alabaster and those as dark as jet? Blond hair and brown and black and tresses the color of flame? Blue eyes? Eyes of amber? Eyes which looked like liquid pools of Stygian darkness?
All the children of one, single planet?
He heard again a voice which held the muted thunder of drums: "From terror they fled to find new places on which to expiate their sins."
A voice from a world far distant in time and space. Words he had heard from others as they repeated the guarded creed of the Original People. The same words he had heard from Marc Bulem only a short while ago.
From terror they fled to expiate their sins.
From terror?
Terra?
Another name for Earth and he wondered if the dream had held a deeper significance than he guessed. Something not merely born of a chance encounter but that very encounter serving to trigger latent data into a symbolic whole. Had the egg represented Earth? The parasitic life Mankind?
He remembered the crying, the endless wailing of those lost in a dark eternity. The alarm or a dirge for a destroyed world?
But Earth had not been destroyed.
"Earl!" He turned to see Vardoon staring at him, a peculiar expression in his eyes. The light he had seen before when facing a contender in the arena. The inner glow of a man facing, and loving, combat. "Earl-it's started!"
Nothing but the flashing lights had changed and yet it seemed that something had entered the mirrored chamber with its soft lights and thick carpets, its ornaments and touches of feminine grace. A dark and somber thing with the hue of death.
"A forced auction," explained Fiona as Dumarest came to stand behind her. "A minor holding; Kalova must be mad to have put himself in debt because of it."
A favor owed to the one who backed him with an offer of twice its registered value. And he would want repayment when it suited him.
"Let it go," said Dumarest.
"Relinquish it? Earl-it's a part of my holding!"
Vardoon said, "Let it go, Fiona. Boost the bidding to a third of extra value then duck out."
For a moment she hesitated, the conditioning of a lifetime at war with what, subconsciously, she knew to be good advice. Sweat dewed her face when, after dragging minutes, she slumped back in her chair.
"It's gone," she said dully. "Kalova's won."
A minor conflict but not the war. Dumarest studied the display, wishing he had the skill to read it, feeling ill at ease and knowing why. His life was at stake but the saving of it was beyond his control. Here was no arena with a single opponent but those with faces he could not see careless of the hurt and death they could unwittingly give.
"A fort on a hill," muttered Vardoon. "Remember, Earl? Kalova would have made a good mercenary-he's clearing away potential sources of danger."
Small villages, woods, coppices which could hold armed men. Beating the grounds and warning others to stay clear by his actions. Soon now he would aim his attack at its true target, forcing the use of material, the wasting of resources-the assets which alone could guarantee Fiona her holding.
A crude analogy, for the present situation contained refinements impossible to generalize. Dumarest leaned forward as the woman sucked in her breath.
"Something?"
"A move against Lobel-but why? He presents no threat and rarely takes the initiative." Fiona studied the display, brow creased in a frown, the fingers of her right hand tapping the broad arm of her chair. "And now Cran!"
Another minor holder and easy prey to a ruthless predator. An attack which triggered a pattern in Dumarest's mind, not of a military engagement but a more familiar scene. A melee in which a score of men stood in the arena each against the other. A situation in which the weak could be as dangerous as the strong.