“Filth,” Enric bellowed, “you may not put your hands to me!”
With a double thrust of his fists against Elegro’s chest he hurled the Rememberer reeling backward across the room. Elegro crashed into a suspension cradle and sent a flank of watery artifacts tumbling; three flasks of scintillating fluids shivered and spilled their contents; the carpet set up a shrill cry of pained protest. Gasping, stunned, Elegro pressed a hand to his breast and looked to us for assistance.
“Physical assault—” Elegro wheezed. “A shameful crime!”
“The first assault was your doing,” Olmayne reminded her husband.
Pointing trembling fingers, Elegro muttered, “For this there can be no forgiveness, Pilgrim!”
“Call me Pilgrim no longer,” Enric said. His hands went to the grillwork of his mask. Olmayne cried out, trying to prevent him; but in his anger the Prince knew no check. He hurled the mask to the floor and stood with his harsh face terribly exposed, the cruel features hawk-lean, the gray mechanical spheres in his eyesockets masking the depths of his fury. “I am the Prince of Roum,” he announced in a voice of thunder. “Down and abase! Down and abase! Quick, Rememberer, the three prostrations and the five abasements!”
Elegro appeared to crumble. He peered in disbelief; then he sagged, and in a kind of reflex of amazement he performed a ritual obeisance before his wife’s seducer. It was the first time since the fall of Roum that the Prince had asserted his former status, and the pleasure of it was so evident on his ravaged face that even the blank eyeballs appeared to glow in regal pride.
“Out,” the Prince ordered. “Leave us.”
Elegro fled.
I remained, astounded, staggered. The Prince nodded courteously to me. “Would you pardon us, old friend, and grant us some moments of privacy?”
6
A weak man can be put to rout by a surprise attack, but afterward he pauses, reconsiders, and hatches schemes. So was it with the Rememberer Elegro. Driven from his own suite by the unmasking of the Prince of Roum, he grew calm and crafty once he was out of that terrifying presence. Later that same night, as I settled into my sleeping cradle and debated aiding slumber with a drug, Elegro summoned me to his research cell on a lower level of the building.
There he sat amid the paraphernalia of his guild: reels and spools, data-flakes, capsules, caps, a quartet of series-linked skulls, a row of output screens, a small ornamental helix, all the symbology of the gatherers of information. In his hands he grasped a tension-draining crystal from one of the Cloud-worlds; its milky interior was rapidly tingeing with sepia as it pulled anxieties from his spirit. He pretended a look of stern authority, as if forgetting that I had seen him exposed in his spinelessness.
He said, “Were you aware of this man’s identity when you came with him to Perris?”
“’Yes.”
“You said nothing about it.”
“I was never asked.”
“Do you know what a risk you have exposed all of us to, by causing us unknowingly to harbor a Dominator?”
“We are Earthmen,” I said. “Do we not still acknowledge the authority of the Dominators?”
“Not since the conquest. By decree of the invaders all former governments are dissolved and their leaders subject to arrest.”
“But surely we should resist such an order!”
The Rememberer Elegro regarded me quizzically. “Is it a Rememberer’s function to meddle in politics? Tomis, we obey the government in power, whichever it may be and however it may have taken control. We conduct no resistance activities here.”
“I see.”
“Therefore we must rid ourselves at once of this dangerous fugitive. Tomis, I instruct you to go at once to occupation headquarters and inform Manrule Seven that we have captured the Prince of Roum and hold him here for pickup.”
“I should go?” I blurted. “Why send an old man as a messenger in the night? An ordinary thinking-cap transmission would be enough!”
“Too risky. Strangers may intercept cap communications. It would not go well for our guild if this were spread about. This has to be a personal communication.”
“But to choose an unimportant apprentice to carry it—it seems strange.”
“There are only two of us who know,” said Elegro. “I will not go. Therefore you must.”
“With no introduction to Manrule Seven I will never be admitted.”
“Inform his aides that you have information leading to the apprehension of the Prince of Roum. You’ll be heard.”
“Am I to mention your name?”
“If necessary. You may say that the Prince is being held prisoner in my quarters with the cooperation of my wife.”
I nearly laughed at that. But I held a straight face before this cowardly Rememberer, who did not even dare to go himself to denounce the man who had cuckolded him.
“Ultimately,” I said, “the Prince will become aware of what we have done. Is it right of you to ask me to betray a man who was my companion for so many months?”
“It is not a matter of betrayal. It is a matter of obligations to the government.”
“I feel no obligation to this government. My loyalties are to the guild of Dominators. Which is why I gave assistance to the Prince of Roum in his moment of peril.”
“For that,” said Elegro, “your own life could be forfeit to our conquerors. Your only expiation is to admit your error and cooperate in bringing about his arrest. Go. Now.”
In a long and tolerant life I have never despised anyone so vehemently as I did the Rememberer Elegro at that moment.
Yet I saw that I was faced with few choices, none of them palatable. Elegro wished his undoer punished, but lacked the courage to report him himself; therefore I must give over to the conquering authorities one whom I had sheltered and assisted, and for whom I felt a responsibility. If I refused, Elegro would perhaps hand me to the invaders for punishment myself, as an accessory to the Prince’s escape from Roum; or he might take vengeance against me within the machinery of the guild of Rememberers. If I obliged Elegro, though, I would have a stain on my conscience forever, and in the event of a restoration of the power of the Dominators I would have much to answer for.
As I weighed the possibilities, I triply cursed the Rememberer Elegro’s faithless wife and her invertebrate husband.
I hesitated a bit. Elegro offered more persuasion, threatening to arraign me before the guild on such charges as unlawfully gaining access to secret files and improperly introducing into guild precincts a proscribed fugitive. He threatened to cut me off forever from the information pool. He spoke vaguely of vengeance.
In the end I told him I would go to the invaders’ headquarters and do his bidding. I had by then conceived a betrayal that would—I hoped—cancel the betrayal Elegro was enforcing on me.
Dawn was near when I left the building. The air was mild and sweet; a low mist hung over the streets of Perris, giving them a gentle shimmer. No moons were in sight. In the deserted streets I felt uneasy, although I told myself that no one would care to do harm to an aged Rememberer; but I was armed only with a small blade, and I feared bandits.
My route lay on one of the pedestrian ramps. I panted a bit at the steep incline, but when I had attained the proper level I was more secure, since here there were patrol nodes at frequent intervals, and here, too, were some other late-night strollers. I passed a spectral figure garbed in white satin through which alien features peered: a revenant, a ghostly inhabitant of a planet of the Bull, where reincarnation is the custom and no man goes about installed in his own original body. I passed three female beings of a Swan planet who giggled at me and asked if I had seen males of their species, since the time of conjugation was upon them. I passed a pair of Changelings who eyed me speculatively, decided I had nothing on me worth robbing, and moved on, their piebald dewlaps jiggling and their radiant skins flashing like beacons.