The black asteroid moved in the perfect and geometric orbit around the sun that shone on the day side of Strada. The girl’s voice was husky and bitter-sweet and, because her training had been thorough she would not have changed her place at the moment with any Stradian woman throughout all the light-centuries of the civilization.
“Sing again that ballad of the king,” he ordered.
Amro awakened with an abrupt feeling of alarm. He lay still for a moment, the moonlight slanting through the window and across his body. He peeled away the innermost protective layers of his mind and felt as light as the touch of insect wings, the distant flow of emotions that would grow increasingly harsh as he neared the focal point.
He padded to the door of the room. Massio lay in undisturbed sleep, not yet aware of the emotional strain in the night air that had awakened Amro. He pushed the screen door open and stepped out onto the cool sand. The breakers were white froth in the moonlight.
The feeling of emotional strain came through more clearly. He turned to the left and felt it fade as he walked, so he turned quickly toward the south, quickening his step as he saw Faven, tall in the moonlight, staring down toward the line of surf.
Sixty feet away, directly in front of Faven, Martha walked toward the surf and even at that distance Amro could see the jerky uncoordinated movements. Her pajamas were a colorless paleness and her shoulders were straight. Even as he watched she reached the surf. A wave smashed at her feet, flooded halfway to her knees. The next wave crashed full against her thighs, driving her back a step.
He reached up through the higher frequencies and found the level on which Faven was directing her commands. He smashed back along that channel, made stronger by anger. Faven put her hands to her throat and turned to face him.
For a moment they fought thus, the Earthgirl forgotten. While Faven fenced with quick, darting impacts he wielded the bludgeon of his mind, smashed down her guard, smashed her to her knees with a small whimpering sound in her throat.
Once he had her helpless it did not take all of his directed will to hold her there. He turned and saw Martha walking unsteadily toward them, her mouth slack, and for a moment he was afraid that Faven had scoured clean the inside of the girl-brain with the abrasive of her will, leaving it childlike.
He turned his thoughts completely to Martha for a fraction of a second, then swept them back to Faven just as she started to scramble to her feet. The blow dropped her face down, her arms and legs spread. He knew that it had been violent enough so that the aftereffects would not wear off for minutes.
The chunk of coral was half buried in the sand.
He took control of Martha’s mind, forced her to pick up the coral. “Now you can kill her,” he said.
“No.”
“Why not? She tried to kill you.”
“No, Quinn. No!”
He exerted a stronger pressure, brought her close to Faven, the coral grasped in both hands, lifted high.
The coral slipped harmlessly to the side. Martha knelt, her hands covering her face, sobs harsh in her throat. Faven lifted herself to hands and knees.
“Why didn’t she?” Faven asked, utterly surprised.
“It’s something in their minds,” he said in his own tongue. “They can’t kill. Life is something individual and sacred to them. Also, Faven, you might be glad if she had succeeded. You know the discipline. I am in charge. Why did you try to do this thing?”
“You weren’t to know. It was to have been an accident.”
Faven got up slowly. The Earthgirl still knelt and wept. As quick as a darting cat, Faven snatched up the chunk of coral and smashed it full at the girl’s head. At the last moment Amro tried to divert it. Martha toppled over slowly. Faven stood, her feet braced, a look of defiance on her face. But he had found his way into her mind too many times now for her to defy him.
He played with her at first, letting her think she was holding him off, watching the narrowing of her eyes, the dilation of her nostrils, the hard rise and fall of her breast. Then he struck and moved back out of her mind.
“Amro!” she gasped.
He laughed, the sound wild and high in the night, and struck again. He lunged deep into the softness of her brain, twisting the blow, reaching and ripping. He sensed her wild panic and hammered at her again, this time reaching the threshold of instinct, slipping past it, ripping apart the very basis of her, the fountainhead of individuality.
The lean proud planes of her face softened and deteriorated and the mouth went slack and the eyes went dull. She stood, a living thing on the animal level, but still erect. Delicately this time, because he wanted the ultimate degradation without complete helplessness, he severed one more strand.
She slumped, apelike, her curled hands, hanging to her knees, then sagged until she stood, her legs bowed, holding herself erect by the pressure of her knuckles against the sand. Her underlip sagged so that the lower teeth showed.
She moved slowly toward him, shuffling her feet. Martha, whom he had thought dead, sighed with the utmost weariness and sat up, her cheek black with the color of moonlit blood.
“Quinn,” she said, “I dreamed that—”
Faven, attracted, animal-like, by the sound and movement, edged over, snuffling with curiosity.
Martha screamed with horror. “Fran!”
The alarmed animal scuttled back, settled on its haunches and peered at Martha. Martha Kaynan fell over in a dead faint.
Massio, three steps behind Amro, said, “I guess she planned to kill the girl. I wasn’t certain enough to tell you about it. She wanted you for herself and you were paying too much attention to the Earthgirl. What now?”
“Take her down the beach and call them and explain and put her through the doorway, Massio. Be quick. I don’t want Martha to see her again. I... I lost my head. Lofta will be annoyed. She was an effective agent.”
Massio calmed the fears of the animal thing by speaking softly and soothingly. He moved close to it, his hand outstretched. Finally it accepted him as a friend. It grasped his finger and Massio walked it down the beach. It chortled and chattered as it bounded along beside him and some of the sounds were almost like words.
He saw Massio pause and seconds later the doorway was a darker patch against the moon shadows. The thing was caught and dragged toward the oblong shadow. The last he heard of it was the distant mewling sound it made at the loss of this fine new friend.
Amro picked the Earthgirl up in his arms and carried her back to the house.
Renaen sat in the usual meeting room and said in a high quaver, “Just two of us now, Dolpha — just two of us.”
The old man belched solemnly. “And I guess our questions are answered.”
“You mean he was wrong in thinking that the Center had some new thing to use against us?”
“Quite wrong. It was a clever move on their part. They duplicated what they would do if they had possessed such a thing and then, when we withdrew agents from defensive operations, which was what they hoped we would do, they struck at one of the most dangerous men the League has. No, they have nothing new.”
Something troubled Renaen. She pursed her withered lips. “But, Dolpha, that Center agent was planted, they say, long before the Center pulled in its horns!”
“How can we be sure of that?”
“I guess you’re right. But we have to think of what to do now.”
“We go back to our usual methods. I’ll cancel all of the arrangements Kama made for escape and set up the usual balance of offensive operations.”
“Is that wise?”
“Kama was an alarmist. We can operate better without him. Maybe the Center did us a favor. Now we have to discuss a plan, a new plan, and I like the sound of it.”