“What are you worried about? Take what you want anyway.”
“No. The ethic of my craft will not permit sharp practice. What an ill day it was when I ventured into Maralia! I have labored in vain!”
“Well, it probably won’t make any difference,” Baron Matello muttered to the others as Flammarion shuffled despondently away. “The way things look, we’ll all have to spend the rest of our lives here.”
Chapter FIFTEEN
As the months passed, the atmosphere within the Aegis sank into gloom. Outside, the Kerek were encamped in force. A constant barrage of ballista missiles, cannon balls and sticky fire was hurled against the sloping walls of the fortress. Galleys sailed overhead and dropped immense stones from great heights. None of this was felt or even heard within the adamant casing, however. Once the original exultation of victory and escape was over, the Aegis’s all-pervading reservoir of silence, of cloying degeneracy, took over.
King Lutheron made some effort to prevent this. He tried to keep his own people apart from the Duke of Koss’s followers as much as possible and forbade most of the pleasures the fortress offered, tearing apart the intricate bordellos, destroying extensive apartments whose weird artistic purpose offended him, and spoiling the dream-slime by mixing acid in it. But nothing, not even the regular military drill he insisted on, seemed able to halt the slow, steady slide into listlessness.
It could not even be said that the whole of the Aegis had fallen into his possession. When Rachad attempted to lead a party through the inner maze, it was to find that he no longer knew the way. Amschel had rearranged the labyrinth, rendering his number code useless and prompting him to retreat hastily, afraid of becoming lost or possibly trapped. He had refused to venture into it again despite Matello’s gibes.
When he could he avoided Matello who, nominally Duke of Koss now, had taken to prowling the Aegis in a fury of pent-up energy, lashing out angrily with his tongue, and sometimes his fists, at anyone he met. Rachad, who himself was utterly appalled by the way events had turned out, did not see how the baron would be able to endure his imprisonment, even in so capacious a refuge as the Aegis. He feared that he would do something foolish, such as open up the Aegis again so as to go down in a blaze of glory.
He had spoken to Zhorga about the dismal prospects for them all. The former merchant airman had stuck out his lower lip glumly.
“We’ve got two choices: either to stay here or take our chances with the Kerek,” he had said. “They’ll be crawling all over Maralia by now—and I reckon it won’t be long either before they get to Earth.”
One night, as Rachad lay in his private room, restlessly trying to sleep, the door opened slowly, and someone entered.
Rachad quit his bed and raised the wick of the night lamp. The intruder closed the door behind him and stared solemnly at Rachad.
“Wolo!” Rachad exclaimed in surprise. It was one of Amschel’s assistants, clad in a plain blue robe. Wolo nodded his head in greeting.
“The master has sent me to take you to him,” he said calmly. “Kindly get dressed, and come with me.”
Rachad felt an acute embarrassment “Why does he want me? He knows?…”
“That you opened the Aegis to the duke’s enemies? Yes… but the fastness of the Aegis is not, after all, Master Amschel’s concern. His work nears culmination. He reminds you of his promise.”
“Promise?”
“He made a bargain with you.”
“Oh. Yes.” A note of suspicious belligerency entered Rachad’s voice. “Well, what if I refuse to come with you?”
Wolo lowered his head, as if understanding something. “I see… Then I will bid you good night, Master Rachad. I will inform the master that you have no interest in the Stone of the Philosophers.”
“Wait!” Rachad said as the other turned to go. “I’ll come.”
Quickly he dressed. Having come this far in pursuit of Gebeth’s goal, he might as well see the business through, he thought. At least it would provide a temporary diversion in what promised to be a lifetime of tedium.
Wolo led him calmly and confidently toward the maze. The Aegis seemed to be sleeping. Once they heard the sound of carousing, as some of Matello’s troops, in defiance of King Lutheron’s orders, disported with the Duke of Koss’s former courtesans. Then they were in the maze, and a distracted look came over Wolo as he repeated the sequence of numbers he had learned, guiding Rachad through into the dim wood.
In the laboratory, Amschel was waiting, wearing a colorful smock on which were woven patterns of star clusters. He sat at a table on which lay The Root of Transformations, the two halves bound together now in lead covers. Beside it was a thick pile of loose papers.
“Good evening, Rachad,” he greeted genially. “Your intrusion into our lives was not, it seems, entirely from honest motives.”
Rachad reddened, and felt sufficiently stung to retort angrily. “What I said was true—I did come to Maralia to obtain the secret of the Stone, though originally I had expected to look no farther than Mars. As for the other thing—yes, I admit it. Baron Matello sent me in here, to open the Aegis and unseat the duke. And for good reason!” Rachad’s voice became more heated. “Don’t you know what’s going on outside? Humanity is being invaded! Koss’s estates could have helped in the war—but now it’s too late!”
“Oh, I am aware of what is happening,” Amschel said quietly. “Did I not tell you that I am a much-traveled man? At a time when Matello and his ilk took cognizance only of their own private quarrels, I already knew how scant mankind’s chances were of prevailing against the Kerek.”
“And so you hid yourself in here and studied philosophy!” Rachad accused. “Why didn’t you invent new alchemical weapons to fight the Kerek, instead? That’s all alchemy is good for anyway, Baron Matello says.”
“Weapons alone will not prevail. The Kerek are too numerous, too ferocious, too resourceful. They will swallow Maralia, then Wenchlas, as they have swallowed others. As they go their numbers increase by reason of their control over captured populations. A large part of the galaxy, if not all the galaxy, may one day comprise the Kerek empire.”
“How readily you seem to accept it,” Rachad muttered.
“I fight the Kerek in my own way,” Amschel told him. “At last I have made azoth. I have impregnated it with all five elements in equal measure. Now only the last two operations remain to be performed: reduction to prima materia, and the creation from that of the Stone. I believe I now have sufficient information to carry these operations through to completion.” He gestured to the book and file on the table. “There is The Root of Transformations, together with a set of my explanatory notes. Together they form an extremely valuable corpus of knowledge. You may take them, in fulfillment of my promise.”
“Why are you giving them to me now? Why not after you have made the Stone?”
“Immense energies are involved in the final operation,” Amschel explained. “The process could go wrong, the laboratory could be destroyed. Then this knowledge would also be destroyed.”
“I see… But how will the Stone help you fight the Kerek? Is it some sort of weapon, then?”
Amschel smiled. “No, the Stone is not a weapon. The true secret of Kerek strength is not, in fact, in their fighting ability but in the factor known as the Kerek Power. I have visited a Kerek planet, and I have seen how this power works. It is a mental force that takes command of cogitation. When under the Kerek Power a man’s thoughts are not his own—they are given him by the Power, and he is unable to generate thoughts from his own consciousness. This force is such that the human mind is unable to withstand it, and that is why the galaxy may, in time, be dominated by a single mentality, a single thought.”