Here and there, spiky plants clung to cracks in the rocks. One in particular, with extravagant red blossoms, attracted him. He stopped and examined it. Then he stepped back and stood tense, just as they had taught him in the swordsman’s class. His hands flashed to the sword hilt behind his left shoulder. The blade whistled. The topmost flower was detached from its stalk. It dropped to the rock, rolled and fell down into one of the grey pools. As it touched the nothings, it smoked for an instant and melted away.
Jeb Stuart Ho stood holding his sword and feeling a little foolish. He was ashamed that he should have succumbed to using his hard-learned skills in such a childish display of bravado. It was unforgivable at a time when all his concentration should be directed to his task.
He decided it was time for him to study the data package. He unzipped the top of his body suit and removed the silk bundle. He squatted on a nearby rock, and carefully began to unwrap it. It contained a tri-di cube and a roll of parchment. Jeb Stuart Ho held up the cube and looked at it. In it was the image of a girl in her early teens. She had dark hair and a pale, petulant face. Her eyes were large and surrounded by dark makeup. Her mouth was coloured dark red and looked cruelly sensual. A loop action inside the cube made the image repeat the same sequence of expressions over and over again. First she stared out impassively at him, then slowly she smiled. Her lip curled, and the smile turned into a sneer. Finally the expression faded, only to start the cycle again. Jeb Stuart Ho turned the cube slowly round examining the girl’s face from every angle. He wished that he had had more experience with women at the temple. The teachers, in their wisdom, encouraged the pupil executives to find love among their own sex.
He put down the cube, and turned his attention to the parchment. It was covered with computer print which he read carefully. There was a solemnity about the moment. He was reading about the person he was going to kill.
A.A. Catto.
Like her brother Waldo, she has remained at a static age for a considerable period.
Member of Directorate (technocrat ruling class) of Con-Lec, a corporation citadel culture in S class decay.
Petulant, wilful, vicious, with high, pain-related sexual appetite. Escorted by human male, reportedly named Reave.
Mistress/pet relationship.
No martial skills.
All training directed to sensory satisfaction.
IQ 197.
M-potential nil.
Psi-property nil.
Retention factor B +.
Subject’s present location midsection city Litz (pop. 1,241,000 - Stuff contract pleasure city) where she moves in a sensation-seeking subgroup.
Class A subject. May surround herself with mercenary protection. Approach with caution.
Aim of intervention is death of subject.
Jeb Stuart Ho read the parchment twice and then folded it beside the cube. He wrapped both in the piece of silk and returned them to his suit. Then he stood up. He knew the first place he had to go. He once again began picking his way through the rocks.
As he went on, moving, all the time, away from the temple, the landscape continued to change. The rock formations began to fragment and break up. Where there had previously been bright colours they faded to a dull grey, not much darker than the pools of shifting nothings. In fact, pools was no longer an adequate description. They had enlarged and merged, so there were now wide expanses of emptiness. Here and there, the rocks jutted out of them, like ice floes on a frozen sea.
It was necessary for Jeb Stuart Ho to cross these expanses. Although his personal generator protected him from the fate of any unshielded matter that came in contact with the nothings, it was still an unnerving experience to step out into the strange, alien mist and suddenly find the solid foothold created by the generator.
On a particularly wide flat expanse of rock, he paused for a moment. He unhitched the supply case from his belt and took a sparing mouthful of water. He looked around, shielding his eyes, and searching for something on the far horizon. He knew that if he was to find the girl A.A. Catto he would have to start by looking for her in the city of Litz. In order to get there he would require a guide. There was a small group of humans who had the power to know where exactly they were in the strange shattered world that had remained after the breakdown. There were certain animals that appeared to have the same faculty. Jeb Stuart Ho knew he would need one of these if he was to make the journey to Litz without much excessive wandering.
If the faculty of location could have been bred or taught, the brotherhood would undoubtedly have produced their own guides. But it seemed to be a completely random gift. All they could do was to keep track of the movements of the various potential guides. Jeb Stuart Ho knew he had been lucky. There was one listed as being in a place on roughly the same plane as the temple. If his calculations had been correct, the shattered landscape he was crossing should be the area where the generator fields of the temple and the place he expected to find the guide failed to overlap completely.
He thought he saw something on the very horizon, but the air shimmered so much where the nothings fought to absorb and destroy it, it was hard to tell. He walked on, and gradually he became positive that there was a tall, dark shape in the distance. After walking a little further it became apparent that the dark shape was a building of some sort. In some ways it was like the temple. It was obviously very tall, and dominated the surrounding landscape in much the same way as the temple. As far as Jeb Stuart Ho could see it didn’t have the clean lines of the temple. Its outline seemed cluttered and fussy.
He knew very little about the place he was going to. The reference had only told him its name. It had said a guide was currently at Wainscot, and given some approximate directions. Jeb Stuart Ho quickened his pace. He could waste no time on the preparatory moves that were needed before he could fulfil his mission.
As he came nearer the dark building, the landscape began to stabilize. It was no more attractive, though, than the borders of the nothings. The rocks did not return to their earlier colours. On the outskirts of Wainscote they were black and shiny. Damp white mist lay in the lower hollows and streamed across the slippery surfaces. No flowers bloomed but here and there twisted, frightened trees clung to the crags. Jeb Stuart Ho saw a dark carrion bird perched on a branch. It eyed him speculatively, but did nothing.
As he drew nearer, he could make out more details of the building itself. To Jeb Stuart Ho’s disciplined mind it appeared a mess. Its base was surrounded by buttresses and porticoes like the exposed roots of some ancient gnarled tree. The main body of the structure was like a stout trunk. It was studded with irregular rows of windows. Most were dark, but a few showed dim, flickering lights. It was topped by an uneven crown of turrets which completed the similarity to a blasted tree by jutting up like stunted branches.
There was an air of gothic gloom that seemed to extend from the house out to the surrounding landscape. The sky had become a deep blue. It gave out no light. That came from an artificial sun that hung brooding behind the turrets, a sullen bloated red. Jeb Stuart Ho involuntarily shuddered, and pulled his cloak more tightly round his shoulders.
Between the rocks he found a rough path that led directly to the house. As he came closer to it, the number of trees increased. More birds, like the one he’d seen earlier, flew high above him in a ragged line. Here and there beside the tracks were other, smaller buildings, cottages or huts. Jeb Stuart Ho peered into a couple of them, but they all seemed to be deserted, and in various stages of decay.
The path opened out as he came closer to the house. The nearer he came, the more he realized exactly how huge the building was. It towered above the surrounding landscape casting a vast, malevolent shadow. A wide area of bare ground littered with rubble and garbage led up to the front of the building. A flight of wide steps gave access to the massive front doors. Jeb Stuart Ho walked quickly across the open space and hurried up the steps. He stopped in front of the double doors. They appeared to have been designed to give access to a race of giants. One of them was slightly open. There was a space just wide enough for Jeb Stuart Ho to slip through. No light came from whatever lay immediately behind. He paused for a moment and ran his fingers over the copper tracery that covered the hard dark wood of the door. Then he slid through the gap, and silently entered Wainscote.