‘What do you think’s happened?’ she said hesitantly.
‘I dread to think.’
‘Could the Callan…’
‘Have been captured? It’s possible. But don’t write us off too soon. We haven’t been waiting all that long. Maybe it’s taking Wilce a bit of time to extricate himself.’
‘It will be really awful if—’ she began, and then a gasp of shock caused Estru to look the way her helmet was facing.
One of the dodecahedron’s pentagonal walls was bursting inwards. Through the imploding rent, accompanied by the icy light of the rings, floated a dozen space-rafts crammed with cyborg warriors.
What followed was horrifying. Only a few Sovyans remained in the dodecahedron. The cyborgs swarmed throughout the structure, hunting them down and slaughtering them in a frenetic orgy. The suit-men were shot, burned, battered to junk with huge hammers. They fought back as best they could, occasionally blowing pale bodies to shreds with rocket-driven shells, but they were outnumbered and their situation was hopeless.
The ferocity of it all terrified the two Ziodeans, floating in their cage in frozen fascination. Then a moan of fright escaped Amara as one of the rafts drifted slowly by them only a few yards away.
The gowned figure they had encountered a week earlier stood on the raft. Leisurely the cyborg gangster abbot turned his body to look them over, his cowl thrown back, his face, with its bizarre mouth and black eyes, appearing cruel, supercilious, amused. Estru felt like a hypnotized rabbit.
The yakusa bonze was gross. The loose gown was open and drawn aside so that he could rest his puffy hands on the pommels of two huge curved swords which were thrust into a sash-like belt, to which also were clipped dozens of appurtenances. Swelling over the belt was a vast belly, corrugated and metal-studded.
A semi-circular plate of gold apparently bisected his brain and jutted out from the skull, each half of which sported its own control turret. The psychological implications of that division intrigued Estru, but he had no time to think about it. He felt only relief when the warrior abbot turned away from them, his attention taken by something else.
A captured Sovyan was being goaded across the dodecahedron by jerking cyborgs. The bonze floated up from his raft and went out to his meet his enemy, drawing the two great swords with a swift, vigorous motion.
His divided brain clearly did not detract from his physical prowess. A normal man, in normal gravity, would have needed two hands to control just one of those unwieldy blades, but the bonze, a sword in each hand, executed a dazzling series of movements, using each weapon to counterbalance the torque of the other. Then the shimmering blades whirled like propellers as he fell to destroying the suit-man, slicing through the metal body with astonishing ease. In less than a minute the Sovyan had been hacked to pieces and his gruesome wreckage drifted through the void.
It was impossible not to feel the tribal energy of the exulting cyborgs as the abbot turned his back on the scene, his twin swords smeared with blood and oil, and again approached the Faraday cage.
In panic Amara and Estru retreated to the far side of their prison. The incredible swordblades flashed, hacking their way through the meshed gridwork. A tumult of Japanese babble burst through the Ziodeans’ earphones the instant the wires were scythed away. Then more of the creatures joined in, tearing the cage apart and reaching for its contents. The hysterical babble became deafening.
Then, at that moment, the whole dodecahedron seemed to implode. A great gap was riven in the side of the building. Shrieking hoarsely, the cyborgs turned to face the new threat.
The bulky shape of the Callan was visible hovering beyond the shattered wall. Driveboats were steering themselves into the dodecahedron, firing on the cyborgs and picking them off in dozens. Captain Wilce’s promised rescue party had arrived at last.
Amara patted her frizzled, purple-dyed hair into place. Though badly shaken, she was rapidly recovering her composure.
‘You certainly took your time,’ she chided in a carefully controlled voice.
Knowing how close a thing it had been, Captain Wilce was not inclined to take the reproof as a joke. ‘It was the best we could do,’ he said gravely. ‘We had some nasty moments. The Sovyans managed to do us a bit of damage, I’m afraid. As a matter of fact the arrival of the cyborgs took them off our backs and enabled us to get to you.’
The explorer ship had withdrawn from Domashnabaza. Through the bridge’s observation dome they could see the ring system a couple of million miles away, arcing through space like a rainbow. Wilce, his back to the view, was stuffing herbs into a smoking tube. ‘We’ve spoiled our welcome all round one way and another, I reckon,’ he said equably. ‘It might even be our brush with the cyborg raft that brought on this onslaught. What are your ideas now, Amara?’
‘We’ll move on,’ she said shortly. ‘We’ve collected enough data here to be going on with. It wouldn’t be very easy getting more, anyway. The defence problem, as you point out, Captain.’
She laughed nervously. As they had left she had seen the cyborgs sacking what might have been a nursery or a hospital.
Estru had been gazing at the rings. He turned to her. ‘Before we move shall I release Verednyev?’
Amara frowned. ‘Eh? What for?’
He shrugged. ‘I presume it was our intention eventually.’
‘Well you presume wrong,’ she snapped. ‘These people are nothing but savages, cyborg and Sovyans alike. We’ve right to collect specimens where it bears on the security of Ziode. I want him for study, do you hear? He stays with us!’ She barely refrained from stamping her foot.
Resigned, Estru shrugged again.
Captain Wilce issued orders. The Callan moved into the interstellar velocity bracket. In minutes they had left behind the tiny, dark, forsaken planetary system where, against all the odds, man had survived, and set themselves to go probing yet farther along the Tzist Arm.
7
It must be admitted that the psychology of Caeanic Man differs substantially from that of Ziodean Man. Caeanic culture has performed the extraordinary feat of projecting its consciousness entirely into exterior forms. The upbringing of a Caeanic, indeed the whole of his social training, conditions his mind to respond in a chameleon-like manner to the adornments he dons. A naked Caeanic is a mental blank, like a man without limbs or a man paralysed, and he almost never allows himself to be so discommoded. For all occasions there are suitable garments; sleeping, taking a bath, fornicating, even childbirth. In normal circumstances it is never necessary for him to see his naked form, and if he does it is a private glimpse devoid of self-image.
A Caeanic, even an educated Caeanic, will be amused if a foreigner should suggest to him that his dependence on raiment is a cultural weakness. To him the benefits of the Art of Attire are self-evident. He will point out that these personality assists with which he invests himself are donned entirely by choice, and give him a greater command over his own mind than is possessed by the average Ziodean, who is subject to all kinds of uncontrollable moods and deficiencies.
Arth Matt-Helver, Travels in the Tzist Arm
‘Just look at that guy! He’s riding on a cloud!’
Castor’s eyes glittered enviously as he read the newscast. The cast sheet showed a picture of a social function at the manse of an important Directorate minister. Among those raising their glasses to toast the minister, plain as day, was Peder Forbarth, outshining everyone, even the minister, as a paragon of elegance, of charm and grooming. By some photographic accident he, not the government supremo, seemed somehow to be the object of the occasion.