"Machinery."
"No, Earl. Such things were not considered to be that. We used no artificial means of power, but we had a windmill and a water wheel and…" She nodded, almost asleep, then jerked in his arms, gasping. "They killed a man. Stoned him to death. They tied him up by the wrists to a post and stood close and threw stones at him until he stopped screaming. Stopped moving. It was horrible!"
Another pause. Water blasted through the narrow crack and drenched her face and hair, and lightning blazed to hurl brilliance through the transparent lid. In its glare her lips looked black and her hair silver.
"Why?" Dumarest shook her. "Why did they kill him?"
"What?" She gasped again, her breasts pressing against his body, eyes blinking as they tried to focus. "The man? Why, he'd devised a system of mirrors to reflect the rays of the sun so as to heat water in a boiler and so produce steam. With it, he turned a painted wheel set with bright crystal. A toy to amuse the children, Earl. A toy-and they killed him because of it."
"For making a machine?"
"Yes," she said dully. "For making a machine."
"And the windmill and water wheel?"
"Were allowed under the Revealed Truth. The wind blew and the water flowed, but the sun did not boil water and to force it to do that was acting against the creed. It was to invite the seeds of destruction to cast down the race again."
Dumarest said quietly, "From terror, they fled to find new places on which to expiate their sins. Only when cleansed will the race of Man be again united."
The creed of the Original People-was Dilys one? Had she originated in a commune of the sect? Had the "Revealed Truth" she had mentioned contained the belief that all men had originated on one world and that world had been possibly Earth?
Terror-Terra.
An easy enough transition from one to the other and if she knew, she might, in her present state of mental fog induced by too high a percentage of carbon dioxide, be induced to betray the closely guarded secret.
"Earl?" She stared at him in puzzlement. "What did you say?"
"Nothing. It doesn't matter." A hope to be discarded along with so many others. More than one commune had turned their backs on machinery, and she had obviously been born into one. But, in that case, how had she become an engineer?
"The man who was stoned was my brother," she said, when he asked. "I had to do what I could to avenge him."
By leaving the community and doing the one thing they would have hated most for her to do; to embrace the vileness they condemned. To become a servant of the machine.
"Earl?"
"Nothing." He eased his arm around her, cushioning her against his body, against the punishing slap of the waves. "Go to sleep, now."
"You'll stay with me?" Like a child, she needed reassurance. "You'll take care of me?"
"Yes."
"You promise? Earl, you promise?"
"I promise."
She sighed and settled and fell asleep, with her lips parted and the soft mounds of her breasts rising to press against him like small, insistent hands. Lying beside her, he watched the glare of lightning tracing pictures in the sky. Spume thrown by the wind dashed against the lid like rain. Droplets which clung and quivered to the thrust of wave's, which ran and formed patterns illuminated by the stroboscopic effect of the lightning.
Faces. Hair the color of flame, of ebon, of silver and of rich, warm brown earth. Eyes which held longing and tenderness, fear, anger and hate. A scarlet shape which advanced with extended hands ready to take and hold and bend the universe to its will. A ruby monster, squatting like a spider at the heart of a web of intrigue.
The fifteen units of the affinity twin.
Kalin's gift, and one which the Cyclan would spare no effort to recover. The discovery made in one of their secret laboratories, stolen, passed on, now his alone. The knowledge of the sequence in which the fifteen units must be assembled to be viable.
A secret which could give them the galaxy.
Thunder roared and the casket tilted, a fresh wave dashing over the lid so that when the lightning next flared, the images had changed. But the sequence would never be lost until Dumarest was dead, or his mind so damaged as to be virtually destroyed.
The affinity twin-an artificial symbiont which, when injected into the bloodstream, moved to the base of the cortex, to nestle there, to take over control of the entire nervous and sensory apparatus of the body. An intruder, which would act as an organic relay, creating an affinity between the dominant half and the subject-host. An affinity which was a literal cojoining so that, in effect, the dominant half became the host, seeing, feeling, hearing, using all the motor and sensory apparatus.
An old and dying man could become young again in a new and virile body. A cripple become whole. A beggar become a ruler. A crone look into the mirror and see a beauty. And all would keep their new shapes until they died, or their own body failed.
Power of incredible potential locked in the arrangement of fifteen units.
The Cyclan knew it, and knew how to use it. They would place the mind of a cyber into the body of every ruler and person of influence, and all would dance to their dictates. But before they could hope for that power, they had to find the order of assembly. They were trying. They would continue to try, but mathematics was against them. The possible combinations ran into millions, and it took time to assemble and test them all. Too much time. Millenia would be needed to check them all.
Time the Cyclan wanted to save.
Time he could save them. Time… time… time…
Dumarest woke, gasping, reaching up and lifting the lid, relishing the cool breeze clearing the stale air from the casket. It was a new day and the storm had passed, the container drifting on an even plane in the water, barely rocking to the slap of waves. Easing himself from the woman's arms, he threw back the lid and rose, breathing deeply the clear, crisp air.
"Earl!" Leo Bochner was up and sitting on the casket he shared with Gale Andrei. "I was just about to call you."
"Why?"
"Look around. We're in trouble."
The sail was still with them, a tattered fragment flapping against the mast they had fashioned from welded pipe. The buoyancy containers rode snug in their frayed lashings, but of the four caskets they had started with only three remained. One had vanished during the night. With it had gone their water and food.
Shen Threnond adjusted the sheet of plastic and, as it bellied with the wind, said, "Once, on Sante, I saw a man who had fasted for thirty days. It was a show at a carnival and I think he was doing it for a bet. If he lasted for thirty-seven days he would have beaten the record."
Egulus said, "Did he?"
"I don't know. I moved on before the period ended but I am sure he did. He seemed fit enough when I saw him. A little spare, perhaps, but fit."
"Going without a few meals doesn't hurt anyone." Bochner looked up from his work. "I've starved for days at a time when on a stalk, and gained because of it. Hunger sharpens the senses and cleanses the body. Of course, some can do without better than others."
Gale Andrei snapped, "Meaning me, I suppose. Hell, can't you talk about anything but food? I'm starving!"
"Not starving," he corrected. "You just want to eat. You're not even really hungry yet. It's just that your stomach is accustomed to be filled at regular intervals and has started to complain. Just be patient. In a few days, it will pass."