Part 7 (1/2)
”The Lady Dallona is in the gun room,” Tarnod informed Verkan Vall, making as though to guide him.
”Thanks, Tarnod; we know the way,” Dirzed told him shortly, turning his back on the upper-servant and walking toward a closed door on the other side of the fountain. Verkan Vall and Olirzon followed; for a moment, Tarnod stood looking after them, then he followed the other two a.s.sa.s.sins into the ascent tube.
”I don't relish that fellow,” Dirzed explained. ”The family of Starpha use him for work they couldn't hire an a.s.sa.s.sin to do at any price.
I've been here often, when I was with the Lord Garnon; I've always thought he had something on Prince Jirzyn.”
He knocked sharply on the closed door with the b.u.t.t of his pistol. In a moment, it slid open, and a young a.s.sa.s.sin with a narrow mustache and a tuft of chin beard looked out.
”Ah, Dirzed.” He stepped outside. ”The Lady Dallona is within; I return her to your care.”
Verkan Vall entered, followed by Dirzed and Olirzon. The big room was fitted with reclining chairs and couches and low tables; its walls were hung with the heads of deer and boar and wolves, and with racks holding rifles and hunting pistols and fowling pieces. It was filled with the soft glow of indirect cold light. At the far side of the room, a young woman was seated at a desk, speaking softly into a sound transcriber. As they entered, she snapped it off and rose.
Hadron Dalla wore the same costume Verkan Vall had seen on the visiplate: he recognized her instantly. It took her a second or two to perceive Verkan Vall under the brown skin and black hair of the Lord Virzal of Verkan. Then her face lighted with a happy smile.
”Why, Va-a-a-ll!” she whooped, running across the room and tossing herself into his not particularly reluctant arms. After all, it had been twenty years--”I didn't know you, at first!”
”You mean, in these clothes?” he asked, seeing that she had forgotten, for the moment, the presence of the two a.s.sa.s.sins. She had even called him by his First Level name, but that was unimportant--the Akor-Neb affectionate diminutive was formed by omitting the -_irz_- or -_arn_-. ”Well, they're not exactly what I generally wear on the plantation.” He kissed her again, then turned to his companions. ”Your pardon, Gentlemen-a.s.sa.s.sins; it's been something over a year since we've seen each other.”
Olirzon was smiling at the affectionate reunion; Dirzed wore a look of amused resignation, as though he might have expected something like this to happen. Verkan Vall and Dalla sat down on a couch near the desk.
”That was really sweet of you, Vall, fighting those men for talking about me,” she began. ”You took an awful chance, though. But if you hadn't, I'd never have known you were in Darsh--Oh-oh! That was why you did it, wasn't it?”
”Well, I had to do something. Everybody either didn't know or weren't saying where you were. I a.s.sumed, from the circ.u.mstances, that you were hiding somewhere. Tell me, Dalla; do you really have scientific proof of reincarnation? I mean, as an established fact?”
”Oh, yes; these people on this sector have had that for over ten centuries. They have hypnotic techniques for getting back into a part of the subconscious mind that we've never been able to reach. And after I found out how they did it, I was able to adapt some of our hypno-epistemological techniques to it, and--”
”All right; that's what I wanted to know,” he cut her off. ”We're getting out of here, right away.”
”But where?”
”Ghamma, in an airboat I have outside, and then back to the First Level. Unless there's a paratime-transposition conveyor somewhere nearer.”
”But why, Vall? I'm not ready to go back; I have a lot of work to do here, yet. They're getting ready to set up a series of control-experiments at the Inst.i.tute, and then, I'm in the middle of an experiment, a two-hundred-subject memory-recall experiment. See, I distributed two hundred sets of equipment for my new technique--injection-ampoules of this _zerfa_-derivative drug, and sound records of the hypnotic suggestion formula, which can be played on an ordinary reproducer. It's just a crude variant of our hypno-mech process, except that instead of implanting information in the subconscious mind, to be brought at will to the level of consciousness, it works the other way, and draws into conscious knowledge information already in the subconscious mind. The way these people have always done has been to put the subject in an hypnotic trance and then record verbal statements made in the trance state; when the subject comes out of the trance, the record is all there is, because the memories of past reincarnations have never been in the conscious mind. But with my process, the subject can consciously remember everything about his last reincarnation, and as many reincarnations before that as he wishes to. I haven't heard from any of the people who received these auto-recall kits, and I really must--”
”Dalla, I don't want to have to pull Paratime Police authority on you, but, so help me, if you don't come back voluntarily with me, I will.
Security of the secret of paratime transposition.”
”Oh, my eye!” Dalla exclaimed. ”Don't give me that, Vall!”
”Look, Dalla. Suppose you get discarnated here,” Verkan Vall said.
”You say reincarnation is a scientific fact. Well, you'd reincarnate on this sector, and then you'd take a memory-recall, under hypnosis.
And when you did, the paratime secret wouldn't be a secret any more.”
”Oh!” Dalla's hand went to her mouth in consternation. Like every paratimer, she was conditioned to shrink with all her being from the mere thought of revealing to any out-time dweller the secret ability of her race to pa.s.s to other time-lines, or even the existence of alternate lines of probability. ”And if I took one of the old-fas.h.i.+oned trance-recalls, I'd blat out everything; I wouldn't be able to keep a thing back. And I even know the principles of transposition!” She looked at him, aghast.
”When I get back, I'm going to put a recommendation through department channels that this whole sector be declared out of bounds for all paratime-transposition, until you people at Rhogom Foundation work out the problem of discarnate return to the First Level,” he told her.
”Now, have you any notes or anything you want to take back with you?”
She rose. ”Yes; just what's on the desk. Find me something to put the tape spools and notebooks in, while I'm getting them in order.”