Part 6 (1/2)
”Whose fault is it if not yours?” she was demanding, angry as he had never seen her angry before. ”You admit you're the one who suggested they use Matt. Why didn't you suggest they go back and grab someone else from the past instead?”
So far Derron was holding on to his patience. ”Operations can't just reach back and pull someone out of history every time they feel like it. Ay's crew are a special case; they're going right back where they belong. And Matt is a special case: he was about to die anyway when he was brought up. Now Operations already has brought up a couple of other men who were about to die in their own times, but those two haven't had a chance to learn where they are yet, let alone what the mission they're wanted for is all about. When they are able to understand it, there's a chance they may refuse.”
”Refuse? What chance did Matt ever have to refuse to go, when you demanded it of him? He thinks you're some kind of a great hero:-he's still like a child in so many ways!”
”Beg your pardon, but he's not a child. Far from it. And he won't be helpless. Before we drop him he'll be trained in everything he'll need, from politics to weapons. And we'll be standing by-”
”Weapons?” Now she was really outraged. She was still like a child herself, in some ways.
”Certainly, weapons. Although we hope he's only going to be in Queensland for a few days and won't get involved in any fighting. We're going to try to have Ay rehabilitated and bring Matt back here before the wedding.”
”Wedding!”
Derron hastened on. ”Matt can take care of himself, and he can do the job that's expected of him. He's a natural leader. Anyone who can lead Neolithic people-”
”Never mind all that!” Becoming aware that her anger was useless, Lisa was sliding toward the brink of tears. ”Of course he can do it! If he must. If he's really the only one who can go. But why were you the one to suggest that he be used? Right after I had talked to you about him. Why? Did you just have to make sure that he was temporary too?”
”Lisa, no!”
Her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g over, and she hurried to the door. ”I don't know what you are! I don't know you anymore!” And she was gone.
Days ago, the plastic membrane, its task completed, had fallen away from his face. The new skin had appeared already weathered, thanks to the Moderns' magic, and with the membrane gone the new beard had grown with fantastic speed for two days before slowing to a normal rate.
Now, on the day he was to be dropped, Matt stood for the last time in front of the mirror of his room- he was still quartered in the hospital-to get a last good look at his new face. Turning his head from side to side, he pondered Ay's cheeks and nose and chin from different angles.
It was a much different face from the one that had looked back at him reflected in the still waters of Neolithic ponds; but he wondered if the spirit behind it had also been changed sufficiently. It did not seem to Matt that he was yet possessed of the spirit of a king.
”Just a few more questions, sire,” said one of the omnipresent tutors, standing at Matt's elbow. For days now the tutors had conversed with him only in Ay's language, while treating him with the respect suitable for subordinates to show when addressing a warrior chief. Maybe they thought they were helping to change his spirit, but it was only playacting.
The tutor frowned at his notes. ”First, how will you spend the evening of the day of your arrival in Queensland?”
Turning away from the mirror, Matt answered patiently. ”That is one of the times we cannot be sure of, where Ay's lifeline is hard to see. I will stay in character as best I can and try to avoid making decisions, especially big ones. I will use my communicator if I think I need help.”
”And if you should happen to meet the dragon machine that a.s.sa.s.sinated your predecessor?”
”I will try my best to make it move around, even if this means letting it chase me. So that you can find the keyhole to cancel out the dragon along with all the harm it has done.”
Another tutor who stood near the door said, ”Operations will be watching closely. They will do their utmost to pull you out before the dragon can do you harm.”
”Yes, yes. And with the sword you are giving me, I will have some chance to defend myself.”
The tutors' questioning went on, while the time for the drop neared, and a team of technicians came in to dress Matt. They brought with them the best copies that could be made of the garments Ay had worn when embarking for Queensland.
The costumers treated him more like a statue than a king. When it was time for the finis.h.i.+ng touches, one of them complained, ”If they've decided at last that we should use the original helmet, where is it?”
”Both helmets are out at the Reservoir,” the other answered. ”The communications people are still working on them.”
The tutors kept thinking up more last-minute questions, which Matt continued to answer patiently; the dressers put a plastic coverall on him over Ay's clothes, and another officer came to lead him out to the little train that would take him through a tunnel to Reservoir H.
Once before he had ridden on this train, when he had been taken to see the sleeping men and the s.h.i.+p.
He had not cared for the train's swaying and did not expect to enjoy riding the s.h.i.+p. As if in tune with this thought, one of the tutors now looked at his timepiece and handed Matt what Matt knew was an anti-motion-sickness pill.
Halfway to the Reservoir, the train stopped at a place where it had not stopped last time, and two men got on. One was the chief called Time Ops: he and everyone else showed deference to the second man, whom Matt recognized from his pictures as the Planetary Commander. The Planetary Commander took the seat facing Matt and sat there swaying lightly with the car's renewed motion, holding Matt in steady scrutiny.
Matt's face was sweating, but only because of the plastic coverall. So, he was thinking, this is what a king looks like in the flesh. At once heavier and less rocklike than his television image. But this man was after all a Modern king, and so the king spirit in him was bound to be different from that which had been in Ay.
The ruler of the Moderns asked Matt, ”I understand you thought it important to see me before you were dropped?” When there was no immediate response, he added, ”You understand what I'm saying?”
”Yes, I understand. Learning Ay's language has not driven yours out of my mind. I wanted to see you, to see with my own eyes what it is that makes a man a king.” Some of the men in the background wanted to laugh when they heard that; but they were afraid to laugh, and quickly smoothed their faces into immobility.
The Planetary Commander did not laugh or even smile, but only glanced sideways at Time Ops before asking Matt, ”They've taught you what to do if the dragon machine comes after you?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw Time Ops nod slightly to the Planetary Commander.
”Yes” said Matt. ”I am to make the machine chase me, to get it to move around as much as possible.
You will try to pull me out....”
The Planetary Commander nodded with satisfaction as he listened. When the train stopped, he waved the others to get off first, so that he and Matt were left alone in the car. Then he said, ”I will tell you the real secret of being a king. It is to be ready to lay down your life for your people, whenever and however it is needed.” Then he nodded solemnly; he meant what he had said, or he thought he meant it, and maybe he considered it a piece of startling wisdom. His eyes for a moment were lonely and uncertain.
Then he put on his public face again and began to speak loud words of encouragement, smiling and clapping Matt on the shoulder as they walked off the train together.
Derron was waiting at trackside in the low, rough-hewn cavern, to grip hands with Matt in the style of Ay's time. Matt looked for Lisa in the busy little crowd, but, except perhaps for Derron, only those who had some work to do were here. In his mind Matt a.s.sociated Lisa with Derron, and sometimes he wondered why these two friends of his did not mate. Maybe he would mate with Lisa himself if he came back from his mission and she was willing. He had thought on occasion that she would be willing, but there had never been time to find out.
The tutors and other busy men hustled Matt off to wait by himself in a small anteroom. He was told he could get out of the coverall, which he did thankfully. He heard another door open somewhere nearby, and into his room came the smell of the vast body of clean water, the lake that was hidden and preserved against the planet's future needs.
On the table in his Ifttle waiting room lay the sword that the Modern wizards had designed for him. Matt belted on the scabbard and then drew the weapon, looking at it curiously. The edge appeared to be keen, but no more than naturally so. The unaided eye could see nothing of what the Moderns had once shown him through a microscope-the extra edge, thinning to invisibility even under high magnification, which slid out of the ordinary edge when Matt's hand, and his alone, gripped the hilt. In his hand, the sword pierced ordinary metal like cheese, and armor plate like wood, nor was the blade dulled in doing so. The Moderns said that the secret inner edge had been forged of a single molecule; Matt had no need to understand that and did not try.
But he had come to understand much, he thought, sheathing the sword again. In recent days, sleeping and waking, Matt had had history, along with other knowledge, poured like a river through his mind. And there was a new strength in his mind that the Moderns had not put there. They marveled over it and said it must have come from his twenty thousand years' pa.s.sage from the direction of the beginning of the world toward the direction of its end.
With this strength to work on the Moderns' teaching, one of the things he could see very clearly was that in Sirgol's history it was the Moderns who were the odd culture, the misfits. Of course, by mere count of years, by languages and inst.i.tutions, the Moderns were far closer to Ay than Ay was to Matt's original People. But in their basic modes of thinking and feeling, Ay and The People were much closer, both to each other and to the rest of humanity.
Only such physical power as the Moderns wielded was ever going to destroy the berserkers-or could ever have created them. But when it came to things of the spirit, the Moderns were stunted children.
From their very physical powers came their troubled minds, or from their troubled minds came their power over matter; it was hard to say which. In any case, they had not been able to show Matt how to put on the spirit of a king, which was something he was now required to do.
There was another thing he had come to understand-that the spirits of life were very strong in the universe, or else they would long ago have been driven from it by the berserker machines of accident and disease, if not by the malignant ones that came in metal bodies.
Wis.h.i.+ng to reach toward the source of life for the help he needed, Matt now did what Ay would have done before embarking on a dangerous voyage-he raised his hands, making the wedge sign of Ay's religion, and murmured a brief prayer, expressing his needs and feelings in the form of words Ay would have used.
That done, he could see no reason to stay shut up any longer in this little room. So he opened the door and stepped out.
Everyone was as busy as before. Men worked singly or in groups, on various kinds of gear. Others hurried past, moving this way and that, calling out orders or information. Most of them remained utterly intent on their business, but a few faces were turned toward Matt; the faces looked annoyed that he had come popping out of his container before it was time for him to be used and fearful lest he cause some disruption of the schedule.
After one look around, he ignored the faces. Ay's helmet was waiting for him on a stand, and he went to it and picked it up. With his own hands he set the silver-winged thing upon his head.
It was an unplanned, instinctive gesture; the expressions on the men's faces were enough to show him that his instinct had been right. The men looking on fell into an unwilling silence that was mirror enough to show Matt that the helmet had marked a transformation, even though in another moment the men were turning back to their jobs with busy practicality, ignoring as best they could the new presence in their midst.
In another moment, some of his tutors came hurrying up again, saying that they had just a few more questions for him. Matt understood that they felt a sudden need to rea.s.sure themselves that they were his teachers still, and not his subjects. But now that the spirit he needed had come to him, he was not going to give them any such comfort; the tutors' time of power over him had pa.s.sed.