Part 8 (1/2)

Light came into being at the center of the stage. Kelexel squirmed into a more comfortable position. Always, that same old beginning, he thought. The light was a forlorn, formless thing that resolved slowly into a streetlamp. It illuminated a slope of lawn, a curved length of driveway and in the background the ghost-gray wall of a native house. The dark windows of primitive gla.s.s glistened like strange eyes.

There was a panting noise somewhere in the scene and something thudding with a frenzied rhythm.

An insect chirred.

Kelexel felt the realism of the sounds as pantovive circuits reproduced them with all the values of the original. To sit enmeshed in the web, linked to the empathic projectors, was as real as viewing the original raw scene from a vantage point above and to one side. It was, in its own way, like the Chem oneness. The smell of dust from wind-stirred dry gra.s.s permeated Kelexel's awareness. A cool finger of breeze touched his face.

Terror crept through Kelexel then. It reached out from the shadowy scene and through the web's projectors with a billowing insistence. Kelexel had to remind himself that this was story artistry, that it wasn't real . . . for him. He was experiencing another creature's fear caught and preserved on sensitive recorders.

A running figure, a native woman clad in a loose green gown that billowed around her thighs, fled into the focus on the stage. She gasped and panted as she ran. Her bare feet thudded on the lawn and then on the paving of the driveway. Pursuing her came a squat, moon-faced man carrying a sword whose blade like a silvery snaketrack glittered in the light of the streetlamp.

Terror radiated from the woman. She gasped: ”No! Please, dear G.o.d, no!”

Kelexel held his breath. No matter the number of times he had seen this, the act of violence felt new each time. He was beginning to see what Fraffin might have in this story. The sword was lifted high overhead . . .

”Cut!”

The web went blank, no emotion, nothing. It was like being dropped off a cliff. The stage darkened.

Kelexel realized then the voice had been Fraffin's. It had come from far down to the right. A momentary rage at Fraffin's action surged through Kelexel. It required a moment for the Investigator to reorient himself and still he felt frustrated.

Lights came on revealing the rising wedge of seats converging on the disc of stage. Kelexel blinked, stared around him at the story cadre. He could still feel the menace from them and from that empty stage. What was the threat here? he wondered. He trusted his instincts in this: there was danger in this room. But what was it?

The cadre sat around him row on row -- trainees and off-duty crewmen at the rear, probationers and specialist observers in the center, the editing crew down near the stage. Taken individually, they appeared such ordinary Chem, but Kelexel remembered what he had felt in the dark -- the oneness, an organism bent on harming him, confident of its ability to harm him. He could sense it in the Chem empathy, the all-one-life they shared.

There was an old stillness to the room now. They were waiting for something. Far down near the stage heads bent together in inaudible conversation.

Am I imagining things? Kelexel wondered. But surely they must suspect me. Why then do they permit me to sit in here and watch them work?

The work -- that violent death.

Again, Kelexel felt frustration at the way Fraffin had cut off that scene. To have the vision denied him even when he knew how it went . . . Kelexel shook his head. He felt confused, excited. Once more he swept his gaze over the cadre. They were a gaming board of colors in the giant room, the hue of each uniform coded to its wearer's duties -- red patches of flitter pilots, the motley orange and black of shooting crewmen, green of story continuity, yellow of servicing and repair, purple of acting and white of wardrobe, and here and there the black punctuation marks of Manipulators, subdirectors. Fraffin's inner circle.

The group near the stage broke apart. Fraffin emerged, climbed up onto the stage and to the very center, the bare circle of image focus. It was a deliberate move which identified him with the action which had occupied that s.p.a.ce only moments before.

Kelexel bent forward to study the Director. Fraffin was a gaunt little figure down there in his black cloak, a patch of ebony hair above silver skin, the gashed straightedge mouth with its deep upper lip. He was suddenly something from the shadowy marches of a far and perilous realm that no other Chem had ever glimpsed. There was an arresting individuality to him.

The sunken eyes looked up and searched out Kelexel.

A chill went through the Investigator then. He sat back, his thoughts boiling with alarm. It was as though Fraffin had spoken to him, saying: ”There's the foolish Investigator! There he is, ensnared in my net, trapped! Safely caught! Oh, certainly caught!”

Silence gripped the empatheater now like a held breath. The intent faces of the cadre focused on the image stage.

”I will tell you once more,” Fraffin said, and his voice caressed the air. ”Our aim is subtlety.”

Again, Fraffin looked up at Kelexel.

Now, he has felt terror, Fraffin thought. Fear heightens the s.e.x drive. And he has seen the victim's daughter, a female of the kind to snare any Chem -- exotic, not too gross, graceful, eyes like strange green jewels. Ah, how the Chem love green. She is sufficiently similar to other non-Chem pleasure creatures that he will sense new physical excitements in her. Ah, hah, Kelexel! You will ask to examine a native soon -- and we'll permit it.