The games of neith, p.8
The Games of Neith, page 8
There was a long silence. Anassa felt a cold, remote misery. The world around her seemed unreal, and she herself a ghost.
She did not know how long she sat there, chilled and alienated. The sun was low in the west.
Suddenly, cutting across her apathy, there came a sound she had not heard for two full days. It was the soft whump-whump of the Basset's diesel. "What—?" she asked.
"The leak is plugged," Wan said, getting slowly to his feet. "Energy from the rest of Gwethym is flowing back here. And our fuel oil will burn again."
Chapter Ten
"Of course it's important," Halliday said annoyedly. "Few things are more important than avoiding bad publicity."
"Yes, sir," his radio technician answered. "You mean that if it were known—"
"I mean that Wentworth isn't on Fridtjof Island. You followed his traces into thirty fathoms of water. Whether he was alive or dead when he was put there, I don't know—the Starborne hasn't any diving equipment, so I can't send one of the men down to find out. But he certainly didn't go there under his own power.
"We saw his sunken ship on the south side of the island. Was it scuttled? And his papers and notes are gone. Somebody took them. And that means that somebody, some quite unauthorized person, knows that Tom Wentworth, an employee of the GSSC, was investigating the so-called energy leak.
"That's the kind of publicity we don't want. No big concern likes loose talk. I want you to pick up those people's traces in the chronichnion and follow them to where they are now."
"Yes, sir. It won't be easy, sir. The reason I could pick up Wentworth's traces was that I had a pretty accurate spacial fix on him initially—his bunk in the hut. I haven't any idea where these other people were in either time or space. I can't pick up their blips."
"Never mind that," said the master of the Starborne. "They must have got near Wentworth, at some point. Hunt around on both sides of his time-space traces. You'll pick them up eventually."
"Yes, sir, I'll try."
"Don't try," Halliday answered irritably. His heavy face was flushed. "Do it!"
-
For two days the Starborne swung idly at anchor beside the jetty of Fridtjof Island while the technician walked slowly up and down the path from the hut to the water, his head and back bent under the weight of the elaborate apparatus of a space-time tracing machine. He had no success.
Early in the morning of the third say, Budd, the technician, knocked on Halliday's door. "SOS, sir," he said, entering.
"What makes you think I'm interested in an SOS?" Halliday asked irritably. He had been interrupted in a delicate part of his toilet. "The Starborne isn't in the business of rescuing people."
"Yes, sir, I know. But this SOS sounds as if it might be from the people whose traces we're trying to pick up." He handed the flimsy bit of plastic tape to his captain.
Sailing yacht Basset, Halliday read, in distress. Too weak to work ship. Will all craft receiving this message please relay to New Christiana and ask government cutter with physician to be sent out. We are at 177° 20' 3" west and 44° 4' north, off Tu Fu Island. Help urgent. Ehr-li Wan, skipper of the Basset.
"Hm," said Halliday. "What makes you think this is the people we're hunting? It sounds like a pleasure yacht where somebody's gotten sick."
"Yes, sir. But look where the ship is." He pointed to the map. "That's only about three days' sail from here. There's very little traffic in these waters. And he doesn't say they're sick, he says they're too weak to work the ship. If they had been poking about near the site of, ah, the so-called energy leak—"
"I'm inclined to think the energy leak never existed," Halliday said abstractedly. "Certainly nobody on the Starborne has been noticeably affected by it. But radio them help is on the way."
"Yes, sir. Shall I relay the message to New Christiana? The Basset's signal was awfully weak. Only an ultrasensitive receiver like ours could have picked it up."
"No, don't bother. It isn't necessary to bring New Christiana into this. And don't talk to anyone about this, Budd. We'll handle this ourselves." Halliday pushed the buzzer that would summon his first mate to the intercom.
-
The Starborne was not subject to the limitations of power that had so harassed the Basset. She had atomic engines, and in the atomic fuel for them she had, practically speaking, an inexhaustible source of power. In less than two days from the time Budd had brought the SOS to his superior, the Starborne was anchoring near the Basset off Tu Fu Island. The smaller craft was flying a distress signal.
"Basset ahoy!" Halliday shouted through an amplifier. There was no answer. Halliday went into his cabin and, rather ostentatiously, came out with a medical kit. There were two considerably less ostentatious bulges over his hips that meant he was wearing side arms.
The Basset, because of her lesser draft, was anchored closer inshore than the Starborne could get. Halliday had a boat lowered and, with Budd for his only companion, took it across to the little ship.
Halliday, whatever his commitments to the GSSC might have been, was a good sailor. He snaked a rope up over the Basset's bulwark, made his craft fast, and shinnied up the rope to the deck. Budd, less adroitly, followed him.
It was immediately obvious that there was nobody on board the Basset. Her cabin was as empty as her deck had been. Halliday stood looking about him, regarding the two narrow berths, the piece of board that had served Wan as laboratory bench and writing desk, and the tiny galley. Then we went over to the writing board and started rummaging through the pigeon holes above it.
Wentworth's report and diary were almost the first things he found. Budd, who was standing behind him, saw his neck turn red.
"Yes, these are the people we've been hunting," he said in a choking voice. "These are poor old Wentworth's papers. They killed him and took his papers away from him. And they wanted a government cutter sent out for them from New Christiana! People like that don't deserve any consideration. They're thieves, common thieves, and murderers!"
He strode purposively out of the cabin. "They must be on the island," he said. "I wonder why, if they were so weak that they had to send out a distress signal, they went to the exertion of going ashore. But we'll find them and settle with them."
"Well, sir," Budd said, replying to his superior's implied question, "they may have gone ashore hoping there was someone on the island who could help them."
"Help them!" Halliday replied angrily. "People like that aren't entitled to help. They're murderers!"
Budd nodded. He did not think it politic to interrupt Halliday's self-righteous anger by pointing out that Wentworth, who had been investigating the site of the "so-called energy leak" for several months, might have been dying or dead before even the Basset was heard of. Halliday, a good company man, had reason for wanting to believe that the people who had Wentworth's papers—and hence knew about the existence of the energy leak—were murderers. It is not murder to kill murderers.
"Be careful," Halliday said as he ran his boat up on the beach. "These people may be dangerous. I'd not be surprised if the whole thing, SOS and all, were a trap. These people are obviously fanatics who have some morbid reason for hating the GSSC." He was, Budd perceived, deliberately working himself into a state of mind where any action would seem a just vengeance to him.
They did not have to look far to find the people who had been on the Basset. They had collapsed a few yards from the beach, just within the shadow of the trees. They were quite near to each other. There was a big cyon by their side.
The man's mouth was open and his eyes were glazed. The girl's long amber hair was still beautiful, but her face was the face of a woman at the gates of death.
For a minute or two Halliday did not move. Then he picked up the man's hand and felt at the wrist for a pulse.
He let the hand drop. "It won't be necessary to settle with them," he said in a tone of heavy satisfaction. "He's almost gone."
"Aren't you going to—" said Budd, and then stopped. He didn't know what he had been going to ask Halliday. It wasn't his place to make suggestions to his superior, whether of compassion or of homicide.
"No. It won't be necessary. I shan't have to soil my hands."
He might be sincere, Budd reflected as he followed Halliday's broad back down to the beach. Even a good company man may prefer to have some things taken out of his hands.
-
Wan lay in a stupor. He had been aware neither of Halliday 's coming nor of his departure. He did not hear the distant sounds of the Starborne as she weighed anchor. His senses were wrapped in mist.
At the back of his mind, very remote by now, was regret for having brought Anassa here to die. In the days after they had left the place where the energy leak had been, when it had become plain to both of them that they had been damaged beyond their ability to survive, he had tried painfully to tell her how sorry he was. She had been too weak to do more than touch his hand and try to smile. But even now he felt a dim wonder that he could so fatally have underestimated the danger.
He felt that he was sinking slowly into cold waters. Backward into the black. He knew what waters they were. The bottomless dark well.
He did not know when a hand was laid on his forehead. But after a moment he became aware of a light, icy tingle that raced along his body and ran deep into his nerves.
He opened his eyes. He felt amazement that he could open them.
A woman was bending over him. A woman? He had seen the statue in the temple too many times not to know her. It was Neith!
Chapter Eleven
"She oughtn't to have gone off and left us," said the proprietor of the waterfront wine shop. "A vacation at this time—there's bound to be trouble. The Jovists are getting bolder every day."
"Was it really a vacation?" the customer answered. "Maybe she went on important business. The Lady Anassa always seemed a responsible person to me."
"Well, it looked like a vacation," Hu-shih answered.
"She's sure to be back in time for the Games," said the customer. "As I said, she's serious and responsible."
"Maybe she is. But I very much doubt there'll be any Games celebrated this year. Besides, all this unrest is bad for business."
"I should have thought people would drink more when they were worried."
"Not with this kind of worry. People aren't drinking, they're laying in arms. It gives me the shivers. Nothing in the world could be so bad for Gwethym as a civil war."
The customer had backed away a little from the wine counter. Perhaps he felt that for a wine-shop owner to be telling his troubles to a customer was contrary to nature. "I've got to be getting back to—"
Hu-shih wasn't listening. "What's that spot out on the water?" he said. "That sort of glittering?"
"I don't see anything."
"You're not looking in the right place." He pointed. "Over there."
"Oh. It looks like—"
Hu-shih and the customer exchanged glances. "It looks like a woman," the customer said.
Lightly, with swift delicate footsteps, a woman was walking over the surface of the water toward the shore. As she advanced, the shipping of the port froze into immobility around her. And as she moved forward there followed in her train the babble of astonished voices that was to be her constant accompaniment during the hours she spent in New Christiana.
"She's walking over the water! She's made of gold!" Hu-shih cried. He gulped. "It's Neith."
"Neith isn't real."
"You fool, who else would be walking over the water? Besides, I've seen her image often enough in the temple. I want to be the first—" The wine-shop owner threw up the flap of his wine counter and ran out. The customer, more slowly, followed him.
By the time the woman was climbing up a ladder on the side of one of the piers, half the population of the waterfront was waiting to welcome her. They drew back, murmuring, as she stepped out on the concrete.
Seen up close, her physical beauty was incredible, astonishing. She wore the thinnest of white shifts, through which the golden flesh of her body seemed to glow. Her hair, loose around her shoulders, was a darker, molten gold. Her eyes were an intense, almost burning aquamarine.
She cast a shadow, so she must have been material; but about the edges of the shape there glowed a nimbus of rainbow hues.
She was smiling gently. The crowd had drawn back from her in awe. Then somebody, greatly daring, said, "Welcome, Queen Neith."
The woman frowned a little. "I'm not Neith," she said. "My name is Chryse. Gold."
"Be greeted by whatever name may please you, mistress," the brave voice answered, though it quivered a little. "The gods may bear what names they choose."
The woman looked down. She seemed to sigh. Then she asked a question which Hu-shih heard as, "Where is Neith's temple?" and the customer, who had a skeptical temperament, perceived as an inquiry as to where people who studied the structure of matter could be found.
A hundred voices shouted information. The woman started up the hill to the temple of Neith.
She was there only a little while. When, she came out, the courtyards were black with people. A way cleared before her magically, and she walked over the ridge of the hill to where the buildings of Sun Yat-sen University were.
Here she had an interview with Larsen, the head of the physics department of the university.
She was closeted with him for a long time. When she came out, her face wore a sober look. The interview was presumably somewhat more satisfactory to him than it had been to her, since he subsequently wrote a highly successful popular book about it, as well as a rather apologetic paper for a scientific journal under the title of Some Speculations on the Possibility of Multilevel Energy Universes.
By now traffic in half of New Christiana had come to an absolute standstill. The news that Neith had come walking over the water to her city had spread to the remotest suburb.
Not everyone believed it, but everyone wanted to see. Yet still, wherever Chryse went, a passage was opened before her almost magically.
She was walking more slowly now. She turned her footsteps toward the water front. Here she walked along the piers and wharves and stopped at last beside a trim little ship.
She asked a question of its owner. The people around her reported her words differently. But whatever they may have been, the owner of the craft, bent almost to the ground in reverence and trembling with emotion, implored her to take it. "A blessing," he babbled, "a blessing and the highest of honors, Mighty Lady, Neith all-glorious, that you lower yourself to take my wretched, my most worthless ship."
"I am not Neith," she is reported to have said. "But for what it may be worth, I thank you and wish you well."
Alone, without anybody to help her, she loosed the ship from its moorings. While the pier threatened momentarily to collapse under the weight of the spectators, Chryse maneuvered the Jade Phoenix through the shipping of the harbor. The woman who could walk over the water had been in New Christiana just five hours.
When she was gone, the city drew a deep, astonished breath. It was immediately obvious that the population of New Christiana was divided into three groups: those who'd actually seen Neith, those who hadn't but lied and said they had, and those who were too honest to lie.
Hu-shih, the wine-shop keeper, was unquestionably a member of the first section. When he had seen the hull of the Jade Phoenix vanish over the horizon, he turned back to his wine shop with lagging steps. Business was good the rest of the day: those who had seen her wanted a drink to celebrate; and those who hadn't, wanted a drink to console themselves.
When he got home that night, he said to his wife, "This will put a stop to that Jovis nonsense, anyhow."
"Why?" asked his wife, who could be rather an annoying person.
"Why? Hyacinth, you surprise me. Neith herself has visited her own city. The Jovists haven't a leg to stand on. Things are going to be all right."
"She didn't really do anything, though," his wife objected.
"Didn't she? Anybody her shadow fell on is fortunate. You know that cough I used to have? It's gone. I won't wake you up any more at night with that cough."
"Well, I hope not," said his wife.
-
Chryse, on board the Jade Phoenix, seemed to listen. She hesitated. She listened again. Then she very slightly changed the ship's course.
It was a little more than thirty-six hours from the time she had left the seaport to the time she reached Tu Fu Island. She moored the Jade Phoenix beside the Basset. Just as Halliday had done, she walked up from the beach to where the trees began. She bent over Wan and touched his forehead with her hand.
Chapter Twelve
Anassa came back to life reluctantly. The dark waters had almost closed over her head. The touch that Wan had perceived as an icy tingle seemed to her at first a dull vexation, and then a stringing torment. Feebly she tried to move to escape it. It followed her. At last, bitterly, she opened her eyes.
The girl called Chryse was kneeling beside her, lightly and delicately stroking her shoulders and arms. The stinging pain was in her touch. But Anassa knew her face. "You ... Neith," she croaked. Her tongue was thick in her mouth.
The girl frowned. Afterwards, it was to seem to Anassa that the most human emotion she ever saw Chryse display was her annoyance at being perpetually mistaken for Neith. "No," she said. "My name is Chryse, which means gold. I am a woman like yourself."
Anassa tried to laugh. Speech was coming back to her. "Like me? Is my flesh like glowing gold? Could my touch bring a dead woman back to life? I've been dead, you know."
"Perhaps not like you, then," Chryse conceded. "But I am no goddess, certainly."
Anassa raised herself on one arm. For a moment she dismissed the question of the girl's identity. "I'm hungry," she said.
