E. Tubb: Earth is Heaven

"Master." Wyeth took the empty beaker. "A vessel has landed with a party for processing. Massaki asks you to visit him. A report from laboratory seven-negative."

Those details could wait. The old cybers waited for his final words before having their brains stripped of outworn flesh. Massaki wanted to demonstrate his new virus bred for the selective destruction of certain genetic traits in cattle; already he was working on a similar strain for use against humans bearing undesirable hereditary weaknesses. The report from laboratory seven merely emphasized Avro's mission.

"Master?"

"Leave me."

Alone Marie studied the simulated galaxy, points of brilliance seeming to shift as he watched, to adopt the identifying symbols of the molecular units forming the affinity twin. With it one intelligence could take over the mind and body of another; the host subject totally dominated by the invader. With its use a cyber could become the ruler of a world, an old man gain a new, young body, a crone renew her beauty. That was power none could resist and a bribe none could refuse.

Those fifteen units, assembled correctly, would give the Cyclan domination over the entire universe.

A secret lost-stolen, to be passed on. The units were known but not the sequence in which they must be assembled. The possible combinations ran into millions-to try each by trial and error would take millennia.

Dumarest had the secret and Dumarest had to be found.

Craig burped and wiped greasy fingers on the grass at his side.

"That was good," he said. "Damned good. There's nothing to beat the taste of real food. Fresh meat cooked over an open fire-I know places where you'd give a week's pay for a meal like that."

"And I know places where, if you were found eating it, you'd be stoned to death." Andre Batrun sucked at a bone before throwing it into the fire. "Zabupa for one. I lost a third officer there a decade ago. He came from Gandlar and couldn't understand why the locals held such a veneration for life in all its forms. A vegetable diet didn't suit him so he bought meat from the handler of another ship. No harm in that but the fool allowed himself to be seen eating it."

"And they killed him?" Craig sounded incredulous. "For that?"

"For them it was reason enough." The captain looked at the ruined carcass. "A little more, my dear?"

Ysanne smiled as she handed him another portion. "Here, Andre, enjoy yourself."

He needed no telling. Time had taught him the value of small pleasures as it had silvered his hair and marked his face with the passage of time. An oddly smooth face now that rest and sleep had erased the dragging marks of fatigue, but it bore the stamp of hard experience and battles won.

"Some wine," said Craig. "I've a bottle." He poured into fragile cups without waiting for comment. "To luck!"

Dumarest swallowed the last of his meat and took the cup. He sipped, tasting a tart rawness which cleansed his mouth of lingering grease. Batrun coughed and, setting aside his container, reached for snuff.

"Good, eh?" Craig lifted the bottle. "More?"

"I like it," said Ysanne and held out her cup. "I like what it does."

She meant what all alcohol did to her, which was the reason she had to be wary of drink. A lack of tolerance sent her into rapid intoxication unless premedicated to prevent it. But she was among companions, she had eaten, it was a time to relax and, if she should get a little lightheaded, where was the harm?

As she sipped she said, "So you found nothing out there, Earl. No monster waiting to pounce."

"None that I could see."

"There's none to see." She gestured with the cup and held it out to be refilled. "And none to hear-if there was it would have responded to the sound of the pumps."

"Not necessarily," said Batrun. "That sound is repetitive, mechanical. Normal life-forms do not make such noises. If something was out there it would have assessed and dismissed it."

And the beast they had eaten could have been running from a predator when it had fallen to Dumarest's thrown knife. A possibility he didn't mention. Instead, he said to the captain, "How is progress on the ship?"

"The final instrument-checks are almost complete. As soon as we've filled the tanks we can be on our way." Riding on canned air with the limitations it imposed. Something no captain liked but they had no choice. "We'll need replacements, of course. From the closest world with technical facilities. Which would that be, Ysanne?"

She frowned. "Lorenze, I think. Or Gillaus. Or Ween and-hell, I don't carry that kind of data around in my head. I look it up as needed. That's what an almanac is for." The frown changed into a laugh as the drinks began to register. "A book we don't need-we know where we're going."

"To Earth!" Craig lifted his cup. "All the way to Earth!"

Or where he and she believed it to be. As Dumarest wanted it to be. He leaned back and looked up at the blaze of stars; suns so close they almost seemed to be touching, worlds so near they almost made spheres in the heavens. A shimmering splendor against which he heard again the thin, cracked voice of an incredibly old man. One of the Terridae-the misers of time.

" Thirty-two, forty, sixty-seven - that's the way to get to Heaven. Seventy-nine, sixty, forty-three - are you following me? Forty-six, seventy, ninety-five - up good people live and thrive ."

A mnemonic which held navigational coordinates when reduced to its basic essentials, as Ysanne had shown. Three dimensions of distance coupled with the essential radial unit which would lead them to a world of promise.

The one, Dumarest hoped, on which he had been born.

"Earth," mused Batrun. "The planet of unending riches. Where no one ever grows old or knows hurt or emotional distress. A paradise free of all the evils which plague mankind." He took a pinch of snuff, firelight illuminating his face, the question in his eyes. "And you left it, Earl. Why should any man run from such splendor?"

To escape cold and starvation. To huddle in a ship bearing strange markings. To be found and, instead of being evicted as he deserved, to be tolerated by a captain more than kind. One who had later died to leave Dumarest to wander alone from world to world. Heading ever deeper into the galaxy into regions where his home world was unknown.

Turned into a mystical legend, a fabrication of imagination, a jest heard in taverns-the Earth Batrun spoke of was not the one Dumarest remembered.

"We'll know that when we get there," said Ysanne. "Maybe he grew sick of endless sweetness. Bored with each predictable day. It happens." She drained her cup and looked at the engineer. "Is that bottle empty, Jed?"

"We'll share what's left."

"As we'll share the loot," she said. "The riches Andre dreams about. Wealth to buy a new ship and maybe a world to call his own. Money to ease his hurts and cushion his declining years. And you, Jed? A new face? A young and smiling visage to appeal to the young girls who haunt your dreams? A harem? An army of mercenaries killing at your command? And you, Earl? What will you do once we get you home?"

Dumarest said, "You're beginning to shout."

"So?" Ysanne emptied her cup and threw it on the fire where it lay wreathed in flame before bursting into a green eruption. "Who is listening? A few ghosts? Some invisible monsters? Shadows? Stars?" She lifted a hand toward them, fingers spreading, curving as if to clutch at the shining splendor. "Jewels, Earl. All jewels. Let us gather them and form them into ropes and chains and strands of sparkling wonder. Adorn me, my love, with the gems of your favor. Cover me with the glow of your affection. The burning flame of your desire." Her hand fell as she laughed. "Or shall we dance? Stamp out our wedding vows around the fire. We have witnesses and I remember the ritual." Her hands moved as if pounding the taut skin of a drum; a beat following the monotonous throb of the pumps. But the beat faltered as the sound abruptly ended. "What's wrong? What-"