E. Tubb - Child of Earth

It was good to sit and look at her with adult eyes and not the love-sick yearning of an adolescent. To be confident and to be free of the touch of jealousy he had experienced when she smiled at another. To forget the disparity of age. To be at peace and confident for all future time.

But it was not to be.

Instead he drifted into nightmare and woke screaming as faceless monsters clawed at his naked brain.

“Earl!” Chagal had him by the arm. “What’s the matter with you? Calm down, man! Calm down!”

Dumarest tore himself free of the restraint and slammed both hands against the sides of his head, hammering at the bone, the agony searing his brain.

“Don’t do that!” The doctor fought the hands, the arms, mastering them with the techniques taught with his trade. “You’re in a state of acute shock. Dementia, even. What came over you?”

A question ignored as Dumarest tore free his hands and rose from the bed. Red mist blurred his vision as he stumbled towards the bathroom, the shower it contained. Water as cold as ice sprayed his head and naked body numbing the flesh and adding further shock to that he had already suffered. But shock of a different kind, one physical and not the mental torment which had turned him into a shrieking animal.

“Earl?” Nada had joined the doctor and stepped towards him as he left the bathroom. “Do you feel better now?”

He gestured her away. “I’ll be all right.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” Chagal took charge, seating Dumarest on the bed, touching his torso, his wrist, neck and skull. “Some heat which could be the reaction to the chill,” he murmured. “A fast pulse and heartbeat and I’d say your blood pressure is way too high.” A tap on each knee and the same on his elbows. “Reactions are good. Skin is clammy but that could be due to that shower you took.”

“But there is nothing wrong?” Nada was eager to know. “He’s going to be well?”

“Give me a moment.” Chagal probed at Dumarest’s temples, touched the softness beneath the ears, the column of his throat. “He seems to be normal but has displayed all the symptoms of someone who has experienced a severe trauma. He was in shock as we saw but what caused it remains unknown. Fear? Fright? A near escape from death?” The doctor shook his head. “We may never know. He may never know. But this could help. Here, Earl, drink it.”

“What is it?”

“Something to relax you, I guess. Shandaha gave it to Nada to bring to me.”

“Why couldn’t he bring it himself?”

“Maybe he thinks he’s too big a man. Does it matter?” Chagal held out the phial. “Just take it.”

“And be grateful for small mercies?” Dumarest shook his head. “How did he know I was in shock or whatever it was?”

“I don’t know. Nada?”

“He sent for me, Earl. He told me to join the doctor here and give him the phial.”

“And how did you know?” Dumarest looked at Chagal, frowning at the reply. “You were coming to visit me when you heard me call out and you came in to see if anything was wrong. Then Nada joined you. Is that what happened?”

“Yes. It was just like that.” The doctor added, “It would have been a coincidence but it could have saved your life. In the state you were in you could have swallowed your tongue. I’d say you were lucky.”

Lucky!

Dumarest remembered the early part of his dream and what Sardia had said to him on the importance of being lucky. Had it been that or was someone taking care he should not come to serious harm? If so who and why?

Chagal said, “Do you want this?”

“No.” Dumarest waved aside the proffered phial. To Nadia he said, “Is Shandaha asleep now?”

“He could be. He wasn’t when I saw him.”

“Does he ever sleep? Lock himself away and is never to be disturbed?” He read the inability to answer mirrored on her face. “Can you tell me? Can anyone?”

“She doesn’t know, Earl.” The doctor hurried to her defence. “Any more than we know. Our host keeps things to himself.”

Too many things but not quite all. Dumarest stared at the woman’s face, examining it, noting small signs he had been too preoccupied to have noticed before. Subtly she had changed. Only in small details but, to him, they were clear. The eyes, the hair, the stance of her body, the curve of her lips, her height, her age.

Sardia, a little younger but just as lovely as he remembered.

To Chagal he said, “Was Delise with you?”

“No. Do you want me to find her?”

“It doesn’t matter. We can do without her help. What I want is for you to guide me back to the chamber where we were last together. Can you do that?”

The doctor frowned, “I’ll try. If you will give me a hand, Nada? You know these parts better than I do. It would help if you led the way?”

Through a series of chambers of various shapes and sizes, in a winding path which must have doubled back on itself or swirled at apparent random. Then, finally, the passage opened on a familiar chamber set with remembered furniture, ringed by translucent walls.

Dumarest halted at the low table set as before with flagons of wine and platters of succulent fragments. The food was fresh as if recently placed. The chessboard and scattered men were as he recalled. Either someone had replenished the viands and adjusted the pieces or only a short while had passed since he had been here last.

An effect similar to that which could be obtained by taking appropriate medication. Slow time which speeded the metabolism so that normal time seemed to crawl and much could be done in minutes which would have taken hours.

Drifting, suffering, healing, travelling back into the past, sleeping, dreaming, waking from nightmare, recovering and all, from the doctor’s viewpoint in a fraction of normal time.

Dumarest said, “I want you both to leave. Please go now. I need to have some time alone.”

To think, to assess the situation. To be free of delusions and distractions. To plot a path through the maze surrounding him in order to save his sanity and existence.

He watched as the others left and closed the door behind them. There was a second portal in the chamber behind which should lie a passage, an expanse of crystal wall behind which rested a secret space which held unsolved mysteries. Flickering lights, whispering voices, all of which could have been an illusion of his own creation in an effort to save his sanity. The attempt of his tormented mind to achieve some semblance of reality and reassurance as thirst-crazed men in an arid waste would see mirages of lakes and springs of sweet water in the desperate hope of salvation.

It was tempting to accept the explanation, but to do so would be to take a gamble with his life.

Dumarest sat, leaning back, concentrating on being calm and detached. He was facing a problem and before hoping to solve it he had to recognise exactly what it was. First to accept the obvious, the true nature of Shandaha.

Earth was listed in no almanac and was regarded as a myth. An imagined planet, an object of derision. All his life Dumarest had known the falsity of that approach. He was living proof that Earth existed and could be found. He had been born on the world and had left it and later returned to it.

He had known from the first what Shandaha had to be.

The only organisations strong enough and capable enough to dictate the listings of the almanac carried on every vessel were the Church of Universal Brotherhood and the Cyclan. Those of the Church preached kindness, care, concern, tolerance and love. Things of emotion. Those of the Cyclan believed in nothing but logic and reason. Every cyber was operated on when young to destroy his capability of emotion. They had no time for adornment, fine art, soft furnishings, things of delight. They were incapable of feeling anything but the mental pleasure of having made a successful prediction of any event or enterprise based on a study of logic and relevant forces.