Robert Silverberg - Nightwings

“The Prince of Roum,” I said. “I know of his location.”

At once his cold eyes sparkled with interest. He ran his many-fingered hands across his desk, on which were mounted the emblems of several of our guilds, Transporters and Rememberers and Defenders and Clowns, among others. “Go on,” he said.

“The Prince is in this city. He is in a specific place and has no way of escaping from it.”

“And you are here to inform me of his location?*

“No,” I said. “I’m here to buy his liberty.”

Manrule Seven seemed perplexed. “There are times when you humans baffle me. You say you’ve captured this runaway Dominator, and I assume that you want to sell him to us, but you say you want to buy him. Why bother coming to us? Is this a joke?”

“Will you permit an explanation?”

He brooded into the mirrored top of his desk while I told him in a compressed way of my journey from Roum with the blinded Prince, of our arrival at the Hall of Rememberers, of Prince Enric’s seduction of Olmayne, and of Elegro’s petty, fuming desire for vengeance. I made it clear that I had come to the invaders only under duress and that it was not my intention to betray the Prince into their hands. Then I said, “I realize that all Dominators are forfeit to you. Yet this one has already paid a high price for his freedom. I ask you to notify the Rememberers that the Prince of Roum is under amnesty, and to permit him to continue on as a Pilgrim to Jorslem. In that way Elegro will lose power over him.”

“What is it that you offer us,” asked Manrule Seven, “in return for this amnesty for your Prince?”

“I have done research in the memory tanks of the Rememberers.”

“And?”

“I have found that for which you people have been seeking.”

Manrule Seven studied me with care. “How would you have any idea of what we seek?”

“There is in the deepest part of the Hall of Rememberers,” I said quietly, “an image recording of the compound in which your kidnaped ancestors lived while they were prisoners on Earth. It shows their sufferings in poignant detail. It is a superb justification for the conquest of Earth by H362.”

“Impossiblel There’s no such document!”

From the intensity of the invader’s reaction, I knew that I had stung him in the vulnerable place.

He went on, “We’ve searched your files thoroughly. There’s only one recording of compound life, and it doesn’t show our people. It shows a nonhumanoid pyramid-shaped race, probably from one of the Anchor worlds.”

“I have seen that one,” I told him. “There are others. I spent many hours searching for them, out of hunger to know of our past injustices.”

“The indexes—”

“—are sometimes incomplete. I found this recording only by accident. The Rememberers themselves have no idea it’s there. I’ll lead you to it—if you agree to leave the Prince of Roum unmolested.”

The Procurator was silent a moment. At length he said, “You puzzle me. I am unable to make out if you are a scoundrel or a man of the highest virtue.”

“I know where true loyalty lies.”

“To betray the secrets of your guild, though—”

“I am no Rememberer, only an apprentice, formerly a Watcher. I would not have you harm the Prince at the wish of a cuckolded fool. The Prince is in his hands; only you can obtain his release now. And so I must offer you this document.”

“Which the Rememberers have carefully deleted from their indexes, so it will not fall into our hands.”

“Which the Rememberers have carelessly misplaced and forgotten.”

“I doubt it,” said Manrule Seven. “They are not careless folk. They hid that recording; and by giving it to us, are you not betraying all your world? Making yourself a collaborator with the hated enemy?”

I shrugged. “I am interested in having the Prince of Roum made free. Other means and ends are of no concern to me. The location of the document is yours in exchange for the grant of amnesty.”

The invader displayed what might have been his equivalent of a smile. “It is not in our best interests to allow members of the former guild of Dominators to remain at large. Your position is precarious, do you see? I could extract the document’s location from you by force—and still have the Prince as well.”

“So you could,” I agreed. “I take that risk. I assume a certain basic honor among people who came to avenge an ancient crime. I am in your power, and the whereabouts of the document is in my mind, yours for the picking.”

Now he laughed in an unmistakable show of good humor.

“Wait one moment,” he said. He spoke a few words of his own language into an amber communication device, and shortly a second member of his species entered the office. I recognized him instantly, although he was shorn of some of the flamboyant disguise he had worn when he traveled with me as Gormon, the supposed Changeling. He offered the ambivalent smile of his kind and said, “I greet you, Watcher.”

“And I greet you, Gormon.”

“My name now is Victorious Thirteen.”

“I now am called Tomis of the Rememberers,” I said.

Manrule Seven remarked, “When did you two become such fast friends?”

“In the time of the conquest,” said Victorious Thirteen. “While performing my duties as an advance scout, I encountered this man in Talya and journeyed with him to Roum. But we were companions, in truth, and not friends.”

I trembled. “Where is the Flier Avluela?”

“In Pars, I believe,” he said offhandedly. “She spoke of returning to Hind, to the place of her people.”

“You loved her only a short while, then?”

“We were more companions than lovers,” said the invader. “It was a passing thing for us.”

“For you, maybe,” I said.

“For us.”

“And for this passing thing you stole a man’s eyes?”

He who had been Gormon shrugged. “I did that to teach a proud creature a lesson in pride.”

“You said at the time that your motive was jealousy,” I reminded him. “You claimed to act out of love.”

Victorious Thirteen appeared to lose interest in me. To Manrule Seven he said, “Why is this man here? Why have you summoned me?”

“The Prince of Roum is in Perris,” said Manrule Seven.

Victorious Thirteen registered sudden surprise.

Manrule Seven went on, “He is a prisoner of the Rememberers. This man offers a strange bargain. You know the Prince better than any of us; I ask your advice.”

The Procurator sketched the outlines of the situation. He who had been Gormon listened thoughtfully, saying nothing. At the end, Manrule Seven said, “The problem is this: shall we give amnesty to a proscribed Dominator?”

“He is blind,” said Victorious Thirteen. “His power is gone. His followers are scattered. His spirit may be unbroken, but he presents no danger to us. I say accept the bargain.”

“There are administrative risks in exempting a Dominator from arrest,” Manrule Seven pointed out. “Nevertheless, I agree. We undertake the deal.” To me he said, “Tell us the location of the document we desire.”

“Arrange the liberation of the Prince of Roum first,” I said calmly.

Both invaders displayed amusement. “Fair enough,” said Manrule Seven. “But look: how can we be certain that you’ll keep your word? Anything might happen to you in the next hour while we’re freeing the Prince.”

“A suggestion,” put in Victorious Thirteen. “This is not so much a matter of mutual mistrust as it is one of timing. Tomis, why not record the document’s location on a six-hour delay cube? We’ll prime the cube so that it will release its information only if within that six hours the Prince of Roum himself, and no one else, commands it to do so. If we haven’t found and freed the Prince in that time, the cube will destruct. If we do release the Prince, the cube will give us the information, even if—ah—something should have happened to you in the interval.”