Дэймон Найт: Orbit 4

The Regent shakily raised his arm and’ pointed at Hedrigs. “Take that—man,” he choked. The black-uniformed Guardsmen swarmed toward Svir, their momentary confusion replaced by cool professionalism. Svir felt only confidence as they approached. He was in trouble, true, but he could work his way out of it.

The confidence vanished. As the Guardmen grabbed him, Svir collapsed into the quivering apathy of total fear. He felt a burning needle thrust into the base of his neck, and simultaneously his entire body became a single charlie-horse. He couldn’t move, he could hardly breathe, and what he saw and heard seemed to be far away, observed through a curtain of pain. He felt his person being searched, and dimly heard Benesh say, “A dorfox, that’s the creature you saw.”

“But, M’lord Regent, that’s a mythological creature.”

“Obviously not! Search the Crown Room.” An unprecedented order. “No one enters or leaves this vault till we find—” he paused, realizing that this was impractical. It would tie up the Guard situation in the whole Keep. “No, belay that. But I want that creature, and I want it alive.” There was a lustfulness in his voice. “Check everyone and everything that passes through these doors.”

Svir felt himself picked up, moved swiftly toward the door. And of all the humans in the room, he was the only one who noticed the dorfox seated on the shoulder of Tar Benesh.

As they rushed him through the Keep passageways, Svir vaguely wondered what had given him away— though he really didn’t care now. Nothing could save him and Cor. And soon this paralysis would be replaced by the ultimate agony of interrogation.

Finally his captors stopped. There was a dull creaking sound. Then he was sailing through the air. His hip struck the hard stone floor. His head and shoulders were resting in a pile of straw. He smelled rot and blood. The heavy door swung shut and he was in darkness.

There was a shuffling sound, and someone was holding him. Cor! She pressed her body tight against his and whispered in his ear what seemed a complete irrelevancy. “I’m so sorry, Svir! I tried to warn you but they got me.” She was silent for a second, waiting for some response. He longed to put his arms around her. “Svir?” she whispered. “Are you all right? Svir!” But Hedrigs was so thoroughly paralyzed, he couldn’t even croak.

“—realize we’re sitting beneath the Keep artillery. To get out, we’d have to go around the peninsula past the entrance guns. And now you want me to send twenty people on a diversionary raid! If Benesh ever connects us with this scheme, we’ll be blown out of the water—if we’re lucky!” Kederichi Maccioso slammed his broad fist down on Tatja’s desk, jarring her aluminum drinking carafe half an inch into the air.

“Relax, Ked, we aren’t suspected of anything yet. It’s still a state secret that the collection is one of the sacrifices. There’s—” She broke off and motioned Maccioso to be silent. Even over the thrumming crowd sounds outside, they could both hear a scratching against the office window.

Tatja Grimm pushed the window open and pulled a shivering, croaking Ancho into the room. She held him close and comforted him with low, gentle sounds. Maccioso sat down abruptly and stared at them, shocked.

“The—dorfox wouldn’t come back alone unless Hedrigs had been taken,” he stuttered.

Tatja smiled. “That’s right. Svir never had a chance— though he lasted longer than I thought he would.”

“But this means Benesh knows. We’ve got to get a—” Then he seemed to realize what Grimm had just said. “What did you say? You knew all along he would fail?” His voice rose to an astonishing volume, rattled the window. “We’re all going to die because of you, you—”

“Shut up, Ked,” Tatja said pleasantly. “You’re disturbing Ancho. Do you really think I would do anything to jeopardize my own life?” She set Ancho on her desk. “You know,” she said with apparent irrelevance, “I’ve studied dorfoxes. If they were just a little smarter or a little more mobile, they could take over the world. As it is though, I can manipulate them. With Hedrigs out of the way, I think Ancho will accept me as his new master.” She undid the clicker and set it carefully on her desk. “Hand me that bottle of lacquer, will you?” She accepted the bottle and screwed an atomizer onto its cap. Then she inserted the nozzle into the clicker’s keyhole and puffed the volatile lacquer into the box. In spite of himself, Kederichi Maccioso leaned over the table to watch this mysterious ritual. Ancho moved over to the corner of the table and munched the klig leaves that Tatja had thoughtfully provided.

“That should fix it.” She undid the hidden catches and lifted the top off the box. “You know that picture-maker we’ve been using in our latest issues? I’ve made some refinements on the invention.”

Maccioso looked at the machine’s innards. It resembled only vaguely the picture-maker Tarulle used. In that device, light was focused on a special cellulose plate coated with very fine algae powder. Wherever light fell on the plate, the cellulose became charged and repelled the greenish powder from its surface. If the plate were properly coated with lacquer, a permanent picture resulted.

Tatja pointed. “See, this clock movement pulls the reel of cellulose tape through the central area. Once every two seconds, this shutter takes an exposure. On alternate seconds, the shutter on the other side of the box takes a picture. So we now have a pictorial record covering nearly three hundred degrees. A picture every second, for nearly ten minutes.” She pulled the reel out of the clicker and began to examine it under a large magnifying glass. Maccioso had a clear, though distorted, view of the pictures through the same lens.

The first thirty pictures covered Hedrigs’ approach to the Keep. Every other picture was reversed since it had been made on the opposite side of the cellulose. In spite of this, and the fact that the pictures were considerably less clear than ones made with simpler, one-shot devices, the sequence gave Maccioso the unreal sensation that he was sitting on Hedrigs’ shoulder. On every second frame, Svir’s head blocked out part of the picture.

Tatja carefully inspected each picture, but it was obvious that she didn’t expect anything strange this early in the sequence. She became increasingly excited as the pictures showed the interior of the Keep. Here the exposure she had chosen was much more effective and the pictures sharper. “See, that paneling and those paintings—they weren’t in any of the reports. And here, I’ll bet this is what snagged dear Hedrigs.”

Maccioso squinted at the tiny picture. It looked no different from the three or four previous. Then Tatja pointed out the rectangular patch of darkness on the passage wall. “That’s not a painting. It’s some kind of window. My guess is that the Guards have heard of the poison gases developed in the Sutherseas. That little window is one end of a periscope, and the observer is in another room, protected from the gas—and apparently beyond Ancho’s range.” They looked at the rest of the pictures, but most were badly fogged. As the exposure had been made, more and more algae powder had been sent into a colloidal suspension in the clicker. An equilibrium state had been reached, where as much green was being deposited as was being dissipated by the exposures. Those last pictures showed vague green blurs. They saw something of the interior of the Crown Room. And in one of the pictures. Tatja claimed she saw a group of men.

Grimm set the film aside and picked up a pair of dividers. “We discovered that Ancho can broadcast through almost twenty feet of porphyry.” She made some rapid measurements of relative sizes on the film. “That periscope window is about three inches by three.” She sat back and her eyes unfocused for a moment. “Now assuming their optics are no better than elsewhere, that periscope can’t have a resolution higher than half an inch.” She looked up and flashed Maccioso a dazzling smile. “I’m all set! Svir has served his purpose.”