E.C Tubb - THE RETURN

Ryon said, "Investigate the possibility that the analogue was too alien for the intelligence to accept. A more familiar host must be found. One with which the imprint can sense an affinity."

"A clone?"

"Perhaps. One from the actual brain tissue itself would have the highest chance of success."

"Marie, the late Cyber Prime, instigated an experiment which could be of value," suggested Candhar. "It was placed in abeyance when circumstances dictated a change of effort. It might be possible to utilize the progress which had been made."

"That decision has already been taken. Proceed as instructed."

Ryon swept from the room attended by his silent aides. Down more passages, into other rooms, ending in one which held medical scents and a real, not imagined chill. Like Candhar the medical technician was no longer young. His bow was as perfunctorily.

"Master. I have done as you asked."

"The situation?"

"The experiment can be completed without too much expenditure of effort or loss of time."

The required answer. Ryon stepped to a transparent wall and studied what lay beyond. Marie had planned well and the logic of the Cyclan had done the rest. While to maintain a lapsed experiment was wasteful yet to discard accomplished achievement was inefficient. The change of effort Candhar had mentioned, induced when Marie had demonstrated his inefficiency and had paid the price of failure, had given him the key to ultimate success.

The dream had died, killed by endless days, vanishing to trail behind her like torn and dusty cobwebs mocking in their memories of what might have happened. She'd hoped for so much. To be free, unrestrained, untrammeled, yet all she had accomplished was to have moved from one prison to another and that of the ship was more confining than she had thought possible. A closed world in which she felt she was being moulded into a figure of madness.

"Nadine, here are the figures for the lower decks." Nigel Myer handed her a slip of paper, not meeting her eyes, too eager to rejoin his comrades to be more than barely polite. "Is there anything else?"

He moved away as she shook her head, released from duties invented to make him feel important and give him a sense of purpose. She knew too well the compliment of the ship. Knew the cliques and cabals which were building and changing, the associations and groups. But, while the compliment found pleasure in the company of others and could talk and make plans she could only walk from one compartment to another, to the salon, the hold, her cabin where, thank God, she could be alone.

"Just a minute!" A woman came towards her, bright touches of paint accentuating her lips and eyes, the bones of her face. Tazima Osborn, arrogant, fuming with anger. "I'm changing one of my cabin-partners. Ellen Beram. I can't stand the bitch. Lisa is willing to take her place. See to it."

"No," snapped Nadine. "You see to it. Why tell me?"

"You put us together. I've never liked the woman since the Escum raid. Move her or there'll be blood – and it won't be mine!"

Another threat and more trouble to add to the rest. The threat meant little; a part of the general atmosphere of violence she had known all her life, but trouble was something she was supposed to avoid, to negate before it grew unto ugly dimensions. A job she'd been good at but that had been on a different world. In the regimented constriction of the ship small things took on a new importance and could lead to quarrels and bloody violence.

Zehava didn't help.

"Let them sort it out between themselves. If they want action put them in a ring with clubs. Naked," she added. "And spike the clubs with nails. They'll cool down when it comes to risking their beauty."

She sat with others at a table in the salon playing dice, the cubes landing hard against the baffle.

"Seventeen!" Zehava picked up one of the four cubes. "Now sixteen. Watch me hit twenty-one!" She threw and cursed as the die came to rest showing a six. "Over! I' in busted and out!" She glared at Nadine. "You brought me bad luck! Take your stupid problems somewhere else!"

An insult, one she could take up, but Zehava wouldn't shrink from combat and she lacked the other's skill. A gust of laughter followed her from the salon and she halted to lean against the bulkhead feeling the endless vibration of the drive against her forehead and cheek. She had known those at the table all her life, but now they were strangers. As were too many others. In the entire ship she had only one friend.

Dumarest was in his cabin. He opened the door to her knock and stepped aside to allow her entrance. He had been resting, the imprint of his body clear on the bunk. The cubicle was dimly lit but bright enough for her to see the scars which marred his naked torso and read his welcome and, thankfully, his concern.

It gave her courage. She said, "I have to talk to you. The others don't take me seriously. The officers look on me as a nuisance. I've no experience of raiding. I don't belong. Even the work I do is a joke."

"You're wrong." He gestured, inviting her to sit on the bunk. "Would you like a drink? Some wine? Here, try some of this."

It was peedham and he served it in a small glass engraved with erotic figures. Zehava's gift, she guessed, and felt a sharp jealousy.

"You must think me a fool."

"No."

"A coward then."

Something of both but she was not to blame for either. Only a fool attempted the impossible and a coward was merely a human who feared the unknown. He sat beside her, smiling comfort over his glass, letting the magic of its contents warm his stomach as he hoped it was dissolving her terror. A paranoid, suspicious of everyone and everything, convinced she was surrounded by enemies. Able to read their secret thoughts, their amusement, scorn, contempt. On Kaldar the boaster, the braggart and swaggerer were held in esteem and then only as long as they lived up to their image. A harsh society in which to be gentle was to be weak and to be weak was to be despised.

Nadine had been born on the wrong world.

He said, gently, "You're not a fool and you certainly aren't a coward. You're just someone who is learning a hard lesson. You are discovering there is no escape. No matter how far or how fast we run the bars we carry with us will always cage us in. You, me, everyone. We are all prisoners of our mind."

"Not you, Earl!"

"Everyone." He sipped at his glass. She saw the light reflected from his eyes, the strong lines of his mouth and jaw. "Don't try to find happiness, Nadine. Be satisfied with contentment."

Good advice but he would never take it. For him there could be alternative to the path he had chosen and she wondered how a world could hold such allure. What had he lost that he should miss it so much?

"Drink," he urged. "You need to relax. What have you to report?"

Nothing but a host of small details, but she sensed his interest was deeper than it seemed. What, to her, were trivial scraps of information was, to him, items which could threaten the success of his enterprise.

Watching him, reading him, she felt a disturbing flood of emotion. One stemming from the safety of the cabin, his strength, the protection he could give. A partner who could offer happiness. One who could give her love.

"Earl!" The peedham had dissolved her reticence. The light held a new softness and his closeness created an urgent demand. "Tell me," she whispered, her hand rising to caress his cheek. "Tell me -" but even as she framed the question she knew it would be futile. What he had lost would be a secret he would keep. Instead she said, fighting for control, "How much longer will the journey last?"

"Does it matter?"

"It could. There are too many disputes, threats, actual fights. The compliment is restless. They resent discipline and are bored. Some even talk of breaking the journey to make a raid."