Jeffrey Lord - Jewel of Tharn

Honcho's face was very close to Blade's. The neuter's facial area was smooth skinned, marred by only a faint down, the teeth longish and a glistening white. The slitted eyes were deep green pits.

"I tell you one thing," said Honcho. "I have already decided this. I know you are not Mazda. You know you are not Mazda. But THEY do not know that you are not Mazda. So, if I decree it, and I may, you will be Mazda! You will be HE WHO COMES TO THEY. It is understood?"

Blade knew that to be servile would be a mistake, perhaps a fatal one. In any case he was not a servile man. Had never been. "I promise nothing," he said gruffly. "Let us wait and see."

"Yes. We shall indeed see. Take a chair and make yourself comfortable."

Blade gazed around in new amazement. Only an instant before he had been in the chamber, on the pad; now he was standing in the midst of a tall-ceilinged room. Somewhere music was playing. Beneath his feet was a thick-piled white rug that he knew would be made of the ubiquitous mani. There were cabinets around the walls. In the very center of the room was a large, low desk with two contour chairs facing it. In one of the chairs, reclining, smiling except for the gimlety green eyes, was Honcho.

The neuter waved a hand toward the other chair. "Sit."

Blade approached the chair warily. Was this the real Honcho or more simlu?

Honcho guessed at Blade's thought. It stood up and extended a hand across the desk. "Touch."

They touched hands. The neuter's was cool, nearly as frail as Moyna's had been, but it was flesh and blood. Blade sank into the chair.

Honcho smiled. "You are convinced that I am in my real at the moment, not simlu?"

Blade nodded. "Yes. I am convinced."

"Good," said the neuter. For a moment it toyed with the chain of diamonds around its neck. Then it reached into a drawer and came out with what Blade recognized as a sort of ball point pen and slate.

Honcho poised the pen, it was really more of a stylus, over the slate and looked at Blade. "Your name?"

But before Blade could answer the neuter held up its hand. "One moment. Before we begin I had better explain something to you. Tell me a lie."

Blade stared. "What?"

Impatience flickered over the neuter's face. "Tell me a lie! Say something that is untrue."

Blade grinned. "My name is Queen Elizabeth."

A low buzz sounded from somewhere in his chair. Two lights, set into the arm rests, began to flicker. Blade's smile pained a little. A built-in lie detector was going to make it tougher.

"You get the point," said Honcho. "Now...your name?"

"Richard Blade."

Again the buzzing and the flickering lights. Blade frowned. "But I'm not lying, damn it. I am Richard Blade!"

"Wrong," said the neuter. "You may have been Richard Blade, whoever and whatever he was, but from this seg of kronos you are Mazda. HE WHO COMES TO THEY. Never forget it."

Blade could only stare, feeling foolish and helpless, with his mouth half open.

"You are Mazda," Honcho repeated. "You are a God in homid form. After millions of kronos the promise has been kept. You are here. HE WHO COMES TO THEY."

There was no mistaking the glitter, the cunning, in the green eyes now. "And," said the neuter, "you are also my own very private God. My own to do with exactly as I please."

As nearly as Blade could reckon it was three days before he saw Honcho again. He had no way of telling time. He did not yet understand the Tharnian kronos, and there were no days and nights, no sun or moon or stars. Only the neutral, curdled milk sky. Blade had to content himself by guessing at the hours, and making marks with a stylus and slate he found in his apartments.

He lived alone, in great luxury, and knew that he was continually watched by spiscreens which he could not locate. He could find no wires, no mikes or cameras as he understood them. He found nothing. Yet he was sure that he was being watched.

Honcho, the neuter who was He, had said as much before they parted.

"There will be some kronos seg before my plans are ready," Honcho said. "I was all but prepared, but your coming has altered matters. For the better, I think. Also there are some things I do' not understand, which I must understand, and I must have a period of deep-think and memspeak. I cannot make any mistakes. Go, Blade. I call you that. Me only. To all others you are Mazda. A God. Remember it. You are HE WHO COMES TO THEY."

Blade lived well. He was allowed to retain the rapier, and so knew it would do him no good. There were closets filled with kilts and toga-like garments. There was a bath, a huge and ornate room, where he was cleansed by jets of perfumed vapor. There was no soap and no razors. Blade did not particularly mind. His beard was heavy, he had always had to shave twice a day, and now it began to thicken and curl, dark and lustrous.

His food was brought to him, and the apartments cleaned, by creatures that he knew must be the ceboids of which Moyna had spoken. The worker-beasts he had seen in the fields on that first day in Tharn.

But these were obviously soldier-beasts, not workers, and Blade observed them closely. They were apparently especially bred for special duties.

The ceboids always came in a squad, five females and one male. The females wore breastplates and kilts and sandals, and did not carry arms. The male ceboid who always accompanied them was armed. He stood guard at the single door when the magveil was inoperative. Blade had tested the door only once, and had instantly been thrown back by the invisible charge.

The ceboids did not speak Tharnian. They chittered among themselves in a fashion that reminded Blade of apes. Yet the ceboids were not apes. There was something baboon-like about the faces, yet the ears were almost human. They walked easily erect, yet could scuttle on all fours when they chose. The females were well developed with large firm breasts, straight legs, and only a vestige of tail. The male, the only one Blade ever saw, was as well built in a masculine way, had a much longer tail, and kept one of the teksin tubes trained on Blade all the time it was in the apartment.

After the first visit of the ceboids Blade reclined, reading one of the many books in the apartment, and tried to ignore them. Or to give that impression. He was, actually, watching them covertly all the while. He did not expect anything to come of it, but he felt that he had nothing to lose. He was searching, with quiet desperation, for any loophole, anything at all, that would permit him to face Honcho on more even terms. At the moment it did not appear promising.

The female ceboids, on their part, took an inordinate interest in Blade and did not try very hard to disguise it. They all had rather large eyes, brown, murky and muddy, in which at times he detected a humid glitter. The females kept staring at him, from odd angles, and making sounds that Blade could only suppose were ceboid giggles. Now and again the male ceboid would speak harshly to them, and for a moment they would desist and be all business, but soon they were at it again. It was not long before he guessed what they were up to - they were trying to get a glimpse beneath his kilts! Blade was amused, and was very careful not to exhibit himself.

Blade read omnivorously, knowing that it was to Honcho's purpose that he do so, the books were hardly there by accident, but he did not concern himself with the neuter's motives. He must learn if he was to survive.

One thing he learned was that Tharn, literally, meant THE ALL OF EVERYTHING. That than which there is no other. It was, Blade conceded, quite a comforting concept. The fact that he, and he alone, knew that it was not true, did nothing to alter matters.

There was a large terrace on which he was permitted to roam. There were no magveils across the open windows of his bedroom, which opened on the terrace, and now he strolled to a waist-high balustrade. The ceboids had come and gone for the time being and he was alone, though conscious of being watched.