"As I said, you will be told it after we leave."
"That will be tomorrow at sunset."
"No," said Dumarest. "It will be now. Is your crew aboard? They should be. It was part of the deal. Now let's get down to it. Is the ship mine or not? Make up your mind."
Eglantine said, "I expect you would like to examine the crew."
Like the ship and the captain, the crew left much to be desired. An engineer with a blotched and mottled face, who reeked of cheap wine and had a withered hand. A handler, a boy; star-crazed and willing to work for bed and board, filling in as steward. A navigator, with rheumed eyes and a peculiar, acrid odor which told of a wasting disease. And a minstrel.
He looked up from where he sat on his bunk, as Dumarest looked through the door. Like the captain he was fat; unlike him, he had a certain dignity which made his soiled finery more of a challenge to an adversary than the outward evidence of laziness. A stringed instrument lay on his lap; a round-bellied thing with a delicate neck and a handful of strings which he was busy tuning. A gilyre of polished wood and inset fragments of nacre, once an expensive thing; now, like its owner, the worse for wear.
"Arbush," said Eglantine. "He plays for us."
"And gambles." said the man. He had a deep, pleasant voice. "And sings at times; and tells long, boring tales if it should please the company. And tells fortunes and reads the lines engraved in palms. Once I saved the captain's life. Since then he has carried me around."
Charity which Dumarest would never have suspected from the captain. Or perhaps it was not simply that. Like the boy, the minstrel was cheap labor.
He touched the strings of his instrument, and a chord lifted to rise and echo in the air.
"A song," he said. "Which shall it be? A paen or a dirge? Young love or withered discontent? Something to lift your heart or to throw a shadow of gloom over the spirits? Name it and it will be yours."
Dumarest caught the edge of bitterness, the hint of mockery. An artist reduced to the status of a beggar. If he was an artist. If the gilyre was more than just show.
"Later," said Dumarest. Outside, in the passage, he said to Eglantine. "Call the boy."
He came, wary, his eyes wide in his thin face, his attitude betraying the beatings he had suffered; the desperate need to swallow his pride in order to remain where he wished to be. Dumarest waited until they were alone and then drew coins from his pocket.
"There is a ship on the field, the Tophier. Find it. Tell the captain that I sent you. He will give you a place on his vessel."
"You're kicking me out?"
"I'm not taking you with me. This ship isn't fit for a man, let alone a boy. Here." Dumarest gave him the money. "Buy yourself some food and decent clothing. Buy a knife and learn how to use it. Learn to walk tall."
"But the captain?"
"To hell with him," said Dumarest evenly. "He's using you, you must know that. I'm offering you a chance to find a decent life. Take it or not-that's up to you. But you don't ride on this vessel."
Nor, if he had the sense, on any other like it; but only time could give him that. Time and the luck which would enable him to survive. At least he had been given his chance.
He turned as the boy scuttled away and heard the thrum of strings. Arbush, silent, had come close and must have heard. But his face, creased with the lines of cynicism, held none of the mockery Dumarest had expected to see.
"An unusual gesture," he said above the soft blurring of the strings; a muted succession of rippling chords which could be used to accompany a song or a conversation. "I do not think our captain will be pleased, yet I think the boy will live to thank you."
"I didn't do it for thanks."
"No, but for what? A wish, perhaps, that someone had treated you the same? Or as a recompense for a good deed received in the past?" The strings murmured louder. "Or were you simply trying to save him from destruction?"
Dumarest said, flatly, "I'm riding on this ship. It's my neck as well as yours. Or would you prefer to leave?"
"To what? A corner in some filthy tavern? My songs bartered for bread? I have known that, and know, too, that here I am better off. A bed, food, company of a kind. And more. Perhaps the thing for which you are looking. The thing all men seek. Happiness? Who can tell?"
A romantic, a soiled visionary; or perhaps a creature lost in the mists of deluding drugs. Symbiotes could do that, giving mystic images in return for food, warmth and safety; repaying their sometimes willing hosts in the only coin they possessed.
"Eglantine sent me to find you," said Arbush. "He is ready to leave. Shalout itches to set the course. You have met him?"
"The navigator."
"Exactly. Once he was an expert at his trade, now he is not what he was." Arbush shrugged. "Are any of us? Yet he can guide us from world to world, given time. Time and coordinates. The first he has; the second you are to give him."
"Later," said Dumarest. "When we are well into space."
"And so he is to send us into the unknown," mused the minstrel. "Sending the five of us, like a hand, hurtling into the void. A fist to hammer the face of creation. A poetic concept, as I think you will agree."
"I think that you talk too much and say too little."
"Perhaps." The eyes in their folds of fat moved a little, became a trifle more hard. Anger? If so he mastered it well. "And perhaps you talk too little and say too much. There is a message in silence. Fear, maybe. Distrust certainly. Yet you do not appear to be a man ruled by fear. Caution, then? If so, how can I blame you? In this life we all walk on the edge of extinction."
A philosopher of sorts as well as an artist, the fingers which strummed the gilyre were deft with practiced skill. Dumarest studied them, noting the tell-tale callouses, the splaying of the tips. The fingers and other things; the set of the rotund frame, the position of the feet, the tilt of the head. Men were not always what they appeared to be; but, as far as he could tell, Arbush was not one of them.
And, even if he was, it was too late to alter his own plan.
"And so we leave," said the minstrel softly, the music from the strings rising a little, taking on a sombre beat, a pulsing rhythm. "As legend has it that men of old first left their place of birth. To venture into the empty dark with nothing but hope as their guide. Shall we find El Dorado? Jackpot? Bonanza? A new Eden? Camelot? Worlds of mystery and untold wealth lying like jewels among the stars; lost planets or worlds that are nothing more than the figment of dreams. Is that what you seek?"
The music rose, loud, imperious, blended chords interspersed with vibrant tones; a strange, disturbing melody carried over the throbbing strum of the accompaniment, a masterly demonstration of skill.
It roared, softened, rose to fade again to a stirring whisper, against which the resonant voice of the minstrel echoed like an organ.
"On such a trip as this who knows what might befall us? Life? Death? Riches or poverty, space holds them all. Those who search must surely find. Happiness. Contentment. Paradise itself, perhaps." The strumming grew louder, harsh chords rising above it, reaching a crescendo, falling with startling abruptness into silence. A silence in which echoes whispered from the walls, the floor, the roof of the passage.
A whispering vibration against which the organ-like voice, muted now, had the impact of a sharpened spear.
"And, who knows, perhaps even Earth itself!"
Chapter Three
Eloise had taken special care, setting out a tray of tiny cakes, crisp things adorned with abstract designs and bright with touches of color. Another tray bore goblets of fine crystal placed close to decanters of sombre red and vivid blue wine. The liquids of forgetfulness, thought Adara bleakly. Forgetfulness and a false courage; the poison which numbed minds and made even the prospect of imminent conversion a bearable concept. Protection against what was to come. A defense for himself at least, though the woman did not seem to need such aid. He glanced at where she sat, lounging in the deep chair at the far side of the room; the curtains drawn back from the window at her side to reveal the city beyond, the spires and pinnacles, the rounded domes, the streets and buildings which stood in their mathematically precise arrangement, coldly white beneath the pale glow of the stars.
She said, "If the sight bothers you the curtains can be closed."
"No." He dragged his eyes from the window. "It does not bother me."
"Not the darkness? The cold?"
Shaking his head he looked directly at her, studying her as he had done a thousand times before; more conscious now than at any time before of the influence she had had on him, the way in which she had altered his perception. Conscious, too, of her beauty which sat framed in the arms of the chair.
She was tall, thin fabrics covering the long, lithe lines of her figure; the material enhancing the swelling contours of hip and thigh, the narrowness of her waist, the twin prominences of her breasts. Her neck was slender, her face strong with finely set bone; the eyes deep, watchful beneath thick and level brows. Tonight she had dressed her hair in a rising crest which exposed the tiny ears, the gems at their lobes, more gems glittering in the ebon mane. The nails of her high-arched feet naked in thin sandals were painted a flaring crimson; the color matching that on her fingers, her lips.