Broge became something more than human.
His brain expanded, his awareness swelling like a colossal balloon to encompass all of time and creation. Sheets and planes of scintillant brilliance were all around and he could see them all in perfect, over-all vision. Each cyber, he knew, had a different experience and none could reduce to words the ecstasy of the unfolding. For him it was as if he moved bodiless through showers of broken rainbows; splinters of unsuspected color woven as if in a fantastic tapestry of unimaginable complexity, a three-dimensional web of translucent hues, intangible yet each strand containing a fragment of the space-time continuum in a series of ever-multiplying, ever-changing relationships.
An incredible maze of which he was an integral part, immersed in the radiance so that it became an extension of his being and he became a manifestation of its complexity, the part merging with and transmuted into the whole.
Like a shimmer of brilliant rain, shards and sparkles of scintillant hue, curtains of gossamer laced and riven with an infinity of strands the fabric of intermeshed rainbows turned and curved and led to a common center at the heart of which lay the headquarters of the Cyclan.
It blazed with the cold, clear light of pure intelligence. The complex which dominated the entire organization, correlating it, synchronizing effort, plotting the devious moves and counter moves strung over a multitude of worlds. The Central Intelligence which, even as he grew aware of it, made contact: merging, touching, assimilating his knowledge and making it its own. Mental communication of incredible swiftness.
"Dumarest on Harold?"
Affirmation.
"But not in your custody. Explain the failure."
Reasons.
"The use of an inefficient agent is a fault. You are to be blamed for that. The probability that Dumarest managed to escape on the Accaus is low. The time element was against this. Another fault."
Protestation.
"Agreed. The distance could have been covered by an agile man in the time specified and a heavy bribe could have gained both entrance to the field and a passage, yet the probability is a mere eight per cent. Even so steps will be taken. Men will be waiting at the world of destination. Future intent?"
Explanation.
"Accepted. The probability of Dumarest still being within the city is high. He must be captured at all costs. All precautions must be taken to ensure his protection. Under no circumstances must he be killed. Give this matter your personal attention. Dumarest must be taken. Failure will not be tolerated."
Understanding.
"Find and capture Dumarest and immediate preference will be yours. Fail and you know the penalty. Do not fail!"
The rest was euphoria.
Always, after rapport, there was a period during which the grafted Homochon elements sank again into quiescence and the physical machinery of the body began to realign itself with the dictates of the brain and, during that time, the mind was assailed by a storm of ungoverned impressions.
Broge drifted in a sightless void, detached, a pure brain in an environment in which only the cold light of reason could prevail. He experienced a host of exotic stimuli, memories of places he had never seen, knowledge he had not gained, new situations alien to his frames of reference-all the over-spill from other minds, fragments, the discard of a conglomerate of assembled intelligences. The waste, in a sense, of the tremendous cybernetic complex which was the hidden power of the Cyclan.
One day he would become a part of it. His body would age and grow rebellious, senses would dull and reactions slow but his mind would remain the keen instrument training and use had made it. Then he would be summoned, taken on the final journey to a secret place where his brain would be removed from his skull, placed in a vat of nutrients, connected in series to the other brains previously assembled. A countless host of intelligences which, working in harmony, formed the Central Intelligence.
There he would remain for eternity, maintained, supported, working to the common end, the prime directive of the Cyclan. All the problems of the universe to be solved, all Mankind to be united into an efficient whole, all waste eliminated, harmony to be achieved beneath the dictates of the Cyclan. The Great Design of which he was a living part.
Chapter Six
Dumarest woke feeling the touch of fingers, questing, probing like a predatory spider. He lay still, eyes slitted as they peered into darkness. He could hear the soft breathing of someone close and then, as gentle as a landing butterfly, the chill impact of something like ice at his throat.
Not ice and not a butterfly but a jagged sliver of glass held by the man who searched him, resting, poised ready to rip into his flesh, to slash the great arteries and release his life in a fountain of blood should he move.
Lowtown was not a gentle place.
He could smell the stench of it around him; the stink of unwashed flesh pressed too close, bodies huddled together for the sake of warmth, vapors rising from damp clothing. The whole compounded with the odors of sickness and running sores, of disease, of grime and rancid oil, of scraps of mouldering food.
Of the poverty which ruled here in this place on this world.
The searching hand grew more bold, the fingers tugging at the fastening of the cloak, slipping inside to fumble at the blouse, the wadded belt beneath. Dumarest felt the touch of breath on his cheek, air carrying a fetid odor which caught at his nostrils. The sharp fragment resting on his throat lifted a little as the man, growing careless, concentrated on the bulk his fingers had found.
A little more and it would be time to act yet to wait too long would be to betray too much. Dumarest gently drew in his breath, tensed his muscles and, with a blur of movement, had rolled away from the threatening shard, had turned, caught the searching hand, squeezing it as the man reared back like a startled beast.
"You-"
The glass had driven its point into the dirt. The glass shattered as Dumarest slammed the heel of his free hand against it, lifting the fingers to snatch at the other wrist. Trapped, body arched back from the hands which held it fast, the man glared his hate and fear.
"My hand; My wrist! Don't!"
"You were robbing me!"
"No! I-" The man swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing in his scrawny throat, his face pale in the dim light cast by the external lights. "I thought you were a friend."
"Liar!" Dumarest closed his hands a little. "Thief!"
"No!" The man sweated with pain. "For God's sake, kill me if you want but don't break my bones!"
He was starving, desperate, driven to act the wolf. It would be charity to give him money for food to thrust into his empty belly but to do that would be to commit suicide. Even if he didn't talk others would notice and, like vicious wasps, they would be eager for their share of what was going. And the man himself would never be satisfied. It was better policy to kill him-a thief had no right to expect mercy.
"Do it," said the man. He had the courage of a cornered rat. "If you're going to kill me make it fast and clean but, before you strike ask yourself if you're in any position to judge. Haven't you ever turned thief when you had no other choice?"
Thief and killer; money stolen from purses when he'd been a boy, other things when, older, he'd grown delirious with hunger. Men killed for the sake of gain. Butchered in the arena for the enjoyment of a crowd. Had Galbrio deserved to die? Had any of the others who had wagered themselves against his skill and lost?
And there had been others-the law of life was simple.
Survive!
Live no matter what the cost for, without life, there is nothing. Live!
Kill or be killed!
"Mister?"
"Go to hell!" Dumarest pushed the man away so that he fell to sprawl in the mud. "Come near me again and I'll break your neck!"
"You were a fool," said the huddled shape at his side when he settled down again beneath the scrap of fabric which formed the roof of a crude shelter. "You should have killed him. His boots would have been worth a bowl of soup, his clothes another." The man began to cough, liquid gurglings rising from fluid-filled lungs. "The bastard! I've no time for thieves."
"That makes two of us."
"Yet you let him go. That shows you're new here. Come in on the last ship?" He coughed again as Dumarest grunted. "I've been here most of a year now. Arrived after traveling Low. I had money, enough for another passage once I'd got my fat back, but they wouldn't let me leave the field. A High passage or nothing-you know the system. Well, I wasn't all that worried, a few days and there'd be another ship, a month, say, and I'd get fit for the journey. Then some bastard stole my money."
He fell silent, thinking, remembering the awful bleakness of the discovery. The regret at not having spent the cash while he'd had the chance. Of buying himself some small luxuries, some decent clothes, enjoying the pleasures of a woman, maybe.