The Dark Design

The other light-ski

The other eye had startled Burton when Thanabur had first turned his face toward him. Instead of the green mate he had expected, he saw a jewel. It looked like an enormous blue diamond, a flashing, multifaceted precious stone set in his eye socket.

He felt uneasy whenever that jewel was turned on him. What was its purpose? What did it see in him that a living eye could not see?

Of the twelve, only three had spoken: Loga, Thanabur, and a slim but full-breasted blonde with large blue eyes. From the ma

Watching them offstage, Burton noted again that just above the heads of each, his other self included, was a globe. They whirled, were of many changing colors, and extended six-sided arms, green, blue, black, and white. Then the arms would shrink into the globe, only to be replaced by others.

Burton tried to correlate the rotating spheres and the mutation in the arms with the personalities of the three and of himself, with their physical appearances, with the tones of their voices, with the meanings of their words, with their emotional attitudes. He failed to find any significant linkages.

When the first, the real, scene had taken place, he had not seen his own aura.

The spoken lines were not quite the same as during the actual event. It was as if the Dream-Maker had rewritten the scene.

Loga, the red-haired man, said, "We had a number of agents looking for you. They were a pitifully small number, considering the thirty-six billion, six million, nine thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven candidates that are living along The River."

"Candidates for what?" the Burton on the stage said.

In the first performance, he had not uttered that line.

"That's for us to know and you to find out," Loga said.

Loga flashed teeth that seemed inhumanly white. He said, "We had no idea that you were escaping us by suicide. The years went by. There were other things for us to do, so we pulled all agents from the Burton Case, as we called it, except for some stationed at both ends of The River. Somehow, you had knowledge of the polar tower. We found out how later."

Burton, the watcher, thought, But you didn't find out from X.

He tried to get nearer to the actors so he could look at them more closely. Which one was the Ethical who had awakened him in the preressurection place? Which one had visited him during a stormy, lightning-racked night? Who was it that had told him that he must help him? Who was the renegade whom Burton knew only as X?

He struggled against the wet, cold mists, as ethereal yet as strong as the magic chains which had bound the monster wolf Fenrir until Ragnarok, the doom of the gods.

Loga said, "We would have caught you, anyway. You see,every space in the restoration bubble-the place where you unaccountably awakened during the preresurrection phase-has an automatic counter. Any candidate who has a higher than average number of deaths is a subject for study sooner or later. Usually later, since we're short-handed.

"We had no idea it was you who had racked up the staggering number of seven hundred and seventy-seven deaths. Your space in the PR bubble was empty when we looked at it during our statistical investigation. The two technicians who had seen you when you woke up in the PR chamber identified you by your... photograph.

"We set the resurrector so that the next time your body was to be recreated, an alarm would notify us, and we would bring you here to this place."

But Burton had not died again. Somehow, they had located him while he was alive. Though he had run away again, he had been caught. Or had he? Perhaps, as he ran through the night, he had been killed by lightning. And they were waiting for him in the PR bubble. That vast chamber which he supposed was somewhere deep under the surface of this planet or in the tower of the polar sea.

Loga said, "We've made a thorough search of your body. We have also screened every component of your... psychomorph. Or aura, whichever word you prefer."

He pointed at the flashing, whirling globe above the Burton who sat in the chair facing him.

Then the Ethical did a strange thing.

He turned and looked out into the mists and pointed at Burton, the watcher.

"We found no clues whatsoever."

The dark figure in the wings chuckled.

The Burton in the pit called out, "You think there are only twelve of you! There are thirteen! An unlucky number!"

"It's quality, not quantity, that matters," the thing off-stage said.

"You won't remember a thing that occurs down here after we send you back to the Rivervalley," Loga said.

The Burton in the chair said something that he had not said in the original inquisition.

"How can you make me forget?"

"We have run off your memory as if it were a tape recording," Thanabur said. He talked as if he were lecturing. Or was he warning Burton because he was X?

"Of course, it took a long time to run your memory track for the seven years since you've been here. And it required an enormous amount of energy and materials. But the computer Loga monitored was set to run your memory at high-speed and stop only when you were visited by that filthy renegade. So, we know what happened then exactly as you knew what happened. We saw what you saw, heard what you heard, felt what you touched, what you smelled. We even experienced your emotions.

"Unfortunately, you were visited at night, and the traitor was effectively disguised. Even his voice was filtered through a distorter which prevented the computer from analyzing his-or her-voice-prints. I say his or her because all you saw was a pale thing without identifiable features, sexual or otherwise. The voice seemed to be masculine, but a female could have used a transmitter to make it seem a man's.

"The body odor was also false. The computer analyzed it, and it's obvious that a chemical complex altered that.

"In short, Burton, we have no idea which of us is the renegade, nor do we have any idea why he or she would be working against us. It is almost inconceivable that anyone who knew the truth would try to betray us. The only explanation is that the person is insane. And that, too, is inconceivable."

The Burton in the pit knew, somehow, that Thanabur had not spoken those words during the first performance, the real drama. He also knew that he was dreaming, that he was sometimes putting words in Thanabur's mouth. The man's speech was made up of Burton's own thoughts, speculations, and fantasies which were afterthoughts.

The Burton in the chair now voiced some of these.

"If you can read a person's mind-tape it, as it were-why don't you read your own minds? Surely you have done that? And just as surely, you would have found your traitor."

Loga, looking uncomfortable, said, "We submitted to a reading, of course. But ..."

He raised his shoulders and spread out his palms upward.

Thanabur said, "So, the person you call X must have been lying to you. He is not one of us but one of the second-order, an agent. We are calling them in for memory sca

The Burton in the chair said, "And what if none of the agents is guilty?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Loga said. "In any event your memory of awakening in the preressurection bubble will be erased. Also, your memory of the renegade's visit and all events from that time on will be a blank space. We are truly sorry to have to do this violent act. But it is necessary, and the time will come, we hope, when we can make amends."