Charon: A Dragon at the Gate Read online

  “Do you think they could? You just said how small they were compared to us.”

  He shook his head sadly from side to side, more in wonder than in reaction to my question. “You see? You make an easy mistake. It’s not numbers that are important. The Confederacy itself could destroy a planet with ten billion on it with one simple device, and do it with perhaps only one man and two robots. Three against ten billion—and who would win?”

  “But they’d have to get to all those planets first,” I pointed out.

  “Any race smart enough to meet and attempt an alliance with the Four Lords—and pull it off under the noses of the picket ships and the other devices our prison system contains to keep us isolated—and who even so remains virtually unknown to the Confederacy would have few problems doing so.”

  I had to admit he had a point there, but I let it pass for the moment. “And the Four Lords went along with the deal?”

  He nodded. “Three of them did. Kreegan came up with the master plan; the aliens will provide the technology and access; and the other worlds contribute their power, wealth, and expertise.”

  “I assume the one who didn’t was Koril.”

  Again he nodded. “That’s the story. He was just flat-out against the plan. He feared the aliens were only using us for a painless conquest which once undertaken, would enable them to enslave or wipe out mankind. In this he was pretty well alone. Of course, emotionally, to be a party to the overthrow of the Confederacy within your lifetime is almost irresistible, but there is an overriding practical reason as well. The Warden worlds that help will share in the rewards, even the spoils. There is very good reason to believe that these aliens are capable of curing, or at least stabilizing, the Warden organism. You understand what that means.”

  I nodded. “Escape.”

  “More than escape! It means we, personally, will be there to pick up the pieces. Quite an incentive! But, as I said, there is overriding practicality here. Charon is probably the least necessary of all the Warden worlds. Mostly political criminals, wrong thinkers, that type are sent here, and the plot, quite frankly, could proceed without us. Could—and would. We would be isolated, cut off as things proceeded without us. But if anything went wrong, we would be blamed along with the others, even though we took no part. That might result in the Confederacy literally destroying the Warden Diamond. But, if things succeeded, the other three would be on the winning side, with all those IOUs and means of escape, and we would be stuck here, consigned to eternal oblivion. Therefore, since we were not important to the plot, we either joined it and gained or we didn’t and lost whatever the outcome. That was what caused the unprecedented removal of a Lord of the Diamond.”

  “This Koril—I gather he didn’t take this lying down?”

  “Hardly! It took the entire Synod’s combined power to oust him, and even then he was horrible in his power. He fled, finally, to Gamush, the equatorial continent, where he had already prepared a retreat and headquarters so well hidden none have been able to find it. Consider—a lowly apt in the magical arts could kill you with a glance. One of the village sorcs could level a castle and transform all the people into trees if he or she felt like it. The combined Synod could make a continent vanish and rearrange the oceans of the world. But that same combined Synod could only oust, not kill, Koril—and cannot locate him now. Does that give you an appreciation of the old man’s power?”

  I had seen little but parlor tricks on this world so far, but I could accept his examples at least as comparative allegory. “And he’s still working against you.”

  “He is. Not effectively of late, but he is more than dangerous. He retained good friends in high places, and some of his agents even managed to penetrate meetings of the Four Lords themselves. At one point, they got past tight security of kinds you can not imagine to witness a meeting with our alien allies themselves. The spies slipped up before they could do any harm and were all eventually tracked down and killed, but it was a very close call. Koril came within a hair’s breadth of killing all Four Lords and two of the aliens as well—and he wasn’t even there! He was still safe down in Gamush.”

  It was my turn to push now. “All this is well and good—but, tell me, why are you telling me all this? I would assume it’s far from common knowledge.”

  “You’re right. Koril’s fall was pictured publicly as a move to save Charon from, evil ambition. We created, in the minds of the people, a portrait of him as a devil, a demon, a creature of pure powerful evil. It has been quite effective, and even useful—a force of opposition based on fear and power. It keeps the masses in line, and he can be blamed for just about anything that goes wrong.”

  “A bogeyman.” So much for tolerating other points of view, I thought to myself.

  “Yes, exactly. But a real one who remains a real threat. We would much prefer to have him be merely a myth. He’s used our own propaganda against us too, to attract those unhappy with us in any way, employing the trappings of devil worship and the rest, creating an effective cult of opposition, in both senses of the word ‘cult.’ We can not be truly safe and secure until Koril is destroyed.”

  “But I thought you said you had tried that and failed.”

  “Well, not exactly. There was no concerted effort to destroy him when he wasn’t already forewarned and forearmed. After all, we didn’t hate him or covet his job—we merely wanted him out because we could not change his mind. Had we foreseen what sort of enemy he would make—but that’s hindsight. We can kill him—if we face him down. But to do that we have to know where he is, where that redoubt is.”

  I knew all this was leading somewhere, but it wasn’t clear why I was the one being led there. “What’s all this have to do with me?”

  “I’m coming to that. First of all, he has a large minority following in-his demon cult, but they are mostly useless except as information gatherers because they really believe that guff. In the aftermath of his botched assault we pretty well wiped out his effective force. He needs new people—level-headed, unclouded with superstition, and yet with some residual ties to the old values of the Confederacy. People who would be useful commanders of his demonic troops, bring fresh ideas and approaches to him, and take his side against the aliens even if they had no particular love for the Confederacy.”

  I began to see. “In other words, newly arrived inmates like me.”

  “You’re the most logical. We get few newcomers these days—none of the Wardens get many, and we get the fewest of all. The nature of our atmosphere prevents most clandestine communications, and even blocks basic surveillance of us on the ground by remotes. The Confederacy has agents of one sort or another all over the Warden Diamond, but they are of almost no use here since messages are nearly impossible to get in or out except by spacecraft, which are rigidly monitored. You’re the first small group we’ve gotten since long before Koril was deposed, so you’re an absolute natural for him to approach. And of course there is a different reason as well—the real reason why we got any prisoners this drop. You see, due to the inevitable slip-up, the Confederacy is finally wise to the fact that we and our alien allies are plotting against it. That’s all it knows though, and it’s too little to act upon—and, I think, too late. Still, they are not stupid. They have already sent at least one top assassin to the Warden Diamond—we know that.”

  “What!” I felt a cold chill. Was I being led down the garden path to the guillotine? Had my cover been so easily blown?

  He nodded. “And while we are sure only of the one, it’s reasonable for us to assume that they would send more.”

  “But what for?” I asked, steadying my nerves as best I could. “You just said it would be nearly impossible to get information out. And anybody they’d send here would be stuck, just like us.”

  “It is our belief—Charon’s, not the Four Lords, I might add—that they will send their best men available to each of the four worlds with the intent of killing each of the Four Lords. Doing this will, they feel, cause some di
sruption, and the new Lord will be a lot less sure of him or herself and perhaps less disposed toward treason. It is not much of a hope, I admit, but it’s the only logical thing they can do while they try and find the alien enemy first.”

  He was uncomfortably close to the mark, and I could only feel I was being toyed with. Something inside kept shouting “He knows! He knows!”—but my more controlled overmind kept saying that the best way to proceed was to play along, at least for now. “And you think that one of us is a Confederacy fanatic?”

  “I know it,” he responded. “I knew it the moment I met the agent face to face.”

  He paused for a moment and I braced for the inevitable denouement to our little play.

  “The Confederacy’s agent,” he said, “is Zala Embuay.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Plot, a Deal, and a Potion

  “Zola? You’ve got to be joking!” I could hardly contain my emotions at this point, a mixture of incredulity, relief, and a still-lingering suspicion that I was being had. “You’ve got to be kidding. Without protection she wouldn’t last ten minutes outside this hotel.”

  “That’s partly the point,” Korman responded, and he didn’t seem to be joking. “Have you ever seen anyone so innocent, so confused, so totally dependent! Not the Warden Diamond sort at all. Not even the Confederacy’s.”

  “You’re saying it’s all an act? A plant?” I found it hard to take this seriously from any viewpoint.

  “Oddly enough, no. Zala is, I’m certain, exactly what we see. She’s shallow, weak, more an outline of a real person than a whole human being. There is no doubt in my mind that she believes herself to be what she is utterly and has no inkling whatsoever of her true nature and purpose.”

  I had to laugh. “This is impossible.”

  “When I saw her I was immediately aware of the anomaly. The Wardens, you see, congregate in every cell, in every molecule of our being. They permeate our existence. With some training you can even see them. Sense them. Hear them. I’m sure you’ll one day experience what I can only inadequately verbalize. But the Wardens become as highly specialized as the molecules they link up to. The brain is particularly odd. Wardens there organize in specific ways, so specialized that you can actually see a diagram of the parts of the brain. When I look at anyone—you, for instance—I see those parts distinctly, and even how they interconnect and interact. The cerebrum and the cerebral cortex are easy to define. In you, in everyone—but not in Zala.”

  “Huh? How’s that?”

  “I can’t really explain it. It is outside my experience in every way. Outside anybody’s, I’d guess. But organically, Zala’s cerebral functions are organized very differently. It’s almost as if there were two forebrains in there, two totally different operative centers linked to the same cerebellum, medulla, spinal cord and nervous system—but not to each other. It is definitely organic. Deliberate. And unprecedented as far as I can tell.”

  “You’re telling me that there are two minds in one body? That’s hard to swallow, although I’ve heard tales of multiple personalities.”

  “No! Not in that old sense. Multiples as we know them are psych conditions. Psychologically induced—and curable. This is not a psych condition. I’m talking about two real minds, Lacoch!”

  I couldn’t shake the oddest feeling that either I was dreaming this whole illogical and improbable conversation or that I had really gone suddenly insane. The thought suddenly came to me that all this was illusion, some way in which they were pulling some sort of sophisticated psyche job on me. Still, I had wits enough left to realize that no matter what the situation, my only choice was to keep playing along, at least for now. “You will understand,” I said carefully, “that I find both the idea and your means of confirmation rather, ah, improbable.”

  He nodded. “Still, it’s true and it must be acted upon. The implications of a dual mind with unknown powers are ones we can’t ignore, and must know more about it Within a matter of hours, I can get a set of master defense codes for the Confederacy, even a list of the top fifty assassins now on assignment along with the actual assignments of at least half. Our information conduits into the Confederacy are not only beyond their belief, they are almost beyond mine. Yet we have heard nothing whatsoever about a project like this, which must have been—what?—twenty years plus in the making. The perfect agent. She can be hypnoed, psyched to the gills, tortured beyond endurance and she wouldn’t know or give away a thing. If we had telepathy she’d pass that test too. All the while the other mind, the assassin’s mind, would be there, beyond reach, gathering data and picking its own time to assume control. It must be something else—it has nothing to do but its job. Cold, analytical genius set to one task and only one.”

  I thought about it. If all this were real, I could not only see his point I could almost doubt myself. Krega had never said that I’d be the only agent, and Zala might well be part of an independent effort. Telling myself I was really crazy for starting to believe all this, I still had to press on. “So you just kill her and that’s that,” I commented dryly.

  “Oh, no! Then we would never see this other mind, never know its capabilities—and we might not catch the next one, or the next dozen, or hundred, or whatever. Not to mention that they’ll be ticking bombs back in the Confederacy when all hell breaks loose and we return. We need to know a great deal more about her new type. Of course, we’d like to know just how much they really know about us at this stage.”

  “I thought you just told me then- secrets were an open book.”

  He glared at me. “Some. But we—the Four Lords—are a special target of a special group. Their plans are so secret that even those who formulated them have been wiped now.” He sighed. “And that brings us back to what we have dubbed ‘Operation Darkquest’—which brings us back to you.”

  I nodded, beginning to see how all this was fitting together. Still, I couldn’t resist a mild jab. “It seems to me that for a man with the powers of a god you’re sounding pretty human.”

  Again the glare, but it softened, and his eyes lit up with just a trace of humor. “You’re right, of course. It is something of a humbling experience, but the mind is always the best weapon no matter what sort of power one acquires.”

  “Now—do you mind getting down to specifics?” I pressed.

  “All right, all right. We are going to assign Zala to you and you to a minor but conspicuous village post down south where Koril’s cult is very strong. We feel certain Koril will contact you, indirectly of course, and sound you out. Now that you know the situation, we want you to go along with him, feed his prejudices. You and Zala will ultimately accept his deal to join him, and that will mean getting you to his redoubt.”

  “You feel sure he’ll contact us? We’ll be pretty obvious, I’d think.”

  “He’ll contact you, all right. Maybe not right away, but he’ll come. Eventually he’ll contact all of you, but not all will go his way.”

  “I see. And you want me to somehow get the location of that fortress to you.”

  He nodded. “That and his future plans.”

  “You have some gadget for me to do all this with, I presume?”

  He shook his head from side to side. “Sadly, no. Most of the usual ones won’t work here, and anything I might add by my powers Koril would detect. He’s that good. No, I suspect we’ll have to wait until he sends you out on your first errand, or mission, or whatever. Call it a test of your resourcefulness.”

  I considered it. “And how am I supposed to make sure this message gets to you without getting my head blown off either by your people or Koril’s?”

  “Koril is your problem. As for the other, the key word is “Darkquest.” Village sorcs and those above will know the term but not what it means. What it will do is make certain that you are not killed and that word of your capture or whatever will reach the Synod.”

  “It seems to me Koril’s going to know at least the signal word himself—if he’s as good as you say.”


  Korman nodded. “He will, but it will do him no good. He won’t know what it means, and any of his people using it other than yourself will simply walk into capture.”

  That part pretty well satisfied me. “How good is this Koril in psych terms though? Am I likely to go through some sort of exercise that will betray the plot when I’m down there in his domain?”

  “He himself is powerful enough to turn your mind to almost anything, which is the reason for the length of our session here. I have been creating blocks in your mind, selective traps and guards that will go up should he try any such thing. And if he does try any mind-turning, it won’t take. Not for long anyway.”

  “But he’s likely to sense the blocks,” I noted.

  “On most attempts, certainly,” Korman agreed. “But you.—you have been through three years of intense psych before coming here, remember. Your mind now shows many, many blocks and rechannelings to me. The extras I add won’t be noticed, and that alone is what makes you so uniquely qualified—you see?”

  I did see. Of course, the psych blocks Korman saw weren’t from any Lacoch psych treatments but from my own breeding, training, and Krega’s Security; but it explained a lot If Korman could sense those blocks—but not remove them—it not only reinforced my assumed identity but quite possibly prevented him from doing some of that mind-bending on me. I remembered that earlier hypnotic gaze. “All right, I understand the plot,” I told him. “What about Zala?”

  “Take her along, by all means!” Korman urged. “Find out all you can from her, particularly from her alter ego which you will almost certainly see. And if you can manage it, when you are in position to use Darkquest see if you can’t manage to have her with you.”