“Then you really weren’t going to torture him?” Frigate said. “I was hoping you didn’t mean your threat. If you had, I was going to walk out then and there and never see any of you again.”
“Of course we didn’t mean it,” Ruach said. “Spruce would have been right. We’d have been no better than Goring. But we could have tried other means. Hypnotism for instance. Burton, Monat, and Steinborg were experts in that field.”
“The trouble is, we still don’t know if we did get the truth,” Targoff said. “Actually, he may have been lying. Monat supplied some guesses, and, if these were wrong, Spruce could have led us astray by agreeing with Monat. I’d say we can’t be at all sure.” They agreed on one thing. Their chances of detecting another agent through the absence of symbols on the forehead would be gone. Now that They – whoever They were – knew about the visibility of the characters to Kazz’s species, They would take the proper measures to prevent detection.
Steinborg returned three hours later. “There is nothing to distinguish him from any other member of Homo sapiens. Except this one little device.” He held up a black shiny ball about the size of a matchhead.
“I located this on the surface of the forebrain. It was attached to some nerves by wires so thin that I could see them only at a certain angle, when they caught the light. It’s my opinion that Spruce killed himself by means of this device and that he did so by literally thinking himself dead. Somehow, this little ball translated a wish for death into the deed. Perhaps, it reacted to the thought by releasing a poison which I do not have facilities for analyzing.” He concluded his report and passed the ball around to the others.
18
Thirty days later, Burton, Frigate, Ruach, and Kazz were returning from a trip UpRiver. It was just before dawn.
The cold heavy mists that piled up to six or seven feet above The River in the latter part of the night swirled around them. They could not see in any direction further than a strong man might make a standing broad jump. But Burton, standing in the prow of the bamboo hulled single-masted boat, knew they were close to the western shore. Near the relatively shallow depths the current ran more slowly, and they had just steered to port from the middle of The River.
If his calculations were correct, they should be close to the ruins of Goering’s hall. At any moment, he expected to see a strip of denser darkness appear out of the dark waters, the banks of that land he now called home. Home, for Burton, had always been a place from which to sally forth, a resting-place, a temporary fortress in which to write a book about his last expedition, a lair in which to heal fresh hurts, a conning tower from which he looked out for new lands to explore.
Thus, only two weeks after the death of Spruce, Burton had felt the need to get to some place other than the one in which he now was. He heard a rumor that copper had been discovered on the western shore about a hundred miles UpRiver. This was a length of shore of not more than twelve miles, inhabited by fifth century B.C. Sarmatians and thirteenth-century A.D. Frisians.
Burton did not really think the story was true – but it gave him an excuse to travel. Ignoring Alice’s pleas to take her with him, he had set off.
Now, a month later and after some adventures, not all unpleasant, they were almost home. The story had not been entirely unfounded. There was copper but only in minute amounts. So the four had gotten into their boat for the easy trip down current, their sail pushed by the never ceasing wind. They journeyed during the daytime and beached the boat during mealtimes wherever there were friendly people who did not mind strangers using their grailstones. At night they either slept among the friendlies or, if in hostile waters, sailed by in the darkness.
The last leg of their trip was made after the sun went down. Before getting home they had to pass a section of the valley where slave-hungry eighteenth-century Mohawks lived on one side and equally greedy Carthaginians of the third century B.C. on the other. Having slipped through under cover of the fog, they were almost home.
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