The Shores of Death (11 page)

He put his arm round her shoulder.
“
No need to sound so melodramatic, my dear. It
is
difficult to see things in perspective, you know. This may be just a phase. Aimer, after all, is not a self-seeker, he believes himself right in doing what he is doing.”

“Neither were Hitler, Rickhardt, Vinor, Krau-Boss self-seekers in the sense you mean, but nonetheless ...”

He led her to a chair and made her sit down. “We must try to remain calm, objective—we—” He looked up. “I heard something—as if another car was entering the airlock. It can only be a friend. I’ll go and see who it is. Wait here.”

But she waited nervously in spite of his confidence. She heard low voices for a few moments and then there was silence again. She got up. As she walked along the passage towards the airlock, she heard it open. Another arrival? She reached the door. An indicator showed her that the water was only just beginning to be pumped away. For a moment she knew that something was drastically wrong, but she could not understand what it was. Then she knew.

Narvo was still in the airlock. It meant only one thing.

It meant that he was dead. Andros Aimer, or his deputies, had murdered Narvo Velusi.

In his last microsecond of life, Clovis Marca had known that he was finished, yet now he was conscious. Had Take somehow misjudged the blow? Or
was
he dead? He seemed to be drifting, highly aware of his own body-bulk, in spaceless infinity. He became frightened suddenly and kept his eyes tightly shut. He remained like that for hours, it seemed, then he opened them, curiosity fighting off his fear.

In front of him something crystalline winked and shimmered. Beyond the crystal, a shape moved, but he did not know what the shape was. He turned his head. More crystal, dim outlines behind it. He moved a leg and his body turned slowly. He was completely surrounded by crystal. Attached to his mouth was a muzzle of some kind and leading off it were several thin tubes which seemed imbedded in the crystal.

He stretched out his hand and touched the irregular surface of the crystal. It tingled slightly. The muzzle stopped him from speaking, but he managed a muffled murmur.

Far, far away, a voice said softly, “Ah good, you will be out of there soon now.”

Then Marca fell asleep.

He woke up and he was lying on a couch in a small, featureless room. It was warm and he felt very comfortable. He looked around, but couldn’t see a door in the room. He looked up. There were indications that the room’s entrance was in the roof directly above the couch, he could make out thin indentations, square in shape.

He swung himself off the couch. He felt very fit. But he wondered if he were a prisoner here. He had a feeling that he was being observed. Perhaps the walls of his room were transparent from the outside. He noted that he was dressed in a one-piece garment of soft, blue material. He touched his neck, where Take’s improvised cleaver had caught him. He felt something there—scar-tissue perhaps. It went round his neck in a regular line.

It felt strange to have been dead and knowing, now, that someone had found him in time and managed to revive him permanently. Normally, it was a very hard job to replace a head and only a few surgeons had the necessary combination of skill and equipment to do it.

Olono Sharvis. It could only be the immortal scientist. But how?

A voice like the hiss of Eden’s serpent filled the room. “If you will return to the couch, I will tell you. It is not in my nature to withhold from people what they want to know.”

Marca obeyed the voice. As soon as he was on the couch, it began to rise towards the ceiling and the ceiling opened out to let it pass. Now he was in a far larger room, a room adorned with fluorescent walls of a multitude of constantly changing colours. The walls moved like flame and dimly lighted the room.

“Forgive the rather gloomy appearance,” said the voice, “but I find it hard to bear too much direct light these days. As you guess, I am Olono Sharvis. You have been seeking me a long time. It is a pleasure that we are able to meet at last.”

Marca turned and looked behind him. Olono Sharvis stood there.

Olono Sharvis was a beautiful monstrosity.

His snake-like voice was matched by a long, tapering head of mottled red and pink. He had facetted eyes, a flat, well-shaped nose and a shrunken, toothless mouth. His bulky body, however, was not at all snake-like. It was almost square, and his legs were short and firm. His hands, as he moved them, seemed sinuously boneless. Bizarre as he was, there was something attractive about his appearance, but the first impression was one of height —for Olono Sharvis must have been a full ten feet tall. He could not always have been like this, or Marca would have heard . . .

“You are right,” hissed Sharvis, “my body is the result of extended experiments over a great many years. I have made alterations not merely for convenience, but also to satisfy my own aesthetic tastes.” Sharvis was blatantly reading his mind. He must be a telepath of a high order, for Marca had no hint that this was happening.

“Do not overrate my powers,” Sharvis continued. “I can read only your conscious thoughts as they occur— otherwise your thoughts are tangled, conflict, and are confusing. Your mind is, in fact, something of a mystery to me—it harbours so many paradoxical thoughts ...”

“How did you find me? ” Marca spoke for the first time, realising that his mouth felt a little numb.

“A minor invention of my own that brings me information from all over the planet. Call it a micro eye—a device a little larger than an electron. I use many thousands of them. I saw what the ungrateful Take did to you and sent a servant post-haste to pick up your parts and bring them here.”

“A servant? ”

“Not a human being, I find it hard to get servants these days ...”

“How long have I been here? ”

“
More than a month, I’m afraid. The initial operation failed. I nearly lost you. You need not worry, by the way, that I have tampered with your mind and body. I pride myself that I have done a perfect repair—no-one would know. The only indication is the red scar around your neck, but that will disappear. How do you feel? ”

“Very well.” Memories were coming back—Alodios, what Take had said . . .

“Again I must be candid. Perhaps I will lose your trust, but I did perform an operation on your artist friend, although I warned him first of what I was going to do, warned him of the consequences, yet he still insisted.” The tiny mouth smiled.
“
I am an equable soul, Clovis Marca—I only do for people what they ask. I use no coercion. Ah, you are thinking of the Krau-Sect days. But I was young and headstrong then—I knew no such humility as I know now.”

Olono Sharvis’s sense of humour was proving too obscure for him. He lay back on the couch and looked at the dancing colours of the walls. He felt relaxed and energetic, and he felt more attraction than fear for the self-mutated scientist. “You know, then, what I sought from you? ”

“Sought. Do you, then, no longer seek it? I assure you I can give you what you want—eternal life.”

“And what’s your price—my soul? ”

Sharvis laughed softly. “Let us not descend to mysticism. What is a soul? You mean your id, your ego? They will remain intact. I am here only to serve you, Clovis Marca—to give you your heart’s desire.”

“Take seemed to think your motives were more malicious.”

“Take and I have known one another too long for me to think of him with complete objectivity, and the same goes for him—perhaps we hate one another—but it is an old, sentimental hatred, you understand. I gave Take his freedom, I gave him immortality—are those the actions of a malicious man? ”

“Take seems to think you stole something from him, too—his humanity.”

“For a man with little humanity in him, with few resources of spirit, then perhaps ever-lasting youth will bore him, will make him feel he has lost his humanity. It is Take’s fault, not mine, that his imagination is limited so he spends his time moping about the galaxy, a self-elected martyr, instead of enjoying my gift to him. Think of that gift as recompense to Take for what he suffered from me in those irresponsible days of my youth.”

“I have never been a subtle man, Olono Sharvis, and I find your words a trifle confusing ...”

“Perhaps not subtle—but forthright and intelligent. Your intelligence must surely respond to what I am saying? ”

“You have been guilty of many evil acts have you not? ”

“Evil? No. I serve no abstract Good or Evil—I have no time for mysticism—I am entirely neutral. When called upon to do so, I do only what is asked of me. It is the truth.”

“I believe you. Yes, I believe you.”

“Well, well, I will not press you to accept what I can offer you. To tell you the truth I lack the materials to give you an absolutely perfect chance of immortality, to make you invulnerable as well as immortal, so I suppose ...”

“You mean, even if I agreed—or rather asked you to make me immortal, you could not do it properly? ”

“Oh, yes, I could make you immortal—but you could still be killed.”

“I hadn’t thought of it before, but such a condition could be nerve-racking, never knowing when you might be—”

“True, true. So consider carefully.”

“What happened to Take after he killed me? ”

“He is still on the planet—actually he is outside my laboratory now. He has been trying to get in for ten days without my noticing. I don’t know what he wants here. I have told him before that he is free to come and go as he pleases, but he is a narrow, suspicious man. I expect we shall see him soon. If so, I have a bargain to offer him. I told you that I refuse no-one what they ask, do to no-one what they do not want. I will leave you now—I have more than your particular problem on my mind. Feel free to go where you choose—you may find my home interesting.”

Olono Sharvis turned and seemed to drift away into the flickering wall and disappear.

Marca smiled. His suspicions of Take had been right. Sharvis’s motives and actions were neither good nor evil—it was what one made of them that counted. He began to debate whether he wanted immortality without invulnerability . . .

O
lono Sharvis’s vast
network of laboratories impressed Clovis Marca. He had visited similar places on Earth but none so spectacular, none designed not simply for function but also for beauty. The complex underground building—built, he remembered, by the efforts of one man—was, in fact, a palace of incredible beauty. There were chambers in it which far outweighed the old cathedrals of Earth in their ability to transport the mind into realms other than the physical. They moved Clovis Marca deeply and he felt that no-one capable of creating such superb architecture could be evil.

In one very large chamber he found several works that were not by Sharvis. They were unmistakably by Alodios. When Marca discovered Sharvis, sitting thoughtfully in a chair in a room of soft, dark colours, he asked him about them.

“Normally,” Sharvis told him, “I ask no price for my gifts—but Alodios insisted. He was the only modern artist I admired, so I was pleased to accept them. I hope you enjoy them. I hope that someday others will come to see them.”

“You would welcome visitors, then? ”

“Particularly men and women of taste and intellect, yes. Alodios was with me for some time. I enjoyed our talks very much.”

Memory of Alodios’s trapped, tormented eyes returned and he felt troubled.

Sharvis’s voice sounded sad. “I can refuse no-one, Marca. In many ways I would have preferred Alodios’s company, but in the end, I had to do what he demanded of me. I fear that you will not stay long, for one reason or another.”

Confused again, Marca left the room.

Sharvis’s * palace ’ was a place of timelessness, but it was probably a day or two later that the scientist sought Marca out as he listened to the singing words of the mobiles in the Alodios chamber.

“You must hate me for interrupting,” whispered Sharvis, “but our friend Take has arrived at last. He finally took the simple way in and entered by the main door. I am glad he has arrived, for I wanted to speak to you both together. I will leave you to finish the novel, if you like ...”

“No—you have aroused my curiosity. No, I will come.”

Leaving the mobiles, Marca went with Olono Sharvis to the room where he had first met him. Take was there, standing sullenly in the middle of the room, the coloured shadows playing across his face. He had his hands clasped behind his back and he had a defeated look about him. He nodded to Marca.

“I see I was unsuccessful. My cowardice got the better of me when I saw Sharvis’s robot coming—I thought he was after me, so I left. I should have battered your skull to pulp. I am sorry, Marca.”

Marca felt disturbed as he confronted his murderer, he also felt a little hostile, but this feeling was replaced by a certain sympathy. “I’m not, Take. Perhaps you acted as you thought best—but I’m afraid that my impression of Olono Sharvis is not the same as yours.”

“Smug cretin! ” Take sat down, staring angrily at Marca before turning his attention to the huge scientist. “And a gullible one—what have you said to him, Olono? ”

“I have only answered his questions truthfully, Ezek.”

“Glibly, you mean. Your * truth ’ and mine are very different.”

Astonished that Take’s hatred for Sharvis could remain so firm, Marca said: “He has been fair with me. He has not lied, has not tried to encourage me to become immortal. In fact, to some degree he has tried to dissuade me.”

“To some degree! ” Take laughed and his laughter, though as musical as his voice, seemed harsh. “Well, Olono—you told me that if I waited you would tell me something I wished to hear. Have you found a means of killing me and will you use it? That’s all I want to hear from you.”

“Then that is what you shall hear. You have it exactly.”

Take was startled. “This is another of your tricks . . . ”

“Have I ever tricked you, Ezek? I have always been straightforward with you.”

“You devious fiend ...”

“Please, Ezek—these outbursts only do you discredit.” The scientist waved a boneless hand. “Calm yourself and I will explain.” He glanced at Marca. “Would you have immortality if I guaranteed you invulnerability as well? ” Marca thought for a second, then: “Yes,” he said. “And Take would have death. Well, Ezek, here is what I can do. I can use your body—with simple modifications I can make it a duplicate of the one Clovis Marca has now—and give it to Clovis Marca. I have mentioned to him that I do not have all the resources for producing another invulnerable body such as yours, but, at the cost of your life, I
can
give him yours. Now, think carefully, are you willing to do this? ”