The Zero Stone Read online

It was a moment before I realized that that voice had not used the lisping speech of Koonga, but Basic. Then they must know me for an off-worlder!

  “Who are you?” My own words echoed hollowly as that voice had not. “Let me see you!”

  Silence only. I spoke again, first promising awards if my plight was told at the port, or if they would give me help in reaching it. Then I threatened, speaking of ill which came when off-worlders were harmed - though I guessed that perhaps they were shrewd enough to know how hollow those threats were. There was no answer - no sign I was even heard. It could have been a recording which addressed me. And who the guardians here were I did not know either - a priesthood? Then they might be akin to the Green Robes and so would do me no favors, save those forced upon them by custom.

  At last I curled into the bed and slept - and dreamed very vivid dreams which were not fancies spun by the unconscious mind, but memories out of the past. So, as it is said a dying man sometimes does, I relived much of my life, which had not been so long in years.

  My beginnings were overshadowed by another - Hywel Jern who, in his time, had had a name to be reckoned with on more than one planet - and who could speak with authority in places where even the Patrol must walk with cat-soft feet, fearing to start what would take death and blood to finish.

  My father had a past as murky as the shallow inlets of Hawaki after autumn storms. I do not think that any man save himself knew the whole of it; certainly we did not. For years after his death I still came across hints, bits and pieces, which each time opened another door, to show me yet another Hywel Jern. Even when I was young, at times when a coup of more than ordinary cleverness warmed whatever organ served him as a heart, he launched into a tale which was perhaps born out of his own adventuring, though he spoke always of some other man as the actor in it. Always this story was a lesson aimed at impressing upon his listeners some point of bargaining, or of action in crisis. And all his tales made more of things than of people, who were only incidental, being the owners or obtainers of objects of beauty or rarity.

  Until he was close to fifty planet years old, he was prime assessor to the Veep Estampha, a sector boss of the Thieves’ Guild. My father never tried to hide this association; in fact it was a matter of pride to him. Since he seemed to have an inborn talent, which he fostered by constant study, for the valuing of unusual loot, he was a valuable man, ranking well above the general core of that illegal combine. However, he appeared to have lacked ambition to climb higher, or else he simply had an astute desire to remain alive and not a target of the ambition of others.

  Then Estampha met a rootless Borer plant, which someone with ambition secreted in his private collection of exotic blooms, and came to an abrupt finish. My father withdrew prudently and at once from the resulting scramble for power. Instead he bought out of the Guild and migrated to Angkor.

  For a while, I believe, he lived very quietly. But during that period he was studying both the planet and the openings for a lucrative business. It was a sparsely settled world on the pioneer level, not one which at that time attracted the attention of those with wealth, nor of the Guild. But perhaps my father had already heard rumors of what was to come.

  Within a space of time he paid court to a native woman whose father operated a small hock-lock for pawning, as well as a trading post, near the only space port. Shortly after his marriage the father-in-law died of an off-world fever, a plague ship having made a crash landing before it could be warned off. The fever also decimated most of the port authorities. But Hywel Jern and his wife proved immune and carried on some of the official duties at this time, which entrenched them firmly when the plague had run its course and the government was restored.

  Then, some five years later, the Vultorian star cluster was brought into cross-stellar trade by the Fortuna Combine, and Angkor suddenly came to life as a shipping port of exchange. My father’s business prospered, though he did not expand the original hock-lock.

  With his many off-world contacts, both legal and illegal, he did well, but to outward appearances, only in a modest way. All spacers sooner or later lay hands on portable treasures or curiosities. To have a buyer who asked no questions and paid promptly was all they wanted at any port where the gaming tables and other planetside amusements separated them too fast from flight pay.

  This quiet prosperity lasted for years, and appeared to be all my father wanted.

  TWO

  If Hywel Jern had contracted his marriage for reasons of convenience, it was a stable one. There were children, myself, Faskel, and Darina. My father took little interest in his daughter, but he early bent more than a little energy to the training of Faskel and me; not that Faskel showed any great promise along the lines Hywel Jern thought important.

  It was the custom for us to assemble at a large table in an inner room (we lived over and behind the shop) for the evening meal. And at that time my father would bring out and pass around some item from his stock, first asking an opinion of it - its value, age, nature. Gems were a passion with him and we were forced to learn them as other children might scan book tapes for general knowledge. To my father’s satisfaction I proved an apt pupil. In time he centered most of his instruction on me, since Faskel, either because he could not, or because he stubbornly would not learn, again and again made some mistake which sent our father into one of his cold and silent withdrawals.

  I never saw Hywel Jern lose his temper, but his cold displeasure was not to be courted. It was not so much that I feared such censure as that I was really fascinated and interested in what he had to teach. Before I was out of childhood I was allowed to judge the pledges in the shop. And whenever one of the gem merchants who visited my father from time to time came, I was displayed as a star pupil.

  So through the years our house became one divided, my mother, Faskel, and Darina on one side, my father and I on the other. And our contact - or mine - with other children of the port was limited, my father drawing me more and more into the shop to learn his old trade of valuing. Some strange and beautiful things passed through our hands in those days. Part were sold openly, others remained in his lockboxes, to be offered in private transactions, and of those I did not see all.

  There were things from alien ruins and tombs, made before the time that our species burst into space; there were pieces looted from empires which had vanished into the dust of history so long past that even their planets had been buried. And there were others new from the workshops of the inner systems, where all the creative art of a jeweler is unleashed to catch the eye of a Veep with a bottomless purse.

  My father liked the old pieces the most. Sometimes he would hold a necklet, or a bracelet (which by its form had never been meant to encircle a human wrist) and speculate about who had worn it and the civilization from which it had come. And he demanded of those who brought him such trinkets as clear a history of their discovery as he could obtain, putting on tapes all he could learn.

  I think that these tapes in themselves might have proven a rich treasure house for seekers of strange knowledge, and I have wondered since if Faskel ever suspected their worth and used them so. Perhaps he did, for in some ways he proved to be more shrewd than my father.

  In one of our round-table meetings after an evening meal my father produced such an alien curiosity. He did not pass it from hand to hand as was his wont, but laid it on the wellpolished board of dead-black creel wood and sat staring at it as if he were one of the fakirs from the dry lands seeking to read a housewife’s future in a polished seed pod.

  It was a ring, or at least it followed that form. But the band must have been made for a finger close to the size of two of ours laid together. The metal was dull, pitted, as if from great age.

  Its claw setting held a stone bigger than my thumbnail, in proper proportion to the band. And it was as dull and unappealing as the metal, colorless, no sparkle or hint of life in it. Also, the longer one studied it, the more the idea grew in mind that this was the corpse of something which migh
t have once had life and beauty but was long since dead. I had, at that first viewing, a disinclination to touch it, though I was always avid to examine these bits and pieces my father used for our instruction.

  “Out of another tomb? I wish you would not bring these corpse ornaments to the table!” My mother spoke more sharply than was usual. At that time it struck me odd that she, whom I thought immune to imaginative fancies, had also so quickly associated the ring with death.

  My father did not raise his eyes from the ring. Rather he spoke to Faskel in the voice he used when he would be answered, and at once.

  “What make you of this?”

  My brother put out his hand as if to touch the ring and then jerked it back again. “A ring - too large to wear. Maybe a temple offering.”

  To that my father made no comment. Instead he said to Darina:

  “And you see what?”

  “It is cold- so cold-‘ My sister’s thin voice trailed off, and then she pushed away from the table. “I do not like it.”

  “And you?” My father turned to me at last.

  Temple offering it might have been, fashioned larger than life to fit on the finger of some god or goddess. I had seen such things pass through my father’s hands before. And some of them had had that about them which gave one a queasy feeling upon touching. But if any god had worn this- No, I did not believe it had been made for such a purpose. Darina was also right. It evoked a sensation of cold, as well as of death. However, the more I studied it, the more it fascinated me. I wanted to touch, yet I feared. And it seemed to me that my feeling reflected something about the ring which made it more than any other gem I had seen, though it was now but age-pitted metal set with a lifeless stone.

  “I do not know - save that it is - or was - a thing of power!” And my certainty of that fact was such that I spoke more loudly than I had meant to, so my final word rang through the room.

  “Where did it come from?” Faskel asked quickly, hunching forward again and putting out his hand as if to lay it over ring and stone, though his fingers only hovered above it. In that moment I had the thought that he who did take it firmly would be following the custom of gem dealers: to close hand about a jewel was to accept an offered bargain. But if that were so, Faskel did not quite dare to accept such ‘a challenge, for he drew back his hand a second time.

  “From space,” my father returned.

  There are gems out of space - primitive peoples pay high sums to own them. What forms them we are not quite sure even yet. The accepted theory is that they are produced when bits of meteor of the proper metallic composition pass through the blaze of a planet’s atmosphere. It was the fad for a while to make space Captains’ rings out of these tektites. I have seen several such, centuries old, which must have been worn by the first space venturers. But this gem, if gem it really was, bore no resemblance to those, for it was not dark green, black, or brown, but a colorless crystal, dulled as if sand had pitted the surface deeply.

  “It does not look like a tektite- I ventured.

  My father shook his head. “It was not formed in space, not that I know of - it was found there.” He leaned back in his chair and took up his cup of folgar tea, sipping absent-mindedly as he continued to stare at the ring. “A curious tale-“

  “We expect Councilor Sands and his lady-“ my mother interrupted abruptly, as if she knew the tale and wanted not to hear it again. “The hour grows late.” She started to gather our cups, then raised her hands to clap for Staffla, our serving maid.

  “A curious tale,” my father repeated as if he had not heard her at all. And such was his hold over his household that she did not summon Staffla, but sat, moving a little uneasily, plainly unhappy.

  “But a true one - of that I am sure,” my father continued. “This was brought in today by the first officer of the Astra. They had a grid failure in mid-passage and had to come out of hyper for repairs. Their luck continued bad, for they had a holing from a meteor pebble. It was necessary then to patch the hull as well.” He was telling this badly, not as he usually spun such stories, but more as one who would keep strictly to facts, and those were meager. “Kjor was doing the patch job when he saw it- a floater - He beamed out on his stay line and brought it in - a body in a suit. Not”- my father hesitated- “of any species he knew. And it had been there a long time. It wore this over its suit glove.” He pointed to the ring.

  Over the glove of a space suit-the strangeness of that indeed made one wonder. The gloves are supple enough; they have to be if a man wears them in outer space for ship repair, or while exploring a planet deadly to his species. But why would anyone want to wear an ornament over such a glove? I must have asked that aloud for my father answered:

  “Why indeed? Certainly not for any reason of show. Therefore - this had importance, vast importance to him who wore it. Enough that I would like to know it better.”

  “There are tests,” Faskel observed.

  “This is a gem stone, unknown to me, and twelve on the Mobs scale-“

  “A diamond is ten-“

  “And a Javsite eleven,” my father returned. “Heretofore that was the measuring rod. This is something beyond our present knowledge.”

  “The Institute-“ began my mother, but my father put out his hand and cupped the ring in it, hiding it from sight. So hidden, he restored it to a small bag and slipped that into his inner tunic pocket.

  “This is not to be spoken of!” he ordered sharply. And from that moment on we would not speak of it as he well knew. He had trained us very well. But neither did he send it to the Institute, nor, I was sure, did he seek any other official information concerning it. But that he studied and tested it by all methods known, and they were not a few, that I also learned.

  I became used to seeing him in his small laboratory, at his desk, the ring on a square of black cloth before him, staring down at it as if by the very strength of his will he would extract its secret. If it had ever had any beauty, time and the drift through space had destroyed that, and what was left was an enigma but no blazing treasure.

  The mystery haunted me also, and from time to time my father would speak of various theories he had formed concerning it. He was firmly convinced that it was not meant to be an ornament, but that it had served its wearer in some manner. And he kept its possession a secret.

  From the day my father had taken over the shop, he had set into its walls various hiding places. And later, upon enlarging the rooms, he had built in more such pockets. The majority of these were known to the whole family, and would answer to hand pressure from any of us. But there were a few he showed only to me. And one of these, in the laboratory, held the ring. My father altered the seal there to answer only to our two thumbs, and he had me seal and unseal it several times before he was satisfied.

  Then he waved me to sit down opposite him.

  “Vondar Ustle arrives tomorrow,” he began abruptly. “He will bring an apprentice warrant with him. When he leaves, you go with him-“

  I could not believe my hearing. As eldest son, apprenticeship, save to my father, was not for me. If anyone went to serve another master it would be Faskel. But before I could raise a question, my father went on with as much explanation as I was ever to get from him.

  “Vondar is a master gemologist, though he chooses to travel rather than set up an establishment on any one planet. There is no better teacher in the galaxy. I have good reason to be sure of that. Listen well, Murdoc - this shop is not for you. You have a talent, and a man who does not develop his talent is a man who ever eats dry oat-cake while before him sits a rich meat dish, a man who chooses a zircon when he need only reach out his hand to pick up a diamond. Leave this shop to Faskel-“

  “But he-“

  My father smiled thinly. “No, he is not one who has a great eye for what is to be seen, beyond a fat purse and the value in credits. A shopkeeper is a shopkeeper, and you are not meant for such. I have waited a long time for a man such as Ustle, one on whom I can depend to be the
teacher you must have. In my day I was known as a master at valuing, but I served in murky ways. You must walk free of such ties, and you can gain such freedom only by cutting loose now from the very name you carry on Angkor. Also- you must see more than one world, walk other planets, if you are to be all that you can be. It is known that planetary magnetic fields can influence human behavior, some ebb and flow in them producing changes in the brain. Alertness and sensibility are stimulated by these changes; memory can be fostered the brighter, ideas incited. I want what you can learn from Ustle during the next five planet years.”

  “Something to do with the space stone-?”

  He nodded. “I can no longer go seeking knowledge, but you who have a mind like unto mine are not rooted. Before I die I want to know what that ring holds, and what it did or can do for the man who wears it!”

  Once more he got up and brought out the ring bag, removed the band with its dull stone, and turned it about in his fingers.

  There was an old superstition once believed in by our species,” he said slowly, “that we left impressions of ourselves on material things we had owned, providing those objects were closely tied into our destinies. Here-“ Of a sudden he tossed the ring at me. I was unprepared, but I caught it, almost on reflex, out of the air. For all the months we had had it under this roof, that was the first time I had held it.

  The metal was cold, with a gritty surface. And it seemed to me, as it rested in my palm, the cold grew stronger, so that my skin tingled with it. But I lifted it to eye level and peered at the stone. The clouded surface was as gritty as the band. If it had ever held fire in its heart, that was long since quenched or clouded over. I wondered briefly if it could be detached from that rough setting and recut, to regain the life it had lost. But knew also that my father would never attempt to do that. Nor, I decided, could I. As it was, the mystery was all. It was not the ring itself but what lay behind it that was of importance. And now my father’s plans for me also made sense - I would be the seeker for a solution to our mystery.