The Zero Stone Read online

  So I became Ustle’s apprentice. And my father proved right; such an instructor is seldom found. My master might have made several fortunes had he wished to root on one of the luxury worlds, set up as a designer and merchant. But to him the quest for the perfect stone was far more meaningful than selling it. He did design - usually during our voyages his mind and his fingers were busy, turning out patterns which other, less talented men were eager to buy when he wanted to offer them. But his passion was exploration of the secrets of new-found worlds, doing his own bargaining with natives for uncut stones not far from where they were first unearthed.

  He laughed at the frauds he uncovered - the lesser stones soaked in herbs or chemicals to make them more resemble the precious, the gems treated by heat to change their color. He taught me odd ways to impress native sellers so that they respected one’s wisdom and brought out the better rather than the worse. Such things as that a human hair stretched across real jade will not burn, even though you set match to it.

  Planet time is reckoned in years, space time less easily. A man who makes many voyages does not age as quickly as the earthbound. I do not know how old Vondar was, but if he were judged by his store of knowledge, he must have outstripped my father. We went far from Angkor, but in time we returned to it. Only I had no crumb, not even infinitesimally small, to offer my father on the history of the space ring.

  I had not been more than a day under our own roof when I knew that all was not well there. Faskel was older. When I looked upon him and then upon my own face in my mother’s well-polished mirror, I would have said he was the elder by birth. Also he was more assertive, taking over the role of my father’s assistant, making decisions even within my father’s hearing. And Hywel Jern did not lift even an eyebrow in correction of his presumption.

  My sister was married. Her dowry had been enough to bring her the son of a Councilor, to my mother’s great content. Though she had vanished from the house as if she had never lived, “my daughter, the Councilor’s son’s lady” was so ever on my mother’s lips as to make of my sister a haunting ghost.

  Of this household I was no longer a well-fitting part. Though Faskel masked for the most part his displeasure at my return, he became more and more officious in conducting the business when I was present though I did nothing to confirm his suspicions that I had returned to supersede him. Once I had thought the shop all important, but off world so many doors had opened to me that now it seemed a very dull way to spend one’s days, and I wondered that my father could have chosen it.

  He roused himself to ask questions about my journeying, so I spent most of my time in his inner office retailing, not without some satisfaction, all I had learned. Though now and then a crisp comment reduced my self-esteem and sent me into confusion, for he made it clear that much of this he already knew.

  However, after my first burst of enthusiasm, it became increasingly clear that if my father listened, he heard, or strove to hear, more than my spate of words. Behind his interest - and it was interest; in that I was not deceived - lurked some preoccupation which was not concerned with me or my discoveries. Nor did he mention the space ring, and I too had a strange reluctance to introduce the subject. Not once did he bring out that treasure to brood over it as he had in the past.

  It was not until I had been four days home that the shadow which I sensed on the household drew closer. Like all shops, we would remain closed during the festival. It was customary for families to entertain kinfolk and friends, making up parties to go from home to home. My mother spoke pridefully at the table that night of our going to Darina’s and being included with them in the Councilor’s own group for a pleasure cruise on the river in his own barge.

  But when she had done, my father shook his head. He would, he announced, stay home. I had never seen my mother, though of late years she might have grown more assertive, stand against my father’s pronouncements. But this time her anger exploded, and she stated that that choice might be his, but that the rest of us should go. To this he nodded and so I found that indeed I was absorbed in what seemed to me a very boring party. My mother beamed and nursed another dream, for Faskel was ever by the side of the Councilor’s niece - though it appeared to me that that lady shared her smiles with several young men and that the portion of them which fell to my brother were not particularly warm. As for me, I escorted my mother, and perhaps pleasured her a little by the fact that I was traveled and that once or twice the Councilor singled me out to ask of off-world matters.

  As the barge slipped down the river, there grew a kind of impatience in me, and I kept thinking of my father and who he might be seeing in the locked shop. For he had hinted to me that he stayed there, not only because of boredom, but because be had a definite reason for wishing the house to be empty that day so that he might meet with someone.

  There had always been visitors whom my father had not made known to his family, some of them using darkness for a cloak, entering and leaving without their faces being seen. That he trafficked in things of uncertain history must have been known to the authorities. But no man ever spoke out against him. For the Thieves’ Guild has a long arm and they move to protect one who is of service to them. My father may have outwardly retired from their Veep councils, but did a man ever retire from the Guild? Rumor said no.

  Only there had been something in my father’s attitude this time which made me uneasy, as if he both wished for and feared whatever meeting was to take place. And the more I thought on his manner, the more I decided that fear - if one could term it fear - had been uppermost. Perhaps, as my father had suggested, my travel had heightened in me a sensitivity which the rest of the family did not share.

  At any rate I excused myself before sunset with the lame explanation that I must meet with Vondar, though my mother did not believe me. And I summoned one of the small boats for hire, ordering the oarsman to make good time back to port. Only so thronged were the waterways that our speed was no more than a weary crawl, and I discovered myself sitting tensely, willing us forward, my hands gripped tightly together.

  Again, on landing, I found the streets crowded, and worked my way with impatient thrusting, which earned me some harsh words, splashes of scented water. The shop front was closed even as we had left it, and I went through the narrow garden at the back.

  As my hand fell upon the door lock, the thumb against the print which would release it, I felt, as a blow, the full force of all the unease which had plagued me. It was dark and cool in the family rooms. I stopped by the door which gave upon the shop to listen, thinking that if my father still entertained his mysterious caller, he would not thank me to burst in upon them. But there was no sound, and when I rapped upon the door to the office, it echoed hollowly.

  When I pushed, the door gave only a little, and I was forced to exert pressure of shoulder to force my way in. Then I heard the rasp of wood against stone, and saw that my fathers desk, overturned, blocked my entrance. I thrust desperately and was in a wildly upset room.

  In his chair sat my father, the ropes which held him upright stained with his blood. His eyes glared at me fiercely in denial of what had come to him. But that denial was the glare of a dead man. All else was overturned, some boxes smashed to bits as if the searcher, not finding what he sought, had wrecked the inanimate in his temper.

  There are many beliefs in many worlds concerning the end of life and what may lie thereafter. How can any man deny that some of them may be true? We have no proof one way or another. My father was dead when I came to him, and dead by violence. But perhaps it was his will, his need for revenge, or to communicate, which hung on in that room. For I knew, as if he had indeed spoken, what lay at the roots of this.

  So I passed him and found that inconspicuous bit of carving on the wall. To that I set my thumb as he had taught me. The small space opened, but not easily; it might have been some time since it was last bared. I took out the bag, feeling through it the form of the ring. That I drew forth and held before my father as if h
e could still see and know that I had it. And I promised him that what he had sought, I would seek too, and that perhaps so I would find those who had slain him. For this I was sure of, that the ring held the key to his death.

  But this was not the last of the shocks and losses which were to come to me on Angkor. For after the authorities had come and the family had gathered and been questioned, she whom I had always called mother turned on me and said, in a high, fast voice, as if she dared not be interrupted:

  “Faskel is master here. For he is blood and bone of me, heir to my father who was lord here before Hywel Jern came. And so will I swear before the Council.”

  That she favored Faskel I had always known but there was a chill in her words now that I did not understand. She continued, making the reason plain.

  “You are only a duty child, Murdoc. Though mark me true, I have never made the less of you in this house because of that. And no one can say that I have!”

  A duty child - one of those embryos shipped from a populous world to a frontier planet in order to vary the stock, by law assigned to some family to be raised and nurtured as their own. There were many such in the early settlement of any world. But I had never thought much about them. It did not greatly matter to me that I was not of her blood. But that I was not the son of Hywel - that I hated! I think she read this in my eyes, for she shrank from me. But she need not have feared any trouble, for I turned and went from that room, and that house, and later from Angkor. All I took with me was my heritage - the ring out of space.

  THREE

  The torch which had been in the room of the sanctuary when first I entered was sputtering to the end as I woke. What had the voice said? For the space of four torches I could shelter there. I looked at the floor. There were three more torches lying ready. Now I got up to force the dying one from its hold, light another in its place.

  But after four torches- what? Would I be thrust-out into the streets of Koonga again? At intervals I questioned the walls of the room, but no answer came. Twice I searched again, seeking some cunningly hidden exit. There was a building frustration within me. I had passed part of a night here, by my timekeeper, and some of the day thereafter. The four torches, I calculated roughly, would cover perhaps three days. But long before that the ship on which Vondar and I had passage would lift. Nor would its Captain worry if we did not claim those passages. Once planetside, passengers were strictly on their own. A Captain would take steps to rescue a member of his closely knit crew, for the ship unit became as tightly welded as a family or clan, but strangers he would not aid.

  What chance had I left? Was I under observation? How would the keepers of this place know when their torches were exhausted? Or had they through the years fallen into such routine that they could judge approximately? And what was their purpose? What did they get out of this service? A temple would accept a gift for a god. And to me this sanctuary continued to suggest a religious establishment.

  I lay down again on the bed, rolled so that I faced the wall and that my breast was hidden from the room. My hands moved stealthily, for I had to believe that there was a watcher. If I could not hold to that hope, I had nothing left. Two pockets in my safe-belt. Between thumb and forefinger rolled the sleekness of the gems I carried. I palmed them and lay still, letting them believe I slept.

  Vondar had had the best of our stock already locked in the safe of the ship. Eventually those should reach the storehouse of the jeweler to whom they had been consigned, there to wait for one who would never claim them.

  What I carried were inferior stones, or so reckoned on inner planets. Only here two of them might well present a temptation to any watcher. Both were fruits of my own trading - one a carved crystal in the form of a small demonic head, with rubies inset for eyes, fang teeth of yellow sapphires, a weird, small curiosity. The very force of the carving might make it attractive on this world. The other was a thumb-sized “soothing stone” of red jade, one of those pieces the men of Gambool carry to finger while they talk business. There is a sensuous satisfaction in the handling of such a piece, and perhaps they are wise in their choice of this tension relaxer.

  How much is a life worth? I could empty my safebelt- but I knew I must reserve a second payment if my plan was to succeed. And I had chosen as best I could. Now I rolled over and sat up. The light of the new torch was brighter than the old.

  The guesting table- I looked at it. Then I crossed the room to sit on one of its flanking stools, lay the stones on its surface. I did not raise my voice in any demand this time but tried to be as one bargaining in the market place.

  “It is said that for all things there is a price,” I began as if I spoke to someone who sat on the other stool to my right. “There are those who sell, and those who wish to buy. I am a stranger in your land, upon your world of Tanth. By no fault of my own I find myself a hunted man. My friend and master is dead, slain also for no fault - for since when have the Green Robes ever before chosen one not of their belief to satisfy their master? Is it not said the unwilling sacrifice is the lesser one and not pleasing to the power to which it is sped?

  “It is true that I have killed, but only to defend myself. I am willing to offer blood price if that is required of me. But remember, I am from off world, and so cannot be bound by the laws of your land unless I willfully and willingly break them by intent - answering only to my own authority for all else.”

  Did anyone hear me? Was Tanth so removed from the civilized worlds that the Confederation’s authority could be flouted? What would priests of a local god care for a rule based light-years away? Nor could I flatter myself that Vondar’s death would set any fleets in motion to demand answers from Tanth’s inhabitants. Like the Free Traders, we accepted risks when we traveled the far star lanes.

  “Blood price will I pay,” I repeated, fighting my mounting tension, willing my voice to remain even and low. I opened my hand and allowed the fingering piece to lie in the open. “This is a gem of virtue. He who holds it while thinking of or speaking on matters of import will discover his temper remains calm, his mind clear-“ I wrapped my tongue in the rolling formality of the native speech, using the wording common to men of substance. In such little things sometimes there is great influence.

  “To this gem of power”-I allowed the carved crystal to be seen now, the leering face uppermost “I will add this talisman. As one can see, it bears the face of Umphal-“ (Which it did not, having come from another world, where that nightmare demon was unknown. But it was enough like the effigies of Umphal I had seen here to pass.) “Set such on a frontlet and what fear need a man longer have of the grimace of the redeyed power. For seeing his own face, Umphal will flee - is that not so? Thus doubly do I pay blood price, with a stone which gives men wisdom, and one which promises protection from that which rides the night north winds.”

  Trying to keep out of mind the thought that I might be speaking only to unhearing walls, that there were no eyes which watched, I spoke again:

  “There is a Free Trader planeted at your port. For my blood price I ask only speech with her Captain.”

  Then I sat in silence, watching the two gems on the table, straining to hear the slightest sound which might reveal I did have a listener. I could not believe that after a period of time within this room sanctuary ended and that the desperate souls who came here had no other recourse.

  I could not be sure - a click - had I heard a click? Dared I believe that I had heard such a sound? It had come from behind me. I waited a long moment and then arose and went to the niche, as if to drink from the flagon there. In the small basket beside that lay something which had not been there before - a flat cake. Once more I picked up that tantalizing bell and was about to ring it when the basket caught my attention. It had been shoved forward, leaving marks in the dust. By the look of those the stone behind it had slid out.

  Certainly I had not been mistaken in my hearing of that click. There was an opening in the wall and I had been observed through it. They had furnish
ed me with food. The cake was crumbly and smelled of coarse cheese, as it had been split open and smeared with that. To off-world taste it was unpleasant, but I ate it. Hunger can conquer much.

  Waiting is the hardest test to which one can be put and waiting was now mine. The torch had burned down and I was about to set another in its place when, without warning, a man appeared in the doorway through which I had first come. Though I went for my laser, he had me covered before my hand touched its butt.

  “Steady on!” He spoke Basic, coming a step or two farther into the room. I saw a ship’s tunic with the insignia of Cargo Master on the collar. “Keep your hands in plain sight.”

  He was an off-worlder, and his uniform was that of a Free Trader. I drew a deep breath. In so much had my plea carried.

  “You have a proposition- he eyed me narrowly, with little cordiality. “Speak your piece.” There was a snap of urgency to that as if he were there against his will with danger breathing hot upon him.

  “I want passage out.” I cut my answer to that bare statement.

  He had backed around so that his shoulders were at the wall - and faced me warily. A Cargo Master of a Free Trader needs must be more than a merchant. He does not grow fat and sleek, and slow of reflex, no matter if he is not a fighting man - officially - but a trader.

  “With half the city to tear you down should you step upon the street?” he countered. Still his laser was aimed at my middle. There was no softening for my plight to be read on his face. The Free Traders are clansmen, with their ship their home. I was not of his brood.

  “Tell me, Cargo Master”-I did not approach him, and now I must be a master bargainer indeed if I was to win my life “what have you heard of me?”

  “That you spat upon one priest, slew another-“

  “I am a gem trader, late apprentice to Vondar Ustle - you have heard that name?”

  “I have heard. He travels far. What of it? Does that make your crime the less here in Koonga?”