Gradually he awoke fully: He was in a bed under sheets of clinical whiteness. Though he feared to explore his condition, the form beneath the fabrics assured him he had not lost his legs. The room was a curved white cocoon, more aseptic and more expensively appointed than any hospital room of his experience. The bulk of smooth equipment at his bedside told of the continuous monitoring of his condition by medical computers.
A door opened and a tall
Ahhn
nurse began deftly to remove the electrodes taped to his wrists and chest and forehead.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Agent Ren. How are you feeling?’
In an agony of apprehension Ren began to explore himself. A wave of immense relief brought an incredulous smile to his lips.
‘I—I’m still complete?’ It was a statement us much as a question.
She looked at him sagely. ‘You’ve lost a bit of weight, but you’ll soon get that back with exercise. You can start getting out of bed today.’
‘You mean I’m healed?’ Ren’s voice ran high.
By way of answer she whipped the sheeting from the bed and left him naked to judge for himself. Deep and unfamiliar scars showed just how extensive had been the surgery, yet the flesh was already whole and firm and without unfamiliar sensation except for a slight tingle at the scar-tissue sites.
‘You were lucky,’ she said. ‘No great internal complications. Your hip bone’s partly plastics now, but I doubt if you’d ever have known if you’d not been told.’
‘But—how long have I been here?’
‘A little over a month.’ She was amused at his consternation. ‘You’ve been kept in medicon-suspension. The healing rate is increased by not having the body constantly in conflict with the psyche. And with a rest from life of that duration, you’ll be amazed at how simple your problems have become.’
Ren had heard of the technique of this medicon-suspension. Computer-aided instrumentation would have taken over control of his subconscious body processes, and his brain would have been allowed to rest. With the computer-enhanced control of his body, a surgeon could promote healing and regrowth at rates otherwise not possible. His body, too, would not have suffered atrophy due to prolonged disuse. The method came from the forefront of medical research on the prime worlds—even there it was available only to the very few who could afford it.
Ren felt good. For the first time in his life he felt completely rested and able to encounter whatever might come with a rational and unclouded approach. As the nurse had said, it was amazing how simple his problems had become. He felt as if he were born anew.
‘Where am I?’ he asked. He knew the answer but wanted confirmation.
‘In Magda, of course.’ The nurse had a way of speaking which reminded him of Zinder.
He watched her carefully. She was an example of pure
Ahhn
stock, yet fully reconciled to the levels of an outworld technology. The result was impressive. Added to her native attributes were a confidence and a competence which foreshadowed a proud and sane mastery of the future. Ren caught her arm lightly as she reached to disconnect equipment and turned her wrist towards him to see the Magda slave-mark indelibly written in her fine skin. But a greater truth was also written there. Dion-daizan’s wizardry was a far more potent force than magic.
Now he thought about it, his repair and skilled recovery could only have been due to the resources of the man he had set out that night to attack. On all Roget only Dion-daizan could conceivably have installed such a facility. The notion made Ren feel slightly sick with himself. Love thine enemy was an old creed to which Ren had not strongly subscribed. Nurse thine enemy back to health with dexterous and expensive skills was a modern extension of the idea and one that made Ren, the recipient, feel very humble indeed.
Dion could have left the gates of Magda closed and left his enemy to die on the cold cobblestones of Thirdhill. No one would have thought worse of the
Imaiz
for it. Yet some humanitarian instinct must have prompted Dion to take Ren in and give him a degree of medical attention unobtainable elsewhere in this sector of the galaxy. By this action Dion had revealed his true stature.
Thanks to the effectiveness of his subconscious rehabilitation, Ren felt very little discomfort when he first attempted to get out of the bed. He found his balance lacking, but was able to stand and walk without much difficulty. Considering the extent of the injuries which had brought him down, he knew he had been incredibly lucky.
The
Ahhn
nurse was patient but firm. After a couple of hours of tests and exercises she declared herself satisfied with his recovery.
‘You may dress in your own clothes now, Agent Ren. Later Dion-daizan wants to see you.’
‘I wish to see him, too,’ said Ren. ‘I owe him a great deal. But for being admitted here, I should probably have died.’
She did not contest the statement, but busied herself in an anteroom dismantling and cleaning the equipment.
‘I take it my attack on Magda was a failure?’
‘Failure!’ Her amusement carried even though he could not see her. ‘You never stood a chance. We had a ring of anti-personnel mines out there that could have destroyed every man you had. And we’ve everything here from laser rifles to high-velocity flame throwers. But you had organized a peasants’ attack, so Dion followed suit. A few things rolled down a hill were all that was necessary to contain you. Take my advice, Agent Ren, and stick to trade. It’ll be a long time before there’s a force on Roget able to better Dion in a fight of any kind.’
Ren dressed, walked to the window and found himself looking out from a position high on Magda’s edge. The view ran straight down the valley that divided Firsthill from Secondhill. Small ships were passing through the shipping lanes to and from the great Aprillo river. From this point of vantage Ren’s trader’s eye could appreciate the vast potential of Anharitte as a landport and as a galactic trading center. In his imagination he rebuilt the already insufficient dock basin and planned a city more modern but just as picturesque and even more colorful on Firsthill.
Almost without knowing it he had begun to identify himself with Anharitte and its inhabitants. Local idiosyncrasies were becoming a secret source of pride to him. It was the one place in the universe he wanted to think of as home. He wondered if Dion-daizan had looked from a similar window and reached a similar respect for this city built on the three hills.
Ren’s resolution was simple now. He was too much in sympathy with Dion’s objectives to oppose the wizard further. He was determined to resign from the Company and remain in Anharitte. This need not affect his future too much. There were freelance trading prospects on Roget whose potential had scarcely been touched. And if these failed he might even seek employment with Dion himself.
His only fear was that the
Imaiz
might not feel disposed to give him the opportunity to remain. Obviously, from the medical care which had been lavished on him, Dion was not going to exercise his rights over the vanquished and have him executed. But Ren realized he had been a considerable nuisance to the
Imaiz
and he doubted that Dion would suffer him to remain on the planet.
‘Agent Ren, the
Imaiz
will see you now.’
The nurse had returned and was waiting to escort him. Somehow the slave mark on her wrist no longer seemed incongruous. He saw it now more as a symbol of application and dedication. Dedication to what? The future,” perhaps. But training her to such a pitch was no ordinary achievement. It was a measure of Dion’s genius. Nobody had ever acquired skills like hers under the coercion of a whip.
He followed her, hoping to get a glimpse of more of Magda’s secrets. He was not disappointed. In the corridor he passed the doors of two more hospital rooms and what appeared to be a biomedical laboratory, all staffed with
Ahhn
nurses and technicians. The end of the corridor brought him back into what was recognizably part of the old castle. The sudden transition from the aseptically clinical to the dark medieval was only a foretaste of the metamorphoses to come.
Dion’s hospital had been established high in one of the great flanking towers of Magda. Ren descended some stairs and each level he came to presented to him a tantalizing glimpse of some different technological microcosm. He could hear machine rooms and catch occasional snatches of electronic noise or the smell of chemicals, perhaps from a laboratory. The complexity of pipes and power cables accommodated in the stairwell emphasized just how certainly he had underestimated Dion’s potential. Ren was seeing a technical and industrial complex built in miniature, but having manufacturing scope probably unequaled outside of one of the prime worlds.
As he passed along the lower corridors a suspicion grew in Ren’s mind. His guide was surely giving him a brief tour of selected parts of the establishment. He surmised that its purpose was to provide him with a more realistic idea of what he would be facing should he again take up arms against the House of Magda—it was also a possible prelude to his pending interview with Dion himself.
Ren took the lesson to heart and found a logical extension. These hand-picked and educated slaves of Magda were the new heirs of Anharitte.
They would be the spearhead of a cultural revolution so formidable that the slave system, the societies—and even Di Irons and the City Fathers—were already anachronisms. The marvelous thing about the whole affair was the care that had been taken not to let the old institutions know that they were already dead.
The real question at issue was: how bloody would Dion-daizan allow his revolution to become? Knowledge was power, and Dion seemed to be a specialist in imparting knowledge. Was he also a specialist in controlling this new force he had created? At the moment he was working with a close-knit team and his control of the situation was absolute. But when a wider dissemination of the knowledge came about, as inevitably it must, was Dion big enough still to hold the reins of power?
If he were not, then what would be the cost in terms of loss of life and damage to the essential character of Anharitte?
Magda was built with an outer ward and an inner one containing the great keep. The keep was lower but considerably more massive than the towers of any of the other castles on the three hills. As he crossed the inner ward Ren was interested to note many signs of burning and explosion—these must have been the result of his own recent activities. In a way he was gratified to find that his excursion into improvised weaponry had had such a powerful result. He had obviously stood no chance against Dion-daizan, but had he attacked Di Guaard, for instance, he would probably have won. The notion amused him and he immediately began to feel better about the coming interview.
On the ground floor of the keep he passed through a communications center. In it was a powerful FTL communicator, many times the size of the limited spaceport equipment. The FTL set was probably capable of making direct contact with Terra itself. Suddenly it was no mystery to Ren as to what had happened to the Rance ships. Direct intervention by the forces of the Galactic Federation had stopped them in midflight. Doubtless here was the instrument that had broadcast the alarm.
This consideration placed the galactic standing of the
Imaiz
in a new light. Only prime world governments could afford to build FTL communications equipment and these units were leased only to those—like space transportation companies—who had good claim to on-line communication links across the distances of space. Dion’s acquisition of such an instrument as this suggested the involvement of outworld planetary governments in the affairs of Magda. Rather than being an adventurer, there was a strong implication that Dion-daizan was an agent for the Galactic Federation itself.
Ren’s previous misjudgment of the situation had been so absolute that he was now incapable of being surprised further. Catuul’s attempts to disrupt the
Imaiz
’s estates were made pathetic by radio-telephone links extending widely over provincial Magda. On-line data links coupled to a powerful computer registered and monitored every aspect of the estates’ growing and marketing activities. Even the farm-stock prices in the capital city of Gaillen were automatically updated every second.
Dion’s knowledge of the overall picture of Roget’s out-space commerce was also something that would have made Ren scream in his sleep had he known of it previously. All transactions made through the spaceport communications terminal received an immediate printout in Magda. There still existed an on-line access to all the information contained in the spaceport data banks. A further display of commercial and technological prowess was a broad screen for viewing ship movements on Firstwater—the image of every vessel moved across the screen, accompanied by computer-generated comment on the origin, destination, value and nature of its cargo.
Dion-daizan’s chambers were high up in the keep. Ren knocked and was bidden to enter. The chamber into which he came was large and nearly circular, occupying almost the whole area of the level of the keep. The walls from ceiling to floor were lined with books and broken only by narrow windows. Furnishings were sparse and consisted mainly of low wooden stools and the broad desk at which sat the wizard of Anharitte.
‘Come in, Agent Ren—be seated. They tell me your recovery is going well.’
‘Miraculous is the word,’ said Ren, ‘I can’t thank you enough. But for you and whoever did the surgery I would certainly have died.’
‘The surgeon, yes—’ Dion’s eyes twinkled with humor. ‘He’s aged twenty-two and is a native of Anharitte. I bought him as a lad for four barrs. His price was cheap because he wasn’t strong enough to carry wood. Still I think it was I who gained the bargain.’
‘You don’t need to spell it out,’ said Ren, ‘I was convinced of the effectiveness of your policy the first day I saw Zinder in the market.’
‘Yet you continued to oppose me?’
‘I did. The liberalization of Anharitte appeared inconsistent with the principles of Free Trade. As an agent of the Company I was committed to uphold the Free Trade principle.’