The Shores of Death Read online

  fourteen

  You always — pom pom —hurt—ta-ra — the one—

  ta ti di you love—the one—pom pom ....

  Three people left Klobax, left that archetypal world for Earth. Clovis Marca, untouched now by the space-ache, guided the ship on manual controls. In cocoons lay Fastina and Damiago, who had asked to accompany them.

  Time was speeded up for him and it seemed a very brief journey before they were in the outer limits of the solar system and he saw the war-fleet.

  It could be nothing else. He noticed gun-mountings, wondered at the control men must be exercising to work calmly in space. It had been done before, but at a time when people were more used to it, better trained to cope with the space-ache.

  He contacted the leading vessel on his pathfone. A man’s face looked out of the screen. To his surprise it was Barre Calax, Chief Controller of Ganymede Metals. Calax recognised him.

  “So you have returned, Clovis. You know what is happening? All my suspicions confirmed. Whose side are you on? ”

  Marca spoke slowly and with difficulty, noting the tightness about Calax’s face. “I fight on no-one’s side—I want to go to Earth and speak to the people. You know they will listen to me, Barre. I can convince them to stop this business, get rid of Aimer and start on the project again.”

  “You could convince them of anything before, I admit. We don’t want to fight, Clovis. I’ll let you through and wait to hear what you achieve. But these aren’t the civilised folk of the Earth you left—these are crazed animals. You will need all your skill to sway them.”

  “Don’t worry. Thanks, Barre.” Marca cut-out and aimed the ship for Earth.

  Andros Aimer was enjoying another meeting in the Great Glade in which he was exhorting the mob to do their utmost for the war-effort and ensure their chances of going on to a better galaxy. The crowd was cheering so heartily that they did not notice Marca’s arrival at first.

  Marca moved with something like the old dignity. He stepped up on the dais behind Aimer and said loudly:

  “My friends, he is lying to you.”

  That was what some of them heard. When the others fell silent as Aimer, angry-faced, whirled on Marca, Clovis repeated what he had said.

  Aimer laughed in Marca’s face. “Here is the man who abandoned us when we needed him. We don’t need him now, do we? ”

  The crowd was still silent. As Fastina and Damiago, who had nowhere else to go, climbed up behind Marca, Aimer called to his men—stone-faced men with hypo-guns—“Kill him! ”

  The crowd was not horrified. It simply seemed curious. Everyone craned forward as Aimer’s men drew their guns and fired at Clovis Marca who did not move.

  Nothing happened. “Grab him! ” Aimer yelled. “He’s got some sort of immunity.”

  For the first time, Marca became aware of Sharvis’s built-in super-fast reflexes. Sharvis had given him a new instinct and a means of using it. He stepped back from the men and then forward, grabbing a gun from one of them. He shot them down and then, before he fully realised it, shot Aimer, too.

  The crowd remained quiet, but now it was expectant. It waited for him to speak.

  Disdainfully he threw down the gun.

  ‘ We stopped using such things four hundred years ago. Now I return to find you about to embark on a fratricidal war! ” He tried to sound angry, but he realised his voice mirrored his lack of emotion. He could not summon any kind of emotion. He paused. They waited.

  “You were frightened, I can understand that, and Aimer traded on your fear. But there is no need for fear now. We must continue with the project. It is our only hope of salvation from the destruction facing the galaxy.”

  A few people cheered him, but the cheering was sporadic. Evidently he was not moving them. Somehow they sensed that the man facing them was not the man who had left Earth.

  Fastina stepped forward and shouted at them. “Listen to him! Listen to him! ”

  Someone called: “What’s the matter with him? What’s the matter with Clovis Marca? ”

  Fastina’s reply was much less fiery. “Nothing. You followed him before—follow him now.”

  Marca stood listening. He found it hard to pay much attention.

  Another voice, a disturbed voice, yelled: “He’s like a dead man—and the way he moves isn’t human—what is he? A robot you’ve fixed up to try and fool us? ”

  Marca had to speak. He said flatly: "I am Clovis Marca, but I have only just returned from space—you know what space does to you. Please listen to me—go home now and I will broadcast to you all tomorrow when I have been able to form some sort of government. Things will settle down. I will communicate with the outworld fleet and tell them that Aimer is dead. Go home now.”

  But only one or two rose. The rest were still waiting. What was it? He could give them nothing more. Even his last speech was an effort. He turned to Fastina.

  “They’re not really listening to me, are they? What do I need to tell them? ”

  “You would have known before,” she said quietly. “Clovis—I loved you—you are not Clovis any more. You are . . . ”

  Then Damiago spoke. “Forget it, Marca. Give them time. Perhaps later ...”

  But now some of them were shouting. Fastina took Marca’s arm. “They’re still baffled,” she said. “ I think we’d better get away from here now.”

  At that moment someone shouted: “Aimer was right! He abandoned us—he’s only come back because we were doing what we wanted to do. He killed Aimer—it was jealousy! ”

  The mob began to move towards them as they sped upward* to their aircar. Damiago glanced behind him. He grinned. “Goodbye, Marca—I’m with them,” and he veered off.

  As Marca sat slumped in his seat, Fastina activated the car. They sped away at full speed.

  Fastina wept as she steered the car. She headed out towards the desert where, with luck, the mob would not look for them.

  “Clovis—how are you? ”

  “Numb,” he said. “I’m numb—I haven’t—I can’t— ” A terrible sense of loss engulfed him, but he could not, it seemed, weep.

  Soon after the cool desert night had come, they sat together on the hard sand, their backs against the grounded aircar.

  He had just made love to her, desperately trying to recapture his lost sensations without success, but it was rape and a horrible kind of rape and they both knew it.

  “Well,” she said. “You have your immortality. But I still wonder why you sought it when you thought that Earth was bound to perish.”

  “So do I,” was all he said.

  Later, in a different mood, he made some sort of attempt to answer. He spoke vaguely. “I heard the news and I went away and thought about it. I thought of all those crowd-scened centuries of history; all those populated hours. I thought of all the sets crumbling and their bright dust scattering and drifting into eternity . . . Somehow I had the idea of preserving it all in me—so that I’d become a kind of walking record of it all—I couldn’t accept that I would ever die. I don’t know ...”

  “But they’re throwing their chance away. You will die if that happens. The fools! ”

  “No. I can’t condemn them for losing sight of their goal. It seems to be an irremediable flaw in the human character—to go for something more immediate and easier to grasp—to forget the difficult things. I did the same thing in my own way.” He sighed. “Oh, I am empty . . . empty ...”

  He sat there, slumped, staring at the clear sky. Beyond it, Barre Calax’s fleet waited. Perhaps it was moving in already. Perhaps Calax would win and establish a firm, if dictatorial, government, get the project going again. He didn’t really care, though he felt he should.

  Then he thought of Alodios, suffering perhaps even more than he was, and he said: “Even if we fail, at least someone will benefit. Perhaps we should fail—for his sake.”

  But she had fallen asleep.

  He got up and looked down at her. He could feel very little towards her except
regret—and regret consumed him.

  Passionless, yet remembering passion; corrupt, yet with a memory of innocence; imprisoned in his terrible casing, his fraud of a body, that invulnerable armour locking out his humanity, Clovis Marca walked away from her, into the desert.