When Quest lifted off for space, the body of Kutsi Merc was lying in an underground corridor. But the pool of blood under him did not dry up, as if the stiletto-pierced heart was still bleeding. Suddenly, Kutsi Merc's hand twitched, fell on the wound and stanched it. The blood coagulated and stopped flowing.
It was a long time before Kutsi Merc moved again. Not one of many millions of Faetians could have survived his condition; not a single one except Kutsi Merc himself.
Kutsi Merc came from a roundhead family who had fled the continent of the Superiors after the Uprising of Justice was defeated. Yar Jupi was only beginning the Blood Bath there. Kutsi was still a small boy without a name of his own. Kutsi's father, Khrom Merc, suspected of being sympathetic to the Doctrine of Justice, was earmarked for elimination by the Blood Guard. The Mercs were poor and could not afford to escape by ship. The three of them made an incredible journey on a raft knocked together by Khrom Merc. After harrowing days at sea, enduring storms that swept away their meagre provisions and a lull that brought an intolerable thirst, they avoided pursuit (none of the Blood Guard ever thought of looking for a raft in the ocean!) until finally, emaciated and at the end of their tether, they reached the coast of Danjab. But no one there had prepared a warm welcome for the refugees. They could not even find work in the fields and workshops of the proprietors, who were indifferent to anything that did not promise gain.
Reduced to desperation by poverty, Khrom Merc steeled himself for what he would have formerly rejected with disgust: he decided to make money out of his deformed little son.
Kutsi had two hearts. This "deformity" is exceedingly rare. On the continent of the Superiors, the parents had kept quiet about their son's abnormality, afraid that he might be pronounced unfit and destroyed.
But here, on the continent of the Culturals, anything that could arouse even morbid curiosity could be a source of profit.
They began exhibiting the little boy at show-booths. Crowds of the curious came rolling in. And each spectator felt himself entitled to feel the naked, terrified "monster". He was roughly turned round, cold tubes were applied to his chest and back, or ears were pressed to his skin in a repulsive manner. He was made to squat, dance to general guffaws and shouts, then again he was examined and auscultated. The rubbernecks shook their heads in bewilderment, marvelled and went away to tell, exaggerating wildly, about the weird monster they had seen with their own eyes.
The enterprising Khrom Merc managed to earn so much that he became the owner, first of a small workshop, then of big ones in which thousands of Faetians were employed by him.
Kutsi Merc grew up, remembering with shame and revulsion the days when his deformity had been "put on show". However, not only his father profited by it. Soon, it transpired that the little boy was becoming uncommonly strong and tough. By tacit agreement between the son and his parents, his two hearts now became a family secret so as not to attract a wearisome curiosity about the boy in school. When he was given a new name on his coming-of-age (he was called Khrom-Merc Junior), he was named Kutsi (Shorty) because of his ungainly shape as a result of his having a double heart.
Kutsi soon grasped that he could make a virtue of his deformity. During the humiliating career of the "show-booth freak", Kutsi Merc developed the traits of character that were to decide his profession.
Unsociable, cunning, venomous, hating the Superiors across the ocean, he possessed rare strength and stamina. He caught the attention of the Special Service. He was found suitable for intelligence work. His irreproachable knowledge of barbarian mores and the barbarian language enabled him to carry out many dangerous transoceanic assignments (but not on a raft any more).
Making his way up the secret ladder, intelligent and self-effacing, rational and decisive, the son of a proprietor and in no way sympathetic to the Doctrine of Justice, he came to enjoy a position of trust among the big proprietors who were selecting convenient rulers for themselves.
Dobr Mar's predecessor had been so afraid of a disintegration war that he had been ready to give way to Dictator Yar Jupi, and so he had become useless to the proprietors. Kutsi Merc was able at that time to warn "the Ruler's friend", Dobr Mar, on what terms he could himself become Ruler, by being the first to start a disintegration war. That was the only way the proprietors, who were members of the Great Circle, thought of dealing with the proprietors of the Blood Council.
On becoming Ruler, Dobr Mar manoeuvred skilfully on the brink of war. When his re-election fell due and he had to take the prescribed step, he sent Kutsi on a diversionary escapade, even risking his own son's life in his personal interests. Kutsi Merc was such an eminent spy that he could have refused the mission. But ever since childhood he had had his own score to settle with the Superiors. He could forgive them neither the Blood Bath, nor the misfortunes of his own family, nor the oppression of the roundheads. That is why Kutsi Merc became a "hunchback", carrying on his back a disintegration charge to destroy the Dictator's Lair together with all the technology delivered by the short-sighted proprietors of Dan jab.
Kutsi Merc had taken a dangerous risk and had lost, struck down by Yar Alt's stiletto.
But it could never have entered Yar Alt's mind, when he tugged the stiletto out of Kutsi's heart, that the hunchback had a second heart.
Kutsi took a long, long time to regain consciousness. The second heart continued beating. Only an organism as unusual as his could win. But he was too weak owing to the enormous loss of blood.
When he came round and realized what had happened, he first of all took off his "hump" and examined it. It had been punctured in several places. The delayed-action fuse had been rendered useless. He threw the "hump" aside.
He was spurred on by a ravenous hunger. He must get out of this place somehow, although it seemed impossible. Kutsi, however, was not one to give up, even when the situation was hopeless.
Overcoming his pain and stomach spasms, he crawled over the stone floor, convinced that the Wall would bar his way. He could not believe the evidence of his own eyes when he saw a gap in it. After the battle of the brain biocurrents, when Yar Alt had mentally been trying to open the door and Lua to close it, no one had ordered the automatic system to close up the Wall. Also still open were the next two barriers through which Yar Alt had hurried and through which the dying Mother Lua had managed to crawl on her hands and knees.
At the familiar turn in the palace gardens, which Kutsi was hoping to reach, his way was barred by a high wall. He crawled off along Lua's bloody trail. He would crawl a little way, stop out of exhaustion and then carry on further. And still Kutsi Merc was alive!
During the few hours that had elapsed, the spaceship Quest had lifted off from Cape Farewell. Yar Jupi himself had gone down into the deep underground bunker to begin the disintegration war on which he had finally decided.
The palace was empty. After switching off the energy that fed the palace's automatic systems, the security robots carried a heavy box with slits on it down into the shelter.
And now the Wall in front of Kutsi Merc trembled slightly. He managed to insert his fingers into the gap and, to his great surprise, was able to assure himself that the Wall was yielding to his pressure. Finally, it parted enough for him to crawl through.
Then, without understanding how, he got to his feet and leaned back against the Wall. It trembled again and moved. Kutsi Merc fell down. (The power supply had been switched on again.)
Kutsi lay there gritting his teeth and trying to understand what had happened. He suddenly realized that the disintegration war was beginning and that he had failed to prevent it nevertheless.
He forced himself to rise to his feet. Everything went dark. He screwed up his eyes and stood swaying slightly, then supported himself by holding onto the priceless wood panelling on the walls. It finally led him out into the garden, fragrant with the Dictator's celebrated flowerbeds. Kutsi felt very much like lying down and dying. He had even stopped thinking about food.
He decided that the disintegration war had evidently not yet broken out. He couldn't hear any explosions, which meant that he must go on living! He did not allow himself to remain lying on the sand in the avenue, but crawled on until he was able to stand up from the kneeling position. He wanted to get to the Blood Door, hoping that it, too, would be open. He was right, and he crawled into the ruined shrine. He could wait there till dark in the familiar niche and at night he could make his way to the aged Nepts, a couple who were friendly with Kutsi's parents. They lived in a former miners' settlement near Pleasure City. Their youngest daughter, Lada, was married to a roundhead who had been educated in Danjab. They had flown to Space Station Deimo together.
Only Kutsi Merc, with his insatiable lust for life, could have made it to the Nepts that night.
When he entered their home, he collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. The solicitous old couple, both overweight, flabby and white-haired, looking very much like one another as is often the case with a married pair who have lived together for a long time, carried his heavy, bleeding body across the room with difficulty and laid it down on some bedding in the corner.
Kutsi Merc had overlooked the fact that the cover of his "hump" had been riddled with bullet-holes and the subterranean air had been leaking into the charge. Although the detonator had not been activated, it was sure to explode after a time because of contact with the air.
That explosion was being awaited with terror by Ruler Dobr Mar, who was tired of guessing when it might happen. By destroying the anti-torpedo defence, the explosion would be the signal for a strike, with no chance of retaliation, against Powermania by rockets armed with disintegration warheads, as was desired by the proprietors who had put Dobr Mar in power.
Against any possible emergency, Dobr Mar had taken refuge in a deep bunker, still hoping that Kutsi Merc would be killed before he could detonate his "hump" and that the war desired by the Great Circle of proprietors would be postponed for a time. The Ruler of Danjab was preparing for a war, but he was afraid of it.
Above all, he wanted the disintegration weapon to stay where it was and things to settle down somehow ... at least, until the next election.
Deep down below, a luxurious government office had been reproduced in every detail, circular in shape with a vaulted ceiling and highly placed oval windows that looked out on nothing. The communications monitors had been mounted underneath them.
Dobr Mar had changed. His face had lost its hardness and his eyes their penetration. He had become garrulous and seemed to be justifying himself to someone all the time. He even said to one of his military leaders with the intention of making it known to everyone:
"History will not forget the Ruler who started the disintegration war. Is that not so?" And he stared past the other man.
Dobr Mar was troubled by Ave Mar's sudden departure for outer space, not because of his son's fate, but because of Kutsi Merc. Why had the man allowed that flight? And what had become of him? Had he really perished in the end?
But everything turned out differently from what Dobr Mar had been expecting, and not as his enemy. Dictator Yar Jupi, had planned. Nor as the proprietors of the Great Circle or of the Blood Council had planned.
The moment came when the fuse in Kutsi Merc's artificial hump functioned of its own accord. A deep underground disintegration explosion took place.
Kutsi Merc, who had been sitting on the Nepts' bedding, felt himself hurled upwards. The floor of the cabin shook, the crockery rattled on the rickety shelves and the portrait of Dictator Yar Jupi fell down from its place on the wall. The transparent film in the window was torn apart and a violent gust of wind blew into the humble room, overturning the table. The sheets of paper covered with writing over which old Nept had bent his back, having taken it into his head to learn to write in his declining years, began whirling about in mid-air.
Kutsi Merc cringed as he waited for the blast. But the ceiling did not collapse. Kutsi limped over to the window.
Nothing, apparently, had happened. But there was no sign of the black spire over the Temple of Eternity.
One of Kutsi Merc's eyebrows shot up. The left side of his face smiled, the other remained watchful. Suddenly, his face grew longer, his eyes widened and he turned pale.
Directly in front of the window, an enormous flowerbed rose up in the centre of the square and out from underneath it glided a smooth cylindrical body with a pointed nose. It grew taller before Kutsi Merc's eyes and became a lofty tower. A moment later, black smoke began billowing from the shaft hidden underneath and the tower began, to rise on a column of fire. Then it detached itself from the square, gained height and set course for the ocean. Soon, the rear end of the rocket turned into a fiery cross which steadily diminished to a tiny glittering star. Only then did it vanish altogether.
Kutsi Merc's hair stood on end. He already knew that not only here, but at a thousand other points on the continent, from identical subterranean shafts, from under the surface of the seas, perhaps even from buildings, terrible rockets were bursting forth to head in a deadly swarm for Danjab.
Kutsi Merc was right. Activated by the automatic systems, the rockets had indeed burst out of their hiding places and, programmed to hit the vital points of Danjab, were speeding across the ocean. One of those rockets rose from the multistorey block in which Ave and Kutsi had been staying, and another was to soar straight up from the Temple of Eternity, where it had been camouflaged as one of the columns. The temple had collapsed at the subterranean explosion of Kutsi's "hump". However, the Central Automatic Defence Console, which was at a great depth, had not been damaged. Its sensitive instruments, only just detecting the radiation caused by the disintegration explosion, immediately sent their signals to thousands of rocket installations.
Dictator Yar Jupi was terrified when the bunker shook. He learned from the instruments about the explosion and the response of the automatic systems and he realized that the disintegration war had begun earlier than he had intended. He rushed up and down the cramped shelter. He craved action. But it had all been done without him.
He was alone. No one could see him except the mindless secretary box which was unable to appreciate the Dictator's joy and triumph. Forgetful of his personal fears, he giggled and danced about. He was filled with a delicious excitement at the knowledge that in a short time the cities and industrial centres of Dan jab would be destroyed and tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of enemy Faetians would cease to exist. He had never experienced a pleasure like this before. Now that the war had started, let it spread! He had achieved his aim: to command life and death over the whole of the planet Faena! And so, grimacing because of a nervous tic, he pulled back the curtain in front of the live screens.
The questioning and distraught faces of the military leaders were staring at him from them. Yar Jupi directed a mad glare at the servile faces and, foaming at the mouth in a burst of inspiration, he screamed:
"What? You weren't expecting it? You were marking time? Well, hear this. I've done it! I! I've blown up the Temple of Eternity and the palace to activate the automatic systems! What? Are you frightened?"
He ran round the bunker, shouting, although the screens were blacking out one after another. The military leaders were obviously not in agreement with their lord and master and preferred to take cover as quickly as possible in their bunkers, which were similar to the Dictator's own. When the secret screens of the Blood Council's members were switched on, they revealed the unhooded, frightened faces of the first proprietors of the ancient continent.
The barbarians' rockets went above the limits of the atmosphere as they flew over the ocean. Their approach was spotted at once by the ever-vigilant automatic observers far from the targets to which the rockets were flying. Without any help from the military or from Ruler Dobr Mar, the rocket defence system went automatically into action. A flock of defence missiles soared up from Danjab and headed for the disintegration armada. They were themselves packed with disintegration warheads intended to explode when close to any missiles that flew towards them.
And the disintegration explosions occurred one after another in the upper layers of the atmosphere, over the ocean. The shock waves threw the rockets off course or simply destroyed them. Mangled fragments and sometimes even whole torpedoes fell into the ocean, to the great horror of seafarers from both continents. It was as if a meteorite shower had plunged into the ocean, raising to the cloudy sky columns of water like the weird trees of a forest that had suddenly sprung up in the sea.
Over eight hundred rockets were destroyed by Danjab's automatic sentinels. But over two hundred continued on their way.
During those first moments of the disintegration war, not a single Faetian took part except for the wounded Kutsi Merc. Not one Faetian was killed in that appalling battle of the rockets.
But this was only during the first few moments.
Soon, Danjab began to tremble under disintegration explosions in hundreds of different places.
A disintegration explosion!
Is there anything to compare with it? Perhaps only the supernovas or the mysterious processes which astronomers have observed on Sol, when enormous tongues of white-hot matter have been ejected over distances many times greater than the star's diameter.
Matter itself was disintegrating, part of it was ceasing to be matter, its mass was diminishing. The energy of the internal bonds was being unleashed and, converted into heat energy according to the laws of nature, was raising the heat level at the place of disintegration by a factor of millions. All the surrounding matter that remained as matter was instantly converted into white-hot gas that shot out in all directions, wiping out everything in its path. But even faster was the action of the radiation that accompanies the disintegration of matter. Penetrating living tissue, its impact was fatal. Even long after the explosion, the impact of those rays was to destroy all who had survived the firestorm or the devastating hurricane.
On the site of each disintegration explosion, a fireball rose up first, immeasurably brighter than Sol itself. Light of such brilliance had never been known on the gloomy planet Faena. This brilliant ball became a pillar of fire that rose up like the white trunk of a magic, gigantic tree, growing up and soaring into the sky, where it spread out in a swirling canopy.
Shuddering, Dobr Mar saw on the communications monitors those ominous mushrooms sprouting on the sites of flourishing cities.
He was appalled. As he paced round his study, he felt himself keeling over; his knees buckled and he slumped into an armchair, scarcely able to clutch hold of it.
What had happened? How had the enemy anticipated him? What about Kutsi?
What had become of the Faetians who were to elect him for another term? They were dead, dead! Thousands, maybe millions, maybe hundreds of millions had ceased to exist!
The military leaders rushed into his office and hastened to help the old Faetian with the shaking head... He was groaning; his left leg was twitching, but his right leg, like his arm, had gone numb.
The military leaders bustled about the circular office and sent for the Sister of Health. They tried to pour water and broke the tumblers. No one was yet capable of understanding the full gravity of the position.
The disintegration war, when they mentioned it, sounded like something horrible but impossible, like a children's fairy tale. Even now, when the ominous mushrooms could be seen on nearly all the monitors in the bunker and many of the screens were black and networking, the scurrying Faetians still didn't want to believe that it was all over up above. It was somewhere far away, but here, what was close and visible was the Ruler's weakness, the Sister of Health fussing over him and the unpleasant odour of medicines.
The dejected military leaders made no decisions and issued no orders.
Once again, commands were given by automatic systems.
Dictator Yar Jupi, who had not such secret communications with the enemy continent like those maintained by Kutsi Merc through the roundheads did not suspect that Danjab had no less reliable a "retaliation system" than the Superiors.
Instruments recording the disintegration radioactivity in the air, the seismic effects of the explosions on Danjab territory and the force of the heat blasts, gave firing commands to countless rocket installations, also camouflaged on the seabed, in deep mine shafts and in mountain gorges. An armada of vengeance had already set off to fly across the ocean to Powermania.
Only Kutsi Merc had foreseen this. No sooner had the coloured, swirling cloud risen up before his eyes than he managed to dive into a disused shaft in which Nept had worked all his life and over which, when it was exhausted, he had built his own cabin. Kutsi Merc took cover in a narrow stone well down which he climbed by means of damp metal rungs.
His weakness seemed to have passed off. Nervous tension had given him back his strength.
He couldn't see anything any more, but could hear and, it seemed, felt with every cell in his body the terrible explosion that rocked the vicinity. Stones rained down on Kutsi; one of them struck him painfully on the shoulder. But Kutsi clung convulsively to the rungs. Even now, he refused to give in.