Chapter 1
“Is it true, Sensei,” the boy said, “that you can stop an attacker with your mind?”
Asher Tye frowned. Sixteen boys stood before him. All hands were loose fists, dangling at their sides. All legs were sixteen inches apart, feet pointed directly ahead. All knees were slightly bent.
Cally, the boy who had asked, was in the front of the two rows. Like most of the others, he was in his midteens, and had been training with Asher for almost a year. His loose, white buttonless shirt was gathered at the waist by a cloth belt colored a faded yellow, almost matching his hair and nascent beard.
“No,” Asher said curtly. This was one belief he could not allow to gain currency. It would destroy his effectiveness as a Bodyguard instructor, if his students believed his skills were due to mental trickery. “The more you train,” Asher told them, “the more you feel the world around you, by its tiniest sounds and air currents and smells and vibrations, as well as by the eyes. The great Bodyguards seem to have eyes in the back of their heads, but they don’t; they have normal senses exactly like each of you, trained to maximum.”
Some of them looked dubious. Asher sighed inwardly. The vocational school was a for-profit cover for the real work that was going on: the training of members for the newly combined Guild of Personal Protectors (Bodyguards) and the fugitive Transfer Guild (Thieves). But the vocational school itself accepted nearly anyone who applied for its martial training. “Become a Bodyguard!” the ads screamed. “See the galaxy!” As a result, the school pulled in the young and rebellious of all kinds, macho-types and wallflowers and bullies and idealists, of whom perhaps three percent would eventually become full members of the Bodyguard Guild.
He wondered how the notion had become planted in Cally’s head. Perhaps Asher had been careless at some point as he worked on the group of gangling novices. Once, for example, he had used a Shield to stop a knife from impaling one of Cally’s opponents during weapons training. He had let the Shield push the opponent backward, and it should have seemed to Cally that his enemy had simply moved out of reach, as indeed he was supposed to. But maybe Cally had felt the Shield somehow, with his knife hand or even, if he had some natural talent in that direction, with his mind. Was he a Receptor, perhaps?
Asher pushed his brown hair away from his eyes in a habitual gesture, even though he never let it grow that long anymore. The sixteen brown and blond and red and black heads watched him fixedly, as they were obliged to do at all times during training; otherwise they were subject to surprise attack.
But this was not the time to leap at one of them, Asher thought. They would see him as avoiding the issue, and the seed that Cally’s question had planted would grow.
“There are no mind readers,” Asher said harshly. “I see the news too, and I heard about the October Guild and its destruction by the Galactic Police.” Asher knew for a fact that the Police had entered the scene long after the real action had concluded. But the story had captured the imagination of certain holographic movie producers, and the resulting extravaganzas had been very popular. The basic plot was always the same: ravenous alien telepathic monsters from the Sculptor subgalaxy infiltrate the main galaxy, take control of everybody’s mind, and rule with sadistic evil until thwarted by a hero and thrown back into the Sculptor. And in fact, the real events had had the same plot line; but the ravenous leader had been the subtle and manipulative October One, and the Sculptor itself had, in a way, taken back its own. As for the hero ...
“You joined the school about that time,” Cally said, and Asher scowled. He told himself that he had been an idiot to allow questions at the end of each class ...
But no. The questions usually helped him understand what was going on in the heads of the class, subtle things beyond the words they said.
With the panther-like step of a Bodyguard, Asher strode to Cally and stood directly in front of him.
“Let’s get this question answered, mister,” Asher said harshly. Before the intense stare of Asher’s brown eyes, Cally visibly flinched. But cowed he was not. He was nearly Asher’s height and at least his weight, and besides, he had an audience.
“You see the shows,” Asher’s voice grated. “A wizard’s mind shields him from all physical danger, right? By reflex, instantly, whether he wants it to or not. Right?” It wasn’t completely true, but the movies had said that it was, and they were reality for the likes of Cally. “Right?” Asher shouted.
“Right!” Cally yelled, and, viciously, he slammed his knee upward into Asher’s groin.
Asher saw it coming, of course, not with his mind, but by virtue of the intense martial training of the past five years from the greatest human warrior in the galaxy, the Nin Tova, founder of the Guild of Thieves. The tiny flicker in Cally’s face, the instantaneous shifting of balance before the strike ...
But deliberately, he suppressed his now almost instinctive reactions.
The slamming knee lifted Asher an inch off the floor, and as his feet hit again, he staggered backwards a few steps. Then he swayed, hunched slightly over, and let air in with an explosive gasp.
There was some pain, but not much. The class watched him, and he watched them. This was not over yet.
There was a question of respect ...
“You see the value of the plastic protectors I make you all wear?” Asher gasped out finally. Then he let his eyes focus on Cally. “Come out here,” he said.
Cally came. He could see that trouble was ahead, but he came.
They faced one another, beltless instructor and yellowbelted student. “Bow,” Asher said. They bowed, never taking their eyes off one another. “Attack,” Asher said.
Cally attacked in a flurry of fists, knees, and feet. Asher let the blows beat the air. With effortless grace he moved away from them, just far enough so that they almost hit, but not quite. He didn’t bother to raise a blocking arm or knee.
At length Cally paused, panting. Then Asher extended a fist. Frantically, Cally drove an arm block against it, and ...
The block bounced off. Asher let the fist move in, slowly. The second block bounced off. It was as if the arm were made of wood imbedded in the ground.
Cally regarded the arm confusedly, stepping back, and at that instant Asher kicked, one foot smashing forward into Cally’s crotch. The cup protector was there, of course, or Cally would have died. But the ball of Asher’s foot drove the cup itself deep into Cally’s flesh, bruising the bone and leaving a circular outline that lasted three weeks.
Then Asher’s leg snapped partly back and the same heel found Cally’s solar plexus. Cally was flung backward onto the floor.
There was silence. Cally’s face stared. He sat up. His eyes began to bulge, his mouth opening in frantic, useless sucking movements. He looked up in panic at Asher Tye, who looked down at him, the expression on his face saying that the discipline was now complete. And the seconds ticked by: twenty, thirty, forty ... The class watched Cally and Asher in turn, horror coming into their eyes, restlessness into their feet.
“You won’t die,” Asher said softly. And Cally didn’t. For all at once, his diaphragm lost its paralysis and came back into action. There was a gigantic gasp as air exploded inward, and Cally fell backwards on the mat, heaving off its surface as he drew in tremendous racking gulps of air.
“So now you all see,” Asher said coldly to the class, “that I am not a wizard.” Then he looked deliberately down at Cally. “And,” he said wryly, “neither is he.”
# # # # #
“Sometimes I wonder,” Asher said to Clemmy that night, “whether anything I do is worth anything in the long run. Those sixteen kids won’t last another year. Some will get lazy and drop out, some will run out of money and drop out, some will move away, some will get surface religion and misunderstand the point of the training, and drop out.”
Clemmy regarded him from an inch away, one leg thrown over his body. Her narrow face was relaxed, cheek on one hand as her elbow supported her head.
“Some will become Bodyguards,” she said.
“Oh sure, maybe,” Asher said. “But most of them will drop out, and other ones will replace them to drop out themselves, and on and on and on.”
She laid her cheek against Asher’s shoulder, and Asher put his arm around her.
“Even the ones that drop out,” Clemmy said in her throaty voice, “will remember. They’ll always feel better because of it. They’ll know some of their limits and know what they can do and what they can’t.”
“I guess,” Asher said. He bent his head slightly and touched his lips to her hair.
“Anyway,” Clemmy said, “that’s not the only thing you do. Behind the scenes, you’ve trained the warriors to raise Shields in their minds. That’s pretty impressive, and it might save their lives someday.”
“But it’s taken a year,” Asher said with sudden heat, “and a lot of them can’t do it at all. That’s what I mean, Clemmy. When I was on the October World, it took the Apprentices less than a week to master, and I mean master, the Shield. Here it takes a year to learn to put up wobbly feeble Shields that take tremendous effort and then fall apart. I’m restless, Clemmy. I feel I’m wasting my time. There aren’t any wizards in the galaxy to raise a Shield against, for heaven’s sake, not anymore. If there were, the galaxy would rise up and exterminate them; the fear of them can still be sensed everywhere. No one likes the idea of someone else poking around in one’s mind.”
Clemmy turned her face up to him; his lips moved from her hair, across her forehead, down the bridge of her nose.
“You’ve taught me a lot of the Skill,” she said, the last word muffled suddenly. “Even the Green Flame—I can blast a tree to cinders with it already. It’s incredible.”
His cheek was back against her hair, then. “You have a natural aptitude,” he said. “And you taught me a lot, too, about many other things.” Against his chest, she smiled.
“What things?” she said. But his mind was elsewhere.
“Warrior-skills,” said Asher. “You’re a better warrior than I am, Clemmy. And also you taught me kindness. And integrity. And willpower.”
“What else?” she said.
“Running and swimming and jumping and tumbling,” he said. “Juggling and acrobatics and fencing and knife throwing. You were one of my teachers in all those things.”
“What else?” she asked, sighing.
But Asher wasn’t entirely distracted. He smiled, but she couldn’t see his face.
“Catching and hitting and waving and hiding,” he said. “Pounding and skiing and handwalking and hopping on one foot. Eating and drinking and sleeping and mmphf.” Her lips were on his and she shut him off, eyes twinkling.
“What else?” she said, and then covered his lips again before he could speak.
He broke away for a moment. “And being a husband,” he said. “And I thought the teaching was mutual.”
# # # # #
Late that night, Asher reached for Clemmy again. “No,” she murmured blearily. “Want to sleep.” He moved his hands on her, and she said “No!” sharper now. She turned her back on him.
Asher sank back, hurt. It had happened before. Sometimes they seemed in perfect synch; other times they were off in different directions. How could sleep compare to love? Asher thought angrily.
Asher made up his mind as he was dressing the next morning. Clemmy was already gone, and as he left the tiny room that they shared on the fourteenth floor, he determined to see the Nin. He knew she was on-planet from the wrist computer announcement board. Whether she, the master of a Guild whose members worked on a little less than half a million worlds, would take time to see him, he wondered about briefly and then dismissed it. Maybe he would just be lucky.
He descended to her office on the sub-sixth floor. Outside the walls, in the bedrock, were tunnels and several escape ships. Even on this populated world, the Nin was prepared. Her former Guild was still sought by the Concourse Police, and if the Police became aware that she had absorbed the Bodyguards, there would be trouble.
He told the Watcher Com what he wanted, and it was only a moment later that the Nin herself came into the room from a rear door. She seemed to fill the space around her, a magnificent woman of perhaps thirty-seven, shaped as much by flowing muscular development as by a natural womanness. Asher tended to become tongue-tied in her presence. He resisted it now with determination.
“So, Asher,” she said, her voice its usual casual presence, alien to pretense and deceit. “What do you wish?”
“You,” Asher almost said, and found his teeth clamped on his tongue. He separated them with an effort, and was amazed. It was a thought that he had never articulated on any conscious level.
He told her some of what he had told Clemmy, and finished by saying: “I am restless and yet have no goals or plans. I don’t know what I want to do next month or next year or for the rest of my life. The only thing I can think of is to seek out the great Teacher in the Sculptor sub-galaxy, but I don’t believe I am ready yet for that. I might never be.”
“Is there trouble between you and Clemmy?” the Nin asked. She had come around to the front of the desk, and now settled on a chair facing him. He could have reached out one hand and touched her. He wondered what would happen if he did. Maybe his hand would have touched empty air. Thinking about it now, he realized that on those rare times that he saw her in the flesh, usually in a meeting or assembly, he was never sure whether it was the Nin herself that he faced, or one of the hundreds of holographic amalgams with which she kept personal touch with Bodyguards on the thousands of worlds. Yet if today she were a sterile amalgam, the contact would not be entirely impersonal, for even with an amalgam some of her time was involved. At some point she had to scan the results of all the pseudo-meetings, no matter how condensed a summary the Bodyguard Com might present.
Clemmy ... “Nothing really,” Asher said slowly. “It’s the one thing that seems right, most of the time. Two people are two people.”
“But of course, you’re both new at it,” the Nin said. Asher looked at her sharply. “You will do very well if you can keep your feeling with Clemmy balanced toward the positive as you both age and change.”
“This is getting away from the point,” Asher said. He and Clemmy had been married for well over a year, partially because it had seemed right, and partially because the Nin had advised them to. Several times he had seen the Nin advise, even order, marriage between two of her Bodyguards when relationships reached a certain point, and he hadn’t been too surprised when his and Clemmy’s turn had come. But it was an odd thing too, marriage. He wasn’t entirely used to it.
The Nin said: “No, it is the point. Restlessness has to do with your age, and sex is one of the driving forces for someone scarcely twenty-two. The problem will be, someday, to place it in perspective. Young men more than women have a tough time with it, Asher. Even in your happiest moments with Clemmy, have you ever thought of another woman? Your old flame Tawna, perhaps?” Asher opened his mouth to deny it. “Or me?”
He closed his mouth abruptly. She laughed softly, her short hair, alternating strands of brown and blonde, waving around her shoulders. She reached a hand out and took his shoulder, and looked into his eyes. Well, this is no computer amalgam, he thought.
“This is why human beings have brains,” she said intently. “Your brain has to separate out the long-term value of everything you do, and decide what should get the most time and what the least. You yourself felt it firsthand when you had to confront the October One that day that seems so long ago. We in the old Guild of Thieves had to teach you to separate your brain from your emotions, and that took a lot of doing, believe me, Asher Tye. Remember when you stood before October, and in the face of a power you thought was invincible you reached inside yourself and found something that gave you a chance against her?
“It’s very, very hard to do at first. First you control the emotion; then you begin to plan, to separate immediacy from long-term gain. Children think sweet things have overriding importance; young men think sex does. They’re both wrong. The two things have their place, but those places are down the list. And both can ruin the things higher up. Free access to sweet things can ruin health. Obsession with sex leaves you penniless and confused in the long run.”
“This is not what I came to talk about,” Asher said desperately.
“But it is,” the Nin said. “It’s practically the definition of restlessness in young men.”
She released him and leaned back in her chair again. “The only solution,” she said, “is goal-oriented activity. You have to have action toward some goal, accomplish that goal, and see what you have learned. I think I’m beginning to agree with you this far, Asher: that it may be time for your first mission for the Guild. You’re as good a warrior as you need to be right now. You need experience in the real universe.”
Asher still felt her touch on his shoulder, and she saw it in his eyes. Softly, she laughed again. “No, Asher Tye, I am not for you in that way, and will never be. Look for the rightness in your reasoning mind. Clemmy is right for you, and it would be better if you both realized that there will be challenges to that rightness. Only if you both work hard can you conquer them all.”
In a way, it was the same pep talk she gave warriors on the martial skills. But Asher felt let down.
“You can’t have every woman that attracts your eye, Asher Tye,” the Nin said then, still softly. “And if I and two hundred other women say ‘no’ to you, you can’t let it bring you down. You’re a married man, Asher Tye. Your peace of mind comes from what you do with it.”
He left. In all his confusion of thought and emotion, it was an effort to turn his mind toward the idea of going out on a mission. He wondered what it would be.
# # # # #
That night, Clemmy came into their room in flowing tears.
“Oh Asher, Asher,” she cried, and threw her arms around him, as if by letting go she would fall a thousand feet.
“What’s wrong, Clemmy? What’s wrong?” Asher said in surprise, smoothing her hair, kissing her eyes, her forehead.
“Hold me, Asher, I need you to hold me, so that I can find the strength to hold you.”
“Hold me?” But she was crying spasmodically now, and it was long minutes before her breath was under her control again.
“I knew him longer than you,” Clemmy said. “He lit up every room he came in.”
A chill hit Asher’s heart like a fist of stone.
“What is it, love?” he murmured, but his reason was working it out already.
“Ran,” she said. “It’s Ran. Oh, Asher, he’s dead.”