The Altar at Asconel by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page B

ought to take the hide off you!”
    Spartak pushed the door aside, and Vineta ran into him blindly, making headlong for the privacy of the lower cabin. He caught her with his free hand, and spoke sharply to Vix.
    “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Just because you’ve been scared white, that’s no reason to take it out on her. She’s had a worse shock than you have—look at that bruise on her! And you know where I found her? Folded up like an embryo in a tiny hole under the floor of the lower corridor! Here,” he added in a gentler tone to the girl, looking for a place to set down his medical case. “I’ll put something on the bruise and give you a pill to calm your nerves.”
    She accepted his ministrations dumbly, swallowed the pill as directed, and whispered, “Can I go now?”
    “Lie down for a while—you’ll be all right.” Spartak gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder and stood aside for her to leave.
    “I’m—sorry,” Vix said with an effort as the door slid to. “You’re right, I oughtn’t to talk to her that way.”
    “It’s better to think of points like that in advance and not afterwards,” Spartak answered curtly, and crossed the floor to drop to his knees beside the bound man. “Hm! How long has he been awake?”
    “Awake?” Vix echoed in astonishment. “I thought he was still knocked out.”
    “Hold it,” Spartak rapped, foreseeing that Vix’s next impulse would be to kick the man into talking. “Let’s see what I can do to loosen his tongue before you—” He reached behind him for an injector and a small phial of grayish liquid.
    “What are you going to give him?” Vix demanded.
    “It’s one of the old Imperial drugs—not really meant as a truth drug, but supposed to bring forgotten experiences back to consciousness during psychotherapy.” With deft fingers he loaded the injector.
    “Why did you think that, of all drugs, might come in handy?” Vix grunted. “Think I might be precessing with my gyros, maybe?”
    “You do take everything personally, don’t you?” Spartak sighed. “As a matter of fact, I thought it might help us to find out how this Belizuek cult gets the hold it’s supposed to have over apparently rational people like Hodat. There,” he added, shooting the dose into the bound man’s wrist veins.
    “How long does it take to work?”
    “A few seconds … Open your eyes, you!”
    The bound man complied after an obvious struggle to go on feigning unconsciousness.
    “Who are you? Where are you from?” Spartak asked.
    “I’m—” Another, equally unsuccessful struggle to still his tongue, and a yielding. “I’m Korisu, and I come from Asconel.”
    “From—!” Vix took a pace forward in amazed horror.
    “What was your mission and who ordered you to do it?”
    His eyes fixed open and seeming glazed, the man whispered, “I was sent by Bucyon to track down Vix and kill him.”
    “Why?” thundered Vix.
    “Because he’d heard that you planned to raise an army and depose him, and wipe out Belizuek on Asconel.”
    “I’m Spartak, Vix’s half-brother,” Spartak said softly. “Does my name mean anything to you?”
    “Y-yes. After I’d found and killed Vix, since I was on Annanworld anyway, I was to locate you and eliminate you as well.”
    “Has someone been sent after Tiorin?” Vix demanded.
    “I—I don’t know for sure. I think so. But nobody knew where he was when I left home. There was a rumor that he had gone towards the hub, to travel in what’s left of the Empire. Someone mentioned Delcadoré.”
    “Then that’s where we’ll go!” Vix declared, and strode towards the control board.
    “Just a moment,” Spartak said. “There are some other things I want to set straight. You, Korisu—are you a follower of Belizuek?”
    “Of course I am. Everyone on Asconel is nowadays.”
    Vix uttered a filthy string of oaths.
    “What is Belizuek?”
    “He is all-seeing and all-powerful. He reads the inmost thoughts of men and