Free The Altar at Asconel by John Brunner Page A

port control building yonder!” He added a vivid and obscene description of her.
    “Just a second,” Spartak whispered. His mind had been buzzing ever since Rochard’s entrance with a wild, fantastic notion. Even now he was reluctant to utter it, but he felt he must.
    “This ‘principal’ of yours—he isn’t by some miracle a man called Tiorin of Asconel?”
    Rochard started. “Why, you know him!” he blurted. “How do you know him? I was forbidden to name him to anyone.”
    “Don’t you see a resemblance between him and this man who holds your arm?” Spartak rapped. The success of his million-to-one probe had shaken him, physically, so that he was now trembling with excitement. As for Vix, he was so startled he had completely forgotten to release his hold on Rochard.
    “Why—I guess so. But there are many worlds where one genetic strain has dominated others and produced a general likeness between many people.”
    “This is no accidental resemblance. You’re looking at his full brother Vix. And I’m Spartak, his half-brother.”
    “Amazing!” Rochard breathed. “Why, for this he’ll pay me double—treble—ten times what he promised! Please let me go,” he added cringingly to Vix. “I must carry the news to him at once.”
    “It still won’t help much,” Spartak grunted, silencing a threatened interruption from Vix with a lift of his eyebrows. “We’ve been put under Imperial requisition, and conditioned to take a mutant girl to some place called Nylock.You must be well in touch with what goes on around here—what can we do to get out from under this?”
    Rochard’s face fell. He said, “Oh, no…” The two words were like the sighing of wind through bushes in a cemetery.
    “Is there someone we can bribe to have the conditioning reversed?” Spartak urged. “Is there anyone we could go to for counter-conditioning?”
    “How about Tiorin himself?” Vix snapped. “What’s his situation here? How’s he fixed for contacts, government influence, things like that?”
    Rochard spoke so rapidly he was almost babbling, his gaze apparently riveted on the imaginary spectacle of a fat reward disappearing into space. “Your brother is in no position to help you either! He’s not meant to be on Delcadoré at all. You see, some short time ago there came a man from—I think—his own world, yours too of course, an assassin, from whom he barely escaped. Since then he’s been in hiding, and only some few trusted agents have been told he’s still here; for the sake of any more would-be killers, the news was passed that he had left for Argus to raise aid against the new rulers of Asconel.”
    “Do you know where he is? Can you contact him quickly?” Spartak demanded.
    “Why, within minutes if he’s at the usual place. But it may take a while to bring him to you. If you’re under Imperial requisition you can’t leave the ship, and any attempt you make to communicate with people on the planet will be automatically jammed.”
    “Get hold of him at once anyway,” Spartak ordered. “It’s our only chance.”
    Frantically Rochard dashed for the door.
    Spartak turned to Vix, wiping sweat from his face. He said, “It might have taken weeks to track him down here—he might have fooled us, along with Bucyon’s assassins, and we’d have gone on a ridiculous chase to Argus looking for him. Even if we have to go home via Nylock, we may prove to have wasted amazingly little time.”
    “If we get back from Nylock,” Vix said. “If we get him aboard in time to make the trip with us, and the girl isn’t brought here before he arrives. If. If.
If!”
    “I should have given Rochard a message to cover that risk,” Spartak whispered. “Told Tiorin to wait for us, and we’d be back to locate him right here.”
    “You were not expecting to find your brother on this world at all,” Vineta suggested unexpectedly. “You were prepared to find he had left for somewhere else.”
    Spartak nodded