Star Winds

On the table, the four small jars still stood, but the four homunculi they had contained had reached the end of their natural life span now. The tiny corpses slumped against the glass bottoms, degenerating into slime which was clouding the water. In time, Amschel had assured Rachad, the water would become clear again, a simple mineral solution as before.

Filling the big cucurbit with a similar solution had taken him several hours. But that had been weeks ago. Rachad now sat on a chair in front of the vessel, thinking hard. Every evening at about this time he spent an hour at the exercise, holding an image in his mind and attempting to project it into the burgeoning mass. The work exhausted him, for he had never found it easy to think in a sustained way.

The huge homunculus was almost fully formed now, but the features were still indistinct. The next few days would tell if his efforts were to be rewarded with success or failure—would tell if, in the end, his creation would step forth and speak in a faint, drifting voice …

Rachad was beginning to daydream again. It always happened after a few minutes. He pulled his mind back on the job, focusing his mind’s eye on the necessary picture, thinking, thinking …

***

“And how close are they, would you say?” Baron Matello asked, his brow furrowed in a frown.

“No more than fifty miles, my lord!” the kneeling messenger answered unhesitatingly.

Matello grunted dourly. The news was bad.

With the Kerek’s famous knack of tracking human ships, he had been afraid that something like this would happen. The enemy, it seemed, had come upon this uninviting world only days after the landing of the Bucentaur. The serf kneeling before Matello and King Lutheron had ridden from the nearest mining town, which was in panic after hearing of the Kerek’s doings in other such towns around the planet.

It would not take the Kerek long to spot the Aegis. They would then attempt to besiege it, and the situation of those in the underground camp was therefore unenviable.

King Lutheron, sitting in a plush chair with what in the circumstances was a luxurious amount of space around him, spoke up. “Perhaps it is time we should seek Koss’s hospitality after all.”

“Perhaps,” Matello admitted grudgingly. Although he had been the first to offer this possibility to the King, the truth was that he hated the idea of going begging to the hated duke. He would rather have perished.

“Leave it for a while,” he said. “The Kerek have not discovered us yet. I still hope to be able to take the Aegis without our demeaning ourselves.”

He ignored the incredulous looks of the officers around him, the camp commander included, who until the interruption had been idly occupying themselves with all there was to do in such a place—cleaning and sharpening their weapons.

“Yes, my liege-lord,” he repeated in a murmur, “I suggest we leave it for a while …”

Caban, what the hell has happened to you? he thought furiously to himself.

***

The homunculus had been growing for about ten weeks. Rachad came into his room one night and stared at it, biting his lower lip.

As far as he could judge the creature was fully matured. The facial features had taken final form several days previously, and a haughty, austere visage stared back at him through the side of the jar, the head, with its long bony nose, tilted ever so slightly on one side.

It was a marvel to Rachad how faithfully the development of the homunculus had followed the direction of his thoughts—the likeness to the original was uncanny. Yet still he had hung back, wanting to be sure. He would only get one chance.

Suddenly he made up his mind. The time for hesitation had to end sooner or later. It was do or die. And the present moment—the Aegis’s nighttime, its activity subdued, and when the laboratory staff had all retired—was most propitious for his purpose.

He stepped to his bed, bent, and drew from beneath it a large hammer. Standing again before the oversized cucurbit, he braced himself and swung the hammer with both hands.

The first blow starred the glass with cracks. The second shattered it and the cucurbit fell to pieces. A gush of water flowed forth, swilling around Rachad’s legs and flooding the floor of the small room.

And following the flood there stepped forth the man-sized homunculus. The fluid seemed to fall away from him to leave him perfectly dry, even dropping out of the fabric of his voluminous purple robe. He stepped hesitantly, looking frail, gazing around him with glazed eyes.

Rachad focused his thoughts. Say to me: I can speak, young Rachad.

The voice that came was distant, breathless, vague. “I can speak, young Rachad.”

A perfect imitation!

Rachad walked the creature up and down the room, still under thought control. To look at, it was hard to believe it was not a genuine human being.