Dumarest 33 - Child of Earth Read Online Free Page B

You’re in a hell of a situation, but I’ve got something which should help.” He produced a small bottle, “I haven’t forgotten everything I’ve learned.” He undid the cap, filled it with the contents of the phial. “Here!” He proffered it, shrugged as Dumarest made no effort to take it, swallowed it himself. “Just a mixture of a few things to reduce toxic levels and give a temporary boost. The equivalent of a good sleep and rest. It will do you no harm. I swear it.”
    A genuine promise but one he had heard too often before. In the sweat-tainted air of the waiting rooms in which contenders readied themselves for combat. The touts eager to ply their wares; the magic compounds which they claimed would guarantee victory. Most were rubbish, some were poisons to ensure defeat, no fighter in his right mind would entertain them. But this was no arena and the doctor wasn’t a tout. Dumarest watched as the cap was refilled, took it, swallowed and felt the warm taste of syrup and a tang as of vinegar fill his mouth and throat.
    “Another?” The doctor lifted the phial. “You look as if you could use it.”
    “Later, maybe.” Dumarest felt the chemicals the liquid had carried begin to take effect. “This thing you mentioned. The one I should see. Trouble?”
    Chagal shrugged. “What else? It’s been with us ever since we left Kaldar. We should be used to it by now. If something can go wrong it will.”
    “And too often does.” Dumarest stood upright, his head barely clearing the curved metal which had once been the hull of a ship. “When are you going to tell me something new?”
    “When it happens.”
    “But it hasn’t happened yet.” Dumarest blinked, aware that he was stating the obvious. Chagal’s potion had been stronger than he thought. “And now?”
    “We go outside.”
    Dumarest halted as they left the shelter. Nothing had changed. All was as it had been before and, as he looked around, he felt again the helpless anger of disappointment and broken expectations. This was his home world. He had crossed the galaxy to find it. He had fought and killed and, in a crippled vessel, had finally made it. Had survived the crash to enjoy his victory only to taste the acrid dust of defeat. For nothing was as he had expected it would be.
    There should have been soft breezes scented with entrancing perfumes, the soothing warmth of a golden sun, lakes of wine and mountains of grain, trees adorned with fruit and bud and flower, shrubs bearing a profusion of glittering gems. Herbs and spices to provide freedom from pain, a return to youthful zest, an end of aging and decay. Salves and ointments and natural fungi to cure all physical ills. For this was Earth, the planet of legend, the paradise for which all yearned and hungered to find. The world of joy and beauty and riches beyond the wildest dreams.
    Instead there was nothing but a barren waste of sterile whiteness formed of ice and snow and stinging motes drifting in the freezing winds. Ghost-shapes that reared to fall, to stream over the endless plain, to rear again, to adopt new configurations of unremitting hostility. A hell that had its full share of anguish, pain, despair and death.
    Yet, even so, there was beauty. Ice had crusted to form filigrees of crystalline splendor to mask the shattered metal and distorted lines of the wreck with an elfin grace. Beauty which Dumarest ignored as he stared down into a shallow dell, at the figures it contained, the body sprawled before them.
    “Tazima Osborn,” said Chagal as they neared the group. “She was on watch last night. She was found like this shortly after dawn.”
    Dumarest dropped to his knees beside the dead woman.
    Alive she had been hard, arrogant, a typical product of the Kaldari. Now she was nothing but an empty shell. The doctor had loosened her clothing but there were no signs of injury. She could have been asleep, her eyes closed, a faint smile on her lips. A gust of wind brought a numbing chill