The Quillian Sector

"Dumarest?" Caradoc leaned back to rest his shoulders against the wall. Bochner had noticed nothing wrong and that was proof of his own efficiency. He sat as Bochner remembered, the cabin looked the same. To Bochner, his temporary unconsciousness would have seemed no more than the blink of an eye. "A matter of applied logic."

"A guess?"

"No."

"And yet you can't be certain. I mean, you might know about where he is but not exactly where. If your logic and skill were good enough surely there could be no doubt?"

"Doubt?"

"Uncertainty. You would be certain."

"Nothing is ever that," said Caradoc. "Always there is the unknown factor which must never be ignored. No matter how certain a thing appears to be, it must never be considered an absolute event. The probability may be high but, always, it remains a probability."

Bochner nodded, remembering a time during his early youth. A copse in which a beast was lurking, himself set and armed, the weapon lifted, aimed, the butt hard against his shoulder, the sights leveled on the spot in which the creature was sure to appear. A long, delicious moment of savored anticipation. The nearing climax of the hunt was like the climax of sex itself, though far more satisfying.

And then the shadow, which had crossed the sun. The raft, which had appeared in a cloudless sky and, as it threw a patch of darkness over the front sight, the quarry had appeared to turn, to run, to dodge the bullet which should have brought it low.

Revenge had done little to ease the hurt and after the dead man had toppled from the raft, and the vehicle itself risen to vanish into the distance, the penalty had waited at the end- the blood-price paid in money and sweat and exile from his home world.

A little thing. One he should have taken into consideration. A neglect which had altered the trend of his life.

Watching him, Caradoc said, "Imagine a container of boiling liquid containing tiny motes of solid substance. They are in continuous, restless activity. The Brownian Movement. The tiny particles are in motion because of the irregular bombardment of the molecules of the surrounding medium. Now, imagine one of the particles to be colored for easy identification. We can tell where it is in relation to the whole. We can tell where it has been. We can even predict where next it might be, but never can we be utterly and absolutely certain."

"Dumarest? The colored particle is Dumarest?"

"The analogy will serve."

"And you know about where he is to be found. In the Quillian Sector." Bochner's face became taut ugly, the skin tightening so that his cheeks looked like scraped bone. "The place where space goes mad. Where the suns fight and fill the universe with crazed patterns of energy so that men kill at a glance and women scream at imagined terrors. Ealius and Cham and Ninik."

"Swenna," said Caradoc adding to the list. "Vult and Pontia-" He paused, then said again, "Pontia."

"Where I was born." Bochner's voice matched the taut ugliness of his face. "I told you I knew the area well."

Chapter Two

Dumarest heard the shout and looked up to see death falling from the sky. The grab of the digger was overhead, the jaws open, tons of oozing clay scooped from the cutting, blotting out the pale orange of the firmament. It should have been neatly deposited in the body of his truck. Instead, it was plummeting down to crush and bury him. No accident. The crane was well to one side, the truck closer to it than himself, but there was no time to think of that.

Even before the warning shout had died he was on the move, lunging to one side, feeling his foot slip on the loose dirt, toppling off balance as the load thundered down.

Luck was with him. A second later, or had he been less fast, he would have been crushed and buried like an insect. As it was, he felt the impact on his left shoulder, the barest touch of the debris which rasped down the sleeve of his coverall, the blow throwing him further in the direction of his fall. He hit a slope, rolling, falling, to land on the waterlogged clay at the foot of the cutting as over him showered the mass of clay, dirt and rubble.

Too much rubble. It pressed on his back, drove his face into the water as it piled on his head, his shoulders, trapping his entire body with a layer of dirt which pressed with an iron hand. A hand which could kill, which would kill within minutes unless he could find some way to breathe.

He strained, body aching, muscles tense, blood thundering in his ears as, slowly, he lifted. A fraction only; loose dirt compacted by his upward pressure, yielding a trifle to form a shallow gap beneath him so that, arms and legs rigid, back arched against the strain, head turned to rest one cheek in the water, his nose lay above the surface and he could breathe.

Breathe and wait for a rescue which need never come.