The Altar at Asconel Read Online Free PDF Page A

human achievement instead of a borrowed technique of star-flight? Or was he simply whistling against the dark? Once, news had come from a million worlds within the year, so swift and reliable was the Imperial communications net. How much had changed! He had told himself Asconel was among the few worlds where anything significant was likelyto happen—yet prior to Vix’s arrival, his last news had come to him two years ago, and was already three years stale, so that the vaunted library was forced to gobble crumbs of unverified data to bring its stock up to date.…
    The door of the cubicle was pushed aside, and a startled off-world student was there, carrying a recorder. “Oh! Excuse me, Brother, but this cubicle was shown vacant on—”
    “That’s all right,” Spartak said, rising with limbs that seemed to have stiffened from the passage of a lifetime. “I forgot to shut the door and close the circuit. But I’ve done what I came to do, anyway.”
    “You’ll forgive me,” Father Erton said in his wheezy, ancient voice. He was very old; rumor placed him at well past the century mark. “I should perhaps not say this. We are a center for study and distribution of information, and it’s only a courtesy obligation that we place on those who make such extensive use of our facilities as you have done, to recompense us with some original work before leaving.” But he loaded the words with a glare, and Spartak, who had always regarded the Master of his order with great respect, felt impelled to excuse himself against the implied charge.
    “I have no intention of departing permanently, Father,” he said. “It is simply that this news—”
    “Moreover,” Father Erton continued, totally ignoring the interruption, “Brother Ulwyn gives us most unfavorable reports of this half-brother of yours who comes to drag you away. Says he is violent in the extreme. Heavily armed. Scarred from fighting!”
    “But Asconel is one of the few—”
    “You may have no intention of departing permanently,” Father Erton proceeded, as though his ears and mouth were keeping different time-scales, the gap between them amounting to several seconds. “But someone else—for example, the alleged usurper on Asconel—may take no notice of what you plan, and your chance to return will be …
pffft!”
    “I’m sorry, my mind is made—”
    “And it would be a shame to waste a mind of your caliber on some desperate single-handed attempt to stand against the general tide of galactic decadence. I grant you, Asconelwas a great name in Imperial days—but so was Delcadoré, so was Praxulum, so was Norge!”
    “Delcadoré still functions as one of the Imperial—”
    “Most crucial of all is my final point. If you leave here and while absent infringe the vow you took to renounce all forms of violence, you cannot be re-admitted.” Father Erton leaned back with an effort and stared at Spartak.
    “I am not by temperament a violent person,” Spartak forced out, acutely conscious that Father Erton’s refusal to listen to a word he had to say had made him long to employ a great deal of violence on his sparse gray pate. “My intention is merely to—”
    “Your intention is to throw away ten years of valuable study on a heroic gesture. You may well not return alive, and even if you do you stand the same chance of turning back the calendar as I would have of combating a tidal wave. I understand your attachment to Asconel—why, I myself, after seventy years, still occasionally find myself nostalgic for my own birth-world! And that the appeal comes from your half-brother makes it even more understandable that you should be tempted. Nonetheless, I urge prudence, a night’s sleep before your final decision, and—best of all—a reconsideration.”
    Spartak got to his feet, a cold rage filling his breast. “Now listen to me,” he said between his teeth. “You know what’s going to happen here? One of these days someone who doesn’t give a yard