E c tubb, p.4
E C Tubb, page 4
"You -- " Red-faced, Stanislac took a step forward, turned and stalked from the room.
Asner shook his head as the door slammed. "He's worried. Really worried. You shouldn't have needled him."
"He'll get over it." Ritter's shrug expressed his indifference. "Are we playing cards or holding a wake?"
"It's up to you, Kurt." Calton stared at Varl, his eyes shrewd. "What's it to be?"
One card alone could turn rubbish into a potential winner, but the odds against his getting it were too high for the possible gain. A percentage player would have quit without hesitation, but Varl ignored the logic and threw down a single discard.
"One."
"Aiming to fill a straight?" Calton dropped a single discard of his own. "Let's see who makes it."
"I'm out." Asner looked at Ritter. "You?" He grunted as the man threw in his hand. "Kurt?"
"The limit." Varl doubled the pot.
Calton blinked, looking at his hand, the money he would need to check if Varl was running a bluff.
Desperately he searched his opponent's face for a sign of weakness, found none, scowled at his cards again.
"We're all waiting, John," Asner said.
"What's the hurry?"
"You want a drink while you're making up your mind?" Ritter was sarcastic. "Or a pod of ka'sence?
Give him one, Piers. Better make it two -- he looks a little confused."
"Call him," Asner said. "Let's see if he's bluffing."
For a moment longer Calton hesitated, then, scowling, threw in his cards. Varl looked at his own hand, at the useless card he had drawn, then laid it face down on the pile.
"That's enough for me," he said, scooping in the pot. "I'm too bushed to see straight."
"Me too." Machen yawned. "Nice game, Jarl. We'll do it again sometime."
"Make a date for when I next drop in." Ritter joined the other man as he headed toward the door.
"Coming, John?"
"To where?"
"The pool. A quick swim, another few drinks, and maybe we can find some company. You interested, Jarl? Kurt?"
"Not me," Varl said. "I'm ready for bed."
Alone, he mounted to an upper level to walk along a promenade in an effort to ease his body and slow the spinning of his mind. The accumulated toxins in his blood -- products of hypertension and fatigue
-- distorted his metabolism and filled his mind with a blurring fountain of isolated facts.
Snippets whirled by the computer data, the game, the way he had tried to draw the one card which would have slipped between the others, Stanislac's anxiety, Ritter's --
Between?
_Between?_
Varl halted to stare at a relay window which showed the external world. To him biologically, it was past dawn, but the arctic night still had two months to run and the window was bright with the eerie beauty of the aurora borealis -- shimmering curtains of delicate luminescence hanging suspended against the stars.
"Hi, there!" The girl was young, with vacuous eyes and a mouth wearing smeared lipstick. She smelled of whiskey and stale perfume. "You look lonely -- wanna come to a party?"
"No."
"Then be polite. I just thought you looked kinda ill. Strained, maybe. Thought I'd stop and be friendly to a fellow human being." She giggled. "Human," she said. "That's funny."
"Why?"
"You tell me. No? Don't wanna play games? Then how about you going to get some shut-eye?
Want me to lead you to bed?"
"No."
"There you go again. Not even been polite. What's it cost to be polite, huh?" Her tone was maudlin.
"A girl gets time off to enjoy a party and you can't even treat her decent. You know what, mister? You can go to hell."
He looked at the empty face, the smeared mouth, the hair which was a mess. Behind her the glory of the universe haloed her head in an aureole of beauty. Dirt against the stars; he tasted something bad.
"Mister? You -- "
"Shut up!" His voice was a knife. "Just get on about your business!"
He left her standing before the window as he walked on, heading for the stairs. He ran down until he reached the lower levels and his own room. He stepped beneath the shower, and the hammering deluge stung the fatigue from his system as it lashed him with whips of ice and steam, of chill and burn and blasting force.
Erica Borken watched as he stepped naked from the stall, rubbing himself with a towel.
"Did you enjoy your game?" she said acidly.
"It made a change."
"Which means you're getting tired of me, is that it?" Then, as he made no comment, she added,
"Haven't you the guts to tell me to my face?"
"All right," he snapped. "I'm getting tired of you. Of you and the stupid game you're playing.
Satisfied?"
"You think it a game?"
"A game. A test. Call it what the hell you like. But I've had enough of it. You can tell your boss I want to see him. Now!"
"Not now," she said. "He'll be asleep."
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*CHAPTER 6*
SLEEP came reluctantly, but once it had established its sway it was slow to relinquish its domain.
Dreams lingered and memories wove their fabric into new fantasies in which those long dead rose to live again. Like a fish swimming up through endless layers of lightening darkness, Nasir Kalif woke to face the tribulations of a new day.
A day of decision, he knew, for if nothing else age brought experience, and enough age brought maturity. Again he wondered at the cruel jest destiny had played on the human race: a genetic trait which ensured that prolonged adolescence should accompany humanity to the grave. That trait was the root cause of all conflicts, of all intolerance, hatreds, and petty spites, of destructive wars, of waste, misdirected effort, and harsh judgments, of all the ghastly terrors of the mind.
He alone was truly mature; the rest were children playing with lethal toys, infants thinking they were adult.
And Kreutzal had given them a wonderful new toy.
A toy that could kill them.
Thinking about it caused a renewal of the tensions which tightened invisible cords around his temples and fed lead shot into his stomach. He was stupid to fear; already he lived on borrowed time, and why should he care what the future could bring? Death would enclose him and provide the eternal safety of oblivion. As a true adult, he could accept his end with the calm equanimity of intelligent appraisal. Yet he was human and a prisoner of the driving trait of his kind: to survive at all costs!
Washed, dressed, armored with chemical strength, the Comptroller of Earth Confederation commenced his day. His comsec flared to life at a touch, and the screen listed his appointments, tasks, and duties, and the routine activities of the day. The representative from Cyginus Five could not be ignored; the delegation from Orion must be entertained; the request from Polaris needed to be attended to. And Major Borken must be given her audience.
He decided to see her at tea, a ceremony he had always enjoyed, and he ordered special cakes to be prepared together with jams, paper-thin bread, butter, and oven-browned scones. The china, so thin it was translucent, was decorated with writhing dragons touched with scarlet on their gilt; the saucers were scalloped with subtle indentations.
When she saw it, Enca smiled. "This is wonderful! A fragment of the past. Did you really use this so long ago?"
"No." Regretfully he shook his head. "The service is relatively new, fifty years old, I think, an import from a nearby world. The ceremony itself was a custom which died during the Debacle but which was dying before that. When I was a child it was reintroduced as a social grace. I find it a pleasant ceremony.
Will you be Mother?" He smiled as she hesitated. "I mean, will you be so kind as to pour the tea?"
"That makes me Mother?"
"The privilege belonged to the female head of the house. Thank you, my dear." He glanced at Varl.
"Won't you sit?"
"I didn't ask to see you in order to drink tea."
"I know that."
"Then -- "
"You are impatient. It is, I know, a condition of youth but one which you must try to master." Kalif gestured toward a chair. "Sit. Drink tea and eat a cake. Try some jam and bread and butter and relax.
'Nothing is so urgent that it cannot wait."
"Do as he asks, Kurt." Erica extended a filled cup. "Help yourself to milk and sugar if you want them." She turned to the Comptroller. "Did people really use to sit around drinking and eating like this?"
"Of course. Hospitality is one of the most important customs devised by mankind. To offer your guest food and drink assured him or her of welcome. The custom is still prevalent on many worlds." Kalif ate a cake and dusted crumbs from his fingers. He looked at Varl. "Have you found the answer?"
"Of how to find Kreutzal? Perhaps."
"A doubt? Then why demand to see me?"
"You know most things," Varl said. "You must know that."
"Impatient?"
Varl shrugged, and slowly ate a cake.
"I see." Kalif looked into his empty cup, then set it carefully on its saucer. "If you were to name one thing that created civilization as we know it, what would it be?"
Erica said, "The hydee."
"Transport to other worlds. Fast, cheap, reliable -- true?"
"Maybe not so reliable," Varl said. "What of the misaligned ships? How many don't hit their targets?"
"Too many."
"And those which simply vanish?"
"Too many."
Varl frowned at the admission. "Why the secrecy?" A stupid question, and he supplied the answer.
"Once let the cat out of the bag and you'd create a panic. Worlds depend on the cheap exchange of products, and that means ships are needed and the men to operate them. A small risk is acceptable -- it's always someone else who gets lost or killed. But when the risk gets too large, then who will transport the cargoes? What will happen to the ships?" He remembered Stanislac and his wife. "Just how bad is it?"
"How many journeys have you made?" Kalif asked. "Personally supervised, I mean. Several dozen?
A hundred?"
"About that," Varl admitted. "Why?"
"How often did you miss target?"
"Not once. I double-checked each setting before -- " He broke off. "So why did I do that? Rumors, mostly. Talk in the taverns about ships which had lost their way, others with stupid navigators or careless skippers. In space a decimal point can make a hell of a difference. What's the point?"
Erica glanced at the Comptroller then, as he nodded, said, "Statistics, Kurt. How often must you cross a road before getting knocked down by a car? Or fall down stairs before breaking your neck?
There's no answer to either question. All we can say is that if enough people do a thing often enough, then a certain event will take place a certain number of times. One ship could travel space a hundred years and be safe. A hundred ships could lose two of their number in a year. You see the difference?"
Varl nodded, looking at the cups resting on the table, the cakes, the plates with their assorted comestibles. The strange scene, which once had been commonplace, was still within the framework of acceptable recognition, but something alien had been added: the cold touch of the unknown.
"When did it start?" Varl asked.
"The misalignings? The vanishings?" Kalif shrugged. "Perhaps from the beginning. New worlds waited on our doorstep -- ships streamed from the factories and left as fast as hydees could be installed.
No one counted who came back. No one cared. A ship went out and was lucky or just vanished. If anyone wondered about it there were a dozen explanations: The skipper was careless, the navigator stupid; the calibration was bad and the jump ended in a sun or too near a world or in the path of a rogue planetoid. Two ships could even collide. Then there was the danger in landing -- sometimes wreckage was reported spread over a mountainside or lying half buried in a field. Predators could kill the crew, or disease -- Achenar provided a prime example. A crew could mutiny or decide to keep a strike secret.
And there were other dangers."
Men greedy for land. Consortiums seeking to own entire systems. New empires rising and companies interested in exploitation and easy profits. A wild time in which life was cheap. Like a cloud, mankind had exploded from the surface of his world to contaminate all he could reach. Who had time to worry about a lost vessel? Who cared?
But someone, in the end, had to care, for when peoples became established and civilization became so complex, to do otherwise was to invite mutual destruction. And so Earth Confederation was established, and the power given to the Comptroller to keep things running.
And even so, Varl thought, institutions like the Pui-Chi could risk bringing horror to a world for the sake of profit, and could condemn a man to a hell of punishment for having stopped them.
"Steady!" Erica had guessed his thoughts. She handed him a cup of tea. "Drink this."
He refused it, wanting something stronger, suddenly impatient.
"So ships are being lost -- so what? Let each take care of his own."
"Meaning?"
"Good navigators. Good captains. If a company decides to operate on the cheap, then to hell with them."
"And their passengers?" Kalif did not wait for an answer. "Companies don't cut corners on efficiency. Not when a ship is such a big investment. They want the best crew they can get and are willing to pay for it. How long did it take you to get your master's ticket? Five years? Seven? How many examinations? Tests? Simulated emergencies?"'
Too many -- they had stolen his youth. "So I spoke without thinking. But what you're saying is that big ships have vanished. How big?"
"The _Deltanian Queen_ has been reported missing," Erica said quietly. "Five hundred passengers and crew together with fifteen hundred tons of cargo. That was a week ago. Before that was the _Lunar Star -- three_ hundred passengers and crew -- the _Cappellan Rose_ -- three-fifty -- the _Orion Express -- two_ hundred and seventy. Want me to go on?"
"Accidents," Kalif said. "All accidents due to human error -- officially, at any rate. But how many accidents can you claim and get away with? And those are the vessels we couldn't cover up. God knows how many have really vanished."
"So you've got a problem," Varl said. "But what's it got to do with me? My job is to find Kreutzal, or what's left of him. That or return to jail, right?"
Kalif nodded.
"So I've enough on my plate. What would I want with more?"
Erica said, "Kurt, we want -- "
"Miracles from the sound of it." Anger made his voice brittle. "You want me to find a man dead three hundred years, one lost in hyperspace, vanished like those other ships, maybe. And what the hell for? To give him a grade-A funeral? A medal? A solid-gold coffin? What the hell do you hope to find?"
"Notes."
"What?"
"Notes," Kalif repeated. "Data. Jottings. An idea. A hope. Kreutzal was a genius, and he never stopped working on the hydee. Every trip he made was for a purpose. Always he was working to perfect his invention, to iron out the snags, to find out just what it was he had discovered. He didn't know
-- are you aware of that? No one knows. We build something and we do something and something then happens. We can guess why it happens but we don't know. We don't _know!"_
"Does it matter?"
"It could."
"Why?" Varl looked from one to the other. "Did the discovery of gravity change what happens to a man when he falls off a cliff? We use hydee and ships vanish. According to you, they've always vanished but we didn't know about it. Now we do -- so what?"
The question hung in the air. The Comptroller rose, and the hem of his robe struck a cup which tapped a jug and produced a thin, high, singing note that filled the chamber with a sound of absolute purity. As the sound died, he said, "You wanted to see me. Why?"
"I'm tired of the hoops you're putting me through." Varl rose to face the old man. "If you want to train an animal, pick a different beast."
"I picked you."
"Your machines did that." Varl glanced at Erica. "And while you're at it, call off your watchdog.
She's a fringe benefit I can do without."
"You bastard! You -- "
"Close your mouth!" He did not look at her. "You talk too much and you snore at night." To the Comptroller he said, "You gave me a job to do, but I can't do it with restrictions on the computer data banks. I want free access to all information. I want a special team skilled in Kreutzal's subspace tensors.
I want to know where he went and why and when. Given time I could figure it out, but I'd rather not grow old in Polar North."
"Or in jail on Voltan?"
"Threaten me with that once more and you won't have to send me back. That whip no longer
works."
"I believe you." Kalif glanced at the woman. "As predicted, Major."
"A week earlier than anticipated."
"True, but there was a margin for error." He turned back to Varl. "Congratulations. I was afraid we'd have to use harsher measures to help you overcome the fear conditioning you received on Voltan, but your natural attributes have made that unnecessary. You could be ready now."
"For what?"
"To see what was found three months ago drifting half a parsec from Fomalhautt." Kalif added bleakly, "To look at hell."
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*CHAPTER 7*
KALIF had not overstated -- that was the real hell of it. Standing at the summit of the tower overlooking the Kalahari, Varl could taste the vomit which had risen in his throat, feel the crawl of his skin, the hand gripping his bowels. The Comptroller had been wrong -- his recovery had not been complete. Watching the holograms in Polar North, he had smelled again the char of his burning flesh, cringed at the remembered agony of his ravaged hands, became a beast flinching at the threat of pain, one who had died to become a man.
He straightened, checking the activity below, in a clearing rested a ship readying for space, a tough freighter, small but strongly built to withstand the tug of high gravities, the savage thrust of rockets. Men crawled like ants over the hull, the flare of their torches like small suns in their hands.
Around the hull lay stacked the mounds of supplies -- the machines, the snouted cannon, the lasers, and other equipment -- yet to be installed. Even as he watched, a ship snapped from hydee high above to drop in a landing pattern.
