The Worlds of George O

by George O. Smith

  That Terry Lincoln and his classmates lacked this important common denominator mattered not. His was a people who had attained Understanding, and he and his companions were on the verge.

  * * * *

  Without Understanding, the babble of tongues about him was babble indeed. This did not bother him. One day he, too, would attain it, and all would become clear. For this moment of celebration, all babble was noise; and Lincoln could not have cared less whether the humanity about him was echoing in their own way his own appreciation of the glitter of City Coleban or talking about him as an object of interest.

  Lincoln paused to watch a display of a game that combined the intricacy and plotting of chess with the speed and precision of hockey played on ice. It was a demonstration skillfully programmed so that even the youths without Understanding could follow the play.

  Rapt, young Terry watched until the game, again by skillful program, came to a brilliant climax of high-speed master moves that ended with one player downed in ignominious defeat. The close of this action was followed by a sales pitch in the tongue of Xanabar, which, of course, anyone with Understanding could follow. To Terry, it was babble, and so he turned to say--

  "That was quite a--"

  --only to find that his companions had left him, and were row turning the corner far along the street.

  Terry turned to follow. As he turned, the sales pitch stopped, ind a new demonstration began with appropriate announcements. His move to leave was blocked by a strong centripetal movement reward the exhibition. While he bucked this inward movement, his classmates turned the corner and were gone from sight.

  This bothered Terry very lightly; he knew he could make his way through this crowd and rejoin his companions. But the crowd that thronged the streets of Coleban had one more human attribute: they were egocentric. They blocked his path and barked at him in the tongues of the galaxy. They did not step aside or help, or seem to care that he was trying to make haste for a very good reason.

  Indeed, there seemed a perverse delight in their operations, as if they found it pleasant to block this rash youth who lacked Understanding. Openings closed as he approached. Strangers paused to speak to one another in the narrowest of ways.

  Pedestrian traffic, supposed to walk on the left by the law of Xanabar, filled the right-hand pedestrian lanes in the wrong direction. That others, trying to make their way in Terry's direction, were also blocked and frustrated did not make Terry's lot any easier.

  Then came the inevitable incident. Terry espied an opening between two walkers, and started through, only to plunge headlong into a saffron-colored man of gross proportions who had filled the gap. Terry hit and bounced backward, to land with a jarring thud on the base of his spine.

  The saffron-colored one laughed harshly, displaying a mouth full of disgustingly bad teeth. To finish this picture, the saffron-colored one had covered his visibly unbathed body with one of the gaudiest costumes to walk the streets of Coleban.

  Angered, Terry Lincoln arose and hit the line with a plunge that had gained him much yardage on the playing fields of Scholar's Cluster--and once more bounced. This time the saffron-colored one kicked Terry in the ribs as he stepped over the lad to disappear in the crowd.

  This was the last straw. It was time to forget that politeness was a gentlemanly trait, and time to get where he was going.

  * * * *

  Starting with a brisk walk, and slowly accelerating into a dogtrot, Terry Lincoln zigged and zagged and darted, making long end runs around phalanxes of people, and driving himself between others that showed no more than half enough space. Soon he was in a semi-gallop, making wide swings here and taking a shortcut through an open alleyway there.

  He lost his sense of direction and, being young, forgot the name of the game he'd set out to win because there was a more frantic game at hand. Terry became turned around and continued to plunge through the crowd in the direction away from his local home base, the spaceport and its wall of hotels, conveniently provided by Coleban for the enforced lay-overs.

  He did not notice that the high polish was no longer about him, nor that the crowd was less dense. He had passed the unmarked boundary of the center city, and was now passing through the borderland, that ring that lies between the polish and the blight.

  Then came the second incident. Once more, Terry tried to plunge between two who walked a bit apart, and once more he hit gross weight and bounced.

  Once more the same saffron face with its mouth full of rotting teeth laughed at him, but this time the ugly one made a grab for Terry, bear-hugged the youth and smothered Terry's mouth in the foul-smelling gaudy garment. Terry flailed, kicked the other's shins, and broke free. Blindly, Terry swung and missed. Then his training rose to the surface, and he squared away. He led with his left and came forward with a right cross that should have made its mark, but failed to connect. Saffron-face countered with an open-handed chop that Terry blocked with his forearm. It stunned all feeling from lower arm and hand.

  Once more saffron-face made his grab, but this time Terry wasn't having any. He managed to connect one shoulder-driven right jab that smashed the saffron mouth, broke off a few jagged stumps of the rotten teeth, and brought a quick flow of blood to the stranger's mouth.

  Terry turned and ran, then made a wide curve that outdistanced the saffron one's attempt to catch him. Terry proceeded once more in the direction his faulty sense said led toward home base: the spaceport and its hotels. Behind him in full chase came the gross one, surprisingly limber for that much visible flab.

  Ultimately, youth outdistanced the man, and Terry paused for breath.

  About him was slumland. Trash littered the sidewalks, and filth filled the gutter.

  Windows were nearly all cracked to some degree, many were broken and stuffed with dirty cloth, others were completely out and covered from within with some sort of reclaimed sheeting or discarded building material.

  The air smelled of rancid grease, vegetables that had been cooked far too long, and the unclean smell of the blight area. Dusk had begun, and the streetlights had come on to cast a wholly incompetent, wan glow. Under one were street urchins playing at some game of dice. Two girls in too-tight and very sleazy dresses passed Terry and spoke to him brashly; he did not need Understanding to know what they had in mind. His silence was greeted by more vulgarities, which attracted the attention of the dice-players. Two, obviously winners, deserted the game for the girls.

  Still, Terry plodded on, for he recalled that the transit had passed overhead of some grubby-looking areas on its way from spaceport to center city.

  And so he continued, confident that beyond this barrier of blight lay the spaceport he sought.

  * * * *

  II

  His name was Homburg. On the wall before him was an illuminated map of the city, with tiny moving lights to show what action was taking place. Below the map were a series of small videoscreens, with scenes of the city taken from marked vantage points.

  The special-colored starred cross that marked the position of Terry Lincoln, and the thin dot-dash line that marked his path, showed him almost diametrically opposite the spaceport and moving away.

  Homburg pressed a button on his desk. On the small screen above the instrument the saffron-colored face appeared. Homburg said, "That was well executed, Bod Zimmer."

  Zimmer said, "Zer Homburg, am I relieved? I wish very much to get out of this filthy disguise."

  "You are relieved, Bod Zimmer. You will be rewarded."

  A snap, and Zimmer's face disappeared.

  Homburg eyed the map and noted that the mark which represented Terry was still moving away from center city and the spaceport on the far side. Satisfied, he arose from his desk and went down the hallway outside to another office. He merely nodded to the secretary in the outer office as he stepped briskly across the room to the closed door. But it was with visible deference that he rapped on the inner door, waited perceptibly, and only after there was no objection tur
ned the knob and entered.

  To the man behind the desk, Homburg said, "Zer Martell, phase one is completed."

  Martell looked up. "Successfully, Bod Homburg?"

  "Quite," replied Homburg, concealing his disappointment. He'd hoped that this success would move his superior to drop the title

  bod, which one used on an inferior. Had

  this been done, Homburg would no longer be required to address his superior by the title zer, and could address him without title as an equal.

  * * * *

  "Very well," said Martell.

  "Now, whether you sleep tonight at all, you will remain on duty until the call comes from the Terrestrial spacecraft that one of their number is missing."

  "Yes, Zer Martell."

  "It will be routed to your office. Take the call just as if your assignment was to take such calls and act upon them. They need not know--indeed, they must not know mat they are dealing with a member of the personal staff of the Master Peacekeeper of Xanabar."

  "Yes, Zer Martell."

  "And then, Bod Homburg, see that this incident is properly and promptly reported to the Terrestrial Agency at once."

  "This will place the agent Peter Hawley and the dog Beauregarde in the operation, Zer Martell."

  "Precisely."

  "I fail to see--"

  "Bod Homburg, that pair have a mutual Understanding that surpasses any that I have ever seen. I hope that we may gain some insight into this superior Understanding by separating them. Once the Terrestrial agent is notified, and the operators move into action, you will give the signal to execute phase two. Understood?"

  "I will give the signal as you order, but I fail to understand why all of this is necessary."

  "Were we to separate them by force, there would be repercussions. To slay one of them would only serve to have the slain one replaced by another whose way of operating would be unfamiliar to us, and it would infuriate the remaining one to a degree that only an irate Terrestrial can achieve. Now, Bod Homburg, were you able to understand the reason for this complicated operation, you would be sitting in this office instead of me."

  "Zer Martell! I would never think of replacing you."

  "You never will," said Martell coldly. "The day you enter this office will be the day I appoint you to it, for then I shall sit where Zer Doktur sits today, and I shall still be your superior. So now begone, and prepare for the next phase."

  * * * *

  In Terrestrial terms, it would have been between two-thirty and three o'clock in the morning.

  The streets of Coleban were deserted, save for some cleaning women and porters and a very few others. Of the masses of humanity who had come seeking their own particular brand of happiness, some had found it and others had not; in either case they were elsewhere.

  The "others" included a sight seldom seen this far from Mother Earth, for no other planet has anything that resembles the Terrestrial canine.

  Beauregarde led, his nose close to the ground and his plume waving cheerfully, as he plied one of his talents. He was tracking the scent of young Terry Lincoln.

  Beauregarde is hard to describe, because he does not resemble any of the standard breeds. Dog, short-haired, brown with darker lines around the eyes, well muscled, seventy to eighty pounds. In short, Beauregarde the dog looked like a dog because his parents were dogs, but here the association with

  canis vulgaris ceases.

  For Beauregarde had the dog's version of Understanding. He was of a long line of dogs bred for Understanding and for the latent intelligence of the canine, instead of size or shape or something equally superficial. Understanding has been a canine trait ever since man and dog shared the campfire and divided the day's kill. As a consequence, it is hardly surprising that Beauregarde's measure of Understanding was greater in any area where Peter Hawley was concerned.

  Peter followed the dog at a little distance. He, too, is hard to describe because he, like Beauregarde, is pure mongrel. Still, Peter Hawley carried himself with a jaunty air as if he owned the sidewalk where he trod: a lithe and slender thirtyish, with plenty of bounce in his step and a smile on his face. The smile was either cheerful rogue or downright insolence, depending upon which side the observer took with regard to Peter. His hair was dark sandy, and his eyes were blue. His complexion was a healthy wind-burned tan, but mostly artificially induced, since Peter's assigned task was to pursue and apprehend villains, and villainy is mostly done in the dark.

  The dog paused, circled tightly, resniffed, and said, "Young Lincoln stood here for quite a while, shuffling back and forth, as if he were watching something."

  The dog's voice was far from Oxford. It was a well-controlled whine and whinny, with chest sounds adding bass with a well-modulated growl or a low rumble. The lips and tongue were sufficiently mobile to give fair articulation. Understanding supplied the remainder of Beauregarde's communication system.

  Peter looked around. "The kid's school file said that he was a bit of a gamesman.

  Maybe that one caught him." Peter indicated the game that Lincoln had stopped to watch. It was dormant now that there were no potential customers, but Peter knew of the game and how it was displayed. "Anything else?" he asked Beauregarde.

  "Well, the rest didn't wait up for him."

  Peter nodded. "I don't suppose that educated sniffer of yours will tell us whether this is where they got separated?"

  "No. But I wouldn't be against this as the place," said Beauregarde. "I think I scent repeaters."

  * * * *

  "Repeaters? Well, now, that makes it a grabbing, instead of a little boy lost, and that makes more sense except for the big puzzler of why."

  "Why?" repeated the dog. "Isn't half of our job retrieving either Terrestrial loot or Terrestrials themselves that have been grabbed by the citizens of Xanabar?"

  "Yes," grinned Peter. "But it's usually toothsome young females that they grab, not fifteen-year-old males, which are a drug on any flesh market."

  "How so?"

  "Beauregarde, a youth of fifteen is one hundred and thirty-odd pounds of misdirected energy, walking on two left feet in an uncertain gait in the wrong direction. Its path is marked by a two-year trail of broken glass, dirty shoes, unfinished projects, unread books, and undone homework. He is as cooperative as a mule when anything constructive is needed, and filled with burning ambition when what must be done is completely beyond his capability. And--"

  "--in other words, who'd want one?"

  "That's about it."

  "Well, there must be some reason. Even the citizens of Xanabar do not grab for the simple sake of grabbing."

  "You're thinking of ransom?"

  "Well?" asked the dog.

  Peter shook his head. "Whilst you were getting your snoot full of Lincoln's scent, I was going through the folder from the kid's school record. There simply isn't anything negotiable in Lincoln's background. His folks have neither money nor position that would make a caper like this worthwhile. Oh, young Lincoln is bright enough to earn a sponsored ticket to Scholar's Cluster, but the citizens of Xanabar aren't swiping adolescent brains with half an education and no Understanding."

  "Not without some reason," insisted Beauregarde.

  "You're a bloody pragmatist," said Peter. "And you're so right. That's what bothers me."

  "That I'm right?"

  "No. What bothers me is not that you're right, but that this operation smells highly of something complicated, with the bait concealed. Jinks, if they wanted to grab him, they've got enough characters in this play to fold up the pavement around him and cart him off.

  Instead--they play games. I don't get it; what I don't like is being too dense to see."

  "So?"

  "So we walk very carefully, carrying our dish extremely level, making neither wave nor surface ripple until we get to the bottom of this mess."

  Beauregarde gave a short bark; in human it would have been a snort.

  "Peter," said the dog, "I lack the imagination to
visualize the scene in which Peter Hawley handles the delicate situation with velvet gloves, whilst Beauregarde lies with chops on fore-paws and watches through heavy-lidded eyes."

  * * * *

  They went on--and on--and on until Beauregarde snorted and dog-sneezed. "Oof," he said.

  "Your opinion of overaged fish is pleasantly aromatic compared to this."

  "What goes?"

  "Something--someone--who stinks. Reeks. Awful."

  "Humph. Well, Beau, the caper makes a pattern, but the prize is still hidden."

  "You mean this smelly character makes sense?"

  "I'll bet a nice well-hung raw steak against one charcoal-singed on the outside that this smelly party was also clad in a costume that couldn't be forgotten in a lifetime."

  "But why?"

  "Well, observe that we are nearing the edge of the fancy part of Coleban. Here we have an incident that marks one of the opposition in the young man's mind. Not long from now, there will be another, with the same offensive party. This will convince Lincoln that he is not a mere victim of circumstance, but the central figure in a plot. He will therefore take off on a dead gallop. Subtly, the opposition will change their tactics and start to block his way in the direction they want him to go, leaving their cover loose so that he thinks he is gaining while all the time he is going in the direction they want him to go. Catch?"

  "Yes, but why?"

  "Well, Beau, take a look. We're about to leave the area of polished metal, reflection-free glass, and marked-up prices. We're on the edge of the honky-tonk, the flashy vurguzz-mill and the joint with the fifty beautiful hostesses, fifty. Unless the target is not distracted, he will observe this distressing side of City Coleban, and take sensible measures. Distracted, he will plunge on and on, deeper and deeper into enemy territory."

  "That is a lot to deduce from a few dog-scents," said Beauregarde.

  "Sure it is. But I've been in Xanabar long enough to figure out most of their operations. In fact, the only thing that bothers me is this one. With the crew they have on board, simply grabbing a kid should be as easy as--er--"