“That will get us to the aircars?”
“It should, easily. But we’ll have a good deal more time. The first groundcar that comes back through the gate into the estate will start up a section of a Ti Martridrama—the third act of ‘Armageddon Five.’ That’s about what it sounds like, and its stage is the whole estate, except for the central building complex. Ti won’t be able to get here until Act Three’s played out—and it takes over an hour. We want to keep him bottled up as long as possible, of course—”
She jerked suddenly, went still for a moment, shook her head.
“Linden just died!” she said then. “Ti shot him. He must have realized finally I had Linden under control. Well, it shouldn’t change matters much now.”
She got out of the console chair. “Come on! Mainly we’ll have to be a little careful. I know where the guards are, but it’ll be better if we don’t run into anybody else either.” It took them eighteen minutes to work their way unseen through the building, and get into the aircar depot. A line of supply trucks stood there, four smaller aircars. They got into one of the cars. The roof of the depot opened as Telzey lifted the car toward it. The car halted at that point.
From a car window, they aimed Linden’s guns at the power section of the nearest truck. After some seconds, it exploded, and the trucks next to it were instantly engulfed in flames. A chain reaction raced along the line of vehicles. They closed the window, went on up. Nobody was going to follow them from Ti’s island. The energy field overhead dissolved at their approach, closed again below them. The car went racing off across the sunlit sea toward the southern mainland.
Gaziel sighed beside Telzey, laid the gun she’d been using down on the seat.
“I did have the thought,” she said, “that if I shot you now and pushed you out, I could be Telzey Amberdon.”
Telzey nodded.
“I knew you’d be having the thought,” she said, “because I would have had it. And I knew you wouldn’t do it then. Because I wouldn’t do it.”
“No,” Gaziel said. “Only one of us can be the original. That’s not your fault.” She smiled, lazily, for the first time in an hour. “Am I dying, Telzey?”
“No,” Telzey said. “You’re going to sleep, other me. Don’t fight it.”
Some six weeks later, Telzey sat at a small table in a lounge of the Orado City Space Terminal, musing on information she’d received a few hours before.
It happened now and then that some prominent citizen of the Federation didn’t so much disappear as find himself becoming gradually erased. It might be reported for a while that he was traveling, had been seen in one place or another, and eventually then that he’d settled down in quiet retirement, nobody seemed to know quite where. Meanwhile his enterprises were drifting into other hands, his properties dissolved, his name was mentioned with decreasing frequency. In the end, even former personal acquaintances seemed almost to forget he’d existed.
Thus it would be with Wakote Ti. He’d demanded a public trial. With his marvelous toys taken from him and an end made to the delights of unrestricted experimentation, he’d felt strongly that at least the world must be made aware of the full extent of his genius. The Federation’s Psychology Service, which sometimes seemed the final arbiter on what was good for the Federation and sometimes not, decreed otherwise. The world would be told nothing, and Ti would be erased. He’d remain active, however; the Service always found a use for genius of any kind.
“What about all the new principles he discovered?” Telzey had asked Klayung, her Service acquaintance. “He must have been way ahead of anyone else there.”
“To the best of our knowledge,” said Klayung, “he was very far ahead of anyone else.”
“Will that be suppressed now?”
“Not indefinitely. His theories and procedures are being carefully recorded. But they won’t be brought into use for a while. Some toys seem best reserved for wiser children than we have around generally at present.”
It was on record that Ti had deeded a private island to the planetary government, which would turn it into the site of a university. The illusory bank accounts of his innocent employees had acquired sudden reality. The less innocent employees were in Rehabilitation. His puppets and Martri equipment had disappeared.
Telzey watched a girl in a gray business suit come into the lounge, sent out a light thought to her. “Over here!”
Acknowledgment returned as lightly. The girl came up to the table, sat down across from Telzey.
“You’re taller than I am now, aren’t you?” Telzey said.
Gaziel smiled. “By about half an inch.”
Taller more slender. The hollows under the cheek bones were more pronounced. There’d been a shift in the voice tones.
“They tell me I’ll go on changing for about a year before I’m the way I want to be,” Gaziel said. “There’ll still be a good deal of similarity between us then, but no one would think I’m your twin.” She regarded Telzey soberly. “I thought I didn’t really want to see you again before I left. Now I’m glad I asked you to meet me here.”
“So am I,” Telzey said.
“I’ve become the sort of psi you are,” said Gaziel. “Ti guessed right about that.” She smiled briefly. “Some of it’s surprised the Service a little.”
“I knew it before we left the island,” Telzey said. “You had everything I had. It just hadn’t come awake.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t dare do anything about you myself. I just got you to the Service as quickly as I could.”
Gaziel nodded slowly. “I was on the edge then, wasn’t I? I remember it. Have they told you how I’ve been doing?”
“No. They wouldn’t. They said that if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.”
“I see.” Gaziel was silent a moment. “Well, I want you to know. I hated you for a while. It wasn’t reasonable, but I felt you were really the horrid changeling who’d pushed me out of my life, away from my family and friends. That was even after they’d taken the puppet contacts out of my head. I could think of explanations why Ti had planted them there, in the real Telzey.” She smiled. “We’re quite ingenious aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are,” Telzey said.
“I got past that finally. I knew I wasn’t Telzey and never had been. I was Gaziel, product of Wakote Ti’s last and most advanced experiment. Then, for a while again, I was tempted. By that offer. I could become Gaziel Amberdon, Telzey’s identical twin, newly arrived on Orado—step into a readymade family, a ready-made life, a ready-made lie. Everything really could be quite simple for me. That was a cruel offer you made me, Telzey.”
“Yes, it was cruel,” Telzey said. “You had to have a chance to see if it was what you wanted.”
“You knew I wouldn’t want it?”
“I knew, all right. You’d have stayed a copy then, even if no one else guessed it.”
Gaziel nodded. “I’m thanking you for the offer now. It did help me decide to become Gaziel who’ll be herself and nobody’s copy.”
“I’d like to think,” Telzey told her, “that this isn’t the last time we’ll be meeting.”
“When I’m free of the Telzey pattern and have my own pattern all the way, I’ll want to meet you again,” Gaziel said. “I’ll look you up.” She regarded Telzey a moment, smiled. “In three or four years, I think.”
“What will you be doing?”
“I’ll work for the Service a while. Not indefinitely. After that, I’ll see. Did you know I was one of Ti’s heirs?”
“One of his heirs?”
“He isn’t dead, of course. I drew my inheritance in advance. I used your legal schooling and found I could make out a rather strong case for paternal responsibility on Ti’s part toward me. It was quite a lot of money, but he didn’t argue much about it. I think I frighten him now. He’s in a nervous condition anyway.”
“What about?” Telzey said.
“Well, that Martri computer he ha
d installed on the island is supposedly deactivated. The Service feels it’s a bit too advanced for any general use at present. But Ti complains that Challis still comes around now and then. I wouldn’t know—nobody else has run into her so far. It seems he arranged for the fatal accident the original Challis had . . .” Gaziel glanced at her watch, stood up. “Time to go aboard. Good-bye, Telzey!”
“Goody-bye,” Telzey said. She looked after Gaziel as she turned away. Klayung, who wouldn’t discuss Gaziel otherwise, had said thoughtfully, “By the time she’s through with herself, she’ll be a remarkably formidable human being—”
Gaziel checked suddenly, looked back.
“Poor old Ti!” she said, laughing. “He didn’t really have much of a chance, did he?”
“Not against two of us,” Telzey said. “Whatever he tried, we’d have got him one way or another.”
COMPANY PLANET
Telzey was generally competent enough to take care of herself—and her enemies for that matter! But this time she was up against a very stacked deck indeed!
I
Fermilaur was famous both as the leading body remodeling center of the Hub and as a luxurious resort world which offered relaxation and scenery along with entertainment to fit every taste, from the loftiest to the most depraved. It was only three hours from Orado, and most of Telzey’s friends had been there. But she’d never happened to get around to it until one day she received a distress call from Fermilaur.
It came from the mother of Gikkes Orm. Telzey learned that Gikkes, endowed by nature with a pair of perfectly sound and handsome legs, had decided those limbs needed to be lengthened and reshaped by Fermilaur’s eminent cosmetic surgeons if she were ever to find true happiness. Her parents, who, in Telzey’s opinion, had even less good sense than Gikkes, had let her go ahead with it, and her mother had accompanied her to Fermilaur. With the legs remodeled according to specification, Gikkes had discovered that everything else about her now appeared out of proportion. Unable to make up her mind what to do, she became greatly upset. Her mother, equally upset, equally helpless, put in an interstellar call to Telzey.
Having known Gikkes for around two years, Telzey wasn’t surprised. Gikkes didn’t quite rate as a full friend, but she wasn’t a bad sort even if she did get herself periodically into problem situations from which somebody else had to extricate her. Telzey decided she wouldn’t mind doing it again. While about it, she should have time for a look at a few of Fermilaur’s unique restructuring institutions and other attractions.
Somewhat past the middle of the night for that locality, she checked in at a tourist tower not far from the cosmetic center where the Orms were housed. She’d heard that Fermilaur used resort personnel to advertise its remodeling skills, the general note being that having oneself done over was light-hearted fashion fun and that there was nothing to worry about because almost any cosmetic modification could be reversed if the client wished it. The staff of the tower’s reception lobby confirmed the report. They were works of art, testimonials to the daring inventiveness of Fermilaur’s beauty surgeons. Telzey’s room reservation was checked by a slender goddess with green-velvet skin, slanted golden eyes without detectable pupils, and a shaped scalp crest of soft golden feathers which shifted dancingly with each head motion. She smiled at Telzey, said, “May I suggest the services of a guide, Miss Amberdon?”
Telzey nodded. “Yes, I’ll want one.” There were no cities, no townships here. The permanent population was small, mostly involved with the tourist trade and cosmetic institutions, and its maintenance systems were underground, out of sight. Much of the surface had been transformed into an endlessly flowing series of parks in which residential towers and resort and remodeling centers stood in scenic isolation. Traffic was by air, and inexperienced visitors who didn’t prefer to drift about, more or less at random, were advised to employ guides.
The goddess beckoned to somebody behind Telzey’s back.
“Uspurul is an accredited COS Services guide and thoroughly familiar with our quadrant,” she informed Telzey. “I’m sure you’ll find her very satisfactory.”
Uspurul was a quite small person, some four inches shorter than Telzey, slender in proportion. Like the receptionist, she looked like something COS Services might have conjured up out of exotic mythologies. Her pointed ears were as expressively mobile as a terrier’s; a silver horse’s tail swished about with languid grace behind her. The triangular face with its huge dark eyes and small delicate nose was unquestionably beautiful but wasn’t human. It wasn’t intended to be. She might have been a charming toy, brought to life.
Which was all very well, as far as Telzey was concerned. More important seemed a shadowy swirl of feeling she’d sensed as Uspurul came up to the reception desk—a feeling which didn’t match in the least the engaging friendliness of the toy woman’s smile. It wasn’t exactly malice. More something like calculating cold interest, rather predatory. Telzey took note of nuances in the brief conversation that followed, decided the two were, in fact, more anxious to make sure she’d employ Uspurul as guide than one should expect.
Somewhere else, that could have been a danger signal. A sixteen-year-old with a wealthy family made a tempting target for the criminally inclined. The resort world, however, had the reputation of being almost free of professional crime. And, in any case, it shouldn’t be difficult to find out what this was about—she’d discovered during the talk that Uspurul’s mind appeared to be wide open to telepathic probing.
“Why not have breakfast with me in my room tomorrow?” she said to the guide. “We can set up a schedule then.” And she could ferret out at her leisure the nature of the interest the remodeled myths seemed to take in her.
They settled on the time, and Telzey was escorted to her room. She put in a call to Mrs. Orm from there, learned that Gikkes would be in treatment at the main center of Hute Beauticians during the early part of the morning and was anxious to see Telzey and get her opinion of the situation immediately afterwards. Mrs. Orm, having succeeded in transferring the responsibility for decisions to somebody else, appeared much less distraught.
Telzey opened one of her suitcases, got out a traveler’s lock and attached it to the door of the room, which, in effect, welded the door to the adjoining wall. The only thing anyone trying to get in without her cooperation could accomplish was to wake up half the tower level. She continued unpacking reflectively.
Fermilaur didn’t have a planetary government in the usual sense. It was the leasehold of COS, the association of cosmetologists which ran the planet. Its citizen-owners, set up in a tax-free luxury resort and getting paid for it, had reason to be happy with the arrangement, and could have few inducements to dabble in crime. The Hub’s underworld reputedly had its own dealings with COS—bodies, of course, could be restructured for assorted illegal purposes. But the underworld didn’t try to introduce its usual practices here. COS never denied reports that criminal pros found attempting to set up shop on the leasehold vanished into its experimental centers. Apparently, not many cared to test the validity of the reports.
Hence, no crime, or almost no crime. And crime of the ordinary sort hardly could be involved in the situation. The receptionist and the elfin guide never had seen her before. But they did seem to have recognized her by name, to have been waiting, in fact, for her to show up.
Telzey sat down on the edge of the bed.
The two were COS employees. If anyone had an interest in her here, it should be COS.
The tower reservation had been made in her name five hours ago on Orado. Five hours would be enough time for a good information service to provide inquirers with the general background of the average Federation citizen. Quite probably, COS had its own service and obtained such information on every first-time visitor to Fermilaur. It could be useful in a variety of ways.
The question was what might look interesting enough in her background to draw COS’s attention to her. It wasn’t that the Amberdon family had money. Almost eve
rybody who came here would meet that qualification. There were, Telzey decided, chewing meditatively on her lower lip, only two possible points of interest she could think of at the moment. And both looked a little improbable.
Her mother was a member of the Overgovemment. Conceivably, that could be of significance to COS. At present, it was difficult to see why it should be.
The other possibility seemed even more remote. Information services had yet to dig up the fact that Telzey Amberdon was a telepath, a mind reader, a psi, competent and practicing. She knew that, because if they ever did dig it up, she’d be the first to hear. She had herself supplied regularly with any datum added to her available dossiers. Of the people who were aware she was a psi, only a very few could be regarded as not being completely dependable. Unfortunately, there were those few. It was possible, though barely so, that the item somehow had got into COS’s files.
She could have a problem then. The kind of people who ran COS had to be practical and hardheaded. Hardheaded, practical people, luckily, were inclined to consider stories about psis to be at least ninety-nine percent superstitious nonsense. However, the ones who didn’t share that belief sometimes reacted undesirably. They might reflect that a real psi, competent, practicing, could be eminently useful to them.
Or they might decide such a psi was too dangerous to have around.
She’d walk rather warily tomorrow until she made out what was going on here! One thing, though, seemed reasonably certain—COS, whatever ideas it might have, wasn’t going to try to break through the door to get at her tonight. She could use a few hours of rest.
She climbed into bed, turned over and settled down. A minute or two later, she was asleep.
II
After breakfast, Telzey set off with Uspurul on a leisurely aircar tour of the area. She’d explained she’d be visiting an acquaintance undergoing treatment at Hute Beauticians later on, and then have lunch with another friend who’d come out from Orado with her. In the afternoon, she might get down finally to serious sightseeing.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 223