The sound of boot heels on the floor outside his prison made Nik strive once more to move. His hands—he could pull them up a little. The rest of him seemed frozen still.
Then the cover over him banged back, and he was looking up into the face of a stranger. The skin was browned in the deep coloring of a spaceman, so that the single topknot of hair above the almost totally shaven skull looked like a white plume in contrasting fairness. The regular features were handsome, though the eyes were so heavily droop-lidded that Nik had no idea of their coloring.
And now there was a quirk of a smile about the stranger's lips, giving a certain relaxation to his expression. Nik found himself losing the first sharp edge of his apprehension.
A bronze hand swooped down and caught at the front of Nik's jacket. He was drawn up in that hold as if his own weight were feather-light as far as the other was concerned. Then an arm about his shoulders steadied him on his feet, and he was standing.
"Don't worry. You'll be able to blast in a minute."
Under the stranger's guidance, Nik regained enough power to step out of the box and take a stumbling step or two. He was lowered onto a stool, his back against the wall of the room. The other sat down, facing him.
The stranger wore space leather and ship boots. The triple star of a captain winked from the throat latch of his tunic. He leaned forward, his fists on his knees, to survey Nik. For the first time in years, Nik Kolherne made no attempt to mask his ruined face with his hand. There was a kind of defiance in his desire for the other to see every scar.
"I was right!" The white-hair plume rippled as the stranger nodded briskly. "You are our probability."
Two
Nik's head and shoulders were propped against the wall, and as the stranger leaned forward, their eyes were much on a level. He matched the searching stare. And now he said, "I don't know what you mean."
"Not needful that you do—yet. How long have you had that face?"
"Ten years, more or less. I was fished out of a wreck during the war."
"Nobody tried to patch it up for you?"
Nik willed his hand to remain on his knee, willed himself to face that frank appraisal without an outward tremor. There was no disgust, no shrinking, only real bewilderment in the other's expression. And seeing that, Nik replied with the truth.
"Why didn't they fix my face? Well, they tried. But it seemed I couldn't adapt to growth flesh—it sloughed off after some months. And other experiments, they cost too much. No one had the credits to spend on Dipple trash."
That had been the worst of his burden in the years behind him, knowing that right here in Korwar were cosmetic surgeons who might have been able to give him a human face again. Yet the costly experimentation needed by a patient who could not provide natural rooting for growth flesh was far out of his reach.
"Something could be done even now."
Nik refused to rise to the bait. "I'm not the son of a First Circle family," he replied evenly. "And if growth flesh fails, there's little they can do, anyway."
"Don't be so sure." The stranger got to his feet. "Don't discount luck."
"Luck?" queried Nik.
"Yes, luck! Listen, boy. I'm on a winning streak now. The comets are all hitting stars on my table! And you're a part of it. What would you do for a new face—the face you should have had?"
Nik's stare was set. Plainly this was meant in all seriousness. Well, what would he give, do, for a face—a real face again? He didn't have to hesitate over that answer.
"Anything!" It would be worth it, any pain or sacrifice on his part, any effort, no matter how severe or prolonged.
"All right. We'll see. Stowar—!" At the space officer's call, the Dipple man came to the door of the room. "I'm standing for Kolherne."
Stowar's flat, emotionless eyes slid over the boy. He was frowning a little. "The choice is yours—now," he returned, but not as if he agreed. "When do you take him, Leeds?"
"Right away. Now, Kolherne"—the other swung to face Nik once more—"it's up to you. If you want that face, you have to be prepared to earn it, understand?"
Nik nodded. Sure he understood. Anything you wanted you had to earn, or take—if you were strong enough and well armed enough to make the grab practical. He did not doubt that Leeds was either one of the Guild or the Brethren, operating well on the cold side of any planetary or space law. But that did not bother him. Within the Dipple, one learned that the warmth of the law was for the free, not for the dispossessed and helpless. He was willing to walk the outlaw's road; that was no choice at all with the promised award ahead.
"This is the story—you're the son of a spaceman, my former first officer. I found you here, will sign bond for you. That will release you from the Dipple. The guard won't do much checking. They're glad to get anyone off the roster legally. Got anything you want to collect from a lock box, Nik?"
What did he have to call his own? A tape reader and a packet of tapes. Nothing he really needed. And those belonged to the Kolherne who had no hope at all—save through their temporary means of escape. Now something as wild as anger or fear was boiling inside Nik; he could hardly keep it bottled down. He did not recognize it as hope.
"No—" His voice seemed so little under his control that he did not say more than that one word.
"Then, let's go!" Again that strong grasp bringing him up to his feet, steadying him. He stumbled across the room, out into Stowar's business quarters, hardly noting Moke Yarn there. Moke was of no importance any more. This was one of Nik's dreams taking on the solid reality of flesh in the hand guiding him ahead, in the surprised expression on Moke's flat face, in the bubbling and churning in Nik's middle. He was drunk with hope and the excitement Leeds had fired in him.
"Now pay attention." Leeds' tone sharpened as they emerged into a mist that had followed the rain. "My name is Strode Leeds. I'm master of the Free Trader Serpent. Got that?"
Nik nodded.
"Your father was my first officer in the Day Star when the war broke out. He was killed when we were jumped by the Afradies on Jigoku. I've been searching the Dipples for you for the past three years. Luck, O Luck, you are riding my fins today! I couldn't have set this up better if I'd known you were going to come down out of the roof back in that warehouse. You stick with me, boy, and that luck has just naturally got to rub off a little on you!"
Leeds was smiling, the wide satisfied smile of a gambler ready to scoop up from the table more than his hoped-for share of the counters.
Nik, still a little wobbly on his legs, tried to match his stride to the captain's, willing to go where Leeds wished, holding to him the promise the other had made, the promise that still seemed part of a dream. He listened to Leeds' glib explanation at the Dipple Registration and nodded when the supervisor perfunctorily congratulated him on his luck. There it was—luck again. He who had never remembered seeing the fair face of fortune was beginning to believe in it with some of the fervor Leeds exhibited.
Then they were out of the Dipple. Nik dragged a little behind his companion, savoring that small wonder that was part of the larger. In all his existence on Korwar, he had been out of the Dipple's gray hush no more times than he could reckon on the fingers of one hand. Once to the hospital in a vain attempt to have them try skin growth on him again, to return defeated and aching with the pain of the medical verdict that it was useless. And the rest on hurried trips to the nearest tape shop to buy the third-hand, scratchy records that had been all the life he cared for. But now he was out—really out!
Leeds punched the code of a flitter at the nearest call box. It was beginning to rain again, and the captain jerked the shoulder hood of his tunic up over his head. Nik licked the moisture from that scar tissue that should have been lips. Even rain was different beyond the Dipple walls; it tasted sweet and clean here.
As they seated themselves in the cab and Leeds set the controls, he glanced at the boy. The captain was no longer smiling. There was a sharp set to his mouth and jaw.
"This is only th
e first step," he said. "Gyna and Iskhag, they have the final decision."
Nik snapped back into tense rigidity. One part of him was apprehensive. So—there was a flaw in this "luck" after all? This was only what all his life had led him to expect.
"But," Leeds was continuing, "since the main play is mine, I've the right to say who's going to lift into this orbit—"
Nik's first seething glow had faded; his old-time control was back. All right, so Leeds had talked him out of the Dipple. He'd have to go right back if the captain's plan failed. Nowhere on Korwar could he show this face and hope for a chance for freedom—unless it was freedom to starve.
Korwar was a pleasure planet. Its whole economy was based on providing luxury and entertainment for the great ones of half the galaxy. There was no place in any of its establishments for Nik Kolherne. On another world, he might have tried heavy labor. But here they would not even accept him for the off-world labor draft once they took a good look at him.
The flitter broke away from the traffic lanes of the city and slanted out on a course that would take it to the outer circle of villas and mansions. Nik gazed down at a portion of the life he had never seen, the wealth of vegetation culled from half a hundred different worlds and re-rooted here in a mingled tapestry of growing and glowing color to delight the eyes. They lifted over a barrier of gray thorn, where the pointed branches and twigs were beaded with crystalline droplets—or were those flowers or leaflets? Then the craft came down on the flat roof of a gray-green house, part of its structure seeming to run back into the rise of a small hill behind it.
The rain splashed about them and poured off in runlets to vanish at the eaves of the building. Nik followed Leeds out of the flier, saw it rise and return to the city. Then he shivered and wiped his sleeve across his face.
"Move!" That was Leeds, giving his charge little or no time to look about him. The captain had his boots planted on a square block in the roof. He reached out a long arm and caught at Nik, pulling him close. There was a shimmer about the edges of the block on which they stood. Abruptly the rain ceased to drive against them. Then the shimmer became solid, a silver wall, and Nik was conscious of a whine that was half vibration.
The silver became a shimmer again, vanished. They were no longer on the roof under the dull gray of the sky but in a small alcove with a corridor running from right to left before them.
"This way." Leeds' pace was faster; Nik stumbled in his wake.
The walls about them were sleekly smooth and the same cool gray-green as the outer part of the house. But Nik had the feeling that they were not in that structure but beneath it, somewhere in the soil and rock upon which it stood.
Just before the captain reached what appeared to be a solid wall at the end of the corridor, that surface rolled smoothly back to the left, allowing them to enter a room.
The carpet under Nik's worn shoepacs was springy, a dark red in color. He blinked, trying to take in the room and its inhabitants as quickly as possible, with all the wariness he could summon.
There were two eazi-rests, their adaptable contours providing seating for a man and a woman. Nik's hand flashed up to his face, and then he wondered. She must have seen him clearly; yet there was none of that distaste, the growing horror he had expected to see mirrored in her eyes. She had regarded him for a long moment as if he were no different from other men.
She was older than he had first judged, and she wore none of the fashionable gold or silver cheek leaf. Her hair was very fair and hung in a simple, unjeweled net bag. Nor did her robe have any of the highly decorative patterns now preferred. It was a blue-green, in contrast to the red cushions supporting her angular body, restful to the eye. Between the fingers of her right hand rested a flat plate of milky semiprecious stone, and from that she licked, with small, neat movements of her tongue, portions of pink paste, never ceasing to regard Nik the while.
In the other eazi-rest was a man whose ornate clothing was in direct contrast to the simplicity of the woman's. His gem-embroidered, full-sleeved shirt was open to the belt about his paunch, showing chest and belly skin of a bluish shade. His craggy features were as alien in their way to the ancestral Terran stock of the others as that blue-tinted skin. His face was narrow, seeming to ridge on the nose and chin line, with both those features oversized and jutting sharply. And there were two points of teeth showing against the darker blue of his lips even when his mouth was closed, points that glistened in the light with small jewel winks. His head was covered with a close-fitting metal helmet boasting whirled circles where human ears would be set.
There were non-Terran, even non-humanoid, intelligent species in the galaxy, and Korwar pulled many of their ruling castes into tasting its amusements, but Nik had never faced a true alien before.
Both woman and alien made no move to greet Leeds, nor did they speak for a long moment. Then the woman put down her plate and arose, coming straight across the room to stand facing Nik. She was as tall as he, and when suddenly her hand struck out, catching his wrist, she bore down his masking hand with a strength he could not have countered without an actual struggle.
Grave-eyed, she continued to study his wrecked face with a penetrating concentration as if he presented an absorbing problem that was not a matter of blood, bones, and flesh but something removed from the human factor entirely.
"Well?" Leeds spoke first.
"There are possibilities—" she replied.
"To what degree?" That was the alien. His voice was high-pitched, without noticeable tone changes, and it had an unpleasant grating quality as far as Nik was concerned.
"To the seventieth degree, perhaps more," the woman replied. "Wait—"
She left Nik and went to the table by the eazi-rests. She spun a black box around to face a blank wall. And the alien pressed a button on his seat so that it swung about to face the wall also. There was a click from the box, and a picture appeared on the blank surface.
A life-size figure stood there, real enough to step forward into the room—a man, a very young man, of Nik's height. But Nik's attention was for the unmarred, sun-browned face whose eyes were now level with his own. The features were regular. He was a good-looking boy; yet there was an oddly mature strength and determination in his expression, the set of his mouth, and the angle of jaw.
The woman had stepped to one side. Now she glanced from the tri-dee cast to Nik and back again.
"He says growth flesh did not take on transplant," Leeds commented.
"So? Well, there are ways—" Her reply was almost absent. "But look, Iskhag—the hair! Almost, Strode, I can believe in this luck fetish you swear by. That hair—"
Nik looked from those features to the hair above them. The wiry curls on the pictured head were as tight as his and just as black.
"It would seem," shrilled Iskhag, "that the FC was right. The probabilities of success at this point outweigh those of failure. If, Gyna, you think you have a chance of performing your own magic—?"
She shrugged and snapped off the tri-dee cast. "I will do what I can. The results I cannot insure. And—it may be only temporary if the growth fails again—"
"You know the newest techniques, Gentle Fem," Leeds interrupted, "and those are far more successful than the older methods. We can promise you unlimited resources for this." He looked to Iskhag, and the blue alien nodded.
"Does he understand?" The high chitter of Iskhag's speech came as he looked at Nik.
Leeds took out a small box and flipped a pellet he took from it into his mouth. "He understands we promise him a face again, but that it has to be earned. Also, I signed him out of the Dipple and will guarantee his Guild fee—"
The woman came back to Nik, her long skirt rustling across the carpet. "So you will earn your face, boy?"
Before he could avoid it, her hand made another of those quick moves, and her fingers closed on his misshapen chin, holding it firmly.
"You are entirely right," she continued as if the two of them were alone in the room
. "Everything must be earned. Even those to whom birth gives much make payment in return, in one form or another. Yes, I shall strive to give you a face, for our price."
For the first time, Nik summoned up enough courage to take a part in this conversation about him and his affairs.
"What's the price?"
The woman loosened her hold on him. "Fair enough." She nodded as if that question had, in some obscure way, pleased her. "Tell him, Leeds." That was no request but an order.
"So"—Iskhag swung his eazi-rest back to its former position—"take him to his quarters, tell him—make all ready. We have been too long about this matter now!"
Leeds smiled. "In a matter of this kind, haste makes for mistakes. Do you wish for mistakes, Gentle Homo?"
"I wish for nothing but to set a good plan to work, Captain." Was there a shadow of withdrawal in Iskhag's reply?
The woman had picked up her plate of pink paste. Once more her tongue licked, in small, tip-touch movements, at its contents, but she watched Nik as Leeds caught him by the shoulder and gave him an encouraging shove toward the door.
Down the corridor, past the alcove where they had entered, then through a second sliding doorway they went, and they were in another luxurious room. Leeds motioned Nik to a seat on a wide divan.
"Hungry?" the captain asked. Without waiting for an answer, he went to a dial server on the wall and spun a combination. A table slid out, drawer fashion, the closed dishes on its surface numbering at least six. Nik watched as it moved into place before the divan, and Leeds sat down beside him to snap up the heat covers.
"Tuck in!" the captain urged, sampling the contents of the nearest dish himself.
Nik ate. The food was so different from the mess-hall fare of the Dipple that he could hardly believe it could be called by the same name. He did not know, could not even guess, at the basic contents of some of those heated platters, but it was a banquet out of his dreams.
When an unaccustomed sense of fullness put an end to his explorations, Nik came to himself again, to the uneasy realization that in accepting this bounty he had taken one more step along a trail that would lead him into very unfamiliar territory and that had its own dangers, perhaps the more formidable because they were unknown.
Norton, Andre - Dipple 02 Page 2