Langley accompanied the agent down tall, columned passages where the air glowed with a soft light and murals traced shifting patterns on the gleaming walls. Behind him sat half a dozen bodyguards, identical giants. Chanthavar had explained that they were his personal slaves and the result of chromosome duplication in an exogenesis tank. There was something not quite human about them.
The spaceman was getting over his feeling of awkwardness, though he still couldn’t imagine that he looked like much with hairy skinny legs sticking out from under his tunic. He, Blaustein and Matsumoto had hardly been out of their palace suite in the day since they were released. They had sat around, saying little, now and then cursing in a whisper full of pain. It was still too new, too devastatingly sudden. They accepted Chanthavar’s invitation without great interest. What business did three ghosts have at a party?
The suite was luxurious enough: furniture that molded itself to your contours and came when you called, a box which washed and brushed and depilated and massaged you and finished up by blowing scent on your scrubbed hide—softness and warmth and pastel color everywhere you looked. Langley remembered checked oilcloth on a kitchen table, a can of beer in front of him and the Wyoming night outside and Peggy sitting near.
“Chanthavar,” he asked suddenly, “do you still have horses?” There was a word for it in this Earthspeak they had taught him, so maybe …?
“Why, I don’t know.” The agent looked a bit surprised. “Never saw one that I remember, outside of historicals. I believe they have some on … yes, on Thor for amusement, if not on Earth. Lord Brannoch has often bored his guests by talking about horses and dogs.”
Langley sighed.
“If there aren’t any in the Solar System, you could have one synthesized,” suggested Chanthavar. “They can make pretty good animals to order. Care to hunt a dragon someday?”
“Never mind,” said Langley.
“There’ll be a lot of important people here tonight,” said Chanthavar. “If you can entertain one of them enough, your fortune’s made. Stay away from Lady Halin. Her husband’s jealous and you’d end up as a mind-blanked slave unless I wanted to make an issue of it. You needn’t act too impressed by what you see. A lot of the younger intellectuals, especially, make rather a game of deriding modern society, and would be construed as dangerous. Otherwise, just go ahead and have a good time.”
The first impression Langley got was of sheer enormousness. The room must be half a mile in diameter, and it was a swirling blaze of flashing color, some thousands of guests perhaps. It seemed roofless, open to a soft night sky full of stars and the moon. However, he decided there must be an invisible dome on it. Under its dizzy height, the city was a lovely, glowing spectacle.
There was perfume in the air, just a hint of sweetness, and music came from some hidden source. Langley tried to listen, but there were too many voices.
Chanthavar was introducing them to their host, who was unbelievably fat and purple but not without a certain strength in his small black eyes. Langley recalled the proper formulas by which a client of one Minister addressed and genuflected to another.
“Man from past, eh?” Yulien cleared his throat. “Int’restin’. Most int’restin’. Have to have long talk with you sometime. Hrumph! How d’y’ like it here?”
“It is most impressive, my lord,” said Matsumoto, poker-faced.
“H’m. Ha. Yes. Progress. Change.”
“The more things change, my lord,” ventured Langley, “the more they remain the same.”
A rather good-looking woman with somewhat protuberant eyes grasped his arm and told him how exciting it was to see a man from the past and she was sure it had been such an interesting epoch back when they were so virile. Langley felt relieved when a sharp-faced oldster called her to him and she left in a pout. Clearly, women had a subservient position in the Technate, though Chanthavar had mentioned something about occasional great female leaders.
He slouched moodily toward a buffet, where he helped himself to some very tasty dishes and more wine. How long would the farce go on, anyway? He’d rather have been off somewhere by himself.
A flabby person who had had a bit too much to drink threw an arm around his neck and bade him welcome and started asking him about the bedroom techniques of his period. It would have been a considerable relief to—Langley unclenched his fists.
“Want some girls? Min’ster Yulien most hospitable, come right this way, have li’l fun ’fore the Centaurians blow us all to dust.”
“That’s right,” jeered a younger man. “That’s why we’re going to have the hide beaten off us. People like you. Could they fight in your time, Captain Langley?”
“Tolerable well, when we had to,” said the American.
“That’s what I thought. Survivor types. You conquered the stars because you weren’t afraid to kick the next man. We are. We’ve gotten soft, here in the Solar System, Haven’t fought a major war in a thousand years, and now that one’s shaping up we don’t know how.”
“Are you in the army?” asked Langley.
“I?” The young fellow looked surprised. “The Solar military forces are slaves. Bred and trained for the job, publicly owned. The higher officers are Ministers, but—”
“Well, would you advocate drafting your own class into service?”
“Wouldn’t do any good. They aren’t fit. Not in a class with the slave specialists. The Centaurians, though, they call up their free-born, and they like fighting. If we could learn that too—”
“Son,” asked Langley recklessly, “have you ever seen men with their heads blown open, guts coming out, ribs sticking through the skin? Ever faced a man who intended to kill you?”.
“No … no, of course not. But—”
Langley shrugged. He’d met this type before, back home. Some of them wrote books.
He mumbled an excuse and got away. Blaustein joined him, and they fell into English. “Where’s Bob?” asked Langley.
Blaustein gave a crooked grin. “Last I saw, he was heading off-stage with one of the female entertainers. Nice-looking little girl, too. Maybe he’s got the right idea.”
“For him,” said Langley.
“I can’t. Not now, anyway.” Blaustein looked sick. “You know, I thought maybe, even if everything we knew is gone, the human race would finally have learned some sense. I was a pacifist—you know, intellectual pacifist—simply because I could see what a bloody, brainless farce it was, how nobody gained anything except a few smart boys.” Blaustein was a little drunk too. “And the solution is so easy! It stares you right in the face: a universal government with teeth. That’s all. No more war. No more men getting shot and resources plundered and little children burned alive. I thought maybe in five thousand years even this dim-witted race of ours would get that lesson hammered home. Remember, they’ve never had a war at all on Holat. Are we that much stupider?”
“I should think an interstellar war would be kind of hard to fight,” said Langley. “Years of travel just to get there.”
“Uh-huh. Also, little economic incentive. If a planet can be colonized at all, it’s going to be self-sufficient. Those two reasons are why there hasn’t been a real war for a thousand years, since the colonies broke loose.”
Blaustein leaned closer, weaving a trifle on his feet. “But there’s one shaping up now. We may very well see it. Rich mineral resources on the planets of Sirius, and the government there weak, and Sol and Centauri strong. Both of them want those planets. Neither can let the other have them; it’d be too advantageous. I was just talking to an officer, who put it in very nearly those words, besides adding something about the Centaurians being filthy barbarians.”
“So I’d still like to know how you fight across four-plus light-years,” said Langley.
“You send a king-size fleet, complete with freighters full of supplies. You meet the enemy fleet and whip it in space. Then you bombard the enemy planets from the sky. Did you know they can disintegrate any kind of matter
completely now? Nine times ten to the twentieth ergs per gram. And there are things like synthetic virus and radioactive dust. You smash civilization on those planets, land, and do what you please. Simple. The only thing to be sure of is that the enemy fleet doesn’t beat you, because then your own home is lying wide open. Sol and Centauri have been intriguing, sparring, for decades now. As soon as one of them gets a clear advantage—wham! Fireworks.” Blaustein gulped his wine and reached for more.
“Of course,” he said owlishly, “there’s always the chance that even if you beat the enemy, enough of his ships will escape to go to your home system and knock out the planetary defenses and bombard. Then you have two systems gone back to the caves. But when has that prospect ever stopped a politician? Or psychotechnical administrator, as I believe they call ’em now. Lemme alone. I want to get blotto.”
Chanthavar found Langley a few minutes later and took him by the arm. “Come,” he said. “His Fidelity, the chief of the Technon Servants, wants to meet you. His Fidelity is a very important man … Excellent Sulon, may I present Captain Edward Langley?”
He was a tall and thin old man in a plain blue robe and cowl. His lined face was intelligent, but there was something humorless and fanatical about his mouth. “This is interesting,” he said harshly. “I understand that you wandered far in space, Captain.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Your documents have already been presented to the Technon. Every scrap of information, however seemingly remote, is valuable. For only through sure knowledge of all the facts can the machine make sound decisions. You would be surprised how many agents there are whose only job is the constant gathering of data. The state thanks you for your service.”
“It is nothing, my lord,” said Langley with due deference.
“It may be much,” Sulon said. “The Technon is the foundation of Solar civilization; without it, we are lost. Its very location is unknown to all save the highest ranks of my order, its servants. For this we are born and raised, for this we renounce all family ties and worldly pleasures. We are so conditioned that if an attempt is made to get our secrets from us, and there is no obvious escape, we die—automatically. I tell you this to give you some idea of what the Technon means.”
Langley couldn’t think of any response. Sulon was proof that Sol hadn’t lost all vitality, but there was an inhuman-ness about him.
“I am told that an extraterrestrial being of unknown race was with your crew and has escaped,” went on the old man. “I must take a very grave view of this. He is a completely unpredictable factor—your own journal gives little information.”
“I’m sure he’s harmless, my lord,” said Langley.
“That remains to be seen. The Technon itself orders that he be found or destroyed immediately. Have you, as an acquaintance of his, any idea of how to go about this?”
There it was again. Langley felt cold. The problem of Saris Hronna had all of them scared. And a frightened man could be a vicious creature.
“Standard search patterns haven’t worked,” said Chanthavar. “I’ll tell you this much, though it’s secret: he killed three of my men and got away in their flyer. Where has he gone?”
“I’ll … have to think,” stammered Langley. “This is most unfortunate, my lord. Believe me, I’ll give it all my attention.”
Langley was pulled away by a plump, hairy hand. It belonged to a large pot-bellied man in foreign-looking dress. The head was massive, with an elephantine nose, disorderly flame-red hair and the first beard Langley had seen in this age. The man had surprisingly keen light eyes. The rather high voice was accented, an intonation not of Earth: “Greeting, sir. I have been most anxious to meet you. Goltam Valti is the name.”
“Your servant, my lord,” said Langley.
“No, no. I’ve no title. Poor old greasy lickspittle Goltam Valti is not to the colors born. I’m of the Commercial Society, and we don’t have nobles. Can’t afford ’em. Hard enough to make an honest living these days, with buyers and sellers alike grudging you enough profit to eat on, and one’s dear old homestead generations away. Well, about a decade in my case, I’m from Ammon in the Tau Ceti system orginally. A sweet planet, that, with golden beer and a lovely girl to serve it to you, ah, yes!”
Langley felt a stirring of interest. He’d heard something about the Society, but not enough. Valti led him to a divan and they sat down and whistled at a passing table for refreshments.
“I’m chief factor at Sol,” continued Valti. “You must come see our building sometime. Souvenirs of a hundred planets there, I’m sure it’ll interest you. But 5000 years’ worth of wandering, that is too much even for a trader. You must have seen a great deal, Captain, a great deal. Ah, were I young again …”
Langley threw subtlety aside and asked a few straightforward questions. Getting information out of Valti took patience; you had to listen to a paragraph of self-pity to get a sentence worth hearing, but something emerged. The Society had existed for a thousand years or more, recruited from all planets, even nonhuman races: it carried on most of the interstellar trade there was, dealing in goods which were often from worlds unknown to this little section of the galaxy. For Society personnel, the great spaceships were home, men and women and children living their lives on them. They had their own laws, customs, language; they owed allegiance to no one else.
“Haven’t you a capital, a government?”
“Details, my friend, details we can discuss later. Do come see me. I am a lonely old man. Perhaps I can offer you some small entertainment. Did you by any chance stop in the Tau Ceti system? No? That’s a shame. It would have interested you: the double ring system of Osiris and the natives of Horus and the beautiful, beautiful valleys of Ammon, yes, yes.” The names originally given to the planets had changed, but not so much that Langley could not recognize what mythical figures the discoverers had had in mind. Valti went on to reminisce about worlds he had seen in the lost lamented days of his youth, and Langley found it an enjoyable conversation.
“Ho, there!”
Valti jumped up and bowed wheezily. “My lord! You honor me beyond my worth. It has been overly long since I saw you.”
“All of two weeks,” grinned the blond giant in the screaming crimson jacket and blue trousers. He had a wine goblet in one brawny hand, the other held the ankles of a tiny, exquisite dancing girl who perched on his shoulder and squealed with laughter. “And then you diddled me out of a thousand solars, you and your loaded dice.”
“Most excellent lord, fortune must now and then smile even on my ugly face; the probability-distribution curve demands it.” Valti made washing motions with his hands. “Perhaps my lord would care for revenge some evening next week?”
“Could be. Whoops!” The giant slid the girl to earth and dismissed her with a playful thwack. “Run along, Thura, Kolin, whatever your name is. I’ll see you later.” His eyes were very bright and blue on Langley. “Is this the dawn man I’ve been hearing about?”
“Yes. My lord, may I present Captain Edward Langley? Lord Brannoch dhu Crombar, the Centaurian ambassador.”
So this was one of the hated and feared men from Thor. He and Valti were the first recognizably Caucasoid types the American had seen in this age: presumably their ancestors had left Earth before the races had melted into an almost uniform stock here, and possibly environmental factors had had something to do with fixing their distinctive features.
Brannoch grinned jovially, sat down and told an uproariously improper story. Langley countered with the tale of the cowboy who got three wishes, and Brannoch’s guffaw made glasses tremble.
“So you still used horses?” he asked afterward.
“Yes, my lord. I was raised in horse country. We used them in conjunction with trucks. I was … going to raise them myself.”
Brannoch seemed to note the pain in the spaceman’s voice, and with a surprising tact went on to describe his stable at home. “I think you’d like Thor, Captain,” he finished. “We still have e
lbow room. How they can breathe with twenty billion hunks of fat meat in the Solar System, I’ll never know. Why not come see us sometime?”
“I’d like to, my lord,” said Langley, and maybe he wasn’t being entirely a liar.
Brannoch sprawled back, letting his long legs stretch across the polished floor. “I’ve kicked around a bit too,” he said. “Had to get out of the system a while back, when my family got the short end of a feud. Spent a hundred years external time knocking around, till I got a chance to make a comeback. Planetography’s a sort of hobby with me, which is the only reason I come to your parties, Valti, you kettle-bellied old fraud. Tell me, Captain, did you ever touch at Procyon?”
For half an hour the conversation spanned stars and planets. Something of the weight within Langley lifted. The vision of many-faced strangeness spinning through an endless outer dark was one to catch at his heart.
“By the way,” said Brannoch, “I’ve been hearing some rumors about an alien you had along, who broke loose. What’s the truth on that?”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Valti in his tangled beard. “I too have been intrigued. Yes, a most interesting sort he seems to be. Why should he take such a desperate action?”
Langley stiffened. What had Chanthavar said? Wasn’t the whole affair supposed to be confidential?
Brannoch would have his spies, of course. And seemingly Valti did too. The American had a chilling sense of immense contending powers, a machine running wild. And he was caught in the whirling gears.
“I’d rather like to add him to the collection,” said Brannoch idly. “That is, not to harm him, just to meet the creature. If he really is a true telepath, he’s almost unique.”
“The Society would also have an interest in this matter,” said Valti diffidently. “The planet may have something to trade worth even such a long trip.”
After a moment, he added dreamily: “I think the payment for such information would be quite generous, Captain. The Society has its little quirks, and the desire to meet a new race is one. Yes, there would be money in it.”
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