The Chalice of Death

by Robert Silverberg

  “What kind of job?” Mantell asked.

  Thurdan said, “According to your psychprobe charts, you were a damned good defense-screen man—once. Every indication was that you’d hit the top before you were through. You fouled up that chance, but unless either Harmon or his machine is way off the beam, you still have plenty of stuff in you. Johnny, you can have a second chance to be top dog in your job, and do me a big favor at the same time. Here we can fight together. For I’ve found out—never mind how—that there’s a scheme under way to assassinate me.”

  “Assassinate—you?” Mantell gasped, incredulous. “B-But what—? Who could—?”

  “Never mind the details, or who wants me murdered. That’s for me to worry about, not you. But the fact remains that they have a chance to succeed before I can identify and stop them.”

  “But Marchin didn’t succeed.”

  “Marchin was different. I had him tagged every minute. Right now, I tell you I’m in constant danger. Oh, I’m well protected, all right, but not well enough for this. So, my friend, I’m going to turn an entire laboratory over to, you, with your pick of the whole scientific staff. The sky’s the limit for you, Johnny”—and Thurdan’s piercing eyes seemed to impale Mantell’s as the absolute ruler of Starhaven paused impressively—“all I’m asking you to do for me is to accomplish the impossible. I want you to build me a personal defense screen. And get onto it at once!”

  Chapter Ten

  “I want you to do the impossible for me,” Thurdan had told him. And, Mantell reflected soberly, that was pretty close to the truth.

  He stood silently looking down at the huge man in the relaxing cradle who had built Starhaven. The personal defense screen was the goal of every defense outfit and of every planet in the galaxy, but so far even the basic working principles had eluded everyone’s grasp. The problem was a horribly complex one: there had to be an arrangement which would selectively block off blaster energy while still admitting air, and although this could be accomplished within the realm of technological possibility, there were all the additional fillips that made the thing impossible. The unit had to be made small enough for a man to carry it about with him; then there was the necessity of somehow grounding the diverted energy, as well as providing for a steady and unstoppable power flow.

  And, Mantell thought, even if all these problems were to be solved, such a screen would be useless. Round and round, and no answer without new problems. If a screen could be devised that was portable and efficient, as a perfect defense against energy weapons, its only effect would be to make energy weapons obsolete. Then, perhaps, the old, crude weapons of the ancient past would be reborn. And if so, there would be the problem of how to devise a screen that would block off knives and bullets and acid and still not cut off air and food.

  “Well?” Thurdan said.

  “You hit the nail square,” Mantell said. “A screen like that is damned close to being an impossibility.”

  “So was building Starhaven,” Thurdan shot back immediately. “But I built it! I don’t know a damned thing about electronics, but I found men who did know. I found the best men in their fields, and they laughed when I showed them my rough plans for Starhaven. But I didn’t listen to them. I told them to go ahead and do what I was paying them to do. I never take ‘impossibles’ for answers, Mantell.”

  Mantell shrugged. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. I’m just not promising delivery until I know I can do it.”

  “Fair enough,” Thurdan said. “Don’t promise anything. Just deliver. I don’t want to die, Johnny.”

  Mantell caught the undertone in Thurdan’s voice as he spoke the last words, and it was a startling revelation of the big man’s character. For behind the bold voice, the resounding tones of command, there lay fear of the unknown, of death, just as in every other human being. Ben Thurdan didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to lose the world and private empire that he had planned and brought into being.

  Well, Mantell considered, you can’t blame him for that.

  “There’s one other thing I want to talk about, Mantell.” The fear was gone from Thurdan’s voice. “It’s the matter of Miss Butler.”

  Mantell tensed. “What does she—?”

  “I asked her to accompany you around during your first few days on Starhaven, Johnny. To help you out until you got your footing here, you understand. But right now, let’s avoid any future conflict by getting things clear at the beginning. Myra isn’t available. I’m marrying her just as soon as I get this problem solved.”

  “I—I never—” Mantell stammered.

  “You never—what?” Thurdan snapped. “You called her place at three o’clock the other morning. I don’t know what you had to say to her at three o’clock in the morning, but I can pretty well guess. So keep your hands off. There are plenty of women on Starhaven, and if you’re interested, I’ll see that you have your pick. But you don’t have Myra!”

  Mantell met Thurdan’s eyes, and flinched. There wasn’t any arguing with the strength he saw there. If Thurban had kept tabs on him to the extent of monitoring his phone, then lying to him was pointless. Even possibly suicidal.

  He said, “Thanks for warning me, Ben. I wouldn’t want to cross you.”

  “No,” Thurdan said quietly. “It wouldn’t be wise even to consider it.”

  Mantell spent another hour listening to Thurdan daydream out loud about Starhaven. Thurdan showed him a small room not far from his which was to be Mantell’s office, introduced him to three or four lab workers, technicians and scientists who would be responsible to him and who would supply him with any materials he might need in his research. As a last item, Thurdan handed him five hundred chips as pocket money, by way of a starting salary.

  “From now on you’ll draw your pay off the standard payroll here,” Thurdan told him. “You’ll be getting five hundred a week. That ought to keep you comfortable for a while.”

  “I imagine I can manage on five hundred. I scrounged for pennies for seven years.”

  Thurdan smiled grimly. “The penny-scrounging days are all done with now, Mantell. This is Starhaven. Things are different here.”

  They returned to the roof landing stage, boarded the waiting aircab, and Thurdan drove him back to the center of the city. Mantell watched the big broad-shouldered figure vanish into the doorway of his office. Then he turned and walked away.

  He was thinking of Myra.

  It was funny, Mantell reflected. From now on he would be getting five hundred a week, and for that he was supposed to figure out a way of preserving Ben Thurdan’s life. But so long as Thurdan lived, Myra was his.

  As Mantell stood there considering that, she came out of another office on the floor. They nearly collided. Backing off, they laughed.

  “Hello, Johnny,” she said—a little coolly, he felt. “I thought you were out in the control tower with Mr. Thurdan.”

  “I was. We just got back five minutes ago. He’s in his office.”

  “Oh. I’ll have to see him, then. Some urgent messages—”

  She started away, but before she had taken three steps Mantell strode after her and caught her by the arm. Then he remembered that hidden photon-absorbers in the ceiling were probably soaking up every bit of this scene. Or perhaps Thurdan was watching it directly. He was as close to omniscient as a human being could be.

  “What is it, Johnny?”

  Mantell hesitated. “I—I just wanted to say so long, that’s all. I suppose I won’t be seeing much of you, now that—now that I’ll be working at the tower. My week of loafing is all used up.” His voice came haltingly; he was sure she knew what he was trying to say. Thurdan had probably warned her to keep away from him, too. Thurdan never missed his bets.

  “Sure, Johnny. It was swell,” she said.

  She disengaged her hand from his grasp gently but emphatically, turned on a wholly mechanical and unconvincing smile, then clicked it off again like the closing of a camera shutter. She walked through the faintly glowi
ng barrier-beam into Thurdan’s office. Mantell stood looking after her. He shook his head and turned away.

  He gravshafted downstairs, caught a passing cab and drove to his hotel room. As he entered the lobby of Number Thirteen, the robot attendant that guarded the place slid forward holding out a package.

  “Mr. Mantell, this just came for you. It was delivered by special courier.”

  “Thanks,” Mantell said abstractedly. He took the package and made his way to the lift tube. The package was bound in a plain plastic wrapper; it was about the size of a book. He frowned, wondering who might be sending him books.

  Upstairs he threw the package on the bed, depolarized the window, stared out at Starhaven, stared up at the synthetic sky and at the synthetic sun, and at the synthetic cloud’s circling under the metal skin.

  Starhaven, he thought. Property of Ben Thurdan, Esq., lord and master of a world of fugitives. And Mantell was the hope he had to avoid death.

  Mantell tried to picture Starhaven without Thurdan. The entire planet revolved around his whims; he was an absolute monarch, even though an enlightened one. The social system he had evolved here worked—though whether or not it would work with any other man at its helm was a highly debatable point.

  And what would happen if Thurdan died? Probably the whole delicate fabric of the Starhaven system would come tumbling in chaotically on itself, ending a unique experiment in political theory. It was easy to foresee a mad scramble for power; the man who grabbed possession of the control tower would rule unchallenged—until another assassin struck him down.

  Suddenly Mantell went cold all over. If anybody were to gain control of that tower, it would be John Mantell! His research laboratory was close to the central control room, and it was safe to consider that he would become a close associate of Thurdan during the course of his work.

  New, strange ideas occurred to him.

  After a while he turned away from the window and glanced at the package lying forgotten on his bed. He snatched it up and held it to his ear. There was no sound of a mechanism within. Cautiously, he opened it

  It had felt like a book, and it was a book—the old-fashioned bound kind, not a tape. Inscribed in dark letters on its jacket was its title: A Study of Hydrogen—Breathing Life in the Spica System.

  Some kind of joke? he wondered. He opened the book to the title page.

  A folded slip of paper lay nestling between the flyleaf and the title page. Mantell frowned and drew it out, unfolded it, read it.

  A moment later the slip flared heatlessly in his hand became an ash, and was gone, drawn quickly into the circulating system of the room along with all other molecule-sized fragments of debris that happened to be in the air.

  It had been a very interesting message, printed in square anonymous voco-type capitals, standard model. It said:

  TO JOHN MANTELL—

  IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN DISCUSSING THURDAN, VISIT THE CASINO OF MASKS IN THE PLEASURE DOME DURING THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS, BETWEEN THE HOURS OF NINE AND TEN IN THE EVENING. NO DANGER TO YOU.

  Chapter Eleven

  Three days later, Mantell paid a visit to the Casino of Masks.

  The decision cost him three days of agonizing inner conflict. His first reaction to the anonymous note had been one of immediate anger; he did not want any part of any conspiracy against the life of Thurdan, at least not yet.

  But then he recalled Myra’s strange words that first night, and started to think of the various possibilities Thurdan’s death might hold for him. He began to consider the idea more seriously.

  The book contained no further clues. He made a detailed examination of it and concluded it had simply been a dummy, a vehicle for the message, and he destroyed it rather than risk getting into a situation where he would be forced to explain what he was doing possessing so unlikely a volume. He had no hint of the sender. The wrapping had been utterly anonymous.

  He had a week to make up his mind about going to the Casino of Masks.

  During the first two days he spent most of his time in his newly outfitted lab, putting himself through an intensified refresher course in defense-screen logistics. It was astonishing how readily the old knowledge sprang brightly into the front of his mind again after so many years. He sketched out a few speculative preliminary functions toward the possible design of Thurdan’s personal defense screen.

  Mantell’s sketches were simply trial hypotheses, wild shots in the dark, but it seemed to him that he saw a few stray glimmers of light ahead. It might take months or years of work before anything useful eventuated, but he could perceive a possible line of attack, and that was a big chunk of the battle already won.

  During those first days in the laboratory Mantell had little contact with Thurdan and none at all with Myra Butler. When he thought of her it was only as a girl of a dead romance, of a moment’s affair. There was a brief sad ache, nothing more. He hadn’t known her long enough for anything more, and in any event, he had become well conditioned to disappointment in his life.

  He buried himself in his work; it was an exciting experience to rediscover techniques and patterns of thought he believed he had forever lost. He met his fellow armament technicians; Harrell, Bryson, Voriloinen, and six or seven others. Most of them were brilliant and wayward eccentrics who had fallen afoul of the law in one fashion or another, and who had fled to Starhaven, where by Thurdan’s wisdom, technicians of all kinds were given a warm and eager welcome.

  The technician named Bryson gave Mantell an uneasy moment one day. Bryson was a small man with rounded shoulders and fingers stained permanent ochre by nicotine; he walked with a kind of shuffle. He was in Mantell’s laboratory one morning observing and helping out, and it occurred to Mantell to ask, by way of conversation, where Bryson had acquired his impressive skill in electronics.

  Bryson smiled and said, “Why, I used to work at Klingsan Defense Screens, on Earth. Before my trouble, that is, I mean.”

  Mantell was holding a packet of junction transistors.

  He started violently, dropping them. They scattered everywhere. “Klingsan, you said?”

  Bryson nodded. “You’ve heard of them?”

  “I worked there once, too,” Mantell said. “From ’89 to ’93. Then they sacked me.”

  “That’s odd,” Bryson said in a curious voice. “I was there from ’91 to ’96, and I thought I knew everyone in the armaments department. I should have known you, then. But I don’t. I don’t remember any Mantell there, not at all. And you don’t look familiar, either. Did you go under the name of Mantell while you were there?”

  “Yes.” Puzzled, Mantell shrugged and said, “Hell, that was more than seven years ago. Nobody’s memory is perfect. Anyway, maybe we worked in different departments.”

  “Maybe,” Bryson agreed vaguely.

  But Mantell felt troubled. He tried to remember a Bryson at Klingsan, and couldn’t. Neither anyone of that name, nor anyone who resembled the little man with the stained fingers. That was odd, because if they had been there at overlapping times they would most certainly have worked in the same department, since they had the same skills.

  Something, Mantell thought, is very wrong.

  But he pushed it to the back of his mind, storing it back with his life on Mulciber and his brief few days with Myra and all the other things he wasn’t particularly anxious to think about, and returned to his waiting workbench.

  He lost himself once again in his work. Another problem had to be settled. He wrestled with it for a while, and by late afternoon his decision was made. He had to find out.…

  That night he went to the Casino of Masks.

  There were eight separate gambling casinos on the tenth level of the Pleasure Dome, each with its own individual name and its own circle of regular clientele. The casino Myra had taken him to was known as the Crystal Casino, largest and most popular of the group, the casino of widest appeal. Others, farther along the gleaming onyx hallway, were smaller; in some, the stakes ran dangerously high, hig
hly dangerous.

  The Casino of Masks was farthest from the liftshaft. Mantell identified it solely by the hooded statue mounted before its entrance.

  The time was exactly nine. His throat felt dry; tension gripped him like a constricting fist. He stretched out a hand, poked it as far as the wrist through the barrier beam that operated the door. The door slid back and he entered.

  He found himself in darkness so complete that he was unable to see his hand held before his face, or even the watch on his arm. In all probability, he thought, he was getting a black light scanning from above, just to make sure he was not on the Casino’s proscribed list.

  After a moment a gentle robot voice murmured, “Step to the left, into the booth, sir.”

  Obediently he stepped to the left.

  “Welcome to the Casino of Masks, good sir,” another robot voice said.

  He wished he had had the chance to find out from Myra or someone else exactly what this Casino of Masks was like, but it was too late for that now.

  His unseen mentor said, “You may now receive the mask. Please turn.”

  Turning, Mantell saw a dim red light begin to glow, and by its light he perceived a triangular slotted mask lying in a lucite case; above it, in a mirror, he saw his image.

  “Lift the mask from its case and slip it over your head,” he was instructed. “It will afford complete protection of privacy from any recognition.”

  With tense fingers he lifted the mask and donned it. The next instruction followed: “Activate the stud near your right ear.”

  He touched the stud. And suddenly the image in the mirror gave way to a blurred figure of the same height. Just a blur, a wavering blotch in the air, concealing him completely.

  Mantell remembered now: he had heard of these masks. They scattered light in a field surrounding the wearer, allowing one-way vision only. They were ideal for those who desired anonymity, as in this casino.