The Chalice of Death

by Robert Silverberg

  But now it was, and it would be curtains for Mantell and Myra the moment the delicate needles of the probe hit the surface of his cerebrum.

  Myra reacted first. She came forward and gripped Thurdan’s thick arm with her hand.

  “Ben, you’re not being fair. Johnny was just probed a few weeks ago. You’re not supposed to probe a human being twice in the same month—if you do, you can damage his brain. Isn’t that right, Dr. Harmon?”

  “Indeed it is, and—”

  “Quiet, both of you!” Thurdan paused a moment, listening to the obliging silence, then said, “Mantell’s a valuable man to me. I don’t want to lose him. But Starhaven’s policy has always been to play the close ones, never to take unnecessary risk. If that SP man was telling the truth, Mantell’s a spy—the first one ever to get past the gate! Erik, get your machine set up for the probe.”

  Harmon shrugged. “If you insist, Ben.”

  “I do.”

  Harmon started for the door. Thurdan called after him, “Get Dr. Polderson in to take the reading.”

  Polderson was Harmon’s chief assistant. The old scientist turned and looked up, bitter-faced. “I’m still capable of handling the machine myself, Ben.”

  “Maybe you are—or maybe you aren’t. But I want somebody else to take the reading on Mantell. Is that understood?”

  “Very well,” Harmon said with obvious reluctance, after a brief pause.

  Mantell could see what the old man had at stake—his professional pride. Well, he would be vindicated, of course, Mantell thought. Polderson’s reading would coincide with the one Harmon had taken on his arrival, in all but one trifling detail—that detail being the conspiracy.

  Mantell’s hands were shaking as he walked through the passageway from Thurdan’s office to the psychprobe laboratory.

  It would be over soon. Everything.

  The laboratory looked very much the same as it had the other time. There was the couch, the psychprobing paraphernalia, the rows of books and the mysterious gadgetry. Only one thing was new: Polderson.

  Dr. Harmon’s right-hand man was a cadaverous youngster with deep-set, dark brooding eyes and the outgoing gaiety of a decomposing corpse. He peered at Mantell with some curiosity.

  “Are you the subject?” he asked in a grave voice.

  “I am,” Mantell said hesitantly. Behind him, walking in the shuffle of the extremely old, came Harmon. Thurdan and Myra had remained behind, in the other office.

  Polderson intoned, “Would you kindly lie down on this couch for the psychprobe reading? Dr. Harmon, is the machine ready?”

  “I want to make a few minor checks,” the old man muttered. “Have to see that everything’s functioning as it ought to be. This must be a perfect reading. Absolutely perfect.”

  He was puttering around in back of the machine, doing something near a cabinet of drugs. Mantell watched nervously.

  Harmon looked up, finally, and, crossing the room, smiled a withered smile, clapped Polderson affectionately on the back and said, “Do a good job, Polderson. I know you’re capable of it.”

  Polderson nodded mechanically. But when he turned his attention back to fastening Mantell into the machine, his eyes seemed to have lost their former intense glitter, and now were vague and dream-veiled.

  Dr. Harmon was grinning. He held up one hand for Mantell to see.

  Strapped to the inside of his middle finger was the tiny bulb of a pressure-injection syringe. And Polderson, shambling amiably about the machine, had been neatly and thoroughly drugged.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mantell climbed obediently onto the couch and permitted Polderson to strap him in. He placed the cold probe-dome on Mantell’s head. Harmon hovered nearby, smiling to himself, watching.

  Suddenly the old doctor leaned over and whispered something in Polderson’s ear. The first few words were inaudible to Mantell, but he caught the conclusion: “—see to it that his probe-chart is identical to the earlier one in all respects. You understand that? Identical!”

  Polderson nodded dimly. He crossed the room, opened a pressure-sealed file drawer, and thoughtfully examined a folio that probably contained the record of Mantell’s last probing, while Mantell watched curiously and wondered exactly what was going on.

  Polderson seemed satisfied after a few moments’ scrutiny. He nodded his head in content, closed the file, and turned back to the machine.

  Mantell, waiting for the probing to begin, suddenly heard the sound of voices.

  Myra was saying, “Ben, I tell you it’s cruel to probe him a second time! He might lose his mind, for all you know! He might—”

  Mantell heard the sound of a slap, and winced. Then Thurdan threw open the lab door and bellowed, “Harmon! I thought I told you to have an assistant conduct the psychprobe!”

  “I’m so doing,” Harmon said mildly. “Dr. Polderson here is performing the actual probe. I’m merely supervising the mechanics of the work.”

  “I don’t want you anywhere near Polderson or near Mantell or near the machine while this is going on,” Thurdan snapped. “I want an absolutely untinkered response.”

  Sighing, Harmon nodded and moved away. He said, “Then let’s all wait in your office. It’s bad to have so many people in here while a probe is going on.”

  And he moved slowly and with considerable display of wounded dignity past Thurdan into the passageway. Thurdan turned and followed him, closing the door. Mantell was alone with Polderson—and the machine.

  Polderson’s lean fingers caressed the keyboard of the psychprobe as if he were fondling a loved one. In a drug-shrouded voice he murmured, “Relax, now, relax. You’re much too tense. You have to ease up a little. Ease up, I tell you.”

  “I’m eased,” Mantell lied. He was stiff with tension. “I’m as eased as I’m going to get.”

  “Loosen up, please. You’re much too tense, Mr. Mantell. Much too tense. There’s really no danger. None at all. The probe is a scientific instrument, totally harmless, that merely—”

  Wham!

  For the second time since he had come to Starhaven Mantell felt as if his skull had been cleft in two. He rocked under the impact of the probe, clung feebly to consciousness for an instant, and let go.

  When he woke he found himself staring up into the face of Ben Thurdan.

  The smiling face of Ben Thurdan.

  Thurdan said in surprisingly gentle tones, “Are you up, Johnny?”

  Mantell nodded groggily.

  “I guess I owe you an apology, Mantell,” Thurdan said. “Polderson just showed me your new psychprobe chart. The reading’s the same as it was when Harmon took it. That SP man was talking nonsense.”

  “You could have saved me a headache,” Mantell said. His skull was spinning on a dizzy orbit. “I told you all along I wasn’t an SP man.”

  “I couldn’t accept that, Johnny. I have to make sure—have to! Do you see that, Johnny?”

  “Sort of. But I hope you’re not going to probe me any time somebody says some crazy thing about me.”

  Thurdan chuckled warmly. “I think I can trust you now, Johnny.”

  “I hope so, Ben.”

  Mantell looked around and saw other figures in the room: Polderson, Dr. Harmon, Myra. His head began to stop whirling just a little. The effects of the psychprobe were diminishing.

  “And I owe you an apology, too, Erik,” Thurdan was saying to Harmon. “Don’t ever say Ben Thurdan can’t back down when he’s wrong. It takes a big man to admit he’s made a mistake. Eh, there?”

  Harmon smiled, showing yellowed teeth. “Right you are, Ben. Right you are!”

  Thurdan turned and left. Myra followed him.

  Harmon said, “All right, Polderson. Thanks for your help. I’ll take care of the lab now, and you can go.”

  “Certainly, Dr. Harmon.”

  Polderson left also. Mantell was alone with the old scientist.

  “We had a close escape that time,” Harmon said, leaning close to him and whisperin
g confidentially. “Would you care for a drink, Mr. Mantell?”

  “Please. Yes.”

  A closet in the far corner of the laboratory divulged a small portable bar. Harmon dialed two sour chokers, took them from the bar as they came filtering out, and brought them across the room. He handed one to Mantell, who took it and sipped thirstily.

  After a moment Mantell said, “What did you mean, we had a narrow escape?”

  “Those of us who stood to risk exposure if Thurdan ever saw a true psychprobe chart of your mind.”

  Mantell blinked in surprise. “You mean—you’re one of us?”

  Harmon nodded smilingly. “I was the first. Then came Myra and the others. It would have been all over for us if Thurdan had seen your true psychprobe, knowing what you now know.”

  “How did you keep him from seeing it?”

  “I slipped Polderson a hypnodrug while he was beginning to set up the machine. The rest of it was simple; I merely ordered him to see only those things I wanted him to see. He took your probe. There was no mention of—ah—us—on it.”

  Suddenly Mantell sat bolt upright. “What about that Space Patrolman’s story, though? Was it just a wild hoax, or was there any truth in it? I mean, about his knowing me back when—”

  Harmon shook his head vigorously. “No. Your first psychprobing and this one said the same thing: you spent the last seven years on Mulciber. Unless new techniques for misleading the psychprobe have been invented, that’s the truth, Mantell.”

  He nodded. That was one bit of reality he had salvaged from all this, then.

  He climbed off the couch, feeling his feet rocking beneath him. “And—was there anything in what Myra said to Ben—about a second psychprobing being likely to damage my mind?”

  “Such a thing has been known to happen,” Harmon admitted. “But it didn’t, in this particular case. Let’s be thankful for that.”

  Relieved, Mantell straightened out his rumpled clothing and followed Harmon down the corridor back toward Thurdan’s office. Ben was sitting behind his desk. He looked every bit as massive seated as he did when standing. Mantell wondered how big Thurdan really was. Six feet six, probably, and two hundred seventy pounds. Probably Ben would be a rough man to tangle with in a fight, even figuring his age at sixty or so.

  “Feeling better?” Thurdan rumbled.

  “A little. Not much.”

  Mantell flopped into a beckoning foam cradle and tried to scrub the throbbing out of his forehead with his fingertips. Every beat of his pulse, every contraction of his heart seemed to echo noisily through the caverns of his skull.

  “May I leave?” Harmon asked. “I’m very tired myself. I’d like to—”

  “Stay here,” Thurdan said, in that smooth, level voice that was so terribly unanswerable. “You’re a scientist, Erik. I want you to hear what Mantell’s going to tell us. You may be interested. Johnny, suppose you tell Myra and Dr. Harmon what you’ve been working on in the lab for the past few weeks.”

  Mantell moistened his lips and looked straight at Harmon. “I’ve been developing a personal defense screen,” he said. “Invisible field and body-size. The kind of shield a man could wear and be absolutely invulnerable while he had it on.”

  Myra tossed an interested glance his way. He saw that Thurdan was knuckling the portfolio he had sent him on the previous day, outlining the progress of his work so far.

  Harmon looked more than a little impressed. In his feather-light voice he asked, “Is such a thing possible—this personal screen?”

  “Tell them, Johnny.”

  “I didn’t think it was possible, either,” Mantell said. “Until I built one.”

  “What? You have succeeded?”

  “It’s not finished yet,” Mantell added hastily. “It won’t be for a week or more, at least. But when I’m done with it, it will—”

  “It’s going to keep me safe,” Thurdan broke in. “At last.” He peered intensely at the three figures ringing his desk. “You see? You see what Johnny is doing for me—and yet I was willing to run the risk of damaging his brain rather than let a possible threat to Starhaven’s security go unchecked.”

  There was no reply to that. Thurdan was sweating. He seemed to be under some tremendous strain. His powerful fingers toyed with the crystal knick-knacks on his desk.

  “All right,” he said finally, his voice knifing through the tense silence. “You can go. All of you. Leave me alone.”

  In the face of a dismissal like that, there was nothing to do but leave. Mantell and Myra and Harmon filed silently out of Thurdan’s office without looking back, and without a word once they reached the outer corridor. Mantell had already had one experience with Thurdan’s concealed audio pickups in the hall.

  Myra and Harmon vanished in opposite directions down the corridor, heading toward their respective offices. Mantell caught the lift tube down and left the building. A cab lurked outside, and he engaged it and took it back to Number Thirteen.

  He wanted to rest. The probing had left him thoroughly exhausted.

  He reached the room a few minutes later, feeling soggy and bedraggled. He showered; the brisk play of ions on his skin refreshed him and left him clean. He swallowed a fatigue tab and sprawled out on the bed, utterly worn out from the strain and from the probing.

  It had been a close thing, he thought.

  Only Harmon’s fast work had saved them this time—and there was no way of telling how soon it would be before some accident would put information of the conspiracy into Thurdan’s hands.

  That would be the end. Ben was quick and ruthless, and he would spare no one in order to keep Starhaven under his domination.

  And—Thurdan had to die. Mantell felt an ungrudging admiration for the colossal old tyrant, but Myra and her group had logic on their side. Thurdan had to be put away now, before a number of contenders to the throne arose and made the task of continuing the peace of Starhaven impossible.

  Mantell half-dozed. Some time passed, and he was barely conscious of its passing. Then the door chime rang twice before he climbed wearily off the pad and answered it.

  One of the house robots stood outside in the hallway, smiling mechanically at him. It held a package in its rubberized grips.

  “Mr. Mantell? Package for you.”

  “Thanks very much,” Mantell said limply. He took the package from the robot and shut the door.

  The package was the size and shape of a book. He knew by now that it must contain another message; this seemed to be the approved way of contacting people on a world where one man held access into all electronic means of communication.

  He unwrapped it. The book, bound in attractive quarter-morocco, was called Etiology and Empiricism, by one Dr. F. G. Sze. Opening it, Mantel found a folded note inserted between pages 86 and 87.

  Withdrawing the note, Mantell unfolded it. It said:

  J.M.—

  AFFAIRS REACHING A CRISIS. WE CAN’T RUN MORE RISKS. MEET ME CASINO OF MASKS TONIGHT TO DISCUSS B.T. IMMEDIATE ACTION. I’LL BE THERE AT 9 SHARP.

  DON’T BE LATE, DARLING.

  M.B.

  Mantell stared at the note, reading it again and again, his eyes coming to rest each time on the “darling” at the end, looking so impersonal and yet so meaningful in the capitalized vocotype.

  Then the note began to wither. In an instant it was but a pinch of brown dust in his hand, and then not even that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Casino of Masks was thronged that night as Mantell-threaded his way into the main hall. He found himself confronted with hundreds of shadowy faceless figures, people of uncertain line and undeterminable identity.

  One of them was Myra. But which?

  He wandered to the swirly board, where the croupier was pleading for new players. He watched the interplay of bright colors a while, placed and lost ten chips on a combination of blue-green-red-black. Red-violet-orange-green came in instead, and Mantell turned away in mild disappointment.

  Looking th
rough the crowd he saw several pink blurs who might have been Myra, or might not have been; there was no way of telling. He was patient. He and Myra had prearranged a signal, but first he had to waste some time in planting false leads for possible pursuers.

  He lost five more chips in a quick interchange of Flicker, then picked up a hundred and fifty with a lucky cast on the Rotowheel. He decided enough time had gone by. He operated the prearranged signal by going to the card tables at the back of the casino and taking a seat at an unoccupied one.

  Almost immediately a house girl, identifiable by the crimson ribbon she wore tied to her mask, appeared. “Looking for a partner, sir?”

  “No, thanks. I’m waiting for someone.”

  Mantell turned down four more offers of a game, three from men, one from another house girl. Finally a pink blur approached, and said, in the flat unmodulated voice produced by the mask effect, “I’ll play with you if the stakes are in my league, stranger.”

  Mantell smiled. It was Myra.

  “I don’t play penny ante, Miss.”

  She sat down. “Put your cards out where I can see them, and start dealing.”

  He dealt. He sorted out the cards and dealt a hand of pseudo-rummy, and as he dealt he murmured lightly under his breath, “Your message reached me. I think you’re right. It’s time to act.”

  “So do we. It’s inevitable that Ben will psychprobe someone and find out all about it before long. We have to strike at once.”

  “When?”

  She tossed three cards to the table. They were aces. “Tonight,” she said. “At midnight.”

  The words seemed to reverberate through the noisy casino. Mantell’s hand shook as he produced the useless fourth ace, drawing it from the cards he held in his hand and dropping it atop the ones she had laid out.

  “Tonight? How will it be done?”

  “I’m going to do it,” Myra said. The distortion of the scattering field robbed her voice of any emotional overtone. “Thurdan has asked me to come to his apartment tonight. We have dinner, then do some work—minor details that he doesn’t have time to handle during the day. I’ll come tonight—with a knife. He’ll be surprised.”