The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories
Roger Zelazny
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth
I'm a baitman. No one is born a baitman, except in a French novel where everyone is. (In fact, I think that's the title, _We are All Bait_. Pfft!) How I got that way is barely worth the telling and has nothing to do with neo-exes, but the days of the beast deserve a few words, so here they are.
The Lowlands of Venus lie between the thumb and forefinger of the continent known as Hand. When you break into Cloud Alley it swings its silverblack bowling ball toward you without a warning. You jump then, inside that firetailed tenpin they ride you down in, but the straps keep you from making a fool of yourself. You generally chuckle afterwards, but you always jump first.
Next, you study Hand to lay its illusion and the two middle fingers become dozen-ringed archipelagoes as the outers resolve into greengray peninsulas; the thumb is too short, and curls like the embryo tail of Cape Horn.
You suck pure oxygen, sigh possibly, and begin the long topple back to the Lowlands.
There, you are caught like an infield fly at the Lifeline landing area--so named because of its nearness to the great delta in the Eastern Bay--located between the first peninsula and "thumb." For a minute it seems as if you're going to miss Lifeline and wind up as canned seafood, but afterwards--shaking off the metaphors--you descend to scorched concrete and present your middle-sized telephone directory of authorizations to the short, fat man in the gray cap. The papers show that you are not subject to mysterious inner rottings and etcetera. He then smiles you a short, fat, gray smile and motions you toward the bus which hauls you to the Reception Area. At the R.A. you spend three days proving that, indeed, you are not subject to mysterious inner rottings and etcetera.
Boredom, however, is another rot. When your three days are up, you generally hit Lifeline hard, and it returns the compliment as a matter of reflex. The effects of alcohol in variant atmospheres is a subject on which the connoisseurs have written numerous volumes, so I will confine my remarks to noting that a good binge is worthy of at least a week's time and often warrants a lifetime study.
I had been a student of exceptional promise (strictly undergraduate) for going on two years when the _Bright Water_ fell through our marble ceiling and poured its people like targets into the city.
Pause. The Worlds Almanac re Lifeline: "...Port city on the eastern coast of Hand. Employees of the Agency for Non-terrestrial Research comprise approximately 85% of its 100,000 population (2010 Census). Its other residents are primarily personnel maintained by several industrial corporations engaged in basic research. Independent marine biologists, wealthy fishing enthusiasts, and waterfront entrepreneurs make up the remainder of its inhabitants."
I turned to Mike Dabis, a fellow entrepreneur, and commented on the lousy state of basic research.
"Not if the mumbled truth be known."
He paused behind his glass before continuing the slow swallowing process calculated to obtain my interest and a few oaths, before he continued.
"Carl," he finally observed, poker playing, "they're shaping Tensquare."
I could have hit him. I might have refilled his glass with sulfuric acid and looked on with glee as his lips blackened and cracked. Instead, I grunted a noncommittal.
"Who's fool enough to shell out fifty grand a day? ANR?"
He shook his head.
"Jean Luharich," he said, "the girl with the violet contacts and fifty or sixty perfect teeth. I understand her eyes are really brown."
"Isn't she selling enough face cream these days?"
He shrugged.
"Publicity makes the wheels go 'round. Luharich Enterprise jumped sixteen points when she picked up the Sun Trophy. You ever play golf on Mercury?"
I had, but I overlooked it and continued to press.
"So she's coming here with a blank check and a fishhook?"
"_Bright Water_, today," he nodded. "Should be down by now. Lots of cameras. She wants an Ikky, bad."
"Hmm," I hmmed. "How bad?"
"Sixty day contract. Tensquare. Indefinite extension clause. Million and a half deposit," he recited.
"You seem to know a lot about it."
"I'm Personnel Recruitment. Luharich Enterprises approached me last month. It helps to drink in the right places.
"Or own them." He smirked, after a moment.
I looked away, sipping my bitter brew. After awhile I swallowed several things and asked Mike what he expected to be asked, leaving myself open for his monthly temperance lecture.
"They told me to try getting you," he mentioned. "When's the last time you sailed?"
"Month and a half ago. The _Corning_."
"Small stuff," he snorted. "When have you been under, yourself?"
"It's been awhile."
"It's been over a year, hasn't it? That time you got cut by the screw, under the _Dolphin_?"
I turned to him.
"I was in the river last week, up at Angleford where the currents are strong. I can still get around."
"Sober," he added.
"I'd stay that way," I said, "on a job like this."
A doubting nod.
"Straight union rates. Triple time for extraordinary circumstances," he narrated. "Be at Hangar Sixteen with your gear, Friday morning, five hundred hours. We push off Saturday, daybreak."
"You're sailing?"
"I'm sailing."
"How come?"
"Money."
"Ikky guano."
"The bar isn't doing so well and baby needs new minks."
"I repeat--"
"...And I want to get away from baby, renew my contract with basics--fresh air, exercise, make cash..."
"All right, sorry I asked."
I poured him a drink, concentrating on H2SO4, but it didn't transmute. Finally I got him soused and went out into the night to walk and think things over.
Around a dozen serious attempts to land _Ichthyform Leviosaurus Levianthus_, generally known as "Ikky", had been made over the past five years. When Ikky was first sighted, whaling techniques were employed. These proved either fruitless or disastrous, and a new procedure was inaugurated. Tensquare was constructed by a wealthy sportsman named Michael Jandt, who blew his entire roll on the project.
After a year on the Eastern Ocean, he returned to file bankruptcy. Carlton Davits, a playboy fishing enthusiast, then purchased the huge raft and laid a wake for Ikky's spawning grounds. On the nineteenth day out he had a strike and lost one hundred fifty bills' worth of untested gear, along with one _Ichthyform Levianthus_. Twelve days later, using tripled lines, he hooked, narcotized, and began to hoist the huge beast. It awakened then, destroyed a control tower, killed six men, and worked general hell over five square blocks of Tensquare. Carlton was left with partial hemiplegia and a bankruptcy suit of his own. He faded into waterfront atmosphere and Tensquare changed hands four more times, with less spectacular but equally expensive results.
Finally, the big raft, built only for one purpose was purchased at an auction by ANR for "marine research." Lloyd's still won't insure it, and the only marine research it has ever seen is an occasional rental at fifty bills a day--to people anxious to tell Leviathan fish stories. I've been a baitman on three of the voyages, and I've been close enough to count Ikky's fangs on two occasions. I want one of them to show my grandchildren, for personal reasons.
I faced the direction of the landing area and resolved a resolve.
"You want me for local coloring, gal. It'll look nice on the feature page a
nd all that. But clear this--If anyone gets you an Ikky, it'll be me. I promise."
I stood in the empty Square. The foggy towers of Lifeline shared their mists.
Shoreline a couple eras ago, the western slope above Lifeline stretches as far as forty miles inland in some places. Its angle of rising is not a great one, but it achieves an elevation of several thousand feet before it meets the mountain range which separates us from the Highlands. About four miles inland and five hundred feet higher than Lifeline are set most of the surface airstrips and privately owned hangars. Hangar Sixteen houses Cal's Contract Cab, hop service, shore to ship. I do not like Cal, but he wasn't around when I climbed from the bus and waved to a mechanic.
Two of the hoppers tugged at the concrete, impatient beneath flywing haloes. The one on which Steve was working belched deep within its barrel carburetor and shuttered spasmodically.
"Bellyache?" I inquired.
"Yeah, gas pains and heartburn."
He twisted setscrews until it settled into an even keening, and turned to me.
"You're for out?"
I nodded.
"Tensquare. Cosmetics. Monsters. Stuff like that."
He blinked into the beacons and wiped his freckles. The temperature was about twenty, but the big overhead spots served a double purpose.
"Luharich," he muttered. "Then you _are_ the one. There's some people want to see you."
"What about?"
"Cameras. Microphones. Stuff like that."
"I'd better stow my gear. Which one am I riding?"
He poked the screwdriver at the other hopper.
"That one. You're on video tape now, by the way. They wanted to get you arriving."
He turned to the hangar, turned back.
"Say 'cheese.' They'll shoot the close-ups later."
I said something other than "cheese." They must have been using telelens and been able to read my lips, because that part of the tape was never shown.
I threw my junk in the back, climbed into a passenger seat, and lit a cigarette. Five minutes later, Cal himself emerged from the office Quonset, looking cold. He came over and pounded on the side of the hopper. He jerked a thumb back at the hangar.
"They want you in there!" he called through cupped hands. "Interview!"
"The show's over!" I yelled back. "Either that, or they can get themselves another baitman!"
His rustbrown eyes became nailheads under blond brows and his glare a spike before he jerked about and stalked off. I wondered how much they had paid him to be able to squat in his hangar and suck juice from his generator.
Enough, I guess, knowing Cal. I never liked the guy, anyway.
Venus at night is a field of sable waters. On the coasts, you can never tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. Dawn is like dumping milk into an inkwell. First, there are erratic curdles of white, then streamers. Shade the bottle for a gray colloid, then watch it whiten a little more. All of a sudden you've got day. Then start heating the mixture.
I had to shed my jacket as we flashed out over the bay. To our rear, the skyline could have been under water for the way it waved and rippled in the heatfall. A hopper can accommodate four people (five, if you want to bend Regs and underestimate weight), or three passengers with the sort of gear a baitman uses. I was the only fare, though, and the pilot was like his machine. He hummed and made no unnecessary noises. Lifeline turned a somersault and evaporated in the rear mirror at about the same time Tensquare broke the fore-horizon. The pilot stopped humming and shook his head.
I leaned forward. Feelings played flopdoodle in my guts. I knew every bloody inch of the big raft, but the feelings you once took for granted change when their source is out of reach. Truthfully, I'd had my doubts I'd ever board the hulk again. But now, now I could almost believe in predestination. There it was!
A tensquare football field of a ship. A-powered. Flat as a pancake, except for the plastic blisters in the middle and the "Rooks" fore and aft, port and starboard.
The Rook towers were named for their corner positions--and any two can work together to hoist, co-powering the graffles between them. The graffles--half gaff, half grapple--can raise enormous weights to near water level; their designer had only one thing in mind, though, which accounts for the gaff half. At water level, the Slider has to implement elevation for six to eight feet before the graffles are in a position to push upward, rather than pulling.
The Slider, essentially, is a mobile room--a big box capable of moving in any of Tensquare's crisscross groovings and "anchoring" on the strike side by means of a powerful electromagnetic bond. Its winches could hoist a battleship the necessary distance, and the whole craft would tilt, rather than the Slider come loose, if you want any idea of the strength of that bond.
The Slider houses a section operated control indicator which is the most sophisticated "reel" ever designed. Drawing broadcast power from the generator beside the center blister, it is connected by shortwave with the sonar room, where the movements of the quarry are recorded and repeated to the angler seated before the section control.
The fisherman might play his "lines" for hours, days even, without seeing any more than metal and an outline on the screen. Only when the beast is graffled and the extensor shelf, located twelve feet below waterline, slides out for support and begins to aid the winches, only then does the fisherman see his catch rising before him like a fallen Seraph. Then, as Davits learned, one looks into the Abyss itself and is required to act. He didn't, and a hundred meters of unimaginable tonnage, undernarcotized and hurting, broke the cables of the winch, snapped a graffle, and took a half-minute walk across Tensquare.
We circled till the mechanical flag took notice and waved us on down. We touched beside the personnel hatch and I jettisoned my gear and jumped to the deck.
"Luck," called the pilot as the door was sliding shut. Then he danced into the air and the flag clicked blank.
I shouldered my stuff and went below.
Signing in with Malvern, the de facto captain, I learned that most of the others wouldn't arrive for a good eight hours. They had wanted me alone at Cal's so they could pattern the pub footage along twentieth-century cinema lines.
Open: landing strip, dark. One mechanic prodding a contrary hopper. Stark-o-vision shot of slow bus pulling in. Heavily dressed baitman descends, looks about, limps across field. Close-up: he grins. Move in for words: "Do you think this is the time? The time he _will_ be landed?" Embarrassment, taciturnity, a shrug. Dub something-"I see. And why do you think Miss Luharich has a better chance than any of the others? Is it because she's better equipped? [Grin.] Because more is known now about the creature's habits than when you were out before? Or is it because of her will to win, to be a champion? Is it any one of these things, or is it all of them?" Reply: "Yeah, all of them." "--Is that why you signed on with her? Because your instincts say, 'This one will be it'?" Answer: "She pays union rates. I couldn't rent that damned thing myself. And I want in." Erase. Dub something else. Fade-out as he moves toward hopper, etcetera.
"Cheese," I said, or something like that, and took a walk around Tensquare, by myself.
I mounted each Rook, checking out the controls and the underwater video eyes. Then I raised the main lift.
Malvern had no objections to my testing things this way. In fact, he encouraged it. We had sailed together before and our positions had even been reversed upon a time. So I wasn't surprised when I stepped off the lift into the Hopkins Locker and found him waiting. For the next ten minutes we inspected the big room in silence, walking through its copper coil chambers soon to be Arctic.
Finally, he slapped a wall.
"Well, will we find it?"
I shook my head.
"I'd like to, but I doubt it. I don't give two hoots and a damn who gets credit for the catch, so long as I have a part in it. But it won't happen. That gal's an egomaniac. She'll want to operate the Slider, and she can't."
"You ever meet her?"
"Yeah."
/>
"How long ago?"
"Four, five years."
"She was a kid then. How do you know what she can do now?"
"I know. She'll have learned every switch and reading by this time. She'll be all up on theory. But do you remember one time we were together in the starboard Rook, forward, when Ikky broke water like a porpoise?"
"Well?"
He rubbed his emery chin.
"Maybe she can do it, Carl. She's raced torch ships and she's scubaed in bad waters back home." He glanced in the direction of invisible Hand. "And she's hunted in the Highlands. She might be wild enough to pull that horror into her lap without flinching.
"...For Johns Hopkins to foot the bill and shell out seven figures for the corpus," he added. "That's money, even to a Luharich."
I ducked through a hatchway.
"Maybe you're right, but she was a rich witch when I knew her.
"And she wasn't blonde," I added, meanly.
He yawned.
"Let's find breakfast."
We did that.
When I was young I thought that being born a sea creature was the finest choice Nature could make for anyone. I grew up on the Pacific coast and spent my summers on the Gulf or the Mediterranean. I lived months of my life negotiating with coral, photographing trench dwellers, and playing tag with dolphins. I fished everywhere there are fish, resenting the fact that they can go places I can't. When I grew older I wanted a bigger fish, and there was nothing living that I knew of, excepting a Sequoia, that came any bigger than Ikky. That's part of it....
I jammed a couple of extra rolls into a paper bag and filled a thermos with coffee. Excusing myself, I left the gallery and made my way to the Slider berth. It was just the way I remembered it. I threw a few switches and the shortwave hummed.
"That you, Carl?"
"That's right, Mike. Let me have some juice down here, you double-crossing rat."
He thought it over, then I felt the hull vibrate as the generators cut in. I poured my third cup of coffee and found a cigarette.
"So why am I a double-crossing rat this time?" came his voice again.
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories Page 1