He stood up and stretched luxuriously, feeling a contentment he had seldom experienced. He had succeeded, after years of frustration, to an extent beyond his wildest dreams.
A command cruiser!
The hardest, fastest, fightingest ship ever built. Probably no more than a dozen of them in the universe, and his, being the newest, was doubtless the best.
A ship like this meant power for its master. Power limited only by the master's desire and ability. And by his refusal to be hogtied by the goody-good morality of the Space Patrol.
"Ship, it's time I named you. From now on, you're Castle."
"Thank you, Vizad Olivine. I am Castle."
"And don't call me by my rank of vizad. Simply address me as Olivine. That will be more in keeping with my cover as an escaped prisoner who stole and mastered you. That's my cover, carefully developed by HQ over a period of eight years. As a criminal, I'mtoinfiltrate Dusty Roost, and with you to back me up, attain the highest position possible in Rooster leadership, in order to subvert the pirates."
"I understand, sir."
"Good. You were not led to doubt my authorization of mastery by the words of Proxad Coralon?"
"Not at all, sir. I am familiar with prison-ship security measures, sir, and am confident that, even during a pirate attack, you could not have escaped the Barnaby against the Patrol's wishes, sir."
Olivine gave a pleased nod, then thought again and felt anxiety hit the pit of his stomach.
That CIT computer was still dogging him!
But . . . no! Not any more. This time the escape wasn't rigged by the Patrol, to send him off like some automatic puppet on a string to do some errand. Escape would have been impossible without the assistance of his polywater doodle. Which the Patrol hadn't known about. He couldn't have got past his cage door without . . .
Still, the Barnaby's power had gone on the blink just at the instant the door unlatched . . . and the doodle had been lying on the floor beyond the door.
He gave a soft snort of disgust with himself.
After all, even if the door had been meant to unlatch when the power blinked, it wouldn't have swung open if he hadn't been pushing against it.
And besides, the CIT computer wasn't that stupid . . . or didn't think he was that stupid. For his cage door to unlatch because of a power fluctuation was too obvious an invitation to escape. The computer would know he would get wise to a trick like that!
And above all, the Patrol wouldn't let a vizad's command cruiser fall in his hands by intention. Why, nothing short of total pacification of Dusty Roost could make up for the amount of crow the Patrol would have to eat over a blunder like that.
Having thought the matter through to his satisfaction, Olivine gave the pocket containing the doodle an affectionate pat. "Bourbon on the rocks, Castle," he ordered.
"Yes, sir."
The serving pedestal rose from the floor. Olivine picked up the frosty glass and drank a toast to his freedom.
Let the Patrol watch my smoke, he gloated silently. Or their own smoke, because they're the ones who'll be burning.
CLOUD CHAMBER
Chapter 1
The backs of Mark Keaflyn's arms and legs were burning like fire. He was laughing.
The combination struck him as incongruous—and thus amusing—so for a moment he laughed louder. At the same time part of his mind was trying to decide why. Why was he laughing? Why were his limbs burning? Why was he sprawled face down on the ground?
None of this seemed to fit in with anything.
Slowly, still chuckling, he sat up and looked around. His surroundings looked very much like the desert Sonora-on-Terra, and the sun was beating down fiercely—which explained the burning of his exposed arms and legs. Absently he stroked his fingers across the sunburned areas, effectively running out the pain and inflammation, as he giggled at the pompous poses of a stand of saguaro cacti on the slope he sat facing.
Probably this actually was Sonora-on-Terra, he reasoned. He did remember coming to Old Earth . . . When? Working with difficulty around the compulsive hilarity that yammered in his mind, Keaflyn consulted his time sense and determined that the present moment was in the afternoon of Earthdate August 7, 2842. And he had arrived in the home world on August 6. That he remembered.
The question was, how and why had he come to be situated here in the middle of a desert, rather than in the city of Splendiss? And what the hell was so funny? Nothing, really, was funny about his situation, he decided—and burst out laughing again. Because it was ridiculously unfunny . . . and so trite. It was something out of an ancient wild west romance—stranded without water in the baking dryness of a Sonora summer. How cornball could a situation get? Maybe next he would try to get life-saving moisture by tearing into a barrel cactus. On the other hand, he couldn't spot a plant of that species from where he sat, and the cactus plants he did see looked forbiddingly tough and shriveled.
If he wanted to keep body and ego-field together, though, he had to find water.
He stood up, laughing this time because he had no idea which way to go. The rule was that, when lost in a wilderness a person should walk downhill, that being the surest way of reaching water or perhaps civilization. But as Keaflyn gazed amusedly about, he saw he could not guess within 180 degrees which way downhill was. The desert was flat, generally speaking.
There was a cluster of mountains off to the northwest, however. He could solve his problem by walking directly away from that landmark. At least, that would keep him moving in a reasonably straight line.
He began walking, giggling constantly, laughing out loud when he stumbled or when a particularly funny thought occurred to him.
As when he wondered if Tinker had arrived at Splendiss yet and how long she would wait for him to show up. These next-lifetime dates were often hard to keep, but he and Tinker had made three of them with success. This would be the fourth. If he got back to Splendiss. And if she showed up. It would be a scream if he knocked himself out crossing this silly desert to get back, and then she stood him up!
He fell down laughing over that one and decided not to bother getting up again. After all, he had walked for most of an hour without seeing that he was getting anywhere. And the body felt weak and dehydrated. Why bother?
There was a major difference between himself and an ancient wild-westerner caught in the same predicament. The old-timer would have thought himself on the verge of death, whereas Keaflyn knew that he was merely going to lose his present body, after which he would have to start from scratch as a soon-to-be-born infant.
Of course, an infant couldn't make love effectively with Tinker, which struck him as a howling joke on both of them. He had devoted a lot of effort to developing this body into a real beaut, partly for Tinker's pleasure and partly in anticipation of the work he had planned for this lifetime, work that would often call for strenuous effort.
A shameful waste, he thought with amused regret. His body was tall, well-muscled, and—being of Bensorian parentage—had a blond barbarian look. Tinker would have enjoyed it.
His arms and legs were beginning to burn again, so he rolled over onto his back.
"You still with us, pardner?"
The voice came from outside his laughter-ridden mind. He opened his eyes to seek its source.
A few feet away from him a lanky, dark-tanned figure in a broad-brimmed hat sat on a robohorse, studying him gravely. Keaflyn snorted hysterically.
The man asked, "What's so funny, pardner?"
"That stupid, woebegone expression on your face," laughed Keaflyn. "Not that you're really stupid, I'm sure, but . . . " He stopped to try to dampen the inside of his mouth.
"You got me tagged, pardner," said the man, swinging down from the robohorse. "I've been a cowpoke for nineteen out of the past twenty-two lives. If that don't make me stupid, what does? Need some water?"
Keaflyn sat up and took several swallows out of the canteen the man handed him. The water was cool and hilariously delicious. He alm
ost choked himself, laughing while he drank.
The cowpoke continued, "but stupid enough to wander off in the desert in August without water I've never been."
"I'm not sure I wandered," Keaflyn giggled. "Don't know how I got here." He tried hard to be serious for a moment and halfway succeeded. "Thanks for stumbling onto me. I was about to lose the bod."
"I didn't exactly stumble, pardner. I'm intuitive about creatures in distress. I caught your pattern half an hour back and rode out here, expecting to find a beleaguered bovine."
Through his guffaws Keaflyn managed to say, "I didn't know I transmitted like a cow. Or that I was radiating distress."
"You were," the cowpoke nodded. "You still are, for that matter."
"The hell you say! How can I be distressed when I'm having such a great time?"
The cowpoke shrugged. "Beats me. Except something's wrong with you, pardner. You got hysterics. I've seen nothing like it"—the man's eyes lost focus as he turned his attention to his backtrack—"since 1943, in the war we had then. It was a kid with combat fatigue, as we called it." He blinked and studied Keaflyn with increased concern. "Man, you are in a bad way! Can't you find it and blow it?"
"Blow what?"
"The cause of your hysterics."
Keaflyn thought about it with mild interest. It hadn't occurred to him that his merriment was abnormal, but now he could see that another person could think it was. And maybe this cowpoke was right. He hadn't been like this yesterday in the city of Splendiss. What had happened since then?
He attempted to scan the interim, but the line of his consciousness vanished into the vast mass of amusement that held sway in the center of his awareness. There was a vague impression of waking this morning in his Splendiss apartment with something wrong. Had he had a headache then? An ache through his entire body, in fact? That hardly seemed believable. Psychosomatic illness was a problem solved centuries ago! But his impression was that he woke up sick. And then he . . .
That was as far as he could follow it. The line burrowed into laughter.
"You're right," he told the cowpoke. "Something funny happened this morning, in Splendiss, probably. I can't get to it to blow it."
The man nodded. "The name's Alo Felston," he said, extending a leathery hand. "I better get you out of the hot sun."
"Mark Keaflyn," he responded, shaking the hand, and giggling. "You suppose I can stay on top of that robohorse with you?"
"Maybe not," Felston said thoughtfully. He turned to his mount and said, "Hornet, signal for a clopter to come."
"Okay, pardner," replied the robohorse. "On its way." Felston turned back to Keaflyn. "I still can't figure how you got way out here if you were in Splendiss. That city's usually in Quebec this time of year."
"I feel like I may have walked it," chuckled Keaflyn.
"It couldn't make sense that somebody was trying to do you in, could it?"
Keaflyn roared at the idea. "What kind of backtrack notion is that?" he snorted.
Felston shrugged. "You're in a hell of a backtrack kind of condition, man," he said defensively. "You've been stuck with a load you can't blow. If you were cleantracked before, you didn't get that load without help."
"My track was clean. I'm a total-clarity scanner. Or," he laughed, "I was until today."
"Take some more of that water," Felston advised. Keaflyn drank—and began laughing again. "Do you cowpoke from a robohorse out of respect for tradition?" he asked.
"Cows are skittish animals," Felston explained. "Pretty dim and overwhelmed ego-fields, they are. Things like clopters upset them, but a robohorse they can accept."
"How can a cow make a living in a place like this?"
"She can't, this time of year. We keep 'em up during this season. I took you for a stray."
Keaflyn was chuckling over the idea that cows and cowpokes still existed—although there was no real reason why they shouldn't, even in so unfavorable a spot as the Sonora. And Felston was, amusingly, a quasi-religious figure: the Good Shepherd—the Good Cowherd, that is—with the touch of telepathic ability required of a Guardian Angel, to help him rescue lost strays.
With a soft buzz, the clopter eased down a dozen yards away. Felston helped Keaflyn climb inside, then turned to his mount.
"I'll be gone for a while, Hornet. Tell Holmon. And mosey on home."
"Okay, pardner," the robohorse replied.
Felston boarded the clopter and sat down beside Keaflyn. "Destination is the city of Splendiss," he directed.
"Yes, sir," the clopter responded as it lifted off and climbed toward the northeast.
Keaflyn was laughing with childlike delight at the coolness in the clopter. Felston got out a food pack, and his passenger laughed around mouthfuls at the deliciousness of it.
The cowpoke was frowning worriedly. "Nothing you can do to stop that?" he asked.
"I don't think so," giggled Keaflyn, "but why bother?"
"So we can talk."
"I can talk and laugh at the same time," Keaflyn replied, demonstrating his point.
"Okay," Felston sighed. "What I wanted to tell you is that Splendiss parks here in the Sonora for three weeks every year. That's in the spring when the flowers are blooming. The city's site is usually about two hundred miles south of where I found you."
Keaflyn nodded agreeably to that information, diverted mirthfully because he could tell the cowpoke was making a point of some kind, which he didn't get at all.
"The thing is," Felston went on, "that the regular residents of Splendiss would know the Sonora. One of them would know that a man dumped without water where I found you would wind up lizard bait."
"But I didn't," Keaflyn chuckled. "You did find me."
"Sure, but the Splendiss folks don't know about me. I don't advertise as a telepath. So when they ask, let's just say I happened to stumble onto you."
"Okay, I'll keep your secret, Alo," Keaflyn said reassuringly, pleased that he had managed to recall the cowpoke's first name.
"Good, Mark. But I want you to think about who in Splendiss would want to do you in."
"Oh, that. Nobody, of course." Was this cowpoke some kind of crazy throwback? he wondered. Mustering a moment of fragile gravity, he said, "You've been a cowpoke for too many lives, Alo. Your thinking was bucolic. Cities haven't been dens of iniquity for centuries. The sanity of humanity is universal. People don't kill people anymore." Then he laughed at his pomposity.
"In your case, I'd say somebody sure tried," answered Felston.
Keaflyn's attention was no longer on the cowpoke, however. The clopter's communicator had caught his eye, and it occurred to him that he wanted to make a call. He switched on the communicator and said, "Splendiss directory, please."
"What are you up to?" demanded Felston. "You shouldn't let anybody know—"
"Yes, sir," the robovoice of the Splendiss directory came from the speaker.
"Do you have an arrival coded 'Tinker'?" gurgled Keaflyn.
"Yes, sir, as of noon today, sir."
"Fine! This is Mark Keaflyn, coded 'Jack.' Admit Tinker to my apartment and tell her I'll be there shortly. Out."
"Yes, sir." Felston said, "Maybe now whoever's after your hide knows he's got to try again."
"You've got a one-track mind, friend," Keaflyn laughed. "A one-track backtrack mind, that is."
Felston shrugged. "Have it your way, Mark. It's no news to me that murder's a habit humanity's broken. Wrecking sanity's another one. The evidence is still there that your mind has been tampered with—by an expert, I'd say—and you were left in the desert to die. You can giggle all you please about how impossible that is, but it's what the facts indicate. And if you don't mind, I'll stick around till the whole thing is settled."
There was a grim anger in Felston's tone that cut through to Keaflyn's attention for an instant. "The Guardian Angel sounds like an Avenging Angel," he remarked gaily.
Quietly Felston said, "I've worked with cattle for a long time, Mark, also with real hors
es back in the early days. My telepathy isn't much, but it's enough for me to know the ego-fields of the so-called dumb animals. One thing I'm sure of is that those ego-fields were once as powerful as you or me. They've been beaten down, degraded, overwhelmed, and overloaded over the trilleniums to the point where they can't be people anymore."
"Dispirited spirits, huh?" joked Keaflyn.
"Right," Felston agreed seriously. "So totally broken that they're beyond help. Maybe still lower bodyforms have ego-fields even more completely smashed; I don't know, because I can't feel them." He turned his head to fix Keaflyn with hard eyes. "Anyway, I've touched enough degraded ego-fields to know damn well that I despise anybody or anything that would knowingly damage sanity—push an ego-field one inch in the downward direction. Somebody's done that to you. I want to know who."
"Don't stare at me," Keaflyn giggled. "I didn't do it." After a moment he guffawed loudly. "What will you do when you find the villain? Murder him?"
Felston's fists clenched, but he said nothing. The clopter glided down to Splendiss, was guided to Keaflyn's apartment, and snuggled against the outer wallport. The port opened when Keaflyn said his name, and he and Felston stepped through.
Standing in the center of the room was a girl perhaps eleven years old and a man of about forty-five.
"I'm Clav Didorik," said the man in a deep, brusque voice that matched his large form. "Which of you is Jack?"
"That's me," chuckled Keaflyn.
"This is my daughter, Marianne Didorik—Tinker." Keaflyn gazed down at the little girl, his grin broadening until it turned into peals of laughter. He sat down in the nearest chair and continued to roar.
Tinker came and leaned against his shoulder. "I'm awfully sorry, Jack," she said. "The body I meant to meet you in this time got killed. When it was nine years old, it was caught in the Brobdinagia disaster. You heard about that, didn't you?"
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