Doomsman - the Theif of Thoth
Page 9
It was a bubble, all steel, and impregnable.
He knew he could not get in. They would have guards,
they would have defenses. He had to go on down. He
turned on his back and paddled away, then down again.
The pressure might crush him, but he was banking they
had set up the system not only to handle the equalizing
problem, but to do it within the limits of the men's comfort. In an emergency, he might be able to make the next one down, This was an emergency.
He stopped thinking, for thinking could only make it
worse He had killed too often. thought too many bad
things. He did not want to cry again.
It would be all right soon, when the * * • and the sharp
little " " •• of his thoughts settled to the floor of his
mind, resting as the whales rested in the colorless ooze of
the ocean bottom. He dove� and thought no more. It was
a long time_
.n was a bloody descent The guards were not so alert
.in the lower pressurizing s[>beres. They had been lulled
DOOMSMAN
by the security of a sphere above them, reasoning that a
man could not dive as deep as the next spheres, and so
must stop at the sphere above. They were wrong.
Down he went, and long stretched into the unending
gloom of the deep. The blue aura flickered and shone
around him, not so much as a headlight in the darkness,
but as a deterrent to those roamers of the ocean who ate
what swam.
A bloody descent, for three men died in that second
sphere, and three in the third sphere, and two in the
fourth. Nine men of Eskalyo had already died, so Juanita
could find his father.
Was it worth it? He didn't know, but the drive was in
him and he had to go down and down and down to see
Eskalyo. And he knew how to kill; he had been taught
well at the School. It was all he knew, so he did it without thought or compunction. The remorse was a strange, gnarled thing, altered in shape, and was not remorse by
the time he felt it. But in its way and its form, it was
there.
Finally, when he thought surely he could go no deeper,
it rose out of the ooze and slime of· the bottom, surrounded by reefs of coral and miles-high trees of sea growth. It was a pink glow at first. A halo coruscating in the depths,
thrust up between the jaws of a subsea canyon. Thrust up
and pulsing, like some cosmic lightning. As he swam
down, stroking strongly now that the goal was almost in
sight, the city rose up out of the canyon. It was a dome,
sunk down on a plateau inside the subsea canyon. It was
perhaps twenty-five miles in circumference, and the dome
rose up a good five miles in its arch. It was huge and
impressive, and totally pink with a light all its own. He
could see why they had named it what they had named it.
Ciudad Rosario.
The patrol shot up to meet him Ten of them. They
.
had their spear guns drawn, and there would be no
chance to talk them out of what they had in mind. Juanita struggled backward and lodged himself in between two shafts of coral, sighting aim on the leader of the
oncoming group. The muzzle of his own spear gun was
thrust through a break in the coral, and as the deeps-
DOOMSMAN
man's face grew clear inside the bubble helmet, Juanito
depressed the firing stud. A mu.fHed report and the bolt
shussssshed away at lightning speed, trailing bubbles
and its cord.
The spear took the man high in the chest and bowled
him backward, carrying him over and feet over and over,
till finally he hung there, limp in the water, his blood
spreading out in a dark cloud around him. Juanita
stabbed at the rewind stud and the mechanism on the
spear tip exploded the bolt free of the dead flesh. The
bolt returned in a twinkling, and though the nine remaining members of the patrol team had scattered, J uanito set the spear back to full power and waited.
They dropped down from atop. He had somehow
forgotten for an instant that this was not free air, but the
carnal ocean, and they came down from above, and
grabbed him.
He struggled with them, but they were in their element,
and it was not hard for their rippling muscles to command his. He wrenched free suddenly and tried to break out from between the coral shafts.
Then one of the deepsmen raised a thin tube of metal,
aimed it and a bolt of deep azure substance struck Juanita Montoya. The assassin felt the power of it wash him and his body was limp as seaweed. The hurt was growing
though, and then-abruptly-it was gone • • •
Everything was gone . • •
He slid off into a dark, darker than th� darkness of the
sea.
He was walking on a spongy road that sucked and
plopped and made vile noises with its million mouths. It
was a grey road, and it wound downward toward a bog
that sucked and plopped and made even more vile noises
with its million mouths. His feet were caught in the stuff,
and he could walk only with an extreme effort. His
hands were free, and he wielded a long knife of heroic
proportions that was dripping rainbow-shaded blood. His
mouth was covered with tape. All around him were
screams.
DOOMSMAN
He
-awoke!
I
"Who are you?" The man before him was tall, with a
tight, urgent competence to his body, though it was
apparent the man was past the prime of life. At least
sixty, perhaps older, with a fine downy white goatee that
came from his chin. His eyes were dark black and
though silver dodged through his hair, still the black mat
of it was high enough to be combed without white
streaks. His nose was aquiline and had been broken once,
and set poorly. His hands were delicate yet reminded Juanita of Thirteen, from his class in the School; Thirteen, whose hands were strangler's hands. These hands were
veined, but not quite killing hands. They werewhat?---doing hands perhaps. Yes, that was it; they were hands that accomplished.
"My son." The man spoke the words so softly, so simply, they told Juanita many things. This was his father, this was Don Eskalyo. Somehow, his father had found
out who he was.
"How . . .
"
"Probing," Eskalyo admitted, and shook his head in an
indefinite little movement. "We learned it all. All of it."
"I've come a long way, Father." There was no weariness now, and neither-surprisingly to Juanito----was there a lack of emotion, affection. He felt warmth for this
man. For the first time in his life, with the exception of
Jock-Thirteen-he felt a kinship, a nearness to someone. Juanita Montoya had come home.
"They sent me out to kill you,' J uanito said, unnecessarily.
Eskalyo's face held a strange expression. Not fear. Not
hatred. Not determination. More, a soft-edged resignedness. What was to be, was to be. It was not a good expression.
"Yes, !I know all that. They know they cannot defeat
me. They know we have something on our side that
means their end . . .
"
Juanita nodded. "I know what it is, !I found it also. I
in New Chicago, and in Alaska, and-"
DOOMSMAN
-and what they have made of you. Yes, all of that,
my son." Eskalyo drew a deep breath.
He went on. "The AmericaState is seething; it won't be
too long now, when everything will explode like the volcanos around us, here at the bottom of the sea, We know that, and they know it, and they fear me. I have contacted the petty monarchies all across the continent, and they are ready, ready to strike when the day is right."
Juanita listened, thrilled for the first time in his life. He
had run and hidden and killed, . and now he was part of a
cause, something to work for and hope for and pray for.
"You came with Elena," Eskalyo said in clipped accents.
J uanito nodded. "She is locked in a locker in the copter."
"She is your half-sister," Eskalyo said. Then, when the
shock had worn away slightly, and Juanita thought of
how he had treated her, how he had forced her to lead
him here-for it was the only way he knew to deal with
people-he could not speak.
"I want to join you, Father," Juanita hurriedly said,
when the mist in his mind had cleared. "I wish to fight
with you. I've been trained. I can fight and I can kill. I
can-"
Juanita stopped abruptly. Eskalyo was shaking his
head. "No, Juanita, you cannot join me."
"But-but-why?"
"A culture produces certain kinds of men. These men
are products and it is not their fault they have been
ruined and altered and corrupted. But they art part of
that culture, and any culture that takes them in runs the
risk of the original sin all over again."
"I don't . . . know what-what you mean
" Jua
•
•
•
nita stammered.
Eskalyo did not have a chance to continue.
The weapon AmericaState was prepared to use, so the
assassin would kill his father, came into being_ How it
had been planted, how it had been concealed in Juanita's
brain so that even he did not know it was there, no one
would ever know. But the tiny beamed transceptor in his
DOOMSMAN
skull, snugged down in the brain tissue, placed there by
the Prober when he had first discovered Juanito was
Eskalyo's son, and beamed to Don Eskalyo's thought patterns, as constructed from early retinal and thought patterns of Juanito-bJazed.
The deadly beams slashed from Juanita's eyes. Eskalyo
had but a split-second to duck. Unbidden, Juanita's eyes
followed his father, and the bright orange beams of destruction continued to stream forth, and Eskalyo dodged, ducked, flopped and rolled across the floor.
Juanito screamed, for the pain was terrible. He
screamed because this was his life, being taken from him.
He screamed because now that he had found his father he
did not want to lose him! "No! No no no, stop!" he
screamed at himself, but could do nothing. His eyes were
drawn to his father, and he could not stop the beams of
force from firing. He tore at his face, but the beams continued, and his eyes would not close, then-Three deepsmen stepped out from behind curtains,
their spear guns leveled, and they aimed at Juanito.
"Wait, stop!" Eskalyo yelled, all the while dodging and
struggling to keep out of the line of the beams.
He could not bring himself to kill his son.
"Kill me, kill me!" Juanita shrieked, and mad� to grab
a spear gun from one deepsman, even ·as his eyes were
averted, still turned on his father.
They would not fire for their Don had not given his
word. Juanito struggled, like a man hag-ridden, and he
clutched at his pouch, and drew forth the vibro-blade,
bringing it up to-
He was blind. He was dying, but worse, he was blind.
Perhaps if he had been able to see, it might not have been
so bad. He lay dying on the floor, blinded by his own
hand, the soggy, pulped remain of half his face an aching
pulse.
He was dying, and there was nothing to say. He had
come a long way, and he knew it was this way all along.
He was bound to death.
DOOMSMAN
He had been doomed from the outset. Like a piece of
wood, caught at the edge of the beach; it might roll with
the waves for a long time, till it was thrust up onto the
sands, where it would rot, still forever. Or, it might roll
back into the ocean, and be lost in the waves. Either way,
it was lost, even as he was lost.
He had nothing to say. That was the way of the assassin. He held tightly to his father's hand, and it said I'm home, Father, now I'm home. He did not speak, but Don
Eskalyo heard the silent words whispering on the air.
Soon, he died. Quietly. Not at all the way he had lived,
so young to die, so full of violence. Quietly he died.
And Eskalyo was silently glad it had happened this
way, terrible way it had happened. Glad, for he knew he
was saved by the very AmericaState that had tried to destroy him. He had been saved by their instrument, his son. A son he would have had to kill himself-for that
was what he was about to tell Juanito before the weapon
exploded into life.
He was going to tell him that no matter if a man is
innocent or guilty, if he is a product of an evil system, he
is doomed.
He would have had to tell him that no matter how
hard Juanito tried, the new world had no place for him
and his violence. It had no place for a man who knew
nothing but death. Eskalyo would have had to deal the
death blow himself, and he had been saved from it.
The world would be clean some day soon. It would be
free of all AmericaState had brought about--even free of
men like Juanito Montoya.
The means was not worth the end. The manner in
which Juanito Montoya had gotten to Ciudad Rosario,
the way in which he had treated Elena, they were all typical of the man, and no change could be brought about that would be final and complete. So, an outcast in the
world that had made him, Juanito would have been condemned by his father's hand. To protect the world Juanito wanted to see.
It had had to be that way.
Now it was finished. It was silence and depth.
Later, they took him out far out into the Pampas, and
buried him where the birds would not fly over him, and
DOOMSMAN
the wind would not disturb � and he could find the
one peace left to a man who kn�w only the way of the
assassin.
Sleep.
THE THIEF OF THDTH
by Lin Carter
I
IIAUTLEY QUICKSILVER, who was among the most celebrated
and certainly the most distinguished of all the Licensed Legal
Criminals and Confidential Agents in the Near Stars, lived
with all the luxurious refinements and civilized comforts
available to those who have achieved the ultimate peak of
their profession.
He had a castle of organic pink quartz on the planetoid
Carvel in that asteroid belt known as The Chain of Astarte.
It had been designed to his specif
ications by none other than
Smingoth Whibberley, the most noted, controversial, and
widely imitated architectural philosopher of the 36th century
A.C. There Hautley lived alone with his quaint hobbies, his
curious pets, and his truly extraordinary collection of hand
weapons culled from 1 ,376 different planetary cultures. No
less than sixteen hundred varieties of weapon were represented in his arsenal-among them devices designed to stab, slice, puncture, detonate, envenom, stun, paralyze, render immobile, implode, decapitate, unlimb, eviscerate or otherwise render hors de combat an unwary opponent. With each of
these, Quicksilver had made certain he acquired a thorough
professional competency upon which depended (and not infrequently) the adroit performance of his occupational duties, if not indeed continuance of life itself.
Quicksilver's castle clung to a sheer crag of dark green
coral which rose from a sea of heavy opal smoke. 1bis vaporous ocean entirely mantled the surface of the planetoid and the pinkly alabastrine hue of his castle formed a delicate aesthetic contrast against the melting and changing hues of the
heavy vapor, the rough emeraldine coral, and the tea-rose
sky, with the sullen disc of Astarte a smouldering ruby on the
dim horizon.
This horizon looked to be far more distant than it actually
was. Carvel was a terraformed planetoid with a diameter of
only forty-nine kilometers. A permanent and artificial magnetic
field, generated by certain ingenious devices situated at the
core of the worldlet, continuously distorted the gaseous molecules of which the atmosphere was composed, lending the optical effect of a stupendous lens. This created the illusion of vast distances, pleasing to the eye.
The coral peak to which clung the pink quartz buildings
was but one among a scattered forest of similar monoliths
which rose from the opal sea at irregular intervals over the
entire surface of Carvel. Carvel itself was one of several
thousand similar worldlets that encircled the otherwise planetless star-a dying red Supergiant with an Ml spectrum, comparable to Antares but somewhat less in magnitude. This
chain of tiny planetoids, in which Carvel was but a minor
gem, encircled the russet star like a necklace of jewels around
the throat of some dusky queen; and among the whirling
myriads, Carvel was lost and hidden.