Doomsman - the Theif of Thoth

by Harlan Ellison

  masquerader pretending to be a famous scholar, to simultaneously develop an interest in purloining the object. Why were individuals from three such widely different areas of expertise suddenly displaying such an extraordinary desire in the Crown?

  An unidentified individual posing as an archeologist, but

  perhaps more truly of a criminal profession, a supercilious

  planetary prince, motives unknown; an intelligence agent, acting under orders of the Emperor's Cabinet. What did these three have in common? Desire for wealth-power-know!-

  edge? No, it was something else, some as yet unknown factor

  which Hautley Quicksilver's acute perceptions had yet to untangle from this raveled knot of mixed motives and unanswered questions.

  A small vertical crease, indicative of intellectual tension,

  formed between his ebon arched brows.

  This much at least hinted at the key to the puzzle: one of

  the three was known to be an imposter.

  Although Pawel Spiro's story hung together, and his disguise was clever enough to fool the camera-and to elude detection by a known colleague, his esteemed superior-the real Pawel Spiro was busily at work in the center of the galaxy on

  anthropological-archeological research, while a phony Pawel

  Spiro, half a galaxy away, was holed up in a glossy tourist

  trap of a hotel, awaiting worli from the foremost private investigator in Known Space.

  Who was the pseudo Spiro? Why did he want the Crown?

  And, perhaps more importantly, whom did he represent?

  And come to think of it, was the pseudo Spiro the only

  fake among Hautley's three would-be clients? What of Heveret Twelfth? True, his fingerprints seemed to match those retained in official Canopan records, but that was only proof to a degree.

  Quicksilver smiled thinly.' In these days of advanced technology, the criminal mind had resources vastly superior to those of the good old days. It was no longer impossible to

  fake fingerprints. Indeed, without greatly taxing his imagination, the galaxy's ace investigator could easily bring to mind no less than eight different ways of so doing, to wit:

  1. Invisible fingertip sheaths bearing raised imprints.

  2. Skin graft, or entire digital transplantation.

  3. Homosculpture.

  4. Bribery of the Archives official whom Quicksil-

  ver had interviewed, or replacement of the genuine

  archivist with a criminal accomplice.

  5. The simple forgery of fake fingerprint records, cunningly smuggled into the Canopan Archives.

  6. Dialic biostasism.

  7. Narcotic persuasion or hypnotic implanting of

  false information regarding the fingerprints of His

  Dignity in the mind of the Archivist.

  8. And last, but not least, time-prolapse, by means

  of an Anchidean protomorph, or a laboratory duplication thereof.

  However, as yet Hautley had no positive evidence as to the

  identity of the individual who had attempted to retain his

  professional services while claiming to be the Proprietor of

  Canopus. This facet of the case would bear further study. He

  filed away among other temporarily unanswerable questions

  the matter of the true identity of the so-called Heveret

  Twelfth.

  No more time for deliberation. The ship was approaching

  'Ibieves' Haven • , •

  17

  THE OUTLAw PLANET in the Gap was not very much larger

  than his own domain of Carvel in the Chain of Astarte. And

  unlike the Astartean system, this one consisted of a single

  minor planet, rather than a belt of asteriods, a system moreover devoid of even a parent star, for Thieves' Haven drifted alone in the blackness of the abyss-like rift between the two

  galactic arms. Rumor had it that the planetoid had once been

  a rogue world wandering space until it fell under the scrutiny

  of a band of master space-thieves who had the worldlet terra-formed at vast expense, triggering a nuclear "round-robin,.

  effect in the planetoidal core for beat, and stimulating the

  ionic field about the new atmosphere for sunlight, or a near

  equivalent thereof.

  Landing at the planet's only spacefield, Hautley locked his

  ship and consulted his timepiece. Less than two hours had

  elapsed since he had bade farewell to Pawel Spiro back on

  Carvel. The imposter would presumably suspend independent

  operations until receiving final word from Hautley Quicksil­

  :ver, who had promised to either accept or decline his con-

  tract within twenty-seven hours. Twenty-five hours remained

  before Hautley must make up his mind. And within this interval, he must accomplish a variety of routine tasks.

  He must locate Shpem Hufferd, and extract from the retired accomplice of Dugan Motley the current location and present pseudonym of the Master-Burglar of Capitan.

  He must secure a personal interview with this Dugan Motley, and pump him of relevant information regarding Motley's famous attempt to steal the reptillian artifact, .in particular, a description of the various measures taken by the Neotbothic priesthood to protect their jewelled treasure from

  thievery; and the means by which Dugan Motley, and Dugan

  Motley alone of all the criminals who had attempted to steal

  the Crown, had escaped from the grip of the fanatic Crownguardians unharmed and unpunished.

  He must furthermore decide which, of the three potential

  clients who had applied for his services, be would accept a

  contract from, and if at all possible, find out who or what

  was behind the imposter posing as Pawel Spiro.

  Quite a list of things to be done within a mere twenty-five

  hours, but Hautley remained undaunted by the enormity of

  this caper. He proceeded about his business, having berthed

  his craft in a rented dock.

  Emerging from the subterranean docking facilities to the

  upper levels of the outlaw world's one city, fittingly named

  Hideout, be took a glidewalk into the business district.

  It was a fantastic metropolis, this capital city of Crime.

  Fabulous avenues lined with · palaces of wine and gourmet

  foods, as well as most of the other pleasures which the flesh

  feU heir to (including thirteen totally new and original vices

  especially invented for Thieves' Haven by a team of

  galactically-famed psychologists, chemists and anatomical

  specialists retained by the local planetary government, known

  as The Syndicate, a generation earlier at incredible fees) .

  Quicksilver had never before had occasion to land on the

  outlaw planet in the Gap in all his excitement-packed career,

  and he looked forward to a tour of the incredible City of

  Criminals.

  While he gaped and gawked at the sights, the swiftly moving power-driven glidewalk. carried him through a whirling panorama of storefronts and neon illuminated signs indicative

  of the pleasures that awaited within.

  Others rode the glidewalk besides him, of course. And

  there was one of these that kept an unobtrusive eye on the

  stoop-shouldered form of the disguised Hautley Quicksilver.

  This individual, a bald-domed, grey-complexioned Orgotry

  in fluorescent scarlet tights slashed with dead-black piping

  and puckered ruffs, ostensibly coughed into a cupped hand.

  Actually, between hacking spasms of glottal throat-clearing,

  the Orgotyr whispered into a ring-radio:

  "It's Quicksilver, chief. What are my instructions?"

/>   Although Hautley knew it not, yet another, a fourth claimant was interested in the Crown of Stars!

  18

  ALL ABOUT THE GLDEWALK whereon the disguised Hautley

  Quicksilver rode, closely shadowed by an unknown observer

  narrowly watching his every move, towered the glittering facades of gaming houses and gambling palaces wherein were installed no fewer than eleven thousand. four hundred and

  sixteen different games of chance devised and maintained for

  the sole purpose of parting a man from his munits.

  For those whose tastes demanded a different sort of stimulus, there were establishments catering to bizarre tastes wherefor princely fees, one could titillate even the most jaded palate by torturing an android, or synthetic human female to death, or where one could indulge in an astounding variety of

  narcotics, including eleven brand new ones the chemists of

  Thieves' Haven had invented. For those habituates so saturated with over-use of narcotic stimulants, and who thus required something rather special to send them off to Cloudcuckooland, other houses of pleasure proferred "super-boilermakers" in which thirty or forty different drugs were expertly blended, compounded and homogenized, and then injected directly into the living brain tissue.

  Yet other stores offered quiet nooks where one could spend

  a tranquil and contemplative hour or two of quiet meditation

  in the racks of the galaxy's most celebrated and inclusive pornographic, necrophiliac and homophagic library, with adjacent film collection for those troubled by a meagre vocabulary.

  Against the velvet backdrop of the Gap-black sky, phantasmal illusion-signs outblazed the stellar skies of other planets with multi-hued advertising spectaculars.

  AH PONG'S DE LUXE DREAMARIUM

  Murder! Rape! Torture! Mass Atrocities!

  Even Suicide For The Ultimate

  In Thrills!

  Have Your Kicks In The Finest Man­

  Made Synthetic Dreams & Illusions

  •

  PEG-LEG FAUNTLEROY

  PRESENTS: "MANHUNT'

  Track Down And Kill Your

  Enemies! Satisfaction Guaranteed!

  Risks Eliminated!

  Why Pay a Psychosurgeon??

  Our Androids Guaranteed to Simulate

  Mom, Dad, the Wife, or Anyone Else You Hate!

  So Work Off Your Frustrations

  The Fauntleroy Way!

  (Genuine Blood Supplied by

  Hemoglobin Associates, Ltd.)

  •

  ONE-EYE GROGAN'S HOUSE

  OF TEN THOUSAND GAMES

  "Lose Yer Shirt in Surroundings

  Of Palatial Elegance

  And Class!"

  •

  MADAME FAFH'S PALACE OF JOY

  Women of a Million Worlds,

  Specially Trained to Serve Youl

  Also, For

  Them As Likes,

  Boys, Men,

  Neuters, Albino Hermaphrodites

  And Highly Talent"ed Dogs!

  As he rode along, ostensibly gawking at the sights, Quicksilver tuned his wristphone to the planetary wavelength, and consulted the Central Directory of Thieves' Haven for the address of Shpern Hufferd. He promptly learned that the former professional associate of the now retired Master Burglar of Capitan now resided in a somewhat decayed suburb of the

  planetary capital. From this informative item, Quicksilver

  swiftly deduced that Hufferd now dwelt in somewhat reduced

  circumstances, despite a highly profitable career in galactic

  crime.

  It reminded Quicksilver of one of the less philosophical

  and more practicaJ. versicles of his own composition, which

  went something like this:

  Resolved: for crime to pay its best

  Your loot you wisely shouldst invest.

  However, it also indicated that, being low on funds, old

  Shpem Hufferd migbt be induced to part with Dugan Motley's current address for a small exchange of monetary units.

  Waiting for the next intersection, Quicksilver stepped off

  the express glidewalk onto a sideway and headed towards the

  less populous suburbs of the city of Hideout.

  Behind him, the bald-domed, grey-complexioned Orgotyr

  in the scarlet fluorescent tights slashed with dead-black piping

  and puckered ruffs stepped off the moving walk, and was replaced by a kind-faced individual in severely tailored sprayon slacks with triple-gathered dockets down the cuff; from his sandy hair-tufts and pallid visage, an inhabitant of Wollheim

  4.

  Through the gaudy neon-illuminated night hurtled Hautley

  and his accompanying shadow.

  Quicksilver treaded · gingerly between the maze of intersecting slideways and glidewalks, moving from strip to strip according to the precise directions he had received from the Central Directory of Citizens (a tourist service of Thieves'

  Haven Chamber of Commerce) .

  As he negotiated the moving roads, the position of his

  "tail" (if this historian may, for the moment, lapse into the

  criminous jargon of the era) was taken by a variety of individuals, including a plum-skinned Schloim from Pazatar 9, a white-furred and dual-headed entity from Wolverine 3, and,

  as the sequence returned to his original shadow, the balddomed, grey-complexioned Orgotyr showed up again.

  Thus kept under continuous surveillance, Quicksilver made

  the trip from the downtown business section of Hideout to

  the remote and rather decayed suburbs wherein he hoped to

  locate Shpern Hufferd

  19

  SHPERN HUFFERD lived in a ramshackle development between

  the Diomazian Sulphur Works and the Autophan Sewage

  Canal, a region that could with admirable accuracy be described as odoriferous. In this section of town none of the immense and immensely expensive illusion-display signs lit up

  the velvet darkness of night. The dilapidated rows of prefabricated hovels were drowned in purpureal gloom, an omnipresent pall broken only by the occasional, fitful and sputtering light in crude primary colors, of a few antediluvian and malfunctioning "neon signs" which blazoned forth such curt

  legends as JOE'S EATS; O'LEARY'S BAR & GRILL; WUN

  LONG PAN'S HAND LAUNDRY; MAXIE'S SODA­

  LUNCH; ZELIM QUANG'S ELITE OVO-SNAVE, and

  similar inscriptions.

  Quicksilver left the slideway and perambulated the few remaining blocks to his goal by the time-tested expedient of shank's mare. His interchangeable followers vanished. The

  streets were fashioned entirely of antiquated qwikplast, much

  stained and splotched by age and neglect. Filthy water gurgled in noisome gutters. Sagging housefronts sagged at odd angles above the street, shadeless windows leering emptily

  like the vacant eyesockets of human skulls-a distinctly foetid and rundown neighborhood That a once celebrated criminal of the calibre of Shpem Huflerd should have sunk so low as to inhabit a swinish hovel of such squalor as these. • •

  Sidestepping adroitly in order to avoid the rotting carcass

  of a starved housecat, Hautley found himself before Shpem

  Huflerd's address. According to the directory, the former

  criminal rented the first floor flat of the decayed two-story

  Living Home, a prefabricated hovel manufactured at a pit�

  tance by Prefabricated Hovels, Inc.

  There were no lights in the bleared and grease-filmed window.

  Nor did Hautley extract any reply when he sounded the

  buzzer. On the off chance that its mechanism might be inoperable, Hautley resorted to a manual signal and knocked.

  again eliciting a negative response.

  ,

  Presumably, Shpern Huflerd was not at home.

  Hautley glanced about him, tak
ing in the ill-lit and dubious

  condition of the neighborhood. Directly across the street was

  another two-story building, its bottom level devoted to an establishment purveying doubtful liquors, the upper story seem�

  ingly residential in character. A few mangy local citizens

  lounged about under a buzzing street light, or slouched

  moistly in the gurgling gutters, seemingly victims to the ine·

  briating beverages on sale in the street-level bar.

  If Shpem Huflerd were out, there were no way of forming

  an accurate estimate as to the time of his arrival home. And

  Hautley distinctly did not wish to remain standing in front of

  his residence all night. For one thing, the neighborhood was

  clearly disreputable. For another, he did not wish to draw attention to the fact that someone wished to interview the former associate of Dugan Motley.

  The best idea would be to simply wait inside. Hautley bent

  to examine the lock. It was an antique electronic-key model,

  which could be opened only by the appropriate wave length

  to which it was attuned.

  Hautley dipped one hand beneath his garments and withdrew a cunningly devised and miniature all-purpose electronic key from one of the innumerable 'pockets and pouches

  ·

  of his "business suit."

  He pressed the tubelike end of this small device against the

  keyhole and spun the dockets. The instrument rapidly ran

  through several thousand frequencies in less than 1 .07 sec�

  onds, eventually striking upon the precise frequency to which

  the lock was attuned.

  The door iris dilated and Hautley stepped quickly into a

  pitch-black room, illuminated only by fitful tlashes of dim

  neon through the grease-smeared windowpanes, through

  which the illuminated sign of the bar across the street shone

  as it flashed on and off.

  Hautley felt certain none of the dilapidated loungers loitering about the street had noted his swift and unobtrusive entry into the flat.

  Standing motionless in the dark room, he quested about

  with keen-honed and delicate senses. The air of the longclosed room was stifling. A variety of odors assaulted his nostrils with outrageous impact. There was the scent of a certain brand of rotgut brandy known as 01' Space Marshall. Added