Flesh and Gold

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  “You’re gonna get it, you sonofabitch!” said South and pushed inside with his fists clenched. “Last time any fucking ESP screws me!”

  Lebedev did not try to explain that like other policemen he was not only not an ESP, but had had an imper circuit tattooed under his scalp. He kicked South in the knee, punched his face as he hunched over in reaction, and sent him a hard blow to the groin with his other fist when his head shot back. The doors closed and the elevator rose with a hiss of pneumatics.

  South snarled in pain and his nose ran bloody, but it did not end there: he was a head taller, and for all Lebedev’s pudginess, had an advantage of ten kilos in weight. His cupped hands were on their way to breaking Lebedev’s eardrums just as Lebedev was aiming the hard edge of his hand at the bridge of South’s nose; one hand caught Lebedev a clout on the ear but his own hand in its trajectory knocked South against the door, slamming the buttons. The elevator paused without opening and fell whispering down its shaft.

  Lebedev hooked South’s leg from under him, both fell, South got his hands around Lebedev’s throat and Lebedev gave up his Police Inspector’s aim of hurting without doing harm and did his best to tear South’s ears off his head. South’s grasp loosened a little and Lebedev twisted and bit him hard on the thumb. South yelped at the moment that the elevator cab landed, the doors opened and Lebedev pulled his strength together for a last burst and rolled out.

  He lay stunned in a dimlit corridor with his arms and legs splayed, only just aware that his enemy was on hands and knees, reaching out for him. The closing doors caught South’s wrist edge on, he yelped again and pulled his hand in quickly. Lebedev heard, through his ringing ear, the muffled cursing and pounding on the doors as the cab rose. Lebedev gasped and could not move for a moment; his other ear caught the ringing of the first as if it were a contagion, he felt South’s very fingerprints on his throat, his tongue seemed to want to take leave of his mouth and crawl away. South was a strong and very angry man who must have done hard fighting in some theater of war, and if he had not been very drunk, Lebedev knew he would have found himself dead.

  He heard, or thought he heard, the elevator stopping and beginning to descend. South had more fight left, but he did not. He rolled over and got to hands and knees, spent another moment gasping there, and pulled himself up painfully, one hand on the wall. He looked round: there were no other elevators at this level. There must be stairs. He did not want to go up, or in any other direction that South might be going. He could not see anyone and the distances of the corridor were dark. He blundered along trying to look as if he knew what he was doing, searching for a ramp or stairwell.

  Around the curve of the elevator housing there was an opening to a ramp that corkscrewed up and down, as far as he could tell in the dim light from the hall. The landing was unlit and he could hide there for a while. But when he stepped into it a soft light rose from the overhead lightstrip, the same kind as the one that had lit up the corridor. It jolted him, he was still sweaty and gasping, and terrified of drawing attention. He glanced round but could not see any camera; the switch was either a pressure-sensitive one under the floor or an electric eye. He heard noises behind him. There was no hiding place here; he started downward, and the strip lighted ahead of him, he was dizzy, the twist and slant of the ramp disoriented him, the light ran before him: follow me! follow me!

  He stopped and panted, leaning against the wall, trying to gather his scattered wits. Lebedev, you are too old for adventures! Nobody is following. His ears were still ringing, but now he clearly heard voices overhead saying, “No, thought there was some noise from—” and trailing off. He pulled himself straight, staggered down and down, until he finally found an exit where the light did not accuse him. For a moment not knowing where he was did not bother him. Because of the grin, that particular rictus of facial expression, that South had shown him:

  Look here, you lags and groaners! Look! Lebedev is here in his prison among us! His law once delivered us into the Pit, and now his law has delivered him to us! The forest of grinning faces and clenched fists had drawn him into its fearful depths. Lebedev, the former Inspector of Police, who had never been required to do more in the way of violence than twist an ear or kick an ankle, had been forced to fight his way through many bruising days. The attack had most unpleasantly reminded him . . .

  But Lebedev, he told himself, you who fought there are hiding here with your hair standing on end and your shirt falling out of your pants. He pulled out a shirttail to wipe the sweat off his face, tucked himself in and straightened the points of his vest. He was standing in a small square area with three doors; one was slightly open and through the crack he could see deep red light. He had become calm enough so that he thought this was worth exploring, but he was sure there would be someone inside. And by now South would have been found and sent packing by a bouncer; it was safe for Lebedev to go up and collect his money.

  As he took his first step on the ramp a loud banging and clattering came from above, wheels hummed, lights whirled and flickered and he shrank back. A cleaning robot was coming down the ramp, spraying and swabbing with disinfectant: the smell of it made Lebedev’s eyes water.

  He shrank back into his hiding place. The robot paused at the foot of the ramp, and then came forward. There was no way for it to go right or left. Lebedev gently tried the two closed doors; they were locked. By the time the robot reached the doorway, Lebedev had retreated farther, into the room from which the deep red light was coming.

  He closed the door silently and flattened himself against it. His nose was itching, and his ears were playing the music of his blood. The place he was in was not quite a room but a square space a little smaller than the one he had come from. Its walls were heavy glass, and red lamps in the walls and ceiling beyond them were illuminating what seemed to be standing frames of hexagonal lattices, row on row, hundreds as far as he could see, perhaps thousands. Their sides were stamped with luminous world-symbols: Demor V, Kemalan, Sem II. They were looped with thin clear plastic tubes that looked like vines twining on fences. A score of mantis-shaped robots moved on tracks between the frames, now using a spraying limb to wash down a wall of latticework, now peering into a cell with a red eye. In the center of each hexagon was a tiny dark knot, like an insect in its cocoon, no, not an insect. An embryo just short of becoming a fetus. In human terms.

  Lebedev stared.

  The sweep of red hexagons ran on forever, like the folded linings of an immense womb, they seemed to pulse with his heart. He pulled himself together once again. He might be mistaken, only think he was seeing embryos. But his eyes were good, and he was not mistaken. It is true that most embryos look alike, whether they are Khagodi or Miry or Varvani—or horses, for that matter, or oppothruxes. He did not think they were Varvani—and certainly not Khagodi. He thought that when they grew up they would most probably be small humanoids with hairless grey-beige skins, and look like the one that Skerow had so painstakingly described, the one who said, We have always lived on this world, and the one called Ai’ia, who had evidently risen a little higher than those others, the ones with the fascinatingly good false I.D.s and working permits, whom he had been watching for years as a police officer. A relative to that other one for whose sake he had sent Jacaranda to die in Zamos’s brothel. And it was all here. The answer to everything was here, in the brothel.

  Why not? he asked himself. Why not in a brothel? But he did not know what he expected himself to answer. He was in the grip of an excitement perilously close to nausea: he had learned more than he wanted, and far too soon. Too soon for him to leave the place without being hunted down, because he had made his cover so conspicuous. He had to wait here, in his sweat, and deal skambi.

  He was sweating again, the red pulsing was so oppressive. He turned away from the infrared and the slender machines moving among the red folds of the womb. He listened at the door and opened it a crack; no one there, robot gone. He pulled off his shoes to avoid leaving prints and hurr
ied up the ramp in his stocking feet.

  Lebedev and Lyhhrt

  Lebedev’s criminal record was not only part of his cover. For many years he had been engaged, wherever he was stationed, in smuggling rice, barley, dehydrated peas, lima beans, onions, scallions, tomatoes, and various other soup accompaniments as well as thyme and bay leaves. His half year’s supply took up no more room than ten Karnoshky flamers, or even twenty Gothenburg stunners, certainly weighed less than one gold ingot—and were camouflaged in similar packagings. Importation of these scarce foods was allowed only to high administration officials and the expensive restaurants where they ate. Lebedev’s superiors in the Police Department had known of his smuggling—they had all done it themselves at one time or another—but turned their eyes away, until a malicious informer had pointedly drawn attention to them; examiners had found among the dried packets a half kilo of karynon, the powerful vicious aphrodisiac, derived from yohimbine, that maddened as it aroused: Lebedev had tugged at some giant’s beanstalk once too often.

  The police had narrowly exonerated him from the charge of transporting a dangerous illegal substance, but could not free him entirely. Skerow herself had been obliged to try him for smuggling and send him to prison; she was furious:

  “What an idiot you are, Lebedev,” her pronunciation was nearer “Yebiteff”—“and all for some soup nuts, or whatever you call them! If you can bring those goods here so easily it must be easy for real criminals. You have been really too careless.”

  But though Lebedev dreaded prison, neither he nor the Police were put out at the conviction. They had been working along with Galactic Federation; now GalFed took over as Lebedev’s employer, and Lebedev had a cover, bizarre as it was—and another bizarre and promising one at Zamos’s brothel.

  He had not foreseen Lebedev the skambi dealer crouching in a lavatory cubicle nursing swollen knuckles and a thick ear. They could be not be washed or combed away, and he was expected to present himself for the money he had earned—if he was not fired out of hand. He needed the money, he dared not take any from outside. He straightened his clothes and slipped out; the light was dim along the walls of the game room; the busy gamers and croupiers did not notice him at all. The wicked flee when no man pursueth, says the Bible. Roza would say: The hat burns on the thief’s head. Would have said.

  Tally, also off duty now, caught sight of him. “My God, Lev—are you the accident that happened to that bastard?”

  He shrank. “Hush Tally! I will lose my job!”

  She glanced round and said in a low voice, “Not if the girls have anything to say about it. They’re fucking sick of paying for new teeth.”

  “I am not sorry I missed all the noise.”

  “Lady Pepper Vodka jumped on him, wanted to finish the job. I guess her breath knocked him out. He’s gone.”

  “Now I must collect my clothing and my soup crock.”

  “I’ll just send one of the O’e for them.”

  “What is oh-ey?”

  “They’re the native people of this world! Surely you must know them. Ai’ia is one.”

  The servant woman at the Residence had told Skerow: We have always lived on this world. “I know of them. I never knew there was a name for them. Let one bring my baggage, then.”

  In the Keymaster’s claustrophobic office the light was dim. Lebedev tried to keep the bruised hand in shadow as he offered the chit.

  The Keymaster peered at the disk and said, “One ten-day.” He pushed a button and a pack of tokens dropped into his claw. Another button brought a HouseCard popping out of a slot. “This is your room key.” His fixed and staring bird’s look showed no more expression than Kylkladi usually did. He said: “Your hand and ear need attention, Dealer.”

  Lebedev accepted card and packet. “I had intended to visit the doctor in the morning.” He had thought he might have to see the doctor for inoculations, but he also knew that the doctor was a Lyhhrt, and he was afraid of Lyhhrt. Next to them Kylkladi were full of bonhomie and conviviality.

  “Your hand will be stiff then. It is wiser to do so now if you wish to keep working here.” Lebedev nodded submissively. “Take the walkway to the House office and the clerk will direct you.”

  Now in the pit of the night Lebedev found the halls and walkways of Zamos’s brothel as busy as they had been in the surges of noon and evening custom, when he visited them as Police. In one alcove a woman as lustrous in starry blue as the Queen of the Night was smiling while she locked manacles on the wrists of a naked Varvani man three times her size. Through the open doorway of another room, Lebedev could see three business suits in black dominoes grouped around a Pinxid woman in red fringed blemskin leggings and a rouged boy in a spiked collar.

  The Pinxid looked up and said, “Allo, Dealer,” and for a moment he lost track of himself and thought she might be Jacaranda, but Jacaranda was dead. No one deferred to him; everyone knew that he was not the Police Inspector.

  He went on unwillingly, sweating again; he did not even know why he was afraid of Lyhhrt. His ear rang from far away, he was weary both from his fight and the long day of dealing skambi, rather dizzy, becoming claustrophobic. For a moment he thought that he had unwittingly been drugged, then wrenched himself back to awareness and realized that the corridor had narrowed and the walls were writhing with vividly colored images of sexual encounters, while the overhead lights were dimmer now; the place had become at the same time both brighter and darker. The clients staggering along the hall in various states of undress and levels of drugging and drunkenness, the men and women trying to lead them into or kick them out of this paradise, seemed coarser and shabbier.

  A woman came out of a door or shadow. She was wrapped in a towel and carried a silver pitcher with a sponge for stopper. She had black hair and eyes and wore no makeup on her strong planed face. Nothing came between her and the eye.

  Dizziness rose in Lebedev’s head. He said, “Nadezhda?”

  She looked at him.

  “Your mother is dead. Why could you not come?”

  He did not know if he truly heard her say: I am not Nadezhda, because the whirling darkness that replaced her twisted and flung him against the wall before he fell into it.

  Something shifted under him, accommodating his body like a loving woman. When he opened his eyes he found himself in a contoured chair, and the Lyhhrt doctor was standing beside him, as magnificent as usual; this time arrayed in copper and brilliant as the setting sun.

  Lebedev said, “Are you the same one?” It was all he could think of.

  “I/we are well acquainted with erstwhile Police Inspector and now skambi dealer Aleksandr Grigoriyevich Lebedev.” Probably the Lyhhrt himself did not know if he was the same one whom Lebedev had interviewed in earlier times. His esp was powerful enough to penetrate a police shield, but not without Lebedev knowing. “You received a blow to the ear.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “You had a cyst in that ear. I removed it. You would have died of brain infection if you had kept on neglecting it. The blow quickened its pace. I am surprised that the pain did not alert you.”

  No one ever hurried to see the prison doctor; Lebedev had pushed pains aside. “I had thought it more likely that the blow would crack my skull. We live and learn.”

  “Your hand is bruised but no bones are broken.”

  “Good enough for dealing skambi?”

  “Carefully. It will remain in good condition as long as I am caring for it.”

  Lebedev regarded the sunburst head with its beautifully moving and unfeeling features. Lyhhrt did not chat and rarely volunteered information. “I need not worry then.” He did not look for the spy-eye.

  “There are no guarantees. Time is pregnant with possibilities. Turn back your sleeve, if you please.” He pressed three dermcaps against Lebedev’s wrist where the veins pulsed. “For inflammation, infection, and pain. I will see you again in three days.”

  The accommodating chair delivered Lebedev to his feet, a
nd he lingered standing for a moment, wondering if he actually had been told that Kobai was still in Zamos’s brothel, well cared for and—pregnant? “Good night,” said the Lyhhrt, though night meant nothing to him.

  Lebedev had not even had time to be afraid. He paused again in the doorway long enough to think that the woman had not been his daughter Nadezhda, and that he had pushed her out of his mind, like the earache, since Roza had died.

  Lyhhrt and Kobai

  When the door irised behind Lebedev, the Lyhhrt pressed a place in his neck and his abdomen opened. He reached in and removed a glastex globe, twenty-five centimeters in diameter, containing his actual self, which he placed on a table top in a gold basket. Holding a tiny remote in one pseudopod he directed his shell to unplug the globe and siphon off the liquid he was swimming in, then replace it with a fresh mixture of food and oxygen from a jar stored in the wall refrigerator.

  He splashed around in this for a moment, and pushed a pseudopod through the globe’s opening to taste the air. When he withdrew it, the plug was replaced, and he used the remote to open a cupboard door and summon a different hominid shell of dull brushed silver in plain features considered, by Lyhhrt, to be less intimidating than their displays in gold and bronze.

  Once nested in it, he connected up the sensors of the seven electrocardiographs, four electroencephalographs, and fifteen sphygmomanometers—all installed in clients—which he had been monitoring by remote. When he was satisfied with their reception he stepped into an almost invisible circle on the floor and stood with his hands at his sides while a plasmix tube descended around him from the ceiling, withdrew its air, sealed itself, dropped him down three levels without a sound. The place where it freed him was alongside the shaft that was wound about by the ramp Lebedev had descended; the tube shut and rose back into its recess.