Star Quest

by Dean R. Koontz

  He began walking, turned from the alley into the streets. The stores were open for business — ultra-modern, clerkless, giant chain stores, and the little, open front shops that always seem to flourish in a desert community no matter what its size and sophistication. At one place, homemade pretzels were for sale, salty and soft. He bought one with his miscellany money and munched on it as he walked. His insides were jumping with excitement and fear, but the most important thing was to seem calm externally, to appear as if he belonged there.

  He passed fruit shops where large baskets of berries of every chromatic dispersion lay in heaps. Some were similar to those he and Hunk had stolen from the hovercraft, but others were unlike any he had ever seen. He wished to taste them all, but he knew there were only twenty-four hours. He might need that time and more to find her. He walked on.

  In an open-air market where sides of animals lay in bloody pools, and cuts of steaks and roasts lay on chipped ice in unpainted bins, a Romaghin government inspector checked over the flesh, stamping it as the butcher slipped him (not so discreetly) a large coin for every animal approved. Flies were already congregating about the front of the place, and Tohm could well imagine what it would look like when the heat of the day lay like a blanket over all. And what it would smell like.

  Next door to the meat market was an automated butchery where meats were kept in refrigerated glass cubes, constantly on display. The prices were about three times those of the cruder merchant, but Tohm felt that he wouldn't mind paying the difference. If he could gag meat down any more. Even looking at all that raw flesh, he realized, was making him ill. The customs, likes and dislikes of the Muties were, he knew, rubbing off on him too.

  A man in a fluttering cape like the one the auto-fact had provided him with many days ago came strutting along the walk. A grossly fat man with a pig's face, he picked at his teeth with a sparkling nail. The lower classes stepped into the street to allow him passage, even though it wasn't a physical necessity, the walks being wide enough for seven or eight men abreast. Tohm, however, did the same. He was not out to call attention to himself, to arouse suspicions.

  Once, crossing the busy street, he saw the boy with the white eyes go by in a limousine. A very wealthy woman sat beside him. The boy showed no signs of recognition. Tohm wanted to run after him, but he didn't. There was something about the boy he didn't like. He couldn't say more than that. Perhaps it was Hunk's fear of the boy, and Hunk seemed afraid of so little. If the Mutie feared the boy, there was a reason. Something beyond the dreams. He made the other side of the street and struck out for the Market of Concubines, having entered the Street of the Pleasure Sellers.

  The Street of the Pleasure Sellers was not really a street at all, but a square. In the center of the square, a large fountain with the mythological creatures of Romaghin religion pouring water from pitchers over the heads of marble nymphets burbled gaily. There was a festive air to everything here. Buildings were colorful and in good repair. Multihued pennants were strung on glittering poles. Already, men were flocking into the square, the clots of upper class men painstakingly segregated from the fatigue-shod peasantry. But peasants, too, could visit the square, for the board of governors placed no social lines between the poor and the rich man's credits. One bill was as good as the other. Money, not ability, is the only thing that makes men equal.

  “My yacht is parked in a low orbit,” one rich man was saying to another. “I brought my half-miler, for I plan to take home fifty beauties.”

  “My tastes,” the other man said, fiddling with his pencil line moustache, “are not so easily satisfied. I find only one girl — if any — worth buying at an auction.”

  “You are just being snobbish,” the first man said.

  Tohm moved on. The majority of peasants were going to frequent the House of Love or the House of Nubile Maidens, where two bills brought fifteen minutes. Few had enough money to purchase their own slave girls, their own mistresses. They watched longingly as the merchants set up their rostrums on their respective platforms.

  Slowly, as the minutes passed, more and more people began drifting into the square. There were about two hundred now, seventy-five percent peasantry. A group of caped socialites were hunched around a Kill a Mutie/ Save Your World sign posted on the bulletin board, arguing politics, all in favor, of course, of killing Muties— differing only on the proper methods of destruction.

  A gong sounded, and a jester announced in singsong lyric that the market was legally open for business. The young peasants pulled out their money and ran for the doors of the pleasure houses. The older peasants were content to wait for an experience which, though necessary and desirable, was not so terribly unique any longer. The few young peasants who had denied themselves and saved their bills over months and months, stood watching the platforms, unsure to which they should run. Some would buy foolishly and quickly the-first girls they saw. Others would wait, wait until all had been shown and none were being held back.

  A moment later, as if at a hidden signal, the merchants came from behind the curtains at the rear of their platforms and began hawking their wares. They were foppishly dressed in jewel-studded capes of brilliant colors with inch- rather than quarter-inch fringe. The Merchant Kinger, directly in front of Tohm, waved his hand at the curtain, beckoning forth a woman. She was truly stunning. She was blonde, very tall, six feet at least. Her great breasts were pushed upward by the thin brassiere of purple shimmercloth she wore. Her silken loincloth did little to hide the vase of her pleasure.

  “I ask you gentlemen—” the merchant was saying.

  Tohm swept his gaze around from platform to platform. He couldn't risk watching only one merchant and having Tarnilee sold behind his back. Raddish was offering a red-skinned lovely from Shawnee, the Indian settled and often raided planet near the rim of the galaxy. The bidders were growing frantic. She promised to bring a higher price. Fulmono was selling twins, dark maidens from the Amazon basin on Earth itself, he claimed. Fasteon was running the point of his walking stick over the legs of a lass who looked scared quite to death at all the leering faces but who seemed determined not to show fear. Fasteon remarked on the fine fullness of her calves, her dimpled knees. Rashinghi was—

  His mouth fell open, closed, opened again. Rashinghi's girl, the one who would pass among the audience collecting the money of the successful bidders (all payments in cash — no refunds) was Tarnilee! She was wearing a robe of brilliant purple with a black hem. The swell of her breasts broke the “vee” of the plunging neckline. She was smiling idiotically from her seat on the edge of the platform. Rashinghi was selling a very attractive girl at the moment, but Tohm's full attention was on the face and form he knew so well. What was she doing as the merchant's woman? Why did she seem to be enjoying herself?

  The excitement in the square had built to a high, sustained peak. He shuffled through the crowd, jostling rich and poor alike, trying to reach the area in front of Rashinghi's platform. He hung to the back, watching her. She laughed at things the bidders said as she collected their money in a black sack she held by a golden chain. She didn't see him. He realized, with a small shock, that she would not know him if she did see him. He was fair-haired now, not dark, not anything like her Tohm.

  The lithe young girl-woman Rashinghi had up at the moment went for seven hundred and six bills.

  Cheering of friends as the rich man paid…

  He could smell perspiration all around him…

  Tarnilee was smiling and speaking confidentially with a fat upper class man who leered rather than smiled…

  The noise of bidding pounded upon his ears…

  His head was spinning nearly out of control. What was she doing this for? Why was she a helper of a merchant? A bid collector was always the merchant's most trusted and favorite wife. Was she married to Rashinghi? No! Or yes?

  He resolved, at that very moment, to kill Rashinghi for whatever he may have done to her. But first, how to talk with her? He felt the pouch of mon
ey in his pocket. If he bid on a girl, bought her, Tarnilee would have to come to him to collect the money.

  At that moment a slim, blonde girl waited on the stage, seemingly more anxious to be bought than the others, displaying her wares with bravado.

  “Fifty bills,” a rich man said.

  “Seventy,” a second chimed in.

  He sucked in his breath. “A hundred!” he shouted.

  Every head swiveled in his direction.

  Rashinghi leaned, strained his eyes. “This is cash, boy. Have ye cash to be bidding so?”

  He took the money pouch from his pocket, opened it and fanned the credits. “My life savings.”

  The rich man roared with laughter.

  “He may have her,” the first bidder said.

  The second man, however, looked at him contemptuously. “Two hundred!”

  “Two fifty,” he found himself bawling.

  “Four hundred!”

  “Five!”

  “Six!”

  “Seven-fifty.” He felt the perspiration trickling down his chin, running under his collar and soaking his shirt. He should have dropped the entire thing. He should have bought someone nobody wanted. After all, he was only buying her to be able to speak with Tarnilee. But now that he had raised the rich man's ire, he knew the fellow would continually outbid him on every girl he tried for.

  “I have a bid for seven hundred and fifty bills,” Rashinghi said, delighted that such a common tart — although attractive — was bringing as much as one of his virgins. “M. Glavoirei,” he said to the wealthy bidder, “do ye wish to top that?”

  M. Glavoirei looked over the heads of the people at the peasant who dared to bid against him. “Top money,” he said. “One thousand bills!”

  The crowd gasped as if it possessed a single set of lungs.

  “One thousand and twenty-five,” Tohm said, shivering in expectation of defeat.

  M. Glavoirei frowned, spat on the ground. “I have only a thousand bills with me. I will write a voucher—”

  “No!” Tohm found himself shouting. “This is illegal. No checks or credit cards. The terms are cash.”

  “He is right, M. Glavoirei,” Rashinghi said.

  “Then permit me to call for more funds. They will arrive within the hour.”

  “He must have my permission to delay the auction,” Tohm said, remembering what he had learned from Triggy Gop's books. “I deny him that permission.”

  “Then,” Rashinghi said, turning to Tohm, “she is most certainly yours.”

  The rich man's friends set up a howl of protest. Rashinghi waved them to silence. “It is only fair. Peasant, I will have her bathed and annointed to join ye at the fountain.” He turned and clapped for the entrance of the next item on the agenda.

  Tohm scanned the crowd for the head of Tarnilee. He had won the fight to speak with her. His mind was full of questions.

  “One thousand and twenty-five bills, dear sir,” she said from beside him.

  He looked down quickly. “Tarnilee!”

  Her mouth opened slowly. “How do you know my name?”

  “I am Tohm.”

  “Tohm who?” she asked, suddenly impatient.

  “Your Tohm. Your man.”

  She looked back at him, her eyes wide. “You are not Tohm. Tohm is dark. You are fair.”

  “That's true. But I am Tohm. I was killed after the Romaghins kidnapped us — rather, my body was killed. But they saved my mind, and I have a new body now.”

  “You speak nonsense. One thousand and twenty-five bills, please.”

  He took he by the shoulder. “Look, Tarnilee, I—”

  “Take your hands off me, please, dear sir.”

  Hesitantly, he removed his hand. “Look, I can prove it. Do you remember the red-leafed trees, the one above our hut. We lived and loved on a grass mat which you always said was filled with patterns that resembled people, faces. We were to be married in a month.”

  She looked at him a moment. “That I said, and that we were. Where did you learn all of this?”

  “I am Tohm!”

  The bidding was getting heated on the latest girl. Numbers were called out to cheering on both sides while Rashinghi urged them higher and higher. Tohm talked louder. “Do you remember the sea and how it talked? I used to listen to the sea, converse with it while we sat on the beach. You said I was insane but that you loved me anyway.”

  She twisted the money bag anxiously in her small hands. “So what. So what… what if you are Tohm?”

  “So what? You can come with me. That's so what. I've crossed Hell a dozen times getting here.”

  There was a sudden gleam in her eye, and her voice changed subtly. “But how are you sure I am Tarnilee?”

  “But you just said—”

  “My name is now Rashinghiana.”

  “You have assumed the feminized version of Rashinghi?”

  “My name is Rashinghiana.”

  He felt himself swaying. “Tarnilee, you're not married to that… to that—”

  “My name is not Tarnilee,” she said firmly.

  “But why him?”

  “He is good to me.”

  “I was better.”

  She frowned. “You never showed me the wonders of the universe, the foods, the wines, the places and the things.”

  He sighed, wiped perspiration from his upper lip. “Look, Tarnilee. I just discovered these things myself. I never knew of them.

  “My name is not Tarnilee. Besides, if it were, and you were Tohm, you are nothing but a peasant. You could not fill the desires these new things have raised in me; you could not feed the hungers.”

  His mind was aching with the new order, the clearer understanding of human nature that was suddenly being thrust upon him. This was an old scene — thousands of years old, but he did not know that. The sun seemed like a huge candle whose melting wax was dropping upon everything, hazing over the buildings and the people, seeping through his ears and encasing his brain. He clutched her arm, dug his nails in. “Look, Tarni— okay, Rashinghiana. In a few days, you're going to be stuck with a smaller, different universe. I don't understand how, but I know the Muties are going to—”

  “Muties?” she said. “You associate with them? You're a pervert?”

  He dug his nails deeper, hoping that, beneath the toga, blood was seeping. “Listen—”

  “Help!” she shouted. “A pervert. Mutie-lover!”

  The crowd turned. Several rich bidders surged toward him. Clutching her even tighter, he brought the gas pistol into his free hand. M. Glavoirei was the first to go down, his leg a shattered hunk of meat worse than anything one might see in the open-air meat markets.

  “You're coming with me,” he said, dropping her arm and wrapping his own burly limb about her slim waist.

  “No!”

  A hand touched his neck. He ducked, swung, and blasted out the man's intestines, sending him down, kicking for a moment before he lay still. The others stopped their advance, eyed him warily.

  “Let me down, you peasant!” she screamed.

  The wax of the sun was hotter. The first layers of it were beginning to solidify over him. If he didn't move quickly, he knew he could never move at all. He fiddled with the flybelt, lifted, turned toward the center of town and the hutch. Then the small, whirring sphere that had dislodged itself from the muzzle of a policeman's rifle burst beneath him.

  Sweet perfume…

  Blue mists engulfed him, swallowed him, dragging him through denser and denser fogs into total blackness…

  Into death?

  XII

  No.

  Not death.

  Although, he reflected, it might as well have been. It would be. He was penned on the third floor of the Capital City Prison in a maxi-security cell. It was less than a yard by a yard. He could sit, and that was all. He sat looking out the window, through the massive steel bars at the gallows they were erecting in the courtyard. His gallows. For his neck.

  Trial wa
s certainly speedy here; one could not complain about judicial procrastination. He had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death within three hours of his capture. The account would be all over the city by now— in the papes, on teevee. In the morning, just about when his twenty-four hours would be up, a crowd would gather in the courtyard to watch the floor jerk out from under him and to hear his neck snap in one, brittle, final comment.

  Swift.

  Clean.

  Nearly painless.

  And, strangely enough, if he could have known the answers to a few questions, he would not have minded. After all, what had kept him moving was dead: Tarnilee's love and his love for her. Hers had expired naturally; his had been murdered back there in the market. She had shot it full of ugly holes. The world was not goody-good. Mayna had been right. But he still wasn't ready to die. Curiosity gave him the willpower to live. Ever since that little vial of dope had stopped dripping and his brain had come awake, he had been plagued with so many mysterious concepts, ideas, people, that he could not sort them out anymore. Once, he would have prayed, but he could not now. He thought of Seer babbling, horrified, mummified, a vegetable cowering before some unknown terror that faced everyone— would face Tohm himself — when he died. That was another reason he didn't want to die. What lay on the other side of the veil, across the gauze between life and death?

  A few answers. That's all he wanted now. What was the Fringe? What were shell molecules? Would the Muties succeed or fail? What, exactly, were they trying to do? Were they demons or angels? And Mayna. If only he could understand and solicit a smile from Mayna, perhaps dying would not be as difficult to face. But strangling to death out there without any answers was not a pleasant future.

  At supper time, they brought him a bowl of worms.

  He didn't eat them, even if, as the guard had said, they were the only fitting last meal for a pervert.

  He contented himself, in the darkness of the night, with sitting and watching the stars blinking, flittering like so many consciences pinching the brain for penance. Dragon eyes. Sparks of dragon breath. Hellfires. He tried to think of as many metaphors and similes as he could, keeping himself awake and sharp. He was determined not to fall asleep on this, his last and only night alive.