A Plague of Demons

by Keith Laumer

  "Well, when this hive spotted us coming in, they knew enough about New Terra to realize at once that we were strangers, coming from outside the area. It appealed to their sense of humor to have the gall to strut right out in front of us and try to put over a swindle. What a laugh for the oyster kingdom if they could sell Terrans on the idea that they were the master race. It never occurred to them that we might be anything but Terrans; Terrans who didn't know the Mancji. And they were canny enough to use an old form of Standard.

  "Sure enough, we didn't show any signs of recognizing them; so they decided to really get a kick by getting us to give them what they love better than anything else: a nice bath of electric current. They don't eat, of course; they live on pure radiation. The physical side of life means little to them. They live in a world of the hive mind; they do love the flow of electricity through the hive, though. It must be something like having your back scratched.

  "Then we wanted food. They knew what we ate, and that was where they went too far. They had, among the flotsam in their hive, a few human bodies they had picked up from some wreck they'd come across in their travels. They had them stashed away like everything else they could lay a pseudopod on. So they stacked them the way they'd seen Terran frozen foods shipped in the past, and sent them over. Another of their little jokes.

  "I suppose if you're already overwrought and eager to quit, and you've been badly scared by the size of an alien ship, it's pretty understandable that the sight of human bodies, along with the story that they're just a convenient food supply, might seem pretty convincing. At least, the prevailing school of thought seemed to be that we were lucky we hadn't been put in the food lockers ourselves. But I was already pretty dubious about the genuineness of our pals, and when I saw those bodies it was pretty plain that we were hot on the trail of Omega Colony. There was no other place humans could have come from out there. We had to find out the location from the Mancji."

  "But, Admiral," said the reporter, "true enough they were humans, and presumably had some connection with the colony, but they were naked corpses stacked like cordwood. The Mancji had stated that these were slaves, or rather domesticated animals; they wouldn't have done you any good."

  "Well, you see, I didn't believe that," the admiral said. "Because it was an obvious lie. I tried to show some of the officers, but I'm afraid they weren't being too rational just them.

  "I went into the locker and examined those bodies; if Kramer had looked closely, he would have seen what I did. These were no tame animals. They were civilized men."

  "How could you be sure, Admiral? They had no clothing, no identifying marks, nothing. Why didn't you believe they were cattle?"

  "Because," said the admiral, "all the men's beards were neatly trimmed, in a style two hundred years out of date."

  After the admiral had signed the check, nodded and walked away, the reporter keyed his fone for Editor.

  "Priority," he said. "Lead. Here's how our world was saved twenty years ago by a dead man's haircut…"

  Of Death What Dreams

  Prologue

  "Left hand," the thin man said tonelessly. "Wrist up."

  William Bailey peeled back his cuff; the thin man put something cold against it, nodded toward the nearest door.

  "Through there, first slab on the right," he said, and turned away.

  "Just a minute," Bailey started. "I wanted-"

  "Let's get going, buddy," the thin man said. "That stuff is fast."

  Bailey felt something stab up under his heart. "You mean-you've already… that's all there is to it?"

  "That's what you came for, right? Slab one, friend. Let's go."

  "But-I haven't been here two minutes-"

  "Whatta you expect-organ music? Look, pal," the thin man shot a glance at the wall clock. "I'm on my break, know what I mean?"

  "I thought I'd at least have time for… for…"

  "Have a heart, chum. You make it under your own power, I don't have to haul you, see?" The thin man was pushing open the door, urging Bailey through into an odor of chemicals and unlive flesh. In a narrow, curtained alcove, he indicated a padded cot.

  "On your back, arms and legs straight out."

  Bailey assumed the position, tensed as the thin man began fitting straps over his ankles.

  "Relax. It's just if we get a little behind and I don't get back to a client for maybe a couple hours and they stiffen up… well, them issue boxes is just the one size, you know what I mean?"

  A wave of softness, warmness, swept over Bailey as he lay back.

  "Hey, you didn't eat nothing the last twelve hours?" The thin man's face was a hazy pink blur.

  "I awrrr mmmm," Bailey heard himself say.

  "OK, sleep tight, paisan.…" The thin man's voice boomed and faded. Bailey's last thought as the endless blackness closed in was of the words cut in the granite over the portal to the Euthanasia Center:

  "… send me your tired, your poor, your hopeless, yearning to be free. To them I raise the lamp beside the brazen door.…"

  Bailey's first thought when he opened his eyes was one of surprise that a girl had taken the thin man's place. She looked young, with a finely chiseled, too-pale face.

  "Are you all right?" she asked. Her voice was soft and breathy, but with an undernote of strength.

  He started to nod; then the wrongness of it penetrated. This wasn't the Euthanasia Center. Behind the girl, he saw the dun walls and plastic fixtures of a Class Yellow Nine flat. He made an effort to sit up and became aware of a deathly sickness all through his body.

  "My chest hurts," he managed to gasp. "What happened? Why am I alive?"

  The girl leaned closer. "You were really-inside?"

  Bailey thought about it. "I remember going into the cubicle. The attendant gave me a hypo and strapped me down. Then I passed out…" His eyes searched the girl's face. "Am I dreaming this?"

  She shook her head without impatience. "I found you in the serviceway behind the center. I brought you here."

  "But-" Bailey croaked, "I'm supposed to be dead!"

  "How did you get outside?" the girl asked.

  For an instant, a ghostly memory brushed Bailey's mind: cold, and darkness, and a bodiless voice that spoke from emptiness… "I don't know. I was there… and now I'm here."

  "Are you sorry?"

  Bailey started to answer quickly, then paused. "No," he said, wonderingly. "I'm not."

  "Then sleep," the girl said.

  1

  "Why?" the girl asked. She sat across from Bailey at the fold-out table, watching as he ate carefully a bowl of lux-ration soup, with real lichen chunks.

  "Why did I go?" He made a vague gesture with a thin, pale hand. "Everything I wanted to do, everything I tried; it all seemed so hopeless. I was trapped, a Ten-Level Yellow-Tag. There was no future for me, no chance to improve. It was a way out."

  "You feel differently now?"

  Bailey nodded slowly. "I used to grieve for the old days, when the world wasn't so crowded and so organized. I always told myself what I would have done if I'd lived then. Now I see that's just an easy out. It's always been up to a man to make his own way. I was afraid to try."

  "And now you're not?"

  "No," Bailey said, sounding surprised. "Why should I be? All that out there"-he made a gesture which encompassed all of society-"is just something built by men. I'm a man, too. I can do what I have to do." He broke off, glancing at the girl. "What about you?" he asked. "Why did you help me?"

  "I… know how it is. I almost jumped from the Hudson Intermix once."

  "What changed your mind?"

  She lifted her shoulders, frowned. "I don't know. I can't remember. Maybe I lost my nerve."

  Bailey shook his head. "No," he said. "You didn't lose your nerve. Helping me took plenty of that. I don't know what the law says about leaving the center via the back door, but I left all my papers there. You're harboring a tagless man." He put down his spoon and pushed the chair back. "Thanks for everything,
" he said. "I'll be going now."

  "Are you sure you feel well enough?"

  "I'm all right. And there are things I have to do."

  "Where will you go? What will you do?"

  "First I'll need money."

  "Without your cards, how can you apply for assignment?"

  "You're thinking about legal methods," Bailey said. "I'm afraid that's a luxury I can't afford. I'll go where the cards don't count."

  "You mean-Preke territory?"

  "I don't have much choice." Bailey leaned across to touch her hand. "Don't worry about me," he said. "Forget me. At worst, I won't be any worse off than when I was strapped to a slab in the slaughterhouse."

  "I still don't know how you got away."

  "Neither do I." Bailey rose. "But never mind the past. It's what comes next that counts."

  2

  Bailey took the walkaway to the nearest downshaft, rode the crowded car to Threevee Mall. No one paid any visible attention to him as he walked briskly along past the glare-lit store fronts through the streaming crowd that bumped and jostled him in a perfectly normal fashion. He passed the barred entry to a service ramp, continued another thirty feet past the green-uniformed Peaceman lounging near it; then he flattened himself against the rippling faзade of a popshop. A stout man with an angry expression bellied past, trampling his foot. Bailey stepped out behind him, delivered a sharp kick to the calf of the fat man's left leg, instantly faded back against the wall as the victim whirled with a yell. One windmilling arm caught another pedestrian across the chest. The latter dealt the fat man a return blow to the paunch. In an instant, a churning maelstrom of shouting, kicking, punching humanity had developed. Bailey watched until the Greenback arrived, cutting a swatch through the crowd with his prod; then he moved quickly along to the gate, jumped to catch its top edge, pulled himself up. There were a few shouts, one ineffective grab at his leg by a zealous citizen who staggered back with a bruised chin for his efforts. Then Bailey was over, dropping on a wide landing. Without hesitation, he started down the dark stairs toward outlaw territory.

  3

  The odor of Four Quarters was the most difficult aspect of that twilit half-world for Bailey to accommodate to. The shops were shabby antiques, badly lit by primitive fluorescents and garish neon, relics of an age that had by-passed and buried the original city under the looming towers of progress. The Prekes-the lawless ones, without life permits, work papers, or census numbers-seemed not much different than their catalogued and routinized brethren on the levels above, except for the variety of their costumes and a certain look of animal alertness. Bailey moved along the wide street, breathing through his mouth. He strolled for an hour, unmolested, before a tiny, spider-like man with sharp brown eyes materialized from a shadowy doorway ahead.

  "New on the turf, hey?" he murmured, falling in beside Bailey. "Papers to move? Top price for a clean ID, Frosh."

  "Where can I take a lay on the Vistats?" Bailey asked his new acquaintance.

  "Oh, a string man, hah? You're lucky, zek. I'll fence it for you. Just name your lines and give me your card-"

  Bailey smiled at the little man. "Do you really get any takers on that one?"

  The pinched brown face flickered through several trial expressions, settled on rueful camaraderie. "You never know. Worth a try. But I see you're edged. No hard feelings, zek. What size lay you have in mind? An M? Five M's?"

  Bailey slipped the Three-issue watch from his finger, handed it over. "Take me to the place," he said. "If you con me, I'll find you sooner or later."

  The little man hung back, eyeing the offering. "How do I know you're on the flat?"

  "If I'm not, you'll find me later."

  A hand like a monkey's darted out and scooped the ring from Bailey's palm. "That's the rax, zek. This way."

  Bailey followed his guide along a devious route, skirting the massive piers that supported the city above, into streets even meaner and dirtier than the first, wan in the light that filtered down through the grimy plastic skylights spanning the avenues. In a narrow, canyon-like alley, supplementally lit by a lone polyarc at the corner, the guide pointed with his chin and disappeared.

  Bailey stood in a unswept doorway and watched the traffic. A man in a shabby woven-fiber coat passed, giving him a single, furtive glance. A hollow-cheeked woman looked him up and down, snorted, moved on. Across the street, a man loitered by a dark window, glancing both ways, then pushed through the unmarked door beside it. A fat woman in shapeless garments emerged, shuffled away. Bailey waited another five minutes until the man had gone, then crossed the street.

  The door was locked. He tapped. Silence. He tapped harder. A voice growled: "Beat it. I'm sleeping."

  Bailey kept tapping. The door opened abruptly; a swarthy, pockmarked face poked out. The expression on the unshaven features was not friendly. The man looked past Bailey, under him, around him, cursed, started to close the door. Bailey jammed it with his foot.

  "I want a job," he said quickly. "You need runners, don't you?"

  The swarthy man's foot paused an inch from grinding into Bailey's ankle. His blunt features settled into wariness.

  "You're on a bum pitch, Clyde. What I need a runner for?"

  "This is a drop shop. You can use me. How about letting me in off the street before somebody gets eyes?"

  Reluctantly, the door eased back; Bailey slipped through into an odor of nesting mice. By the light coming through from a back hall he saw a clutter of ancient furniture, a battered computer console. Then a meaty hand had caught his tunic-front, slammed him back against the wall. A six-inch knife blade glinted in the fist held under his nose.

  "I could cut your heart out," a garlic-laden voice growled in his face.

  "Sure you could," Bailey said impatiently. "But why take a wipe for nothing?"

  "Who told you about me?"

  "Look, I just arrived an hour ago. The first drifter I met led me here. Everybody must know this place."

  "Bugs send you here?" The hand shook him, rattling his head against the wall.

  "For what? The Greenies know all about you. You must have paid bite money, otherwise you wouldn't be operating."

  The knife touched Bailey's throat. "You take some chances, Clyde."

  "Put the knife away. You need me-and I need money."

  "I need you why?"

  "Your biggest problem is transmitting bets and pay-off information. You can't use Pubcom or two-way. I've got a good memory and I like to walk. For a hundred a week in hard tokens I'll cover all of Mat'n for you."

  The silence lengthened. The knife moved away; the grip on Bailey's blouse slackened slightly.

  "Bugs got something on you?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Why you need money?"

  "To buy new papers-and other things."

  "You got no cards?"

  "Not even an ID."

  "How do I know you're not dogging for the Bugs?"

  "Get some sense. What would I get out of that?"

  The man made a guttural noise and stepped back. "Tell it, Clyde. All of it."

  Bailey told. When he finished, the swarthy man rubbed his chin with a sound like a wood rasp cutting pine.

  "How'd you do it? Bust out, I mean?"

  "I don't know. The girl found me in an alley mumbling about a pain in my chest. My wrists were a little raw, as if I'd forced the straps. After all, it isn't as if they expected anybody to try to leave."

  The dark man grunted. "You're scrambled," he said. "But there could be something in it at that. OK, you're on, Jack. Fifty a week-and you sleep in the back."

  "Seventy-five-and I eat here, too."

  "Push your luck, don't you? All right. But don't expect no lux rations."

  "Just so I eat," Bailey said. "I'll need my strength for what I've got to do."

  4

  The dog-eared, seam-cracked maps of the city which Bailey's employer supplied dated from a time when the streets had been open to the sky, when unfiltered
sunlight had fallen on still-new pavements and facades. Two centuries had passed since those wholesome, innocent days, but the charts still reflected faithfully each twist and angle of the maze of streets and alleys. Each night, he quartered the city, north to south, river wall to river wall. In the motley costume which Aroon had given him, he passed unremarked in the crowds.

  Off-duty, he undertook the cleaning of Aroon's rubbish-filled rooms. After feeding the accumulated debris of decades into a municipal disposer half a block from the house, he set about sweeping, scrubbing, polishing the plastron floor and walls until their original colors emerged from under the crusts of age. After that, he procured pen and paper, spent hours absorbed in calculations. Aroon watched, grunted, and left him to his own devices.

  "You're a funny guy, Bailey," he said after a month of near-silent observation. "I got to admit at first I didn't know about you. But you had plenty chances to angle, and passed 'em. You're smart, and a hard worker. You never spend a chit. You work, you eat, you sleep, and you scribble numbers. I got no complaint-but what you after, Bailey? You're a hounded guy if I ever see one."

  Bailey studied the older man's face. "You and I are going to make some money, Gus," he said.

  Aroon looked startled. His thick eyebrows crawled up his furrowed forehead.

  "How much do you make a week, booking the 'stats?" Bailey put the question boldly.

  Aroon frowned. "Hell, you know: Three, four hundred after expenses-if I'm lucky."

  "How much do the big boys make? The books?"

  "Plenty!" Gus barked. "But-wait a minute, kid. You ain't getting ideas-"

  "They don't rely on luck," Bailey said. "They know. Figure it out for yourself. The play is based on the midnight census read-outs. But the figures for production, consumption, the growth indices and vital statistics-they all vary in accordance with known curves."

  "Not to me, they ain't known. Listen, Bailey, don't start talking chisel to me-"