“You not what I think, Mr. Horn! When Dize tell me, I think first, ‘Oh, I carry spoiled rich boy! I carry some big fool who make nuisance all time and complain, complain because my ship is not luxury liner!’ Is good to find young man from Earth who not caves in like burst balloon when someone tries kill him!”
If you could only read my mind …” Horn said wryly and tucked the incredible letter ordering his death back into the concealed compartment of the late Pedro Cavelgrune’s wallet.
Shembo exposed all his shiny teeth in a grin of comprehension and disappeared again in a cloud of smoke.
“Sure, is sensible! Is more worth keeping life of person who not want kill other people than keep life of person who does want kill other people! So you get little bit scared, hm? Never you mind, Mr. Horn! Is safe here on this ship of mine! Is all good reliable crew, work with me long time.”
“In the android trade,” Horn muttered to himself. “Captain, I guess I ought to ask you something about this business you’re in. I know practically nothing about it. I remember when I was a kid—oh, twelve or fourteen years ago—my grandfather was talking about buying himself a piece of it, as a diversification of his robot interests. But I don’t recall anything coming of it.”
Shembo chuckled. “He not manage to buy in,” he said flatly.
“I guess he didn’t. But how can you be so positive?”
The captain extended a hand with two fingers folded, two crossed. “Android trade tight like that,” he said. “All so tight it not leak liquid helium!”
So it was a monopoly, and jealously guarded. Okay, if someone had had the bright idea of transporting an entire android factory to an underdeveloped outworld where his raw materials cost him literally nothing, he might be expected to want to hold on to his advantage as long as possible. Fair enough. Monopoly-breaking was hardly the kind of job to attract Lars Talibrand, was it? It was more the business of regular government authorities. Anyway, as for benefiting entire planetary populations, Dize had indicated that Earth was the chief consumer of androids, and Earth didn’t recognize citizens of the galaxy.
“Do you have many androids on Creew ’n Dith, Captain Shembo?” he demanded.
“Few. Go to big houses, rich families. Sometimes when rich man drop by at port, he bid in oction to get specially good one. But not many, no.”
“You have more use for robots, hm?”
“Sure. Androids pretty much same as people except not so onery. Robots good and useful—very strong, but tame!”
“So your cargo will all be bought up on Creew ’n Dith?”
“All? No, not all—is not very rich world, mine. Beautiful, exciting, yes, but not so rich. So sell some to dealers from further out, exchange for more androids.”
Horn’s brow corrugated with concentration. “Between Earth and Newholme the ratio seems to be eight robots to three androids. Is that the same on this leg of the route?”
“Hell, no! For eight robots I get six, maybe so many as ten androids when I sell on Creew ’n Dith! Robots worth more androids further you get from Earth, see? Earthside robots the very best, Newholmer nearly so good, what we make on Creew ’n Dith not much worth exporting, see?”
That sounded reasonable, Horn decided. If the bulk of the androids traveling by this route to Earth originated out Arthworld way, or even perhaps somewhere still further from the solar system, this variation in their price was perfectly logical. Doubtless the losses Dize had referred to when he saw his next cargo exposed to the rain and wind—from pneumonia and similar causes—also affected their value, as must transportation costs …
Shembo had gone off into a highly technical account of price fluctuations in the android trade, which his command of Anglic was not really adequate for. Horn listened with only half an ear. After all, he might have come to an entirely false conclusion, and his next stop was the place where he was likeliest to be told about Talibrand’s secret, by the authorities who had nominated him for galactic citizenship. He ought to stop guessing from flimsy evidence and wait until he was given something concrete to act upon.
CHAPTER XIII
“NO, I WILL NOT tell you our reason for nominating Talibrand to this honor,” said Hereditary Councillor Braithwin coldly. “But before you leave this hall I shall require to know your reason for asking such a stupid question!”
He was a man of medium height and great girth, with an aggressive lower lip and full rubicund cheeks. He sat in a throne-like chair of black and yellow native woods, padded with what looked like unprocessed animal furs, and he wore a black tunic and full black breeches with a gold-plated belt and soft leather calf-high boots. His Anglic was virtually perfect, displaying hardly a trace of the thick accent that obscured Shembo’s speech.
Horn felt himself flushing under the accusing stare of the hereditary councillor. He was totally at a loss. He had been feeling like that ever since his arrival on Creew ’n Dith. Newholme, for all its superficial differences, might as well have been a regional backwater of Earth. But this!
He struggled to maintain his composure as he glanced around the hall, noting the women in long soft white dresses, many of them pretty, the men all in variants of the costume worn by Braithwin and somehow seeming more masculine than he was in his fashionable Earthside clothing; the low ceiling with its exposed timber beams, the walls of dressed stone with narrow windows climaxing in a point as abrupt as an arrowhead’s, the succession of furs spread out on the tiled floor between the entrance and the spot where he stood facing Braithwin.
Mustering all his courage, he raised his voice to make certain everyone in the long hall heard him, looked the councillor straight in the eye, and demanded, “Is it not important to know for what reason a citizen of the galaxy was kitted?”
“What?” Braithwin seized the arms of his chair and pulled his body forward from the waist, glaring at Horn. At the same moment a rustling cry of dismay ran through the assembly, followed by a buzz of talk as those who spoke Anglic translated for those who did not, and another outburst of cries which Braithwin silenced with a glare.
“Killed?” he rasped. “Lars Talibrand killed? Proof, I say!”
“I came from Earth to Newholme because Talibrand went from Newholme to Earth,” Horn answered deliberately. “From Newholme I came to Creew ’n Dith because Talibrand went from Creew ’n Dith to Newholme. I know because I have—this!”
He whipped out Talibrand’s certificate, held it up for everyone to see, and tossed it into Braithwin’s lap.
“And carrying it,” he finished, “I have been kept kicking my heels at your door because you would not admit me to an audience!”
Braithwin’s burning eyes fixed him for a long moment. Then he uttered a curt sentence in Creewndithian. Horn had picked up enough odd words from Shembo during his voyage from Newholme to realize that it constituted a relatively polite order to the crowd to get the hell out, and he waited until he was alone with the councillor in the great echoing hall.
“You’re no more’n a boy,” Braithwin said at lat, tapping the wallet on the back of his hand. “Spite of that beard you wear.”
Horn didn’t attempt to dispute the remark. The older man got to his feet and descended the steps of the dais from which he had presided over the assembly. He fell to absentminded pacing on the bare tiles, five steps one way, five another.
“So he’s dead,” he muttered almost inaudibly. “Rest him well. … But you, Horn! You have only yourself to blame for being kept kicking your heels at my door, haven’t you? You put it about that you’d come to pry into the use we make of the robots we buy from Earth. I’ve got more important things to do with my time than answer a lot of empty-headed questions! This world’s a sight different from yours, you know. Yours practically runs itself, I hear, what with your machines, your robots and androids and all. Here we look after the planet—we humans! We don’t leave everything up to cogs and circuits and blue-skinned artificial men!”
He swung to face Horn directly, thrusti
ng out the hand which held Talibrands wallet so that one corner pointed at the younger man’s heart. “Why the blazes didn’t you say what you’d really come here for?”
“Because Talibrand was killed!” Horn flared. “Because whoever he was up against was able to try and have me killed in a duel on Earth, and later kidnap me on Newholme! Because Talibrand died with his work unfinished! What ought I to have done when I learned I’d got here ahead of the news from Earth—go out and shout from the rooftops?”
Braithwin drew his beetling brows together and studied Horn thoughtfully for a long while. Abruptly he said, “Let’s get out of this drafty hall. I’ve held a long enough audience for today, anyhow. Come into my study and sit down.”
He pushed open a heavy wooden door behind the dais and led Horn into a small room with the same stone walk as the main hall, furnished with a rough wooden trestle table and half a dozen canvas-seated chairs. There were books, many of them from Earth, on shelves attached to the wall by pegs. A bellow materialized a brown-haired girl in the universal floor-length white dress, who carried a pottery jug and some mugs on a tray.
“Sit down and try the drink that’s made us what we are,” Braithwin grunted. “Creewndithian beer is rough and sour, but if you stick with it it won’t betray you the morning after. Hael!”
They drank, Horn barely taking a sip of his—he had tried this beer aboard Shembo’s ship and concluded that it must be an acquired taste. Then Braithwin sank into a chair facing him and crossed his legs.
“The whole story!” he commanded. “And don’t make it too fancy, hear?”
“Why Earth?” Braithwin muttered when Horn had finished. “Why Earth, of all the planets in the galaxy? If someone was hunting him, he could have been safe here, where he could have had a hundred armed men to watch him day and night—just by asking for them! But of course he was not the man to set overmuch store by simple safety. …”
“You knew him personally?” ventured Horn. “I wish I had done.”
“He was a cousin of mine—he and his brother Jan. I have sent for his brother; it will be well that he is told of his brother’s death by me, before news gets to him by road of gossip. A freshener for your beer?”
Horn hastily covered his mug with his palm and shook his head. The girl poured for Braithwin and he drank as though trying to put out a fire in his belly.
“There must have been a reason for him going to Earth,” he muttered as he set the mug aside, empty again. “There must have been a reason! You, Horn—do you know what it might have been?”
“Hardly,” Horn said with a grimace. “So far, nobody’s even told me what Talibrand was up to! A spaceman on Newholme—Dize, the one I mentioned as having helped me—he said if his identity had been known it would have handicapped his work, but as for what that work was …” He shrugged. “I was hoping you would tell me.”
“Without asking leave of the Hereditary Council, I can’t,” Braithwin sighed. “I can only tell you what it was that made us propose him for citizenship of the galaxy. Your Newholmer friend was quite right—he was at first reluctant to accept the honor we pressed on him, because he said to be famous would hamstring his future plans. Then at last he agreed it would be a convenience to have the status of a citizen of the galaxy, with all the attendant power to draw upon in case of need, but insisted we withhold his name and appearance from the people and say merely that there was now a third citizen, beside Gayk and Yugus, so that if he was forced to reveal himself he would not be treated as an impostor.”
Horn risked a further swig of his beer, found it much less unpleasant than at first, and took a healthy draft. “You were going to tell me what he did to secure the nomination,” he prompted.
“Ah yes!” Braithwin held out his mug to the girl again, and she emptied the jug into it before departing in search of a fresh supply. “Well, he brought me proof that the eldest son of one of our noble families had been stolen away by a vicious and unmanly relative. He set out to trace the boy, and found him, and in the doing discovered that others had been taken, too: commoners’ children, kidnapped by unscrupulous traders out of space. And they’d been taken out beyond Arthworld somewhere, transshipped, dyed blue—”
“Conditioned, and used to swell the supply of androids for Earth?” Horn leaned forward breathlessly.
“Precisely!” Braithwin rumbled. “But Lars did not rest satisfied with that one success. He determined to follow the whole terrible matter to its end. He uncovered other such happenings on half a dozen worlds, and in some cases was even able to restore the children to their families. So much did his discoveries revolt our council that we came close to barring the android traders altogether from Creew ’n Dith—for how could we ever know which of their androids might be a human child? But Jan Talibrand argued against this, saying it was the reverse of a tribute to his brother’s work and would imply that he had not fully succeeded in his task, so we let things go on as before. We depend much on the tax we levy on the trade, of course, though I for one like it little and will have no androids in my employ. Still, you’re from Earth, and doubtless you feel differently.”
Horn shook his head. “In my family’s household there is only one android, and he’s been a sort of third parent to me since my birth. And, as I told you, I was started on my journey by androids. Well! What you’ve told me makes many things clear that baffled me, but I still find it hard to believe that even a few children could have—ah—vanished without causing a tremendous outcry.”
Braithwin gave a mirthless chuckle. “To you from the tame planet Earth, doubtless it does seem strange. But here …” He reached to the floor beside his chair and lifted up a skull, ivory-yellow, its cruelly fanged jaws open in a dead snarl. From crown to snout it was fully the length of his forearm.
“I shot that beast on my own estate two years past, not a mile from where we’re sitting. It had taken the daughter of one of my retainers, a girl aged twelve. Ours is a wild world, Horn, even after centuries of occupation.”
“So those missing children could have been assumed victims of a killer beast. I follow you.” Horn frowned. “And am I right to think that androids in general must have heard of what Lars had done?”
“Most certainly. Lars himself informed us that many had risked their lives to help him in the dim hope that they too might be found to have been stolen from human parents and not concocted in some chemical stew.”
“Where are the androids made that are shipped through here?”
“On Arthworld, I suppose, or maybe further out. I told you, the less I have to do with android traders the better I’m pleased, and to me it’s all one on what world they’ve set up their infernal cookery.”
Horn said, fumbling, “I don’t understand why androids should be shipped from so far away! I can understand it being very expensive to manufacture them on Earth, but I’d have thought the cost of transporting them all the way from Arthworld, or wherever, would have canceled the advantage out. There must be plenty of the requisite technicians on Vernier, for example. Or they could be recruited right here on Creew ’n Dith!”
“Unlikely,” Braithwin grunted. “Some term it superstition, but to me and many other folk of this world there’s something you might call unnatural about men breathing, eating, sleeping, prone to our diseases, capable of speech, yet spawned of some artificial process. They’re so nearly human, and yet they’ve been robbed of so much by their conditioning that they’ve been made empty. If I want something calm and rational, I’ll settle for a machine. A man should enjoy a bit of healthy lust. He should be capable of love and hate! Though I suppose you think that’s a barbaric attitude.”
Horn chose his words with care. “Perhaps on your world you have a purpose to which such impulses can be put. On Earth they’ve turned inwards and gone sour. When I compare Dordy, the android, with a man like Coolin I can’t help feeling that what the former lacks is mainly the capacity for self-indulgence which in the latter came out as vicious cruelty.”
<
br /> “Maybe,” Braithwin shrugged. “Still, to us it was the most heartbreaking thing of all about those children Lars Talibrand rescued—to find that the devils who kidnapped them had made them as sterile and passionless as any android. Think of the hurt that caused to one man I know crippled in an accident—paralyzed—whose only son was returned to him and proved to lack the ability to carry on the line! I found him a brave youth to adopt, an orphan from among my own retinue, but it’s not the same. Yes?”—this last to the girl who had served their beer, who during the conversation had reentered the room.
She said something in Creewndithian which Horn failed to catch, and Braithwin rose briskly.
“Jan Talibrand is here. He came at once to meet you when he heard the news.”
Horn likewise stood up, just in time to confront the new arrival—a man so unlike him who had lain on Earth with a knife in his chest it was hard to credit that the two were brothers.
CHAPTER XIV
THIS WAS A LONG MAN—long of face, with dark eyes set close together beneath thin black brows; long of limb and body, long of hand and foot. Carefully dressed dark hair curled on his head. He wore clothes of the same style as did Braithwin, but elaborately embroidered with gold thread, and his belt was studded with jewels. He had a ring on his left thumb and jeweled buckles on his low shoes.
Removing a pair of large soft gloves, he offered Horn a hand that was very slightly damp with sweat. His voice was low, and his command of Anglic as good as Braithwin’s, though less colloquial.
“So you, sir, are the Earthman who cared enough about the fate of my unfortunate brother to bring news of him all the way from your home. My thanks, my sincere thanks—although the shock, of course, is terrible.”
Horn stared him squarely in the face. After a moment he dropped his eyes and added, as though aware that he neither looked nor sounded like a man who had just been cut to the quick, “Though I must grant I had been steeling myself to hear he had risked his life once too often ever since he set about his foolhardy quest.”