Horn shifted uncomfortably in his chair. A little surprised at his own directness, he heard himself say, “It must be rough to be—to be one of you.”
‘It is.” Dordy’s eyes fixed on his face. “Want to know how rough? The insurers who cover me for the hotel management impose a condition on my policy: I mustn’t set foot outside the hotel during carnival week unless they pay a surcharge of one thousand per cent on the basic premium. I stop being insured the moment I step over the threshold.”
Unexpectedly, he laughed. “Sorry, Mr. Horn. I’m presuming a hell of a lot on the strength of one decent gesture you made. I apologize.”
Horn got up and walked over to the nearest window. From here he could see down to the shore of the bay, where dark paddleboats were churning up the polychrome luminescence of the sea. Bubbletaxis were drifting on the breeze like balls of thistledown. Very faintly, from the fairground at the other side of the hotel, there came the intermingled tunes of a score of loud-blasting calliopes.
“It didn’t seem to me as though Coolin was very eager to go hunting the killer of—what did you say his name was?”
“He said his name was Winch. As I pointed out that may well not have been the truth.”
Horn nodded. “Anyway! Coolin seemed a sight less keen than his androids were to catch up with whoever did for Latchbolt.” He made his tone challenging, and Dordy responded with a sarcastic grin.
“Thinking that we don’t have families, or relations? That we come out of a chemical vat instead of a womb? That makes us all brothers, Mr. Horn. All of us.”
“I’d like it a lot better if people cared more about each other,” Horn said, almost inaudibly because he had been brought up to distrust sentimentality.
‘I’m afraid you have thousands of years of history opposed to you, sir,” Dordy said.
The cleaning robots, having carried out an automatic survey of the entire suite, rolled up to him and reported that the job was done. He dismissed them briskly, and the moment they had departed walked over to the nearest closet and commanded it to open. Horn, half-turning, gave a start.
“Why, it’s full of Winch’s belongings! Why didn’t you tell Coolin to search them?”
“I formed my opinin of Coolin directly after his arrival,” Dordy answered over his shoulder. “Shouldn’t he have thought of doing that himself? It never occurred to him. As you just said, it’s as though he doesn’t really care. I formed my opinion of you in a hurry, too. It’s a habit one has to learn in my job. I have to size up a client the moment I set eyes on him; there are some elements of ‘good service’ which no robotic device has yet been designed to cope with. And one carries the habit over into other areas, eventually.”
Bewildered, never having heard an android speak so familiarly before, Horn watched as Dordy went on opening doors and drawers manually. Most of the compartments were empty; Winch must have brought much less baggage with him than the owner of the piled cases under which Latchbolt had been hidden.
At length, seeming satisfied, Dordy turned towards the door. On the threshold he paused, and gave Horn a long scrutinizing look, as though weighing him in a mental balance. He seemed to reach a crucial decision, though what it could be Horn hadn’t the faintest idea.
“All right, Mr. Horn!” The words were stiff with tension. “Here’s your chance to behave as though you mean what you’ve been talking about—to show you care as much about one of you with a knife in his heart as we do about one of us with his face beaten to pulp!”
He put his blue hand inside his dark tunic, fumbled in a pocket, and tossed something flat and oblong across the room to Horn, who caught it automatically.
“His name wasn’t Winch,” Dordy said. “His name was Lars Talibrand.”
And he was gone.
Horn had been mechanically turning the thing he had been given over and over in both hands for long moments before he finally got around to looking at it. Considering the wealth and status of his family, he had had very little to do with androids most of his life—after all, the owners of the planet’s leading robot manufacturers could hardly employ other than their own much-touted products on their estate. But he had a distinct feeling that androids weren’t supposed to act as Dordy had just been doing.
As soon as he started to examine his new acquisition, however, all such superficial thoughts vanished from his mind. What he held consisted in a sort of wallet of dull grey woven metal: a pocket-shaped sheath enclosing a smaller oblong which could be pulled out. He removed it. It was a thin booklet, the front cover engraved with words in five different languages. He could read only one of the various inscriptions—that in Anglic Terrestrial—but that was enough to make him blink with surprise.
The legend said, CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY.
Inside, a solido picture leapt up at him. It must have had bio-identity, for now it was fading from its original lifelike coloring towards a monotone grey, and the eyes in the face were closed. But enough detail remained for him to be certain this was the red-haired man who had died in this room.
Opposite the picture was a page of wording in an unfamiliar tongue, in the midst of which stood out the name Dordy had mentioned: “Lars Talibrand.” The next page he could read, and was presumably a translation of the foregoing. It declared that on such a day of such a year the government of Creew ’n Dith had nominated Lars Talibrand to the distinction of galactic citizenship, and continued below in slightly different type to the effect that a world called Vernier had seconded the nomination, and again in yet another type added that a world called Lygos had confirmed it. At the foot of the page was a list of five other worlds to which the same Lars Talibrand had rendered signal service.
Horn felt a chill of awe run down his spine. What kind of a man was this who had died here? What kind of a man could do such work as to make whole planets grateful to him?
A man human enough to die when a knife was thrust through his heart …
He got to his feet and determinedly set to, working his way through the sparse belongings in the room. He belatedly decided that it was for that purpose that Dordy had left all the drawers and closets ajar—otherwise only the registered occupant could have gained access to them unless he had one of the staff’s pass-keys. There were a few changes of clothes, none suitable for the gaiety of carnival but all of them exotic to Earthly eyes: cracked leather breeches exuding alien scents, cleated boots, enormous enveloping parkas clearly destined for the climate of some world less thoroughly domesticated than this one. There were toilet articles, new, probably supplied by the hotel since his arrival. Nothing informative beyond that. Maybe the killer had already been through everything, though there was little to suggest hasty disturbance by a stranger.
Dissatisfied, he opened the booklet anew. He had presumed that it consisted entirely of versions of the same testimonial he had already read, in various languages. Now he found there were only as many translations as there were of the proud title on the cover—five. Behind followed pages and pages of planetary exit and entry stamps. He estimated two hundred or more, covering twenty different worlds, and the thought made him almost dizzy. A traveler, this man!
Curious, he glanced at the last page seeking an entry stamp for Earth. There wasn’t one. But of course Coolin had been right in one thing: literally thousands of off-worlders came to Earth at carnival time, and the authorities were then likely to grow lax.
He slid the booklet back in its wallet and set off in search of Dordy. He had a great many questions to ask.
CHAPTER IV
IN THE PUBLIC ELEVATORS the carnival spirit was already rampant. A slender woman apparently wearing no more than a coat of iridescent paint struggled to persuade him to try a special euphoric she had been given, and on the next stop down a grinning boy of sixteen or so entered announcing his intention of spreading some joie de vivre among the robots and androids on the service levels with the help of a large carton of fireworks. Luckily for Horn, who had much more serious business in the serv
ice basement, the painted woman managed to press some of her euphoric on the boy before he left the car, and the last sight Horn had of him showed him sitting on the floor with one elbow on his case of fireworks, lost in wave after wave of helpless laughter.
Puzzled at finding a client in carnival dress in the service basement, a robot inquired whether Horn had lost his way. Shaking his head, he explained that he was looking for Dordy’s office.
Reproachfully the robot pointed out that he had only to ask, and Dordy would come to his suite at the earliest possible opportunity.
“I know what I’m doing!” Horn snapped. “Where is his office, anyway?”
Programmed not to interfere with humans’ decisions, no matter how apparently irrational, unless lives were being endangered, the robot gave up. “Third door on the right, sir,” it said. “But at present I do not believe he is there.”
Correct; the room was empty. Horn went in and sat down in a hard plain chair, struck a smokehale and prepared himself for a long wait. In fact, only a few minutes had gone by when the door slid back again and Dordy entered, betraying no surprise on seeing that he had a visitor.
“I’m sorry you had to wait,” he said. “I only just now saw the last of the lawforce androids off the premises. They were, as I think you realized, a little more thorough than Coolin.”
“You sound—” Horn had to fumble for a word. “You sound defiant, Dordy!”
At that, the android did look surprised, and perhaps a trifle relieved. Shutting the door, he moved briskly to a chair facing Horn’s.
“Yes, sir. ‘Defiant’ fits the case precisely. I suppose you refer to my use of unprefixed names for humans, for example ‘Coolin’ for ‘Superintendent Coolin?”
“I don’t give a damn what you call him.” Horn grunted. “I want to know more about this.” He lifted the woven-metal wallet. “You intended me to come and ask questions about it, didn’t you? I don’t see any other reason for giving it to me.”
Dordy nodded. “As I told you, sir, I reached a conclusion about you on very slender evidence. But sometimes one has to gamble. There are so many things a human can do which an android could—but can’t. If you follow me.”
Something in his tone made Horn want to apologize, but he had no idea why. He said gruffly, “Well, first off: I assume this is some kind of pass, or identity document. But I never heard of anyone being made a citizen of the galaxy before! What’s it supposed to mean?”
“Such documents aren’t recognized here,” Dordy shrugged. “Earth is a curiously parochial world in some ways. But there’s a lot more to the inhabited galaxy than just this one planet, as you’ll have been reminded by the impressive array of entry and exit stamps in the back of that booklet.”
“Yes, of course! I mean, one studies galactography in school, and gets to recognize the stars with inhabited planets in the sky at night. And there are imported luxuries and so on. Only … only it doesn’t mean very much to most people, I guess.”
“Apparently not, sir.”
Was there sarcasm in the tone? If so, why? Horn felt a depressing sense of being at a loss, confronted with this blue-skinned inferior, and sternly reminded himself that after all Dordy wasn’t even a naturally born man but only a facsimile grown from a programmed solution of organics in some elaborate fashion he did not know the details of. Men had invented the android process! Without human genius Dordy could never have come into existence.
It must have something to do with the universal phenomenon someone had once summed up by saying that no man is a hero to his valet. In Dordy’s position there must be ample exposure to the foibles of humanity—more than enough to make him cynical and a little discourteous. No matter; a man, a real man, had died overhead a short while ago, and Derry Horn was not going to allow mere androids to display more concern over the death of one of their kind than humans did over the murder of one of theirs!
Determinedly, he plowed on with the questions he had had in mind when he left Talibrand’s suite.
“How did you come to get hold of this—this certificate?”
‘Talibrand gave it to me on his arrival,” said Dordy. “It was the most precious thing he had, except his life. He could only part with it because he knew he was in very great danger, and to have been found in possession of it would have sealed his fate however well he might otherwise have disguised his identity.”
“But why to you?” Horn demanded. “Did you know him well?”
“I’d never seen him before.”
“Then …” No, this wasn’t making sense. He tried another tack. “Who was he hiding from? Did he know someone was hunting him—did he know who? And if you know, why didn’t you mention this to Coolin?”
“For the same reason I don’t propose to tell you.” Dordy smiled.
‘Then you do know!”
‘I know nothing I could prove, sir.” This time the irony was unmistakable. “I could name a name and feel certain it was right, and not be able to provide evidence in a hundred years.”
“I think you’re stalling,” Horn said suddenly. “I think—yes, I see how it might be! It isn’t anything to do with me, is it—not me personally? It’s all because of your friend the floor manager who got killed! You saw me being sympathetic to him, and I guess you probably thought, ‘Ah-hah! Here’s Derry Horn, of Horn & Horn the rich robot manufacturers—if I play my cards right I can maybe get him to lean on the lawforce a bit and here’s one android killing that won’t get handled the way the law lays down’! I don’t think you give a damn about Talibrand. I don’t even believe he gave you this certificate of his. I think you probably took a quick look through his belongings before Coolin and his team got here, and made off with this because it might be important.”
He tossed the grey wallet with its amazing booklet on to a nearby table, and got up.
“Well, I’m not going to be used, hear? It’s the job of the lawforce to do whatever is to be done in a case like this, and if Coolin doesn’t happen to be all that good at his work I’m shot if I’m going to make myself responsible for his failings! The hell with it all–I’m going out and have myself some fun!”
He was at the door when Dordy, who had not made a move, called after him.
“Mr. Horn!”
He glanced back, not speaking.
“You’re wrong to say I don’t care about Talibrand. He was a good man.”
“Sure—that booklet says he was some kind of walking miracle! But in whose opinion? He wasn’t anything to anyone on Earth.”
“You’re wrong there, too. Incidentally, there’s no point in leaving his pass with me. It’s useless except to a human being. I can’t do any good with it at all.”
“Nor can I,” Horn said harshly, and went out.
A mobile fountain was rolling slowly past the entrance to the hotel when he reached the street. He hurried after it and swigged two or three mouthfuls of the various fruit-flavored euphorics streaming from its multiple spouts. At once a heady artificial gaiety took possession of him. He bought a mask from a passing vendor who had reserved the most resplendent of his creations for his own face, and ducked behind it into anonymity.
At the curb waited bubbletaxis, pastel-colored, lemon, pale green, pink, sky-blue. Their patient automatics hummed at the edge of audibility, awaiting passengers. As Horn strolled unhurriedly to select one for his own use, another which had been chartered elsewhere in the city settled to rest nearby, bearing a young couple making passionate love. Passers-by hooted with laughter at their annoyance as they perforce had to leave their vehicle and climb into the next in line to resume their airborne courtship. They took the one Horn had been intending to use. Gravely he bowed and gave them precedence, and the girl—it could be seen she was very pretty for she had removed her mask to make kissing easier—promised drunkenly that he could have her any time they met during the carnival, provided she was on her own.
It didn’t seem likely.
He entered the bubbletaxi they had just va
cated, and it took the air with a gentle bobbing motion, like a drifting feather. The seats were still warm from the former occupants, and a hint of fragrance clung even in the open cockpit. Horn put his feet up on the forward rim of the vehicle and leaned back to stare at the stars.
One learns to recognize the ones which have inhabited planets. …
Only later one also forgets, he qualified. He couldn’t for the life of him have identified two of those stars and their inhabited worlds. He could have listed most of the names, given a few minutes to think about them; what he could never have hoped to do was attach them all to the proper dots of brillance above.
Annoyed, he switched his attention to the lights underneath him instead. There was the fairground, over on his left; there was the arc of the beach, fringed with the luminous organisms sown at sundown, some of which had been carried out to sea in the wake of paddleboats or by chance changes in the current. His vehicle was bearing him in a wide curving swoop all over the city, controlled as much by the breeze as by its automatics. Now the air bore to him the distant fairground blare, now a freak snatch of song from a boat lazing on the ripples a mile from shore. Carnival!
The sound montage should have been evocative, since it was part of the heritage of every living adult. It should at once, even without the euphorics he had gulped down, have snatched his imagination away from all such nastiness as androids beaten to death. Who cared about androids, anyhow—except other androids? And the man who had been killed was a total stranger, probably with delusions of grandeur to judge by the boastful certificate he had carried.
Yet, by the time his bubbletaxi had deposited him at the far edge of the fairground, in the thick of the merrymaking, he was growing terrified at the prospect of being haunted for the whole of carnival week by visions of brutal murder. To distract himself he jumped out before the vehicle had properly come to rest and ran whooping down the grassy bank it had settled on to dive headlong between two gaudy concession-booths.