CHAPTER TWO
The Terran Empire has set its blazon on four hundred planets circlingmore than three hundred suns. But no matter what the color of the sun,the number of moons overhead, or the geography of the planet, once youstep inside a Headquarters building, you are on Earth. And Earth wouldbe alien to many who called themselves Earthmen, judging by thestrangeness I always felt when I stepped into that marble-and-glassworld inside the skyscraper. I heard the sound of my steps ringing intothin resonance along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes,readjusting them painfully to the cold yellowness of the lights.
The Traffic Division was efficiency made insolent, in glass and chromeand polished steel, mirrors and windows and looming electronic clericalmachines. Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor which gave aview of the spaceport; a vast open space lighted with blue-white mercuryvapor lamps, and a chained-down skyscraper of a starship, littered overwith swarming ants. The process crew was getting the big ship ready forskylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a third look. I'dbe on it when it lifted.
Turning away from the monitored spaceport, I watched myself strideforward in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere; a tall man, alean man, bleached out by years under a red sun, and deeply scarred onboth cheeks and around the mouth. Even after six years behind a desk, myneat business clothes--suitable for an Earthman with a desk job--didn'tfit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on the balls of my feet,approximating the lean stooping walk of a Dry-towner from the Coronisplains.
The clerk behind the sign marked TRANSPORTATION was a little rabbit of aman with a sunlamp tan, barricaded by a small-sized spaceport of desk,and looking as if he liked being shut up there. He looked up in civilinquiry.
"Can I do something for you?"
"My name's Cargill. Have you a pass for me?"
He stared. A free pass aboard a starship is rare except for professionalspacemen, which I obviously wasn't. "Let me check my records," hehedged, and punched scanning buttons on the glassy surface. Shadows cameand went, and I saw myself half-reflected, a tipsy shadow in a flurry ofracing colors. The pattern finally stabilized and the clerk read offnames.
"Brill, Cameron ... ah, yes. Cargill, Race Andrew, Department 38,transfer transportation. Is that you?"
I admitted it and he started punching more buttons when the sound of thename made connection in whatever desk-clerks use for a brain. He stoppedwith his hand halfway to the button.
"Are you Race Cargill of the Secret Service, sir? _The_ Race Cargill?"
"It's right there," I said, gesturing wearily at the projected patternunder the glassy surface.
"Why, I thought--I mean, everybody took it for granted--that is, Iheard--"
"You thought Cargill had been killed a long time ago because his namenever turned up in news dispatches any more?" I grinned sourly, seeingmy image dissolve in blurring shadows, and feeling the long-healed scaron my mouth draw up to make the grin hideous. "I'm Cargill, all right.I've been up on Floor 38 for six years, holding down a desk any clerkcould handle. You for instance."
He gaped. He was a rabbit of a man who had never stepped out of the safefamiliar boundaries of the Terran Trade City. "You mean _you're_ the manwho went to Charin in disguise, and routed out The Lisse? The man whoscouted the Black Ridge and Shainsa? And you've been working at a deskupstairs all these years? It's--hard to believe, sir."
My mouth twitched. It had been hard for me to believe while I was doingit. "The pass?"
"Right away, sir." He punched buttons and a printed chip of plasticextruded from a slot on the desk top. "Your fingerprint, please?" Hepressed my finger into the still-soft surface of the plastic, indeliblyrecording the print; waited a moment for it to harden, then laid thechip in the slot of a pneumatic tube. I heard it whoosh away.
"They'll check your fingerprint against that when you board the ship.Skylift isn't till dawn, but you can go aboard as soon as the processcrew finishes with her." He glanced at the monitor screen, where theswarming crew were still doing inexplicable things to the immobilespacecraft. "It will be another hour or two. Where are you going, Mr.Cargill?"
"Some planet in the Hyades Cluster. Vainwal, I think, something likethat."
"What's it like there?"
"How should I know?" I'd never been there either. I only knew thatVainwal had a red sun, and that the Terran Legate could use a trainedIntelligence officer. And _not_ pin him down to a desk.
There was respect, and even envy in the little man's voice. "CouldI--buy you a drink before you go aboard, Mr. Cargill?"
"Thanks, but I have a few loose ends to tie up." I didn't, but I wasdamned if I'd spend my last hour on Wolf under the eyes of a deskboundrabbit who preferred his adventure safely secondhand.
But after I'd left the office and the building, I almost wished I'dtaken him up on it. It would be at least an hour before I could boardthe starship, with nothing to do but hash over old memories, betterforgotten.
The sun was lower now. Phi Coronis is a dim star, a dying star, and oncepast the crimson zenith of noon, its light slants into a longpale-reddish twilight. Four of Wolf's five moons were clustered in apale bouquet overhead, mingling thin violet moonlight into the crimsondusk.
The shadows were blue and purple in the empty square as I walked acrossthe stones and stood looking down one of the side streets.
A few steps, and I was in an untidy slum which might have been onanother world from the neat bright Trade City which lay west of thespaceport. The Kharsa was alive and reeking with the sounds and smellsof human and half-human life. A naked child, diminutive andgolden-furred, darted between two of the chinked pebble-houses, anddisappeared, spilling fragile laughter like breaking glass.
A little beast, half snake and half cat, crawled across a roof, spreadleathery wings, and flapped to the ground. The sour pungent reek ofincense from the open street-shrine made my nostrils twitch, and ahulked form inside, not human, cast me a surly green glare as I passed.
I turned, retracing my steps. There was no danger, of course, so closeto the Trade City. Even on such planets as Wolf, Terra's laws arerespected within earshot of their gates. But there had been rioting hereand in Charin during the last month. After the display of mob violencethis afternoon, a lone Terran, unarmed, might turn up as a solitarycorpse flung on the steps of the HQ building.
There had been a time when I had walked alone from Shainsa to the PolarColony. I had known how to melt into this kind of night, shabby andinconspicuous, a worn shirtcloak hunched round my shoulders, weaponlessexcept for the razor-sharp skean in the clasp of the cloak; walking onthe balls of my feet like a Dry-towner, not looking or sounding orsmelling like an Earthman.
That rabbit in the Traffic office had stirred up things I'd be wiser toforget. It had been six years; six years of slow death behind a desk,since the day when Rakhal Sensar had left me a marked man; death-warrantwritten on my scarred face anywhere outside the narrow confines of theTerran law on Wolf.
Rakhal Sensar--my fists clenched with the old impotent hate. _If I couldget my hands on him!_
It had been Rakhal who first led me through the byways of the Kharsa,teaching me the jargon of a dozen tribes, the chirping call of theYa-men, the way of the catmen of the rain-forests, the argot of thievesmarkets, the walk and step of the Dry-towners from Shainsa and Daillonand Ardcarran--the parched cities of dusty, salt stone which spread outin the bottoms of Wolf's vanished oceans. Rakhal was from Shainsa,human, tall as an Earthman, weathered by salt and sun, and he had workedfor Terran Intelligence since we were boys. We had traveled all over ourworld together, and found it good.
And then, for some reason I had never known, it had come to an end.Even now I was not wholly sure why he had erupted, that day, intoviolence and a final explosion. Then he had disappeared, leaving me amarked man. And a lonely one: Juli had gone with him.
I strode the streets of the slum unseeing, my thoughts running afamiliar channel. Juli, my kid sister, clinging around Rakhal's neck,he
r gray eyes hating me. I had never seen her again.
That had been six years ago. One more adventure had shown me that myusefulness to the Secret Service was over. Rakhal had vanished, but hehad left me a legacy: my name, written on the sure scrolls of deathanywhere outside the safe boundaries of Terran law. A marked man, I hadgone back to slow stagnation behind a desk. I'd stood it as long as Icould.
When it finally got too bad, Magnusson had been sympathetic. He was theChief of Terran Intelligence on Wolf, and I was next in line for hisjob, but he understood when I quit. He'd arranged the transfer and thepass, and I was leaving tonight.
I was nearly back to the spaceport by now, across from the street-shrineat the edge of the square. It was here that the little toy-seller hadvanished. But it was exactly like a thousand, a hundred thousand othersuch street-shrines on Wolf, a smudge of incense reeking and stinkingbefore the squatting image of Nebran, the Toad God whose face and symbolare everywhere on Wolf. I stared for a moment at the ugly idol, thenslowly moved away.
The lighted curtains of the spaceport cafe attracted my attention and Iwent inside. A few spaceport personnel in storm gear were drinkingcoffee at the counter, a pair of furred _chaks_, lounging beneath themirrors at the far end, and a trio of Dry-towners, rangy, weathered menin crimson and blue shirt cloaks, were standing at a wall shelf, eatingTerran food with aloof dignity.
In my business clothes I felt more conspicuous than the _chaks_. Whatplace had a civilian here, between the uniforms of the spacemen and thecolorful brilliance of the Dry-towners?
A snub-nosed girl with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked for_jaco_ and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near theDry-towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One ofthem, without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone ofhis voice, began to make elaborate comments on my entrance, myappearance, my ancestry and probably personal habits, all defined in thecolorfully obscene dialect of Shainsa.
That had happened before. The Wolfan sense of humor is only half-human.The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger, preferably anEarthman, to his very face, in an unknown language, perfectly deadpan.In my civilian clothes I was obviously fair game.
A look or gesture of resentment would have lost face and dignity--whatthe Dry-towners call their _kihar_--permanently. I leaned over andremarked in their own dialect that I would, at some future andunspecified time, appreciate the opportunity to return theircompliments.
By rights they should have laughed, made some barbed remark about mycommand of language and crossed their hands in symbol of a jest decentlyreversed on themselves. Then we would have bought each other a drink,and that would be that.
But it didn't happen that way. Not this time. The tallest of the threewhirled, upsetting his drink in the process. I heard its thin shatterthrough the squeal of the alabaster-haired girl, as a chair crashedover. They faced me three abreast, and one of them fumbled in the claspof his shirtcloak.
I edged backward, my own hand racing up for a skean I hadn't carried insix years, and fronted them squarely, hoping I could face down theprospect of a roughhouse. They wouldn't kill me, this close to the HQ,but at least I was in for an unpleasant mauling. I couldn't handle threemen; and if nerves were this taut in the Kharsa, I might get knifed.Quite by accident, of course.
The _chaks_ moaned and gibbered. The Dry-towners glared at me and Itensed for the moment when their steady stare would explode intoviolence.
Then I became aware that they were gazing, not at me, but at somethingor someone behind me. The skeans snicked back into the clasps of theircloaks.
Then they broke rank, turned and ran. They _ran_, blundering intostools, leaving havoc of upset benches and broken crockery in theirwake. One man barged into the counter, swore and ran on, limping. I letmy breath go. Something had put the fear of God into those brutes, andit wasn't my own ugly mug. I turned and saw the girl.
She was slight, with waving hair like spun black glass, circled withfaint tracery of stars. A black glass belt bound her narrow waist likeclasped hands, and her robe, stark white, bore an ugly embroidery acrossthe breasts, the flat sprawl of a conventionalized Toad God, Nebran. Herfeatures were delicate, chiseled, pale; a Dry-town face, all human, allwoman, but set in an alien and unearthly repose. The great eyes gleamedred. They were fixed, almost unseeing, but the crimson lips were curvedwith inhuman malice.
She stood motionless, looking at me as if wondering why I had not runwith the others. In half a second, the smile flickered off and wasreplaced by a startled look of--recognition?
Whoever and whatever she was, she had saved me a mauling. I started tophrase formal thanks, then broke off in astonishment. The cafe hademptied and we were entirely alone. Even the _chaks_ had leaped throughan open window--I saw the whisk of a disappearing tail.
We stood frozen, looking at one another while the Toad God sprawledacross her breasts rose and fell for half a dozen breaths.
Then I took one step forward, and she took one step backward, at thesame instant. In one swift movement she was outside in the dark street.It took me only an instant to get into the street after her, but as Istepped across the door there was a little stirring in the air, like therising of heat waves across the salt flats at noon. Then thestreet-shrine was empty, and nowhere was there any sign of the girl. Shehad vanished. She simply was not there.
I gaped at the empty shrine. She had stepped inside and vanished, like awraith of smoke, like--
--Like the little toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa.
There were eyes in the street again and, becoming aware of where I was,I moved away. The shrines of Nebran are on every corner of Wolf, butthis is one instance when familiarity does not breed contempt. Thestreet was dark and seemed empty, but it was packed with all the littlenoises of living. I was not unobserved. And meddling with astreet-shrine would be just as dangerous as the skeans of my threeloud-mouthed Dry-town roughnecks.
I turned and crossed the square for the last time, turning toward theloom of the spaceship, filing the girl away as just another riddle ofWolf I'd never solve.
How wrong I was!