CHAPTER THREE
From the spaceport gates, exchanging brief greetings with the guards, Itook a last look at the Kharsa. For a minute I toyed with the notion ofjust disappearing down one of those streets. It's not hard to disappearon Wolf, if you know how. And I knew, or had known once. Loyalty toTerra? What had Terra given me except a taste of color and adventure,out there in the Dry-towns, and then taken it away again?
If an Earthman is very lucky and very careful, he lasts about ten yearsin Intelligence. I had had two years more than my share. I still knewenough to leave my Terran identity behind like a worn-out jacket. Icould seek out Rakhal, settle our blood-feud, see Juli again....
How could I see Juli again? As her husband's murderer? No other way.Blood-feud on Wolf is a terrible and elaborate ritual of the codeduello. And once I stepped outside the borders of Terran law, sooner orlater Rakhal and I would meet. And one of us would die.
I looked back, just once, at the dark rambling streets away from thesquare. Then I turned toward the blue-white lights that hurt my eyes,and the starship that loomed, huge and hateful, before me.
A steward in white took my fingerprint and led me to a coffin-sizedchamber. He brought me coffee and sandwiches--I hadn't, after all, eatenin the spaceport cafe--then got me into the skyhook and strapped me,deftly and firmly, into the acceleration cushions, tugging at theGarensen belts until I ached all over. A long needle went into myarm--the narcotic that would keep me safely drowsy all through theterrible tug of interstellar acceleration.
Doors clanged, buzzers vibrated lower down in the ship, men tramped thecorridors calling to one another in the language of the spaceports. Iunderstood one word in four. I shut my eyes, not caring. At the end ofthe trip there would be another star, another world, another language.Another life.
I had spent all my adult life on Wolf. Juli had been a child under thered star. But it was a pair of wide crimson eyes and black hair combedinto ringlets like spun black glass that went down with me into thebottomless pit of sleep....
* * * * *
Someone was shaking me.
"Ah, come on, Cargill. Wake up, man. Shake your boots!"
My mouth, foul-tasting and stiff, fumbled at the shapes of words. "Wha'happened? Wha' y' want?" My eyes throbbed. When I got them open I sawtwo men in black leathers bending over me. We were still inside gravity.
"Get out of the skyhook. You're coming with us."
"Wha'--" Even through the layers of the sedative, that got to me. Only acriminal, under interstellar law, can be removed from a passage-paidstarship once he has formally checked in on board. I was legally, atthis moment, on my "planet of destination."
"I haven't been charged--"
"Did I say you had?" snapped one man.
"Shut up, he's doped," the other said hurriedly. "Look," he continued,pronouncing every word loudly and distinctly, "get up now, and come withus. The co-ordinator will hold up blastoff if we don't get off in threeminutes, and Operations will scream. Come on, please."
Then I was stumbling along the lighted, empty corridor, swaying betweenthe two men, foggily realizing the crew must think me a fugitive caughttrying to leave the planet.
The locks dilated. A uniformed spaceman watched us, fussily regarding achronometer. He fretted. "The dispatcher's office--"
"We're doing the best we can," the Spaceforce man said. "Can you walk,Cargill?"
I could, though my feet were a little shaky on the ladders. The violetmoonlight had deepened to mauve, and gusty winds spun tendrils of gritacross my face. The Spaceforce men shepherded me, one on either side, tothe gateway.
"What the hell is all this? Is something wrong with my pass?"
The guard shook his head. "How would I know? Magnusson put out theorder, take it up with him."
"Believe me," I muttered, "I will."
They looked at each other. "Hell," said one, "he's not under arrest, wedon't have to haul him around like a convict. Can you walk all rightnow, Cargill? You know where the Secret Service office is, don't you?Floor 38. The Chief wants you, and make it fast."
I knew it made no sense to ask questions, they obviously knew no morethan I did. I asked anyhow.
"Are they holding the ship for me? I'm supposed to be leaving on it."
"Not that one," the guard answered, jerking his head toward thespaceport. I looked back just in time to see the dust-dimmed ship leapupward, briefly whitened in the field searchlights, and vanish into thesurging clouds above.
My head was clearing fast, and anger speeded up the process. The HQbuilding was empty in the chill silence of just before dawn. I had torout out a dozing elevator operator, and as the lift swooped upward myanger rose with it. I wasn't working for Magnusson any more. What righthad he, or anybody, to grab me off an outbound starship like a criminal?By the time I barged into his office, I was spoiling for a fight.
The Secret Service office was full of grayish-pink morning and yellowlights left on from the night before. Magnusson, at his desk, looked asif he'd slept in his rumpled uniform. He was a big bull of a man, andhis littered desk looked, as always, like the track of a typhoon in thesalt flats.
The clutter was weighted down, here and there, with solidopic cubes ofthe five Magnusson youngsters, and as usual, Magnusson was fiddling withone of the cubes. He said, not looking up, "Sorry to pull this at thelast minute, Race. There was just time to put out a pull order and getyou off the ship, but no time to explain."
I glared at him. "Seems I can't even get off the planet without trouble!You raised hell all the time I was here, but when I try to leave--whatis this, anyhow? I'm sick of being shoved around!"
Magnusson made a conciliating gesture. "Wait until you hear--" he began,and broke off, looking at someone who was sitting in the chair in frontof his desk, somebody whose back was turned to me. Then the persontwisted and I stopped cold, blinking and wondering if this were ahallucination and I'd wake up in the starship's skyhook, far out inspace.
Then the woman cried, "Race, _Race_! Don't you know me?"
I took one dazed step and another. Then she flew across the spacebetween us, her thin arms tangling around my neck, and I caught her up,still disbelieving.
"_Juli!_"
"Oh, Race, I thought I'd die when Mack told me you were leaving tonight.It's been the only thing that's kept me alive, knowing--knowing I'd seeyou." She sobbed and laughed, her face buried in my shoulder.
I let her cry for a minute, then held my sister at arm's length. For amoment I had forgotten the six years that lay between us. Now I sawthem, all of them, printed plain on her face. Juli had been a prettygirl. Six years had fined her face into beauty, but there was tension inthe set of her shoulders, and her gray eyes had looked on horrors.
She looked tiny and thin and unbearably frail under the scanty folds ofher fur robe, a Dry-town woman's robe. Her wrists were manacled, thejeweled tight bracelets fastened together by the links of a long finechain of silvered gilt that clashed a little, thinly, as her hands fellto her sides.
"What's wrong, Juli? Where's Rakhal?"
She shivered and now I could see that she was in a state of shock.
"Gone. He's gone, that's all I know. And--oh, Race, Race, he took Rindywith him!"
From the tone of her voice I had thought she was sobbing. Now I realizedthat her eyes were dry; she was long past tears. Gently I unclasped herclenched fingers and put her back in the chair. She sat like a doll, herhands falling to her sides with a thin clash of chains. When I pickedthem up and laid them in her lap she let them lie there motionless. Istood over her and demanded, "Who's Rindy?" She didn't move.
"My daughter, Race. Our little girl."
Magnusson broke in, his voice harsh. "Well, Cargill, should I have letyou leave?"
"Don't be a damn fool!"
"I was afraid you'd tell the poor kid she had to live with her ownmistakes," growled Magnusson. "You're capable of it."
For the first time Juli showed a sign of animation
. "I was afraid tocome to you, Mack. You never wanted me to marry Rakhal, either."
"Water under the bridge," Magnusson grunted. "And I've got lads of myown, Miss Cargill--Mrs.--" he stopped in distress, vaguely rememberingthat in the Dry-towns an improper form of address can be a deadlyinsult.
But she guessed his predicament.
"You used to call me Juli, Mack. It will do now."
"You've changed," he said quietly. "Juli, then. Tell Race what you toldme. All of it."
She turned to me. "I shouldn't have come for myself--"
I knew that. Juli was proud, and she had always had the courage to livewith her own mistakes. When I first saw her, I knew this wouldn't beanything so simple as the complaint of an abused wife or even anabandoned or deserted mother. I took a chair, watching her andlistening.
She began. "You made a mistake when you turned Rakhal out of theService, Mack. In his way he was the most loyal man you had on Wolf."
Magnusson had evidently not expected her to take this tack. He scowledand looked disconcerted, shifting uneasily in his big chair, but whenJuli did not continue, obviously awaiting his answer, he said, "Juli, heleft me no choice. I never knew how his mind worked. That final deal heengineered--have you any idea how much that cost the Service? And haveyou taken a good look at your brother's face, Juli girl?"
Juli raised her eyes slowly, and I saw her flinch. I knew how she felt.For three years I had kept my mirror covered, growing an untidystraggle of beard because it hid the scars and saved me the ordeal offacing myself to shave.
Juli whispered, "Rakhal's is just as bad. Worse."
"That's some satisfaction," I said, and Mack stared at us, baffled."Even now I don't know what it was all about."
"And you never will," I said for the hundredth time. "We've been overthis before. Nobody could understand it unless he'd lived in theDry-towns. Let's not talk about it. You talk, Juli. What brought youhere like this? What about the kid?"
"There's no way I can tell you the end without telling you thebeginning," she said reasonably. "At first Rakhal worked as a trader inShainsa."
I wasn't surprised. The Dry-towns were the core of Terran trade on Wolf,and it was through their cooperation that Terra existed here peaceably,on a world only half human, or less.
The men of the Dry-towns existed strangely poised between two worlds.They had made dealings with the first Terran ships, and thus gaveentrance to the wedge of the Terran Empire. And yet they stood proud andapart. They alone had never yielded to the Terranizing which overtakesall Empire planets sooner or later.
There were no Trade Cities in the Dry-towns; an Earthman who went thereunprotected faced a thousand deaths, each one worse than the last. Therewere those who said that the men of Shainsa and Daillon and Ardcarranhad sold the rest of Wolf to the Terrans, to keep the Terrans from theirown door.
Even Rakhal, who had worked with Terra since boyhood, had finally cometo a point of decision and gone his own way. And it was not Terra's way.
That was what Juli was saying now.
"He didn't like what Terra was doing on Wolf. I'm not so sure I like itmyself--"
Magnusson interrupted her again. "Do you know what Wolf was like when wecame here? Have you seen the Slave Colony, the Idiot's Village? Your ownbrother went to Shainsa and routed out The Lisse."
"And Rakhal helped him!" Juli reminded him. "Even after he left you, hetried to keep out of things. He could have told them a good deal thatwould hurt you, after ten years in Intelligence, you know."
I knew. It was, although I wasn't going to tell Juli this, one reasonwhy, at the end--during that terrible explosion of violence which nonormal Terran mind could comprehend--I had done my best to kill him. Wehad both known that after this, the planet would not hold the two of us.We could both go on living only by dividing it unevenly. I had beengiven the slow death of the Terran Zone. And he had all the rest.
"But he never told them anything! I tell you, he was one of the mostloyal--"
Mack grunted, "Yeah, he's an angel. Go ahead."
She didn't, not immediately. Instead she asked what sounded like anirrelevant question. "Is it true what he told me? That the Empire has astanding offer of a reward for a working model of a matter transmitter?"
"That offer's been standing for three hundred years, Terran reckoning.One million credits cash. Don't tell me he was figuring to invent one?"
"I don't think so. But I think he heard rumors about one. He said withthat kind of money he could bargain the Terrans right out of Shainsa.That was where it started. He began coming and going at odd times, buthe never said any more about it. He wouldn't talk to me at all."
"When was all this?"
"About four months ago."
"In other words, just about the time of the riots in Charin."
She nodded. "Yes. He was away in Charin when the Ghost Wind blew, and hecame back with knife cuts in his thigh. I asked if he had been mixed-upin the anti-Terran rioting, but he wouldn't tell me. Race, I don't knowanything about politics. I don't really care. But just about that time,the Great House in Shainsa changed hands. I'm sure Rakhal had somethingto do with that.
"And then--" Juli twisted her chained hands together in her lap--"hetried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her somesort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. Itwas a weird thing, scared me. But he'd sit Rindy down in the sunlightand have her look into it, and Rindy would gabble all sorts of nonsenseabout little men and birds and a toymaker."
The chains about Juli's wrists clashed as she twisted her handstogether. I stared somberly at the fetters. The chain, which was long,did not really hamper her movements much. Such chains were symbolicornaments, and most Dry-town women went all their lives with fetteredhands. But even after the years I'd spent in the Dry-towns, the sightstill brought an uneasiness to my throat, a vague discomfort.
"We had a terrible fight over that," Juli went on. "I was afraid, afraidof what it was doing to Rindy. I threw it out, and Rindy woke up andscreamed--" Juli checked herself and caught at vanishing self-control.
"But you don't want to hear about that. It was then I threatened toleave him and take Rindy. The next day--" Suddenly the hysteria Juli hadbeen forcing back broke free, and she rocked back and forth in herchair, shaken and strangled with sobs. "He took Rindy! Oh, Race, he'scrazy, crazy. I think he hates Rindy, he--he, Race, _he smashed hertoys_. He took every toy the child had and broke them one by one,smashed them into powder, every toy the child had--"
"Juli, please, please," Magnusson pleaded, shaken. "If we're dealingwith a maniac--"
"I don't dare think he'd harm her! He warned me not to come here, or I'dnever see her again, but if it meant war against Terra I had to come.But Mack, please, don't do anything against him, please, please. He'sgot my baby, he's got my little girl...." Her voice failed and sheburied her face in her hands.
Mack picked up the solidopic cube of his five-year-old son, and turnedit between his pudgy fingers, saying unhappily, "Juli, we'll take everyprecaution. But can't you see, we've got to get him? If there's aquestion of a matter transmitter, or anything like that, in the hands ofTerra's enemies--"
I could see that, too, but Juli's agonized face came between me and thepicture of disaster. I clenched my fist around the chair arm, notsurprised to see the fragile plastic buckle, crack and split under mygrip. _If it had been Rakhal's neck...._
"Mack, let me handle this. Juli, shall I find Rindy for you?"
A hope was born in her ravaged face, and died, while I looked. "Race,he'd kill you. Or have you killed."
"He'd try," I admitted. The moment Rakhal knew I was outside the Terranzone, I'd walk with death. I had accepted the code during my years inShainsa. But now I was an Earthman and felt only contempt.
"Can't you see? Once he knows I'm at large, that very code of his willforce him to abandon any intrigue, whatever you call it, conspiracy, andcome after me first. That way we do two things: we get him out ofhiding, and we g
et him out of the conspiracy, if there is one."
I looked at the shaking Juli and something snapped. I stooped and liftedher, not gently, my hands biting her shoulders. "And I won't kill him,do you hear? He may wish I had; by the time I get through with him--I'llbeat the living hell out of him; I'll cram my fists down his throat. ButI'll settle it with him like an Earthman. I won't kill him. _Hear me,Juli?_ Because that's the worst thing I could do to him--catch him andlet him live afterward!"
Magnusson stepped toward me and pried my crushing hands off her arms.Juli rubbed the bruises mechanically, not knowing she was doing it. Macksaid, "You can't do it, Cargill. You wouldn't get as far as Daillon. Youhaven't been out of the zone in six years. Besides--"
His eyes rested full on my face. "I hate to say this, Race, but damn it,man, go and take a good look at yourself in a mirror. Do you think I'dever have pulled you off the Secret Service otherwise? How in hell canyou disguise yourself now?"
"There are plenty of scarred men in the Dry-towns," I said. "Rakhal willremember my scars, but I don't think anyone else would look twice."
Magnusson walked to the window. His huge form bulked against the light,perceptibly darkening the office. He looked over the faraway panorama,the neat bright Trade City below and the vast wilderness lying outside.I could almost hear the wheels grinding in his head. Finally he swungaround.
"Race, I've heard these rumors before. But you're the only man I couldhave sent to track them down, and I wouldn't send you out in cold bloodto be killed. I won't now. Spaceforce will pick him up."
I heard the harsh inward gasp of Juli's breath and said, "Damn it, no.The first move you make--" I couldn't finish. Rindy was in his hands,and when I knew Rakhal, he hadn't been given to making idle threats. Weall three knew what Rakhal might do at the first hint of the long arm ofTerran law reaching out for him.
I said, "For God's sake let's keep Spaceforce out of it. Let it looklike a personal matter between Rakhal and me, and let us settle it onthose terms. Remember he's got the kid."
Magnusson sighed. Again he picked up one of the cubes and stared intothe clear plastic, where the three-dimensional image of a nine-year-oldgirl looked out at him, smiling and innocent. His face was transparentas the plastic cube. Mack acts tough, but he has five kids and he is assoft as a dish of pudding where a kid is concerned.
"I know. Another thing, too. If we send out Spaceforce, after all theriots--how many Terrans are on this planet? A few thousand, no more.What chance would we have, if it turned into a full-scale rebellion?None at all, unless we wanted to order a massacre. Sure, we have bombsand dis-guns and all that.
"But would we dare to use them? And where would we be after that? We'rehere to keep the pot from boiling over, to keep out of planetaryincidents, not push them along to a point where bluff won't work. That'swhy we've got to pick up Rakhal before this gets out of hand."
I said, "Give me a month. Then you can move in, if you have to. Rakhalcan't do much against Terra in that time. And I might be able to keepRindy out of it."
Magnusson stared at me, hard-eyed. "If you do this against my advice, Iwon't be able to step in and pull you out of a jam later on, you know.And God help you if you start up the machines and can't stop them."
I knew that. A month wasn't much. Wolf is forty thousand miles ofdiameter, at least half unexplored; mountain and forest swarming withnonhuman and semi-human cities where Terrans had never been.
Finding Rakhal, or any one man, would be like picking out one star inthe Andromeda nebula. Not impossible. Not _quite_ impossible.
Mack's eyes wandered again to his child's face, deep in the transparentcube. He turned it in his hands. "Okay, Cargill," he said slowly, "sowe're all crazy. I'll be crazy too. Try it your way."