Sanctuary in The Sky (9 page)

XV

The change
that came over Raige was like a miracle. In a second she regained her official manner; the yellow playshirt which had given her a casual air lost its effect, became merely clothing. She stepped forward and spoke in a clear, carrying voice.

“Lang!”

The stranger from out of eye-range half turned his head, unhurriedly, to see who had called him. Then he bent and reached down his right arm, so that his pet could scamper up it to his shoulder, and began to come towards them.

He halted five or six paces distant, and looked them over leisurely, giving Vykor a nod first and then studying Raige. Its movements oddly parallel with its master’s, the creature called Sunny did the same from the vantage point of his shoulder.

There was even a certain resemblance between them, Vykor noticed. Lang’s face, with its firm but rather narrow
jaw, coming to a point, its high-bridged, thin nose and the eyes deep-set beneath sandy brows, was hardly the same in any single respect as the animal face of his pet; what they shared was a certain alertness, a never broken interest in the world around them.

“I am Captain Raige,” said Raige when the silence had lasted some moments. “I am chief of the department of personnel administration, non-Glaithe branch. Accordingly, while you are at Waystation you fall within my field of responsibility.”

“I am so well able to look after myself,” said Lang with perfect gravity, “that I have even been able to undertake to look after another individual life besides my own.” He put up his hand and scratched Sunny behind one of his pointed ears. “Do not concern yourself on my account.”

“I’m afraid I must,” said Raige bluntly. “You have been the cause—knowing or unknowing—of a good deal of trouble since your arrival. Moreover, you have been reported in unauthorized areas to which no one but the permanent Glaithe staff is allowed access.” She stepped forward determinedly. “Please come with me to my office.”

For a moment Vykor, watching in fascination, thought that she was going to succeed, and that the assumption that her request would be automatically complied with would bring Lang in her wake unquestioning.

Lang gave her a quizzical look, and shook his head very, very slightly. A trace of tension showed in Raige’s neck muscles.

“You refuse?" she said.

“You might say that was my intention,” Lang agreed.

"Very well,” shrugged Raige. “I will have you taken there —eventually. Unless you would prefer to answer my questions here and at leisure, now.”

“I’ll answer such questions as I can,” said Lang thoughtfully. “Yes, why not?” He looked around, selected a rock of convenient height to sit on, and tipped Sunny off his shoulder to run on the ground before relaxing onto his chosen seat.

“Go ahead,” he invited, with a large gesture.

“Where have you been since your arrival at Waystation?” Raige’s voice was as impersonal as ice. She had undone the
neck of her shirt and was drawing out her tiny recorder on the end of a chain which she wore as a necklace. Her small fingers poised to note Lang’s answer.

“I have been ... in the station,” said Lang. His face remained serious, but a hint of mockery danced in his eyes.

“Where exactly, please?” said Raige levelly. “You have not been to the cabin which was assigned to you—”

“Is it compulsory to spend a certain proportion of time in the cabin allotted?” broke in Lang. “If so, I plead ignorance —and fail to see why such a rule is necessary.”

“There is not a rule requiring it—merely an inference that occasionally it is necessary to sleep, wash, change clothes.” “The Ocean is full of a liquid that cleanses swiftly," Lang said. “You have costume sellers all round the tourist circuit, as you call it, and as for—”

Vykor said suddenly, “What do you call it, then?”

Raige turned her head in surprise, and Lang affected polite non-comprehension. But his eyes contradicted his expression. “I?
Call what?”

“The tourist circuit. You said, ‘as
we
call it.’ What do you think it should be called?”

Lang gave him a curious, meditative stare. "I think you are trying to read too much significance into a casual remark,” he said.

Vykor shrugged. Sunny, having scratched in the ground for a few moments, seemed to become aware that something was happening and came trotting over to squat down and stare at him.

“I agree—it’s neither here nor there,” said Raige, and returned to her inquiries. “Lang, you have been reported in parts of Waystation to which entry is forbidden, as I said. Is this true?”

“I was informed that Waystation is neutral territory,” Lang answered casually. “I have been wandering about looking and listening. Whether I infringed local regulations I do not know.” He paused, and added, “Designation of a place as neutral implies to me that all may come and go as they wish.”

“But you would not consider yourself free to come and go —let us say—in the bedrooms of a house belonging to even a

close friend.” Raige was studiously calm. “Where exactly have you been in the station?”

“I am a stranger here,” said Lang. “I do not know what your names are for the places I have explored.”

“Are
you a stranger?” muttered Vykor, as though to himself. Sunny sat up on his hindquarters and waved his forelegs excitedly.

Lang chose to hear the low-voiced question, and bestowed a smile on Vykor. “Yes, young man,” he said. "I am a stranger here. Why should you think I have been here before?”

Vykor hesitated. He glanced at Raige and received an almost imperceptible nod.

“Because I myself have seen you in a part of Waystation you could not possibly have entered by accident,” he said.

“True—I have not entered any area by accident. I have been carrying out a systematic exploration to see as much of Waystation as I can in as short a time as possible.”

“And what do you think of what you have seen?” said Raige.

Lang’s face went dark on the instant, as though a thundercloud had crossed it. He said with sudden force, “It is
a
born
inable."

Vykor started, and glanced at Raige to see what her response would be to that. She preserved her composure, as usual, but there seemed to be a trace of disappointment in her tone as she said, “Why so?”

“I have seen ... no happiness,” said Lang surprisingly. “None?”

“Selfishness, self-interest, lust to power, desire for satisfaction of personal urges, continual conflict, lack of security, lack of hope . . . these are what I have found at Waystation. And I have not found any attempt to set things right. I have not found anyone seeking a solution; I have seen not a single example of disinterested goodness.”

He spoke with a rising passion, and on the last sentence his voice rang like a trumpet.

“You’re wrong!” snapped Vykor. “Give credit to the Glaithes for what they do!”

Lang leaned back, his eyes fixed on Vykor, crossed his left leg over his right and clasped its ankle. Tired of playing,
Sunny came and rubbed his furry flank against his master’s other leg.

“What?” Lang said softly. “The Pags curb their slave- subjects the Alchmids by making them dreamweed addicts. The Glaithes whom you admire curb their potential rivals the Cathrodynes by conniving at a Majko attempt to make them, also, addicts of the drug. What does this show in the way of hope? What is tomorrow?

“The Glaithes”—he turned his gaze on Raige, bit by bit, as he went on—'“arbitrarily deny to others the knowledge in the memory banks of Waystation. Is that your property, this knowledge? By what right do you arrogate it to yourselves? Merely because you think, as the Pags think and as the Cathrodynes think, that you are innately superior to others? It looks very much like it!”

Vykor was gaping. How had this man found out so much in so short a time? It seemed impossible that he should truly be as much a stranger as he claimed. He spoke out hotly.

“Wouldn’t the Pags and the Cathrodynes do their best to turn this knowledge to their own advantage? If you know so much, you must have discovered that they are forever seeking a chance to stab each other in the back!”

“And who tells you that this knowledge, this information in the memory banks, would serve as a knife?” said Lang scathingly. “Moreover, does it not seem wrong to you—as a member yourself of an oppressed people—that individuals should be used as pawns in a game of power-politics? Take this poor woman Mrs. Iquida, who came out here in the same ship as we did! Do you like to see her become a tool to prod the dignity of the Cathrodynes?"

“Any way the arrogance of the Cathrodynes can be deflated seems good to me,” said Vykor defiandy.

“I was afraid you might say that,” Lang commented, and fell silent.

“You are an outsider,” said Raige at length. She had put her recorder aside, and it hung on its chain against the bright fabric of her shirt. “It seems to me that you have
little
right to sit in judgment on us.”

Lang sighed and gave a nod. “I have only the right of a free individual,” he said. “But at least I am willing to use that
right. Cruelty, depravity, injustice, evil of all sorts—these flourish most where individuals keep silence when they might condemn.”

He prodded Sunny with the toe of his right foot; the animal responded by running up his leg and body to his usual perch on his master’s shoulder.

“And moreover,” said Lang, apparently to himself more than to the others, “I have traveled far, and visited very many worlds. I have seen what can be made of human society, and what has been made of it. Here in the systems of the Arm you have failed in very nearly every imaginable way.”

“We have done our best,” said Raige. Lang’s tirade seemed to have affected her deeply.

“Then you must be willing to be judged by your achievement,” said Lang, and got to his feet and began to walk very slowly away along the edge of the Ocean.

Vykor was about to start after him and hold him, but Raige gestured to him. “Let him go,” she said soberly.

“But—after he refused to obey you? After he proved to know so many damaging things?”

“He is a stranger, and has no more than an abstract interest in our affairs here along the Arm.” Raige shrugged. “It is not likely, for instance, that he would tell the Cathrodynes who is responsible for starting this wave of dreamweed addiction they are so worried about. No, we must let him go.”

Despondently, Vykor sat down on the rock that was still warm from Lang’s body. “Do you—do you agree with what he said?” he ventured. “About what the Glaithes have done, in particular?”

He sounded hopeful, as though he expected Raige to deny the truth of the accusations categorically. But in this she disappointed him.

"He may be right,” she admitted. “After all, he has traveled to many worlds; he has seen much, and perhaps enough to permit him to judge us. I can only hope, for the sake of Glai, that he is talking without knowing all the facts—yet lie seems to have discovered so much in such a short time I think even that consolation is denied to me.”

Vykor stared at Lang’s retreating back. Then he gave a sudden gasp, and flung up his arm, pointing.

As Lang passed one of the openings in the rock which gave access to the Caves, two men leapt stealthily out. Cathrodynes, in uniform. They looked like the same pair who had interrogated Dardaino a short while before.

One of them knocked Sunny to the ground and clapped a baglike hood over Lang’s head and shoulders; the other dived forward and wrapped his arms around Lang’s legs to pinion them. In seconds, before Vykor could cry out, they had carried him off. Sunny fled yapping among the rocks.

“That,” said Raige very softly, “is what I feared might happen. We cannot allow it, Vykor—and equally, we cannot do anything to prevent it.”

“What are you going to do?” demanded Vykor, white- lipped.

Raige shrugged, dropping her recorder back inside her shirt and fastening it. “What we can,” she said dully. “As always, what we can.”

XVI

It
was
as well, Ligmer reflected, that he had been warned by Ferenc about the precipice he was treading so close to. It puzzled him why he should not have been warned about the Cathrodynes’ discovery—their new knowledge about the real structure of Waystation—before leaving Cathrodyne.

He could so easily have let slip without realizing some information that would put the Pags on the same track!

And yet, of course, the knowledge he now had was also a distinct disadvantage. He had always discounted the Pags’ extreme claims about the origins of Waystation, and had welcomed the nonconformist reactions of the rare scholars like Usri who seemed to be genuinely anxious to free themselves from prejudice and begin a scientific study of the subject. Now, of course, it was dismaying to know that this same
trend among the Pags which he had welcomed might lead to his own people losing a valuable lead over their rivals.

He disliked Ferenc’s brand of aggressive nationalism, but he regarded himself as thoroughly patriotic—as witness his strong reaction to Vykor’s accusations of injustices by Cathrodynes on Majkosi. He found himself now tom between his patriotism and his scientific interests—and with the conflict he had grown tense and irritable.

“What in space has got into you, Ligmer?” snapped Usri, slapping down a sheaf of papers on the table at which they sat—in the City, as usual, since it was impossible for Usri to enter Cathrodyne territory or for Ligmer to visit her in Pag domains. The tourist circuit provided the only neutral place where they could meet and argue.

Feeling anger well up inside him, and welcoming it as a relief to an intolerable strain, Ligmer snapped back, “What do you mean, what’s got into me?
You
seem to have a fit of real obstinacy today!”

“Of all the—I Look, I’m only trying to clear away prejudice from this problem, and bring proper scientific detachment to bear on it. I say what any fool could see with one eye and half a brain—that we must assume the Glaithes are hiding facts about the s
tructure of the station from us!
And the only way we can get at them is indirectly. Much more obstruction from you on the matter, and I’ll be driven to conclude that when Raige turned down our application to use the memory banks she did it because you’d told her to
!
”

“Rubbish!" retorted Ligmer. “Gas clouds
!
You heard yourself why she refused, and I’m as annoyed about it as you are.”

“Well, then, stop acting as though it was my fault the application was refused!”

They stared at each other bitterly. But neither of them said anything further for some moments. In the interval of silence, a figure came from between the thick clumps of bushes flanking the paths through the park, and stepped into their I'learing. It was Ferenc; he seemed tense.

“Ah, Ligmer!” he said with obvious relief. “Good, I’m glad I managed to find you. ‘Day, Usri. Do you mind if I have a

word with Ligmer on his own?” It obviously cost Ferenc a lot to make the request a polite one.

“Frankly,” said Usri in a disgusted voice, rattling together the documents she had before her and reaching to pick up the file in which she carried them around, “frankly, I don’t give a yard of a comet’s tail if I never see the face of him again. Go ahead!”

Ferenc frowned, and gave Ligmer a reproving glare. "Something’s upset you,” he said to Usri.

The Pag gave a short laugh. “Nothing more than I should have expected,” she said cuttingly. “It was too good to hope that a Cathrodyne should keep his head clear of preconceptions for more than a day or two at a time.”

“Now see here—” began Ligmer. Ferenc gave him a scowl this time, took a deep breath, and went on placatingly.

“I resent that, Usri . . . but maybe you’d better tell me what it was about.”

“What’s the good?” Usri answered, and then gave in, putting her documents back on the table. “Oh, all right, I guess it might conceivably help. The trouble’s easy enough to explain. It’s—”

There was laughter and the sound of heavy footfalls among the bushes, and loud contralto voices raised with Pag accents. Usri stopped short; Ferenc swung round to look in the direction from which the noise came, and he heard Ligmer give a gasp that verged on a groan. His own heart sank.

Two brawny Pags were emerging into the clearing. They both wore casual clothing similar to Usri’s, but one of them had her head shaved, revealing that she was of military caste. It was the arrival of this one that so dismayed him—for it was the same Pag officer whom he had quarreled with during his trip out here. She must be working off a few days of her accumulated leave at Waystation.

She came into the clearing arm-in-arm with her companion; in her free hand she held a large mug of fuming liquor, and a small moustache of the purple froth on top of it disfigured her upper lip.

"Well, well, well!” she said, and a smile curled back the purple moustache over her sinister filed teeth. She shook her

96

arm free from her companion, looking Ferenc slowly up and down and shaking her head.

Covertly, Ligmer turned aside his knees under the table, so that if necessary he could get up in a hurry.

At length the Pag officer finished her contemptuous survey, and glanced at Usri. “Is this big-mouthed Cathrodyne bothering you, dearie?” she asked.

“No, Officer Toehr,” was the answer. “For one of them, he’s passably tolerable.”

“You don’t say,” Toehr commented musingly. “You don’t say! Well, that’s a far cry from the way he was acting on the trip out here—isn’t it?” she finished with sudden venom, stabbing a fist through the air toward Ferenc’s face with one finger extended accusingly.

Reflexively, Ferenc took a step backwards, and Toehr gave a sarcastic chuckle. “So that’s the size of it! You’re tough enough when you’re aboard one of your own poky little ships—but when you’re off your own ground you tremble at shadows!”

She turned to face Usri, so suddenly that some of the liquor splashed over and trickled slowly down the side of her mug. Drops of purple went on detaching themselves from the bottom for some moments afterwards, making little blots of color on the ground and fading away like jellyfish melting in hot sunlight.

“You should have heard this blowhard during the trip!” she said. “To listen to him, you’d have said he thought Pags weren’t fit to share the same universe with him, let alone a comer of it like the Arm! He’s climbed down since then, has he?”

Usri stared at Ferenc. “Are you sure you’re talking about the same person?” she demanded of Toehr.

"Changed his tune that much, has he?” Toehr grinned savagely. “No, dearie, it’s definitely the same man. He said he’d like to do something to me that you wouldn’t forget in a hurry—and nor have I forgotten it. How about you, loudmouth?” she barked suddenly at Ferenc.
“You’ve
forgotten it, sounds like!”

Ferenc licked his lips. “I don’t remember what it was that you said,” he retorted. “I never knew a Pag to have anything

97

to say worth remembering. But I recall what I said, and if you want me to repeat it now, you can hear it again.”

For a moment the Pag officer stood frozen with astonishment. Then she gave a yell of pure rage and hurled the mug she held directly at Ferenc’s face, following it herself in a whirlwind of fists and feet.

Ferenc managed to avoid the mug itself; such was the force with which Toehr had thrown it that it would at least have broken his nose and might have knocked out his front teeth. But the spray of liquor from it sowed a purple stain across his face, some running into his eyes and making them fill with tears. At first, then, he could only strike out blindly at the savage fury who had attacked him.

Ligmer started to his feet, and felt a grip like a vice close on his arm. He glanced down, trying to pull free, and met Usri’s granite eyes.

"No,”
she said meaningly, and shook her head once.

Toehr’s companion, who had said nothing since coming into the clearing, took her eyes off the developing struggle long enough to give Usri an approving nod, and then yelled an encouragement to her friend, who had succeeded in getting a lock on Ferenc’s right arm and was attempting to dislocate it with her knees braced against her opponent’s back.

Ferenc’s face was covered with a mixture of liquor, sweat, tears from his swollen eyes and dust from the ground. He looked like a primitive warrior with his warpaint on, and was trying to behave like one. He struggled to free his arm, failed, and brought his free hand round to catch at Toehr’s feet.

His jaw muscles knotting with pain and effort, he secured a grip on one of Toehr’s big toes and jerked it sharply sideways.

The pain startled Toehr into releasing her grip for an instant, and Ferenc seized his chance to roll free and scramble to his feet. Panting, Toehr copied him, and they stood half- crouched, facing each other from a distance of a few paces, each debating between attacking or waiting for an attack.

“All right—stop it there.”

The cool voice scythed through the clearing, and their eyes switched to see where it had come from. In the mouth of each of the paths leading into the clearing stood Glaithe men-at-arms, coming no higher than Toehr s elbow but armed with paralysis guns which they kept alertly swinging from one to another of the group before them. They numbered at least a dozen altogether.

Their leader strode forward and gave the two combatants a glare. “Officer Indie,” he said, jerking his thumb at his own chest. “What’s it about this time?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Toehr, looking as though she would dearly like to pick him up and throw him away among the bushes. She could have done it with one hand.

“It’s a matter of honor, something you Glaithes aren’t acquainted with.”

“We have better ways of looking after our honor than by scrapping on the ground like animals,” Indie retorted. “All right—you've got one minute to leave the tourist circuit and return to your own sections. Both of you
!
Fast!”

“Like hell I will,” said Ferenc. “I should be thrown out of neutral territory because a Pag with more muscles than sense chooses to throw a mug of liquor at me—”

Toehr’s face contorted in a snarl, and she hurled herself at him again. Indie gestured, and there was the soft plop of a paralysis gun.

The tiny capsule of drugs which it released was a potent weapon; Ferenc had barely adopted a stance to defend himself before Toehr had thrown up her arms and fallen headlong, in a total stupor.

“Right; that’ll do,” said Indie. “Were you with her?” he added, turning to Toehr’s companion, who nodded. “Okay, you can get her back to her own section.”

“I’m going too,” said Usri, standing up. “This whole business revolts me. I’ll give you a hand,” she added, and bent to grab Toehr’s legs.

“If you’re involved in another case of this kind,” Indie said to Ferenc, “you get put under paralysis and shoved straight aboard one of your own ships. And you won’t be allowed back on Waystation. Clear?” He swung round to Usri. “And the same goes for that hellion you’re dragging away; tell her when she wakes up!”

He gathered his men-at-arms with a gesture and walked
away into the bushes, leaving Ferenc staring after him with a sour expression and rubbing the arm Toehr had almost tom away from his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Ligmer asked inanely. “I tried to give you a hand, but Usri held me back and I couldn’t break loose.”

“Oh, you’d have been more of J. hindrance than a help,” said Ferenc shortly. “I wish that Glaithe hadn’t butted in— I’ve been itching to paste that Pag since before I arrived. Hell ... no matter. At least she’s more likely to steer clear of me from now on.”

He wiped the dirt from his face with a kerchief from his belt pouch, and looked at Ligmer. “Now that’s over, maybe I can tell you what I came here to say. They found Lang. He’s in our section now, under restraint, and because you said he seemed to know more than he should about the origins of Waystation Temmis ordered me to get you to help with the interrogation. Come on, pick up those papers and move.”