Into the Slave Nebula
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I
N THOSE
last few months Lars Talibrand traveled far and fast—from system to system, from star to star, backtracking, making false trails whenever he could spare a precious day or two. But he could not elude the patient death that dogged his footsteps.
He went from Vernier to Arthworld to Creew ’n Dith; from Creew ’n Dith to Newholme to Mars. He came at the last to Earth in carnival time, when all the world was making holiday, and there, in a high chamber in a hotel overlooking on the one side a fairground’s tumult and on the other a placid inlet of the sea, he met his destiny.
When that was done which certain people had decreed must be done, the news of its doing went the way Lars Talibrand had come. This news traveled faster than he had been able to, even in the knowledge that more than his life depended on speed.
And on worlds scattered across the galaxy certain men, certain women, breathed easier because Lars Talibrand breathed no more.
Blasting bands, chanting choirs, performing animals with expressions of patient tolerance at the foolishness of the antics their human masters forced them to exhibit, hordes of feverish revelers shouting, throwing streamers, laughing as though the whole world was the stage for a vast slapstick comedy—the carnival processions paraded past the hotel in which Lars Talibrand could not hear them.
Why not? After all, tonight and for the week to come, this planet Earth
would
be the stage for a comedy, the
farce of carnival in which all could become Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, by turns.
Processions such as these were winding through the streets of every town on the terminator; as the sunset moved around the planet, others would join them.
Now, down by the beach, androids were making the last checks before turning on the colored lights, setting loose the tiny organisms which would make the very ocean glow; the service robots tested each other’s circuits, making sure beyond doubt they would not fail during the coming week. In the fairgrounds the concessionaries—all amateurs, those who preferred to enjoy themselves by helping others to do so—were setting up their booths, marquees, stalls, their gyrodromes, switchbacks, grav-free dancehalls. Trucks full of miscellanea lumbered up, bringing the last batches of sweetmeats, novelties, partical joke kits, flasks of wine, masks, deluing swords, aphrodisiacs and a thousand other things.
Householders were taking the last of their valuables to the public repositories to be stored behind time-locked doors until carnival was over. People had been known to lose themselves so completely in the frenzied half-world of the week-long festival that they pledged away everything they owned and woke next Oneday into the dismal universe of the grey-clad Dispossessed, there to mourn away two statutory years as the most miserable of conscious beings, less lucky than robots, less secure than androids. So the prudent, aware of their own fallibility, insured against the possibility.
Owners of family groundcars and helis were likewise time-locking the controls. During carnival no one could possibly want to go anywhere in a hurry, of course—unless, for instance, to hospital after a heart attack. There was no business, no urgent appointments to be kept apart from romantic rendezvous … and it was a dedicated
lover indeed who could maintain his fidelity in face of hundreds of fresh and willing partners. Along the streets, on the beaches and the lawns of the many parks, robots were distributing the free bubbletaxis, little open two- and four-seater drifters, which could be relied on to take their passengers
somewhere
, but which could not be directed until daybreak. After dawn it was permitted to give them an address—your own, or anyone else’s—but until then it was up to random robot selectors to choose their destinations.
The sky above shone a luminescent darkening blue, with hardly a cloud to be seen. It would have to rain, here and there across the face of Earth, some time during carnival week, in order to preserve the meteorological balance of the atmosphere. But it would rain so far as possible out to sea, and at a local time when most of the revelers would be sleeping.
Catering wagons were falling in behind the carnival processions—thousands of them. There had to be thousands. No place of business remained open during carnival save the fairground concessions, and that included food shops and restaurants.
Now, as the sun went down, the luxury stores which had remained open to meet the last-moment demand for wigs, cosmetics, perfumes and fancy dress, began to resonate to the subtle low-frequency sonics that made the clients vaguely uncomfortable and encouraged them to depart from the premises. Much relieved, leaving the problem of working out their accounts for the fantastically profitable few days just past, until their return to work, the human staff hurried to change and join the crowds. A little wistful, their android assistants locked up behind them, taking their time, wondering what could be done with the next seven empty days.
Merriment and rejoicing like a river of wine, a day of
sunshine, a breaking wave of light, engulfed the world, and there were few who noticed that—like a temperate summer—it was here and there patched with grey.
Derry Horn drew back from the window overlooking the roadway. The last of the processions had streamed into the fairground, and electric organs were drowning the strains of the parade bands. Time now to dress and go to join the fun.
At a curt command the windows went opaque, matt-surfaced so as not to spoil the carefully planned indirect lighting with accidental reflections. He gave another direction, and closet doors slid back to reveal the selection of costumes he had ordered for carnival. There was something for every possible mood in the range he had chosen—or so he had thought. But now, as he fingered the silks, the stiff parchments, the glitter-weaves, he found himself oddly at a loss.
No: not “oddly.” He made the admission with a weary sigh. Rather the phrase should be: “as usual.”
Irritated, he seized one of the outfits at random and threw it across a chair. At once he began to wonder what in the world had made him choose
that
one. Once more … “as usual”!
Resolving to put the costume on anyway—and the hell with it—he slipped out of his ordinary day-clothes and crossed to the bathroom at the side of his suite to freshen up. When he left the shower he stepped into the drying cabinet adjacent, switched one of its walls to a mirror setting, and regarded himself thoughtfully as gentle warmth sucked the moisture off his body.
This is you
, he told himself.
This is Derry Horn at twenty-two
.
He saw a dark-haired young man with pale skin and dark blue eyes. Around his full mouth there was a noticeable slackness, a quarter-way towards being a pout. The
flesh of his arms and thighs was unfirm, shaking just a little to his movements. The paleness of his skin and the darkness of his hair combined to make his cheeks and chin almost—not quite—blue, like watered milk, shadowed by roots of beard that not even the most efficient modern depilatory could remove.
He touched his face, wondering what atavistic compulsion still made men think it unmanly not to be able to grow beards even though they spent so much time trying to prevent them from showing. Maybe it was just that they had to have something which opposed their will? There certainly wasn’t much else in this disciplined world which resisted their whims.
He grew aware that he was thoroughly dried, and left the cabinet. With the removal of his weight from its floor, the soft blasts of hot air ceased their hissing.
On his return, the costume he had laid out looked even more ridiculous. But when he glanced at the still-open closets, he could see nothing that was more to his present taste. Naked, he threw himself down in a padded chair and struck a smokehale. This was a lunatic state to be in, the first night of carnival!
It crossed his mind that a drink might help, and he called for a waiter, which came swiftly. This hotel where he was staying offered perhaps the best service in the world—and since the world was Earth, that meant the best in the galaxy. Naturally, too, its robots were by Horn & Horn.…
Prompt, silent, the waiter emerged from the service aperture and halted before his chair in mute inquiry, its lean plastic body glistening under the lights. For a moment he felt inclined to compare its rather beautiful quasi-human form with his own flabby nudity, but the notion was stillborn; he had been surrounded by robots since he was born, and nothing could make him regard them as more than mechanical conveniences.
“I want something to snap me out of a fit of depression,” he said abruptly. “What do you recommend?”
The waiter hesitated. “I’m not programmed to prescribe for illness, sir,” it said apologetically. “Might—?”
‘I’m not ill!” Horn snapped. “I just want a euphoric of some kind. The best you’ve got.”
“I could get you the most expensive,” suggested the waiter diffidently. “I presume that would be the best. Although, to be honest, I’ve heard from various clients that others in a lower price-bracket were more to their taste …?” It let the words die away, cocking its head.
Oh, for—!
Horn fought the temptation to curse aloud. What had possessed his father and grandfather to discontinue the nice uncomplicated robots of his early childhood, which could be relied on to do what you told them to without argument, in favor of these “sophisticated” new models that puzzled and prevaricated over the simplest request?
“It’d make things a sight easier if the management put androids on waiter duty instead of robots!” he exclaimed. “At least they’d have some idea of how the stock tastes!”
With a faint air of protest, the waiter said, “If you’ll permit me to correct you, sir, it wouldn’t help at all. Androids are prohibited from indulging in liquor or any other stimulant, as you doubtless know.”
“One could get around that,” said Horn, with the certitude of a man who has got around many regulations. He had. He belonged to a wealthy family, even by the standards of a wealthy age. “But all a drink would do to you would be to short your circuits out.”
Suddenly the ridiculousness of arguing with a robot struck him, and he began to chuckle. The waiter made a solicitous move foward, and he waved it away.
“You didn’t tell me which euphoric you desire,” it said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Horn said, getting to his feet. “Forget it.”
“I’m physically unable to forget anything,” said the waiter proudly. “In fact it took me a long time to calculate the implications of the concept.” Then it was struck by the possibility that such an admission might be taken to reflect on the quality of its parent company’s products, hesitated again, assigned the problem—as it had been designed to do—to the category “dilemma,” and returned to the service aperture, its plastic feet hushing on the heavy pile of the carpet.
When it had vanished, Horn put on his carnival costume and gave a final glance around the room, his headquarters for the week. Well, that was a change, anyway. Maybe the change would make the difference. Somehow or other he had
got
to enjoy himself! If he didn’t re-awaken that ability he might lose it forever, and his whole life would monotone down to the same flat round of boredom from which he was trying to escape. Last year’s carnival had been so far from the memories of the ones he had enjoyed as a child—or even as an adolescent. They had been marvelous; memory swore that to him. Last year’s had been—in a word—dull.
This year, therefore, a different city. A hotel room instead of his family’s home to come back to when he was worn out. No one related to him within a thousand miles. Maybe it was the cloying circle of his family which had ruined his fun last year.
Maybe.
He hated to think of what his future would be like if it was not his surroundings that were at fault—if the flaw lay in himself. To face a hundred more years of mere existence; never to experience excitement; grey day after grey day …
Perhaps he should have had that euphoric after all.