Into the Slave Nebula (2 page)

H
E WENT
reflexively to the personal elevator connected to his suite, and had called for it before he remembered: carnival week had officially started now. Instead of the elevator rising in its shaft, a speaker on the wall came to life and with dulcet tones gave him a recorded reminder.

“It’s carnival week, sir! In the interests of good fellowship and companionability, the hotel has withdrawn the personal elevator service in favor of the main elevators. Please leave your suite and turn left along the corridor to locate the nearest operating elevator. We hope you meet congenial acquaintances there even before you join the merry throng outside!”

When he was sixteen or seventeen, he and a bunch of student friends had discovered this custom of hotel managements, and had spent half an evening making absolutely certain that hotel residents
did
meet interesting company in the elevators. They had got themselves up to look like decaying corpses—blue-faced, puffy-handed, with wall-white contact lenses on their eyeballs—and laid themselves down on the floors of empty elevators to await results. Their score had included four cases of hysteria and a heart attack. They had thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Somehow, though, it didn’t seem so funny now he looked back on it. He hoped no one here had had the same idea—or at any rate, that no one would put it into practice this early in carnival week.

He had not used the corridor outside his suite since his arrival. Presumably the robots which had brought
his baggage had come that way, but he himself had come up in the personal elevator. Anyone booking a suite the size of his was entitled to expect that much privacy. Consequently there was an indefinable deserted air about the corridors, not in any form so perceptible as dust on ledges, or an echo—simply an absence of human passage.

He walked quickly because the sensation his surroundings induced in him was disturbing. He pressed the call button and looked uneasily along both the passages which met at right angles close to the elevator well. A few paces distant in the corridor which he had not taken a pile of baggage belonging to some late arrival was waiting to be put into store; otherwise there was no hint of occupation. He shivered slightly, cursing the compulsoriness of carnival.

Abruptly there was a movement among the stacked empty cases. An arm shot into view, as though thrown out by a man lying on his back. At the same moment he heard a low moan.

It might have been a word. It might have been, “Help!”

So someone had had the same idea as he and his student friends. Oh well: it was a standard gag, only funny the first time around. He pressed the call button again, wishing the elevator would hurry.

The arm drew back. A leg was flung wildly into the air and came down on the floor with a slamming noise. The violence of the movement was insane. There was a hint of a crunch mingled with the impact, as though a bone had broken. And a scream.

The agony behind the cry cut through Horn’s assumptions. This was no carnival joke! That sound had its roots in pain!

He found himself already moving towards the source of it.

The skin on the back of the hand which showed beside the baggage pile was blue. Android. But nonetheless a feeling being, capable of suffering. Heavy-looking cases were piled over and around his body; others, formerly laid on his legs, had been spilled aside. Inch by inch the victim was drawing back the leg he had kicked out, as though in preparation for another wild spasm.

“Service!” Horn yelled, throwing back his head. The call vanished into the length of the corridor. Then he bent to haul the concealing cases clear. Empty, they were quite light, but he was unused to lifting even light objects—that was a job for robots. He was sweating before he had swept aside half a dozen of them. Only then did he look down at what he had uncovered … and came close to vomiting.

In the shadow, the android’s blue skin looked grey, like a sick human being’s. His features, of course, were altogether human. Had been, rather. Someone had beaten him savagely about the head until his eyes burst, his nose was mashed flat on his left cheekbone, and his teeth were broken from their sockets. It was the eyes that were the most revolting.

Horn had never felt so helpless in his life. Half of him insisted that he go away, quickly, get to the elevator and so out to the street to join the carnival. The other half of him ached to do something to relieve the pain the mutilated android must be suffering. One ought not to leave even a dog or cat in such dreadful agony, let alone a creature which could stand up and talk to you, whatever the color of its skin. But he did not know how to begin—or whether it was worth beginning.

He was staring sickly around when a voice hailed him from behind.

“Say, friend! Was it you called the elevator before I did?”

He turned his head. A pudgy man of middle age in a
parti-colored jester’s suit was hailing him from the door of the elevator car. It must have arrived a moment previously.

“Yes! Yes—but … look, come here, will you?”

The pudgy man chuckled. He had the indefinable air of a person of great wealth—though if he was spending carnival here on this floor of this hotel, that went without saying.

“
Oh
-oh! At it already, are you? What’s behind that stack of baggage—a booby-trap of some sort?” He shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll buy it. It’s carnival time, after all.”

He trotted from the elevator and came to peer over Horn’s shoulder. From the sudden catch in his breathing Horn knew he had canceled his assumption about booby-traps.

“Hey!” the pudgy man said in a low voice. “That’s messy, isn’t it? Wonder why the garbage robots haven’t cleared it up.”

“He was hidden under these cases,” Horn gestured. “It looks as though he was beaten unconscious, and only recovered enough to push the cases away and call for help just as I came by.”

The pudgy man drew back a couple of steps, unable to tear his gaze away from the hideous spectacle, as though at once repelled and fascinated by it. “I should—ah—I should leave it, young fellow,” he muttered. “It’ll be cleared away soon enough, no doubt.”

“But why should anyone want to
do
such a thing?” Horn burst out, clenching and unclenching his fists in frustration as the android gave another sobbing moan.

“You’re young,” said the pudgy man. “But you’re not that young, surely! Looks to
me”
—condensing into the phrase implications of superior maturity and worldliness—“as if some sadist got started on his carnival fun early. Must be rich, too; he’ll get a whopping bill for this from the management!” He shuddered. “I hope he confines
himself to androids, damn it—wouldn’t recommend my worst enemy to help whoever did this to get his kicks!”

“But I can’t just leave him lying here!” Horn exploded.

“What else can you do? If you have a dueling sword with you, I guess you can fetch it and put him out of his misery, seeing you’re so worried.
I’m
not the dueling type—don’t own a sword. Ah, don’t fret, young fellow!” He laid a comforting hand on Horn’s shoulder. “Service is pretty good in this hotel, you know. They’ll get rid of it soon.”

A speaker by the elevator announced that there was another call, and unless a passenger entered within thirty seconds the car would go to another floor. The pudgy man muttered, “Excuse me,” and hastened back the way he had come.

He just made it before the door shut.

Alone once more, Horn felt tears starting into his eyes as the android, conscious enough to have realized that there were voices nearby, tried to lift his hands and clutch at the world he could no longer see. His mouth had been torn at the corners; he attempted to articulate words, but they were shapeless and muffled with blood.

That blood was as red as any human being’s. Overcoming his revulsion, Horn took the blue-skinned hand within his own. The android whimpered like a frightened child and pressed it feebly, drawing at least a shred of comfort from the contact.

Why the hell hadn’t robots come running when he shouted for service? He swung around angrily to call again, and was startled to find someone—who had approached unheard—already standing only a few feet away. Beginning with the well-pressed cuffs in front of him, his eyes took in the dark business clothing, not of good quality but neat enough and well cleaned. By this
simple fact, that here was somebody still in working garb when everyone human in the city had changed into carnival rig, he knew that at the top he must encounter the blue face of another android.

“It was good of you to do that much for him,” the newcomer said in a soft voice. I’m afraid it doesn’t look as though there’s much else that can be done—is there?”

“What?” Horn was briefly confused. Nothing in his entire life had so rocked his personality as this encounter with the victim of a sadist’s lusts … if he was to believe the explanation offered by the pudgy man.

“I mean holding his hand like that,” the newcomer said. “If you’ll excuse me, sir …?”

Dazed, Horn drew back. With swift economical movements the android dropped on one knee beside his fellow, produced a diadermic syringe as neat and deadly looking as a pistol, and applied it to the upturned veins of his wrist. In a moment the writhing and moaning stopped.

Meanwhile, Horn had risen to his feet, unsteadily. “You—ah—you’re on the hotel staff?” he asked. His voice was brusquer than he intended, but otherwise it might have broken.

Wary, as though expecting a complaint about the quality of the service which permitted a guest to encounter such a shocking sight as this, the android nodded.

“I’m the manager’s secretary, sir,” he said. “For the duration of carnival, of course, that makes me effectively the manager—my chief went to the fairground half an hour ago. On his behalf, I’d like to apologize for this unfortunate incident.”

“Unfortunate!” The word burst out at the shrill top of Horn’s vocal register. “But this is terrible!” And, catching the android’s threatened renewal of apology before it
could be spoken, he plunged on. “No, I don’t mean my finding the poor devil beaten up and lying here! I mean that anyone should want to do such a horrible thing!”

There was a moment of tense silence, during which the android seemed to be evaluating what he had just heard. At length he said, “It’s kind of you to express such concern, sir. But no doubt the perpetrator will be charged for what he has done.”

“Is that all you can think of—someone having the cost of his fun added to his bill?”

Once more the android hesitated. Abruply he relaxed. He said in a tone which bordered on the confidential, “Frankly, sir,
no
. That’s the last thing which concerns me. But the—is culprit too strong a word?—the
person responsible
hasn’t committed a crime, you know. We may be expensive, but we are replaceable.”

“But surely—”

“Oh, certainly my colleague was trained, and valuable to the hotel. He was the floor manager, incidentally. He—”

“Was?”

“I gave him a shot of comatine.” The android hefted his diadermic, glanced down at it thoughtfully, and returned it to his pocket. “One learns to judge whether an android is damaged beyond hope of economical repair. Latchbolt would need new eyes, and that is usually the break-even point.”

“This happens all the time?” Horn was pale with horror.

“I wouldn’t say that”—in a judicious tone. “But during carnival one generally reckons to lose two or three of the staff.”

Horn stared at the expressionless blue face. His bowels were churning, and the straight lines of the corridor seemed to be twisting at the limits of his field of vision.
After a short eternity he managed to say, “But do you know who did it?”

“We may find out. We may not. There’s also insurance to cover this kind of risk.” The android sounded bored, but under the veneer of calm Horn thought he could detect bitterness, veiled as if by smoke. “And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I hear the cleaning robots approaching to dispose of Latchbolt’s remains.”

Ironically he concluded, “No doubt you will be wishing to get out on the street and join in the fun.”

Horn shook his head. “No—uh—no! With this fresh in my mind, how the hell do you think I could enjoy carnival? I guess I’ll get back to my room and give myself a chance to recover from the shock.”

Very conscious of the andriod’s gaze following him, he started along the corridor. He had gone twenty paces before he realized he was heading in the wrong direction. Of course—he had turned a corner by the elevator.

Furious at his own stupidity, embarrassed at being seen to make a mistake by this android whose coolness and composure made him feel like a blundering teenager again, he swung around intending to retrace his steps. As he turned, he caught a quick glimpse through the partly open door of the nearest suite. Beyond that door …

Gasping, he strode forward and slammed the door aside. “Here!” he called. “Come here!”

This body was not as ugly as the mutilated android, but it reinforced ugliness already in his mind, and his head swam.

Unhurriedly, the android came after him. “What is it, sir?” he inquired.

“Your chance to catch the
culprit
who beat your colleague to death!” Horn stepped across the threshold of the suite. It was identical with the one he himself had been assigned. Except for its occupant.

“The chances are the same man did both, aren’t they?” he pressed on, having to lick lips suddenly gone hot and dry. “And even in carnival week I guess the lawforce has to take an interest in murder.”

He was red-haired, this man, and his skin was a human shade. He lay on his back on the carpet, whose pile had spread out a little under his weight, like grass. His eyes were open and fixed unseeing on the ceiling. A large sharp wooden-handled knife protruded from his chest just over his heart, and—presumably because with his last dying strength he had tried to pull the blade free—his hands were loosely disposed around it, as though folded on his chest by a compassionate hospital attendant.

A
FTER MUCH DELAY
lawforce headquarters furnished a team of investigators: four android technicians under the leadership of a human superintendent named Coolin whose every movement demanded silently why he should have to be on the job while everyone else was out having fun. He struck smokehale after smokehale as his subordinates probed the suite and the adjacent corridor, and chewed the mouthpiece of each into fragments before it had burned down.

A few minutes before their arrival, the comatine shot administered to the dying android had depressed his metabolism to the point of no return. Apparently unconcerned at losing the chance to have the attacker named by the victim, Coolin confined his work to having solidos taken of the dead man and the battered android, and a few curt questions addressed to Horn and the android acting-manager—whose name, Horn had by now established, was Dordy. Earth had for long been so rich that her authorities could afford to be lenient with the citizens, and many of the ancient motives for crime had vanished, for example poverty—no one on the planet was underprivileged bar the Dispossessed who brought their fate upon themselves. Nonetheless, Horn had retained from childhood a romanticized conception of the efficiency of the lawforce, and this first-ever encounter with the casual reality shocked him almost as much as the discovery of Latchbolt’s mangled body.

“All right!” Coolin grunted. “Let me just get the whole thing straight. Who was he, anyway?”

Dordy shrugged. “When he arrived he gave the name
of Winch. That may not be his own, but during carnival …” A delicate gesture with one lean blue hand. “I try always to welcome our clients personally and inquire if they are satisfied with our service. I talked to him yesterday, about noon. I noticed that he spoke with an accent I did not recognize.”

Coolin grunted. “But you must have a pretty cosmopolitan crowd in a place like this. Don’t you get guests here from all over?”

“All over Earth,” Dordy agreed. “Consequently I judged him to be from off the planet.”

Lowering himself into a padded chair, Coolin regarded the corpse, encased on the floor within a faintly shimmering stasis field to prevent rigor and putrefaction setting in. “An ordinary knife. And in the chest. Odd, that. Supposing someone wanted him out of the way
that
badly, he could have waited till tonight and provoked a duel with him. If he didn’t have the courage he could have slipped him a shot of poison. There are plenty that will addle the brain before a medic can come to the rescue. But he tackled him face to face with a knife. To me that spells the settlement of an off-world score. Hmmm? And so many foreigners come to Earth for carnival, we probably don’t stand a snowball’s chance on Mercury of catching the man responsible. He’ll leave on the first starship after schedules revert to normal next Oneday.”

His
eyes
, roaming around the suite, paused on Horn’s pale face framed by the back of just such another chair as the one he himself was sitting in.

“Not a coward’s way of doing things,” he murmured. “Face to face with a knife. Maybe he yelled?”

“That would have attracted the attention of our floor manager, sir,” Dordy said. “The waiter robots aren’t programmed to respond to random noises, only to clearly
spoken commands. Your killer must be a big man, sir—and strong, to have smashed in Latchbolt’s face.”

“Assuming the same man did both.” Coolin tossed aside the latest of his smokehales.

“This corridor!” He gestured through the open door. “People don’t use it much?”

“Except for carnival time, people don’t use it at all,” Dordy agreed, employing the special android use of the term “people.”

“So what’s it there for?” Coolin countered.

“Android and robot staff, sir,” Dordy explained. “Cleaning robots pass along it twice a day and whenever they are sent for, and the floor manager always checks clients’ suites during the occupants’ absence, to verify the operation of all facilities.”

“So until you shut down the personal elevator service, a killer could have come and gone unnoticed except by robots which are too discreet to comment on human behavior, and one—one, yes?—android who is now dead thanks to your intervention.” Coolin’s tone was curiously colored with satisfaction; Horn wondered whether it was due to learning that his case looked superficially insoluble and therefore could be left over until after carnival instead of being followed up at once, with all the attendant difficulties.

Dordy, owing to the blue skin, could not pale with fury, but Horn suspected that a man in the same mood would have done. Words seemed to be ground out of his mouth like flour from a mill.

“Administering comatine to Latchbolt was a routine action,
sir!
Had I realized that you would be so severely delayed on the way here, I would have withheld the shot even though it meant his continued suffering!”

“Hoity-toity!” Coolin said, rising. “I’ll remember that, blueboy! And I’ll make sure it comes to the attention of
your chief next week that you were more concerned about the fate of another android than what had happened to a human client of the hotel!”

He rounded on his assistants, standing in a group by the door with their technical equipment festooned around them.

“Record Mr. Horn’s testimony, you! And I guess you’d better get something from Dordy as well, though since he’s so emotionally wrought up over his blue pal’s death I don’t know if it’ll be worth anything in a court. Shift the bodies directly you finish. I’ll be down at the reception lobby checking the registration records.”

He marched out.

Recording the testimony took only a short time. Then the dead man and the dead android were carried off in a floater which bobbed up to the windows of the suite—clearly it would not be good for the hotel’s image to remove corpses by any route where guests might see them.

And it was over.

Horn remained in the chair where he had sat since Coolin’s departure, staring at the spots of blood on the carpet but not remembering the red-haired man who had lain there peacefully—picturing instead the android who had died in agony.

Some people, he was abstractly aware, found violent death the most thrilling thing in the galaxy, able to tickle the most jaded palate. After his first-year brush with the reality, Horn realized he was not one of those people. He had found the whole affair sordid and sickening.

The entry door of the suite slid back again, and there was Dordy once more, this time accompanied by two functional cleaning robots. On seeing Horn, he checked in mid-stride.

‘I’m sorry, sir! I didn’t realize you were still in the room. I was going to have the blood removed from the carpet while it’s still wet.”

Tell ’em to go ahead,” Horn sighed, but made no move to leave the suite. For a while the only sound was the faint buzzing of the machines cleaning the floor; then, suddenly, Dordy spoke up.

“You were wrong, weren’t you?”

“About what?” Horn groped.

“About my chance to discover who it was who committed the crimes.” Dordy stressed the plural. Ordinarily Horn might have found the android’s assumption of person-to-person equality, without the deferential “sir” attached to every remark, irritating. Right now he was too shaken up to care.

“I guess I see what you mean,” he muttered. “I wasn’t too well impressed by Superintendent Coolin myself. Still, I guess we’re just too habitually law-abiding on Earth these days to attract a high caliber of human recruit into the lawforce. The carnival season apart, there can’t be very many violent deaths nowadays in the course of a year.”

“Two to three murders per million of the population,” Dordy said. The robots had withdrawn from the soiled area of carpet, and he stared down to make sure all traces of blood were gone, then scuffed at the pile with his foot. “Not counting android killings. There are a good many of those, but nobody keeps the statistics.”

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.