Into the Slave Nebula (3 page)

Dissatisfied, he opened the booklet anew. He had presumed that it consisted entirely of versions of the same testimonial he had already read, in various languages. Now he found there were only as many translations as there were of the proud title on the cover—five. Behind followed pages and pages of planetary exit and entry
stamps. He estimated two hundred or more, covering twenty different worlds, and the thought made him almost dizzy. A traveler, this man!

Curious, he glanced at the last page seeking an entry stamp for Earth. There wasn’t one. But of course Coolin had been right in one thing: literally thousands of off-worlders came to Earth at carnival time, and the authorities were then likely to grow lax.

He slid the booklet back in its wallet and set off in search of Dordy. He had a great many questions to ask.

I
N THE PUBLIC ELEVATORS
the carnival spirit was already rampant. A slender woman apparently wearing no more than a coat of iridescent paint struggled to persuade him to try a special euphoric she had been given, and on the next stop down a grinning boy of sixteen or so entered announcing his intention of spreading some
joie de vivre
among the robots and androids on the service levels with the help of a large carton of fireworks. Luckily for Horn, who had much more serious business in the service basement, the painted woman managed to press some of her euphoric on the boy before he left the car, and the last sight Horn had of him showed him sitting on the floor with one elbow on his case of fireworks, lost in wave after wave of helpless laughter.

Puzzled at finding a client in carnival dress in the service basement, a robot inquired whether Horn had lost his way. Shaking his head, he explained that he was looking for Dordy’s office.

Reproachfully the robot pointed out that he had only to ask, and Dordy would come to his suite at the earliest possible opportunity.

“I know what I’m doing!” Horn snapped. “Where is his office, anyway?”

Programmed not to interfere with humans’ decisions, no matter how apparently irrational, unless lives were being endangered, the robot gave up. “Third door on the right, sir,” it said. “But at present I do not believe he is there.”

Correct; the room was empty. Horn went in and sat down in a hard plain chair, struck a smokehale and
prepared himself for a long wait. In fact, only a few minutes had gone by when the door slid back again and Dordy entered, betraying no surprise on seeing that he had a visitor.

“I’m sorry you had to wait,” he said. “I only just now saw the last of the lawforce androids off the premises. They were, as I think you realized, a little more thorough than Coolin.”

“You sound—” Horn had to fumble for a word. “You sound defiant, Dordy!”

At that, the android did look surprised, and perhaps a trifle relieved. Shutting the door, he moved briskly to a chair facing Horn’s.

“Yes, sir. ‘Defiant’ fits the case precisely. I suppose you refer to my use of unprefixed names for humans, for example ‘Coolin’ for ‘Superintendent Coolin?”

“I don’t give a damn what you call him.” Horn grunted. “I want to know more about
this.”
He lifted the woven-metal wallet. “You intended me to come and ask questions about it, didn’t you? I don’t see any other reason for giving it to me.”

Dordy nodded. “As I told you, sir, I reached a conclusion about you on very slender evidence. But sometimes one has to gamble. There are so many things a human can do which an android could—but can’t. If you follow me.”

Something in his tone made Horn want to apologize, but he had no idea why. He said gruffly, “Well, first off: I assume this is some kind of pass, or identity document. But I never heard of anyone being made a citizen of the galaxy before! What’s it supposed to mean?”

“Such documents aren’t recognized here,” Dordy shrugged. “Earth is a curiously parochial world in some ways. But there’s a lot more to the inhabited galaxy than just this one planet, as you’ll have been reminded by the
impressive array of entry and exit stamps in the back of that booklet.”

“Yes, of course! I mean, one studies galactography in school, and gets to recognize the stars with inhabited planets in the sky at night. And there are imported luxuries and so on. Only … only it doesn’t mean very much to most people, I guess.”

“Apparently not, sir.”

Was there sarcasm in the tone? If so, why? Horn felt a depressing sense of being at a loss, confronted with this blue-skinned inferior, and sternly reminded himself that after all Dordy wasn’t even a naturally born man but only a facsimile grown from a programmed solution of organics in some elaborate fashion he did not know the details of. Men had invented the android process! Without human genius Dordy could never have come into existence.

It must have something to do with the universal phenomenon someone had once summed up by saying that no man is a hero to his valet. In Dordy’s position there must be ample exposure to the foibles of humanity—more than enough to make him cynical and a little discourteous. No matter; a man, a real man, had died overhead a short while ago, and Derry Horn was not going to allow mere androids to display more concern over the death of one of their kind than humans did over the murder of one of theirs!

Determinedly, he plowed on with the questions he had had in mind when he left Talibrand’s suite.

“How did you come to get hold of this—this certificate?”

‘Talibrand gave it to me on his arrival,” said Dordy. “It was the most precious thing he had, except his life. He could only part with it because he knew he was in very great danger, and to have been found in possession
of it would have sealed his fate however well he might otherwise have disguised his identity.”

“But why to you?” Horn demanded. “Did you know him well?”

“I’d never seen him before.”

“Then …” No, this wasn’t making sense. He tried another tack. “Who was he hiding from? Did he know someone was hunting him—did he know who? And if you know, why didn’t you mention this to Coolin?”

“For the same reason I don’t propose to tell you.” Dordy smiled.

‘Then you do know!”

‘I know nothing I could prove,
sir.”
This time the irony was unmistakable. “I could name a name and feel certain it was right, and not be able to provide evidence in a hundred years.”

“I think you’re stalling,” Horn said suddenly. “I think—yes, I see how it might be! It isn’t anything to do with
me
, is it—not me personally? It’s all because of your
friend
the floor manager who got killed! You saw me being sympathetic to him, and I guess you probably thought, ‘Ah-hah! Here’s Derry Horn, of Horn & Horn the rich robot manufacturers—if I play my cards right I can maybe get him to lean on the lawforce a bit and here’s one android killing that won’t get handled the way the law lays down’! I don’t think you give a damn about Talibrand. I don’t even believe he gave you this certificate of his. I think you probably took a quick look through his belongings before Coolin and his team got here, and made off with this because it might be important.”

He tossed the grey wallet with its amazing booklet on to a nearby table, and got up.

“Well, I’m not going to be used, hear? It’s the job of the lawforce to do whatever is to be done in a case like this, and if Coolin doesn’t happen to be all that good
at his work I’m shot if I’m going to make myself responsible for his failings! The hell with it all–I’m going out and have myself some fun!”

He was at the door when Dordy, who had not made a move, called after him.

“Mr. Horn!”

He glanced back, not speaking.

“You’re wrong to say I don’t care about Talibrand. He was a good man.”

“Sure—that booklet says he was some kind of walking miracle! But in whose opinion? He wasn’t anything to anyone on Earth.”

“You’re wrong there, too. Incidentally, there’s no point in leaving his pass with me. It’s useless except to a human being. I can’t do any good with it at all.”

“Nor can I,” Horn said harshly, and went out.

A mobile fountain was rolling slowly past the entrance to the hotel when he reached the street. He hurried after it and swigged two or three mouthfuls of the various fruit-flavored euphorics streaming from its multiple spouts. At once a heady artificial gaiety took possession of him. He bought a mask from a passing vendor who had reserved the most resplendent of his creations for his own face, and ducked behind it into anonymity.

At the curb waited bubbletaxis, pastel-colored, lemon, pale green, pink, sky-blue. Their patient automatics hummed at the edge of audibility, awaiting passengers. As Horn strolled unhurriedly to select one for his own use, another which had been chartered elsewhere in the city settled to rest nearby, bearing a young couple making passionate love. Passers-by hooted with laughter at their annoyance as they perforce had to leave their vehicle and climb into the next in line to resume their airborne courtship. They took the one Horn had been intending to use. Gravely he bowed and gave them
precedence, and the girl—it could be seen she was very pretty for she had removed her mask to make kissing easier—promised drunkenly that he could have her any time they met during the carnival, provided she was on her own.

It didn’t seem likely.

He entered the bubbletaxi they had just vacated, and it took the air with a gentle bobbing motion, like a drifting feather. The seats were still warm from the former occupants, and a hint of fragrance clung even in the open cockpit. Horn put his feet up on the forward rim of the vehicle and leaned back to stare at the stars.

One learns to recognize the ones which have inhabited planets
. …

Only later one also forgets, he qualified. He couldn’t for the life of him have identified two of those stars and their inhabited worlds. He could have listed most of the names, given a few minutes to think about them; what he could never have hoped to do was attach them all to the proper dots of brillance above.

Annoyed, he switched his attention to the lights underneath him instead. There was the fairground, over on his left; there was the arc of the beach, fringed with the luminous organisms sown at sundown, some of which had been carried out to sea in the wake of paddleboats or by chance changes in the current. His vehicle was bearing him in a wide curving swoop all over the city, controlled as much by the breeze as by its automatics. Now the air bore to him the distant fairground blare, now a freak snatch of song from a boat lazing on the ripples a mile from shore. Carnival!

The sound montage should have been evocative, since it was part of the heritage of every living adult. It should at once, even without the euphorics he had gulped down, have snatched his imagination away from all such nastiness as androids beaten to death. Who cared about androids,
anyhow—except other androids? And the man who had been killed was a total stranger, probably with delusions of grandeur to judge by the boastful certificate he had carried.

Yet, by the time his bubbletaxi had deposited him at the far edge of the fairground, in the thick of the merrymaking, he was growing terrified at the prospect of being haunted for the whole of carnival week by visions of brutal murder. To distract himself he jumped out before the vehicle had properly come to rest and ran whooping down the grassy bank it had settled on to dive headlong between two gaudy concession-booths.

Two girls—alike, perhaps sisters—coming the other way arm-in-arm tried to leap apart in order to let him charge between them. They didn’t quite separate fast enough, or he had to put his arms around them to save himself from falling, or something. However it might have been, a moment later they were all three sprawled on the ground in a tangle of limbs, kissing and laughing with the ring of hysteria that always pervaded the racket of carnival week.

“Get off me, idiot!” giggled one of the girls, seizing a discarded burr of glittering plastic from near at hand and tangling it among Horn’s dark hair.

“Correct!” Horn declared. “I am an idiot! Carnival started hours ago, and I’ve only just turned up to join in! Want to help me make up for lost time?” He plucked at the hem of her skimpy dress while leering across her at her companion.

It took little persuasion. They linked arms again, this time with Horn in the middle, and went strutting through the fairground to a nonsense song picked up from one of the organs, to which each of them contributed a verse in turn. The girls seemed to laugh much louder at Horn’s verses than at their own. Delighted, he laughed louder than both of them.

There were same performing shoemice from Vernier; they hooted with amusement over the antics of those. There was a not-quite-face on a purple animal from Lygos, which retained a perfectly solemn expression while its trainer drilled it through the most absurd contortions; that struck them as fantastically funny and left them barely able to stagger towards the next concession, where a lightning caricaturist turned each of them in turn into sarcastic parodies: the two girls into a kind of playing-card, heads and arms waving either side of a union at waist-height, and Horn into a hooded skeletal figure with a scythe. That was too appropriate to be amusing. He ripped the drawing of himself into shreds and chased the girls away, masking his annoyance with shrill cries of mock laughter. Balls of silver rising and falling in a shimmering column of light drew them; they found a device that distorted gravity at random and spent ten crazy minutes being whirled and tumbled together inside one of the balls … after which the concessionaire discreetly allowed them a further ten minutes of privacy, undisturbed.

Emerging thirsty, they stopped at a fountain. Horn had three measures, and thereafter the night began to melt together like a dream. They picked up other people along the way until he found himself leading a party of a dozen or more through sideshow after sideshow, competition after competition.

At last, though, it seemed that their gaiety was lessening while his still grew. Barely an hour remained before dawn. Some people were already asleep on the ground; this was usual on the first night of carnival. Tomorrow people would sleep all day and awake refreshed at sunset, whereas on this first day they would typically have been awake for twenty hours already.

“Come on!” Horn shouted hysterically. “We still haven’t seen—”

And broke off, looking around rather foolishly. He was speaking to the air. His party had melted away. A sign on a neighboring concesson offered a probable explanation. It read simply: DOUBLE BEDS.

All hilarity evaporated, and exhaustion took its place. He thought about the sign for a while, which was tempting even though neither of the sisters with whom he had begun the evening remained to keep him company; then he decided it was a waste when there was a comfortable hotel suite awaiting him. It would not be long before he could order a bubbletaxi to take him back to it. Meanwhile, he might as well sit down in one and let it bear him where it liked—it was more comfortable than sitting on the ground here. Not to mention cleaner; the ground was almost squelching with spilled liquor and perhaps less savory fluids, and all sorts of rubbish covered the grass.