Into the Slave Nebula (4 page)

He picked his way tiredly among the close-set booths, trying to remember when he had last gone to bed alone after a night of carnival, until he came to the place where bubbletaxis were parked. Just as he made to enter the nearest, there was a movement in shadow, and he drew back, gasping. One of the grey-clad Dispossessed had somehow managed to infiltrate the city, and was gazing straight at him with hungry, horrible eyes.

Nothing was said. There was only a look of accusation. But it hit him like an iron bar across the forehead. He stumbled backwards as the Dispossessed vanished into the darkness he had emerged from, and from behind him a voice said, “Clumsy fool!”

He was preoccupied for a moment with thoughts of the Dispossessed: condemned to the crudest, ugliest clothing, the barest of subsistence diets. He made no response.

The voice said again, “I called you a clumsy fool! And you are! I ought to run you through where you stand!”

Turning slowly, Horn realized he was being addressed by a stranger in gold and white, smeared with the marks of fruit where someone had pelted him for amusement. His face was hidden behind a golden mask, and his right hand rested on the hilt of a sword obviously meant for use and not for show.

Horn’s heart seemed to congeal and sink to the bottom of his belly. In memory he could hear the voice of the pudgy man saying he hoped the sadist who had beaten Latchbolt to death would confine himself to androids during this carnival. He had heard of, but he had never before run across, those who would take advantage of the license of carnival to work off their desire for cruelty and bloodshed. That wasn’t what dueling was meant for! It was only supposed to be a psychological prop—a subconscious reassurance for vigorous young men in a civilized society that if they had to they could fight to survive.

But even during carnival one didn’t deliberately pick a quarrel with a total stranger for the sake of a fight! One enjoyed a few matches, perhaps picked up a few scars one might choose to keep if one felt it was glamorous …

Yet here was this stranger saying, in a voice which suddenly seemed as though it ought to be familiar, “Well? Is the clumsy fool going to behave decently and come with me to a dueling-hall, or must I simply stick him like a pig out here in the open? Either way—are you listening?—I propose to kill you.”

A
LL OF A SUDDEN
what traces of carnival mood remained in Horn’s mind, artificially supported by the various euphorics he had continually gulped down since his arrival at the fairground, vanished before a rising gale of cold disgust. It had been threatening him all night, and he had barely managed to hold it at bay; the starkness of the stranger’s words now stripped him of all defenses, and he realized that without reservation he detested the world that had bred him as he was.

For it had also spawned casual killers who could beat androids to death for amusement, secure in the knowledge that their crime was mere destruction of property. How far above life was property prized, when the lack of it condemned the losers to the living hell of Dispossession?

Waiting impatiently, the man in white and gold said, “If I have to, I will run you through out here—I swear it! And there will be no one but my
friends
as witnesses!”

Drawn back to the present, Horn looked about him. In shadows nearby he detected blurred figures whose attitude somehow betrayed eagerness. People of that kind also were something he had heard about but not encountered before: those who spent the week of carnival tracking down sadistic killers and watching their duels with a voyeur’s greed. There were rules to govern dueling, naturally, and such bystanders could always be relied on to swear that they had been complied with.

He sought a way of escape, and realized sickly that
there was none. He could be tripped whichever way he tried to run. Therefore …

Detrmination grew in him. Without realizing it, he knew now that he had been surrounded all his life by things which nauseated him. He had never struck back, but only hidden himself behind the stockade of security afforded by his grandfather’s fortune. For better or worse, that was going to stop.

He saw that a cooler for iced drinks and confectionery had been overturned a few paces from where he stood. He strode towards it and slapped a handful of sticky but delightfully cold pulp on his forehead and cheeks. His mask had long ago been mislaid in the tumult of the night. Refreshed, he turned to the man in white and gold.

“Very well. Where shall we go?”

The stranger took a step back, as though surprised to find his challenge at last accepted. But he swiftly recovered his self-possession.

“There is a hall a short distance from here which is still open. I see you have no sword of your own, but you can rent one there. Come with me.”

Horn snatched up a blouse some girl had discarded on the ground and used it to wipe away the last traces of the fruit-pulp from his face. He was nervous, but to his amazement he was not afraid. He had conceived a sense of purpose, though it was a purpose he intellectually despised, and the sensation was strange and somehow inspiring. Falling in beside the challenger, he noticed from the corner of his eye that the anonymous watchers were following along behind.

“You seem to be pretty free with your challenges,” he muttered after a few paces. “Is the number of your kills the index of your enjoyment of carnival?”

The eyes behind the gold mask glinted. “I have killed at every carnival since I was twenty!”

“By picking on opponents who have never been challenged
before?” Horn made the words as insulting as he could. The man in white and gold bridled.

“Once! Only once! Have you never dueled, then?”

“Not in your style, for the pleasure of a kill.” Horn hesitated, then decided the rest of the truth was worth exploiting for what it might do to undermine the stranger’s arrogance. “But I won the premier award for sword-play in my home city last year.”

And of course everyone assumed the family had bought the judges
. … That was why he hadn’t touched his sword in eight months, why he had left it at home instead of bringing it with him for carnival week. Acquiring that skill had been the only thing in his life he had ever taken really seriously; then when he found how people regarded his triumph the whole of his enthusiasm had turned to ashes.

With melancholy satisfaction he noted that the news seemed to have had the desired effect on his companion. The man did not utter another word until they had entered the dueling-hall.

There was no one else present except the concessionaire, drowsing over his reception desk, and cleaning robots were waiting in the corners ready to sweep up the bloodstained sand scattered on the floor and replace it with fresh for the next night’s custom. Briefly Horn’s resentment against the universe sought a focus in the proprietor—what sort of man could bring himself to spend carnival week offering facilities for violent death?—but a moment later he found himself wondering whether it might not be a real service for some people whose
ennui
had reached the stage where even suicide appeared pointless, and who might welcome the chance to have a limit set to the emptiness of their lives.

Passively, he agreed for the benefit of the record that he had been properly challenged by the man in white and gold. One of the masked “friends” of the latter who had
accompanied them into the hall emerged from anonymity long enough to confirm the statement before joining his companions, all hooded and cloaked, in a group at the side of the hall.

I’ll have to rent a sword,” Horn grunted when the legalities were over. “Have you a Duple Champion?”

“Of course, sir,” the proprietor sighed, and produced one from a rack of weapons behind his desk. Horn felt it, tried a pass or two—which told him that he was slow through lack of practice—and applied it to the whirring grindstone beside the weapons rack. Stroking a few grains of metal from the thickest part of the blade turned it into the counterpart of his own at home, perfectly balanced.

But one difference did remain. This was keener than a razor, whereas his own was blunt.

“Anywhere you like on the floor, gentlemen,” the proprietor said. “I don’t expect we shall have anyone else in before dawn.”

That at least would be a help, Horn thought: not to be hemmed into the standard deuling-zone by the tingling beams of light-bars. If all else failed him, he could at least retreat and retreat until this stranger so eager for a kill grew bored and relaxed his concentration.

And yet …
stranger?
Once more he had the curious sensation he had felt when he was first challenged: that he ought to be able to place the man in white and gold.

But there was no time to wonder about such superficialities. The challenger had squared off and the automatic countdown had begun. A small black cloud of nervousness had formed behind Horn’s eyes, which he could foresee growing larger if he was indeed forced to stretch the contest unduly. Make it quickly, then, if at all possible—make it before the other man began to recognize with his muscles as well as his mind that his opponent had exceptional skill.

They touched blades on the instant the countdown ended, parried, twisted and broke free, getting each other’s measure. Horn knew he was the slower after ten short seconds; yet in the same span of time, with dawning astonishment, he realized something else which was so much to his advantage he hardly dared act on it. The stranger was no longer his own master—hadn’t been since the first click of their blades. He was instantly in the grip of blood-lust, and his next move was to launch a frenzied attack as though determined to hack Horn limb from limb.

Dimly at the remote edge of a consciousness fined down to absolute concentration on the fight, Horn caught the sound of a unison sigh of—pleasure? relief?—something crazily askew from normality, anyhow, uttered by the faceless cluster of watchers who had come in the hope of seeing a man die in slow agony. He decided that he was not going to pander to that unnatural lust any longer than was necessary. And in fact the time was so short he barely believed it even when the duel was over.

The challenger, carried away, overreached himself. In the fraction of a second when the trick was safe, Horn employed the same device which had won his championship match the year before, changed hands on his sword and stroked the tip up his opponent’s body from crotch to rib-cage. At the end of its course he thrust it home and let it go.

His belly opened like a half-peeled banana, the man in white and gold reeled backward and slumped gurgling to the floor. Horn didn’t bother to look at his work. He merely headed for the door.

Goggle-eyed, the proprietor hurried from the desk to bar his way, demanding who was going to pay his fee. Horn shrugged.

“He challenged me! Let him pay, however he is!”

Who
was
he, anyway? Fighting nausea at the sight
of his third corpse within twenty-four hours, and a still stronger wave of it due to his half-awareness of the disappointment the watchers were exuding at the shortness of the fight, he returned to strip the mask from the face of the dead man.

No wonder the voice had struck a chord in memory, although now he realized it had been disguised with deliberate deepness and an affected formality of speech.

He had killed Superintendent Coolin of the lawforce.

Restlessly, Horn tossed in his superbly comfortable bed. He was physically exhausted—the tension of the duel had drained during his return to the hotel and left all his limbs numb—but he could not dig his way into the dark mine of sleep. It was not merely that whenever his eyes were closed he saw visions of Latchbolt’s face, beaten into ruin; of Talibrand’s, composed and hideously vacant; of Coolin’s, contorted in agony; and that these images would inevitably haunt his dreams.

It was simply that he could not foresee himself ever sleeping soundly again on a world which committed responsibility for the maintenance of law and order into the hands of a man who could boast of having killed at every carnival since he was twenty.

What had attracted Coolin into his job, anyhow? The chance of being able to feast his eyes every now and then on the consequences of a rare crime of violence?

That question was unanswerable, at least so long as carnival went on.

At length the little booklet belonging to Talibrand floated into his mind’s eye, and he saw the pages turn to reveal proof of visits to one after another of the worlds that had later attested their gratitude in that amazing certificate at the beginning of the document. What could this Lars Talibrand have done? What could Derry Horn dream of doing that might be equally honored and
praised? Certainly nothing that belonged to the pattern his grandfather had mapped out for him, which he had scarcely questioned since he grew old enough to talk.

That elderly autocrat had certainly accomplished a great deal in his long life. He had supplied the population not only of Earth but of several outworlds with more, and more efficient, robots than any competitor. They might not be as versatile as androids, but they were far more reliable, and immune from the almost human nervous breakdowns which occasionally afflicted very highly strung specimens of android. (Not that these ever went so far as violent outbursts against their owners—there was a guarantee in all contracts of sale that the worst which could happen was catatonic withdawal from reality.)

Yet was this commercial achievement anything likely to bring him recognition as a universal benefactor, a “citizen of the galaxy”? Of course not. He already had all the benefits he could imagine, and in his old age he was growing crotchety—so his grandson had often suspected—through lack of new incentives.

What would happen when the old tyrant got to hear of the events of the past day? Probably he’d take his grandson severely to task, like a schoolboy, for being so stupid as to get mixed up in things which didn’t concern him. Then he would proably make some inquiries and grease a few palms by way of insurance for the family’s good name, and nothing more would ever be heard of the affair.

His father? He’d probably offer gruff compliments on the victory over Coolin and then go see
his
father in a fit of agitation about possible complications. His mother, on the other hand, would certainly flutter woollily about him risking his life, before going away and boasting of her boy’s fighting skill to her friends.

His sister, who was four years younger than he, would perhaps have another fit of that wide-eyed hero worship he had basked in until a year or two ago. By now, though, she was likely to be growing out of it, having found it as pointless as he had already decided. And, according to their ages, the rest of the family—of whom there were seemingly myriads scattered across the face of Earth—would either loudly wonder what the younger generation could be coming to these days, or scornfully condemn the exhibitionism of their relative, keeping their envy of him secret.

Last afternoon he had been dismayed at the prospect of not enjoying carnival this year. It was infinitely worse to find himself not expecting to enjoy the rest of his life.

The sun was high in the sky, invisible behind the opaqued windows of his suite, when he at last managed to doze off into unrestful slumber. When he awkened, he knew the instant he opened his eyes not only that someone had been into his room while he slept, but who that person was.

Dordy.

For, on the table beside him where he had left nothing but a pack of smokehales and a kerchief when he went to bed, there now also reposed the grey woven-metal wallet which had belonged to Lars Talibrand.

He sat up, ordered the windows to clear, struck a smokeshale and slipped the booklet out of the wallet agan, thumbing the pages. The names of the many worlds on which Talibrand had been a welcome guest rang in his head as he studied them.

What were they like? He had been told, doubtless, many times in school; now he had to corrugate his brow in an effort to unite facts with names, almost as he had done last night when looking up from the bubbletaxi at the stars. Creew ’n Dith: something about the sound
suggested sharp cold gales blasting around a fastness on the crest of a mountain. Arthworld: again, this had evocative echoes, like waves breaking on the sand of a long white beach …

All that, out there! Millions of individuals with personal identities, ruling, serving, loving, hating, doing all the human things—but not as he himself did them, at one well-cushioned remove from reality. The thought caused a wrenching change in his mental perspective, as though something had kicked his awareness off down a path at right angles to its accustomed one. He pictured Earth, the parent world, as a dowager like his deceased great-grandmother, content to relax and play with her lapdogs while her son went out and carved himself a financial empire to keep her in luxury.