Into the Slave Nebula (5 page)

Now this man Talibrand
…

He turned to the solido at the beginning of the booklet. It had faded to uniform greyness now. Lars Talibrand was finished. Only … well, if he had made himself so important that enemies hunted him from world to world, and even to Earth where his safe-conduct of galactic citizenship no longer protected him, then the chances were that he must have been equally keenly loved, and have left behind countless thousands of friends.

The beginnings of a decision sprouted in Horn’s mind, like a shy flower putting forth green to test the climate of spring. He turned to the last page of the booklet on which planetary entry stamps appeared, and his eyes unfocused as he looked beyond the printed name to the reality it implied.

Newholme. A nice substantial name, that. Without the romantic ring of Creew ’n Dith or Lygos. But different from the flat, placid, plopping sound
Earth
.

The decision hardened, and he spent a brief moment wondering in bewilderment whether this was what
Dordy had been obliquely referring to yesterday, and how a mere android could foresee something in the mind of a man before the man himself was aware of it.

That, though, was of no consequence. He was going to Newholme.

A
HEADY EXCITEMENT
seized him, tempered with not a little anxiety. But also there was impatience, to the point where he felt every second he spent after making up his mind was the waste of a chance to leave Earth. He leapt from the bed shouting for service, telling the robot which answered his call to bring him breakfast and fetch Dordy to his suite.

Showered and dressed faster than ever before in his life, he was gobbling down a hasty meal when the android acting-manager finally entered, looking extremely tired.

“You sent for me, Mr. Horn? I’m sorry to have taken so long, but during carnival this place is—well …” A shrug completed the apology.

“Never mind,” Horn said out of a full mouth. “I just wanted to let you know I’m checking out.”

Dordy nodded. “You’ve found more congenial accommodation for the rest of carnival? With friends, perhaps? Or
a
friend?”

“I’m sick of carnival!” Horn gave the words a measured emphasis. “I’m sick of the people who take part. I’m sick of the things they do. I’m getting the hell out.”

“Yes, sir. It’s still carnival week for everyone else, though.”

Horn froze for an instant as the implication sank in. Of course! It would be pretty nearly impossible to go anywhere for the remaining six days. People weren’t expected to want to travel during this season—they were supposed to be too busy enjoying themselves. Then he relaxed. There’d be a way of getting around that difficulty.
There was always some way of getting around any difficulty.

“Never mind that for the moment! Sit down. I thought you might be interested to hear what made up my mind for me.”

With an expression of polite interest Dordy complied, and Horn went on, “Someone challenged me to a duel just before dawn. I killed him.”

“As though there hadn’t been enough deaths already,” Dordy said, his pose of civility slipping. He tried and failed to master a yawn. Deliberately appearing to miss the point, Horn shook his head.

“Not for him apparently. It was Coolin, the lawforce superintendent.”

The blue skin above Dordy’s right eye wrinkled as he raised the eyebrow. “Really! Well, that explains quite a lot of things.”

“Does it for you? It leaves me completely in the dark,” Horn said in an aggrieved tone. “What exactly does this news—ah—clarify for you?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Dordy palmed his eyes and rubbed the skin of his temples, as though stretching it. “I’m very tired, and it would be dreadfully complicated to try and explain everything right now.” He dropped his hands. “But I ought at least to give you a warning. It was bad luck for you to get mixed up in the murder of Lars Talibrand. If you’d behaved like an average citizen—given your testimony and shown impatience to get on with the fun of carnival—you’d probably not have been bothered again. By doing more than this minimal civic duty, you’ve probably marked yourself out as a potential danger to a lot of very dangerous people.”

“But—but this sounds like a historical melodrama!” Horn objected.

“Isn’t it dramatic that a man should have been hounded from planet to planet, driven out of the regions where
his reputation protected him to Earth where his immunity no longer held good—and killed?”

“That’s not just something you worked out from looking at the booklet you gave me. You sound far too positive.” Horn thrust back his chair from the breakfast-table. “How do you come to know so much about this Lars Talibrand whom you claim never to have met before he checked in at your hotel?”

“What you really mean is: how does a menial android come to know more of what’s going on in the galaxy than—No, I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to say something like that. I can only promise you that you could learn exactly the same facts as I know if you took the trouble to go and look for them.”

“I’m going to,” Horn said determinedly.

There was a long pause. At last Dordy said, in a voice absolutely different from the tone he ordinarily affected, the deferential one suited to an android on the staff of a luxury hotel, “Then I wish you luck, Mr. Horn. You’ll need it. It would be a brave thing for a man to expose himself—like an android—to the risk of death without retribution from the law.”

Horn froze. In the words he seemed to hear the tolling of a funeral bell, or a dreadful sentence being uttered in the court of the universe. But before he could speak again, Dordy had risen and resumed his subordinate manner.

“I’ll arrange to have your baggage at the exit directly you find transport for yourself, Mr. Horn. I hope you succeed in doing so.”

A few hours later, sheer frustration was bringing horn around to the conclusion that Dordy, in spite of being a lowly android, was possessed of far more common sense than he was. He had come equipped with enough money and credit certificates to last him through carnival, and
a return ticket to his home city so that even if he managed to exhaust his stock of cash he could still get home. But the ticket, naturally, was useless—no public transport except bubbletaxis operated during carnival week—and even those owners of vehicles in whom his offer of payment woke a flicker of cupidity admitted that they had time-locked the controls for fear of gambling or giving their property away. Everyone else, better adjusted to their world than these few with faults they recognized, laughed at him. They were as well off already as they could imagine being; a few thousand credits made small difference one way or another.

Certainly the money wouldn’t repay them for the loss of a whole night of carnival.

At sunset, when there was no longer a chance of stopping a sober person on the street and striking a bargain because the entire adult population was hurrying to the fairground or to private parties, Horn made his way morosely back to the hotel. The money he had with him, he had lately realized, was on the one hand too much—since in this mood he was never going to spend it on carnival amusements—and on the other far too little, for it would barely cover the price of even a one-way ticket from Earth to Newholme. He had learned this from a tariff-board displayed outside an interstellar travel agency. The office beyond, of course, was shut.

Despondently, on returning to his suite, he sent for Dordy, with a vague idea that the android might honor his credit certificates and let him have extra cash so that tomorrow he could try the effect of increasing his offer for the loan of a vehicle. Almost as soon as the robot had departed to fetch him, the acting-manager appeared at the door of the suite.

“Ah, Mr. Horn! You’ve had no luck, I judge from your expression! But don’t worry—I haven’t cleared your baggage or re-allotted your rooms.”

“Damnation!” Horn exclaimed. “Nobody gives a hoot for anything but this lunatic carnival right now! You’d think the world had come to a complete stop!” The implications of this last remark penetrated, and he put his hand on his chin, musing. “But it can’t have, can it?” There must always be some services which have to continue—power, and water-supply, and heating, and even maintenance of the carnival gear like bubbletaxis and fountains when someone decides to bash them about. And I guess the lawforce has to keep going, too; carnival isn’t a season of
complete
lawlessness. Who the hell takes care of all that?”

Dordy just stood there and looked at him.

“Yes, of course,” Horn said finally. “It was a damned stupid question, wasn’t it? But …” He gathered courage; this somehow demanded more of him than accepting Coolin’s challenge had required last night, even though his life was not at stake. “Look—ah … sit down! Smoke?” He proffered his pack of smokehales.

Dordy accepted the chair, but waved the smokehales aside. “Not allowed, sir,” he said. “We’re conditioned against them, in fact. And against liquor and all euphoric and depressant drugs.”

Horn made to set one to his own lips, then realized that to someone who was immune from the taste for such things the sight of a man sucking grey vapor out of a thin white tube was probably rather ridiculous. He changed his mind and instead voiced the idea which had just occurred to him.

“Well, anyway! I’ve had no luck in trying to borrow or rent a vehicle to get me home, so I was wondering—ah—whether any of your people could organize a heli for me. Or something. I mean, since you’re temporarily in charge …” The words trailed away, but he had made his point.

“You had it in mind to offer payment?” Dordy said.

“Why, of couse. I’d pay generously.”

“No doubt, sir.” Dordy sounded patient. “I was just wondering whether you expected your money to be desirable to—as you put it—one of my people. Androids are not permitted to spend money in public places, nor do they enjoy the advantages of credit rating. Bluntly, sir, even though I grant that it is possible for one android to be better off than another, it is wholly impossible for any android to be better off than any human being. So money is, so to say, irrelevant.”

Embarrassed at not having deduced the consquences of a fact he was perfectly aware of, Horn said harshly, “Not better off than the Dispossessed?”

“Dispossession lasts a maximum of two years, sir. Being an android is”—Dordy gestured as though feeling for a word in the air before him—“permanent”

“Hell’s bells!” Horn exclaimed. A half-remembered tag from a history text crossed the field of his memory, and he grabbed at it. “Then how about—what’s it called?—manumission? You know, release from a service contract! My family is pretty well off. I’m sure I could arrange for any android who helped me to be bought from his present owner and—and turned loose.”

“To do what?” Dordy said. He sounded tense, as though trespassing over the limits laid down by his status in life, prepared at any moment to be told to shut up and get out. “Androids get their freedom by doing, Mr. Horn! What do you think I would say if someone—let’s postulate a customer of the hotel who was particularly pleased with the service I’d organized during his stay—bought me out and said, ‘Dordy, you can quit your job and there’s no need for you to work ever again’? I’d thank him kindly and turn the offer down. What would I do if I lost this job? Sit on my bunk in an android barracks and read the classics of literature?”

He waved the notion aside, looking faintly bored.

“But never mind that, sir. Suppose you tell me exactly what you’re hoping to do?”

There was a long silence. Eventually words emerged from Horn’s mouth which he himself heard with vague astonishment.

“I guess—I guess I don’t really know. It started with the idea that someone ought to bring to justice the man who killed Talibrand, and your floor manager too. But that’s ridiculous. It’s straight out of a historical romance. I guess I’d be satisfied to get up there, the other side of our nice clear blue sky, and discover what a man could do to be nominated as a citizen of the galaxy. I’d just plain like to be convinced that things of that kind still exist. Beyond that, I …” He turned his hand over, palm to the floor, and scowled.

“I’m told that life on worlds other than Earth isn’t so comfortable as here, sir,” Dordy said.

“So what?” Horn jumped to his feet and began to pace the room. “I’m wealthy without having asked to be—it just happened when I was born! And I’m miserable! Damn it, I am! I don’t have any purpose in living, never have had, ever seem likely to have!
I’m
never going to have a job like yours where someone might one day come along and say, ‘Well done, I want to pay you back for everything!’ I’m just going to occupy the well-worn grooves of a career laid down for me before my father got married, and when I die no one will be able to remember whether I did this or that, or whether my father or my grandfather worked it all out and just ordered me to get on with it. And I can’t stand it any longer!”

Dordy seemed to be debating within himself. After a while he too got up, straightening his smart formal clothing with quick twitches.

“In that case, Mr. Horn, you needn’t worry any longer about your transport. It’s waiting for you as soon as you’re ready to leave.”

I
N
D
ORDY’S OFFICE
was a big taciturn android with a blunt chin, wearing the coarse overalls of a general service technician. As Horn, still trying to make sense of what had happened, accompanied Dordy into the room, this android rose automatically to his feet, then gave him a searching look and switched his eyes to Dordy.

“Him?” he said in a neutral tone that came within an ace of being disparaging.

“Yes, of course!” Dordy snapped. “Mr. Horn, this is Berl. He’s with the municipal service department. He’s off duty tonight, and has access to a heli in which he can take you home.”

Uncomfortable, Horn said, “Well, there isn’t any need for that, you know. I can fly a heli if you can loan one to me.”

“With all the continental guide-beams turned off for overhaul?” Berl grunted, and added belatedly, “Sir!”

“Why—no! I mean, are they? I didn’t realize.”

“Sure they are. Carnival’s the best chance we get to withdraw public service equipment from regular use and check it out. At that there’s a lot of work to cram into one week, even working around the clock. Maybe it would be a good idea to double the length of carnival, give a bit more elbow-room.”

There was a faint hissing sound from beyond the door, then a sharp report, and a crash as though a pile of crocks had been dropped. “Excuse me,” said Dordy wearily, and went to see what had happened. Horn waited for his return, very conscious of Berl’s scrutiny but unable to say anything.

Dordy was only out for a short time, however, and came back with a frown. “Boy with some fireworks,” he announced. “He was here last night too—full of the carnival spirit. He blew the foot off a robot waiter with that one. I hope his family can stand the bill they’re going to get next week! What was that you were saying about wanting carnival to go on longer, Berl?”

The blue-skinned men exchanged glances full of mutual comprehension; Horn felt oddly left out of the exchange. Then Berl shrugged.

“Well, life’s like that. Okay, Mr. Horn, let’s go. You won’t find my heli very comfortable, I’m afraid—the only place I could borrow from was the wreck-salvage section. But it has just been thoroughly checked, so you can rely on it getting you where you want to go.”

Horn turned awkwardly to Dordy. “I don’t quite know how to say thanks,” he muttered. “You told me money isn’t any good, but if there’s anything at all I can—”

Dordy raised his hand. “Androids don’t have to be thanked any more than they have to be paid, Mr. Horn. You just go where that booklet of Lars Talibrand’s leads you. You can do it. I wouldn’t be allowed to.”

Berl gave a sound halfway between a grunt and a laugh, and waited impatiently by the door for Horn to join him.

“But—” Horn felt briefly giddy. “But you
know
where, don’t you? You know what Lars Talibrand’s work was! Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because you don’t have to walk out of that door, sir. The moment you do, you’ll be in it up to your neck, and from then on it will be up to you whether you come out with your life. Goodbye, Mr. Horn.”

The heli Berl had borrowed was indeed a long way from the passenger models to which Horn was accustomed. Potbellied, immensely powerful, it lumbered
through the sky at a slow hundred and fifty with its unretracted legs spread wide on either side of its folded grappling equipment. He sat in acute discomfort on a plain metal bench which doubled as a toolchest—the tools rattled like the chains of a banshee every time the engine hit a particular frequency—beside what struck him as an appallingly flimsy door fitted with a catch Berl sternly warned him not to touch or even brush against while they were moving, for fear it might spring open.

The square edge of his seat cut off the circulation in his legs, sending his calves to prickling sleep no matter how often he tried to shift his weight from one side to the other. There was a stink of lubricant from the bearings of the rotor overhead.

“It’s not designed for this sort of trip,” Berl vouchsafed after they had been in flight nealy an hour. He seemed to be half amused and half sympathetic towards Horn’s vain attempts to make himself comfortable. But it was the first thing he had said without prompting since they set out; to Horn’s halting remarks about the advantages and drawbacks of carnival, uttered earlier, he had returned only grunts and nods.

It was cold up here; Horn leaned back to make the most of what warmth seeped through from the engine astern of their cockpit.

“Ah—what exactly is this machine designed for, then?” he ventured. “Didn’t you say something about borrowing it from the wreck-salvage section?”

“That’s right,” Berl nodded. There was no light except from the stars and the dim glow of the instrument panel; the blueness of his skin was turned to a grey as neutral as was Horn’s own complexion. “All I could get was this heavy lifting job, y’see. Rest of the helis are due for major overhauls. Take days, maybe all of what’s left
before carnival is through. But this type doesn’t see too much service during an average year, doesn’t get worn out so quick. It’s the kind you send out when a couple of groundcars get so tangled up in an important intersection you can’t risk waiting till you’ve cut ’em into sections the small helis can handle. Ever seen one of them at work?”

“No, I don’t believe I ever have,” Horn said. “I’ve been by at a spot where accidents like that had recently happened, I think, but it was always cleaned up before I arrived. I guess—” He hesitated, couldn’t decide why, and finished what he had been about to say. “I guess you boys do a pretty fast job!”

“We try to. Right now, of course, we can take things easy—you can’t do much harm if you break a bubbletaxi, and all it needs is to send out a mechanic in a floater. The rest of the year, though, you keep us pretty busy.”

He didn’t sound in the least resentful—rather, his tone was one of satisfaction, as though he was glad of the demands his job made on him. Nonetheless he fell silent again, and there was an interval during which the only sound was the drone of the rotors. Horn, peering overside, spotted the lights of a city to the east, which he could not identify: a patch of misty brilliance like an extra-galactic nebula viewed through a giant telescope, dotted with occasional brighter points like novae. He commented on the resemblance to Berl, not wanting to let the conversation die, but the android only shrugged.

“Wouldn’t know about that. My job’s wreck-salvage.”

Am I crazy?
Horn asked himself.
To think of leaving Earth on some wild chase among the outworlds, when there’s so much right here at home I know nothing about?

But it was too late for second thoughts. Berl was throttling back the power and the heli was losing height. A group of lights ahead suddenly took on familiar patterns.
That was the Horn family’s estate, and they were about to land. He realized with dismay that he hadn’t planned what he was going to say to his relatives, rehearsed counters to their predictable objections.

Well, he would probably still have time to think about that. It was hours before dawn. The whole family was probably scattered over a hundred square miles, and before his father came home he could expect plenty of opportunity to sit and muse by himself.

The heli touched down. Berl reached across him and flipped the catch of the passenger door. It dropped to form a ramp for his exit. Stiffly rising to scramble out, Horn muttered automatic thanks, and instantly re-heard Dordy’s cynical remark that androids didn’t have to be thanked any more than they had to be paid.

“Say—uh—Mr. Horn!”

Turning, he saw Berl leaning down from the high doorway of the heli.

“Dordy told me you have Lars Talibrand’s certificate. Is that right?”

Horn clapped his palm to the pocket in which he had slipped the document. It was where it ought to be. He nodded.

“Well—uh …” Berl seemed oddly at a loss. “Could I see it? Just for a moment?”

“Why—why, sure!” Bewildered, Horn produced it and handed it over. There was a pause. He could just discern the android’s fingers turning the pages in the dim glow of the instrument lights.

Then the document was being extended for him to retrieve, and Berl was saying in a tone absolutely unlike any of his previous remarks, “Than you, sir! I really appreciate that!”

What? I’m the one who’s been done a favor, surely!
But while Horn was still fumbling for words Berl had
closed the door and fed power to the rotors. Battered by the vertical gale, he turned and trudged towards the house; before he reached it, the heli was out of sight.

He had been set down on the rear lawn among beds of night-secented flowers which ordinarily perfumed the whole vicinity of the house. The heli had left behind so strong a reek of hot oil, however, that it was still in his nostrils when a hand-held flashlight sprang up ahead of him and a quiet, familiar voice said, “Good morning, Mr. Derry. Welcome home.”

“Thanks, Rowl. Uh—you don’t seem very surprised to see me back.” Horn fell in alongside the portly android butler who had been in his family’s service since he was first imported. He had heard—but only at second-second-hand—of the argument which had raged about employing an android in the household of the planet’s leading robot manufacturer, no matter how fallible those robots had been thirty years ago. The disagreement had been settled on the basis that it must be an
imported
android, whose prestige value would perhaps compensate for the obvious drawbacks. Nonetheless, Rowl was still the only android on the staff; the rest were custom-designed robots.

“Well, no, Mr. Derry,” Rowl said. “You see, the manager’s secretary called me from the hotel where you were staying and warned me of your impending arrival.”

“Did he now!” Horn checked in mid-stride, briefly possessed of a vague sense that he had been left out of something, his imagination tantalised by a half-formed vision of a planet-embracing network of androids, a colossal grapevine of news and gossip. But he had known Rowl since his birth; far too many years of childhood memory conspired against his thinking of the butler in any other than the ordinary context of his home. At a loss for the latest of uncountable times since the start of carnival,
he peered into the house through the transparent walls which in summer gave the illusion of continuity between living-area and gardens, seeing no movement except that of the ever-busy cleaning robots.

“Well, that was thoughtful of him,” he said at last. “Ah—is anyone else at home?”

“No, sir. Mr. Derry senior went to a party last night and did not return, though he is expected not to remain away indefinitely, and Mrs. Lu”—his mother—“said that …” Rowl gave a discreet cough, letting the words tail away.

“Said that if he could do it so could she and she won’t be back tonight,” Horn snorted. “You don’t have to be tactful with me, Rowl!”

“I suppose not, sir,” Rowl admitted, looking pained nonetheless at the accuracy of Horn’s guess. “Well, anyway: Mr. Horn”—his grandfather, who as head of the family alone rated the formal use of its surname—“has been saying he doesn’t enjoy carnival as much as he used to. He was in a very bad temper when he returned yesterday morning, and I regret to say I expect he will probably feel the same today.”

“What about my sister?”

“Oh, Miss Via is with a party of students under the supervision of your cousin Mrs. Leadora. That entire branch of the family is here, incidentally.”

“Damn. I’d clean forgotten about their being invited for the week. Oh well, never mind—I shan’t be around long enough to be pestered by them, with luck. Rowl, do you suppose there’s a hundred thousand in ready cash in the house?”

“Well … yes, sir, there is indeed. But of course the ordinary expenses of carnival will substantially reduce that sum during the next few days.”

“Let ’em have their fun on credit, then! If a Horn can’t
command credit, who on this horrible planet can? I’m going to need cash—a lot of it—in a hurry! Here, get me a drink and a snack, will you? I need it to set me up for an argument with grandad.”

If Rowl had the faintest inkling why his employer’s grandson wanted so much money in a hurry, he didn’t betray the fact, but merely bowed and moved to comply.