New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers (13 page)

“What is this crooked gambling?” Adams asked. “The gambling here isn’t crooked, is it?”

“The third landing port,” Villiers said. “We want the smuggling operation.”

“Oh,” said Josiah.

“What do you mean by crooked gambling, sir?”

“Did you expect a man you suspect of heartier villainies to run an honest gaming house?” Villiers asked. “Josiah was cheating you systematically.”

“Well, is that so?” Adams asked. His grip on Josiah’s arm increased substantially in force and he touched the warm tip of Josiah’s nose with the cold tip of his gun. “You’d better show us the way.”

Josiah looked at Villiers with sensible blue eyes. “It’s not that I’m craven, you understand. But if you’re going to close things down, I suppose I’d better help you. Usual terms?”

“Usual terms,” Villiers said.

“What does that mean?” Adams asked.

“It would only distress you, I’m afraid,” Villiers said. “Perhaps it would be better not to know.”

* * *

Shirabi closed the box over the second girl and rose. He was pleased by his new personal force, strong enough to dominate already-terrified little girls. He rubbed his hands together and then flexed them. He admired the blue tracings on the backs. They seemed to him an elegant corruption, like the veins in blue cheese.

The grasshopper deposited its second armload of boxes within the hold of the freighter. It poised like a father who means to let his baby son stand alone, and then reached out an inevitable steadying arm. Then it slid back on its rails into the warehouse.
 

The operator swung the front around briskly on its central pivot wheel. He brought the arms down.

“Over here. These boxes.” The operator, Achdut Haavoda, responded to the new authority in Shirabi’s voice. “Aw, shit, Shirabi. Let me do it my way.”

Shirabi said, “I want these boxes aboard next.” He pointed to the boxes at his feet, the ones containing the bodies of Alice Tutuila and Louisa Parini.

Haavoda shrugged, brought the grasshopper around, and made the indicated boxes part of his next armload. It meant refiguring his entire stacking order, but Shirabi didn’t care anything about that.

Shirabi folded his hands over his stomach as he watched this load of boxes safely within the hold. It gave him a solemn satisfaction, the glow of a newly-blooded hunter who knows that today’s pigeons stand for elephants tomorrow.

Levi was still watching the grasshopper with lips agape. He was toying with something in his pocket.

“Go to the door and watch,” Shirabi told him.

“What?”

“Go to the door. And watch.”

Shirabi got behind the cold cart in which Godwin reposed and began to push it. It started slowly, but once he had momentum going he found it easy to guide it parallel to the grasshopper track. The grasshopper was picking up another load and swinging around to follow behind him.

Ned Hornygold, the blond young captain of the freighter, stood in the extensor and looked at Shirabi coming his way pushing a white cart.

“What is it you mean to do, Shirabi?”

“It’s another body. I mean to have it aboard.”

The cart should have had another pair of hands guiding it. As Shirabi brought it up to where the captain stood, the left wheel dropped into the grasshopper track, the cart top lurching at an angle. Shirabi pushed forward and instead of bringing the wheel out of the track, the force wedged it in place.

“I’m stuck,” he said.

Hornygold waved frantically at the grasshopper. “Stop there. Hey, stop.”

“Little accident,” Shirabi said, and shrugged apologetically.

Hornygold put his hands on the bar beside Shirabi’s. “Push or pull?”

“Let’s try push.”

They tried push.

“Maybe we’d better try pull.”

They tried pull.

Of the four men at work in the hold, two were Shirabi’s. They broke off work and came over to watch the extraction proceedings. Hornygold went down on his belly to look at the wheel.

Shirabi said, “Come on out here and lend a hand.”

Hornygold said, “It’s snagged. It’s going to have to be lifted up. How the hell did you do it, Shirabi?”

Shirabi’s man wiped sweat from his forehead and said, “Get Levi on it. He’s the boy for the heavy stuff.”

Shirabi turned. Haavoda was lounging at the controls of his machine. Shirabi waved and called for Levi.

Levi came in response to his master’s voice.

“Levi. This cart is stuck. It won’t go inside. The wheel is caught. The cart has to be lifted. Can you do it?”

“Oh, gee, sure.”

He put his two hands to the end of the cart. He bent, strained, lifted, and the end of the cart came free.

“Very good, Levi,” Shirabi said.

Suddenly, Haavoda, from his vantage point on the seat of the grasshopper, yelled, “It’s Josiah. And he’s got that Villiers with him. And another guy.”

“They’re onto us,” Shirabi said. “Levi, it’s Mr. Godwin in that cart! You don’t want him left behind. Get him inside the ship.”

His voice had a beautiful ringing quality to it. It inspired Levi with a full appreciation of his chance to do something for Mr. Godwin. He pushed with his strength at the rear of the cart and ran the wheel back into the grasshopper track. Puzzled, he pushed harder.

“Rafi, Mapai, get on it,” Shirabi said, and his two men moved to join Levi. There was confusion of effort, and the cart went nowhere.

Hornygold backed toward the door of the hold. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to fight?” Shirabi asked, pulling Godwin’s curdler out and brandishing it.

“No,” said Hornygold.

“On second thought, I believe I’ll join you,” Shirabi said. He thrust the gun at Levi. “It’s the man who killed Mr. Godwin, Levi. Point the gun at him and pull the trigger.”

He and Hornygold ducked into the hold of the ship and turned right for the control room. Hornygold’s two crewmen were on their heels.

* * *

Villiers ran low though the warehouse, Adams at his right hand, Josiah behind them and even lower. The warehouse was a high rock-ceilinged cavern. There were huge open doors at the far end and beyond them a clutter of men and machines at the hold of a ship in cradle.

A man at the controls of a grasshopper saw them, called and then jumped down and made a dash for the warehouse doors. He found the controls and started the doors down.

Josiah yelled, “Achdut Haavoda! Stop! Mapai, Rafi! It’s the Navy. Take terms.”

The doors continued inexorably downward with all deliberate gravity. Villiers increased his speed, leaving the other two behind him. He hit the ground, rolled under the doors, thereby doing twice the damage of Henry’s roll under the bed, with half the regret, and on one knee put his gun on Haavoda. Adams hit the ground and rolled too late. He bounced off the bottom of the door with an unhappy thump.

Haavoda looked at the curdler in Villiers’ hand and very sensibly—he was no fighting man; he was a machine operator (two varieties)—said, “Terms.”

“Terms,” said Villiers, and immediately turned his attention to the other men. If you wonder how he dared, well, if somebody says, “Terms,” and then doesn’t quit, nobody will play with him anymore. Both Villiers and Haavoda knew this.

There was a thump, the might of intention behind it, on the other side of the warehouse doors. They rang absentmindedly.

There was a final flicker of motion in the hold. Three men had their backs and shoulders to a cold cart in the last few feet of the extensor. The central one of the three was Levi Gonigle, holding in his two hands a gun that he was still trying to trace the origin and meaning of.

If somebody says, “Terms,” and then doesn’t quit, he may roam as he likes for the rest of his life, and all will turn away as he passes. The people will point and say, “He said ‘Terms,’ and then he didn’t quit. He’s a cheat. Don’t have nothing to do with him.” His only company will be rascals of his own stripe. It’s silly, I will be ready to agree—but then it’s no more silly than any other common convention.

“Terms,” said Mapai stepping to one side. “Terms,” said Rafi, stepping to the other side.

“Terms,” said Villiers.

Behind him there was news of an arrival. Adams’ voice said with boyish firmness, “All right, you, there. I’ve got you.”

“I’ve already agreed to terms,” Haavoda apologized.

But Levi didn’t say “Terms,” and step to the side. He didn’t know you could do that. Levi continued to hold the gun in his right hand. With the heel of that right hand and his left hand on the bar of the cart, he put his shoulders against the metal and lifted. He went, “Uhhh-
uh
,” and the wheel was free.

A bell rang twice inside the hold of the ship. The hold doors gave a warning click and began to slide shut.

Levi didn’t hear. He concentrated on getting the cart that held Mr. Godwin within the ship. He pushed hard to save Mr. Godwin.

The doors came smartly against the sides of the cart as it rolled forward, and held it tightly. It wouldn’t move.

Levi didn’t know what was happening. Too much information for him to handle was flooding over him—carts that wouldn’t go, ringing bells, shouts, people moving. Like a statesman faced with complexity, he turned to the simplest solution, which is to say, violence. He pointed the curdler in his hand and fired.

Haavoda was struck. He cried out in shock and then curled into a crying ball on the floor. Did Levi intend that?

Mapai, at Levi’s left, hit the floor. He covered his red head with his hands and didn’t look up. Rafi, at Levi’s right, continued to stand. But he said in the most irritated of voices, “Dammit, Levi. Don’t be stupid.”

Villiers fired. Adams fired. Levi fell to the floor, the curdler popping from his hand as it slapped against the rock. Poor Levi—he understood consequences no better than Torve the Trog and lacked Torve’s alternative. And he was dead—whatever that means in this era.

Villiers and Adams ran forward toward the ship. They dodged past the body. Mapai and Rafi stood well out of their way. They went to ground on the left side of the cart, Villiers in front, Adams just behind.

“What now, sir?” he asked. “Isn’t that all?”

“No. I saw some of them inside the ship.”

“Oh,” Adams said. “Well, I guess we’ll have to dig them out.”

Villiers said, “The control room should be up there.” He gestured with his right thumb.

Adams said, “Respectfully, sir. One of us has to go forward. I’d like to volunteer.”

Villiers allowed Adams full room to pop through the hole under the cart. “Right you are. It’s your profession.”

“And maybe my promotion,” Adams said, and went knees, belly, and then elbows through the hole.

He left Villiers with a greater impression of possibility than he ever had before. Villiers gave him a fair count to be out of the way inside, and then went under the cart himself.

He pushed through and found himself short of the lee of a cold box. He wriggled and ducked into shelter. Then he brought his head up gingerly.

Through two hatchways and some intervening clutter, he saw parts of Adams going under cover in the control room. He heard the hair-pricking sound of curdler fire.

Adams called back, “They’re not up here. Somebody’s shooting at me outside in the corridor, though.”

“Nobody’s in the ship?”

“No, sir.”

Villiers rose, looked for a local switch for the hold doors, found one, and tripped it. The doors began to open. He put hands on the end of the cart, pushed, pushed, pushed it free, re-tripped the doors and turned away. The doors came to a stop, bells rang gravely, and then the doors began to close again.

Villiers said, “If you don’t want to be shot, close the doors up there.”

The doors behind him banged together.

“Yes, sir,” said Adams. He kept his head down and duck-walked around the control room. After some moments he found his switch and closed the door. And they were alone inside the closed ship.

Villiers brushed himself off, his clothes disordered for the second time in the evening. He looked around at the contents of the hold. When Adams appeared at the control room door, Villiers was turning away.

Adams said slowly, “Sir? I’ve been thinking. Haven’t we trapped ourselves? They’ve all escaped. If we try to get out, all they have to do is wait by the doors.”

“On the contrary,” Villiers said, “we’ve won.”

“But, no, sir. We’re trapped.”

“Mr. Adams, do I understand you to believe that we are
trapped
here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Adams,
here
is a spaceship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Star Well is a piece of rock. We are a spaceship. We are on the outside. We are the universe. They are inside, and we have them surrounded.”

“Oh,” said Adams. “Yes, sir.”

Villiers smiled. “You did well, Mr. Adams. Mr. Srb is lucky to have you.”

And as we know, Srb was lucky. If Srb hadn’t had an assistant with enough initiative to prowl about on his own, Shirabi and his thumbs might well have slipped off into the universal night. Luck was what made Srb so successful an Inspector General. Sitting under that apple tree waiting for that top apple to drop. As it always did.

Adams was looking pale. “Did I do well, Mr. Villiers? I shot a man.”

Villiers held his hand out, palm down. There was a barely perceptible tremble.

“See?” he said. “Don’t worry. You did do well. All right?”

Adams nodded his head.

Villiers said, “By the way, Mr. Adams. Now that we are alone, would you favor me with the answer to a question of dress that has been puzzling me?”

“Certainly, sir,” Adams said.

* * *

An hour later, with the bonds to Star Well cut and the ship in orbit around the rock, Villiers was sitting in the control room watching Adams trace linkages. This was Adams’ area of competence. On background, he had been able to operate the ship. Now, model manual in hand, he was trying to understand it.

Villiers rose. Adams didn’t notice him leave the control room. There were cold boxes in racks in the hold, and two abandoned on the floor. On impulse, Villiers knelt down beside the one he had used for cover on entering the ship and opened it. A cold box cover served two purposes. One was protection from the box’s field, which was strong enough to disconcert, and the other was esthetics. Most cold box cases were unattractive for any of several reasons. Villiers kept his fingers well back and the healthy-looking body within did not disturb him.