No World of Their Own (7 page)

“What are the uniforms?” asked Blaustein.

“Different trades: metalworker, food producer, and so on. They have a guild system, highly organized, several years' apprenticeship, and there's a lot of rivalry between the guilds. As long as the commons do their work and behave themselves, we leave them pretty much alone. The police—city-owned slaves—keep them in line if real trouble ever starts.” Chanthavar pointed to a burly black-clad man in a steel helmet. “It doesn't matter much what goes on here. They haven't the weapons or the education to threaten anything. Such schooling as they get emphasizes how they must fit themselves to the basic system.”

“Who's that?” Matsumoto gestured to a man in form-fitting scarlet, his face masked, a knife in his belt, who slipped quietly between people indisposed to hinder him.

“Assassins' guild, though mostly they hire out to do burglaries and beatings. The commons aren't robots—we encourage free enterprise. They're not allowed firearms, so it's safe enough and keeps the others amused.”

After dinner, which was at a spot patronized by the wealthier merchants, Chanthavar smiled. “Near walked my legs off today,” he said. “Now how about some fun? A city is known by its vices.”

“Well, okay,” said Langley. He was a little drunk; the sharp pungent beer of the lower levels buzzed in his head. He didn't want women, not with memory still a bright pain in him. But there ought to be games and … His purse was full of bills and coins. “Where to?”

“Dreamhouse, I think,” said Chanthavar, leading them out. “It's a favorite resort for all levels.”

The entrance was a cloudy blueness opening into many small rooms. They took one, slipping life-masks over their faces: living synthetic flesh which stung briefly as it connected to nerve endings in the skin and then was part of you. “Everybody's equal here, everybody anonymous,” said Chanthavar. “Refreshing.”

“What is your wish, sirs?” The voice came from nowhere, cool and somehow not human.

“General tour,” said Chanthavar. “The usual. Here, put a hundred solars in this slot, each of you. The place is expensive, but fun.”

They relaxed on what seemed a dry, fluffy cloud, and were carried aloft. The guards formed an impassive huddle some distance behind. Doors opened for them. They hung under a perfumed sky of surrealistic stars and moons, looking down on what appeared to be a deserted landscape not of Earth.

“Part illusion, part real,” said Chanthavar. “You can have any experience you can imagine here, for the right price. Look …”

The cloud drifted through a rain which was blue and red and golden fire, tingling as it licked over their bodies. Great triumphant chords of music welled around them. Through the whirling flames, Langley glimpsed girls of an impossible loveliness, dancing on the air.

Then they were underwater, or so it seemed, with tropical fish swimming through a green translucence, corals and waving fronds underneath. Then they were in a red-lit cavern like Hell, where the music was a hot pulse in the blood. They shot at darting containers which landed to offer a drink when hit. Then they were in a huge and jolly company of people, singing and laughing and dancing and guzzling. A young female giggled and tugged at Langley's arm. Briefly, he wavered. Then he said harshly: “Scram!”

Whirled over a roaring waterfall, sporting through air which was somehow thick enough to swim in, gliding past grottos and glens full of strange lights, and into a gray swirling mist where you could not see a yard ahead … Here, in a dripping damp quiet which seemed to mask enormousness, they paused.

Chanthavar's shadowy form gestured, and there was a queer taut note in his muffled voice: “Would you like to play Creator? Let me show you …” A ball of raging flame was in his hands, and from it he molded stars and strewed them through sightless immensity. “Suns, planets, moons, people, civilizations and histories—you can make them here as you please.” Two stars crashed into each other. “You can will yourself to see a world grow—any detail no matter how tiny. A million years in a minute or a minute stretched through a million years; you can smite it with thunder, and watch them cower and worship you.” The sun in Chanthavar's hands glowed dully through the fog. Tiny sparks which were planets flitted around it. “Let me clear the mist; let there be light.”

Something moved in the wet smoky air. Langley saw a shadow striding between new-born constellations, a thousand light-years tall. A hand gripped his arm, and dimly he saw the pseudo-face beyond.

He writhed free, yelling, as the other hand sought his neck. A wire loop snaked out, tangling his ankles. There were two men now, closing in on him. Wildly, he groped backward. His fist connected with a cheek which bled artificial blood.

“Chanthavar!”

A blaster crashed, startlingly loud and brilliant. Langley hurled a giant red sun into one of the faces wavering near him. Twisting free of an arm about his waist, he kneed the vague form and heard a grunt of pain.

“Light!” bellowed Chanthavar. “Get rid of this mist!”

The fog broke, slowly and raggedly. There was a deep clear blackness, the dark of outer vacuum, with stars swimming in it like fireflies. Then full illumination came on.

A man sprawled dead near Chanthavar, his stomach torn open by an energy bolt. The guards milled uneasily. Otherwise they were alone. The room was bare, coldly lit.

For a long moment, he and the agent stared at each other. Blaustein and Matsumoto were gone.

“Is … this … part of the fun?” asked Langley through his teeth.

“No.” A hunter's light flickered in Chanthavar's eyes. He laughed. “Beautiful job! I'd like to have those fellows on my staff. Your friends have been stunned and kidnapped under my own eyes. Come on!”

VII

There was a time of roaring confusion as Chanthavar snapped orders into a visiphone, organizing a chase. Then he swung around to Langley. “I'll have this warren searched, of course,” he said. “But I don't imagine the kidnappers are still in it. The robots aren't set to notice who goes out in what condition, so that's no help. Nor do I expect to find the employee of this place who helped fix matters up for the snatch. But I've got the organization alerted. There'll be a major investigation hereabouts inside half an hour. And Brannoch's quarters are being watched already.”

“Brannoch?” repeated Langley stupidly. His brain felt remote, like a stranger's. He couldn't throw off the airborne drugs as fast as the agent.

“To be sure! Who else? Never thought he had this efficient a gang on Earth. They won't take your friends directly to him, of course. There'll be a hideout somewhere in the lower levels. Not too much chance of finding it among fifteen million commoners, but well try. We'll try!”

A policeman hurried up with a small, metal-cased object which Chanthavar took. “Peel off that mask. This is an electronic scent-tracer. We'll try to follow the trail of the pseudo-faces. Distinctive odor, so don't you confuse it. I don't think the kidnappers took the masks off in Dreamhouse; then someone might notice who they were carrying. Stick with us. We may need you. Let's go!”

A score of men, black-clad, armed and silent, surrounded them. Chanthavar cast about the main exit. There was something of the questing hound over him. The esthete, the hedonist, the casual philosopher were blotted up in the hunter of men. A light glowed on the machine. “A trail, all right,” he muttered. “If only it doesn't get cold too fast. Damn it, why must they ventilate the lowers so well?” He set off at a rapid jog trot, his men keeping an easy pace. The milling crowds shrank away.

Langley was too bewildered to think. This was happening faster than he could follow, and the drugs of Dreamhouse were still in his blood, making the world unreal. Bob, Jim … now the great darkness had snatched them too. Would he ever see them again?

Down a drop-shaft, falling like autumn leaves, Chanthavar testing each exit as he passed it. The unceasing roar of machines grew louder, more frantic. Langley shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to master himself. It was like a dream. He was carried willlessly along between phantoms in black.

He had to get away. He had to get off by himself, think in peace. It was an obsession now, driving everything else out of his head. He was in a nightmare and he wanted to wake up. Sweat was clammy on his skin.

The light flashed, feebly. “This way!” Chanthavar swung out of a portal. “Trail's weakening, but maybe—”

The guards pressed after him. Langley hung back, dropped further, and stepped out at the next level down.

It was an evil section, dim-lit and dingy. The streets were almost deserted. Closed doors lined the walls, litter blew about under his feet, the stamping and grinding of machines filled his universe. He walked fast, turning several corners and trying to hide.

Slowly his brain cleared. An old man in dirty garments sat cross-legged beside a door and watched him out of filmy eyes. A sleazy woman slunk close to him, flashing bad teeth in a mechanical smile, and fell behind. A tall young man, ragged and unshaven, leaned against the wall and followed his movements with listless eyes. This was the slum, the oldest section, poor and neglected—the last refuge of failure. This was where those whom the fierce life of the upper tiers had broken fled, to drag out lives of no importance to the Technon.

Langley stopped, breathing hard. A furtive hand groped from a narrow passage, feeling after the purse at his belt. He slapped, and the child's bare feet pattered away into darkness.

Damn fool thing to do,
he thought.
I could be murdered for my cash. Let's find us a cop and get out of here, son.

He walked on down the street. A legless beggar whined at him, but he didn't dare show his money. New legs could have been grown, but that was a costly thing. Well behind, a tattered pair followed him. Where the hell was a policeman? Didn't anyone care what happened down here?

A huge shape came around a corner. It had four legs, a torso with arms, a nonhuman head. Langley hailed it. “Which is the way out? Where's the nearest shaft going up? I'm lost.”

The alien looked blankly at him and went on.
No spikka da Inglees.
Etie Town, the section reserved for visitors of other races, was somewhere around here. That might be safe, though most of the compartments would be sealed off, their interiors poisonous to him. Langley went the way the stranger had come. His followers shortened the distance between.

Music thumped and wailed from an open door. There was a bar, a crowd, but not the sort where he could look for help. As the final drug mists cleared, Langley realized that he might be in a very tight fix.

Two men stepped out of a passage. They were husky, well dressed for commoners. One of them bowed. “Can I do you a service, sir?”

Langley halted, feeling the coldness of his own sweat. “Yes,” he said thickly. “Yes, thanks. How do I get out of this section?”

“A stranger, sir?” They fell in, one on either side. “We'll, conduct you. Right this way.”

Too obliging! “What are you doing down here?” snapped Langley.

“Just looking around, sir.”

The speech was too cultivated, too polite.
These aren't commoners any more than I am!
“Never mind. I—I don't want to bother you. Just point me right.”

“Oh, no, sir. That would be dangerous. This is not a good area to be alone in.” A large hand fell on his arm.

“No!” Langley stopped dead.

“We must insist, I'm afraid.” An expert shove, and he was being half dragged. “You'll be all right, sir, just relax, no harm.”

The tall shape of a slave policeman hove into view. Langley's breath rattled in his throat. “Let me go,” he said. “Let me go, or—”

Fingers closed on his neck, quite unobtrusively, but he gasped with pain. When he had recovered himself, the policeman was out of sight again.

Numbly, he followed. The portal of a grav-shaft loomed before him.
They tracked me,
he thought bitterly.
Of course they did. I don't know how stupid a man can get, but I've been trying hard tonight.

Three men appeared, almost out of nowhere. They wore the gray robes of the Society. “Ah,” said one. “You found him. Thank you.”

“What's this?” Langley's companions recoiled. “Who're you? What d'you want?”

“We wish to see the good captain home,” answered one of the newcomers. His neatly bearded face smiled, and a gun jumped into his hand.

“That's illegal—that weapon—”

“Possibly. But you'll be very dead if you don't—that's better. Just come with us, Captain, if you please.”

Langley entered the shaft between his new captors. There didn't seem to be much choice.

The strangers did not speak, but hurried him along. They seemed to know all the empty byways. Their progress upwards was roundabout but fast, and hardly another face was seen en route. Langley tried to relax, feeling himself swept along a dark and resistless tide.

Upper town again, shining pinnacles and loops of diamond light against the stars. The air was warm and sweet in his lungs, but he wondered how much longer he would breathe it. Not far from the shaft exit, a massive octagonal tower reared out of the general complex, its architecture foreign to the slim soaring exuberance which was Technate work. A nimbus of radiance hung over its peak, with letters of flame running through it to spell out C
OMMERCIAL
S
OCIETY
. Stepping onto a bridgeway, the four were borne up toward a flange near its middle.

As they got off onto the ledge, a small black aircraft landed noiselessly beside them. A voice came from it, amplified till it boomed through the humming quiet: “Do not move further. This is the police.”

Police!
Langley's knees felt suddenly watery. He might have known—Chanthavar would not leave this place unwatched. He had sent, an alarm when the spaceman was found missing; the organization was efficient, and now he was saved!