Rhapsody in Black (7 page)

One face—only one—turned my way. It was a small boy, and he took just one quick glance at me before he looked away again. I saw an expression of utmost horror in his pale pink eyes.

The priests weren't scared of me, I knew that. If anything, they felt revulsion. My mind went back to the faces of Rion Mavra, of Coria and Khemis, and the beautiful Angelina. And the gunmen. I could see now what had been behind their stony expressions and their silence. Perhaps—in Mavra's case, at least—a long way behind, deeply buried beneath diplomacy and necessity, but there nevertheless. How else could a chosen people regard those who had elected to go to hell?

‘You must go,' said the priest whose service I had interrupted. ‘You cannot stay here. Go, at once.'

‘Where?' I asked him. ‘Where do I go?'

‘Anywhere,' said the priest. ‘There is nothing for you here. The people will not see you. There is nothing for you here. You must go.'

‘I want something to eat,' I said. ‘Some clean clothes.'

‘No one will give you anything,' he said.

‘Suppose I take it?' I said, feeling an edge of real hatred creeping into my voice.

‘We will not see you,' said the priest, and promptly looked straight ahead again. He took up his recitation again. I glanced back at the priest who had discovered me. He was studiously looking elsewhere, and while I stared at him he assumed the air of one going about his proper business and moved away, quietly and respectfully.

Deliberately, I shone the beam into the eyes of the speaking priest. He did not blink. I moved closer, making the beam more intense and more direct. It must have hurt him, but he did not show by the slightest sign that anything was happening. Suddenly, I had become the invisible man.

I went back into the corridor, and began opening the other doors, searching for food and water and clothing. I found water, and I found a thick overall which enabled me to replace my filthy trousers.

I washed my hands slowly and carefully, realising for the first time that they were badly blistered. I am inordinately sensitive about my hands—a pilot has to have good hands to handle a ship well—and the blisters brought home the fact that I had plunged neck-deep into bad trouble. I paused to wonder what was wrong with me, sure that I would never have acted this way in the old days. But that soon passed, and I began to wonder once again what I was going to do next. The weird attitude of the people had caught me completely by surprise. What was the point of being free if nobody would see me? But I knew full well that if I tried to go back to the capital, steal a spacesuit and get back to the
Swan
, the armed miners would have no difficulty in seeing me and shoving me right back into my cosy cell. And this time they'd be more careful about letting me out.

When I was good and ready, I went back outside.

Okay, said the wind, so you're an ace burglar. You can steal what you like. So what?

‘Somewhere,' I said, ‘there has to be someone who can tell me where to find whatever it is that's caused all the trouble.'

Sure, he agreed. But how are you going to get him to look at you, let alone tell you what he knows?

I didn't know.

Once upon a time, long before the
Javelin
ploughed a ditch in the black rock of Lapthorn's Grave, Lapthorn and I had occasion to set the
Fire-Eater
down on a world which had pretensions to being a planet of beauty and elegance. The people there thought very highly of themselves and had a generally low opinion of everybody else. As a nut cult, I suppose, they were no less unusual than the worm-like citizens of Rhapsody, but they certainly seemed to have a lot more to be proud of (and conceited about). However, I don't like cults of any kind, and I probably wouldn't have liked them any better than I liked the Exclusive Rewardists even if they hadn't been so consistently nasty to me. They thought that Lapthorn and I were pretty poor specimens, both physically and idealistically, and they lost no opportunity to offer us evidence of our failings.

In the main square of the port where we made landfall stood a monument which carried a proud boast of their ambitions and their philosophy. The statue was corny enough—a stylised athlete in the classical mould. The ancient Greeks had produced hundreds just as good, but because the cultists had plonked theirs a thousand light-years from ancient Greece they had a much higher opinion of themselves. The inscription on the pedestal was the motto of the cult.

It read: MEN LIKE GODS

Lapthorn had studied the statue and the inscription with all due seriousness when we first landed, and I could tell that he was impressed. But he was of asthenic rather than athletic build, and never put on weight no matter how much he ate. It would take a lot more than healthy exercise and clean living to turn him into a reasonable imitation of a superman. This, mercifully, prevented him from becoming involved with the culture and philosophy of the world, and the way that the inhabitants went to great lengths to insult us soon drove out any least vestige of admiration which he might have harboured for them.

Hence, when temptation struck me, as it occasionally did, he was unable to muster sufficient disapproval to counsel caution. One night—the last of our intended stay—I, with Lapthorn as accessory before and after the fact, did wilfully and maliciously deface the sacred statue.

I inserted the word DON'T into the inscription.

I thought it was funny.

So did Lapthorn.

They threw us in jail for ninety days (local). Fortunately, the world turned on its axis faster than most.

Until I landed on Rhapsody, that was the only time I was ever in jail. It may seem peculiar that a career so long and checkered as my own should not have resulted in other periods of incarceration, but it was a fact. My innate cautiousness and honesty had conspired to keep me safe from the versatile arm of the Law of New Rome, and simple diplomacy had sufficed to keep me out of trouble on a purely local scale.

That single episode had instilled into me a healthy regard for the dangers of trespassing on other people's idiosyncrasies. It also added fuel to my strong dislike for those of definite and exclusive faith.

I actually remembered and rehearsed that incident as I approached Rhapsody, but I make no claim to a prophetic gift. I was as surprised as anyone else when we were jumped as soon as the drive-unit was cooled.

I had taken off the hood, and was relaxing in the cradle with my eyes shut. It hadn't been a difficult approach and landing at the speed I'd elected to adopt—as evidenced by the fact that I'd been able to reflect on old times—but there are proprieties to be observed. A space pilot should always look as if he's been through hell and a half to get where he is.

Charlot and Nick had gone down to attend to the passengers, and Eve was disconnecting my electrodes with one hand and preparing my shot with the other. We weren't in any hurry, and while we exchanged a few innocuous and irrelevant remarks some fifteen or twenty minutes crept by. I would have been moderately content, in fact, to stay on board for the duration. We need our t
erra firma
, of course—as I've said—but we prefer it accompanied by air and sky and sunlight.

I heard the inner lock swing shut with an unusually loud thump. I presumed, of course, that somebody was getting out. But a few seconds later, an anonymous figure in a surface-suit scrambled into the cabin with an indecent amount of haste.

He was waving a gun.

At first I thought it was Johnny, because he was the only person I knew who habitually waved guns for no good reason. Then I realised that it wasn't one of our suits, and I knew we'd been jumped.

I couldn't see his face because of the black glass visor in his helmet, but I could imagine him watching me like a hawk. All-seeing and predatory.

He pointed the gun at me and said, ‘Get out of the chair.'

Strangely enough, that order made me feel better. No spaceman would refer to the cradle as a ‘chair'. Ergo, I conclusion jumped, he hadn't come to steal my ship. It was me he wanted.

I disentangled myself from the straps, and stood clear of the cradle.

‘Right,' he said. ‘Now, one at a time, get down the ladder. Put your suits on slowly.'

The others were already being shipped through the lock, two at a time. There was another heavy with a gun at the bottom of the ladder. They had already seized such of our armoury as was accessible without grubbing in the hold. Eve and I donned our suits with dramatic care. Remembering what conditions on the world were liable to be like, I took a flashlight and secured it inside the suit. The gunman didn't object.

I was the last to leave. One gunman went out with Eve, the other with me. There was a third waiting outside, and that was all. They had apparently been given no trouble at all. I was very grateful that Johnny hadn't been inspired by our numerical superiority to put up a fight. The
Hooded Swan
wasn't a big ship, as starships go, and with seven passengers, five crew and three gunmen aboard she was distinctly overcrowded. The consequences of a beam battle in a sardine can are dreadful to contemplate.

We were escorted across the surface of Rhapsody away from the
Swan
. They didn't leave anyone on board, and they permitted Nick to secure the lock against potential invaders.

I'd put us down in the twilight zone, at the required latitude, within a couple of hundred yards of the surface-lock which gave access to the principal warren. The pinpoint accuracy was a great compliment to my piloting, but no one expressed gratitude that we didn't have far to walk. The surface was all dust-drifts and rock-jags, and wasn't suitable for strolling in the evening, but we had no difficulty in obeying the instructions which our captors sent over the open call circuit. They marched us in Indian file to the vast lock, which gave us access to the capital. I looked around briefly, and caught sight of one other ship—presumably the Star Cross ramrod—a couple of miles away towards daylight.

We were permitted to desuit in the reception area under the lock. I was allowed to retain the flashlight, but not to remove any of the other potentially useful things that were secreted in the suit, under the guise of standard equipment. (Like, for instance, food concentrates and the emergency bleep.)

We were now privileged to clap eyes on our captors for the first time, while they crammed us into a hand-operated hoist.

The heavy mob looks the same the universe over. They have never really escaped the influence of the clichés laid down by the earliest exponents of the art of strong-arming. They always have big shoulders and slack features, and a casual swing to their movements deliberately styled to suggest that they can—and maybe do—bend iron bars between their fingers. Our welcoming committee was trying hard—if subconsciously—to give this overall impression, but they weren't very good at it. Gangsters may be born or made, but these men had had gangsterism thrust upon them. They looked as if they'd rather be pecking away at a rock face, and that was probably their normal occupation.

‘What the hell goes on?' asked Nick, while the hoist descended noisily. It was Charlot's picnic, of course, but Charlot hadn't bothered to protest or demand to be taken to their leader, so perhaps Nick thought it was up to him to expel some hot air. Mavra and company seemed to take the whole affair very fatalistically.

‘Shut up,' said one of the gunmen bravely.

‘There's no need to add insult to injury,' I remarked.

‘Shut up,' he said again. He obviously didn't feel up to explaining the situation. A man of action.

‘As a matter of simple curiosity,' said Charlot oilily, ‘are you institutionalised or freelance?'

No answer.

I rephrased the question for them. ‘He means, are you the regular cops or did you just take up the habit?'

Still no answer. It's possible that they still didn't understand the allusion, but I concluded that it was more likely they weren't going, to say anything more. I admire a man who can take his own advice.

We didn't get to see much of the local scenery. They hustled us out of the hoist into a dark corridor, and promptly split us into three groups going three different ways. The men of Mavra's party were one group, the women of Mavra's party the second, and the crew of the
Hooded Swan
the third. They marched us up and down long corridors that were all grimly similar. This was the first time we encountered the full force of Rhapsody's sporadic lighting system. Some corridors had only one lamp, often not centrally placed. Others had two, and were well-endowed by the local standards. Not one of the bulbs was brighter than a wax candle.

Nick, Eve and Charlot were hustled through a door into a minuscule cell. Johnny and I were taken down the passage a little way and shoved into a similar one. It was just as small and just as crowded.

There was a man lying full-length on the bunk. He looked up at us with the ghost of a smile on his face. He was an offworlder, like us. I presumed that if there were other cells, they must all be full of outworlders. Either that or the cavemen were not in the least concerned about our comfort. The cell was about eight feet by six. The bunk was six by four and a toilet took up at least a sixth of the remaining floor space.

‘Standing room only?' I remarked, gazing steadily at the man sprawled on the bunk.

He got the hint, but he didn't move.

‘Nice to see you,' he said, probably with a certain amount of sincerity. It couldn't have been much fun on his own. ‘Where did you blow in from?'

‘Attalus,' said Johnny, giving nothing away.

‘You company men?' he asked.

‘No,' I said.

There was a pause.

‘Maybe I'd better introduce myself,' he said. ‘I'm Matthew Sampson. I....'

‘You drive a ramrod for the Star Cross Company,' I told him, to show that I knew what was what, and in the fond hope that he might be persuaded to tell us something we didn't already know. ‘You the captain?'

‘That's right,' he said.

‘I thought so. Nobody but a starship captain would take up all the bunk room while we stand.'

He must have taken a dislike to my attitude, because he didn't move his big feet.

‘Who the hell are you?' he asked, instead. His voice was still level and friendly, as if he were trying hard not to take offence.

‘My name's Johnny Socoro,' supplied Johnny.

‘I'm Grainger,' I added.

‘The guy who reached the
Lost Star
,' he said, with sudden apparent enthusiasm. ‘Say, you did us a big favour there. Caradoc hasn't got its face back on straight yet. It lost four ramrods in the Drift, did you hear?'

‘I was there,' I told him. I didn't bother to tell him that I'd actually seen the ramrods blow. I didn't feel like explaining how it had happened.

‘So you're from New Alexandria,' he said pensively. ‘You got that crazy ship here—the
Hooded Sun
?'

‘
Swan
,' I said coldly.

‘It's here, then,' he repeated.

‘It's here.'

‘And you're after the payload?'

‘Payload?' I asked with sarcastic innocence.

‘Come on, man,' he protested. ‘We're all in the same jail. There's none of us going to be treasure hunting while the war's on. We might as well sit down and talk about this thing like civilised people.'

‘How civilised?' I wanted to know.

‘Look, man,' he said. ‘There's no point in either of us being dog-in-the-manger when neither of us has the loot. I mean, why not be friends? When it comes to the crunch and the locals want to make a deal, you hold the cards, remember? You got New Alexandria behind you. I only got a boss who'll hang pictures with my guts if I don't do things his way. And your ship has ten times the pace of mine, if it comes to a race. I'm no fool, friend, and neither are you. We can make a deal here and have the whole thing settled by the time they let us out.'

‘You're sure they're going to let us out?'

‘Ah, the guys with the guns are only trying to tidy things up and keep all the wheeling and dealing on top of the table. It isn't a revolution, you know.'

‘It might be by now,' I said, remembering that we'd just thrown Rion Mavra back into the political maelstrom.

‘No,' he assured me. ‘That's not the way they do things around here. It'll all be settled soon, after a lot of talky-talky. The only change from our point of view is that we'll be dealing with the whole kit and caboodle instead of just Jad Gimli or any other Sons of the Whitewashed Skeleton operating under their own banner. Say, nobody else is here, are they? It is just you and me?'

‘As far as I know,' I told him, ‘there are no other parties involved. Nor are there likely to be.'

‘That's good,' he said, relieved. ‘Now, how about some honest talk? Spirit of good, healthy competition. Open season on the cavies, huh?' He sat up on the bunk. ‘Take a seat,' he invited cordially. I sat down, after carefully brushing the place where I intended to sit with the edge of my hand. Sampson gave me a pain. He was about as genuine as a Nineteenth Century antique spaceship.