Sanctuary in The Sky (10 page)

XVII

After
he and Raige had separated—Raige hurrying back to the Glaithe administrative section to consult with her colleagues and settle what was to be done about the Cathrodynes’ arrogant seizing of Lang—Vykor returned slowly to his own Majko section.

And discovered chaos.

His first intimation came as he headed down the long corridor that led into the section from the entrance to Chute Number Silver—currently that chute was providing the shortest cut to the Majko section from the tourist circuit.

There was blood on the floor of the passage.

It had been partly hidden with a handful of dust, so that his feet were slipping in it before he realized that it was wet.

He dropped to one knee and touched it; the tip of his finger was red when he lifted it up.

Uncertainly, he looked about him. There was neither sound nor movement in the corridor. He stood up and went forward again.

The slightest hiss of plastic on metal alerted him as he passed one of the doors set in the bulkhead on either side; he had time to utter a choking gasp, but not to look round, as he felt a hood thrust over his head and his arms pinioned to his sides. A horrible sinking sensation overcame him as he recognized the technique the Cathrodynes had used to capture Lang. Had they decided to take him, Vykor, as well, to make him repent his hasty words at leisure?

“A
ll
right, he’s one of ours—turn him loose.”

The familiar voice of Larwik, uttering these words, brought a gush of relief, and he felt the hood being raised from his face. Larwik was standing before him, his face serious, his attitude taut and expectant.

“While you’ve been mucking around the Caves amusing yourself, we’ve been having trouble down here,” he said acidly.

“What?” said Vykor confusedly, and then lifted his finger so that the redness on its tip pointed toward Larwik.

“That’s right. Violent trouble,” said the other shortly.

Vykor glanced around to see who else was present; a girl with a determined look stood at his right, holding the hood she had taken off his head, and a man whom Vykor knew by sight but not by name was on his left.

“What happened?”

The girl spoke up. “Some Cathrodynes walked into our section and started putting their noses where they weren’t welcome. We thought they were looking for Larwik, or someone in touch with the dreamweed trade—”

“They were looking for Lang,” interrupted Vykor. “What’s more, they found him, just a few minutes back, near the Caves.”

“We heard that later. It’s immaterial,” snapped Larwik. “What mattered was that they came walking into our section as though they owned Waystation and us too, and refused to get the hell out when they were told to. So we threw them

out, and one of them got pretty badly hurt in the process. That’s his blood you have on your hand.”

“We’ve been waiting for them to come back,” said the girl. “That’s why we slapped the hood over your head—in case you were either a Cathrodyne or one of the Glaithe staff coming to interfere.”

“Well, it wasn’t!” said the man Vykor knew only by sight. “And it hasn’t been for a hell of a long time, either!
I
say we oughtn’t to skulk around here waiting for them meekly; we ought to set the record straight and walk into the Cathro- dyne section. Then we’ll see how
they
like having their privacy messed about with.”

Larwik checked the time, glancing at a wall chronometer. “It’s a hell of a time since they left,” he agreed. He held a short length of metal bar in his right hand; he was slapping it meditatively into the palm of his left as he stood reflecting the matter.

“All right,” he said at length, and dropped his arms to his sides. “I’d like to waggle this little stick of mine under the nose of that overweening fool, Temmis. But we can’t just go in a group of half a dozen or so. Vykor! Go through A Quarter of the section and rout out everyone who can walk. I’ll get them out of B Quarter—you others take C and D, and drag in anyone you come across in the public sections. And don’t be slow about it, either.”

Sudden happiness filled Vykor as he moved through the station in company with the assembled band of Majkos. To be walking together with others of his own people, bound on a single united mission, was tremendously inspiriting. They walked with a swagger all of a sudden, moving as though they felt—and did not merely claim—that they were the equal of anyone else, their Cathrodyne masters included. Daringly, someone started to chant a song which had not been sung in public on Majkosi since before the great Cathrodyne armadas dropped from the sky and disgorged the armies which had made aliens rulers of their home planet.

They passed through the tourist circuit as the most direct path between their own section and that of the Cathrodynes. As they strode through the City, Majkos working as waiters
in the cafes, gigolos on the dancing floors, entertainers in the cabarets, called out, “Where are you going?”

“Come with us!” was the answer they received. They hesitated—but they came, so that by the time the party reached the entrance of the Cathrodyne section it was more than two hundred strong.

Normally, there would have been guards at the head of the chute leading from the tourist circuit into Cathrodyne territory. There was no one, and when Larwik and Vykor, at the head of the improvised army, came out into the corridors they found a peculiar, unprecedented silence.

Cautiously, to begin with, then with increasing confidence they progressed into the section. At length they were boldly flinging back doors and looking into cabins that proved to be empty, or used for storage. There was no sign of the residents.

“They must have heard we were coming!" yelled someone, and gave a hoarse laugh of relief. Hearing it, Vykor realized just how deep was the fear that had been masked by the sense of comradeship the advance of the party had inspired.

“Don’t relax your vigilance!” Larwik called back. “It may still be a trap!”

He threw open another door, and jumped back in case someone was waiting beyond. Nothing happened. He stepped circumspectly inside, and gave a startled exclamation.

Vykor followed him in. Sitting half sprawled across a desk, there was a Cathrodyne officer sunk in a complete stupor, which had overtaken him so swif
tly
that a stylus he had been using to write a report had traced a curved line from the tail of the last word he had written to the point where his hand now lay limp.

There was a cry from across the passage. Someone had found more Cathrodynes: two of them, this time, both also unconscious. And as they progressed, they found more, and more, and more.

“It’s beginning to look as though they’ve all been struck down!” said Larwik, when they had discovered fifty or more of the lax bodies. "Here, you!” He slapped the face of the latest one he had found, and rolled back the man’s eyelids, but there was absolutely no response.

“They must have been gassed, or something,” ventured Vykor, and Larwik nodded.

“Something of the sort. I wonder how long it will last, and who was responsible.”

“Maybe if we go straight to the heart of things—into Temmis’ office, for example—we’ll find a clue.” Vykor moistened his lips.

“Good idea.” Larwik returned to the passage and shouted along it. "Is there anyone here who’s worked in this section? We want to find Temmis’ office!”

“I can tell you where it used to be,” said a smouldering
-
eyed woman whose face was marred by a long curved scar. "I was there—once.” She shouldered her way past them and walked rapidly forward—too rapidly for Larwik, whose expression grew worried as she strode ahead of him, but, as it proved, safely enough.

For even in the very center of the section, there were only unconscious men and women. Majko servants and Lubarrian clerks were in a slumber as deep as
their masters’.

“That’s Temmis’ room,” said the, scarred woman at last. She slid the door open and went in. Yes, there he was—at his desk, one hand on a communicator, the other dangling towards the floor on the end of a slack arm.

The scarred woman tipped back his head and spat in his face deliberately.

“The only thing wrong,” she said after a pause, “is that he’s not aware of what I’ve done. But that’ll come.” And she turned and went out of the room again.

When she had gone, Larwik, Vykor, and two or three others who had followed them studied the scene.

“Do you know these others in here?” Larwik asked Vykor.

“As it happens, I do. That one”—Vykor pointed—“is an officer who came in on my ship, called Capodistro Ferenc. He”—another gesture—“is an archeologist called Ligmer, who was also with us. Him”—again—“I saw at the Caves, not long back. He was one of the Cathrodynes who arrested Lang."

“And who do you suppose is missing?” said Larwik. He walked round the room, frowning. Temmis himself, Ligmer, Ferenc and the unknown formed four points of a rough
square. In the center of the square, facing Temmis’ desk, was a vacant chair.

“Lang,” said Vykor.

“It looks that way, doesn’t it? Then do you suppose he was responsible for putting all the Cathrodynes to sleep? What is he—a magician?”

“This is probably a trick the Glaithes have kept secret,” Vykor suggested. “With Pags and Cathrodynes in the same station, they’d need some kind of method for quelling riots, or freezing a dangerous situation like this one, without having to fight their way in.”

“Something the builders of Waystation incorporated in the first place, and which only the Glaithes have figured out how to work,” nodded Larwik. “Yes, that seems reasonable. Just one trouble: why aren’t there any Glaithes here now? You’d expect them to take advantage of this.”

“Maybe the effects are due to wear off any moment—and the Cathrodynes are going to be crazy mad at losing Lang.” “Could be. Well, we’d better make the best of whatever time remains to us; this is a priceless oppor
tunity to upset the Cathrodynes!
We can drag their records out and them, muck around with their food, their— Of course! Vykor, suppose we slip dreamweed into all their stored food? They’ll have to haul out the entire personnel! Dreamweed addicts can’t be as uppity and—”

A shout of warning and a clattering of feet in the corridors interrupted him, and the sound of heavy bodies falling, thudding on the floor. They rushed to the door to see what was happening.

At the head of a party of Glaithe men-at-arms whose paralysis pistols were smoking from constant and rapid use, Raige was striding down the corridor like a fury. She saw Larvvik and Vykor and charged up to them.

“I don’t know where you got the paralysis shots to put the whole Cathrodyne staff under,” she barked. "But whatever you were planning is finished, understand? I’ve had to put most of your Majkos to sleep, too, and my men have better things to do than to haul them down corridors like sacks of rubbish—”

“But . . .
we
didn't put them to sleep!” interrupted Vykor,
hardly believing his ears. “Didn’t you? Wasn’t it a trick you pulled to get Lang back from the Cathrodynes?”

"Isn’t he still here?” Raige’s astonishment matched Vykor’s, and for a long moment they merely stared at each other.

Larwik drew a deep breath. “Look in Temmis’ office,” he invited, and stood aside so Raige could see. "That chair was empty when we got here.”

Raige thrust past him and stared round. “Yes, it was Lang who was here," she said. “There are animal pad-prints on the floor by this chair, about the size of the tracks of that pet he keeps.” She whirled and came back to them.

“Vykor, you wouldn’t lie to me. Is this true? Did you find everything like this: Lang gone and the Cathrodynes in coma? Or have you taken Lang?”

“It’s true,” said Vykor stonily. “We thought
you’d
taken him.”

“No
!
We were getting ready to—at gunpoint if necessary —but when we came into the section we found you’d got here a few moments ahead of us".’’ She called to a man-at-arms down the passage.

“Get to Captain Indie! General emergency positions for all personnel. We’ve got to find that man Lang and hold him, or there’s no telling what disasters may not happen!”

XVIII

The
men-at-arms nodded and doubled away. Raige turned back to face Larwik and Vykor.

“Now get these Majkos out of Cathrodyne territory—and be quick about it
!
”

Larwik gave her a defiant stare. “And pass up a unique opportunity to get a bit of our own back on them? Not on your life, Raige!”

As though by magic, a paralysis gun appeared in Raige’s
hand. “We’ll do it the slow way, if you like. I’ve already got a working party hauling your people back to their own quarters. We’re in charge of Waystation, and we mean to stay in charge. This is neutral territory. Whatever our personal opinions of the rights and wrongs in questions involving the subject races, we keep them out of the station. Move!”

Larwik’s eyes switched betrayingly, as he looked for something he could throw at the gun in Raige’s hand; he had put his metal bar down somewhere when he found that there was not going to be any resistance from the Cathrodynes. Accustomed to reading her own people’s expressions, which were impassive as stone compared to those of most other people along the Arm, Raige saw what he had in mind and tightened her finger on the trigger before he could move. A capsule of paralysant sank into Larwik’s diaphragm, and he tottered and tumbled within a second.

Raige gave Vykor a searching glance, and then put her gun away again. “I’m sorry to have to do that,” she said in a low. tone. “But—well, you know how we stand when it comes to arguments between Majkos and Cathrodynes; we’re on the side of the oppressed. Only Waystation is not the place to fight out disagreements.”

Vykor nodded, swallowing hard. “I suppose you couldn’t do anything else,” he agreed reluctantly. “But it would have been wonderful to use this chance . .

“It wouldn’t have been much of a chance,” said Raige. She was looking fixedly past him, into Temmis’ office. “Because whatever it was that put the Cathrodynes out, it’s wearing off already. Look!”

Vykor followed her gaze. Ferenc was stirring; he raised his head, without opening his eyes, and put his hand to his face as though he were giddy.

“Fortunately we’re nearly finished clearing the section of Majkos,” said Raige in a low tone. “Get Larwik out of sight, will you? Get one of my working parties to put him back where he belongs.”

Vykor obeyed quickly, gathering Larwik up by his shoulders and knees and staggering clumsily down the corridor with him held like a ridiculously overgrown baby. Meantime, Raige stepped into the office and glanced round. Apparently
Ferenc was more resistant than the others; he was the only one to be moving yet.

Now his eyes flickered open, and he found himself looking at the vacant chair. He came completely alive in an instant. “Where in the galaxy did he go to?” he snapped, and jumped up. Then he also saw Temmis, Ligmer and the other man—and Raige.

“Is this a trick of yours, Raige?” he demanded forcefully. “What’s happened to Lang?”

“Calm down, Ferenc, and tell me what happened. I’ll go into the matter of your kidnapping Lang later—right now, he’s disappeared completely and I want to know what put you all to sleep like this. It wasn’t one of our tricks—I wish we did have an emergency procedure like that to handle you.” Swift question and answer satisfied Ferenc that she was speaking the truth. He sat down again with a weary expression and stared at Temmis while he spoke.

“You turned down an application from Ligmer and his Pag friend Usri—that was where it started.” He uttered the name of the Pag archeologist with a disgusted curl of his lip. “Yet you’d allowed Lang to use the memory banks, without authority or a good reason.”

"We never gave him any such permission—I told Ligmer so.”

“I saw your message. I didn’t believe it. I only half believe it now. But if I’m to accept that he put everyone in our section to sleep while he was sitting here in this room, so that he could make his escape, then I could believe anything.

“All we wanted him for was to find out what special knowledge or what special status he had. It was shriekingly clear that whatever he was he wasn’t the simple rich tourist that he pretended to be.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Within a few moments of us bringing him in here, after he’d sat down in that chair, the door opened and that blasted animal he keeps came scurrying over to him. He bent down and picked it up.

“Then I remember there was a kind of humming sound. Temmis was going to ask who the hell let the animal into the section; Breger over there, who was one of the men who
arrested Lang, said he’d left the animal out by the Caves.”

"I saw him do the job. We were all set to walk in here and paralyse the lot of you. We aren’t going to tolerate what you did, Ferenc—and I .wish Temmis would wake up so that I could tell him what I think of him.”

Ferenc scowled. “You’re too conceited, you Glaithes,” he growled. “Pretty soon, we’ll see how well you laugh on the other side of your faces.”

“Save the threats,” Raige told him impatiently. “After the humming noise, what next?”

Puzzlement overcame Ferenc’s irritation. "I was going to go to the door and see how Lang’s animal could have opened it,” he said slowly. “And I didn’t even manage to get- out of my chair. I remember nothing at all—not even the subconscious awareness that time has passed which you get when you’re asleep—until I woke up to see you in here a moment ago.”

Someone else had come into the room in time to hear the last two or three remarks. Raige exchanged nods with him, and Ferenc swung his chair round to see who it was. It was Indie.

“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Indie said in response to a hint of a look of inquiry from Raige. “One or two are just beginning to wake up. They don’t recall a thing.” “You’ve no idea where Lang is, I suppose?”

“Unless the Pags are sheltering him . . . there’s going to be trouble on that side, Raigel They refused to let our search parties enter, and we had to shoot our way in. We inspected part of the section as a matter of principle. But we didn’t have the resources to complete the job, so I pulled the searchers out of the section again and just set a watch in case a swarm of angry Pags come blazing out the way the Majkos came out after the Cathrodynes earlier.”

Raige gave him a reproving frown, but the damage was done.

“What was that?” said Ferenc, leaping to his feet. “Did you say the Majkos went out after us? What happened?” “Nothing,” said Raige flatly. “We stopped it, and you’d better be properly grateful. They were talking about intruding on your privacy in a way you’d feel, because your searchparties who went looking for Lang in the Majko sections weren’t exactly tactful. That’s another matter I want to reprimand Temmis for.”

“This little mess will take ages to straighten out,” said Indie. “I don’t think we’ve seen the half of it yet. The Alchmids got wind of the fact that we were shooting down Pags, and what must amount to half the Alchmid staff of servants and clerks in the Pag section just walked out. They asked us for asylum—and of course' we had to give it to them—but almost every one of them is a dreamweed addict.” “More likely to be
every
one,” said Raige heavily. “Pags don’t trust their subjects well enough to let Alchmids free from addiction work here at Waystation.

“Delightful,” added Raige in a bitter tone. “If it’s any consolation to you, Ferenc, I think I hate the Pags worse than the Cathrodynes, for the way they habitually drug their servants.”

“How clean is your nose?” snapped Ferenc. “You permit the sale of dreamweed openly at Waystation—even one or two of our staff, and several of our people here on vacation, have succumbed to it, thanks to you.”

“If your people were as strong-willed as they like to claim, they’d run no risk,” snapped back Raige. Her nerves were feeling raw.

“I wish Lang had never come to Waystation,” said Indie. “Intentionally or unintentionally he has created more chaos within a few days than an army of subversive agents.”-

“He
i
s an army of subversive agents,” said Raige positively. “I no longer believe that he is doing this irresponsibly, at random. He’s working to a plan, and that plan is to cause us the maximum inconvenience, difficulty and annoyance in the minimum time. I wish we could find him!”

Ferenc burst out unexpectedly with a great guffaw of laughter.

“There are things I’d like to wring Lang’s neck for!” he exclaimed. “But I’d like to fall on his neck, too—for letting me see the pompous
little
Glaithes running around in circles like insects! It makes me wonder why we’ve put up with your arrogance for so long. If one man with a
little
determination
and originality can achieve so much, why in the galaxy haven’t we penetrated your pose before?”

“Because you have neither determination nor originality,” said Raige curtly. “Come on, Indie, let’s go and inspect the damage to date.”

They passed unmolested through the corridors to beyond the Cathrodyne section. Here and there a group of men-at- arms—three, each facing in a different direction, was the common pattern—watchfully ensured that the angry Cathrodynes did not start to add to the problems the Pags had created on their side of Waystation.

But at the exit, there was someone lurking in a dark comer, and Raige put out her hand to stop Indie in his steps. “Careful!” she murmured. Then added, louder, “Come out, you!”

It was Vykor who moved cautiously into light. He was wild-eyed, and panted violently. A blue bruise marred his forehead; there was a trace of dried blood on his chin, as though he had cut his lip.

“Be careful, Raige!” he whispered, and had to pause to gulp air. “This is hell! The whole station’s gone crazy—everybody is chasing and cursing everybody else!”

“Who hit you?” said Raige, narrow eyed.

“Larwik, the bastard! A lot of Majkos who’ve woken up from being paralysed want to come back here and take the Cathrodyne section to pieces whether or not you Glaithes try to stop us. I tried to make them see reason, and Larwik called me a traitor and had me thrown out of the section—said he’d break my jaw if I put my head back in. And the Pags—”

"We know about the Pags,” said Indie shortly.

“You heard by communicator?”

Indie exchanged glances with Raige. “Maybe we don’t know, then. Better tell us
?
’ he said.

“Why, they turned their males loose in the Alchmid section!”

“What?”
Indie and Raige exclaimed simultaneously.

“Yes! They were so angry at their Alchmid servants mutinying and asking for asylum, they uncaged their males and turned them loose. There must be fifty of them! They’re raping and wrecking all through the section, and paralysis shots

won’t stop them the way they do ordinary people—two shots at once will put them out for a few minutes, but they wake up so soon!”

“Those Pags!” said Raige between clenched teeth. She began to stride towards an elevator.

“That’s not all!” called Vykor, and she indicated that he had better come with her if he had more he wanted her to hear.

“The Lubarrians!” he said. “They lynched their chaplain, Dardaino—said they’d had enough of priests using their religious office as an excuse for laying every woman they could find!”

“They
killed
him?” Indie demanded.

“Threw him down an elevator shaft without waiting for the car to arrive.”

At that same instant the car Raige had signaled did arrive; Indie trembled visibly as he stepped into it. Vykor followed, crowding the car.

“I can almost feel Waystation shaking to pieces,” said Raige as she pressed buttons for the Glaithe administration block.

The car was beginning to move, and Indie was formulating a comment, when the inconspicuous loudspeaker set in the ceiling of the car—no place in the station was out of range of the central PA system—clicked and came to life.

“Stand by to abandon!” it said crisply. “Stand by to abandon Waystation! In one hour local time, abandon Waystation!”

Lang’s voice!