The Invaders Plan (24 page)

And yet, for all that, there was a sort of noble majesty in it; it stretched two hundred scorching miles to mountains which, in the afternoon's blistering sun, barriered the stretches of death from the civilized world of Voltar.

Sun-dancers, two-hundred-foot pillars of dust, rose with lazy grace in the blistering thermal currents of the desert floor to be twisted by the flame-tongued wind. The dust contained bright flecks of sparkling mica, flashes of feldspar and the poisonous green salts of copper. Six of them were going now, their tops almost stationary, their desert-connected bottoms moving this way and that, sometimes toward each other, sometimes away: they simulated a chorus line, dancing gracefully in a parody of a glittering review, or more like the writhing of grief-torn mourners singing a song of death.

A fitting funeral scene: Crobe had just told me he was going to turn me in. I was contemplating throwing myself off the tower to plunge down thousands of feet into the chasm which held the bones of ancients and the more recent smashed remains of luckless Apparatus personnel who had erred.

When one is deep in the throes of the self-pity that goes with contemplated suicide, one does not enjoy being interrupted.

"Oh, there you are," came Snelz's voice behind me. "I was searching everywhere." Too bright a voice, inadequately solemn for my mood and the deathly desert scene.

He came within range of the corner of my eye. He was wearing brand-new black gloves. He was wearing a brand-new black uniform. He was carrying a couple of small boxes in one hand and he had a tattered old book in the other.

"You look
down,"
he said. "Can't have that." And he took a chank-pop from a box of them. I noticed the label on the box: it was from one of the most expensive shops in Commercial City. He didn't pop it: it would have been a silly thing to do in this wind anyway. "No?" he said. "Then have a puffstick." And he opened the lid of the other box: they were the fourteen-inch puffsticks, the kind affected only by the rich. Equally silly to try to use one in this blistering wind.

I contemplated how I would go about throwing him off the rampart. It didn't even lighten my gloom. I thought, can't you just go away and let someone be quietly miserable?

He shoved the boxes into the wide grenade pockets of his tunic. He took the tattered book from under his arm. "I know," he said, opening the book, "that you are just dying to find what must have happened." I hadn't slept trying to figure it out. But I wouldn't give him that satisfaction. If I gave him a slice-blow on the back of the neck while putting out my foot, I could probably spin him off the rampart and into the depths.

"After I left last night," said Snelz cheerfully, "I went all over Camp Kill looking for a specialist in crooked dice. I finally found one. Unfortunately I had to pay him some of your cut of Heller's purchases today to find out. I knew you would be dying to know. He gave me this book." You're going to die telling me, I thought. Just as soon as I find enough energy in this heat to deliver the slice-blow and put out my foot.

"It says here," said Snelz, "that those are known as 'thudder dice.' Because if you shake them real hard and listen real close you can hear the lead pellets in them thud." He took the dice out of his pocket and shook them near my ear. "Hear the thud?" Like the thud you are going to make when you hit bottom down there, I thought.

"My friend told me that a lot of people have been killed trying to use thudder dice. So we were lucky!" Five-thousand-credits-owed lucky, I thought. I might as well hear him out.
Then
kill him.

"It seems they have a goo in them that momentarily positions the lead pellet. But it says here in this paragraph,
Warning: Do not use these dice more than a few throws.
It seems that the goo in them warms up and melts when you blow on the dice too much. And when they are shaken very vigorously for a prolonged period, the lead pellet in them also develops friction heat in moving rapidly. The insides of the dice get quite hot and the lead pellet won't stick in one place anymore. So they just behave like regular dice all the time." He put the book up so I could see the reference. I didn't bother to read it. "So Heller," continued Snelz, "just thought it was a regular dice game and he didn't have any suspicions. So he won't be after our hides. Isn't that nice? He's just a good dice player and kind of lucky. So he won't be pestering me and I won't have to tell him whose dice they are or how you tried to set him up." You won't tell anybody anything after you hit the bottom down there, I thought. I tensed to make my move.

Something was flashing in front of my eyes. Snelz was flipping some gold-colored credit notes in front of my face. I steadied his hand.

That morning I had drawn the hundred and fifty-five credits I still had left in a year's pay advance. I had given it to Crobe. He had snarled that I was still ten credits short and he would now go to Lombar anyway if I didn't come through by nightfall. But there was another hitch. I had gotten sick down there again and I couldn't stand to go near him even once more.

And here were ten credits!

"Heller sent a man out to buy a lot of things this morning," said Snelz. "It was Timyjo that went and he is a great thief. He stole most of it, so your cut is big. It was eleven credits but this book cost one credit. Hey, what's the matter?" I had sat down weakly on a ledge. After a little, I said, "Snelz, I happen to owe Crobe ten credits. Take it down and give it to him."

"Oh? Right!"

"Wait," I said, reviving a bit. "Give me those dice."

"Indeed, yes! I wouldn't use them again for anything!" I took the six dice, gave them a blasphemous funeral prayer and threw them off the rampart and into the depths below. Let the ghosts of the ancients and the executed Apparatus offenders get in trouble with them way down there in their black chasm and let the living live!

A half an hour later, I was in the training hall, sitting by the desk. I was about to get one of the worst shocks in my life. At the moment my worries consisted only of a dull nausea in my stomach and the realization that if I were taken off the mission, I would find myself hopelessly overdrawn on pay, bankrupt and cashiered. I was sitting there, hoping to get some idea of how to pry Heller out of Spiteos, observing the scene before me to find any inspiration.

The vast hall was a patchwork of independent projects. Four assistant trainers, in four different places, were trying to get four different acts into shape. One was a wrestling act, one was a juggler and the other two were in such early stages I could not make them out, consisting as they were of just some minor exercises.

The Countess Krak was far back on the right side of the room, quite distant. She was instructing one of her trainers to teach a juggler: the objects were six medium sized lizards, the kind with razor-sharp spines; it would be a good act when perfected but the juggler was afraid of cutting his hands and the assistant trainer needed coaching on how to get his student to overcome this fear with confidence. I couldn't hear what the Countess was saying to him but now and then she would herself flip a couple of lizards into the air and grasp them correctly and then pass them to the assistant so he could show the juggler. I didn't envy the assistant: you could lose a finger on a spiny lizard; but the Countess was being very patient and reassuring. She seemed to have on new clothes and I hoped she wouldn't be fool enough to wear them on a trained act parade: Lombar would be investigating like a swooping bird of prey.

I hadn't paid much attention to Heller when I came in beyond making sure he was there as stated by the guards at the door. But now my attention shifted to him.

Heller was through with his studies for the day. Clear over at the opposite corner of the hall from Krak, he was simply going through some ring exercises to keep in shape.

He was doing what is called a "startler" – so labelled because it always brings a shock of indrawn breath from an audience which, of course, supposes the gymnast has lost his grip and is falling.

Performed with a single, hanging ring about ten feet from the floor, the gymnast does a single handstand on the ring, his body rising upward, parallel to the rope. It is difficult enough to do one of those handstands on a ring – I never could. But the rest of the stunt is why it is called a startler.

Heller's hand would slip off the bottom of the ring and his body would start to plummet downward vertically. But his heels would flick forward and, tight together, would catch the rounded top of the ring, one on either side of the rope, and abruptly stop the fall. It is difficult to make heels hold on the rounded top of an iron ring but, even after a drop, he was having no trouble with it. Then he'd reach up for the ring with the other hand and do the startler using that one.

He was having no trouble at all. He was very graceful. To him it was just casual exercise. He was doing it over and over, right hand, then left hand. It really looked like he was thinking of something else – and probably he was: the evening and night with the Countess Krak.

My attention shifted to the wrestling act. It was going on a short distance to the side of Heller's ring. The assistant trainer there apparently had his hands full – full of trouble. The assistant was a tall, muscular fellow in the usual loincloth. The two he was trying to train were not cooperating: one was a primate, a shaggy beast covered with hair, captured in the jungle of some wild planet; the other was a yellow-man, probably from the Deepst Mountains, one of the race you often see in circuses doing "strong acts" – you know, the kind with no body hair, huge muscles, given to a lot of roaring and posturing. Both primate and yellow-man were about six foot eight inches tall and weighed maybe three hundred pounds. Big.

I got interested in the act. Apparently the primate and the yellow-man were supposed to be having a fight over a big, red, piece of fake fruit. It was really a comedy-acrobatic wrestling act, all rehearsed and precisely timed. But to an audience it would look like a funny fight. It was supposed to begin with the primate hunched down eating the fruit. Then the yellow-man was supposed to jump on the primate to take the fruit away and they would leap and spin and so on for a time and finally the primate would solve it by splitting the fruit in half and they'd both sit down to eat it, the funniest part being that it was the primate, an ape, really, that solved it.

The assistant trainer wasn't having any trouble with the primate. Like any big ape, it could spin and somersault with great agility. The trouble was with the yellow-man. And I must say that I would not have liked to meet him in an alley. He was so motivated by brute force that he was really punishing the primate and it was making the ape a bit sullen to be side-punched and kicked when it wasn't part of the scenario.

At one point of the act, the yellow-man was supposed to get a strangle armlock on the primate. The ape was then supposed to front somersault out of it. Apparently the yellow-man wouldn't let go enough so the primate could flip. The yellow-man, hate in his eyes, was trying to finish the grip and really strangle the ape.

I heard the assistant trainer's voice dimly in the din and clatter of the hall. He said to the yellow-man, "Look. I'll take the place of the ape and you put the grip on me and I will show you exactly where to clamp so the ape can get out of it and do his somersault." I thought, trainer, I wouldn't do that if I were you, that yellow-man is kill-crazy.

The primate had turned a bit sullen and, rubbing its throat, shuffled off to one side out of the way. The assistant trainer stood in its place and indicated that the yellow-man should begin.

Well, I've seen some looks of savage anticipation in my time but the look that came over that yellow-man beat them all. They had probably found him in some Domestic Police cell charged with murder or he wouldn't be here at Spiteos. He had probably suffered what he thought was injustice and bad treatment – rightly so at Spiteos. And
here
was his chance!

He sprang on that assistant trainer like a ferocious beast!

With an animal snarl he slammed his arm around the trainer's neck. Gripping his own wrist with his other hand, he began to apply the pressure!

There was murder in the yellow-man's eyes, hate in the roars which went past his bared teeth. I expected at any instant to hear the trainer's neck snap. He could not cry out.

The racket in the place was such that no one else seemed to be paying any attention. Maybe this sort of thing was too usual in these acts. I was certain the yellow-man was going to chalk up a new murder right that instant. My eye caught a movement to the side of them.

Heller had not caught the ring with his heels. He front-flipped to land on his feet.

In a flash of motion, Heller was close by the fight!

He reached down, almost unconcerned, and with a thumb and forefinger put a clamp on the giant's elbow! It is an ordinary release defense action, it produces considerable pain and paralysis, though how Heller knew what points to touch on a yellow-man – who is made differently – I do not know.

The roar of the giant turned to a screech!

He let go of the trainer like the trainer had gone red hot. He whirled to rear up against Heller!

Heller quietly kicked the giant in the back of the head with his toe. It was not a lethal kick. The yellow-man flopped forward, out cold.

The trainer was struggling up. Heller gave him a hand. The fellow couldn't talk yet but thanks was on his face.

I couldn't hear what Heller was saying but he was being solicitous about the trainer's neck and was rubbing it for him. The primate then got up and came over to them and – it made both the trainer and Heller laugh-solemnly shook Heller's hand. Actually it was very funny for one doesn't expect apes to know much. I laughed myself – and it was the last laugh I had that day!

The trainer went over and got an electric whip. The giant was still out cold. Heller saw that it was under control and apparently decided that was all the exercise he was going to do today. He picked up his exercise suit top and slipped into it. Then he trotted across the room, threw a kiss to the Countess Krak and left the hall.