The Status Civilization (9 page)

The judge paused. In a thoughtful voice he continued, “The highest type of man on Omega is the individual who understands the laws, appreciates their necessity, knows the penalties for infraction, then breaks them—and succeeds! That, sir, is your ideal criminal and your ideal Omegan. And that is what you have succeeded in doing, Will Barrent, by winning the Trial by Ordeal.”

“Thank you, sir,” Barrent said.

“I wish you to understand,” the judge continued, “that success in breaking the law once does not imply that you will succeed a second time. The odds are increasingly against you each time you try—just as the rewards are increasingly greater if you succeed. Therefore I counsel you not to act rashly upon your new acquisition of knowledge.”

“I won’t, sir,” Barrent said.

“Very well. You are hereby elevated to the status of Privileged Citizen, with all the rights and obligations which that entails. You are allowed to keep your business, as before. Furthermore, you are granted a week’s free vacation in the Lake of Clouds region; and you may go on that vacation with any female of your choice.”

“I beg pardon?” Barrent said. “What was that last?

“A week’s vacation,” the hidden judge repeated, “with any female of your choice. It is a high reward, since men outnumber women on Omega by six to one. You may pick any unmarried woman, willing or unwilling. I will grant you three days in which to make a choice.”

“I don’t need three days,” Barrent said. “I want the girl who was sitting in the front row of the spectators’ gallery. The girl with black hair and green eyes. Do you know which one I mean?”

“Yes,” the judge said slowly, “I know which one you mean. Her name is Moera Ermais. I suggest that you choose someone else.”

“Is there any reason?”

“No. But you would be much better advised if you selected someone else. My clerk will be pleased to furnish you with a list of suitable young ladies. All of them have affidavits of good performance. Several are graduates of the Women’s Institute, which, as you perhaps know, gives a rigorous two-year course in the geishan arts and sciences. I can personally recommend your attention to—”

“Moera is the one I want,” Barrent said.

“Young man, you err in your judgment.”

“I’ll have to take that chance.”

“Very well,” the judge said. “Your vacation starts at nine tomorrow morning. I sincerely wish you good fortune.”

Guards escorted Barrent from the judge’s chambers, and he was taken back to his shop. His friends, who had been waiting for the death announcement, came to congratulate him. They were eager to hear the complete details of the Trial by Ordeal; but Barrent had learned now that secret knowledge was the road to power. He gave them only the sketchiest outline.

There was another cause for celebration that night. Tem Rend’s application had finally been accepted by the Assassin’s Guild. As he had promised, he was taking Foeren on as his assistant.

The following morning, Barrent opened his shop and saw a vehicle in front of his door. It had been provided for his vacation by the Department of Justice. Sitting in the back, looking beautiful and very annoyed, was Moera.

She said, “Are you out of your mind, Barrent? Do you think I have time for this sort of thing? Why did you pick me?”

“You saved my life,” Barrent said.

“And I suppose you think that means I’m interested in you? Well, I’m not. If you have any gratitude, you’ll tell the driver that you’ve changed your mind. You can still choose another girl.”

Barrent shook his head. “You’re the only girl I’m interested in.”

“Then you won’t reconsider?”

“Not a chance.”

Moera sighed and leaned back. “Are you
really
interested in me?”

“Much more than interested,” Barrent said.

“Well,” Moera said, “if you won’t change your mind, I suppose I’ll just have to put up with you.” She turned away; but before she did, Barrent caught the faintest suggestion of a smile.

Chapter Twelve

The Lake of Clouds was Omega’s finest vacation resort. Upon entering the district, all weapons had to be checked at the main gate. No duels were allowed under any circumstances. Quarrels were arbitrarily decided by the nearest barman, and murder was punished by immediate loss of all status.

Every amusement was available at the Lake of Clouds. There were the exhibitions such as fencing bouts, bull fighting, and bear baiting. There were sports like swimming, mountain climbing, and skiing. In the evenings there was dancing in the main ballroom, behind glass walls which separated residents from citizens and citizens from the elite. There was a well-stocked drug bar containing anything the fashionable addict could desire, as well as a few novelties he might wish to sample. For the gregarious, there was an orgy every Wednesday and Saturday night in the Satyr’s Grotto. For the shy, the management arranged masked trysts in the dim passageways beneath the hotel. But most important of all, there were gently rolling hills and shadowy woods to walk in, free from the tensions of the daily struggle for existence in Tetrahyde.

Barrent and Moera had adjoining rooms, and the door between them was unlocked. But on the first night, Barrent did not go through the door. Moera had given no sign of wanting him to do so; and on a planet where women have easy and continual access to poisons, a man had to think twice before inflicting his company where it was not wanted. Even the owner of an antidote shop had to consider the possibility of not being able to recognize his own symptoms in time.

On their second day, they climbed high into the hills. They ate a basket lunch on a grassy incline which sloped away to the gray sea. After they had eaten, Barrent asked Moera why she had saved his life.

“You won’t like the answer,” she told him.

“I’d still like to hear it.”

“Well, you looked so ridiculously vulnerable that day in the Victim’s Society. I would have helped anyone who looked that way.”

Barrent nodded uncomfortably. “What about the second time?”

“By then I suppose I had an interest in you. Not a romantic interest, you understand. I’m not at all romantic.”

“What kind of an interest?” Barrent asked.

“I thought you might be good recruitment material.”

“I’d like to hear more about it,” Barrent said.

Moera was silent for a while, watching him with unblinking green eyes. She said, “There’s not much I can tell you. I’m a member of an organization. We’re always on the lookout for good prospects. Usually we screen directly from the prison ships. After that, recruiters like me go out in search of people we can use.”

“What type of people do you look for?”

“Not your type, Will. I’m sorry.”

“Why not me?”

“At first I thought seriously about recruiting you,” Moera said. “You seemed like just the sort of person we needed. Then I checked into your record.”

“And?”

“We don’t recruit murderers. Sometimes we employ them for specific jobs, but we don’t take them into the organization. There are certain extenuating circumstances which we recognize; self-defense, for example. But aside from that, we feel that a man who has committed premeditated murder on Earth is the wrong man for us.”

“I see,” Barrent said. “Would it help any if I told you I don’t have the usual Omegan attitude toward murder?”

“I know you don’t,” Moera said. “If it were up to me, I’d take you into the organization. But it’s not my choice. … Will, are you sure you’re a murderer?”

“I believe I am,” Barrent said. “I probably am.”

“Too bad,” Moera said. “Still, the organization needs high-survival types, no matter what they did on Earth. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do. It would help if you could find out more about why you committed murder. Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances.”

“Perhaps,” Barrent said doubtfully. “I’ll try to find out.”

That evening, just before he went to sleep, Moera opened the adjoining door and came into his room. Slim and warm, she slipped into his bed. When he started to speak, she put a hand over his mouth. And Barrent, who had learned not to question good fortune, kept quiet.

The rest of the vacation passed much too quickly. The subject of the organization did not come up again; but, perhaps as compensation, the adjoining door was not closed. At last, late on the seventh day, Barrent and Moera returned to Tetrahyde.

“When can I see you again?” Barrent asked.

“I’ll get in touch with you.”

“That’s not a very satisfactory arrangement.”

“It’s the best I can do,” Moera said. “I’m sorry, Will. I’ll see what I can do about the organization.”

Barrent had to be satisfied with that. When the vehicle dropped him at his store, he still didn’t know where she lived, or what kind of an organization she represented.

Back in his apartment, he considered carefully the details of his dream in the Dream Shop. It was all there: his anger at Therkaler, the illicit weapon, the encounter, the corpse, and then the informer and the judge. Only one thing was missing. He had no recollection of the actual murder, no memory of aiming the weapon and activating it. The dream stopped when he met Therkaler, and started again after he was dead.

Perhaps he had blocked the moment of actual murder out of his mind; but perhaps there had been some provocation, some satisfactory reason why he had killed the man. He would have to find out.

There were only two ways of getting information about Earth. One lay through the horror-tinged visions of the Dream Shop, and he was determined not to go there again. The other way was through the services of a skrenning mutant.

Barrent had the usual distaste for mutants. They were another race entirely, and their status of untouchability was no mere prejudice. It was well known that mutants often carried strange and incurable diseases. They were shunned, and they had reacted to exclusion by exclusiveness. They lived in the Mutant Quarter, which was almost a self-contained city within Tetrahyde. Citizens with good sense stayed away from the Quarter, especially after dark; everyone knew that mutants could be vindictive.

But only mutants had the skrenning ability. In their misshapen bodies were unusual powers and talents, odd and abnormal abilities which the normal man shunned by day but secretly courted by night. Mutants were said to be in the particular favor of The Black One. Some people felt that the great art of Black Magic, about which the priests boasted, could only be performed by a mutant; but one never said so in the presence of a priest.

Mutants, because of their strange talents, were reputed to remember much more of Earth than was possible for normal men and women. Not only could they remember Earth in general, but in particular they could skren the life-thread of a man backward through space and time, pierce the wall of forgetfulness and tell what really had happened to him.

Other people believed that mutants had no unusual abilities at all. They considered them clever rogues who lived off people’s credulity.

Barrent decided to find out for himself. Late one night, suitably cloaked and armed, he left his apartment and went to the Mutant Quarter.

Chapter Thirteen

Barrent walked through the narrow, twisting streets of the Quarter, one hand never far from his weapon. He walked among the lame and the blind, past hydrocephaloid and microcephalous idiots, past a juggler who kept twelve flaming torches in the air with the aid of a rudimentary third hand growing out of his chest. There were vendors selling clothing, charms, and jewelry. There were carts loaded with pungent and unsanitary-looking food. He walked past a row of brightly painted brothels. Girls crowded the windows and shrieked at him, and a four-armed, six-legged woman told him he was just in time for the Delphian Rites. Barrent turned away from her and almost ran into a monstrously fat woman who pulled open her blouse to reveal eight shrunken breasts. He ducked around her, moving quickly past four linked Siamese quadruplets who stared at him with huge mournful eyes.

Barrent turned a corner and stopped. A tall, ragged old man with a cane was blocking his way. The man was half-blind; the skin had grown smooth and hairless over the socket where his left eye should have been. But his right eye was sharp and fierce under a white eyebrow.

“You wish the services of a genuine skrenner?” the old man asked.

Barrent nodded.

“Follow me,” the mutant said. He turned into an alley, and Barrent came after him, gripping the butt of his needlebeam tightly. Mutants were forbidden by law to carry arms; but like this old man, most of them had heavy, iron-headed walking sticks. At close quarters, no one could ask for a better weapon.

The old man opened a door and motioned Barrent inside. Barrent paused, thinking about the stories he had heard of gullible citizens falling into mutant hands. Then he half-drew his needlebeam and went inside.

At the end of a long passageway, the old man opened a door and led Barrent into a small, dimly lighted room. As his eyes became accustomed to the dark, Barrent could make out the shapes of two women sitting in front of a plain wooden table. There was a pan of water on the table, and in the pan was a fist-sized piece of glass cut into many facets.