The Venus Belt (10 page)

Just as I turned, the cabin door swung shut with a positive
click
.
The knob wouldn’t move. I wiped my face, left hand coming away sticky cri
m
son. The right still gripped a foot of gory steel. Trying not to drip on Ca
p
tain Spoonbill’s hall carpet, I focused with difficulty: yes, a trail of someone else’s blood. I wondered how solidly I’d connected. That
knee
had connec
t
ed solidly enough; I could hardly stand upright: gas pains amplified a hundredfold.

The naked, sword-swinging barbarian routine has been oversold, I think. Locked out in the middle of the night, gasping, drenched in someone else’s blood, I care not what course Conan may take: I lowered myself to the floor against the wall and practiced groaning. A couple of timid passers-by ran screaming at the sight of me, then a uniform arrived, gun in hand, to let me explain what had happened. She passkeyed me in, promising to send a medic, and followed the trail of gore away.

Healer Francis W. Pololo had something absolutely
wonderful
for pain. He also took blood samples from my Rezin as I rummaged around for some nice, easy-fitting trousers, but wouldn’t listen about fingerprints. Guess he had that theory filed away with phrenology and palm-reading. Nice fellow, though, and not bad-looking for a gorilla. I thought of K
o
ko, wondering if he was spoken for, and as I gingerly fastened my pants, I thought of Clari
s
sa, too, glad we hadn’t made this a second honeymoon. Then I asked the doctor for another pain pill.

***

Full of nerve-deadeners, I didn’t want to mix my highs, but the Level 790 bar was a well-lit public place where nobody could sneak up on me, and I wasn’t planning to sleep again until I got my Webley back. That infernal gadget of Clarissa’s was all that had kept me out of
Bonaventura
’s
meatloc
k
er.

A bit slow on the nanoelectronic uptake, though: my assailant had had plenty of time to pull out every drawer in the bureau and empty it on the carpet. Something told me it wasn’t just a scavenger hunt.

Despite the nighttime emptiness of the Yellow Tower corridors, the bar seemed almost crowded. “Western Hemisphere” the bartender an
s
wered as he poured me out a double—King Kong Kola. “Every-one in Yellow’s up from North or South America. Breakfasttime in Green right now, suppe
r
time in Orange.”

I sipped my drink; definitely not the Real Thing. “What about the Blue?’’

“Whatever time suits their porpoises,” he snickered.

I considered throwing up all over his nice clean bar. Instead I turned my back, hitching up my elbows to watch the natives as the sky turned round and round outside. Some were talking, drinking, playing cards or electronic games. Others watched a stage where a young gorilla was taking off her clothes. Seemed like a waste of time, to me.

The place began to fill up even more. More likely
cocktail
time in the Orange Tower. All this joint needed was a big tank for the dolphins, and—

“
Hey!
”
The guy beside me stumbled sideways, knocking over his drink. He wheeled on the person next to him. “Whaddyou wanna do that for, si
s
ter?” he slurred, peering sadly down inside his empty glass. The pale, sophi
s
ticated type beside him turned slowly, gave him a silent sneer down her nose, and turned away.

“Hey! You can’t jog my arm like that an’ broff it osh . .
brush it off!
Whaddabout my drink?” He extended a wobbly arm and poked her shou
l
der savagely.

“Take it easy, friend,” I said, my tongue doing its own thinking as usual. “Let her alone, I’ll buy you another—”

“Who aksed
you
,
buddy?” He jabbed me in the chest with stiffened fi
n
gers, setting off a number of accumulated pains.

I seized the offending digits, bending them back a little. “
Now, buddy, you want that drink or not?
“

Wrenching his hand free, he drew it back for a punch. “I’ll teach you to—” and let fly craftily with his other fist, but I ducked, and he bashed it meatily into the bar. I slid under his second flailing punch and planted my own stiffened fingers dead-center in his solar plexus.

“
Whoof!
”

He doubled, staggering against a chair, and fell across a nearby table, scattering crockery. The occupants jumped up, knocking others down around them in a rapidly expanding circle. Napkins, liquids, curses flew. Somebody threw a punch. In seconds, while my erstwhile antagonist barfed all over the floor, the saloon erupted in a joyous free-for-all, a hundred combatants gaily socking everyone around them. A chimpanzee swung from the chandelier, bombing people with onion dip. The stripper stopped, di
s
gusted at losing her audience, gathered up her clothing, and sat down on the stage, feet over the edge, kicking anyone who stumbled near.

Baap!
Seeing sudden stars, I shook my head, swung to grab the shoulder of a tall form looming over me. I raised a fist.

“Whoa...Pilgrim, I’m on
your
side!” He cocked his head and grinned a crooked grin, holding a little chimp—the guy who’d socked me—by the scruff, then casually tossing him out into the riot to fend for himself. “Plucky, but too small—had t’throw ’im...back.”

I gave someone behind me an elbow in the guts, snap-kicked a bo
t
tle-waver coming at my head, and turned to my now familiar ally. “Say, you’re not really...” I recognized this seamed and ugly-beautiful mug, the big R
o
man nose, and crinkled squint. “Mike Morrison?”

He snatched a pair of fighters, cracked their heads together, and easily side-stepped a wildly thrown chair, which bounced harmlessly off the mirror behind the bar. “Guilty,” came the answer in that famous sandy-textured voice, cadence plodding forward in oddly shaped chunks, “but don’t tell nobody—headed out t’make m’first...space opera.” He shook his head, a sour look passed across his leathery face. “Only thing th’ people wanna see, these...days. Feels downright silly ’thout a...horse under me—
unh!
”

Someone brained him with a serving tray. He crossed his eyes and swayed in little circles, a big hand on the bar to right himself, then grabbed the astounded tray-wielder by the lapels. “Mister, somebody oughta smack you fer that.” His eyes narrowed in anger, slanted, almost Mongolian. “But I won’t, I won’t...like
hell
I won’t!”

Crack!
The unfortunate assailant followed a ballistic curve across the room and landed in a fountaining of drinks and pretzels. Morrison blew on his battered knuckles, shaking out the sting, and sort of looked direc
t
ly at me, sideways. “Pilgrim, I like a good...dust-up, but let’s—
look out!
”

I whirled, by reflex whipping out my Rezin. The pale “sophisticated” lady, composure vanished with a snarl, was shoving something at my face. It snapped into focus—a tiny gun barrel, bullet glinting visibly deep i
n
side the chamber. I slapped the gun aside, left-handed, she lunged, carried by m
o
mentum onto my extended blade.

The weapon sank to the guards with a ghastly sucking noise, pommel jammed against my hip. Her eyes, an inch from mine, widened abruptly as if she were just waking up. She gave a tiny gasp, looked down at her midriff, the ultimate despair written on her face, stumbled backward off the blade, and crumpled, her life coursing onto the floor.

Silence swept the room.

I threw the knife aside, her little gun still in my other hand, and knelt beside her in a pool of smoking blood. Not a sound, not a movement. I felt for a pulse—nothing. She was gone. I’d killed a woman, and she was gone.

A huge rough hand descended gently on my shoulder. “She walked right into it, Pilgrim, some kinda...suicide, I’d call it. C’mon, get up outa there.” He pried me away from the floor, hooked a chair with the toe of his boot, and slid it under me, carefully extracting the little pistol from my hand and laying it on the bar.

I closed my eyes hard, and opened them again.

Morrison stood slowly shaking his head, hands spread on his narrow waist, a finger curled and locked into the high side of his canvas-like gu
n
belt. The big, plain military automatic perched where his right hip pocket should have been, rendered tiny by his sheer, larger-than-life presence, its smoothly worn ivory stocks checked and yellowed by ha
n
dling and hard use. “There ain’t much...point, but somebody call a He
a
ler!”

He thrust a tumbler into my hands. I sipped it absently—it burned.

But the Healer was already there, along with security people, alerted by the fighting. He set his bag on a barstool, glanced around the rapidly empt
y
ing room, then knelt down by the body, confirming that’s what it was. He looked up at me. “Haven’t I seen you once already tonight?”

I sat there, nodding dumbly, my hands beginning to shake. “Earlier th-this evening. Someone b-broke into my—”

“So you
said
”
answered the gorilla. He stood, glared down at my dri
p
ping knife lying on the bar beside the tiny autopistol, then back at the dead woman—girl, really, I could see that now—and gave me an expre
s
sion I’d never had before from anyone on the right side of the law. “Call the Ca
p
tain,” he instructed the bartender. “Something stinks in here.”

Morrison started to speak, paused, twisting the thin gold circlet around his massive wrist. “I saw the whole...thing,
bureaucrat.”
Then he looked at me. “She’s the one shoved that
borracho
into ya, an’ started this whole...brannigan. Lookin’ t’backshoot ya’n all the excitement.” He stopped, running a large confident hand through his thinning, crewcut hair, then continued in that relaxed, inexorable, singsongy tone.

“Pilgrim, you gonna play with that, or drink it? An’ don’t fret s’much. I mean t’see you vouched for with security, at Cap’n Spoo
n
bill’s...convenience.”

He stepped away, one knee bent slightly inward, a shoulder carried low, then paused and turned back to me. “Pilgrim, you’ll be all right. I like your...sand.” Then he limped out of my life and into the sunset.

In whichever tower
that
was going on.

***

Tuesday, March 2, 223 A.L.

As played out as I was, sleeping soundly that night should have been a cinch, especially with the armed guards outside my stateroom door to pr
o
tect me from the boogie-person. Though if I’d tried to leave, it might have looked like something else. Those suddenly widening eyes kept coming back to me, but the Healer had a pill for that.

It almost worked, too.

Next morning, they brought me back my Bowie knife, cleaned and po
l
ished, along with my victim’s tiny gun and holster. It was a Bauer .25, a nine-ounce stainless-steel seven-shot vest-pocket number, of practically no stopping-power.

Made in the United States.

Somehow, I’d been reprieved. With the grisly trophies came a message from the Captain to look him up as soon as I got dressed. I peeked outside my cabin. The guard was still there, but she smiled sympathetically and promised to escort me to the infirmary, which was where the brass seemed to be awaiting my pleasure. The sick bay’s down in the re
c
tangular stern, as buried in the middle of the ship as anything can be, and not too far from all those crates for Mr., Ms., or Mrs. Tormount. Inside, Healer Pololo stood waiting, along with Koko and a grim-visaged fellow in Spartan black and gold.

We sat down in the waiting room.

“Mr. Bear,” the simian physician offered, “I owe you an apology. I simply figured that no wholly innocent party could be involved in two vi
o
lent incidents in the same evening.”

“Try running a liquor store on East Colfax Avenue sometime.”

He removed his wire-rimmed glasses and gave them a self-conscious scrub. “Well, you know what I mean. Captain Spoonbill, this is Mr. Bear.”

Sounded like feeding time at the zoo. Spoonbill was an imposing block of a man, conveying in attitude and bearing, rather than literal a
p
pearance, the same frozen unreachability as those statues on Easter Is
l
and. He shook my hand, striving for the neutral expression that served him for a smile.

“Mr. Bear, concerning your detention last night...”

“That’s okay, I’d already done my partying. I take it you’ve decided I’m ‘wholly innocent,’ too?” I wondered how they’d feel about smoking in here.