To Die In Italbar Page 9

  He turned his attention once more to the bright whirlpool that sucked him toward its center: Summit.

  He would be there in no time at all.

  * * *

  When the message arrived, his first reaction was a very loud "Damn! Why ask _me?_" But since he already knew the answer he restricted his subsequent reactions to the expletive.

  Pacing, he paused to flip a toggle and postpone his lunch until further notice. After a time, he noted that he was in his rooftop garden and smoking a cigar, staring into the west.

  "Racial discrimination, that's what it is," he muttered, then moved to a hidden plate, thumbed it open and flipped another toggle.

  "Send me a light lunch in the manuscript library in about an hour," he ordered, not waiting for a reply.

  He continued to pace, breathing in the smells of life and growth that surrounded him and ignoring them completely.

  The day grew gray and he turned to the east where a cloud had covered his sun. He glared at it and after a few moments it began to dissipate.

  The day brightened once more, but he growled, sighed and walked away from it.

  "Always the fall guy," he said, as he entered the library, removed his jacket, hung it on a hook beside the door.

  He moved his eyes along the rows of cases which contained the most complete collection of religious manuscripts in the galaxy. On shelves beneath each case were bound facsimiles of the originals. He passed into the next room and continued his search.

  "Way up there by the ceiling," he sighed. "I might have known."

  Setting the foot of the ladder within three feet of the Qumran scrolls, he adjusted its balance and climbed.

  He lit a cigarette after he had seated himself in an easy chair with a fac-copy of _The Book of Life's Manifold Perils and Pleas for Continued Breathing_, in ancient Pei'an script, across his knees.

  It seemed but moments later that he heard a click and a programmed cough at his right elbow. The robot had entered, rolled silently across the thick carpeting, come to rest beside him and lowered the covered tray to a comfortable eating level. It proceeded to uncover it.

  He ate mechanically and continued reading. After a time, he noted that the robot had departed. He had no memory whatever of what it was that he had eaten for lunch.

  He continued to read.

  Dinner passed in the same fashion. Night occurred and the lights came on about him, brightening as the darkness deepened.

  Sometime in the middle of the night he turned the final page and closed the book. He stretched, yawned, rose and staggered. He had not realized that his right foot had grown numb. He reseated himself and waited for the tingling to pass. When it did, he climbed the ladder and replaced the volume. He restored the ladder to its corner. He could have had robot-extensors and gray-lifts, but he preferred libraries of the old-fashioned sort.

  He passed through sliding windows and walked to his bar on the west terrace. He seated himself before it and the light to its rear came on.

  "Bourbon and water," he said. "Make it a double."

  There was a ten-second pause, during which he could feel the faintest of vibrations through his fingertips resting on the bar. Then a six-by-six square opened before him and the drink slowly rose into sight, coming flush with the counter top. He raised it and sipped.

  "... And a pack of cigarettes," he added, remembering that he had finished his some hours before.

  These were delivered. He opened the pack and lit one with what was probably the last Zippo lighter outside of museums. Certainly the last functioning one. Every piece of it had been replaced, countless times, by custom-made duplicates turned out solely to repair _this_ lighter--so it was not, properly speaking, an antique; it was more in the nature of a direct descendant. His brother had given it to him-- When? He took another sip. He still had the original around somewhere, all the broken pieces reassembled within its scratched case. Probably in the bottom drawer of that old dresser .

  He dragged on the cigarette and felt the drink grow hot in his stomach, then move its momentary warmth into regions beyond. An orange moon hung low on the horizon and a rapidly moving white one was pacing midheaven. He smiled faintly, listened to the toadingales in their wallows. They were doing something of Vivaldi's. Was it from _Summer?_ Yes. There it was. He took another swallow and swirled the remainder in hi's glass.

  Yes, this was his job, he decided. He was really the only one of them with experience in the area. And of course the priest would rather send the inquiry to an alien than to one of his own people. Less of a chance for reprimand, for racial reasons; and if there was something dangerous involved .

  Cynical, he decided, and you don't want to be cynical. Just practical. Whatever prompted the thing, it's yours now; and you know what happened the last time something like this occurred. It must be dealt with. The fact that there will be no element of control means that, ultimately, it will be aimed at everybody.

  He finished his drink, ground out his cigarette. The glass dropped from sight. The panel slid closed.

  "Give me another of the same," he said; and quickly, "Not the cigarettes," as he remembered the new servomech's program.

  The drink was replaced and he took it with him into his study. There, he dropped into and semi-reclined his favorite chair. He dimmed the lights, caused the room temperature to drop to 62 degrees Fahrenheit, moved a control which brought about the ignition of real logs in the fireplace across the room from him, dropped a tri-dee night winter scene upon the room's one window (it would have taken him several hours to arrange for the real thing), extinguished all the lights now he saw that the fire was taking and settled back into his favorite thinking environment.

  In the morning, he switched on his automatic Secretary and Files unit.

  "First order of business," he dictated. "I want to talk with Dr. Matthews and my three best programmers immediately after breakfast--here in my study. I want breakfast, by the way, in twenty minutes. You estimate the eating time."

  "Do you wish to speak with them singly or as a group?" came the voice from the hidden speaker.

  "As a group. Now--"

  "What would you like for breakfast?" S & F interrupted.

  "Anything at all. Now--"

  "Please be more specific. The last time you said 'Anything'--"

  "All right. Hamandeggsandtoastandmarmaladeandcoffee. Now, the second thing I want is for someone high up on my staff to contact the Surgeon General or the Director of Health or whatever the hell his title is, in the SEL complex. I want full access to that Panopath computer of theirs no later than tomorrow afternoon, local time, via remote input from here on Homefree. Third, have the port hands start checking over the T for distance-jumping. Fourth, find out who it belongs to and get me the dossier. That's it."

  Approximately an hour and a quarter later when they had assembled in his study, he waved them toward chairs and smiled.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "I require your assistance in obtaining some information. I am not certain as to the specific nature of the information or the questions I must ask in order to come by it, though I do have some vague notions. It will concern people, places, events, probabilities and diseases. Some of the things I wish to know concern happenings fifteen or twenty years past, and some quite recent. It could take a long while to come up with sufficient information for me to act upon, but I do not have a long while. I want it in two or three days. Your job, therefore, will first be to assist me in formulating the appropriate questions, and then to place those questions on my behalf before a data source which I believe capable of providing what I need. That is the general situation. Now we shall discuss specifics."

  Late that afternoon, after they had departed, he realized that there was nothing more he could do for the time being, and so turned his attention to other matters.

  That evening, however, as he wandered through his arsenal, it was for purposes of making a routine safety check, he told himself. But as time passed, he found that he was checking only
the smaller, more lethal pieces, such as might be borne easily by one man, perhaps carried concealed and capable of striking from a distance. When he realized what he was doing he did not stop, however. As, among other things, the only living deicide in the galaxy, he felt it his bounden duty always to be prepared, just in case.

  Thus did Francis Sandow spend the days before his departure for Deiba.

  * * *

  Anxious to test his new powers on a smaller scale before moving on to the large urban centers of Summit--a far more heavily populated world than Cleech--Heidel von Hymack orbited the world at a great altitude while he studied its maps and read statistics concerning that synthetic planet.

  Then, careful to avoid the traffic control centers of the great space ports, he dropped into a thinly populated, backwoods area of its second major continent, Soris. There, in a canyon, he concealed the vessel he had used, beneath an overhang of rock. He locked its controls and its ports, and with a tiny beamer he had found in a rack, he cut brush for camouflage and arranged it about the jump-buggy.

  Moving away, staff in his mottled hand, walking, he broke into song. At an earlier date, this would have surprised him, for he did not understand the words that he sang and the tune was a thing out of dream.

  After a time, he saw a small farmhouse built against the side of a hill . .

  * * *

  The music throbbed about him as he set his laboratory in order. He cleaned, adjusted, locked down, put away everything which would not be needed for a time. His giant, ghostlike figure drifted about the ship, straightening, ordering.

  I'm becoming a bit old-maidish, he chided himself, smiling inwardly. A place for everything and all of it there. What will it be like if I have the opportunity to go back, be around people again, readapt? Of course, I adapted to deep space ... Still, it would be quite a change. There is nobody who could tackle my condition yet, if H cannot do anything for me. So it would be years off. Several centuries, most likely. Discounting some unexpected breakthrough. What will it be like if it takes several centuries? What will _I_ be like by then? A ghost of a ghost? The only human alien to his own species? What will my descendants say?

  Had there been functioning lungs within him, he would have chuckled. Instead, he moved forward and seated himself within the observation section of the _B Coli_. There, he watched the stars spin, as in a cosmic centrifuge, about him. A Gregorian chant provided the sound track as he hung and they wheeled, on his way to Cleech, Heidel von Hymack's last reported destination.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was late on a rainy night when she first saw him in the flesh.

  Having no customers that evening, she had descended and visited the small newsstand off the lobby. She knew that the front door of the establishment had been opened because of the sudden draft and the amplification of noises from the street and the storm. Selecting her reading materials and depositing her coins, she took her papers and turned to cross the lobby.

  That was when she saw him, and the papers fell from her hand. She took a step backward, confused. It was impossible that they should ever be this near to one another. She felt dizzy, and her face began to burn.

  He was big, bigger even than she had imagined. His hair was mainly black--just a few light touches of gray at the temples--she noted; but then, of course, he would have had the S-S treatments and aged more slowly than other men. This pleased her, for she would have hated to see him in his decline. And those hawklike features and those blazing eyes! He was more impressive in person than on record or in tridee. He wore a black rain garment and bore two huge pieces of luggage--one a clothing case of sorts and the other a perforated box with a handle. The rain sparkled in his hair and eyebrows, glistened on his forehead and cheeks. She felt like running forward and offering her blouse as a facecloth.

  She stooped and gathered the papers. Rising, she lowered her head and raised them before her, so that her face was partly hidden. Then she moved into the lobby, as though reading, and found a chair near to the main desk.

  "Room and girl, sir?" she heard Horace saying.

  "That will be fine," he said, lowering his luggage to the floor.

  "There are many vacancies," said Horace, "because of the weather," as he pushed the album across the counter. "Let me know what strikes your fancy."

  She heard him turning the pages of the big book and she counted, because she knew them by heart: ... _Four, five_. A pause... . _Six_.

  He had stopped.

  Oh no! she thought. That would be Jeanne or Synthe. Not either one of them, not for him! Meg, perhaps, or Kyla. But not that cow-eyed Jeanne, or Synthe, who was twenty pounds heavier than her photo indicated.

  She ventured a glance and saw that Horace had moved away and was reading a paper.

  Deciding quickly, she rose to her feet and approached him.

  "Commander Malacar ..."

  She tried to say it boldly, but her voice dropped to a whisper because of the dryness of her throat.

  He turned and stared down at her. Glancing at Horace from the corner of his eye, he raised his right forefinger and crossed his lips with it.

  "Hello. What is your name?"

  "Jackara."

  Her voice was better this time.

  "You work here?"

  She nodded.

  "Occupied this evening?"

  She shook her head.

  "Clerk!" He turned.

  Horace lowered the paper.

  "Yes, Sir?"

  He jerked a thumb at Jackara.

  "Her," he said.

  Horace swallowed and looked uncomfortable.

  "Sir, there is something I had better tell you--" he began.

  "Her," Malacar repeated. "Sign me in."

  "Just as you say, sir," said Horace, producing a blank card and a writing stylus. "But--"

  "The name is Rory Jimson, and I am from Miadod, on Camphor. Pay now, or pay later?"

  "Pay now, sir. Eighteen units."

  "How much is that in DYNAB dollars?"

  "Fourteen and a half."

  Malacar produced a roll of bills and paid him.

  Horace opened his mouth, closed it, then said, "If everything is not satisfactory, please let me know immediately."

  Malacar nodded and stooped for his bags.

  "If you'll wait here, I'll ring you a rob."

  "That won't be necessary."

  "Very well. In that case, Jackara can show you to the room."

  The clerk picked up the stylus, fidgeted with it, replaced it. Finally, he returned to his paper.

  Malacar followed her toward the lift shaft, studying her form, her hair, trying to recall her face.

  _Shind, prepare to transmit and relay_, he said, as they entered the shaft.

  _Ready_.

  --_Do not look startled, Jackara, or give any out-ward sign of hearing me. Tell me how it is that you know me_.

  --_You are a telepath!_

  --_Just answer the question, bearing in mind that I can destroy half this building by waving my arm in the proper way_.

  "This is where we get off," she said aloud, and they left the lift and she turned to the right, leading him along a tigerstriped corridor where lights glowed only in the baseboards. The effect was tantalizing as well as stark. It gave a somewhat animal-like aura to the girl moving before him. He sniffed and detected faint narcotic fumes in the air. They were stronger near the ventilators.

  --_I have seen your picture many times. I have read much about you. That is how I knew you. As a matter of fact, I have all your biographies--even the two CL ones_.

  He laughed aloud and gave Shind the shorthand signal for "End transmission. Continue to receive," then, _Is she telling the truth, Shind?_ he inquired.

  _Yes. She admires you considerably. She is quite excited and extremely nervous_.

  _No trap, then?_

  _No_.

  She halted before a door, fumbled with her key for a time, unlocked it.

  She pushed it open and instead of entering or s
tepping aside, moved to bar it, facing him. Her face twisted and untwisted and she looked as if she were about to cry.

  "Do not laugh when you go in," she said. "Please. No matter what you see."

  "I won't," he said.

  Then she stepped aside.

  He entered the room and looked about. His eyes fell first upon the whips, then moved to the picture above the bed. He lowered his luggage to the floor and continued to stare. He heard the door close. The room was a study in asceticism. Gray walls and gleaming fixtures. The one window was shuttered tight.

  He began to understand.

  _Yes_, said Shind.

  _Prepare to transmit and receive_.

  _Ready_.

  --_Is this room monitored in any way?_ he inquired.

  --_Not exactly. That would be illegal. There are ways that I can request assistance or activate monitors, though_.

  --_Are any of them activated right now?_

  --_No_.

  --_Then no one will hear us if we speak_.

  "No," she said aloud; and he turned to look at her where she stood with her back and palms pressed against the door, eyes wide, lips dry.

  "Don't be afraid of me," he said. "You sleep with me every night, don't you?"

  Feeling awkward when she did not reply, he removed his coat and looked around.

  "Is there a place where I can hang this to dry out?"

  She moved forward and seized the garment.

  "I'll take it. I'll hang it in my shower."

  She jerked it from his hands, passed quickly through a narrow door and closed it behind her. He heard its lock click. After a time he heard sounds of retching.

  He took a step in that direction, about to rap and ask if she were all right.

  _Do not_, said Shind. _Let her be_.

  _All right. --Do you want to be let out?_

  _No. I would only upset her further. I am quite corn fortable_.

  After a time, he heard a flushing sound, and a little later the door opened and she emerged. He noted that her eyelashes were wet. He also noted the bright blue of her eyes within them.

  "It will be dry before too long," she said, "Commander."