Inside Man and Other Science Fiction Stories Part 5

Part of the s.h.i.+fting grayness flowed over the board. When it receded, a knight had changed its place. "Truly, I have tried to be careful," a quiet, rather tired voice said out of a darkness at the heart of the shadows, an area that was tenuously substantial.

"Is it certain that you yourself have not in some way given her cause for suspicion?"

"Quite certain. I've watched myself night and day." Mattern smiled ruefully. "Which is d.a.m.ned hard when you're on your honeymoon."

"Is there anyone else who might have spoken of these things to her?" the kqyres asked.

"No one." Then Mattern remembered the young s.p.a.ceman he had met coming into the hotel, who seemed to have a look of Lyddy. But that was nonsensical. Looking like her didn't mean talking to her. In any case, what would Raines know that he could tell her? Silly to be so suspicious. The Golden Apple was one of the few places in Erytheia City where one could get Earth smokestacks. "No one," Mattern repeated. "No one at all."

The patterns s.h.i.+fted and darkened. "Then I must be getting careless. I am growing old."

"Anyone can make a slip," Mattern said rea.s.suringly. "Just try to be a little more careful, that's all." He moved a rook.

The grayness crept out over the board, touched a bishop, hesitated, and moved to ap.a.w.n. He is getting old, Mattern thought pityingly, as he took the p.a.w.n. Once I could never beat him. Now I win two games out of three.

"But you are content with the woman?" his partner asked anxiously. "You are not disappointed with her in any way? She pleases you as much today as she did when first you set eyes on her?"

"Of course she does! You'd think it was you who'd been dreaming of her all these years, not me."

"I suppose we shared those dreams..."

"And you'd never seen her." Mattern stared intently at the shadow. "Are you disappointed, then?"

"Of course not. You know that to me a human woman is merely an object of art.

And she is very beautiful. But I thought she might not have come up to your expectations. Reality often falls short of dreams." The shadow's voice tautened.

"Has she changed much?"

"Very little," Mattern said, absorbed once more in the game. "You'd think only a year or two had pa.s.sed. Surprising how women do it."

The shadow sighed. "Surprising," it agreed, its voice relaxing. "But then the female s.e.x is mysterious."

They played on a while in silence. The kqyres finally spoke. "You will need a lot of money to provide an establishment fitting for so lovely a lady."

"I have a lot of money," Mattern said. "More than enough."

The kqyres flickered so violently that Mattern's eyes hurt. "Not enough for the things she deserves to have jewels, palaces, planets..."

"One thing I know would make it a lot more comfortable for her," Mattern suggested. "If only you didn't have to be close to me all the time, kqyres. If only you could stay on the s.h.i.+p even when I'm not there. Not that I don't enjoy your company," he added quickly, "but she seems to be highly strung."

"Do you think I like the situation any better than you? But this is the way the mbretersha has ordered it."

"I suppose she knows what she's doing," Mattern sighed. In any case, the mbretersha's orders were absolute and could not be contravened otherwise, at least one universe might be destroyed. There were still so many things he didn't understand and was not likely to learn.

"Strange," he went on pensively, "that Lyddy should have seen you, when I hardly can, and I know you're here." He knew, too, that the kqyres was deliberately vibrating out of phase, so that the horror of his appearance in this continuum wouldbe spared not only those he chanced to meet, but also himself. There was always the danger of pa.s.sing a mirror. Knowing how the kqyres looked in his own universe, knowing how he himself looked in the kqyres' universe, Mattern didn't doubt that any revelation would be a frightful one. However, he couldn't help being curious.

"I still think someone must have told her where to stare," the shadow said, "and what for."

"Don't be absurd!" Mattern snapped, outraged at the idea that his carefully kept secret might not be a secret at all. "Just try to be careful when she's around. Vibrate harder, or something."

"I shall do my poor best." The shadowy one hesitated. "Do you not think that if perhaps you were to tell her the truth?"

"Lord, no!" Mattern exclaimed. "She'd take a fit!"

"Once you would not have spoken of her that way," the kqyres said reproachfully.

"I didn't mean it the way it sounded," Mattern tried to explain. "It's just that well, by now I hardly remember what the truth is myself."

III.

Did that truth go back fifteen years, to the time he had met the kqyres, twenty years to the time he had first seen Lyddy? Or even further back than that? Did it go back, say, twenty-four years, to the time when he was sixteen and had killed his stepfather?

He could still see Karl Brodek lying there with his head crushed, could still feel the terror rising in him at what he had done...

Then he had turned and fled the small community on Fairhurst one of the Clytemnestra planets and made for the capital, where he s.h.i.+pped out on one of the small tramp freighters that voyaged among the planets of that system. None of the four other planets was human-inhabitable, but two had mining stations, and one had a native civilization advanced enough to make trading practicable, though not very profitable.

For the next four years, he drifted from one tenth-rate s.h.i.+p to another, one ill-paid job to another. In all this time, he never left the Clytemnestra System. As soon as he was satisfied that his former neighbors were not going to set the law on his trail, he had no desire to go away. It wasn't place liking that kept him; it was dread of the jump.

Most s.p.a.cemen never do quite get over their dread of the hypers.p.a.ce jump, but with Len the dread amounted almost to a mania. He was ashamed of the feeling, especially since he suspected he'd picked up that extra dollop of terror from the creatures on the native planet.

Self-respecting colonials didn't a.s.sociate with non-humans, but during those firstyears of fear that his fellow men were hunting him, he'd felt safe only with the flluska.

He learned a little of their language, and he spent such spare time as he had on Liman, their planet. He couldn't breathe the atmosphere, but there were the trading domes; n.o.body minded if he used them when there was no trade going on.

The flluska were a religious people, with G.o.ds and demons similar to those of the terrestrial cosmogonies. Only, while their G.o.ds lived conventionally in the sky, their demons lived in hypers.p.a.ce. Len was too unsophisticated himself to wonder how so primitive a people could have evolved such a concept as hypers.p.a.ce in their theology. He merely grew to share their terror of it.

The year Len was twenty, the Perseus, one of the star freighters that made the long haul from Castor to Capella, found itself in Fairhurst Station short one deckhand.

The man they'd s.h.i.+pped out with was in jail, waiting to see whether a manslaughter or a.s.sault charge was going to be lodged against him. The s.h.i.+p could not afford to wait. The station was scoured for a replacement and Len Mattern was the best man they could find.

Normally the stars.h.i.+ps did not take on untrained hands. Even the lowliest crewman was supposed to have spent a minimum number of years at the s.p.a.ce schools, because in theory, all promotions came from the ranks, even in the merchant service.

But in spite of his lack of training, they offered him the job. The bigline s.h.i.+ps never liked to sail shorthanded; in case of trouble, that could be a basis for legal action.

Len knew the opportunity offered him was a dazzling one not only far more money than he'd ever seen before, but the chance of breaking out of the system. He was afraid though, terribly afraid. "I've never made the jump," he told the second officer in a quavering voice.

"You'll never be a real s.p.a.ceman until you do." The second officer was patient, because he knew Mattern was his only chance of making the crew up to its full complement.

"I've heard tell that things change their shapes in Hypers.p.a.ce."

"Maybe they do; maybe it's their real shapes you see out there. Who's to tell what the truth is?"

Len licked dry lips and tried again. "They say there're people beings, anyway living in hypers.p.a.ce." That tale he had heard from s.p.a.cemen who had made the jump. Even if he'd believed in the flluska's demons, he would have had the good sense not to admit such a thing to a stars.h.i.+p officer, a man of sophistication from the Near Planets, perhaps even Earth herself. Still, s.p.a.cemen were notorious myth-spinners. Perhaps he had made a fool of himself, anyway.

But the second officer wasn't laughing. "Federation law says we should have nothing to do with the creatures of hypers.p.a.ce. If we leave them alone, they don't bother us."It would have been better if the officer had laughed at him and said there was nothing in hypers.p.a.ce but s.p.a.ce. "Will we see them?"

"Does a s.h.i.+p going through ordinary s.p.a.ce see any of us?" the officer returned.

"The creatures of hypers.p.a.ce live on their own planets, and we give those planets a wide berth. Simple as that." He added, "What are you so afraid of, boy? Not a s.h.i.+p's been lost in hypers.p.a.ce for over two centuries, and there haven't been any blowups for years."

"Blowups?" Len repeated.

"Accidents. A technical term. You've taken worse risks s.h.i.+pping out in those tin can tramps."

Finally, Len gave in to his own common sense more than to the officer's and signed up for the voyage. He filled out the necessary forms hundreds of them, it seemed like. When it came to each line for next of kin, he left a blank.

"Haven't you any relatives at all?" the second officer asked, surprised.

"Not a one." Len didn't bother to mention that half-brother back on Fairhurst; a five-year-old kid isn't much kin to speak of. Besides, the boy probably didn't even know he had a brother he'd been less than a year old when Len left. One of the barren women must have adopted him and brought him up as her own.

Len Mattern filled out all the s.h.i.+p's papers and was inscribed on the s.h.i.+p's rolls. And he made the terrible jump through hypers.p.a.ce for the first time.

People who traveled on s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps only as pa.s.sengers never could understand why the jump was invariably referred to as "terrible." That was because before the s.h.i.+p made the jump they'd be given drugs, in their c.o.c.ktails, in their food at dinner, or in their drinking water and the next day they'd wake up and find they had slept right through the whole thing, so it couldn't be so awful. Of course those who traveled around the universe a lot were bound to catch on. Someday they'd miss a meal or not drink anything and they'd find themselves awake while the s.h.i.+p was jumping. But the s.h.i.+pping lines didn't take any chances and the aberrant pa.s.sengers would also find themselves locked in their cabins with smooth metal shutters where the mirrors used to be.

But one thing that couldn't be helped: They couldn't be stopped from looking down at themselves and seeing extra arms and legs; or finding no arms and legs at all, but tentacles instead; or that their skin had turned into s.h.i.+ning scales or that there was an extra eye in the back of their head. And when the time came for another jump, they would ask to be drugged.

However, crewmen couldn't be drugged. They had to be awake to tend the s.h.i.+p. The credo of the s.p.a.ce Service was that you couldn't trust a machine to itself any more than you could trust an extraterrestrial, a non-human. If a man wasn't in charge,ultimately everything would go to pot. That was part of the s.p.a.ce tradition, like the primitive axes that hung on the bulkheads, so a man could smash his way to the modern firefighting equipment. Except, of course, that if fire really broke out, it would be quicker to press the b.u.t.ton that sent the automatic fire-fighting machines into immediate action. But still the axes hung there, because they had always hung there and, like all the metal on the s.h.i.+p, they had to be kept polished.

Each time a s.h.i.+p made the jump, the crewmen stayed awake. They saw s.p.a.ce and time change before their eyes. They saw their own fellows turn into monsters. It was an awful thing to see, even though they knew it wasn't actually a change, but a s.h.i.+ft to another aspect of themselves. Worse than the seeing was the feeling. It was like being turned inside out, organ by organ your heart and your liver and your guts and all the rest, each carefully turned inside out, the way a woman takes off her gloves, smoothing each one with great precision. The h.e.l.lish part was that it didn't hurt. A man felt as if he were being twisted and wrenched apart, and it didn't hurt, and it was the wrongness of that more than anything else that well, that was why the pay was so high on the stars.h.i.+ps. So many of them went mad.

All this Len Mattern had heard of and had expected though no amount of expectation could have braced him for that kind of reality. But there was more to it than he had heard, and it was the extra part that the second officer seemed curiously anxious to deny. "You saw n.o.body nothing at the portholes," he told Mattern after that first jump. "You just imagined it."

Mattern had been a s.p.a.ceman long enough to be able to distinguish imagination from reality. Perhaps the creatures of hypers.p.a.ce did live on planets, but it seemed they did not breathe the atmosphere of those planets as human beings breathe air, and so they were not confined to them. They could move around freely in the starless dusk of their universe. And, if there was a pact, then they must be intelligent creatures though he would have known that anyway, for they spoke to him. He could hear them through the tight walls of the s.h.i.+p less in his ears than his mind cajoling, entreating, promising. And he shut his ears and his mind, because he was afraid.

At the end of the voyage, he was offered a permanent berth on the Perseus. "We don't usually take crewmen from the Far Planets," the second officer said thoughtfully. "They don't have the training needed. But you're a good deck hand."

Len waited tensely, not knowing whether he did want the job or not.

"The universe is opening up and sooner or later we're going to have to start diversifying our crews, take untrained men, maybe even" The officer hesitated "extraterrestrials. Sometimes training can restrict a man to the point where he can't think for himself. Main trouble with untrained men, though, is that often they've got too much imagination. They think things that aren't true, see things that aren't there."

"I understand, sir," Mattern said. "I'll keep my imagination stowed away until it's wanted."From then on, he had seen no more at the ports than any of his properly conditioned mates.

IV.

Len Mattern stayed with the Perseus over three years. Gradually, from things he observed himself, from things his s.h.i.+pmates told him, he learned what little there was to be known about hypers.p.a.ce. Everything was different there from norms.p.a.ce; even the mechanical properties of things changed. However, jumping was safe enough, as long as the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps didn't stop. As long as they were only pa.s.sing through that other universe, they were, in a sense, not actually there, so that the elements of which they were composed would not change, although, to the senses, they seemed to.

Unless, of course, the s.h.i.+p collided with something. Then everything became very real. That was what the pact was for to make sure they didn't collide. Every s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p had, locked in the captain's cabin, charts of that other universe charts which gave, in norms.p.a.ce terms, the coordinates of the hypers.p.a.ce worlds. That way, when a s.h.i.+p made the jump, there would be no danger of her materializing inside one of the alien planets and destroying both. Even touching one of the hyperworlds could have a disastrous effect. Only the captains were ever permitted to see these charts; they would be far too dangerous in irresponsible hands.

Len might have grown old in the Perseus' service, if the Hesperia System hadn't been one of her stops, and if he hadn't seen Lyddy there.

Hesperia was a small, rose-pink sun surrounded by four planets and the debris of what once was a fifth. Most solar systems in the Galaxy had asteroid belts like that; some time later, Len found out why. Three of Hesperia's four planets were barren rocks. The fourth, Erytheia, was mostly water, calm water, sometimes blue, sometimes when the sun was high violet-tinged. There was land, a small continent in the north, where it was always spring, a slightly larger continent in the south, where it was always summer, and that large island in the west which was said to have a climate better than spring and summer combined.

The atmosphere of Erytheia was what they call Earth type that is, Man could breathe on it. A very inadequate description, though, because men could breathe the atmosphere of Ziegler's Planet, too, only sometimes it almost seemed worthwhile to stop living in order to stop having to breathe Ziegler's air. Erytheia's atmosphere was gentler and purer than the air of Earth. The native fruits were edible and the local life-forms were small and amiable. But there wasn't enough land for the establishment of a self-supporting colony; it would have bred itself into poverty within a few generations.

What else could be done with a small paradise in a remote sector of s.p.a.ce but turn it into a high-cla.s.s brothel and gambling casino? Only the very rich could afford to travel so far to look at scenery, and by the time they reached their destination,scenery wasn't enough. They wanted some excitement.

Naturally, the Perseus would stop at Hesperia. Naturally, Mattern would see Lyddy, who was one of the seven wonders of that system. She wasn't too many years out from Earth then, and he had never dreamed any woman could be that beautiful.

She was long-necked and slender, unlike the women of the Far Planets, who were mostly squat-built and bred for labor. It seemed to him he had seen her before in a vision, a dream, who knew where? Certainly never in reality. But he could understand why men would travel light-years for her.

The prices she charged were also astronomical. Still, if he put away his money carefully, in a couple of years he ought to be able to save up enough for a night with her. It was a goal, and he'd never had a goal before, even such a small one; everything had been just aimless drifting. He got a tri-di of her and put it up inside the door of his locker and was happy dreaming of her, even if it meant being kidded about her by his s.h.i.+pmates.

When he made the next jump, he knew for certain that the creatures of hypers.p.a.ce not only spoke to him through his mind, but could enter it and read it if they chose.

He felt very naked and vulnerable. Why couldn't the others on his s.h.i.+p also see the creatures, so that he would not be the sole focus of their attentions?

"Do what we ask," the hypers.p.a.cers the xhindi, they called themselves said softly, "and you will have enough from just a single voyage to have her for a week, a month, a year. Do what we ask and you can have her for all eternity."

"But all I want is just one night!" he protested.

And they had laughed, and one with a honey-sweet mind had said, "Is that all you want, really all?" Then they began naming the things a man could want and they certainly seemed to have a full knowledge of humanity and its most secret desires.

Afterward, Len had started to think. It would be nice to have Lyddy all to himself for a while, anyway. It would be nice to be able to buy her pretty dresses and jewelry. There were other things that would also be nice. Maybe he could have his teeth fixed and his leg straightened. His stepfather had broken it the night his mother died and it had never set properly. With money, he could do a lot of things. He hadn't realized there was so much in the universe to be wanted.

Now his wages began to look as picayune as once they had seemed large. He could make more elsewhere, he told himself; he might not be educated, but he had a good mind, plus rapidly dwindling principles. He didn't need the hypers.p.a.cers, though.

There were plenty of illegal ways of making money within the framework of norms.p.a.ce activities. So he left the secure monotony of the stars.h.i.+p to seek an enterprise which would bring in quick and copious profits.

His first step was to go see a rather disreputable acquaintance of his, Captain LudolfSchiemann. Schiemann was an ancient s.p.a.ceman from Earth, who owned and commanded a ramshackle craft of prehistoric design, held together with spit and spells.

Schiemann operated out of Capella IV with cargoes of whatever he could get. He was able to make a living with the Valkyrie only because he would take on jobs that no sane skipper would touch. Some were dangerous; most were illegal into the bargain. The risks were out of all proportion to the profit, which was why the only helper he'd been able to get was Balas, a big, powerful man, not old but mad. He'd been a deckhand on one of the big stars.h.i.+ps and had broken too early to be ent.i.tled to a pension.

Mattern had met old Schiemann at a bar in Burdon, the capital of Capella IV, and had had a few drinks with him, whenever the Perseus and the Valkyrie had happened to hit port at the same time. Schiemann had a favorite joke he kept repeating over and over: "If you ever get sick of the Perseus, Lennie sick of good food and hot water and decent quarters you can always come to the Valkyrie. I'll take care of you."

Now Mattern went to him and said he'd like to take Schiemann up on that offer.

The old man's pale green eyes protruded even further from his head. "You want to leave the Perseus for a berth on my s.h.i.+p! You're madder than Balas!"

"Not a berth, Pop," Mattern told him. "A share of her a half share."

Schiemann grinned. "Now you must think I'm crazy, to hand over half my s.h.i.+p just like that. Maybe you'd like me to sign her over to you entirely." And he puffed; savagely upon his Venuswood pipe.

"Look," Len said, "let's not kid ourselves. You're a crook, Pop, but such a lousy crook that you make it look as if crime really doesn't pay. And I'll tell you what's wrong with the way you operate. You have no organization, no system, no imagination. I have 'em all. You contribute the s.h.i.+p; I'll contribute my know-how.

Together, we'll make a fortune."

"Modest, aren't you?' the old man jeered. "What kind of know-how do you get working as a deckhand on a starboat? All right, maybe you're the universe's best metal polisher, but"

"Look, Pop," Len interrupted, "I'll make a deal with you. We work together for a year. If you don't pull in at least three times the amount you got before, as just your share, my half of the s.h.i.+p reverts to you. What could be fairer than that?"

Schiemann still wasn't convinced that he was not being played for a sucker. Being what he was, he could never expose himself to a court battle, no matter how much justice might be on his side in a particular instance. But he didn't think Len could be so rotten as to figure on something like that. Besides, the old captain couldn't helpliking the boy. So he agreed, saying as he did so, "I should have my head examined." But before the fourth voyage was out, he realized that he had never done a wiser thing in his life. Under Len's direction, the Valkyrie as a business enterprise was cleaning up.

Only in relative terms, of course. It took six months, over a dozen voyages, before Len managed to save enough for that night with Lyddy. And every time he made the jump in the Valkyrie, the hypers.p.a.cers told him, "One night won't be enough," and the honeyminded one had insisted, "You must want more than that. You must. Who could be satisfied with so little?"

Finally, the night came. It was wonderful, it was ecstasy, it was everything he had dreamed of but it was too short. "Goodbye, honey," Lyddy said as he left, "come back and see me again."

"When you have some more money," she meant. And it was all over.