Universe 4 - [Anthology] Read online

  “It looks like some photographs,” said Raulf. “They were on the seat when we arrived.”

  “Indeed,” said Clachey. “So you think you’re going to import Aquitanian gunk? Do you have any tablets on you?”

  “Of course not,” said Raulf. “What do you take us for? Criminals?”

  “Empty your pockets,” said Delmar. “If there’s gunk in the group, somebody’s probation is in bad trouble.”

  Paul, Raulf and Bo wordlessly arranged the contents of their pockets on the table. One at a time they stood up while Delmar deftly patted them up and down. “Oh, what’s this?” From Paul’s waistband he extracted one of those devices known as stingers, capable of hurling needles of lethal or anesthetic drugs across a room or a street and into a man’s neck. Bo and Raulf were clean.

  “Pay your respects to all,” Clachey told Paul. “I believe that this is up and out, Amhurst.”

  “It might well be,” Paul agreed dolefully.

  A drunk lurched away from the bar and careened into the two detectives. “Can’t a man drink in peace without you noses breathing down his neck?”

  A waiter tugged at his arm and muttered a few words.

  “So they’re after gunkers!” stormed the drunk. “What of that? Up in Cloudhaven there’s fancy gunk-parlors; why don’t the noses go raid up there? It’s always the poor scroffs who get the knocks.”

  The waiter managed to lead him away.

  Bo said, “For a fact, how come you don’t raid Cloudhaven?”

  “We got our hands full with the scroffs, like the man said,” replied Delmar, without heat.

  Clachey amplified the remark. “They pay; they have the money. The scroffs don’t have the money. They loot to get it. They’re the problem, them and you merchants.”

  Delmar said to Bo, “This is a final notification, which will be inserted into your record. I warn you that you have been observed in the company of known criminals. If this occurs again, it’s up and out.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” said Bo in a heavy voice. He rose to his feet and jerked his hand at Hernanda. “Come along. We can’t even take a drink in a respectable tavern without persecution.”

  Delmar and Clachey led away the despondent Paul Amhurst.

  “Just as well,” said Raulf. “He’s too erratic.”

  Bo grunted. “I’m going to have to lay low. Until I think of something.”

  Raulf made a sign of comprehension; Bo and Hernanda departed Kongo’s. “Where now?” asked Hernanda.

  “I don’t know ... I don’t feel like much. There’s nowhere to go.” As if involuntarily he glanced up to the stars which burned through the night-glare. Rampold? Where was Rampold?

  Hernanda took Bo’s arm and led him down the escalator to the Shermond slideway. “I haven’t been over to Jillyville for a while. It’s just across the bridge.”

  Bo grumbled automatically, but could think of nothing better.

  They crossed River Louthe by the Vertes Avenue Bridge, and sauntered through the flower market which for centuries had created a zone of clotted color in the shadow of the Epidrome.

  Hernanda wanted to wander through the Epidrome and perhaps risk a dollar or two at one of the games of chance. “So long as you use your own money,” said Bo gracelessly. “I don’t intend to throw gold down a rathole. Not at sixteen dollars a day on that buffing machine.”

  Hernanda became sulky and refused to enter the Epidrome, which suited Bo well enough. The two moodily walked up to the Parade.

  As they passed the Black Opal Cafe, Bo noticed Alice’s copper-glinting hair. He stopped short, then led Hernanda to a table. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “Here? It’s the most expensive place along the Parade!”

  “Money means nothing to Big Bo the Histle.”

  Hernanda shrugged, but made no objection.

  Bo selected a table twenty feet from where Waldo sat with Alice. He punched buttons, deposited coins; a moment later a waitress brought out their refreshment: lime beer for Bo and frozen rum for Hernanda.

  Alice saw them and raised her camera; in irritation Bo put his head down on his hand. Hernanda stared at Alice and the camera. Tourists everywhere, taking photographs.

  “We should be flattered.”

  Bo gave Waldo a baleful examination. “Toffs out slumming—him, anyway. She’s off-world. A starlander.”

  Hernanda scrutinized each detail of Alice’s gown, hair, face and her fillet of jade pebbles. “She’s just a child and a bit tatty. She looks as if she’d never seen a stylist in her life.”

  “Probably hasn’t.”

  Hernanda looked at him suspiciously, sidelong. “Are you interested?”

  “Not all so much. She looks happy. I wonder why. It’s probably her first time to Hant; soon she’ll be heading back into nowhere. What has she got to live for?”

  “She’s probably rolling in money. I could have it too if I were willing to put up with her kind of life.”

  Bo chuckled. “It’s remarkable, for a fact. Well, she’s harmless, or so I suppose.”

  “Certainly nothing much to look at. All young eagerness and dancing around the maypole. Hair like a straw pile . . .Bo!”

  “What?”

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “My mind is roving the star lanes.”

  Waldo and Alice rose from their table and left the café. Bo’s lewd conjectures caused him to suck in his breath. “Come along.”

  Hernanda sulkily swung her head away, and remained in her seat. Bo paid her no heed. Speechless with indignation, she watched him go.

  Waldo and Alice halted to avoid a jeek. Bo reached from the side and gave the jeek’s tail horn a hard slap. The jeek voided upon Waldo. Alice glanced at Bo in consternation, then turned to Waldo. “It’s that man there who did it!”

  “Where? Which man?” croaked Waldo.

  Suddenly alive to the danger of apprehension and police charges, Bo slid away through the crowd. Reeking and smarting, Waldo pursued him. Bo ran across the Parade, off into one of the rancid little alleys of the Alien Quarter. Wild with rage, Waldo followed.

  Bo ran across the plaza where a dozen or more jeeks stood at a chest-high bench ingesting salt-froth. Waldo halted, looking here and there; Bo darted forth and thrust him into the group of jeeks; Waldo’s impetus overturned the bench. Bo ran fleetly away, while the jeeks trampled Waldo, struck him with their secondary stubs, squirted him with tar.

  Alice appeared with a pair of patrolmen, who flashed red lights at the jeeks and froze them into rigidity.

  Waldo crept across the plaza on his hands and knees, and vomited the contents of his stomach.

  “Poor Waldo,” said Alice.

  “Leave him to us, miss,” said the corporal. “Just a question or two, then I’ll call down a cab. Who is this gentleman?”

  Alice recited Waldo’s name and address.

  “And how did he get in this mess?”

  Alice explained as best she could.

  “Was this man in the green pants known to either of you?”

  “I’m sure not. The whole affair seems so strange.”

  “Thank you, miss. Come along, I’ll call the cab.”

  “What of poor Waldo?”

  “He’ll be all right. We’ll take him to the dispensary to be cleaned up. Tomorrow he’ll be as good as new.”

  Alice hesitated. “I don’t like to leave him, but I’d better be getting home; I’ve a great deal to do tomorrow.”

  4

  Bo gave no thought to Hernanda; he strode along the Parade in a strange savage mood, comprehensible to himself least of all. Why had he acted so? Not that he was sorry; on the contrary, he had hoped to soil the girl as well.

  He returned to his Fulchock apartment, where he thought of Hernanda for the first time. She was nowhere in evidence, nor had he expected her, nor did he want her. What he craved was something unattainable, something indescribable.

  He wanted the red-haired girl, and for the f
irst time in his life he thought not in terms of sheer submission, but admiration and affection and a manner of living he could only sluggishly imagine.

  He flung himself upon his couch and fell into a torpor.

  Gray-blue light awoke Bo. He groaned, rolled over on his couch and sat up.

  He went to look at himself in the mirror. The sullen heavy-jawed face under the tangle of blond ringlets provided him neither distress nor joy; Bo Histledine merely looked at Bo Histledine.

  He showered, dressed, drank a mug of bitter mayhaw tea, and ruminated.

  Why not? Bo rasped at himself. He was as good as anyone, and better than most. If not one way, then another—but own her, possess her he would. The aspirations of the night before were flimsy shadows; Bo was a practical man.

  The spaceyards? The buffing machine? As remote as the winds of last summer.

  Bo dressed with care in gray and white pantaloons, a loose dark-blue shirt with a dark-red cravat, a soft gray cap pulled low over his forehead. Examining himself in the mirror, Bo found himself oddly pleased with his appearance. He looked, so he thought, less bulky and even somewhat younger: perhaps because he felt excited.

  He removed the cravat and opened the collar of his shirt. The effect pleased him: he looked—so he thought—casual and easy, less heavy in the chin and jaw. What of the tight blond curls which clustered over his ears and gave his face—so he thought—a sullen, domineering look? Bo yanked the cap down over his forehead and left his apartment.

  At a nearby studio, a hairdresser trimmed away clustering curls and rubbed brown toner into the hair remaining. Different, thought Bo. Better? Hard to say. But different.

  He rode the tube south to Lake Werle in Elmhurst, then went by slideway to the Academy.

  Bo now moved tentatively; never before had he visited the Academy. He passed under the Gate of the Universe and stood looking across the campus. Giant elms stood dreaming in the wan morning sunlight; beyond rose the halls of the various academic disciplines. Students streamed past him: young men and women from the backlands and the far worlds, a few from Cloudhaven and the patrician suburbs, others from the working-class areas to the north.

  The business of the day was only just beginning. Bo asked a few questions and was directed to the central cab landing; here he leaned against a wall and composed himself for a possibly long wait.

  An hour passed. Bo frowned through a discarded student journal, wondering why anyone considered such trivia worth the printing.

  A cab dropped from the sky; Alice stepped to the ground. Bo dropped the journal and watched her, keen as a hawk. She wore a black jacket, a gray skirt, black stockings reaching up almost to her knees; at her waist hung her note-taking apparatus. For a moment she stood looking about her, alert and attentive, mouth curved in a half-smile.

  Bo leaned forward, encompassing her with the hot force of his will. He scrutinized her inch by inch, memorizing each of her attributes. Body: supple, slender; delightful slim legs. Hair flowing and glowing like brushed copper. Face: calm, suffused with—what? gaiety? merriment? optimism? The air around her quivered with the immediacy of her presence.

  Bo resented her assurance. This was the whole point! She was smug! Arrogant! She thought herself better than ordinary folk because her father was a commander of the O.T.E. ... Bo had to admit that this was not true. He would have preferred that it were. Her self-sufficiency was inherent. Bo envied her: a bubble of self-knowledge opened into his brain. He wanted to be like her: easy, calm, magnificent. The inner strength of the starlander was such that she never thought to measure herself against someone else. True! Alice was neither smug nor arrogant; on the contrary, she knew no vanity, nor even pride. She was herself; she knew herself to be intelligent, beautiful and good; nothing more was necessary.

  Bo compressed his lips. She must concede him equality. She must know his strength, recognize his fierce virility.

  Tragedy might be latent in the situation. If so, let it come! He was Bo Histledine, Big Boo the Blond Brute, who did as he pleased, who drove through life, reckless, feckless, giving way to no one.

  Alice walked toward the halls of learning. Bo followed, twenty feet behind, admiring the jaunty motion of her body.

  5

  That morning, immediately after breakfast, Alice had telephoned Waldo at Cloudhaven. The Waldo who appeared on the screen was far different from that handsome, serene and gallant Waldo who had arrived by cab the previous evening to show her the city. This Waldo was pale, gaunt and grim, and met Alice’s sympathetic inspection with a shifting, darting gaze. “No bones broken,” he said in a muffled voice. “I’m lucky there. Once the jeeks start on a man they’ll kill him, and they can’t be punished because they’re aliens.”

  “And this stuff they squirted on you: is it poisonous?”

  Waldo made a guttural sound and directed one of his burning suspicious glances into the screen. “They scoured me and scrubbed me, and shaved all my hair. Still I smell it. The stuff apparently reacts with skin protein, and stays until a layer of skin wears off.”

  “Certainly a remarkable affair,” mused Alice. “I wonder who would do a thing like that? And why?”

  “I know who, at least. It was the fellow in green pantaloons at the table opposite. I’ve been meaning to ask you: didn’t you photograph that couple?”

  “Yes, indeed I did! They seemed such a typical pair! I don’t think you can identify the man; his head is turned away. But the woman is clear enough.”

  Waldo thrust his head forward with something of his old animation. “Good! Will you bring over the photograph? I’ll show it to the police; they’ll work up an identification fast enough. Somebody’s going to suffer.”

  “I’ll certainly send over the photograph,” said Alice. “But I’m afraid that I don’t have time to drop by. The Academy is on my schedule for today.”

  Waldo drew back, eyes glittering. “You won’t learn much in one day. It usually takes a week just for orientation.”

  “I think I can find the information I want in just an hour or two; anyway, that’s all the time I can spare.”

  “And may I ask the nature of this information?” Waldo’s voice now had a definite edge. “Or is it a secret?”

  “Of course not!” Alice laughed at the thought. “I’m mildly curious as to the formal methods of transmitting the urbanite ideology. Academicians are naturally a diverse lot, but in general they are confirmed urbanites: in fact, I suppose this is the basis upon which they attain their positions. After all, rabbits don’t hire lions to teach their children.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Waldo haughtily.

  “It’s perfectly simple. The Academy indoctrinates young rabbits in rabbitry, to pursue the metaphor, and I’m mildly curious as to the techniques.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time,” said Waldo. “I attend the Academy and I’m not aware of any ‘rabbitry,’ as you put it.”

  “You would be more apt to notice its absence,” said Alice. “Goodbye, Waldo. It was kind of you to show me Jillyville; I’m sorry the evening ended unpleasantly.”

  Waldo stared at the fresh young face, so careless and gay. “ ‘Goodbye’?”

  “I may not be seeing you again. We won’t be in Hant all that long. But perhaps someday you’ll come out to the starlands.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Waldo muttered.

  A curious affair, Alice reflected, as she rode the cab down to the Academy. The man in the green pantaloons probably mistook Waldo for someone else. Or he might have acted out of sheer perversity; such folk were probably not uncommon in the psychological stew of the great city Hant.

  The cab discharged her on a plat at the center of the campus. She stood a moment admiring the prospect: the walks and slideways leading here and there across landscaped vistas, the white halls under great elms, the great Enoie Memorial Clock Tower, formed from a single quartz crystal four hundred and sixty feet high. Students passed in their picturesque garments, each a small lonely cosmos
exquisitely sensitive to the psychic compulsions of his environment. Alice gave her head a wistful shake and went to an information placard where the component structures of the Academy were identified: the Halls of Physical Science, Biologies, Mathematics, Human History, Anthropology and Comparative Culture, Xenology, Cosmology, Human Ideas and Arts, a dozen others. She read an informational notice addressed to visitors:

  Each hall consists of a number of conduits, or thematic passages, equipped with efficient pedagogical devices. The conduits are interconnected, to provide a flexible passage through any particular discipline, in accordance with the needs of the individual. The student determines his special field of interest, and is issued a chart designating his route through the hall. He moves at a rate dictated by his assimilative ability; his comprehension is continuously verified; when the end is reached he has mastered his subject.