She looked at him through the twilight. He didn’t meet her gaze. After a moment he cleared his throat and said, “Do you want to leave?”

  “Don’t you want to tell me about your family some more? No? Then 1 think it’s time we go.” She got to her feet. “Don’t you?”

  It was just midnight when they returned the flier to the agency. Kilgarin found out the directions to the central entertainment area of the Rylon port, thanked the man, gave him a standard chit tip, and went with Marka to the lift tubes, catching the next aircar to the lower levels.

  There was only one other man in the aircar with them, a Rylon native. Thin, wearing body paint on his chest, arms, and legs, he crouched on the bench that ran around the wall of the car, his legs drawn up and his fingers clasping his ankles. His eyes were white, his pupils dilated to near invisibility; his mouth was open and his breath hissed through lips that were cracked and raw. Kilgarin stood half-facing the Rylan; he caught almost nothing from the man’s mind, no emotion or whisper of intelligence. As Kilgarin watched, a line of mucus crept out of the man’s nostril and slipped down into the corner of his mouth. KILGARIN turned away. He and Marka left at the next stop. The Rylan didn’t.

  Rylon deserved its reputation, Kilgarin decided an hour later. It was indeed the most complete pleasure port he’d ever encountered, offering diversions he’d never imagined possible, as well as standard distractions for the tourist whose interests lay in more prosaic areas. There were brain devices of varying complexities, neural stimulators and depressants, exotic parlors, foods and liquors, women, men, animals, children—a literal explosion of the perverse. Kilgarin became rapidly ill. The third time he encountered a man like the one they’d seen in the aircar, he realized it wasn’t an unusual state for a native Rylan. To one extent or another, everyone who lived and worked on Rylon was addicted to some form of narcotic. No doubt, Kilgarin thought, it was supplied by the Company.

  The Central Area was circular, several concentric corridors enclosing an immense amphitheater where spectacles were staged on an hourly basis. The nearer one came to the amphitheater—the visitor was forced to proceed from ring to ring in order to reach the center—the more bizarre became the entertainments offered. Marka and Kilgarin worked their way through the nine rings in a little over two hours, neither speaking to the other; since the riverbank earlier in the evening, both had remained cool and introspective. Kilgarin felt no anger, himself, but knew that Marka was irritated with him, for reasons he didn’t care to comprehend. He respected the silence she offered him, however, and kept to it as they wandered from stall to stall, sometimes pausing to examine an article whose purpose was at first obscure. Several times Kilgarin wanted to bypass a stall that Marka insisted on investigating. The Cork knew she was doing it to punish him, for whatever wrong she thought he’d done her. He accepted it, but gradually it began to annoy him. When they reached the final ring, he wanted to take the aircar back to the port area, but she insisted that they visit the amphitheater. For the first time in several hours, she spoke to him directly.

  “How can 1 ever tell anyone I’d been to Rylon and hadn’t seen the theater?”

  He sighed. “If that’s what you want, we’ll go.”

  They avoided a man who was moving blindly through the crowded corridor, his skull enclosed in a helmet that cut off his vision and hearing, and when he was past they continued down the hall, toward the light that marked the theater entrance.

  Ty’ger was standing outside the entrance to the theater, talking with a young woman in Physical grays whom KILGARIN recognized as one of the Charter’s crew, and as the Physical half of Ty’ger’s Sensitive/Physical exploration team. Kilgarin wondered what she was doing here on Rylon with the Centaurian; normally a Sensitive/Physical team acted together only on unknown planets, mindlocked to make a more effective agent than either would be alone. Vaguely, the Cork remembered an image of the woman from his own mindlock with the Centaurian: her name was Luanne, he recalled, and Ty’ger’s relationship with her extended beyond the surface of alien worlds. It was unusual, but not unheard-of. Kilgarin debated approaching the two of them, had about decided against it when the decision was taken out of his hands.

  “Kilgarin—Marka—just the people we were looking for.” Ty’ger was striding toward them, grinning, leading Luanne with a hand tight around her wrist. “We were about to go inside, but Luanne said she didn’t want it to be just the two of us. We were discussing it when you two showed up and solved everything. You will join us, won’t you?”

  Marka flicked a nervous look at Kilgarin, then smiled back at Ty’ger. “If you want us to,” she said.

  “You’re still concerned about the other night, aren’t you? Yes, 1 know you are. Don’t be. That was then,” the Centaurian said,” and tonight is another matter entirely. It’s like I told you, Kilgarin. Some days I just don’t care about that friend of yours. Some days I just want to forget.”

  “Ty’ger, you’re hurting my hand,” Luanne said behind him. He glanced around, looked from her face to his hand around her wrist. He let go and she stepped away, nibbing her fingers along the band of pink skin where his fingers had squeezed her too tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” the Centaurian said.

  “Actually, we were thinking about not going—” Kilgarin began, but broke off when Marka glared at him. He felt himself growing angry.

  “Nonsense,” Ty’ger said loudly. “You have to see the theater, Kilgarin. Get your credit chit out. that’s it; now come along—it seems we’re in time for a new show.”

  He led the three of them into the theater, keeping up a stream of conversation that Kilgarin mostly ignored. The Cork was concentrating on placing a probe through Ty’ger’s mind, and was finding it impossible; there was no way to learn what the Centaurian was actually thinking, because Ty’ger had thoroughly blocked his mind.

  Inside the amphitheater they located four scats near the balcony rail. There were headsets connected to the armrest of each seat; Marka and Luanne put theirs on, but neither Ty’ger nor Kilgarin needed to—their natural talents would enable them to read the emotions of the players quite well. The theater was not usually frequented by Sensitives, it seemed, for around the four of them the majority of the audience wore the helmets. Kilgarin viewed the expressions on the Physicals in the amphitheater with distaste. There was a mixture of greed and fear visible in their twisted mouths and staring eyes. Kilgarin felt uneasy, though he hadn’t yet let down his barrier against the audience’s reactions, something he knew he would have to do during the course of the show.

  “Wait until you find out what they’re thinking,” Ty’ger said, noticing the look in the Cork’s eyes.

  “I’m not sure I want to,” Kilgarin replied.

  The spotlights came on in the theater below. Marka leaned forward, bracing her arms on the railing that protected her from the fifty-foot drop to the circular stage. Seven or eight men stood in the glare of the lights, positioned in such a way that each stood at the vertex of a huge star. They were dressed in silver and gold. Each man’s hands were encased in heavy plastisteel gauntlets, and the gauntlets were studded with silver spikes. Kilgarin frowned as he received the first thought-pulse from the “actors.” Their thoughts were muted and confused, and not one of them projected an aura of consciousness. He probed deeper—and jerked out with a start. The men were nearly mindless; part of their frontal lobes had been removed.

  “My god,” Kilgarin said.

  “Wait,” Ty’ger whispered. “Watch.”

  The spotlights shifted. Seven more figures stepped out of the shadows, moving gracefully into the center of the stage. They were women, modestly clad from the waist down, their legs concealed by tight hands of cloth wound from ankles to hips. All seven moved with a silky ease that astounded Kilgarin: they seemed almost animalistic. Touching their minds, he learned why. They too had been altered, but whereas the men were almost mindless and without emotion, the women still had their emotions intact—only their intelligence was gone.

  He watched, stunned, as the preconditioned “actresses” moved into position around the men, forming another star that enclosed the first. The audience became hushed. KILGARIN caught a glimpse of Ty’ger’s face, and beside him, Marka’s. Luanne wasn’t visible, hidden behind the Centaurian’s shoulder. Kilgarin returned his attention to the stage. Light glinted on the plastisteel gauntlets.

  Slowly at first, then with increasing frenzy, the actors and actresses began to dance.

  Kilgarin watched for several minutes. Then he asked Marka if she wanted to stay. When she didn’t answer, he got up and left the theater, and found a public lavatory and was sick.

  “Another cup?”

  “Please,” Kilgarin said. He accepted the coffee gratefully.

  “You’re too pale. You sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

  “Nothing, Cook.”

  “You want to talk about it, Kilgarin?”

  “No. Leave me alone, Cook. Just let me sit here. Just leave me alone.”

  After a while he left the cafeteria and went to his cabin. Apart from the Cook, the ship was empty; there were no other minds to intrude upon his. All the other crew members were down at the port. Even the Captain. Kilgarin reached his cabin and shut himself inside. Taking out the transparent pouch with its blocks of wood, he sat staring at them for several minutes, toying with a knife that he’d sharpened to a glittering edge.

  Very deliberately, he took the smaller of the two wooden blocks, a partially finished carving of a tiny animal, and he jabbed at it with the knife until the block was cut and scratched, chips of wood lying on the desk around it, and he continued to jab at the figure until the knife blade snapped and he cut himself on the jagged edge.

  He sucked at the wound, eyes closed. He didn’t hear the door to his cabin slide open, but he heard it when it shut.

  She looked at him with eyes that were red and swollen, but not, he thought, from crying.

  “What do you want?” he asked. She flinched at the sound of his voice. It was harsh, clipped.

  “Cook told me you were in here. He told me you’d been sick.”

  “Why should you care?” Kilgarin asked. “I’m surprised you noticed I was gone.”

  “That’s not fair, Killy. You know how—hypnotic that sort of thing can be.”

  “No. I don’t, Marka. On my world people would have been killed for doing something like that. People would have been beaten for watching it. And you just sat there…enjoying it.”

  “I didn’t enjoy it,” she said quietly.

  “You enjoyed everything about that place,” the Cork said. He glanced at the figurine lying in a clutter of wood chips on his desk. He poked at it with his knife.

  “Killy, I was trying to—to hurt you. Because you hurt me. I never thought it’d go so deeply with you—”

  “Hurt you?” Kilgarin looked up. “When?”

  “On the riverbank, when you were telling me about your family. Flaunting it. I never had a family, Kilgarin. and you knew that. The way you spoke about your parents—your brother—how was l supposed to feel?” Her voice had a pleading quality in it. Kilgarin was suddenly less certain about her eyes.

  “I didn’t realize it would bother you.” he told her. Seeing her like this made him uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t have said it if I’d known.”

  She didn’t answer. The muscles in her face worked. Turning her head to avoid his eyes, she glanced at the shelf over the bed console. A dozen wooden statues stared back at her. None was higher than six inches. “1 never saw your cabin before,” she said. “Or those.”

  Kilgarin waited. Finally she turned back to him. “I’m sorry too, Killy. I didn’t think your frontier planet morality was so strong. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Marka,” Kilgarin said. She pursed her lips, as though she were about to speak, then shook her head, said something too softly for him to understand the words, and left the room. He listened to her footsteps recede, and pressed the heat-sensitive tab beside the door, and the door slid shut. He went back to his desk.

  He didn’t like the way he felt. It was too much like the feeling he’d had three years before, when he’d found himself becoming dependent on Marka. It was an uncomfortable sensation. He didn’t know what to do.

  Lifting the scratched carving, he placed it carefully in the pouch, sealed the bag, and set it back in its niche in the desk unit. The niche whirred shut around it.

  Chapter Five

  Eighth month, twentieth day, anno Domini 3146

  Mind-drive:

  The colors come slowly, washing one over another, pulsing from infrared to ultraviolet. Kilgarin feels the colors moving through him, warm to cold, and he sifts his mental hands through that arterial river, letting the strong emotions through and halting the ego-destructive “silt.”

  Here, a man contemplates suicide—and Kilgarin’s hand reaches, touches, soothes.

  There, a man trembles on the verge of madness—and Kilgarin caresses, removes.

  Ahead of the Charter, bands of color appear from a central point, widening to their maximum width as they run beside the mindship and shrinking once more as they vanish to the rear. Elongated spots of white dot the rainbow streamers, indicating stars and, sometimes, galaxies. All seem alike, here in the Back Region: giants, white dwarfs, neutron stars, the remains of nebulas or portions of a galactic cloud. Each is a speck of white in the river of color. Size varies little, as does intensity. In the Back Region, all lights are the same—only the mindship glows brilliant.

  Kilgarin senses other minds riding outside the mindship sphere. The mental field of Wells, the Engineer, is quite apparent, as arc the fields of the Communications agent, Ryork, the Technicians, the Navigators, and the other Sensitives who help maintain the psychic sphere. The most prominent of the fields, however, is not an organic one—it is the artificial mind-web of the Captain, the electronic field established by his Set, which allows him to supervise the ship’s progress and course. Like a king on horseback, he rides at the forefront, dominating the scene. His presence invades Kilgarin’s thoughts. His control is absolute.

  He is everywhere.

  And so is Kilgarin.

  Here, the beginnings of a fight in the recreation room—and Kilgarin soothes, calms, removes the pain and anger.

  There, a stark burst of hate, a woman’s anguish—and the Cork guides, gentle fingers releasing and revealing.

  On through the darkness, deep into the Back Region, the Charter glides. And everywhere there is Kilgarin, their valve—soothing and alive.

  Mind-drive:

  He sat with Wells in the Engineer’s quarters in the southern hemisphere of the ship. They sipped brandy and talked, from time to time moving the pieces on the board they’d set on the bed between them. Kilgarin found the game relaxing, though ultimately boring. Wells, on the other hand, was a true enthusiast. Both men had learned the game on their homeworld, but Wells had gone on into collecting and studying the various versions that had popped up during history. He had several antique sets and would display them at the slightest provocation. Kilgarin had learned not to show too much interest, or else he would be forced to suffer a long and involved lecture on the origin of each piece, its history, and its classic use in the strategy of the game of chess.

  “How long have you known him?” Kilgarin asked, continuing their discussion.

  “The Captain? Lord, six years now at the least. I met him just before he became Mate on the Charter. We shipped on the Lady together, back—oh—back around ’40. He was in Administration then, and I was a Technician. He’d been working his way up on the Lady for almost seven years, and I’d been a Tech for about that time myself. Quiet fellow; we had a drink or two in a crowd when we’d hit port, nothing special. Then this Charter thing came along and they asked me to join up—it was a new ship, just commissioned—and I recommended him for First Mate. That was in ’43. 1 was friends with the Company hiring officer at the time, you see.”

  “Hm,” said Kilgarin.

  “We got along, the Captain and I. A bright lad, even then. Bit quiet, like I say, but he can handle himself in a tough spot, that’s for certain.”

  “Oh?”

  Wells moved a piece, grinning. “Find your way out of that. Fellow.” He scratched at his neck, still grinning, and continued, “Sure, he was a quick one. One time when he was Mate we were hit by some sort of epidemic on one of these colonial worlds on the Arm. The entire damned area was down with this bug, and it was killing our crew one after another. Our old Captain sent the lad off to one of the other cities, where they had some sort of serum. Classic. He took along two other Physicals, and both of them got sick, but somehow the .Mate managed to get back the serum by himself. He did. You should have seen his face when he came back to the ship, carrying those damned big packs—like a haunted man’s. Serum didn’t work, though. Bug died out on its own.”

  “Sounds like an apocryphal story,” Kilgarin said.

  “Maybe,” Wells said, “but it’s true.”

  Kilgarin moved a piece on the board, and Wells gave a laugh. He placed a pawn on the same square with Kilgarin's knight. “Mate,” he said, “that’s check.”

  Morning greeted the Charter when the mindship made its third landfall of the trip. Kilgarin was one of the first on the surface of the virgin world, in time to catch the earliest rays of the rising sun. The other members of the ship’s exploratory team bustled about him, but Kilgarin hardly noticed them; he was totally immersed in the dawn, in the beginning of a new day on a world no man had ever seen before. He wondered if this would be the planet where they’d finally discover intelligent life. The odds were as much for it as against it. He drew a breath of the bitterly cold air, knowing he was foolish to feel the way he did—but unable to help himself, any more than he ever could help himself the first few minutes on a completely alien shore. The air tasted clean in his nostrils. (And wasn’t there the slightest hint of salt in that taste? Perhaps.)

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23