Читать книгу Swan Song - Brian Stableford - Страница 6

CHAPTER THREE

There were three of them, and they were big.

Sam was still with me. We’d had a few drinks and we’d had a stroll, and we talked. Mostly about space and spacefaring. Nothing exciting. Nothing important. Nothing about the sad and sorry mess. When it came time for Sam’s turn to mind the baby we set out for the ship. The softening squad was waiting by the gate to the field.

They were obviously local talent, hired to do a little of what they might well be doing anyhow, on their own account, to somebody else. They weren’t really there for the purpose of hurting me—though they would. Nor were they there in order to persuade me to listen to Caradoc’s brand of reason. They were just there to drop a hint, to let me know that what I already knew was not only true but inescapable.

They didn’t want to take us in the middle of the street, so they came shuffling out of the shadows with the intention of herding us down a convenient alley before working us over. I took a couple of quick steps back, and they moved like lightning to cut me off, but I maneuvered myself into the blaze of the lights, into the center-street pool of glare from the clip joints and the neon signs. I wasn’t going to let them have their party in private.

There were people on the street, flitting back and forth. But they moved swiftly, without any hint of a glance in my direction, and pretended to be shadows.

There was music—loud, fast, drum-beating—oozing out of the fun-parlors on either side. The street was only twelve feet wide, but the music seemed to be coming from a vast distance. Nevertheless, I found myself thinking in time to it as I stopped in my tracks, and the twanging of the guitars was oddly noticeable. I had half a dozen shadows sprawling across the smooth street-some pink, some green.

“Get out of it, Sam,” I said. “They might not bother with you.”

“Ha!” he muttered. “You they do for the drop. I’m thrown in as a bonus. Tonight’s special offer. Besides, there are only three of them.”

They stood still, mocking us with their coolness and their fake mafia stances. Sam knew as well as I did that we didn’t stand a chance. Not even if there were only two.

“Run,” I said.

“Don’t be a fool.”

They were wallowing in their anticipation as they swayed forward like a trio of ballet-dancing bulldozers. They were letting the tension build up to snapping point.

It snapped, and in they came.

I knew that it was no good trying to get away, and I made up my mind that I was going to hit one of them a blow he’d feel. But when the first boot went into my gut I knew that there wasn’t going to be any gesture of defiance. I tried one desperate kick that didn’t have any real chance of mashing anybody’s balls, and then I began to fold up. I hid my face with one arm and my nether regions with the other hand, and I let them knock me sideways toward the light-streaming window on my left.

I was brought up against the plate-glass so hard that when my ear came away again I thought for one ungodly moment I’d cracked it and they were going to send me crashing through it to slash myself to ribbons in the debris.

Somebody said “Get the bastards!” in a voice full of hatred and loathing, and for a crazy instant I wondered how they came to be hating me on top of it all. I just couldn’t understand why anyone should be so goddamn mean. Then I realized that it was the heavy mob who were getting got, and getting got in no uncertain terms. With some considerable shock I realized that it was the kid from the ship who had spoken the magic words—the kid whose name I didn’t even know. He wasn’t alone.

It was at least ten against three, and I have to confess that it was a pretty enough sight from where I was sitting. I’m by no means a violent man, but I can lie down beside the nastiest fight and not get a bit upset if those who are suffering have harbored nasty thoughts toward me.

Nasty thoughts they had certainly harbored, but thanks to providence they hadn’t done me any lasting damage.

Sam Parks helped me up from where I’d slid down the window.

“Cretins,” he said, mumbling slightly because someone had hit him hard on the side of his mouth. “I been on this road all my life. There isn’t a door on thirty-two worlds I can’t yell ‘help’ into and not get it.”

“Thanks, Sam,” I said.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank the guys who answered. But they’ll be glad enough to help. Spacemen, handlers—even port officers—they all come in for a bit of hammer from the local delinquents from time to time. Look at them...you can see they’re enjoying themselves. A bit of their own back for most, I guess.”

The fight seemed to be growing. A lot of people seemed to want a bit of their own back.

“I think the locals got reinforcements,” I said.

“It wouldn’t be polite to leave,” he pointed out.

I saw his point, but I didn’t see much point in staggering back into the fray. I might end up just as badly mauled as the vicious threesome had initially intended. It was hard to decide how much time I could, in all decency, spend sagging back against the window looking pained, but I was saved the embarrassment of having to show my gratitude and camaraderie by further participation when the police turned up.

Within minutes the street was empty of all but honest spacemen and their friends. No arrests seemed likely to be made, and everyone seemed quite unworried about the whole affair. I thanked the kid, honestly and sincerely. He looked glad to have been of assistance, and pretty proud of himself. So far as I was concerned, he was welcome.

Sam and I continued on our weary way back to the Sandman.

“You’re hot,” he said.

“I know,” I told him.

“There’s going to be more trouble,” he predicted dolefully.

I knew that too, and I said so.

“If there’s anything I can do...,” he said, without any extraordinary enthusiasm.

“There’s no point in sticking your neck out along with mine,” I told him. “Don’t get involved with Caradoc. It hurts. There’s only one man can get me out of this and I’m not sure that he’d bother. Come to that, I’m not sure if the cure is much better than the disease. If I could reach him, which I can’t.”

“You want me to send a message?”

“It’d take weeks to get where it has to go. Things are a bit more imminent than that, I really feel. If we can lift off tomorrow, maybe I can gain the time to get things sorted out so Charlot will get them off my back. But if we can’t....”

I left it hanging, which was how I felt.

We got back to the ship without encountering any more trouble, and the officer who was watching it while the captain was hunting up contacts let us in. We went up to the cockpit and set the screen to give us a view of the distant port offices.

“You got a gun?” asked Sam.

“Never owned one in my life,” I told him.

“Draw one from the locker,” he advised. “I’ll make sure Haeckel okays it in the morning.”

I shook my head.

He sprawled in one of the couches, fiddling with the straps and eyeing me dourly.

“We could—” he said, and trailed off.

“Go on,” I prompted.

His lips formed the word “lift,” but there was barely any sound behind it.

“Oh sure,” I said, trying not to sound too derisory. “Just you and me. Off into the unknown. That’s a crime, you know. Mutiny, theft...there must be more. Never to set foot in any recognized port again. Alien worlds and the backsides of maverick colonies. It’s a great life for the congenitally lonely.”

“It’s been done,” he said quietly, shielding himself from the half-hearted sarcasm.

“It’s been done,” I agreed. “But not so often. It’s easy. Sometimes it’s downright attractive. But you know the score, Sam, even if you never kicked around on alien worlds and never made an illicit landing in your life. Sure, no port authority has a hope in hell of controlling all traffic in and out of its territory. But the system works...just how are we supposed to make a living in a tin can like this? How do we pay for the fuel? It isn’t the bounds of possibility that has us caged, Sam, it’s the money. Money is a medium of exchange...and it has to be exchanged. That’s where you can’t break the system...right there. The law couldn’t catch us, but that doesn’t mean we’d get away. Thanks for the offer.”

I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. I’m no lover of port authority and carrying papers and doing everything the right way, but I’d had experience. Years of it. Lapthorn was always trying to get beyond human reach, to cast himself—and me—adrift, to become a real citizen of the galaxy instead of just a human invader. It’s just not that simple. I understand the urge to be a highwayman, to abandon all responsibility and cast off all repression, and I sympathize. I really do. But it’s only a dream, and no matter where the rim is said to be, the sticky fingers of civilization can reach you, so long as you’re trying to operate with six thousand tons of very complicated, very expensive human technology wrapped around you. Space may offer unlimited freedom, but you can’t collect unless you can do without a spaceship. That’s the way it is.

Nevertheless, the wind chipped in, it has been done.

Don’t remind me, I said.

Meanwhile, the silence was hanging a little heavy on Sam’s hands. He felt that he was involved in this, somehow. I’d known him only a matter of days, and most of our business had been transacted through a call circuit, but already he was as close to me as Lapthorn had ever been. I was letting him stand that close, and I knew it. By not reacting to his presence I was slowly sucking him into my problem. A year ago, I couldn’t have let that happen.

After a while, he said, “What are you going to do?”

I didn’t know. I thought that was obvious. What was there to be done?

“There’s only one thing you can do, you know,” he said.

“I’m not going to hijack the ship,” I said, “and I’m not going to shoot it out. I’m not Dick Turpin, I’m not Billy the Kid, and I’m not Flash Gordon.”

“It’s either run into space,” he said, with an all too accurate assessment of the probable alternatives, “or run on the ground. You can’t dodge a man like that standing still.”

His logic was devastating. I had this slender thread of hope which stretched n thousand light-years to the long arm of Titus Charlot and the New Alexandrian puppetmasters, but no gambler would ever put his loose change on a chance like that, let alone his shirt and all its contents. I had to reckon to be on my own, and if I was on my own I had to start thinking rabbit. It was either space or dirt. Sam was on my side, and if I could only reach Captain Haeckel’s hard heart maybe a run for the stars was on—semi-legally, at least. But if Haeckel wasn’t on the side of the angels...if he even remained neutral....

And we had to remember that it wasn’t Haeckel’s ship. He was an employee, not an entrepreneur. And I knew from the way he chewed his gum that he hadn’t spent his boyhood dreaming about the day he was going to cut loose and become a highwayman. He was nobody’s sucker, and his best friend would never accuse him of being a hero. No serious student of probability would back Haeckel. No way. So what was I left with?

Mud.

“It’s not a bad world,” said Sam, meaning it was godawful. “The colony hasn’t ever really got off the ground, but you know damn well that the way the billions scattered, no colony ever had a fair chance without luck or a bonanza.” That was true enough, I guessed—the old overpopulation neurosis and the back-to-the-trees brigade had contrived to spread the human race as thin as butter in an Earthside sandwich.

“It’s rough out beyond the port complex,” said Sam, “but that might be all to the good from your point of view.”

“I’m no backwoodsman,” I told him sourly. “I’m not the type to go traipsing out into nowhere to build myself a log cabin, plant potatoes, and trap the local equivalent of the squirrel. It’s not my life. I’m a machine-man. I’m a starman, and you can’t be a starman without living so close to machines you become fifty percent printed circuit yourself. If nothing else, I’ve proved that in my long and checkered past. I spent two years on the side of a mountain haunting the ruins of a shattered starships, and it was every single day too long. It’s not my life. It’s just no kind of life at all.”

“It’s not forever,” said Sam. “The heat never lasts forever. They’d lose interest in you...how fast? A year? A month? This bird has better things to do than hang around here waiting for you to surface. How can he search a world?”

He was right, of course. Unless I wanted to face out Soulier—and I’d have to be crazy to do that—I had to take a long walk in the wilderness. My memory kept flashing back to the long blur in my history that was two tormented years on a bleak black rock. Here, there were trees. But it was still cold, still wild, still empty. I stared the prospect in the face, but it wasn’t an easy one to look at steadily. Two years of sitting in on my own death-watch had provided me with one hell of a distaste for the simple life.

No doubt I could survive it, but could I face it?

How about you, sunbeam? I asked. What’s your solution?

You got it all taped, he said. There’s nothing to add.

It must be the first time, I commented bitterly.

I’m only a tactician, he said. I could have won you the fight if you hadn’t been so determined to play tortoise. I can keep you alive till tomorrow. Say the word and we’ll go to war with Soulier. But you’re the strategist. It’s your body and your life. You live it the way you choose to live it. You need help, you call me, and it’s yours. But you and I have both learned a lot from trying to fit together. I’m hurling no insults, I’m making no comments. I’ll go along with you.

That I suppose, testified to the fact that I’d won some kind of victory in the months of my freedom. I’d won respect from my mind parasite. One time, he’d been ever-ready to tell me exactly how to take the next hurdle—and ever-ready to take it himself if I was ready to cop out. I’d learned from him, he from me. We were running the race together now.

It didn’t help the decision, but if he’d offered advice it wouldn’t have helped either. It would have sidetracked the whole issue. This way, I was still poised. Devil or deep blue sea?

“It pays to stay alive,” said Sam.

“I’m not going to let Soulier have his way,” I said. “Of all things, that’s the top priority. I can’t fight Caradoc, but I’m damned if I’ll let them crush me. I’ll go to hell first, let alone the backwoods. They made me an offer I can’t refuse.”

“That’s the worst kind,” agreed Sam.

“So bugger ’em. I’ll cheat the bastards if it kills me.”

Trouble was, it might.

My stomach had never recovered from the sinking it took when I first found the man from Caradoc standing at my shoulder, and the gut-blow it took from the heavy hadn’t helped any. If it wasn’t for the wind I could have had a hellish case of indigestion. In spite of the wind, I felt one coming on.

Then the call circuit beeped. It sounded like I felt.

I automatically reached out to answer it, but Sam was up off his couch knocking my hand away. “I’m O.O.W.,” he muttered. “Want to get me shot?”

He acknowledged the call, and I heard the captain’s voice interrupt him, in a cold, syrupy tone.

“You get that drive-unit into shape,” he said. “Wake Grainger. I’ve got the others here and I’m bringing them in. Plus a couple of passengers. We’ve been chartered and we’re taking off tonight. As soon as humanly possible. These guys have pressing business.”

“We can’t,” Sam protested. “Half the cargo is still underneath our fins. They knocked off shifting it when their time ran out. Where you going to find a gang at this time of night? Or is the kid going to do it all himself?”

“The gang is on its way out right now,” said the captain. “The area will be clear in ninety minutes. We’ve been cleared for takeoff already. We lift at oh-oh-six ship-standard. Move it.”

“Yes, Captain Haeckel, sir,” said Sam, with more than a hint of insubordination, “you’re the boss.”

He switched off the circuit, and he turned his pale eyes on me.

“They found out you’re not in the hospital,” he said. “You just ran right out of time. If you’re going to run, you better start right now. They’ll be covering the port, but there are ways of getting through the perimeter....”

My legs were itching. For all I knew they might be underneath the fins right now, with a butterfly net, just waiting. I looked at the screen, and I saw half a dozen tiny figures ambling across the tarpol. The jumbo crew. No Haeckel, no passengers.

“I’m on my way,” I said.

“I’ll come with you,” said Sam.

“What the hell for?”

He was already on his way out of the door, running for his cabin.

“I’ll show you the way through the perimeter,” he called back.

“Man,” I said, “I know how to skip a field. I’m not an idiot.”

But he’d gone. He was coming. I knew he was a fool, and that it wouldn’t do him or me the slightest bit of good. I knew that he didn’t and shouldn’t owe me anything, and that he was riding the tide of some ridiculous impulse. But I didn’t have the heart to stop him. I didn’t want to stop him.

“Thanks, Sam.” I said, as I moved to the door myself. He couldn’t hear me. I was talking to myself.