Star City

by Tully Zetford

  Apart from her legs, which Hook — being the ungraceful galactic adventurer he was would call short and fat if called upon to describe them — the lady Terifia was seemingly a most nicely fitted-together representative of the female section of Homo sapiens. She did have a smile that could be used in a variety of ways, to charm and to chill; Hook knew all about that. He wondered about her; but she was to him merely a woman, giving him shelter whilst the techs got the ship once more into communication with star city.

  He could make polite conversation with the best of them when he had to.

  "I just cannot understand how you managed it, Taynor Hook. Really, it is quite beyond me."

  "It is all a blur now," said Hook. He was not prepared to allow this woman a single millimetre entrance to any of his secrets. No-one had entry there — not even, to his shame, Shaeel, who was perhaps the only real friend he possessed in the galaxy. "I just opened the air lock and helped Bunji through."

  "You did that, Hook!" Bunji Cater was prepared to go on a hero-worshipping spree. This filled Hook with distaste. "You just bashed the valve open!"

  "If you say so."

  There were men in the galaxy who would give a very great deal to be situated where Hook was now. Here he was, sitting comfortably in the private staterooms of a great lady, with her son, the Bolan, on the very best of terms, drinking and talking and clearly quite able to ask for outrageous favours and receive them. Here was where some very good business might be done for those whose business in the galaxy was business.

  Space and the great gulfs between the stars had powers to bring grandeur to a man's talk as well as feebleness of utterance against the great dark. Some people reacted in similar non-rational ways when confronted with other people who had by trick or evolution or greed acquired themselves a title or a rank or a position that, in their own estimation, placed them above the common herd; above, in this sense, again being in their own estimation. Reactions to greatness, real or fancied, told much about a man, whether he be Homo sapiens or not. Embarrassment, an over-reaction of crudity and rudeness, the expected cringing and kow-towing, all these things measured a man, just as a man was measured against the stars by the way he conducted himself in the galaxy.

  Ryder Hook was perfectly polite to the lady Terifia and her son, Bunji, the Bolan Cater. Any other course would have been alien to him until they had proved themselves deserving of whatever that other course might bring. Then, why then, if necessary, Hook would deal with them as he had with Cher-charon.

  "The Curlmen were most anxious," Terifia said. She said this without a conscious show of pride or even of acknowledgment of her position; these things she took for granted. "They were disconsolate when we thought dear Bunji had —had — that is, before you rescued him, Taynor Hook."

  "I gather the Top-Star is on your account?"

  "Why, yes. I always travel Top-Star. Really, any other way of travel is so tiresome."

  You should try travelling hard, frozen like a side of beef, Hook said to himself, addressing her high and mightyship. But he let her prattle on. They'd come to Stellopolis to celebrate Bolan Cater's coming of age because Stellopolis was renowned throughout this segment of the galaxy as a place of refinement and luxury and, in short, just the place to throw a party, no expense spared.

  "Stellopolis had to leave their own planet when their star went nova, and they've been travelling around the galaxy ever since learning things. Oh," said Terifia, waving one hand at Hook. "Oh, yes, there are many star cities, of course, and some of them are as large as planets. But we were recommended Stellopolis — the Curlmen call their city Curl, as you know — by everyone who matters in our society." Then, just like that, out of the blue, she threw the uncatchable one at Hook. "We move in the best circles, Taynor Hook. We are with F.I.F."

  She made of the statement a clear question.

  Hook knew this was uncatchable in these circumstances; but he'd have a damn good try not at catching it but of chucking it back. He started to speak as the annunciator bleeped and Captain Lorton, commanding Top-Star Asshendahl, announced himself.

  "At the moment I am not prepared to declare my allegiance to any econorg —"

  And, over:

  "Captain's compliments, ma'am, and may I come aboard bearing gifts?"

  A robot programmed to jump when activated by the captain's speech patterns opened the door and Captain Lorton strode through, grasping in his own hands a bottle and a casket of golden filigree work. He demonstrated, by thus carrying these articles himself instead of letting a robot do the dirty work, as was usual, that he was doing the lady Terifia honour and attempting to make amends for the ghastly tragedy.

  All the same, Hook noted with a little sour cynicism he found refreshing from time to time, this Captain Lorton was too damned cheerful by half.

  Terifia did not rise. She turned her head and a brilliant smile illuminated her face for the captain. But she said: "No econorg, Taynor Hook? You astonish me!"

  "You are looking wonderful, ma'am!" Lorton worked away at his P.R. task. A rubicund man, whose tanned face and carefully waved hair suggested a sea-faring dog, an image calculated to give a thrill of heady excitement to old ladies travelling first class with him, Captain Lorton advanced upon Terifia. He bowed, shot a look at Hook that should have melted that unregenerate on the spot, like a shot of dis-gel, and smiled at Bunji. "I am glad to see the Bolan is unharmed. A terrible business. But, happily, all over and forgotten now." He put the bottle on the table next to Terifia's lounger and extended the gold filigree box. "A token from the entire officers and crew of Asshendahl, ma'am, in appreciation of your passage with us! "

  Bunji Cater opened his mouth and Hook knew with amused certainty that young man was going to be exceedingly impolite to the gallant captain. Hook remembered Lorton's actions when the starship was ordered to pull back, and his ready acceptance, and Hook's thoughts at the time; this was the other face of a starship captain engaged on Top-Star work. The competent space-faring officer had to be submerged in the hearty P.R. man to keep the passengers happy. Hook wasn't prepared to see a man prostitute himself like this. He rose, cutting off Bunji's remark.

  "If you'll excuse me," he said. He didn't bow. He turned away, made for the door.

  "Taynor Hook!" This from Terifia came almost as a wail.

  "I hope to have the pleasure of your company in star city," said Hook, cutting the photo-electric eye on the door. The door opened silently. "Until then, then . .."

  He was gone before the lady Terifia had chance to say any more, long before her son Bunji, the Bolan Cater, had time to draw a fresh breath — and certainly long before Captain Lorton had time to unburden himself of his apologies and deepest hopes and best wishes and all the rest.

  Darkly, Hook knew he both wanted Terifia to roast the good captain, and at the same time the captain to come as near as he could to choking off a woman who thought she was almost god-almighty.

  The dichotomy tantalised him as he went off to find his way back to Stellopolis, the star city the Curlmen called Curl.

  He wanted to get his hands on the money metal they owed him. Fast.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANDREWS came forward, smiling, shaking hands, saying: "Yes, Taynor Hook. I am extraordinarily glad to be able to say your cutter, although damaged, was not destroyed, and the micro-recordings all are unharmed."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  The mellow yellow sun shone down through a quadruply-skinned transparent dome. Lawns spread around in segments from the bandstand in the centre, where robots pretended to be musicians, and taped music a thousand years old poured in a mellifluous flood across the park. People strolled here and there between the lawns and flower beds. Andrews, a man whose high function in star city could be ascertained only because he wore a gold ornament around his neck, and because two men in enforcer's black uniforms followed him everywhere, their hands on their gun butts, clearly was overjoyed at their good fortune.

  "Our records show that th
e money metal owing to you was dispensed —"

  "I never received it."

  "That is not strange, under the circumstances. Also, I am more than happy to say, Taynor Inlander is alive. He was seriously injured and is under intensive care; but he'll be up and around again in a couple of days."

  "That is good news."

  "Yes."

  "I never received the money metal. Everything blew apart when it was due."

  Andrews frowned. He was a big and luxuriant man, with a mass of dark hair, and a nose that surgery alone kept in shape. His midriff bulged. "I cannot do a thing about the records, Taynor Hook. As far as the records show, you are paid in full."

  Hook felt tired. Suddenly, just like that, he felt worn out. He'd have to fight for the filthy money they owed him, just as he was always having to fight in this damned galaxy.

  "The money metal never reached me, therefore you have not fulfilled your contract."

  Cheerfully-smiling Andrews did not spread his hands, apologising, diplomatic. He did not have to. What he said went. Hook had kept this off-handed appointment only because he was in the supplicant position. As for Hook himself, as a man; he was a man without a credit card, hence he was a nobody, and hence, equally hence, Andrews need not give a twopek damn for him.

  Despite all this Andrews maintained that distant and careful politeness that skinned the depths of true violence of which any man in his position was capable. Andrews ran all this section of the city — call it borough, precinct, poral — and he knew his own powers.

  "It has been pleasant meeting with you, Taynor Hook. We of Stellopolis are grateful for the microrecordings you have sold us. Good day to you."

  With his enforcers at his back, dark and ominous, Andrews walked slowly away in that warm and friendly sunshine.

  Ryder Hook looked after him, and wondered why he didn't just belt the guy across the ear.

  The reason was simple. Asinine violence would get him dead very fast, and Hook wanted his due payment, not a lethal flash from an energy gun.

  They'd repair his cutter. At least, they'd do that. That would conform to interstellar codes of conduct. Laws were tricky things; there were no romantic interstellar police flitting about among the stars to sort out troubles and to whom you could take your grievances. As far as Hook knew, there were no fine fancy galactic policemen. Who would pay them? Organise them? Under whose authority would they operate? Would you let another solar system or multi-system conglomerate operate an interstellar police force without wanting your share of the say-so? And as for letting the watch-dogs command themselves, that way lay another stupid and ultimately suicidal attempt at this nonsense of a galactic empire.

  Had Hook belonged to an econorg or a union he would have been on the communications link immediately, and pretty soon his very own organisation would have been putting pressure on the Curls of Stellopolis. But the Curls knew he had no credit card. They knew he was a loner. They knew and took advantage of the fact that he had no-one who would help him. He could be pushed around without fear. With an econorg at his back he'd have pulled more power right away than any romantic interstellar police could have done for him. But, despite all this, Ryder Hook would remain a loner in the galaxy.

  He started to get mad.

  This was a silly thing to do; but he felt that dragging ache on him, and the way his brains hurt as though they were frying. All those marvellous organic implants in his skull had no part of this; and he had not activated them for some time. There would be an apparat net operating around here somewhere, keyed to the agents of some super-bureau or other. But he'd do this thing on his own. He was getting madder by the minute. Damned bunch of star-city layabouts! Womb-regurgitants! He'd damn well show the gonils they couldn't push Ryder Hook about and live to brag about their prowess!

  No, by God! He'd do something drastic, and the quicker the sooner.

  The decision taken, Hook lost all animosity against Andrews personally. The man was just doing a job he considered to be important, and his records must show the money metal as having been paid out. That it had gone spinning and billowing out into space was not his concern. You couldn't blame the man. But Hook felt very much like blaming the city. He wanted his money. The fault of the crash had not yet been decided, and maybe there would be a whitewash job on that; all that Hook considered relevant was that he was owed money, the city had not put that cash into his hand, so he was going to do that little thing himself.

  These people who called themselves Curls and who came from a planet now destroyed called Curl had called their star-wandering city Curl. You could feel sorry for them in that their original sun had gone nova and they'd had to move. That had happened to many races in the galaxy. They'd simply upped sticks and equipped their city with a number of coupled units of some standard ftl drive and taken off.

  Why they had chosen to settle in orbit around this planet Voyden, second out around the star Purlon Major, perhaps no-one could know. They'd been here two hundred years terrestrial. Stellopolis extended, as Hook had earlier observed, for a good few kilometres in every direction, a thumping great mass of buildings whirling around in space. Arteries of communication linked sections, either tubed airlanes or tubed highways, with borough linked to borough by covered bridges and flexible hose-like extensions. The whole mass moved within itself, gently, as it circled in orbit, and one wouldn't bother about that when a touch on an ftl drive unit would settle everything nicely back into equilibrium once more.

  Many sections lived comfortably with the standard space-style of one eighth terrestrial gravity applied to give a reassuring up and down. Other sections existed in free fall, and no doubt high jinks took place there from time to time. Yet further sections existed where the gravity was maintained at what was, relevant to Earth, one point one, and Hook gathered that this was the Curlmen's natural mode of life, inherited from their original planet. Every now and then a man wanted to feel that primordial gravity pulling on his bones and muscles; that way he might push back a trophy.

  For a man like Hook — and the only men like Hook he knew of were the Novamen — who had been adapted to work as easily under nine gravities as he did under one, gravitic changes came without comment. He stomped off out of the park and avoided a gang of speedsters in their electric cars whirling down a dual-carriageway tube, watched as they soared up in an arching loop to join an expressway crossing at right angles, creating a snarl of traffic, and so walked on cherishing that germ of hatred. Hook knew how to hate, all right; but also he knew the values of hatred and how nonhatred paid better dividends. Hook didn't hate these Curlmen of Stellopolis; he just wanted them to pay the money they owed him; and if they wouldn't pay voluntarily then they'd pay involuntarily.

  All around him the city hummed and buzzed and clicked and bustled about its multifarious purposes. The people here kept busy, maintaining the city, organising resources, sending to the planetary surface of Voyden for raw materials and venting their wastes back. The folk here had a lot to do in their prime purpose of seeking and finding luxury and pleasure. There were many planets and star cities in the galaxy whose prime objective was to find pleasure. Hedonists of the galaxy, they performed essential work. Hook knew that. For him, going grimly off to get the money he was owed, they would have only contempt. Very well, then, contempt it would be.

  A bank?

  One of the many tentacles of the business power of any of the many econorgs who had outlets here?

  Possibly.

  He didn't want to have to push his luck and go for a hard-shell outlet, where there would be goons and radiation-fields and homotropic snoopers and a varied arsenal of the defensive apparatus designed to prevent one econorg from doing down another.

  F.I.F. were well represented here. So were Interstell Imp and Sieur Stel and a dozen others. There was no RCI agency here on Stellopolis, and Hook felt cheated because of that. RCI was dominated by the Boosted Men, and had they an agency here it was almost certain a Novaman would be here also, and the
n Hook's task would have been immeasurably easier.

  Too bad ...

  Out of sorts as he was, he needed a lift.

  In the end he selected an agency of GCC, for he had the idea the Boosted Men were infiltrating this particular econorg and even so lowly a thing as a robbery on the scale he contemplated might impede their schemes, if only for a heartbeat in galactic time.

  He walked smoothly and sedately past the main entrance.

  Even on a star city the econorgs protected themselves with a zealous care for their own rights. The roof bristled with armament suitable for inter-dome work; no doubt the city bosses would not allow weapons there that would blow chunks out of the city screening. The front door presented a formidable obstacle to anyone who sought to enter without a GCC wrist credit card to flash at the scanners.

  The block rose from the highest street level sheer for a hundred metres. All below that level, and Hook checked, there were six other levels, radiating a cross-hatching of tube-ways. The walls were predictably sheer there, also. Only above that hundred metre mark were windows let into the metalloy fabric. Sparse for the first five hundred metres, they increased in numbers higher up the building. From that weapons-bristling roof a tower some thousand metres thick rose to join the dome. Beyond the dome, mistily visible as a black smear, a spire projected into space. So they had their own berthing facilities. To be expected. GCC were pretty big in the galaxy these days.

  Hook checked everything most carefully, and waited until the orbit of star city carried it past the curve of the planet below. For a few hours a kind of twilight night would fall, as the limb of the planet occluded the sun. Lights sparkled up all over this section of Stellopolis. Those lights in their fairy strings and blazing coruscations must make a pretty picture from space. Hook, staring hungrily up, saw them only as giving him a little chance against the goons of GCC.