Getting away from Stellopolis would be a pleasure.
He didn't blame the Curlmen; they were only acting as almost all the peoples of the galaxy would act in the same circumstances.
The shape of the planet Voyden swung past over his head now as star city pirouetted in its orbit. He could see the swirl of clouds and the sheen off the seas as the sun struck in at a low angle from its recent eclipse. The Curlmen had settled their star city into a relatively low orbit and the planet covered a vast expanse of the city's skyview. Hook was accustomed to having enormous balls of matter apparently hanging unsuspended in space above his head; for a planetary culture accustomed only to a moon as large, say, as old Earth's, such a vision would be monstrous, frightening, awe-inspiring.
As he looked, relishing the spectacular sight of that massive planet, glowing in misty white and blue highlights, sombre in green and brown shadows, glittering with the sun off water, Hook saw the smoothly deliberate approach of a ship. She drew in matching orbits and velocity and then vanished beyond the tower of a department store, heading for the berthing area. Hook walked on. Presently, looking up again, he saw the discharge of waste matter from star city, the elongated blobs of darkly shining stuff spinning and vanishing away to fall at last somewhere on the surface of the planet of Voyden.
A kind of peace enveloped him and, recognising that old devil tiredness overtaking him, he could yet relish the ease of it and the blessedness of the sleep to come. Down past a cross-street where electric traffic moved silently and effortlessly, clean in the star city atmosphere, he saw the entrance to the berthing area.
A bare half-dozen paces down the side-street brought him abreast a doorway. From the doorway, guns in their hands, stepped Locum Hauser and Walton Gaines. Hook stopped. People were walking past those half-dozen paces off; but they would only see three men talking peacefully.
Gaines said: "We've been waiting for you, Hook."
Hauser said: "I'll blast him down now, Walt."
The dominant emotion in Hook's mind was contempt — blazing, scathing, merciless contempt for himself. Here he'd been sauntering along, maundering about the beautiful view of the planet, feeling tired, looking forward to a shower and a sleep; and — now! He was an idiot of idiots! If ever he forgot again the prime directive of life in this galaxy, he'd be dead. There was no time to relax. Relaxation was strictly for those with credit cards and money and guards and enforcers to do their will. A simple galactic wanderer had no time letting his mind wander from the main course of life.
"Hi, Gaines, Hi, Hauser," he said. He couldn't summon a smile, so he managed to lift a corner of his upper lip.
Both Gaines and Hauser regarded that as a symptom of fear.
They were wrong; but the miniscule amount of time they'd spent coming to that conclusion stood between them and an instant pressing of triggers. They clutched energy guns and they'd use 'em, and the devil take what happened in the path of the twin blasts.
"You killed Cher-charon, Hook. That was a bad thing to do."
Hook rubbed his head. He moved his hands very carefully. "You tried to kill me, so did Cher-charon. What do you want now?"
"We want what's ours. Where's the cash from the sale? Come on Hook, we know you got paid off."
"All the money metal was sucked into space."
"Give! " Gaines gun twitched.
There was no chance of jumping them; they were old hands at this and held their weapons far enough away so that at his first tensing to spring they could fire.
He was not in a Boosted state. He was just an ordinary man with some very extraordinary powers. He was no superman. He had to remember that ...
"Where's Happy?" He spoke with the casual thoughtlessness of an acquaintance asking another of a third. He sounded artless.
"Money metal, Hook! Give!"
They were going to kill him. They were very sure of that. Hook dug into the inside pouch and produced the money metal he had removed from the GCC agency's banking outlet. Both Gaines and Hauser looked interested.
"Sucked into space! Haw, you gonil, Hook."
They had him angled, bracketed. He could deal with one of them, probably; whilst he did that the other would shoot. Hook knew enough about them and their kind to know the shooter wouldn't worry if his pal was caught in the blast.
Again, he said: "Where's Happy?"
"He'll get his share. Don't you fret. Come on, hand it over." Gaines eyes fixed on the money metal in Hook's hands.
What Ryder Hook had to do now pained him. There was no way of saving the money and his skin. Of the two, important though the money was, it meant nothing compared to the importance he attached to his own skin. So he would have to use the cash to save himself. Again he weighed the chances of jumping them both and again he decided against. Insane risks he would take; but not this kind of suicide.
He riffled the money metal.
"Give, Hook, you curd!" Hauser's eyes, too, fixed on the flashing bills passing between Hook's hands.
Hook took a pace back.
That made five.
Five in normal walking paces, that was. Say one and a bit doing what he would have to do.
The bills riffled through his hands. He set himself, without altering the rhythm of the flashing metal. He poised with one foot anchored for a thrust, the other barely touching the metalloy paving. He spoke cheerfully.
"Sure, Gaines. Sure, Hauser. You c'n have the money. You're a pair of creeps, anyway. I bet Happy don't get his."
He held the money out and twisted one hand slightly and the scintillating spray of bills fluffed, spilled, and sprayed outwards. Two pairs of eyes fastened leech-like on the scattering money.
One and a bit leaps.
The money was still scattering, two pairs of eyes were abruptly re-focussing on the side-street, two forefingers were tightening on triggers. Hook's first leap took him to the corner and the bit flung him around. The twin blasts scorched past, scything into the street, vapourising a passing electric car and a group of passersby. The metalloy decking smoked into a long brown greasy weal.
Hook just ran flat out to the next corner, finked twice — unnecessarily, and whipped around it.
If he knew Gaines and Hauser they were picking up money.
A siren ululated reassuringly.
The enforcers were hurrying to this spot. Some sonofabitch had been letting off a power gun and they'd want to know why. They'd tie this in with the two previous blasts, probably.
Hook straightened up his clothes and walked with the crowd to see what was going on. He was alive and he was in the clear. But he damned-well didn't have a pek to show for his night's work.
CHAPTER SIX
RYDER HOOK watched it all on the tv in Terifia's apartment.
He lounged in a comfortable knee-length robe of salafan silk, tastefully decorated with legendary monsters and caught by magneclasps about him in such a way as to reveal a modicum of his manly chest — so the sales brochures on the readout had suggested it should be worn — eating a tasty appetite-giving pre-lunch snack, and from time to time casting an appreciative glance at Terifia, who sat with her legs curled up on the opposite lounger and wearing an identical robe.
The tv showed almost all. The actual shoot-out was omitted and was replaced by a filmed recording of a ballet-troupe who'd caused a great stir a year or so before in Stellopolis. But the news media showed the chase, the steady overhaul, the grappling and the final boarding. Then the ballet, at which point Terifia rather spoiled the effect she caused by swinging her legs out and suggesting they go in to eat. Hook was hungry, right enough, even after the last few days of good food at Terifia's, and they ordered the com-robot to transfer the tv image to the dining room. The three-dimensional impression cube lit on the far wall as they sat down to a meal as marvellous as any of them had been. The story picked up again as the triumphant Stellopolis enforcers emerged from the battered cutter waving the packet of money metal. What they had done to Walton Gaines, Locum Hauser and Ha
ppy Derning was not shown.
The morality of it all made Hook aware that he was a simple human being; but it did not put him off his food.
He was more involved with the moral problem presented by this fulsome attitude of Terifia in thus taking him under her wing. She had sought him out, using a public-address system which could put anyone in touch with anyone else who was listening if they could afford to pay the city bosses for the privilege. Now she was clearly bent on conquering him. No doubt she saw in him ripe plunder. The Bolan's coming of age party was due this night as ever was, when Voyden occulted the sun, and there was going to be the biggest high jinking of any high jinks Stellopolis had seen. Hook was beginning to find out just how wealthy Terifia was. She kept a retinue of plug-uglies to maintain her isolation from the mundane herd. Hook's isolation came from outside as well as inside, these days.
"Those stupid curds," Terifia said, tapping her lips with a sensitised cloth that instantly cleansed them. "How they thought they could escape eludes me. They must have known the owner of the ship would report its loss."
"They didn't think," said Hook. He spoke in a grey and neutral tone. He wasn't proud of reporting in to the city bosses that his cutter had been stolen; but he had done so in a fit of fine civic zeal, and, lo and behold, the mystery of the GCC agency bank raid was solved.
Terifia clearly shared that opinion. She sipped at her crystal glass of telil — a drink Hook equated with a waste of money — and said: "GCC ought to pay a reward, Hook. You should claim."
Doing that would provide a laugh. Ryder Hook was a man who valued a good laugh more than most, more than a man, for example, who laughed too often and too easily.
"I don't have a credit card, Terifia. They're not likely to pay much attention to me."
"I'll damn well make them!" She sat up straight, and her features took on a rosier glow through the tan. "If I can be properly grateful to you, Hook, then so can some damn agency who're not half the size of F.I.F.!"
"You're very kind," said this Ryder Hook who was quite happy to be humble when it suited his nefarious purposes.
The news report gave way to coverage of an inter-zonal match and Terifia irritatedly snapped at her robots to switch the tv off. The wall-size three-dimensional appearance cube died and collapsed and slid away into its cupboard. Soft quarter-tone music drifted into the scented atmosphere. "You're too pessimistic, Hook. Oh, I know you're a damn fool for not having a credit card; but —" Here an idea occurred to Terifia, and she went on: "I'll fix you up with F.I.F. When I tell 'em they'll be only too happy. Yes, that's what we'll do, Hook."
Vague ideas of sympathy for Bunji Cater, her son, crossed Hook's mind. This lady had a will of her own. Hook decided with some reservations that he'd attend the party out of mere politeness, and because the Cater family might turn nasty, and then he'd see about spacing out.
"My ship's smashed up again," he said. And then Ryder Hook made a foolish statement. "When Stellopolis has her repaired again —"
"I doubt if they'll do that, Hook. They'll claim it was no fault of theirs your ship was damaged. And they'd be right." Then Hook saw the fatuousness of his statement.
In this man's galaxy no-one did anything for anyone else unless interest, payment or obligation indicated they should do so. That wasn't entirely true. There were selfless people still, races and combines and unions who sought only to do good. But Hook, to his sorrow, did not often space the same lanes as those.
The lady Terifia, now, was seeking to do good for Hook. There was the matter that he had rescued her son from death; but Hook summed up Terifia as a lady who would damned-well go on doing what good she could and stand from under if you got in the way.
"But," said Terifia, stretching, perfectly at ease, "if you had the power of F.I.F. behind you — why, then, Hook, you'd swing some weight when you talked with the city bosses."
Hook could recall with a frightful mental clarity the way the RCI credit-card scientists had removed the credit card neurologically implanted in his left wrist. That had been when RCI had thrown him out of their Powerman Project.
He didn't want to go through that experience again.
"I'll think about it, Terifia." He knew he was being weak — and that was a novelty — but he felt quite certain that situated as he was now he had no wish to offend this powerful woman. At the right time he might take a very different attitude; but he could feel somnolently able to take advantage of her now. If she wanted to be a galactic do-gooder, Ryder Hook, although abhorring the idea he might be a gentleman, had no wish to deter her.
Just getting a means of transportation off Stellopolis would be a price for a bargain ...
Later that afternoon — for Stellopolis besides running a neat eight-terrestrial-day week ran also a varying-length day and night cycle, in a diurnal rhythm originating on their home planet, now destroyed, of Curl — Hook took a new look at star city. He was as impressed as he would ever allow himself to be, and this not from any dog-in-the-manger attitude of cynicism, which set out never to be astonished; rather, he wanted always to hold a little of himself in reserve.
Stellopolis flowered among the stars.
Crowds of brilliantly-dressed people flipped and tripped and cavorted along the brilliantly lit avenues. Anything the heart could desire could be obtained, and all flavoured with the peculiar Curlmen's-mystique of luxury. From the stark necessity of having to lift a city and equip it with ftl drive engines and take off into the stellar night, the Curlmen had developed a way of life that perfectly attuned them to living eternally in space. Out of emergency they had created beauty. Like fireflies of the dark spaces, the avenues and tubeways glowed against the night. Fire-flies, fire-light, fire-clad, laughter and abandon and joyousness spread throughout star city. Cares were sloughed away. Wine flowed, catching the lights, as it poured unceasingly from stainless-steel fountains, feathering, ruby-red, diamond-yellow, flowing and flowing into the sculptured ceramic basins. Gaily-dressed throngs circulated, dipping tubes into the never-ending flow of wine, sipping and laughing. Bright eyes glittered through the eye-slits of facial-masks hewn to shapes more grotesque than a planetary-bound culture could conceive. Shrill laughter racketted over the piazzas. Men chased women, and girls chased boys, and everywhere the spirit of fiesta, of saturnalia, of sheer enjoyment because enjoyment was the greatest gift the Curl of Curls could bestow, spluttered and pulsed through Stellopolis.
Scenes like these might be enacted a million times over on million planets of the galaxy — and all the millions more — but for Ryder Hook because he was in the heart of the raveup Stellopolis then these hectic adventurings became the most important in the galaxy. No Boosted Man came near and for the time being Ryder Hook was quite prepared to abandon himself to the simple delight of living it up.
"Come on, luxers! Boil in! "
A giant grotesque in skin-tight glitter costume with swirling flittery draperies swirling as he pranced bounded across the plaza where music and laughter swayed against the night. The anti-gray pack strapped to the grotesque's back gave him air leapings and cavortings; the black mask shone with the diamond dust of pleasure, the skirlings and swathings brought him all swivery and helter-skelter to pause before the lady Terifia.
Hook eyed the grotesque.
In all this frenetic laughter and scurryings about, in the drinking and the play, with balloons plopping and shrill shrieks of girls and lads skimming chutes into anti-gray suspended bowls of water, extra-oxygenated, scented, coloured the grotesque for all his costume and his mask and his exaggerated mimicry struck a discordant note. Despite all his determination to relax and enjoy himself among the fun-seekers and the luxers, Hook tensed up and then relaxed into a feral waiting very different from the loose relaxation of a moment before.
"Hey, luxers! Here's the damsel herself!" The grotesque pranced before Terifia, shaking, laughing. Her bodyguards four dark hard men from Anselm laughed, too, seeing no danger here. They were good; but this was play-time and this gr
otesque one of the players.
This whole area had been given over to abandonment and enjoyment and the domes linked together here resounded to the hubbub. All this was being paid for by Terifia, in honour of the coming of age of her son, the Bolan, and in the eyes of the revellers she could do no wrong.
After this night, Hook knew, the title and the petty authority would pass to Bunji Cater, the trappings of a ludicrous nobility that still held the power, in this galaxy and in this day and age, of commanding respect and obedience from others. But the wealth, the riches, the basic sources of strength, would remain still with Terifia. She was a nice woman, full of her own power, with short fat legs; but she tried to do good in her own imperious way. She was not the kind of woman Ryder Hook would in the normal way have bothered over for a single second.
A group of near-naked girls ran past, clad only in strings of jewels and tufts of feathers, shrieking with their own laughter, their rosy bodies agleam in the lights. Two of Terifia's bodyguards watched the girls, their eyes like weasels. Hook watched the grotesque.
He saw the tensing of muscles in the old familiar way and he took a step forward, grasped the grotesque's right forearm and, with a merciless gouging of his fingers, bent the arm up and back.
The grotesque screamed.
All that pressure could not stop the neurologically-activated and muscle-powered dis-gel gun from jumping into the grotesque's hand. But he could not fire. They stood for a heartbeat, and then Hook clipped the arm further back so that it snapped, a dry tickling sound in the riot all about.
A bodyguard next to Terifia moved.
Hook knew what he was going to do.
He swung the grotesque off the ground, holding him like a club, put his feet into the bodyguard's guts. He let the swing carry him on, and yelled with a fury made more vicious at the brainlessness of Terifia's bodyguards.
"You stupid gonils! If you kill him now you'll never know who sent him!"
The bodyguard collapsed, retching. He would have shot and killed the grotesque and Hook both, and cared not one whit for either of them.
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