"Stay, Anton!" said Terifia.
She was not afraid.
She came up to Hook and reaching out a hand ripped away the grotesque's black diamond-dusted mask.
A flat and evilly-wedge-shaped head was revealed in which the reptilian eyes blazed with an emerald fire of hate.
Cast marks etched in acid across the scaled jaws showed the Trocoin to be a member of an honourable cast among that race of violent and vengeful people. He was a man who might be hired to kill other people. He was not in the accepted sense of the word an assassin; but the differences were shaded in tones of morality that meant nothing when the corpse lay charred and bleeding at his feet.
Hook cuffed him across those scaled jaws, and the screaming stopped. The swirling scarlet tails of the Trocoin's costume shivered and fell around his ankles. His arm remained broken and angular in Hook's grip.
"Ask him, Hook."
Terifia breathed deeply now, her eyes large and round beneath the makeup. The enormity of it made itself felt in her mind as an insult. She spat the question at the Trocoin.
"Who sent you to kill me, you curd?"
Hook waited, and then, quietly, he said: "You may never know, Terifia. He's programmed himself onto a self-destruct. He couldn't have been too confident, the poor devil."
"You feel sympathy for him?" Her tone lacerated Hook.
"It's a living."
"You're a grotesque, yourself, Hook, by the Great Salvor!"
"So I've been told. Who would like to see you dead?"
Her laugh shrilled unpleasantly.
"Who? Why, my loving son Bunji!"
Hook felt the distaste, and felt the sorrow, and knew it to be true.
Hook let the dead body of the Trocoin slump to the metalloy decking. The man had suicided rather than reveal the identity of his employer. No pro-assassin caught would do that. Around them the party raved on. Colours and lights and wine and women, laughter and songs, all the good things of the galaxy men and women fought and killed for — all of them dead and black forever to this Trocoin reptile-man at Hook's feet.
"You saved my life, Hook. You —" Terifia swayed towards him.
With a sinuous movement Hook avoided her naked clutching arms and, bending, riffled through the dead Trocoin's clothes. As he had expected he found nothing. The reptile-man had worn clothes and carried a dis-gel gun. That was all. "There's an irony for you, Terifia," said Hook, straightening up and letting the dead man's left arm flop back. The wrist credit card had dulled and destructed in death; but there had been time for Hook to read F.I.F. "Maybe you can trace him through your econorg."
"I don't need to. This is the work of my darling Bunji — I know it! I know it!"
On Terifia's home planet the women ran affairs until their son's daughters could take over. The men merely paraded the outer pomp. Bunji Cater quite clearly felt that to be a state of affairs needing alteration, and his male liberation movement had begun with his own mother. Hook knew of the dread secrets these young men must share. He wanted none of it. He just wanted a drink and a way get himself off Stellopolis in one piece — and preferably with money metal.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOOK'S star cutter brought back to star city languished in space, parked out of the way by the disposal chutes, tethered by an umbilical cord and neglected. He had got absolutely nowhere with the city bosses. Terifia, after a try she felt she owed Ryder Hook for what he had done, gave up, saying rather testily: "If you're as big a gaff as you seem, Hook, and don't have the nous to join up with an econorg, then you deserve all you're asking for."
Even GCC had refused to pay any reward, pointing out with a logic that Hook would like to have stuffed them with that the Stellopolis police had recovered the money, not Ryder Hook.
Fifty kilos of art micro-recordings brought a very great deal of cash indeed. No-one in his right mind would accept that in money metal. It would be credited to his account, and his econorg would smile on him. Hook's money had been paid to him as he had requested. If he no longer had it, that was his hard luck. GCC would give him no reward for any help he had afforded the police in recovering the loot from the bank raid. And the Stellopolis city bosses wouldn't repair his space cutter until he paid them for the work.
No-one was being kind to Hook, and in that he saw merely his usual fate.
Terifia was being kind; but she cloyed after a time, and Hook suspected she had no idea of where to draw the line between benevolence and sheer self-gratification.
He enjoyed her, for although she was not beautiful and had short fat legs, she knew what life was all about. Oh, yes, he enjoyed her, and pleasured himself; but that could take only a fraction of his mind off his worries.
The four bodyguards from Anselm had disappeared.
They had been replaced by a much-enhanced bodyguard, of beings from a number of different races and thus pooling a variety of aptitudes. Terifia was taking good care of herself from here on in. What had happened to the four from Anselm who had so signally failed, Hook did not know. If Terifia had had them killed, he would not be surprised. To the lady Terifia that would be merely a just execution.
The Bolan, Bunji Cater, had also vanished.
"Gone sneaking back to his cronies, I expect," said Terifia. "And to think of the love I gave that boy! This is how he repays me."
"He'll try again, Terifia, if this funny little men's lib carries on."
"Funny it may be, and little; but I'm not laughing and it seems damned big to me."
The star city orbited about the planet of Voyden and the city-days passed. Hook felt that he must make another raid. This time he'd plan with a little more thoroughness and hit a Stellopolis outlet. He heard that the city bosses would have recompensed GCC for their losses; recovering the stolen money had seen to that. Payment for the damage, as always minimal in a society with immense recuperation factors operating for it, was taken care of. In this galaxy of the hundred and first century you could raze a city and they'd be cutting the ribbons on the freeways into the new one before you could turn around.
Taking a good look around, Hook was interrupted in his planning by Terifia's announcement that she had been invited by a city boss, one Lars Cu-Foylty, to sample the supreme delight of Stellopolis. Hook had heard people talking of the Curlmen's much vaunted, highly private and reputedly altogether wonderful pastime. They called it the Exper game. Reserved for the top people, extraordinarily wealthy and powerful visitors, denied to the ordinary run of folk, Exper was something that no-one should miss if afforded the opportunity.
Lars Cu-Foylty who carried within himself a deep knowledge of his own importance, had been gracious enough to allow the lady Terifia to bring Ryder Hook to an Exper session. It was a great privilege and honour. Also, it would result in a sizeable chunk being lopped from Terifia's bank balance.
"Oh, yes, Terifia," said Hook, in answer to the lady's bubbling announcement. "I agree in principle that one should sample every experience once. But in practice I consider it a foolish notion."
"Question is, Hook, are you a fuddy-duddy spoil-sport?"
"If I am, I am." He wasn't going to be gracious about this. He knew what Shaeel, his hermaphrodite friend, had had to say on various cutting and unkind occasions about Hook's sticking in the mud prowess. "You can have your arm cut off if you like that experience. They'll grow you a new one, I know; but that's an experience I'd as lief be without."
"I don't know," said Terifia as she primped and patted her hair. She was wearing a vividly electric-blue hairstyle with many curls and dependent lovelocks that brushed around her naked shoulders. Her skin glowed that glorious golden tan of the peoples the galaxy recognised as of Homo sapiens stock. "That might be something to know. How you'd react."
"I'd react badly. Bloody badly. I have a strong dislike to portions of my anatomy being forcibly separated from the rest of me."
Terifia giggled, swinging around on the low stool so the hand-maid robots had to duck and glide to avoid her legs. Her bod
y was very nice, very voluptuous indeed. Maybe ... "You could," said Hook, and halfway through the sentence making it into a laugh and a giggle and something that was nothing to do with what he was saying, "you could have your legs cut off. Get a new pair. Might be useful."
Her breasts, firm enough through careful attention, threatened to start heaving. Hook would not have cared to have Terifia become agitated, not right now. But: "You will have your little joke, Hook. I'm not an Earthwoman. I like my legs. Earthgirls have long skinny sticks."
"Oh," said Hook.
"Anyway, I believe in sampling all there is to sample."
"Like testing out an experience of death?"
"If you like," said the lady Terifia, swinging back to her makeup again.
Hook knew far too much about Death.
"Count me out."
She turned her head to look at him and now she was angry.
"I took a great deal of trouble to get Lars to invite you, you great ugly lump, Hook! Are you telling me you're not coming to Exper?"
"Of course I'm coming!"
"Well, make up your mind. While you've been off out gawping at star city Lars has been most attentive."
Had Hook been the normal male jealous of the female with whom he was currently keeping company, as they said, and probably with designs of marriage to follow, he would have leaped quiveringly alert. This was a danger sign. But Terifia, kind as she was, had managed to do nothing for him in the way of having his star cutter repaired. She was nice — true. But he would never tie himself for very long to one girl.
Particularly one who thought short fat legs were beautiful.
"You'd better get dressed, Terifia. We don't want to keep Lars waiting."
"Oh, Hook!"
Terifia's handmaid robots dressed her with finicky care and a lavish expenditure of powdered glitter-gems pressure-sprayed over her breasts and stomach and reaching over the shoulders. Her dress clung to her as she moved, and swayed and billowed when she paused. A silvery sprite, she seemed, with her towering mass of electric blue hair and her retinas tattooed to match. jewellery festooned her arms and of itself served as a covering. As for her legs; Hook did not smile. She must have taken some notice of his remark, for the allure slits of her gown were magneclamped up, giving her enough freedom to walk on her crystal slippers. She'd be wearing a tiny evening-out ag-pak in the small of her back and no doubt would soar most of where she wanted to go.
Hook, for his part, had changed into classically severe purple-black tunic and trousers, which he wore over his boots, and with a single splash of scarlet in the lining of the half-length cloak. His equipment snugged around his waist — Tonota, belt-pouch, ag-pak, med-pak all the rest of the gear a civilised inhabitant of the galaxy must needs take with him on an evening's entertainment.
Lars Cu-Foylty met them in his reception chambers, smiling, walking forward with outstretched hand in the accepted sapiens greeting ritual. Terifia twittered, clearly impressed, despite her own feelings of self-importance.
"So this is the maniac who had his cutter stolen and who is not affiliated with any conglomerate," said Foylty. He shook hands. The Cu was a mere signification of his high-standing among the Curlmen.
"He is a maniac, Lars! I've told him and told him. One day he'll learn the truth.'
"Assuredly."
Foylty led them through to a room in semi-darkness where men and women and aliens talked quietly, sitting in loungers, drinking any of a multiplicity of drinks immediately available. One or two idiots, as Hook sourly said, were smoking, a detestable habit Earth had successfully exported to her old enemies centuries ago.
They took the loungers indicated to them, and Foylty hurriedly introduced them to the couple sitting nearby. The man, florid, sure of himself, with a facial that concealed perfectly his true age and gave him the appearance of a man of a mere fifty, was chewing stim-gum. Hook knew that stim-gum was chewed by other than workers; but it was unusual.
"Now we're all here," Foylty said, breaking the low-voiced conversations into quietness. "We may begin. I believe you will be pleased with what we have found for you." He signalled his com-robots and the lights died completely. In the silence Hook could hear the gentle susuration from the breathing of these people all around him. He had only heard of Exper. He had no real idea of what to expect.
A pearly light grew on the far wall — at least, Hook could have sworn the radiance grew radially from a central spot on the wall; but after a time it was in his eyes, in his head, and instead of sitting in the lounger looking at the pictured representation of the scene on the wall, he was actually there in the representation. He was an onlooker on a strange scene.
"By the Curl of Curls!" The voice was Foylty's, echoing from a long way away, and yet, Hook knew, right here in the room with him. "We have latched a prize Exper! "
But the voice drifted and was gone. Hook became fused with the group of aliens who stood looking at a crude wooden wagon whose wheel lay pinned beneath the axle, splintered and ruined. Evil bat-like figures flitted among the branches, and ruby eyes glared brilliantly upon the half dozen aliens clustered around the wagon. Two weary mammoth-like creatures stood patiently in the shafts, their heads hanging, the sweat dripping from their coats. On the wagon was piled a heaping mass of household and domestic paraphernalia. A Chill wind blew. Night was not far off, and these people were stranded, and the night contained hideous dangers.
"Right?" came Foylty's voice, again, intruding. "Are we all fused?"
A pause and in that pause Hook felt the first stirrings of a new and sickening emotion coursing through him. He kept shuttling between the knowledge that he sat in a lounger in a comfortable room in star city, and the unmistakable fact that he stood beside a broken-down wagon and faced the oncoming night with terror in his breast.
"Right," came Foylty's whisper, for the last time. "Here we go."
Hook saw the wagon under his hands, felt the hard-grained roughness of the wood as he struggled to heave the thing up off the wheel. Not that that would do much good. The wheel was smashed and they had no spare. Something howled most hideously off in the forest. The girl beside him jumped in fright. Now Hook understood what that new and pungent emotion was that flowed through him and loosened his bowels.
Fear.
He was terrified.
He, Ryder Hook, was shaking with fright!
He turned as a man ran across, yelling. What he said Hook had no idea. The weird double-knowledge went on, so that he understood these people were not Homo sapiens, with their sleek chestnut-coloured fur, their wide and brilliant eyes hooded in bone, their bushy tails, their mouths which curved upwards and which showed the lip indentations to house the sharp tusks jutting from the lower jaw. They were not attractive, these aliens, they repelled because they stank abominably, and their sleek fur matted and hung muddily-tangled around their knees and the flat pads that served as feet.
The double-knowledge that Hook experienced expanded.
At once he realised this was triple-knowledge, a tripartite dismemberment of his consciousness. For now, as well as knowing he sat in a lounger in star city, and tried with despairing fear to haul a broken-down wagon up off its wheel in a forest that spawned horror — he was that horror!
For a third sensory impression surged over him, not driving away the fear that alien felt but supporting it and acting alongside it, in concert. For Hook glared with feral ruby eyes from the trees of the forest, and licked hungry chops as he sized up the prey below.
They would make good eating. He could imagine sinking his claws and talons into their bodies, biting huge chunks out of them, spitting out the fur, sinking his nose and teeth into the hot intestines! Oh, yes, Hook was going to dine well this night — and Hook was going to scream in agony and terror as he was devoured.
"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" Terifia was moaning from the lounger next to him. He could not see her; but he knew she was in orgasm, and so he knew, too, that she had totally succumbed to the dark powers o
f the Exper.
The evening's entertainment proceeded. From the forest the bat-shapes swooped down, claws and fangs extended and ripping. Hook sought bloodily for his kill, and Hook snatched up a scythe and desperately attempted to fend off the horrors swooping from the nighted forest.
Terror and blood and agony engulfed Hook's mind.
The underlying motives of life and death were made manifest and hideously transparent.
For he was not just one person struggling with the cart, and turning, screaming, to feel his throat ripped out. He was not just one of the bat-creatures swooping down from the trees and rending and slashing and lapping greedily at the spilled and steaming blood. He was all of these. He was all the alien furry creatures with their pitiful wagon and he was all the malignant bat-like creatures and their pitiless fangs.
Hook for the moment could not break the compulsion Exper laid on him.
He was aware only of this combined essence of fear and of death, and of voracious hunger and of death.
He both suffered and triumphed. He was destroyed and he destroyed. And he did these things in many bodies.
His body shuddered with the repeated shocks, and his brain jumped and reacted to blood and entrails, to claws and fangs, to death and destruction.
Presently, after a while, when Hook had died the requisite number of times, Hook could fly back to the trees of the forest, engorged, trailing a dangling string of intestines from his fangs as he flew.
For a time — for a time — there was silence and darkness and exhaustion.
Slowly, like pallid dawn creeping through a hungover luxer's lavatory window, the lights in the room came back on and Hook could stare around at his fellow Expers in their loungers.
Their expressions were those of — not exactly of Werkler cats who have dined well on Werkler mice — but of a vacancy of immediate sensation and repleteness centring on the mind rather than on the stomach. They looked mentally bloated.
Lars Cu-Foylty stood up, spreading his hands.
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