Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Welcome home, Nephew,” Gordon Gavilan almost sang. Larger than his third brother, Garrick, the present Sun King had the distinctive bronze skin and hazel eyes, but was broader and heavier, and had a deep furrow between his brows. Near him was his wife, Celia, a slender, pretty, vague-looking woman with light brown hair and fluttery hands.

  “We’ve prepared a little feast in your honor,” Gordon said jovially. “Just the immediate family. Where’s Dalton?”

  “He said he’d be right along,” Celia reminded him. “He’s just finishing inspecting the guard.”

  “The boy takes his duties too seriously,” Gordon said, his grin slipping just a little. “Good manners are worth something, too.” •

  Another ornate door, at the other side of the room, flew open and slammed loudly against the wall. Dalton had arrived.

  He looked as Tix had described. But Tix hadn’t mentioned the curving black moustache that clung to Dalton’s upper lip like an unkempt leech. It gave Dalton a sinister look, which he evidently prized. Nor had Tix mentioned Dalton’s walk, a kind of strut in which his black boots pounded heavily on the polished hardwood floor.

  Dalton came in and went to take his seat at Gordon’s right hand.

  “For today,” Gordon said, “I think we will give Kemal the seat at the right.” Dalton glared at his father, then quickly controlled himself and made a sketchy bow.

  “Welcome to Mercury, Cousin,” he said to Kemal.

  Tix came in, bowed to his father, and took his seat as well. Gordon made a signal, and the servants began bringing in platters of food.

  Kemal had never seen such a repast—academy food was academy food, from one end of the solar system to the other. The Gavilan table was strewn with Martian goose stuffed with lunar nut dressing, Jupiteran caviar and manta-ray soup, Venusian hydroponic vegetables and fruits, including blue kiwis and purple starfruit, and tankards of dry Martian wine.

  There were polite questions as to how Kemal was doing on Mars. Then, between the soup and the meat, Gordon went right to the point.

  “Wondering why I brought you back so suddenly?” Gordon finally said, eyeing Kemal directly.

  Kemal nodded slowly.

  “Kemal, we’ve just gone through several years of problems with the city of Kallag. Do you know how things work here?”

  Kemal said, “I know that Mercury has belonged to the Gavilans ever since my grandfather, Bahlam, consolidated our rule.”

  “It’s not quite ours,” Gordon said. “In internal matters, things are decided by a council. Each of the arcologies has votes based upon the size of its constituency. On matters of planet-wide importance, majority vote carries the decision. The Sun King directs all foreign policy and trade and is the arbitrator for disagreements between the arcologies. He maintains a space fleet, which controls smuggling, with financial assistance from the principalities. Good little fleet. Dalton heads up that section, eh, Dalton?”

  “I do my best,” Dalton said, finishing the last of the vegetables and washing them down with wine. “I have spoken before about the need to modernize the fleet.”

  “And I have told you before, to what end? We are not engaged in a war. Nor does one seem imminent. The fleet is a first-rate fighting force already. You have told me so yourself.”

  “It could be better,” Dalton grumbled, stabbing a starfruit.

  Gordon shrugged and went on. “The principalities pay a tax for maintaining the fleet, customs service, and the merchandisers’ cooperative. The Mercury cooperative markets all of the planet’s products, getting the best prices in the open marketplace.”

  “Not that our enemies believe that,” Dalton said. “They accuse Father of making sweetheart deals, getting money back under the table in kickbacks, and negotiating bad agreements.”

  “It’s a ridiculous accusation, of course,” Gordon said. “But there are elements on Mercury that would overthrow Gavilan rule. Theoretically, that’s possible. If all the principalities on the council voted against us, we could be ousted. But in actual practice, the Miners usually vote with us, and the Musicians almost always do. The Track Cities are frequently intransigent, but they are tied to us, since, by law, we control the storage, marketing, and movement of all goods from the surface of the planet.

  “The Warrens are in a slightly different position. They are in the cooperative voluntarily and can withdraw if they so choose. Their charters permit them to develop their own markets, and they exempt a certain proportion of their goods to sell outside the cooperative. Some of them, especially Kallag, are demanding free trade, as though that were a cure for all their ills. They have forgotten how it was in the early days of our civilization, when every arcology sold its own goods, and the big traders from Mars were able to play one against the other to drive down the prices.”

  “We’ve had a long history of difficulty with Kallag,” Dalton said. “I’ve told you, I can take care of them.”

  “We want to avoid open warfare,” Gordon said, “lb that end, we have recently concluded a treaty with Kallag. It ends our differences. And I want you to sign it, Kemal, on behalf of myself and Mercury Prime.”

  “Why me?” Kemal asked.

  Gordon took his time before speaking. “You may well hold a grudge against me, Kemal, because I kept you on Mars so long. Believe me, it was for your own good, and for the good of the family.”

  “Can you explain that?” Kemal asked, deciding he’d had enough of both his uncle’s starfruit and his lies.

  “I ask you to take it on faith, for the present. Believe, for the moment, at least, my good faith toward you.” He raised his right hand to affirm his honesty.

  “What sign of it is there, Uncle Gordon?”

  “This. That at this moment, when I have concluded an important treaty with the arcology of Kallag, I have chosen you, rather than one of my sons, to carry it to Kallag and sign on behalf of your Gavilan clan. It means that you are one of us, equal in my eyes to my sons.”

  It was dazzling. And it was perplexing. Kemal couldn’t quite believe it. It was all too neat and easy. What was Gordon up to? he wondered.

  “Are you ready to do this for me—for your family?” Gordon asked.

  Kemal waited until he had everyone’s attention. He touched his napkin to his lips, placed the cloth on the table, then said, “I’m afraid not.”

  Gordon stared at him. “What do you mean, Kemal? You won’t go?”

  “Uncle, if you want me to do something for you, you are going to have to do something for me.”

  Everyone’s forks and spoons and glasses stopped in midflight to their respective destinations. No one had ever demanded anything of Gordon Gavilan, and especially not one of his own family!

  “And what is that?” asked Gordon with forced nonchalance, breaking the silence.

  “I want my father’s inheritance.”

  Gordon laughed. “But of course! I’ve been holding it for you in trust. You’ll find every kilo accounted for. In fact, there’s more there than when Ossip died.”

  Kemal couldn’t help but notice Gordon’s antique wooden chair squeak when the titanic man squirmed in it. “I want it deposited to me in a bank in New South Mars,” Kemal said. “All of it, including deeds to property. In my name and no other. Tb do with as I please.”

  “What do you intend to do with it? It’s a sizable amount of money,” Gordon said, suddenly sitting still.

  “What I do with it is my own concern. The fact is, it’s mine and I want it.”

  Gordon leaned his sweaty face toward his nephew. “Kemal, there’s never been the slightest question about that. I can set up an account now so that you can draw interest from your share. The interest alone is a huge amount.”

  “No,” Kemal said.

  “Now, boy, listen to me. I have a lot of delicate negotiations going on right now. I’ve been . . . compounding your father’s inheritance by working with it. I can’t simply unravel my negotiations by removing that part from the principal. It’s in you
r interest, boy, to let it remain with me, because current deals are going to double your share. Within a year, you’ll be legally of age. I’ll give it to you then, with pleasure. You have my word on it. What do you say?”

  “No,” Kemal said again.

  “Do you doubt my word?”

  “I probably would, if I gave it much thought. I simply want what’s due me.” Kemal struggled to remain cool-headed, sure that composure more than anything else would help him get what was his.

  “You’re still not twenty-one!”

  Kemal sensed the weakness of Gordon’s argument. “Eighteen is the legal age on Mars,” he ventured.

  “You’re not Martian, you’re Mercurian! Our law puts the age of manhood at twenty-one,” Gordon bellowed, his face turning as crimson as a Martian sunset.

  “You say I’m Mercurian,” Kemal said. “But I’ve lived sixteen of my twenty years on Mars.”

  “You don’t know what was going on here,” Gordon said lamely. “What I did was for your own good. And you had to be educated, Kemal, in order to take your rightful place here in the ruling hierarchy of Mercury Prime.”

  “I don’t give a damn what your reasons were,” Kemal said. “You made them without consulting me. If you want any cooperation from me, you’ll treat me as an adult and give me my due.”

  “Kemal, I’ve already told you, it’s most inconvenient for me to withdraw your father’s bequest from my general funds at this point. I give you my word: In six months, you will receive what is due you.”

  “No.”

  Gordon flinched at Kemal’s bulletlike delivery. “But you have my word. Don’t you trust me at all, Kemal?”

  “You’ve asked me that already,” Kemal said coldly. He stared directly at his uncle’s narrowed eyes, though could see peripherally that all were quiet again save Dalton, who twiddled a steak knife between his fingers. “No, Uncle Gordon, I do not trust you.”

  Blood vessels stood out on Gordon’s face and neck, and beads of sweat formed on his brow and upper lip. “Kemal,” he said slowly, almost pleadingly, “I understand your annoyance at me. But I swear I’ll put things right by you. You have my solemn word. The entire bequest of your father, plus accrued interest, in four months. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Kemal said for the last time.

  “You’re unreasonable and uncivilized!” Gordon exploded, unable to restrain himself any longer. He leaped from his chair and flung it backward, gouging the precious sculpted wall behind him and knocking the old chair to pieces. “Get out of here! Get out of here before I kill you with my own hands!”

  Kemal had an answer for that, too. “Try,” he wanted to say. But he decided he’d said enough. He stood, bowed, and left the audience chamber.

  Kemal ordered dinner in his own suite that night. A servant brought it on an ornate tray. Beside the steaming dishes, there was a document in a heavy envelope. Kemal opened it and saw that it was a paper releasing to him the accrued personal bequest of his father, Ossip Gavilan.

  Kemal read the document carefully. It was signed and witnessed and seemed to be in order. It gave him the right to examine the accounts and transactions since his father’s death in order to judge for himself if there had been any mishandling of his funds.

  There was a condition, however. Kemal was to receive the bequest only after signing his name as Mercury Prime’s signatory to the Mercury Prime-Kallag Protocol. After that, the first ten million Konigs would be released to him, the rest to follow within the week.

  As much as Kemal wanted the money and the freedom, he despised Gordon even more, and certainly didn’t trust him. What could he possibly have inherited (besides money) that Gordon would want? he wondered. Going to Kallag will get me that much closer to my freedom, he thought, but I will not sign this treaty blindly. “My eyes are very much open, Uncle,” he said softly.

  Kemal lay on his bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

  A messenger arrived some time later with the sealed treaty and Kemal’s new travel documents from Gordon. Transport was ready to take him to Kallag at his earliest possible convenience. That meant right now, Kemal knew, just like at military school.

  Gordon was wasting no time. But that was fine with Kemal. The sooner he finished this and got on with his life, the better.

  8

  Kemal was the only passenger in the inter-arcology launch that was to take him to Kallag. He sat alone in the luxurious little cabin.

  The pilot, already aboard in the front compartment, signaled for takeoff. Kemal strapped in, and they lifted away from Mercury Prime.

  Soon they were descending. Mercury’s surface, even viewed through darkened polarized viewers, was a hellish spectacle. The land was mostly flat desert, scoured clear of sand and other debris. Rocks were piled into complex shapes like a surrealistic landscape by an alien sculptor. The desert floor had been split into a crazed pattern, but it was an alien pattern, not like a desert floor might crack on Earth. The rock formations were piled high by wind and other forces. Randomness had produced stone collections that were characteristic of the forces at work on Mercury.

  As the launch descended, Kemal could see endless kilometers of what looked like railroad tracks. These, he knew, were the solar collectors, the only artificial things on the Mercurian surface. They were remains of the early days of settlement, an attempt to get at the mineral wealth of the planet.

  Peering ahead, Kemal could make out a dense mass low on the horizon: a Track City.

  Everything appeared strange, but most alien of all was the light he saw as the launch passed into the planet’s atmosphere. A luminous red-gold, shading into hues of violet and suffused with the fiery light of the nearby sun, the coloring was the dimly remembered hues of eidetic dreams.

  The Track City came up toward the launch swiftly. It was a squat, ugly thing, a black iron toad squashed flat against the smoldering earth; the bumps and protrusions on its hide resolved into viewing ports, observation galleries, and equipment pods bristling with detection devices.

  The Sun King’s amber-colored launch flew over it and continued low across Mercury’s cracked surface.

  Minutes later, Kemal made out a dark opening on the bleak plain. It clarified into the mouth of a cavern, and beyond it Kemal could see the line of the terminator, the line dividing Mercury’s bright side from its dark. The ship braked, hovered, then descended into the mouth of the cavern.

  The cavern’s entrance had a width of several kilometers and slanted downward toward the planet’s interior. Powerful, long-lived glow-lamps illuminated its walls, but the place was so vast that the lighting produced only a twilight gloom. The launch continued down the gradually narrowing cavern, coming at last to a major branching.

  It took the left-hand branch.

  The launch’s pilot proceeded cautiously down a winding tunnel no more than twice the ship’s width. After another few kilometers, the launch, which, though streamlined, was limited to low speeds and high maneuverability, slowed and then came to a stop. Kemal saw that there was a kind of landing stage ahead, with loading stalls and heavy equipment. Lights burned through the gloom.

  The pilot landed neatly. Wasting no time with formality, Kemal sprang from the launch. Guards stood in a single rank. Standing before them was a man in civilian clothes, small, balding, middle-aged, with t he look of a minor official.

  “You are Kemal Gavilan?” he asked. “I am Holton Zac, here to offer you official welcome to Vitesse.”

  “Thank you,” Kemal said. “But did I hear you correctly? Is this Vitesse?”

  “It is indeed,” Zac said.

  “Then I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” Kemal said. “I am going to Kallag on official business.”

  “No mistake,” Zac said. “You are new to Mercurian politics, young sir. We heard of your mission and decided to put ourselves and our excellent city of Vitesse on your itinerary.”

  “Sir,” Kemal said, stunned, “you have no right to interfere with my journey
.”

  Zac shrugged. “Put it down to politics. Welcome to Vitesse. You are our guest.”

  But Kemal recoiled. “This makes no sense to me. What business is it of yours where I go? I demand that I be allowed to proceed to Kallag immediately.”

  Abruptly the launch’s door opened, and out stepped the pilot, still wearing a pressure suit but with the helmet open. She was thin-faced, light-eyed, and tanned, with wisps of dark hair on her forehead. Kemal thought she might have been attractive if her expression had not been so serious.

  “I’d like to introduce you to Duernie,” Zac said. “She comes to us from the Dancers, who arranged this little diversion.”

  The woman walked up to him and peered intently at his face. “You are Kemal Gavilan, son of Ossip the Sun King.” It was not a question.

  “Yes, of course,” Kemal said anyway.

  “You resemble the king,” she said, squinting at him. “I bring you greetings from the Dancers.”

  “That’s nice,” he said distractedly. “But what is this all about?”

  It seemed to be the wrong thing to say. The woman turned away, disappointment evident on her face.

  Zac said to her, “I told you we could expect him to know nothing. Gordon sent him away when he was four. And no doubt made sine he was kept in ignorance.”

  “Then the situation is even worse,” Duernie said. She strode off through a corridor leading to the city’s interior. A door slammed behind her.

  “What’s she so angry about?” Kemal asked, a puzzled look on his face as he watched her go.