by E. C. Tubb
“You must love death,” he said drily. “One more step and the thing would have smashed your skull.”
“But it didn’t,” reminded Kalgan evenly. He had not altered his calm posture. “Your name?”
“Tharg.”
“You throw a skeel blade well.”
“I’ve had practise and I can’t afford a blaster.”
“So?” The golden cloak rippled over the golden shoulders as the tall man shrugged. “That can be remedied.” He stared at Tharg with a peculiar expression, his cold blue eyes drifting over the great thews and barrel chest, then looked towards the block as the auctioneer resumed his business.
“A rare and delectable gem, culled from the starships of space, won in fair combat and brought here for your admiration.” The old man clapped his hands and an assistant stripped the robe away from a hidden shape. “See?”
A woman stood on the worn stone of the block. Tall she was and with skin holding an inner light of its own, pearl-like, almost translucent, the colour of old ivory and as smooth and flawless as a new-hatched dream. Black hair rippled from a high forehead, falling in thick waves over naked shoulders, half-revealing, half-concealing the ripe curves of her lissom figure and the slender grace of waist and thighs. Her lips were a crushed rose, her teeth gleaming white, her eyes twin pools of trapped midnight.
“One thousand stellars,” rapped Kalgan, interrupting the auctioneer’s flow of praise. Tharg stared at him, then at the girl, then back to the impassive man of gold. He smiled.
“Fifteen hundred,” called a voice from the rear, and.... “Two thousand.” This from a glinting-eyed woman wearing an elaborate headdress, a procuress from the whispered kingdom of Sith.
“Three thousand.” A sweating nomad thrust his way to the edge of the crowd, then swore as his bid was topped by a man from Zedroni.
“Five thousand for the pearl of perfection!”
“Six!”
“Seven!”
“Have an end,” snapped Kalgan. “Ten thousand stellars.”
The old auctioneer smiled as he heard the fantastic sum offered, then as no one topped the bid, clapped his hands as a signal to his assistants to close the transaction. Gently they draped the glowing body in a fine robe and led the girl towards her new owner. Impassively Kalgan counted out the thin sheets of urillium script and turned, the girl at his side, ready to walk from the great plaza.
“Wait!” Tharg grinned, his teeth flashing in the light from the setting sun. “You’ll need a guard for such precious merchandise, for though this is auction time, and all men obey the truce, yet ten thousand stellars would tempt a saint—and the girl is beautiful.” He stared at her, his bold eyes drinking in her loveliness, roving from her features to the robe-shrouded body, and a little pulse began to jump high on one temple.
“Yes,” said Kalgan, and something of humour touched his lips. “As you say, she is—beautiful.” He did not look at the girl.
“Then, by your leave, I will walk with you.” Tharg grinned. “It may well be that I shall save your life twice today.”
“I had not forgotten,” said Kalgan quietly, and again his cold blue eyes held a peculiar expression as he stared at the big man. The girl said nothing, but stood, her liquid dark eyes flickering from one to the other of the two men, then flushed a little beneath Tharg’s direct gaze.
On the rostrum the old auctioneer raised his voice as he offered other slaves for purchase. Kalgan glanced towards him, then looked back at the big man.
“Did you come to make a purchase?”
“Aye, but my friend was sold before I arrived.” Tharg shrugged, letting the lie roll easily from his tongue. “We shall meet again.”
“And so shall we.” Kalgan gestured and hard-faced men pushed forward and closed around the girl. “As you see I have no need of more guards, but I thank you, and will thank you more. At the tavern nearest to the spaceport at midnight. Be there if you will.”
Then he was gone, moving away with a swirl of flashing colour, and Tharg frowned thoughtfully after the tall figure.
He shrugged.
Midnight came with a burst of stars flecking the moonless sky and a cool wind blowing from the outlying desert. Down the Street of Starmen lights blazed from every window and door, and the press was as thick as during the day. Slavers jostled starmen, and both merged with traders and nomads and all headed for the wine shops and pleasure houses lining both sides of the street.
Tharg walked towards the spaceport, his stride lithe and his head thrown back as he sniffed at the chill breeze. A woman smiled at him with rich invitation, and a gambler, rattling his pieces of nocked bone, called at him to test his luck, but he ignored them both. A tout plucked at his arm and whispered of nameless pleasures, and a drunk offered him a goblet of wine. He passed on as if they were shadows, thrusting broad shoulders between idling men, his eyes clouded with thought and lost dreams.
A fight boiled to a red-stained climax before and a little to one side. A blond Eddorian hissed at a dusky nomad, and flaring light from giant flambeaux rippled on skeel blade and blaster. The blaster whined and seared the air with incandescence, the bolt missed, and the Eddorian died, coughing blood through a gash in his throat and trying to fire a blaster with a severed hand. The nomad grunted as he wiped clean his blade, then roared for wine and the pleasures of a blue-haired female, cause of the argument.
Tharg pressed on.
At the tavern he ordered wine, the rich purple wine of Selleda, and gulped his goblet empty in one gigantic swallow. Irritably he snapped his fingers towards the serving wench, and she simpered at him as she tilted the wine skin at her hip, pouring a purple stream into the hammered brass of the cup. Again he gulped, again, then sat staring sombrely at the surface of the dark fluid, twisting faces from light and shade, painted with golden light and purple wine.
A woman’s face, dark-haired and with eyes of trapped midnight, with a crushed rose for lips and old ivory for skin. Flesh there was too, the half-remembered sheen of firm young curves and lithe muscles, dancer’s muscles and a dancer’s art in their subtle underplay.
“Her name is Leedora,” said an even voice. “A dancer.”
Kalgan stood at his side, straight and tall, the flaring light reflecting from his bronze in shimmering glory. He sat and ordered wine, then sipped, his cold blue eyes never leaving those of the big man.
“Is she yours?” Tharg didn’t ask how the other knew of what he was thinking. He had learned her name and now....
“She could be yours,” said Kalgan, and sipped at his wine.
“Then she is yours?” Tharg thinned his lips and the heavy metal of the goblet bent beneath his hand. “Someone called you Kalgan the Golden,” he said bitterly. “I never valued gold until now—now that I know what ten thousand stellars can buy.”
“Can it buy love?” There was a thin bitterness in the bronze man’s voice, bitterness and an aching pain. “Leedora is not mine, Tharg, not as you think she is. I bought her because I knew her of old, and I once had cause to value the friendship of her father. It was a debt too easy to repay.”
“Then?” Hope flamed in the grey eyes.
Kalgan nodded. “She could be yours, Tharg, or mine, but the choice is hers.” He sighed and stared into his goblet. “You called me Golden,” he said. “But it comes to me that you heard me called by another name.”
“I have.”
“And that name?”
“Kalgan the Deathless.”
“Whispered by a beggar, a man so near to death that he should thank his Gods that his life is near done.” Kalgan shrugged at Tharg’s puzzled stare. “There are ears in the Street of Starmen, more ears than belong to one head, and men are hungry for gold.” He stared at his wine again. “Is that why you killed the beast?”
“Is it true?” Tharg leaned forward and there was blazing hope in his grey eyes. “Have you lived while other men, have grown old and died? Are you deathless?”
“Is that why you kill
ed the beast?”
“The beast?” Tharg impatiently shook his head. “What matter that now? You seemed to be frozen, in another man I would call it fear, and your life hung by a thread. It was a simple thing, but answer me. Are you truly deathless?”
“You killed the beast,” said Kalgan quietly. “Know why and you know the answer to what you ask.”
“You speak in riddles,” snapped Tharg, and frustrated anger boiled with him so that his hands trembled and he slopped a little wine as he raised the goblet to his thirsty lips. “What has my killing a beast to do with immortality?”
“If you had not killed him, would I have died?” Kalgan shrugged and answered his own question. “I would not. A dozen things could have happened, the beast could have succumbed to the blaster bolts, the Nione gun could have opened fire, even, perhaps, I would have killed it myself. I know not, I never know, but you acted—and you know not why.”
“I wanted your friendship.”
“Did that affect your aim? A skeel blade is not the easiest thing to throw and the beast was invulnerable to blasters. Was it mere chance that you hit it in the one small vulnerable spot?” Kalgan shook his head. “No. It was chance, yes, but of a nature you have not yet dreamed of. In that lies my immortality.”
“Then it is true?”
“Yes.”
Pain seemed to grip the bronze man then, an inward pain of unbearable anguish, and his blue eyes held the untold suffering of a thousand hells. Almost he seemed to have forgotten the big man, the crowded tavern, the scents of burning wood and spilled wine, the sweat of men and the subtle odours of women. He spoke as a man might speak when he is alone, isolated on a mountain top or deep in the vastness of outer space.
“Immortality! The gift of the Gods—and a living hell! Never to die, never to know that one day there will be an end, to go on and on, treading the futile round, friendless, loveless, alone. I would that I were as other men, able to pit my life on my skill, to face the flash of blades and the whine of blasters as once I did. A long time ago now. A long, long time ago. And I am weary of this life. Weary.”
He blinked, washing cobwebs from his tormented eyes, and he drank deep at his wine, drank as Tharg sometimes drank, desperately, bitterly, trying to wash away the twisted ruins of blasted hope and shattered dreams. When he spoke again it was as man to man instead of man to himself.
“Yes, Tharg. That whispered name was true. I am Kalgan the Deathless.”
“No.” Tharg shook his head, annoyed at himself for ever believing the dream and, now that he was facing it, denying its possibility. “All men can die.”
“So?” Kalgan leaned forward and his eyes were as clear as though the wine he had drunk had been water. “You have proof of that?”
“Aye.” The big man smiled grimly and his hand fell to the hilt of the skeel blade. “I have proof.”
“Then kill me,” whispered Kalgan. “Draw your blade and split my skull, or....” He slipped the blaster from his waist and rested it on the table. “Use this—if you dare.”
“Dare?” Tharg blinked. “Do you wish for death?”
“Yes, but I chose the wrong word. Kill me, then, Tharg—if you can.”
“I have no quarrel with you,” said the big man thickly. “I wish you no ill.”
“Kill me, damn you! Kill me and take the woman, my ship, my gold. Kill me and earn the undying gratitude of a damned soul.”
“No!”
“Then....” The wine was a purple stream as it left the goblet and dashed in the big man’s eyes, flung by a bronze arm with savage force.
The reaction was instantaneous, born of the grim necessity to survive, dictated by reflex action, without thought, without argument.
Tharg reared from the table and his arm was a blurred streak as it flashed to his side. Steel whined as it left its scabbard, swung up, poised—and splintered to molten ruin as a blaster whined from across the tavern. He snarled, snatched at the blaster, aimed it at an impassive face—and the trigger clicked as it misfired. Savagely the big man drew back his arm to use the weapon as a club, then the wine he had drunk rose and hit him, turning his limbs to water, and he fell like a stabbed tsinga, his head thudding against the edge of the table.
“Well, Tharg?” Kalgan looked at him with calm blue eyes. “Can you kill me?”
“I didn’t mean....” Tharg swallowed and shook his head, the strength flowing back to his limbs and his senses clearing of fog. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“It proved my point,” said Kalgan quietly. He picked up the blaster, tilted the pitted orifice towards the scarred floor, and touched the trigger. Flame spouted from it, a searing shaft of ravening energy, and smoke coiled from a round charred hole in the planking.
“Luck,” he said with bitterness. “Chance, call it what you will. I cannot die.”
“An accident,” gulped Tharg. He was sweating as he realised what he had almost done. “Who knew some fool would test a weapon at the exact moment it was in line with the skeel blade? Who knew that the blaster would misfire at that second, and how could anyone tell that the wine would weaken me? Coincidence, Kalgan, sheer blind luck.”
“You think so?” The golden men held out the blaster. “Try again.”
“No.”
“Afraid, Tharg?” Kalgan shrugged and slipped the weapon into its holster. “You need have no fear. I will not die.”
“You can try your luck too far.”
“You think I haven’t tried that? When the beast attacked me, do you think I was helpless? No, Tharg, I waited and I hoped. I hoped that this time no accident would save me, but it did, and you saved my life. If it hadn’t been you it would have been something else.” Kalgan gestured to the waitress and ordered more wine.
“What is immortality, Tharg?”
“Living forever.”
“Perhaps, but shall we put it another way? Would you say that it is the avoidance of death? The avoidance of disease, illness, old age, which is an illness in itself? If a man could avoid all those things, Tharg, wouldn’t he be deathless?”
“He might,” agreed the big man, and within his skull little wheels seemed to click as facts fell into position. “You mean?”
“I bear a charmed life, Tharg. Things happen which prevent my death. A blaster misfires, a skeel blade strikes home, a poison is expelled, a disease is conquered. A thousand things that would kill normal men have no affect on me. I fight—and no blade can harm me. I jump off a precipice--and an accident snags me to a root or I fall into a snowdrift, or I just survive against all natural law. That is your immortality, Tharg. There is no other.”
“Immortality,” breathed the big man, and his eyes flamed with an ancient dream. Then his shoulders sagged and he groped for his wine as a blind man would grope for his bread.
“But for none other than you.”
Kalgan didn’t answer, but his eyes held hidden secrets as he stared at the big man. Across the tavern a starman cursed as a supple-hipped woman left him to press her scantily-clad body against a swarthy trader, and a nomad trilled in anger as his wine slopped in his lap.
In seconds raw fury exploded into primitive violence, born in wine and heat, in tension and the barely-concealed hostility of divergent races brought together in uneasy truce. A skeel blade flashed bright, then dull as it tore through flesh, and a man coughed a red plume as he grovelled on the floor. Other blades flashed, and wine mingled with spilled blood as tables crashed and men bellowed with snarling rage and released blood-lust. Blasters were forgotten in their rage, and steel and driving fists turned the tavern into a shambles.
Tharg rose, his hand groping at his empty scabbard, stared at the impassive features of the Golden One.
“Let’s get out of here,” he muttered.
“Why?” Kalgan shrugged and reached for his wine. “They cannot harm me.”
“Maybe not, but they can harm me, and I’ve no liking to die in a tavern brawl.” Tharg ducked as a goblet hurled towards him. “Y
ou may be immortal, but I’m not.”
“No,” agreed Kalgan, and rose to his feet. “You’re not immortal—not yet.”
Together they walked into the flame-lit night.
* * * *
Leedora sat in a padded acceleration chair and stared thoughtfully at the glistening controls of the starship. Around her the faint whisper of the hyper-drive told that the ship was a living thing, thrusting between dimensions to a rendezvous in the normal space-time continuum, and she had been on such ships before.
She turned as the door slid aside and Tharg entered the instrument-cluttered control room.
He smiled at her, his eyes revealing his hunger, then sighed as he slumped into a chair at her side.
“Leedora,” he said abruptly. “What is Kalgan to you?”
“A friend.” She glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“I love you, Leedora,” he said with simple frankness. “I want you as a man wants a woman, all of you for all time. You know that.”
“I know it.” Her voice was a throbbing whisper of feminine understanding. “But there is something you want more.”
“Yes,” he said, and stared at the ranked controls. For long minutes he sat silent, fighting his ancient dream, annoyed with himself for feeling doubt and wanting, as a child wants, more than he knew he could grasp. “Tell me of yourself,” he said. “Tell me of Kalgan.”
“Of him I know nothing. My father knew him and the Golden One claimed that he owed him some small service.” She twisted her lips in bitterness. “Small! Ten thousand stellars is not what I would call small.”
Tharg hid a frown as he saw the bitter twist to her lips, knowing that she felt soiled at having been bought at the auction and knowing too that it was the man that had bought her that aroused such bitterness. No woman likes to be purchased by the man she loves.
“I was a dancer, you know that,” she continued. “My father died and I was trained for the stage. I did well, too well, for raiders learned of me and lay in wait to board the starship on which I was travelling.” She shrugged. “Even they did not realise the worth of their prize. Ten thousand! Even with their dues to Ghort it was a good six months’ work.”
