by John Brunner
Still in the casual civilian clothes which suited his upright frame so poorly, Ferenc came down the corridor with a set expression. He nodded at the door of the cabin outside which Ligmer had halted.
“This one yours?”
“Uh—no. The next one along.”
“All right.” Ferenc went past him swiftly and shoved open the door, standing slighdy aside and gesturing to Ligmer to enter. As soon as he had done so, Ferenc followed and shut the door again.
He sat down in the nearest chair, leaving Ligmer to make do with the couch, and gave him a scowl. “I suppose you’ve
been thinking some pretty disgraceful things about me,” he said after a pause. He uttered the words as though they cost him a great effort.
“Why?” parried Ligmer.
“Don’t give me that! Because after all that I said—and meant—during the trip here, you found me fraternizing with a Pag. Right?”
“It did seem strange,” Ligmer agreed cautiously. “But now I think you had a reason for it.”
“Damned right I did. And so that you can watch yourself when this Usri woman is around you—which looks like being most of the time, though I can’t stand Pag company for more than a few minutes together no matter how much I drive myself—I got General-Marshal Temmis’ permission to enlighten you about the reason.”
“Oh,” said Ligmer in a flat voice. It was clear from his face that he thought he had probably already committed some embarrassing blunder.
“I told Temmis when I got here-that I didn’t think it was wise for you to be allowed to muck around on your own in Pag company. Still, he said the High Council agreed to your assignment here, so I can’t press the matter. After what happened, though, I suggested I ought to warn you to keep your nose clean.
“You know what gets done to people who don’t keep their secrets properly?”
Ligmer swallowed and nodded.
“But I don’t have much in the way of secrets,” he ventured.
“You’re just about to acquire one,” said Ferenc grimly, and ran over the orders which Temmis had given him on his arrival, with the facts behind them as an explanation for his own unprecedented and out-of-character behavior.
As he progressed ,a light seemed to dawn on Ligmer, and at the end he was nodding slowly, back and forth, back and forth. “That’s why,” he said in a satisfied tone as Ferenc’s last words died into silence.
“Why what?” Ferenc’s first reaction after his long speech had been relief at getting it over with; now he pounced alertly on Ligmer’s words.
“Why Captain Raige wouldn’t agree my application that I filed together with Scholar Usri.” Ligmer felt in the pockets of his slacks and produced a duplicate of the application. Ferenc almost snatched it from his hand.
"I don’t see the connection,” he said after a pause. He sounded reluctant to admit the fact.
“Well . . . maybe I’m wrong, then. But Usri and I deliberately phrased the application to look innocuous. We’d been talking over these relics of prehistoric spaceships alleged to have been found on Pagr—and by the way, it now looks as if they really exist—”
“I find that hard to swallow,” grunted Ferenc. “Go on.”
"Well, we succeeded in isolating two or three quite distinctive design principles in the fossil remains of these ships. I won’t go into details, since it’s all rather technical, but it’s a development of a process my instructor at university invented for classifying types of engineering design.
“This could be the clue to a final demolition of Pag propaganda regarding Waystation.' Or it might not. We shan’t know, now, unless the Glaithes have a change of heart on the matter. Raige turned the application down cold. And now it seems likely that it was because a careful study of design principles in the structure of Waystation would at once reveal the distortions they’ve put into their maps.”
Ferenc slapped his open palm on his thigh. “You may have something,” he said. “You’re not such a muddlehead as I thought you were when I first met you. You can’t think of any other reason why Raige should have turned down the application?”
“No. Unless she was just feeling obstinate, and refused on principle.”
“Not likely that. The Glaithes are cool customers—don’t let their impulses run away with them. Speaking of impulses running away with them, what in the galaxy possessed you to let this steward Vykor escape when he’d insulted Cathrodyne?”
Ligmer flushed to the tips of his ears. This story was going to haunt him for ages; he could see that. He said defensively, “It was in the tourist circuit, and there wasn’t very much I could do, was there? I reported the matter right away, and so
far as I’ve heard he hasn’t attempted to show his nose around his ship again.”
“He still gets away with it, damn it! Thanks to those slimy Glaithes . . . Well, no good wasting worry on unimportant things like that.”
A click sounded in the facsimile message pan on the wall of the cabin beside the bunk. Ligmer grunted and lifted the lid to reveal the message slip. He read it, and held it out to Ferenc, speechless with annoyance.
Under the code number of Ligmer’s cabin, Ferenc read:
Our inquiries have failed to reveal that anyone invited Lang to visit the memory bank halls. Consequently I must assume Scholar Usri and yourself to have been mistaken.
It was signed, “Raige, Captain.”
Ferenc scowled and gave it back. “This means . . .?” he demanded.
Ligmer briefly ran over the reason for the message. “But damnation!” he exploded at the end. “We were not mistaken. We were going around the various chutes leading into the tourist circuit and checking a few superficial points of the design of each so that we could decide whether or not it was worth sending in this application to Raige.
“You know that the entries to the memory bank halls are in the tourist circuit; there’s an opinion that in fact the whole layout of the tourist circuit—the hovers, the garbage clearance and all the rest—is directly controlled by some portion or other of the banks. Usually, they’re screened off at ground level.
“But you can see them from the mouth of a chute if it happens to be in the right relationship with them. We were in Chute Number Platinum at just such a moment, and we both saw Lang clearly and distinctly. Maybe we eould have mistaken someone else for him, but who else carries a black- furred pet animal like that ghastly yapping creature he owns?”
“What was he doing?” Ferenc looked grim.
“Just coming out. I don’t know how he passed the entries —I’ve been there a couple of times, when I was here as a student, and they were always secured and quartered to my knowledge.”
“Then it’s possible he hadn’t actually been past the entries?”
“No! This entry was open, and closed as he came away.”
“Temmis ought to know about this,” said Ferenc with sudden decision. “We can’t let Raige get away with calling you a liar, even if she accuses Usri at the same time.”
The bald-headed chief of staff heard them out, nodding at the telling points of their narrative, and when they had finished slapped his hand down on his desk with a sound like a pistol.
“I want to know about this man Lang,” he said crisply. “I think we should keep an eye on him. Obviously he’s not what he pretends to be; obviously the Glaithes have an interest in him, if they’re willing to cover up for him. You’ve spoken to him since your arrival, you say?” His sharp eyes fixed on Ligmer.
“Yes. As Officer Ferenc said, I and Scholar Usri discussed the theory of the origins of Waystation with him. Scholar Usri said something interesting afterwards. She said she had a feeling that he knew more about Waystation without having been there before than we did, who’d studied it.”
“Humph! Wouldn’t bet my money on a Pag’s guesswork —but as you say, it’s interesting that she should have made a remark like that.” Temmis thumbed a stud on his desk, and a smart uniformed orderly presented himself at the door
of the office.
“Find out from Glaithe reception or from their admin service where the stranger from out of eye-range, Lang, is accommodated,” Temmis ordered him. “And if possible, find out where he is at the moment.”
They waited in silence for the few minutes it took the orderly to go and come back. When he did, he wore a puzzled look.
“They say, noble sir,” he told Temmis, “that he was assigned cabin Gl-1420—that’s in the Glaithe section, just close to the tourist circuit. They’ve put people from beyond the Arm there before, when there’ve been any.”
“Ah!” said Temmis, and gave Ferenc and Ligmer a meaning glance. “That’s indicative! In the Glaithe section!”
“But, sir,” pursued the orderly doggedly, “he never went to the cabin—his baggage is still exactly as it came from the delivery chute, the toilet materials are untouched, the meters show no record of water having been used in the washbasin, and the key-seal on the door appears not to have been broken since the cabin was last tenanted.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” snapped Temmis. The orderly gulped and looked unhappy.
“Yes, sir! That’s what they told me, though.”
“Right; dismissed,” said Temmis with a frown. When the orderly had gone, he pressed the call-switch on his desk communicator and spoke to a staff officer.
“Colonel! How many personnel have you off-duty and in the section at the moment?”
“Approximately thirty-five, sir,” the colonel’s voice reported. “I can recall others if necessary, though.”
“Thirty-five should be enough. I want a complete survey made of every accessible part of Waystation. We’re looking for the stranger from out of eye-range.”
"This man Lang? Yes, sir. Will do at once. What shall I tell them to do if they spot him?”
“Tell ’em to work in pairs, and then have one follow him, the other report in to me personally as fast as he can.”
“Right, sir,” the colonel said, and broke the connection. It was more than an hour later when he called back, his voice unhappy. “We’ve hunted high and low, sir,” he stated. “Reliable personnel have checked the tourist circuit, the Majko and Lubarrian sections, the public offices in the Glaithe section “and those areas of the private section we could get into, and as much of the Alchmid section as was possible without running into Pag opposition. No one has seen hide nor hair-of the man Lang for several hours.”
Temmis nodded slowly, saying nothing. The colonel waited anxiously for a moment, then went on: “Any further instructions, sir?”
"Continue by relays till he shows up,” Temmis told him, and flicked the switch. He raised his eyes to the others.
“Well, that means he could be in”—he checked the points on his fingers—"Pag territory, which is unlikely and may be discounted; a private corner of the Caves, having a good time with some good-time girl, which from his apparent nature seems almost as unlikely; or—and this does seem likely in view of what you’ve told me—some part of the Glaithe section which is forbidden to visitors.”
He dropped his hands to the desk and folded them together. “In any case,” he said softly, looking beyond the others and seemingly through the bulkhead of the cabin, “I’m getting very anxious indeed to speak to this man Lang. Not been to his cabin! Not to be found in any of the obvious places in Waystation! It must mean something—and I’m determined to find out what.”
XIV
“Get acquainted with Waystation,” Raige had told him. “Not just the dock, the reception hall, the service areas, your own Majko section—all of it!”
Vykor was despondently trying to do exactly that. She had issued him an allowance of currency scrip to cover his needs for the immediate future and advised him to go and spend it in the tourist circuit first of all—to try and improve his mood.
But it was all meaningless to him now.
He had wandered through the City again, seeing a couple of free Majkos that he knew and exchanging a greeting, without mentioning that he had now become one of them. The news had reached them already; they congratulated him with one breath and commiserated with the next.
Now he was entering the mouth of the Caves, the one part of the tourist circuit he had not seen before—and the realization did what nothing else had done so far: pierced his apathy. There were rumors about the Caves, most of which he was fairly sure were true, and he had had a stem enough upbringing to make him ashamed of being seen there.
“That sort of thing is fit only for decadents like the Cathrodynes”—how many times had he heard self-righteous voices at home utter just such a sentiment?
So, even now that he had become an expatriate, an outcast, he hesitated before the entrance, looking up.
There was something odd about the Caves. They did not run under the Mountains, as might have been expected. They existed independently, like the Plains and the Ocean. Sometimes they were adjacent to one, sometimes to the other. But they, like everything else in the tourist circuit, moved on in a majestic slow cycle.
He strained his eyes to see past the Caves on either side and failed. Ahead of him, there was this dark-blue glowing entrance, a pointed, narrow, upright opening in something of semi-luminous blue-green, crusted and rough as though hung with dried organic residues. Light caught on tiny glittering points here and there and sparkled suddenly as he moved his head.
Hand-in-hand two masked Glaithes in gaudy holiday attire walked past him and were swallowed up in the blue-green gloom. Past them, odd noises—here a sharp cry, bitten off at the end; there a dull gurgling like water running into a hollow vessel; again, a series of a dozen heavy thuds—drifted to Vykor’s ears.
He took a tentative step forward, and felt something firm yet yielding underfoot—sand, loosely packed. Some of it got into his openwork sandals, and he shook it out irritably.
Then at last he set his shoulders back and summoned the courage to walk straight ahead.
Beyond the entrance there was a short passage, rather low and cramped, so that at one point he had to duck his head a little to avoid an overhang which glowed eerie turquoise in color. He felt that he was going downwards, although there was no visible declivity.
Beyond the overhang, he came into a wider space, with a stream of clear water tumbling down one of its walls into a broad, shallow pool at the bottom. The floor of the pool also glowed a little. Sitting in the pool, wrapped from neck to ankles in a thick cloth like a blanket, a Lubarrian girl was cupping up water in one hand andb pouring it over the other, alternately. Many of the residents of the half-world of the Caves were Lubarrians, as a consequence of the sensual religion they had acquired from their Cathrodyne masters. It had never struck root on Majkosi, and Vykor could not tell whether this action was symbolic of something or not. From the intent, ritualistic way in which the girl carried out her repetitive actions he suspected that it might be.
He went on further, and came to a long passage where one wall had been hollowed out every few yards to form a series of alcoves. Some of the alcoves had red curtains drawn across their mouths; as he passed, he heard grunts and movements from behind the curtains. One of them had a sort of black halfdoor, over which an Alchmid youth leaned, his eyes unseeing, his hands clenching and unclenching, his mouth slightly open as a bit of shining spittle ran over his lower lip. There were many Alchmids here, too—degraded by their addiction to dreamweed. Vykor shuddered and hurried past the boy. He seemed only a little younger than Vykor himself.
Beyond there, the passage branched into two; he hesitated, and took the right-hand branch because he thought he could hear music coming from it. He had barely entered it when there was a sudden high-pitched cry, followed by a scream of laughter, and an Alchmid girl wearing a skimpy cloth around her hips and a nearly transparent veil which floated behind her came running and giggling down the passage, almost colliding with him.
Behind her came a Majko of Vykor’s own people, shouting breathlessly and waving a half-full bottle of purple liquor. He cau
ght the girl as she stumbled in avoiding Vykor, and gave a triumphant cry as he turned and dragged her back up the passage.
Vykor followed them at a distance, and was relieved to find when he came out once again into a large open space that here there was feasting and dancing going on, to the music of a small band. Glaithes, Alchmids, Lubarrians, Majkos, even two bleary-eyed Cathrodynes, sat around a broad flat table lit by flaring wicks stuck in the necks of bottles, and yelled to him to stop and join them.
He considered doing so. Then he saw that there was an Alchmid girl, wearing a fantastic garb of red and white ruffles, sitting next to a Majko of middle age, who was carefully
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distilling dreamweed over the flame of one of the wicks on the table. Ready at her hand lay the sharp, crystalline spike with which the tarry-brown preparation of the drug was injected. The Majko was feverishly begging her to be quick about her task.
Vykor averted his eyes quickly, and hurried across the space in front of the band, having to avoid the clutching hands of a Lubarrian girl who rose from her place at table as he went by. He almost fell over the prostrate body of another Cathrodyne at the foot of the bandstand; the man clutched in his hand a bottle which was slopping its contents over his chest as it rose and fell with his breathing. His face smiled beatifically.
Again, there was a short passage, and again there was water running at the end of it. This time it was in the form of a shallow sparkling brook across the passage floor, and he was in it up to his ankles before he realized. Something snatched at his legs, and he gave a cry of alarm as he looked down.
It was a girl—a Lubarrian again—who sat hidden in the opening in. the cave wall from which the stream floated, dressed in a shapeless garment of some stiff plastic material that made dull noises as she moved.
