Time was unimportant now. The word must get around. So instead of driving to some definite destination, Farradyne set the Lancaster in a long, lazy course and let the big ship loaf its way into space.
3
Big Jupiter and tiny Ganymede were dwindling below by the time Farradyne was finished at the control panel. He was hungry and he was tired, so he was going to eat and hit the sack. He turned and saw her.
Norma Hannon sat in the computer’s chair behind the board. Her hands were folded calmly and her body was listless. She had been quietly waiting for him to get finished with the important part of his piloting before she started anything. Farradyne grunted uncertainly because he was completely ignorant of her attitude, except perhaps the feeling that she would enjoy violence.
“Well?” he said.
“I caught the landing ramp as it came running in.”
“Why?”
“You owe me a couple,” she told him. “You’re a lotus runner, you can give me one. Simple as that”
“How do you figure?”
“You killed my brother,” she said. There was more vigor in her tone as the anger flared again. “So you owe me more than a couple of blossoms for it, at least”
“What makes you think—”
“Another thing,” she interrupted. “I wanted to come along with you.”
“Now see here—”
“Don’t bother pretending you give a damn for the lives of the people you sell those things to. Run your dope and get your dough and skip before you have to see the ruin you bring.” The flare of anger was with her and she wriggled in her chair with an animal relish that was close to ecstasy.
“But I can’t—”
“Keep it up,” she said. “You’ll satisfy me, one way or another.” She eyed him critically. “You can’t win, Farradyne. I’ve had my love lotus, and all that is left of my feeling is heavy scar tissue. Pleasure and surprise are too weak to cut through; only a burning anger or a deep hatred are strong enough to make me feel the thrill of a rising pulse. I can get a lift out of hating you, but if you kissed me it would leave me cold.” She paused speculatively. “No, would it? Farradyne, come here.”
“But why?”
“Because I hate your guts. Of all the people in the solar system, I hate you the most. I can keep telling myself that you killed Frank, and that does it. And I add that you are a love lotus runner and in some way part and parcel of this addiction of mine and that builds it up. Now if you came over and kissed me, I’d let you and the very thought of being kissed and fondled by such a completely rotten reptile as Farradyne makes me seethe with pleasant anger.”
Farradyne recoiled.
“Afraid?” she jeered, wriggling again. “You know, as a last thrill I might kill you. But only as a last thrill. Because then the chance to hate you actively would be over and finished and there could be no more. So between hating your guts and getting an occasional hellflower from the man I hate, I can feel almost alive again.”
Farradyne shook his head. This sort of talk was above and beyond him. No matter what he said or did it was the wrong thing, which made it right for Norma Hannon.
He did not know much about the love lotus. All he knew was from hearsay. But that did not include this sort of completely illogical talk. Like many another man, Farradyne had always scorned the use of any chemical means to lower the inhibitions of a woman. He wanted them to love him for himself, not because of a sniff of perfume that made them any man’s woman.
Seeing this end result actually made Farradyne feel better about the lot he had been cast in. If Clevis was the kind of man who boiled inwardly from a sense of outraged civic responsibility, Farradyne was beginning to feel somewhat the same.
He looked at Norma Hannon more critically. She had been a good-looking woman not too long ago. She had probably laughed and danced and fended off wolves and planned on marriage and happy children in a pleasant home. Someone had cut her out of that future and Farradyne felt that he wanted to get the man’s neck between his hands and squeeze. He shook himself and wondered whether this addiction to hatred were contagious.
He said softly, “Who did it. Norma?”
Her eyes changed. “I loved him,” she breathed in a voice that was both soft and heavy with another kind of anger than the violence she had shown just a moment before. This was resentment against the past, while her previous flare had been against the physical present “I loved him,” she repeated. “I loved the flat-brained animal enough to lead him into the bedroom if that’s what be wanted. But no, the imbecile thought that the only way I would unfreeze was with a hellflower. So he parted with half a hundred dollars for one. The idiot could have rented a hotel room for a ten-dollar bill,” she added sourly. “Or bought a marriage license and had me for the rest of his life for five.”
“Why didn’t you refuse it?” he asked. “Or didn’t you know that it wasn’t a gardenia?”
Norma looked up with eyes that started to blaze, but they died and she was listless again. “Maybe because people like to flirt with danger,” she said. “Maybe because men and women don’t understand each other.”
“That’s the understatement of the century.”
There was no flicker of amusement in her face. “Look at it this way,” she said. “I did say I loved him. So naturally he wouldn’t be the kind of man who would bring me a love lotus. Or if he did I could wear it for the lift they bring without any danger, because any man worth loving would not take advantage of his sweetheart while she’s unable to object So I wore it and when I woke up after a real orgy instead of a mild emotional binge, I was on the road toward having no feelings left. I’ve been on the road ever since and I’ve come far.”
She looked at him again. “See what you and your kind have done?” she demanded. Farradyne knew that she was whipping herself into a fury again. “I was a nice, healthy woman once, but now I’m a burned out battery. It takes a spot of violence to make me feel anything. Or maybe a sniff from a lotus. Maybe by now it would take more than one.”
“But I haven’t any.”
She snarled at him. “You can afford to part with one stinking flower.”
Norma leaped out of her chair and came across the room, her face distorted, her hands clutching at his face. Farradyne fought her away, and saw with dismay the look of animated pleasure on her face. It was an unfair fight; Farradyne was trying to keep her from hurting him without being forced to hurt her. She went at him with heel and fingernail and teeth.
He gave up. Taking a cold aim at the point of her jaw, Farradyne let her have it. Norma recoiled a bit and her face glowed even more. In his repugnance at hitting a woman he had not struck hard enough. She came after him again, enjoying the physical violence, looking for more of the same. Farradyne gritted his teeth and let her have it, hard.
Norma collapsed with a suddenness that scared him. He caught her before she hit the metal floor and carried her to the salon below, where he laid her on the padded bench that ran along one wall. His knowledge of things medical was hot high, but it was enough to let him know that she did not have a broken jaw. Of one thing there was no doubt: Norma was out colder than he had ever seen man or woman.
He carried her to one of the tiny staterooms, and stood there contemplating her and wondering what to do next. He would have been puzzled as to the next move if Norma had been a completely normal woman. As it was, Farradyne decided that no matter what he did it would be wrong. She would be as angry at one thing as at another. The cocktail dress would not stand much sleeping in before it came apart at the seams, but she would surely rave if he took it off to save it for tomorrow. If he left her in it, she would rave at him for letting her ruin the only thing she had to wear.
Farradyne gave up and slipped the hold-down strap across her waist and let it go at that.
He would take what happened when she woke up.
Then he went to his own stateroom and locked the door because he didn’t want any more ruckus and confusion. He
slept fitfully even though the locked door separated him securely from both amour and murder—both of which added up to the same end with Norma.
It was a sixty-hour trip from Ganymede to Mars. Each hour was a bit more trying than the one before. Norma bedeviled him in every way she knew. She found fault with his cooking but refused to go near the galley herself. She objected to the brand of cigarettes he smoked. She made scathing remarks whenever he touched an instrument reminding him of his incompetence as a pilot. She scorned him for re-fusing to bring her the lotus.
By the time Farradyne set the Lancaster down at Sun City on Mars, he had almost arrived at the point where her voice was so much meaningless noise.
He landed after the usual discussion of landing space and beacon route with Sun Tower, and Farradyne found time to wonder whether the word about his affiliation had been spread yet For the Tower operator paid him no more attention than if he had been running in and out of the spaceport for years.
He pressed the button that opened the spacelock and ran out the landing ramp.
“This is it,” he said flatly.
“This is what?” she asked negatively.
“The end of the line.”
“I’m staying.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m staying, Farradyne. I like it here. You go on about your sordid business, and see that you get enough to spare a couple for me. I‘ll be here when you return.”
Farradyne swore. She had moved in on him unwanted and had ridden with him unwanted. If she wanted to, she could raise her voice, and brother, that would be it. One yelp and Farradyne would spend a long time explaining to all sorts of big brass why he was hauling a woman around the solar system against her wishes. A phenomenal quantity of sheer hell can be raised by any woman merely by making a howl of shocked surprise, putting on a look of wounded dignity and pointing a finger at any man within a pebble’s throw. Even men who have been rooked in this ladylike maneuver are inclined to lean the other way and convict the man when a woman plays that trick.
So grunting helplessly, Farradyne left her in the Lancaster and went to register at Operations. He was received blandly, just as he had been received on Ganymede. Then he headed into Sun City to stall a bit He went to a show, had a drink or two, prowled around a bookstore looking for something that might inform him about the love lotus and then bought himself some clothing to augment his scant supply. He succeeded in forgetting Norma Hannon for four solid hours.
Then he remembered, and with the air of a man about to visit a dentist for a painful operation, Farradyne went reluctantly back to his ship.
The silence that met him was reassuring. Even if she had been sound asleep, the noise of his arrival should have roused her so that she would come out to needle him some more. He looked the ship over carefully, and satisfied himself that Norma Hannon was not present.
This was too good to miss.
He raced to the control room, punched savagely at the button that closed the spacelock and fired up the radio. “Lancaster Eighty-One calling Tower.”
“Go ahead, Lancaster.”
“Request take-off instructions. Course, Terra.”
“Lancaster, is your passenger aboard?”
“Passenger?”
“Check Stateroom Eight Lancaster. Your passenger informed us that she was going into town, that you were not to leave without her.”
“Aye-firm, I will check.” Farradyne snarled at the closed microphone. Willfully abandoning a passenger would get him into more trouble than trying to explain the reason for the presence of his guest. Norma had done a fine job of bolting the Lancaster to the landing block in her absence.
He waited fifty seconds. “Tower from Lancaster Eighty-One. I will wait. My passenger is not aboard.”
“Lancaster. Hold-down Switches to Safety, Warm-up Switches to Stand-by. Power Switches to Off. Open your port for visitor.”
“Visitor, Tower?”
“Civilian requests conference about pickup job. Are you free?”
“I am free for Terra, Tower.”
“Prepare to receive visitor, Lancaster. Good luck on job.”
“Aye-firm. Over and off.”
Farradyne went below and rode the bottom step of the landing ramp on its way out of the spacelock. He reached the ground about the same time as the arrival of a port jeep, which brought his visitor to him.
“You’re Charles Farradyne? I’m Edwin Brenner. I’m told you are free for Terra. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Brenner nodded. He looked around. The jeep was idling and making enough noise so that the driver sitting in the machine could not possibly hear anything that was being said. The driver was not even interested in them; something in the distance had caught his eye and he was giving it all his attention. Satisfied, Brenner leaned forward and in a low voice said, “Let me see what you’ve got.”
Farradyne shook his head. “Who, me?” he asked.
“You. I’m in the market. If they’re in good shape, we can make a deal.”
Farradyne felt that this was as good a time to play cagey as any. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“No? I hardly think you are telling the truth.” Farradyne grinned broadly. “So I’m a liar?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Look, Brenner, I don’t know you from Adam’s off ox. From somewhere, you have the idea that I am a runner and you want to get into the act. In the first place I am not a runner and in the second place you have about as much chance of getting into a closed racket with that open-faced act of yours as you have of filling a warehouse with heroin by asking the local cops where to buy it.”
Brenner smiled. “I can see you’re cagey,” he said. “I don’t blame you. In fact, I’d not have come out here asking like an open-faced fool if I hadn’t been completely out of stock. I’m a bit desperate.” He went into an inside pocket and came out with an envelope. “This is a credential or two,” he said, “so that when you return this way, we can maybe do business. The usual way, you know. No questions, or witnesses. Okay?”
“I’ll be back—maybe, Mr.—er, Brenner.”
“You get the idea.”
“I’ll—” Farradyne’s voice trailed away as he caught sight of the object that had held the interest of the jeep driver. It was Norma Hannon, who came around the fins of the Lancaster with the sun behind her.
Her errand had been shopping. The overworn cocktail dress was gone and in its place was a white, silky number that did a lot of fetching things to her figure. She had also taken the complete course at some primpmill. She was another woman. Not even Farradyne, who had seen her for days, could have been convinced that this beautiful perfection was not Norma’s usual appearance.
Farradyne was silent. But as Brenner caught sight of her coming around the sunlit tail of the ship, with enough sun shining through her to make the pulses jump he made a throaty discord.
“Hello,” she said brightly, as though she and Farradyne were reasonably close acquaintances, but in a tone that indicated that she was paid passenger and he the driver of the spacer. “I’ve some parcels being delivered in a bit. We’ll wait, of course?”
Farradyne agreed dumbly.
Norma nodded coolly to Brenner and said. “I’m going on in,” as though she did not want to interfere with any business that might be going on between the two men. She went up the ramp displaying a quantity of well-filled nylon at every step.
The roar of the jeep’s engine snapped Farradyne’s attention back to Brenner—or where Brenner had been standing. The jeep was taking Brenner away in a cloud of spaceport dust.
Farradyne shrugged. That was not the man he really wanted. Call it close but no cigar. Farradyne did not want a man to buy love lotus, he wanted a seller of the things, a shipper, a character from the upper echelon. There might be an avenue through Brenner, but he doubted it.
With a sigh, Farradyne went into the Lancaster. Norma rose from the div
an along the end of the salon and whirled like a mannequin, her silken skirt floating. She stopped and let the skirt wrap itself around her thighs. “Like it?” she asked.
“It’s very neat,” he replied flatly. “But where did you get the wherewithal?”
“I figured you owed me something so I took it out of the locker in the control room. You left the key dangling conveniently in the lock.”
Clevis had left Farradyne quite a bit of operating money but far from enough to go cutting a silken swath across the average fashion mart. “What’s the grand idea?” he asked.
“You’re a cold-blooded bird. You don’t give a hoot that you and your cowboy-spacing killed my brother and that you and your kind made it possible for some lecher to dope me out of my feelings. I’m told that half-decent gangsters send flowers to a rival’s funeral, but you wouldn’t part with even a love lotus you aren’t paid for. So if you won’t give me one, I’m going to force it out of you.”
“But—”
“You get the idea,” she said, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle over one round hip. “But I’m honest. You’ve some change coming.” She put her hand down in the space between her breasts and brought forth a small roll of bills which she handed to him. Dumbly, he took them.
They were warm and scented with woman and cologne and would have been hard on Farradyne’s blood pressure if it had not been for the anticipatory glitter in Norma Hannon’s eyes. There was a small commotion at the spacelock. Farradyne looked to see three men coming in with fancy-wrapped boxes. He groaned and went aloft to the control room. Norma had run the gamut without a trace of a doubt.
4
Farradyne sat before his control panel with his head in his hands and tried to think this affair out to a logical conclusion. There had to be some way out of it all. The only alternative was to go on hauling Norma back and forth, being the brunt of her needling and her viciousness and getting nothing done because of it. The mess had started off bad enough, but had now deteriorated until at the present moment the future looked completely hopeless.
Hellflower (1957) Page 3
