The Golden People

by Fred Saberhagen

  "Hello," said Adam, and relaxed, or tried to relax, leaning on the bar. He experienced, as usual, a sudden wave of mixed feelings on encountering Ray. "Good old Vito Ling didn't give me a chance to say hello, the other day. Damn, he can't always be that touchy, can he?"

  "He's not," said Ray, and paused thoughtfully. "Actually he's a pretty good guy." Ray paused again, and a faint smile appeared on his face, evoking old days at Doc's school, old shared pranks and adventures there when Adam visited. "Pretty good for one of you ordinary second-rate human types, that is."

  "Yeah, sure." Adam turned back to the bar.

  "He is. Merit picked him out, didn't she?"

  There was a pause, in which Adam thought he could feel the slight intoxication of his evening's drinking fading prematurely. "Right," he said, not able to think of anything else to say. He wondered if Ray could tell how he, Adam, felt about Merit, and intended to try to do with her. He wondered how Ray felt about her himself. Wondered, and couldn't guess.

  "We've already got serious trouble at the lab," said Ray. "And it's been getting Vito down." He ordered a drink from a robotic creature that appeared behind the bar, and Adam got himself another. The area behind the bar was all colored lights and shadows, and music, much better than some that Adam had heard recently, was coming from somewhere.

  "What kind of trouble?" Adam asked, sipping.

  "Mainly because of an expensive gizmo that the Foundation sent with us from Earth. It was supposed to be just what we needed to unravel the mystery of the Field. But it just flat won't work. Vito and I both told the administrators back on Earth that it should have been constructed differently, but they wouldn't believe us. They were wrong." Ray swallowed half his drink. Suddenly Adam couldn't remember if he had ever seen Ray take alcohol before.

  Adam asked him: "So, you haven't much hope of success now with the Field?"

  "We might have had a good start on it, if our gadget had been properly designed." Ray appeared to brood. "Now, we'll have to find another way."

  "Another way?"

  One of the naked hostesses, on the customers' side of the bar, was approaching Ray. When she got close enough to touch him on the arm, and he turned to face her, her professional smile suddenly altered. It was as if she had been awed despite herself by the Jovian man's size and masculine beauty, suddenly confronted at close range.

  When the hostess finally opened her mouth to speak, Ray closed it for her with the lift of one massive finger under her chin. "You might come back and look for me again in a couple of hours," he told her. His voice was abstracted, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. The girl backed away, the professional smile almost totally gone, until she bumped into someone and the spell was broken.

  There had been music in the background all along, ever since Adam had walked in from the lift. Now the instruments suddenly blared up louder, and more colored lights began to focus upon a wide central stage.

  "So." Ray's eyes considered Adam. "Something drew you to settle on this planet—when, about four years ago? Something keeps you here. When I first heard you were living here, that you'd quit the Space Force, I thought it was the Field. But that's not it, is it? Not directly."

  "You're right." Adam tasted his drink. "Something. And no, not the Field exactly. I don't know if I can define it. But the Field's what brought you here. Or is it? What does this planet mean to a Jovian?"

  "You're as perceptive as ever, Adam." Ray slouched easily, elbows on the bar, leaning there like a crouching lion. "No. The Field isn't really all."

  "What else?" asked Adam. Then an answer occurred to him. "In your case, because someone built it. That's it, isn't it? It's the Field-builders who are on your mind."

  "They are. Increasingly." Ray downed the rest of his drink. "Let's go over to the table. I don't think you'll have to dodge any more punches."

  Ray was making fascinating statements, opening topics and then dropping them. That wasn't really his way, as Adam remembered. Adam still leaned on the bar. He wasn't ready to drop this one. "That's it, isn't it? It comes back to the Builders. Why did they create the Field, and where are they now?"

  "Why? I think they created it—just to see what would happen when someone else, like—Earth-descended humanity, discovered it. And where are they now? I think that they're not too far away." Abruptly Ray pushed off from the bar. Not really looking to see whether Adam was following him or not, the huge man led the way toward the distant table where the Lings and the Shishidos appeared to be having a genuinely good time, celebrating something. Celebrating what, Adam wondered? Certainly not the laboratory failure he had just heard about. Certainly not the near-fight on the dock.

  "Do you think the Field could be a parapsych effect?" Adam wondered aloud, suddenly, as they were skirting the low stage. The stage was occupied by frenetically dancing girls whose skins were covered with colored lights and almost nothing else, and Adam felt a little idiotic walking almost among them, discussing parapsych effects.

  Ray turned to answer, the lights playing indirectly on his face. "If it is, it's a damned good one. They've integrated it with effects of the physical sciences. That's a little beyond what we can do. So far." It sounded like that, maybe, was the main point of what he had been thinking about. He turned again and moved on.

  Vito Ling was the first person at the table to see them coming; the tall physicist's face took on an anxious look, and he scrambled to his feet and stuck out his hand to Adam. "Sorry about the other day. Really sorry. I had no reason to act that way, no excuse at all." He was obviously sincere.

  "It's all right—no harm done."

  "I'll say not. I'm just lucky that you're cooler than I am."

  The handshake was firm. It might be easy to get to like this character, Adam thought. That was all he needed, that would make things really nice. Oh, yes.

  Merit, delighted at the truce, got up to greet Adam with an old friend's kiss. He sat down in the chair Ray pulled up for him, between Merit and Ray. A drink was poured for him. He was introduced to Mrs. Shishido, at close range a nicer-looking woman than he had expected. Mrs. Shishido beamed at him.

  "Well, now!" said her small husband, also well pleased to see peace. "Well! Mr. Mann, I understand that you are actually the first human being of Earth to ever set foot on this planet—except perhaps for the unfortunate Golden. And you've been living here for some time now? I wish that I might have been able to meet you sooner."

  Shishido was genuinely interested in the planeteering history. The others were too, once the subject had been raised. Adam began to talk of the earliest days of the Space Force exploration of Golden, telling as an eyewitness of the first experiments with the Field. He could speak well when he wanted to put forth the effort, and now he had a willing audience.

  Vito Ling and Dr. Shishido listened with complete attention. Ray stared into space, but Adam felt that he was absorbing every word. The eyes of the two women stayed on Adam's face. The noise and visual confusion of the Pioneer Hotel faded into a vague background.

  When Adam paused, Vito let out a sighing breath, and shook his head. "I wish I'd been here then!"

  "It's still the same planet, outside the Stem," said Adam. "That's what I like about Golden. We haven't been able to ruin it. And it's still the same Field that we saw then."

  The physicists began a three-way argument among themselves, each for slightly different reasons damning the theories and activities of the Research Foundation. Meanwhile, dancing was in again this year, and Adam danced with Mrs. Shishido, though he didn't feel much like it.

  Then he led Merit out onto the crowded floor. The music was part of an uproar, that was about all you could say for it. Bodies jostled them this way and that.

  "How's the geryon research going?" he asked.

  "Slowly. I don't know if I can even call it research yet. I've been to your local zoo and library."

  "They do a pretty good job, I think. I helped the zoo people collect some of their specimens, last year." Merit danci
ng beside him was silent, as if her thoughts were wandering. He asked: "What brought you to the Pioneer Hotel?"

  "The Shishidos' idea. I really don't mind a place like this—about once a year." She didn't ask Adam what had brought him here tonight; probably she knew. Instead she asked him: "How do you like my husband?"

  "I guess I like him."

  "I love him, Adam. And he's a good man." Something was definitely worrying her. "And what more important things than those is it possible to say about anyone? About you, or Ray, or anyone else?"

  Adam said nothing, important or otherwise. He held Merit gently and chastely in his arms, at the proper times during the dance, or tried to do so, while they were bounced around like fools on the stampeded dance floor. This was what he was going to get from her. This much and no more.

  When there was a pause in the dancing, and the two of them got back to the table, Adam looked carefully at Vito for signs of another jealous fit. But Vito only smiled vacantly at both of them and went on with the scientific discussion of the Field.

  Adam sat and listened to the scientific argument, meanwhile sipping on another drink. Now the alcohol in his bloodstream was easing him past the level of slight exhilaration, to the point where there seemed to be a certain amount of electronic noise in his brain, and concentration was needed to drive clear signals through.

  Ray and Merit. Always his friends, right from the start. More than his friends. And yet at the same time always above him, above the rest of humanity too. Merit and Ray, their ninety-eight… siblings, Ray called them sometimes. Kin? Clan members? In Adam's opinion there still wasn't a good word. Maybe that was by design, to make the Jovians appear to outsiders as less of a cohesive group.

  Not pretending to be superior. Not pretending anything. Not claiming a birthright above common humanity for the purpose of boosting their own egos, or to maintain themselves somehow in power. Adam might deride, or fear, or feel contempt for people who claimed superiority for such purposes, but he would never envy them.

  And the truth was that he did envy the Jovians. They were superior, standing together above the world. Suddenly he wondered if there were any little second-generation Jovians as yet. It would be very strange, he thought, if there were not.

  Some words caught his ear. The subject of table conversation had shifted, and he broke into the talk of Golden's possible future. "Hold on, this planet may be pretty well populated already."

  "Primitive," said Vito. "Oh, I don't mean that we should talk all over 'em. But there must be enormous uninhabited areas out there, hey? Practically whole continents."

  Adam said: "I really wouldn't think so. Of course it's hard to tell, from pictures taken from above six or seven hundred kilometers. The Field seems to cause random distortion of detail."

  Ray chuckled softly. "I wonder how random it really is."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Adam got to his feet; he felt a little drunk, maybe more than just a little, and the sensation was unpleasant as well as unfamiliar. "Well, glad to have seen all you people. I feel the urge to move on." Merit looked up at him with an unreadable expression. The other people round the table made their several protests and offered their farewells, and he started away from them. From near the elevators he looked back, across the room's activity. Ray was standing now, resting one giant muscular hand gently on Merit's head, while she sat with her eyes closed and face relaxed, looking as if she might be sound asleep. The others round the table watched the two Jovians, not understanding any more than Adam did. And we never will, thought Adam.

  Abruptly Ray left the table and walked toward the stage, which was empty now of dancers and musicians. Adam turned his back and found his way to the wall near the elevators, where in an alcove stood a discreet machine, dispenser of sobering pills. He gulped down a pill, and looked around again. Now Vito and Merit, who was lively again, seemed to be getting ready to leave, and Ray was seated at a piano beside the stage. Adam recalled suddenly that there had almost always been beautiful music, live or recorded, to be heard at any time somewhere in Doc Nowell's enormous house. And it would be like a Jovian, Adam thought, to play fine music now, in a place like this, amid such noise that no one else would be able to hear it.

  It struck Adam that the drunken uproar was noticeably diminished. In the vicinity of the stage, a circle of heads were now turning toward the piano. The ring of quiet polarization widened. Now, even where he stood at the wall, Adam could hear some of the piano notes. And now he could hear more.

  Ray's music flowed out to where the night sky of Golden was curved around the bubble windows. I've never heard this, Adam thought. What can you call this kind of music? What is it? He moved forward into the room again, until he stood gripping the back of someone's chair.

  He can do this, too, Adam thought. They can do this.

  Now the vast room, or most of it, was almost quiet, expect for the music that Ray Kedro played. Somewhere at the far side of the room, among the distant trees and rocks, one person sobbed, loudly and drunkenly. Then a door opened in the wall near Adam, and a fat man in evening dress came hurrying out, as if the silence had alarmed him. Then the fat man too stood quietly listening.

  Experience this, said the music. Feel this—you can almost touch it now. This is what life is about.

  No. Adam turned away, heading again toward the elevators. How would you know, Ray, what human life is like?

  Adam's mind felt blurred. The alcohol and the sobering pill were fighting it out in his bloodstream.

  The elevator door closed on him, shutting him in, cutting off the golden sounds. He was alone in the car going down. I usually am alone, he thought. You stupid drunk, he told himself, why don't you go off somewhere and cry?

  There were only a few people in the hotel lobby when he reached it. Adam looked at his timepiece. It was two in the morning. He hadn't realized that it was so late.

  He stepped out of the lobby onto the black and dully gleaming slideway. His head was full of vague thoughts, none of which really demanded his attention. The slideway shot him back toward Stem City, carrying him past observation platforms and alcoves. In one of these large recesses eight or ten young people were dancing to some music of their own. They had set up a screen on which the image of some retchsinger was contorting itself in three dimensions and unnatural color. No, at second glance it appeared that the screen was attached to a built-in, coin operated video that they were playing. Something new here every day.

  The rest of the observation niches were empty as Adam glided past them. There were only a few people on the slideway, most of them riding in what looked like a grim hurry on the faster center strips.

  Far ahead of Adam, going in the same direction as he was but on the slowest outer strip, a man and a woman moved along arm in arm. At a distance they looked like Merit and Vito; they were certainly dressed the same. But how could Merit and Vito possibly have got ahead of him?

  Just as the couple were passing one of the observation alcoves, four figures erupted from concealment inside it. Like a pack of wild teeners, swinging fists and weapons, the four charged the couple from behind. The man and woman were both knocked down. Already they were being dragged off the slideway and back into the alcove.

  The cold combat computer had flicked on automatically, and Adam was already hurtling forward, running in a curved path over slower and slower strips toward the alcove. He pounded off the slowest strip just in time to see the top of one pigtailed head vanish down through a utility trapdoor at the rear of the bubble-walled enclosure. The attackers were gone.

  Vito Ling lay on the deck of the observation platform, twitching, wide-eyed, dead. His face and head were covered with his blood.

  A few meters away… Merit…

  Adam turned her over, to lie face up. She was unconscious, but she was alive, with no injury that his frantic examination could discover. A pulse throbbed in her wrist as Adam's shaky fingers held it.

  He looked away for a moment, toward the closed
trapdoor. Would he have a chance of catching anyone? But no, he had better stay with Merit. He looked back at her.

  Adam screamed, as his legs thrust him erect, away from the figure on the deck. His hands came slapping up to hide the world from his eyes.

  Instead of Merit, he had seen Alice on the deck, pregnant and butchered and dead.

  Behind his closed eyes, his mind scrambled for truth, some kind of truth that he could cling to. Fearfully he uncovered his eyes, looking toward the place where Vito—

  Had been. Vito's body was now gone. There were no bloodstains there on the deck now. Nothing.

  Numbly Adam looked around. No Merit on the floor. No Alice either, of course not Alice. And no Vito Ling. No pigtailed attackers. Adam Mann was alone in the alcove, breathing hard and trembling.

  A couple of people shot by on the fast strip of the slideway, paying him no attention.

  Hallucination. Forcing himself to think, to act, Adam walked to the rear of the alcove and examined the trapdoor closely. It was locked shut, and a thin film of unmarked dust lay around it and over it, along with a little windblown litter. It looked as if no one had used the door for days at least.

  Hallucination. He stumbled out onto the slide-way and resumed his journey. He was shaken, hardly aware of what was going on around him. To think that he sometimes envied others their parapsych powers…

  But what could have brought on this experience? He had never had anything like it in his life before. Probably his feelings for Merit—relating her to Alice—but of course it might have been genuine precognition, which would mean that some time in the future, Merit and Vito would travel this way, and would be attacked.

  Shock hit Adam again. Merit had said something like: "I don't mind a place like this—about once a .year." It wasn't likely that she and Vito would be on Golden that long. It wasn't likely, Adam thought, that they would return to the Pioneer Hotel before they left. Tonight it was going to be, of course, tonight.