The Golden People

by Fred Saberhagen

  In a slow unthinking way Adam had moved again out to the rapid strip; now he spun around and raced back for the immobile utility walk along the outer edge of the slideway. He had to get back to that alcove—or might the attack be going to take place at a different one?

  Looking down the long slideway toward the Pioneer Hotel, he could now see Merit and Vito in the distance, approaching arm in arm, gliding toward him along the slow outer strip.

  Adam reached the utility walk and sprinted back toward them. Now his view of them was blocked by vending machines on the walk ahead of him. How far was it to that alcove? God, it mustn't be far, the attack and killing took only a few seconds.

  A lone man went by on the slideway, turning his head to watch Adam run, then turning away with determination, minding his own business.

  Adam ran.

  There was a scuffle and a faint outcry from close ahead. Adam rounded a vending machine and came dashing into the alcove. A figure at the rear was just putting coins into the video machine to turn it on, bringing the retchsinger figure gigantically alive upon the holostage above.

  Vito Ling was not dead on the floor, he was still more or less on his feet, but he was being held in that position. One of his arms was being twisted behind his back by a tall powerful young man in teener garb, while another one stood before him with a brassknuckled fist drawn back, holding Vito's bleeding head up by the hair while turning his own head to look at Adam. The fourth attacker, who appeared to be more or less directing matters, was a short, lightly built man with a face lined well beyond the teenpack age. He looked around with surprise at the sound of Adam's entrance, then put a smile on his face and stepped toward Adam.

  And there, behind the short man, Merit was lying on her face, just as in the vision.

  The short man stepped forward. He was a cocky little character with dangerous eyes. But now he was going to do his imitation of polite reasonableness.

  "Friend, we really don't need no help here," said the short man to Adam in a pleasant voice. The other three had paused, waiting and watching to see if there was going to be a real distraction.

  Vito looked like he might be going to die.

  Adam did not move or speak.

  The short man said to Adam: "I mean the lady had a touch too much to drink, you know, and it's just a friendly little argument."

  Adam leaned forward a little. At the end of his run he had automatically come to rest with his feet just the right distance apart for balance and quick movement. He could feel the strength ready in his arms, that were hanging loosely in front of him, and he could feel his chest heaving with the exertion of the run and with the build-up of adrenalin.

  Alice. And now Merit. Twice in one lifetime. But now he had them in front of him. He watched the short man's eyes, and smiled at him.

  "I mean," asked the short man, in a new tone, one meant to frighten, "why be a dead hero?"

  When nothing happened, he stepped forward, making his voice friendly again. "Let me explain—"

  Adam observed the short man's subtle shift of weight in stride, which meant that the right knee was going to come up for Adam's groin. The combat computer guided Adam's sidestep, and launched his right fist in what would have been a clumsy sucker punch if it had not come with almost invisible speed from a standing start. The blow took the short man on the neck under his left ear, and lifted him onto his toes. He fell, rolled over, and lay face down on the deck without moving.

  The retchsinger image tore off its shirt, and jittered in its plastic cage. Its mouth opened and noise came out.

  "Get him!" ordered the man who had been feeding the retchsinger coins, the lean figure standing close under the noise and light of the machine.

  The two who were holding Vito let him drop and came at Adam, spreading out to get him between them. Their faces also were too old for teeners. Adam defended cautiously when they closed in on him, and in the first blurred second of savage motion and impact he knew they were a professional team. It was all he could do to keep himself alive and spin out from between them.

  The lean figure in the rear came forward, cursing impartially at them all. "Get him, I said."

  Adam had two seconds to look at Merit again. Still she had not moved.

  The two big men regarded Adam with awe, and paused before coming at him again. One of them was flexing his wrist, where the edge of Adam's hand had caught it. The man was getting his fingers to work again, but his length of metal pipe had bounced away and was riding the slideway to Stem City.

  "Come on!" urged the lean one. "Quick!"

  Adam started a move at the biggest man, a subtle feint intended to fool a good fighter. The man jumped back a step as Adam spun round. He caught the lean man moving in, with a side snap kick that hit him in the knee like a swung hammer. One more down.

  The giant with the brass knuckles was almost quick enough; Adam felt a scrape across his forehead as he dodged the swing. Then he was stepping in, hitting with backfist, knuckles, elbow. He thought that he had never hit anyone or anything so hard before.

  And now the big character who had lost his pipe weapon was the only one besides Adam still on his feet. Still flexing his sore wrist, the big man backed away, no longer a workman going at a job, but a man with the fear in him. Now he was shaking his head a little. This one knew, this one appreciated •what was going to happen to him.

  The man took a last look into Adam's face, and turned and ran for the slideway. Just at the edge of the alcove Adam caught him from behind. The two went down, with Adam on top; the man beneath him strained and squealed and then his neck was broken.

  Adam turned round in a crouch. The lean opponent had overcome the pain of his knee enough to pull out a gun; and Vito, battered almost to death, had got up to throw himself at the enemy and save Adam from a bullet.

  Vito had luckily managed to bang the lean man's sore knee, and now the two wounded were struggling feebly against their injuries and against each other. Or, they had been struggling, for by now Adam had crossed the intervening space and kicked the lean man in the head. The head on its lean neck bounced through one vibration like a punching bag on its mount, and then was still.

  Bloody and gasping, Vito just stayed sitting on the deck, staring ahead of him. Adam, gasping if not bloody, stood beside Vito looking warily around in all directions, ready to meet the next threat when it came. People were still going by on the slideway, passing the alcove scene and looking in at it, then turning away with a desperate blank-ness in their faces, eager to not-involve themselves. Adam eyed the passing people cautiously. But it seemed that none of them were going to turn aside into the alcove and try to hurt Merit any more.

  In a few moments he had regained a certain relative sanity, and went to look after her. She was just stunned, he thought, just as in the vision. She was undoubtedly breathing, and now she was even turning her head a little from side to side, and her blood was still pulsing safe inside its warm tender vessels. Adam touched her face with one of his terrible hands. A living face. Yes, Merit had to be alive, because the universe still had to be a place in which a man could live.

  The jukebox was still playing. Probably less than two minutes had passed since the start of the fight. But suddenly the voice of the retchsinger was silent. Adam looked up to see the image swallowing, drinking from its bottles of colored liquids, meanwhile twisting its body in time to the throbbing music, its sculptured belly muscles writhing.

  Then the image raised its arms and the music crashed toward a climax. The imaged body snapped forward, and with a heaving groan projectile-vomited a streaming rainbow of bright color that splattered and filmed the inside of the plastic cage.

  Vito Ling lay looking up from his hospital bed. A hundred thin insulated wires led to the helmet in which his head was cradled, but he was aware of his visitors and perhaps he was trying to smile at them. It was hard to be sure.

  Adam kept watching Merit as she sat beside the bed holding Vito's hand. Her eyes seldom left her
husband's face, and when she spoke to her husband her voice was sometimes not loud enough for Adam to hear it clearly. Vito was unable to speak to answer her, but his eyes kept coming back to her face and he appeared to be listening to what she said.

  After a while, Adam got up and left the room.

  Ray, his face looking tired, was waiting out in the corridor, where small bubble windows glowed with a wintry dawn.

  "Looks like he's going to make it," Adam told him.

  Ray nodded. "I've just been talking to the doctor in charge." Then he made a gesture of futility. "You saw it coming, fortunately, but I saw nothing. Nothing. Parapsych talent, the undependable. How can we build on it? And yet we must."

  The two of them stood talking there in the corridor for a little while, not really saying much, until Merit, smiling tiredly, came out of Vito's room. She took an arm of each of them. "He seems to be doing as well as we could hope. He's going to make it, I'm sure now. Let's all get some rest."

  Two plainclothes detectives met them just as they were passing the waiting room. "Mr. Mann, we'd like another few minutes with you, if you please."

  Adam shrugged wearily. The small bandage pulled at the slight cut on his forehead.

  "We'll wait downstairs," said Ray exchanging looks with him. He moved away, with Merit leaning on his arm.

  The detectives watched them go, then faced Adam. One said: "We checked up on your Space Force background. I guess it is possible that you laid out those four hoods all by yourself."

  "I'm glad to hear it. I was worried. Mind if I sit down?" He stepped into the waiting room and took a chair. Physically he felt weary. And he felt a little giddy, lightheaded, almost cheerful. Merit was all right. Merit was all right. Nothing else mattered very much.

  The other detective asked Adam: "What do you think those four men wanted?"

  "Looked to me like they wanted to kill Vito Ling. But you'd better ask them."

  There was a brief pause while the two detectives exchanged glances. "Three of them are dead," one finally informed Adam. "It's not certain that the fourth, one is ever going to think straight again. You hammered him pretty good. They say an artery in his brain gave way."

  He knew their eyes were probing him to see what he thought of the carnage he had wrought, but he had been looking down at his hands when he heard the words and he just kept looking at them. The fight seemed unreal to Adam now. At last he looked up. "Can't say I'm especially sorry. I guess there are a lot of members of the human race I just don't give a damn about any more."

  The two detectives had sat down facing him across the little waiting room, that was otherwise empty. One of them sighed. "Well, can't say I'm sorry either. They were all professional strong-arm boys. Two just arrived on Golden last month, two have been here for a year. They worked a lot for gamblers."

  "We're growing into a big city," Adam said.

  "Does Dr. Ling like to gamble a lot, do you know?"

  "I couldn't say. I just met him a couple of days ago. But he's only been on Golden a couple of days. I doubt he's had time yet to run up any giant debts and refuse to pay them."

  "Yeah." The detective sighed again; it made him sound as if he were surprised and saddened by the kind of things he kept running into in his job. "Know any other reason why anyone would want to kill him?"

  Maybe me, thought Adam. / want his wife. Or maybe there was something else. His imagination showed him the president of the Research Foundation on Earth, tired beyond endurance of Vito's complaints, calling in the hired killers. He smiled (for Merit was safe, and he could smile) and said: "I have no idea, no."

  And something was still worrying Merit, something besides the mere fact of her husband's being nearly killed. Well, he, Adam, intended to find out what it was.

  "We understand Mrs. Ling is a Jovian, is that correct? One of those…"

  "Yes. She's one of those."

  "She's a telepath, then, isn't she? But she didn't foresee the attack?"

  Adam felt annoyed. "They don't go around reading people's minds right and left. And once the action started she must have been stunned before she knew there was anyone approaching. Any danger."

  "Stunned expertly," said a detective. "Very expertly. The doctors say there's no sign of any damage now."

  "Yes?" Well, there were ways in which that could be done. "Meaning what?"

  "What do you think that fact means?"

  "Someone wanted her husband dead, but not her. Is that all? I'm tired."

  Again the police looked at each other. "That's all for now, Mr. Mann," one said. "You're not being charged with anything, of course. In my personal opinion it'll smell a little sweeter here with those four gone."

  "There'll be four more—or eight," said Adam, moving wearily away. "Lots of opportunity on Golden."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "It's this damned Jovian business," said General Lorsch. She was sitting behind her desk and looking at Boris Brazil through tired eyes. "Probably that fight episode on the slideway, with the Jovian woman involved, is somehow tied in with all the rest of it." With one hand she pushed a carven wooden box across her desktop to the Colonel. To Brazil it looked like Grodsky's old desk, but the Colonel wasn't going to try perching on a corner of it today.

  He silently accepted the invitation to smoke, and took a little time to get his chosen cigar fired up. Time in which he could also do some thinking.

  He was glad to be back on Golden again after a seven year absence, even glad in a way that the Field was still unconquered. But not everyone was so happy, evidently, or he wouldn't have been called back. He hadn't met General Lorsch before today, but he doubted that she normally appeared as worn and harried as she did right now.

  "Excuse me, General," Brazil asked, "but is the problem really just these hundred Jovians?"

  "Yes, it's basically just the Jovians, even if there still are only a hundred of them." The General, toying with a small cigar of her own but not lighting it, managed a smile. "From your viewpoint, Colonel, maybe I sound like a trifle like a monomaniac—but you don't really know anything about these people, do you?"

  "The Jovians? No ma'am."

  "I didn't either, until very recently. Now I've been through one interview with Ray Kedro—he's evidently their leader, to the extent that they have a leader—but I can't communicate what happened during that interview as evidence. There are the intelligence reports."

  She could, thought Boris, at least have talked to him about that interview, since it sounded so important. Maybe later he would push to hear about it.

  As for the intelligence reports, Boris had already read through some of the printouts that were now scattered about on the General's desk. Now the Colonel glanced down again, skimming quickly over certain paragraphs:

  "—Jovian organization has penetrated every branch of Earth society, probably including the Space Force. Their economic power like their political influence, is indirect but enormous—"

  "—can they be considered subversive? If they would lead or coerce humanity, they have given no real evidence of what direction they would choose."

  Subversive. Boris frowned at the word. He knew that there were people, in the Space Force as elsewhere, who could see subversive plotters be-hind every rock. There were also a few very real people, real terrorists, who for one reason or another plotted violence and destruction of the government. Usually, as far as Boris could see, it was not really because of anything in particular that the government had done, but just because the government was there, and terrorists in love with violence and destruction had to have some target, and big important targets were more fun.

  And some of the terrorists might, for all that Boris knew, be Jovians.

  The most urgent-looking message on the table read:

  —EVIDENCE INDICATES JOVIAN CONSTRUCTION ILLEGAL STARSHIP ON GANYMEDE. GANYMEDE INSTALLATION NOW DESERTED JOVIANS UNFINDABLE IN SOL SYSTEM. PROBABLE SPECS OF SHIP CONSTRUCTED HERE FOLLOW:

  The ship appeared to be a big
one, and if the specifications given in the report were accurate, it mounted certain generators and other equipment generally reserved for exclusive use in weapon systems. It looked like the Jovians had built for combat.

  "Neat trick, putting together a starship in secret," Boris commented. "One like this, especially."

  "They're pretty clever people," said the General drily. "The authorities on Sol System didn't realize that the Jovians were up to anything on Ganymede until all the Jovians known to be in the system began to head that way. By the time we really took notice that something was up, they were in their starship and gone."

  The situation was a complete dustcloud to Boris. He leaned back in his chair, puffed gently on his cigar, and said: "So, they're all out joyriding in their outlaw bird. I take it you expect them to come here, to Golden, ma'am, since you pulled me off another job and had me brought here and are telling me all this."

  "I do expect them to show up at Golden, yes."

  "I see, ma'am. What'll they do when they get here?"

  "I wish I knew." Lorsch shook her head, and threw her own tormented cigar away, still unlighted. "I have three ships…" The General let her words trail off, then added: "I've asked An tares for some reinforcement, just in case. Three more ships. Don't know if I'll get them."

  "You're expecting a fight, then?"

  "I want to be ready for one."

  "And just what am I here for, ma'am?"

  "You're here because you know something of the planet and the situation, Colonel. And according to the records, you also know this fellow Adam Mann."

  Aha. "Adam Mann. Yes ma'am, I remember him. He worked for me as a planeteer at one point. Right here on Golden."

  "So the records state. What did you think of him?" Brazil pondered. "A good man, basically. Not— well, not an ordinary man, even for planeteering, where we tend to get—an assortment."

  "Yes," the General responded drily. The reputation enjoyed, or endured, by the planeteering profession was nothing new to her. But she was thinking now of something else, of Adam Mann specifically. "I don't know if he's working for the Jovians now, or just friendly with some of them, or what. In any case he probably knows them at least as well as any non-Jovian alive. I'd like to talk to him, find out if he's disposed to be helpful to us, and, if he is, consult with him. If he isn't—I'd like to know that too. And he's not always an easy man to talk to, or so I've been told."