Star quest

by Dean Koontz

  "Everyone, goddamn it, says that I don't understand. But no one will explain it."

  "You couldn't understand it"

  "Shut up!"

  "You couldn't!"

  He slapped his hand across her face, stared at the red imprint it left. The smell of her was strong, sweet and somehow musky. When he plunged his lips against hers, he was not thinking so very much of what he was doing. Not very much at all. Frustration and confusion had mounted within him and found its form in this. She kissed back for a moment, then tore herself from him and ran back toward the hutch. From the main cavern, she called to him, "Supper will be almost ready. The men cooked it tonight It might not be good, but you had better hurry."

  And she was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  "THE MARKET OF CONCUBINES," Corgi said, staring at him with eyes that perceived only fuzz patches and blips.

  "On the Street of the Pleasure Sellers."

  "Mapwise, what quadrant is that?" Babe asked.

  "Second."

  "Name the different merchant's platforms in the marketplace in the order in which they appear."

  Tohm strained back through the hypno-lessons, the drills of the afternoon. "Raddish, Fulmono, Kinger, Fadsteon, Frin, Rashinghi, Talaman, and Froste."

  "Very good," Corgi said. "Very good indeed."

  "All the platforms are owned by the same people— the Romaghin board of governors. There is no free trade in the slave market, though the board of governors wishes to convey that impression."

  "Where'd you get that?" Babe asked, puffing on his odorless cigar.

  "Reading on my own—some history books I pored through once."

  Corgi ran through his mental list of questions, which seemed to be endless. "How do you find the hutch in that quadrant if you need help or shelter?"

  "I go to the comfort station near the prison, take the third stall from the end, and depress a brick ten up from the floor and five in from the left partition."

  "Okay. I deem you prepared. Now, you will leave at dawn when the markets are preparing for the day. You will make your way to the Market of Concubines. I have contacted the Old Man and told him about you, and Hunk's plan. He agrees on Hunk's idea and on your being given a chance to find Tamilee. He is contacting all other groups and evacuating them to friendly but unarmed planets. We are scheduled to join a large Mutie group on Columbiad. We will put our plan into action then. I hope you understand what we want to do. We are going to create—that is not the proper word, but it will serve—a universe without warlike worlds. We hope to live in peace. If you wish to come with us, be back here no later than twenty-four hours from the time you leave. You must find your woman in that period. We have shown you the city via maps and have tutored you in the customs of the lowest class so that you can move more freely than many people in the upper strata of society. Babe will give you one thousand credits with which you may, with some luck, bid for your woman should she come up on the platform. There will also be another fifty credits there for the miscellaneous. We can't accompany you, only wish you luck."

  "I'll find her and bring her back," Tohm said, standing.

  "Now I guess I should catch some sleep while there's still time."

  "You'll need it," Corgi said.

  "Goodnight."-Babe.

  "Goodnight," he answered, moving through the door and into the corridor, conscious of their eyes and semi-eyes on him. His mind was in a turmoil. His conversation with Mayna hung heavy about him, made him feel strangely inadequate, impotent. Somehow, he was not as excited about the search tomorrow as he should have been. Would finding Tamilee mean returning home? Although baffled by it, he was charmed with the civilized worlds. The red-leafed trees, the fish and the traits were no longer enough. The simple life had fled from him and left a hole in his being, in the delicate fabric of his soul.

  His thoughts were intruded upon by a strange noise that competed for his attention. He stopped and listened. He had heard—and yes, there it was again—an animal sound, a rumbling noise and a weeping. Very strange indeed. It seemed to be coming from Seer's room.

  Again.

  But Seer didn't cry aloud…

  Seer shook, yes…

  And Seer wept, certainly…

  But Seer did not cry out as if in pain…

  Not normally…

  There was a sudden screech again, louder this time. But it seemed that whatever was making the noise was trying to suppress it, to seal its own lips from the outcry of its own lungs…

  Quietly, he moved across the hallway to the door, pushed it gently open, peered in…

  And stood transfixed.

  Frozen…

  There, on the old man's bed, was Mayna. Her leotard suit was pulled down to her waist. Her breasts were naked, and Seer, nestled in her lap like a child, was drawing upon one. The breasts were longer than they were wide and were mostly fleshy nipple like an animal's teat.

  Suddenly, almost spasmodically, she jerked her head to face him.

  "You—" he started to say.

  "Get out!" she screamed.

  The words hung back in his throat, choking him with their reluctant syllables, their hesitant fingers of meaning…

  "Get out!"

  He closed the door, his head spinning. Why with Seer of all people? Why with a babbling idiot? Even Babe would have been better. Or Corgi, certainly. He turned and ran, throwing his hands over his ears to block out any traces of the weeping. He found his room, fumbled the door open and shut, and fell into bed without palming the lights. Why, why, why? And why the Hell should he care? It was bad enough that she did it, but why was he all hung up over it? Forget it. Wipe it out. It's nothing to you. If she wants the old man, let her have him. The idiot! The slobbering moron!

  The door crashed open, and she was there, dressed once again, standing in the rectangle of light that flooded through the open portal.

  "Get out!" he snapped.

  She- slammed the door, palmed only the nightlight which brightened the room—but not too much. "You," she said, hissing in tones that were more cat than woman and that made the single word a paragraph.

  "It's my turn to say get out!" He bunched his fists, searching for something to strike out at, wondering all the while why he was so enraged. "You're in my room. I want you out."

  "I don't give a damn," she hissed again, her foot claws trembling in and out of their sheaths, retracting, springing, over and over. "I don't give a little good damn what you want! What right have you got to snoop in other people's rooms?"

  "I thought he was in trouble. I heard the weeping noises—like someone in pain."

  "He bit me. He bit me, Hero Tohm, not you!"

  "I thought he was alone; old fool like that hurt—"

  "Shut up!"

  "Get out!" he snapped back, determined, this time, to fight her viciousness with cunning and hatred of his own.

  "No. Not until I've told you really what a worm you are, Hero Tohm!"

  "I'm not a hero."

  "I know that."

  "Get out!"

  "No. I started to tell you some of this in the caves before supper. You thought, by appealing to my animal characteristics, my lust, you'd buy time for yourself. You thought a good kiss would get me all heated up."

  "You aren't heated by anyone but old fools—"

  She leaped on top of a chair, sitting on the back, perfectly balanced, ready to spring upon a mouse. She looked down at the bed. "Old fool, is he? You don't know half of what he knows. None of us does. None of us can imagine just what he sees, Hero Tohm. Fool indeed! You're the fool. A damn fool, Hero Tohm. He has reason to babble: he sees. He sees it!"

  "It?" he asked, interested despite himself.

  "God!" she boomed, leaping from the chair to the dresser, sitting with her exquisite back to the mirror.

  "God, Hero Tohm. Seer sees God, and he can't take it Does that mean anything to you? Does it suggest anything? Seer looks down into the very heart of things, past the stars, beyond the rea
lities and semi-realities and quasi-truths and what we call the Real Truths. It is all chaff to him, Hero Tohm. Seer looks around the bends we don't even know are there and peeks into corners we have forgotten about or never seen. He looks upon God. And it has driven him insane. Does that mean anything to you, Hero Tohm?"

  "I—" He started to sit up.

  "No. It wouldn't. You don't understand the concepts. But God, Hero Tohm, is a concept you should certainly be able to understand. Vaguely, at least. Don't tax your mind. You had God on your primitive little world, didn't you? Some kind of god. Wind God. Sun God. But God is nothing like you imagine him or I imagine him—or like anyone has ever imagined him. Seer knows what He is like, and Seer has been driven insane by the knowledge. So, Hero Tohm, what the Hell is God? What is it that could be so horrible that it has kept Seer babbling and weeping all these years? Maybe he doesn't see anything—just vast emptiness, pitch, void, godlessness. Maybe there is no God, Hero Tohm. But I don't think that's it. I think Seer could recover from that view. God is there. But God is something so horrible and with so many facets of terror that Seer never ceases to be horrified into insanity."

  Tohm grabbed his head in his hands as if to burst it, to smash it open. All he wanted was Tarnilee. He thought that was it. Wasn't it? He couldn't really put his finger on anything else. At least, he wouldn't let himself.

  She hissed scornfully. "Certainly I suckle him. He can't eat. It's not only a case of not being able to feed himself; there's more, much more, to it. He has reverted, Hero Tohm. If he could get his nourishment from a tube connected with his belly, he would be happy. He wants back in the womb, Hero Tohm. He wants swallowed. But he can't have that. Damn it, he should, but he can't. So there is nothing but breast feeding; that's the farthest back he can go. And he would starve it" he didn't have that Hell, maybe that would be better. Maybe it would be merciful to let his stomach curl in on itself, shrivel and toss about in agony, trying to gobble him up for nourishment. Hell, maybe we should put a bullet through his head and rip up his brain, let him bleed his soul out on the cement. But I won't. Corgi won't. The Old Man won't, and the Old Man has more guts and brains than all of us. There's something horrible about Seer and something holy too. Something holy that rubs off from that undescribed demon called God, Hero Tohm."

  "I didn't know."

  "Okay," she spat. "Then you didn't know. You don't know. But don't be so goddamn superior! Don't judge me, Hero Tohm, by what you think I should and should not do. Don't go setting my moral standards and values when you don't have the least understanding of what I am! Don't give me goody-goody nonsense. By now you should know the world is not goody-goody."

  He stood, crossed the space between them in a near leap, clutched her and dragged her from the dresser.

  "Get away from me!"

  "Mayna, listen—"

  She purred as he ran his hand through her great pile of hair.

  "Listen, I was confused. Hell, I don't know anything. I didn't ask to be here. I didn't ask to be ripped free from my village and plunged into confusion."

  She laced her arms around his back, cried into his shoulder.

  "I came looking for a girl. At first, I wanted only to find her and go home. I don't know any more. I have to find her now because that has been my motivation all along, that has been the thing that has kept me alive. It would be like cheating a dream if I stopped. So if I trampled on anyone, maybe it is worth it, maybe not But I don't mean to trample."

  She was shivering. He lifted her slight body and carried her to the bed with him.

  "The Seer," he said. "Hell, that's terrible. Terrible, not only for him, but for everyone who understands him."

  Her hands were caressing him. He forsook all conversation, pressed his lips to hers. Her small, pink tongue flicked inside his mouth. He squeezed her breast. And suddenly her claws came up, raked his side. He leaped off her. Blood was oozing thickly out of the long, fine scratches, staining his shirt.

  "What did you do that for!"

  "I'm still nothing more than an animal to you, Hero Tohm! You want to see what it would be like. You never say 'I love you'; you just start groping around. You want to see if there is anything good about me."

  "Bitch!" he snapped, massaging his tender side.

  "You want to know whether my tummy is furry."

  "Is it?" he wheezed, blood sticky on his fingers, his mind on fire.

  "You'll never know," she said, running for the door. "Never in a million years!" She slammed the door, leaving him alone in the darkness.

  For a long moment, he stood, clutching at the fire in his side, trying to diagnose the fire in his mind. But no answers would come. He treated the bodily fire by washing the shallow slashes. They were not deep, and the job required little time. He rinsed them with alcohol, salved them, and applied two hand-sized adhesive bandages.

  Washing the blood out of the sink, he felt even less real as the crimson patterns in the water grew fainter and fainter. Everything was beginning to seem like a dream—dozens of dreams and nightmares piled upon one another.

  He went to bed then, his eyes fixed to the ceiling, and tried to sleep. But sleep was a long time coming…

  Chapter Eleven

  MAYNA WAS NOT around the next morning when Corgi, Babe, Fish and Hunk gathered to send him off. He looked for her constantly and hoped that she would come. But she did not

  "Now remember," Corgi said, his eyes a misty gamboge-flecked gray, "you only have twenty-four hours. Get back here with Tamilee, and you can come with us. Otherwise, I'm afraid you’ll be stuck here in this universe with the Romaghins and Setessins."

  "I'll try, Corgi," he said, shaking the preferred hands and tentacles.

  "Remember, you can go to the other hutches if you need either help or shelter," Hunk said.

  "Don't hesitate," Babe urged.

  T won't," he assured them. He stepped back into the tunnel from where he had first made his entrance seemingly years ago on the cushions of air. They closed the doors to the hutch. Taking the periscope scanner, he checked the alley above as they had taught him. He saw no one and, therefore, activated the blower that re-versed the air streams and lifted him gently but firmly up, up, up and through the grating which clanked back into place behind him and served as a landing zone when the winds abruptly ceased.

  He could hardly believe it. He was finally in the capital city, near the slave market, perhaps in time to buy back his Tarnilee. He tried to think of what she looked like. He couldn't get a clear picture.

  The day was going to be a beautiful one. The thin yellow clouds that would burn off before even the noonday sun appeared were the only things marring the otherwise perfect sky. The sun had just risen and had not yet heated the cool, pleasant air of night.

  He began walking, turned from the alley into the streets. The stores were open for business—ultra-modern, clerkless, giant chain stores, and the little, open front shops that always seem to flourish in a desert community no matter what its size and sophistication. At one place, homemade pretzels were for sale, salty and soft. He bought one with his miscellany money and munched on it as he walked. His insides were jumping with excitement and fear, but the most important thing was to seem calm externally, to appear as if he belonged there.

  He passed fruit shops where large baskets of berries of every chromatic dispersion lay in heaps. Some were similar to those he and Hunk had stolen from the hovercraft, but others were unlike any he had ever seen. He wished to taste them all, but he knew there were only twenty-four hours. He might need that time and more to find her. He walked on.

  In an open-air market where sides of animals lay in bloody pools, and cuts of steaks and roasts lay on chipped ice in unpainted bins, a Romaghin government inspector checked over the flesh, stamping it as the butcher slipped him (not so discreetly) a large coin for every animal approved. Flies were already congregating about the front of the place, and Tohm could well imagine what it would look like when the heat of the day lay like a
blanket over all. And what it would smell like.

  Next door to the meat market was an automated butchery where meats were kept in refrigerated glass cubes, constantly on display. The prices were about three times those of the cruder merchant, but Tohm felt that he wouldn't mind paying the difference. If he could gag meat down any more. Even looking at all that raw flesh, he realized, was making him ill. The customs, likes and dislikes of the Muties were, he knew, rubbing off on him too.

  A man in a fluttering cape like the one the auto-fact had provided him with many days ago came strutting along the walk. A grossly fat man with a pig's face, he picked at his teeth with a sparkling nail. The lower classes stepped into the street to allow him passage, even though it wasn't a physical necessity, the walks being wide enough for seven or eight men abreast. Tohm, however, did the same. He was not out to call attention to himself, to arouse suspicions.

  Once, crossing the busy street, he saw the boy with the white eyes go by in a limousine. A very wealthy woman sat beside him. The boy showed no signs of recognition. Tohm wanted to run after him, but he didn't. There was something about the boy he didn't like. He couldn't say more than that Perhaps it was Hunk's fear of the boy, and Hunk seemed afraid of so little. If the Mutie feared the boy, there was a reason. Something beyond the dreams. He made the other side of the street and struck out for the Market of Concubines, having entered the Street of the Pleasure Sellers.

  The Street of the Pleasure Sellers was not really a street at all, but a square. In the center of the square, a large fountain with the mythological creatures of Romaghin religion pouring water from pitchers over the heads of marble nymphets burbled gaily. There was a festive air to everything here. Buildings were colorful and in good repair. Multihued pennants were strung on glittering poles. Already, men were flocking into the square, the clots of upper class men painstakingly segregated from the fatigue-shod peasantry. But peasants, too, could visit the square, for the board of governors placed no social lines between the poor and the rich man's credits. One bill was as good as the other. Money, not ability, is the only thing that makes men equal