A Maze of Stars

by John Brunner

  The landing grid is there. That sets a postward limit. But grids like that are self-repairing. Inspection would reveal little or nothing about its age.

  As usual, that leaves only one thing to do. Find out.

  THE COLOSSAL GRID CEASED ITS THRUMMING JUST BEFORE THE racket became intolerable. The ship was safely down, and Stripe was none the worse save for ringing in her ears and a hint of nausea.

  Impatient as their kind always were, the passengers from the starship started to disembark at once. As yet she could not see them, but she could tell by the way those assigned to dance attendance on them reacted: scions of the city’s—indeed, the planet’s—richest families, who might look forward, if they discharged their duties aright, to a year’s income for a few weeks’ work.

  Fat chance of me ever rating a job like that!

  Overhead there seemed to be a slight delay. She knew the routine by heart, naturally. First the passengers’ belongings were unloaded via a token sterilizer that washed them with a pale blue glow and probably did about as much good as the prayers inscribed—at the insistence of the temple priests— on the floor of the rollway they rumbled down. Then, when owners and baggage had been reunited, the crew would descend at a more leisurely pace and make way for locally recruited staff, cleaners always, sometimes bodgers—as starfarers contemptuously termed Trevithra’s finest craftspeople—to take care of minor repairs. In the meantime the sanitary system would be drained and its contents sent for sterilization, and then for her and Rencho would come the crucial moment, the moment when …

  But where was Rencho? It wasn’t like him to be late!

  Puzzled, growing worried, she glanced up once more and confirmed that evacuation tubes were nuzzling up to the permeable areas of the ship’s hull. Moreover, she had already heard the slam and clang of giant garbage skips trundling to await the load they were to bear to the incinerators. If she missed her chance—! Oh, she would kick herself for so heedlessly parting with everything she had dumped on Bolus’s stall! And Mother Shaqqi was bound to cheat her of at least part of her share of the “amulets” she had told Donzig to hand over …

  Was this the time when she was doomed to wind up as broke as she had often feared?

  Mouth dry, heart pounding, she cautiously parted fronds in the ceiling of the arrivals hall and peered down at the strangers. Her angle of view was too narrow to afford a proper sight of them, but she caught glimpses and found herself wondering not for the first time whether she was ever going to run across a visitor content to use his or her own feet.

  As usual, the majority were sealed inside suits like those worn—she had seen pictures—by the negotiators from Yellick who had concluded the deal to install the grid, and later by the medical experts who had lived here for a full circuit of the sun, studying Trevithran life-forms and developing vaccines and counterorganisms against those capable of infecting human tissue. Clearly the suited ones were not fully convinced by those experts’ assurances.

  However, others were either bolder or able to afford a superior level of immunization, for they were prepared to risk breathing unfiltered air. For instance, gliding past beneath her at this moment was a lean and rather stately woman with snow-white hair and immensely long fingers, clad in a rose-red robe and borne along by something blue and soft with a great many legs. If she had been as huge as the rotund man who appeared to be her companion, for they kept pace with one another, Stripe would have understood why; he looked as though ten steps would exhaust him under the burden of his own weight. He, however, was grasping the air and swinging along with both feet clear of the floor, brachiating in fact like a clumber, or a pithronel in transhumance season. Only a faint glow betrayed the nature of his unseen supports.

  Fawning, their Trevithran escorts claimed them. They moved out of sight, and Stripe found herself gazing at yet other peculiar forms of assisted ambulation. Wheeled vehicles, tracked ones, rolling cages, mechanical walkers, pads of endlessly flowing slime that left no trace either on the floor or on their riders—the variety of conveyances seemed infinite.

  Abruptly it occurred to Stripe that she was seeing some of them for the first time. That implied a ship from a new planet. She clenched her fists. Where in all of space had Rencho gotten to?

  At long, long last she recognized his approaching footsteps. Even now, though, he didn’t seem to be hurrying. Thrusting the flexibox toward her feet and rolling it with the ease of habit, she slid to the floor and confronted him.

  “What took you so long? I was getting worried! I mean— look!” She gestured toward the reception grid.

  Neat in green uniform and black turban, Third Deputy Port Controller Rencho shrugged. This landing mattered far less to him than it did to Stripe. He affected contempt for most interstellar travelers on the grounds that one planet should be enough for anybody, though he did make an exception for merchants; he was as appreciative of foreign gadgetry and imported luxuries as anybody—anybody not a templegoer, of course. Moreover, now and then he was able to put an off-world buyer in touch with his brother-in-law, who traded in curios and works of art, and his finder’s fees constituted a far more significant supplement to his wages than did the paltry sums he split with Stripe.

  He said gruffly, “There was no way to let you know, was there?”

  “But by this time they—”

  He cut her short. “Don’t worry. There’s delay all around. This ship’s not from Yellick but Sumbala. We only ever had one from there before, the one that came to agree landing rights, which didn’t touch down. It’s come a long way. Some say Sumbala lies beyond the Veiled World!”

  He intended the statement to sound impressive, but to Stripe it was meaningless, save that by implication it explained the peculiar modes of transport she’d just seen. She had heard people talking about stars all her life, but they had no reality to her. At night the artificial aurora blanked them out, except when a ship was due to land, and by day there was only the sun. Reverting to the crucial subject, she insisted, “But they’ll have thrown everything away!”

  “No, I’m trying to tell you!” he snapped. “This is a different design. They’ve had to make changes to the—”

  The noise of rushing water interrupted him.

  “And what’s that if it’s not the sewage being flushed?” Stripe countered.

  “I …” Rencho ran a finger between his forehead and his turban as though the latter had suddenly grown too tight. “I guess they sorted things out. Come on, then.”

  From his sleeve he produced the little wriggling device that their conspiracy depended on. How often Stripe had dreamed of stealing it! Until, divining her thoughts, Rencho warned her that it was conditioned to respond only to him. Were she to try and wear it, it would die, and bequeath her a nasty rash into the bargain.

  Perhaps one day—

  But for the time being she was as dependent on Rencho as Donzig was on her. Meekly she followed in his wake as he strode in the direction of the waste-discharge area.

  Beyond another of the ubiquitous curtains of reddery they reached their destination to find it was as Rencho had promised: the huge disposal skip had still not descended from the surface of the grid. Stripe breathed a sigh of relief. Then, suddenly sensing that her companion was ill at ease, she demanded what was the matter.

  “New ship,” Rencho muttered. “From a new world. And full of tourists from who knows how many others. I can’t help wondering—”

  “Wondering if we dare risk it?” Stripe broke in. “Ah, you sound like an anti! Where’s your sign saying bugs keep out?”

  “Don’t try my patience! I was only thinking maybe we ought to let the experts check things out this time. I can get at their report—”

  “It’s always been all right before! Besides … Well, consider the profit! You got your cut of the last lot, didn’t you? And it was worth having? Yes? Well then! Think how much more we can look forward to if I offer absolutely brand-new stuff, never tasted on Trevithra before! There’s at
least one restaurant under Marnchunk where the boss will double my usual rate.”

  “Double it? Are you sure?”

  “Sure as I’m standing here!”

  Greed and caution fought visibly in Rencho’s face. The former won. He moved as usual toward the sensors that he had to dupe into believing that the refuse was on its way to be burned. Using his wriggly key, he made the requisite adjustments— barely in time, for overhead they finally managed to mate the skip with the hull, and rattles and bangs announced that it was being filled. Shortly it slid noisily down to where a trolley waited that should have carried it at once to the incinerator. Thanks to Rencho’s tampering, when it rolled away it turned left instead of right and halted in the compartment where they stood.

  Stripe unsealed its cover. At once the air was full of most amazing odors: rich, appetizing, in the literal sense mouthwatering. She uttered an exclamation.

  “How can they bear to throw all this away? Look, there are full bottles, untouched packs with complete meals in them, and not just food and drink but all sorts of other things!” She snatched up items at random—a jar packed tight with green fruit as bright as jewels, a transparent box with amethyst strands floating in a crystal liquid, a silver tube from whose pierced cap she shook blue powder—and tried to read their labels. Her face fell.

  “This doesn’t make sense. The letters are wrong.”

  “I told you,” Rencho muttered. “This ship’s all the way from Sumbala. Writing changes, same as language. I heard some of the passengers talking as they left the concourse, and I couldn’t understand half of what they said.”

  “So how can we tell what these are for?” Abruptly downcast, Stripe gazed at him with disappointed eyes.

  “I’ll have to find someone. My sister’s Gowd may know. And there are a few people who’ve had a chance to work on starships, replacing someone who got hurt here or took sick. They may have picked up some of the foreign lingos … Anyway, you can’t carry all this in one load, can you?”

  “What do you think I am, a lumberlugger?” countered Stripe, feigning her normal self-possession.

  “Then take the food and drink, and I’ll hide the rest until I find out what it is. You can collect it later.”

  Stripe bit her blue lower lip with small yellow teeth as she calculated the risk of Rencho cheating her. The odds were high, but she wasn’t yet in a position to work alone. After a moment she said, “I guess there’s no alternative. Help me load?”

  “No, you do that. I’ll hide the other stuff. We’ve got to be quick. It’s nearly time to trigger the incinerator. I just hope no one’s monitoring the flame spectrum, or—Cheech! I forgot my burn smear. I’ll have to go fetch it or someone might get suspicious because the skip doesn’t smell right when it returns to base.”

  Busily cramming item after item into her box, Stripe said, “Just leave some of the packaging, why don’t you? Burn it right here. If any scraps survive, they’ll assume it’s because it’s foreign and needs a higher temperature or something.”

  “But they’ll smell smoke coming from the wrong—”

  “No they won’t.” Stripe jerked her head upward. “Listen.” Rain was starting to drum on the roofs of the port and hiss as it struck the still-hot grid. They heard shouted orders from above as the clearance crews rushed to finish their work and seek shelter. Shortly rainwater began to flow down the walls of the room they were in and trickle across the floor.

  “Get a move on,” the girl added. “If people see me soaking wet, they’ll think nothing of it, but you’re in uniform, and someone might start asking questions.”

  “I don’t know why I put up with you,” Rencho grunted. “I really don’t. You order me around worse than my chief.”

  “It’s because I dreamed up our little scheme, which had been under your nose for years and you didn’t notice.”

  True enough. Resignedly Rencho set about finding storage places for the mysterious alien goods. He had little trouble. This was an old room, long neglected, and reddery was sprouting all over it, affording plenty of niches and cavities behind the dense foliage. By the time the rain started to leak through the matted stems of the ceiling the job was done, and Stripe’s flexibox was so full she could barely push it along on its frictionless base.

  “How long do you think it’ll be before you find someone to read those labels?” she demanded, wiping perspiration from her eyes.

  “You’d better give me three or four days,” Rencho answered, striking a fusee and tossing it among the wrappers he had left in the skip. They flared up satisfactorily, leaving the metal coated with greasy smuts, but the smoke reeked worse than charring prayer leaves.

  “That long?” Stripe countered, fanning the fumes aside.

  “You want it done fast or you want it done right?”

  “I guess … Okay. But I’m glad we didn’t miss this lot, aren’t you? This is treasure trove!”

  CLAD IN A CONVENTIONAL GOWN, IN ALL RESPECTS RESEMBLING any other male who passed along the streets of Clayre, a personage unremarkable as to elbow tufts and sole pads, broad and bluish lips, and teeth that when glimpsed were yellow, almost orange, strolled through the rain, paused to listen to occasional conversations, wandered onward.

  And shortly began to pick up, despite the downpour, whiffs of the stench of hate.

  Too much to hope for, that my stay be made so brief! Yet I might dare to hope, if only to remind myself that I can do so …

  Turning briskly, though not so briskly as to attract unwelcome attention.

  BURDENED THOUGH SHE WAS, STRIPE CONTRIVED TO DRAG and shove and drag her flexibox to the perimeter fence. Never before, however, had she come away with such an astonishing load of booty. Vague thoughts crystallized at the back of her mind, entailing the suspicion that she must be growing up, for they were far more abstract than she was accustomed to: Sumbala must be an incredibly rich world. Ships from Yellick never dump such quantities of leftover stores. Usually I’m lucky to get one surplus meal pack per passenger because, like Rencho says, it costs a star and a planet to haul mass through tachyonic space.

  Of course, the best of those meal packs could sell for enough to support her family for a week …

  The prospect of what this batch would command made her almost giddy. And there was more to be collected later!

  And what about the return? Either their medicine must be incredibly far advanced, or they simply don’t care about picking up our germs, which to them must be as alien as theirs are to us, from food that they buy on Trevithra!

  Unused to machines, she did not consider that sterile provisions might be synthesized as required.

  But diseases are one thing. You can invent cures for them, or find vaccines.

  She heard an imaginary voice, much like Bolus’s, say mockingly, “Is that so? Then how about cheeching?”

  And that was the point, wasn’t it?

  It’s the bugs that get into your gonads and then change your children: they’re the problem. I suppose the passengers without suits have all had their families and their progeny are growing up safely back at home. Because if not, their germ plasm must be amazingly armored!

  A shiver of anxiety trespassed down her spine as she reheard Rencho’s doubtful comment about maybe letting experts evaluate matters before running any risks. She damped it by concentrating on the prospect of unprecedented riches, especially the quantity of anticheeching medicine she could buy for Yin and Marla not from a quack like Bolus but from another, better doctor, maybe even one whose patients lived on Marnchunk Hill.

  No doubt it was distractions of that sort, she later concluded, that led to her making the most grievous mistake of her young life.

  It had not occurred to her that any of the political antis would still be hanging around by the main entrance so long after the foreigners had dispersed. Usually they set off in immediate pursuit.

  Not today.

  She realized it even as she was struggling to guide her flexibox down the supp
lex without losing her grip on the stiffex. Nearly a dozen protesters were still in sight, arguing fiercely as they dressed again. It looked as though roughly half had followed the off-worlders as per normal, but this remainder wasn’t satisfied with making such a token gesture. She caught the odd shrill cry about infection from yet more distant planets than before, and someone made as though to strike someone else with one of the now-unilluminated signs they carried.

  At that moment she lost her grip on the flexibox.

  It slithered to the ground with a crunch.

  Something inside cracked, and in moments the air was full of a strange and pungent smell, at once acid and oily, at once appetizing and repugnant, like a blend of gleeze with smoked and pickled frang.

  Frantically she jumped down to retrieve the box, force it upright, push it away before the others noticed … and was too slow. Even the sluggish movement of the tropical evening air sufficed to bear the odor to the antis. Private disputes forgotten, they turned as one to stare in her direction.

  If only this had happened outside, under the rain—!

  The one with the ultraloud voice said, “What’s in that box? Something from the starship? Something foreign—poisonous?”

  “I know her!” said another, shading enormous eyes with a web-fingered hand. “Can’t be more than one mockery with that pattern of red stripes! I see her in Mid-City Market all the time!”

  Mockery? They’re calling me a mockery? When they look as though they ought to be burning prayers to buy forgiveness for their parents’ miscegenation—!

  But this was no time to fume over the sort of insults children of Donzig’s age hurled uncomprehendingly at one another on street corners.