by Mick Farren
A number of the men, as well as making sure they looked their best, were concealing weapons under their clothes-blackjacks, knives, brass knuckles, and homemade electroguns were strapped to legs and hidden under shirts. When Morish questioned Renchett about it, the longtimer, whose inevitable knife was pushed down in his boot, explained how when different units went on liberty at the same time there was always fighting. It was good to have an edge.
When all fourteen men were dressed to their satisfaction, there was nothing to do but wait. There was no way that they could pretend that they felt like anything but a bunch of kids about to go off on an adventure. The Screen in the downden came to life. Once again it was an image fed in by an external scanner. Hark had his first sight of a recstar.
"There she is!"
"Ain't she a little beauty?"
From the outside, the recstar was anything but beautiful. It looked more like another military installation than a palace of carnal delights. Essentially it was a small planetoid, an irregular chunk of slate-gray rock that had been hollowed out, built over, and heavily fortified. Hark could see seven fire domes, and there were undoubtedly more on the far side. Docking spires jutted from the surface like metallic spines. Ropes of tubular moveways snaked across the uneven, cratered surface. There were other installations that Hark didn't recognize. Everything was the same drab gray as the original rock. Morish voiced the three recruits' surprise.
"It's a damned fortress."
Dacker laughed. "What did you expect? That it'd be painted red and gold with a welcome sign flashing? It wasn't put there just for our benefit. It's a regular class-three orbiter. The women were an afterthought. They're down in the interior, down by the core."
The recstar grew bigger and bigger until it filled the entire screen and smaller surface details became visible. It was much larger than Hark had first imagined. Although it hardly dwarfed the cluster, it was possibly as large-the screen didn't make it easy to judge scale. The perspective altered, and the recstar became a vertical horizon. The cluster seemed to be traveling across it. Lights were visible as the scanner tracked the orbiter's darkside. Multicolored plasma pulsed around a discharge stack. In the side-on sky, a small pale sun was visible. It had to be a long way away-it was scarcely larger than the background stars. Hark was overtaken by a lonely desolation that men should have to visit the women of their species in the bowels of this infinitely remote weapons base circling its tiny, distant sun.
Sirens were braying in other parts of the ship, and the forward motion stopped. A line of surface craft came over the horizon, slab-sided, rust-streaked bucket shuttles headed for the cluster. Elmo was back on the messdeck.
"We better move out if we're going to be on one of the first of those boats."
The troopers didn't need a second urging to start filing out. By the time they reached their designated air lock, an umbilical had been stretched and attached to the first of the shuttles. There were lines of men from other messdecks waiting to free-fall to the surface craft. Elmo's fourteen didn't make it onto the first ship, and there was a delay while a second shuttle maneuvered into the loading position and the umbilical was reattached. Finally it was their turn to swing feet-first into the ribbed tube and float to the entry port of the shuttle. A loading attendant moved them inside. The interior of the shuttle was not quite as Spartan as that of an e-vac. There was atmosphere and even rudimentary berths, gee-frame shocktraps with webbing straps to secure their occupants. The shuttle accelerated hard and fast, and the passengers were pushed back into the frames with their faces distorting. The shuttle also landed hard, but nobody cared. They were down on the recstar and out of the war for a short space of time.
There were no humans manning the upper levels of the planetoid. The loading areas and weapon systems were being operated by huge lanteres, bulky chitinous creatures three times as tall as a man. They survived in an environment of methane and ammonia and dim orange light that was as thick as soup. The troopers had to cross their areas through transparent airtight tunnels. It was like walking on the bottom of a dense, alien sea. The lanteres were uncomfortably similar to giant versions of the crayshells Hark had speared and eaten in his youth. When one reared from its hydrolastic control bed to peer at the humans in the tunnel, he did his best to avoid the multiple eyes that were clustered between its twin antennae.
A lengthy descent by a cage elevator, mostly through solid rock, brought them to their own environment. The humans seemed to have been deliberately isolated from the military functions of the base. The first thing to hit the men was the rich and complex diversity of smells. Cooking food mingled with perfume, alcohol, and a dozen blends of incense. Above all, there was the warm funk of humanity. The elevator gates slid back, and the fourteen stepped out into a crowd that strolled and sauntered and aimlessly mingled. It was a shock. After what seemed like a lifetime of military hurry up and wait, there was an almost unthinkable luxury in this aimless-ness and lack of organization. Color was a second shock. Against the drab uniformity of the messdecks, the riotous color in the heart of the recstar was positively shameless. It was something that affected even the long-timers. After a couple of paces, the whole group stopped and just drank in the scene as the elevator gates closed behind them. There was music in the air that vied with the shouts of laughter and the general buzz of conversation. The crowd seemed to stretch on forever. There seemed to be men from every function that humans performed on a battle cluster. A group of drop pilots in midnight-blue uniforms leaned on a supporting pillar singing drunken harmonies. A gang of sluicers in green coveralls emerged from a booze den shouting raucously. But by far the majority were in the dress tan of ground troopers. More important, there were women. There were women in all shapes and sizes, there were women in feathers and bright colors, there were women with painted faces and metallic jewelry, and women who were all but naked. Hark thought that a short redheaded woman had smiled at him, but before he could say anything, she was gone.
He was awed. What was one supposed to do in a place like this? Could it really be so easy? Finally Renchett broke the spell.
"So what do we do first?"
Dyrkin assumed command of the group.
"We find ourselves a comfortable place to drink and plan our strategy."
"Why don't we go straight to the knocking shops and get down to it?"
"You have no imagination or finesse, brother Helot. The fighting men of the Anah 5 deserve better than a twenty-minute knocking shop."
Renchett grinned. "That's the truth!"
In all Therem installations, recreational space seemed to be at a premium, and this was no exception. The overall impression was that an entire town, built from whatever materials were at hand, had been crammed into a system of tunnels and low caverns, but despite what were obviously adverse conditions, an exciting and vibrant humanity flourished in, these caves. The elevator gates had opened on an intersection of three fairly wide but low-ceilinged arterial corridors. Each corridor was lined on both sides with booths offering various forms of entertainment for the visiting men. There were drinking joints and places to eat; one sign advertised dancing girls, while another hinted at a more esoteric sexual display. Smaller alleys ran off the main corridors, and these had their own varied attractions. There was something exhilarating about being surrounded by so many people behaving the way humans were supposed to behave. The fighting men of the Anah 5 advanced down the middle corridor in an aggressively self-conscious group. Dyrkin, as usual, took the point, staring into each booze den they passed.
"The ones right by the elevator banks are strictly for sluicers and suckers. If you're smart, you press on into the center."
Couples walked by arm in arm and openly kissed and fondled each other. Hark was bemused. Would he behave like that? A scantily clad woman with a butterfly tatooed on her forehead actually beckoned to him. He was about to break ranks and go and talk to her, but Dyrkin pulled him up short.
"Forget it, boy. Only a fool goe
s with the first one he sees."
Hark shrugged and kept on walking. Dyrkin was probably right. There was also so much to see. It was strange to be once again around human constructions. A side effect of living in a battle cluster was that one started to believe that everything in the universe had been made by the Therem and forgot that humans could also be creative in their own simple way. Each of the booths that they passed was unique. Some were gaudy, others makeshift, even dilapidated, but others were nothing less than works of art. There was a terrible irony, Hark thought, in that the women down here created while the men were off somewhere else destroying. Something had gone terribly wrong with the way human beings existed.
The bulk of the materials from which the booths were constructed had obviously been cannibalized from other parts of the base, but also evident were gems, fabrics, and decorative plastics that had no place in a Therem military installation. They had been manufactured in the women's colony or brought in from elsewhere. It all seemed to point to the fact that the women had organized a fairly complex internal economy and were permitted to conduct some measure of interplanetary trade.
Dyrkin, who seemed to be treating the liberty as if it were a full-blown mission, finally found a drinking booth that met his standards. It was a prime spot on the corn dor, situated under a ventilation shaft. The upward shaft gave the place more headroom and brought a constant cool breeze, and the booth's dim, golden light produced an illusion of spaciousness that was a definite plus in the crowded environment. A huge flag with a stylized and exceedingly phallic serpent painted on it hung down from the inside of the shaft and fluttered gently. There was plenty of room for the men from the Anah 5. The only customers were three e-vac crew and a woman in a silver tunic that might have originally been cut from a radiation suit. A grade-two armorer was sitting at the same table as the woman, but he was so comprehensively drunk that she seemed to be preparing to dump him. A music unit was pumping muted electronic rhythms.
"This place'll do."
"It's kind of quiet, ain't it?"
"It won't stay that way for long, now that we're here."
"Why don't we go someplace with a bit more life? The big place back down the corridor-that looked okay. At least there were women in there."
"Trust the old master. There'll be plenty of women, and not just thumbprint whores, either."
There was a small sensor pad beside the entrance to the booth, and as they went inside, each man was supposed to press the ball of his right thumb into the pad's receptor. Every recstar establishment-eating house, knocking shop, dance hall-had one of these devices to the right of its door. Each strolling vendor and street-walking prostitute carried a smaller, portable version of the unit hung around her neck on a lanyard. The sensors were the basis of the women's economy. Each thumbprint registered somewhere in the infinite memory of the base's central intelligence. The number of thumbprints credited to a business or individual dictated the quantity of goods and services that could be drawn from the base. If either fell below a minimum quota of prints, that franchise would be revoked, and the vendor would find herself back scuffling in the general population. The advantage of the system, from the visiting men's point of view, was that it created a sense of competition that made for a far higher quality and greater variety of available amusements. It ensured that the recstar offered the fighting men the very best that it could. It also gave the Therem, if indeed they cared, the capacity to monitor the tastes and appetites of every single trooper who took liberty there. At first, Hark assumed that the thumbprint system was yet another example of Therem applied psychology. It was only later that he discovered that the women themselves had been instrumental in devising the system. The competition gave them a certain sense of worth and dignity and, at least in their own minds, made their situation something above a state of enforced prostitution. The distinction was largely illu-sionary, but in the Therem Alliance, even an illusion was better than nothing.
When the fourteen troopers had seated themselves, a tall, muscular blonde emerged from a room in back of the booth.
"I'm Vana, and I'm going to be your hostess for as long as you're here."
Fourteen troopers stared hungrily at Vana. "Will you look at that."
"Glad you like what you see." Vana's smile was strictly professional.
Dyrkin immediately got down to business. "So what you got to get loaded on around here?"
"You must be the maingun in this bunch."
"You got it."
"So you know what the deal is." "We got to like the place first." "Maybe you should try the special."
"Sure, specials all round."
Hark realized that there was some kind of liberty ritual getting started here. The special came in liter steins, piping hot, heavily spiced, and accompanied by beakers of ice water. Hark took a first experimental swallow, and his head swam. The drink had to contain other intoxicants in addition to the alcohol. Although powerful, the effect was much more subtle than the burn of the raw booze he'd tasted on the Anah 5. After three rounds of specials, Dyrkin made up his mind.
"Yo, Vana!"
"You want another round?"
"We want to make this place our home base for the duration."
Vana nodded. "Fourteen of you?" "Fourteen."
'Ten thumbs per man per thousand minutes. We supply the food, and we invite over some of our friends. Deal?"
Dyrkin looked around at the others. Not all of them looked completely sold on the booth, but they all nodded. They had to concede that Dyrkin knew how to run a liberty.
"Deal."
The grade-two armorer, who had been facedown on the table for a while, sat up with a start. The woman in silver had already begun to exchange glances with Renchett.
"What the hell is going on in here?" the armorer demanded drunkenly.
He got unsteadily to his feet and squinted blearily at the troopers.
"Forsaken ground monkeys."
He had clearly taken leave of his reason.
"I ain't sharing a bar with no ground monkeys."
Renchett was on his feet and coming around the table.
"We got a problem here?"
He slapped the drunk hard on the chest with the flat of his hand. "Because-if you got a problem-" He punctuated his words with further slaps. His voice was flat and unemotional. "-then you-better-leave."
The drunk staggered backward. Renchett was maneuvering him in the direction of the exit. When he had the armorer where he wanted him, he propelled him through the doorway with a practiced kick. This was more than enough for the e-vac crew. They practically fell out of their seats.
"We ain't no heroes. You can have the place."
The fourteen had secured their territory.
Just as Vana had promised, the women quickly began to arrive. To everyone's delight they seemed to have no reservations about getting acquainted with the troopers. A young, very rounded olive-skinned woman who said her name was Zydell had wriggled into Hark's lap after only the most minimal of invitations. The specials had started to make Hark a little dizzy. He'd started to sweat and was seeing the faintest of blurred hallucinations. On the advice of Vana, he'd switched to a pale amber concoction that was called a juliet. The dizzy feeling had abated and he'd stopped sweating, but if anything, the hallucinations had become more intense. After three Juliets, and with Zydell smiling, stroking his ear, and running her hands over his close-cropped hair, he felt uncommonly good. Better, in fact, than he could ever remember feeling before. This had to be the real reward of the warrier. Zydell held up her sensor box, and he happily pressed his thumb into it and eased down in his seat, luxuriating in the sense of well-being. Then an unfortunate thought struck him. Maybe this was exactly the way the Therem wanted him to feel. More of their bloody psychology. He was surprised at the strength of his own cynicism.
A trio of dancers in huge painted masks with exaggeratedly full, red lips and heavy sultry eyes swayed into the booth. After they'd completed a complex and hi
ghly erotic dance, they went around collecting thumbprints. The other women were vocal in their encouragement to give generously. At this point, Renchett, who had been kissing the woman in the silver tunic, looked around at the other men.
"Think we may be giving a bit freely with the thumbs, my brothers."
There was a chorus of disagreement from the women, but Renchett shook his head and held up a hand for silence.
"The way you have to look at it, my brothers, is that if all of us went sticking our thumbs in every receptacle that presented itself, we'd end up devaluing the currency."
There were shouts of approval from the men and catcalls from the women.
Zydell squirmed in Hark's lap. "That's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard."
Hark grinned. It had to be another liberty ritual, convincing the women that they wouldn't settle for anything less than value for print.
"I heard that if a man makes too free with his thumbprint, the sensors start refusing to accept it."
Vana raised a quizzical eyebrow. "I never heard that."
Zydell nuzzled Hark's ear. "You're not going to stop pressing my box, are you?"
Hark was about to thumb the sensor when a voice in his head warned him to back off for a moment. He held up his thumb.
"You heard what the topman said. Maybe I shouldn't be making too free with this."
Zydell didn't fit quite as comfortably into his lap anymore. "You want me to go?"
Hark didn't even have to summon his courage. The Juliets led him smoothly into it. "I thought you and me might go someplace together."
"I'd want double to go to my place. If you're so concerned about your precious thumb, we could do it right here. Some of your messmates don't seem too concerned about privacy."
Hark looked around and saw that a handful of the men had already retired to the shadows and were writhing on the floor with their female companions. He recognized Helot, nearest to the light, but he couldn't make out the features of the others. Hark didn't think that he could handle anything so public.
