Victim Prime

by Robert Sheckley

  Albani rushed back to the city, breaking enough safety regulations to satisfy the most exigent of policemen. Harold meanwhile had proceeded to the waterfront. Foote was reputed to hang out in a place called Mulligan’s Last Chance Saloon & Flophouse. It was a tall, narrow structure near the docks.

  “Foote?” the proprietor said. “Little thin guy wearing a long black overcoat? Yeah, he comes in here sometimes. But I don’t know where he is now.”

  “I’d like to find him,” Harold said.

  “If I was you, I’d try down near the fishing docks at the corner of Lakehurst and Viande. Foote sometimes works as a fish scaler when the pork-stuffing plant is closed.”

  Harold went down to the fishing docks. Here the tall ships sailed in from Cuba, Haiti, and the Bahamas. Gulls wheeled and turned in the dimming afternoon air. Small boats rolled at their moorings, their masts creaking and groaning in the stiff breeze. Many of these vessels had been decorated for Saturnalia night, now fast approaching. Tomorrow evening was the pre-Saturnalian festival. There would be a procession of boats through the harbor, lights blazing, fireworks soaring.

  Harold found a ragged old man sitting on a bollard looking out to sea.

  “Foote?” said the ragged old man. “Horton Foote? If you know the tracks of the morning mist you know where his pickets are.”

  “What?” said Harold.

  “Kipling,” the man said. “Is it really important for you to find Foote?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is it twenty bucks’ worth of important?”

  Harold paid. The ragged old man led him through the darkening back streets of Esmeralda, into the labyrinthine twists and turns of the inner city. It was a place where slops reeked in the gutters and sterile starlings fought rabid rats over savory bits of unkempt refuse. From somewhere on a high balcony a woman was singing a plaintive folk song, old when the pyramids were new, about the sadness of having to do the daily wash when her man warn’t coming home no mo’.

  Townspeople, some broad-faced and unshaven, others narrow-browed and lascivious, lounged in doorways with their hands in their pockets and clay pipes in their mouths like men waiting for Holbein to come paint their portraits. The gaslights had come on, each lamp surrounded by the glowing nimbus of light that the architects of Esmeralda had copied from an old Laird Cregar movie. Evensong was over and blue twilight was fading at last into the murmurous and irreparable night.

  “That’s him right over there,” said the man, and sidled off into an alley.

  Harold looked in the direction indicated. Across the street, at a café whose bright lights and mirrored interior made it look more important than it was, a man in a long black raincoat sat at a sidewalk table sipping a drink which, on close inspection, turned out to be a lime rickey. Sitting beside him was none other than Michelangelo Albani drinking a Negroni.

  “Ah there, Harold,” Albani said. “Take a seat, join us. I’ve just gotten here. Horton, this is my friend Harold Erdman. He is also not interested in buying your Treachery Card.”

  Albani gave Harold a look that said, clear as day, “Go along with it.”

  “That’s right,” Harold said, pulling up a chair and sitting down. “I’m also not interested in buying your Treachery Card.” He turned to Albani. “So what’s new?”

  “I got a Reckless Driving Obligation this afternoon,” Albani said. “Can you imagine? And on a Bribeless Tuesday, too, of all the lousy luck. Well, you win some, you lose some. What did you do today?”

  “Hey, come on, fellows,” Foote said. “You think I ain’t got no sources of information? I happen to know you want to buy my Treachery Card.”

  “Oh, you’ve seen through me,” Albani said. “Yes, all right, Foote. I do want to buy it. Not now, of course. In a couple of weeks, a month at the most. I expect to be able to make you a very attractive offer at that time.”

  “I can’t wait no couple of weeks,” Foote said.

  “So I hear,” Albani said pleasantly.

  “But I suspect you can’t wait neither,” Foote said.

  Harold cleared his throat—a dead giveaway, but he didn’t have Albani’s experience in not giving himself away. Foote, a small, ugly man with a brownish-red birthmark shaped like a flying fish under his left armpit, rubbed his nose.

  “How much do you want for it?” Albani asked.

  “Two hundred dollars,” Foote said.

  “Done,” Harold said.

  Albani gave him a reproachful look, but Harold already had his billfold out.

  When they were a block away, Albani said, “I could have gotten it for fifty.”

  “Yeah, but it’s getting late.”

  Albani looked at his watch. Then he noticed that daytime was definitely turning into nighttime. “Damnation! We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to get out to Louvaine’s villa tonight! And we haven’t even picked out our disguises yet!”

  41

  Jacinth brought her smart little red sports car to a screeching stop in front of Louvaine’s apartment building just as twilight was settling down for a short but pleasant visit to the island. The mildness of the evening was not reflected in the young girl’s eyes. They were slate-blue and filled with anger.

  She slammed out of her car and strode as purposefully as she could in her miniskirt and tight bolero jacket to the entrance. She didn’t bother to buzz. Inserting her own key, which Louvaine had given her during a more promising time in their relationship, she went through into Louvaine’s apartment.

  “Louvaine?” she called. There was no answer from the darkened apartment. She turned on the lights and went to Louvaine’s wardrobe closet. His chamois jacket and tweed hat were missing, and so was his shooting stick. So he had gone to his villa in the country, just as her friends had said, without even telling her, much less asking her. The fact that he might be on Hunt business was no excuse. She knew at least ten people he had asked to his country house for a party that night. And he hadn’t asked her.

  Although she was absolutely furious, she did stop to think about it, to wonder why Louvaine had decided to have this party so suddenly, and why, all personal reasons aside, he hadn’t asked her.

  She sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs and lighted a mild narcotic cigarette. She remembered how Louvaine had talked about Harold. A perfect Victim type, he had called him.

  And then, lo and behold, what happens but the Hunt computer, with its thousands of combinations to choose from, comes up with the very one he wanted. Something fishy there. And why had he gone out to his villa with a bunch of his friends, but not her?

  All right, she said, let’s reason it out. Louvaine went to the villa to party with his friends in order to lure Harold out there after him. But Harold, with this guy Albani Spotting for him, couldn’t be such a fool as to do that. He wouldn’t go out to a part of the island where Louvaine was well known, and, because of his habit of paying everybody off, well liked among the peasantry.

  Something about this didn’t make sense. It was as if one important piece of the puzzle was missing. There was some bit of information she needed, but she didn’t know what it was. She got up and paced restlessly up and down the room. Her gaze fell upon the wall of framed trophies and souvenirs which Louvaine kept. She walked over to the wall, looked more closely. Yes, one of the frames was empty, a small frame with a chased silver frame. Now what had been in it? She couldn’t remember. She was about to put the whole thing out of mind when, on a hunch, she turned over the frame. On the backing, in Louvaine’s neat, backsloping handwriting, were the words: “This Treachery Card inherited from Uncle Osvald, may he R.I.P.”

  Louvaine had taken his Treachery Card! That was interesting. But who could he use it on, out at his villa where everybody was on his side? Now the mystery was only getting deeper and she needed a drink.

  She went to the liquor cabinet. Near it was a telephone table, and a scratchpad was lying beside the telephone. There was a name and number scrawled on it. Horton Foote. One of Louv
aine’s enemies.

  Again, the thing made no sense. Why would Louvaine call a man who everybody knew despised him?

  She took another drag on her cigarette and sat down again. The answer came to her: Louvaine, with his devious mind, would call such a man because Foote would be the last person anyone would suspect of working for him!

  What might have happened, Louvaine might have made up with Foote and paid him plenty to sell Louvaine’s Treachery Card to Harold, so that Harold would think he had an advantage going out to the villa tonight, whereas actually, Louvaine would be waiting for him, ready to kill.

  She didn’t like it. She thought it was pretty rotten, what Louvaine had done: picked Harold out as someone he could handily kill, arranged somehow to get paired with him in a Hunt, and then set him up to fall into an ambush through a Treachery Card. Trickery was all very well, but this sort of thing was not in the Huntworld spirit.

  Louvaine had left her out of the party because he had been afraid she would figure out what he was up to.

  Opening the top drawer of the telephone table, she found Louvaine’s telephone book. There was Harold’s name, neatly written in. Louvaine couldn’t have known so quickly who his Hunter was, not by any fair means!

  She lifted the telephone and called the number for Harold given in Louvaine’s book. It was the number of Nora’s apartment. Nora answered.

  “Look,” Jacinth said, “you hardly know me. I’m Jacinth Jones and we met briefly at the Jubilee Ball. You’re a friend of Harold’s, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Nora said. “What’s the matter?”

  Jacinth explained briefly what she had discovered. “I’m an old friend of Louvaine’s, but really, he’s not playing fair. He’s cheating, and that’s not right. So I thought I’d tell you so you could tell Harold, because I really think he ought to watch out for himself.”

  “Oh God,” Nora said. “I just hope there’s still time to stop him from going out there. He was supposed to leave from Albani’s apartment. I’ll call there right now. Thanks, Jacinth!”

  Nora, in a blue dressing gown, her short blond hair still wet from the shower, found Albani’s number and telephoned.

  Teresa answered. “Albani residence.”

  “I must speak to Mr. Albani, or to Harold.”

  “They’re downstairs in the basement, discussing important matters. I have orders not to disturb them for any reason whatsoever. Who is this?”

  “I’m Nora Albright. I’m the person Harold has been staying with. The one from his hometown.”

  “Oh, yes, he’s spoken of you. Would you like to leave a message? I’ll have him call you as soon as he’s out of conference.”

  “Look, this is really terribly urgent,” Nora said. “I’ve just learned that there’s been some hocus-pocus over a Treachery Card. My information is that some person named Horton Foote sold it to Albani. But I’ve just found out Foote is employed by Louvaine! It’s a setup! If they go to the villa, Harold will be walking into an ambush!”

  “Oh, mother of God, no!” Teresa said. “Mike couldn’t stand it if he lost another client.”

  “Then you’d better call them up from the basement and let me speak to Albani or Harold.”

  “I’m real sorry,” Teresa said, “but they’re not here at all. I lied to you before.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Mike told me to. So people would think he and Harold were still in the city.”

  “Then they’ve gone to the villa?”

  “They left half an hour ago. Isn’t there anything we can do? Can we inform the authorities and get them to stop the fight?”

  “No,” Nora said. “What Louvaine has done is not against the laws. It just runs contrary to all decency and ethics. Let me think. … Look, I’d better get off the phone. I’ve got an idea.”

  Nora hung up. There was no way she could contact Harold or Albani. There was no way she could get to Louvaine’s villa in time. There was just one thing she could do. She hoped it would do the trick. She dialed The Huntworld Show.

  42

  Albani didn’t like to go anywhere without his car. Man has only a limited time on earth to drive a Lamborghini and Albani wanted to take advantage of every moment of it. His professional discrimination took precedence over his personal tastes, however. With the Treachery Card in his possession he had hastily selected disguises for Harold and himself. They then went down to Central Station, arriving just in time to catch the seven-fifteen train to Santa Marta, the little village near which Louvaine had his villa.

  The train was full of peasants dressed in black and carrying large woven baskets filled with salamis and breadfruits, two specialties of the island.

  When Huntworld gained its independence, the Founders’ first move was to kick everybody off the island in order to make a fresh start, demographically speaking. After lengthy discussions it was decided that the island needed a peasantry. But not just any peasantry. What Esmeralda needed was a really good peasantry, content with its lot and unenvious of the wealth and flashy life-styles on all sides of them. The Founders knew that a really good peasantry wouldn’t be cheap, but nothing else would lend that air of quaint subservience so valued in the modern world.

  After much soul-searching it was decided to import southern European peasants wearing berets. Spanish and Italian employment agencies were contacted, notices went up throughout Andalucia and the Mezzogiorno, applicants were screened, and the best applicants were sent to the well-known Peasant School in Zug, Switzerland, for final polishing.

  The peasants of Esmeralda did very little real work. Their main function was decorative. Government slaves took care of the tedious tasks such as plowing, weeding, seeding, harvesting and manuring. All the Esmeraldan peasants did was perform country dances on Sundays and spend a lot of time drinking Slog, the mixture of wine and beer that the Esmeralda bottlers were trying in vain to popularize.

  They also spent a lot of time boasting about how rich and virile they were while their womenfolk stayed home roasting entire pigs stuffed with ears of corn.

  Their traditional costumes had been designed by Jiki of Hollywood and featured full skirts, baggy pants, and tightly laced bodices.

  The children of the peasants were a problem, of course, as children always are, but soon after puberty they were sent to trade schools in Kashmir, and this made everyone happy.

  An observant man might have noticed two cloaked figures getting off the train at Santa Marta del Campo, a village in the Esmeraldan countryside about fifty miles from the city. They went directly to the Blue Bophor, the largest tavern in, the village, and spoke quiet words to the owner. One of the strangers, a tall, handsome man with a full false beard, showed the bartender something he held tightly in his hand. The bartender gaped at it. Then a cunning look came over his face.

  “Oh, aye, and wha’s thot to me?” he asked. He had attended a year of peasant bartender school in the north of England, and this showed in his speech.

  “We want to see Antonio Feria,” the bearded one said.

  “Och, but he’s busy, catering the party on the hill, you know.”

  “Indeed I do know.” A crisp banknote appeared between his fingers. “Bring him to me, eh, there’s a good fellow.”

  The bartender took the bill, cringed to show his gratitude, and went to the telephone.

  43

  When young Django Feria got home from school that evening, he found two strange men sitting in his mother’s parlor. One of the men was tall and handsome and wore a false beard. The other man was even bigger, dark-haired, dressed entirely in black, and he was wearing short soft boots. There was something cold and unforgiving about his eyes—pale northern blue eyes—that struck Django at once, and he said, “Who’s he?”

  “Shut up,” said Django’s father, Antonio Feria. Django noticed that his father had put on the clean shirt with tassels which he usually saved for wakes and holidays. This stranger must be one of the important ones, Django thought,
but he did not allow himself to perceive what he thought that importance might be, because the habit of not thinking what other people didn’t want him to think was a lesson he had learned well in the local Peasants’ Grade School.

  Just then his elder sister, Miranda, came through the earthenware door. She posed for a moment, hipshot, her sultry lower lip stuck out, her hair a dense bush of untamed possibilities. She was tall for a peasant, though short for an aristocrat. Her small uptilted breasts pressed against the sleazy fabric of her peasant blouse. Her legs, completely concealed beneath her heavy long skirt, could be counted upon to be shapely.

  “Father, what have you done? Who are these people?” Though her tone of voice was one of alarm, there was that in her expression which argued that she might not find it objectionable to be put into the power of one of these men, or possibly both, though perhaps not at the same time.

  Antonio Feria sat down at the plain wooden table, rubbed his large unshaven jaw, and poured himself a glass of ouzette. His eyes were filled with rage struggling against lassitude.

  “It’s simple enough,” he said gruffly. “This man”— he indicated Harold with a half-gesture of his crippled right hand—“will accompany you to Señor Louvaine’s feast tonight. He will carry the teriyaki chicken in place of Giovio, the new peasant in the village whom Señor Louvaine has not met. You will accompany this man, carrying the traditional lard cupcakes. Do you understand?”

  “He’s not from around here,” Miranda said, eyeing Harold with interest. “Is he another new peasant?”

  “No, he is a Hunter, and he comes from far away.”

  “A Hunter? But who does he Hunt?”

  Her father looked away. An expression of pain crossed his broad features. “He hunts Louvaine, El Patron,” he muttered at last, pouring himself another glass of ouzette.

  “Father! You would betray Señor Louvaine, who has done so much for us and for the enitre village?”