“Come in,” he smiled. “I am just finishing some special work.” As though to prove the point, he bent over his desk, began checking down a long bill of lading.
~ * ~
Tenchu stood watching him. He liked the smell of the little shop, the warm odor of Jovian teel, the clean fragrance of Venusian zoth. Sweet and fresh—like Eyehla. Such a silly child she was-
“I am worried,” Tenchu said slowly.
“The burden of worry is more easily borne by two,” Naavic observed absently.
“What would you do,” Tenchu went on, “if you discovered your wife to be unfaithful?”
“Eh?” Naavic looked up, grinning at the thought of his fat, homely spouse being untrue. “I should offer her my sincere congratulations!” He laughed, wheezingly. “Why do you ask?”
Tenchu leaned back in his chair, toyed with the glittering solene luck charm that hung about his neck. When he at last spoke, his voice was like the rustling of sheer cellosilk.
“I have learned,” he murmured, “that a—a friend of mine is being deceived by his wife. Yet I hesitated to tell him for fear he may kill her.”
“Kill her?” Naavic repeated. “If he does not value the woman, then why should he care? There are many more in the slave marts of Santu. And if he does value her, why deprive himself of her charms?”
“True.” Tenchu nodded. “But surely this husband will kill the lover?”
‘That would show little wisdom.” Naavic replied, shaking his head. “Even if he should escape the police, his wife would always regard him as a murderer and mourn the martyred one who gave his life for her.”
“Then,” Tenchu muttered impatiently, “what will this husband do?”
“If he is wise, he will forgive his wife, thus increasing himself in her eyes and belittling the lover who, shamed, will depart.”
“Ha!” Tenchu stood for a moment in silence, stroking his chin. “It may be that you are right. I shall tell this husband to offer forgiveness—at the proper time.”
Naavic stuffed his long pipe with coarse black shole. “Do I know these people of whom you speak?” he asked casually.
“No.” Tenchu shook his head. “Health and happiness, Naavic. You have spoken with great wisdom.”
Leaving the little spice-shop, Tenchu glided like a soft shadow through the narrow streets. Along Ixtan Way, with its grimy signs in twisted Martian characters, its tumble-down houses, pitted and eroded by the howling red sandstorms from the desert. Past the Space-Market where, in the brilliantly lighted bazaars, sharp-faced merchants haggled over their wares. Beggars whining wearily, soft voices calling from behind ornate lattices; and those who live by darkness creeping out of black doorways to people the night with vague, living ghosts. An occasional ship, out-going or in-coming, gave the dingy streets momentary splendor as its rocket-flare gilded them in ruddy gold
Now Tenchu was following the Han Canal, filled to overflowing with melted ice from the polar cap. The dark waters were splashed with patches of light from windows, strewn with the reflection of the high, cool stars. Canal-cabs raced along its surface, sending up clouds of spray as they wheeled to avoid leisurely private boats, heavily laden cargo craft. At intersecting canals police whistles shrilled, silver spurts of sound in the darkness. Tenchu moved with impassive swiftness, his face a stolid mask.
After half an hour’s walking he approached the raw, ragged edges of the Olech. A few scattered houses, a fringe of rank vegetation, and the desolate red plain stretched before him, barren, interminable. Here there was no road, no canals; only the windblown dunes broke the horizon. Tenchu stared across them at the old abandoned beacon, a gaunt tottering wreck against the savage purple sky. In the distance he could see the lights of Psidis, glowing faintly like a drop of phosphorus spilled on the desert.
Tenchu turned, headed toward the beacon. It was hard walking. The loose, dry sand gave beneath his feet, leaving shapeless impressions swiftly smoothed away by the wind. The dunes, fringed with sparse, tall grass, were like giant bald heads. Tiny stalk-eyed bats dipped and circled overhead. The wind sighed and the sand rustled softly. All at once Tenchu was standing beside the tall beacon. There was no sign of life about its crumbling girders. Tenchu nodded. He was early. Squatting in the shadow of the building, he waited.
Visions of Eyehla’s slim young beauty danced before his eyes, brought a choking sensation to his throat. She was foolish, yes, but so lovely. Naavic had been right—there was only forgiveness.
The indistinct outline of a tall, swift-striding figure brought Tenchu to his haunches. Humming to himself, Johnny Greer plodded toward the ruined structure. The venture, he had decided, promised to be both pleasant and profitable, as well as a great deal less risky than some of the other incidents of his highly colored career. Of course, it was still a bit dangerous to return to Earth, but by now the affair of the missing radium should have blown over sufficiently-
Crouched in the pool of darkness at the base of the beacon, Tenchu waited. The humming grew louder and Johnny Greer stepped into a patch of moonlight He was carrying a small satchel in his right hand. Tenchu straightened up, smiling mildly.
“Tenchu!” The satchel fell from Johnny’s hand. “What do you-”
Before he could finish the question, Tenchu stepped forward, drawing a small black object from beneath his robe. A pale, tenuous thread of light linked the two for a moment. Johnny Greer’s legs buckled under him; he sighed faintly, pitched forward to the ground.
For a bleak instant Tenchu stared at him, watched the thirsty sands soak up the trickle of blood. It was scarcely necessary for him to feel Johnny’s wrist to know that there would be no pulse; the little proton gun had bored a neat, round hole in the Terrestrial’s forehead. Tenchu nodded, began to rummage through the dead man’s belongings. A cellosilk handkerchief, bearing the initials J. G., brought a satisfied smile to his face. He stuffed it into his pocket.
Turning from the body, Tenchu scooped a hole in the sand. His lean, curved fingers dug swiftly to form a shallow grave. When Johnny Greer had been thrust into it, with the satchel for a pillow, and the sand pushed back into place, Tenchu stood up, regarding his work reflectively. Little danger of the corpse being discovered. No one other than an occasional desert nomad ever visited the barren, wind-swept dunes. Tenchu, regarding the heavy little proton gun, smiled beatifically.
~ * ~
Some moments passed before he saw Eyehla walking briskly toward him. Tenchu drew a sharp breath at sight of her. In the dim, soft light her glossy hair seemed almost blue. There was a grace, a lilt to her walk that filled him with sudden fierce anger. So she was happy at the thought of leaving him for Johnny Greer! And that small sack, hanging heavily from her hand! His money! Thaels, dollars, solts, even rare zetas from Pluto! A thousand thaels—more! And she believed that Johnny Greer had wanted it only as a loan. She herself would have been only —a loan! Such a trusting little fool! Tenchu stooped low, hastily wrapping Johnny Greer’s handkerchief about the butt of the proton gun.
Eyehla was quite near, now. He could see the glint of her yellow solene necklace, the scarlet of her lips against her rose-pink face. She approached the base of the building, glanced nervously about, still clutching the heavy sack.
With catlike softness Tenchu crept from the shadows. The sand deadened the sound of his approach. Now he was close behind her, his arm poised.
It was very quickly done. Eyehla slipped to the ground without a murmur. Almost before she reached it, Tenchu was kneeling at her side. He smiled, noticing that she breathed regularly. The blow from the gun-butt, deadened by the handkerchief, had been light. Her skin had not even been broken. He would have to work quickly before she came to.
He unwound Johnny Greer’s handkerchief from the gun, laid it on the sand beside her. With trembling fingers he removed her necklace, her rings, and, snatching up the sack of money, ran hurriedly toward the town.
Midnight was just blinking on the red time-signals when he entered t
he town. The Olech seemed strangely quiet. Gambling houses, taverns, the little latticed windows, had drawn the crowds into their nets. An occasional tong-sodden spacehand; a slinking, soft-footed molat; a stocky policeman leaning against a lamp-post—apart from these the streets were deserted.
Tenchu found his own establishment in full cry. Johl, at the head of the long table, was having difficulties in keeping track of the swift-changing odds. Shaking the sand from his clothes, Tenchu stepped into the little back room.
The apartment was just as he had left it. Eyehla had written no note of farewell. Tenchu placed the sack of money, the jewelry, in his strong-box, locked it securely. He was just pouring himself a glass of dark olo when he heard the dragging footsteps outside. The door swung open and Eyehla lurched into the room, her face gray with pain.
“Eyehla!” Tenchu ran to help her. “What has happened?” He glanced toward the adjoining bedroom. “I thought you were in there—asleep!”
“My husband!” She crumpled to the floor at his feet. “I have done a great wrong!”
“Eh, matana?” Tenchu murmured, blinking. “You-”
“I promised Johnny Greer to leave you—to run away with him.” All the Terrestrialism, the spirit of rebellion, had fallen from Eyehla; she was now entirely Martian, meek, woebegone. “I took your money, went out to the desert to meet him. And” —her voice suddenly broke—”he struck me, from the shadows, stole the money and my necklace, my rings. I know, because of this handkerchief I found beside me—I was a fool to believe such a man!”
“So.” Tenchu’s lean, strong hand caressed her cheek. “Do not blame yourself. You are young. The money is well spent if it has taught you wisdom.”
Eyehla glanced up at him, unbelievingly. “You forgive me?” she whispered. “After what I have done?”
“Surely, matana,” he said gently. “The matter shall be forgotten. Forgiveness is ever the test of true love, aye, and the goal of the virtuous.” Smiling benignly, Tenchu scraped the sand from beneath his fingernails.
Somewhere out in the sultry Martian night a rocket plane roared. The staccato coughing of its exhaust was like deep mocking laughter.
<
~ * ~
Episode on Dhee Minor
BY HARRY WALTON
I
nside the low sheet-metal commissary building of the space post known on the Interplanetary Relations & Commerce Commission’s roster as No. 291, Oliver Blakston grumbled within his air helmet—where, to be sure, there was nobody to hear him grumble but himself. All space-post factors grumbled, as a matter of traditional right. Besides, it helped to pass the time between customers, and when these number only a score of prospectors, a dozen Martian spore gatherers and looth wool shearers, and one aged, slightly senile fugitive from justice, there is plenty of time to pass.
“Why in the name of thirty Plutonian devils I stay here, I don’t know. I’ve seniority enough to pick a dozen better posts. On colonies where you can breathe air that didn’t come out of a can, and eat food that doesn’t taste like it was dragged out of Old Faithful. This time,” he swore, “I’m quitting. Six days more and I’m pulling out of this stinking sulphur hole—”
He’d said it before, he knew. He always asked himself the same question, arrived at the same decision, just before the monthly supply ship arrived. And when it did, inevitably he found too many things to clean up before he could leave, and would grumblingly announce that he had decided to stay “just one danged month more.” Spacemen grinned when he said that. He’d stayed “one danged month more” for eight years now. But this time, so help him, he meant it.
One by one he polished the shiny little oxygen cylinders comprising the most important item of his trading stock, cursing all the while the tarnish and corrosion wrought by this alien atmosphere. A blend of nasty gases that smelled just as bad if lumped under one name—hydrogen sulphide. You smelled the characteristic rotten-egg odor thirty-two hours a day—and the day of Dhee Minor was just thirty-two hours long. The smell seeped through air conditioning and filtering systems, past double-seamed metal walls and lucite helmets, through rubber, cloth and glass. The atmosphere was poisonous, but the odor itself was demoralizing. It had been years since Blakston had seen a hen’s egg, but he knew that never again would he be able to swallow a mouthful of one.
He grumbled about the smell, swore sulphurously at every spot of tarnish which he painstakingly rubbed bright. But his grumbling was automatic by now and had little to do with his thoughts. Mentally he was counting the full cylinders on hand, noting the number of empty returns, estimating what quantity he should stock of this article and that for trade throughout the coming month. He used no notes, made no errors. His mind was an orderly file that would empty itself of nonessentials the moment current orders had been filled.
Bending over the oxy-cylinders, he felt the scrape of the door being opened, heard the characteristic shuffle of an Ootlandah, and looked up to recognize Queel, a native of the planetoid and one of the reasons Blakston always stayed “one danged month more.”
Properly speaking, this wasn’t Queel. Queel had died six and a half minutes after Blakston first met him, six years ago. This was a remote descendant of that Queel, and a less remote descendant of the Queel Blakston had seen two days ago. Literally, Blakston had never laid eyes upon the Ootlandah who now waddled into the commissary and stopped, quivering as though blown by an invisible breeze, before the long thurkwood counter.
~ * ~
The casual eye would have described Queel as a perambulating vegetable. An elongated oat grain, enormously magnified to the size of a small Earth man, would have looked like Queel —or like any other Ootlandah, for that matter. Spacemen marveled that Blakston could tell the natives apart. Queel was curiously bearded; his whiskers sprouted up from his waist and fringed his tiny, gourdlike head like the calyx of some fantastic blossom. He had two little eyes and a mere slit of mouth, yet so flexible were his internal organs that he could imitate human speech to a nicety, although in a reedy tone. Furthermore, hours spent listening to Blakston’s reading of books, newspapers and space-post communications had given Queel an immense and sometimes startling vocabulary, which he enjoyed using in unique fashion.
“Queel the elder respectfully salutes you,” chirped the native. The atmosphere carried the sound, and Blakston heard it well enough, for his helmet was fitted with air-tight sound diaphragms as well as the conventional radio communicator.
Blakston grunted amiably. “Queel the elder” was a stock phrase, indicating that the individual now present had lived out more than one half of his normal life span. It was a courtesy appreciated by Ootlandahs to acknowledge the information.
“For a can of apcots,” Queel went on in a businesslike tone, “I have to exchange two large Keela-fungi. Is trade okey dokey?”
Blakston smacked his lips. A real treat at any time, Keela mushrooms were a delightful change from canned food. “Trade is done,” he said gratefully, and walked out to find his part of the bargain, two enormous puffy parasols, lying beside the doorstep where Queel had left them. Blakston grinned at the characteristic pride of the Ootlandah, who had plainly carried them thus far, perhaps for miles, but who, for no amount of “apcots,” would have let himself be seen in the act of burden.
Blakston brought the Keela in and shoved them into the desulphiding chamber to be ready for supper. He selected a large can of apricots, added, by way of bonus, a strip of tough licorice from an air-tight glass jar, and passed both to Queel, whose whiskers quivered with delight at the gift.
“Am most thankful,” he squeaked. “But regret imminent passing which you will have to witness— Look out!”
The warning was timely, and Blakston instantly made ready by whisking a handy cloth over the stock on the counter. The Ootlandah shook himself, his tiny green-rimmed eyes mournful. Then, with a sudden upheaval of energy and to the accompaniment of a sound much like a sneeze but signally more violent in effect, he shivere
d himself asunder. The oatman, whiskers and all, disintegrated to a fine dust that settled slowly to the floor. Blakston waited patiently for the miracle he had seen a hundred times but still found fascinating.
From the center of the little pile of yellow powder sprouted a small yellow pod, rapidly expanding like a toy balloon. Swiftly it assumed larger proportions, prickled with growing whiskers, grew reedy little legs with flapping pads of feet. Within sixty seconds there stood complete an exact replica of the deceased Queel. This explosive life cycle completed, the new born spoke.
“Queel the younger salutes you!”
~ * ~
Blakston again grunted acknowledgment. Queel the younger would find that sufficient, as his ancestors had before him. For this Queel possessed all the accumulated memories of hundreds of his direct forebears. For all his fragility—he weighed scarcely twenty pounds Earth gravity, and not a tenth of that on this tiny world—Queel was a triumph of evolution. He was, in his own way, immortal.
Travelers of Space - [Adventures in Science Fiction 03] Page 12
