Melchior's Fire tk-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  Suzy went over to the bronze doors, knocked on one, then opened it just a small bit and said something to whoever was on the other side. In a moment, Norman Sanders strode out and towards them, wearing a genuine crimson silk dressing gown. It was one of the most breathtaking of all the examples of opulence they’d seen, but, An Li thought with some satisfaction, he still looked like an unmade bed.

  “Good day, everyone,” he said cheerfully, if a bit sleepily, taking a seat at the head of the table. He waved his hand at the steaming items on the table. “Go ahead! Be my guest! Dig in! I never eat much for breakfast. Never feel like I’m started. Some coffee, maybe some eggs Benedict, that’s about it for now.” He suddenly realized that most of these people hadn’t seen real food in their whole lives, and the one or two who had probably had forgotten the look of it.

  “Omelettes there at the end, with lots to put on them if you like, and those over there are crepes, and those are breakfast meats. All real, I’m assured, with one or two minor exceptions. There’s apparently some farming done here, in very limited amounts, just for the hotels and the bosses. Those are teas and juices, and over there are various sandwiches if you’d rather lunch than breakfast, with, I think some onion soup in the tureen. Go ahead, dig in, eat, get joyously full, and then we’ll talk.”

  He was as good as his word, and the food was as rich as he promised. In fact, some of the food didn’t taste all that good to them, with one notable exception. They’d been on the artificial and reconstituted stuff so long, some forever, that they had no appreciation for the taste of real things.

  The exception was Randi Queson, whose only real regret was that she hadn’t much of an appetite. She hadn’t been sleeping well, even with some help from a medical computer. She kept having nightmares about cold, alien voices dismissing the human race as irrelevant.

  Still, she managed some old favorites she’d neither eaten nor been able to afford in a very long time.

  During the whole thing Norman Sanders said little except pleasantries and “Pass the coffee,” but they all sensed his mind going behind that dull, cherubic bearded face as he carefully watched each of them in turn.

  And when they had regretfully watched the ample leftovers being cleared and taken away after none could manage any more, An Li couldn’t help but wonder where those leftovers went. Not anywhere she knew could use them, that was for sure.

  Leaving only coffee and tea, the army of cooks and waiters had left with the remainder of the food, and it was again only them. Suzy took a seat on a divan across from the table and said nothing; Jules stood by the table to pour anyone’s coffee or tea but otherwise to stand impassive looking at them all. Clearly neither was going to be a central part of this forthcoming discussion.

  Finally, the producer stuck a big cigar in his mouth, which Jules promptly lit. After puffing on it a bit and beginning to fill the air with thick and unpleasant smoke, Sanders began to speak. As he did, air filtration clicked on, drawing the smoke up and to his rear, out of their own nostrils. It was a nice touch.

  “As Madame An has most certainly told you, I am Norman Sanders. I already know who you all are, and I’ve gone over what you accomplished and I’m impressed. I’m not much of a man of action, and I draw most of my courage from good whiskey, but that’s why I’m looking to hire people. That’s what a producer does, you know. He’s kind of an entrepreneur. He finds a project, gets control of it, then he puts it into action by hiring the best people for the job and giving them the best tools he can within a budget that will be adequate but realistic. For that, he gets a share of the payoff, sometimes the biggest share. It’s not fair, maybe, but if he does his job right he’s doing something others can’t do. I realize that this isn’t cyberspace, we’re not talking about jacking in customers in a safe and secure place to experience the thrills of whatever we dream up, but the basics are the same anyway. I didn’t come here looking for any of you, but synchronicity seems to have put me here looking for just such people at the time when those people show up here. I have a project. If it comes off, it’ll make me one of the richest people in creation and one of the most powerful. I won’t mince words on that. Your shares will be tiny for assuming the risk and doing the labor, but they’ll still be enough so that you’ll never have to work again and can do pretty much what you want forever. Interested?”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” Jerry Nagel responded.

  “Let me start at the beginning. I’m a collector. Antiques, mostly, but historical stuff, and stuff that inspires or stimulates. I go to a lot of auctions, or send representatives there who know my tastes, and I wind up with a lot of stuff. Some of it is junk, some of it is truly wonderful, and some of it is blind speculation. I went to one where they were auctioning off the personal effects of Dr. Oscar McGraw. Anybody ever hear of him?”

  Most had not, but Randi Queson knew the name. “He was a brilliant physicist. Said to be on a par with Einstein, Newton, that league. Is that the one you mean?”

  “The very one.”

  “I thought he held a research professorship on Marchellus.”

  “He did, but he passed away about six months ago. It was a tragedy to science, maybe, but the guy was like almost two hundred and fifty years old and had every kind of rejuvenation process and youth serum you can name. They say he was sharp to the end. Looked like a prune, confined to a wheelchair, but he taught a class the day he died.

  “Anyway,” Sanders continued, “the doctor was superfamous, had been since he was a kid. He’d lived a long time, knew or met everybody famous in our end of the universe, and had accumulated every honor and prize there was. I figured the historical stuff alone would be amazing, and it was. He’d been alone for years, after his sixth wife died, and there were no heirs this side of the Great Silence, so he willed his papers to his university and a bunch of stuff to various libraries, and the rest he said to put up on the block and use the proceeds to endow scholarships in physics and mathematics for bright kids who needed them. There was a ton of stuff to go up, and lots of interested, well-heeled bidders, but I managed to get a lot, including some trunks and such that turned up in his attic. Lots of personal stuff, so they let it go. I had people go through it and catalog it, and I began to notice some interesting names I would never have associated with him. The one that really got to me was Dr. Karl Woodward.”

  “The evangelist who disappeared a ways back?” Lucky Cross asked.

  He seemed surprised that the knowledge had come from this quarter. “Yes, indeed. How do you know about him?”

  “Oh, my mom used to be a real regular with him. Sent him money and stuff almost all the way to the end of her days. He was her kind of preacher. Cussed like a sailor, smoked, hated most other preachers. We used to get videos from him now and then. He was a real stem-winder.”

  “He was indeed. He was also a doctor of astrophysics, and had been a classmate and university research partner with McGraw until something caused a big change in Woodward and he dropped out of science and got religion. Not sure of the story there, and McGraw never understood it, but they stayed friends, or so it appears from the notes. I have a ton of voice diary reminiscences by McGraw of old Doc Woodward, but it was their last meeting that suddenly got me to sit up and take notice. Woodward, it seems, had come across a stuck pirate band and a derelict old ship that pointed him directly to the Three Kings. How to get there, that is. Woodward wanted McGraw to run the physics and get it exact as possible. McGraw wanted to talk Woodward out of it. He didn’t; he did the figures and gave ’em to Woodward, who promptly took off in his tent-meeting spaceship and vanished, apparently forever. I have McGraw’s calculations. Everything else is still there, and it checks out. I’ve had it looked at. We even think we know why Woodward’s ship couldn’t have survived the trip, at least two ways. I think the problem’s solvable, and so do the brains I hired to look at it. I want you to go there and stake it out for me.”

  There was absolutely no apparent reaction from any of
the others there, unless you counted the unsuppressed belch Lucky Cross gave. Finally, Jerry Nagel said, “You have the figures from the smartest guy who’s ever lived in our lifetime, the stuff used by Woodward? And it didn’t work for Woodward? And you think that, decades later, those same figures that this smart guy with his supercomputers and whole university brain machine got not quite right can be made right by lesser brains? Who are you kidding? Things are getting worse every year, breaking down more and more. We’re on the skids, not the way up. You’re offering us a one-way trip to a sure death.”

  Sanders shrugged. “I’m offering you a way out, a chance to make a bundle, get free of all debts and clear your reputations, and no strings. I’ve got money and position, but you can’t have too much, and I’ve always dreamed of owning my own studio, top to bottom, without regard to cost. Risk? Sure. Lots of it. A hundred times more than the usual salvage-type job, but you know that going in, something you didn’t last time. Right? Blank check on equipment, whatever you need. And nobody’s gonna follow you and try and collect one way or the other, I can guarantee that.”

  An Li looked at her companions and sensed that they weren’t nearly as dead set against this as they were making out. You couldn’t tell about the Doc, particularly after what she’d been through, but maybe, just maybe, there was real interest there.

  “Let me talk to my former crew in private for a few minutes,” she suggested to the producer. “Let me see if things can be worked out.”

  Sanders shrugged. “Take some time. But my time is valuable, and there are a lot of other crews here that can be put together. My offer won’t be on the table indefinitely.”

  “We’re just gonna step outside for a bit and talk,” An Li told him, ignoring the implied threat. “Then we’ll give you an answer.”

  He nodded, and dismissed them with a near-regal nod, getting up from his chair and, with his two too-good-to-be-true companions, vanishing back into that bedroom or whatever it was.

  “Li—” Queson began, but she waved her hand and shook her head to indicate that there was to be no talking here. They all got the message, and, as a group, trooped out and went down to the lobby area.

  An Li led them to a particularly noisy part of the reception area and then said, “We were almost certainly bugged in there, probably still are, but between the ambient noise here and the small leaky communicator I have in my pocket we should be reasonably secure. If not, it’s better than nothing.” She looked at each one of them in turn, then asked, “So? What’re your thoughts?”

  Cross shrugged. “No different than most other jobs, except the getting there. I also don’t like this split. Standard in this business is fifty-fifty, financing and crew, after expenses. He thinks he’s got us ’cause there’s nobody else gonna hire us right now, but that’s bullshit. We all know that. There’s nobody else better to do this kind of job, and if he plunks down a few million on a throwaway crew he’s throwin’ money down a hole. We’re the best chance he’s got and he knows it.”

  Sark and Nagel nodded. Only Randi Queson seemed a bit hesitant. “You really think we can do this?” she asked them all. “I mean, nobody’s ever come back that went looking with a chance of finding it. Not one. That tells me that either you die on the way there or there’s no way back once you get there.”

  An Li looked at all of them carefully. “Honest opinion? I think we can do it, yes, but there’s more to it than meets the eye here. I looked into that damned gem that’s supposed to be from the Three Kings and something or somebody looked back.”

  “Huh? What?” They were all interested now.

  “You can see things in it. Strange things. Some of it’s out of your mind, some of it is no place you’ve ever been, but I don’t think those things are natural. I think they’re set up to collect information on us, or maybe anyone or anything. Like alien-type ferrets. Only we take them around. We wear them like jewelry, and the public and the rich and famous actually stare into them.”

  “More than ferrets,” Queson said, thinking things over. “Baited hooks. I’d love to actually see one of those.”

  “Ask him. I think he loves showing off all the things he has and you don’t. It’s part of the fun of being rich and powerful,” An Li responded. “Still, you won’t sleep good when He shows up in your mind.”

  “ ‘He’?”

  Quickly she told him of the sensation.

  Queson now had her anthropologist’s hat on. “Makes me wonder. We’re being baited and hooked by these empty ships with just enough treasure to make sure we’ll keep coming. You seem to think we’re being scouted, but it sounds more to me like we’re being studied, in small and manageable groups. Hey, rats! Here’s some great cheese! Come to our maze! Let’s see how clever you are!”

  “If that’s true, then there’s no bankable treasure over there,” Jerry Nagel pointed out. “Just bait and a trap. That really lowers the odds.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We just outsmarted a creature that had the collective knowledge and wisdom of an entire human colony,” An Li reminded him. “And we’re no colony or group of Holy Joes. We’re salvagers.”

  “I don’t like it,” Nagel said firmly. “If they’re that technologically ahead, and we’re in their own den or trap or maze or whatever it is, then we haven’t got a chance in hell of getting out of there.”

  Randi Queson was deep in thought. Finally she almost breathed, “I wonder…”

  “Huh? Wonder what?”

  “How many ships are on record as having returned from the Three Kings with bait but no people? What kind of ships were they? If they weren’t cyberships, then we may have an edge they didn’t.”

  “That first scout who reported the place was a cybership,” Cross noted.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Only I wonder if they got any more reports from it on other discoveries after they got the Three Kings report. An, give me a little time this afternoon to research this stuff and see what I can come up with. Set up a late dinner, on Mr. Megabucks, with all of us to settle things once and for all. The later the better. By then I hope I’ll know just what kind of chance we might have, however slim, of pulling this thing off.”

  “Fair enough,” An Li replied, and she saw the rest of them nodding. “Tell you what. We’ll meet in the courtyard outside the hostel at, oh, twenty-one hundred hours. That give you enough time, Doc?”

  “Better than nothing.”

  “Okay. I’ll try and set up dinner for an hour or so later. The one other question is, do we need to replace Achmed if we agree it’s a go?”

  They looked at one another and shrugged. “I don’t think so,” Sark replied. “We’re still a team, accustomed to each other’s signals and timing. Adding somebody on something like this and breaking them in isn’t gonna be easy to do. We’re not taking apart a colony here. It’s almost like prospecting or exploring. I think we can handle it. Anybody think I’m wrong?”

  “Well, if we can replace him with that actress pet of his, Suzy what’s-her-name, I wouldn’t mind,” Nagel commented wryly.

  “Funny, I thought Jules the Sweet would be more your style. Seriously, replace him or not?”

  She looked around and saw nobody contradicting the big man.

  “All right, then,” she said. “Doc, you go do your research. Jerry, I want a workup and laundry list of just about everything and anything you think you’d need if we do this. The rest of you, well, whatever you can think of. Let’s be ready when we go back there tonight!”

  * * *

  Norman Sanders almost choked on his claret. “Half? Half!”

  “It’s reasonable considering the odds,” An Li pointed out. “You get an expert crew and the only front money required is the list of necessary equipment and supplies and the ship’s lease itself. We know pretty much what you’re worth, Mr. Sanders, and what this all costs. It will take you almost six months to make back the up-front cost of this expedition on interest alone. We agree on your bills up front, before we leave. We add that
to your half. Other than that, it’s a split.”

  “It’s outrageous! You’re nothing without my information!”

  “And once we have it you become irrelevant,” she noted.

  “This is blackmail! You’re all a dime a dozen! I can go out and hire a crew for next to nothing on this asshole of a world!”

  “Then why don’t you and stop wasting all our time?” Randi Queson came back. “It’s because half of something is quite a bit, but half of nothing is nothing. You’re not buying bodies here, or you wouldn’t still be bothering with us at all. You’re hiring expertise that nobody else has, and you’re hiring the best. The best usually get a premium, but we’re offering this to you at standard rates because the profit potential is so high.”

  “You don’t take this, what will you do? You’ll all be scrambling for garbage in the backwaters of this hole!”

  “Not at all,” the doctor responded. “I’ll go back to teaching until something else comes up, and Jerry will stop figuring out how to disassemble things and go back to making things work with what’s at hand. Lucky will go back to tugs or some other commercial piloting job, Li may need a bit of help but she’ll wind up the same, and Sark, there, well, there’s always work for someone like him. A real jack of all trades.”

  “I’m thinking of taking an offer as a contract enforcer with the entertainment guilds,” Sark said with a kind of eerie combination of smile and growl.

  “You see, Mr. Sanders, we have lives, both real and future,” Randi told him, sounding quite confident. “You want the best, you need to pay for the best.”

  Norman Sanders looked for a moment like he was going to have a stroke, then he calmed down enough so that at least his face no longer appeared to be bright red. He reached out, took the rest of the wineglass, and downed it.