by Various
Dr. Craven hesitated and rubbed his chin, which was bright red again. He said finally, "Mr. Lindsay, you didn't kill your mother before you were seventeen, did you?"
"My mother died last year," said Lindsay, unbelieving.
"Incredible!" muttered the psychiatrist, shaking his head. "According to the computer you must have...." He paused again, then said, "I hope this won't embarrass you but you evidently are a man who prefers men to women. The stigmata is definite and shows--"
"Night soil!" Nina exploded her favorite expression before Lindsay could collect his wits for an answer. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Dr. Craven, but this man's a veritable satyr. I caught him looking at my legs yesterday. Ask Maria Bergozza if you want any further proof."
"But this is impossible!" the psychiatrist exploded. "According to the computer--"
"Your computer's out of whack," Nina said calmly, and led a stunned Lindsay out of the place. She added, "You didn't deserve that, boss. Not after puffing my eyes up."
"Why not just keep your glasses on then?" he countered. They returned to their office in unfriendly silence. Lindsay sent Nina home early and took a copter across the Lake to his own place, there to nap until time for the match at the Colosseum.
* * * * *
He felt more at home in the UW box at the vast arena than at any time since reaching Earth. Since it was a sporting event, the eye-glasses were serried, at least in the lower, higher-priced tiers, by good looking faces, male and female, unadorned.
Someone slid into the comfortable contour chair beside him and said, "Evening, Zalen. Enjoying yourself?"
Lindsay looked into Senator Fernando Anderson's diamond-shaped raspberry glasses. He said, "So far--how about you?"
Anderson made a face. "I had a date with a gorgeous item but she put me off until later. So I thought I'd look in. Maria arranged a seat in the UW box. Otherwise I'd be watching it on vidar."
Lindsay looked up and around and discovered that the vast stadium was packed to the rafters, judging by the glowing cigarette tips that resembled an uncountable horde of frozen fireflies.
The court itself was pitch-dark, save for the lines and the net. He had trouble recognizing O'Ryan as his would-be assassin and opponent walked out. Neither player was clearly visible of feature, though shoes, shorts and racquets were luminous, as were the balls they began to hit back and forth across the net.
The only other luminous objects, save for the dim exit lights, were the betting boards. Lindsay, who had never seen one save on a vidar-screen before, asked Anderson how they worked. The senator from New Mexico was glad to explain.
"Naturally," he said, "since the results of all athletic contests are predicted on the computers, there is no betting on who will win."
"No upsets?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson laughed, said, "The last time there was an upset--in the British Australian test cricket matches three years ago--a computer investigation proved bribery and there was a hell of a stink."
"Then how do you manage to bet?" Lindsay asked.
"Simple," said the Senator. "Naturally, in case of accidental injury, all bets are void. But otherwise the betting is on the percentage of variation between the computer prediction and the actual play of the contest. There--you can see the computer line on the big board over there. The line of actual play will be red when it comes on. That way there is plenty of chance for betting on points, games, sets or match."
The man from Mars studied the predictor line for the match. It revealed that Pat O'Ryan, after a fast start, was due to slump in the second set, recover in the third and polish off his opponent, Yamato-Rau from Indonesia, in the fourth set with the loss of but one game.
"Looks like a shoo-in for O'Ryan," he said. "Right?"
"It ought to be," the Senator replied. "He's taken Yamato-Rau in six of their seven previous matches. The second time they played he had a sprained wrist that affected his volleying."
"Care to make a bet?" Lindsay asked his companion.
"Sure--why not?" Anderson countered. "Percentage of variation for game, set or match?"
"I'd like to bet on the Indonesian to win," said Lindsay quietly.
* * * * *
Senator Anderson looked at Lindsay sharply. He said, "You know something."
"Against the computer-prophecy?" Lindsay countered.
Anderson backed down and gave him a hundred to one on a fifty-credit bet. "You can't win, of course," he murmured, "but if you do it will be worth it."
The match began and the hum of the great crowd's conversation slowly quieted. At first it went according to the computer prophecy. Serving brilliantly, hitting crisply from either hand and smashing and volleying with deadly accuracy from all parts of the court, Pat O'Ryan held complete command of the match.
There was something hypnotic about the play--the clean ping of racquet strings on luminous ball, the swift flight of the ball, a streak of light in the darkness, the flash of another racquet, the long and intricate tactics of each exchange, broken only occasionally by the flash of a light that betokened an error or an ace and the resulting alteration of the scoreboard.
The red line crept in zigzag fashion along the computer board as the match progressed, veering above or below the white line of the prophecy but always returning to cross or even to cover it briefly. Big O'Ryan took the first set six games to three on a single service break against the Indonesian champion.
"Money in the bank," said Anderson in Lindsay's ear as the players changed courts following the first game of the second set, which Yamato-Rau had taken at fifteen. "Candy from a baby."
"It's barely begun," said Lindsay with a confidence he was far from feeling. He glanced at the clock above the scoreboard, saw that it was scarcely ten o'clock. Sickly he recalled that O'Ryan had told him it took twenty-four hours for his grain allergy to take effect. Lindsay had given him the drink barely seventeen hours before. He began to wish he had not bet so thoughtlessly.
The second set went to deuce twice before Yamato-Rau broke O'Ryan's service to run it out at eight-six. This was two games more than the computer had calculated and caused considerable uproar in the crowd.
"I hear you had some trouble last night," Anderson told him.
"Nothing serious," said Lindsay, wondering how much the senator knew. Dammit, he thought, he wished he didn't like the power-hungry politician.
He wondered if Anderson were behind the attempt of the morning--and if he were behind it, why? There could, he decided, be all sorts of Machiavellian motives hidden beneath that smiling face. Then the match got under way once more, and Lindsay concentrated on the play.
Once again O'Ryan seemed to be in command--just as the computer had foretold. Games went to five-two in his favor. Then, as the players changed courts once more, the tall Irishman paused to towel off--and paid special attention to rubbing his eyes.
At that his string ran out. Four straight times his swiftest drives hit the top of the net and bounced back into his own court. He blew his service thanks to a pair of double-faults and three minutes later Yamato-Rau had taken the set while the crowd sat in stunned silence.
The fourth set was pitiful. O'Ryan played like a blind man and the Indonesian ran it out with the loss of exactly one point per game. The red line on the computer-board yawed wildly toward the bottom instead of following the white line as it should have.
"Keep your credits," Lindsay told Senator Anderson. "You were right. As it turned out I did know something after all."
"It's impossible!" cried the senator. "But it's cheap at the price--here!" He withdrew his wallet and began pulling out crisp hundred-credit notes.
"Look out!" cried Lindsay. Around them the stands had erupted into violence. While the players were shaking hands at the net, angry--and, Lindsay suspected, frightened--bettors and spectators leaped the low barriers and swarmed out onto the dark court. They hemmed the players in, driving them toward the wall directly under the UW box in which Lindsay and Anderson were sittin
g.
Someone threw something and Yamato-Rau stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. Swinging his racquet like one of his ancestors' shillalehs, O'Ryan charged to his rescue, pulled him to his feet, covered his retreat to the wall. There Lindsay was able to pull first the Indonesian, then the Irishman, up into the box.
"Damned fool!" said Anderson. "Getting us into a riot." But a moment later Lindsay saw the senator swinging hard at an angry customer with a fist in which his wallet was still clenched. The man made a grab for it as someone else hit Anderson over the head with a plastic bottle. He dropped across a contour-chair, letting his wallet fall from unconscious fingers.
UW police formed a protective wall around them and Pat O'Ryan, recognizing Lindsay, said, "Thanks, Ambassador. I guess I owe you a couple. If my eyes hadn't gone bad on me...."
Lindsay was tempted to admit his guilt in that matter but decided against it. He had no desire to be caught in another riot. He picked up Anderson's wallet, put it back in the still unconscious senator's breast pocket. A white-clad interne was brought through the police cordon, knelt beside Anderson and began to make repairs.
"You'd better leave now, Ambassador," said one of the boss policeman respectfully to Lindsay when the senator had been carted away on a stretcher. Lindsay nodded. Then he noticed a slip of paper lying beneath the chair across which Anderson had fallen. It read: rec. 10,000 cdt. 1 em. & di. neck. It was from Zoffany, the jeweler.
"What the hell!" Lindsay discovered he was speaking aloud. He stuffed the paper in his pocket and followed the officer through a maze of underground passages out of the Colosseum. He still thought, What the hell! What could Nina have reported about him that was worth that sort of money to the senator?
* * * * *
Spy, slattern or not, Nina was efficient, as he realised when a bowing motley-clad waiter captain smilingly ushered him to a secluded table for two in a banquet niche of the Pelican. It was Lindsay's first visit to an Earthly after-dark cafe and he instinctively compared it with certain of its imitations in the comparatively small cities of his native planet.
It was sleeker, better run, far more beautiful. Its general color scheme was darkly opalescent, subtly glowing, flattering to its clients. And, of course, most of them needed flattering, at least to Lindsay's alien eyes. He noted here a pair of scimitar-shaped spectacles whose turquoise-studded rims caught the light like a pair of small lemon pies, there a harmopan-covered female face that glowed pale green in the darkness.
But even more numerous and decorative than at the stadium, the gladiators and courtesans were present, reinforced by a larding of vidar stars visiting or entertaining in the capital. And these, Lindsay admitted to himself with awed reluctance, outshone in sheer beauty and handsomeness any group of Martian humans.
They ought to, he thought. Direct descendants, figuratively if not actually, of the advertising-Hollywood beauty fetish of the previous century, they were selected almost from birth for their callings and trained rigorously from childhood on, the males to become athletes or actors, the females courtesans or actresses.
There was no race among them, for their only standards were beauty and physical fitness, no creed but achievement in their lines of individual entertainment. He caught sight of a lissome Euro-African, the classic exoticism of her flower-petal face illumined by joyous laughter beneath a glossy neo-Watusi hairdo, as she glided gracefully over the dance-floor in the arms of a hunch-harnessed and bespectacled partner.
The gladiators and courtesans alone seemed to find joy in living. Lindsay, who had seldom been unhappy in his active existence, felt his sympathies and heart go out to them. He followed the progress of a tiny Oriental model whose face was alive with good-humor as she swept past his table, her exquisite figure stressed by a glittering jeweled sheathe.
"You really should wear glasses--or else learn not to stare," said Maria, appearing from nowhere and sitting down at the table. She made amends by extending a warm soft hand to grip one of his. Though she wore her glasses and her hair was severely pulled back, he had no difficulty in recalling the fact that, unclothed, she was lovely.
"Why don't you get in on the act?" he suggested, nodding toward a pair of models emerging from the harmopan room. "All you'd have to do would be to remove your specs and harness and let your hair down."
"You're sweet, Zale," she said, pleased. Then, with a sigh, "But there's a lot more to it than that."
"You do all right that way too," he told her boldly.
She slapped the back of his hand and then, growing quickly serious, said, "Zale, I didn't ask you to meet me for that. I've got so much to ask you--so much to tell. Did you really find an assassin waiting for you when you got home last night? And did you kill him?"
"Yes and no," said Lindsay. "I did find one and I didn't kill him. In fact we parted good friends."
"You Martians...." She sighed, then said, "And I understand you have already broken two computers--this afternoon at the psychiatrist's and this evening at the Colosseum. It's the most marvelous news, darling. I've got to know how you did it."
"I'm damned if I know how I fouled up Dr. Craven's computer," he told her, "I'm still trying to figure it out."
Her face fell. She said, "I was hoping you had something.... But never mind." Then, brightening, "But you're driving them crazy. They ran Dr. Craven's results through Elsac late this afternoon and got the same answer. The records checked that you didn't kill your mother and I know you're not an invert." She laughed softly.
Spurred by the erotic atmosphere, plus the dizzying speed of recent events and Maria's nearness, he said, "Let's get out of here and go to my place."
Her hand covered his again atop the table. "I wish we could," she said wistfully. "I like you very much, Zale darling. But this is too important. We haven't time. But what about the tennis tonight? There's going to be an investigation, of course. Won't you tell me how you did it?"
"Not until I've figured out both," he said. "I may be on the track of something or it may be sheer chance. Until I understand what happened at Dr. Craven's I'm simply not sure of my facts."
"But there simply isn't time, darling," Maria told him. "This is really what I must talk to you about. We got word today that President Giovannini is going to unveil Giac any day now."
"Decided against your sabotage plan?" he asked her.
She wrinkled her pert little nose. "What's the use? They'd simply repair it. Besides, it's much too well guarded. Zale, you're our only hope now."
He said "If I'm right, and I'm beginning to hope I am, it won't matter whether Giac is unveiled or not. In fact, it might be more effective if it were."
Maria drummed on the table with nervous knuckles. "But you don't understand, Zale. You don't think for a minute that the Ministry of Computation is taking this lying down. I got word less than half an hour ago that they are preparing to force your recall as an unsuitable plenipotentiary."
"They can try." Lindsay spoke grimly. This was a move he had failed to foresee, though he supposed he should have. Inadvertently he was becoming a major threat to the crockery in the china shop that was Earth.
"They can do it," Maria said simply. "Zale, these people have become absolutely dependent upon their computers. They aren't going to let their entire creed be wrecked by one Martian."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked simply.
"Come with me--now," she said, once more gripping his hand. "A group of us want to talk to you, to find out how you have done it."
He looked at her, found her adorable in her earnestness. He said, "And if I play guinea pig with your friends, then you and I...?"
"Of course--as soon as there's time," she told him.
"You are a little bundle of fanaticism, as well as of sex," he told her. "I should think at least, since you seem to have such an inside track, you could manage to get my recall deferred."
"That's just it!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I see everything, I hear everything--yet I can do nothing. Papa thinks I
'm merely a foolish female creature and his attitude blocks me at every turn." Lindsay realized again how fundamentally frustrated she was, wondered if she would ever find a completely satisfactory release.
Lindsay decided to play along. "All right," he said. "Shall we go?"
"Thanks, darling," she promised. "We'd better go separately. There will be a blue copter-cab waiting outside when you leave." She leaned across the table to brush his lips briefly with hers, squeezed his hand and glided off.
* * * * *
He wondered, while he waited for the check, just how foolhardly he was being, allowing himself to be summoned to a meeting of palace conspirators. It could very easily be a trap, whether Maria knew it or not. It could be a ruse to add fuel to the fire being lit under him for his recall as a legate persona non grata on Earth.
"You haven't forgotten our date, have you darling?" The voice was throatily reproachful above him and he looked up in surprise at a glittering female figure, who seemed to be clad entirely in blazing brilliants.
She was tall and blonde, her hair an ocean helmet of gold, sprinkled with gems. Her face was beautifully boned, with broad cheeks and forehead pierced by a decided widow's peak. Light green eyes slanted upward beneath brows like the wings of some tiny graceful bird. Nose, lips and chin gained fascination from the perfection they skirted but just escaped. Face, arms, upper bosom and shoulders wore the even tawny golden tan that only some blondes can achieve.
Her figure, ashimmer with gems, was lithe of waist, firmly full of breast and pelvis, moved with the enticing grace of an Indonesian temple dancer as she slipped into the seat Maria had so recently vacated.
"Sorry, your highness," he said with a look of honest admiration. "I didn't know we had a date."
"We have now," she stated. She laid a handbag solidly encrusted with diamonds, emeralds and rubies on the table, said to the dwarf waiter, "Bring me the usual, Joe--and give Ambassador Lindsay another of whatever he's drinking."
At any other time, Lindsay thought. He said, "I regret this more than you'll ever know, my dear, but I've got a copter-cab waiting for me outside."
