“Say a businessman arrives by plane at Kennedy International Airport. Where is he likely to go first?”
“Maybe to his hotel, but he’ll have a reservation, or he’ll telephone for one from the airport. We haven’t, and can’t. At least, I haven’t seen any phone booths.”
“Nor any Travelers’ Aid,” Darzek said thoughtfully. “And yet there must be some way for a stranger to engage a hotel room or its equivalent. I just noticed that the transmitter on the end has no destination board. Anyone using it just presents his solvency credential. Watch.”
“Do you think—”
“I think it’s possible. All the other transmitters are free. Shall we try?”
They approached the transmitter. Miss Schlupe tucked Biag-n’s sample case under her left arm and placed her right hand over the solvency credential scanner. “It clicked,” she said.
“Try it again. We both want to go to the same place.”
“It clicked again.”
“Good. I’ll go first.” He unbuttoned his coat. “Wait two minutes. If the trouble is still going on when you arrive, just hit the floor and leave it to me.”
He stepped through the transmitter. When she joined him, two minutes later, he was calmly relaxing on a hassock and smoking one of his dwindling supply of cigarettes.
She looked about her in amazement. “Are we back on the ship?”
“No. The layout is the same, but the gravity is normal and the rooms are larger.”
“Then it is a hotel!” She darted excitedly to ripple open doors. “A hotel compartment on the same order as our ship compartment.”
“The ultimate in standardization,” Darzek agreed. “The glorified average—the arrangement that will satisfy the needs of the most people.”
“I’d feel better about it if there was a fire escape. Or at least a window.”
“You are enjoying the hotel of the future. A honeycomb hotel. With perfect lighting and air conditioning, no windows are needed. With a transmitter in every suite, every inch of space can be used for rooms. When travelers want accommodations, they pay with their solvency credentials, and a computer assigns them to a vacancy. They can transmit directly to their rooms from the transmitting exchange, or from the corner drugstore, or even the hotel lobby, if there is one. Neat, don’t you think? There’s a service transmitter in the table, so we can eat as long as our solvency lasts.’’
“I’d still like it better if there was a fire escape.”
“So would I. I’m wondering how long it will take our friends to trace us.”
“I didn’t know we had any friends!”
“But we do,” Darzek said confidently. “We must have. The Council of Supreme is expecting us. Supreme himself is expecting us. Eventually someone will think to put a tracer on our solvency credentials, and find out where the computer put us.”
“If our friends can trace us, what’s to prevent our enemies from doing the same?”
“That’s another thing I’ve been wondering about. When someone finally shows up, how will we know which it is? While I’m watching the transmitter, why don’t you look through our ex-friend’s sample case.”
She sorted through dozens of circles of cloth, clucking her tongue softly over the superb quality of the fabrics, but she found nothing but samples. She returned them to the sample case and got out her knitting. They waited, Darzek watching the transmitter steadily, automatic in hand, and Miss Schlupe directing wary glances toward it as she knitted.
Time passed.
They came so suddenly that Darzek was startled into momentary inaction. There were three of them, and they loomed hugely in the small room: creatures of a kind they had not yet seen—gaunt, segmented stalks with a multiplicity of knobby limbs, looking like weirdly animated flowers because their angular bodies terminated in tinted, transparent hoods that covered their heads.
Darzek murmured, “Who goes there, friend or foe,” and rose slowly, automatic leveled. He could not discern whether the oval that gleamed faintly behind the hood was a face or a huge, searching eye, but he had the sensation of being scrutinized calculatingly, as an entomologist might examine an insect while deciding whether it would do for a vacant pin in a collection. He tightened his finger on the trigger.
He never quite perceived where the weapon came from. One of the creature’s numerous arms moved with incredible speed, and a short tube was leveling on him.
He dove to the floor as he fired. There was a sickening crackle, a whiff of ozone, a scream of pain. The weapon thumped onto the polished floor and rolled. Darzek kicked at it, missed, twisted away as the second creature leaped toward him. He shot another weapon from a hand of the third and tried to get to his feet.
The second pounced upon him. The multiple arms whipped around him like ropes. As they constricted they forced his hand upward, and he pulled the trigger again and shot his assailant through the head. The arms lashed once and went limp. Darzek pulled free, leaving the creature lying in a thickening, gelatinous ooze.
He turned quickly and saw Miss Schlupe coolly impale the first creature with a knitting needle. It collapsed with a soft, squishy moan. The third creature, one arm dangling uselessly, had pursued one of the rolling weapons. Miss Schlupe was there before it, trailing strands of yarn. She planted her foot on the tube and brandished her needles. Darzek pointed his automatic.
The creature hesitated. Suddenly a jerky tremor seized its body. Without uttering a sound it collapsed in an ungainly pile of segments that shook violently for a moment and then subsided.
Darzek bent over it warily. “Schluppy,” he announced, “you are a terror. You’ve frightened it to death.”
“Serves it right,” she said indignantly, pulling her half-finished scarf from a puddle of ooze. “They’ve ruined my knitting.”
Darzek was examining a hole high up on the wall. “If that had hit me, you’d have had to knit me a new shirt. See if it goes through the opposite bedroom wall. If our neighbors are going to be complaining, we might as well be forewarned.”
She returned shaking her head. “There’s just a pinprick up by the ceiling. What is it?”
“Some kind of a ray gun. What do we do now—ask Room Service to clean up the mess?”
“We pack up and get out of here before their friends arrive.”
“There’s nothing to pack except your knitting.”
“I’m not packing that!”
“You’d better,” Darzek said. “I don’t know how efficient their police are, but let’s not go out of our way to leave clues. Wash it off and wrap it in something. I’ll watch the transmitter.”
She hurried away, pulling the knitting along the floor.
Darzek pocketed the spent cartridges and took up a position in the shelter of a bedroom door. He could survive only by learning quickly, and the first lesson was not to be sitting within plain sight and easy reach when a group of enemies came through a transmitter.
Miss Schlupe reappeared, her wet knitting enfolded in handkerchiefs. “I’m ready.”
Darzek walked over to contemplate the transmitter’s enormously complicated destination board. “I just remembered. We can’t leave. We don’t know how to operate this thing.”
Chapter 6
Miss Schlupe said bitterly, “If Smith were here, I’d turn his nose right-side-out and tweak it. Why didn’t he explain this?”
“Either he had so much to teach us that he forgot, or he left transmitters for Biag-n to explain. What are you mumbling about?”
“I was counting. There are just seventy-one possibilities. If we had a couple of days, we might figure the thing out.”
“You’re thinking of trying one slide at a time,” Darzek said. “They probably work in combination, too, which would make thousands of possibilities. Or maybe they’re used succ
essively, like on a dial telephone. Our problem isn’t the number of destinations, but the fact that we have only one choice. Wherever we end up, we’re stuck there because we don’t know how to come back and try again.”
“Any place would be better than this,” Miss Schlupe said distastefully, tiptoeing around a puddle of ooze and touching her fingers to her nose.
“Not necessarily. The dead bodies in the next place could be our own. But I agree. We should get out of here.” He turned for another look at the destination board. “These lower slides are arranged differently. If we knew why, it would probably be important.”
Miss Schlupe gasped and leaped aside. Darzek whirled, leveling his automatic. A strange creature stood beside them, a blurred image of Smith, with wider body and an extra three feet of height. Darzek backed away slowly, but the creature paid no attention to him. He was staring at the three dead bodies, and on his inhuman face was a very human look of horror.
He bent over one of the tubular weapons and spoke in large-talk. “The Eye of Death!” he moaned.
“Poetic,” Darzek said agreeably. “In spite of which it might be a highly effective gadget if used properly.”
“It is forbidden!”
“Too bad we didn’t know. We could have spanked their hands.”
The creature turned his attention to Darzek. He said wonderingly, “You were attacked by three, with Eyes of Death —and you live?”
“My mother always said I was stubborn, but my father blamed it on meanness.”
The huge, hideous face became contorted with an expression not remotely unlike astonishment. The mouth shaped a whisper. “Now I understand why you were chosen. Praise Supreme!”
“I’m glad someone understands. Look, friend—normally I don’t stand on formality, but under the circumstances I think you should tell us who you are.”
The other delivered a genuflection, a curious circular movement of the arm. “I am EIGHT.”
“Eight what?” Darzek demanded.
“I am the eighth member of the Council of Supreme.”
“Congratulations. Would you mind proving that?”
The other stared.
“I have a nasty, suspicious disposition,” Darzek went on, “and it wasn’t improved by what happened a short time ago.” He gestured at the three bodies. “Who are they?”
“Agents of the Dark. Where is Biag-n? Why didn’t he bring you to me?”
“Biag-n died before he could meet us, which left us in a situation I would call a pretty pickle if that weren’t so aptly descriptive of some of the local citizens.” He said in English, “Does he look honest, Schluppy?”
“He looks scared to death.”
“It may amount to the same thing. Look, EIGHT,” he said, changing to large-talk, “we’re allergic to rooms containing dead bodies, and we don’t know how to work the transmitter. Would you mind getting us out of here?”
EIGHT had sunk onto a chair, where he sat with arms encircling his head despairingly. “It is as I feared,” He moaned. “The Dark has agents everywhere. Biag-n—”
“Died a hero’s death—I think. But let’s eulogize him some other time.”
EIGHT got to his feet. “Did you personalize the transmitter?”
“I don’t think so. Not unless I could have done it without knowing how.”
“I am not thinking. I can’t think. Of course you didn’t, or I could not have entered. The agents of the Dark could not have entered. You should have personalized the transmitter. You really don’t know how? I’ll show you.”
“Not with this transmitter, you won’t. Not if ‘personalize’ means what I think it does. The less evidence we leave here, the better I’ll like it.”
“How could the Dark have learned that you were coming to Primores?” EIGHT demanded. “And that Biag-n was an agent of Supreme? No one knew. No one except—how could the Dark—”
“Let’s play Twenty Questions some other time. Get us out of here.”
EIGHT strode to the transmitter, thought for a moment, touched out a destination. “Follow me,” he said, and was gone.
Miss Schlupe gestured disgustedly. “Damn! And we still don’t know how to work the transmitter!”
“He set it for three passages. Take the sample case. Maybe these people know about fingerprints. Have we touched anything?”
“I don’t think so. The doors?”
“Go ahead. I’ll wipe the latches.”
He rubbed quickly with his handkerchief, snatched his suitcase, and leaped into the transmitter. Miss Schlupe stood waiting for him; EIGHT was already hurrying away.
They were in a public garden. Above a transparent dome the night sky blazed with stars. The walks were faintly luminous, and huge, glowing flowers gave off a soft effusion of light that bathed the park in a ghostly halo. Their pungent perfume hung heavily in the motionless air. Miss Schlupe sniffed gingerly, sneezed, and muttered, “Vicks Vaporub.”
EIGHT chose a route that avoided the strange-looking figures who walked the paths. At the opposite side of the park he halted at a transmitter station and waited for them impatiently.
He touched out another destination. They stepped through and found themselves in the main transmitting exchange.
Darzek murmured approvingly. “I don’t think any police science could trace us through this place.”
“I don’t think he’s worried about the police,” Miss Schlupe said. “He’s just like Smith—afraid of the Dark. I’m beginning to be a little afraid of it myself.”
EIGHT had paused for thought again. Darzek turned an anxious eye on the stream of unlikely shaped passengers that flowed around them. He said softly, “Can’t we go somewhere, and then think about it?”
EIGHT started. “I was wondering—yes. Of course.”
He led them to the alcove and offered his hand for a transmitter’s scrutiny, a large, puffy, hairless hand with a vast row of short, stubby, hairy fingers. EIGHT motioned to Miss Schlupe. “Quickly!” he said.
“I’ll go first,” Darzek told him, and stepped through the transmitter. He inventoried the room with a glance and leaped to investigate the adjoining rooms. Miss Schlupe and EIGHT were waiting when he emerged from the last one, EIGHT looking about for him bewilderedly.
“Are we safe here?” Darzek demanded.
“I am EIGHT! I am a member of the Council of Supreme! The transmitter admits no one without my seal.”
“How many people have your seal?”
“This is my official residence,” EIGHT protested. “There are few places in the galaxy where we could be safe if we were not safe here.”
“I’ll take his word for it,” Miss Schlupe said wearily. She dropped onto a hassock and kicked off her shoes.
“The Council will meet soon,” EIGHT said. “I have already convoked it. I did so as soon as I learned that you were coming.”
“You look tired, Schluppy,” Darzek said. “Are you up to a meeting with the Council?”
EIGHT said protestingly, “But only you are to meet with the Council.”
“Is that so? Supposing I were to tell your Council to go soak its collective heads, of which it probably has a surplus.”
“We did not know you would bring an assistant. No one can be present at a Council meeting without a pass certified by all of the members, and I obtained only one.”
“Then obtain another one.”
“Never mind,” Miss Schlupe said. “If it’s like other council meetings I’ve attended, I won’t be missing anything.”
“How long will this meeting take?” Darzek asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps a long time. Perhaps several days. There may be much planning to do.”
“Can she stay here? Is there a service transmitter?”
�
��Of course.”
“All right. I’ll meet with your Council. But first I’d like to remedy certain deficiencies in my education, and before that I’d like all of the official information about the Dark.”
EIGHT moved over to the table and opened a panel. The ceiling glowed softly, and a pattern emerged. “This,” EIGHT said, “is the galaxy.”
Darzek glanced indifferently at the spiraling haze of light. Then he started. This was no theoretical projection, but a map.
“And this,” EIGHT whispered, “is what the Dark has done.”
A tiny crescent of blackness appeared at the edge of the glowing disk. Suddenly it widened and plunged inward to form a sinister finger that lay across the galaxy’s remote perimeter, pointed unerringly at its heart.
It continued to grow. It bulged unevenly, filled in hollows, bulged again. Its base oozed outward, and it began to lengthen. Then the tip darted forward, leaving a widening emptiness in its wake, and when the movement finally stopped the finger had become a muscular arm with incongruous bulges and indentations, a vast corridor of cancerous Dark.
No stars shone there. No lines of commerce or communication crossed it. Stars there had been, and habitable worlds with prosperous societies and intricate networks of trade and travel, but the Dark had consumed them.
“So that’s the Dark,” Darzek mused. “But what happened to the suns that were there? Are they just—gone?”
“Gone,” EIGHT agreed.
“How could a sun vanish?” Darzek demanded.
“Vanish?” EIGHT repeated, puzzled. “They are there, but they are lost to us, to the galaxy. The Dark has taken them. The native populations have been afflicted with madness—the madness of the Dark. They have evicted all foreigners and confiscated their property. They have terminated all trade and communication with the rest of the galaxy. What the Dark does with them we do not know.”
[Jan Darzek 02] - Watchers of the Dark Page 6
