How he dreaded this experience!
How he craved and thirsted for this experience!
A Boosted Man had come close enough to him for his own half-Boosted Man metabolism to resonate with those diabolical frequencies. The moment was transitory. As quickly as the symptoms had crashed upon him they passed.
But for those few heart-beats Hook had been a Boosted Man — and the passing of the evil state left him hollow and withdrawn and grey, a husk.
`What the hell's got into you, Hook?'
`Nothing except a damn-fool Krifman!'
He was back on form again.
`This damn-fool Krifman has a wrist credit-card that says he's with ZZI. ZZI, Hook. There's no better econorg in this man's galaxy. Who are you with?'
Officials in orange uniforms were moving among the survivors now, with their computerised questions, and their probes for forged credit cards and all the rest. Hook grunted and hauled up the left sleeve of his tunic.
'I'm with me, Rafflans, that's who,'
Rafflans didn't grasp that.
'You? A loner? Haw!'
Rafflans laughed, delighted at the colossal stupidity of Hook attempting to cut his own course in the galaxy when, as every intelligent man knew, to be under the protection of a multi-system conglomerate was the only way to survive.
Hook spoke with a genuine sourness.
'There was a ZZI agency on Mergone, Rafflans, you great Krifman idiot. But here? On Merfalla? Did you even know there were people on this goddamned planet?'
'No — I — what the hell are you getting at, you sapiens ape?'
'Just that something screwy is going on.'
'I'm an executive with Krifarm — yes, that's why I know about weapons — and I'm not going to be fooled with, believe you me. I'll have whatever agency is down on this dump squeaking out over the parsecs so fast for ZZI their tails won't touch the ground.'
'You may be a big shot, Rafflans.' Hook spoke quietly. He couldn't tell this big hulking Krifman that wherever there were Boosted Men there was grief for ordinary decent humanity. The Boosted Men were out, for their own dark and twisted ends, to dominate as much of the galaxy as they could, which nonsensical concept sickened Hook. But he knew the Boosted Men meant to do it and, what was even more horrifying, they were capable of it. They called themselves the Novamen. They played for the highest stakes there were between the stars and all the rules were their own.
Hook finished as quietly: 'Just don't annoy these people. They might not like ZZI much.'
Such an idea struck Rafflans as absurd.
`We're a bigger econorg than — ' he began. One of the orange uniformed officials stood before them.
'No matter how large or important your econorg may be,' the official said in a voice that rasped with repetition. 'I'll say this once. Get over to the desk and deposit your weapons. Check them in carefully. Down here on Locus we do not recognise any econorg but one. So walk carefully.'
None — except the startling exception of Hook — had spoken to Rafflans like that in years and years. He gaped. Then: 'What the hell are you blatting about, terrestial ape! I'm an important — '
'Shut up and get over with the others.'
The Martian Mega looked enormous in the official's hand. It had leaped there from its holster, and only a Boosted Man could have seen it move.
Rafflans bristled and started to shout. Hook shoved him. 'Let's get over there and check our guns. You'll have your guts shot out otherwise, you Krifman fool.'
Rafflans just didn't believe what was happening to him. In the next couple of hours his weapons were taken from him, his money-metal was taken, he was stripped of his clothes and handed a pair of dun orange coveralls, he was given a swift physical, food was dished out on plastic-paper plates, a dismal meal, and he was herded with the other survivors into the capacious hold of a freight flier. All the time officials in the garish uniforms held guns pointed at him and the other survivors.
The man in the tight bright-blue clothes and orange cloak spoke to them.
'You have come to Locus and you will work. Conditions are good. If you attempt to escape, however, you will be punished. But I know you will not want to escape. You will now be taken to your centers of employment. Move!'
As he went out with Hook, Rafflans said: 'I just don't believe it! I don't believe it!'
Chapter Five
When they stepped out from the freight flier's hold on to a landing apron and saw about them the towers and blocks and complexes of an industrial city, the girl Myza spoke crossly to her friend Fraulein Elterich.
'They're punishing us, Anthea! It's all the fault of that horrible Hook man! He smashed up their spaceship and now they're punishing us!'
'I don't think so, Myza. Anyway, they'll catch Hook soon. You can't sit in a pilot's seat and not leave enough traces.' Anthea Elterich's brows drew down. 'Anyway, he saved our lives. I feel sorry for him.'
Myza sniffed.
'What sort of man is he, then? He's hiding among us. I don't know half these passengers — who would, when the ship carried over three thousand? I only met that nice Denis when we stopped aboard the shuttle.'
Denis, a man whose black hair shone with oil and ministrations, and whose chest tended to the concave rather than the convex, summoned courage enough to smile. Myza's purple hair had turned spotty under the washings, and some of its mousey brown showed through.
Hook stood to their rear, silently, listening.
Rafflans nudged him.
'If we turned you in, you chancroid, they might let us off.'
'You don't believe that, Rafflans. They've got an operation going on down here. It's secret. This planet is supposed to be uninhabited. Yet look at that industrial power!'
Rafflans moved his hand in Krifman contempt.
'ZZI wouldn't even notice a hundred units like this. But I grant you it's impressive enough, near-to, like this.'
They started forward under the threat of guns in the fists of brightly-uniformed guards. The cracked concrete showed weeds sprouting valiantly. The air, at least, under the dome shrouding the city smelled fresh. Outside, on the planetary surface, no doubt conditions were barely livable. You'd certainly be dead out there without protection of the kind afforded, not by an econorg, but by a spacesuit with full supplies.
The pavement changed to a pedway and the party sped on. 'It's mostly chemical engineering,' said Rafflans.
'Yes,' said Hook.
'I'll not turn you in, Hook. I don't want anyone else stealing the pleasure of tearing you limb from limb.'
'That's big of you.'
Hook had steered clear of the other survivors. He fancied his disguise had implanted a set impression on their minds, and now he had discarded it they just did not recognise him among the party where they did not know everyone. But he had the sneaking suspicion that if Myza or Anthea Elterich got a good clear look at him some stirrings of recognition would flicker. That Myza! She'd scream out at once and betray him to the guards on the instant.
They passed other workers going to and from the factories.
Hook studied them. The people all looked ill. Their faces were gaunt and haggard. Their dull-orange coveralls were old and stained and ripped. And yet everyone walked the pedway, they laughed and joked and waved to one another. They behaved as if they were having a wonderful time.
The pedway glided on. Guards separated out parties detailed for different factories.
Myza let out a shriek of pleasure.
'Oh, Anthea! Look at the lake! And those yachts! There is good swimming there, and a restaurant where I know they'll serve best Ollindai — I always did love that drink.'
'Where?' said Anthea Elterich, and then: 'Oh, yes! How lovely the sunshine is, glinting off the yachts' sails.'
Hook stared in the direction in which the two girls were looking.
He could see a blank expanse of cracked and oil-stained concrete, and a blank concrete factory wall, and nothing else. Nothing remotely resembling
a lake with scudding yachts met his astonished gaze.
'Those flowers,' said Rafflans, sniffing the pungent chemically-fouled air wafting from the factory. 'They smell sweet. I always did like flowers.'
Hook looked at the bulky Krifman.
He looked at Myza and at Anthea Elterich.
Mental manipulation had presented many a hazard in the turbulent past. It could still be found in out of the way places. This damned planet of Merfalla — or Locus as the guards down here called it — was well out of the way.
Hook cursed.
A small group of passengers hived off with those near Hook, stood around a simple metalloy drinking fountain. The water gushing from the faucet looked slimy and green, nauseous. The people were filling tin cups and drinking it down, and Hook heard them exclaiming at the fine quality of the wine and spirits, and of how this place did a guy and a gal proud when it came to drinking dens. He sighed.
'Move along there, now, friends,' said a guard. He swung a rubber truncheon; but his gun was firmly holstered. 'There'll be plenty of drinking time when you finish your shift.'
The party moved on. Inside the first factory complex they were handed from overseer to foreman to robot to bench. The work they were required to do exactly fitted their capacities. Where a robot could do the work, then it would do so. Where a living intelligence was required, then an orange-coveralled human being, whether Homo sapiens or Homo mal or Krifman or any other of a bewildering variety of aliens, would do what was necessary.
Hook found himself at a bench supervising static robots in electronic-circuit assembly. He got through the work as fast as possible, adhering to the flow-charts on their flicker-screens. Overseers prowled. When he got out at the end of the shift he found Rafflans waiting, talking to Denis. The young man looked exhausted; but a look of anticipatory merriment flushed his thin features.
'It's very easy, the work. And tonight we're off to the yacht harbour and the lake. Then it's the restaurant — or maybe we'll have a barbecue on the beach. Myza is going to be very kind to me.'
'Lucky boy,' said Rafflans, expansively, smacking Denis on his narrow back. 'I'm for a spot of drinking myself.'
He saw Hook.
'Hey! Come on Alf. We're waiting.'
'Right with you,' said Hook.
They took the pedway to the lake where they soon palled up with a charming girl from Leostar, who had been working on Locus for some time and already had enough saved in her econorg's bank to set herself up in the cosmetic business she planned to run back home. She had done exceedingly well to answer the advertisement and come here. The wages were exceptional and the conditions sumptuous. They had a pleasant sail, and then went through to the restaurant. Hook settled back in the softly padded chair and studied the menu.
Anthea Elterich had stared directly into his face as they had laughingly collided trying to fold and stow the sail, and if she had recognised him as Ryder Hook she had made no comment. For a fleeting instant Hook wondered why he should worry if she did know who he was. Rafflans called him Alf all the time now, as he remembered he had asked him to do, and everyone else called him Alf.
Alf was a nice name.
'Hey, Alf! How about the Dover Sole — never mind that it was caught here on Locus and never saw Old Earth in its flat little life!'
'Or the smoked salmon.'
'I'm for the truits de flota,' said Leona, the girl from Leostar. 'I'm not homesick; but I like to eat food I know is the best in the galaxy!'
'In that case,' said Rafflans, leaning confidentially across the bare shoulder of the girl where it gleamed with a healthy pink flush under the narrow glitter strap of her flung-out dress. 'You should try Krifman sucking-pig. Mmm! There's nothing like it on all the worlds.'
`Smokey bacon!'
'T-bone steak!'
'Oropsais of Dorven!'
'Bird pie — turkey and goose and peacock and all!'
Laughing, flushed, drinking exquisite wines, they ordered and the robots brought the food and they ate until they lay back, distended, fulfilled.
`What a meal!'
'Fantastic.'
'Brandy?'
Brandy it was for all except Hook. He drank tea.
'I'm the only civilised person here!'
`Philistine!'
They had to explain what philistine meant to the girl from Leostar and Leona laughed delightedly and said: 'Back home we call them walkers-near-the-ground.'
They all roared at the joke.
Surely, life was great!
Later that night Hook escorted Anthea back to the luxurious hotel in which they had been quartered, rent-free. He stood in her room, with its suspended-bed, its soft rug, the shower cubicle, the tv with currently a tele-drama miming away, casting lights across the room where the rosy lamps had been turned down. Hook stretched. He did not feel tired; just pleasurably fuddled.
Anthea let him kiss her.
She responded with a sudden abandon that made Hook feel that life could be very sweet, if you allowed it.
He pushed down the strap of her demure evening dress, of some greenly-clinging material that, for some odd reason, changed occasionally to an orange hue under the mingled glow from the lights and the tv. Her skin was very smooth and of that glorious golden colour thousands of years of mutual interbreeding had brought to make wonderful the race of men and women.
She opened her mouth.
She was moist and warm and delicious and Hook let himself slide away and dive self-indulgently into the abysses of forgetfulness in passion.
Next morning he felt great and couldn't wait to get through the shift. His back ached a trifle, and that made him think he ought to take a work-out in the gym. He'd seen the lavish provision of expensive equipment, shining under the sun's rays, and he breathed in deep lungsful of air, fresh and bracing.
Yes, Anthea was a passionate little girl and he had to keep in shape. They were going to the opera as soon as they had eaten after the knocking-off whistle, and then — well, who knew? The whole gaudy playground of the city was open to them. Locus was one real pleasure centre, there was no doubt about it.
Mind you, all this fun and pleasure and plenty was entirely due to the beneficial influence of science. Science had brought the peoples of the galaxy through some incredible problem times in the past. There had been that period when the many different races of the galaxy had been shooting off into space, ftl drives had proliferated, contacts were being made, trivial territorial wars, even, had been fought. But now the galaxy boomed along and everyone had a share in the security and wealth. Oh, yes, there were wars, still, when some primitive race suddenly decided they must carve out a so-called empire among the stars for themselves. There were still conflicts. But the multi-system conglomerates would step in to protect their investments. No sane person would stand for an interstellar war. The upside-down notion that a 'Galactic Empire' was anything more than a drug-dream had long since gone.
Galactic Empires were kid's daydreams in the real galaxy.
Hook's thoughts turned in upon themselves. He was called Alf. He was meeting a beautiful girl with grey eyes tonight, Fraulein Anthea Elterich, and she would be kind — very passionately kind — to him. He licked his lips. She'd been all over him, her golden body bare and glorious, warm and sensuous, demanding all that he joyed to give her.
Why, then, should his thoughts maunder on silly children's ancient nonsenses like Galactic Empires?
Back eighty centuries or so on Old Earth the benighted fools then had used up all the fossil fuels in an almighty spending splurge. Then they'd had to scrape around for alternative sources of energy. Oh, yes, they'd found them; but that had been little credit to the businessmen or the politicians or the insatiable consumers. Science had come in and baled out Homo sapiens then. The same pathetic story had been enacted on a thousand planets around the limb of the galaxy — a million.
Old Earth had been invaded by those crazy six-armed nuts from Carpella. Earth had dominated a mighty common
wealth of suns herself, had dwindled in power, to lie forgotten and neglected. The continental masses had shifted. Old Earth had become a garden planet, and then a city-wide planet serving a million solar systems, and then had lodged herself into her own niche within the other planets and races of the galaxy so that a man — a Homo sapiens — of Earth became just another of the life forms living in the galaxy shoulder to shoulder. Population pressures had become insupportable, and it had dwindled finally to a desert-planet. Another race lived on Earth, now, in harmony with Homo sapiens. The two worked together. Changes and upheavals had gone on — and still, through them all, a straight and direct line of knowledge existed between the earliest civilisations of Earth and the present day. Hook dated his own birth at the First of January, in the year One Hundred nought one — ten thousand and one, the first day of the hundred and first century.
There were many and many forms of reckoning time and calendars multiplied in the galaxy. But you couldn't even conceive of a date like that on which Ryder Hook had been born if you didn't have continuity.
He wandered gently from the gym to meet Anthea.
Just why his thoughts had strayed down those old yet fascinating paths he couldn't say, especially when there were ripe red lips and grey eyes, golden limbs and golden breasts, firmness of flesh and healthy lust waiting for him. He was a museum nut, he acknowledged that. It was a vice.
Again he paused.
Something was troubling him and he didn't know what it was and that, despite that it was all of a piece for Alf, was insupportable for Ryder Hook.
Anthea ran up and kissed him and they went into the opera house together. She looked stunning in a white two-piece that displayed her long golden legs. Her hair shone. Her eyes danced. She was a most delectable piece of girlhood.
After the concert — Hook had strangely forgotten the music the instant they stepped from the marble stairway — they decided a drink and a meal would fortify themselves for the night's labours of love.
In the restaurant Hook waved to Rafflans and Leona, and they waved back and came over.
The Boosted Man Page 4
