The Boosted Man

by Tully Zetford

  A woman with a wild mop of yellow hair and eyes of a blue so startling they must be retinally-dyed, walked up with a smile. She was a dumpy person, a little flabby still, as though she had had plenty of flesh to work on before she came to Locus.

  `Hullo,' said Hook, holding out his work sheet.

  She glanced down at it.

  `I'm Overman Benson and I run this show. I didn't ask for extra help.'

  'But I'm sure you could do with an extra pair of hands,' said Hook, pushing that inane smile. This woman could see reality about her, even if she carried a ladybird plug in her ear that controlled her. He had to be careful.

  'Have you been checked out?'

  'Why, surely. Overman Baynes has it all.-'

  'All right. Neuro-suppressors. That's Hallipen. Over there.'

  She was a sight brisker than anyone he'd met yet. She motioned and still with that smile Hook wandered across. Hallipen was a Fortan, a being whose chief claim to fame lay in the pair of atrophied arms that hung from a small and slender pair of shoulder-blades beneath the shoulder blades of his normal arms. The collar bones ran intricately past his lungs. The arms might be atrophied; but they gave their owner a great advantage in intricate detail work. Hook knew Fortans were fine electronics people.

  About to broaden his big stupid smile and hold out his hand, Hook looked into the nearest box. He could see through the transparent lid.

  In there, stark naked, laid out, perfect in form and feature, lay the white body of an impossibly beautiful woman. And Ryder Hook knew.

  Chapter Nine

  Trust the Boosted Men to pick on a dancing girl of the Shashmeeri!

  Hook caught his involuntary hesitation and walked on.

  'Sure,' said Hallipen, the Fortan, waving one of his atrophied hands holding a slipstick. 'I fancy her, too; but that's out. Best forget all about that.'

  Hook kept his smile going.

  'I'm working for the econorg, Hallipen,' he said. 'I know which plug to pull.'

  Hook walked on down the line of boxes. Each contained a perfect girl encased within the translucent walls.

  Most were Earth girls. But, among the hundred, there were representatives of ten of the alien races reputed to produce the most beautiful females of a terrestial pattern. Mind you, Hook always preferred a real Earth girl. The Shashmeeri were all breast and hip and impossibly so; discretion in amounts of beauty appealed to Hook far more than this carnal obsession with lush profusion. Shape and soft firmness and delicacy, they were the prime-requisites in a woman's breasts; not size.

  He picked up the routine of what was going on here. Science could work what appeared to be miracles and if this was bioengineering on a macro rather than a micro scale, it was none the less for that of intense interest.

  What was being done to these perfect examples of female beauty was very similar to what had been done to Hook himself.

  They were undergoing treatment that had been pioneered by RCI in their Powerman Project.

  The outcome of the final stages of that project, stages from which Hook had been excluded, was the production of Boosted Men.

  These girls in their translucent boxes with the transparent lids were being transformed into Boosted Women.

  Well, Hook considered, that would be nice for the Novamen.

  Without genetic engineering they couldn't hope to breed Boosted boys and girls from these women; but no doubt that would follow all in good time.

  Now he could understand the secrecy surrounding Locus. Hallipen fussed.

  'We're almost finished up with this batch, Alf. So you'd best carry out the final check with the neuro-suppressors. I see the work sheet says you were involved in their production.' The Fortan glanced up and — almost but only almost on this happy planet of Locus — a frown appeared on his face. 'It's most unusual for personnel engaged on production of components and bio-tooling to be switched to the end product. Most odd.'

  'They must have thought you needed help. '

  'Help? Why, we can turn out these young ladies now like peas from a pod! Still, I'll admit I do work hard at it. I can do with some help, at that.'

  'There you are, then.'

  The information Ryder Hook needed was almost all within his grasp. A few more facts; the last and, given what he already knew, the most vital factor, and then he could see about changing the situation.

  Atavistic and vicious though it might be, the idea of doing that gave him some anticipatory pleasure.

  The Fortan had to sit down for a spell. He looked ill. Hook said: 'How long have you been here, Hallipen?'

  'How long? Oh — now that's odd. I don't seem able to remember clearly. I've to remember the kids' birthdays and they haven't come around, yet — at least, I don't think they have. I hope not.' He stroked his left tiny hand over his chin, whilst his left normal hand propped his head up on his knee. 'How strange that I'm not sure!'

  Well, said Ryder Hook to himself, you're another one of the poor devils these bastards of Boosted Men have murdered. Hallipen would never get back to Fortanesi and his kids, that was for sure.

  'How long does it take to process a batch of these girls?' Hallipen tried to stand up, and failed, and subsided. But he went right on smiling.

  'You do ask questions! I've never met anyone who asked so many questions. It takes — it takes —'

  'All right,' said Hook, growing warm. 'Are any more programmed after this lot?'

  Hallipen chuckled. 'Only one. That I know. My contract expires then and I'm off home. I miss the kids.'

  Hook turned away.

  The strong and gagging odour of chemicals and oil and laboratory wastes circulated in the air. Air conditioning ran at a minimum here. There was no need of refinements of conditions for deluded workers who thought they were having a wonderful time in a good job with hectic pleasures. Men and women and aliens were run at full-speed here, all out, burning up. When they died they could be shovelled out on to the planetary surface and forgotten. They wouldn't be going home.

  Hook knew with a sourness he detested and relished that the overseers and the foremen and the Overmen would be discarded, too.

  Overman Benson bustled up, her yellow hair seeming to crackle with discharges of static.

  'How are you getting along, Alf? We have to keep our quotas up.'

  'This batch is prime, Overman. I'm all ready for the next little lot when they arrive.'

  'Good. Keep at it. Remember your econorg depends on you!'

  There were thousands of rallying-cries for the multi-system conglomerates; passionate exhortations, mottoes, pass-words, secret formulae of words, fine ringing phrases, all designed to make econorg members feel one of a family and to give of their utmost for the mutual good.

  Hook didn't spit.

  He was supposed to be a stupid hypnotised worker, wasn't he?

  This ramshackle city labouring under its encircling web of hypnosis was merely a single tiny spot on the planetary surface of Merfalla, and calling it Locus did not make it any the more important. Outside, the rest of the planet slumbered in indifference, nursing an environment alien and hostile to humans who needed air to breathe and a lack of high-energy radiation. One single city did not make a planet. And this wasn't a real city. For a start there was not one single museum. Hook was a museum nut. He knew that any culture with any pretensions of value, and hope, had to know and understand its own past. The idea of living in the present and the future alone had been tried, plenty of times and in every case — as far as Hook knew — had failed.

  Shaeel wouldn't thank him for bringing ves down here.

  As Shaeel had said to him once: 'Y'know, 'ook, although my ancestors were produced on Earth I sometimes wonder about you Terrans. I mean — look at all those tridi shows and stories you had about your Terrans going off and conquering the galaxy and smashing up stars along the way — '

  `Knock it off!' Hook had said. 'That was kid's stuff.'

  `And highly dangerous, you Chancroid Subject for Surgery! How
could kids understand about the real galaxy if they're stuffing their fool little heads with maniacal ideas about smashing stars and conquering galaxies and having interstellar wars — intergalactic wars too, my Poor Sainted Aunt Augusta! Don't you fool Terrans know the difference between distances that are interstellar and intergalactic, already?'

  Hook had been charmed by that little, tossed in, 'already'. `We haven't been about conquering anyone for thousands of years — '

  `My Sweet Dear Creature 'ook! If I wasn't a Ladylike Gentleman — or a Gentlemanly Lady — I'd kick you in the pants.'

  Ve would, too — if ve remembered before some other bright scheme occurred to ves.

  Wacky old Shaeel—who could aspirate an 'h' as well as anyone and yet who always insisted on calling Hook 'ook. Shaeel, who had both men and women running after yes. If Hook had the temerity to claim a friend in this galaxy, he might suggest that Shaeel was the nearest he would ever come.

  He went across to Overman Benson and leaned down above that electric-crackle yellow hair. He made his smile more meaningful. She looked up, wary and yet preening already.

  `You — doing anything after shift, Overman?'

  `Why — I had planned; but if you've—'

  Hook leaned closer. He was working in ordinary time now. Just why he'd picked on this shrunken-fat little woman wasn't perfectly clear, except that he had to start somewhere. After all, he supposed she wasn't entirely to blame, for just how the Boosted Men selected their Overmen and other grades of overseers remained a mystery. He reached up, smiling into her eyes, conscious that his own brown eyes looked clear and frank and shining with integrity, and tweaked her left ear.

  `Really, Alf! I like a little nudge and wink — but Hallipen is — '

  He performed the operation smoothly, a twisting dive in and out. Overman Benson gave no indication that she had noticed anything. Still smiling at her, Hook palmed the ladybird plug and stepped back.

  `You're all IQ, Overman.'

  She glanced around, puzzled. The chamber had not altered a great deal for her; but Hook knew that to her eyes he had suddenly put on a dazzlingly-white coverall with shiny buttons. She shook her head. Hook felt no sympathy. She was dead, anyway, as soon as the Boosted Men finished here. And getting her off-planet at once still would not save her. The bodily rot induced by conditions here had gone too far. To save Anthea — and Rafflans and Myza and Denis and the other passenger survivors from Talcahhuano — must be the first priority if there was any rescuing to be done.

  He took himself off to the washroom. The tools in the kit supplied were adequate although they were not of the superbly high quality of his own tools in his boots. He had to take a damned sight more care opening the bug this time and de-activating the booby-trap. He was in ordinary time, now; he was skilled and a master electronics operator and yet he had to sweat this one out where before, in speed-time, he'd gone in with the superhuman touch of a Boosted Man.

  There lay the danger, of course — the insidious craving for power one always said one would resist. The knowledge that difficult tasks were made easy. The sheer power over circumstances and events. By Dear Old Dirtie Berti Bashti! No wonder the Novamen clung to their Boosted status!

  He went back into the chamber and through the oval crystal door.

  He did not even consider giving the ladybird to Hallipen. The Fortan was a scientist, and had enough training to understand that the sickness within him was terminal in scope. Disease, sickness, these were the obscenities of the galaxy now, used as swear-words, loathed, feared when outbreaks such as the pandemic that had caused all the trouble back on Mergone broke out against all normal sanity. Disease had been conquered — the kind of conquest that meant something when set against insane kiddy-nonsense of conquering galaxies — and yet the foulness persisted in striking back at humanity in new and hideous Medusa guises.

  He took Overman Baynes's ladybird with a simple sleight-of hand trick, an adaption of one of the many card-sharp tricks he whiled-away boring hours practising when forced to do so, and de-bugged it. With the two ladybirds he went to find Anthea and Rafflans.

  In the foyer of the Main Building the overseer Hook had first spoken to here looked up and called: 'Hey! Alf! There's a coupla guys looking for you. Lucky you walked by.'

  In the first goon's hand the docket Hook had passed over indicated clearly, without doubt, that he had been rumbled.

  The enforcer wore a mean look that, Hook supposed, he would see as a paternal frown, a concerned consideration for his own welfare. Both goons had the flaps of their holsters unzipped and the gun-butts shone dully under the lights. Both were men, one a Homo sapiens the other a Homo mal, and they were both tough, big-chested, mean and ready to blast him down the instant he gave them trouble.

  But, first, they would have to play it with sweetness and light, according to the dictates of the Boosted Men who kept their workers happy.

  `Alf? Oh — there's a little problem come up — nothing serious. We'll just go along to Central Records and sort it all out.'

  He was perfectly at their disposal and happy to go with them, although he couldn't for the life of him understand what there could be wrong. And he had a schedule to keep — the neuro-suppressors had —

  'Sure, sure,' said the first goon. 'But this won't take long.'

  'No time at all,' affirmed the second goon, the mal, affably. He chuckled, a fat happy cop making a silly little chore into a joke. 'You know these office types and their dockets.'

  `There's nothing to worry about,' said the first goon. 'Down here on Locus we're all one big happy family.'

  `Sure, that's right,' said the second enforcer. 'You just come along with us, Hook.'

  Chapter Ten

  Ryder Hook was not fool enough to imagine the mal would miss the slip. Even if he did, the man wouldn't.

  To Ryder Hook, in that moment, the feeling of a great weight slipping off his shoulders gave him the sense of expanding his lungs and of breathing a huge draught of fresh air. He was free.

  He hit the man in the guts and the mal in one tubular ear. Then he ran outside.

  He was in ordinary time; but he felt wonderful, all the same.

  Exactly how much information the Boosted Men here had assembled into his dossier he had no way of knowing. Certainly, RCI had a file on him. The Novamen would not be able to lay their hands on his records with EAS through any ordinary channels, and, anyway, no one — apart from the department —knew that Ryder Hook had once been Jack Kinch. Other econorgs and solar system governments kept files on him. They might be assembled into a package that would give enough of a run down to alert and worry the Novamen. Hook had had to fight in the dark before.

  This time, he felt convinced that he was being sought because the forensic men on Locus had matched up his traces with those found about the pilot's throne of the shuttle. They wanted him for smashing up their spaceship. They'd taken a long time to catch up with him; but they'd got there in the end.

  That poxed docket had done it, of course.

  Regrets were not in Ryder Hook's style.

  He hared off down the street.

  If he was fool enough to allow himself to be taken in, and questioned, the sophisticated computer equipment the Novamen would have here would rapidly — very rapidly — tie him in with this Ryder Hook who caused so much trouble. He had to assume that. There was no time to spare at the moment to cut into whatever apparet net might be operating here and find out. Hook would take the situation at its worst and plan on that, and if the scene wasn't really as bad as that, why, then he was laughing.

  Not that he laughed much.

  He'd probably laughed more down on Locus recently than he had in the last year.

  He ran on and laughed gleefully when orange-clad work people looked at him, made signs, motioned to them to join him. He was just a happy drunk of Locus, out on a spree.

  He'd like to see Locus burned up.

  The poor dupes inhabiting the tragically funny city would s
uffer anyway. He had to keep thinking that. Ruthless, tough, uncaring Ryder Hook — he had to keep reminding himself these people were already doomed.

  He found Myza taking a break in a small bar opposite the factory. She giggled when he panted up.

  `Fancy your chances, Alf?'

  `Where's Anthea?'

  `Working, of course. Our shifts were changed — have a drink.' The scummy mess in a cracked tin cup might be foul coffee or wine or lager, for all he knew.

  `Not right now, thanks, Myza.'

  He started across the street towards the factory gates and Myza called: 'You won't find Anthea there, Alf.'

  He swung about. His face puzzled Myza. Hypnotised into seeing bland smiles all the time she couldn't really comprehend the filthy black rage spreading on Hook's face.

  `She's been transferred — I told you we'd changed shifts.'

  `Yes, you told me that, you stup — you told me. But where's Anthea?'

  `She's filling in at the Main Building. Something about a hitch in production there. But Anthea's biomedical you know.'

  `Yes, I know.'

  He daren't trust silly empty-headed Myza with the ladybird. If he gave it to her to pass on to Anthea and told her to tell Anthea to put it in her left ear, Myza would be sure to do that herself, first. Then — no, it wasn't worth the furore.

  `Never mind, Myza.' Her frown annoyed him. 'I'll see you tonight.' If it was a lie nothing showed. 'Cheerio.'

  `I always, said you were an odd one, Alf.'

  He walked away holding down the screaming urgency that told him to run, run!

  He'd find Rafflans at the weapons shop, for sure. Their shifts coincided. If the big Krifman tried to rip his arms off and wrap them around his neck he'd hit Rafflans, so help him, he would! Why in all the stars of the galaxy had Anthea been shifted into the Main Building now?

  He'd have to go and find her, of course; but he had to get the order in which he did all the things he had to do right. Anthea would have to wait.

  Still wearing the white Main Building overalls with their shiny buttons he nipped around the back of the bar building. As he had expected a couple were sitting on an upturned heap of rubbish — God knew what they thought they were sitting on — drinking goo from battered plastic cups. The young man was of a sufficiently broad-shouldered build to suit. The girl looked exhausted with sagging dark smudges beneath her eyes and a tremble all along her limbs. The two were in the middle of the preliminaries, and Hook felt a stirring of some emotion or other in his flinty heart. Which was a nice romantic way of putting it.