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Insidekick
By J. F. BONE
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
February 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sidenote: Johnson had two secrets--one he knew and would die rather than
reveal--and one he didn't know that meant to save him over his own dead
body!]
Shifaz glanced furtively around the room. Satisfied that it was empty
except for Fred Kemmer and himself, he sidled up to the Earthman's desk
and hissed conspiratorially in his ear, "Sir, this Johnson is a spy! Is
it permitted to slay him?"
[Illustration]
"It is permitted," Kemmer said in a tone suitable to the gravity of the
occasion.
He watched humorlessly as the Antarian slithered out of the office with
a flutter of colorful ceremonial robes. Both Kemmer and Shifaz had known
for weeks that Johnson was a spy, but the native had to go through this
insane rigmarole before the rules on Antar would allow him to act. At
any rate, the formalities were over at last and the affair should be
satisfactorily ended before nightfall. Natives moved quickly enough,
once the preliminaries were concluded.
Kemmer leaned back in his chair and sighed. Being the Interworld
Corporation's local manager had more compensations than headaches,
despite the rigid ritualism of native society. Since most of the local
population was under his thumb, counter-espionage was miraculously
effective. This fellow Johnson, for instance, had been in Vaornia less
than three weeks, and despite the fact that he was an efficient and
effective snoop, he had been fingered less than forty-eight hours after
his arrival in the city.
Kemmer closed his eyes and let a smile cross his keen features. Under
his administration, there would be a sharp rise in the mortality curve
for spies detected in the Vaornia-Lagash-Timargh triangle. With the
native judiciary firmly under IC control, the Corporation literally had
a free hand, providing it kept its nose superficially clean. And as for
spies, they knew the chances they took and what the penalty could be for
interfering with the normal operations of corporate business.
Kemmer yawned, stretched, turned his attention to more important
matters.
* * * * *
Albert Johnson fumbled hopefully in the empty food container before
tossing it aside. A plump, prosaic man of middle height, with a round
ingenuous face, Albert was as undistinguished as his name, a fact that
made him an excellent investigator. But he was neither undistinguished
nor unnoticed in his present position, although he had tried to carry it
off by photographing the actions of the local Sanitary Processional like
any tourist.
He had been waiting near the Vaornia Arm on the road that led to Lagash
since early afternoon, and now it was nearly evening. He cursed mildly
at the fact that the natives had no conception of time, a trait not
exclusively Antarian, but one which was developed to a high degree on
this benighted planet. And the fact that he was hungry didn't add to his
good temper. Natives might be able to fast for a week without ill
effects, but his chunky body demanded quantities of nourishment at
regular intervals, and his stomach was protesting audibly at being
empty.
He looked around him, at the rutted road, and at the darkening Vaornia
Arm of the Devan Forest that bordered the roadway. The Sanitary
Processional had completed the daily ritual of waste disposal and the
cart drivers and censer bearers were goading their patient daks into a
faster gait. It wasn't healthy to be too near the forest after the sun
went down. The night beasts weren't particular about what, or whom, they
ate.
The Vaornese used the Vaornia Arm as a dump for the refuse of the city,
a purpose admirably apt, for the ever-hungry forest life seldom left
anything uneaten by morning. And since Antarian towns had elaborate
rituals concerning the disposal of waste, together with a nonexistent
sewage system, the native attitude of fatalistic indifference to an
occasional tourist or Antarian being gobbled up by some nightmare
denizen of the forest was understandable.
The fact that the Arm was also an excellent place to dispose of an
inconvenient body didn't occur to Albert until the three natives with
knives detached themselves from the rear of the Sanitary Processional
and advanced upon him. They came from three directions, effectively
boxing him in, and Albert realized with a sick certainty that he had
been double-crossed, that Shifaz, instead of being an informant for him,
was working for the IC. Albert turned to face the nearest native,
tensing his muscles for battle.
Then he saw the Zark.
It stepped out of the gathering darkness of the forest, and with its
appearance everything stopped. For perhaps a micro-second, the three
Vaornese stood frozen. Then, with a simultaneous wheep of terror, they
turned and ran for the city.
They might have stayed and finished their work if they had known it was
a Zark, but at the moment the Zark was energizing a toothy horror that
Earthmen called a Bandersnatch--an insane combination of talons, teeth
and snakelike neck mounted on a crocodilian body that exuded an odor of
putrefaction from the carrion upon which it normally fed. The
Bandersnatch had been dead for several hours, but neither the natives
nor Albert knew that.
* * * * *
It was a tribute to the Zark's ability to maintain pseudo-life in a
Bandersnatch carcass that the knifemen fled and a similar panic seized
the late travelers on the road. Albert stared with horrified fascination
at the monstrosity for several seconds before he, too, fled. Any number
of natives with knives were preferable to a Bandersnatch. He had
hesitated only because he didn't possess the conditioned reflexes
arising from generations of exposure to Antarian wildlife.
[Illustration]
He was some twenty yards behind the rearmost native, and, though not
designed for speed, was actually gaining upon the fellow, when his foot
struck a loose cobblestone in the road. Arms flailing, legs pumping
desperately to balance his toppling mass, Albert fought manfully against
the forces of gravity and inertia.
He lost.
His head struck another upturned cobble. His body twitched once and then
relaxed limply and unconscious upon the dusty road.
The Zark winced a little at the sight, certain that this curious
creature had damaged itself seriously.
Filled with compassion, it started forward on the Bandersnatch's four
walking legs, the grasping talons crossed on the breast in an attitude
of prayer. The Zark wasn't certain what it could do, but perhaps it
could help.
Albert was mercifully unconscious as it bent over him to inspect his
prone body with a purple-lidded pineal eye that was blue with concern.
The Zark noted the bruise upon his forehead and marked his regular
breathing, and came to the correct conclusion that, whatever had
happened, the biped was relatively undamaged. But the Zark didn't go
away. It had never seen a human in its thousand-odd years of existence,
which was not surprising since Earthmen had been on Antar less than a
decade and Zarks seldom left the forest.
Albert began to stir before the Zark remembered its present condition.
Not being a carnivore, it saw nothing appetizing about Albert, but it
was energizing a Bandersnatch, and, like all Zarks, it was a purist. A
living Bandersnatch would undoubtedly drool happily at the sight of such
a tempting tidbit, so the Zark opened the three-foot jaws and drooled.
Albert chose this precise time to return to consciousness. He turned his
head groggily and looked up into a double row of saw-edged teeth
surmounted by a leering triangle of eyes. A drop of viscid drool
splattered moistly on his forehead, and as the awful face above him bent
closer to his own, he fainted.
The Zark snapped its jaws disapprovingly. This was not the proper
attitude to take in the presence of a ferocious monster. One simply
didn't go to sleep. One should attempt to run. The biped's act was
utterly illogical. It needed investigation.
* * * * *
Curiously, the Zark sent out a pseudopod of its substance through the
open mouth of its disguise. The faintly glittering thread oozed downward
and struck Albert's head beside his right eye. Without pausing, the
thread sank through skin and connective tissue, circled the eyeball and
located the optic nerve. It raced inward along the nerve trunk, split at
the optic chiasma, and entered the corpora quadrigemina where it
branched into innumerable microscopic filaments that followed the main
neural paths of the man's brain, probing the major areas of thought and
reflex.
The Zark quivered with pleasure. The creature was beautifully complex,
and, more important, untenanted. He would make an interesting host.
The Zark didn't hesitate. It needed a host; giving its present mass of
organic matter pseudo-life took too much energy. The Bandersnatch
collapsed with a faint slurping sound. A blob of iridescent jelly flowed
from the mouth and spread itself evenly over Albert's body in a thin
layer. The jelly shimmered, glowed, disappeared inward through Albert's
clothing and skin, diffusing through the subcutaneous tissues, sending
hair-like threads along nerve trunks and blood vessels until the threads
met other threads and joined, and the Zark became a network of
protoplasmic tendrils that ramified through Albert's body.
Immediately the Zark turned its attention to the task of adapting itself
to its new host. Long ago it had learned that this had to be done
quickly or the host did not survive. And since the tissues of this new
host were considerably different from those of the Bandersnatch, a great
number of structural and chemical changes had to be made quickly. With
some dismay, the Zark realized that its own stores of energy would be
insufficient for the task. It would have to borrow energy from the
host--which was a poor way to start a symbiotic relationship.
Ordinarily, one gave before taking.
Fortunately, Albert possessed considerable excess fat, an excellent
source of energy whose removal would do no harm. There was plenty here
for both Albert and itself. The man's body twitched and jerked as the
Zark's protean cells passed through the adaptive process, and as the
last leukocyte recoiled from tissue that had suddenly become normal, his
consciousness returned. Less than ten minutes had passed, but they were
enough. The Zark was safely in harmony with its new host.
Albert opened his eyes and looked wildly around. The landscape was empty
of animate life except for the odorous carcass of the Bandersnatch lying
beside him. Albert shivered, rose unsteadily to his feet and began
walking toward Vaornia. That he didn't run was only because he couldn't.
He found it hard to believe that he was still alive. Yet a hurried
inspection convinced him that there wasn't a tooth mark on him. It was a
miracle that left him feeling vaguely uneasy. He wished he knew what had
killed that grinning horror so opportunely. But then, on second thought,
maybe it was better that he didn't know. There might be things in the
Devan Forest worse than a Bandersnatch.
* * * * *
Inside the city walls, Vaornia struck a three-pronged blow at Albert's
senses. Sight, hearing and smell were assaulted simultaneously. Natives
slithered past, garbed in long robes of garish color. Sibilant voices
cut through the evening air like thin-edged knives clashing against the
grating screech of the ungreased wooden wheels of dak carts. Odors of
smoke, cooking, spices, perfume and corruption mingled with the
all-pervasive musky stench of unwashed Vaornese bodies.
It was old to Albert, but new and exciting to the Zark. Its taps on
Albert's sense organs brought a flood of new sensation the Zark had
never experienced. It marveled at the crowded buildings studded with
jutting balconies and ornamental carvings. It stared at the dak caravans
maneuvering with ponderous delicacy through the swarming crowds. It
reveled in the colorful banners and awnings of the tiny shops lining the
streets, and the fluttering robes of the natives. Color was something
new to the Zark. Its previous hosts had been color blind, and the
symbiont wallowed in an orgy of bright sensation.
If Albert could have tuned in on his fellow traveler's emotions, he
probably would have laughed. For the Zark was behaving precisely like
the rubbernecking tourist he himself was pretending to be. But Albert
wasn't interested in the sights, sounds or smells, nor did the natives
intrigue him. There was only one of them he cared to meet--that slimy
doublecrosser called Shifaz who had nearly conned him into a one-way
ticket.
Albert plowed heedlessly through the crowd, using his superior mass to
remove natives from his path. By completely disregarding the code of
conduct outlined by the IC travel bureau, he managed to make respectable
progress toward the enormous covered area in the center of town that
housed the Kazlak, or native marketplace. Shifaz had a stand there where
he was employed as a tourist guide.
The Zark, meanwhile, was not idle despite the outside interests. The
majority of its structure was busily engaged in checking and cataloguing
the body of its host, an automatic process that didn't interfere with
the purely intellectual one of enjoying the new sensations. Albert's
body wasn't in too bad shape. A certain amount of repair work would have
to be done, but despite the heavy padding of fat, the organs were in
good working condition.
The Zark ruminated briefly over what actions it should take as it
dissolved a milligram of cholesterol out of Albert's aorta and
strengthened the weak spot in the blood vessel with a few cells of its
own substance until Albert's tissues could fill the gap. Its knowledge
of human physiology was incomplete, but it instinctively recognized
abnormality. As a result, it could help the host's physical condition,
which was a distinct satisfaction, for a Zark must be helpful.
* * * * *
Shifaz was at his regular stand, practicing his normal profession of
guide. As Albert approached, he was in the midst of describing the
attractions of the number two tour to a small knot of fascinated
tourists.
"And then, in the center of the Kazlak, we will come to the Hall of the
Brides--Antar's greatest marriage market. It has been arranged for you
to actually see a mating auction in progress, but we must hurry or--"
Shifaz looked up to see Albert shouldering the tourists aside. His
yellow eyes widened and his hand darted to his girdle and came up with a
knife.
The nearest tourists fell back in alarm as he hissed malevolently at
Albert, "Stand back, Earthman, or I'll let the life out of your
scaleless carcass!"
"Doublecrosser," Albert said, moving in. One meaty hand closed over the
knife hand and wrenched while the other caught Shifaz alongside the head
with a smack that sounded loud in the sudden quiet. Shifaz did a neat
backflip and lay prostrate, the tip of his tail twitching reflexively.
One of the tourists screamed.
"No show today, folks," Albert said. "Shifaz has another engagement." He
picked the Antarian up by a fold of his robe and shook him like a dirty
dustcloth. A number of items cascaded out of hidden pockets, among which
was an oiled-silk pouch. Albert dropped the native and picked up the
pouch, opened it, sniffed, and nodded.
It fitted. Things were clearer now.
He was still nodding when two Earthmen in IC uniform stepped out of the
crowd. "Sorry, sir," the bigger of the pair said, "but you have just
committed a violation of the IC-Antar Compact. I'm afraid we'll have to
take you in."
"This lizard tried to have me killed," Albert protested.
"I wouldn't know about that," the IC man said. "You've assaulted a
native, and that's a crime. You'd better come peaceably with us--local
justice is rather primitive and unpleasant."
"I'm an Earth citizen--" Albert began.
"This world is on a commercial treaty." The guard produced a blackjack
and tapped the shot-filled leather in his palm. "It's our business to
protect people like you from the natives, and if you insist, we'll use
force."
"I don't insist, but I think you're being pretty high-handed."
"Your objection has been noted," the IC man said, "and will be included
in the official report. Now come along or we'll be in the middle of a
jurisdictional hassle when the native cops arrive. The corporation
doesn't like hassles. They're bad for business."
* * * * *
The two IC men herded him into a waiting ground car and drove away. It
was all done very smoothly, quietly and efficiently. The guards were
good.
And so was the local detention room. It was clean, modern and--Albert
noted wryly--virtually escape-proof. Albert was something of an expert
on jails, and the thick steel bars, the force lock, and the spy cell in
the ceiling won his grudging respect.
He sighed and sat down on the cot which was the room's sole article of
furniture. He had been a fool to let his anger get the better of him. IC
would probably use this brush with Shifaz as an excuse to send him back
to Earth as an undesirable tourist--which would be the end of his
mission here, and a black mark on a singularly unspotted record.
Of course, they might not be so gentle with him if they knew that he
knew they were growing tobacco. But he didn't think that they would
know--and if they had checked his background, they would find that he
was an investigator for the Revenue Service. Technically, criminal
operations were not his affair. His field was tax evasion.
He didn't worry too much about the fact that Shifaz had tried to kill
him. On primitive worlds like this, that was a standard procedure--it
was less expensive to kill an agent than bribe him or pay honest taxes.
He was angry with himself for allowing the native to trick him.
He shrugged. By all rules of the game, IC would now admit about a two
per cent profit on their Antar operation rather than the four per cent
loss they had claimed, and pay up like gentlemen--and he would get
skinned by the Chief back at Earth Central for allowing IC to unmask
him. His report on tobacco growing would be investigated, but with the
sketchy information he possessed, his charges would be impossible to
prove--and IC would have plenty of time to bury the evidence.
If Earth Central hadn't figured that the corporation owed it some
billion megacredits in back taxes, he wouldn't be here. He had been
dragged from his job in the General Accounting Office, for every field
man and ex-field man was needed to conduct the sweeping investigation.
Every facet of the sprawling IC operation was being checked. Even minor
and out-of-the-way spots like Antar were on the list--spots that
normally demanded a cursory once-over by a second-class business
technician.
* * * * *
Superficially, Antar had the dull unimportance of an early penetration.
There were the usual trading posts, pilot plants, wholesale and retail
trade, and tourist and recreation centers--all designed to accustom the
native inhabitants to the presence of Earthmen and their works--and set
them up for the commercial kill, after they had acquired a taste for the
products of civilization. But although the total manpower and physical
plant for a world of this size was right, its distribution was wrong.
A technician probably wouldn't see it, but to an agent who had dealt
with corporate operations for nearly a quarter of a century, the setup
felt wrong. It was not designed for maximum return. The
Vaornia-Lagash-Timargh triangle held even more men and material then
Prime Base. That didn't make sense. It was inefficient, and IC was not
noted for inefficiency.
Not being oriented criminally, Albert found out IC's real reason for
concentration in this area only by absent-mindedly lighting a cigarette
one day in Vaornia. He had realized almost instantly that this was a
gross breach of outworld ethics and had thrown the cigarette away. It
landed between a pair of Vaornese walking by.
The two goggled at the cigarette, sniffed the smoke rising from it, and
with simultaneous whistles of surprise bent over to pick it up. Their
heads collided with some force. The cigarette tore in their greedy grasp
as they hissed hatefully at each other for a moment, before turning
hostile glares in his direction. From their expressions, they thought
this was a low Earthie trick to rob them of their dignity. Then they
stalked off, their neck scales ruffled in anger, shreds of the cigarette
still clutched in their hands.
Even Albert couldn't miss the implications. His tossing the butt away
had produced the same reaction as a deck of morphine on a group of human
addicts. Since IC wouldn't corrupt a susceptible race with tobacco when
there were much cheaper legal ways, the logical answer was that it
wasn't expensive on this planet--which argued that Antar was being set
up for plantation operations--in which case tobacco addiction was a
necessary prerequisite and the concentration of IC population made
sense.
Now tobacco, as any Earthman knew, was the only monopoly in the
Confederation, and Earth had maintained that monopoly by treaty and by
force, despite numerous efforts to break it. There were some good
reasons for the policy, ranging all the way from vice control to taxable
income, but the latter was by far the most important. The revenue
supported a considerable section of Earth Central as well as the huge
battle fleet that maintained peace and order along the spacelanes and
between the worlds.
But a light-weight, high-profit item like tobacco was a constant
temptation to any sharp operator who cared more for money than for law,
and IC filled that definition perfectly. In the Tax Section's book, the
Interworld Corporation was a corner-cutting, profit-grabbing chiseler.
Its basic character had been the same for three centuries, despite all
the complete turnovers in staff. Albert grinned wryly. The old-timers
were right when they made corporations legal persons.
Cigarettes which cost five credits to produce and sold for as high as
two hundred would always interest a crook, and, as a consequence, Earth
Central was always investigating reports of illegal plantations. They
were found and destroyed eventually, and the owners punished. But the
catch lay in the word "eventually." And if the operator was a
corporation, no regulatory agency in its right mind would dare apply the
full punitive power of the law. In that direction lay political suicide,
for nearly half the population of Earth got dividends or salaries from
them.
That, of course, was the trouble with corporations. They invariably grew
too big and too powerful. But to break them up as the Ancients did was
to destroy their efficiency. What was really needed was a corporate
conscience.
Albert chuckled. That was a nice unproductive thought.
* * * * *
Fred Kemmer received the news that Albert had been taken to detention
with a philosophic calm that lasted for nearly half an hour. By morning,
the man would be turned over to the Patrol in Prime Base. The Patrol
would support the charge that Albert was an undesirable tourist and send
him home to Earth.
But the philosophic calm departed with a frantic leap when Shifaz
reported Johnson's inspection of the oiled-silk pouch. Raw tobacco was
something that shouldn't be within a thousand parsects of Antar; its
inference would be obvious even to an investigator interested only in
tax revenues. Kemmer swore at the native. The entire operation would
have to be aborted now and his dreams of promotion would vanish.
"It wasn't my supply," Shifaz protested. "I was carrying it down to
Karas at the mating market. He demands a pack every time he puts a show
on for your silly Earthie tourists."
"You should have concealed it better."
"How was I to know that chubby slob was coming back alive? And who'd
have figured that he could handle me?"
"I've told you time and again that Earthmen are tough customers when
they get mad, but you had to learn it the hard way. Now we're all in the
soup. The Patrol doesn't like illicit tobacco planters. Tobacco is
responsible for their pay."
"But he's still in your hands and he couldn't have had time to transmit
his information," Shifaz said. "You can still kill him."
Kemmer's face cleared. Sure, that was it. Delay informing the Patrol and
knock the snoop off. The operation and Kemmer's future were still safe.
But it irked him that he had panicked instead of thinking. It just went
to show how being involved in major crime ruined the judgment. He'd have
Johnson fixed up with a nice hearty meal--and he'd see that it was
delivered personally. At this late date, he couldn't afford the risk of
trusting a subordinate.
Kemmer's glower became a smile. The snoop's dossier indicated that he
liked to eat. He should die happy.
* * * * *
With a faint click, a loaded tray passed through a slot in the rear wall
of Albert Johnson's cell.
The sight and smell of Earthly cooking reminded him that he hadn't
anything to eat for hours. His mouth watered as he lifted the tray and
carried it to the cot. At least IC wasn't going to let him starve to
death, and if this was any indication of the way they treated prisoners,
an IC jail was the best place to be on this whole planet.
Since it takes a little time for substances to diffuse across the
intestinal epithelium and enter the circulation, the Zark had some
warning of what was about to happen from the behavior of the epithelial
cells lining Albert's gut. As a result, a considerable amount of the
alkaloid was stopped before it entered Albert's body--but some did pass
through, for the Zark was not omnipotent.
For nearly five minutes after finishing the meal, Albert felt normally
full and comfortable. Then hell broke loose. Most of the food came back
with explosive violence and cramps bent him double. The Zark turned to
the neutralization and elimination of the poison. Absorptive surfaces
were sealed off, body fluids poured into the intestinal tract, and
anti-substances formed out of Albert's energy reserve to neutralize
whatever alkaloid remained.
None of the Zark's protective measures were normal to Albert's body, and
with the abrupt depletion of blood glucose to supply the energy the Zark
required, Albert passed into hypoglycemic shock. The Zark regretted
that, but it had no time to utilize his other less readily available
energy sources. In fact, there was no time for anything except the most
elemental protective measures. Consequently the convulsions,
tachycardia, and coma had to be ignored.
Albert's spasms were mercifully short, but when the Zark was finished,
he lay unconscious on the floor, his body twitching with incoordinate
spasms, while a frightened guard called in an alarm to the medics.
The Zark quivered with its own particular brand of nausea. It had not
been hurt by the alkaloid, but the pain of its host left it sick with
self-loathing. That it had established itself in a life-form that
casually ingested deadly poisons was no excuse. It should have been more
alert, more sensitive to the host's deficiencies. It had saved his life,
which was some compensation, and there was much that could be done in
the way of restorative and corrective measures that would prevent such a
thing from occurring again--but the Zark was unhappy as it set about
helping Albert's liver metabolize fat to glucose and restore blood sugar
levels.
* * * * *
The medic was puzzled. She had seen some peculiar conditions at this
station, but hypoglycemic shock was something new. And, being unsure of
herself, she ordered Albert into the infirmary for observation. The
guard, of course, didn't object, and Kemmer, when he heard of it, could
only grind his teeth in frustration. He was on delicate enough ground
without making it worse by not taking adequate precautions to preserve
the health of his unwilling guest. Somehow that infernal snoop had
escaped again....
Albert moved his head with infinite labor and looked at the intravenous
apparatus dripping a colorless solution into the vein in the elbow joint
of his extended left arm. He felt no pain, but his physical weakness was
appalling. He could move only with the greatest effort, and the
slightest exertion left him dizzy and breathless. It was obvious that he
had been poisoned, and that it was a miracle of providence that he had
survived. It was equally obvious that a reappraisal of his position was
in order. Someone far higher up the ladder than Shifaz was responsible
for this latest attempt on his life. The native couldn't possibly have
reached him in the safety of IC's jail.
The implications were unpleasant. Someone important feared him enough to
want him dead, which meant that his knowledge of illicit tobacco was not
as secret as he thought. It would be suicide to stay in the hands of the
IC any longer. Somehow he had to get out and inform the Patrol.
He looked at the intravenous drip despondently. If the solution was
poisoned, there was no help for him. It was already half gone. But he
didn't feel too bad, outside of being weak. It probably was all right.
In any event, he would have to take it. The condition of his body
wouldn't permit anything else.
He sighed and relaxed on the bed, aware of the drowsiness that was
creeping over him. When he awoke, he would do something about this
situation, but he was sleepy now.
* * * * *
Albert awoke strong and refreshed. He was as hungry as he always was
before breakfast. Whatever was in that solution, it had certainly worked
miracles. As far as he could judge, he was completely normal.
The medic was surprised to find him sitting up when she made her morning
rounds. It was amazing, but this case was amazing in more ways than one.
Last night he had been in a state of complete collapse, and now he was
well on the road to recovery.
Albert looked at her curiously. "What was in that stuff you gave me?"
"Just dextrose and saline," she said. "I couldn't find anything wrong
with you except hypoglycemia and dehydration, so I treated that." She
paused and eyed him with a curiosity equal to his own. "Just what do you
think happened?" she asked.
"I think I was poisoned."
"That's impossible."
"Possibly," Albert conceded, "but it might be an idea to check that food
I left all over the cell."
"That was cleaned up hours ago."
"Convenient, isn't it?"
"I don't know what you mean by that," she said. "Someone in the kitchens
might have made a mistake. Yet you were the only case." She looked
thoughtful. "I think I will do a little checking in the Central Kitchen,
just to be on the safe side." She smiled a bright professional smile.
"Anyway, I'm glad to see that you have recovered so well. I'm sure you
can go back tomorrow."
She vanished through the door with a rustle of white dacron. Albert,
after listening a moment to make sure that she was gone, rose to his
feet and began an inspection of his room.
It wasn't a jail cell. Not quite. But it wasn't designed for easy
escape, either. It was on the top floor of the IC building, a good
hundred feet down to the street below. The window was covered with a
steel grating and the door was locked. But both window and door were
designed to hold a sick man rather than a healthy and desperate one.
Albert looked out of the window. The building was constructed to
harmonize with native structures surrounding it, so the outer walls were
studded with protuberances and bosses that would give adequate handholds
to a man strong enough to brave the terrors of the descent.
Looking down the wall, Albert wavered. Thinking back, he made up his
mind.
* * * * *
Fred Kemmer was disturbed. By all the rules, Albert Johnson should be
dead. But Shifaz had failed, and that fool guard _had_ to call in the
medics. It was going to be harder to get at Johnson, now that he was in
the infirmary, but he had to be reached.
One might buy off an agent who was merely checking on tax evasion, but
tobacco was another matter entirely. Kemmer wished he hadn't agreed to
boss Operation Weed. The glowing dreams of promotion and fortune were
beginning to yellow around the edges. Visions of the Penal Colony
bothered him, for if the operation went sour, he would do the paying. He
had known that when he took the job, but the possibility seemed remote
then.
He shook his head. It wasn't that bad yet. As long as Johnson hadn't
communicated with anyone else and as long as he was still in company
hands, something could be done.
Kemmer thought a while, trying to put himself in Johnson's place.
Undoubtedly the spy was frightened, and undoubtedly he would try to
escape. And since it would be far easier to escape from the infirmary
than it would be from detention, he would try as soon as possible.
Kemmer's face cleared. If Johnson tried it, he would find it wasn't as
easy as he thought.
With characteristic swiftness, Kemmer outlined his plans and made the
necessary arrangements. A guard was posted in the hall with orders to
shoot if Johnson tried the door of his room, and Kemmer himself took a
stand in the building across the street, facing the hospital, where he
could watch the window of Albert's room. As he figured it, the window
was the best bet. He stroked the long-barreled blaster lying beside him.
Johnson still hadn't a chance, but these delays in disposing of him were
becoming an annoyance.
Cautiously, Albert tried the grating that covered the window. The
Antarian climate had rusted the heavy screws that fastened it to the
casing. One of the bars was loose. If it could be removed, it would
serve as a lever to pry out the entire grating.
Albert twisted at the bar. It groaned and squealed. He nervously applied
more pressure, and the bar moved slowly out of its fastenings.
* * * * *
The Zark observed his actions curiously. Now why was its host twisting
that rod of metal out of the woodwork? It didn't know, and it was
consumed with curiosity. It had found no way to communicate with its
host so that some of the man's queer actions could be understood; in the
portions of the brain it had explored, there were no portals of
communication. However, there still was a large dormant portion, and
perhaps here lay the thing it sought. The Zark inserted a number of
tendrils into the blank areas, probing, connecting synapses, opening
unused pathways, looking for what it hoped existed.
The results of this action were completely unforeseen by the Zark, for
it was essentially just a subordinate ego with all the lacks which that
implied--and it had never before inhabited a body that possessed a
potentially first-class brain. With no prior experience to draw upon,
the Zark couldn't possibly guess that its actions would result in a
peculiar relationship between the man and the world around him. And if
the Zark had known, it probably wouldn't have cared.
Albert removed the bar and pried out the grating. With only a momentary
hesitation, he lowered himself over the sill until his feet struck an
ornamental knob on the wall. He glanced quickly down. There was another
protuberance about two feet below the one on which he was standing.
Pressing against the wall, he inched one foot downward until it found
the foothold. With relief, he shifted his weight to the lower foot, and
as he did a wave of heat enveloped his legs. The protuberance came loose
from the wall with a grating noise mixed with the crackling hiss of a
blaster bolt, and Albert plunged toward the street below.
[Illustration]
As the pavement rushed at him, he had time for a brief, fervent wish
that he were someplace else. Then the thought was swallowed in an icy
blackness.
* * * * *
Fred Kemmer lowered the blaster with a grin of satisfaction. He had
figured his man correctly, and now the spy would be nothing to worry
about. He watched the plummeting body--and gasped with consternation,
for less than ten feet above the pavement, Albert abruptly vanished!
There is such a thing as too much surprise, too much shock, too much
amazement. And that precisely was what affected Albert when he found
himself standing on the street where the IC guards had picked him up. By
rights, he should have been a pulpy smear against the pavement beneath
the infirmary window. But he was not. He didn't question why he was
here, or consider how he had managed to avoid the certain death that
waited for him. The fact was that he had done it, somehow. And that was
enough.
It was almost like history repeating itself. Shifaz was at his usual
stand haranguing another group of tourists. It was the same spiel as
before, and almost at the same point of the pitch. But his actions upon
seeing Albert were entirely different. His eyes widened, but this time
he slid quietly from his perch on the cornerstone of the building and
disappeared into the milling crowd.
Albert followed. The fact that Shifaz was somewhere in that crowd was
enough to start him moving, and, once started, stubbornness kept him
going, plowing irresistibly through the thick swarm of Vaornese. Reason
told him that no Earthman could expect to find a native hidden among
hundreds of his own kind. Their bipedal dinosaurlike figures seemed to
be cast out of one mold.
A chase through this crowd was futile, but he went on deeper into the
Kazlak, drawn along an invisible trail by some unearthly sense that told
him he was right. He was as certain of it as that his name was Albert
Johnson. And when he finally cornered Shifaz in a deserted alley, he was
the one who was not surprised.
Shifaz squawked and darted toward Albert, a knife glittering in his
hand. Albert felt a stinging pain across the muscles of his left arm as
he blocked the thrust aimed at his belly, wrenched the knife from the
native's grasp, and slammed him to the pavement.
Shifaz bounced like a rubber ball, but he had no chance against the
bigger and stronger Earthman. Albert knocked him down again. This time
the native didn't rise. He lay in the street, a trickle of blood oozing
from the corner of his lipless mouth, hate radiating from him in
palpable waves.
Albert stood over him, panting a little from the brief but violent
scuffle. "Now, Shifaz, you're going to tell me things," he said heavily.
"You can go to your Place of Punishment," Shifaz snarled. "I shall say
nothing."
"I can beat the answers out of you," Albert mused aloud, "but I won't.
I'll just ask you questions, and every time I don't like your answer,
I'll kick one of your teeth out. If you don't answer, I guarantee that
you'll look like an old grandmother."
* * * * *
Shifaz turned a paler green. To lose one's teeth was a punishment
reserved only for females. He would be a thing of mockery and
laughter--but there were worse things than losing teeth or face. There
was such a thing as losing one's life, and he knew what would happen if
he betrayed IC. Then he brightened. He could always lie, and this
hulking brute of an Earthman wouldn't know--couldn't possibly know. So
he nodded with a touch of artistic reluctance. "All right," he said,
"I'll talk." He injected a note of fear into his voice. It wasn't hard
to do.
"Where did you get that tobacco?" Albert asked.
"From a farm," Shifaz said. That was the truth. The Earthman probably
knew about tobacco and there was no need to lie, yet.
"Where is it?"
Shifaz thought quickly of the clearing in the forest south of Lagash
where the green broad-leaved plants were grown, and said, "It's just
outside of Timargh, along the road which runs south." He waited tensely
for Albert's reaction, wincing as the Earthman drew his foot back.
Timargh was a good fifty miles from Lagash, and if this lie went over,
he felt that he could proceed with confidence.
It went over. Albert replaced his foot on the ground. "You telling the
truth?"
"As Murgh is my witness," Shifaz said with sincerity.
Albert nodded and Shifaz relaxed with hidden relief. Apparently the man
knew that Murgh was the most sacred and respected deity in the pantheon
of Antar, and that oaths based upon his name were inviolable. But what
the scaleless oaf didn't know was that this applied to Antarians only.
As far as these strangers from another world were concerned, anything
went.
So Albert continued questioning, and Shifaz answered, sometimes readily,
sometimes reluctantly, telling the truth when it wasn't harmful, lying
when necessary. The native's brain was fertile and the tissue of lies
and truth hung together well, and Albert seemed satisfied. At any rate,
he finally went away, leaving behind a softly whistling Vaornese who
congratulated himself on the fact that he had once more imposed upon
this outlander's credulity. He was so easy to fool that it was almost a
crime to do it.
But he wouldn't have been so pleased with himself if he could have seen
the inside of Albert's mind. For Albert knew the truth about the
four-hundred-acre farm south of Lagash. He knew about the hidden curing
sheds and processing plant. He knew that both Vaornese and Lagashites
were deeply involved in something they called Operation Weed, and
approved of it thoroughly either from sheer cussedness or addiction. He
had quietly read the native's mind while the half-truths and lies had
fallen from his forked tongue. And, catching Shifaz's last thought,
Albert couldn't help chuckling.
At one of the larger intersections, Albert stopped under a flaming
cresset and looked at his arm. There was a wide red stain that looked
black against the whiteness of his pajamas. That much blood meant more
than a scratch, even though there was no pain--and cuts on this world
could be deadly if they weren't attended to promptly.
He suddenly felt alone and helpless, wishing desperately for a quiet
place where he could dress his wound and be safe from the eyes he knew
were inspecting him. He was too conspicuous. The pajamas were out of
place on the street. Undoubtedly natives were hurrying to report him to
the IC.
His mind turned to his room in the hostel with its well-fitted wardrobe
and its first-aid kit--and again came that instant of utter
darkness--and then he was standing in the middle of his room facing the
wardrobe that held his clothing.
* * * * *
He felt no surprise this time. He knew what had happened. Something
within his body was acting like a tiny Distorter, transporting him
through hyperspace in the same manner that a starship's engine room
warped it through the folds of the normal space-time continuum. There
was nothing really strange about it. It was a power which he _should_
have--which any normal man should have. The fact that he didn't have it
before was of no consequence, and the fact that other men didn't have it
now merely made _them_ abnormal.
He smiled as he considered the possibilities which these new powers gave
him. They were enormous. At the very least, they tripled his value as an
agent. Nothing was safe from his investigation. The most secret hiding
places were open to his probings. Nothing could stop him, for command of
hyperspace made a mockery of material barriers.
He chuckled happily as he removed his pajama jacket and reached for the
first-aid kit. From the gash in his sleeve, there should be a nasty cut
underneath, and it startled him a little that there was no greater
amount of hemorrhage. He cleaned off the dried blood--and found nothing
underneath except a thin red bloodless line that ran halfway around his
arm. It wasn't even a scratch.
Yet he had felt Shifaz' blade slice into his flesh. He knew there was
more damage than this. The blood and the slashed sleeve could tell him
that, even if he didn't have the messages of his nerves. Yet now there
was no pain, and the closed scratch certainly wasn't the major wound he
had expected. And this _was_ queer, a fact for which he had no
explanation. Albert frowned. Maybe this was another facet of the psi
factors that had suddenly become his.
He wondered where they had come from. Without warning, he had become
able to read minds with accuracy and do an effective job of
teleportation. About the only things he lacked to be a well-rounded psi
were telekinetic powers and precognition.
His frown froze on his face as he became conscious of a sense of unease.
They were coming down the hall--two IC guardsmen. He caught the doubt
and certainty in their minds--doubt that he would be in his room,
certainty that he would be ultimately caught, for on Antar there was no
place for an Earthman to hide.
[Illustration]
Albert slipped into the first suit that came to hand, blessing the seam
tabs that made dressing a moment's work. As the guards opened the door,
he visualized the spot on the Lagash road where he had encountered the
Bandersnatch. It was easier than before. He was standing in the middle
of the road, the center of the surprised attention of a few travelers,
when the guards entered his room.
* * * * *
The bright light of Antar's golden day came down from a cloudless yellow
sky. In the forest strip ahead, Albert could hear a faint medley of
coughs, grunts and snarls as the lesser beasts fed upon the remains of
yesterday's garbage. Albert moved down the road, ignoring the startled
natives. This time he wasn't afraid of meeting a Bandersnatch or
anything else, for he had a method of escape that was foolproof. Lagash
was some thirty miles ahead, but in the lighter gravity of Antar, the
walk would be stimulating rather than exhausting.
He went at a steady pace, occasionally turning his glance to the road,
impressing sections of it upon his memory so that he could return to
them via teleport if necessary. He found that he could memorize with
perfect ease. Even the positions of clumps of grass and twigs were
remembered with perfect clarity and in minute detail. The perfection of
his memory astonished and delighted him.
The Zark felt pleased with itself. Although it had never dreamed of the
potential contained in the host's mind, it realized that it was
responsible for the release of these weird powers, and it enjoyed the
new sensations and was eager for more. If partial probing could achieve
so much, what was the ultimate power of this remarkable mind? The Zark
didn't know, but, like a true experimenter, it was determined to find
out--so it probed deeper, opening still more pathways and connecting
more synapses with the conscious brain.
It was routine work that could be performed automatically while the rest
of the Zark enjoyed the colorful beauty of the Antarian scenery.
With the forest quickly left behind him, Albert walked through gently
rolling grassland dotted with small farms and homesteads. It was a
peaceful scene, similar to many he had seen on Earth, and the
familiarity brought a sense of nostalgic longing to be home again. But
the feeling was not too strong, more intellectual than physical, for the
memories of Earth were oddly blurred.
Time passed and the road unreeled behind him. Once he took to the
underbrush to let a humming IC ground car pass, and twice more he hid as
airboats swept by overhead, but the annoyances were minor and
unimportant.
When hiding from the second airboat, he disturbed a kelit in the thick
brush growing beside the road. The little insect-eater chittered in
alarm and dashed off to safety across the highway. And Albert, looking
at it, was conscious not only of the external shape but the internal as
well!
He could see its little heart pounding in its chest, and the pumping
bellows of the pink lungs that surrounded it. He was aware of the
muscles pulling and relaxing as the kelit ran, and the long bones
sliding in their lubricated joints. He saw the tenseness of the
abdominal organs, felt the blind fear in the creature's mind. The
totality of his impressions washed through him with a clear wave of icy
shock.
* * * * *
Grimly, he shrugged it off. He had ESP. He ought to have expected it--it
was the next logical step. He scrambled back to the road and walked
onward a little faster, until the battlements of Lagash came in sight.