Collected Short Fiction, page 293
Joroiran shrugged. “He insisted on it—as a safety move, he said.”
Kausirn strode quickly forward and ordered Navarre to one side with a brusque gesture. Navarre obeyed; it was obvious Kausirn would relish an opportunity of using that blaster.
Suddenly Joroiran drew himself up and said, “Why the gun, Kausirn? This is most unseemly. Navarre is your fellow adviser as of this moment, and I won’t tolerate your uncivil behavior in here.”
Good for him, Navarre thought, smiling inwardly. He had succeeded in winning Joroiran over, then. But would it matter, with Kausirn armed?
Turning, the Vegan chuckled gravely. “I mean no disrespect, sire. This man is a deadly enemy of us all. He schemes not only your death but the conquest of the Cluster and of all the galaxy.”
“Have you gone mad?” Joroiran demanded. “Navarre is loyal to me and always has been! Put down that weapon, Kausirn! Put it down!”
“Navarre is loyal but to himself,” said the Vegan. “J took the liberty of listening outside your Majesty’s door for some moments. He told you, did he not, that he had failed to find the Chalice?”
“He told me that,” Joroiran admitted. “What of it? The Chalice is a mere legend. It was foolish of me to send him chasing it. Had I not listened to you—”
“The Chalice exists,” said the Vegan tightly. “And Navarre would use it as a weapon against you.”
“He’s mad,” Navarre said. “I spent a year tracing the Chalice and found nothing but false trails. It was all a trick of yours to get me from Jorus, but—”
“Silence,” the Vegan ordered. “Majesty, the Chalice is a crypt, located on the ancient planet Earth. It contained ten thousand sleepers—men and women of Earth, suspended since the days of Earth’s empire. I tell you Navarre has wakened these sleepers and plans to make them the nucleus of a re-established Terran empire. He intends the destruction of Jorus and all other worlds that stand in his way.”
Dumbstruck, Navarre had to fight to keep his mouth from sagging open in astonishment. How could Kausirn possibly know—?
“This is incredible,” Navarre said. “Sleepers, indeed! Sire, I ask you—”
“There is no need for discussion,” said Kausirn. “I have the proof with me.” He drew a gleaming plastic message-cube from his tunic pocket and handed it to the Overlord. “Play this, sire. Then judge who betrays you and who seeks your welfare.”
Taking the cube, Joroiran stepped aside and converted it to playback. Navarre strained his ears but was unable to pick up more than faint murmurs. When it was over, the ruler returned, glaring bitterly at Navarre.
“I hardly know which of you to trust less,” he said somberly. “You, Kausirn, who have made a figurehead of me—or you, Navarre.” He scowled. “Earthman, you came in here with sweet words—but I see from this cube that every word was a lie. You would help overthrow Kausirn only to place yourself in command. I never expected treachery from you, Navarre.”
He turned to Kausirn. “Take him away,” he ordered. “Have him killed. And do something about these ten thousand awakened Earthmen. Send a fleet to Earth to destroy them.” Joroiran sounded near tears; he seemed to be choking back bitter sobs before each word. “And leave me alone. I don’t want to see you any more today, Kausirn. Go run Jorus, and let me weep.” The little monarch looked from Kausirn to the stunned Earthman. “You are both betrayers. But at least Kausirn will let me have the pretense of ruling. Go. Away!”
“At once, sire,” said the Vegan unctuously. He jabbed the blaster in Navarre’s ribs. “Come with me, Earthman. The Overlord wishes privacy.”
CHAPTER III
THE LOWER DEPTHS of the Overlord’s Palace were damp and musty—intentionally so, to increase a prisoner’s discomfort. Navarre huddled moodily in a cell crusted with wall-lichens, listening to the steady pacing of the massive Daborian guard outside.
Not even Kausirn had cared to kill him in cold blood. Navarre hadn’t expected mercy from the Vegan, but evidently Kausirn wished to observe the legal forms. There would be a public trial, its outcome carefully predetermined and its course well rehearsed, followed by Navarre’s degradation and execution.
It made sense. A less devious planner than Kausirn might have gunned Navarre down in a dark alcove of the Palace and thereby rid himself of one dangerous enemy. But by the public exposure of Navarre’s infamy, Kausirn would not only achieve the same end but also cast discredit on the entire line of Earthmen—a line still somewhat in favor among the people of Jorus.
Navarre cradled his head in his hands, feeling the tiny stubbles of upshooting hair. For a year, he had let his hair grow—the year he had spent in the distant galaxy of Earth and Procyon, where the ways of galactic culture had been left behind, where he was under no compulsion to display the universal trademark of the Earthman. His hair, thick, dark-brown, had sprouted. Helna Winstin, the female Earthman from Kariad—her hair had been red. And Domrik Carso had issued forth with a flax-yellow that contrasted curiously with his rich brown beard.
But at the end of the year, when the seeding of Procyon was done and already half a thousand new Earthmen had been born, Helna and Carso and Navarre had come together, and it had been decided that they should return to the main galaxy.
“It’s best,” Carso had growled. “You stay away too long, it’s possible Joroiran may decide to trace you. You never can tell. If we remain here, we may draw suspicion to our project. We’ll go back.”
Helna had agreed. “I’ll return to Kariad, you to Jorus. We can return to the confidences of our masters: perhaps we can turn that to some use in the days to come.”
Navarre remembered that he had been reluctant to leave Earth, where the air was fresh and clean and he could walk freely with unshaven scalp. But finally he had agreed. Leaving Helna and Carso on Kariad—for Carso, under sentence of banishment from Jorus, feared to re-enter without permission—Navarre had come back.
And been trapped.
He wondered how Kausirn had found out his plans, how he had known that a new race of Earthmen was growing in Galaxy RGC 18347. It was too accurate to be a guess. Had they been followed this past year? Kausirn’s assassins had nearly finished Carso and Navarre at the beginning of their quest; perhaps that had just been a blind.
Somehow his two thousand would have to be warned. But first—escape.
HE SQUINTED through the murk at the Daborian guard who paced without. Daborians were fierce warriors, thought Navarre, but not overlong on brains. He eyed the tusked one’s bulk appreciatively.
“Ho, old one, your teeth rot in your head!”
“Quiet, Sir Earthman. You are not to speak.”
“Am I to take orders from a mouldering corpse of a warrior?” Navarre snapped waspishly. “Fie, old one. You frighten me not.”
“I am ordered not to speak with you.”
“For fear I’d befuddle your slender brain and escape, eh? Milord Kausirn has a low opinion of your kind, I fear. I remember him saying of old that your usefulness ends at the neck. Not so. moldy one?” The Daborian whirled and peered angrily into Navarre’s cell. His polished tusks glinted brightly. Navarre put a hand between the bars and tugged at the alien’s painstakingly-combed beard. The Daborian howled.
“It surprises me the beard did not come off in my hand,” Navarre said.
“Goad me not,” muttered the Daborian. Navarre saw his jailer was approaching the boiling-point.
“Is it not true,” asked Navarre, “that on Dabor a tuskless one such as you would be used as a kitchen-scull rather than a warrior?”
The Daborian grunted and jabbed his fist through the bars; Navarre laughed, dancing lightly back. He offered three choice curses from the safety of the rear of his cell.
The Daborian, he knew, could rend him into quivering chunks if he ever got close enough. But that was not going to happen. Navarre stationed himself perhaps a yard from the bars and continued to rail at the guard.
Maddened, the Daborian reversed his gun and hammered at Navarre with its butt. The first wild swing came within an inch of laying open the Earthman’s skull; on the second, Navarre seized the butt and tugged with sudden strength. He dragged it halfway from the guard’s grasp, just enough to get his own hands on the firing stud.
The bewildered Daborian yelled just once before Navarre dissolved his face. A second blast finished off the electronic lock that sealed shut the cell.
Fifteen minutes later Navarre returned to the warm sunlight, a free man, in the garb of a Daborian guard.
VERRU, the wigmaker of Dombril Street, was a pale, wizened little old Joran who blinked seven or eight times as the stranger slipped into his shop, locking the door behind him and holding a finger to his lips for silence.
Wordlessly, Navarre slipped behind the counter, grasped the wigmaker’s arm, and drew him back through the arras into his stockroom. There he said, “Sorry for the mystery, wigmaker. I feel the need for your services.”
“You . . . are not a Daborian!”
“The face belies the uniform,” Navarre said. He grinned, showing neat, even teeth. “My tusks do not meet the qualifications. Nor my scalp.” He lifted his borrowed cap.
Verru’s eyes widened. “An Earthman?”
“Indeed. I’m looking for a wig for—ah—a masquerade. Have you anything Kariadi in style?”
The trembling wigmaker said, “One moment.” He bustled through a score or more of boxes before producing a glossy black heacal4iece. “Here!”
“Affix it for me,” Navarre said.
Sighing, the wigmaker led him to a mirrored alcove and sealed the wig to his scalp. Navarre examined his reflection approvingly. In all but color, he might pass for a man of Kariad.
“Well done,” he said. Reaching below his uniform for his money-pouch, he produced two green bills of Imperial scrip. One he handed to the wigmaker, saying, “This is for you. As for the other—go into the street and wait there until a Kariadi about my size comes past. Then entice him somehow into your store, making use of the money.”
“This is very irregular. Why must I do these things, Sir Earthman?”
“Because else I’ll have you flayed. Now go!”
The wigmaker went. Navarre took up a station behind the shopkeeper’s door, clutching his gun tightly, and waited.
Five minutes passed. Then he heard the wigmaker’s voice outside, tremulous, unhappy.
“I beg you, friend. Step within my shop a while.”
“Sorry, wigmaker. No need for your trade have I.”
“Good sir, I ask it as a favor. I—have an order for a wig styled in your fashion. No, don’t leave. I can make it worthwhile. Here. This will be yours if you’ll let me sketch your hair-style. It will be but a moment’s work. . . .”
Navarre grinned. The wig-maker was shrewd.
“If it’s only a moment, then. I guess it’s worth a hundred units to me if you like my hair-style.”
The door opened. Navarre drew back, let the wigmaker enter. He was followed by a Kariadi of about Navarre’s size and build. Navarre brought his gun butt-down with stunning force on the back of the Kariadi’s head, and caught him as he fell.
“These crimes in my shop, Sir Earthman—”
“Are in the name of the Overlord,” Navarre told the quivering wigmaker. He knelt over the unconscious Kariadi and began to strip away his clothing. “Lock your door,” he ordered. “And get out your blue dyes. I have more work for you.”
The job was done in thirty minutes. The Kariadi, by this time awake and angry, lay bound and gagged in the wig-maker’s stockroom, clad in the oversize uniform of Joroiran’s Daborian guard. Navarre, a fine Kariadi blue from forehead to toes, and topped with a shining mop of black Kariadi hair, grinned at the grunting prisoner.
“You serve a noble cause, my friend. It was too bad you had to be treated so basely.”
“Mmph! Mgggl!”
“Hush,” Navarre whispered. He examined his image in the wigmaker’s mirror. Resplendent in a tight-fitting Kariadi tunic, he scarcely recognized himself. He drew forth the Kariadi’s wallet and extracted his money, including the hundred-unit Joran note the wig-maker had given him.
“Here,” he said, stuffing the wad of bills under the Kariadi’s leg. “I seek only your identity, not your cash.” He added another hundred-unit note to the wad, gave yet another to the wigmaker, and said, “You will be watched. If you free him before an hour has elapsed, I’ll have you flayed in Central Plaza.”
“I’ll keep him a month, Sir Earthman, if you command it.” The wigmaker was green with fright.
“An hour will be sufficient, Verru. And a thousand thanks for your help in this matter.” Giving the panicky old man a noble salute, Navarre adjusted his cape, unlocked the shop-door, and stepped out into the street.
He hailed a passing jetcab. “Take me to the spaceport,” he said, in a Kariadi accent.
AS HE SUSPECTED, Kausirn had posted guards at the spaceport. He was stopped by a pair of sleek Joran secret-service men—he recognized the tiny emblem at their throats, having designed it himself in a time when he was more in favor on Jorus—and was asked to produce his papers.
He offered the passport he had taken from the Kariadi. They gave it a routine look-through and handed it back.
“How come the checkup?” he asked. “Someone back there said you were looking for a prisoner who escaped from the Overlord’s jail. Any truth in that?”
“Where’d you hear that?” Navarre shrugged innocently. “He was standing near the refreshment dials. Curious-looking fellow—he wore a hood, and kept his face turned away from me. Said the Overlord had captured some hot-shot criminal, or maybe it was an assassin, but he got away. Say, are Jorus’ dungeons so easily unsealed?”
The secret-service men exchanged glances. “What color was this fellow?”
“Why, he was pink—like you Jorans. Or maybe he was an Earthman. He might have been bald under that hood, y’know. And I couldn’t see his eyes. But he may still be there, if you’re interested.”
“We are. Thanks.”
Navarre grinned wryly and moved on toward the ticket-booths as the secret-service men scooted off in the direction of the refreshment dials. He hoped they would have a merry time searching through the crowd.
Having passed the police screen, he entered the ticket-booths, reached a stat, and punched out his destination, Kariad. He slid his passport and a hundred-unit note into the slot and waited; moments later there came a ticket entitling him to one-way passage on the royal liner Pride of Jorus, along with his passport and a few demi-units in change.
He gathered up money and papers and ticket and stepped through the gate toward the field itself. Looking back, he saw secret-service agents busily buttonholing people here and there in the line.
Kausirn is probably nibbling his multitude of fingers to the bone, Navarre thought. But the fact that he was effecting a successful escape afforded him little joy. The Vegan knew of his plans, now—and the fledgling colonies of Earthmen in Galaxy RGC-18347 were in great danger.
He boarded the liner, cradled in, and awaited blastoff impatiently, consuming time by silently parsing the irregular Kariadi verbs.
CHAPTER IV
CUSTOMS-CHECK was swift and simple on Kariad. The Kariadi customs officers paid little attention to their own nationals; it was outworlders they kept watch for. Navarre merely handed over his passport, made out in the name of Melwod Finst, and nodded to the customs official’s two or three brief questions. Since he had no baggage, he obviously had nothing to declare.
He moved on, into the spaceport. It was late afternoon on Kariad; Secundus, the yellow main-sequence sun of the double system, was high, while red giant Primus lay flattened at the horizon. Navarre had always thought it wasteful that a one-planet system should have two suns. The double stars together cast an almost purple glow, bordering on brown.
The money-changing booths lay straight ahead. He joined the line, reaching the slot twenty minutes later. He drew forth his remaining Joran money, some six hundred units, and fed it to the machine. Conversion was automatic; the changer clicked twice and spewed eight hundred and three Kariadi credit-bills back at him. He folded them into his wallet and moved on. There was no indication of pursuit this time.
He recalled his last trip to Kariad. Then, he and Carso had been chased by two assassins sent by Kausirn. Passing the weapons shop where they had eluded their pursuers, Navarre glanced up at the arcade roof; there was no sign of the damage that had been done earlier.
Deliberately he walked on through the crowded arcades for ten minutes more. Then, all seeming clear, he stepped into a public communicator booth, inserted a coin, and requested information.
The directory-robot grinned impersonally at him. “Yours to serve, good sir.”
“I want the number of Helna Winstin, Earthman to the Court of Lord Marhaill.”
His coins came clicking back. The robot said, after the moment’s pause necessary to fish the data from its sponge-platinum memory banks, “Four-oh-three-oh-six-K.”
Quickly Navarre punched out the number. On the screen appeared a diamond-shaped insignia framing an elaborate scrollwork M. A female voice said, “Lord Marhaill’s. With whom would you speak?”
“Helna Winstin. The Earthman to the Court.”
“And who calls her?”
“Melwod Finst. I’m but newly returned from Jorus.” After a pause the Oligocrat’s emblem dissolved. Helna Winstin’s head and shoulders appeared on the screen. She looked outward at Navarre cautiously. Her face was pale, with sharp-rising cheekbones. She seemed to have shaved her scalp not long before.
“Milady, I am Melwod Finst of Kariad West. I crave a private audience with you at once.”
“You’ll have to make regular application. I’m very busy just now. You—”
Her eyes widened as the supposed Finst tugged at his foremost lock of hair, yanking it away from his scalp far enough to show where the blue skin color ended and where the pale white began. He replaced the lock, pressing it down to rebond it to his scalp, and grinned. The grin was unmistakable.
