Virility Gene, page 1
part #4 of Ryder Hook Series
Chapter One
Ryder Hook first heard a rumour of the so-called Virility Gene in that nastily-escalating brawl in a sleazy deep-freeze satellite orbiting a best-forgotten planet of the Enares system. Hook ducked his head out of the way of an explosive shot that splattered the bulkhead with pock marks. The controls had already been set to dump a Star-Hard's consignment of deep-frozen passengers down to the required temperature for starlight Hard. Outside the satellite's hull the stars of the galaxy were whirling away; and here in this bubble of air Ryder Hook was like to get himself killed — and for no good purpose.
`Keep your head down, Flakey,' he said to the Drossan, whose plate-fab clothes concealed an agile and eel-like body, and whose four sinuous arms curled around, severally, a cosh, a length of metalloy chain, a twenty-five centimetre knife and a Drossan prayer book.
`I just came to be frozen for the Star-Hard,' said Flakey, his slit-mouth showing absolute annoyance, his eyes, wide-mounted on mobile tubes, wriggling. His neck — all one and a half metres of it — coiled down to bring his sleek head on a level with Hook's. `These gonils have no conception of courtesy.'
`You keep your head down or they'll blow it off.'
Hook's own annoyance was contained by his half-resigned, half-resentful acceptance that no one could expect to go through life in the galaxy of the hundred and first century without bumping into trouble of one kind or another. He always tried to keep out of trouble. Other people, with even less scruples than he had — and his scruples would fit on a micro-dot and leave room for the Galactic Encyclopedia — would insist on involving him in this kind of punch-up.
The fighting died for a moment, and Hook settled comfortably in the rear of an overturned computer console and took out a pre-packed sandwich. He and Flakey shared it amicably. Every now and then a shot cracked out, or a dis-gel gun spurted, and sometimes there was a shout of pain or a shriek of horror at the inevitable deliquescing end.
Then Flakey, the Drossan, told Hook something of the Virility Gene. He'd heard it was to be found on a planet — whose whereabouts he did not, to his infinite regret at that time, know — and that its owners, cultivators, miners, or just plain synthesisers, kept a stranglehold on its export.
`If you believe half the things you hear among the stars about the Virility Gene, Hook,' Flakey said, squirming to be comfortable. 'You'd be running your tail off for parsecs.'
'I don't happen to belong to a race blessed with tails’
`You don't — I hadn't noticed.'
`And, Flakey, I've warned you three times. Those idiots out there are shooting at each other. I have absolutely no desire to find out about what. As soon as the planetary enforcers arrive and clear the situation up, we can get frozen Hard. The warning stands — keep your wriggly little head down!'
`You're going to Lakashimi, right, Hook?'
`Yes.'
A burst of dis-gel splattered across the corner of the console and both men hunched away. A drop of that on the skin would mean the rapid melting of the body, to leave only a puddle. And then even the puddle would vanish.
`Feller called Gaines came from Lakashimi. Funny guy.'
Perhaps it was a memory of the funny guy called Gaines, who hailed from Lakashimi, that made Flakey's sinuous squirmings take his sleek and agile body too far from the computer console.
Hook, whose own dis-gel gun remained neurally and electronically affixed to his left wrist, yelled.
He should have saved his breath.
Flakey's charming head disappeared in the explosive concussion of a shot from a Swan-Durk magnum.
Smoke coiled in the freezer complex. Hook slid past the toppling still-flopping body of Flakey. He saw the Riffian who had shot Flakey, glaring about wildly, the Swan-Durk big in his fist. Hook's dis-gel leaped into his hand and he fired. The Riffian took the shot in the face, and instantly, screaming, clawed at himself. He knew he had seconds to live.
Hook watched him shrink and melt and deliquesce.
`Curd,' said Ryder Hook. 'Ill-mannered gonil, interrupting an interesting conversation.'
That was the first time Hook had heard about the Virility Gene.
The second time Hook heard about the Virility Gene was in a lusciously-decadent Palace of FU Delights, on Sonleary, over in the out-of-the-way Usica Cluster. Although Hook did not care much for the overblown and much-vaunted charms of Shashmeeri dancing girls, all long white legs and impossibly pneumatic breasts and bulbous hips, he had to concede that the girl dancing now was a real artist. She was billed as Shoshanna the Humming Bird, and Hook sat slumped in his seat, toying with his liquor, watching and figuring ways of making a few rolls of ready money-metal.
Being a loner in the galaxy with allegiances to no one — except, perhaps, to Shaeel the Hermaphrodite — sometimes became tiresome to Hook. He'd scorn any link with any multi-system conglomerate; this more often than not made life excruciating.
As he had surmised, Hook had to step in to take Shoshanna the Humming Bird out of the Palace of FU Delights before the aroused men there could get to her. She appeared completely bewildered. This intrigued Hook. Shashmeeri dancing girls were notorious for their sensuousness.
The place erupted into a cacaphony of shouts and yells, with men of a dozen different races leaping the seats, tearing off their clothes, fighting to be the first. Shoshanna cowered back, her hands to those enormous breasts, each with a pathetic little tinsel-glitter star, her wide eyes wider still with a sudden sick horror of what she had aroused. Hook put his fist into the fate of a mal, cracked the head of a Krifman, kicked the feet from under a jernja — those artful aliens had five legs apiece, besides a tail — scooped up Shoshanna and bore her away. She tried to claw his eyes out. He slapped her on that beautifully upholstered rump, and growled: 'Still!'
Something about this brown-haired, brown-eyed terrestrial must have aroused absolute terror in her breast, for she fainted. Hook did not smile but he thumped a few more heads, trod over a half-dozen falling bodies, and so fled into the Sonleary night.
By the time he had convinced Shoshanna that her virtue was safe with him, and she'd recovered in her lodgings, Hook was looking for excuses to depart. Shoshanna was trying to earn her living as any Shashmeeri dancing girl could — by dancing.
`Pick a better spot next time, Humming Bird.'
`Believe me, Hook I will!'
Her husband had sold up everything they possessed, including Shoshanna's clothes, so that she went to and from work with a tattered old plastivelvet soak wrapped about her near-nakedness.
'He knew you didn't need clothes in your line of work.'
`But he'll come back! He bought a map from a Krifman. Stafiri — that's my husband — has gone to bring back a huge supply of the Virility Gene! We'll be rich! Enormously rich!'
`I hope so,' said Ryder Hook. 'Where did he go?'
But Shoshanna the Humming Bird had no idea where her husband, Stafiri, had gone to get these supplies of the Virility Gene.
`But he'll come back, Hook. I know he will!'
`just believe it, girl, just believe it.'
She cooked some supper, a tasty light meal that took shape in the ultra-sonic cooker from the plastic-wrapped cubes she extracted from the larder, and they ate companionably. The wine, a rose, did not offend Hook overmuch. The production kit in the lodging house's common room dispensed a limited choice but Shoshanna grew vivacious and excited, and it was very clear that Hook's powerful physique, and clear brown eyes, made her dream wistfully of her vanished husband, Stafiri.
Hook saw that if he wanted to, he could. But, as he had said, he preferred girls to look like human girls from old Earth. He disengaged her white arms and removed his ear from the advances of her lips. They were soft and wanton and her tongue was a marvel. Now, if she'd been a real girl ...
She'd said goodnight with a very real puzzlement, pouting, more than a little hurt, and with her two little silver glitter stars in her hands, pathetic.
Ryder Hook heard rumours of the so-called Virility Gene for the third time aboard Stellroute's starship Vandeneuf en route to Jundersborg in the Carnaireann Cluster. This time he was travelling in some style, with Shaeel and Karg. As usual, he was one jump ahead of the law, and a bare half a jump ahead of the Boosted Men. If he made it to Jundersborg in one piece he fancied he might stay in one piece long enough to catch his breath.
Sitting in the lounge he listened to the idle conversation.
The name Virility Gene was, of course, something of a misnomer, much used by those sections of the media catering for the less-skilled echelons of the stellar econorgs; but from what Hook gathered on this occasion from the furry little alien from Cailiang, the name fitted in a loose and bowdlerised way.
The habit of continually looking over his shoulder could not easily be broken — he would not wish to break it for he wished to stay alive — even here, in the snug lounge of starship Vandeneuf , and Hook felt nothing of the ease he should be feeling in good company, with drinks and music and idleness before him for seven days terrestrial. Stellroutes was a relatively small multi-system conglomerate and a trifle on the shady side, and that suited Hook perfectly.
`It's somewhere there, Taynor Klark,' the little Cailiang said to Hook. 'A proton speculator told me, and they're not fools.'
Hook took his eyes away from the angled mirror that showed him the door to the left. 'I agree. They're not. But one hears so much about Virility Genes — how do you disentangle the truth from the imagination?'
A mal seated opposite showed by his facial
`And this proton speculator was putting credit into it?'
The Cailiang preened his fur, dyed pink and indigo, smoothing it out so that the patterns glowed. 'He was.'
`As to that,' boomed a Krifman, heavily-built, authoritative, wedged into a massively pneumo-upholstered chair. 'It really doesn't matter. You can always float a speculation where virility is concerned.'
The Cailiang laughed, and the mal nodded, working at his ear. The Krifman settled himself, conscious of the impact he had made. 'And,' the Krifman continued, nodding with the knowledge of the galaxy. 'Any econorg would go along with you. They know a good thing when they see one.'
For Hook these people represented the assured of the galaxy, people not all of Homo sapiens stock who possessed credit cards and fat bank accounts with the econorgs of their choice. People who would not think twice about stepping on him. He sat back a little, listening, not pushing into the conversation. But the talk drifted to econorgs and their ways, the Virility Gene for the moment absent from the spoken conversation but present in all their minds.
Hook saw with some amusement that the subject had disappeared from the conversation for the intriguing and highly human reason that each one sitting here wanted later to talk privately to the Cailiang. They were like kritchuks sniffing around a hunk of meat, each one waiting until the other made a move so they could snap in from the flanks, destroy the rival and gain the prize for themselves.
He ordered another drink — a plain orange beer — and kept his eyes on the mirror and the door.
The passages out for Shaeel, Karg and Hook had been paid for by Tayniss Thentel. She wasn't as bad as she was painted, and she piled on the face paint too, or so had said Shaeel, the Hermaphrodite, in ves cutting way. Hook had barely escaped from Sykoris with the Boosted Men vengefully sending their agents after him. All Ryder Hook wanted to do in the galaxy was keep his own skin intact, to survive, to make some kind of life for himself, to live.
The Novamen had other ideas.
Hook was forever barred from becoming a Novaman, and that fact, more than any other, could enrage him. Usually he steered as far away from the Boosted Men as he could.
Shaeel walked into the lounge. Hook saw ves in the mirror.
Shaeel's not-man's not-woman's face showed the compressed lines of tenseness that — quite apart from being unusual for Shaeel — distressed Hook. Hook didn't give a damn for anyone in the entire galaxy, except, perhaps, for Shaeel when the maph wasn't being ves usual sarcastic self.
Of only one thing could Ryder Hook be sure as he rose and walked with vague steps, as though considering another drink or a turn around the promenade deck, and that was that there was no Boosted Man aboard starship Vandeneuf.
He would not make a mistake like that. Or — he had not done so up till now.
When they were walking up the deck together, out through the plastiglass doorway and on to the promenade deck, nearly deserted at this time of ship-night, Shaeel said:
`My dear 'ook! Sitting and Drinking, are you? And here is Karg Maintaining an Observation on a character of the most dubious —'
`Someone followed us from Sykoris. That was to be expected.'
`You are foolishly credulous, My Great Hairy Masculine Asinine. In my view the painted Ts Thentel contrived our escape Unscathed. Unscathed.' The Hermaphrodite habitually spoke in capital letters. 'In my view, my dear old Bertie Bashti, we are, all three of us, being Set Up.'
`For what?'
The graceful movement of Shaeel's shoulders in the blue coverall could only have been contrived by a being who was neither man nor woman. `That, my dear 'ook, remains one of the Great Unsolved Problems.'
`Hasn't Karg sorted him out yet?'
`The good Karg appeared Alarmingly Gentle when I last saw him.'
When Karg, who was a F'lovett, looked ferocious, it meant he was normally happy. When he became upset or angry he became docile and inanely cheerful looking.
A light-hearted couple of terrestrials walked past, obviously deeply in love, paying no attention to Hook and the Hermaphrodite. Hook saw them, recced them, discarded them from his evil computations. Simple love of that kind seemed to be denied him, he felt, to be reserved for anyone other than himself.
`Let's go and sort out the chancroid, Shaeel.'
`With the utmost pleasure.'
Hook looked with some favour upon Shaeel. Ves arms and shoulders were smooth and strong, ves waist nipped in and ves hips flared with an insolent feminine swing. The breasts which occasioned so much liveliness in their relationship were decently covered by the blue coverall; but the fab-metal could not conceal the intoxicating sensuousness of their outlines. Yes, Hook decided, not for the first time, it had been a great day for the Galaxy when the genetic scientists of old Earth had created this wonderful race of Hermaphrodites.
There were still ignorant louts who called Hermaphrodites `it' when their correct pronoun was `ves'.
Snugged away under Hook's left sleeve the little dis-gel gun could be brought into action by muscular contractions that by neurological surgery gave him instantaneous reactions. Shaeel at this time had a Delling in the same position. The guns were so common as to excite no comment. Their big energy weapons had been locked away for safety in the ship's armoury. Only an idiot would care to shoot off a power gun inboard of a spaceship. Hook had met idiots like that before; he wondered, not without a feeling of anger at the waste of time, if the alien on whom Karg was keeping an observation would turn out to be another.
They turned into G-three corridor, empty and clean under the ceiling lighting.
`There's Karg.'
One moment the corridor had been empty, the next the squat bulk of the F'lovett appeared, signalling to them. Instantly, Karg vanished again into his cleaning-robot's closet.
A door opened and a Krifman stepped out.
The Krifmans were a race which considered itself to be the best in the galaxy: rough, tough, arrogant, supremely confident. Usually, Hook got on with them quite well. He'd had to thump one or two along the line. He and Shaeel walked along smoothly, talking inconsequentially in an off-hand manner.
The Krifman wore a metal-fab suit that had been smothered in glitter-points, so that he dazzled as he walked. His short red cloak hung from one shoulder to his waist, in the latest fashion. On his belt he carried a holstered Zag, a solid-projectile weapon firing a large bullet at relatively low-velocity, admirable for work inboard of a spaceship. He'd have a credit card sugically implanted in his left wrist, and, without any real doubt, a dis-gel gun on his right. The Krifman barged down the corridor as though he owned Stellroutes starship Vandeneuf.
`This must be the feller, my dear 'ook — Abel.'
Abel Klark as an alias had been used by Hook before, would be used again. He had many aliases among the stars.
`Sure. Let him go.'
`But — I'
`Let's hear what Charlie has to say.' Charlie was Karg.
The Krifman marched on, quite clearly with the knowledge implanted in his brain that anyone in his path would step aside. He was so evidently accustomed to deference he could not conceive of receiving anything else. He was, Hook surmised a high executive of a powerful econorg, although no badge or insignia were visible. A dangerous man to make an enemy.
Hook stepped aside.
Shaeel, after a moment of total disbelief, stepped aside also.
They watched the red cloak — more of a cape with its artfully-angled slinging — above the glitter suit vanish around the far corner, going on to G-four corridor.
Karg popped out of his closet.
He smiled as though thoroughly amused.
`I'd have finished him off, Hook—'
`Point is, Karg, old friend — what has he done to us to deserve such a fate?'
Karg's thickly chunky body, which came up to Hook's waist, overlapped on both sides of his belt. His arms could crush a beer barrel, as Hook often thought, envisaging that interesting phenomenon with interest, in his mind's eye.
`He's been watching us. Ever since he came aboard.'
Karg had come aboard alone. It had seemed to Hook that a Hermaphrodite and a F'lovett travelling together would excite enough memory to give possible trackers a clue. A human being, nondescript in the way Hook cultivated, would arouse no such interest. Even so, Shaeel was called Balson on the passenger list.
