The Chalice of Death (23 page)

Mantell frowned. He had the feeling that there was an inconsistency somewhere in her glib argument, but at the moment he was not interested in finding it.

He grinned at her. “You know, I think I'm going to like this place,” he said.

Chapter Six

There were a few stray threads of conversation after that, but they petered out quickly and they finished eating in silence. Against the backdrop of the singing violins (not violins really, he knew, but merely tones produced by an electronic musical synthesizer somewhere in the giant building) Mantell thought, This is quite a woman! He was trying to imagine—without success—what thing she could have done that would have forced her to take refuge here on Starhaven from the galactic police system.

It was hard to figure what crime lay in the girl's past. She seemed too clean, too pure. Mantell was well aware that she was no angel; but even so, she gave the appearance of innocence, making it seem as if she always acted out of the highest motives.

Mantell didn't regard himself as a hardened criminal, either. He kept telling himself he was just a victim of circumstances. The breaks of life could as easily have gone the other way for him, and instead of becoming a desperate wanderer on a tourist planet like Mulciber, he could have remained a skilled armaments technician back on Earth.

He scowled. He was
still
an armaments technician, he told himself. Only not on Earth but here on Starhaven, where nobody would plague him with cheap moralizing.

And where there was Myra.

He wondered, as he sat staring at her, how he was going to get away with it.

Obviously she was Thurdan's girl. That was an obstacle that would stop most men right away. On a planet like this, a man doesn't try to walk away with the absolute tyrant's girl if he intends to enjoy a long life. Of course, there was always the possibility that Thurdan might tire of her.…

Who are you kidding? he asked himself. Sure, Thurdan would tire of her. Any minute now, he thought bitterly. Who could ever tire of
her
?

Mantell's mood darkened. He told himself he would have to forget any intentions he might have in regard to Myra Butler. Otherwise he would be up to his ears in deep trouble, and he had been on Starhaven less than a day.

The robot servitors appeared and cleared away the remnants of the meal. There was still half a bottle of wine left, but Mantell had neither the desire nor the room for it now. He watched the robot clear the wine away with the rest of the things, and grinned.

“I never thought I'd last long enough to pass up a half-f bottle of wine,” he said.

He leaned back. He felt warm and well-fed, with the taste of rare wine still on his lips.

“Where to now?” he asked.

She smiled. “Do you dance?”

“More or less. I'm a little out of practice.”

“That doesn't matter. Come. The ballroom's three levels above.”

Mantell felt little desire to dance just now. But she continued pleadingly, “I love to dance, Johnny. And Ben won't ever dance with me. He never will. He hates dancing of any kind.”

Mantell shrugged agreeably. “Anything to oblige a lady, I always say. If you want to dance, let's go.”

Together they drifted out of the dining hall and into the waiting lift tube, and up three levels to the ballroom. Mantell realized in astonishment that ninety per cent of the Pleasure Dome was still above them, even here on the twelfth level.

The ballroom was a huge arching room, magnificently decorated. Music throbbed out of a hundred concealed speakers. Glowing dabs of soft living light, red and blue and gentle violet, swung and bobbed mistily in the air just above the dancers. It was a stunning sight, a scene out of a picture book.

“For a man who doesn't like to dance, Thurdan built quite a dance hall,” Mantell observed.

“That's one of Ben's specialties—catering to other people's likes. It keeps the people loyal to him.”

“Ben's a shrewd man,” Mantell said.

“The shrewdest there ever was,” agreed Myra.

They stepped out onto the dance floor. Myra glided into his arms. They began to dance.

It had been years since the last time Mantell had been on a dance floor. On Mulciber he simply hadn't thought in terms of luxuries like dancing; the struggle for life was too intense. And on Earth, he had always been too busy with less frivolous things.

But here, on this pleasure planet, he could make up for lost time.

There was a modified antigravity shield mounted beneath the gleaming dark luciphrine plastic of the dance floor. The field was on lowest modulation, not strong enough to lift the dancers from the surface of the floor but mustering enough power to cut down their weight somewhere between thirty and forty per cent, Mantell estimated.

It was more like floating than dancing. Feet glided, skimming over the floor.

Mantell felt Myra lightly against him, clinging; the bobbing swirls of living light in the air circled playfully around them, giving Myra's face sharply accented multicolored highlights of curious effect. The music beat beneath them, swelling and surging deeply. Mantell found himself moving with a grace he had never known he possessed.

It was half due to the antigrav shield, he thought, and half to Myra, feather-light in his arms.

One thing struck him as incongruous. Around him in the crowded pavilion danced the people of Starhaven, each one carrying locked within his mind the burden of some crime, each a hunted man now safe forever from the hunters.

They laughed, joked, clung to each other, just like ordinary people. Just like those who lived everyday lives within the law. Men and women having a good time, but outlaws all.

Mantell and Myra danced on. An hour, two hours perhaps, slipped by. Under the low gravity, time seemed to speed imperceptibly. Mantell hardly cared. He let the hours move past.

Finally, as the music died for the hundredth time and the couples left the floor for a short breather between numbers, Myra said, “Had enough?”

Mantell grinned at her. “Hardly.”

“But I think we'd better leave now, Johnny. It's getting late.”

He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. He realized for the first time how tired he was. All in this same day he had run a race with the SP ships, undergone a painful psychprobing, and now spent hours with Myra. It had been a full schedule.

“Where do we go now?” he asked. “The gambling den? The bar?”

She shook her head lightly. “We go home,” she said: “It's close to my bedtime.”

The music began again, a lilting fast dance, and the crowds of pleasure-seekers coasted back onto the dance floor. Mantell made way through the throng, holding tightly to Myra's hand. He was able to get back to the liftshaft without too much trouble; they rode down and out into the brightly floodlit plaza outside the Pleasure Dome.

As if from nowhere the slinky teardrop car that had conveyed them to the Dome appeared. They got in.

“Take us to my place,” Myra instructed the driver.

The trip was over almost before it had begun. They pulled up in front of a handsome apartment building. Myra got out; Mantell followed.

The doors of the building swung back at their approach. He escorted her up the liftshaft and as far as the door of her apartment.

She touched her thumb lightly to the doorplate and the door started to roll back. She said, “I won't ask you in, Johnny. It's late, and—well, I can't. Please understand, won't you?”

He smiled. “Okay. It's been a swell night, and I won't press my luck further. Good night, Myra. And thanks for everything.”

“I'll be seeing you, Johnny. Don't worry about that.”

He frowned and started to object, “But Ben—”

“Ben may not be with us too much longer,” she whispered in a strange tone. “A lot depends on you. We're counting on you more than you can imagine.”

“What? You—?”

“Remember what I said about asking too many questions too soon,” she warned. “Good night, Johnny.”

“Good night,” he said, bewildered. She smiled enigmatically and then he found himself staring at the outside of her door, alone, well-fed and feeling warm inside.

The car was waiting downstairs when he emerged. It was after midnight, and the sky was dotted with convincing stars. Thurdan had not spared expense in making Starhaven a wonderland world come true.

He climbed into the car. The driver looked human, but from the rigid forward set of his head he might just as well have been a robot.

“She's a remarkable woman, isn't she?” Manfell said to the man. “Miss Butler, I mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mantell smiled. The driver wasn't much of a conversationalist, obviously. He said, “Take me home, to Number Thirteen.”

“Yes, sir.”

Relaxing, Mantell watched the buildings slip by on either side. He was tired now, and anxious to reach his room. He was more than tired: he was exhausted. It had been a fantastic day.

Chapter Seven

Mantell saw a man die, his second day on Starhaven. It taught him not to judge by first impressions. Starhaven wasn't entirely a pleasure-planet, a happy Utopia. There was violent death here, and evil.

He had slept late that day, ridding himself of his fatigue and weariness. At 1100 in the morning the room-phone buzzed loudly, waking him from a tortuously involved dream of Space Patrol men, fugitives, and ancient, fumbling scientists operating psychprobes.

He pulled himself out of bed, crossed the austere, simple room that had been assigned to him, and switched on the phone, rubbing sleep from his face. Slowly the pattern of colors that appeared on the visiscreen shaped itself into a meaningful configuration.

It was the face of Ben Thurdan.

Even on a visiscreen a foot square his face had a terrible brooding intensity, a dark-visaged strength. He smiled and said, “I hope I didn't wake you, Mantell. You must be pretty tired.”

Mantell forced out a chuckle. “I guess I overslept. It's a bad habit of mine.”

“What did you think of the Pleasure Dome?” Thurdan asked easily. Mantell's sleep-fogged mind started to frame an answer, but before he could speak Thurdan had added the words, “… and Myra.”

That threw him off base. He said, “It's a fabulous place, Mr. Thurdan. I've never seen anything like it anywhere. And—and Miss Butler was very helpful in explaining Starhaven to me.”

“Glad to hear that,” Thurdan said slowly. There was a long, uncomfortable moment of silence. Mantell fidgeted before the screen, acutely conscious of the great reservoir of power that lay in the man. At length Thurdan said, “Mantell, I liked you the second I saw you. You've got
character
. I like a man with character.”

Mantell wondered what the Starhaven boss was driving at. Keeping back his surprise, he said gravely, “Thank you, Mr. Thurdan.”

“Call me Ben.” The deep piercing eyes studied Mantell until his flesh began to crawl. “I trust you, Mantell. And let me tell you I don't trust very many people on Starhaven. Suppose you do me a little favor, Mantell. Yes. A little favor.”

“If I can—Ben. What sort of favor do you mean?”

“I want you to keep your eyes open. Miss Butler—Myra—will be keeping company with you again today. Listen to things carefully, Mantell. And feel free to get in touch with me if you think there's anything I ought to know.”

Mantell frowned and said, “I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. But I think I grasp the general picture.”

“Good. Stick with me, Mantell. Life can be very very good for a man on Starhaven, if Ben Thurdan is backing him.”

Thurdan grimaced in what was probably supposed to be a friendly smile, and rang off. Mantell stared at the shining surface of the blank screen for a second, trying to figure things out.

The call from Thurdan, he thought, was linked in some manner with Myra's enigmatic words at her door just before he had left her last night. Obviously Ben Thurdan was afraid of something; an assassination plot, more likely than not—and had chosen Mantell to serve as an extra pair of eyes and ears for him.

Maybe—Mantell caught his breath—maybe he suspected that Myra herself was involved in some conspiracy against him, and had arranged for Mantell to keep company with her so he could gain her confidence and report back information.

Mantell shook his head. A tangled web was beginning to form. Too soon, he thought. He hadn't come here to Starhaven to play power politics and get enmeshed in palace intrigues. He had just wanted a place to hide; a place where he could rebuild his battered personality and forget the Mulciber years.

He gobbled a breakfast tab and looked at his hands. They were shaking. He was playing with big trouble, and he was afraid.

Calming himself, he dialed Myra's number. She appeared on the screen, looking awake and unafraid, and they exchanged light banter for a moment or two before Mantell explained that he had called to arrange a date for lunch with her at the Pleasure Dome.

“Meet you there in ninety minutes,” she said. “Outside the ninth-level dining hall.”

“Right.”

He broke the contact and started to dress. He killed the better part of an hour pacing tensely around his room, then went downstairs and found a cab to take him to the Pleasure Dome.

Myra met him there on time, to the minute, and once again they took the table near the window, drawing much attention from the service-robots. They had a brief, nervous lunch: chlorella steak and fried diamante potatoes, with splits of golden Livresae beer. They had replaced the freeform table with a crystal-topped affair in which strange green-hued horned fish swam proudly and serenely. Neither Mantell nor the girl said very much. Both seemed to be under a sort of cloud.

Myra said finally, breaking a long silence, “Ben called you this morning, didn't he?”

Mantell nodded. “That man seems to have taken a liking to me. I guess something in my psychprobe chart must have impressed him.”