Gordon R. Dickson (7 page)

Kil got stiffly to his
feet.

"All
right," he said. "I guess I'm good enough to travel." Dekko went
off into another of his silent fits of laughter.

"Why,
Kil," he said, when he had sobered again, "you don't just walk out
the door and out of riggertown like that. Don't you remember? Ace was having
you shook out when I came along and shorted out a pocket sunbeam in the eyes of
those two crims of his. The word's still out for you. We're going to have to
change the way you look and a lot more about you if we want to make it to the
Terminal without trouble."

"We do?" said Kil. "Well,
let's get busy at it, then."

"Do me!" Dekko grinned at him.
"You got a lot to learn."

During
the next three days Kil came around to admitting this himself. But first
came
the matter of changing his appearance. The primary
change Dekko insisted upon was bleaching Kil's hair to a silvery white.

"But
you'll just make me that much more conspicuous," Kil protested.

"You've
got the wrong id§a," Dekko explained, patiently. "You want to look
just like everyone else? You want to fade into the background? Sure, that's
fine for people who aren't being looked for specially. But when you got someone
who knows what you looked like to start off with, you want them to look at you
now and then say, no, that couldn't possibly be the juby we're after."

"I still think-"

"No.
Now listen. I got a hump on my back. One
guess
how
people remember me? If I could get rid of that hump I could walk up to most of
them tomorrow and they'd scratch their heads trying to remember what I remind
them of. Now, you— you change your hair to white. You stand out in a crowd like
a streetside sunbeam. But they take one look at you and that's all they
see—they see a freak with white hair and a young face. The fact your face is
like what they're looking for makes them all the more positive it's not you.
Their mind works backward. It starts making excuses for the fact that you look
like you. Ends up they're ready to swear you don't look like what you actually
look like at all. It's like hiding something in plain sight.
They
say, that can't be it.
It's not hidden."

Kil gave in, with
misgivings.

The
next part was more complicated. Dekko insisted on teaching him how to walk,
talk and act like an Unstab.

"Now,
there's got to be something inside you," he instructed. "That part
of it you should be able to do all right because you
got
something inside you; this business of your wife. But remember that—that's
the difference between Unstab and Stab. An Unstab's got something inside him,
chewing on him all the time. So just start thinking of your wife from the
minute we step out the door and keep it up."

Kil nodded.

"That won't be hard," he said.

"Now,
about the way you act. Unstabs don't just wander through the area not looking
at anything. They're out to make something, or keep what they already made.
They watch all the time, everything. Keep your eyes going and act suspicious
of anybody."

"Right," said
Kil.

"You
got one point in your favor. You can look at someone as if you want to cut
their guts out. Now, that's good for the average rigger you'll bump into
because it fits down here. But if you run across anyone who saw you before you
saw Ace, watch your face, because they'll remember that expression as
something special to you."

Kil sighed.

"I've been trying to
control that all my life," he said.

"Well,
now it's important.
Now, about the talk—the gabby .low.
This area here is riggertown; and everybody in it's a rigger—or thinks he is.
When one rigger takes another for
something, that
makes the second rigger a juby. Anybody who doesn't know riggertown or gets
rigged is a juby. Anybody who's Stab.* is Big S. . . ." and so on.

Finally,
the fifth day after Dekko had brought him back to the apartment, they were
ready.

"You
go first," Dekko told him. "Now, you know the route to the Terminal.
It's
eight to one no one'll even look twice at you. But if
there's trouble, just stall. I'll be about forty yards behind you and I'll come
up and take care of it. I'll say that again. Wait for me. Clear?"

"What
about you?" asked
Kil.
"What if someone
recognizes you?"

Dekko laughed noiselessly.

"Nobody's
seen me. Those two Crims of Ace's were blind before they knew what hit them.
Let's roll it."

They
went out. After all this, the trip to the Terminal was anti-climactic. No one
so
much as looked at Kil.

CHAPTER SIX

It was
different travelling, Kil found, after his
recent experience with the Unstabs. That and the training session Dekko had
put him through had had the effect of rendering him suddenly and almost
painfully aware of the Unstab point of view. For the first time he knew what it
felt like to be conscious of accepted society as something apart from himself.
He felt it and something deep and rebellious within him resented it. He looked
around at his fellow passengers, once the rocket had reached peak altitude and
started its long glide toward the west coast, with naked eyes. Each individual
struck him, for the first time, as a living enigma, a walking puzzle box of
thought and flesh. What would this man do, or that woman, if Kil were to walk
up to them this minute and tell them what had happened to him? Which ones were
UnStab? Which ones were members of some Society or other? Which ones were,
perhaps, World Police out of uniform or on some secret duty? The normally
homogeneous structure of society seemed to Kil suddenly broken, shattered into
a million fragments—into four billion odd fragments—each one, one of the
world's four billion odd population. And Ellen lost among them. Lost . . . lost
. . . lost. . . .

They
came down at the foot of the mountains in Pasadena, in the AiToyo Seco, where
there had once been a famous stadium. And he and Dekko took a cab to
headquarters, of the Thieves Guild.

This,
it turned out, was a large, rambling, temporary structure made of twenty-year
plastic, high up on the side of the mountains. Inside the front door
was
an anteroom and a surprisingly beautiful blonde woman in
early middle age. She and Dekko spoke together for a moment in low tones beyond
Kil's hearing. Then she rose from the desk where she had been sitting and
walked across the room to a door which she opened with her own Key.

"Go
ahead," she said. "He's in." And she stood aside to let them
pass. Following Dekko through the door, all un-

prepared
,
Kil caught his breath and stopped dead with an exclamation.

Sitting
facing them in an oversized chair was a huge man with a completely bald head
above a sad oriental face. He sat as if weary with the weight of his great
body; and "all the furniture of the room about him, like the chair he sat
on, was built oversize, outsize, larger than human. The effect was not so much
to strike the stranger with surprise at something so bizarre and unusual, as
to make him feel that these overlarge proportions were in fact the true ones,
and that it was he who was diminished, reduced, brought down to childhood's
size again. Like children, Kil and Dekko approached the giant; but if this was
not without its profound effect on Kil, it appeared to affect Dekko not at all.

"Kil," said
Dekko, stopping before the chair. "This is Toy."

The
obsidian eyes in the wide yellow face turned to focus on Kil.

"Yes,
that woman's my wife," said Toy, without preamble, in a bass as heavy as
himself. "I'll tell you that to satisfy your curiosity right from the
start. She's my wife and she ioves me. I don't know why. Any normal woman would
have left me long ago."

Kil,
startled and embarrassed by this unexpected attack, found
himself
suddenly wordless. He stared at the giant, caught too suddenly and unpreparedly
to be angry. Dekko smiled.

"Fishing, Toy?"
he asked.

"Only
observation," replied Toy. "How many people do you think have come
through that door or some similar door, and seen me, and
not
wondered about her?" His eyes went back to Kil. "Excuse me.
It's my one bitterness. Like King Midas who turned everything he touched to
gold. Everything I touch," his huge right hand curled around the end of
his chairarm and the tough plastic bent like cardboard, "turns to
fragments."

He let go of the chair arm.

"Excuse me again," he said.
"You've come at a bad time. I've
been pitying
myself. What can I do for you?" Dekko nodded at Kil.

"Him," he said, succinctly.

"Him?"
echoed Toy. The black eyes took in Kil for a long moment. "You look as if
you had a problem, young man. How do you like it—this world, this ant-swarm,
this mechanized midden heap, this modern age of ours? Does it suit you? Can you
find accomplishment in our better mousetraps, art in our improved plumbing,
glory in our conquest of bloodless mathematics, and adventure in our
antiseptic, well-lighted and airconditioned vice dens? What purposeful lives we
lead in our inoculated trottings to and fro about the world. Don't you
agree?"

"It looks like you
don't," said KiL

"Me?"
said the giant. "I'm an anachronism. No, by God, I flatter myself. I'm a
living fossil, a most excellent specimen of Tyrannosaurus Rex, claws
clipped,
teeth capped, and set to holding hanks of yarn for
old ladies with knitting on their mind. I'm a superb body in an age when bodies
have gone out of style. What a successful chieftan, what an outstanding hero I
would have made at any time up to the last few hundred years, before the world
became so cluttered up. What a Khan, what a Varanger, what a Viking. Just think
,
I could have been a Greek legend, like Hercules, or a
Roman Emperor of the Legions like Maximilian. No, forget fame. Think just what
a happy cave man I would have made. I can break the neck of a bull with one
twist of my arms; what an excellent provider of meat for my tribe. I can
handle a bow with a three hundred and fifty pound pull and send an arrow more
than a mile. What a pillar of strength in time of trouble. And modesty forbids
that I tell you about my capabilities with a stone axe. You may possibly find
me a trifle bitter; and you're correct. In a world of future-happy people, my
future is all in the past."

Dekko shifted restlessly.

"How about it?" he said.

"Nothing.
If
she
passed
you, it's all right. What's your name, young man?" "Kil Bruner,"
said Kil.

"Kil,
there's only one requirement for entrance into the Guild. Once you're in, the
Guild protects you and you're expected to help anyone in the Guild. None of
this nonsense about what's mine is yours; and all you have is mine. But there's
one condition. And that is, you have to think over the reasons for your
entering for fifteen minutes, without speaking and without moving, while I
watch you. If you still want to enter at the end of that time, you're in."
"That's all right," said Kil.

"Good.
Come on, then." With astounding lightness, Toy rose to his feet; and now,
standing, his great size was all the more apparent, for he was built thick and
broad, with squat body and relatively short bow legs. His head towered more
than a foot above Kil's. Kil looked at Dekko, but Dekko did not move, except to
gesture in Toy's direction. Kil turned and followed the giant.

Toy
faced his Key into the cup of a further door that let them into a smaller room.
It was not a bad size as rooms go, but Toy filled it. It was bare of
furnishings except for two chairs, one built to Toy's outsize dimensions, another
of normal proportions. The large chair sat off to one side; and the smaller
faced a far wall on which was a large clock whose second hand crept slowly
around the face.

"Sit down," said
Toy, taking the large chair. "And think."

Kil
settled himself. He was aware of the giant lolling back and regarding him, but
Toy was not directly in his line of vision and Kil made no attempt to look at
him. Instead, he sat back and looked at the clock.

The
second hand was moving around the dial, with the inexorable slowness of all
second hands. It made no sound, and there was no sound elsewhere in the room.
Toy moved not at all, and even the sound of his breathing was inaudible to
Kil's ears. Kil watched the clock.

He
had not really intended to think. He had accepted and dismissed this minor
ordeal in the same moment. It was merely, he thought, a matter of sitting still
for fifteen minutes, and that would be all. He found it was not that simple.

Slowly,
the seconds began to stretch out. Though he knew that in fact no such thing was
happening, it seemed that the second hand was beginning to slow its crawl. His
body, at first comfortable, began to protest against its forced inactivity.
The sound of his own breathing, the sound of his heart beating, grew larger in
the stillness until they seemed to thunder in his ears. Little itches and
cramps came and went and multiplied in mounting protest until they threatened
to force him to move in spite of all his will.

He
saw the danger now. Grimly, he set himself to combat it, and the clamoring
hordes of the body, defeated, drew back and relapsed into silence. Before his
fixed eyes, the hands of the clock had marked off only a little more than four
minutes.

And
now, with the body out of the way, came a new assault upon his self-control.
The mind, which had been lying quietly inactive during these first few minutes,
now began to stir itself with little fears and doubts.

Why
was this test? What was he doing here? Was he actually taking the right way to
solve his problem? The rising tide of his thoughts swept him inexorably to the
heart of his troubles. He had not intended to think about it, but now his mind
ran free like a hound unleashed; and he realized suddenly that this was the
true test, that the will power that had gained him his victory over a rebel
body could be no help with this. The doubts and fears came thick and fast. His
vision seemed strangely blurred as if he were on the verge of passing into
unconsciousness; and through it he could see, in contrast to his racing
thoughts, a second hand on the wall clock that seemed almost to have stopped.

Now,
to add to this, he became suddenly and painfully conscious of the eyes of Toy
upon him. He could not turn his head and see those eyes; but he felt them boring
like twin scalpels probing the buzzing wasp's nest of his brain. The pressure
rose intolerably within him and he knew, suddenly, that unless he found some
avenue of escape for it, soon, the tension would become too much for him and he
would speak or move, would jump to his feet and run from the room.

Desperately,
he searched within himself for some final source of strength.
For
Ellen,
he
thought,
I've
got
to—for Ellen.
And
then he found, in the thought of Ellen herself, what he was looking for. It
rose up before him like a vision of cool water to his feverish soul, and he
sank down into it, gratefully.

For it was for Ellen, of course. Out of the
harsh and senseless tangle of a paradoxical world with its Unstabs, its
Police, its Societies, its problems large and small, the fact of his love and
his longing for his wife rose as one clear and simple truth. Whatever else
might be right or wrong, this was right. It was right that he should want her.
It was wrong that she should have been taken away from him. And it was right
that he go after her, by any means, by all means, until he found her. Whatever
else he might do that was wrong, this that he
did,
was
right. Ellen . . . Ellen . . . and the little, bittersweet memories of her
came back, a touch in the darkness, beside him in the night time, a distant,
half-heard bustle of movement elsewhere in their apartment as he worked, and
drew him into them, away from the room and Toy and the clock and everything. .
. .

"Kil."

Kil came back with a start
and sat up.

"What—" he said.
"The fifteen minutes up?"

"Forty
minutes are up," answered Toy. There was a curious look on his face, a
strange look of mixed sympathy and interest. "I'd have liked to wait
longer; but we've got Dekko to consider. Before we go back, though, is there
anything you might like to tell me?"

"No," said Kil,
slowly. "No, I don't think so."

"Maybe
I'm wrong," said Toy, "but I get the impression that you may be
one.of those few lucky people who've found something worth fighting for. It's
what I've looked for all my life and never found," His voice had gone
bitter again. "It's impossible to cut yourself on the sharp edge of
existence nowadays. If I could just find something like you—well, never mind.
But if you ever need help that I could give, you might ask me for it, if you
feel like it. And I might even give it."

"Thanks," Kil
looked at him.

Toy
grunted, and got up, and led the way back to the other room. Dekko was waiting
there for them; and he looked at Kil curiously as they appeared. Toy went
across to a cabinet in the wall and took from it a wrist band.

"Let's see your Key," he said. Kil
gave it to him; and the yellow faced man's large fingers deftly detached it
from its old wrist band and pinched it into the new one he had taken from the
cabinet. He held it close to the Key on his own wrist and lifted both to Kil's
ear together. A tiny, high-pitched hum could be heard coming from both instruments.

"That's
it," he gave the Key back to Kil, who slipped it back on his wrist.
"That's our identification. Any two Keys of Guild members brought together
will hum like that. Also, before they hum, there's a vibration you'll feel in
the skin of your wrist, so that you can make identification without attracting
undue attention, if you want."

"I'm a member now?" asked Kil.

"You're a
member," said Toy.
"Anything else?"

"Yes,"
spoke up Dekko. "We want an in to one of the big Societies.
How about Black Panther?"

Toy sighed.

"So
that's why you've come to me." He nodded, almost as if to himself.
"There's a branch of the Black Panther meeting tonight."

Kil looked at him
curiously.

"Do you belong?"
he asked.

"No, but my wife does. She's a very
useful woman." There was a hint of something like sadness in the giant's
voice. "You'll have to wait until dark. Then she'll take you." He
looked at Dekko oddly. "Sometimes I wonder about you," he said.

"Every man to his own trade,
Chief," said Dekko, unperturbed.

"Yes—" Toy nodded. "Go out the
way you came in.
She'll
take
care of you."

And so they left him.