No World of Their Own (11 page)

He sat up in bed, staring blindly before him. That had been a blaster going off!

Another crash sounded, and boots slammed on the floor. Langley jumped to his feet. Armed force—a real kidnap try this time, in spite of all guards! Another energy bolt flamed somewhere outside the room, and he heard a deep-voiced oath.

He crouched against the farther wall, doubling his fists. No lights. If they were after him, let them find and haul him out.

The tumult rolled somewhere in the living room. Then he heard Marin scream.

He sprang for the door. “Open, goddam you!” It sensed him and dilated. A metal-clad arm slapped him back, down to the floor.

“Stay where you are, sir.” It was a hoarse gasp out of the mask-like combat helmet. “They've broken in—”

“Let me
go!”
Langley shoved against the gigantic form of the Solar cop. He was no match; the slave stood like a rock.

“Sorry, sir, my orders—”

A blue-white beam snapped across the field of view. Langley had a glimpse of a spacesuited figure hurtling out the smashed window, and Marin writhing in its arms. Other police were charging after it, firing wildly.

Then, slowly, there was silence.

The guard bowed. “They're gone now, sir. Come on out if you wish.”

Langley stepped into the shambles of his living room. There was a haze of smoke, burned plastic, the thin bitter reek of ozone. Furniture was trampled wreckage between the bulky, armored shapes which filled the chamber.

“What happened?” he yelled. “In God's name, what happened?”

“Easy, sir.” The squad commander threw back his helmet; the shaven head looked tiny, poking out of the metal and fabric that encased his body. “You're all right. Would you like a sedative?”

“I asked you what happened!” Langely wanted to smash the impassive face. “Go on, tell me—I order you.”

“Very good, sir. Two small, armed spaceships attacked us just outside.” The commander pointed to the sharded window. “While one engaged our boats, the other discharged several men in space armor with antigravity flying units, who broke into the suite. Some of them stood off our reinforcements coming through the door, one of them grabbed your slave. Then we rallied, more men came, and the enemy retreated. No casualties on either side, I believe. It was a very brief action. Luckily they failed to get you, sir.”

“Who were they?”

“I don't know, sir. Their equipment was not standard for any known military or police force. I think one of our aircraft has slapped a tracer beam on them, but it can't follow them outside the atmosphere and that's doubtless where they'll go. But relax, sir. You're safe.”

Yeah. Safe.
Langley choked and turned away. He felt drained of strength.

Chanthavar showed up within an hour. His face was carefully immobile as he surveyed the ruin. “They got away, all right,” he said. “But it doesn't matter too much, since they failed.”

“Who were they, do you know?” asked Langley dully.

“No, I couldn't say. Probably Centaurian, possibly Society. It'll be investigated, of course.” Chanthavar struck a cigarette. “In a way, it's a hopeful sign. When a spy resorts to strong-arm methods, he's usually getting desperate.”

“Look here.” Langley grabbed his arm. “You've got to find them. You've got to get that girl back.”

Chanthavar drew hard on his cigarette, sucking in his cheeks till the high bones stood out. His eyes were speculative on the American. “So she means that much to you already?” he asked.

“No! Well, damn it forever, it's plain decency! You can't let her be torn apart by them, looking for something she doesn't know.”

“She's only a slave,” shrugged Chanthavar. “Apparently she was snatched impulsively when they were repelled from your quarters. It doesn't mean a thing. I'll give you a duplicate of her if it's that important to you.”

“No!”

“All right, have it your way. But if you try to trade information for her—”

“I won't,” said Langley. His lie had become a mechanical reflex. “I haven't anything to trade—not yet, anyway.”

“I'll do everything in my power,” said Chanthavar. He clapped Langley's shoulder with a brief surprising friendliness. “Now back to bed for you. I prescribe twelve hours' worth of sleep drug.”

Langley took it without protest. It would be something to escape the sense of his own utter helplessness. He fell into an abyss without dreams, without memory.

Waking, he found that repairs had been made while he slept; the fight last night might never have happened. Afternoon sunlight gleamed off the ships patrolling beyond his window.

His mind gnawed the problem like a starving dog with an old bone from which all nourishment has gone. Marin … Because she had come near him, she was gone into darkness. Because she had been kind to him, she was given over to fear and captivity and torment.

Was it only that she looked like Peggy? Was it herself? Was it the principle of the thing? Whatever the anguish in him derived from, it was there.

He thought of calling Brannoch, calling Valti, throwing his accusation' into their faces and—and what? They would deny it. Several times he called Chanthavar's office, to be informed by a maddeningly polite secretary that he was out on business. He smoked endlessly, paced the floor, threw himself into a chair and got up again. Now and then he ran through his whole stock of curses and obscenities. None of it helped.

Night came, and he drugged himself into another long sleep. Drugs might be the way he ended up—or suicide, quicker and cleaner. He thought of stepping out on his balcony and over the side. That would finish the whole mess. A well-designed robot would mop up his spattered remnants and for him this universe would no longer exist.

In the afternoon, a call came. He sprang for the phone, stumbled, fell to the floor and got up swearing. The hand that switched it on shook uncontrollably.

Chanthavar's face smiled with an unusual warmth. “I've got good news for you, Captain,” he said. “We've found the girl.”

Briefly, his mind would not accept it. The weary groove of futility was worn so deep that he could not climb out. He stared, open-mouthed, hearing the words as if from far away.

“She was sitting on a bridgeway, rather dazed, when picked up. Post-anesthetic reaction. She's coming out of it already. There was no deep mental probing done, I'm sure, perhaps only a mild narcosynthesis—No harm done at all that I can see. She's been unconscious all the time. Doesn't know a thing. I'm sending her over now.” Chanthavar grinned. “Enjoy yourself!”

The impact trickled slowly through the barriers of craziness. Langley knelt, wanting to cry or pray or both. But nothing would come out. Then he began to laugh.

The hysteria had faded by the time she entered. But it was the most natural thing in the world to embrace her. She held him close, shaking with reaction.

Finally they sat together on a couch, holding hands. She told him what she could. “I was seized, carried into the ship. Someone pointed a stun gun at me and then there's nothing more. The next thing I remember is sitting on the bridgeway bench, being carried along. I must have been put onto it, led there in a sleepwalking state and left. I felt dizzy. Then a policeman came and took me to Minister Chanthavar's office. He asked me questions, had me given a medical checkup, and said nothing seemed wrong. So he sent me back here.”

“I don't get it,” said Langley. “I don't understand it at all.”

“Minister Chanthavar said apparently I was taken on the chance I might be of value—when they failed to get you. I was kept unconscious so I wouldn't be able to identify anybody, asked a few simple questions under narcosynthesis and released when it was clear I could be of no help.” She sighed, smiling a little tremulously at him. “I'm glad they let me go.” He knew she didn't mean it only for herself.

He swallowed the drink he had prepared and sat without speaking for a while. His mind felt oddly clarified, but the past hours of nightmare underlay it.

So this was what it meant. This was what Sol and Centauri stood for: a heartless power game, where no one counted, no act was too vile. The moment one side felt it had an advantage, it would be on the other's back, and the struggle would lay planets waste. This was what he was supposed to sanction.

He still knew little about the Society; they were surely no collection of pure-minded altruists. But it did seem that they were neutral, that they had no lunacies about empire. Surely they knew more of the galaxy, had a better chance of finding him some young world where he could again be a man. His choice was clear. It would run him through a gamut of death, but there are worse things than extinction.

He looked at the clean profile of the girl beside him. He wanted to ask her what she thought, what she desired. He hardly knew her at all. But he couldn't, with the listening mechanical ears in the room. He would have to decide for her.

She met his gaze with calm green eyes. “I wish you'd tell me what's going on, Edwy,” she said. “I seem to be as exposed as you in any case, and I'd like to know.”

He gave in and told her of Saris Hronna and the hunt for him. She grasped the idea at once, nodded without excitement, and refrained from asking him if he knew an answer or what he intended to do. “It is a very large thing,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Langley. “And it's going to get, a lot bigger before long.”

X

Three might be eyes as well as ears in the walls. Langley went to bed shortly after sunset. Spy-beams went right through the communicator, Valti had said, but he wore his pajamas anyway. He lay for an hour, threshing about as if unable to get to sleep. Then he commanded loud music. The recorded caterwauling should drown out a low-pitched conversation.

He hoped the stomach-knotting tension in him didn't show on his face.

Scratching, as if after an itch, he pressed the stud. Then he struck a cigarette and lay waiting.

The tiny voice was a vibration inside him. He thought about sonic beams heterodyned and focused on his skull-hones. It was distorted, but he'd know Valti's phrasing anywhere:

“Ah, Captain Langley. You do me an unprecedented honor. It is a pleasure even to be routed out of a snug bed to hear you. May I advise that you speak with your lips closed? The transmission will be clear enough.”

“All right.” There was one hopeless question which had to be asked. “I'm prepared to bargain with you—but do you have Blaustein and Matsumoto?”

“I do not, Captain. Will you take my word for that?”

“I … reckon so. Okay. I'll tell you where I think Saris is—mind you, it's only an informed guess—and I'll help you find him if possible. In return, I want your best efforts to rescue my friends, together with the money, protection, and transportation you offered, both for' myself and one other person, a slave girl who's in this apartment with me.”

It was hard to make out whether the exultation which must be leaping through that gross form had entered the voice: “Very good, Captain. I assure you, you will not regret this. Now as to practical considerations, you must be removed without trace.”

“I'm not sure just how that little thing's going to be done, Valti. I think I'm more or less under house arrest.”

“Nevertheless, you shall get out tonight. Let me think … In two hours, you and the girl will stroll out onto the balcony. For Father's sake, make it look natural! Remain there, in plain sight from above, no matter what happens.”

“Okay. Two hours—2347 by my clock, right? See you!”

Now he had to wait. Langley got out another cigarette and lay as if listening to the music.
Two hours! I'll be one gray-haired wreck before then.

Time crawled, it took forever to get by a minute. Langley swore, went into the living room, and dialed for a book. Basic modern physics. At the rate time was going, two hours would be enough to get a Ph.D. He grew suddenly aware that he had been staring at the same scanned page for fifteen minutes. Hastily he dialed the next. Even if it wasn't registering, he ought to look as if it were.

He looked at the clock and felt his belly muscles tighten. Twenty minutes to go.

He had to get Marin outside. He couldn't leave her in this hellhole, and he had to do it in a way that the observers would consider unremarkable. For a while he sat thinking. The only way was one he didn't like. A far New England ancestor compressed angry lips and tried to stop him. But—

He walked over to the door of her room. It opened for him, and he stood looking down on her. She was asleep. The coppery hair spilled softly around a face which held peace. He tried not to remember Peggy, and touched her arm.

She sat up. “Oh … Edwy.” Blinking her eyes open: “What is it?”

“Sorry to wake you,” he said awkwardly. “I couldn't sleep. I feel like hell. Come talk to me, will you?”

She regarded him with something like compassion. “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, of course.” Throwing a cloak over her thin nightgown, she followed him onto the balcony.

There were stars overhead. Against the remote blaze of city lights swam the black shark-form of a patrol ship. A small wind ruffled his hair. He wondered just where Lora stood—not far from the ancient site of Winnipeg, wasn't it?

Marin leaned against his side, and he put an arm about her waist. The vague light showed a wistful, uncertain curve to her mouth.

“It's nice out,” he said banally.

“Yes …” She was waiting for something. He knew what it was, and so did Chanthavar's observers sitting at their screens. God, how he wanted to get away from their eyes!

He stopped and made himself kiss her. She responded gently, a little clumsily as yet. Then he looked at her for a long while and couldn't say anything.

“I'm sorry,” he mumbled at last.