The Chalice of Death (3 page)

And then came the depressing news that
Science Fiction Adventures
was going out of business, for reasons unconnected with the quantity of material I was contributing to it. A lot of magazines folded in 1958, including a few that I never wrote for at all. What had done them in was the sudden collapse that summer of the American News Company, the giant (and allegedly mob-controlled) distributing company that was responsible for getting most of the science-fiction magazines of the day to the newsstands. When ANC went under, nearly all of the magazines in the s-f field died with it.

But Ace Books was still thriving, and I lost no time getting a slightly expanded version of “Shadow on the Stars” over to Don Wollheim, who bought it in April, 1958 and published it five months later under, of course, a different title—
Stepsons of Terra
. I didn't like it much, but arguing with Wollheim about titles was a little like arguing with God about the weather. You took what you got, and that was that. This time around, though, I have restored my original title. Don isn't here to say no, and my bibliographers will be able to figure things out.

There you have the story behind these three books. I went on writing books for Ace for another few years, but with decreasing frequency, because the death of most of the science-fiction magazines had led me to move out of s-f into a host of other fields of work. And by 1964, with my twelfth Ace book,
One of Our Asteroids Is Missing
, my career as a writer of Ace Double Books came to its end. I was finding new strengths as a writer, by that time, and was ready to move on to larger and better-paying publishing houses like Doubleday and Ballantine with books of a more complex sort. (Other writers Wollheim had developed, such as Philip K. Dick, John Brunner, and Samuel R. Delany, were beginning to move along also, and he was, with some justification, resentful of our departures from his list, but we were all young and ambitious and couldn't remain Ace authors forever.)

One of Our Asteroids Is Missing
appeared ten years and two months from that day in the fall of 1953 when, as a starry-eyed apprentice with dreams of selling a story some day running through his head, I had picked up that very first Ace Double science-fiction volume, the back-to-back van Vogt book. In that decade I had run the whole course from reader and collector to novice writer to successful professional, and my relationship with Ace and its editor Don Wollheim, was an essential step along the way. I'm pleased to see these early novels of mine, so important in my evolution as a writer, returning to print now after these many decades.

Robert Silverberg

January 2010

The Chalice of Death

To Isaac Asimov

Chapter One

It was midday on Jorus, and Hallam Navarre, Earthman to the Court, had overslept. He woke with an agonizing headache and a foul taste in his mouth. It had been a long night for the courtier, the night before—a night filled with strange golden out-system wines and less strange women of several worlds.

I must have been drugged
, Navarre thought. He had never overslept before.
Who would do something like that
? As the Overlord's Earthman, Navarre was due at the throne room by the hour when the blue rays of the sun first lit the dial in Central Plaza. Someone evidently wanted him to be late, this particular day.

Wearily, he sprang from bed, washed, dabbed depilatory on his gleaming scalp to assure it the hairlessness that was the mark of his station, and caught the ramp heading downstairs. His head was still throbbing.

A jetcab lurked hopefully in the street. Navarre leaped in and snapped, “To the palace!”

“Yes, sir.”

The driver was a Dergonian, his coarse skin a gentle green in color. He jabbed down on the control stud and the cab sprang forward.

The Dergonian took a twisting, winding route through Jorus City—past the multitudinous stinks of the Street of the Fishmongers, where the warm blue sunlight filtered in everywhere, and racks of drying finfish lay spread-winged in the sun, then down past the temple, through thronging swarms of midday worshippers, then a sharp right that brought the cab careening into Central Plaza.

The micronite dial in the heart of the plaza was blazing gold. Navarre cursed softly. He belonged at the Overlord's side, and he was late.

Earthmen were
never
late. Earthmen had a special reputation to uphold in the universe. Navarre's fertile mind set to work concocting a story to place before the Overlord when the inevitable query came.

“You have an audience with the Overlord?” the cabbie asked, breaking Navarre's train of thought.

“Not quite,” Navarre said wryly. He slipped back his hood, revealing his bald dome. “Look.”

The driver squinted flickeringly at the rear-view mirror and nodded at the sight of Navarre's shaven scalp. “Oh. The Earthman. Sorry I didn't recognize you, sir.”

“Quite all right. But get this crate moving; I'm due at court.”

“I'll do my best.”

But the Dergonian's best wasn't quite good enough. He rounded the Plaza, turned down into the Street of the Lords, charged full throttle ahead—

Smack into a parade.

The Legions of Jorus were marching. The jetcab came to a screeching halt no more than ten paces from a regiment of tusked Daborians marching stiffly along, carrying their blue-and-red flag mounted just beneath the bright purple of Jorus, tootling on their thin, whining electronic bagpipes. There were thousands of them.

“Guess it's tough luck, Sir Earthman,” the cabbie said philosophically. “The parade's going around the palace. It may take hours.”

Navarre sat perfectly still, meditating on the precarious position of an Earthman in a royal court of the Cluster. Here he was, remnant of a wise race shrouded in antiquity, relict of the warrior-kings of old—and he sat sweating in a taxi while a legion of tusked barbarians delayed his passage.

The cabbie opaqued his windows.

“What's that for?”

“We might as well be cool while we wait. This can take hours. I'll be patient if you will.”

“The hell you will,” Navarre snapped, gesturing at the still-running meter. “At two demiunits per minute I can rent a fine seat on the reviewing stand up there. Let me out of here.”

“But—”

“
Out
!”

Navarre leaned forward, slammed down the meter, cutting it short at thirty-six demiunits. He handed the driver a newly-minted semiunit piece.

“Keep the change. And thanks for the service.”

“A pleasure.” The driver made the formal farewell salute. “May I serve you again, Sir Earthman, and—”

“Sure,” Navarre said, and slipped out of the cab. A moment later he had to jump to one side as the driver activated his side blowers, clearing debris from the turbo-jets and incidentally spraying the Earthman with a cloud of fine particles of filth.

Navarre turned angrily, clapping a hand to his blaster, but the grinning cabbie was already scooting away in reverse gear. Navarre scowled. Behind the superficial mask of respect for the Earthmen, there was always a certain lack of civility that irked him. He was conscious of his ambiguous position in the galaxy, as an emissary from nowhere, as a native of a world long forgotten and which he himself had never seen.

Earth. It was not a planet any longer, but a frame of mind, a way of thinking. He was an Earthman, and thus valuable to the Overlord. But he could be replaced; there were other advisers nearly as shrewd.

Navarre fingered his bald scalp ruminatingly for a moment and flicked off his hood again. He started across the wide street.

The regiment of Daborians still stalked on—seven-foot humanoids with their jutting tusks polished brightly, their fierce beards combed. They marched in an unbreakable phalanx round and round the palace.

Damn parades anyway, Navarre thought. Foolish display, calculated to impress barbarians.

He reached the edge of the Daborian ranks. “Excuse me, please.”

He started to force his way between two towering, haughty artillery men. Without breaking step, a huge Daborian grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him back toward the street. An appreciative ripple of laughter went up from the onlookers as Navarre landed unsteadily on one leg, started to topple, and with a wild swing of his arms and three or four skipping steps, barely managed to remain upright.

“Let me through,” he snapped again, as a corps of tusked musicians came by. The Daborians merely ignored him. Navarre waited until a bagpiper went past, one long valved chaunter thrust between his tusks and hands flying over the electronic keyboard. Navarre grabbed the base of the instrument with both hands and rammed upward.

The Daborian let out a howl of pain and took a step backward as the sharp mouthpiece cracked soundly against his palate. Navarre grinned, slipped through the gap in the formation and kept on running. Behind him, the bag-piping rose to an angry wail, but none of the Daborians dared break formation to pursue the insolent Earthman.

He reached the steps of the palace. There were fifty-two of them, each a little wider and higher than the next. He was better than an hour late at the court. The Overlord would be close to a tantrum, and in all probability Kausirn, that sly Lyrellan, had taken ample advantage of the opportunity to work mischief.

Navarre only hoped the order for his execution had not yet been signed. There was no telling
what
the Overlord was likely to do under Kausirn's influence.

He reached the long black-walled corridor that led to the throne room somewhat out of breath and gasping. The pair of unemotional Trizian monoptics who guarded access to the corridor recognized him and nodded disapprovingly as he scooted past.

Arriving at the penultimate turn in the hall, he ducked into a convenience at the left and slammed the door. He was so late already that a few moments more couldn't aggravate the offense, and he wanted to look his best when he finally did make his belated appearance.

A couple of seconds in front of the brisk molecular flow of the Vibron left him refreshed, and he stopped panting for breath. He splashed water on his face, dried off, straightened his tunic, tied back his hood.

Then, stiffly, walking with a dignity he had not displayed a moment before, he stalked out and headed for the throne room.

The annunciator said, “Hallam Navarre, Earthman to the Overlord.”

Joroiran VII was on his throne, looking, as always, like a rather nervous butcher's apprentice elevated quite suddenly to galactic rank. He muttered a few words, and the micro-amplifier surgically implanted in his throat picked them up and tossed them at the kneeling Navarre.

“Enter, Earthman. You're late.”

The throne room was filled to bursting. This was Threeday—audience day—and commoners of all sizes and shapes thronged before the Overlord, desperately hoping that the finger of fate would light on them and bring them forward to plead their cause. It was Navarre's customary job to select those who were to address the Overlord, but he observed that today Kausirn, the Lyrellan, had taken over the task in his absence.

Navarre advanced toward the throne and abased himself before the purple carpet.

“You may rise,” Joroiran said in a casual tone. “The audience began more than an hour ago. You have been missed, Navarre.”

“I've been employed in Your Majesty's service all the while,” Navarre said. “I was pursuing that which may prove to be of great value to your Majesty—and to all of Jorus.”

Joroiran looked amused. “And what might that be?”

Navarre paused, drawing in breath, and prepared himself for the plunge. “I have discovered information that may lead to the Chalice of Life, my Overlord.”

To his surprise, Joroiran did not react at all; his mousy face revealed not the slightest trace of animation. Navarre blinked; the whopper was not going over.

But it was the Lyrellan who saved him, in a way. Leaning over, Kausirn whispered harshly, “He means the Chalice of
Death
, Majesty.”

“Death …?”

“Eternal life for Joroiran VII,” Navarre said ringingly. As long as he was going to make excuses for having overslept, he thought, he might as well make them good ones. “The Chalice holds death for some,” he said, “but life for thee.”

“Indeed,” the Overlord said. “You must talk to me of this in my chambers. But now, the audience.”

Navarre mounted the steps and took his customary position at the monarch's right; at least Kausirn had not appropriated
that
. But the Earthman saw that the Lyrellan's tapering nest of fingers played idly over the short-beam generator by which the hand of fate was brought to fall upon commoners. That meant Kausirn, not Navarre, would be selecting those whose cases were to be pleaded this day.

Looking into the crowd, Navarre picked out the bleak, heavily-bearded face of Domrik Carso. Carso was staring reproachfully at him, and Navarre felt a sudden stinging burst of guilt. He had promised to get Carso a hearing today; the burly half-breed lay under a sentence of banishment, but Navarre had lightly assured him that revokement would be a simple matter.

But not now. Not with Kausirn wielding the blue beam. Kausirn had no desire to have an Earthman's kin plaguing him here on Jorus; Carso would rot in the crowd before the Lyrellan chose
his
case to be pleaded.

Navarre met Carso's eyes.
Sorry
, he tried to say. But Carso stared stiffly through him. Navarre knew he had failed him, and there was no gainsaying that.

“Proceed with your tale,” Joroiran said.

Navarre looked down and saw a pale Joran in the pleader's square below, bathed in the blue light of chance. The man glanced upward at the command and said, “Shall I continue or begin over, Highness?”

“Begin over. The Earthman may be interested.”

“May it please the Overlord and his advisers, my name is Lugfor of Zaigla Street, grocer and purveyor of food. I have been accused falsely of thinning my measure, but—”