Caravansary rooms didn't have built-in locks. There was a rugged staple and strap on both the inside and the outside of each door. The occupant provided his own padlock to secure the space.
Mark's lock was Terran, sturdy and expensive. It was programmable to a variety of different styles, but he'd set it to open from the pressure of both his thumbs together. He unlocked Room 36, switched on the tiny area light he carried in a pocket, and closed the door behind him. He dropped the padlock's hasp through the staple from the other side, though he didn't bother to lock it.
The room's interior was about as inviting as a crocodile's gullet.
Rooms in the caravansary were six feet by ten, with a half loft overhead reached by a metal ladder. Occupants could use the low benches cast into the back and side walls to sit, sleep, or place their goods out of the slight pool of water in the middle of the floor.
There were no lights, no running water, and no toilet facilities of any kind. At the rear of the caravansary were a common latrine and eight shower heads that ran constantly at full force—Dittersdorf Major had no shortage of fresh water.
The showers were, however, cold water only. Mark had learned that shortly after he arrived.
Mark had prepared for his journey to the frontier with the same degree of organization that had earned him his degree. He'd read—sleep-learned, for the most part—both official and private accounts of life on the frontier, then listed the items he would need.
Mayor Heinrich Biber's twelve large cases might have been enough to hold the proposed gear; then again, they might not. The trouble was that "the frontier" was an expanding region, not a place.
Mark's information about Kilbourn was slight and certainly out of date if the planet really had a boarding school for "delicately brought-up" girls, as Dr. Jesilind had implied. Besides, even if Mark had really been sure of the conditions at his intended destination, there were the intermediate landfalls like Dittersdorf to consider.
The second time through, Mark cut his list to what would fit in one fifty-pound pack. That was the most weight he was sure he could handle by himself in rugged conditions. Everything he carried was rugged, weatherproof, and so far as possible multifunctional. The hypnagogue, for example, could project text as holograms as well as sleep-teaching the contents of a book chip, and it functioned as a database.
Also, Mark brought money. The line of credit from his father was long enough for him to book passage on a yacht if he needed to (and if there were any yachts around, which there certainly weren't any place Mark had seen since he left Landingplace on Quelhagen). Lucius didn't approve of Mark's choice, but he stuck to the bargain he'd made with his son: a year on the frontier, followed by either apprenticeship as an attorney on Quelhagen or a complete end to monetary support. It was hard to tell what Lucius thought about the details, but he'd never been one to stint with his backing for something he'd agreed to do.
Room 36 would sleep six merchants and their goods in as much comfort as damp concrete could offer. Several of the caravansary's rooms were now occupied by extended families of a dozen or more, squalling and quarreling in search of a new life at the lowest possible cost. Mark didn't want a companion and the room's slight cost wasn't a factor, but he sometimes wondered if a smaller space might not have oppressed him less.
Sighing, Mark took his hypnagogue from its stiffened pouch on the side of his pack. Three landfalls out from Quelhagen he'd picked up a book chip on the geography and history of the Digits. This seemed to be a good time to read it.
He slipped the book into the socket of his hypnagogue. The chip wasn't manufactured on Earth or Quelhagen, so he'd been a little surprised to learn that it fit his viewer. He'd projected the first pages of text as holograms above the viewer when he bought it in a spaceport jumble shop, but he hadn't had a chance to sleep-learn the book.
Mark lay down on his mattress, a thin pad of closed-cell foam, arranged the hypnagogue's induction pads on his temples, and cued "Greenwood" to learn something about Bannock and Jesilind. When the index beeped, he turned the unit on. The hypnagogue matched and smoothed the alpha waves of his brain, then began to transfer the book's contents directly to his cerebral cortex.
Mark wasn't really asleep, let alone unconscious. He was vaguely aware of concrete gleaming around him in his light's harsh illumination, and he could switch off the hypnagogue at any point. His intellect was disconnected unless he made a determined effort of will, however.
The hypnagogue distorted a reader's time sense, but it couldn't have been long before Mark realized there was something wrong with the way his viewer read the chip. Snatches of implanted thought reached the surface layers of Mark's mind:
The Protector of Hestia, a Satanic figure with horns and glowing eyes, scattered settlement grants among swarms of dwarfish, misshapen creatures who poured gold into his palm in return. In another part of the mental image, winged, haloed angels in shining armor from the planet Zenith were in battle with the dark legions of worlds settled by the Asian Sphere. Behind these angels, the dwarfs spread across Greenwood despite anguished looks from the hard-pressed Zeniths.
Mark dabbed his finger at the viewer's switch. The fantasy images stopped, but he couldn't sit up when he first tried to. "Wowee!" he said.
The software was close but not quite the same as Mark's hypnagogue had been designed for. The unit had filled his head with the personified moods and emotions of the book's author rather than the stated facts on which those beliefs were based. The influx was totally disorienting.
"Wowee," Mark repeated softly.
He'd thought he'd be able to pick up better information about the frontier as he got closer to it, but he'd found very few books for sale after he left Quelhagen. Part of the problem was that what book chips there were had been published in quirky local formats, so that you had to have a special viewer to read them.
Mark had shopped for information on every planet where he laid over, but he'd found only one place that had both books and viewers of the same style for sale. That was Heavenly Host, a world settled by a sect which believed rocks had souls and which published tracts explaining its faith on carbon-based chips. Using silicon would have been sacrilege.
Mark hadn't bought any of their material.
When Mark found a geography text published in standard Atlantic Alliance format that his hypnagogue could read, he'd thought it too good to be true. As usual, such apparent windfalls were too good to be true.
The world spun for a moment. When it stopped, Mark was no longer seeing double, though he was a little dizzy. Wowee.
He got up from the bench very carefully. Normally hypnagogue software either worked or it didn't, so this had been a real surprise. There were probably people who'd pay for the experience. A different subject matter would have more appeal, though.
Despite the book not being suitable for sleep-learning, Mark could still read about Greenwood. Not in this room, though. He picked up the viewer and went out into the domed court again. It wasn't so much that he wanted company; he just didn't want to be alone with the echoes of heaven and hell fighting in his head.
The four Zeniths had finished their meal and were passing a bottle around. Mark tried to imagine them with wings and haloes. He couldn't, but at least the effort made him smile.
Somebody had left a heavy metal bucket overturned on the other side of the circle of benches. Mark went to it, checked for other claimants, and sat down. He switched on his viewer, this time using it to project text in air-formed holograms instead of as a hypnagogue.
Nearby, two men with linked arms sang, "From this valley they say you are going," lugubriously. Then they sang, "From this valley they say you. are going," again. Each man held an empty bottle in his free hand. Their voices weren't bad.
Mark began to read about the settlement of Greenwood. The Alliance administered newly discovered worlds through the protectors of established colonies. There was no point in sending personnel to an unoccupied planet, and it wasn't practical to govern directly from Paris a place weeks or months out in the interstellar boondocks.
Grants of extraterritorial authority to the protectors were generally fuzzy, because nobody on Earth really had a clue about what was going on at the frontier. Inevitably, some protectors exceeded their proper authority. One of the worst examples of this was the long-serving Protector Greenwood of Hestia. He'd sold settlement grants for a planet that was clearly under the jurisdiction of the Protector of Zenith. To add insult to injury, Greenwood had named the planet after himself.
According to the book's author, Greenwood had gotten away with this arrant banditry—besides payments to the Alliance, the grantees paid fees to Protector Greenwood himself—because the protectors of Zenith during the period were lackadaisical. Furthermore, Zenith's chief citizens were wholly occupied in prosecuting the war against proxies of the Eastern Sphere.
Mark snorted and set down the viewer. That wasn't how he'd learned history on Quelhagen. The chief citizens of Zenith had always been concerned first with avoiding risk to their own skins. Their closely second desire was to make money. So long as the Proxy Wars went on, there wasn't enough money in those settlement grants to make them worth arguing about. Greenwood was wide open to Eastern attack, particularly before Alliance forces finally captured the huge Eastern base on Dittersdorf Minor. When the fighting stopped, it was time for Zenith money-grubbers to get interested.
Mark started to read again. His surroundings were a living hum, but he wasn't aware of any single aspect of them.
Somebody kicked the bucket out from under him.
Mark jumped upright, squarely on his feet. The bucket clattered from the bench between the two friends as they moaned, "From this valley . . ."
Mayor Biber's four baggage handlers ringed Mark. The leader, Griggs, looked disgruntled. He'd obviously figured that when he kicked Mark's seat away, Mark would fall on his ass.
That would have been Mark's guess too. It looked like instinct and his gymnastics training had paid off. The Zeniths didn't seem about to applaud, though.
"What you reading, cutie?" one of the men said. He flicked a hand at the hypnagogue. Mark jerked it clear. The Zenith behind him jolted him forward hard; Griggs pushed him back.
The caravansary watchman hunched down in his kiosk to avoid seeing what was going on in the common court. He wasn't armed, so there wasn't a lot he could have done anyway, but Mark would have appreciated even a shout just now.
The Zeniths' breath stank of the liquor they'd been drinking. Based on the smell, Mark suspected that a lab report on the booze would read: YOUR HORSE HAS GONORRHEA.
This was a bad situation, and it was likely to get worse fast. Other travelers moved quietly away from Mark and the Zeniths. Even the two singers stood up and wove across the common court toward the latrine.
"I don't like cute boys, fellows," Griggs said ironically to his companions. "Do you guys like cute boys?"
"Gentlemen, I'm very sorry if I've given you offense," Mark said. He tried to keep eye contact with Griggs while he folded the hypnagogue shut. It was a fairly rugged unit, but it could be broken if somebody tried hard enough.
So could Mark himself.
"Don't have no use a'tall," another Zenith said. He swept a big boot at Mark's ankle to knock his feet out from under him. Mark skipped over the kick. The Zenith swore and punched Mark hard on the shoulder.
There was absolutely no reason for what was happening, except that Mark had been reading. And, of course, that he was available.
Dr. Jesilind opened the door of Room 14 and peered out furtively. He caught Mark's eye for an instant, then ducked back. Jesilind's lock clacked shut audibly.
"Let's see what you got there, cutie," Griggs said. He stepped forward, reaching for the hypnagogue. Mark dodged between Griggs and another Zenith. He walked—just short of ran—toward Room 36. He wished he hadn't locked the door when he came out.
"Hey, where you think you're going?" A Zenith demanded, grabbing Mark's arm. Mark tried to shrug loose. He couldn't. Two of the luggage handlers were a bit bigger than Mark, while Griggs and the fellow holding Mark's arm outweighed him by a good hundred pounds.
"Sir, I must ask you to let go of my sleeve!" Mark said in a voice that snapped with authority. Only moral authority, though, and that wasn't what was called for at the moment.
The Zenith laughed and released Mark. They were ringing him again, tighter now so that he couldn't duck through them.
"Look, I'm going to tell you what, punk," Griggs said. "I don't like cute boys, and I'll bet you don't like real men. So I'm going to let you punch me, just as hard as you can. And then I'm going to punch you. That seem fair?"
Mark slipped the hypnagogue into a side pocket. This isn't really happening. . . . But of course it was.
"Sir, can't I buy you a drink?" Mark said, praying that his voice was steady.
"He had his chance, boss," a Zenith said. "Slug him."
Mark grimaced and with all his strength punched Griggs on the jaw. The shock went all the way to Mark's shoulder. His hand hurt as if he'd slammed it in a car door.
Griggs shook his head. All four Zeniths laughed uproariously.
"Your turn, Griggsie!" a rough said gleefully.
Mark stood stiff, his hands at his sides. His eyes were open, though nothing they saw was penetrating to his brain. All Mark had left was his dignity as a gentleman of Quelhagen. Griggs would take that from him at any moment, but Mark wasn't going to give it up by screaming or flailing uselessly at the Zeniths.
"Let's see what the little guy had for breakfast, hey fellers?" Griggs said. He drew back a big scarred fist to swing at Mark's belly.
"Let's not," Yerby Bannock said from behind Griggs. Mark's eyes focused. Bannock grabbed the two bigger Zeniths by the neck and slammed their heads together.
The impact sounded like a maul hitting a tree trunk. The men dropped. They couldn't have been more limp if Bannock had sucked all the bones from their bodies.
One of the remaining Zeniths put his hand into his jacket pocket. Bannock caught his wrist, then reached into the pocket himself. He came out with a shiny pistol. He dropped it on the floor while the rough punched vainly at him.
For illumination at night, the caravansary mounted light sconces above the doorways of alternate pairs of rooms. Bannock transferred his grip to the scruff of the would-be gunman's neck and carried him toward the nearest sconce.
The fourth Zenith snatched at the fallen pistol. Mark hit him over the head with the metal bucket. It rang echoingly in the big domed room.
Bannock hung the back of his man's jacket over the light sconce, then stepped away. The fellow squalled and kicked violently, seven feet in the air. He could get free easily enough by slipping his arms out of the sleeves, but he'd be very lucky not to land on his head when he dropped.
The man Mark had hit turned slowly toward him. He held the pistol, but his eyes were glazed. Mark stepped back and with all his strength swung the bucket overhead. It bonged and bounced from the fellow's skull. The Zenith remained standing.
"Better hit him again, kid," Bannock suggested. "They don't give no points for neatness in a brawl."
"No," Mark gasped. He was exhausted. His right hand throbbed so fiercely from punching Griggs that he had to let go of the bucket's vibrating handle. "I can't."
I won't. The Zenith bled from a cut scalp. His face streamed blood. It made Mark sick to look at him.
"Well, it's your choice," Bannock said. He took off his poncho. Bannock didn't look particularly worked up, but he'd popped all the buttons of his leather vest.
The Zenith's eyes rolled up. He dropped the pistol and fell over beside it.
Mark set the bucket on the floor. He had to brace himself on it before he could straighten up. Rage and fear had wrung more of the strength out of him than physical effort had, though he'd swung the bucket with everything he had. The thick metal was dished in as though a vehicle had driven over it.
"Know where this lot bunks, lad?" Bannock said as he lifted Griggs and the other big man by their collars.
"They're in thirty-seven, sir," Mark said. He took a deep breath. "Beside me."
Bannock walked toward Room 37, dragging the unconscious Zeniths. "You've learned a valuable lesson, lad," he said. "Don't you never hit a man with your bare hand unless your feet are nailed to the floor of an empty room."
He looked over his shoulder, smiled, and added, "And particularly don't hit him on the jaw. You can hurt yourself bad that way."
"I think I did," Mark muttered. He could still flex his right hand, though. It hurt like blazes and had already started to swell, but he guessed he hadn't actually broken anything.
Bannock dropped the roughs in front of their door and looked at the lock. "Just the sort of trash you'd figure no-hopers from Zenith to be using," he sneered.
He gripped the padlock with one huge hand and twisted. A piece of the hasp flew off with a snap and pinged nervously on the floor.
Bannock tossed the remainder of the lock after it. Mark gaped. A force of nature, all right.
Bannock pulled the door open, reached down, and threw Griggs inside. He tossed the other big man after the first, then sauntered over to where Mark's victim lay. The door stood wide behind him.
"I used to be real good at this," Bannock said regretfully. He lifted the flaccid Zenith by the belt, his center of balance. "I've slowed down, though, and I don't know when the last time I cleaned out a tavern was."
Bannock lofted the unconscious man ten feet through the air. He vanished into Room 37, landing with a crash among his fellows and the Mayor's baggage.
The remaining Zenith stopped struggling. He hung rigid from the light sconce, obviously terrified of drawing further attention to himself.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Bannock," Mark said. He didn't have his voice quite under control. There were too many hormones surging through his bloodstream. "Your help was a, a godsend."
"Tsk," said Bannock, slamming the door of Room 37. "I appreciate the chance to bring dirt from Zenith to a better understanding of their place in the universe."
He looked around and murmured, "Now, what'll we—yeah, that'll do nicely."
The corner of a heavy cart had cracked the doorpost of a nearby room. Over the years, further impacts and water seeping into the weak places had flaked off most of the concrete covering a reinforcing rod. Bannock scuffed the rod with his boot heel to twist it out from the wall. He bent, gripped the end of the three-eighths-inch steel, and jerked it fiercely back and forth until a foot of it snapped off in his hand.
"Whooee!" Bannock said, juggling the rod one palm to the other. "Tell me that don't heat metal up, working that way!"
He thrust the rod over Room 37's strap and through the staple, then bent the rod into a loop. The room was sealed until somebody cut the rod. Or somebody as strong as Yerby Bannock straightened the steel out again, which seemed about as likely as a sunny day on Dittersdorf Major.
Bannock dusted his hands together. He grinned up at the man on the light sconce. The Zenith pretended to be catatonic, squeezing his eyes more tightly shut.
"Sir, you're amazingly strong!" Mark blurted.
"Ah, but you're the one who opened the dishes so I didn't have to tear the box apart, lad," Bannock said, though he was obviously pleased at the compliment. "Amy couldn't have been happier to see the plates, neither. Said she'd heard of such but never thought she'd see it for herself."
Mark saw the pistol glittering on the concrete. He picked it up and looked at it curiously. The short barrel ended in a needle spike.
Bannock shook his head. "Nerve scrambler," he said. "Not supposed to kill you, but this one likely would anyhow seeing's it's such a piss-poor piece of junk. Don't you mess with it, lad."
He took the scrambler from Mark, held it momentarily in both hands, and twisted. Bits of the weapon showered to the floor.
"How did you do that?" Mark said.
Bannock shrugged. "Well," he said, "you want to make sure you don't have your hand over the barrel because sometimes they go off. Time or two I was too drunk to remember that."
He opened his left palm toward Mark. The flesh was scarred like wax heated until bubbles rose and burst.
Dr. Jesilind emerged from his room. "Ah, Yerby, you're back," he said with a false brightness. He looked around the common area, obviously surprised not to see Mayor Biber's servants. When he noticed the man hanging from the light sconce, he said, "Yerby, you've been fighting again!"
"Well, not like you'd really call fighting, Doctor," Bannock said in some embarrassment. "Nothing undignified, like."
Mark stared at Jesilind. He'd have thrown me to the wolves to save his own skin! The doctor flushed as if he'd heard the unspoken words.
"I found a place we can eat all together," Bannock said. "Not Kilbourn quality, maybe, but I guess it'll do better than cold rations in this box."
He looked up at the caravansary's domed ceiling and grimaced. "Like a tomb, this place is. A big concrete tomb."
Mark suddenly relaxed. OK, Jesilind wasn't a hero, but neither was Mark Maxwell. If the doctor had come out shouting and swinging when he saw what was happening, two innocent men instead of one would have the tar whaled out of them by thugs from Zenith. It hadn't been Jesilind's fault.
"Say, you'll come along with us, won't you, Mark?" Bannock said. "It is Mark, right?"
Mark opened his mouth. He was used to being "Mr. Maxwell," to people he'd known for years. That was normal politeness on Quelhagen.
A frown as momentary as riffles on a pond crossed Dr. Jesilind's face. He didn't say anything.
Mark wasn't on Quelhagen anymore. "I'd be honored, Yerby," he said. "But you'll have to let me pay for the meal as a small recompense for you saving me a moment ago."
Bannock clapped Mark on the shoulders. The big frontiersman really did know his own strength—Mark had seen how great that strength was when it wasn't being tightly controlled—but he had an inflated notion of how strong normal people were, too. The friendly gesture almost knocked Mark down.
"You pay?" Yerby snorted. "When, besides them plates for Amy, you got me the best exercise I've had since I left Greenwood? Your money's no good when I'm around, boy! Now, let's go introduce you to my sister."