Prelude
From the moment he landed on Surcease, Randolph Tarney had been afraid. A sense of dread had been building within him since the time, days before, he had walked into the passenger starship Beyond Sorrow, bound for this central world of the Castor/Pollux Sector.
At first it had been exciting to hear his native language again, for he had been born on one of the outlying planets of this Sector. But conversation had not gone well. The passengers travelling with him had been listless and demoralized. Most were oddly gaunt, and many limped from a disfigurement of the lower leg, a prominent bulge that was only partly hidden by the pantaloons they affected. Tarney had been puzzled and disturbed; he had wondered what disease or environmental mutation he might find on Surcease. Naturally garrulous, he had sought out first one, then another of the passengers, but there was something haunting in their eyes, and they responded in monosyllables, or not at all.
Tarney was looking in particular for drugs. The Bodyguard Guild had studied the decay in the Castor/Pollux Sector. Com Central, the galaxy’s major information source, had scanned its trillions of informational levels and found no evidence of a cosmic disaster in that Sector—sudden white hole formation or a nova blast of hard radiation, for example—nor any sign of plague or unusual political repression. The likeliest cause, based on weighted attention to past rumor: the massive, endemic use of some new and ambition-stripping drug, possibly the Andalian lichen derivative called Candy. But why had the problem not reached a high index in the Galactic Concourse newscasts? Why, nowhere in Surceasean news, was Candy or any other drug identified, or even alluded to? Why did the news almost never mention the Surceasean Sector at all?
But statistics had told a tale, to eyes trained to read them and minds capable of seeing within them. Sector industrial output: fading. Trade: fading. Contributions to the arts: disappearing. Gross Sector Output (GSO): plunging.
The Bodyguard Guild had been interested. It had recently merged with the Guild of Thieves, and the Thieves had made it their frequent business to infiltrate drug operations, siphon off the profits, and closed the druggies down.
Now, as the ship-to-shore shuttle touched the tarmac, Tarney felt an immediate prickling in the nape of his neck. The ship’s shuttle had landed him in the most active spaceport on the planet, which itself was a sector capital; yet there had been few ships in orbit, and fewer shuttles on the ground. The terminal was almost deserted, cleaning robots moving listlessly about. Tarney cleared through automatic customs, his short, black body and his luggage scanned, inventoried and analyzed, and walked toward the plate walkway leading to the main terminal. Pastel colors surrounded him, but they were overlaid by a patina of yellowish film. Once Tarney walked past a cleaning robot bumping against a wall, again and again, and no service units in sight.
The prickling intensified, and he felt his warrior-trained body relax into preparation, summoning all its powers of self-protection. In his mind, he felt go up a wavering Shield, a Shield that had taken him eighteen months to learn, but which he was far from completely mastering.
The same eerie stillness dogged him out of the terminal. He had booked into an in-town hotel, and now from the automatic ground car he stared at the sprawling city around him, and wondered. It was mid-afternoon on a weekday, but he saw few people abroad on this level, though it was a fine day, green-hued clouds of water vapor puffing gracefully in a cobalt sky. The buildings he could see were low-slung—by planetary ordinance, he understood—but had an air of neglect, as if a ghetto had spread like a cancer to engulf the entire city. It was a highly carbonaceous world and the buildings were graced with a wood facade, but what stain or paint each had once sported was now spotted or chipped and rotting away. The buildings seemed too low and too few for a human city this size, until, coming to the top of an incline, Tarney looked over and realized that much of the city was below apparent ground level.
Tarney spent only a few moments in the autohotel—just long enough to stow his luggage. Then he began to prowl.
# # # # #
“Ding syrup,” Tarney said, “is the sweetest thing in all the galaxy. Next to it, Earth’s maple syrup tastes like urine. F’rup syrup tastes like industrial waste. There’s nothing like ding in the known universe. I sell it, and I can’t lose. When I let people taste it, people buy.”
The barhands watched him lugubriously. Tarney ordered another round.
“And that’s why I’m here,” he said, slapping his dark palm on the charge plate. “Surcease needs ding; my company is willing to sell the first shipment below cost, because we know that once anyone tastes it, they will want more. As I said, we can’t lose.”
One of the barhands stirred. “You think so,” he said, holding his glass under the automatic spout. “Dem.” The drink Tarney had paid for spilled out into the glass, filling it half full.
The barhand drained the glass. His voice was cultured, but his face was white and emaciated and he was nearly in rags. Once he had been a big man, and the bony frame was still broad, but he was stooped now and his hair had receded until you could draw a line over the top of his scalp from ear to ear without encountering a hair. His right leg held the odd deformity that Tarney had seen on almost all the people of Surcease. The dem—nearly pure alcohol flavored with a whiff of musk, the thought of which made Tarney gag inside—was having no perceptible effect.
“I know so,” the little black man said heartily. Another barhand, this one a woman, was standing at the automatic spout. “Aye, have another one,” Tarney said. “There’s plenty more where it came from.” He slapped the charge plate again.
The balding man said: “You won’t find any takers on Surcease, mister. We got something a lot sweeter than any syrup ever made.”
“Now, my friend, that’s hard for me to believe,” Tarney said, putting a friendly arm around the other’s shoulder and looking up at him. He winked broadly at the barhand. “Ding is sweeter than sex, my friend. Once you try it, my company knows that you will be hooked. That’s why they let me pass out free samples. It’s expensive stuff, but they don’t care. It’s not the first taste that makes the profit.”
“Will my Ressie be hooked too?” the barhand said. The people crowding around the automatic spout hooted loudly, catcalling in cacophony.
“Your Ressie?” Tarney said.
“Blackie here, he don’t have a Ressie,” the woman called. She was weaving slightly, stringy grey-streaked hair peeking out under a scarf. Tarney looked at the crowd; its character had undergone a sudden, subtle change. In the eyes now looking at him, he saw ... What? Sadness? Or, for heaven’s sake, pity?
The balding man said: “Blackie, we got to get you a Ressie. Then you’ll see what your ding syrup is worth around here.” It seemed to Tarney that the crowd gave a collective sneer.
“What’s a Ressie?” he asked again.
“Take him downtown,” someone said.
The big, balding man reached for Tarney’s arm. “Wait,” Tarney said, almost desperately. “I want you to taste ding. Then you’ll know.” He drew a vial from his bodice pocket.
They passed it around. One after another, without bothering to wipe the bottle’s lip, they tasted the ding. Tarney watched carefully, for ding syrup really was all that he had said. It was the rage of all the human galaxy. A single ounce was going for five hundred credits, even on poorer planets.
The first barhand licked his lips after the taste; his haggard expression did not change. The second, the woman, sipped, snorted and passed the bottle on. The third, a man, took an indifferent swallow, and without reaction, handed the vial to the next man.
“C’mon, Blackie,” the big man said. He pulled Tarney out of the autobar and led him down the skylip.
# # # # #
“Where are we going?” Tarney asked, resisting a little. But the big man turned on him.
“Look, Blackie, I’m doing you a favor. Trust me. You got anything better to do? Don’t you want to wrap up your business here one way or another?” The careful diction that Tarney had detected seemed to fade in and out, as if the man didn’t care anymore.
“Don’t call me ‘Blackie,’” Tarney said.
“Hey, no offense,” the balding man said, holding his hands up, palms outward. “We call yellow-hairs ‘Blondie.’ It’s just the way of it here.”
Tarney scowled. He didn’t believe it for a minute; but now, as he watched the other limp ahead of him, he felt that he was getting somewhere. Ressie. Was that the name of the drug? But their syntax in referring to it had been strange, as if they were referring to a permanent possession that never ran dry.
On one side of them, the street’s lip rose up and fell away into the depths below, dozens of building levels beneath them. Walking, Tarney could now see clearly what he had glimpsed from the car: that the great bulk of the buildings were below ground, massive caverns opening up between them like canyons in a desert of rectangular, upthrusting patterns. Tarney scarcely noticed the one exception until they were upon it.
“But that’s Government Center,” he said suddenly, recognizing it from his background studies of the planet. The big man was pulling him straight toward that monolithic tower that dominated the skyline.
“So what?” the man said curtly. “Look, bud, I’m doing you a favor. You’ll thank me for it for the rest of your life.”
Tarney subsided, but the prickling in his neck intensified again. He kept every sense he had on the alert, and maintained too the Shield that he had never expected to use.
They limped and strode through a side entrance in the granite tower, and all at once were rising in an antigrav elevator. But they didn’t go far. Even as they stepped off, Tarney glanced upward and saw the shaft through a crack, disappearing into dizzying distance.
“‘The Tower don’t mean nothing,” the big man said. Tarney had the eerie feeling that this was a man of culture gone entirely to seed, taking on the coloration of the people around him, language and all. “The nearest Ressie station is here, is all. Come on.” They walked down silent corridors. Again Tarney was struck by the unnatural stillness around him.
“Where is everybody?” he asked in a hushed voice. The man ignored him, and hustled him through a door marked in raised golden letters: tourist bureau.
“Got an interested customer,” the balding man said. “Just landed.”
A man lounging behind a desk against the far wall looked up at them. He was the first person with any flesh on his bones Tarney had seen on the entire planet. He was very young.
“Wait,” Tarney said. “I want to know what a Ressie is.”
The fat man’s dark brown eyes caught his and held them. And, to his horror, Tarney felt a mental probe reaching out toward him.
“No,” Tarney said. “No ... !” He backed away from the man. Despite his Shield, he had never really expected a probe of mental Skill. The mental wizards of October had fled the galaxy; he had seen them go.
The fleshy man’s eyes widened. “You have a Shield,” he said in surprise. “You’re no ding syrup salesman ... no,” he said, eyes narrowing, “you come from the Guild of ...” His eyes widened again. He rose abruptly and came around the desk, moving with remarkable quickness for one so large.
Tarney turned to run. The fat man lashed at him with a whip of mental force. It shattered on Tarney’s Shield.
Even the fat man, Tarney realized as that last glimpse sank in, had that strange bulge alongside one leg.
“Stop him,” the fat man yelled. The gaunt and balding man who had been with Tarney whirled and flung his arms around Tarney’s waist in a movement belying his dissipation.
Tarney didn’t even break stride. He simply let the natural movement of one elbow angle into the man’s face with a sharp twist. The man’s nose was smashed into his skull; he let go with a choking howl and fell.
Tarney’s footsteps thundered down the silent hallway. He found himself straining with his mind. The feeble Skill that he could muster was almost entirely a question of concentration, of centering. He had no mental weapons of his own, just the one inadequate defense.
He was in the elevator; he reached the ground floor. Still the relentless mental probe thrust at him. Staggering for a moment, he burst through the door into an empty street.
“What now?” he thought desperately. He began to run, back the way he had come with the balding man. The probe seemed to follow him like a raven in the air, pecking down at him with a beak ten feet long, razor-sharp.
He saw a callbox, and called up an autocar, slapping his palm against the contact again and again.
Steps were sounding from the direction of the Center. Tarney turned and saw two men and two women coming at him. And the mental probe kept pounding, pounding.
The first woman reached him and ... with the fluid grace of a warrior, Tarney avoided her grasping hands and buried one fist in her stomach. Her breath left her in an explosive gasp, and she fell. Her mouth opened and closed spasmodically, like that of a beached fish.
One of the men was upon him then; it was no time for niceties. Tarney smashed a palm against the other’s ear. But before the man could cry out, Tarney’s other fist had imploded his breastbone and the first had crashed in sequence against his temple, and the man was out.
The other two held back. The woman reached into her blouse ...
Far down the skylip, Tarney saw the fat man coming. The mental probes still thrust and thrust at him, but the physical challenge could not break Tarney’s mental centering; he was warrior-trained to the point of unthinking, automatic self-defense.
He fingered an ornamental button on his bodice, and a weighted plastic blade shot out into the air as the woman’s blaster cleared her clothing. The blade went into her neck, and her hands flew up, dropping the weapon. She fell back, and Tarney saw a gush of blood burst through her fingers.
He gave the last man a lunging, powerful push, and felt a rib break ...
The man staggered, out of control, and fell against the lip. The weapon he had been bringing up in one hand dropped into the depths of the city as he clawed for balance. His hips the fulcrum, he seesawed for a moment on the lip. There was the briefest silence. And then the hum of the arriving autocar was occluded by a Dopplering scream, receding into the sunken city.
Tarney was in the car and away before the fat young man reached the three bodies remaining on the skylip pavement. Only one was still alive.
# # # # #
An October wizard ... who could have guessed, Tarney thought. They were supposed to be all gone, driven out of the galaxy. And yet ... and yet ... Once Tarney had dealt with a wizard, and had felt enormous Power—Power such that before it he had felt as nothing. He had not felt the same intensity from the fat man. Yet had those little warning bells in his mind not caused every possible alertness in him, the fat man would have struck him down.
Tarney had not wanted or meant to kill. He was trained to do so, quickly and quietly, but only when it could not be avoided. This time the mental struggle had befuddled him, and his body had gone maximum.
He didn’t have all the answers, but there was only one option open to him now. He had to get away, had to communicate with the Bodyguard/Thieves. They had to know that a wizard was involved here, that an ordinary thief had almost no chance. It would take someone with mental Skill to figure out the riddle of Surcease.
No, he himself had to get off planet as soon as he could. At the spaceport there would be a tachyonic holography booth. He would use it before grabbing the first shuttle out.
And then he was there, at the spaceport. He had palmed the necessary credits long since, drawing on one of the Bodyguard’s accounts to pay for the autocar. Now he was out, blinking in the late afternoon sun, and then striding under the canopied walkway toward ...
WAUWMMMMMM ... the mental bolt hit him like a sledgehammer on rock. His Shield was still up, and the blow rang it like a cast-iron bell. He reeled, clutching at a support post, almost falling. This was not the fat man; this was someone else, more powerful, more Skilled. Not like the October Adept he once had known, but ...
WAUWMMMMMM! Prepared this time, he shook it off and broke into a stumbling run. The main terminal was thirty feet away. There were very few people about.
WAUWMMMMMM! WAUWMMMMMM! He was in the terminal. WAUWMMMMMM! WAUWMMMMMM! WAUWMMMMMM! He reached the auto check-in.
As he laid his palm on it, he looked wildly around, frantically working on his ringing mind, keeping it centered, keeping it concentrated.
WAUWMMMMMM! “Next shuttle out,” he gasped. “Any destination. Any starship. Anywhere ...” WAUWMMMMMM!
“Clear for Gate 867,” the impersonal autovoice said. “Proceed to Walkway 8.”
Blow after blow hit Tarney’s mind as he moved blindly onto Walkway 8. As the plate on which he stood picked up speed, he felt the blows pause for a moment, as if a watcher had lost sight of him. Looking in both directions down the interminable walkway, his tearing eyes saw no one. And then he realized that he had forgotten the holography booth.
He cursed himself for a fool. At that moment another bolt hit him, and Tarney almost lost it, for his self-flagellation had weakened his concentration. He suddenly found himself on his knees; the protective force fields had kept him from falling into the bed of the walkway beneath the speeding plates. He let his self-doubt fall away then in a convulsive letting-go, just as another bolt came down. And in that bolt, he sensed a triumph that turned abruptly to disappointment. “Hah!” Tarney growled out loud. “Not this time, baby. You didn’t get me this time.”
He repeated it, over and over. “Not this time. Not this time. Not ...” The blows came faster now, but he was more centered than he had been before. He clawed his way to his feet and stood there, swaying, as the plate eventually found Gate 867.
There, right at the gate’s entrance, he saw the universal symbol of a holographic transceiver. And ...
A dog moved out of the transceiver booth. Tarney stared. The dog was as big as a pony, but with a massive mane almost like a lion’s, lips drawn back over razor teeth like a Doberman. And its body was as red as if it had been dipped in blood.
The animal’s growl came to Tarney like the snarl of a soul in rage. The beast seemed to flow across the floor and leaped at Tarney’s throat.
He flung his arms up, reaching for the mane—the only defensive move a man could make against an attack dog—to grab the collar or hair and fall backward, hurling the animal over and past ...
But Tarney’s hands grasped empty air. He fell on his back onto the floor.
Astonishment. The beast was ten feet in front of him again, snarling, ready to leap.
A holograph? No. A mental chimera? Tarney rose slowly ...
And the dog said: “You are the last Bodyguard left in the galaxy. We have killed them all.”
Alarm rang in Tarney’s head, and fear welled up like vomit. Killed them all? How could that be?
The dog smiled.
WAUWMMMMMM! Tarney fell to his knees. He had let his control slip. He reached for it again ...
WAUWMMMMMM! He reached ... WAUWMMMMMM! WAUWMMMMMM!