The Chalice of Death: Three Novels of Mystery in Space Page 16

  “Drink?” Thurdan asked abruptly.

  Mantell nodded, trying to hide his eagerness, and Thurdan nudged a sliding knob in the base of his couch. A sleek portable bar came rolling out of a corner of the room toward him. It stationed itself in front of Mantell.

  After a little deliberation he dialed a sour choker, third strength. Almost before he was through punching out the signal, the robot bar was extending a crystal beaker three-quarters full of cloudy green liquid. Mantell took it. The bar swiveled away and went to Thurdan, who ordered a straight bourbon.

  Mantell sipped and nodded in appreciation. “This is good stuff. From Muriak?”

  “Synthetic—all synthetic. We don’t bother smuggling liquor in any more, not when we have chemists good enough to whip up stuff like that.” Thurdan leaned back and stared intently at Mantell. Slowly he said, “According to what you told Dr. Harmon, you used to be an armaments technician before you got into trouble. That automatically makes you a very valuable individual on Starhaven, Mantell.”

  He had quickly dropped the “mister.” That must be only for newcomers who had not yet qualified, Mantell guessed.

  “Valuable?” Mantell asked. “How so?”

  “Starhaven lives and dies by its armaments. The moment our screens show any signs of weakening, we’ll have a Space Patrol armada crashing down on us from every octant of the galaxy at once. I spent billions shielding Starhaven, Mantell. It’s the first absolutely impregnable fortress in the history of the universe. But even so, it’s no stronger than the technicians who maintain its screens and guns.”

  Mantell’s hands began to quiver slightly. “It’s a long time since I did anything like that,” he told Thurdan. “Seven years. I hardly remember my stuff.”

  “You’ll learn again,” Thurdan said easily. “The psychprobe gave me your biography. Seven years of beach-combing and bumming after you lost your job. Then you killed a man, stole an SP ship, and headed for here.”

  “I didn’t kill him. I was framed.”

  Thurdan smiled bleakly and shrugged. “The probe says you did kill him. The probe isn’t prejudiced. It just reports what happened. Go argue with your own memories, Mantell.”

  Mantell sat very quietly, stunned, gripping his glass hard. He could remember every detail of that brawl in the beachside cafe, the fat, drunken tourist yelling that he had stolen his wife’s jeweled brooch, then the tourist’s flabby palm slamming into his cheek … And, the tourist slipping and cracking his skull open before Mantell laid a hand on him.

  “I honestly thought I didn’t do it,” Mantell said quietly.

  Thurdan shrugged again. “No use arguing with the probe. But that doesn’t matter here. We don’t believe in ex post facto laws.” Thurdan rose and walked to the tri-di mural that swirled kaleidoscopically over the surface of one wall, a shifting pattern of reds and bright greens, a flowing series of contrasting textures and hues.

  He stood with his back to Mantell, powerful hands locked: a big man who had done a big thing in his life, the man who had built Starhaven.

  “We have laws here,” he said after a while. “This place isn’t just an anarchy. You break into a man’s house and steal his money, and the law entitles him to go after you and make you give it back. If you cause too much trouble, we kill you. But nothing in between. No brain-burning, no jail sentence that lets a man rot away in a living death.” He turned. “You, Mantell—you could still be happily working for Klingsan Defense Screens if you hadn’t felt sorry for yourself, kept hitting the bottle, gotten yourself canned. But the forces of law and order threw you out, and ruined you as a man from there on.”

  Mantell took another drink and frowned questioningly at Thurdan. “Don’t tell me I’ve run into some kind of reform school, now!”

  Thurdan whirled, dark eyes hooded and angry. “Don’t say that. There won’t be any reforming here. Drink all you please, lie, cheat, gamble—Starhaven won’t mind. We’re not pious. A fast operator on Starhaven is a pillar of society, a good upstanding citizen. We won’t preach to you here.”

  “You said you had laws. How does that square with what you just told me?”

  Thurdan smiled. “We have laws, all right. Two of them. And only two.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The first one is something generally known as the Golden Rule. I phrase it like this. ‘Expect the same sort of treatment yourself that you hand out to others.’ That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. And the other?”

  Thurdan grinned darkly and nipped at his drink before speaking. “The second law is even simpler: ‘You’ll do whatever Ben Thurdan tells you to do, without argument, question, or hesitation.’ Period. End of the Starhaven Constitution.”

  Mantell was silent for a moment, watching the big rawboned man in the glaring costume and thinking about the sort of world Starhaven was. Then he said, “That second law contradicts the first one, wouldn’t you say? I mean, so far as you’re concerned.”

  He nodded. “Oh, certainly.”

  “How come you rate, then? How come you can place yourself beyond the laws?”

  His eyes flashed. “Because I built Starhaven,” he said slowly. “I devoted my life and every penny I could steal to setting up a planet where guys like you could come and hide. In return, I get the right of absolute dominance. Believe me, I don’t abuse my power. I’m no Nero. I set things up this way because Starhaven has to be run by a single forceful leader.”

  Mantell’s brows knit. There was, he had to admit, even though reluctantly, plenty of truth in what he was saying. It was a weird, even devilish philosophy of government—but it seemed to work, at least here on Starhaven. It hung together consistently.

  “Okay,” Mantell said. “I’m with you.”

  Thurden smiled. “You never had any choice,” he said. “Here. Take this.”

  He handed Mantell a small white capsule. Mantell studied it. “What is it?”

  “It’s the antidote to the poison that was in your drink,” Thurdan said. “I suggest you take it within the next five minutes, if you’re going to take it at all. Otherwise it may be unpleasant.”

  Mantell repressed a shiver and hastily popped the capsule into his mouth. It tasted faintly bitter, and dissolved against his tongue. He felt chilled. So this was what it was like to be in the absolute grasp of one man!

  Well, he thought, I asked for it. I came to Starhaven of my own free will. Here I am, and here I’ll stay.

  Thurdan said, “You have a week to relax and learn the ropes here, Mantell. After that you’ll have to begin earning your keep. There’s plenty of work here for a skilled armaments man.”

  “I won’t mind getting back to work.”

  Thurdan grinned at Mantell. “Have another drink?”

  “Sure,” Mantell said. He dialed and drank without hesitation. There was no better way to show that he trusted Thurdan.

  Chapter Four

  The two men drank, and finished their drinks. Mantell could distinguish no difference between the drink he had had before and this one—but he relied on the fact that Thurdan seemed to need him, and that the big man seemed too sane to poison a man for the sheer pleasure of it.

  A few moments later Thurdan jabbed a button at his desk and the girl with star-blue eyes came in. She wore a large-sleeved synthilk blouse of electric blue, buttoned high on one shoulder, and a dark skirt of some soft clinging material that accentuated her graceful walk. If the outfit was calculated to make an effect on Mantell, it accomplished its purpose.

  Thurdan said, “Mantell, this is Miss Myra Butler, my secretary.” And Johnny Mantell was conscious of Thurdan’s swift glance at the girl; a look that held both warmth and pride, and gave Mantell a sudden start. He thought: Lord! Thurdan’s in love with her! He must be twenty years older, but I admire his taste.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling straight into the shining blue eyes that eclipsed even the crackling brilliant color of her blouse. Resolutely then he pulled his
gaze away from hers. Watch your step, Johnny, he cautioned himself. If Thurdan is in love with her, you can land in a big bunch of trouble without half trying. Take it easy, boy, and live longer.

  But on the other hand, he could never recall meeting a woman with the same magnetic appeal that Myra had for him. It was as if he were drawn to her by powerful invisible cables. To be sure, he had known beautiful women during his earliest days on Mulciber, before all his money and self-respect had gone. But in the dreary later years of combing the beaches and hawking shells to tourists, he knew that the only kind of woman who would have anything to do with Johnny Mantell was the kind of woman that Johnny Mantell didn’t want to have anything to do with.

  Thurdan said, “Mantell’s going to be an armaments technician, Myra. He’s going to be very useful to us, I think. I want you to show him around Starhaven. Give him the number one guided tour. He has a week to get the feel of the place. You show him the sights.”

  “That sounds like a pretty pleasant week,” Mantell said. It couldn’t hurt to praise Thurdan’s choice in women a little, he thought.

  Thurdan ignored the remark. He took a crumpled handful of bills from his pocket and shoved them at Mantell.

  “Here. Here’s some walking-around money to see you through the week. You go on the regular payroll as soon as you start working.”

  Mantell looked at the bills. They were neatly printed, in various colors. They looked vaguely like the standard Terra-issued Galactic currency. But they weren’t Galactic issues at all.

  In the center, where the stylized star-cluster design is found on the high Galactic bills, and the atom-diagram symbol on the low ones, these notes had a portrait of Ben Thurdan, head and shoulders, in remarkable detail. The denominations were interesting too. Thurdan had given him two hundred-chip bills, a fifty, a twenty, and some single-chips.

  “Chips?” Mantell said, puzzled.

  Thurdan chuckled. “The local unit of currency. I’ve always thought it was appropriate on a world like Starhaven. Just so you can guide yourself, one chip equals one Galactic credit in purchasing power. A hundred cents equals one chip. Originally I was going to have blue chips, red chips, and so on, but that turned out to be too complicated.… Show him around, Myra.”

  They made their way through shining well-lighted halls, the girl slightly in the lead and Mantell behind, into a gravshaft that lowered them gracefully and smoothly to street level. They stepped outside into the fresh and pleasant air.

  A car was waiting at the curb for them—a slinky dark teardrop style, in the latest model. Thurdan had obviously made his mind up that Starhaven would keep abreast of the current stream of galactic fashions, even though the planet was closed to normal trade and tourist travel.

  Myra slid into the car and murmured something to the stony-faced man behind the wheel. By the time Mantell had both legs in the car, it had pulled away from the sidewalk and was under way.

  Hardly any time later, it was pulling up again, outside a glittering chrome-trimmed building. Myra reached into her purse and handed Mantell a key.

  “You see the building on the left?”

  Mantell nodded.

  The girl said, “The name of that place is Number Thirteen. It’s a hotel that Ben runs. You’re going to live here.”

  “Can I afford it?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Your room number is 1306. Any time you’re anywhere in Starhaven and you want to get here, just ask a driver to take you to Number Thirteen. They’ll know the place. Do you want to take a look at your room now?”

  “Later will be fine,” Johnny Mantell said, disliking the thought of being away from the girl.

  Myra told the driver to get going again, and they drove on, down the wide, well-designed streets. Mantell kept one eye on the girl and one on the attractive scenery outside. He was deciding that Starhaven was quite a place.

  As they passed each building of note, Myra pointed it out and named it. “That’s the main hospital over there. See?”

  “The double tower? Looks lovely. There’s everything here, isn’t there?”

  “What did you expect to find on Starhaven? Three poolhalls and a barroom? Just because Starhaven is a sanctuary for—for criminals, that doesn’t mean we aren’t civilized here.”

  Mantell flinched and raised his hands as if to ward off her words. “Okay! Okay! I’m sorry!”

  “Thurdan built this place himself, twenty years ago,” she said. “It was an uninhabited world, too cold to be of any use to anyone. He had a lot of money—never mind where he got it. He got together a crew of men like him, and together they built the shell and the inner sun. That was the beginning of Starhaven. Then they built the armaments, and suddenly there was a fortress in space where before there had been just a cold empty world. And that was the beginning of Starhaven, Mantell. Twenty million people live here now, and no one hounds them with false piety.”

  Mantell looked at her. After a moment he asked the question that had been nagging at him ever since he had first seen her.

  “How did you happen to come here?”

  It was the wrong thing to ask. He saw the anger flare on her lovely face; she started to unsheathe her claws and let her fur rise like an insulted feline. Then her anger subsided.

  “I almost forgot you were new, Mantell. We never ask anybody why he’s here. Your past is your own secret. Ben Thurdan knows it, and you know it. But nobody else is entitled to know anything about you except what you want to tell them.”

  Mantell felt his face going red. “Sorry,” he said.

  “That’s okay. It’s an understandable mistake. But just remember not to ask it any more.”

  “Does Thurdan know every single person on the planet?”

  “He tries to. It’s impossible to know twenty million people, but he tries. Everyone who comes gets a personal welcome from him, same as you did. Only some days fifty or a hundred or five hundred show up, and they don’t all get an individual drink and a handshake. Ben gives newcomers a job to do.”

  “You can’t just do as you please?”

  “Not at first. You put in a few years at an assigned job and if you’re rich enough you can buy yourself off and loaf. You’re in the armaments division, aren’t you?”

  Mantell nodded.

  “The buying-off price is high there. But so is the pay. Anyone with a specialty like that is valuable property here. But someone has to drive the cabs and someone has to sell popcorn at the sensostims, and if Thurdan tells you that’s your job, you do it, or else. It’s the only way to make this world run.”

  “He seems to do a pretty fair job of making it run,” Mantell said. “And he seems to know how to pick his secretaries, too.”

  “Keep me out of this,” the girl said, but she was grinning. “We get off here.”

  The car whirred to a gentle halt. The gleaming doors telescoped open, and they got out. Mantell looked around and whistled.

  They were in front of a vaulting domed building set back behind a smooth, almost unreal grassy lawn. The building seemed crowded. Sparkling lights radiated from the upper stories of the dome. It was immense, a hundred stories high or more.

  “What is this place?”

  “This,” Myra said, “is the second most important building on Starhaven. It’s second only to Thurdan’s headquarters.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s called the Pleasure Dome,” she said. “Shall we go inside?”

  They stepped onto a moving slidewalk and let themselves be carried up a gently sloping ramp that led into the front entrance of the vast building. Mantell found himself swept into a cavernous antechamber that was at least a hundred feet high and seemingly acres square. The enormous room was packed with people, though sound-absorbers damped their voices. The walls were decorated with highly suggestive murals fifty feet high. Pleasure Dome, Mantell thought. Of course. Starhaven was nothing but a private dream world for Ben Thurdan, a dream world to which outsiders could be admitted on request, and th
is was the factory from which most of the dreams flowed.

  As Mantell stood there gaping, someone jostled against him, and he felt a hand slide gently but not altogether imperceptibly into his pocket. He clamped his fingers tightly around the wrist, whirled, and brought his other hand forth to grab the pickpocket by the throat.

  He was a small ratty man half Mantell’s size, with bright darting eyes and close-cropped black hair and a hooked corvine nose. Mantell tightened his grip on the pickpocket’s throat and yanked his hand from his pocket. He glanced at Myra. She seemed to be laughing, as if this were all some tremendously amusing joke.

  Mantell said, “Is this how they sell admission tickets to this place?”

  The pickpocket looked very pale. In a whisper he said, “Let go of me, huh, fellow? I can’t breathe.”

  “Let go of him, Johnny,” Myra said. In the confusion he still managed to notice that this was the first time she had called him Johnny.

  Mantell decided there was no point in strangling the little fellow. He shook the pickpocket once, just for good measure, and let him go.

  Seconds later he had a blaster pointing in the vicinity of Mantell’s navel.

  “Okay, friend. Since subtlety didn’t seem to work, I’ll try a more direct approach. Hand over your cash, and be quick.”

  Mantell recoiled in astonishment and shock. People were milling around in the big lobby, and they were all ignoring the holdup going calmly on in their midst! Then he remembered where he was. This was Starhaven. Anything went. Coldly and reluctantly he drew his bills from his pocket.

  Myra was still laughing. She put her hand over his, keeping it there for a second, and pushed the hand, money and all, back toward his pocket. With her other hand she deflected the pick-pocket’s blaster.

  “Put the gun away, Huel,” she said. “He’s new here. He just came from Thurdan. That’s all the cash he has to his name.”

  The blaster was lowered. The runty little pickpocket grinned up at him amiably and said, “I didn’t mean any harm by it, friend. It’s just between pals, that’s all.” He winked at Myra. “Thurdan told me to do it. Just to show him the ropes.”