Hunt the Space-Witch! Seven Adventures in Time and Space Read online

  “It seems almost like a dream, doesn’t it? The Valley, I mean. And La Floquet, and all the others. But it wasn’t any dream,” Thornhill said. “We were really there. And I meant the things I said to you.”

  The operator’s voice cut in sharply: “Standard call time has elapsed, sir. There will be an additional charge often credits for each further fifteen-second period of your conversation.”

  “That’s quite all right, Operator,” Thornhill said. “Just give me the bill at the end. Marga, are you still there?”

  “Of course, darling.”

  “When can I see you?”

  “I’ll come to Vengamon tomorrow. It’ll take a day or so to wind things up here at the observatory. Is there an observatory on Vengamon?”

  “I’ll build you one,” Thornhill promised. “And perhaps for our honeymoon we can go looking for the Valley.”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever find it,” she said. “But we’d better hang up now. Otherwise you’ll become a pauper talking to me.”

  He stared at the dead phone a long moment after they broke contact, thinking of what Marga looked like, and La Floquet, and all the others. Above all, Marga.

  It wasn’t a dream, he told himself. He thought of the shadow-haunted Valley where night never fell and men grew younger, and of a tall girl with dark flashing eyes who waited for him now half a galaxy away.

  With quivering fingers he undid the sleeve of his tunic and looked down at the long, livid scar that ran almost the length of his right arm, almost to the wrist. Somewhere in the universe now was a little man named La Floquet who had inflicted that wound and died and returned to his point of departure, who now was probably wondering if it had all ever happened. Thornhill smiled, forgiving La Floquet for the ragged scar inscribed on his arm, and headed up the companionway to the passenger cabin, impatient now to see Vengamon once more.

  Hunt the Space-Witch!

  Chapter One

  It was Barsac’s second day on Glaurus, and the first moment of free time he had had since the ship had landed. Before that there had been the landing routines, the spaceport men to bribe, the inspectors to cajole, the jet alleys to scrub. But on the second day withered old Captain Jaspell called the men of the Dywain together and told them they might have five days’ leave before departure.

  Barsac smiled. He was a lean man, tall and well-muscled, with the chiselled scars of the Luaspar blood-rites fanning out radially from the edges of his thin lips. He was an Earther, thirty-nine years old; twenty of those thirty-nine years had been spent as a spaceman, the last eight as Second Fuelman aboard Captain Jaspell’s Dywain. He rose in the crowded cabin where the crew had assembled to hear Jaspell’s words and said, “Captain, is that job on Repair Deck still open?”

  Jaspell nodded. He was a desiccated Earther of a hundred and three years, still keen of mind and iron of discipline. “You know it is, Barsac.”

  “And you’re planning to fill the post while we stop over on Glaurus?”

  “I am.”

  “I ask you to wait a day before publishing notice of the vacancy, then. I know a man on Glaurus who would fill your need. His name is Zigmunn. He’s a Luasparru. He’s my blood-brother, Captain.”

  “Bring him to me today or tomorrow,” Jaspell said. “I can’t wait any longer than that to find a replacement. Is he qualified?”

  “I swear it.”

  “We shall see, Barsac. Bring him here.”

  An hour later Barsac dismounted from the spaceport-to-city tube and found himself in the heart of the city of Millyaurr, oldest and greatest on Glaurus. It was a city of twenty-one million people and its population hailed from at least a hundred fifty worlds. Barsac found himself jostled by scrawny blue dwarfs and fat gray-skinned Domrani patriarchs as he made his way down the ancient street. From the shops that lined the road came the smells of wine and raw meat, of newly baked bread and of festering cabbages.

  Zigmunn had said in his letter that he lived now in the Street of Tears in the central residential zone of Millyaurr. Barsac paused to ask directions of a wizened old vender of stimulotubes, and cordially declined the offer of a tube at a large discount. He made his way forward.

  It was ten years since he had last seen Zigmunn, though it did not seem that long. The Luasparru was an agile, quick-witted man who had formed a fine complement for Barsac’s stolid massive strength, and they had hit it off immediately when they shipped off Vuorrleg together more than a decade back. The ship they were on was making a stop at Luaspar, Zigmunn’s home-world; Barsac had gone to the home of Zigmunn’s cognate kin and there they had gone through the agonizing Luaspar rites of blood-fealty, bound to each other in friendship forever by the scars that lined their lips.

  Then they had left Luaspar and gone on. And they had stopped for a while on Glaurus a year later, and became separated in a bar-room brawl, and Barsac had returned to the ship alone, without his blood-brother. The ship had blasted off without him. At his next port, Barsac found a letter waiting for him from Zigmunn; the Luasparru, stranded, had been unable to get a berth on any other ship out of Glaurus, and was biding his time, waiting for an offer.

  Shortly after Barsac transferred into Jaspell’s ship, the Dywain, and wrote to Zigmunn to tell him where he was; the Luasparru replied he was still stranded, but had high hopes of returning to space soon.

  Eight years went by, and Zigmunn’s letters became less frequent as no sign of a berth materialized, and finally Barsac learned that the Dywain was due to visit Glaurus as part of a journey out to the Rim. Then came word that the Dywain would be taking on an additional crewman on Glaurus, and Barsac rejoiced at the thought of being reunited with the Luasparru after so long.

  The glowing placard against the side of a weathered old building read: Street of Tears. Zigmunn lived at number eighty-one in the Street of Tears. Barsac looked for a house-number.

  He found one: thirty-six. He crossed the street, which was narrow and reeked of the garbage of millennia, and headed up the cracked and blistered pavement. It was long ages since the slidewalk had functioned in the Street of Tears; probably the underground mechanisms had rusted into decay centuries ago, and the inhabitants had simply stripped away the metal of the slidewalk and sold it for scrap, leaving the naked concrete exposed beneath. The buildings loomed high, blotting out the golden light of Glaurus’ sun.

  Sixty-nine, seventy-one, seventy-three. Barsac crossed another street. He swore. Had Zigmunn been living in this filth for eight years?

  Seventy-seven. Seventy-nine.

  Eighty-one.

  The street was crowded; aliens of all descriptions, swaggering native-born Glaurans, even a few curious folk who wore silver reflecting-masks that obscured all of their faces but their eyes and who walked in solitary grandeur, alone and given a wide berth by others on the street. Barsac turned his attention toward the house.

  It was old and weary-looking, a drab place of crumbling yellow brick. He went in. A directory in the dingy lobby yielded the information that Zigmunn lived on the third floor, room 32-A. There was no sign of a liftshaft; Barsac took the creaking stairs.

  He knocked once at the door of 32-A before he noticed that a shutter had been drawn across it and a gleaming lock affixed. Dust stippled the lock and the shutter; both had been in place more than a little while.

  Barsac turned. He pounded on the door of 33-A, and after a moment it opened, hesitantly.

  “I’m looking for Zigmunn the Luasparru,” he said.

  He faced a tiny gnome of a woman who gaped toothlessly at him in confusion. She wore a mildew flecked wrap that had probably been the height of fashion seventy or eighty years before, on some other world.

  “Who?”

  “Zigmunn of Luaspar. The man who lived or lives in the room next to yours.” He pointed. “A very thin man about my height, with bronze skin and scars around his lips. Scars like these.” He bent close, showing her.

  “Oh. Him. He went away. Two, three, maybe four weeks ago. Hasn’t been
back since. Would you stop in for tea with me? A young man like you must be very thirsty.”

  “No, thanks. Three or four weeks ago? Did he say where he was going?”

  She giggled shrilly. “Not to me. But he wasn’t fooling anybody. Him with all that drinking and his women and the noise and knives, there was only one place he would decide he wanted to go, don’t you know?”

  “I don’t know. Where?”

  Again the giggle, oddly girlish. “Oh, you know. I can’t say. It really isn’t right.”

  “Where?” Barsac demanded again, loudly this time. His voice seemed to stir up eddies of dust in the darkened hallway.

  “Really, I—”

  The door of 34-A popped open suddenly and a fierce-looking Dlarochrene stuck his wattled head out and snapped, “What’s all the noise out here? Get back in your room, old fossil. Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Zigmunn of Luaspar,” Barsac said stonily as the old woman slammed shut her door and threw the bolt. “He’s a friend of mine. I’d like to find him.”

  “The Luasparru hasn’t been here for weeks.”

  “That’s what the old lady told me. I want to know where he’s gone.”

  “You mean you can’t guess?”

  “I’m a spacer. I haven’t been on Glaurus in nine or ten years. I don’t know anything much about this planet.”

  “I suggest you find out, then. And if you’re a friend of his, I don’t want to talk to you. Go downstairs to the bar. You’ll find some of his friends there. They’ll tell you where he is.”

  The door shut abruptly.

  Barsac stared at the peeling wood a moment, then turned away, wondering what all this meant, what Zigmunn had done, where he was now. Questions were piling up rapidly. Barsac did not care for complications.

  The bar was on street level, a dark low-ceilinged hovel that stank of stale beer. Barsac peered in; five or six habitués sat slumped at crude little wooden tables, and an Earthman bartender waited boredly behind his bar. With elaborate casualness Barsac sauntered in.

  He spun a Galactic unit on the dull surface of the bar and asked for a drink. Lazily the bartender poured it, spilling half. Barsac smiled and drained the glass.

  “Give me another,” he said. “And make it full measure or I’ll split your throat.”

  He put another coin next to the first one. Without responding the bartender poured him another, this time filling the glass to the brim. Again Barsac drained it in a gulp. Then he leaned forward, stared bluntly into the cold flat eyes of the barkeep, and said in a low voice, “I’m looking for a man named Zigmunn, a Luasparru. Know where he might be?”

  Unsmilingly the barkeep pointed across the dark room to a figure slumped at a far table.

  “Ask her.”

  “Thanks,” Barsac said. “I will.”

  He crossed the bar-room to the girl’s table, pulled out the chair opposite hers, and sat down. She looked up as he did so, but the glance she gave him was without any interest or curiosity; she simply looked at him because he was there, not because she cared about him.

  “Buy me a drink,” she said tonelessly.

  “Later. I want to talk to you first.”

  “I don’t talk to people. Buy me a drink. My room’s on the fourth floor if you’re looking for sport. If you just want to humiliate me, don’t bother. It can’t be done. Better men than you have tried.”

  He looked at her strangely. She was young—eighteen, maybe, twenty at most, and she was either an Earther herself or else mainly of Earther descent. Her corn-yellow hair fell carelessly over her shoulders; she wore a faded cling-on sweater that wrapped itself skin-tight against her slender body and in Zwihih style was cut to leave the nipples of her breasts bare. Her throat and face were dark in color, but whether it was from suntan or dirt Barsac could not tell. Her eyes were not the eyes of a girl of eighteen; they looked older than those of the woman he had seen upstairs.

  “I guess I’d better buy you a drink,” Barsac said. He held up two fingers to the watching barkeep.

  This time he sipped his drink; she gulped hers, but showed no animation afterward. Gently he said, “My name is Barsac. Ever hear it before?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “I thought a friend of mine might have mentioned it to you sometime. A friend named Zigmunn.”

  “What do you know of Zigmunn?” Her voice was flat and empty; it seemed to come from just back of her teeth, not out of her chest.

  “I’m his blood-kin. You see the scars around my lips? Zigmunn has them too.”

  “Had them. Zigmunn has no face at all by now.”

  Barsac’s hands gripped the ragged wood of the table tightly. “What do you mean by that?”

  For the first time the girl smiled. “Do you want me to tell you? Really?”

  “I want to know where Zigmunn is.”

  “He isn’t on Glaurus right now, that’s for sure. I’m thirsty again.”

  “You’ll get your drink when you tell me where he is. If he isn’t on Glaurus, where is he?”

  “Azonda,” she said.

  Barsac blinked. Azonda was the eleventh planet of the system to which Glaurus belonged; Barsac cast back in his memory and recalled that the planet was without an atmosphere and so far from its sun that it was virtually without light as well—a cold, dead world. The thought came to him then that the girl must be either drunk or insane.

  “Azonda?”

  She nodded. “He left three weeks ago. He and I had a little party the night before he left. And then he left. For Azonda.”

  Frowning, Barsac asked, “What in the name of space would he do on Azonda?”

  She looked oddly at him. “You mean that, don’t you? You’re perfectly sincere? No. You want to tease me. Well, I won’t be teased.” Her eyes, which for a moment had come alive, lapsed back to their former brooding deadness, and she let her shoulders sag.

  He grasped her arm. “I’m a stranger on Glaurus. I don’t know about Azonda. And I want to find Zigmunn. There’s a berth open on my ship for him, if he wants it. We’re leaving in five days for the rim stars. Tell me: what’s he doing on Azonda? Or is this a joke?”

  Quietly she said, “You came three weeks too late, if you have a ship’s berth for him. Forget about Zigmunn. Go back to your ship and stop looking for him.”

  He squeezed her arm mercilessly. “Will you tell me where he is?”

  She paled under his grip, and he released her. “One more drink,” she pleaded.

  Barsac shrugged and ordered the drink for her; none for himself. She tossed it down and said slowly, “Azonda is the headquarters for the Cult of the Witch. Three weeks ago Zigmunn joined the Cult. I was invited to join but I turned it down—because I haven’t fallen quite that low yet. Yet. Anyway, he joined. He’s on Azonda right now, undergoing initiation. And worshipping the Witch. I don’t want to talk about these things down here. If you want more information, come upstairs to my room.”

  Chapter Two

  It was a small room, well-kept and clean despite the great age of the building. There was little furniture: a cheap chair, a writing-desk, a vidset, and a bed wide enough for two. Barsac followed her through the door numbly, thinking of Zigmunn and wondering what iniquity the Luasparru had fallen into now.

  She switched on the light; it was dim and uncertain. She locked the door. Gesturing for him to take the chair, she sprawled down on the bed. She hiked her flowing skirt up to her thighs, crossed her legs, and stared expectantly at him.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “My name is Kassa Jidrill, and I’m a party girl with a free permit. It’s the best sort of work a girl can get these days, if you have a liking for the work. I don’t, but I get along … sometimes. My mother was an Earther. Now you know all that’s worth knowing about me.”

  He studied her. Her legs were slim and well turned, and some of the deep despair of a few moments before had left her. But he had not come to Millyaurr to play with part
y girls.

  He said, “I’m looking for Zigmunn. You say hee’s on Azonda. Would you swear to it?”

  “I’d swear by my chastity,” she said acidly. “I told you he was there prancing and dancing around the Witch, no doubt. Believe me or not, as you choose.”

  His jaws tightened. “How can I get to Azonda, then?”

  “You can’t. At least no certified spaceline will take you there. You might try hiring a jackrogue spacer to ferry you there. Or you could join the Cult and get a free passage, but that’s a little drastic. Save your money and your time. There’s no way out of the Cult once you’re in.”

  Rising, Barsac came toward her and sat on the edge of the bed. “Zigmunn and I are blood-kin. We’ve been separated ten years. I don’t care what filth he’s been forced to wallow in; I’m going to bring him out.”

  “Noble aims. But foolish.”

  “Perhaps so.” He laid one hand on her bare thigh; it felt cool to the touch. “I need help, though. I have only five days on Glaurus and the world is strange to me. I need someone to explain things to me.”

  “And I’m nominated, eh?”

  “You knew Zigmunn. You could help.”

  She yawned. “If I wanted to. But the Cult’s a dangerous proposition. Go downstairs and buy a bottle then come back. Forget Zigmunn. He’s as good as dead.”

  “No!”

  “No?” She shrugged lightly. “Have it your way, then. You’re a strong and a stubborn man, Barsac. As much of an opposite to Zigmunn as anyone could imagine.”

  “How can I get to Azonda?”

  “Forget Zigmunn,” she crooned. She twisted sharply and toppled toward him, grasping his shoulders tightly in her arms, pulling him toward her. Her pale blonde hair tumbled in his eyes; it smelled of a sweet oil.

  “No,” he said suddenly, and rose.

  For an instant anger and hatred glared in Kassa’s eyes; then she softened. “Another failure, I see. In these times it’s hard for a party girl to earn her keep; the men prefer to chase around in quest of dissolute blood-brothers. Very well, then. I’ll take you to Lord Carnothute.”