Mercenary (21 page)

Strength counts for a lot in hand-to-hand combat, but skill counts for more. Here I had the advantage; I had spent more time in a space suit, and had faced worse hazards than had Heller. I maneuvered him into an armlock that was just as effective in suits as it was naked; he could not move without dislocating his elbow. I maintained the hold with one arm and my body and feet, pinning him to the wall by using the leverage in my magnetic boots as well as bracing against the opposite wall. With my free hand I sealed the lock, pressured it, and set off my bomb.

When the inner panel opened, my “nerve gas” spread rapidly into the ship. It was actually colored, perfumed vapor, harmless, but it made the point: I had taken the ship and won the match.

Now I signaled Sergeant Smith. “Arrest this man,” I said as my helmet came off. Respect was no longer an issue.

The referees recovered the rapier and doctored pugil stick; there was no question what Corporal Heller had tried to do. But before taking any further action, I interviewed him in my office.

“Corporal,” I said briskly, “you have your choice of summary unit discipline or a formal court-martial. I recommend the former.”

“Sir?” he asked, perplexed.

“I am prepared to deal,” I said.

He understood. “Unit discipline,” he said immediately.

“You may have information I want. Provide it freely, and I will assign nominal punishment.” I remembered how Sergeant Smith had said this to me, years ago; I had learned from him.

“Sir, you know I tried to kill you,” he protested.

“You are not the first,” I said dryly. “I know you are only a tool. I want the mind.”

“Sir, my life—”

“Is forfeit to the Navy. I will protect you.”

He yielded, knowing the nature of my commitment. “I will tell you anything I know.”

“Who hired you to kill me?”

“Kife,” he said, his mouth seeming to be reluctant to form the syllable.

That surprised me. Not the answer; I already knew that. But the fact that he answered without evasion.

Few who betrayed QYV, I was sure, survived long. In fact, he could have been hired indirectly, not knowing his true employer. QYV was being less devious here than I had expected.

I got the story from him: Heller's family was poor, with no real prospect for improvement. He had been sending most of his service pay back home; the normal Navy allotments for dependent parents were not sufficient in this case for the medication required. QYV had offered instant, anonymous settlement of the family debts, and a handsome reward upon discharge from the Service, so that the family would be secure and Heller himself would have much-improved future prospects. Heller trusted QYV because QYV always kept his word; in any event, the debt settlement had been arranged before Heller made the attempt on my life. If he died in the attempt, or was executed, his family remained better off. “It was the best I could do for them,” he concluded.

“Now that you have failed—”

He smiled grimly. “No bonus. I'm on my own.”

“If you had succeeded—”

“I was to fetch a little key from your body and fling it into space.”

I was surprised again. “You had no delivery route?”

“No, sir. Just to fling it away. After that, Kife would send a lawyer to plead my case in court-martial and get my sentence reduced.”

With such a lawyer, and the strings QYV could pull, I knew Heller would have done all right. But he had failed, was now a liability to QYV, and so had accepted my terms instead.

That was the extent of his pertinent information. I knew he was telling the truth, because of my talent.

“You have no personal animosity toward me?”

“No, sir. I respect you. It was a put-up job; I'm no good for command, just for fighting. We knew you'd have to turn me down, giving me cause for challenge. You're not bad at combat yourself, sir.”

I pondered. “I can't give you riches, but I can give you life and a clean record.” I had not forgotten the potency of that offer, either. I knew he would respond; when he made a commitment, he honored it all the way. “Will you serve me loyally henceforth, if I give you the chance?”

He spread his hands. “You beat me fair, sir. You've got me, if you want me. I wouldn't want me.”

“Then you are hereby assigned to my personal staff. Your record will not be affected, and your family will not know.”

He was amazed. “What about the punishment, sir?”

"You will be my bodyguard. If I am to be killed, you will intercept the attempt to the best of your ability.

If you die or are wounded, that is your punishment. You tried to take my life; until you save it, you have not paid."

“Yes, sir!” he agreed.

Another person could not have afforded the risk, but my talent made it feasible for me. Heller would be the best bodyguard I could obtain. He owed me life and knew it.

“Uh, sir—”

“Yes, Corporal?”

“Something I heard, can't be sure it's true—”

“Yes?”

"There's another attempt on you slated. Some other way to get the key from you. But I don't know how.

Just that there's someone or something on the ship. Indirect, maybe."

“Thank you, Heller.” I wasn't surprised. QYV had tried three times; why not four?

I had survived the encounter with no more than some chafes about my body, owing to the unexpectedly strenuous nature of it. I didn't bother with sick bay, preferring to assume the pose of indestructibility. I rubbed some salve on the sore spots, had a light meal, and settled down in my hammock for a nap, alone. When I had been married, I had rated a bed; I missed it, but single enlistees or officers had hammocks, and I was no exception.

Several hours later I awoke, feeling odd. The room was dimly illuminated, the way I preferred it for sleep; there was sufficient light for vision. I looked at the ceiling, for I had caught a flicker of something there, something in a dark color, oblique to my vision. I could not quite focus on it, seeing it mostly peripherally as it flowed gently by. I was not alarmed; the sight was pleasant. It occurred to me I was dreaming, for there was no holo-projector here, yet I knew I was awake.

Now the image changed, becoming brighter, more defined, undulating iridescently, as though an ocean of rainbows were heaving by. Bands of color separated from the mass, forming into arcs, semicircles, spirals, and loops. Other bands realigned, forming patterns of lines that somehow passed through the individual curves without interference. Perhaps it was like the petals of flowers floating on a heaving sea, the waves distinct from the objects yet interacting in a curious, intangible fashion.

I closed my eyes, and the sight changed but did not disappear. Rather, it became muted, an underlying grid of color, as if this were the fundamental form that filtered through my eyelids. I opened my eyes again, and the grid was clothed with new ornaments, symmetrical motifs, that slowly turned in space three-dimensionally, like galaxies or rare ancient urns, each more lovely and significant than the others, each a vessel of sheerest wonder. Faster they turned, like spinning planets, spraying out colors like gravity waves, more and more rapidly until their outlines blurred, and even then they were impossibly beautiful.

Abruptly, all was gone. I saw only my room, stark and bare. There are no loose items in a Navy ship, for they could become missiles during accelerative action. No pictures or paperweights. All is secured and little is esthetic. I lay still, hoping for a return of the pretty visions, but they were gone. I felt a loss so great it brought tears to my eyes and a burden to my chest. Paradise lost!

I stirred, sitting up, causing my hammock to swing slightly—and suddenly there was sound. Fragments of marvelous music flitted about me, as if some profound orchestra were tuning up. The room seemed to tilt as I moved, throwing me off-balance; everything was askew. I steadied myself, but though my body was still, it also seemed to be turning; the room was turning, too, in the opposite way, and my legs were rotating in diverse directions; yet somehow all was organized so that I neither twisted apart nor lost my position in the room. The sound clarified, and I heard a distant, lovely, vaguely familiar melody, one I longed to appreciate more closely but could not approach.

But I tried. I got to my feet and found I was not dizzy despite the motions of the universe and my body.

Beautiful bass notes sounded as my feet struck the floor. I walked melodiously to the door in pursuit of the distant theme, passing through the complex tapestry of colors that reformed, without disturbing it.

Geometric patterns played across the door, and the latch-release panel was somewhat like a painted goblin's head, but I touched it and the panel slid open.

Beyond was flickering fire. Intense orange flames leaped up and came through to touch me, but they had no heat; I was invulnerable to this sort of illusion. I stepped into the inferno, following the melodic theme.

The flames remained, reminding me somewhat of the savage surface of Io, but once I was fairly in them I discovered new aspects. They had discrete shapes of their own, and these were animate, almost alive.

There were flame-flowers blooming from their twining flame-vines, more beautiful than any I had ever seen. The smells of them came to me now, the essences of perfect nature, compatible with the music that enfolded them. The geometric shapes flitted in from the other chamber, becoming angular and sine-wave bees and butterflies and hummingbirds without sacrificing their mathematical identities, and carried sparkling pollen from flower to flower, mating them. There were small, satisfied flashes of light as the sex organs that were the flowers received their gratifications, their completions. Then the flowers faded, for nature has little use for anything whose function is past, and were replaced by fruits on the vines, becoming full and juicy and delicious.

As I gazed at those fruits and understood the symbolism of their generation, I felt the stirring in my own loin, the need to merge my own pollen with the ovules of the female, to generate my own fruit and the seeds of my own type of life. The flames became half-naked young females of human persuasion wearing skirts without panties, shawls without halters, dancing, twisting, shaking, writhing, their breasts bouncing and quivering with the fullness of their motions, their legs lifting, spreading, closing beckoningly. The nymphs twined like serpents inside their decorative ornaments, impossibly alluring. Now I saw flame-men, too, with fire phalluses that jetted sparks into the crevices of the female flames. I longed to jet my sparks also, but the flame-girls were intangible to my flesh. I needed my own kind.

I resolved to search for a human woman of suitable configuration and youth. I strode forward, and suddenly my environment shifted again. Horror fell on me like nocturnal rain, soaking me through the flesh to the bone, and through the bone to the marrow. I shivered, terrified of everything. Things came at me, threatening; I was aware of teeth, claws, eyes, and thin sucking-type proboscises. I fled their chill menaces, but there was nowhere to flee; the very shadows reached their barbed extremities toward me.

I spun to the side, and the scene obligingly shifted, sliding past me laterally, vibrating; when I stopped, it continued more rapidly, carrying the monsters along. But this was dizzying. I clapped my eyelids down; the clang as they slammed closed echoed loudly across my skull and set the jelly of my brain to vibrating.

That was worse than the monsters, so I reopened my eyes, cautiously so the orbs would not burst loose from their sockets in the vacuum, but it was all right; they were contained. Now I saw my hand before my face, outlined in double contours without and within, so that it was at once skeletal and ballooningly fat. The contours tripled, quadrupled, quintupled, sextupled, until I blinked, reminded of something by that last description; I had been in quest for a woman. Then the multiple lines vanished, replaced by solid colors, red contrasting sharply with green, blue with orange, yellow with brown. But underneath remained the hand, the empty hand, proffering what was more horrible than anything it could have held. I wrenched away again, trying to scream, trying to blot it out.

And a man loomed before me, but the sounds he uttered were unintelligible, a meaningless roar. I peered into his face, but it was blank, devoid of soul. As I looked, I saw a progression of features on him: human, ape, feline, reptilian, with staring eyes. I realized he was but a shell, an incubus, a golem of no account. I shoved him aside, and he moved with strange lightness, as if he were canvas filled with foam, and I went on to the next, and he, too, was nothing. I continued past a crowd of them, until I came to the master-entity, a monster in vague man-shape, foul smelling. I saw it take hold of a man and crush him in a bear hug so hard that flesh pulped under the skin, so that he was rendered into a shapeless mass. Then the monster sank a hollow fang into the top of the victim's head and sucked out the multicolored juice, and the skin-sac shriveled as the substance was depleted. When the bag was empty except for the rattling bones, the monster blew foul air through its tooth, inflating the sac until it was as turgid as a space suit in a vacuum. The man was restored as a soul-empty shape, a balloon, a doppelganger who moved about among the others who did not notice the change. Who accepted it as an ordinary person.

Now the monster came for me, for I still had juice in me, and I could not flee him. There was blood all around me, pooling on the floor, spattered on the walls. Evidently some had leaked from the victims of the monster while they were being squeezed. I didn't want to step in it, knowing it would somehow destroy me, but the monster was reaching for me. I was too frightened to think straight or even fight, knowing I was doomed.

Words came through from the confusion of notes and blood. “Hope... Hope... Hope... Hope...”

I paused, seeking the source. “Who calls me?”

“Repro. Repro. Hope, you have been drugged. Drugged! Do you understand?”

“Drugged,” I repeated. It did seem to make sense.

“Hallucinogenic, evidently. Are you in a vision?”