The Five Gold Bands (8 page)

“Get
in
there!” screeched the Steward. “Before I cudgel you! You’ll see your wife at the proper time.”

The exit was barred. Paddy dispiritedly followed the steward. Any minute now the furor would ring out. Ah well, shrugged Paddy, death came to all men. Perhaps the Councillor had merely replaced the book.

More hopefully he followed the Steward up a ramp into an antechamber off the performance platform. The Steward turned him over to a Badau in a red and green tunic. “Here he is—the magician. I’ve had to search the entire building for him.”

The Badau in uniform inspected Paddy sharply. “Where’s your equipment?”

“Just let me have a deck of cards,” said Paddy. “That’s all I need for now.”

“On that shelf then. Now attend carefully. You’re on after the present act. Step up on the stage, bow to the diners.

See that your humor, if you make use of such, is of a refined nature, the Lords are at their eating. Bow when you leave the stage. Conduct yourself with the utmost respect. This is not some greasy tavern on Earth.”

Paddy nodded, went to stand by the entrance to the stage, where an Earther woman was performing an exotic dance. Music came from a band of mesh around the stage, the music of a climate as warm and enchanting as the dance.

The Badau audience was attentive, watchful. Damned satyrs, thought Paddy, and turned his own attention to the dance, a writhing, posturing slow gyration. The girl wore a gilded G-string over hips slender but ripe, a shoulder blouse of gauze, a high pagodalike headdress. She was sinuous as running water. Her movements were pulse-stirring promises of joy.

The music waxed, waned, became melodious, piquant, soft, increased in beat toward a climax. The dancer followed like shadows after a cloud. Twine of arms, heave of smooth lithe torso, twist of round legs, collapse in a curtsy and off the stage.

“
Phew!
” said Paddy, eyes glittering. “There’d be a good shipmate for me and I’d even forget the Maeve women.”

“The Magician Black unveils the ancient arcana and the mysteries of Earth,” said a voice to the audience.

“Go on,” said the stage manager. “Perform. Make it good.”

Paddy halted, backed up like a skittish horse. The time had come. This was reality. There was a room full of Badau lords to be entertained. They were dull, unsympathetic, hostile. Of course he could jolly them a bit, get them in a good humor.

The stage manager jostled him forward. “Go on, get out there,” he said, “and don’t forget my instructions.”

Paddy felt naked on the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, now you’re to see marvels such as you’ve never suspected. So sit tight. I have here a deck of fifty-two cards—the oldest playing device known to man, other than the chessboard. And I’m proud to say there’s none that’s more a master of the pack than me, Harry Black, the Miracle Magician of the Age.”

Behind his back he covertly split the deck. “Now I’ll read you the cards in a way you’ll talk about for years to come.”

He held the cards before his face. “This first one doesn’t count. I only want to show you the deck.” Behind his back, out again. “Now this is the jack of spades—trey of clubs—five of diamonds—” The audience seemed apathetic. He heard a muffled hiss.

“Enough of that, you say? Very well then, ’twas only a warm-up. Now here’s the jumping aces. Just a minute, I’ll turn my back on you to count the cards. Now, see here, that the ace of clubs, the ace of spades and in the middle the ace of diamonds. You can tell by the point.

“Now see—I put one on top, one in the middle, one on the bottom. I cut the cards. That’s mixing them thoroughly. Now we look through the deck and there! What do we see! They’re all together again!”

Ssss… ssss…!

“And now,” said Paddy genially, “if some kind gentleman would come forward, take a card… Please someone?… Someone to draw a card?… All a little bashful, eh?… Very well, then, I’ll draw one myself but it’s you that’ll see it and not Harry Black.

“Ah, and this little item it is—can you all see it now?—and I put it on the bottom and now I’ll cut the cards, thus burying the card inextricably in the deck. And now here we go. Harry Black, with his trained glance, looks along the faces and with his eyesight keen as the fox of the Wicklows he spots the card and whisht! It’s the nine of hearts! And isn’t that a marvel now?”

Paddy ducked. It was the rind of a fruit buzzing past his ears. Paddy bowed. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, that’ll be all for now.”

He backed off the stage. “Cold audience,” he remarked to the silent stage manager. “Ah, where’s my wife?”

The manager said in a crisp voice, “
If
it weren’t for her I’d have you thrown out of the hotel.”

Paddy said stupidly, “And how do you mean if it weren’t for her?”

The stage manager said contemptuously, “You saw her dance. The Lords seemed to like her. I advise you to stay in your bed tonight.”

A great light burnt into Paddy’s brain. “Dance? You mean that she was… You mean…” He beat at his brows. “And that was… Ah well, never mind. Where is the little deceiver?”

“She’s in the dressing room, waiting for the next series.”

“I’ve got to see her.” Paddy ran down the ramp, bumped into Fay coming around the corner.

“We’ve got to leave,” whispered Paddy. “They’ll be after us at any time.”

“Why the rush?” asked Fay, coolly.

“I went to Suite Ten to get the book. I just had it in my grasp when the hardest-looking Councillor of them all walks in and takes it clean away from me. As soon as he sees what’s in it and decides what it is he’ll have the hounds out after us, all of them. The sooner we’re off the better.” Paddy paused for breath while Fay looked on with a slight smile.

Paddy heaved a great sigh, rumpled his black hair. “No, no—it’s no good. You go off, wait for me in the ship. I’m going now to find that hulking big Badau and I’ll take that book away from him. I’ll get it, and no mistake.

“But you be off, so they won’t catch both of us. Besides,” and he looked narrowly toward the stage manager, “I don’t think they’re planning anything good for you this night.”

“Paddy,” said Fay, “we’ll both go. And the Badau will find nothing in the book. I got there first and I got the Son’s memorandum. It’s in my shoe right now. The sooner we’re back on our ship the better.”

Paddy awoke from deep sleep to find the ship floating free. He peered out a bull’s-eye. Space surrounded them like a vast pool of clear water. Astem glittered Scheat, to one side hung yellow Alpheratz, and ahead down a foreshortened line ran the stars of Andromeda’s body—Adhil the train, Mirach the loins, Almach the shoulder.

Paddy unzipped the elastic sheet, clambered out, stepped into the shower, stripped, turned on the mist. The foam searched his pores, slushed out oil, dust, perspiration. A blast of warm air dried him.

He dressed, stepped up to the bridge deck, where he found Fay bending over the chart table, her dark hair tousled, the line of her profile as clean and delicate as a mathematical curve.

Paddy scowled. Fay was wearing her white blouse, dark green slacks and sandals and seemed very calm and matter-of-fact. To his mind’s eye came the picture of the near-naked dancer in the fantastic gilt headdress. He saw the motion of her cream-colored body. The clench of muscles, the abandoned tilt of her head. And this was the same girl.

Fay looked up into his eyes and, as if divining his thoughts, smiled faintly, maddeningly.

Paddy maintained an injured silence, as if somehow Fay had cheated him. Fay, for motives of her own, did nothing to soothe him but turned back to the sheet of metal she had taken from the Badau book. After a minute she leaned back, handed it to Paddy.

It was minutely engraved in the Badaic block. The first paragraph described the space-drive tube, giving optimum dimensions, composition, the tri-axial equations for its inner and outer surfaces.

The second paragraph specified the type of field-coils found to be most efficient. Then followed two columns of five-digit numbers, three to a column, which Paddy—remembering the secret room at Akhabats he had broken into—knew to be field-strength settings.

Fay said, “I opened the Pherasic can, looked into it also. It had a metal sheet something like that one—describing the tube—but instead of detailing the coils it prescribed their spacing.”

Paddy nodded. “Duplication of information.”

“We’ve got two of these things, said Fay seriously, “and it’s uncomfortable carrying them around with us.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” said Paddy. “And since we can’t get in to Earth— Well, let’s see. Delta Frianguli is pretty handy and there’s an uninhabited planet.”

The planet was dead and dull as a clinker, showing a reticulated surface of black plains and random flows of cratered scoria three miles high, ten miles wide.

Paddy made an abrupt gesture. “The problem is not so much hiding our loot as finding it again ourselves.”

“It’s a big planet,” said Fay dubiously. “One spot looks like another.”

“It’s a misfit among planets,” declared Paddy. “A dirty outcast, shunned by polite society—all ragged and grimy and patched. Sure, I’d hate to be afoot down there in the waste.”

“There,” said Fay. “
There’s
a landmark—that pillar or volcanic neck or whatever it is.”

They settled to the black sand of the plain and it creaked harshly under the ship. The pillar rose high above them.

“Look at the face it makes.” Paddy pointed out fancied features in the rock.

“Like an angry dragon or a gorgon.”

” Angry Dragon Peak —that’s its name,” said Paddy. “And now there must be a cubbyhole somewhere near.”

In their space-suits they crossed the level space, the black sand crunching and squeaking underfoot, climbed the tumble of rock and found a fissure at the base of the monolith.

“Now,” said Fay, “somehow we’ve got to locate Angry Dragon Peak on the planet. We could cruise months around these badlands looking for it.”

“Here’s how we’ll find it,” said Paddy. “We’ll take a head bubble from one of the spare space-suits, and leave it here— with the ear-phone pressed up against the mouthpiece, and the switch on ‘Converse.’ Next time we come we’ll send out a message and the receiver will pick it up and bounce it back to us, and… We’ll go down along the direction.”

Behind them lay the dead planet of Delta Trianguli. Paddy looked out ahead. “Adhil’s next, then Loristan.”

He picked up the key, scrutinized the letters on it. RXBM NON LANG SON.

He chewed his lip. “Now this is a different problem. On Alpheratz A and on Badau we at least knew which she been to buy at. But this time we have a key, and there’s a million doors on Loristan, not to mention boxes, drawers, lockers, padlocks, jam cupboards—”

Fay said without raising her head, “It’s not that difficult”

“No? And why not, pray?”

“Loristan is banker, broker, financier to the Langtry worlds. The Loristan Bank regulates currency for the entire galaxy and there’s nothing like its deposit boxes for safety. They’re so safe that not even the Sons of Langtry themselves could break into a box. And that’s what that key is—a safe-deposit key.”

“And why is this safe-deposit system so safe?” asked Paddy.

Fay leaned back against the bench. “First the central vault is encased in eight inches of durible and guarded by explosive mines. Then comes a layer of molten iron, then more durible and more insulation, then the vault. Second, the goods are banked mechanically, without human handling or knowledge.

“You go to the bank, buy a box, put in your valuables, take the key. Then you code the box with whatever arrangement of letters you wish and drop it in a chute. The machine carries it away, stacks it, and nobody knows where it is or which or whose is whose. The only records are in a big gelatine brain.

“To get your box, you go to any branch, punch your code on the buttons, insert your key and the combination brings you your box. Neither the key alone nor the code alone have any effect. The box holder is doubly protected against theft.

“If he loses his key or forgets the code then he must wait for the ten-year clearing, when all boxes which have laid undisturbed for ten years are automatically ejected.”

“So,” said Paddy, “all we do is drop down to Loristan, use the key and take off again?”

“That’s all,” said Fay. “Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Listen.” She turned on the spacewave. A voice spoke in the Shaul dialect. “All citizens of the cluster be on the lookout for Paddy Blackthorn and the young woman accompanying him, both Earthers. They are desperate criminals. Reward for their apprehension alive is a million marks a year for life, perpetual amnesty for all crimes, the freedom of the universe and the rank of Langtry Lord.”

“They really want us,” said Fay.

“Shh—
listen!
” And they heard the Shaul describe them in precise detail.

Another voice began to repeat the same message in Koton. Fay turned off the set.

“We’re being hunted as Grover O’Leary hunted the white-eyed stag—with tooth, nail and all odd angles.”

Fay said, “I tried to make contact with Earth but there’s still interference. No doubt the blockade is tighter than ever.”

Paddy grunted, “And how about your Earth Agency then, that you train so exhaustively for and evidently serve with your every resource?”

Fay put on her faint smile. “Paddy, do you know I trust only three people in the world? Myself, the chief of the Agency and you? After all the Agents are human. That reward would turn almost anyone’s head. And all for a very small whisper.”

“The fewer that knows, the better,” Paddy agreed. He ran his hand through his hair. “Black-haired, they said. They must have caught Dr. Tallogg.”

“Or maybe they tied together the Earther vandals on Alpheratz A and the inept performers at the Kamborogian Arrowhead.”

“That sexy dance wasn’t inept. You looked as if you had lots of experience.”

Fay rose to her feet. “Now don’t be so old-maidish. Certainly I have good coordination and I’ve had dancing lessons. Anyway, what do you care about my past? I’m not your type. You like those cow-eyed underslung Maeve women, remember? So much to squeeze, remember?”

“Ah, so I did,” sighed Paddy, “but that was before I saw that smooth pelt of yours and now I’m tempted to change.”

“Pish! I’m plain. Remember? With a skinny posterior. Remember?”

“Very well then,” said Paddy, turning away. “Since you’ve the memory of the most revengeful elephant of India you’re still plain and still skinny.”

Fay grinned to herself. She said to his back, “We’d better try to change our appearances. There’s hairwash and Optichrome in the locker. Maybe we’d better be blonde for a while. We’ll dye our clothes also. And I’m going to cut your hair short and wear mine differently.”

Loristan was a small world and mountainous. Great forests of trees a mile high charged the air with oxygen and a visitor’s first experience with the low gravity and the oxygen produced a fine exhilaration.

Where the cities of Alpheratz A and Badau were low and severe Rivveri and Tham, the twin cities of Loristan, reared spectacular towers into the air. Buttressing planes of arched metal hung between, conquering space, sometimes for no other purpose than sheer exuberance. Raw rich color glowed everywhere. There was no gloom on Loristan, none of the Pherasic mysticism, the Badau stolidity. Here were bustle, aggressiveness, activity.

Paddy now had bright blue eyes and cropped blond hair. The combination lent him an expression of boyish naïveté. He wore a blouse stamped with patterns after the Pendulistic school, loose breeches flapping at the ankles.

And Fay—where was the somber dark-haired girl Paddy had first seen? Here was a bright eager creature with white-gold elf-locks, eyes blue as a frosty morning, strawberry mouth. And every time Paddy looked at her he groaned inside and the word Maeve came to be hated. Twice he tried to grab her and kiss her and twice she ducked and sprang across the cabin. Finally Paddy lapsed to a sullen indifference.

Loristan widened below, and the twin cities twinkled like jewels.

“Well,” said Fay, “what’ll it be? Shall we sneak down to a landing somewhere in the forest or use the public field, bold as life?”

Paddy shrugged. “If we tried slipping down out in the woods or in that Big Jelly Swamp they show on the chart there’d be a dozen guardboats on us like birds on a nutmeg. But when we pull into their public field they rub their hands and say, ‘Fine, another couple of Earther savages to be fleeced,’ and that’s as far as their minds reach.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Fay. She touched the controls, the boat nosed down. They slipped quietly to a landing on the pitted field, settled among a dozen other boats of similar model. For ten minutes they sat, watching through the observation dome for any sign of undue interest.

No one seemed to heed them. Other boats took off and landed, and from one of the incoming ones a dark-haired Earther couple alighted. Coincidentally, the man wore a blue jumper.

Fay nudged Paddy. “Let’s follow those two. If there’s any suspicion, they’ll certainly arouse it.”

The two Earthers sauntered off the field and no one looked at them twice. With more confidence Paddy and Fay followed, through the terminal lobby and out upon the shining streets of Rivveri.

“There’s the bank,” said Fay, nodding at a spire of red marble shafted and splined with silver, “and there, see that counter along the side? That’s the safe deposit. You need never even step inside.”

Paddy said half to himself, “It can’t be this easy.”

“It can’t be,” said Fay. “I feel the same way. As if this city is wired like a big burglar alarm—a trap—and that red spire is nothing but bait for Paddy Blackthorn and Fay Bursill.”

“It’s a hunch I have,” muttered Paddy. “A hunch that something is fishy.”

Fay looked up and down the street with her new blue eyes. “Every hunch is supposed to have subconscious reasons for being.”

“It’s all too bright and open. Look at those butter-yellow Loristanese in the little pleated skirts, with their silly smiles on their faces and those sassy little caps. It’s as if they’re all nudging each other with their elbows, telling each other to watch the big joke when the axe falls on Fay and Paddy.”

Fay squared her small shoulders. “Give me the key. All we can do is take a chance. After all we have two-fifths of the data and we could always bargain for our lives.”

Paddy said gloomily, “You don’t bargain in a nerve tube. You talk and gladly too. Those two sheets aren’t safe till they’re out of our hands.”

“Well, we’ll have to take the chance. Give me the key. You wait here and if anything happens go back to the ship, take off fast to Delta Trianguli, pick up the sheets and get away with them.”

Paddy snorted. “What do you take me for now? I’m thinking you’re becoming too bold and independent with your ordering. It’s me that’ll go up there and draw the lion’s tooth. There was never a Blackthorn yet that his woman did up the slops for him, and we won’t ever start here out on this drunker planet Loristan.”

“Boom-boom-boom,” jeered Fay. “You sound like you’re running for office.” But she smiled and was evidently pleased. “Oh, let’s both go. Then there won’t be any argument and we can both feel virtuous.”

With pumping hearts they marched up to the bench, found an empty booth. An armed guard stood at either end of the counter but paid them no heed.

Paddy pushed the key in the slot. Fay punched out the code on a set of buttons—RXBM NON LANG SON. Then came the wait. Ten seconds, twenty seconds—it was a paralyzed eternity.

A siren shrieked high on the red spire. The doors into the bank slid open, a pair of armed guards strode out toward the counter.

Paddy squared off. “Run, Fay—quick now. I’ll hold ’em. They’ll never take me alive.
Run
, girl! Get to the boat. You know where we’ve hid the stuff.”

Fay giggled nervously. “You fool, shut up. It’s lunchtime. They’re the relief guards.”

A rattle, a click and a package fell into the hopper at their counter.

Fay picked it up, covered the green-and-orange medallion of the Loristan Langtrys.

“Now,” she said, “back to the boat.”

“They’re watching us like hawks,” hissed Paddy.

“Come along. You’re acting like you’ve just robbed the bank!”

They walked briskly across the square, turned into the glass-fronted lobby, set out across the field. An armed guard ran toward them, shouted.