Earthblood (23 page)

STOCK. Under the first sign, another hung by one rusted pin. It said FOR

SALE—VIABLE HUMAN EMBRYOS. Something had been painted beneath the words, but the letters had been scratched out.

Roan turned to the men. "Go shopping," he said, and they stood and looked amazed.

"Go shopping. Spread out so you don't look like an army; and don't start anything."

"Where you going, Boss?" Askor inquired.

"I'm going to see how easy it is to become a father." Roan climbed the narrow, hollowed steps, pushed past the remnant of a beaded hanging into a dark and smelly room lit by a crack in the ceiling. From behind a desk, a mangily feathered Geek in tarnished bangles looked at him with utter insolence.

Roan kicked a broken chair aside and leaned on the desk.

"What do you want?" the creature rasped in a scratchy, irritable voice. "Who referred you here? We deal wholesale only, to selected customers—"

"I don't go through channels," Roan interrupted. "I came to inquire about buying an embryo: a human one, like you advertise outside."

"We have thousands of satisfied customers," the dealer said automatically, but in a tone that indicated that it had no need of another. It was looking Roan over distastefully. "How much are you prepared to pay—if I should happen to have something in stock?"

"Money doesn't matter—just so it's the real thing."

"Your approach appeals to me." The dealer fluffed out its molted face ruff and sat up a little straighter. "But you have to have at least one wife. Sodomate law. The Feds would get me."

"Let me worry about that. What have you got?"

"Well, I could offer you a good buy in a variety of FA bloodlines—"

"What does FA mean?"

"Functionally adapted. Webbed digits, heavy-gravity types, lightly furred—that sort of thing. Very nice. Guaranteed choice, selected—"

"I want genuine Terry type."

"What about our number 973? Features the cyclopic maternal gene, rudimentary telepathic abilities that could be coaxed along—"

"I said Terry type, the original variety."

"Nonsense. You know better than that. It doesn't exist—"

"Doesn't exist, eh?" He bent close to the dealer. "Take a look. A good look." The dealer clacked its tarnished beak and looked at Roan worriedly. Its large round Rheops eyes were watery.

"My goodness," it said. Then: "The feet. You'd be surprised how often it's the feet."

Roan stepped back and pulled a boot off and planted his bare foot on the massive old desk.

The dealer gasped. "Five digits! One might almost think—" It looked up into Roan's face with a sudden alarm. It slid off its stool and hopped back.

"You're not—oh, no—"

"Sure I am," Roan said. "I came from right here. Twenty-five years ago. And now I want to know all about the circumstances surrounding my presence on your shelves."

"Go away! I can't help you! I wasn't here then! I know nothing!"

"For your sake," Roan said, "you'd better know something." He took a gun out of his belt and hefted it on his palm.

"My . . . my uncle. Uncle Targ. He might—but he left word he wasn't to be disturbed . . . !"

"Disturb him," Roan said ominously.

The dealer's eyes went to a corner of the room, flicked back.

"Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. I'll check the files, and—" Roan came around the desk and headed for the corner the Rheops had glanced at. There was the tiny glint of an oculus from a shadowy niche. The feathery alien skittered across to intercept Roan.

"Uncle Targ isn't active in the business any more! He's not a well being! If you'd just—"

"But I see he still retains an active interest." Roan swept the dealer aside and raised the gun and fired a low-power blast at the wall. Plaster shattered all around the Eye, exposing wires which led down toward a circular hairline crack in the fused-sand floor. Roan brought the gun up and fired at the crack. The dealer jumped at him and hauled at his arm, squawking. Abruptly, the trapdoor flew up and a tiny, old voice screeched in five languages: "Stop, cease, desist, have done, give over!" A naked ancient head popped up from the opening, its three remaining feathers in disarray. "Break off, check, stay, hold, cut short! Chuck it, I say!" it shrilled.

"Terminate—"

"I've already stopped," Roan said. "Uncle Targ, I presume?" He tossed the dealer aside, stepped to the opening. Spidery stairs led down. He holstered the gun and descended into the heavy reek of sulphur dioxide. Uncle Targ danced on skinny, scaled legs, screaming curses in at least four tongues it hadn't used before.

"You swear with great authority," Roan said when the oldster paused for breath. "Why all the flummery?"

The creature skittered to the wall and plugged a wire dangling from its wrist into a socket.

"I should have let you rot! I should have decanted you at the first sight of that accursed box with its crests and jewels and its stink of trouble!

Because of you, my very own pouch-brother was hacked to spareribs in the flower of his dealership! But instead, I maintained you at the required ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit for days, and this is the thanks I get!" It stopped and breathed heavily for a moment. Then:

"Go away," it piped in a calmer tone. "I'm an old being."

"You're an old windbag, but that's your problem," Roan said carelessly. "All I want to know is who am I?"

"All that shooting! You could have shorted my metabolic booster unit!" Roan looked around at the dim-lit room. There were no windows, but the walls were paneled in pure gold and somebody kept it polished. There was a chandelier hung with diamonds and a burl desk that must have cost a couple of thousand Imperial to import from Jazeel. The creature's flimsy old body was swathed in yards of silver damask, and in one side of its beak it wore a ruby that looked like the heart of a rare red wine.

"You've got a right nice sickroom," Roan said. "And it's a matter of no moment to me whether you're evading the Feds or the tax collectors or if you just like to be alone. But I'm still waiting for an answer." He tossed the gun impatiently and motioned with his free hand at Uncle Targ's wires. "I can either plug you," he said, "or unplug you." Uncle Targ squeaked around in the back of its throat as though it were pulling out rusty file drawers in its head.

"I'll have to get your records." It hesitated. "Don't look, now." It sounded as though it had them in its lace bra.

Roan went on looking, but Uncle Targ played a tune with its fingers on a solid piece of wall and a drawer slid out. A card flipped up. Roan reached over Uncle Targ's shoulder and grabbed the card. Somehow, he'd expected to see names on it: his father's name, or his mother's. Or a country.

Instead, it said, Pure Terran, Beta. ITN Experimental Station, Alpha Centauri. (special source d.g.)

"What does 'Beta' mean?" Roan asked.

"Beta is you. Alpha was somebody else. And then there was Gamma, and the others."

"Others. Pure Terran . . ."

"They weren't viable."

"Were they my brothers?"

Uncle Targ shrugged. "Alien biologies have never been a hobby of mine."

"But what else do you know?"

"What's the difference? Why do you care? You're you and it seems to me you're pretty lucky. Suppose you were me, getting older and older and all the money I've got won't buy even a minute of the pleasures you can get free." The screech was a whine now.

"Why I care is my business. Telling me is your business." Tremulously, the old creature unplugged itself, teetered across to its stool, perched, and lit up a dope stick. It was obvious from the way it caressed it that it wasn't allowed to have them very often.

"So long ago," it murmured, looking at the ceiling.

"Did you know I was stolen?" Roan asked.

"You are crude," Uncle Targ said distastefully. It pushed a button and the trapdoor slammed shut in its nephew's face peering from above.

"I'm waiting," Roan reminded it.

"I, ah," Uncle Targ said. "That is, so many of one's usual sources had withered away—you understand—"

"What made me so valuable?"

"You? Valuable? You retailed for a miserable two thousand, if I recall correctly."

"Still, there was your brother. And someone went to considerable trouble to come after me."

Uncle Targ blew smoke from orifices in the sides of its head. "Who knows?

You do seem to be a more or less classic specimen of Man, if anyone has an interest in such matters." It sighed. "I envy anyone who cares that much about anything at all. With me it was money, but even that palls now."

"The card said I came from Alpha Centauri; can't you tell me any more than that?"

Uncle Targ rolled one beady eye at Roan. "On the flask," it said, "there was a name: Admiral Starbird, and the notation 'Command Interest.' I have no idea what that might mean."

"Are there Terrans on Alpha?"

"I know nothing whatever of this Alpha place," Uncle Targ piped. "And I do not care to know. But there are no Terrans living there—or anywhere else, for that matter. The Pure Terran is a myth. Oh, ten, fifteen thousand years ago, certainly. They kept to themselves, lords of the universe, practiced all sorts of racial purity measures—except for the specially mutated slaves they bred. But then they had the poor judgment to lose a war. Since then the natural tendency toward environmental adaptation has had free rein. And with the social barriers down, the various induced mutations inbred freely with the Pure Strain. Today you're lucky if you can pick up what we in the trade call an Eighty X; a reasonable superficial resemblance to the ancient type."

"What about me?"

"Umm. If I were to cut into you, I daresay I'd encounter all sorts of anomalies. How many hearts do you have?"

"I don't know. I thought you said alien biology wasn't a hobby of yours."

"One can't help picking up a few—"

There was a loud thud from above and plaster fell down on the burl desk. Uncle Targ screeched and jumped for the trapdoor button. The lid sprang open and a solid slug wanged off the gold wall by Roan's ear and the ancient being's profanity cut off in mid-curse. Roan yanked out his gun and flattened himself against the wall; through the trapdoor he could see Askor holding Uncle Targ's nephew by the neck and slamming the feathered head against the desk. A small ragged slave was scrabbling frantically for the beaded hanging, but Sidis' unsheathed claws held him pinned by a trailing cloak. Roan fired a shot into the ventilator grill. It made an echo like eternity bursting.

"All right, boys, break it up," he called, and clambered up into the shop. Sidis looked at him, grinning his metallic grin, and the slave broke free and bolted from the room. Askor waved the dealer in a wide gesture as though he had forgotten he was holding him.

"Poion seen you come in here and we thought we heard some shots and then we couldn't find you."

"So all you rowdies could think of was to shoot the place up. I told you to go shopping."

"Pay for stuff?" Askor tossed the dealer aside; it struck with a clatter of beak and claws and bangles and crept to a neutral corner. "We figured you was kidding."

Roan glanced down into Uncle Targ's private retreat. The ancient Rheops lay on its back, glazed eyes wide, with its mouth full of blood.

"Come on," Roan said. "Let's get out of here." Back in the plaza the bazaar had died as though a sudden storm had slammed it shut. Roan could feel the eyes staring at him from behind blind shutters and past barely parted hangings at narrow windows and through cracks in sagging facades. Askor glanced around, strutting.

"I guess they know we been to town, hey, Chief?"

"Shut up and march," Roan said.

This is what I always leave behind me, he thought. Fear . . .

"I don't get it, Chief," Askor grumbled, sitting beside Roan in the eerie light of the central panel. "For better'n a year and a half now—ever since we lost Warlock—we been bypassing dandy targets, blasting balls to bulkheads from one two-bit world to another. And when we get there—no shooting, you say. Go shopping, you say. The boys are getting kinda fed up—"

"We stopped and took on supplies once or twice," Roan said. "But I suppose that wasn't enough to satisfy your sporting instincts."

"Huh? Aw, that was peanuts; just grocery shopping, like."

"With a few good-natured killings thrown in, just to keep your hand in. Well, you can tell the crew there'll be plenty of action from now on."

"Yeah? Say, that's great, Cap'n! What you got in mind? A run through the Spider Cluster, maybe, and knock off a few of them market towns that ain't been hit for a hundred years—"

"Nothing so pedestrian. Set your course for Galactic East . . ." Askor scratched at his hairless skull. "East? Why do we want to head out that way, Chief? That's rough territory. Damn few worlds to hit, and them poor ones."

"There'll be plenty of worlds; and after the first couple years' travel, we'll be in a part of space no one's visited for a few thousand years—"

"A couple years' run out the Arm? Cripes, Cap'n, that'll put us in No-man's-space. The ghostships—"

"I don't believe in ghostships. We may run into Niss, though. That's where the last big engagements were fought—"

"Look, Chief," Askor said quickly. "What about if we talk this over, huh? I mean, what the hell, there's plenty good worlds right here in this sector to keep us eating good for the next two hundred years. What I say is, why look for trouble?"

"You're afraid, Askor? That surprises me."

"Now wait a minute, Cap'n! I didn't say I was scared. I just . . ." His voice trailed off. "What I'm getting at is, what the hell's out there? Why leave good hunting grounds for nothing?"

"Alpha Centauri's out there," Roan said.

"Alpha . . . That's the place you said the ITN was. Cripes, Chief, I thought you said we was through with that chasing around—"

Roan came to his feet. "What do you think this is, a ladies' discussion circle? I gave you an order, and by the Nine Hells, you'll carry it out!" Askor looked at him. "You sound more like old Cap'n Dread all the time," he said. "I'll follow your orders, Cap'n. I always have. I know I need somebody with brains to tell me what to do. I just made the mistake of thinking we could talk about it—"