In the Beginning (17 page)

“You must have a powerful thirst, Mercurian!”

Hendrin glanced at him scornfully. “I’m just warming up for some serious drinking, friend. Bizant sets the blood flowing; it’s just a starter.”

The drink arrived, and he downed it in a quick gulp. That was good, he thought. “I’ll have another…and after it, a shot of dolbrouk as a chaser.”

“That’s more like it,” said the Venusian appreciatively. “You’re a man after my own heart.” To prove it, he downed his own drink—a mug of fiery brez. Roaring, he slapped his companion’s back and pinched the arm of the silent Earth-girl huddled between them.

Ideas started to form in Hendrin’s head. He was alone on a strange planet, and a big job faced him. These two Venusians were well along in their cups—and they wore the tight gray britches and red tunic of Darrien’s brigades. That was good.

As for the girl—well, she might help in the plan too. She was young and frightened-looking; probably she’d been caught in a recent raiding-party. Her clothes hung in tatters. Hendrin appreciatively observed the occasional bare patch of white thigh, the soft curve of breast, visible through the rents. Yes, she might do too. It depended on how drunk these Venusians were.

The Mercurian left his place at the bar and walked over to the carousing Venusians. “You sound like my type of men,” he told them. “Got some time?”

“All the time in the universe!”

“Good enough. Let’s take a booth in the back and see how much good brew we can pour into ourselves.” Hendrin jingled his pocket.“There’s plenty of cash here—cash I might part with for the company of two such as you!”

The Venusians exchanged glances, which Hendrin did not miss. They thought he was a sucker ready to be exploited. Well, the Mercurian thought, we’ll see who gets exploited. And as for the money—that was his master’s. He had an unlimited expense account for this mission. And he intended to use it to the utmost.

“Come, wench,” said one Venusian thickly. “ Let’s join this gentleman at a booth.”

***

Hendrin jammed his bulk into one corner of the booth, and one of the Venusians sat by his side. Across from him sat the other Venusian and the girl. Her eyes were red and raw, and her throat showed the mark of a recent rope.

Chuckling, Hendrin said, “Where’d you get the girl?”

“Planetoid Eleven,” one of the Venusians told him. “We were on a raiding party for Darrien, and found her in one of the colonies. A nice one, is she not?”

“I’ve seen better,” remarked Hendrin casually. “She looks sullen and angry.”

“They all do. But they warm up, once they see they’ve no alternative. How about some drinks?”

Hendrin ordered a round of brez for all three, and tossed the barkeep another three-creda coin. The drinks arrived. The Venusian nearest him reached clumsily for his and spilled three or four drops

“Oopsh…waste of good liquor. Sorry.”

“Don’t shed tears,” Hendrin said. “There’s more where that came from.”

“Sure thing. Well, here’s to us all—Darrien too, damn his ugly skin!”

They drank. Then they drank some more. Hendrin matched them drink for drink, and paid for most—but his hard-shelled body quickly converted the alcohol to energy, while the Venusians grew less and less sure of their speech, wobblier and wobblier in coordination.

Plans took rapid shape in the Mercurian’s mind. He was here on a dangerous mission, and he knew the moment he ceased to think fast would be the moment he ceased to think.

Krodrang, Overlord of Mercury, had sent him here—Krodrang who had been content to rule the tiny planet without territorial ambitions for decades, but who suddenly had been consumed by the ambition to rule the universe as well. He had summoned Hendrin, his best agent, to the throne-room.

“Hendrin, I want you to go to Mars. Join Darrien’ s army. Get close to Darrien. And when you get the chance, steal his secrets. The Clanton Mine, the orthysynthetic duplicate robots, anything else. Bribe his henchmen. Steal his mistress. Do whatever you can—but I must have Darrien’s secrets! And when you have them—kill him. Then I shall rule the system supreme.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

In Hendrin’s personal opinion the Overlord was taken with the madness of extreme age. But it was not Hendrin’s place to question. He was loyal—and so he accepted the job without demur.

Now he was here. He needed some means of access to Darrien.

Pointing at the girl, he said, “What do you plan to do with her? She looks weak for a slave.”

“Weak! Nonsense. She’s as strong as an Earthman. They come that way, out in those colonies. We plan to bring her to Dorvis Graal, Darrien’s Viceroy. Dorvis Graal will buy her and make her a slave to Darrien—or possibly a mistress.”

Hendrin’s black eyes narrowed. “How much will Dorvis Graal pay?”

“A hundred credas platinum, if we’re lucky.”

The Mercurian surveyed the girl out of one eye. She was undeniably lovely, and there was something else—a smoking defiance, perhaps—that might make her an appealing challenge for a jaded tyrant. “Will ye take a hundred fifty from me?”

“From
you,
Mercurian?”

“A hundred-eighty, then.”,

The girl looked up scornfully. Her breasts heaved as she said, “You alien pigs buy and sell us as if we’re cattle. But just wait! Wait until—”

One Venusian reached out and slapped her. She sank back into silence. “A hundred-eighty, you say?”

Hendrin nodded. “She might keep me pleasant company on the cold nights of this accursed planet.”

“I doubt it,” said the soberer of the two Venusians. “She looks mean. But we’d never get a hundred-eighty from Dorvis Graal. You can have her. Got the cash?”

Hendrin dropped four coins into the Venusian’s leathery palm.

“Done!” the Venusian cried. “The girl is yours!”

The Mercurian nodded approvingly. The first step on the road to Darrien’s chambers had been paved. He reached across the table and imprisoned the girl’s wrist in one of his huge paws, and smiled coldly as defiance flared on her face. The girl had spirit. Darrien might be interested.

***

Lon Archman shivered as the bitter Martian winds swept around him. It was just as it had been in the drug-induced tests Wentworth had run back in the Universal Intelligence office, with one little difference.

This was no dream. This was the real thing.

All he could see of Mars was the wide, flat, far-ranging plain of red sand, broken here and there by a rock outcrop or a twisted gabron-weed. In the distance he could see Canalopolis, the city Darrien had taken over and made the headquarters for his empire.

He started to walk.

After about fifteen minutes he saw his first sign of life—a guard, in the grey-and-red uniform of Darrien’s men, pacing back and forth in the sand outside Canalopolis. He was an Earthman. He wore the leather harness that marked the renegade. Archman’s lips pursed coldly as he watched the Earthman pace to and fro. Cautiously the Intelligence agent edged up on the renegade. He couldn’t use his zam-gun; he needed the renegade’s uniform. It would have to be a surprise attack.

Remembering what had happened in the final test on Earth, Archman glanced in all directions. Then he sprang forward, running full tilt at the unseeing renegade.

The man grunted and staggered forward as Archman cracked into him. Lon snatched the renegade’s zam-gun and tossed it to one side. Then he grabbed the man by the scruff of his tunic and yanked him around.

He was a scrawny, hard-eyed fellow with fleshless cheeks and thin lips—probably a cheap crook who thought he stood better pickings serving Darrien than making a go of it on Earth. Archman hit him.. The renegade doubled in pain, and Archman hit him again—hard. The man crumpled like a wet paper doll.

Again the Intelligence man glanced warily around. He was a quick learner, and he wanted to improve that 97.003% score to 100%. 100% meant survival on this mission, and Archman wasn’t particularly anxious to die.

No one was in sight. He stripped off the unconscious guard’s clothing, then peeled out of his own. The chill Martian winds whipped against his nakedness. Hastily he donned the guard’s uniform. Now he was wearing the uniform of Darrien’s brigade of filthy renegades.

Drawing his zam-gun, he incinerated his own clothing. The wind carried the particles away, and there was no trace. Then he glanced at the naked, unconscious renegade, already turning blue, frozen cold. Without remorse Archman killed him, lifted the headless body, carried it fifty feet to a sand dune, shoved it out of sight.

Within minutes the man would be buried by tons of sand. Archman had considered this first step carefully, had originally planned to exchange clothing with the guard and assume his identity. But that was risky. This was safer. Men often got lost in the Martian desert and vanished in the sand. When the time came for changing of the guard, that would be what they would report of this man.

So far, so good. Archman tightened the uniform at the waist until it was a convincing fit. Then he began to trot over the shifting sand toward the city ahead.

About ten minutes later he was inside Canalopolis. The guards at the gate, seeing him in Darrien’s uniform, passed him without question.

The city was old—old and filthy, like all of Mars. Crowded streets loomed before him, streets thick with shops and bars and dark alleys, lurking strangers ready to rob or gamble or sell women. It wasn’t a pleasant place. Archman smiled grimly. This was a fitting planet for Darrien to have set up his empire. Dirty and dark, justice-hating like Darrien himself.

Well, Archman thought, I’ve got to begin somewhere. Getting to Darrien would be a slow process—especially if he wanted to live through it.

The city’s streets were thronged with aliens of all sorts: bushy-tailed Venusians, swaggering boldly with their deadly stingers at the end of their black tails; blue Mercurians, almost impregnable inside their thick shells; occasionally a Plutonian, looking like a fish with legs with their finned hands; and, of course, the vicious, powerful Martians, all of them showing their sneering tusks.

Here and there there was an Earthman, like Darrien himself a renegade. Archman hated those worst of all, for they were betraying their home world.

He stood still and looked around. Far ahead of him, in the middle of the city, rose a vaulting palace sculptured from shimmering Martian quartz. That was undoubtedly Darrien’s headquarters. Surrounding it were smaller buildings, barracks-like—and then the rest of the city sprawled around it. Darrien had built himself a neat little fortress, thought Archman.

He wasn’t at all sure how he was going to reach Darrien. But that would come in time. The first action, he thought, would be to get a couple of drinks under his belt and to have a look around the town.

A sign in three languages beckoned to him: BAR.

He cut his way through the milling traffic and entered. It was a long, low-ceilinged room which stank of five planets’ liquor. A Martian bartender stood before a formidable array of exotic drinks; along the bar, men of five worlds slumped in varying degrees of drunkenness. Farther back, lit by a couple of dusty, sputtering levon-tubes, there were some secluded booths.

Archman stiffened suddenly. In one of the booths was a sight that brought quick anger to him—anger that he just as quickly forced to subside.

A blue Mercurian was leaning over, pawing a near-nude, sobbing Earth-girl. There were two Venusians in the booth with them, both slumped over the table, lying in utter stupor face-down in little pools of slops.

An Earth-girl? Here? And what the hell was that hardshell doing pawing her?

Archman’s first thoughts were murderous. But then he realized such a situation gave him a chance to make a few contacts on this unfriendly planet. He shouldered past a couple of drozky-winos at the bar, choking back his disgust, and moved toward the booth in the back.

***

The levon-tube was sputtering noisily, going
griz-griz
every few seconds. Energy leakage, thought Archman. He reached the booth, and the Mercurian left the girl alone and looked up inquisitively at him.

“Hello, Mercurian. Nice bit of flesh you’ve got there.”

“Isn’t she, though? I just bought her off these sots you see before you.” The Mercurian indicated the drunken Venusians, and laughed. “We ought to cut their tails off before they wake!”

Archman eyed the alien stonily. “Drunk they may be, but they wear Darrien’s uniform—which is more than you can say, stranger.”

“I’m here to join up, though. Don’t leap to conclusions. I’m as loyal to Darrien as you are, maybe more so.”

“Sorry,” Archman apologized. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Go right ahead. Dump one of the tailed ones on the floor. They’re so drunk they’ll never feel it.”

Casually Archman shoved one of the Venusians by the shoulder. The alien stirred, moaned, and without complaining slid into a little heap on the floor. Archman took his seat, feeling the girl’s warmness next to him.

“My name’s Archman,” he said. “Yours?”

“Hendrin. Just arrived from Mercury. A fine wench, isn’t she?”

Archman studied the girl appreciatively. Her face was set in sullen defiance, and despite her near-nudity she had a firm dignity about her that the Earthman liked. She seemed to be staring right through the Mercurian rather than at him, and the fact that her breasts were nearly bare and her lovely legs unclad hardly disturbed her.

“Where are you from, lass?”

“Is it your business—
traitor?”

Archman recoiled. “Harsh words, pretty one. But perhaps we’ve met somewhere on Earth. I’m curious.”

“I’m not from Earth. I was a colonist on Planetoid Eleven until—until—”

“An attractive bit of property,” Archman told the Mercurian. “You capture her yourself?”

Hendrin shook his domed head. “No. I bought her from these Venusians here. I mean to sell her to our lord Darrien, for use as a plaything.”

Archman smiled casually. “I could almost use one like her myself. Would you take a hundred credas for her?”

“I paid a hundred-eighty.”

“Two hundred, then?”

“Not for a thousand,” said the Mercurian firmly. “This girl is for Darrien himself.”