Meeting at Infinity (2 page)

T
HE CRUISER
was of unfamiliar shape and special materials; large, luxurious, immaculate, it hummed down the Avenue Columbus a yard above the ground. It moved swiftly, but word of its going outran it.

The news was at the main entrance of The Market a full minute ahead, and the faceless ones began to clot together like blood corpuscles at the site of a wound. Conjured from their regular beats, twenty Market police moved in. Four of them got rid of the cultists and their portable altar, paying
no attention to the maledictions screamed at them, while the others drove back the crowd, held them tensely in check.

“Lyken!”

The word sent tingling, weakening bolts of anticipation through Luis Nevada’s guts. He had to lick his lips and set his shoulders deliberately back, to give himself the illusion of new confidence.
At least—
the bitter reflection crossed his mind—
the intangible aura that keeps them away from me will now be of advantage …

Thinking so, he struggled to make his way forward to the front of the crowd, he thrust past a fat woman and came to within a yard of the front rank. In the same moment the oohing and aahing began, and the physical tension of the crowd relaxed. The huge portals of The Market slammed silently back. Magnificent, majestic, Ahmed Lyken and his guard of six giants strode towards the cruiser that awaited them.

Nevada saw the look of fury boiling on Lyken’s face, and his heart sank. Nonetheless, he pushed another six inches forward and filled his lungs for the cry which might bring him salvation.

A large hand closed on his arm with crashing painful force, and a thick rasping voice burned on his ear. “Don’t shub me, bud. Who ya think y’are?”

Head spinning, Nevada saw that he had been grabbed by a man almost as tall as one of Lyken’s giants, in a scarlet cover-up across the chest of which gold letters proclaimed the man’s identity: Breaker Bolden, they said.

A pug. Nevada’s head spun; he choked up words automatically, all the time viewing Lyken climbing into his cruiser and out of reach. He said, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to shove you.”

The pug’s face seemed to draw together towards its center, and his hand tightened still further on Nevada’s arm. He was probably not very bright; his battered appearance suggested he had been a long time in his game. So he would
not have detected what almost everyone else had seen instantly—that Nevada, dressed like a dreg, wasn’t. But the status-charged inflections of Nevada’s voice were unmistakable.

“No’ody shub me like y’ did!”

A fist like a pile driver waved under Nevada’s nose. He shut his eyes and did what he had meant to do when he came. He cried out, “Lyken! Lyken! Remember Akkilmar!”

He heard a puzzled grunt from the pug; then there was a world-shaking explosion against his face, and a mask of pain blinded him even when his eyes had started to open. The grasp on his arm ended abruptly, making him stagger and fall back against his neighbors in the crowd.

He began to piece together information again. One of Lyken’s enormous bodyguards had cracked him scientifically over the head with a baton, and was watching, hands on hips, for signs of further resistance. Another of the giants was reaching out towards Nevada, was catching his arm and dragging him forward.

Putting his free hand up to his face and feeling blood run from his nose, Nevada struggled to walk upright and with dignity. He was going towards Lyken, and the gamble had come off.

The merchant prince waited for him, a startled look on his face; all around, the faceless ones stared at the stranger who could command the prince’s attention. What lay behind it?

Nevada was presented in front of Lyken now, as though he were a trophy brought back from the hunt, and Lyken’s eyes searched his battered face. Long seconds passed.

Then Lyken gestured to his bodyguard. “Put him in the cruiser,” he said, and spun on his heel.

At first Athlone was too startled to do anything but curse. He began to review in his mind the underlings whose heads would roll for not discovering that Nevada had influence
with someone as powerful as Lyken. Then the savage foretaste of pleasure in that gave way to a sour apprehension.

How was Allyn going to react to
this
news?

He felt himself sweating; he felt one of his hands clench crushingly on the other and had to force them apart. But this was appalling! To be under the protection of a merchant prince was not officially valid; in practice—as Athlone knew too well—it was worth battle armor.

“Something wrong, boss?” said Benny uncomfortably, with his talent for saying the wrong thing. Athlone gave him a scowl and a wordless snarl, and he shut up.

No, this could
not
be the end. Athlone damned himself for reacting like a stupid coward. So Lyken was a merchant prince, so Nevada had by some trick got himself taken into Lyken’s private cruiser. So what? Maybe Nevada thought that that would frighten him off, perhaps act as a sort of threat. It wasn’t going to. It couldn’t be allowed to.

Athlone could feel not fright, but shyness, stupid, puerile shyness. The world of The Market wasn’t his world. He’d never touched it, never come into closer contact with it than thirdhand. It had overtones of divinity. It did to almost everyone. It still wasn’t going to scare him off.

He felt his mind fill with warm astonishment at his own presumption; he relaxed, expanded, sat back on the soft cushions. All right! If he couldn’t tell Lyken where to get off—and he couldn’t—then he was going to get hold of a man that could.

He said, “Benny, you ever hear of a Manuel Clostrides?”

“Why—uh—” Benny’s incessant look of bewilderment deepened. “Why, yes, boss. The man who runs
that,
you mean?” He gestured across the avenue towards the great white tower.

“That’s the man. We’re going to see him, Benny. You and I. Run over to the entrance. And make it a smooth turn!”

Yet by the time he managed to reach Clostrides, his self-assurance
had leaked away. It was phony, anyway. All he had to sustain him was the same force that drove him always, and it was not enough. In the big, straight-backed chair he was given, he found he did not know what to do with his hands. He placed them eventually on the arms of the chair, grasping so tightly that white marks showed over his knuckles.

Clostrides did not let the fact pass unnoticed. It was a long time since a man with only a single bodyguard had sat in that chair. Nonetheless, circumstances at present were extraordinary, and the news of something puzzling occurring outside the main entrance, had already reached him. Maybe Athlone would be worth listening to.

He spent, as he always did, about a minute studying his visitor carefully, before he deigned to open the conversation. When at length he did speak, he could see the relief flood Athlone’s mind, although his voice was sharp and his question curt.

“What do you want?”

“I—I’ll keep it short, because I know you’re busy,” said Athlone. “You may have heard of a man called Luis Nevada.”

The name meant nothing to Clostrides; still, he inclined his head fractionally. Athlone would give him indirectly all necessary information about the man, and what he did not give could be discovered later.

“I’m vice-sheriff of the Eastern Quarter,” said Athlone, and for once did not give the title the resounding emphasis he generally accorded it. “This man Nevada is a killer—very clever one. He has eluded me for going on six months now, simply because the only evidence against him is the unsupported word of his victim. He got an injunction against me to prevent me from divulging his identity without his permission in places where he’s been living, and he tied my hands that way”

“And—?” Clostrides said quietly while Athlone was drawing
breath. His tone conveyed that he felt Athlone was taking longer than he had promised over his tale.

“Well, there’s a statute of limitations in force. I have to close the case and apply for trial within one year and one day of the discovery of the crime. And the only source of evidence against him now is himself.”

“I’m not concerned with law enforcement,” said Clostrides.

“I know that, Bailiff! And I wouldn’t trouble you—but it’s a citizen’s duty, binding upon all of us, to assist the course of justice, not to obstruct it.”

“Am I obstructing it?” Clostrides sounded amused now.

“Ahmed Lyken appears to be obstructing it.”

“Oh!” said Clostrides, and cupped his hand under his chin. A smile, the curve of which exactly paralleled the curve of his hand, crossed his face. “You interest me now!”

Conscious of having made his opening, Athlone let himself relax. He said, “I’ve been watching Nevada very closely for some time. These past couple of months, he’s been trying to melt into the crowd, to disguise himself as one of the dregs of society. But I’ve never lost track of him. Not until today outside The Market, when—”

“When he shouted something at Lyken and got taken into Lyken’s private cruiser,” nodded Clostrides. “I see.”

Athlone stopped with his mouth half-open, his bombshell fizzling out. He recovered himself, finding vague comfort in the reflection that to get where Clostrides was you had to be very quick on the uptake. He said, “Uh—yes, that’s right. I don’t know what he has in mind, exactly. But there’s one thing he might do, which I’ve
got
to prevent. I suspect he might try to bribe Lyken—”

Clostrides looked disbelieving. Athlone hastened to buttress the statement.

“Oh yes! He’s a wealthy man still, even though he’s trying to pass for one of the dregs. He was a speculator and trader in imports. Anyway, if he wants what I think he does, it
won’t cost Lyken anything. Nevada will probably want him to take him into his franchise until the statute of limitations takes effect. And that’s what I’ve got to stop.”

Clostrides nodded absently and got to his feet. Uncertain whether he also should stand up, Athlone hesitated.

“It’s an ingenious idea,” said Clostrides musingly. He began to stroll about the room, pausing in turn in front of each of the three notable gifts he had on display today. “To escape the long arm of the law by buying your way where no one can touch you.”

The words seemed to Athlone like nails in a coffin. But he had to disbelieve them, challenge them, even with the authority of the high bailiff behind them. He said fiercely, “Not at
all
?”

Clostrides said patiently, with a bored air, “Criminal or not, Athlone, a man in the precincts of a Tacket franchise is answerable only to the proprietor of that franchise, and no one can touch him.”

Mingled with the coffin nail finality of the flat statement was simple shock; Athlone was not of the world of The Market, and it took him aback to hear Clostrides use Tacket’s name as a technical term and not as an obscenity. The shock passed; the despair remained.

“You must surely have known that,” Clostrides said, not looking round. He put out a hand and traced the lines of the golden veins seaming the huge white rock before him. “You must know that those who loosed the White Death on the world were reckless, unsupervised fools, and that the system of The Market was set up to ensure that use of Tacket’s Principle was properly regulated. Yes?”

Athlone gave a miserable nod. He hardly heard Clostrides; he was occupied with his own troubles.

“Well, then, you must grant that franchise holders are entitled to some compensation for the restrictions they observe.
A franchise once sold, then, is totally exclusive—unique to its proprietor. Yes?”

Again Athlone muttered some sort of answer.

“Therefore the system has to be proof against abuse from either direction—from carelessness on the part of a concessionary, and from interference with a concessionary. Moreover, unsupervised application of Tacket’s Principle has to be rigorously suppressed. Fortunately, the force of public opinion is against it, and that’s the strongest safeguard of all. Half the living population recalls the White Death, you realize. We sell a franchise only when it’s been properly explored; we sell it only to a party we consider reliable—whether an individual or a syndicate. But thereafter the onus is on the concessionary to observe the rules. In the case of any infringement, we act at once.”

A peculiar note in Clostrides’s voice cut through the fog of Athlone’s gloom. It seemed to him that the bailiff was playing him, that in fact he was concealing a sliver of hope. He looked up.

“Is harboring a wanted criminal an infringement, maybe?” he suggested, clutching at a straw.

Clostrides shrugged, turning away from the gold-lined rock. “How badly wanted?” he said. “And by whom? I should have said that if you can’t get evidence to convict this man Nevada right here, you stand small chance of being able to extradite him if Lyken permits him entry to his franchise.”

Defeated, Athlone sagged in his chair.

Clostrides watched him with faint amusement. It was quite obvious what was going on in the man’s mind. Of course, it was no concern of his. The Market, like the medieval church, was a society within society, having its own laws and its own law enforcement methods. Nonetheless, it would cost nothing to add to the truth he had already spoken. Half a truth was often more misleading than a straightforward lie, Clostrides found.

He returned to his chair.

“Anyway,” he said, “the problem is really academic. We’re repossessing Lyken’s franchise tomorrow.”

Athlone was not so far lost in his own problems that he could not recognize world-shaking news when it was given to him. He leaned forward, shaking a little. “Why?” he demanded.

“For reasons good and sufficient!” snapped Clostrides.

“I—I didn’t mean to be inquisitive—”

“All right. You’ll find out when the news is announced officially. As I was saying: we’re going to repossess. Lyken has refused to yield, so we shall have to take the franchise by force. This man Nevada—if we find him in the franchise and alive, I suppose we could turn him over to you. I warn you, it’s unlikely; he’ll represent an encumbrance to Lyken, and the chances are good he’ll be used as cannon fodder. It depends at least partly on how successful Lyken’s recruiting is this evening.”