This Fortress World (14 page)

I walked briskly along the smooth, wide road. No one else was in sight, behind me or in front. I was alone, moving toward a rendezvous with the stars.

Broad fields surrounded the road. Some of them were turned up in black, fertile folds. Some were faintly green and uneven. After a little, I saw men working, far off at first, forked dots in the distance, and then closer. In one field a stooped, sweating serf was shoving a rusted, old, metal plow through the stubborn sod. On the next a gleaming plastic plow was pulled by a serf and guided by his wife. I knew it was not another man behind the plow only because the sun-blackened face had the tattered remnants of a tunic beneath it. On one vast farm I saw powerful machines pulling other machines. Better-dressed, happier men guided the machines. I saw them smile occasionally. One waved as I passed.

Slavery was preferable to freedom. Soon there would be no serfs left to till their small fields and reap their pitiful harvests; they would give up their freedom to fill their stomachs. The farms would grow bigger and bigger until just a few men owned Brancusi, or one.

The port grew in front of me. The ships speared upward. The tops of low buildings sprouted like mushrooms under the feet of the sky-reaching giants.

And then I topped a low ridge and saw the fence that encircled the port.

My legs were suddenly weary. I stopped and sat down by the edge of the road. As far as I could see, the fence went on and on. It was a stout fence made of linked metal, tall and formidable. Every few yards it was guarded by mercenaries. I had as much chance of getting inside as I had of reaching another world without a ship.

I sat there for a long time, trying to think of a way to sneak in. The nearest tree was at least half a mile from the fence. I might have a better chance after dark, but I had a suspicion that the fence would be lighted. The whole port would be as bright as day.

And yet people did board these ships. They got on them and traveled to other worlds. They got inside the fence.

I stood up and walked steadily down the road. I walked up to the gate house and through the open gate. The mercenary on guard looked at my face and my black suit and curled his lips.

"Where do you think you're going?" he said.

I looked at him coldly. "I'll tell you if you really want to know. But people who know too much have short lives."

His face tightened. He wanted to say something more, but he didn't dare. He jerked his head toward the open field.

I walked into the port and toward the clustered buildings. The pavement was pitted and uneven.

Some of the buildings had doors in them. I didn't want them. They would be offices. Some of them were orange and blue; some were silver and black. I circled them. I walked across endless pavement, discolored, cracked, heaved up occasionally in huge slabs. The ships got closer. They seemed to be leaning toward me, off balance. I had an uneasy, choked feeling that they were toppling.

I walked past them toward other buildings. These were open-ended. As I walked, trucks passed me, piled high with bales, crates, and boxes. They vanished into one of the buildings. As I drew abreast of it, I saw that it was a warehouse. Men swarmed inside it. They marked things down in large ledgers as the goods were unloaded from the trucks. They stacked the boxes and crates and bales, they opened others, they repacked some, and they loaded some on other trucks. I looked back. The trucks were streaming from the base of one of the ships. The goods were lowered by a swaying cable from a gaping hole high in the side.

A huge, low-slung vehicle on treads waddled slowly past me. On its groaning back was a long, flaring cylinder, blackened at the flared end, swelling to a bulbous growth at the other. It turned ponderously into a building beyond the warehouse.

I walked to the building and stopped by the wide entrance, looking in. Here men were busy with tools and flames and machines. They worked and shaped intricate bits of metal and huge cylinders like the one that had just been brought in.

I leaned against the corner of the wide entrance and watched. They had been to the stars, these machines, or they were going to the stars. These cylinders pushed those giant spears skyward, hurling defiance at time and distance, roaring disdain at the world that tried to hold them back.

To the cylinder brought in by the crawling truck, men linked great chains. Motors whirred. The cylinder inched into the air, hesitated, and descended gently into a cradle. Men moved into place around it and went swiftly to work.

Time passed. Once thunder came down from the sky, shaking the ground, tearing at it with a tongue of flame. The building quivered. I grabbed the wall to keep from being knocked to the ground, but the men worked on unconcerned.

Far across the field, the ship came to rest, and I turned to watch it. In a few minutes, a black circle opened in the shining side. Something snaked out of it, uncoiling, dropping to the ground. Little manikins climbed down the swaying ladder, bright orange-and-blue dolls.

They assembled on the ground and marched mechanically across the field to one of the office buildings. They kept coming down the ladder and forming and marching, endlessly.

"What you want?" It was a hoarse voice close to my elbow.

I turned, startled. Standing in front of me was a big man with a big belly, bristle-faced, dressed in dirty, sweat-stained working clothes.

"You want something?" he asked sourly. "If you do, I'll help you. If not, move on. You're disturbing the men."

I reached into my pocket and brought out the note. I had folded it once. I handed it to him that way.

He opened it, looked at it for a moment, turned it over, looked at it again, and handed it back. "You've had your joke. What's it say?"

"George," I said. "This is for George Falescu."

His eyes narrowed. He looked to the right and the left, furtively. He jerked his head toward the rear of the building and walked away from me. I followed him, puzzled. He stopped in a dark corner, far from the other workers.

"He ain't here," the man whispered.

"Where is he?"

"You oughta know."

"What do you mean?"

"Your buddies came and got him this morning. Agents, like you. They took him away. You know what that means."

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I stared at him, hard-eyed and unmoved. But inside I was chilled and shaking. I didn't know what it meant. It could mean too many things, and I wasn't sure of any of them. Only one thing was certain. My one good chance of getting off Brancusi was gone, if it had been a good chance, and I had to believe in that. I had to believe in Laurie. There was nothing left if I couldn't believe in Laurie.

"Of course," I said. "And your help will be rewarded—in time."

I was stabbing around in the dark, but I couldn't just say, "Oh?" and walk away. He had good grounds for suspicion already.

He glowered at me. "It better."

Unconsciously I licked my dry lips and found myself doing it and stopped. "Was Sabatini with them?"

"Who's that?" he growled.

"The dark-faced Agent with a big nose."

He glared at me suspiciously. "Naw. There was nobody like that."

I nodded. "He must have been busy on another job." I wasn't doing it right; I was making the wrong guesses, and making them the wrong way. But I had to try. "I've got something else for you. It'll pay you more than the other, if you can do it."

"How much?"

"As much as it's worth, and it's worth a lot."

"No promises!" he said darkly.

"Hard cash."

He nodded. "What is it?"

"It's important that I get away from here secretly. I've got to get passage on a ship."

"What ship?"

"The next."

"The Phoenix, to MacLeod?"

I nodded. "That's it."

He sneered. "What you think I am, a magician? Nobody can get you on a ship except a Peddler. You know that."

"Good!" I nodded decisively. Then our man won't slip through our fingers that way." I stared at him, my eyes narrowed. "You're a lucky man to be alive."

He looked bewildered now and afraid. I turned abruptly and strode out of the shop before he could ask any questions. The sun was hot outside, but it didn't warm me any. Inside I was colder than deep space.

Falescu had been picked up by Agents. What did it mean? They couldn't have known that I was going to contact him. I hadn't known myself until this morning. He may have been mixed up in something else, something not connected with me at all. There was no point in jumping at shadows. Because of me, the world didn't stop. It kept on turning, people lived and loved and died who did not know my name and didn't know or care that a mysterious pebble was missing. I was not the center of the universe; my existence had meant nothing; my extinction would mean less. Perhaps I was forgotten already.

But I was still cold. I knew that I was not forgotten. Sabatini would not forget.

I walked back toward the office buildings. Two of them were blue with orange trim. The imperial colors. I would not go there. Another was black with silver trim. The colors of space, the colors of the Peddlers. They shipped goods and tools and people. They were interested in profits, not intrigue. There was no reason they wouldn't take me. Around my waist was five thousand imperial chronors in one hundred chronor pieces.

I stepped into the office. After the sunlight, the room was cavernously dark, filled with the faint aroma of out-world spices. My eyes adjusted. It was only a small room, not luxurious but neat. Shelves along two sides of the room were filled with samples of merchandise. Across the rear of the room was a long, high counter. Behind it a middle-aged man with a bald, shining head was bending over a ledger. He looked up. His face was shiny, too.

"Something?" he asked, almost chirping. "The fabulous Arcadian black pepper, perhaps? Very scarce now that Arcadia has fallen. It will be some years before conditions are settled enough to permit another shipment."

He was the first man who didn't change when he saw my black uniform.

"No," I said.

"You wish to ship something? Reasonable rates to all parts of the galaxy. All inhabited worlds—"

"Myself," I said. "I want passage on the Phoenix."

"Ah," he said wisely. He leafed through the book until he came to a page he liked. He looked up sadly. "Passenger space on the Phoenix is extremely limited, and it has been reserved for months. Perhaps some other ship for a later date?"

"The Phoenix. Now."

He cocked his head and studied my face as if I were some strange and interesting kind of worm. "Perhaps it would be possible to squeeze you in. The Phoenix is shipping without the services of a second officer. Such emergency accommodations come high, however, and—"

"That doesn't matter." I felt relieved. He was after money; that was all right.

"Then we will fill out an application blank." He skipped happily to the floor, and I saw how short he was. He must have been sitting on a high stool, because his head came just above the top of the counter. He went to the back wall, opened a cabinet, and pulled out several sheets of paper. He climbed back onto his stool, laid the papers in front of me, and held out a pen.

"I can't write," I said. It was an impulse; it seemed to be a good one.

He nodded cheerfully, turned the papers around to face him, and poised the pen in the air. "Name?"

"John," I said. "John Michaelis."

He wrote it in a round, flourishing hand. "Identity card?"

I stared at him. "That won't be necessary."

He looked up, one eyebrow raised, and shrugged. "Very well. Destination?"

"MacLeod."

"You won't be transferring there to another ship?"

"No."

"Business?"

"Personal."

He looked up quickly and then wrote on the paper. I watched the word as he traced it out. Upside down, it was hard to read, but I recognized at once that it wasn't: "Personal." Then I deciphered it. It said: "Secret." I glanced away quickly.

The questioning went on endlessly. Birthplace? Date of birth? Race? Personal description? Identifying marks? Baggage? Would I sign a waiver relieving the company of responsibility in case of accident?…Some of my answers seemed satisfactory. Others made his pen hesitate before it wrote.

"Master?" he said.

I caught my breath. There it was. That was what he had been waiting for. Master, master. I couldn't think. It would be so easy to make a mistake. "None," I said. I looked straight into his eyes as he raised his head.

He put down the pen with a gesture of finality. "Passage refused," he said quietly. Now he didn't sound birdlike at all.

"I won't accept that," I said, making my face hard.

"You have no choice. Passage is accepted or refused at the discretion of the company."

"That isn't very smart of you," I said pointedly. "Important things depend upon my reaching MacLeod. Powerful men are going to be displeased."

"By the terms of our charter with the Emperor, no masterless men can be given passage." He was immovable.

"Let me see your superior."

He smiled. "I have no superior."

I studied him. "It isn't smart to know too much about business that doesn't concern you."

"That may be true. I know it is unwise to know too little about your own business."

"Wiser men than you have lost their heads."

He shrugged. "If you have a master, tell me. If not, go away. I have work to do."

"My master," I said slowly, "is the Emperor. He will be displeased to know that this has become common knowledge."

"I can check on this, of course?"

"Of course."

He slid off his stool and started for a door in the rear, trotting. He pulled the door open. The room beyond was darker.

"You are a brave man," I said. "It's too bad such courage must vanish from Brancusi."

He smiled at me and closed the door behind him.

He had called my bluff. I wasn't sure that he wasn't bluffing, too, but if so, it was a better bluff. I was convinced that he would get in touch with the Palace. The little man had won, and I had lost. I hoped that it wouldn't be fatal.