Stardeath

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2She was tall, blond, and blue-eyed, with a good figure and a mouth twisted as if she had tasted something bad. Her voice and eyes matched her uniform: crisp and cold.

“Kurt Varl, you disappointed me. I’d hoped to find an intelligent man.”

“Captain Varl.”

“Your licence was rescinded when you were sentenced to corrective punishment—for multiple murder and wanton destruction of private property. Or are you going to protest your innocence?”

“Execution is not murder.”

“And you killed in your capacity as captain in order to prevent a mutiny.” She shrugged indifferently. “As I said, Varl, you are a fool.”

“And you, Major? What are you?”

“You recognize my uniform?”

“I can read your braid.”

“And admit I outrank you?”

“Not where it counts.” Abruptly, he was tired of the game. “In the Venegian Sector we had a name for women like you. They were all well built and good-looking and all had tailored uniforms and high rank. The only field of battle they ever saw was between the sheets.” He caught the hand she swung at his face, his own fingers digging hard into her wrist. “Whose battleground are you, Major?”

For a moment their eyes met and then, with surprising strength, she jerked her wrist from his grasp. “An animal,” she said bitterly. “I should have expected it. A beast walking on two legs. What else could have killed nine people and destroyed a valuable cargo? You belong to the Dark Ages.”

He made no comment, looking instead at the room, and at the tall window which gave a view of rolling hills in the far distance, of clouds, and of the ground a long, long way below. The sun was low in the sky, dying with flaring streamers of crimson and gold, scarlet and amber, pink and orange. The colours touched his face and highlighted the cheekbones as they accentuated the hollows, dusting the eyes and giving the whole a resemblance to a pagan mask. Studying it, she thought of primitive idols wreathed in the smoke of sacrificial fires, their nostrils flared to catch the scent of newly spilled blood.

Then he turned and the moment was gone. He was just a man again, one caught in a vicious trap, the victim of justice formulated to embrace different circumstances on a different world.

He said flatly, “If you’ve come to gloat, forget it. Men are dead and I killed them and would again if the need arose. They were scum and you know it. The courts knew it—but the cargo belonged to the Pui-Chi Consortium and reparation had to be made. So I got sentenced and the government paid and everyone’s happy.”

“You infer expediency?”

“That and stupidity—mine. I should have taken what was going and run. Instead, I acted the captain, brought in my ship, delivered my passengers, and faced the music.” He looked at his clenched fists. “The last time, Major. I promise you that.”

“You’ll be old before they let you out,” she said bluntly. “Old and broken and maybe insane. Nine men, Varl. That’s a heavy debt to pay, and you’re damned lucky it isn’t more. Those guards could have died. If the monitor hadn’t summoned medics without delay, they would have died and you’d be facing fresh charges at this very moment. Think about it. Just think.”

He drew in his breath and shook his head, then turned and paced the floor. The gas had left him a little weak and foggy but not enough for him to be unaware of the guards beyond the door. The woman had come for a reason; the guards had been sent to collect him; he had acted too quickly for his own good.

“I’ve thought,” he said. “So?”

“Just how badly do you want to get away from here?”

“So badly that if you’re having a game with me I’ll break your neck.”

“I believe you.” She met his eyes; her own were cold, calculating. “Do you think you could do it?”

“It would be fun to try.”

“Your kind of fun.” Contempt edged her voice. “To hurt. To kill. To force others to jump when you give the word. A child. A vicious, unthinking child.”

“An animal,” he said. “That’s what you called me. But even an animal has feelings. What do you want from me?”

“You.”

“Just that?”

“Can there be more?” She turned and poured wine from a decanter into a glass and lifted it to study the tints swirling behind the crystal. “A deal, Varl. Your sentence commuted in return for your full cooperation. I warn you now—you could be getting the worst of the deal.” She poured a second glass of wine and extended it toward him. “Do we drink to it?”

He shook his head.

“You’d rather go back to your cell? To sit and wait for what’s coming? What will it be the next time? Flaying? Being slowly immersed in boiling oil? Choking on molten lead? Does it give you a kick? Are you a masochist?”

Her voice was too high, its tone too harsh, and the set of her mouth and eyes betrayed her strain. She was a woman sent to do a job and already she had tasted the possibility of failure.

He said, “The continued application of pain can build a resistance to its stimulus, as witnessed by those addicted to the use of the whip. It can even cause an emotional transference. Who knows, given time I may run joyfully to the sessions, eager to taste the new thrill of broken bones and burned flesh. After all, it’s only in the mind.”

“You bastard!”

“Yes.”

She looked at her wine and said, abruptly, “We need you.”

“Who?”

“Earth Confederation. The Comptroller. The fleet. Every damned ship in space. Posterity. You want more?”

“Start with your name.”

“Major Erica Borken, Central Computer Division, Probability and Analog Section, Spatial Department, Special Assignment.”

“Why me?”

“The specifications.” The wine vanished as she lifted the glass and drank; a single droplet clung like a pearl to the full bloom of her lower lip. “We need a certain kind of man, and they aren’t all that plentiful. A primitive—but with a brain. A man with guts and the killer instinct—but who knows how to evaluate situations. Someone who has experience in space, who can handle people, who can give orders and make them stick. A fighter. A man who can survive. Someone who knows how to hate.”

“An animal?”

“That and more. You fit and we need you—need you enough to spring you out of this trap. But I’m not begging. There are others, maybe not as well suited, but available and a damned sight easier to find.”

“Then get one,” he said. “But when you hand him over, be prepared to add that nice, neat uniform, your rank, your office, your career. The bastards who put me in here aren’t gentle. Fail them and you’ll find out just how hard they can be.”

“I know.”

The admission gave him victory, but he did not make the mistake of pressing it too hard. She could see him marched back to hell and think her career cheap at the price.

“Get me out of here,” he said. “Get me some decent clothes and take me somewhere I can feel human again. And tell me what all this is about.”

* * * *

The first took time, the second money, the third cooperation she was reluctant to give.

“My job was to get you,” she said. “The details will come later.”

“But you know them?”

“Some of them. Enough to know how important this is. Enough to be scared.”

They sat on the terrace of a hotel, which emulated a mountain in its soaring flight toward the stars. Facets of crystal caught and magnified the lights of distant beacons and the transient gleams of passing aircraft. Erica’s hair shone with burnished perfection in the brilliance; her face was angelic.

The illusion was created by too many lonely hours, Varl knew; he busied himself with the meal. The woman had ordered and the table was loaded with a profusion of dishes, each holding a succulent delight. Varl probed with the pointed sticks provided, lifting, tasting, recognizing flavours and discovering tastes he had never known existed.

“Luxury,” he said. “Who is footing the bill?”

“I’m allowed expenses.”

“That isn’t answering my question.”

“What does it matter? Call it reparation. A bribe. Compensation.”

“And you?”

“I don’t come with the meal.” For a moment her face froze to match her eyes. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Varl. You can push too hard.”

“I was curious as to who was backing you.” He speared a morsel of meat and chewed, not speaking again until he had swallowed. “The Pui-Chi Consortium valued that cargo at about three times its loaded worth. They might have had the idea that I cached it. A meal, a pretty woman, some money spent in bribes—some would think it a good investment.”

“Did you? Cache the cargo, I mean?”

His shrug matched the enigma of his smile.

“Not that you’d tell me if you had,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m working for Earth Confederation, and all expenses are taken care of. Incidentally, we leave tomorrow morning. Early, I’m afraid, but I didn’t think you’d object.”

“I don’t.”

“No.” She looked at the ground lying dark below the terrace, at the strings of lights, the condominiums, the shopping malls, the industrial complex. “Civilization,” she mused. “It looks so safe, yet how thin is the veneer. Sometimes, when I realize just how thin, it scares me.” Then, abruptly, she said, “Did you find it hard to kill?”

“I learned how in the Venegian Sector.”

“Things,” she said. “Insects—it isn’t the same.”

He made no comment, lifting his glass to sip at his wine; the light from the crystals adorning the building illuminated his face and gave it a harsh bleakness.

“You must have been young then,” she said. “During the war, I mean. Little more than a boy. And yet you learned to kill—or so you say. What did they look like? Wasps? Spiders? Ants?”

“Men,” he said. “You’ve been reading the propaganda. They weren’t men, but they looked like old-time knights in armor. Their exoskeletons were smooth and black and gleamed like polished metal, and when they bled they oozed red. Real blood just like ours. Only their shapes were different.”

“And their breeding habits.”

“And the way they looked after each other,” he admitted. “They put us to shame. The damned war should never have started, and it should have ended much sooner than it did. Too many men died out there. Men and Venegians, kids, babies, grubs, women, but people, all of them.” He emptied his glass and paused with his hand over the bottle. “I’ve had enough.”

“Go ahead if you want. I’ll take care of you.”

“Orders?”

“That, if you want.”

“I’d rather talk.”

“And I know what about. But leave it. The Comptroller will tell you what all this is about, and he won’t thank me for having interfered. Or for telling you about Polar North. In the meantime, I suggest you do your best to relax. You’re far too tense. Can you swim?”

They sported in water the temperature of blood, then plunged through misty curtains into a freezing chill to dive into tubes of electronic forces which spun them about and spat them into pools alive with golden fish and fronds of delicate weed. And later they walked on the upper promenade to look at the stars through panes of magnifying crystal, then went to sit in a garden heavy with the scent of nocturnal blooms.

“The cargo was contaminated,” he said abruptly. “Do you know what a tenge is?”

“A parasite, isn’t it?”

“One yielding a rare and expensive compound. Not just a perfume but a scent keyed to the natural exudations so as to accentuate the pheromones. Wearing it, a woman—any woman—is irresistible to any partner she desires. And no woman can deny a man using it anything he wants. The Pui-Chi were smuggling a consignment of eggs in the cargo, but something went wrong. The things hatched ahead of time.”

“Parasites,” she said. “I begin to understand.”

“They use living creatures for hosts. When gravid, they vent their eggs into the bloodstream. Once distributed about the body, death is inevitable.”

“But newly hatched eggs?”

“They’d used a dog to harbour them. It had remained alive while being eaten away inside. I had passengers to think about, women and children. The scum I killed had been set to guard the consignment. Dead, they couldn’t argue.” In the shadows he saw the gleam of her eyes. “What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. The same, I guess—no, I lack your courage. Does that make me a coward?”

“No. You’d have done the same if you were faced with it.”

“I wish I could be as sure of that as you are.” Her hand found his own, fingers closing, giving comfort with their warmth. “So you destroyed the cargo—but why not tell what happened?”

“I did, but I’d done too good a job. No evidence,” he explained. “My word against that of the Pui-Chi and the lie-detector evidence was ruled inadmissible because of my space-service conditioning. Bribery, but it worked, and I’d carried a couple of bleeding hearts who swore I was a martinet. They didn’t like the way I’d ordered them around when they broke regulations.”

“It’s over now,” she said.

He was bitter. “Is it?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m out of jail but still have to pay the price. How long do I need to pay?”

“Maybe all your life,” she said. “But there are compensations.”

Later, in the snug comfort of her bed, she reached out to touch the hard contours of his body and found him sleeping like a child. But before dawn he woke her with his frenzied screams.