Meeting at Infinity Read online

Athlone had no space in his mind for a cult, though. He had his own dedication: the destruction of Luis Nevada.

  He thought: one or two years! And realized fatalistically that he would not have to endure more than a year of his personal torture, at most. If within a year and a day of laying his case against Nevada, he had not secured revenge, it was over; if Nevada got out of reach before that—secure in Lyken’s franchise, besieged but not surrendering, or worse yet, dead without the hand of vengeance having touched him—it was over likewise. And so was Kingsley Athlone.

  He was tempted to think that that was mere romantic maundering. A griping in his guts contradicted him. To him, the Allyn Vage that had been, the Allyn Vage he was striving to bring back, meant more than his life itself.

  When he came out of Allyn’s room again, he was shaking from head to foot. Knard glanced up from his great desk, and without a word dispensed a pill into a measure of water. He brought it to Athlone and held it out.

  “What is it?” Athlone asked wearily.

  “A trank. Just a trank. Better take it.”

  Athlone hesitated; then he seized and swallowed it, and handed back the cup. He said, “Knard, the power of that gadget of yours terrifies me.”

  “The perceptor?” Knard put both hands on the cup and held it before him like an offering. “I can only tell you not to fear it. I can only say that it’s just a field in a box, a rho function field, connected so as to provide sensory data to the patient, and used to counteract the sense of isolation from reality which always used to affect cocoonees. It’s just an analogue of reality—nothing more. And the longer the patient uses it, the more accurate the data yielded.”

  “How the hell can you use something you don’t understand? That’s what shakes me! And if you of all people don’t—”

  Knard shrugged. “Five years and the experience of a dozen or so cases isn’t all that much to go by.”

  Athlone gave him a strange look. He said, “Knard, something just hit me. You say we’ve had it only five years?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I didn’t think.…” Athlone’s voice tailed off uncertainly; just in time it occured to him that he might be going to insult Knard, and he didn’t want to. Knard, though, did not seem to realize. His voice betrayed wry sarcasm as he replied.

  “You were going to say: you don’t think there’s been much progress in any field since Tacket.”

  Athlone nodded. That was roughly it.

  “Well, you’re damned right!” said Knard with unexpected emphasis. “There’s been change, but no progress. I’d like to lay claim to enough originality to have invented the rho function field myself, but I’m as secondhand as anyone in our lazybones world. All I did was figure out how to use it to advantage.”

  “You mean,” said Athlone painfully, “you mean we imported the idea?”

  “Of course we did.”

  Athlone felt sweat prickle on his forehead. He had the impression of being on the verge of a terrible but significant discovery. “But—who brought it in, then?” he choked out. “Whose franchise did it come from?”

  “Ahmed Lyken’s,” said Knard shortly.

  “The hell you say!” Illogical, apparently groundless, fear started to blossom in Athlone’s guts, like a fireball. He repeated, “The hell you say!”

  6

  THROUGH THE whole structure of the franchise system the contradictions crawled like termites—invisible to the superficial view which was all that the general public was permitted to gain.

  For example, the concessionaries bound themselves to rigid rules—ostensibly to reassure the public that irresponsibles could never again bring back a White Death from one of the sister Earths. Not one of them gave more than lip service to this ideal. All the concessionaries, and most especially the twelve who were also Directors of The Market, regarded the rules as a sort of code duello—if they had not existed, they would have been compelled by the resulting anarchy to spend more time fighting the competition openly than making their legitimate profit.

  As it was, most of them divided their attention between finding out how they themselves could stretch their self-imposed bonds, and taking action against colleagues who had stretched them already.

  The first concessionaries who took on Tacket franchises and rescued their parent world from famine and war by turning it into a middleman’s planet were justified in demanding some protection against the then vigorous opposition: “Travel with Tacket now—burn with Tacket hereafter!” And the cultists limped along the streets, crippled by the White Death.

  They got their protection, and they made it absolute. When the cults’ influence declined, when prejudice against “imported” goods dwindled to vanishing point, they would not give it up.

  At first the concessionaries had a sense of mission; they felt they were rescuing their world from disaster. Bit by bit all that waned away. Colleagues became rivals. A franchise became simply a mine of wealth. The principle to be followed became: co-operate when necessary, compete when possible.

  Lyken had not co-operated enough. Now he was being driven down. And his rivals of yesterday, his colleagues of the day before, prepared to become his enemies of tomorrow.

  Unaware of the hour of decision that had come upon them at noon the Directors of The Market met together later in the day to consider an hour of decision they had set themselves: not noon-for-doom, but midnight-for-fight.

  They were dignified men. Some had scarred faces. Many had beards. All of them were richly clothed, and all had resonant voices which seemed to have frozen into the tone used for giving orders. If they spoke, they were almost always to be obeyed at once. The rule failed only at times like this, when they met together as equals and Clostrides sat at the head of their council table and controlled them like a charioteer driving wild horses.

  One bodyguard and one aide stood behind each chair. Each chair came from one of its occupier’s franchises—these men were powerful and none commanded less than three of the sister Earths. In a throne of ivory Dewitt Yorell sat wearing robes of white and red, a cap of platinum links on his almost bald head; he was the senior of them all and controlled five worlds, the most of any of them.

  When they were all assembled and had exchanged cold greetings, Yorell commenced the proceedings with a question to Clostrides.

  “How did he take it, Manuel? Do we fight?”

  Clostrides leaned back lazily in his own chair; that one was handcarved on this original Earth, centuries ago—had to be, for to sit in an imported chair would have slighted all the concessionaries but the giver, and Clostrides could side only with a majority of the Directors.

  He said, “He refused to yield—which was of course what we anticipated. However he had second thoughts; he said that he would exchange his franchise for another of equal value. But I think I was correct to deny him this.”

  In unison, the assembly grunted approval.

  “When I did deny it, though,” Clostrides pursued, “he said that in his view that implied we were lying. He said that if all that concerned us was the fungus he had allowed to slip through on that grain consignment, we would be satisfied with closing his franchise. Anything else he construed as theft.”

  Amusement showed on the Directors’ faces.

  “This fungus, now!” said Yorell. “It’s an ingenious story for the public. Are we certain it will stand up?”

  Clostrides shrugged. “The fungus is real and exists. It was in fact isolated from grain imported by Ahmed Lyken. True, it’s excellent grain; true, the fungus will flourish on the grain and nowhere else. But we allowed judicious amounts of the infected grain to be sold, and according to my information we can expect independent reports of it to start arriving tonight. Public alarm, suitably fostered, will do the rest. Oh yes, the story will stand up.”

  “And even if it doesn’t, who cares?” said Hal Lanchery in a bored tone from the lower end of the table. He was the youngest of the Directors, and very brash. He had been lucky ra
ther than skillful to escape the same treatment as Lyken was now to get, so rapidly had he come up and so many corners had he cut on the way. Others at the table shifted in their chairs, pointedly expressing annoyance. Clostrides hurried on.

  “I think, therefore, we can go ahead as planned. As to affairs at this end, we will of course cut Lyken’s power at midnight and break the seals on his Tacket numbers. It takes about six or seven hours to discriminate down to a new number. The portals should open at about dawn, therefore.”

  “What has Lyken got to offer against us?” Yorell said. “Who’s he been buying arms from, for instance? Is he recruiting?”

  “Yes, he is.” Clostrides glanced at papers before him. “I advised all his known suppliers that the extent of his credit might not be good after today, but I’m sure he had substantial funds and will convert all of them into armaments. Oddly enough, I didn’t get the impression that he’d been expecting this showdown. I find that reassuring. As to recruiting, he’s already got agents on the streets—so fast, in fact, that I suspect he must have called from his cruiser to order them out before he actually got back to his base from here this afternoon. The number they sign up before sunset will probably be rather small, but I’ve arranged to handicap him this evening, when he’ll be making a maximum effort.”

  “How?” Yorell put in.

  “There will be rioting in the vicinity of his base. I anticipate considerable interference with all traffic, including Lyken’s.”

  From next to Hal Lanchery, Jorge Klein looked up abruptly. “At what time?” he snapped.

  “From about six-thirty or seven, onward.”

  Klein turned to his aide and gave a brisk order; the aide nodded and left the room.

  “Apologies,” said Klein in a brittle tone. “I have a consignment which looters would find attractive routed through that area this evening. I’ll have to change the schedule.”

  “What sort of consignment?” inquired Clostrides, not for himself especially but because he could read a desire to know in the faces of all the other Directors.

  “Guns,” said Klein, biting the word off short.

  Hal Lanchery was looking impatient, and Clostrides passed sleepy eyes across his face before speaking again.

  “We have an interesting proposal which was put to me yesterday to consider,” he said. “Hal—maybe you’d describe it yourself?”

  “By all means!” said Lanchery, and sat upright. “Now as things stand, we can assume that Lyken will use every last moment up to midnight to get reinforcements through to his franchise. No matter how we handicap him, we can bank on his assembling a respectable army. We can also bet that between midnight, when we cut his power, and dawn, when we get our own portals open into the franchise, he’ll have time to deploy to very good effect. It takes time to move the attacking forces in, and what’s worse, the portals are conspicuous and vulnerable while they’re operating. What we need is some way of confusing Lyken’s defenders while we’re moving in, and if possible also of thinning out his cannon fodder simultaneously.

  “Now as you perhaps know, in one of my franchises there is an interesting culture called the G’kek.” Lanchery glanced along the table. Understanding had already begun to dawn on several faces, and Clostrides was nodding approval. Lanchery leaned back and expanded his proposition.

  “The G’kek are semi-nomadic, rather bloodthirsty, and they’re capable of truly astonishing feats with wild animals. They’re also exceptionally well provided with animals to demonstrate their powers on. I propose that the first wave of our attack should be a large contingent from the G’kek, together with a representative assortment of dangerous animals. It won’t cost anything except power, and it will very effectively tie Lyken’s defenders in knots while we move in.”

  He looked around for approval from the other Directors. A few of them were nodding; others looked dubious. Yorell voiced what seemed a common objection.

  “Transporting human beings from franchise to franchise is highly dangerous,” he said bluntly. “What’s more, we know a lot less about animal sickness than we do about human sickness. I could imagine a veterinary equivalent of the White Death coming through with the wild beasts.”

  Lanchery shook his head. “As to the danger of bringing the G’kek through, it’s negligible. I wouldn’t suggest it if they were a high culture. They’re superstitious barbarians, in fact, and won’t understand a thing. And they’ll be very glad to be sent back afterwards. They just have this fabulous power over animals, and it includes the ability to tell a sick beast from a healthy one. I’m certain we can weed out the sick ones before driving them through the portal.”

  Jorge Klein grunted. “The idea’s attractive,” he said cautiously. “Anything which thins out Lyken’s cannon fodder is attractive.”

  “But—?” prompted Clostrides. He’d seen most of the objections to Lanchery’s scheme, but if they were going to come out he preferred them to be voiced by the Directors, not by himself. He sided only with majorities.

  Klein’s objection was logistical, and well-founded. Lanchery countered it. He countered others, and they spent almost an hour working their way towards acceptance. No one voiced the strongest objection of all—the possibility that Lanchery might use his opportunity not to move in the savage G’kek, but to move in forces of his own, skilled, well-armed and highly trained. Clostrides wouldn’t have put it past him. But there was no sign that the other Directors suspected that.

  They reached agreement ultimately, and turned to the last and most difficult problem: assessment of the geography facing them. From the nature of nearby franchises, they could extrapolate to a limited extent, but the coarseness of the discrimination their portals were capable of—dictated by nuclear “noise” in the atoms of the matter of which those portals were constructed—prevented a very close approach, and actual penetration into Lyken’s franchise was not possible until the seals were broken at midnight. That system was foolproof; the Directors were all aware that if it had not been, their rivals and colleagues would have tried poaching. Any one of them would willingly have tried poaching. Likewise, every concessionary kept his secrets well—hypnolocking his employees’ minds, planting false and misleading rumors, inventing ingenious and wildly inaccurate cover stories about the nature of his franchise.

  Planning their assault, Clostrides reflected, the Directors were less like generals than like blind men fumbling their way across strange rooms.

  He had a vision of a vast balance swinging over them as they argued and expounded. On one side of it was success, represented by Lyken’s franchise and the hard-earned knowledge of its resources which reposed in Lyken’s base there, and on the other, failure—a successful resistance by Lyken’s defending forces. An outsider might have guessed that Lyken did not stand a chance against the united forces of the Directors; none of themselves shared that illusion. They knew too well how slim a margin separated them from failure; their franchises were profitable, true, but they also were demanding, calling for vast staffs, armies of skilled technicians, equipment costing millions, and running with the erratic behavior of an artistic temperament. In effect, they were gambling, and although they weighted the odds they could never be sure of winning.

  Clostrides had to side with the majority as always. He did not like to think what would happen if by a miracle Lyken held out.

  7

  JOCKEY HOLE SAT in his usual place, behind the huge one-way glass frontage of the Octopus Bar, and watched darkness move in on his manor. Opposite him was Gaffles, quiet and patient. When Jockey was cogitating, and especially when he was looking out along Holy Alley, he liked silence.

  His expression was thoughtful.

  Jockey liked data. News, information, rumors—a well-spat string of any sort. Maybe it was due to Jockey and people like Jockey (there weren’t many) that the yonder boys had adopted that figure of speech into their wide talk: “spit the string!” Because knowledge was power. Know everything about someone, and you made him d
ance like a puppet on the strings.

  Jockey had knowledge the way his bodyguards had muscles—some he had, he hadn’t even used yet. Quite a lot of it he didn’t expect ever to use, because it related to people even as far up the tree as Manuel Clostrides and the merchant princes themselves. He didn’t often call that stuff to mind; he didn’t enjoy contemplating the gulf between him and them.

  This time was different. He turned to Gaffles.

  “Know? That number Curdy Wence—when he came in with his bit of string, I figured it was just curio.”

  Gaffles hunched forward. “But now—” he prompted.

  “Now maybe I feel it might pay. Listen at this list, and see how you see it.” Jockey began to tell items on his fingers, flicking them one by one. “It’s about Lyken. Lyken’s ’cruiters are out drumming up manpower like never for years. Gold? There’s a rumor running that something Lyken brought in was infected with some disease germ. Gold?”

  “I got the rumor,” put in Gaffles. “I also got that it was strictly from Tacket.”

  “We hear that,” shrugged Jockey. “And who else? For the unmeasured ones, rumor is better. Next, we get that Athlone went to see Clostrides directly after Lyken left—and he comes out and fires his personal guard, Benny Mott.”

  (When that news reached him, Jockey had snapped, “Did you hire him yet?” And when the news-bringer’s face went white, Jockey had cursed him fluently for all of a minute prior to getting a legman after Benny to offer him a Rate Two for whatever information Athlone hadn’t had hypnolocked out of reach.)

  “We know one thing certain about Athlone,” said Gaffles.

  “That all he’s cared about these months is Luis Nevada? Gaffles, watch yourself. You’re getting astute in your age. How do you read this, then? Suppose the number Curdy told us about—the dreg that wasn’t, Lyken took into his cruiser—was Luis Nevada?”

  Gaffles pursed his lips. “Jockey, you pay Curdy Rate One for just a curio? You saw this coming!”