The Planet Killers

Chapter VII

An hour later, and two additional rounds of khall, and Gardner had his hand across the table, holding hers. He was forcing himself to take the khall one sip at a time, letting his body metabolize it before he allowed any more into his system. Otherwise he ran the risk of becoming maudlin, sentimental, and, perhaps, overly talkative. The combination might be fatal.

He eyed the girl closely, thinking of her and her thesis. It was a promising enough topic for research, and there was no doubt that she had come to the perfect world for studying cruelty. And then the thought returned that in three weeks—no, now only two weeks and a couple of days, now—he was going to kill this girl and the three billion Lurioni she was so assiduously studying.

“How long are you planning to stay on Lurion?” he asked, trying to sound merely formally curious, with ho deeper motive.

“Oh, another month or so, I guess.” Gardner winced. A whole month!

She went on, “My visa’s up in two months, you see, but I’ve observed about all the cruelty I want to observe on any one planet. These people have perfected it astonishingly well. You’d be surprised how many happy marriages there are on Lurion with one partner a sadist and the other a masochist.”

“That sounds like a pretty sensible arrangement,” Gardner said. Then, returning to the earlier subject, “So you’re leaving in a month, eh? Guess I’ll be on Terra afore ye, in that case. I’ll be going back in two, two and a half weeks.”

Her eyes brightened. “You can’t imagine how much I envy you. Frankly, I’m sick of this place. If I could get passage back, I’d leave with you, or even earlier. But all the ships out are booked solid for a month. I’ve been checking.”

“And no luck, huh?”

She shook her head. “There isn’t a berth to be had on any ship.”

Gardner felt the dull thudding of his heart beneath his breastbone. She could leave with me, he thought, but the hopeful thought died at once. There was no room for more than five on his little ship, and members of his team had to have priority. Besides, it would be a flat violation of security to take her with him. Terran civilians were not to be evacuated.

She’s expendable, Gardner told himself savagely. Earth Central would never have approved her passport if she had any value to anybody. The fact that she’s young and full of life and wants to live doesn’t matter to the computer. She’s here, and so she’ll have to die with the rest of them.

He gripped the glass he was holding tightly, then released it for fear he would smash it. Getting involved with her was a monstrous mistake; he had known that at the start, and yet he had allowed himself to glide into this tete-a-tete. And now he would have to contend with sticky emotions all the way from here to the end. It made a difficult job practically impossible.

She noticed his mood. “You look pale, Roy. Is something the matter?”

“No, nothing,” he said quickly. “There just isn’t enough alcohol in me yet, that’s all.”

He took a hefty slug of khall and stared broodingly at the swirling greenish liquor that remained in the glass. Khali was cheap. Gordon wondered if his predecessor, Davis, who was probably still wandering some foul back alley of Lurion in a drunkard’s rags, had also met a girl on Lurion. The khall helped to numb the guilt, all right. Not much, but enough.

“You really can’t be feeling all right,” Lori insisted. “You keep staring into your glass that way, or else off into space. Why don’t you tell old Aunt Lori the trouble? Maybe I can help.”

Her hand touched his and, irritably, he snatched it away. “There isn’t any trouble!” he snapped. “Don’t start meddling with—”

He stopped, seeing the shocked, hurt expression on her face, and realized the depth of his boorishness. “I’m sorry, Lori,” he said softly. “That was a miserable thing to say. You were just trying to help me, and I almost yelled your head off.”

“It’s all right, Roy. We all lose our tempers sometimes. Especially when strangers try to butt into our personal problems. Forgive me?”

“I’m the one who needs to be forgiven,” he said.

They patched it up, but Gardner knew he had stung her deeply. He forced himself to look cheerful, to prevent any further inquiries. But, within, he told himself, She’s just a lonely kid on an ugly world, and I had to go and be nasty to her.

“You are a strange one,” she said.

He grinned. “I’m still sober, that’s the real trouble. And so are you. Let’s see if we can’t do something about the situation.”

He called the waiter over and ordered yef another round of khall, and another one when they had finished that. He realized that neither of them had as much as mentioned the thought of dinner, and now it was past the dinner hour. Another insidious effect of khall, he thought with curious clarity. It’s a high-calorie drink, the kind that bamboozles you out of your appetite, but doesn’t nourish you in place of the food you’re skipping.

He got very carefully and meticulously crocked during the next hour, maintaining an iron control over himself all the while. His face felt fuzzy, his hearing was not as acute as it was when he was sober, and he knew that if he stood up he would have some difficulty co-ordinating his movements. But yet he was still his own master. He had had just enough khall to numb the burgeoning guilt growing within him, but not enough to cause him to say or do anything indiscreet.

Lori was considerably less careful. By the time the hour had passed, she was volubly prattiing about her oedipus complex; her very real fear of becoming a spinster schoolteacher in some small college’s anthropology department; her feeling of loathing and repugnance for Lurion and all that happened there. In short, she tossed at Gardner her entire self.

“So you see, I figured it was better to come here first and get a good stiff dose of ugliness, and then I could use Lurion as a sort of yardstick when I moved on to other planets, on my list.”

Gardner nodded gravely. Had he been a little more sober, he would have cut the conversation short before it was too late, before she had given so much of herself that it would be impossible for him ever to make the cold decision that would kill heir.

He sat quietly, listening, until she talked herself out. Perhaps the khall was losing its hold on her, for she smiled suddenly, reddened, and said, “I’ve been talking an awful lot of drivel, haven’t I?”

“On the contrary. It’s all been most fascinating, Lori.”

“But I’ve been hogging the conversation. I’ve hardly let you say a thing. And now you know every littie thing I’ve done since I was seven, and I really don’t know anything more about you than your name, your trade, and where you’re from I”

Gardner smiled lighdy. “Perhaps that’s just as well. I’ve had a horribly dull life. It would only bore you if I went into all the dreary details.”

She seemed to accept that as being reasonably sincere. They finished their drinks. Lori looked at the time and said, with a little gasp, “Oh, dear, its getting terribly late!”

“For both of us. In this place you just can’t sleep past daybreak.”

Gardner took her back upstairs; her room was two floors below his own. They stood for a moment outside her door.

“Goodnight, Roy. And thanks for spending the evening with me. It’did me good to see a Terran face again.”

“The pleasure was mine, Lori. Goodnight.”

He was standing so close to her that a kiss seemed to be in order. But it was a light one, a delicate grazing of lips and no more, a gentle thank-you-for-an-evening’s-company. She opened the door, staggered inside, nearly toppled on the bed, waved to him somewhat giddily, and closed the door. She hadn’t invited him in, and Gardner hadn’t been looking for an invitation. He smiled at her through the closed door, and went up the winding stairs to his own room.

As usual, the seal had been tinkered with. No surprise, that; the management and all the hotel employees knew that he was a jewel merchant, and they were dead set on robbing him before he left the hotel. But, unfortunately for them, there just wasn’t any way for them to penetrate that seal.

Gardner broke it with a quick blast of air—the signal was unaffected by the quantity of alcohol fumes on his breath—entered, and sealed the door carefully from inside.

He slept soundly, waking just after dawn with a ferocious hangover. Triphammers kept exploding behind his forehead, as he made his way muzzily to the washstand and gobbled down a pill. The pill eased the throbbing considerably, but his head continued to ache. Lori was not in the hotel dining room for breakfast when he arrived. Gardner wondered if she were sleeping late, and debated going up to her room to pay her a visit. But he decided against that, and went straight to the jewel exchange from the dining room.

That evening, when he returned from his day’s commerce, she was in the lobby again. She smiled graciously at him as he entered.

“Hello, Roy. Sleep well last night?”

“I slept fine. It was waking up that hurt.”

She grinned. “I know what you mean.”

“I missed you at breakfast,” Gardner said. “You sleep through all the racket the chambermaids make?”

“It’s easier to juggle hot coals,” she said. “No, I was up and out early, at the crack of dawn. I went down to the produce markets at sunup to watch the cockfights they stage down there.”

Gardner’s eyebrows rose. “I’m impressed. You couldn’t have had more than four hours’ sleep.”

“It’s the natural resiliency of youth,” she said lightly. “But I’m starting to feel it now. I’m crumbling around the edges, if you know what I mean.”

Gardner invited her into the casino for a drink; this time, they limited themselves to one apiece, then went on into the dining-room for dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in the hotel lounge talking to each other.

The next day, when Gardner arrived at the jewel exchange for his day’s trading session, he saw Tom Steeves heading toward him. Steeves, the veteran of twenty years of jewel trading on Lurion, had made several attempts to get friendly with Gardner, but the Security man had warded Steeves off as politely as possible, not wanting to get entangled in a friendship with a man he had to kill.

But this morning Steeves would not be shaken off. “Are you free for lunch today, Roy?”

“Yes, I am… uh…why?” Gardner asked, wishing he had had the good sense to offer a defensive excuse.

Steeves smiled jovially. “I’m having lunch with a couple of interesting fellows, and I’m looking around for company. I’d very much like you to join us, Roy. I think it would be well worth your while.”

There was something almost cajoling in Steeves’ tone, as if the stout, middle-aged jewel merchant were pleading with Gardner to say yes.

Frowning, Gardner asked, “What sort of fellows do you mean? Are they in the jewel line?”

“Not exactly. They’re… well, philosophers, for lack of a better word. Two young Lurioni.”

The idea of Lurioni philosophers seemed Unlikely to Gardner, unless it was a philosophy of evil that Steeves’ friends expounded. But the Security man felt strangely moved by Steeves’ insistence. Wondering whether he were making another major tactical error, he accepted Steeves’ invitation and agreed to meet the older man at noon.

It was a hectic morning. Gardner threw himself into his trading with such energy that he surprised himself; it was almost as if this really were his life’s focus, this trading of stones and amassing of money. At noon, he found Steeves waiting at the prearranged street corner.

“The restaurant is a few blocks from here,” Steeves said. “It’s quickest to walk. My friends will meet us there.”

As they made their way through the narrow, crowded streets, Steeves said, “Well, Gardner, you’ve been on Lurion close to a week now. What do you think of the place, eh?”

“You want me to be blunt?”

“I want you to be honest.”

Gardner shrugged. “It’s a hellhole, the most unmitigatedly evil planet I’ve ever seen; a world where the prime commandment seems to be Hate thy neighbor.”

“You seem to have sized the place up pretty quickly,” Steeves said. “It doesn’t take long, does it?”

“Not at all.”

“Yet I’ve been here twenty years,” the older man remarked. “I’m almost used to it. And you know something, Gardner? It doesn’t bother me any more. My first couple of months on Lurion, I kept thinking that this planet was the pinnacle of savagery. I hated it here. But gradually I began to understand why Lurion was the way it was, and I stopped hating.” He laughed self-consciously. “You think I’m a fat old fool, eh, Gardner?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Of course not. But you’re new here, and you can’t possibly believe that anyone could learn to tolerate Lurioni ways. And maybe I am a fat old fool. Maybe living here so long has dissolved my brain. Here’s the restaurant.”

They turned in the doorway of a small, dimly-lit place with only a scattering of patrons. Two Lurioni were sitting at a table to the left of the door, and they rose the moment Steeves and Gardner entered. They looked young, and there was something about their eyes—a gentleness, a sadness, that

Gardner had not observed before on this planet. He felt uneasy and troubled, and told himself that once again his curiosity had led him into risks. Meeting Lurioni socially was unwise, considering the nature of his assignment.

Steeves said, “Roy Gardner, meet Elau Kinrad and Irin Damiroj.” As they all sat, Steeves said to the two Lurioni, “Mr. Gardner is new to Lurion. He’s only been here a few days, and he told me just now that he despises Lurion.”

Before Gardner could say something that would fake the sting from Steeves’ truthful remark, Damiroj said softly, “Your attitude is quite understandable, ser Gardner. We despise our culture ourselves.”

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter. After they had ordered, Steeves said to Gardner, “Kinrad and Damiroj are what you’d call progressive Lurioni. They’re active in philosophical circles here.”

“I wasn’t aware that there were philosophical circles on Lurion,” Gardner said.

Kinrad smiled. “It is a recent development, say, of the past three years. That is, our organization dates only from three years past. Previously there were always a few of us, isolated, generally unaware of the existence of any others like themselves. Usually their fate was suicide. Damiroj and I hope to counteract this.”

Gardner was silent while they explained, speaking alternately, with Steeves bridging the occasional linguistic gaps. They began with a brief history of Lurion, a poor planet to begin with, badly cheated by nature; its soil was barren and devoid of many useful heavy elements, and its climate was treacherous and unstable from pole to pole. Dank hot seasons were succeeded by blood-freezing cold ones.

There was only one race of Lurioni, but there had been many nations, each toiling along at a bare subsistence level-Marginal life had given rise to a counsel of despair; on a world like Lurion, it was each man for himself. War had been frequent, usually for the basest imperialistic motives.

Some fifteen hundred years ago, the scattered nations of Lurion had finally begun to amalgamate. First came the alliances and ententes; then, the beginning of linkage between the alliances. Until finally Lurion had attained its present confederate form of government, with one central authority, one main language; but with considerable autonomy in the confederated nations. With such a shaky union, Lurion entered the era of interstellar space travel and established communications with most of the other planets.

But the old ways of fear and greed had remained. A planet-wide religion, conceived in ancient pre-technological days, still survived, though transformed and secularized; it was a free-enterprise kind of religion which counseled each man to do evil lest evil be done to him first.

“Our world is not an attractive one,” Kinrad admitted. “Our laws are archaic, our ethics brutish, our art debased, our commerce rapacious. There are those on Lurion who even agitate for war with other worlds.”

“No!” Gardner said.

“Alas, yes,” Damiroj replied mournfully. “We hope this will not come to pass. But in the meantime we work quietly, privately, in hopes of influencing our countrymen. And Earth-men like ser Steeves are invaluable to us.”

Steeves grinned. “I’ve become sort of father-confessor to the outfit, you might say. I try to show them how they can work for the betterment of life here. And I help out with cash. We’re trying to get men into the government, you see, and that takes money, for we have to bribe bigger and better than the politicos if we ever hope to abolish the bribe system at all. So I contribute. Maybe now you can see what I’m driving at, Gardner.”

“I see it; this is a pitch for funds.”

“Exactly.”

“But what makes you think I’ve got loose cash? And anyway, why should I give a damn about the Lurioni way of life?” Gardner asked.

Steeves did not flinch. “Even if you gave a couple of coppers, it would help. And I know you give a damn about Lurion, Gardner. Just in these few days, I’ve been able to size you up as a man who’s got social conscience. You aren’t just a money-grubber like most of our colleagues. You’re intelligent. You understand that we’ve got to help the Lurioni to help themselves, or else civilization is going to stay on the backstabbing level here forever. Which makes Lurion undesirable for us. And which might lead to war, for all we know. So that’s why I brought you along to meet these friends of mine. I thought—”

“No,” Gardner said hoarsely. He rose from the table, though his meal was only half-finished. “You’ve got the wrong man. I’m not interested in contributing to anything. Let Lurion solve its own problems.”

Pale, shaky, he bolted from the restaurant, while the others gaped in astonishment. Out in the street, Gardner stopped, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He was weak and shaky. The meeting had been a fiasco. Nothing could be more dangerous to his mission than getting mixed up with a bunch of Lurioni radicals.

He made his way to a sidewalk pub.

“Khali,” he muttered.

He gripped the drink tightly and gulped it down. It was essential that he blot this luncheon from his mind, as soon as possible.