WHEN YOU HIT THAT TICKER WITH THE ADRE
Lord could see the man was a cardio-dope all right. The blue cheeks, the rapid, shallow breathing, were a trademark. The wide, meaning, knowing smile, as though all the world were an oyster for this guy’s own guzzlement. Get your own ticker-sticker, uncle.
Gosheron looked up, smiling vacantly, his be-ringed fingers, wet with wine, clutching a liquor dispenser. His aides seemed to tense up, like ropes dipped in water, their faces going stiff and hard and ugly. The man in Chinese costume staggered a few further unsteady, paces, stopped and drew himself up in drunken solemnity. His face twitched. His feet were planted wide apart on the synthi-glass floor, heels off. His knees were slightly bent and Lord could see the quiver running along the muscles of those legs.
The man wasn’t drunk.
Noise and confusion came back into Lord’s world. The groaning bedlam of the convention beat at him with frenzied hands.
Lord moved a fraction of a second before Gosheron’s aides. He drew his needle-beam, holding it carefully under a lapel flap, sighted on the pseudo-drunk and shot his stomach out through his backbone. Then, sheathing the weapon, Lord moved swiftly down the steps on to the floor, his coat flaring, took the dead man companionably by the arm and murmured a polite phrase of greeting.
The man’s eyes were still open. Mirrored there was no expression at all. Death had struck too fast for any purely physical reaction. Lord had used a needle beam fined down so the wound was small; there was a little blood and intestine on the back of the man’s Chinese coat but the hole in his stomach was invisible. Lord flicked the coat across to make sure.
The cardio-dope was still standing balanced on those wide-apart betraying legs. As he began to fall, his legs buckling, Lord took the weight on his arm, held the corpse upright and started to manoeuvre towards the nearest exit to one side of the alcove. Half-dragging half-carrying the body he got outside attracting as much attention as a hypo-needle at a party. Dopes, drunks, mixers, they all came alike to the bouncers.
‘Stab with me, Jab with me, Come on, baby, GRAB with -’
The man suddenly welled a spurt of blood down his trousers and Lord hastily thumbed a window slide and tipped the body over. It’s a long way down, buster. Goodbye, uncle. He went back into the big room, changing faces as he went.
Gosheron would never know he had just had his life saved by a Terran. He musn’t know, of course: all that he’d make out of it would be the attempted attack itself. A fine life. Terran Security Agent, a fine jim-dandy life.
Time: 2140.
A group was singing, loudly, discordantly, but in an iron mesh of rhythm.
I wanna GLOW
With a baby who’s not SLOW
I wanna SHOT
Of porage that is hot, HOT, HOT!
He’d been out of sight of Gosheron for perhaps forty-five seconds. His sigh of relief was not pleasant. Everything looked the same. If Gosheron copped his blood-bucket tonight - exit Lord also, ungracefully.
Impossibly the noise and confusion grew. Sounds and colours rose and burst around him like fire-streaked porpoises breaking the surface of a turgid, boiling, lava-engorged sea.
That was one attempt that had failed. There’d be others - probably fanatics from the Earth for Terrans party. Just so long as the Sahndran Ambassador had a fine old time and was suitably impressed by Terran independence and wealth
- wealth! that was as false a front as an anaemic fifteen year old hat-check girl’s then the big wheels of Earth might chisel a few contracts for materials.
He. snatched a glass from a passing robot. Wood al-co-hol! Down the hatch, derriere’s up - whatever a derriere was. His mind fretted again over Katy. Where in hell was the girl? She’d forgotten him, obviously, taking some boob of a spaceman and sucking him dry. To hell with all women.
I wanna GLOW...
Lord grimaced disgustedly and threw the empty glass at a dispenser. He missed and the crystal shattered into fragments. A girl’s high-pitched laugh jeered at his nerves.
Gosheron was talking now with the arbiters of trade and industry and money. This was the crux of the whole jamboree. This little quiet casual conference was the reason this lavish display of worldly wealth and squandering extravagance had been staged. Gosheron represented Sahndran on Earth, and Sahndran had systems choc-full of raw materials, resources, metals, Q’s, everything that Earth lacked. Be nice to him, Terran hater though he might be, pal, he holds the whip hand. Only - don’t let him know. Put on a show, throw an Advert. Con. and let him see how we can whoop it up! Dazzle the old boy. Geriatrics kept him chipper at eighty-three. Fling in a woman or two. Talk nice.
And get those raw materials for Earth!
Drink, Your Excellency? Which porage would you prefer? Yes, Your Excellency. This is the latest
I wanna WHIZ
Wanna ZIZ,
Drink my NU-CLE-O-NIC FIZZ!
There had been more than a hint of desperation in the way Earth had flung itself into the algae business. If algae and bacteria could not provide the protein and carbohydrates and fats needed and if the forests could not supply the raw materials for commerce and synthesis, then mankind was sliding to hell in a bucket. The enormous demand for energy had stripped the land of renewable Q’s
- the sun and wind and tides were left. And still the consumption racket went on, still the stentorian calls for more production and consumption boomed out. It was hysterico-religious mania by then, of course. Geriatrics added to the inferno. Improved methods of equipping the unfit for life sprang up, adding still more burdens. Birth control? Just try, uncle, just try. The whole crazy mess rolled on inevitably, with warfare an outmoded - and unmentionable - method of control.
The basics were perfectly correct. Just that something went wrong along the line, somewhere. Even space travel didn’t turn out to be the panacea everyone had confidently expected.
We just weren’t the only people in the Galaxy.
A tall, glistening, floodlit flagpole with the United Nations flag bravely fluttered, towering over a garbage can with a gaping ever hungry mouth. That was the symbol.
WE’LL DRINK AT BARS
SPREAD FROM HERE OUT TO THE STARS
A world bedlam of frenzied, sensation-seeking, hungry, frightened people.
Drink, drink, wood al-co-hol!
You couldn’t really blame them.
Lord felt the shivers and pulled his nasal plugs out, took a rapid sniff of snow, and replaced the filters. He needed it, anyway, after that hop-headed Chinaman. He finished another Nuclear Fizz - this time his cast was accurate and the glass splintered down the dispenser to be carried into the city’s complex reclamation system - and wandered into the shadows to the rear of the animated group around Gosheron.
They were busily building empires and tearing others out from under the clammy feet of friends. Lord felt a faint disgust.
The woman with the golden face mask and bleached rocket hair glided swiftly from some purple-lit alcove, seized his arm. Her eyes were yellow pits of fire.
‘Spencer! Darling Spencer! Fancy seeing you!’
Index: T/F/354920/E.
Name: Katherine Coburn.
Age: Alleged 26. Chronologic: 40. Height: 160 cms. Hair: Mousy. Eyes: Blue (partial to yellow stain).
Professional tridi entertainer. Four hospitalisations on unspecified data. Possible connections with Earth for Terrans party. Security Risk Rating: BX - problematical. Appears on restricted ‘arrest during emergency’ list.
There burst a suffocating wash of sound and light from the ballroom carrying her throaty greeting on it like a surfboard, tearing into his guts and making him ache to crush her into his arms then and there.
‘Katy - I’d not recognised you - Katy - why in hell didn’t you visor me?’
‘I recognised you easily, uncle. But, Spencer, darling - I’ve been so busy -’
‘Yeah! I saw! With that fat slug Gosheron.’
‘But he’s important, darling. And he’s got lots of you know what.’
‘I can keep you in reasonable comfort, Katy, you know that -’
‘Oh, don’t propose again, there’s a dear boy! I believe passionately in Trial Marriage, and it’s so much less fuss. We’ve been happy for a couple of years, uncle, why not let it go on that way?’
‘We’ve been happy! I’ve been in hell!’
She shrugged, her naked shoulders agleam in the lights where finger marks had smeared away powder. Lord’s tongue was a cinder in the dryness of his mouth. She smiled at him, the golden sheath around her mouth dimpling and folding over the flesh.
‘I need a fix,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Atta boy, Spencer - I’ll join you.’ Her yellow eyes smouldered. She lifted her scrap of skirt, drew out a jewelled plastic box. ‘What are you hitting these days?’
‘Usual.’ Lord’s own box, his portable carry-case, opened clumsily under his trembling fingers, a hinge snapped with a sharp ping! and the lid hung askew.
‘Hey, take it easy, uncle!’ she laughed.
The needle filled smoothly. Lord bared his forearm, pinched up the flesh and slid the porage home where it was needed. Uncle! Hit that sky!
Katy’s eyelids half closed, her body undulated and she rippled her hands in an abandoned temple dance, tiny bells tinkling on her ankles. She crooned softly.
I need a tonic - Uncle;
I’m super-sonic - Uncle.
Don’t get platonic,
You hep carbuncle.’
‘You’re mixing!’ he accused her.
‘Sure, uncle. Sure. I’m hot! I’ve been mixing coupla weeks now. Get wise, Spencer darling. Grab a jab and stab! The old mainline porage is strictly for the crumbs.’
The golden sheath around her mouth crimped in and her smile would have drowned the sunrise. Her teeth were very white.
‘Do get me a drink, dear boy -’
He brought two Nuclear Fizzes and didn’t realise he had finished his own in one gulp. Somewhere off to one side Gosheron was surrounded by the moguls of finance, safe for the moment, giving time to talk to Katy without nagging worry.
‘I’ll see you after this -’ he began eagerly.
She cut him off, gaily, like a sunbeam falling unexpectedly across a candle flame.
‘Spencer, darling - have you seen Gruney around?’
‘Gruney?’ he said vaguely.
‘Yes, Gruney,’ she laughed impatiently. ‘Grunewald Sloane. Such a dear boy. He promised to let me grab a stick from his ticker-sticker. Do you think I should?’
She finished archly.
‘Stay away from cardio-dopes,’ Lord said automatically, not really hearing what she was saying, seeing only the outline of her in the sheathing golden film. He had just realised that the film was all she was wearing, it had looked like a dress with the scrap of pocket-skirt. She looked like the torrid flame from some pagan temple torch.
‘That’s your trouble, Spencer,’ she pouted, flinging her empty glass somewhere in the direction of a disposer. ‘You never want any fun! Cardio-dopes are hepped whizzes. Especially Gruney. If you see him tell him I’m aching to have a word with him.’ She laughed kittenishly. ‘He’s dressed like a Chinaman, really utter. Bye, bye, Spencer, darling.’
And she was gone, like a flame twisting round a wind tossed torch. Spencer’s mind groped among blackening embers. He puzzled over familiar things with foul sooty fingerprints across them.
Chinaman’s clothes? Cardio-dope?
What was Katy doing running with that bunch?
JIB JOB JAB - AGAIN,
HIT THAT VEIN - BRAIN!
Time: 2148
Katy knew a man who had tried to kill Gosheron. Katy didn’t know Lord was Terran Security. Katy had been trying to make Gosheron. Spencer Lord’s mind twisted like a burned out hyper-drive. His face went sickly grey under the false features and he laid an unsteady hand against the wall to support himself.
Training took over. He didn’t feel or hear the relays clicking in his brain; but the icy, wall compounded of complete calm, utter confidence and dedicated obedience clamped shut like the closing valves of an airlock.
Almost.
Jamming the smooth functioning of his Bureau indoctrinated reactions, a sibilant golden flame mocked the closing of that wall. The vivid image of Katy danced maddeningly before his eyes, filtering the coldly calculated trained sequence of actions he must now go through. He shut his eyes in agony for a space, then opened them by an effort of will and put one hand to his weapons belt.
Security Rating Risk: AAA. Terran Security Operative. Left, right, left, right, left. BIM! BAM! BOOM! There wasn’t much inside him now except a vastly dark hole which sucked his guts through claws of white hot steel.
The song from the chanting line in the ballroom beat up in metronomic waves of hypnotic sound. The wooden floor glistened with spilt liquor. An abandoned needle splintered under his foot. He disregarded all that, walked steadily over to the group around Gosheron. He couldn’t see Katy.
If she tried to kill Gosheron he must kill her. It was black and white. There’d be no time for a fast deal, a hand across her mouth dragging her away where he could talk, unfix the crazy notions and fanatic schemes she must have had drilled into her poor befuddled brain. Gosheron must not know, ever, that his life had been endangered. These fanatics would try a shot even if they were dying in pieces - and Katy was one of them!
It was a situation fully covered by various aspects of the training he had gone through - except that the assassin wasn’t the girl he - Lord was too far gone even to curse. The Earth’s continued sustenance depended on the deals that would be made tonight, and once Gosheron, the old Terran hater, got a whiff of any murder-plot against him he’d be off - whoosh - to the stars.
Lord was sweating now, the sleazy feel of it slick between plastic face mask and flesh. He felt sick, too.
Giggle-gas balloons were popping everywhere now and Lord forced himself to smile foolishly, mouth drooling as the stuff billowed around him. He had half a mind to take out one filter - it was a hell of a job trying to giggle the way he felt. And, suddenly, it was too dangerously easy.
He checked himself savagely. Gosheron was laughing and chuckling, greasy fat tears rolling down his slobby cheeks. The group around the alien were back-slapping, chortling, having a whale of a time; Lord knew their keen brains were bent on one objective, talking Gosheron into ripe contracts for Earth.
Sharks and shysters they might be: but Earth’s future depended on them good luck to them. Katy - Katy was a moth, a gaudy, brilliantly empty flutterer, giving nothing to the world, only taking. Yet - she was Katy ... Katy ...
Time: 2151.
When Lord saw her flashing eyes and laughing mouth in the crowd around Gosheron, her leg rubbing familiarly against a flushed young roisterer, he knew it was too late. She had wormed her way through the crush towards the alien. Lord pushed through after, laughing, shouting, a drink seized from a lax hand held high. His other hand stayed on his weapons belt under the flaring coat. The girl was a sliver of quicksilver, gliding in among the guests, slipping closer and closer to Gosheron.
I’M RIZ
I’M HIZ
ON MY NU-CLEO-NIC FIZZ!
Lord pushed faster, hating himself, hating the world, wondering just what he dared to do. There was an icy band around his forehead that constricted and drew fire-hot sparks of pain from his temples. Glass smashed in a roar of laughter. Heat beat up in baking waves. People rolled drunkenly away from a couple locked in a torrid embrace. Balloons and rockets crashed and plopped. Gosheron was clumsily tilting a glass, an aide steadied it, moving between Lord and Katy.
He stepped casually fast to one side, reached out a rock steady hand for Katy. She eluded his grasp without appearing to see him. Then he saw the needle between her fingers.
That wouldn’t be porage. That would be a killer.
YOU NEED A TONIC - UNCLE
YOU’RE SUPER-SONIC - UNCLE ...
She had one impudent arm around the fat alien now, her ripe lips reaching for his flabby mouth. She was laughing screechingly, piercingly, and flakes of gold began to peel from her body. An aide glanced at her, chuckled, and reached out.
Lord was held suspended in a timeless vacuum. He thought he had stopped breathing and his heart-beats came in sluggish reverberations of sound that hurt his chest.
The aide saw the needle. His laughing face went grim. Katy, all her vibrant body a golden bow, moved the hand with the needle. The drop of liquid at the tip caught the lights and shone fragmentarily blinding like a nova.
‘Porage, porage, have a shot of porage,’ she chanted.
Gosheron wheezed and shook, his fat face creased in smiles, his eyes avid on the girl’s slim body. The aide’s hand raked down towards Katy. She thrust and in that instant the other aide, unseen by Lord, fired. His wide beam tore Katy’s hand and wrist off. The needle vapourised. She stood looking dazedly at the stump, cauterised already and with no blood oozing.
Miraculously a clearing appeared around the drama. Women screamed. Men swore. There was a sudden, awful, engulfing silence.
Lord’s face felt as though a granite crusher had used it for a dummy run. His brain told him that he mustn’t allow the Sahndrans to think this an organised attempt on the life of their Ambassador. He had to cover up - fast.
He could not trust himself to speak yet. He shoved roughly into the cleared area, trampling splintered glasses, and took the girl’s body on his arm as she collapsed in a dead faint. He faced Gosheron, forced his rigid lips to open.
‘She meant no harm!’ He whined the words as though fear and horror stricken. ‘She wanted to give you a shot of porage - give you a kick. And you blasted her arm off.’
Gosheron’s smile was now all diplomacy.
‘I am sorry for the impetuosity of my guards, but -’ He shrugged and ripples of fat ran disgustingly along his shoulders. ‘We cannot take chances. She should have known better.’
‘I’ll look after her,’ Lord got out. ‘My name’s Kinroy Tracey, in case you want to pay any compensation.’
Then he was pulling away, carrying Katy, her nude gold filmed body cold against his arm. Cold?
He glanced down in panic. Her closed eyelids showed blue where the gold had worn away. She was barely breathing. He scraped a nail across her gold filmed flesh, saw the betraying blue tinge beneath.
The little idiot! She’d been cardio-doping, all right! The shock, with her in that condition ...
Before he had left the great ballroom she was dead.
‘The filthy aliens!’ Lord mumbled blindly to himself, over and over. They used a molecular on her. The poor kid. Dead. They only needed to knock her hand away. Dead. A molecular. The dirty rotten twisted ...’
He sat with her in his arms for a long while, whilst around him beat the insistent roar of the world, going to hell in a bucket and enjoying itself every inch of the way.
Time: 2200.
Spencer Lord laid Katy down gently and walked back into the ballroom to continue protecting the alien Ambassador.
Get a Jab - Get a Grab.
On a nu-cle-o-nic Fizz!
Drink, drink, wood al-co-hol!
Going to hell in a bucket.