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02 - The Door Through Space - Marion Zimmer Bradley · Science Fiction Books - Daily

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  Speaker 1: Chapter two, The Terran Empire has set its blazon on
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  Speaker 1: four hundred planets, circling more than three hundred suns. But
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  Speaker 1: no matter what the color of the sun, the number
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  Speaker 1: of the moons overhead, or the geography of the planet,
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  Speaker 1: once you step inside a headquarters building, you are on Earth,
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  Speaker 1: and Earth would be alien to many who call themselves earthmen.
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  Speaker 1: Judging by the strangeness I always felt when I stepped
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  Speaker 1: into that marble and glass world inside the skyscraper, I
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  Speaker 1: heard the sound of my steps ringing into thin resonance
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  Speaker 1: along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes, readjusting them
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  Speaker 1: painfully to the cold, yellowness of the lights. The traffic
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  Speaker 1: division was efficiency made insolent in glass and chrome and
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  Speaker 1: polished steel mirrors and windows, and looming electronic clerical machines.
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  Speaker 1: Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor,
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  Speaker 1: which gave a view of the spaceport, a vast open
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  Speaker 1: space lighted with blue white mercury vapor lamps, and a
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  Speaker 1: chained down skyscraper starship littered over with swarming ants. The
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  Speaker 1: process crew was getting the big ship ready for skylift
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  Speaker 1: tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a
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  Speaker 1: third look eyed be on it when it lifted turning
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  Speaker 1: away from the monitored spaceport. I watched myself stride forward
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  Speaker 1: in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere. A tall man,
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  Speaker 1: a lean man, bleached out by years under a red sun,
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  Speaker 1: and deeply scarred on both cheeks and around the mouth,
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  Speaker 1: even after six years behind a desk. My neat business
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  Speaker 1: clothes suitable for an earth man with a desk job
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  Speaker 1: didn't fit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on
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  Speaker 1: the balls of my feet, approximating the lean, stooping walk
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  Speaker 1: of a dry towner from the Coronas plains. The clerk
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  Speaker 1: behind the sign marked transportation was a little rabbit of
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  Speaker 1: a man with a sun lamped hand, barricaded by a
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  Speaker 1: small sized spaceport of desk, and looking as if he
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  Speaker 1: liked being shut up there. He looked up in civil inquiry,
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  Speaker 1: Can I do something for you? My name's Cargle. Have
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  Speaker 1: you a pass for me? He stared. A free pass
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  Speaker 1: aboard a starship is rare, except for professional spacement, which
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  Speaker 1: I obviously wasn't. Let me check my records, He hedged
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  Speaker 1: and punched scanning buttons on the glassy surface shadows came
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  Speaker 1: and went, and I saw myself half reflected a tipsy
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  Speaker 1: shadow in a flurry of racing colors. The patterns finally stabilized,
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  Speaker 1: and the clerk read off names. Brill, Cameron, Ah, Yes, Cargole,
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  Speaker 1: Race Andrew, Department thirty eight, Transfer Transportation. Is that you?
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  Speaker 1: I admitted it, and he started punching more buttons. When
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  Speaker 1: the sound of the name made connection in whatever desk
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  Speaker 1: clerks use for a brain, he stopped with his hand
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  Speaker 1: half way to the button. Are you Race Cargle of
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  Speaker 1: the Secret Service? Sir, the Race Cargole. It's right there,
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  Speaker 1: I said, gesturing wearily at the projected pattern under the
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  Speaker 1: glassy surface. Why I thought? I mean, everybody took it
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  Speaker 1: for granted? That is, I heard you thought Cargo had
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  Speaker 1: been killed a long time ago, because his name never
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  Speaker 1: turned up in news dispatches anymore. I grinned sourly, seeing
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  Speaker 1: my image dissolve in blurring shadows, and feeling the long
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  Speaker 1: heeled scar and my mouth draw up to make the
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  Speaker 1: grin hideous. I'm Cargle, all right. I've been up on
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  Speaker 1: floor thirty eight for six years, holding down a desk.
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  Speaker 1: Any clerk could handle you for instance, he gaped, he
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  Speaker 1: was a rabbit of a man who had never stepped
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  Speaker 1: out of the safe, familiar boundaries of the Terran trade city.
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  Speaker 1: You mean you're the man who went to Charin in
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  Speaker 1: disguise and routed out the lists, the man who scouted
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  Speaker 1: the Black Ridge and Shane Saw, and you've been working
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  Speaker 1: at a desk upstairs all these years. It's hard to believe, sir.
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  Speaker 1: My mouth twitched. It had been hard for me to
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  Speaker 1: believe while I was doing it. The pass right away, sir.
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  Speaker 1: He punched buttons, and a printed ship of plastic extruded
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  Speaker 1: from the slot on the desktop. Your fingerprint, please. He
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  Speaker 1: pressed my finger to the still soft surface of the plastic,
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  Speaker 1: indelibly recording the print. Waited for a moment for time.
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  Speaker 1: Harden then laid the chip in the slot of a
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  Speaker 1: pneumatic tube. I heard it woosh away. They'll check your
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  Speaker 1: fingerprint against that when you board the ship. Skylift isn't
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  Speaker 1: till dawn, but you can go aboard as soon as
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  Speaker 1: the process crew finishes with her. He glanced at the
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  Speaker 1: monitor screen, where the swarming crew were still doing inexplicable
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  Speaker 1: things to the immobile spacecraft. It will be another hour
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  Speaker 1: or two. Where are you going, mister Cargle? Some planet
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  Speaker 1: in the Hidees cluster, Vainwall? I think something like that.
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  Speaker 1: What's it like there? How should I know? I'd never
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  Speaker 1: been there either. I only knew that vain Wall had
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  Speaker 1: a red Son and the terran Leggate could use a
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  Speaker 1: trained intelligence officer and not pin him down to a desk.
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  Speaker 1: There was respect and even envy in the little man's voice.
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  Speaker 1: Could I buy you a drink before you go aboard,
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  Speaker 1: mister Cargle? Thanks, but I've a few loose ends to
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  Speaker 1: tie up. I didn't, but I was damned if I'd
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  Speaker 1: spend my last hour on wolf under the eyes of
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  Speaker 1: a desk bound rabbit who preferred his adventure safely secondhand.
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  Speaker 1: But after I'd left the off in the building, I
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  Speaker 1: almost wished I had taken him up on it. It
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  Speaker 1: would be at least an hour before I could board
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  Speaker 1: the starship, with nothing to do but hash over old
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  Speaker 1: memories better forgotten. The sun was lower now THI Coronas
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  Speaker 1: is a dim star, a dying star, and once past
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  Speaker 1: the crimson zenith of noon, its light slance into a long, pale,
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  Speaker 1: reddish twilight. Four of Wolfe's five moons were clustered in
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  Speaker 1: a pale bouquet overhead, mingling thin violet moonlight into the
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  Speaker 1: crimson dusk. The shadows were blue and purple, and the
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  Speaker 1: empty square. As I walked across the stones and stood
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  Speaker 1: looking down one of the side streets, a few steps
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  Speaker 1: and I was in an untidy slum which might have
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  Speaker 1: been on another world. From the neat bright trade city
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  Speaker 1: which lay west of the spaceport. The carsa was alive
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  Speaker 1: and reeking, with the sounds and smells of human and
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  Speaker 1: half human life. A naked child, diminutive and golden furred,
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  Speaker 1: darted between two of the chinked pebble houses and disappeared,
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  Speaker 1: spilling fragile laughter like breaking glass. A little beast, half
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  Speaker 1: snake and half cat, crawled across a roof, spread leathery
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  Speaker 1: wings and flapped to the ground. The sour, pungent reek
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  Speaker 1: of incense from the open street shrine made my nostrils twitch,
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  Speaker 1: and a hulked form inside, not human, cast me a
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  Speaker 1: surly green glare. As I passed, I turned, retracing my steps.
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  Speaker 1: There was no danger, of course, so close to the
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  Speaker 1: trade city. Even on such planets as wolf Terra's laws
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  Speaker 1: are respected within earshot of their gates. But there had
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  Speaker 1: been rioting here and in Charin during the last month.
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  Speaker 1: After the display of mob violence this afternoon, a lone Terran, unarmed,
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  Speaker 1: might turn up as a solitary corpse flung on the
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  Speaker 1: steps of the HQ building. There had been a time
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  Speaker 1: when I had walked alone from shan Saw to the
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  Speaker 1: polar colony. I had known how to melt into this
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  Speaker 1: kind of night, shabby and inconspicuous, A worn shirt, cloak
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  Speaker 1: hunched around my shoulders, weaponless except for the razor sharp
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  Speaker 1: skin in the clasp of the cloak, walking on the
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  Speaker 1: balls on my feet like a dry towner, not looking
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  Speaker 1: or sounding or smelling like an earth man. That rabbit
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  Speaker 1: the Traffic office had stirred up things I'd be wiser
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  Speaker 1: to forget. It had been six years, six years of
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  Speaker 1: slow death behind a desk, since the day when Rachael
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  Speaker 1: Censar had left me a marked man, death warrant written
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  Speaker 1: on my scarred face. Anywhere outside the narrow confines of
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  Speaker 1: the Terran law on Wolf recall Censar. My fists clenched
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  Speaker 1: with the old impotent hate. If I could get my
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  Speaker 1: hands on him, it had been recall who first led
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  Speaker 1: me through the byways of the Kharsa, teaching me the
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  Speaker 1: jargon of a dozen tribes, the chirping call of the Yamen,
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  Speaker 1: the way of the catman, of the rainforests, the argate
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  Speaker 1: of the thieves market, the walk and step of the
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  Speaker 1: dry Tanners. From Shansaw and Daelon and aard Karan, the
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  Speaker 1: patched cities of dusty salt stone which spread out on
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  Speaker 1: the bottoms of Wolf's vanished oceans. Recall was from shansa
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  Speaker 1: human tall as an earth man, weathered by salt and sun,
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  Speaker 1: and he had worked for Terran intelligence since we were boys.
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  Speaker 1: We had traveled all over our world together and found
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  Speaker 1: it good. And then, for some reason I had never known,
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  Speaker 1: it had come to an end. Even now, I was
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  Speaker 1: not wholly sure why. He had erupted that day into
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  Speaker 1: violence and a final explosion. Then he had disappeared, leaving
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  Speaker 1: me a marked man and a lonely one. Julie had
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  Speaker 1: gone with him. I strode the streets of the slum,
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  Speaker 1: unseeing my thoughts, running a familiar channel. Julie, my kid's sister,
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  Speaker 1: clinging around Rocall's neck, her gray eyes hating me. I
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  Speaker 1: had never seen her again. That had been six years ago.
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  Speaker 1: One more adventure had shown me that my usefulness to
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  Speaker 1: the Secret Service was over. Recall had vanished, but he
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  Speaker 1: had left me a legacy, my name written in the
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  Speaker 1: sure scrolls of death anywhere outside the safe boundaries of
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  Speaker 1: Terran law. A marked man. I had gone back to
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  Speaker 1: slow stagnation behind a desk. I stood it as long
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  Speaker 1: as I could. When it finally got too bad, Magnuson
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  Speaker 1: had been sympathetic. He was the chief of Terran intelligence
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  Speaker 1: on Wolf, and I was next in line for his job.
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  Speaker 1: But he understood when I quit. He'd arranged the transfer
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  Speaker 1: and the pass, and I was leaving tonight. I was
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  Speaker 1: nearly back to the spaceport by now across from the
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  Speaker 1: street shrine at the edge of the square. It was
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  Speaker 1: here that little toy cellar had vanished, But it was
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  Speaker 1: exactly like a thousand a hundred thousand other street shrines
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  Speaker 1: on Wolf, a smudge of incense, reeking and stinking before
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  Speaker 1: the squatting image of Nebron, the toad god, whose face
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  Speaker 1: and symbol were everywhere on Wolf. I stared for a
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  Speaker 1: moment at the ugly idol, then slowly moved away. The
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  Speaker 1: lighted curtains of the Spaceport cafe attracted my attention, and
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  Speaker 1: I went inside. A few spaceport personnel and storm gear
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  Speaker 1: were drinking coffee at the counter, a pair of furred
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  Speaker 1: chalks lounging beneath the mirrors at the far end, and
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  Speaker 1: a trio of dry towners. Rangy weathered men in crimson
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  Speaker 1: and blue shirt cloaks were standing at a wall shelf,
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  Speaker 1: eating Terran food with aloof dignity. In my business clothes,
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  Speaker 1: I felt more conspicuous than the chalks. What place had
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  Speaker 1: a civilian here? Between the uniforms of the spacemen and
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  Speaker 1: the colorful brilliance of the dry towners, A snubnosed girl
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  Speaker 1: with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked
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  Speaker 1: for jacko and bunlets, and carried the food to a
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  Speaker 1: wall shelf near the dry towners. Their dialect fell soft
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  Speaker 1: and familiar on my ears. One of them, without altering
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  Speaker 1: the expression on his face or the easy tone of
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  Speaker 1: his voice, began to make elaborate comments on my entrance,
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  Speaker 1: my appearance, my ancestry, and probably personal habits, all defied
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  Speaker 1: in the colorfully obscene dialect of SHAINSA that had happened
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  Speaker 1: before the wolf, and sense of humor is only half human.
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  Speaker 1: The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger,
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  Speaker 1: preferably an earth man, to his very face, in an
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  Speaker 1: unknown language, perfectly deadpan. In my civilian clothes, I was
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  Speaker 1: obviously fair game. A look or a gesture of resentment
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  Speaker 1: would have lost face and dignity what the dry towners
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  Speaker 1: called their kihar Permanently, I leaned over and remarked in
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  Speaker 1: their own dialect, that I would, at some future, an
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  Speaker 1: unspecified time, appreciate the opportunity to return their compliments. By rights,
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  Speaker 1: they should have laughed, made some barbed remark about my
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  Speaker 1: command of language, and crossed their hands in a symbol
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  Speaker 1: of jest, decently reversed on themselves. Then we would have
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  Speaker 1: bought each other a drink, and that would be that.
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  Speaker 1: But it didn't happen that way, not this time. The
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  Speaker 1: tallest of the three whirled, upsetting his drink in the process.
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  Speaker 1: I heard its thin shatter through the squeal of the
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  Speaker 1: alabaster haired girl as the chair crashed over. They faced me,
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  Speaker 1: three abreast, and one of them fumbled in the clasp
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  Speaker 1: of his shirt cloak. I edged backward, my own hand,
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  Speaker 1: racing up for a skin I hadn't carried in six years,
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  Speaker 1: and fronted them squarely, hoping I could face down the
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  Speaker 1: prospect of a rough house. They wouldn't kill me this
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  Speaker 1: close to the HQ, but at least I was in
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  Speaker 1: for an unpleasant mauling. I couldn't handle three men, and
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  Speaker 1: if nerves were this taunt in the Karsa, I might
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  Speaker 1: get knifed. Quite by accident, of course, the chocks moaned
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  Speaker 1: and gibbered. The dry towners glared at me, and I
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  Speaker 1: tensed for the moment when their steady stare would explode
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  Speaker 1: into violence. Then I became aware that they were gazing
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  Speaker 1: not at me, but at something or someone behind me.
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  Speaker 1: The skeins snipped back into the clasps of their cloaks.
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  Speaker 1: Then they broke, rank, turned and ran. They ran, blundering
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  Speaker 1: into stools, leaving havoc of upset benches and broken crockery
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  Speaker 1: in their wake. One man barged into the counter, swore
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  Speaker 1: and ran on, limping and let my breath go. Something
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  Speaker 1: had put the fear of God into those brutes, and
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't my own ugly mug. I turned and saw
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  Speaker 1: the girl. She was slight, with waving hair like spun
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  Speaker 1: black glass circled with faint tracery of stars. A black
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  Speaker 1: glass belt bound her narrow waist like clasped hands, and
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  Speaker 1: her robe stark white bore an ugly embroidery across the breast,
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  Speaker 1: the flat sprawl of a conventionalized toad god nebron. Her
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  Speaker 1: features were delicate, chiseled, pale, a dry town face, all human,
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  Speaker 1: all woman, but set in an alien and unearthly repose.
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  Speaker 1: The great eyes gleamed red. They were fixed, almost unseeing,
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  Speaker 1: but the crimson lips were curved with inhuman malice. She
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  Speaker 1: stood motionless, looking at me, as if wondering why I
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  Speaker 1: had not run with the others. In half a second,
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  Speaker 1: the smile flickered off and was replaced by the startled
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  Speaker 1: look of recognition. Whoever and whatever she was, she had
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  Speaker 1: saved me a mauling. I started to phrase formal thanks,
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  Speaker 1: then broke off in astonishment. The cafe had emptied and
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  Speaker 1: we were entirely alone. Even the chalks had leaped through
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  Speaker 1: an open window. I saw the whisk of a disappearing tail.
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  Speaker 1: We stood frozen, looking at one another, while the toad
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  Speaker 1: gods sprawled across her breasts rose and fell for half
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  Speaker 1: a dozen breaths. Then I took one step forward, and
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  Speaker 1: she took one step backward at the same instant. In
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  Speaker 1: one swift movement, she was outside in the dark street.
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  Speaker 1: It took me only an instant to get into the
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  Speaker 1: street after her. But as I stepped across the door,
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  Speaker 1: there was a little stirring in the air, like the
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  Speaker 1: rising of heat waves across the salt flats at noon.
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  Speaker 1: Then the street shrine was empty, and nowhere was there
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  Speaker 1: any sign of the girl. She had vanished. She simply
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  Speaker 1: was not there. I gaped at the empty shrine. She
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  Speaker 1: had stepped inside and vanished like a wraith of smoke,
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  Speaker 1: like like the little toy cellar they had hunted out
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  Speaker 1: of the carsa there were eyes in the street again,
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  Speaker 1: and becoming aware of where I was, I moved away.
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  Speaker 1: The shrines of Nebron are on every corner of Wolf.
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  Speaker 1: But this is one instance when familiarity does not breed contempt.
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  Speaker 1: The street was dark and seemed empty, but it was
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  Speaker 1: packed with all the little noises of living. I was
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  Speaker 1: not unobserved, and meddling with a street shrine would be
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  Speaker 1: just as dangerous as the skeins of my three loudmouthed,
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  Speaker 1: dry town roughnecks. I turned and crossed the square for
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  Speaker 1: the last time, turning toward the loom of the spaceship,
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  Speaker 1: filing the girl away as just another riddle of Wolf
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  Speaker 1: I'd never solve. How wrong I was. End of chapter two,