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Ch. 05 · The Man Who Staked The Stars

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  Chapter five of The Man Who Staked the Stars by Catherine MacLean. This LibriVox
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  recording is in the public domain. Chapter five. When he left the office
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  with Pierce, someone stepped out of a corner of the corridor and clutched at
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  his sleeve, speaking rapidly. Bryce brushed the hand off carelessly and walked on
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  a junkie. He remarked to Pierce. There was a quick flash of motion
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  behind them that sent them whirling to one side. Pierce stood aside with a
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  small needle gun in his palm, waiting to see if it would be needed,
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  while Bryce finished the downstroke of his hand that sent the knife and the
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  junkie reeling to the rubbery corridor flooring. Shall I report him, Pierce asked,
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  making his needle gun vanish in the same smooth motion it had appeared and
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  indicating a phone sign. No, it doesn't matter. Bryce walked on thoughtfully.
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  Everyone wants to kill me at once, Pierce said. It's easy to
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  sway a miserable man to the point of pitting all his troubles and hate onto
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  one name like Bryce Carter. I know, said Bryce. He saw that
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  the smiling, dark young man was alert, walking a little ahead of him
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  and glancing quickly left and right as they approached corners and intersections and recessed doorways
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  where a man could wait unseen, doing his job as a bodyguard efficiently and
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  inconspicuously. If it's the man I think it is, Bryce told him,
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  falling into step again after they passed the turn into the tube trains. He's
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  working against a deadline. It's now or never. There won't be any more
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  of this after next month, Pierce answered, after a glance at a passing
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  mirror to see if they were followed, and a quick scan of the train
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  platform. Your usual haunts will be booby trapped. Better stay out of routine.
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  That night, in the space Hands end of the city, they ate
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  the dinner that he usually had with Mona at a nightclub or alone, looking
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  for a good pickup and an expensive cocktail lounge. He was in the shipping
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  area around the docks, at the opposite end of the city from his usual
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  haunts. The ceiling was low and the glasses shivered and danced with a constant,
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  muted thunder of jets that shuddered through the floor from the nearby landing fields.
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  His new assistant and bodyguard was pleasantly deferential, lighting cigarettes for him,
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  listening respectfully to his opinions, drawing him out with questions that showed he understood
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  what he was listening to. Bryce could not remember having had such a good
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  time talking since he left the company of the meteorite miners at the Belt.
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  Everything he said seemed right and even brilliant. As he talked and told anecdotes
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  of his life and sketched some of his plans, he saw his past life
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  with peculiar vividness, as if he were a stranger seeing it for the first
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  time. In the reflected light of the interest and enthusiasm of his audience,
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  events took on a new glow of entertainment and adventure and success, where they
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  had seen to be just work and risk and routine at the time. They
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  had an evening to pass. Somehow, Pierce got into conversation with a little
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  Egyptian who could have stood for Syno and had the same merry impetuous way about
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  him. Ras Anna was his name. He claimed to be the Caliph of
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  Baghdad, still incognito, or perhaps a professional explorer disguised as a native.
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  After a few drinks, he enlisted them somewhat confusedly as the two missing musketeers,
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  and they found themselves wandering arm and arm from bar to bar and up
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  and down dark alleys. Interviewing the heathen natives, Bryce realized that he was
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  laughing steadily and enjoying himself in a way that had nothing to do with a
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  small number of drinks he'd had. He couldn't get any difference out of Raz.
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  Raz wouldn't have deferred to God himself, and it was no use trying
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  to impress him, for nothing impressed him. Apparently, the hook nosed,
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  merry little man had no ambition and no envy of anyone, and wanted no
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  better of life than he had at the moment. It was a strange new
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  world they led Bryce through, not the ragged, starving, crowded viciousness of
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  his childhood, not the fighting equality of spacemen and rock miners, many of
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  them wanted, by the law, the barren hospitality of the sellers and the
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  belt who owed him money and who invited him to their sparsh dinners in gratitude
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  those he had always managed to keep in their places and exact a certain measure
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  of respect. Even the smooth, powerful men of wealth around him now accorded
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  him a certain measure of deference that was an acknowledgment of strength. But the
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  two musketeers he was with and the world they opened for him, seemed to
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  respect neither distance, nor politeness, nor hold any fear for strength. Friendly
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  insults and uncritical friendliness mingled oddly with the mock solemn pretense of the fairy tale,
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  and that part was genuine and spontaneous. It didn't seem to be a
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  different kind of people he was meeting exactly. It was the same kind of
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  people, approached differently. He didn't know exact exactly how it was done,
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  and he let the other two take the lead. Perhaps he had drunk too
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  much, he thought as he rode the hotel elevator. For in retrospect,
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  the evening was a haze of pleasure that was hard to pin his attention to
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  everything he had said, Everything that had happened seemed profoundly right, an atmosphere
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  which he had encountered rarely before, and only then in the last stage of
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  drunkenness. But he was sober. He had had only a few drinks,
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  and his perceptions seemed sharpened rather than blurred. Yet where there should have been
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  critical thoughts and regrets for error and restless plans. In his mind. There
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  was only a pleasant, empty buzz. Too much talk, he thought,
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  yawning as he went down the luxurious hotel corridor to his room. It was
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  that night that he first noticed something wrong with the mirror. He glanced into
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  it casually while undressing, then not so casually, walking up to it and
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  inspecting his face. A slight, unpleasant tingle coursed along his nerves a stranger.
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  When he tried to focus on what was wrong, he could find nothing
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  that looked any different, yet the total effect was completely wrong. He decided
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  that it must be the mirror, some subtle distortion of the reflection. The
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  old one must have been broken and cleaning, and a new one put in.
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  The chill passed, and still the good blank feeling lasted. He went
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  to bed, reviewing the evening and smiling, and went to sleep without resorting
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  to the mental arithmetic that he generally used to clear his mind of dissatisfaction actions.
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  The next morning, the mirror still looked peculiar. There seemed to be
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  nothing wrong with the reflected image of the room. But when he gave himself
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  the usual inspection. Before stepping out into the corridor, the feeling of strangeness
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  returned, and his eyes felt as if they were blurring. He put his
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  hand up to his eyes instinctively and felt a distinct shock when the mirror image
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  did the same. Odd A slender, smiling young man joined him in the
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  lobby, rising and falling into step with him as he passed, going through
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  doors before him. With the inconspicuous alertness and precaution, he did his duties
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  as a bodyguard well, bryce noted, but that was only to be expected.
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  Efficiency is and should be unnoticeable. One thing he discovered during the working
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  morning at the office. There had been nothing wrong with the mirror in his
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  hotel room. The washroom mirror was worse. He stood for a while,
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  frozen in midstep while he looked at the lean, tanned, and freckled face,
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  which looked like a color movie of his, every feature in its proper
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  place as he remembered it, but yet not his. It didn't belong to
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  him. He made faces at it, and it made faces back as if
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  it were his. While he tried to believe that he was looking out of
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  the gray eyes which looked back at him. Then he heard someone coming in
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  and left suddenly and sheepishly. That afternoon, after Pierce got into the swing
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  of the work, he began to be useful, fitting himself into the work
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  routine as though he had always been part of it, making the right calls
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  and contacts and appointments on the barest hints, handing him the phone intuitively as
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  he needed it, always at the right time with almost telepathic instinct, while
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  checking over the decisions and plans of Kesby and the staff that needed is okay,
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  and signing type letters. Bryce taught the thoughts and plans which came half
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  formed to mind, almost thinking aloud, and when his remark struck something that
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  sounded like it would be good to do soon, he saw Pierce jotting them
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  down later, detailing the preliminary steps for Bryce's use. And two, all
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  the small tasks were being taken from him with easy naturalness, saving him much
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  time. His assistant was being what he had claimed he would be, a
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  genuinely useful left hand. Bryce found himself proud of the kid's manifest efficiency,
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  for he was a product of the same school that Bryce himself had climbed from.
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  On the way back to the hotel after work, he caught Pierce glancing
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  at him with a thoughtful expression and realized he had been faltering and giving a
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  second glance to every public mirror that he had passed. He was momentarily embarrassed,
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  wondering if any strain had showed on his expression. There was a party
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  he had to go to that night, so he changed to formal clothes and
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  stepped off again for the home of the FN Administrative Governor of the Moon.
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  He did not want to attend. It would be another of those stiff,
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  lonesome dinners he had suffered through before, but he had to learn to make
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  friends on his own social level and be easy and convivial with the kind of
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  people he would be associating with the rest of his life. After the first
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  hour had given him a good test, Bryce decided that the evening was as
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  bad as he had anticipated. He stood on the outskirts of a small group,
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  holding a drink and watching resentfully as a startlingly beautiful woman laughed and talked
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  with the others of the group and not with him. She had been introduced
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  to him as Sheila Wesley. The joke she had with the others were quick
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  and subtle flashes of wit and insight, and seemed to be based on a
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  mutual understanding that he could not share, even though some of the others had
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  just been introduced and had been strangers to each other a few minutes back.
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  It was something he grasped vaguely as a common background and approach to life that
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  they shared, perhaps through education. There were quick references to political situations they
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  all seemed familiar with, or a name that could have been some character in
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  a book they might all have read, or could have been somebody in history,
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  each reference followed by a subdued laugh and an added witty statement from some
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  other quarter. No one of them gave a word to him or noticed that
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  he was there. Why should they. He was dressed well and expensively,
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  but so were they all. He was a person of prominence and power,
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  but so were they all, and bored by it. He could not talk
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  like the others. Then what could he do to make Sheila Wesley smile at
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  him the way she smiled down at the ridiculous little fat man beside her as
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  he excitedly stuttered out his opinions. Sheila Wesley was not like Mona to be
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  captured by money and clothes and influence. Would she be impressed even by the
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  power he would have Later He tried to picture her as tremulous and odd,
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  hanging on his words and flattering him, but he couldn't believe it. She
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  probably wouldn't notice him any more than now. There was nothing he could do
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  to impress her. He had thought Mona had poised, but now he saw
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  that her manner was just an inadequate carbon copy of a completely spontaneous original.
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  The woman Sheila, managed to be poised, aloof and yet friendly to everyone,
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  simultaneously warm and unattainable. He desired to be bitingly rude, that at
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  least would make her admit that he existed. She was smiling at that ridiculous
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  little fat man. Again, he trained his glass and completely unnoticed, left
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  the party. Nobody would miss him, he was sure. Outside in the
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  corridor, Roy Pierce, his assistant, was engaged in conversation with two young
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  men and two girls. There he is now, he heard Pierce say,
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  and one of the men came toward him, laughing. Is it true that
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  this lunatic can't go and make up with the lady of his heart because she
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  has had him bad if we all try to smuggle him in and one of
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  the girls are really gorgeous blonde called. He was just telling us about that
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  time you were in space with the pirates after you, and they had stolen
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  the big focusing mirror from the first belt foundry furnace. I'm sure you could
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  tell it better. You tell it. He was surrounded by the five.
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  Then go ahead, they were urging, laughing, go ahead. It didn't
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  really happen, did it. This accusation was made by the pretty blonde.
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  He looked at her, half indignantly. I don't know how he tells it,
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  but it happened. And he began to tell what had happened. The
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  two girls and the two young men listened, adding occasional startled interjections and admiring
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  laughter. Pierce inserted an occasional question, and Bryce became aware that in answering
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  them, he was guided to stress and amplify points that made clearer the danger
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  and comedy. Later, he became aware that he was half consciously following the
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  clues of Pierce's expression for the right stress and mood of the telling. Now
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  offhand and smiling and telling what he had done now heavily dramatic mimicking and burlesquing,
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  the tones and threats of the outlaws, now ironic and bitterly indifferent to
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  passing over damage and deaths as a Riley lifted eyebrow in the dark, young
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  face listening, and a faint, imperceptible shrug made him see what had happened
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  from a different angle than he had seen it. Then Pierce apparently had something
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  he needed. A good story sense following him must be something he had learned
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  unconsciously last night, but it worked. To see how well it worked in
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  the expressions of his audience. Someone leaving the party had stopped to listen,
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  standing behind his right shoulder. When he finished, amid the exclamations and sighs
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  of his listeners, a cool, familiar voice drawled, that's quite a story.
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  I picked up something about that at the new Foundry on Reef five,
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  but it was already an old yard. Then she stood before him, still
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  smooth and poised and lovely, offering her hand. I'm glad to hear it
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  from the horse's mouth, aren't you, Bryce Carter. We were introduced in
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  there, I think, but the name didn't click. It was Sheila Wesley
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  that evening was something to remember. First they were a private party at a
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  nightclub, then at a small restaurant, Tom Betty, who was the pretty
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  blonde ralph In, the pretty brunette whose name was Marcia, Pierce, himself,
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  and Sheila. The talk ranged wildly over a multitude of subjects, breaking
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  sometimes into collective fantasies of nonsense like a hatful of fireworks that left them laughing
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  helplessly, sometimes shifting to philosophy and mutual confidences. Every so often, Pierce
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  brought the subject around to something that struck home to Bryce, and he found
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  himself holding forth with unexpected passion and eloquence, and he was surprised to see
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  that the others were keenly interested. Pierce rarely said more than an occasional cheerful
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  remark, but in the more subtle plays of conversation, Bryce found himself still
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  half consciously consulting the cues of his expression to find what his own reaction should
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  be, to find the right word and the right attitude that pleased the table
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  and earn urged them all onto greater and more fantastic heights of talk. It
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  was obvious that Pierce never had any difficulty understanding anyone. He had an instinct
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  that Bryce lacked, and Bryce willingly surrendered to superior skill and followed his silent
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  lead. Sheila, he discovered, besides being a member of one of the
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  top diplomatic families, had worked for a short while as a consultant at the
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  Belt Plastic Manufactory when it was being set up, and had taken to space
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  life. She shared his enthusiasm about the future of the asteroid belts. It
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  was an unprecedented evening. At the close of it, he had four new
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  friends and had discovered that Tom was Tom Mahernick, one of the attorneys of
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  the Spaceways Commission and one of the men whom he had gone to the dinner
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  to meet. And Sheila, tall and slender and beautiful, pressed his hand
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  as the group parted and said, in her wonderful voice, I want to
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  see you again. Bryce, She smiled, I eat at the technician's end
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  of town. You know I'll be with a group at Geiger's Counter tomorrow lunch.
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  If you bear the company of slide rule artists, we'd be glad to
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  see you anytime. He stood for a moment, oddly surprised, say thank
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  you to the lady Pierre smiled and to Sheila, you shouldn't startle people like
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  that, ma'am. His heart's weak. I just dropped dead, Bryce said,
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  finding words, You aren't leading me on. You'll be there on my
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  honor. She smiled, good night, Bryce. She was used to such
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  tributes. Half mocking as they were, she knew how much they were basically
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  sincere, and accepted their trip to her beauty as a matter of course.
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  What a wife to have, and introduced as his wife to other men,
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  and see the look in their eyes. He remembered suddenly that he had not
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  once mentioned that he was a director of UT. Somehow the conversation had never
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  been led to a subject where he could have said it. He made a
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  mental note to tell her next time. It seemed strange that he had been
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  with five people so many hours without informing them that he was a director of
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  UT. He had done the same thing last night, now, he remembered,
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  but they had seemed to like him without it. He led himself into
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  his hotel room and turned on the light, but the first sidewise glimpse of
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  himself in the mirror was disturbing. He solved that problem by the remarkably simple
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  expedient of turning the light out again and undressed in the dark, grinning foolishly.
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  End of chapter five read by Paul Hampton,