Jack L. Chalker - Priam's Lens

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A Del Rey® Book

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-90074 [SBN 0-345-40294-4

Printed in Canada

First Edition: May 1999

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

For Eva, Dave, and Steve, as always

Visit the Jack L. Chalker Web pages for up-to-date news, bibliography, appearances, etc., at

www jackchalker.corn

ONE

A Snake in Eden

The trouble with playing God is that the devil keeps popping up and spoiling the fun.

Humanity had grown and matured and finally spread outward to the stars as the dreamers had all

hoped. Ancient Earth itself, birthplace of the race, was more a memory than a destination, and the

starfields of an entire galactic arm had become the playthings of the new spacefaring race.

It had been a glorious time and, for humanity, a wondrous one, in which nationalism and tribalism

had been almost vanquished; there was just "us," and occasionally "them," and when "us" met

"them," well, "us" tended to win.

They called it the age of homo in excelsis, the Ascent of Man, master of all he surveyed, the

future ever brighter ...

And then one day, the Titans showed up, kicked everybody in the ass, and that was that.

Even now, most people didn't know what those Titans, which was what others called them after a

while, really looked like. They'd come from somewhere in the direc-tion of the Zuni Nebula, but

almost certainly from far beyond that. They'd come in ships of pure energy that traveled in ways

none could comprehend—ships that shone from some inner light and occasionally throbbed or

rippled along their energy skins but otherwise did nothing. Ships that looked like nothing less than

enormous winged moths of heaven, and they did the most awful thing, the one thing that humanity

could neither comprehend nor allow.

They totally ignored everybody.

They didn't answer any hails, they paid no attention to ships sent to contact them; they simply

paid no attention. And when probes were sent, they were simply vaporized, not by conscious action

but simply by being in contact with 'those great ships.

And when, even to get attention, the great weapons had been brought to bear on the newcomers'

huge shining vessels, the weapons had simply vaporized, too. The en-ergy weapons were either

absorbed or deflected or simply ignored.

The Titans did, however, like humanity's planets. They liked them a lot, only they didn't like them

the way they'd been remade.

Helena had been typical of the kind of planets they liked. It had a stable population of almost

three billion people when the Titans arrived, and a thriving economy; its primary job of repairing and

building great spaceships and refitting the powerful interstellar drives was vital to the continuation of

the whole region of planets. Still, nobody there had worked too hard unless they wanted to, there

was plenty of recreation, robotics did the heavy lifting, and it was, as was typical of many mature

worlds, a pretty nice place to settle down, have families, and live life.

All that life, all that energy, was connected to a vast interstellar empire that made them all proud to

be a part of it. This busy hub of activity was right in the center of things and it knew it.

And then the Titans noticed it, and descended on it, and all communication with Helena ceased.

In a matter of days, not a single intelligible signal went in or out. Some ships got off and out of there

right at the start, but they could tell no one anything about what happened after that. The other ships

never rose again, and any ships coming in or near also simply went quiet and off the tracking

boards.

It wasn't that others couldn't see what was going on there. As usual, the newcomers simply didn't

pay any at-tention as long as you didn't get too close, in which case you became part of the project.

The great shining ships simply remade the planet into some sort of personal ideal. They did it as

simply as hu-mans could remake worlds in a virtual reality chamber, only they really did it.

The actual method of matter to energy and energy to matter conversion couldn't be divined;

nobody had any instruments that could even measure it. But when it was done a world had been

remade into a pastoral ideal. All traces of cities and road systems and any artifacts of humankind

simply ceased to exist; even the air tested out as if no industrial activity had ever been there.

Of the people, it was hard to say. Scans showed hun-dreds of thousands of human beings still

down there, hav-ing survived perhaps in shelters or cracks or perhaps by design, but there was no

way to get to them, no way to find out what sort of life they might be managing in this ideal-ized

garden world. They probably would not starve; much of the vegetation was not alien or unknown

but rather re-lated to or based upon what had already been there, and the fresh water was probably

about as pure as one could imagine.

But now there were millions, widely spread out, where before there had been billions. And they

were stuck.

The three large continents of Helena now did have one new artificial thing each, though, to replace

what had van-ished. On each, fairly close to the center of each land mass, one of the great moth

ships had settled and, like the worlds they'd changed, each had metamorphosed into a shining

multicolored structure that stretched out for a thousand kilometers, no two exactly alike, all clearly

from the same sort of minds.

Minds that were not seen, but minds that had most defi-nitely moved in and stayed. Minds that

still allowed nothing out.

Wave upon wave of these new gods, these all-powerful Titans, had swarmed from the direction

of the Zuni Ne-bula; world upon world, system upon system, met the same fate: The worlds were

not uniform, but they all were quiet, pastoral, and each had every obvious trace of its former

inhabitants removed, even if the Titans left some of those inhabitants there. It was impossible to

guess what life down there was like, or whether the humans there now would still be recognized as

human, or if they, too, had been changed.

Across the once cultivated fields of the western conti-nent of Helena a figure ran through the

incredibly tall grass that now covered the land, so tall and so strong that the winds rippled it like

water; a sea, even an ocean, of grass stretched as far as any eye could see.

It was a man, naked, scarred, limping slightly but not from any recent injury, his long hair and

flowing beard giving him the visage of a wild beast. He was running through the grass that was taller

than he, although he was a big man, barely glancing back, knowing he could see no pursuers in this

vegetable ocean and hoping that, for the same reason, no pursuer could see him, either.

He headed for a rocky outcrop that rose from the high plains like an island in the sea, a jumbled

mass of boulders and weathered white and orange rock that might have been sculpted by some mad

artist. He made for it now as if his life depended on it, made for that outcrop with all the last bits of

energy and will he could command, a look of desperation bordering on madness in his face and

eyes, his mouth actually slightly foamed.

It was the look of a man who had known for some time that he was to be sacrificed, and who

now was desperate to ensure that the sacrifice would not be in vain. Nothing about him indicated

any hope beyond that, any sense that he was not in a desperate race with inevitable death.

He reached the base of the outcrop but did not immedi-ately climb up into it. Now was when he

was most vul-nerable; now was when he had to emerge from the grass, however briefly, and for a

moment expose himself to the view of anyone watching. He paused, nervously, tensely, listening,

sniffing the air, wishing he had the kind of senses those who were after him so effortlessly

possessed and used.

He heard nothing, nothing but the hissing of the gentle but persistent wind rustling the tops of the

two-meter-tall grasses, creating the waves and ripples all around.

Finally, he decided to take the chance, since staying there too long would be just as risky. If he

had not lost them, then this was the only place he could possibly have been heading. It hadn't been

clear what sort of trap that represented when he'd set out; it was one of those details that had been

omitted in his instructions. One of many such, he reflected ruefully.

Quickly, now! Up and onto the rocks, and for one brief moment he chanced a look around at the

tops of the grasses to see if there were any clear signs of movement. He could see nothing, but

didn't dare take enough time to really see if there was something out there or not; with the steady

winds and rippling grasses, whatever might be there would have to be obvious to be seen.

Now he was concealed within the rocks, and could push aside a jagged pink boulder that looked

as if it had fallen there ages ago and squeeze down inside a small cavity that revealed itself. As soon

as he was in, the boulder rolled back over the opening, not quite covering or blocking it, but, he

hoped, enough to fool anyone looking for him.

Now, in the cool dark, he slowly maneuvered his body down a widening passage he had been

told to expect. It was reassuring that things here, at least, were going by the script. Deep within, the

air suddenly smelled different, the sounds ceased, and there was the deadly stillness of a tomb.

Corning to a floorlike area in the rock, he felt around, fi-nally pulled out a small device, and,

hefting it, pressed a stud on one side.

The soft glow of a flashlight illuminated the small chamber, sufficient light for him to check on his

things and ensure that nothing had been disturbed. He was astonished that it worked, that it was still

here at all. He must have been the first one in here in almost a hundred years, and here was the

flashlight, fully charged, as if it had been left here only yesterday.

There would be very little time once he began transmis-sion. The Titan grid would seize upon it in

a matter of sec-onds, take hold of it, eat it, dissipate it. Then the fun would begin. Then they would

be coming for him from all around, sensing the energy activity. It was only in those precious few

seconds that he had a chance of getting a message out. Everything they'd done up to now depended

on that; everything he'd pledged, even his own life, was based upon that theoretical window between

action and reaction that had sometimes worked, sometimes didn't. He still didn't want to do it, but if

revenge was the only thing left to him, he'd take it.

Still, he knew that if it didn't work this first time, then he would die horribly and for nothing.

If it did, he might still die horribly, but maybe, just maybe, unlike the billions who had been

snuffed out in the takeover, his death would have real value, real meaning. If, of course, the data got

out, and if, as well, the Dutchman's automated listening posts intercepted it and passed it along. It

wasn't much, but it was all he had.

It would certainly be his head in the noose no matter what. There was no way to record all this,

no way to input it into fancy data capsules or hand off to your Personal Agent like back in the old

days here, those days that now seemed more like a dream, a fairy story from the distant past made

up by people to give themselves hope when they had none. No, everything was in his head, and that

would have to be the data source.

He had been born near here, in a town that no longer ex-isted, into a civilization that no longer

existed, but he'd been one of the lucky ones to get out before the Fall. Back now after all these

years, he was astonished that this old butte survived. When he'd seen it, the only thing in the entire

region that looked familiar, he'd begun to hope once more that perhaps not all had been wiped

away. The Titans might have godlike, unimaginable powers, but they did have one characteristic that

gave some comfort that they weren't absolute, weren't perfect: like the humans they barely noticed,

they would just as soon cover something over as rebuild it. They kept a great deal of the landforms

and seas the way they were because to make too radical a series of changes could unbalance the

whole thing. Not that they couldn't create anew from scratch—they'd cer-tainly done it with several

planets considered dead and worthless by humans. But if it could be done by just fudging a little

here, a little there, and sweeping some of the dirt under the rug so it looked clean, that was good

enough for most.

Maybe this time a little laziness would cause them to stub their toe. That laziness had caused them

to unknow-ingly leave a loaded gun buried here, one they didn't know about and certainly never

dreamed could hurt them. Maybe...

He wasn't kidding himself that he had the key to human salvation, or even a good answer to the

greatest threat in all creation, but when one side had almost "Let there be light!" kind of power and

your side had spitballs and rubber bands, well, maybe something that could really hurt them would

at least make them notice, and that's what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world.

He wanted to hurt them. He wanted to hurt them bad.

If this really could hurt them. If in fact it either existed or could be built or brought up to

operational levels before it was snuffed out. If there was anybody left out there with enough freedom

and guts and stubbornness and all the rest to find it, put it together, and use it.

He thought he heard something, something like a rock falling inside the cavern. He was still and so

was the air inside, and there was no sound of interior water. Rocks didn't just fall, and he knew it.

He couldn't stall any more. He wasn't up to outrunning them, and in here he could hardly hide from

them. The hell with it. What the hell was he prolonging life in this place for, anyway?

The power was on; it had been building up for more than two years now, taken from a deep

geothermal plant embedded well down in the mantle of the planetary crust. That was why they had

never noticed it. Crusts moved, and mantles shifted on geologically active worlds, and they hadn't

even guessed that the controlling force was right under their theoretical noses.

He slid down into a rocky seat that had once been much more elaborate, and much more

comfortable, when this place was active, the remnant of a planetary defense unit left over from the

days when godlike beings from the re-motest regions of the galaxy hadn't been needed to make

humans die. No, human beings did a lot of killing themselves, and civil wars had always been the

worst.

No civil wars now. No, indeed. And all those billions and billions who'd died in those wars—what

would they think now? Would they think their cause still just and true and worth the horrors of war if

they saw what the result would be for their descendants?

There was another sound of something dropping and hitting against the sides of the cavern. He

tensed, then found himself curiously calm, curiously detached all of a sudden. He reached down,

fished out the spindly headset he'd cobbled together from bits and pieces scrounged out of a

hundred buried ruins and put it on. Instantly he could feel the connection, feel the raw power that

was there at his command. One shot.

Had both the moons been up? Of course they had. He'd worked out the lunar tables a million

times. So long as they were fully in the sky this shot would find the spots on it. Find, record, relay,

broadcast.

Priam's Lens. The great secret that never got finished because it ran out of time. But the math was

right, the theory was correct. Full on. They could have it, and all his innermost secrets and feelings

as well. He couldn't stop it. There wasn't exactly time, nor were there optimal condi-tions for a nice,

neat package. Somebody would have to sift the wheat from the chaff.

He froze for a moment, almost feeling them around him. It was now or never. He shut his eyes,

leaned back, and gave the mental command to fire.

There was an enormous roar, as if a great and terrible wind was contained inside the cavern, and it

rushed out and past and out and was away at the speed of light. He felt as if he were falling into a

great abyss, and his mind burned, and he couldn't help it. The animal part of him, the only part that

could function, screamed in pain and terror, screamed so loud that it echoed horribly back and forth

along the walls of the cave in an inhuman and terri-fying wail.

Whoever else was moving in on him wasn't prepared for that: four lithe forms, briefly illuminated

in the blast of energy, moved swiftly back out, their survival reflex overcoming any immediate plans.

Besides, where was this poor creature going to go? If, of course, something that screamed like that

could possibly survive.

Once outside, they looked around in the bright, clear sunlight, trying to figure out what had

happened as best their minds could. Nothing seemed to have happened; it all looked the same.

The noise, the inside light, the screeching had all stopped, too. They froze, acting as one,

listening, then clicked their needlelike nails and nodded in agreement, and three of them slid back in

while the fourth guarded the entrance.

Infrared, which hadn't worked before, now did. Whatever had raised the temperature here and

blinded that part of their abilities was gone, spent in that single blast and roar. Now, halfway down,

they saw the quarry. It was still lying there, but it seemed to be coming around, groping for some

kind of support. Whoever or whatever it was, it was now apparently blind. They didn't mind that,

but that didn't mean they couldn't and wouldn't play with it before the kill.

Utilizing a type of telepathic connection and using their nails to time actions with a series of clicks,

they made their way around and down toward the prey, who could now be heard breathing hard,

sounding panicked and confused. Whatever he had done, it had hurt him.

A Wild One for sure. They didn't quite think in words like that, more in a series of holographic

concepts and pic-tures and actions. They had been specifically bred to hunt and kill Wild Ones,

particularly the sick and injured. They liked it. It was their identity, their function.

Below, enough of his senses had returned that he knew they were there, knew that they were there

to kill him. He couldn't remember very much, not even who or what or where he was nor how he'd

come to this, but he knew that those who hunted and killed had him trapped.

He pulled himself out and tried to stand, but he was hor-ribly dizzy. As he put out a hand to

steady himself on the rock wall, he heard the clicking. Behind him. In front of him. Above him.

Animal survival took over. If two predators were on ei-ther side and one was up where the exit

clearly was, you went for the one. He couldn't see any of them, not in this darkness, but he got the

impression that they could see him. He heard a tinkling bit of cruel laughter as he tried to lash out in

the direction of a close-by set of clicks. They would do their clicking at his level, but he quickly

realized that they were having their sport with him, that at no time were they where the clicks led his

ears to believe they were.

There was a click, and something cold, hard, and metal-lic drawn softly and quickly across his

back. He whirled and lunged for where he thought the attacker had gone, but all he managed to do

was run into the opposite wall of the cave and draw more derisive laughter, made all the worse by its

echoing within the cave. They would never let him climb out, but it was narrow and he could feel the

airflow toward the exit. If he moved quickly, he might catch the one above off guard or cause the

bottom two to be momen-tarily off balance. It was better than staying here, anyway.

With all the remaining energy in his aching body he moved as fast as he could up and along the

steps and rock gradations toward that airflow. He actually made it most of the way, could almost

see the entrance notch, when two small forms on either side of the path rushed out, one in front and

one in back, and this time the nails drawn across his chest and back bit deeply and painfully into his

flesh while spinning him around. He almost lost his balance and fell, but shock from his previous

ordeal and adrenaline now kept him going, ignoring the pain, rushing for that notch and the open

sky.

One of them dropped from the upper area right in front of him, and he pushed on right to it, now

visible as a small shadowy shape, pushing at it with all his might. Twenty centimeters times four

fingers worth of thick, sharp needle nails penetrated his abdomen, and more went through his

crotch, penetrating and ripping at his scrotum. The pain was nearly unbearable, but the attacker was

small and light enough that his sheer size and bulk carried him on, screaming in pain, walking right

over the one who'd so wounded him and up, out, into the sunlight, into the warmth!

Bleeding, in agony, he nonetheless managed to get him-self out of the crevice and onto the side of

the rocky outcrop itself. He was wounded, perhaps mortally, but if he could just get down there, just

get into the tall grass and lie down, at least they might not get his body!

A small naked form suddenly popped up right in front of him, a form so amazing to his sight that

he stopped dead, staring, as she clicked those needles that she had for fingernails. There was a

sound on either side of him, and he turned to see absolutely identical copies of this one in front of

him crouched on either side, and he heard a fourth behind.

"My god!" the last part of his sanity and humanity cried out. "You—Oh! My God! Not you!"

And with that the pack, who understood not a word, tore him to shreds and fought over the

tastier internal organs.

TWO

A Diva among the Cockroaches

The joint's name was, appropriately, La Cucaracha, although much of the lettering was faded or

worn away and the electronic enhancements more resembled an electri-cian's nightmare than

anything coherent.

Most places this far down in the skids were shadows of places once great and legendary and

respectable; this one had only the legends, and most of them were bad.

In a sense, the place was a reflection of what had once been the proud Confederacy, a federation

of more than three hundred colonial worlds encompassing a multitude of races but dominated by

those of Terra, also called Earth. It had been a marriage forged in blood and maintained by raw

power, but it had held, and in its time it had been the lord of an entire galactic spiral arm.

Now The Confederacy was mostly a joke; worlds lay in ruins from rioting, panic, and raw fear,

particularly among those too poor to book passage out in the way of the new invaders. The naval

force that once could vaporize a planet or explode a star was reduced to an evacuation and

surveillance service. What good was a military that could only blow up its own kind, that could

neither inflict harm nor avoid being swatted like biting flies if they irritated?

There was still a government, of course, and a loose federation of worlds, but what good was it

when you were retreating outward on a spiral arm? What happened when they ran out of worlds to

evacuate to, as they pretty well already had? And who was going to put in the enormous resources

and skill to create new habitable worlds when it was certain that eventually they, too, would be

overrun?

Here lies The Confederacy; it wasn't as great as we thought it was, but it was all we had...

The joint was in a once great city, now fallen into dis-repair and overrun by its lowest common

denominators, those who couldn't leave and those who had already given up and lived for the

moment. Only here, near the old spaceport, did any semblance of the old days exist, even if in

memories.

The spaceport, now called Hacalu Naval District, was under severe martial law. The joint and the

few other rem-nants of bygone days were inside the district, although that didn't make it more

desirable. Just because it was frequented by dispirited military people and the always anarchic

spacers didn't make it any more "normal," only physically secure.

Inside it was always crowded with the flotsam and jetsam of The Confederacy. Most were

Terrans, but there were often representatives of the dozen or more non-human races that had once,

willingly or unwillingly, been members of the old order. If they could exist in a Terran- friendly

environment and consume the usual stuff, well, they weren't turned away.

The Terrans didn't discriminate, either. Not the spacers and the old-line Navy folks, anyway.

Space took its toll on the professionals, always had. The twists and turns of time standing nearly still

during journeys left them with no family or friends that didn't also move the same way, and the

various forces, the radiation and warping and twisting of space-time, changed them all into different,

often unique life-forms of their own.

They were a tough, violent, mutant breed, and they were the only ones left holding any part of

civilization to-gether in what seemed to be the last days of independence and freedom any would

ever know.

The place was filled with noise, and body odors less than pleasant, and the remnants of puke and

vile concoc-tions. It was staffed by real people only because the machines could no longer be

trusted; still, here you could buy most anything, any pleasure, any vice, anything at all.

Nobody seemed to notice her when she walked through the entrance and into the hall. Anybody

who could stand the smell had already passed the first test. Still, in a place like this, every newcomer

was viewed with some curiosity and even some suspicion, particularly when they knew that no ships

had come in recently that they didn't know and when the figure was unlike anyone familiar.

She was a small, slightly hunched over individual, wearing a black robe, perhaps a black dress,

with a bit of tassel and lace about it. It stretched to the floor, giving little indication of what lay

beneath, and it rendered the body somewhat shapeless, although it clearly was, or had started out as,

Terran. She also wore a hat, one with a fancy shape and brim, from which fell a thin gauzelike film

that made it impossible to see her face or tell any more about the features there. Clearly, though, she

could see out of it. She moved slowly, with the aid of an ornate carved cane of what might have

actually been real wood, in the kind of short shuffling steps that only the very an-cient were forced

into.

One huge, silver-haired man with a bushy gray beard and pointed, blackened teeth leaned over to

the bartender and gestured slightly at the newcomer. "Is it me or what I've been havin', or is that one

there the oldest creature in the known galaxy?"

The bartender, a rough-looking man with nasty growths on his face and arms, shook his head.

"Beats me. There's some money in those clothes and that walking stick, but anybody with money

wouldn't walk like that."

"Not unless it was an act," the customer agreed, suspi-cious. He slid off the stool and casually

approached the figure, who was still heading for the bar and might make it in another five minutes at

the speed she was going.

She was either shriveled beyond belief or she was incredibly short; the silver-haired man literally

towered over her.

"Are you sure you're in the right place, ma'am?" he asked, trying to be polite. He reflected,

though, how even the small suggestion of money might mean she wouldn't get ten steps when she

left the place.

"Cockroaches of a hundred varieties on the floor, roaches on the sign—I think there can not be

two of these places," she responded in a high, tough, ancient voice suited to what had to lie beneath

the clothes. "I need to find someone. He's a frequenter of this place, and we had an appointment to

meet here today this very hour." She started creeping on toward the bar, and he followed.

"Yeah? Who? Maybe I know him."

"You probably do, but that doesn't mean much. He is called, I believe, simply the Dutchman. Is

he about?"

"The Dutchman! I—yeah, I know him. Sort of. But he's not here, and the Hollander's not in

port. I'm afraid somebody just tricked you into coming into a real dangerous place, ma'am."

"I have been in worse. I know that is hard for you to be-lieve, but you are not a woman and you

weren't out here in the old days. Do you even remember the old days, sonny?"

"Yes, ma'am. Most of us do. Remember, a lot of us were born centuries ago. We age slow, and

with the docs in these ports, we can keep ourselves in fairly good condition even when age does get

to us. I've lived seventy years, but I was born over three hundred years ago, on Cagista."

She cackled, amused, as she finally made it to the bar itself and accepted her self-appointed

reception com-mittee's aid in easing into one of the overworn full stools with back and one arm still

intact. She let out a sigh of con-tentment when she settled in, as if great pain had suddenly been

lifted from her.

"Sonny, you want to compare old age with me? I was born nine hundred and seventy-one years

ago next month."

His jaw dropped, and he wasn't at all sure he believed her. "Ma'am? That's before space flight!

That's back in ancient history! Why, that would mean you'd have been born on Earth!"

"Well, they'd gone to the Moon, but not much more," she acknowledged. "Me, I was born in a

small town in the west of England called Glastonbury. Nobody's heard of it these days; like

England, like Earth itself, it's passed into dim legend. It was a legend then. Joseph of Arimathea

brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury. King Arthur built Camelot there and found the Grail and

used it to fight evil." She paused. "None of this means anything to you, though, does it?"

"I'm afraid not, ma'am. Earth was destroyed before my time. I never even knew anybody who'd

even been there before you, let alone somebody actually born there. I told Atair, the bartender,

there, that I thought you looked the oldest person I ever did see. Maybe I'm right?"

Sharing birth years was an old sport among spacers, although not between them and the

groundhogs. Space travel did all sorts of things to you when you did it all the time, some positive,

some negative, but in addition to the biological effects there was always the problem of time. Like

anything else, time, too, was warped and distorted by going to and fro over impossible distances

using artifi-cially created wormholes and natural phenomena to attain speeds and distances otherwise

impossible. When nothing else could give, time gave as well. Spacers were literally a breed apart, not

just because of the physical toll but because they were forced to sever all links to family, home, and

clan. Time was linear only to them, relative to all others. How many years had she physically lived to

pass through that nine hundred plus? How many had he to reach even his temporal distance from his

birth?

She seemed amused by his impudence at suggesting her age. "Perhaps. Too old, certainly. Old

enough to hear par-ents speak of world war and be schooled in the greatness of the British Empire

even if they had dissolved it before I got there. Old enough to see Communism fall and a hun-dred

isms after that. Old enough to see Earth finally bring on its own doom, and old enough to not have

been there at the time. And old enough, now, not only to have seen The Confederacy at its start and

height, but at its death. Let me tell you, young man, if you live long enough to reflect back on those

kinds of events in a stinkhole like this, you've lived far too long and it's pretty damned depressing!"

"Well, I can see that," he admitted. "Even in my lifetime. But whoever lured you here wasn't your

friend, I can tell you. You'd get mugged before you got to the street level now that you've shown up

here. I'll have them call for a Navy police escort."

"That's all right. I know where I am and what I am doing," she assured him. "You are Navy, I take

it?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm a chief warrant officer on the Hucaniarea—that's a frigate in drydock above.

Been here a month and a half getting repairs and refitting. Probably be stuck here another month or

more. Name's Gene Harker. Just `sir' or `Mister Harker' to most folks. Not much for a spacer to do

when he's drydocked, I'm afraid. The kind of stuff that can be had in here makes the time pass a

little quicker. Wouldn't take most of it in here, though. You give any of these hard-asses a hair and

they steal the whole beard."

"I would think that they are all spacers or employees of the Navy and these support

establishments," she resounded. "I shouldn't think that any would stoop to the level of mugger.

Smuggler, certainly, or even hired killer, but not a mere mugger of a little old lady. What the devil

could I have that any of them would find useful?”

"Some of 'em were just born bad, and some are on all sorts of drugs and hackplays and just don't

have the same sense of real life that they would if they weren't so fucked—sorry, ma'am—fouled

up."

She gave the soft cackling laugh once again. "Sir, don't spare any language on my part! I've

forgotten more foul language in countless tongues than you can possibly know! But every character

here who is truly `fucked up' makes himself as vulnerable as anybody is to them. No, I suspect that

few allow themselves to get that off reality, even in this place. Enough to take away the stink,

perhaps, but you come here for those things and you buy and take them away with you. If you stay,

you stay for business or for the company."

"Guy was killed here not four hours ago," the bartender commented, having edged over closer to

them. "Two old captains got into some kind of fight over something that happened twenty, thirty

years ago. They got to screaming, and before we could stop them they shot each other. One was

vaporized, the other lost a leg and a hand. Don't think they aren't dangerous, ma'am."

"I didn't say they weren't dangerous," she responded softly. "I simply meant that I am no babe in

the woods, and that they are not the only ones in here who might be dangerous."

It was said so simply, so softly, so matter-of-factly in that little old lady voice of hers that both

men felt an odd chill when they heard it. You just never know about anybody, not really. While it

was hard to take anybody who appeared and sounded like she did as any kind of a threat, who knew

what she might have under those baggy clothes?

"You say the Dutchman's ship is not in port?" she asked, changing the subject. "The message we

received was that he would have gotten in this morning."

"Pardon, but if you're talking Die Fliegende Hollander, van Staaten's ship, then you're talking

more legend than reality," the bartender told her. "Like its namesake, nobody has ever reported the

ship making port. It's a ghost ship from a long-overrun world. I've heard every kind of talk and

legend about him from those who come in here, but nobody's ever really seen it, let alone connected

with it. It's not real."

The officer looked thoughtful for a moment, then sighed. "Oh, he's real enough, I'm afraid, but he

still wouldn't be coming in here."

Both the bartender and the old woman stared at him. "You know of him, then?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. He's number one on the most wanted list, if you want to know. He never makes port.

He attacks likely prey, small freighters and the like, stealing what fuel and spares he needs,

sometimes taking the whole ship and can-nibalizing it. He's got all he needs on that ship. You spot

him, he either makes tracks at maximum speed or he attacks and destroys, depending on who and

what you are. That's why they say that spotting the Hollander is signing your death warrant. He's

totally insane, but he's damned good at what he does. But he doesn't talk, not to anybody, except to

occasionally give an automated warning to prey to abandon ship now or be destroyed. If he has it

cold, he'll sometimes do that much. We've chased him from one end of the Arm to the other at one

time or another. We think he actually lurks inside the Occupied Zone, somehow keeping just beyond

the interest of the Zuni Demons, as we call 'em in the Navy."

"Fascinating," she responded. "So if he were to show up here, somehow, you would be forced to

arrest him or something?"

Harker smiled. "Something like that. I'm not a cop, but I've come close enough to him once on

the ship to take it kind of personally that he's still at large. You know how much brass he's got? His

identification signature shows up on screens and instruments as an ancient sailing ship with all sails

Jack L. Chalker - Priam's Lens

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