Barrington J. Bayley - The Star Virus

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2024-12-24 0 0 323.31KB 132 页 5.9玖币
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The Star Virus by
Barrington J. Bayley
I
Suddenly Rodrone understood why the scene before his eyes held such
fascination for him, and why he returned again and again to worlds like
this one. Lurid, offbeat and infernal, it offered the exaggerated symbolism
of a painting rendered by a schizophrenic; and so drew him to that
attractive realm of mental aberration where thoughts and actions could all
be bizarre without feelings of shame…
The landscape had the combination of sharpness and gloom that
typified an airless planet, and the grotesquely large ruby-colored sun gave
it a gory glow in every shade from dark wine to cherry red. Except, that is,
for the river of molten ore that slithered down die side of a nearby
mountain like a writhing white-hot snake, lighting up the gloom for miles
around.
The mining technique was crude but effective. A beat-en-up space
freighter, centuries old, hovered on its tail low over the mountain, using
its main engines to direct a blast of nuclear heat that smelted the metal
directly out of the lode.
Men in white spacesuits moved slowly along the banks of the metal
river, gesticulating to one another. From his vantage point on the
observation ledge of his spaceship, the Stond, they seemed like malicious
little imps, eager to hurl one another into the deadly current to be swept
along to where it cooled to a glowering red in the collecting bowl that had
been blown out of the ground earlier.
A mile away stood the third ship of his expedition, the Revealer.
Rodrone lifted a space helmet he carried and placed it over his head; not
because he needed its protection—the ledge where he stood was covered
with a shimmering transparent film that clung to the hull of the ship like a
soap bubble—but because of the communications set it contained. Faintly
through the tuned-down speaker, he could hear the men on the ground
laughing and daring one another to edge closer to the white-hot stream
and take a chance on its suddenly changing course.
He pressed a stud, putting him through to Kulthol down by the
collecting bowl. By turning his head slightly, he could see the tiny screen
inside the helmet; at the same time Kulthol's sandy-haired, stubbled face
sprang on to the plate.
"Anything?" Rodrone asked.
"Not an atom. We're wasting our time."
The molten stream was iron; but it was not iron they were looking for.
Occasionally there occurred in ores of this type, on planets of this type
circling suns of this type, silicon diamonds: denser and harder than
ordinary diamonds and therefore useful industrially. With difficulty, they
could be synthesized, but there was a steady market for the natural variety
and Rodrone, against the judgment of his fellows, had decided to make a
try. Kulthol was vainly sifting the molten metal through a detector grid for
signs of the gems, and this was the third location in the past few hours.
"The iron's good," Kulthol remarked. "Maybe we could do business in
that."
"Forget it." Iron was the commonest metal in the universe, and though
there were rare times when its price in the metal exchanges made it just
worthwhile to make deliveries, this was not one of them. "Pack up the
gear," he ordered. "We've done enough."
- The huge ungainly freighter, shaped like two squat towers locked
together, swung away from the mountain and settled its creaking bulk on
the plain. Rodrone turned his back on the scene, which a moment ago had
almost sent him into a psychedelic trance, and entered the hull of the
Stond. The ledge withdrew after him, and as the port closed, the
air-containing bubble—which was in fact composed of liquid and
maintained by pressure—collapsed and vanished.
He laid the space helmet down in an alcove and was confronted for a
moment by a full-length mirror. Like many men whose uncertain
temperament hid a secret vanity, he could not resist a second or two of
self-contemplation. The image facing him was of a tall, spare man with
dark skin and thick brown hair. A fringe beard framed a mournful
countenance and made his sensitive, almost negroid lips and liquid brown
eyes even more brooding, volatile, dangerous. It was the face of a
vacillating dreamer, a wastrel and an adventurer. Even in space he wore a
short black cloak and thigh-length boots to match the rich brown cloth of
his other garments, and a small golden handgun was clamped to the front
of his left thigh.
"No dice, eh?"
His revery was interrupted by a young baritone voice, and he turned to
the figure who had entered the corridor from the other end.
"No dice," he answered. The other laughed slyly.
Clave Theory was about twenty-five years old and in appearance
seemed to be made of chalk. His flaxen, almost colorless hair was combed
back to spread carelessly over his shoulders. His bony frame was clad in
loose-fitting, puce-colored clothing, and his broad face was so pale as to
seem consumptive, a deathly impression exacerbated by its expression:
the eyes had a staring, glassy quality and the lips were habitually drawn
back in a half-grin of sinister amusement.
But the deathly quality was belied by Clave's easy, quick movements
and his obvious health and liveliness. He would take an interest in
anything and dare anything, the more outlandish the better. Rodrone
liked him immensely, partly because despite Clave's own picture of himself
as an unwavering cynic he was in fact utterly ingenuous.
"We'll probably have trouble from the bondsmen," Rodrone said,
following Clave into the roomy compartment at the end of the corridor.
"Well, I guess you can handle it."
The trouble was not long coming. The chamber was one of several
distributed through the Stond, sandwiched between the control room and
engine and storage spaces. Egg-shaped and about thirty feet on the long
axis, it was well furnished but suffered from the chronic untidiness of men
living casually. Rodrone sat down and helped himself from a dish of bread
and assorted meats, half-aware of voices and the clumps of heavy boots
from below.
A door opened. A dozen men crowded through, some still wearing
spacesuits, minus helmets. Others wore, on the breasts of tunics of coarse
fabric, the insignia of the Merchant House of Karness.
They were led by a burly black-haired man with a look of sullen anger
on his face.
"Don't you know enough to leave your suits downstairs?" Rodrone said
mildly. "What kind of house-training did they give you in Karness's
barracks?"
The man flushed. "Enough of that, Rodrone. We want a reckoning!"
"We don't have a complaints department," Rodrone said.
"When we joined up with you we expected a better deal," another told
him, struggling to get out of his suit. "After three months we've got
nothing to show for it"
"Oh no? I observed that you seemed to be enjoying yourselves »down on
the ground. Like a bunch of damned kids."
"Now look here," the big man put in, his tone softening slightly, "there's
plenty of material to be picked up in this cluster. Titanium, gold and
beryllium just lying there for the taking. Then there are the organics. It all
fetches a decent price, and it onlv takes a little hard work and
application."
"Oh, so it's work you're looking for," Rodrone sighed mockingly.
"It all fetches a decent price!" the other repeated, his voice rising. "But
no, we go chasing off to planets not worth a damn. Ferr told you there
would be no gems here"—he gestured to one of their number—"and so did
your own man, Harver. So why in hell did we come here?"
"I like it here," Rodrone replied in a maddeningly bored, affected tone.
"Pleasant spot for a vacation."
They glanced at one another with looks of disgust, then seemed to
stiffen as Kulthol entered with one or two of Rodrone's regular men.
Kulthol cast a ferrety glance around the room, then walked across it to
place himself strategically near one wall, from where he looked on with
evident interest.
Rodrone sighed again, this time to himself. He could see what was
coming. The malcontents had originally been bondsmen to the merchant
house of Karness and had reneged to join Rodrone's outfit at his last call
on a Karness-domi-nated planet. Habitually careless as to whom he took
on, he had accepted them without question.
In a way, their dissatisfaction was saddening. Reared as serfs in the
service of their masters, their notions of how freebooter gangs like
Rodrone's operated were apt to be naive. They had expected to work to a
steady schedule, mining metals and other minerals on unpopulated
planets and selling them in the metal exchanges, feeding the trade
network that extended indefinitely throughout the stars of the Hub. The
idea of illegal operations against the merchant houses had probably not
entered their minds, and they had certainly not reckoned on being under
the orders of a wastrel who was little interested in work, who had set down
on this planet by whim and merely used the search for silicon diamonds as
an excuse.
In short, they believed in the orderly universe their former masters
liked them to believe in. They did not understand the droves of
individualists and misfits at large in the colorful, chaotic Hub worlds.
Eventually, if Rodrone was right, most of them would crawl back to
Karness and take their punishment. A few might stay free.
The spokesman was steeling himself for the final confrontation. "We
want to pull out," he said. "We're setting up on our own."
"Go ahead."
"We need a ship."
Rodrone paused, appeared to be considering. "Sure," he said with a
shrug. "You can take the old freighter."
"Are you joking? We'd rot in that thing!" That was unfortunately true.
Its ancient engines had broken down three times in the last month
already, and Rodrone intended to scrap the old crate anyway.
"Three months spent with me hardly entitles you to make off with the
Revealer," he pointed out.
"We know that." The black-haired man wiped his brow. "Name your
price. We'll lodge a promissory note with any bank you like and pay off
within a stated period."
"You forget you are renegade bondsmen and the banks might not
accept your signature. Besides, I don't wish to part with the Revealer. I
am sorry you are so disappointed with your new life, gentlemen, and if you
like I will set you free at our next port of call—even on a Karness planet, if
that's what you want."
The man spat. "We're not going back to Karness! We mean to take that
ship!"
"A pity you couldn't have come to the point sooner. Well, you know,
there's only one way to get it."
As he spoke, Rodrone rose to his feet, calmly lifting both hands palms
outward to a level with his stomach, as if in a placating gesture.
The bondsmen had probably counted on the fact that if it came to a
fight they outnumbered all the loyal followers Rodrone had in the
expedition. This was a situation into which most experienced freebooter
captains would never have backed themselves, but which did not distress
Rodrone unduly.
Automatically the men measured the distance between Rodrone's hand
and the gun on his thigh, at the same time keeping a nervous eye on
Kulthol and the others ranging about them. All except Clave, that was. He
was eating his meal, outwardly oblivious to the conversation.
As it happened, several already had weapons in their hands, in pockets
or behind backs. But as they brought them into view the little golden gun
on Rodrone's thigh suddenly vanished and reappeared in his left hand
with a slapping sound. All motions froze.
They stared, incredulous. Rodrone worked his magic trick again,
reversing and re-reversing the magnetic control field between the plate on
his thigh and the one attached to his wrist. The gun reappeared on his
thigh, then flew back to his hand again, quicker than they could move or
even see.
"My eye is as quick as my draw, gentlemen," Rodrone warned them in a
low voice.
"They can't take us all," growled the black-haired man. "Get them!" He
fired, dropping to one knee.
He never rose again. The shot from his bullet-firing weapon zipped past
Rodrone, but the thin beam from the freebooter's tiny gun bored a hole
through his skull.
At almost the same instant there was a deafening crash. A flashing
shaft of pure energy burned a smoking hole in the wall behind the
bondsmen.
Clave was standing, holding a two-handed beam tube before him. "The
next burst takes you all," he said affably.
Kulthol, lounging against a table, laughed.
The bondsmen could scarcely believe their eyes. The beam tube was
hardly a weapon for use indoors. They looked at the gaping, still-hot hole,
then at the body of their leader sprawled on the floor. Silently, sullenly,
they threw down their weapons.
"That's better," Rodrone said, returning his gun to its place. "You have
behaved very foolishly. Allow me to inform you that the penalty for
mutiny, out here beyond the reach of law, is generally far more severe than
anything you would suffer at the hands of Karness."
"What are you going to do with us?" asked one, glowering and afraid.
"Nothing. Punishment bores me." Rodrone flung himself on a couch,
propping a booted foot on a low table. "You may decide for yourselves how
you wish to spend the future. If you wish to remain with me, then you will
have to accustom yourselves to my ways. Otherwise…" He shrugged.
"There are other outfits more assiduous than we are in their search for an
honest living. As most of you are trained technicians, in time you may no
doubt find a place with them. However, I may as well tell you that I am not
completely without plans for some acceptable pickings in the near future,
and you can decide shortly whether my methods are really as distasteful to
you as you currently imagine. Finally, let me say that it is a matter of
complete indifference to me what you do. I don't care if you end up as
slaves of the Vine."
They all shuddered slightly at the reference to the notorious Dravian
Vine, a vegetable growth that secreted a pearly mist instantly addictive to
a number of species, of whom man was one, after which they became
suppliant servants possessing an eager rapport with the Vine's wishes.
Although lacking sentience in the true sense, the Vine had by one means
or another succeeded in establishing itself on a number of worlds close to
its planet of origin, and the number of men who spent their lives in its
grip certainly ran into the tens of thousands.
"And by the way," ended Rodrone, pointing with distaste to the floor,
"please remove your friend. I'd also like you to repair the wall tomorrow.
We like to keep things in good order."
Saying nothing, the bondsmen picked up their dead spokesman and left
the room. It had been very silly of them, Rodrone reflected, to heed the
dead man's counsel.
Kulthol all but spat. "Stupid groundhogs!" he said in contempt.
"Don't blame them too much," Rodrone answered absently. He had, he
realized, been unkind. It would have been possible to handle the situation
more compromisingly. The reason for his behavior was no doubt the
contempt he shared with Kulthol for the huge Merchant Houses and the
limited lives they imposed on all their serfs from birth to death. A man
had to be a rough-hewn individualist to be happy in the loosely-gathered
band around Rodrone. Because it was easy to enter did not mean it was
easy to live with, and the bondsmen were bewildered. Oddly enough, it
was their lifelong habit of obedience that made them rebellious now.
Shortly afterwards, a few others began to drift in, including some from
the Revealer. They brought in the girls— another addition netted by a
recent landing—and the atmosphere began to warm up. Wine was
produced from somewhere. Pulsing music filled the air, and suddenly one
end of the chamber dissolved into a three-dimensional picture screen
showing wild, half-naked dancers that made the blood race.
The bondsmen did not put in an appearance. Rodrone watched for a
short while, then smiled wryly, got up and left. He was in no mood for the
orgy which the gathering would shortly become.
He withdrew to his private cabin and relaxed in its quiet, soothing
atmosphere. Around him were his maps, his books on every conceivable
subject—mostly science. A few scientific instruments were littered about,
more for decoration than for any purpose they could serve here, and the
smell of oiled steel mingled incongruously with the scent from a bunch of
exotic pink orchids.
Rodrone was a man caught in an unstable tug of war between the poles
of action and thought. Here he could sink into the latter state, brooding
and dreaming, seeking to satisfy the cravings of his imagination by erratic
dab-blings in history and the sciences.
Idly he picked up one of his favorite tomes, a history of prehistoric
Earth. It told of the drama of human nations in the confused period before
interstellar flight, of Egypt, America, Pan-Asia. Turning the pages, he
came to the lavish illustrations of Egyptian religion and gazed for the
hundredth time at a picture that would never cease to hold him
spellbound: the Barque of Millions of Years, carrying Ra and its crew of
the lesser gods on a steady course through the universe.
Rodrone often wondered if the writer of the book, who seemed to have
gained his information from haphazard sources, was not wrong in one
major fact. Was it not more likely that the civilization of Egypt could have
come after that of America, that is after the advent of spaceflight? The
preoccupation with solar energy, the bright colors and stiff, stylized
depictions of gods and cosmic processes did not belong on a world
softened by a rich atmosphere and abundant biological life. They belonged
here in alien space, light-years away from human populations, on an
airless world whose sharp outlines stood out in a wash of lurid color. This,
he felt, was the kind of universe the Egyptian myths understood; it seemed
incredible to him that Egypt should have known nothing of other worlds
while the Pan-Asian Commune, with its earthbound and totalistic
philosophy, should have been the civilization to carry man's activity into
the galaxy before dissolving in its last determined effort to maintain
mankind as a single political entity and prevent the explosion of its
authority into a never-ending frontier.
There would never be such a thing as unity again… because of the Hub:
the dazzling, star-packed swirl visible in every planet's sky, offering such a
plethora of worlds that the very concept of "world" had disappeared from
men's lives. Boundaries had not existed in the five hundred years since
men came to the Hub and realized that the age of fences,was over. There
were a billion places to go, and under such conditions regular authority
became impossible. There were no nations. There were no governments
except those partially attempted by the moguls of interstellar trade. It was
a half-civilized age of free men, and there seemed no reason why it should
not go on forever.
The outlying stellar districts of man's origin, where stars were thinly
spread and separated by tens of light-years, were forgotten as the Hub
became man's habitat. The location of Earth was not to be found on any of
Rodrone's maps.
The ensuing disorganization of human populations was increased by
the fact that technology too had exploded and was no longer associated
with an organized body o£ thought. Every man was his own engineer, his
own technician, and numerous techniques existed locally which were not
known generally. There were scores of different types of spacedrive, for
instance. Such scientific contact as did take place was mainly due to men
of Rodrone's caliber—"fuz-zy-brains," to use an ambiguous term that
meant execration in some quarters and grudging praise in others. The big
Merchant Houses, always ambitious to coagulate political power, hated
and feared such men; for while a simple adventurer caused little trouble
apart from some rowdyism, and could always be depended upon to
transport a cargo or escort it to ward off marauders, thinkers seemed to
pose a perpetual threat to their unsteady power, especially if they were the
half-hearted kind like Rodrone. To Rodrone, however, the Houses were a
parasitic growth little better than the Dravian Vine. His reading of history
had strengthened his natural distaste for political institutions of any kind.
In an earlier age he might have been a university professor or an
academician. Today he lived by the strength of his arm and the quickness
of his wits, and his knowledge in all directions was patchy and bizarre. But
tonight he had promised himself a treat. He laid aside the book, pushing
the colorful Egyptian gods from his mind, and took down an advanced text
on physics heavily larded with mathematics.
But before taking the next step, he paused. There was a little job he
wanted to do first. Moving to a servo-panel he made settings, bringing to
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