Brian Stableford - Journey to the Center

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JOURNEY TO THE CENTER by Brian Stableford.
Scanned by Aristotle
"Do you realize now the magnitude of die problem?" she inquired, solemnly.
"Sure," I said. "Having exterminated one hu-manoid species, you're now willing to take on three
hundred more, including the Tetrax. We'd only be outnumbered by—at a conservative estimate—several
millions to one. And that's people. In terms of worlds, ships and weaponry we'd be outclassed right out of
sight. Lady, if you so much' as take the safety-catch off your flame-pistol on this world, you're in danger of
creating a diplomatic incident. If you repeat what you just said to anyone, especially a Tetron, you're likely to
find yourself back aboard your ship heading for nowhere with instructions never to cast a backward glance in
this direction. Who the hell do you think you are?"
The silence that decended then seemed very heavy. I could almost swear that the troopers stopped
breathing. They seemed positively spellbound.
"My orders," she said, "are to do everything in my power to apprehend and destroy that android,
Everything."
Chapter One
If I had had more of a social conscience, events on Asgard
might have developed very differently. In fact—or so I have
been assured—the ultimate future of the human race may
have been affected (for the worse) by my lack of charity. I
find this a very sobering thought, and I'm sure there is a
moral in it for us all. This is, however, not my purpose in
telling the story—I am not in the business of writing moral
fables. ,
Perhaps things would have been different if the call had not arrived in the middle of the night. No one is at his
best when summoned from sleep at approximately 12.87 standard metric. I only have a wall phone, which can't
be reached from the bed; to answer it I have to wriggle out of the bag and stagger across the room. I usually trip
over my boots en route, and this is why I habitually answer the phone with a grunt that sounds more like a curse
than a greeting.
The voice that replied to my grunt didn't seem in the least put out. From his cultured tone I tagged him
immediately as a Tetron. Pangalactic parole, being a Tetron invention, uses a range of phonemes which makes it
difficult for anyone but a Tetron to speak it in a cultured tone. Humans of western descent always sound
barbarous, though the Chinese seem to manage much better. (I speak three Earth languages—English, French and
Japanese—but in parole I still sound like the interstellar equivalent of a country bumpkin.)
"Am I speaking to Mr. Michael Rousseau?" asked the Tetron.
"Probably," I answered.
"Are you in doubt as to your identity?" he inquired solicitously.
"This is Mike Rousseau," I assured him tiredly. "There's no doubt about it. What do you want?"
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6 Brian Stableford
"My code is 74-Scarion. I am the officer on duty at Immigration Control. There is a person wishing entry to
the city who identifies himself as one of your race. I cannot admit him unless one of his own kind is willing to
accept token responsibility for his well-being. As you know, your race has no consulate on this world, and there
seem to be no official channels through which I can operate."
"Why me?" I asked, in pained tones. "There must be two hundred humans on Asgaid. Or does your version of
alphabetical order set my name at the top on your file?"
"Your name was suggested to me by a Mr. Aleksandr So-vorov, who is a member of the Coordinated Research
Establishment. I naturally approached him first, believing that he is the one member of your race who is in a
position of notional authority. He informed me that he is unable to take responsibility for a person whom he
describes as a 'scavenger and fortune-hunter,' and suggested that you would be more likely to have a good deal in
common with such an individual."
(As you will note, I am not the only person on Asgard lacking in charity. Far from it, in fact.)
I groaned. "Look," I said, "just what do you expect me to do for this character?"
"Simply provide him with a place to stay until he finds accommodation of his own. Familiarize him with the law
and with our customs. Act as his host until he is ready to make his own way. That is all."
I was still silently cursing Sovorov, and my reaction was more or less instinctive. "I can't do it," I said firmly.
"I'm almost broke. In three or four days—seven at the most—I'm going back out in the cold. In the meantime, I
have to get new equipment. I'm not in a position to take in any stray cats."
"I do not understand," replied 74-Scarion. I had to use the English word for cats, of course; there are no such
things, I presume, on the Tetron homeworld. The Tetrax don't like us to drop vernacular terms into their carefully
molded artificial language. They see it as a kind of pollution. They're probably right.
"I can't do it," I said. "Anyhow, you can't just dump him on the first human that comes to hand. I may not
even speak his language. What language does he speak?"
In a way, that was getting my own back. There are no words in parole, of course, for the human languages.
74-Scarion, however, was unperturbed. A new voice chipped in to answer my question.
"My name is Myrlin, Mr. Rousseau," it said—in English. "I speak English, Russian and Chinese. Not that it
matters. I wouldn't want to force myself upon you, if you're unable to accommodate me. I don't want to force
myself on anyone, in fact, but the officer here won't admit me to the city unless someone agrees to sponsor me. Is
there anyone you can suggest?"
He sounded so polite that I felt guilty. Instead of asking myself whom I disliked enough to visit them with an
early-morning phone call I tried to think of someone who'd be in a reasonable position to take care of a stray cat,
and who wouldn't mind being asked to do so.
"I think I know someone who can take care of this," I said finally—in parole, for the benefit of the Tetron.
"There's a man named Saul Lyndrach. He lives in sector six. I met him briefly yesterday. He's just come back
from a trip and he seemed quite pleased with the way things had gone. That probably means that he'll be around
for a while, and that he's not short of credit I think he'll be willing to help you out."
"Thank you, Mr. Rousseau," said 74-Scarion smoothly. "I will call Mr. Lyndrach immediately. I'm sorry to have
troubled you."
It wasn't until I'd hung up that I began to get curious about Myrlin. I'd been so keen to avoid having him
dumped on me that I hadn't asked what he was doing here, or where he'd come from, or any of a dozen other
things I might routinely have asked of a fellow human being. After all, when there are fewer than three
hundred of one's species in a city of three hundred thousand people, on a world several thousand light-years from
Earth, one really should make an effort to be friendly. Poor Myrlin, I thought, would probably figure that every
human on Asgard was like Aleksandr So-vorov. I assured myself, though, that Saul Lyndrach would put him
right. I resolved to see Saul sometime within the next couple of days, to apologize to him and to Myrlin.
That seemed to me to be a reasonable train of thought— just as reasonable, in fact, as the train of thought
which had carried me through the telephone conversation. I went back
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Brian Stableford
to bed convinced that nothing of any real consequence had occurred.
How was I to know that Mr. so-called Myrlin, who could speak English, Russian and Chinese, was no more
human than Mr. 74-Scarion of Immigration Control, and that he might be just about the deadliest menace that
our fair species has ever faced?
When I got up again, the lights of Skychain City had been burning brightly for some time. It was dark outside the
dome, but according to the Tetron timetable it was daytime, and when the Tetron timetable says it's daytime,
daytime it Mas to be. Asgard's own days are about a week long, in Earthly terms—six days Tetron time—but
neither we nor the Tetrax could adjust our Circadian rhythms to that kind of regime, so we keep our own tune (or,
to be strictly accurate, tfaair time). All the other permanent bases on Asgard are on level one, below the surface,
but Skychain City has to be on top in order to provide the anchorage for the skychain which shuttles people and
goods back and forth from the docking satellite. The satellite and the skychain—and, for that matter, Skychain City
itself—are owned by the Tetrax, although the House of Representatives and the police force are multiracial. The
joke has it that members of all the humanoid species on Asgard get together to make decisions democratically;
they all talk for hours and then decide to do things the Tetron way. That's because the situation is such that if
the Tetrax decide not to cooperate, nothing can get done. Such is life.
After breakfast, I went to see my good friend Aleksandr Sovorov. I thanked him kindly for recommending me
to the officers of Immigration Control, but what I really wanted to know about was an application I'd put in to
C.R.E. for new equipment. I wanted them to hire me the equipment in return for a percentage return on anything I
brought back from my expedition into the lower levels. It wasn't a bad deal, from someone with my record, but I
wasn't too optimistic about the outcome.
"I haven't had any official notification yet," said Sovorov, rolling a stylo between his short, stained fingers. I could
never quite figure out what had stained them. Sometimes I suspect
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Brian Stableford
he deliberately dipped them in some kind of reagent, so that he could wear the stains as a badge of office. "I am
a scientist," the stains proclaimed. "I work in a laboratory, doing the heavy spadework finding out what all these
fancy alien artifacts are made of and how they work." Needless to say, Aleksandr Sovorov thought he was
one of the most important men alive. He thought that the future of the human race rested on the shoulders of
men like himself. He didn't know about Myrlin either. "Did anyone argue the case for me?" I asked. "I mean—is it
just a signal flitting from one readout to another, or has someone taken the trouble to go into committee and
say: 'Look, lads, this is a good idea. Rousseau is a good man.'? I could do with a little moral support, you know."
Sovorov shrugged. "7 don't know of anyone who's prepared to argue your case," he said. "Personally, I wouldn't
be prepared to support it. Not that it's my decision, of course."
"You could give me some help if you wanted to. Why won't you?"
Sovorov stabbed at the desk with his stylo, and I wondered what his subconscious was trying to tell me in its sweet,
inarticulate way.
"Because," he said, "I don't believe in letting my personal loyalties override my principles. We happen to be
members of the same species—we may even be friends—but that doesn't alter the fact that the way you
operate has nothing whatsoever in common with the methods and principles of this institution. We are trying
to recover the knowledge locked up in the artifacts preserved in the lower levels. We are trying to proceed in a
careful and rational manner, one step at a time. We send out our own recovery teams, who are fully trained and
whose first priority is safety. They know exactly what they are doing, and they know what to look for. They are
not treasure hunters; they are scientists.
"You, by contrast, are a scavenger. You work alone, wandering around aimlessly hi unexplored regions, hunting
for ways down to new levels, picking up things that take your fancy. Your main aim is not to further the
growth of knowledge but to make money by finding objects which have not previously been encountered. God
alone knows what damage you do out in the remote regions where you work. If we had our way, scavenging of the
kind you indulge hi would
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 11
be outlawed—we would not deal with you and your kind at all if we could have your activities banned. As things
stand, we are unfortunately compelled to compete on the open market for many of the prizes which you and
others like you bring back to the city. Instead of putting you out of business, we are forced by circumstances to help
support you."
"It's a free world," I pointed out (not without a touch of sarcasm). "The Tetrax found it. They could have kept it
entirely to themselves. They didn't have to let anyone in. As things stand, I don't see that you're entitled to any
special privileges just because you're a multiracial consortium dedicated to advancing the knowledge of a hundred
homeworlds instead of an independent operator trying to make a living. No one has any moral title to the stuff
that's lying around in the lower levels, except possibly the people way down below, if there are any. We're all
parasites, scuttling around the nooks and crannies of Asgard's outer skin, all trying to extract a little profit from
our parasitic ventures. You're working for the good of the human race and a hundred other like-minded species—
okay, so am I, in my humble way. I'll lay long odds that you've learned a damned sight more from stuff brought in
to you from scavengers than from the stuff your own teams have picked up. They're too damned orderly and
methodical. They don't cover territory the way we do, they pause to look under every last stone. They don't
have the intuition we do."
"No doubt they don't travel as far or as fast as you do," said Sovorov. "But from their work we are gradually
building up a coherent picture of the humanoids who lived on Asgard before the 'big freeze,' as you are so fond of
putting it. In time, that solid foundation of knowledge will provide us with the means to discover more and more
about Asgard and its technology. In the short term, the fancy gadgets you scavengers bring in might add more to
our understanding than the more limited but more coherent information gleaned by our research teams, but in
the long ran it is our methods which will pay the more handsome dividends. When we are masters of the new
technology, you will still be children wandering around in the cold looking for pretty trinkets to pick up. There will
come a time when no one will want your trinkets, because we already know everything they have to tell us."
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Brian Stableford
"And when that time comes," said I boldly, "you'll still be scratching the surface. You'll still have gotten no
farther than level four. By that time, my kind will be halfway down to the center."
He laughed at that. The laughter of the wise when confronted with an unfashionable idea. They laughed at
Galileo. They laughed at Christopher Columbus. They also laughed at a lot of cranks, but there's no point in being
negative about these things, is there?
If it weren't for positive thinking, we'd never have gotten to Asgard in the first place.
I did have several other irons in the fire, and I spent the rest of the day trying them out to see if any of them
had warmed up. As things turned out, none of them had, but I spent a lot of time arguing and haggling before I
was finally forced to come to that conclusion.
When no one is prepared to give you what you need, there's really only one thing that you can do, and that's
recalculate your needs. There were two ways I could do that. One was to give up operating as a loner and join a
team. I could probably hire out to any one of a dozen concerns who kept their fieldworkers well supplied with
adequate life-support systems. The problem with that, of course, was that I'd become a mere employee. If the team
I was with made any particularly significant finds, we'd all get some kind of a bonus, but it would be a long way
from owning the whole thing myself. I hated to let go of the dream of turning up something really big. It wasn't so
much the money that mattered, but the prestige. I wanted people to recognize me when they passed me on the
pedwalk. I wanted people on the home-world I'd never seen to speak my name in awed tones. I wanted to be a
hero, a living legend. I'm not altogether sure why, but I really did want it badly. It seemed more important than
anything else.
The other way I could reduce my needs was by deciding that some of the equipment I already had was good for
another trip after all. The returns from my last jaunt had paid for a complete overhaul of my truck, so I was safe
to take myself out over the surface to just about any point I cared to pick. The problems would begin when I left
the truck and started to go down. My cold-suit could still pass the basic safety checks, but it was getting old and it
had taken a lot of wear. The dayside temperature on the surface of Asgard gets
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Brian Stableford
high enough to be comfortable, but level one never gets much above freezing point, and level two is a nice, steady
hundred and forty below. Down in four it's still only twenty or thirty degrees absolute, just as if Asgard were still in
the depths of the dark cloud which—according to Sovorov and his friends in C.R.E.—it had passed through a few
million years ago.
Naturally, I wanted to go down to four. I wanted to go down even lower, if I could find a way. If I could find a
way, I wanted to go all the way down to the center. Bearing that in mind, going out with anything less than the
best equipment was like playing Russian roulette with only one empty chamber. If you're wandering around
leaving footprints in oxygen/nitrogen snow, you can't afford to have your cold-suit develop a fault. You turn
into an icicle in a matter of minutes, even if your suit gives out slowly. Rumor has it that if you're ever found,
there may be some hope of thawing you out again so that you can take up your life just as you left off, but it's not
the kind of gamble a serious student of probability would take. I've seen them try it twice, and each time they ended
up with a putrid mess. Even the Tetrax don't have that kind of miracle at their fingertips.
It wasn't just the suit, of course—there was also the matter of supplies. Fuel, gaspacks, food, water—they all had to
be bought. The quantity I could buy determined the time I could stay out, and the time I could stay out determined
the likelihood of catching something worthwhile. What I had to bear in mind was the fact that if I brought back
barely enough to pay my running expenses I'd be even worse off when it came to fixing up the next trip but one. In
order to keep the odds in your favor you have to keep on winning. You only have to lose once to be wiped out.
That's why I was trudging around Skychain City looking for a backer instead of heading straight out into the
wilderness with every last penny of my credit converted into the necessities of life. I may be a fortune-hunter, in the
eyes of a man like Sovorov, but I'm not a fool. I wasn't going to take desperation measures until everyone else
on Asgard had turned me down.
My sleep that night was uninterrupted, which was perhaps as well. It was the last decent night's sleep I got for
some considerable time. The following morning, Sovorov phoned
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 15
me to say that my application for an equipment grant had been turned down. He didn't bother to apologize or
sympathize. That was before I'd finished breakfast, and I was under the impression that things couldn't get much
worse. I was wrong.
I'd just thrown the plates into the grinder when the door buzzer sounded. When I opened the door, I found
myself looking at two Spirellans. My immediate instinct was to close the door—not because I have anything against
Spirellans as such but because these two were wearing the gaudy clothes that signaled the fact that they were
unmated males not yet established in the status hierarchy. The ways in which a Spirellan can win a good place in
the status hierarchy of his clan are many and varied, but most of them involve doing someone else down. There are
half a hundred races regarded by the Tetrax as being utter barbarians. The human race is one, and the Spirellans
are another. Personally, I'd put the Spirellans somewhat lower than ourselves, but I'm biased.
Anyhow, I let them in. In order to get along in a place like Skychain City, where several hundred humanoid
races rub shoulders, you have to suppress your instincts.
"My name is Heleb," said the spokesman, his eyes scanning my room with minute care and patience. "I believe
that you are Mike Rousseau." He never once looked at me. I didn't mind that; it meant that he was being polite.
When one Spirellan looks directly at another for more than a few seconds it's considered to be a challenge and a
threat
"That's right," I confirmed. He spoke well, but he had aa unfair advantage. Spirellans don't look much like
Tetrax— they have blue-and-pink marbled skin and two very pronounced skull ridges, which make them look
rather like lizards with winged helmets, while the Tetrax look more like moon-faced monkeys with skins like
waxed black tree bark—but they have similar mouths, with flat upper palates and protean tongues.
"I hear that you are looking for employment," he said smoothly.
"Not exactly," I told him, eyeing his junior partner suspiciously as he began to pay close attention to the book-
tapes stacked in my file-net. The codes were written in English or in French, depending on the display language,
so he couldn't
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Brian Stableford
read them, but his examination seemed no less intense for that. "I've been trying to raise enough money to outfit a
solo expedition. I don't want to sign up with an established team."
Heleb flashed me the Spirellan equivalent of a smile, but his gaze was fixed on a remote spot beyond my
shoulder. "I am thinking of mounting an expedition myself," he said. "There would be five of us, including my
younger brother Lema." Here he nodded briefly in the direction of his companion. "We have the capital to equip
ourselves well, but we do not have an experienced man to assist us. We feel that it would be foolish to set out
across the surface without an experienced man. In time, we will be experienced ourselves, but for now we need help.
We were recommended to come to you."
"Who by?" I asked.
"An officer of the Coordinated Research Establishment. He knew that your application for an equipment grant had
just been turned down, and he wanted to help you."
"He must have known before I did," I muttered. To Heleb, I said: "111 have to think it over."
There are some races—or, at least, some classes of persons within certain races—who don't recognize the propriety
of a diplomatic refusal. They're apt to take it as an insult.
Heleb looked me in the eye just long enough to let me know that he wasn't pleased.
"I have invited you to join me," he said, levelly. "Your hesitation might be considered an insult."
"No insult is intended," I assured him, making sure I didn't look too long at him.
"I think that you should accept my invitation," he said.
"I still have several alternatives open to me," I assured him, lying in my teeth. "I will consider them all."
"Make sure that you consider carefully," he said. Then, abruptly, he signaled to his brother, who was still taking
an altogether unwarranted interest in my reading material, and they left, closing the door quietly behind them.
I sat down on the bed and wondered what fate had against me. The last thing I needed was to get into a quarrel
with a Spirellan just because some idiot at C.R.E. had convinced him that I was the man he needed to make his
first adventure in the cold country a successful one. If Heleb really believed
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 17
that, then he would put pressure on—Spirellans set a lot of store by success.
I felt in desperate need of a sympathetic ear and some moral support, so I decided to go see Saul Lyndrach,
and get a look at mysterious Myrlin at the same time.
Unfortunately, Lyndrach wasn't home. Like me, he lived hi a one-room cell in a honeycomb singlestack—one of a
couple of hundred erected by the Tetrax when they first built the base that had expanded into Skychain City. The
building supervisor hadn't seen him go out, and hadn't seen him at all since noon the previous day, when he'd
passed through in the company of a giant. The giant (he assured me solemnly) had been a good head taller than
Lyndrach, who was himself a head taller than me. That didn't sound likely. Lyndrach was nearly two meters tall,
and that was big by the standards of ninety-eight per cent of the humanoid races foregathered on Asgard. If the giant
was Myrlin, then he was a pretty exceptional human being—I thought.
I went down to Lyndrach's local drinking den, knowing that he spent a lot of time there. It seemed more likely
that he'd be there, telling his visitor all his weird ideas about Asgard and the center and the missing indigenes, than
that he'd be showing the newcomer the sights of Skychain City.
The bartender told me that Saul hadn't been in all day, and that he hadn't brought any giants in at any time. I
nearly let it go at that, but thought I might as well stay for a quick drink. While I sipped it, another thought
occurred to me.
"Hey," I said to the bartender—A Zabaran, I think—"do you know a Spirellan called Heleb? Has a brother
called Lema."
, It was an innocent question, I thought, but the bartender moved back a couple of paces. "What if I do?" he
countered. I frowned, not having expected the guarded reaction. "What's wrong with him?" I asked suspiciously.
"It's none of my business," said the Zabaran, 18
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 19
"Whose business is it?" I inquired, feeling more anxious by the moment.
As he turned away to attend to another customer, the bartender muttered: "Guur." To the uninitiated, it would
have been a meaningless grunt, but to me it was a name. Amara Guur—a Vormyran. Not a nice person—rather
the opposite, in fact.
Heleb had been worrying me sufficiently on his own. If he was really working for Amara Guur, then the import
of his visit might be considerably worse than I'd imagined. I could think of no reason whatsoever why Amara Guur
might be interested in me, but if there was a reason, it was unlikely to be one that might work to my advantage.
Extremely unlikely.
As I continued to sip my drink, I began to think that the best possible thing I could do might be to get out of
Skychain City without waiting for lights out. A sense of urgency the like of which I had never felt before began to
impress itself upon me, and I didn't like it. I might well have yielded to that impulse, in which case this would
have been a much shorter and simpler story, but my attention was distracted by the arrival of another of my fellow
humans—one who, like Saul Lyndrach, was in the same line of business as myself. His name was Simeon Balidar.
Truth to tell, I didn't like Balidar much. Maybe I had too much in common with him. He was always hunting for
information about profitable hunting grounds. We all were, of course, except that Balidar would rather spend three
weeks picking up hints about someone else's finds than two weeks making a find of his own. He really was a
scavenger, following where others led in the hope of profiting by their efforts. In spite of all this, though, I never
tried to avoid him and I never picked a quarrel with him. No matter how long you live among aliens, or how
close you get to members of other species, you still remain dependent on the nearness of your own kind. That's
why Aleksandr Sovorov, no matter how fiercely he disapproved of me, would still say, sincerely, that I was his
friend. No matter how misanthropic a man might be (and he probably wouldn't be a starman if he wasn't), he
keeps up appearances with other members of the human race. Those appearances are worth something.
Balidar greeted me as if there were no one else in the world he'd rather see. I asked him about Saul
Lyndrach, but
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Brian Stableford
he was no wiser than I. We talked for a while, to no good purpose—I didn't have any secrets that I didn't mind
giving away—and eventually we joined a game of cards that was going on in one of the back rooms. My main
motive for doing so was to alleviate the growing tedium of our conversation. It gave me something to do to take
my mind off the disturbing uncertainties of my predicament.
Two of the other players were Zabaran, the other was a Sleath. Balidar obviously knew them, and they all
claimed to know Saul Lyndrach, though none of them had seen him or knew anything about his whereabouts. They
had heard no rumors of giants, either—or so they said.
I hadn't much spare credit, and I resolved to leave after I'd lost the very modest investment that I initially put into
the game. I expected to lose—we were playing a Zabaran game which was simple enough in principle but'
complicated enough to give regular and practiced players a significant advantage.
As things turned out, however, I began to win. Skill had nothing to do with it; I was simply fortunate with the
cards. Time after time, I was favored by the fall, and the Sleath, in particular, began to get upset about it. For one
thing, he was the big loser, and for another, he really wasn't doing anything wrong. He was playing the odds quite
sensibly—he simply kept getting beaten. That's enough to try the patience of a saint By the time I had eleven
or twelve times my original investment piled up in front of me, I was getting quite embarrassed—not that I was
about to give any of it it back. I could tell that the Sleath was beginning to wonder whether I was cheating, and I
was glad that most of my wins were coming up on other people's deals. Balidar made a couple of cracks about
my good fortune that could easily be taken two ways, but I couldn't see that the Sleath had any excuse to get upset
except for the fact that he hated losing. Who doesn't?
Some people play more cautiously when they're losing. Others play more aggressively. The Sleath was one of the
latter kind. He began betting more often, raising the stakes when he could. That only increased the probability
that he would continue losing, and he did.
I knew that some kind of bust-up was inevitable half an hour before it happened. It didn't particularly worry
me. It was up to the Zabarans to stop their friend from doing any-
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 21
tiling stupid, and if they were too slow I ought to have no difficulty in handling a Sleath. In all probability he'd
never seen his homeworld—no more had I—but he carried its heritage in his genes. He was thin and light, adapted
for fast movement hi an environment where the gravity was four-fifths of what it is on Asgard. In order to get
around on As-gard he needed to wear supportive clothing—he was dressed in what was effectively an artificial
exoskeleton. He couldn't afford to get into any fights, especially not against someone whose physique—by
coincidence—was more or less perfectly adapted for Asgardian conditions.
His temper gave out when he lost a hand to me that virtually wiped him out. It was mostly his own fault—he'd
played it with as much subtlety as a man in a cold-suit trying to dance a jig—but he turned to the Zabarans and
pointed an accusing finger at Balidar, who'd dealt the hand.
"They're cheating us!" he said. "Don't you see—they're working as a team. Balidar's been throwing his friend
perfect cards all day."
The Zabarans each referred to the stacks of chips in front of them. They were both losing, but hardly enough to
pay for a round of drinks. Balidar was losing more than the pair of them put together.
"Look," I said amiably, "the cards haven't done you any favors, but you haven't exactly shown them the respect
they deserve. If you calm down, you'd probably play better."
"You bastard!" he said (or words to that effect), and pulled a knife.
I moved away from my chair, picking it up as I did so. By the time he was within striking range, I had the chair
in front of me. When he lunged, I clipped his wrist with one leg and rammed the opposite one into his left eye. The
howl he let out had so much more rage in it than pain I thought that discretion demanded further action. I hit him
over the head just hard enough to make him collapse.
The door behind me had opened, and I turned around, expecting the space to be filled with inquisitive faces.
There were faces all right, but they didn't look particularly inquisitive. They were, however, familiar. One of them
belonged to the bartender, but the other two were both Spirel-lans: Heleb and his little brother.
I was still holding the chair, and any thought I'd had of
22 Brian Stableford
putting it down was now gone. I looked at Balidar, expecting moral support. He was looking at the ceiling,
absentmindedly shuffling the cards.
Heleb was looking at me, hard and steady. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to.
"Hello, Heleb," I said, as casually as I could. "Are you looking for me?" To one of the Zabarans I said: "Cash
me those chips, will you."
The Zabaran made no move to comply. The bartender closed the door, leaving Heleb and Lema on the inside.
It felt rather as if I were alone.
The room had no window, and Tetron glass doesn't shatter anyway. If I was going to get out, I was going to have
to go past Heleb—-or more likely over hum.
"The trouble with humans," said Heleb, hi his neatly pronounced parole, "is that they're barbarians. They're
vicious, and they have no respect for the customs of other races. They have no concept of honor."
I couldn't help glancing at Balidar again, but he was still avoiding my gaze. Some humans, it seemed, definitely
were lacking something. He'd set me up.
"You cannot get away with murder," Heleb continued. "Not here. There is law here, and the law has to be
observed. How else can we all live together?"
He was still staring at me, but he hadn't made a move to do anything.
The Sleath rolled over, making an audible groan. So much, I thought, for murder.
"Cash those chips!" I said, my voice harsh. This time, the Zabaran banker moved, and began to count the
chips. He took his time, and in the meantime the rest of us might have been frozen solid. There was no sound but
the clicking of the counters, and then the rustle of the Tetron credit notes which were the official trade medium of
Skychain City.
By the time I turned to pick up the cash, however, the Sleath was very much alive again. He was sitting up,
and when he saw me reach out for the money, he went for his knife again. It was lying on the floor, near the table
leg, and I had no difficulty stamping on his fingers as he reached for it. That was when Heleb moved.
Fighting a Spirellan is a very different matter from fighting a Sleath. Heleb was as well adapted to the gravity
as I was, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 23
and he was trained in unarmed combat of the type practiced by his people. But the chair was still in my left hand,
and I lashed out with all the force I could muster. He was expecting it—not unnaturally—and he rolled with the
blow, getting a good two-handed grip on the chair himself. He added his own strength to the force of my blow,
and if I hadn't let go I'd have ended up doing a somersault into the wall.
With the credit notes in my right fist, I dived for the door. Heleb tripped me, and little brother Lema delivered a
neat chop to the back of my neck. I went down on to my knees, dazed but still conscious, and tried to lunge
forward again. My shoulder ran into the closed door, which didn't budge an inch. Stiff fingers closed on the sides of
my neck, groping for the carotid arteries.
Someone, I thought as I passed out, has been doing research on human anatomy.
I woke up with a terrible hangover, reeking of some aromatic liquor from God-knows-where. I thought it was a
little odd, but it took me several seconds to remember that I hadn't been drinking at all, let alone stinking like
garbage that was enough to make a sensitive man vomit.
I opened my eyes and was instantly dazzled by the bright light. I had to blink furiously a dozen times before I
could stand it. When I finally managed to look around, I found that I was in a cell. It was spotlessly clean, and one
of its four walls was made of clear glass. The glass sparkled with flashes of reflected light. There was no mistaking
the Tetron handiwork.
I rolled off the low-slung bunk, and tried to stand up. At the third attempt, I managed it. The glass wall was
solid except for a mesh panel at about head height, where there was an incoming current of fresh air. I took a
couple of deep breaths, and then banged with my fist on the glass. A couple of minutes passed before the guard
appeared. He was a Tetron, of course, dressed like any other Tetron civil servant.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Thirty-two ninety," he replied.
That meant I'd slept all night.
"How did I get here?"
"The police brought you."
"Where from?"
"I'm not sure. Would you like me to look at the arresting officer's report oa you?" His tone was gentle and
concerned, unfailingly polite,
"Don't bother," I said. "Can you remember what the charges were?"
"Murder," he replied. "It is alleged that you killed a Sleath by battering him to death."
24 25
I groaned. I didn't bother to say: "It's a lie!" or "I was framed." It wouldn't make any difference. He would
simply have reminded me that as I was to be presumed innocent until proven guilty I could be sure that he
personally would maintain an open mind on the question.
"Can you find me a lawyer?*91 said to him.
"Certainly," he said. "Did you have any particular lawyer in mind?"
"I don't know any," I said. "Could you call Aleksandr So-vorov at the Coordinated Research Establishment and
ask his advice? He's certain to know a dozen."
"I will do that," promised the guard. "Is there anyone else you would like me to notify?"
"Yes," I said. "A man named Saul Lyndrach. Ask him to come to see me. I'm going to need all the help I can
get. Can you get me some water to drink?"
"Of course. Would you like some food also?**
"Not just now. But I could do with getting rid of the stink of whatever foul stuff they forced down my throat
after they knocked me out."
"There is a shower-bath behind the rear partition. There is also apparatus for cleaning clothes. Do you need
instruction on the operation of these fitments?"
I shook my head wearily.
He went away. Tetron penology really is based on the highest ethical conduct—they say. Their treatment of
criminals is supposed to be the most enlightened in the galaxy. A Tetron jail is just about the nicest place there is
to be held for trial. The only trouble is, no one gfets to stay in one for more than a couple of days, They don't use
them for convicted criminals.
By the time I'd had a drink of water, waslied myself and cleaned my clothes, I was feeling a great deal better.
The only trouble was that the better I felt, the better I was able to appreciate the enormity of my situation. I was in
a very deep hole. Obviously, nothing that had happened to me the previous day had happened by chance. Heleb
and Balidar were both part of some kind of conspiracy, whose purpose was to frame me for murder. And behind it
all, if the grunting bartender had meant what he seemed to say, was Amara Guur. Why Amara Guur should have
the slightest interest in me was beyond my comprehension, but I knew only too well that
26
Brian Stableford
any interest he did have was extremely unlikely to work out to anything but my ultimate disadvantage. Too many
of the people Amara Guur took an interest in wound up dead.
My lawyer turned up at forty-one ten, full of apologies about being delayed. He explained, regretfully, that it
had proved impossible to contact Saul Lyndrach, who had, apparently, disappeared. He was, of course, entitled to
disappear if he wanted to, but the Tetrax were looking for him because they were anxious about a human named
Myrlin, for
whom he had accepted responsibility.
The lawyer's name was 238-Zenatta. He was, of course, a
Tetron.
"The evidence for the prosection is all on file already," he
told me. "It merely remains for me to prepare your defense.
Naturally, I will need your full cooperation in this matter,
but it seems to me that your only chance to minimize the
magnitude of the offense is to plead diminished responsibility
due to alcoholic poisoning."
"Like hell it is," I told him. "I didn't do it!"
"I'm so sorry," he said. "I hadn't realized that there might
be a dispute. Please explain in your own words exactly what
did happen." I gave him a blow-by-blow account of the whole sequence
of events. I explained my conspiracy theory.
'This account differs rather markedly from the account agreed on by all the other witnesses," said 238-Zenatta,
in the Tetron equivalent of an anxious tone. "Simeon Balidar has admitted that you and he were, in fact, cheating.
The cards used in the game have been deposited as evidence, and have been shown to be marked by strategically
placed grease stains. Balidar agrees with the two other players, and with the Spirellans, that the blows which you
gave the dead man were, indeed, the cause of his fractured skull. There is no mention in their testimony of a knife.
Actual bodily harm was also suffered by the man Heleb, and a substantial amount of damage done to the property
where the affray took place. The prosecution has established that you have spent some time attempting to raise
money to furnish equipment for an exploratory expedition into the lower levels, and that you refused Heleb's offer
of employment, telling him that you had another way of raising capital. It is suggested that the only thing to
which you could have been referring was your inten-
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 27
tion to make money cheating at cards, assisted by Simeon Balidar. Balidar confirms this. It would be extremely
difficult to attack this testimony in any way. There seems to be no obvious point of weakness."
"There wouldn't be," I said hollowly. "It's a carefully constructed edifice of lies. Someone has taken a lot of
trouble to build it."
"But Mr. Rousseau, why should they? Why should anyone go to the lengths of committing a murder in order
to have you convicted of the crime? If there has been a conspiracy, there must have been a reason for it. What is
it?"
That, of course, was the big question. Without an answer to that, not even the most charitable and trusting
Tetron in the galaxy could begin to believe me.
"Could you establish a link between Balidar and Heleb?
Suppose we could demonstrate that they were all tied in with
Amara Guur, one way or another?" •
The Tetron shook his head. "Perhaps we could. What would it prove? To demonstrate the existence of a
conspiracy one needs far more than evidence of the fact that a set of witnesses have acquaintances in common. I
repeat, why should Amara Guur—or anyone else—want to have you convicted of murder?"
"Well," I said, thinking as rapidly as I was able. "It's nothing I've done to him. There's no reason anyone would
want revenge for anything I've done. So, if the reason isn't in the past, it must be in the future. Guur has to be
trying to take advantage of your cockeyed penological system. He wants to buy my services."
The Tetrax, of course, are as enlightened in their treatment of convicted criminals as they are in their treatment
of the accused-but-not-yet-convicted. So they say. Effectively, all crimes represent debts to society which have to be
repaid. Specifically, they represent debts payable to the parties injured by the crime. In the case of death, the
claimants are the dependents of the victim—his family, his employer, and so on. If I were to be convicted, the
court would decide what reparation I would have to make, depending on my circumstances. There was no fixed
fine for murder—that would effectively allow men who were rich enough to get away with it. It would
automatically cost me all the credit I had and more. The "more" would have to be earned. I could work for
28
Brian Stableford
the Tetrax, doing something that could well turn out to be hard and disagreeable, at a rate of pay which they
would set. They would have paid off the full amount of my calculated debt, and in working for them I'd have to
work off that sum and the interest (again at a rate they set).
On Earth we have a word for that; it's called slavery. The Tetron equivalent doesn't carry quite the same
emotional overtones. The alternative to working for the Tetrax is to become a bonded slave for someone else—
anyone, in fact, who will offer a contract for your services. The contracts have to comply with certain standards—
even slaves have rights with respect to their treatment—but they're fairly flexible. Anyhow, if I were convicted I'd
have the option of accepting an offer from an outside source to pay off the whole of my debt immediately in return
for a specific number of days (or, more likely, years) of some specific kind of service.
There is yet another alternative—in theory, at least—and
that is refusal to cooperate. No one can make you work at
anything if you say no. That's when the gloves come off.
What happens then is that the Tetrax put you into a coma,
and use your body as a factory producing various organic
compounds, and even live viruses. If you don't work as a
man, you work as a machine. That takes longer still, and
when you've served your term, you tend to be not quite the
man you once were. Not many people take that option,
though some races which have peculiar metabolic systems are
so much in demand that they can actually get off with much
shorter sentences that way.
Anyhow, the implications of all this are easy enough to see: if you're a particularly nasty-minded person, and
you particularly want to obtain the services of some other person, you might consider framing him for a
particularly nasty crime, and then offering him a moderately favorable bond contract, knowing that the
alternatives which face him are likely to be far less attractive. Of course, if he realizes that you framed him, he's
likely to spit in your eye regardless, but he has to be pretty stubborn if the Tetrax are demanding twenty years of
his life and you're only asking two.
"But I don't see," said 238-Zenatta, "why Amara Guur should want to acquire your services. There are
hundreds of scavengers in Skychain City. Why would he want youT'
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 29
That, of course, was the big problem. It was a great theory, if only I could figure out some reason why Amara
Guur might want me badly enough to set up a murder in order to catch me.
It didn't seem to make much sense.
I could tell just by looking that 238-Zenatta didn't think it made any sense at all. He might be too polite to say
so, but in his heart of hearts he was one hundred percent convinced that I was guilty as hell.
Who could blame him?
"Slavery," I said, "is an abomination. No civilized society should tolerate it."
I'd just watched my trial on television. 238-Zenatta had put up what seemed to me to be a rather lackluster
performance, but I couldn't really believe that anyone else would have done any better. The magistrate, needless
to say, had found me guilty. My appeal had been dismissed in a matter of minutes. Now I was waiting out the
statutory three days when someone might offer to buy me out. I was playing cards with my jailer, whose name was
69-Aquila. He had not made a single crack about marked cards. Mind you, they were his cards and he was winning.
We were playing a game of skill without the involvement of money.
"How do you treat criminals on your homework!?" he asked.
I told him* ,
He laughed.
"I realize, of course, that everything we lesser species do seems to you to be barbaric," I said. "But you must be
able to understand that sometimes the reverse seems to be true. To us, some of your customs seem barbaric. We
abandoned slavery more than four hundred years ago."
"That only serves to demonstrate how backward your culture is," he answered. "There are a great many things
that you could have given up whose abandonment would testify to a certain level of enlightenment. War, for
instance. I understand, however, that far from giving it up, your species has actually been engaged in an
interplanetary war for almost all the time span during which you have been using starships."
"So it's rumored," I conceded, "but you're changing the subject. It's your conduct that's in question, not ours. I
am sitting here waiting for someone to offer to buy me. If they
30 31
don't, I will automatically be forced to work for you in whatever capacity you find convenient—either that or have
myself turned into a laboratory animal with my mind switched off for the next twenty years. I find this a rather
invidious position to be in. I don't think anyone should be subjected to this kind of treatment."
69-Aquila shrugged. "It is necessary," he said. "In fact, it is not merely necessary, but inevitable. The Tetrax
have had the opportunity to study the historical development of thousands of humanoid cultures. There is a pattern
in these data which our scientists have analyzed and explained. The kind of social relationships which exist in a
humanoid culture depend very largely on the technology which the culture possesses. As technology develops, so
the economic basis of their existence changes. In the beginning, when there is no technology to speak of, and all of
every man's labors are devoted to the business of survival, there is no complex social organization. The main social
groups are families or tribes; political power is simply brute force.
"When knowledge has advanced sufficiently to allow a relatively small number of agricultural laborers to produce
food enough to feed twice their number, cities can grow, and with them more complicated organizations. Political
power is entirely bound up with control of the land, because those who control the land control the food surpluses
which the land produces, and this is what sustains the city dwellers.
"When knowledge has advanced still further, a more complex technology emerges, and machines begin to take
over much of the business of production. Agriculture becomes even more efficient, and cities expand. Factories
appear, and the men who control the machines enjoy growing political power which enables them to compete with
the men who enjoy power by virtue of controlling the land. This is the stage of history which your own culture is
currently experiencing. Naturally, it seems to you to be the end of the sequence. If you had imagination, though,
you would understand that it is not; but instead you preoccupy yourselves with endless squabbles about which
individuals should control the land and the machines, or which political institutions should take them over.
"We know the pattern of history as it extends beyond your barbaric phase, though you will not listen to us when
we ex-
32
Brian Stableford
plain it to you. Really, it is obvious, but barbarians are notoriously stupid and illogical. What will emerge from
your present cultural condition—and probably is emerging even now, if only you had eyes to see—is a new system
of social relationships. Just as feudalism was replaced by capitalism, so capitalism will be replaced by slavery. It
is inevitable. Your technology is even now elaborated to the point where the provision of almost unlimited energy
is feasible. Once you mastered the frame force and found the way to travel between the stars, the matter of land
control ceased to be of any real importance—though your stupid territorial war against your barbaric neighbors
shows that you have failed to understand this. Similarly, you now have the mechanical power to overproduce
your needs—you live in an economy of abundance. For all I know, there may still be people starving on your
homeworld, but if so, it is unnecessary, and in any case there are no people starving on any world managed by the
Tetrax. Control of machines has therefore ceased to be a crucial source of political power.
"So, what is the crucial source of political power? I will tell you—it is the control of other people; the control of
the services which they can perform for one another. In truth, this was always the crucial element in political
power—it is political power—but in the primitive stages of social history it is an end achieved indirectly, by the
application of intermediate means. In the final phase, there are no more intervening means; the end is achieved
directly. All social relationships begin to take the form of institutions which function by giving one man .control
over the services of another. Money comes to symbolize labor rather than commodities, and any obligations
incurred by members of society—whether they are voluntary or involuntary—have to be discharged through
contracts of service. In an economy of abundance, how else can a man discharge a debt save by selling himself? He
has nothing else to sell. Call it 'slavery' if you wish, but that will not make it any less inevitable. It is the destiny of
all hu-manoid societies."
"It's a fascinating theory," I said. "But it doesn't make me feel any better about things."
"We call it the theory of dialectical materialism," said 69-Aquila, as he totted up the points in yet another game.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER 33
"I think we had something similar on my homeworld," I said.
He laughed. "How ridiculous you barbarians are!" he replied. "You are all the same. We tell you our discoveries,
and if you do not deny them you try to claim that you already know them. Don't you see how absurd you are?
Only by the painstaking comparison of the histories of countless hu-manoid races could anyone induce any
empirical generalization of this sort. How could you produce such a theory without having the opportunity to
observe that which is common to hundreds of different cases?"
"I still say that it's a violation of my rights as a sentient being to put me in a position where I'm forced to sell
myself to the lowest bidder," I said, retreating back to my original position. You can't win an argument with a
Tetron. It just isn't possible.
"There you go again," said 69-Aquila. "If you can't claim the theory for your own you just don't want to
understand it. Willful stupidity, that's all it is. If you think we're so uncivilized, perhaps you'd rather the vormyr
were running things here?"
"The vormyr bloody well are running things here," I told him (though I had to add the swear words in my own
language—pangalactic parole doesn't have any). "You may run the legal system, but Amara Guur runs organized
crime. You caught, tried and convicted me, but Amara Guur set me up. You're just the means—his are the ends.
That's what I'm complaining about."
This time, at least, he had the grace not to laugh. He just let the remark go by, refusing to take it seriously.
摘要：

JOURNEYTOTHECENTERbyBrianStableford.ScannedbyAristotle"Doyourealizenowthemagnitudeofdieproblem?"sheinquired,solemnly."Sure,"Isaid."Havingexterminatedonehu-manoidspecies,you'renowwillingtotakeonthreehundredmore,includingtheTetrax.We'donlybeoutnumberedby—ataconservativeestimate—severalmillionstoone.An...

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