"I'm dying, I'm dy-inng! I can't wait? Quick, quick-ahh-" he heard DeyMeox's voice say, and then, from behind him, Shemsi's: "That's it, you sickofobber! Ram it to her! Ream the wh.o.r.eb.i.t.c.hmare!"

Gelor pivoted-to stare at the powerful minicorder across the little room. From it emerged Shemsi's words. He had no doubt that when he walked toward the cell's door, it would split out her "Wonderful! Wonderful!" and so on. While he had made a fool of himself, wallowing with the 189.

false DeyMeox attached to a mechanical s.e.xulator, Shemsi had slipped away to help the waiting crober reset the homeostats on the spore-cans.

After that he had made it simple. He had lurched up from the clutches of the thing half-blind with his own l.u.s.t and satiation. He remembered lashing out without hitting Shemsi. Of course! Antic.i.p.ation, too, had warped his thinking. He had gloated too much over the final twist he had planned for them: murder of his two helpful slaves, and to Sheol with his pledge to them.

Once he (thought he) had locked them in and started the flow of killing gas, he had a.s.sumed their deaths. Except that they had been carrying out their twist, upstairs. While he rushed to deliver harmless spores to CongCorp, they had been here, safe. Laughing. Laughing at him . . .

They won't laugh any more. I'll tend to those swinish sows as soon as I'm through with CongCorp.

In the relay room he hooked up a fresh loop and spoke into it: "This is Gel Gelor, who was Hajji Kalajji. I have been betrayed. Through no fault of mine the . . . merchandise I provided you is faulty. I accept all blame and within one week of days-standard I shall undo the damage. Count on it! Your project will proceed as scheduled. I ask only that you hold off retaliatory action until I have proven this. A fair offer, surely: simply give me one week. I shall prove my good faith and skill before the time is up."

He swallowed hard, set it to turning. In the loading room, he locked a new can to the spore-chamber. He opened the valve and adjusted the homeostat; watched the canister fill in mins. Smiling now, he returned to comni to call Jasbirstation for a charter craft. He had to move!

It still wasn't his day. The only s.p.a.cer available was an ancient ramscoop. Its captain was some hard-drinker off Jahpur. His rep was so bad that no crew worth having would ship with him. Gelor pondered sweatily.

"I'll bring my own crew!" he said. "We shall be on the wheel within a couple of hours."

"Acknowledged," Station Charter said. "We'll hold the ship for you."

190.

Gelor cut the comm. His smile was thin, but it was a smile.

He'd bring a crew, all right. An unwilling crew-and stoned to the eyeb.a.l.l.s. How they'd hate him when they learned the duty he planned for them now! It was better by far than killing them here and now. Instead, they'd all ship out together: he and Shemsi and DeyMeox. And Captain Hard-drinker. Gelor would see to it that the captain screwed the h.e.l.l out of both women, going and returning.

Together, the three of them would rain Teratogenesis Six down on Eilong!

Jesti and Yahna arrived at the old palace just as their quarry was leaving in a commercial loader. They did see that he had two women with him, and several big crates.

"Shuttleport!" Jesti snapped, and wheeled.

He wheeled and ran ... and of course he and Yahna afoot could not match the loader's speed. By the time they reached the port, the enemy and his little hhareem had gone on to Jasbirstation. Yahna and Jesti had to wait, panting, for the next departure. And up they went-too late again.

The Handsome Man and company had boarded a chartered ramscoop and redshifted. A little more checking nailed it down: the Handsome Man had also bought a commercial flight ca.s.sette. Oh yes, sure, the clerk remembered-because it was a mighty, mighty unusual destination. Eilong.

"That's a nothin' planet way beyond Saiping. He sure was-"

"He was in a hurry," Jesti grunted, "or he'd never have settled for that old ship. A big hurry to get to my planet! There's only one thing we can do-get Slicer out of that cave on The Sponge and try to follow."

He arranged transport while Yahna entered an overpriced station shop. Since it was a clothing store and she emerged wearing a beautiful new outfit and carrying a large box as well, he was ready to sneer.

Next they had to convince Musla and Twil that they had tried. A 'fax from the station newscenter was proof enough 191.

that Hieronymus Jee was dead, but the Bleaker and the Jarp were hardly happy about leaving-especially for Eilong. That's when Yahna made Jesti ashamed of having sneered. Yahna Golden, MarsCorp, had plenty of cred. Easy for her to turn that and her ID into a lot of ready cash, in that shop onstation.

A couple of thousand stells in cash convinced Twil and Musla. Slicer moved out of its hiding place and into s.p.a.ce. Sensors and scanners found no ramscoop trace. The quarry was long gone. The pursuit set course for Eilong, "Yahna, I-about the money ..."

"I seem to be with you," she said, and Jesti swallowed hard.

His throat went even tighter when he gazed at the screen, much later. That glaring furnace was his sun, no matter how little he'd seen of it from the mines. That growing ball was his planet. Had the Handsome Man been here and gone?-or could he be here now? Jesti chewed his lip. His homeland. The Handsome Man's goal-so he could sell it. How? s.e.m.e.n and blood . . . murder and murder, again and again. My world. Blood and s.e.m.e.n? Sell? Whatever the plan was, it was enormous and concerned the welfare of the whole world . . . Jestikhan Churt's world. Personal vengeance faded to triviality.

"I have to go down there," Jesti said, because it wasn't in him to evade or deny what he perceived as duty. "Onto my planet.''

"You're a fugitive," Yahna reminded him. "You can't just call in for a docking berth." She waited till he turned to stare at her, stricken. "So. I dock us, in my name. / go onplanet, because we might want to make a holomeller there-big money for the Eilan economy! But I want it to be secret right now. No 'dignitaries,' no guides. Just me . . . and my bodyguard, of course. His problem is that he has to wear a breather mask/helmet."

He blinked. "You know-I'd hug you if I thought I dared. Musla! This ship just became a chartered carrier for Yahna Golden-psychist, of MarsCorp!"

192.

"Uh. One condition. Me an' Twil get off, too. Stationside bar, maybe."

Yahna covered her new formfitting suit of violet with her new cloak-long and mauve and hardly so eye-catching as her miniskirt and SprayOn kneeboots. She and her "unfortunate bodyguard" with his breathing problem went through Customs in a breeze, went down onplanet with no trouble whatever, and attracted only minimal attention, none negative.

(No, no ramscoop had docked here. Not for months.) Jesti guided her through the blue-gray night of the world that had been-no, that always would be his. Some called it a troglodyte world, since most Eilans dwelled in the abandoned workings of Eilong's mines. It was not such a bad existence ("particularly before you know what there is elsewhere," the Golden One's companion muttered). Constant temp was a rule in the old workings. A stripped ore-chamber could be turned into an attractive enough apartment, provided one didn't mind recycled air. And never seeing the light of the sun.

None of that mattered. Eilong was Jesti's home, a miner's world of cliffs and drifts, pits and circuitous caverns. A people-ravaged world with surface streets that wound among mountainous slag piles where recycling machinery worked day and night at turning deadly methane into lifegiving power for the dwellers below. Jesti's world. His and Oolong Eef's.

Once they reached the maze of streets beyond the shuttleport, his feet turned automatically toward the old man's home+laboratories.

Strange, how they had come together: the boy from the pits and the Council of Elders' top scientist and sage. Somehow a spark had flashed between them. They had progressed to sharing not just thoughts but feelings. Jesti might even have built himself a place of power in the Elder's structure, had he not become so involved with the plight of miners.

Yahna walked tall and confidently. Jesti felt an unpleasant p.r.i.c.kling every time he glimpsed someone who even 193.

might be a policer. He had not been away all that long-it only seems a century!

They came to the familiar shaft and entered the lift. Jesti touched the indicator. Then smacked it. The unit responded to that by grinding into noisy life. Yahna said nothing and held back a smile as they descended into Eilong. Down to the the third level, and then along to the proper apt-unit.

Jesti had expected to be apologetic for rousing the old man from sleep. Not so: Eef was up, a man whose girth just missed matching his height. Yahna watched him clutch the (unhelmeted, now) Jesti to him, and was introduced to one of the few whose body reacted adversely to the enzyme that prevented weight gain, and who (unscientifically!) refused to curb his eating. He was amazed, then entranced at his white beard. Nearly everyone in the Galaxy was hairless below the eyebrows-or nostrils, at least-by choice, and here was a man both fat and bearded-and the beard was naturally white!

Also, he was not purple. No, only miners were, she remembered.

Their explanations left out a number of activities, but included the Handsome Man and their pursuit of him. Had he been here?

Eef went very grim and led them to his labs. Carrying his helmet and with Yahna pacing silently beside him, Jesti was in the chill grasp of foreboding. The culture case with rank upon rank of shallow nutrient tanks did not diminish his apprehension. (Besides, Yahna had opened her enveloping cloak and Oolong Eef showed no reaction to her leggy, singular figure.) "What do you see, Jesti?"

Jesti peered and frowned. "Black specks."

"Precisely," Eef said. "Dead spores. Attempts by someone to culture spores of ... an undetermined type. The spores turned out to be dead, and so the project failed. Whatever it was."

"Dead spores. Project. You've left us in the dark, mentor."

"Hmp! I don't understand it either." Oolong's heavy white brows drew into a scowl. He paced off a few waddly 194.

steps. "A few cycles ago, an unidentified s.p.a.cer flew over the world. It merely cruised, and refused contact. You know our people-complacent. No one fired on the ship, or tried to back up demands for communication. It departed. Naturally the Elders wondered, and I set to work on the mystery. What I learned was that the ship dropped those spores onto Eilong. Why, I do not know. I do not know, Jesti . . . Yahna. But there is more. Come over here."

He led them to another culture case. Again they gazed upon nutrient tanks. This time the contents were very different. These spores were far from black. Bright orange, they ma.s.sed in colonies that seemed to seethe and spread before their eyes. They seemed . . . malignant, Yahna thought. Sinister. Obscene, Jesti thought, with a twisting inner sensation.

"This is from another batch of spores," Oolong said, "similarly seeded by another ship, only a few hours ago. We have been on the alert since that other time, and we were ready when this lot rained down ... in two-step canisters that actuated at ten kloms alt.i.tude. We managed to snag one before it opened-though the ship escaped our pursuit craft and fled into s.p.a.ce. This time, well you see. The spores are alive. Very alive."

The old man shuttered as he flipped on a puter simulation screen. The image was frozen there; Eef must have been studying it when his visitors arrived. The image was that of an unborn child, presumably Eilan.

"This is a computer extrapolation of the effect these spores will have-are having." Oolong's voice quivered. "They are unique to our experience. So far as I am yet able to discern, they attack only the unborn child. You can see the ... the effect, on the human fetus."

"I-1-" Yahna put her hand over her mouth and crowded close to Jesti. He saw, and he too was shuddering. Horror rose in him-and rage.

"The head is reduced to half normal size," Eef said, almost in a whisper. "The arms and legs lose hands and feet. They become . . . flippers. Grotesque, piteous monsters!" He turned away. "The ultimate in teratogenesis. The top of the ladder whose first rung was something now 195.

only an edutape memory-thalidomide, it was called. A plague to terrorize a whole world. The spores spread like gas through a mine. Already there is no corner of Eilong they have not reached. They will invade the womb of every pregnant woman-may already have done! Someone has attacked all Eilong. Some evil crober has deformed and crippled and blighted the life of every unborn child! And its desolated parents, of course. Every child. The whole world is thus blighted, Jesti!"

Yahna heard Oolong's voice break. Her stomach was lurching. Every horror she had ever dreamed was nothing, compared to this moment. "Why?"

Oolong Eef spoke to the wall, where lights flashed to indicate his superb putersystem's recording of incoming communications. Probably from Council members, Jesti a.s.sumed. Oolong had work to do and he and Yahna were only in the way. Here, there was nothing they could do. The horror of it was almost too much to grasp, but one thing was left to him.

/ can still seek the Handsome M-onster. He did not merely seek personal vengeance now, but planetary revenge. It was a necessity.

"The answer came shortly before you two approached my door. It came from CongCorp Central-and I must soon stop talking and hear all these calls I'm receiving. CongCorp's comm said it was rumored that Eilong had been struck by a rare teratogenic mycptoxin. In other words, a monster-producing mushroom spore. A rumor, mind you-this less than six hours after the dropping of the horror! If such were the case, CongCorp is happy to advise that it is familiar with the horror and that its scientists have developed an ant.i.toxin. CongCorp will be so happy to help us cope with the problem.''

"And to take over the whole world in the process," Yahna whispered.

"Cong . . . Corp!" Jesti stared at the floor, then jerked up his head. "Oolong! Your must deal with them, to get the ant.i.toxin. Pleasel I know this: an unusually handsome man is somehow responsible. He sold that horror to CongCorp. He is totally ruthless, a man who murders 196.

casually. Again and again. Meanwhile, you and the Elders must tell everyone-tell all the Galaxy! Tell TGO! Spread the word! Use CongCorp to get the ant.i.toxin ... but do not let the monsters winl"

"Monsters," Oolong repeated dully, and turned back to stare at the extrapolative simulation on the screen. At an unborn Eilan . . . monster.

Yahna went up behind him and placed both hands on those bowed shoulders because she had to. "I will try my hardest, my best, my b.i.t.c.hiest, to get MarsCorp to help, Oolong Eef. I will try. Certainly some help from the Akima Foundation. Beyond that ... I will fight, I swear it, for the next holomelodrama we make to feature the murder of a planet-with an interplanetary corporation shown as the true villain. I will fight for that, Oolong Eef-and to make the corporation recognizable. CongCorp's funds are enormous . . . and so are MarsCorp's! And the influence the Akima Mars series has, the following ..." Standing behind her, Jesti saw the great shudder that ran through her, so that her long, long cerise cloak quivered. "I will try, Oolong Eef-I -will fight for it!"

My G.o.d, Jesti thought, insofar as he was capable of thinking. / knew I had allied myself with a madwoman, tied our destinies together, but . . . my G.o.d! I think / must love the brave madwoman!

"Yahna . . . Valkyrie ... he has things to do," he murmured. "And we have a monster to track."

"Monster," Oolong Eef mumbled, staring at the horror on his screen.

Knowing that the only way he-fugitive and subversive, condemned to death here and fled-could help his world was to leave it again, Jesti swung an arm around Yahna and left in silence, leaving Oolong staring at the simulation of horror.

17.

Death was now armed with a new terror.

-Henry Peter, Lord Broughaam Always before, Gelor had thought of the palace on Jasbir as echoically s.p.a.cious. Now he had the feeling that its walls were about to close in on him. Though shaking with fatigue, he couldn't sleep, since the raid on Eilong. Strain rode heavy on him. He jumped at shadows. Sudden noises startled him. Again and again he checked the compound's outer gates. The alarm system preoccupied him.

The women saw to it that he stayed on edge. His first act had been to lock them to the droid-frame in the great hall. He knew he was safe from them, totally safe. Yet still he hung on the ragged edge of panic every time he glimpsed them. Their eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went-and that included even those times when he was out of that vast chamber. Long sidewise glances probed/ mocked/accused him.

Their words were designed not to help, as well: "Why's he so nervous, DeyMeox?"

"Why indeed! Wouldn't you be, if you had that crazy Eilan on your trail?"

"The purple man-?"

"The purple man, Shemsi. By now he's seen what T6 is doing to his world."

197.

198.

"You mean he'll want revenge!"

"Revenge is a word. What that purple man will come thirsting for is blood. Gelor's blood. It makes me chill to think about it."

"Dey-you really think he can find Gelor here!"

"Pos. He'll find him. Us. One way or another, the purple man will find his planet's murderer."

Then, rather than act nervous, they laughed. All the devils of a hundred moons and planets rode their mirth. Gelor wanted to hide his head, plug his ears. He couldn't, and he could not shut out the sound and the truth, the tension. Bleakly, he wondered if he were going mad. He thrust the thought aside. Fear of the man called Jesti wasn't madness. It was facing reality. What bothered Gel Gelor most was not the doom potential of that coming, but the fact that DeyMeox had seen it as soon as he had-or sooner. Her brain, her mind-why had he let his ego lure him into using her? From the start she'd had him on the hip. A victim, not a victor.

He didn't dare let himself think too much about that. Jesti would come. That was what was important. Gelor was chilled, far colder than the room's temp warranted. He sank heavily into a chair.

He sat there motionless for forty minutes.

And he knew why. Fear. Fear, too long extended, had frayed him down into the near-paralysis of panic, of depression.

He could not afford that. That way lay death, and he didn't need to die. He would have the wealth he'd won from CongCorp. He had this place, and weapons. He had the two women as hostages and to help him, however reluctantly. He had life itself-and above all I have my brain. If only he could muster the energy and will to use it.

He did. With an effort, he heaved himself up and went back into the great hall/workroom.

Silently DeyMeox and Shemsi watched him from where they stood locked in the grasp of the droid-frame. He had the feeling they were smiling, both of them, ever so slyly. He smiled too-openly. Striding across the chamber, he drove a 199.

fist into the crober's belly. She doubled over, gagging and gasping.

Gelor turned to Shemsi. "Your turn."

She cringed. Her free arm came up to shield her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"You mean you'd rather have it another time?" Gelor grinned. "My dear, it's your lucky day. What I need at the moment is an andrist. If you would care to put your skills to use . . ." He let the sentence trail off. Already Shemsi's lips were parting and her eyes widening.

"Oh yes, master. Yes, yes. I'm yours to command. You know that.

"Master." Gelor liked that. A little of his depression lifted. A fraction of his panic ebbed. "What I want is for you to rework my dupladroid. If that is within your skill?"

The affront was deliberate: questioning her ability. She could brook no question as to her wizardry at her craft, and he knew it.