Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive (3 page)

At least no one had done so until the Kromads, a nocturnal feathered race with an interest in the vaguer reaches of theoretical physics, finally cornered the bashful tachyon. In an experiment of remarkable elegance they fractionally slowed up a number of the particles which then collided - and blew up their sun. After which disaster no one, except the Argolin, was prepared to mess around with tachyonics any more.

'Perhaps if there was a programme of investment in the Leisure Hive?' suggested Morix.

Brock shook his head. 'Where would you get the money?' he demanded.

'There are bankers on Ygros-lO,' said Morix with obvious distaste. The aristocratic Argolin had always despised those who dealt in mere money. 'You yourself represent various investment groups.'

Brock sighed. 'Tell me,' he asked, 'how can I possibly recommend to any banker or any of my clients that they should invest in a decaying enterprise which is on its last legs?'

But Pangol had heard enough. The Terran upstart had dared to cast aspersions on the glory of Argolis. Angrily he crossed the room and turned off the hologram. Suddenly in mid sentence the figure of the Terran accountant faded from view.

The other Argolin smiled approvingly at each other. There was a time, not too long ago, when at the slightest sign of contempt on the part of any foreigner, Terran or whoever, they could have spitted the offending churl on the end-of their electronic lances. But these days were gone, more's the pity.

Morix shook his head. 'That was discourteous, Pangol,' he protested. There must be no more aggression on Argolis.'

He glanced uneasily up at an ancient helmet that hung on the wall... an ancient Argolin tournament helmet and a lasting symbol of the ferocious Argolin past. It was the Helmet of Theron, the helmet which the captain of the first great Argolin expedition to the stars had worn in some of his most famous battles. Morix feared the Argolin past. It had brought his people to the very edge of destruction. It might destroy them yet.

He looked sadly at Pangol. There the old Argolin spirit still burned fiercely.

There was nothing more boring, thought the young visi-journalist, than waiting in Old Delphi galacto-port for something to happen. Some story to break. Anything. It didn't matter what. Just so long as it was newsworthy. All it needed was some celebrity to breeze through on his, her or its way to - where? That was the trouble. No celebrity ever visited Terra any more.

'That's the problem with Earth these days,' his companion, the oldest visi-journalist on Terran duty, observed with a yawn. 'Nothing ever happens here. Earth's become the Switzerland of the galaxy. A journalistic dead end. The elephants' graveyard. The place where they send old visi-journalists to die.'

The younger man yawned too. He had heard it all before: yesterday to be precise and no doubt he would hear it again tomorrow. The old visi-journalist was nothing if not predictable. Hence no doubt his appointment to Terra, after a lifetime spent covering non-stories in every crummy planet in the galaxy.

'Has it ever occurred to you,' asked the young journalist, 'that we may actually be seeing news stories all around us? Here and now. And we can't recognize them because we've lost the talent to see news when it happens.

'Take her,' he went on, pointing to one of the passengers who had just entered the departure lounge.

The passenger in question was a woman, beautiful, elegant, wearing flowing orange robes and an extraordinary coiffeur. Her hair was piled up on her head in a smooth cone and glittered with jewels. She carried a small black globe which was attached to her wrist by a silver chain.

'You don't see many Argolin here, do you? Not surprising really. There can't be that many of them left.'

The older journalist didn't answer. His almost atrophied news sense was beginning to twitch like a sleeping spaniel.

'I wonder who she is.'

'Mena. The Consort of the Heresiarch of Argolis.'

'I went to Argolis once when I was a kid. First of the Leisure Planets. Very colourful as I recall—'

But the old journalist was no longer listening. He had gone over to speak to his friend who was a booking clerk. The young journalist joined him.

'She arrived here about three weeks ago,' the booking clerk was saying.

'One of your regulars?'

'Never seen her before,' replied the clerk.

'Who's the fellow with her?' asked the young journalist. They turned and looked at the Terran who was seeing her off.

'Name of Hardin,' said the clerk, checking his booking list. 'He's booked on the next flight.'

'To Argolis?'

The clerk nodded.

'Wonder why he's not travelling with her,' remarked the young journalist.

His colleague was trying to place the Terran. He had seen him somewhere before. Then it came to him: 'Particle engineer. Spoke at a scientific congress I covered about two years ago. Gave a paper on - what the devil was it now? - "Environmental Instability: the Problems of Tachyon Technology".

'The things you remember,' said the young journalist with a laugh. I've never met anyone with a brain packed with so much useless information. Tachyon technology, indeed: that's hardly galaxy-shattering news. No wonder the network posted you to Terra if that was your idea of a scoop.'

But the spaniel refused to lie down.

'Why aren't they travelling together?' demanded the old journalist. 'Something odd there.'

'Maybe she doesn't want to listen to any more boring old lectures on Environmental Instability or whatever it was during her trip home.'

The old journalist acknowledged the justice of the remark. It hadn't been exactly a scintillating conference, he recalled. Even amidst a desert of technical gobbledegook the lecture in question had seemed particularly opaque. He remembered that the network had not used one of the stories he had filed from the conference. When
had
they last used one of his stories?

'What do you think?' he asked the booking clerk.

'The chap's probably just off to Argolis to fix their tachyon generator,' replied the latter. 'You know what the Argolin are like. Proud as princes. They wouldn't want to travel with the hired help.'

The spaniel gave a last twitch and went back to sleep: the old journalist shrugged. Oh, well, he thought, it was probably nothing.

Just then a silver box the size of a packing case complete with an array of sensors entered the departure lounge. It hovered an inch or two off the floor and moved purposefully in the direction of the Extra-Terrestrial Travellers' Bar. The case was a mobile environment, provided by the hyperspace lines for use by creatures for whom Terra's atmosphere was poisonous. The box could be steered by its occupant and a variety of translating devices enabled the traveller to communicate his, her or its wishes in any hyperspace port of the galaxy.

'Know who that is?' demanded the young journalist, gathering his mini-cam and recording and translating gear.

The old journalist shook his head-He found it increasingly difficult to keep track of Off-World celebrities.

'One of the mud dancers from Hesperus-2. They came sixth in the last intergalactic final. Come on,' he said. 'Ought to be a story there/

But there wasn't. At least the network didn't think so.

Later, over a glass of synthetic Scotch, the older journalist remembered why he had been curious about the particle engineer and the Argolin woman. After all, why should the Argolin need an expert on environmental instability when, as everyone knew, they had a perfectly good tachyon generator?

That morning in his bare, cell-like room Morix, Heresiarch of Argolis, had had his first seizure. A fit of coughing that left him grey and gasping for breath. He realized the significance of the attack. He had even been half expecting it. Now it had come he would face death quietly and with dignity, like a true Argolin knight. But first there were duties still to perform.

Too weak to stand, he summoned the medical guides to bring a hover litter. The two orderlies laid him on the litter and bore him to the boardroom where they sat him in his chair.

At his command they pressed a button on the desk console. A blank area of the boardroom wall slid back to reveal a view of the Argolin landscape. Not the landscape as it was today-cold, jewelled, glittering, lit by the refracted colours of a million rainbows. But the landscape of Argolis as it had been before the Foamasi War. The land was green and lush, with rolling hills and dense woods where once Argolin knights had hunted. Flowers grew in profusion. There was an abundance of fruit. The air was perfumed and sweet.

Pangol entered the room, but Morix did not hear him. He was lost in contemplation of the past beauty of the planet.

Morix's breath rattled in his throat. 'There must gave been a great madness in our race,' he whispered, 'to have allowed all this to be destroyed/

Pangol was not impressed. 'The Foamasi struck when we were not prepared,' he said.

'We both struck together,' declared Morix. 'I should know, I commanded one of the great hyperspace war galleys. I remember I was astonished to discover a race that reacted in battle as swiftly as the Argolin. I had barely ordered the crew of my war galley to fire the missiles, when I heard, over the hyperspace link-up, a Foamasi captain give the identical command,'

Morix shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'We were both equally guilty.'

Another fit of coughing overtook him. He lay helpless in his chair, unable to move. One of the orderlies wiped his brow. Morix nodded his thanks. He seemed to be ageing before their eyes.

The screen on the desk console flickered into life, revealing the face of the guide who was in charge of welcoming the shuttle arrivals.

'Heresiarch, a Terran has just arrived off the shuttle and begs audience—'

'I don't beg a damn thing!' snapped a familiar Terran voice. 'I just want to see Morix. Tell the Chairman of this Leisure Planet that it's urgent. I've no time to waste on Argolin ceremony.'

'His name is Brock,' explained the guide.

Pangol reacted angrily to the name. 'Come to sneer at us no doubt,' he said. 'There was a time when a mere Terran would have been flogged for such temerity.'

Morix silenced the younger man with a feeble motion of his hand. 'Send him to me,' he whispered.

Pangol gazed fondly at the ancient duelling helmet that hung on the wall. The Helmet of Theron the Great. If Theron had only discovered Terra on his first space voyage, he thought, he would have left that miserable planet and everyone on it barbecued to a crisp. Then there would have been no Brock to insult the Argolin now.

Morix motioned to the orderlies to press the button that controlled the wall panel. He watched the ancient landscape of Argolis vanish behind the white section of wall.

Brock threw open the door and burst into the room. He was a thick-set, dark-haired man who burned with a restless energy the others could feel. It was: like standing close to a noisy engine: you felt the valve settings needed adjustment. He was accompanied by a gaunt Terran who carried a briefcase and offered nothing by way of greeting.

'Mr Chairman,' said Brock genially, 'and my dear Pangol, after ail these years of dealing with you via the telecommunicator, here I am at last in the all-too-solid flesh,' He patted his slight paunch and laughed. He slapped Pangol on the shoulder and then lumbered over to shake Morix by the hand. He stopped in his tracks, aghast at the sight of the figure in the chair. Could this grey, waxen, shrunken creature be Morix, last of the Heresiarchs, Chairman of the Leisure Planet Argolis Inc.? It 'Morix?' he asked questioningly.

With, agonizing slowness the figure inclined his head.

Brock turned to Pangol for explanation. The latter replied bitterly: 'Hard to recognize, isn't he?'

'Well, I—' The Terran spread his hands, lost for a moment for words. 'What's the matter with him? Is he ill? Is there anything I can do?'

'He's dying,' said Pangol brutally. 'Take a good: look. Outsiders never get the chance to see it. It's our secret The way the Argolin die. The way we all die on this planet.'

'I don't understand.'

'It's because of the Foamasi,' explained Pangol. 'The radiation from their missiles affected our metabolic rate, slowing it for long periods of time. For years we don't appear to age at all. It's as if we were kept under glass. The radiation actually preserves our bodies - until what we call the Twilight Time.' Pangol grinned wolfishly. Then suddenly some metabolic key is tripped -and the whole ageing process begins. It speeds up. In a few hours, a few days at most, our bodies age fifty or sixty years. An Argolin can be fit and well one minute, and the next he has become a shell, a skeleton ravaged by the years.'

With a great effort Morix spoke: 'Forgive Pangol, my dear Brock. He knows I have only a little time to live. He is angry. But there is no reason to be. Death, when it comes to the Argolin, strikes swiftly.'

Brock shook his head. 'I didn't know,' he said.

'No one knows,' snapped Pangol. 'We don't broadcast the fact. Long ago the Argolin Council decided to keep it a secret. They decided it might be bad for the Leisure Planet business. Might put the holiday makers off if they knew that their charming guides carried a biological time bomb around inside them.'

'If I had known, I would never have come—' Brock glanced uneasily at Klout, his lawyer.

'Why did you come here?' asked Morix. 'In the past we've always conducted our business by telecommunicator. And why bring a lawyer with you?'

He glanced suspiciously, at the gaunt silent figure who stood beside the accountant.

'Because I thought we might need one.'

'Why?'

Brock sighed. It was going to be hard; harder than he had thought. 'Since I spoke to you, there has been an offer,' he said.

An offer? From whom?'

'From a group with 30 trillion galactic credits to invest.'

A rare smile lit up Morix's drawn features. 'They want to invest in the Leisure Hive?' he asked.

Brock shook his head. 'Not exactly, Mr Chairman,' he said. 'They want to buy Argolis. The whole planet. Lock, stock and radioactive barrel.'