The Invaders Plan (42 page)

Heller zipped the airbus down like he rode a crane hook. I was blinded by the writhing lights and don't know how he did it but the airbus landed as soft as the falling feather of a songbird squarely in the center of the club's vehicle escalator. The girls danced out and I would have followed them in but saw that Heller was still standing there on the ramp. He was watching the airbus and kept on watching it until he saw exactly where the escalator side arm thrust it. He took note of the position and then turned to the door.

The Artistic Club front was much like the other club fronts facing the square – all rippling lights and letters that threw colored sparks. The girls had fled off to the ladies room to recheck their masks the way girls will. Right in the entrance stood some club floorman in a white evening suit. He had his hand slightly out. I knew what was required. He wanted a five-credit note to escort us to one of the better tables! And, completely aside from a five-credit note, I had no notes at all other than these counterfeits! I stopped walking forward right there!

Heller said, "I'm going to the men's room to adjust my mask." And there I stood facing the wild animal – which I conceived this floorman to be – barehanded!

It was not the first hair-raiser of that evening!

Then, for some reason I did not understand, another floorman – the manager? – was beckoning to me from deeper within the club and I hastened on by the itching palm.

Heller was there in a moment and presently the girls came out and the manager? led us into the main club.

The evening was just beginning but most of the tables were already full. Masks, masks, masks, all types and shapes and kinds, a blur of hidden identities.

A blare of loud music!

Boots, boots, boots. Every color of boot anyone ever heard of and the underfloor circulating lights rippled and splashed upon them.

Tables, tables, tables. The manager led us to one, slightly raised, against a wall. I quickly checked. It was also near an emergency exit.

We sat down and looked across the club. There was a bandstand and stage over there. And to the right was an open dance floor flanked at the back by drop curtains.

A balladess, not a very good one, was standing in front of the band, black-faced, red-teared and wailing her heart out.

I wondered where the club prices were posted. Even though I couldn't pay them, I still would like to know. Then I saw that they were under the table-face. One pushed a button to light the table-face up but even with the button unpushed one could see the letters and figures. I got an impression of five– and ten-credit items! Columns of them! Nothing less than five or ten credits a person an item in this place? Ow!

The balladess was finished and there was a spattering of applause. She went back to her table and party.

A man stood up and marched out onto the dance floor. He took some hoops out of his evening suit, appeared to light them and then began to juggle them. One would have thought he would have burned his hands but it was just simulated fire.

"This is why they call it the Artistic Club," Heller was telling the Countess. "Everybody who comes here must do an act. It goes on all night."

"Don't some of them get stage fright?" I said.

"The management thought of that," said Heller. "They keep count and if any single person at a table backs out, the bill for the whole table is doubled!"

"What a funny idea," said the Countess. And she was laughing. I wasn't! Even though I couldn't pay the bill in the first place, the thought of doubling horrified me.

"I'm hungry," said Hightee.

And as host I had to ask politely, "What would you like?" Heller beckoned over a yellow-man waiter. He pushed the table button and the tabletop lit up, amazingly with the menu vertical and straight before each guest.

I felt like I was dying when I saw all those five– and ten-credit items! I made my throat behave. "Order away," I said gaily. It sounded more like a funeral dirge.

They all decided to have mountain springers – the small game animal imported from Chimpton, a whole planet away. Prohibitive! Ten credits a plate!

After solemn deliberation, they elected to have red bubblebrew. At ten credits the canister!

Then they decided on flaming icecake for dessert! At fifteen credits each!

My lightning fast ability to calculate put it at one hundred and five credits!

The management threw in toasted drybuns for nothing. How nice of them! They must be the most expensive club on Voltar!

I let them order me the same. I might as well be cashiered or executed on a full stomach. For my choice was either to use my identoplate and be court-martialled or use the counterfeit money I carried and be executed!

The mountain springer came and I picked at it, expecting perhaps to find diamonds imbedded in it.

Heller whispered to me, "Don't look so worried. It'll be all right. Have a good time. Don't spoil it for the girls." A lot
he
knew! This (bleeping) party of mine was going to ruin me. But then I remembered that a lot of other officers, faced with promotion parties, had had to starve a month or two. I drank my canister of red bubblebrew. But none of that made me feel any better.

They chattered and joked and seemed to enjoy the dinner immensely. I did eat. I was hungry.

When the last flicker of icecake fire had disappeared down their throats, Heller signalled a hovering yellow-man and ordered another round of red bubblebrew! That made it one hundred and eighty credits!

They drank to clear skies and bright stars. They drank to success and more promotions. They drank to a not-thinly-veiled "mission." They drank to Hightee's next play.

Heller ordered another round of red bubblebrew! Two hundred and twenty credits!

They all sat back now, watching the other guests perform. Some were good, some were bad, some got a little applause, some got quite a bit.

I had just settled into a kind of stupor. The inevitability of my two choices weighed me down. It couldn't be any worse.

And then it was!

A light was flash-flash-flashing at our table. Hightee poked me in the shoulder. "You're first from this table."

"Me?"

"Of course," said Hightee with a smile. "And you'd better put on a good act!" She laughed. "If you don't perform, they double the bill!" The whole table thought this screamingly funny. It must have been the red bubblebrew! To me it was sheer tragedy.

I nervously rose to my feet to go out and be slaughtered by the mob.

I had been impelled into this action by the threat of a doubled bill. Three-quarters of the way to the stage, I realized that it was a double of something I couldn't pay the single of. What was I doing here?

Bravery in the face of mobs is something I do not understand. How an actor or singer or dancer can actually stand up there
alone
and look at an audience that is looking at him is quite beyond my comprehension.

On the stage, I turned to look. A huge, glaring spotlight was practically putting my eyes out. Adrift and disembodied were the masks, masks, masks, all pointed in my direction. And below it were the boots, boots, boots, stamping in a colored rippling haze of lights, ready, I was sure, to kick the daylights out of me.

What if they all rushed at me at once and started mangling me?

In other words, I had stage fright.

It had been half-formed in my mind that I would recite a poem. When I was a child, I had been taught some poems. "The Brave Hec at the Battle of the Blim" was one of them I had been praised for when I was six. I opened my mouth. For the life of me I couldn't think of the first line!

Hastily, I reviewed, all in a flash, any anecdotes I knew. There was one about two Apparatus agents who each thought the other one was a female until they wound up in bed. I opened my mouth to start to tell it.

Ulp, the last thing I could mention here was the Apparatus!

My knees shook. The audience was getting restive. The huge spotlight glared pitilessly. My buck-toothed Demon mask seemed to be melting.

Abruptly, I had an inspiration. Naturally, a hunter of songbirds uses their calls. I was pretty good at it. I could lure them within a few feet before I shot them.

In a voice I intended to sound bold, but which came out quivering, I said, "The mountain thriller!" My mouth was awfully dry. But I got my lips pursed. I actually got the birdcall going.

Silence from the audience.

"The meadow warbler!" I said. And I gave the call of that bird.

Silence from the audience.

"The marsh hen!" I said. And I gave the somewhat raucous squawk of the marsh hen.

Silence from the audience. Not even a patter of applause. Nothing!

I thought furiously. I could not remember any more calls. Either the audience thought there were more or were waiting for me to do handstands or backflips or something.

Suddenly their silence made me very cross. I glared at them. I said, accusatively, "Well, the birds like it!" There was an instant
storm
of laughter! They pounded their boots, they held their sides. They laughed and laughed and laughed!

I scuttled back to our table. The audience was still laughing. Hightee patted my sleeve, "I thought you were very brave." The next person on had a sonic-light drum and juggled it while playing it. When he got through, the audience shouted at him, "Did the birds like it?" There were screams of laughter.

A girl, a singer, was on next and when she finished, the audience again called out, "Did the birds like it?" And more screams of laughter.

A man who rolled a barrel with his feet finished and the audience also asked him, "Did the birds like it?"

"You were a hit," said Hightee.

I began to realize I must have been and was even starting to feel cocky. A new round of bubblebrew didn't even make me wince.

But ah, how short-lived are the infrequent moments of happiness in life. I tipped my head back to drink and I saw it!

A press balcony!

It was up above the crowd, jutting out into the room. There were three reporters there and, oh Gods, a Home-view camera crew!

Hightee followed my riveted stare. "Oh," she said, shrugging it off, "they cover this club a lot. They are spotting talent, looking for something new. They also pick up what we call filler time: they never use it unless the event day has been totally dead." She laughed, "I think the newssheets just hang around here so they won't have to go to work!" Any cheer I had been feeling was gone. If there is anything detested in the Apparatus, it is reporters and if there is anything more detested than that, it is reporters with cameras! Lombar was quite violent on the subject. "The victims have no right to know," was one of his favorite sayings. His specter seemed to loom closer in the outside dark.

And then the light beam which designated the next performer was on our table again. Hightee shrank back.

Heller touched the Countess on the arm and they rose.

Lightly, they trotted toward the open dance floor, the Countess in her shimmering pale orange and lepertige mask, Heller in a glittering powder blue evening suit and steelman stars huge over his eyes. The spotlight shifted and picked them up.

The Countess held up her hand. To her right there was a serving table. It had tall bubblebrew bottles on it. It was cluttered with frail canisters. These all sat on a big square of white glittercloth. She moved to this rickety display. She took one corner of the cloth. I thought she was going to pull the table over! With a flip of her wrist, she gave an expert yank!

The cloth simply came out from under with a swish. It was dangling in her hand. Not one bottle or canister had even quivered!

The audience must have thought that was the act. They applauded lightly.

But it sure wasn't the act. The Countess called something to the band. The pair had reached the center of the dance floor now. The Countess floated the big square of white glittercloth in the air: it was about a yard from corner to corner, diagonally. She folded it with an expert flip. She stuck one corner of it between Heller's teeth and took the opposite corner in her own. Their faces were now about six inches apart.

The band began a frivolous, folksy tune. Heller and the Countess put their hands behind their backs and with an intricate pattern of footwork, began to dance.

"The Manco Mancho!" said Hightee with delight. She patted her hands together in a little girl's expression of joy. "Watch this," she nudged me. "It's the nursery folk dance of Manco! They would both know it of course!" Each of them biting a corner of the cloth, they gravely executed the geometric steps in perfect unison and time.

Suddenly at the end of a music bar, their teeth dropped a fold in the cloth and their faces were a foot apart. The music continued. But now they weren't following each other's steps. In sweeping foot motions, alternately, one seemed to be kicking the feet out from under the other one but the other one was in the air when the foot passed under. Back and forth.

Hightee was looking a little bewildered. The dance was suddenly much more complex. "That isn't the Manco Mancho!" And indeed, it wasn't. It was the first elementary exercise of foot combat, timed and made to look like a dance! I thought, they better not get too good. That Homeview camera up there is right on them! The last thing we wanted here was an identified Heller, much less the Countess Krak!

There was a patter of applause from the audience. I gritted, fall down or something, blow it, don't get yourselves on Homeview!

At the end of a music phrase, there was a pop. They had let go another corner of their cloth. Still biting it, they were now a yard apart.

Heller must have given her a signal. They went over onto their heads! They each gave a half-turn and were now back to back, still connected by the cloth in their teeth! Upside down, on their heads and hands, they began to beat the soles of each other's feet together in rhythm!