The Five Gold Bands (7 page)

Outer Slett Field lay behind the warehouses and packing sheds which lined the main field. It was a wide irregular space, undeveloped, used by private owners, small traders. There was no control tower, no radar beam, and when Paddy and Fay climbed out into the warm dusk no eye turned to look after them.

Paddy took a few steps, turned to watch Fay walking toward him—slowly as if she were wearing a heavy knapsack. He grinned.

“Bed will be the finest thing you ever felt, young lady. Your knees will be like oiled hinges and your feet will ache as if they’d been trod by a horse. But in a day or so you’ll not notice so much. And if you stayed here a while your neck would swell and your sons would grow up short and tough and rubbery and your grandsons would be Hunks as coarse and ugly as the best of ’em.”

Fay sniffed. “Not if I have the picking, as I intend, of their father.” She stared around the luminous blue-green sky. “Where’s the town from here, Mr. Baedeker?”

Paddy gestured toward a grove of low heavy-trunked trees at the edge of the field. “If memory serves me there’s a tube station in this direction. It’ll take us to the heart of the town.”

Painfully they walked to the concrete ramp which led down to a pair of metal doors. Paddy pressed twice. A moment later the doors snapped back and they entered a little car with two seats.

The doors slid shut, there was a sense of rapid motion. A moment later the doors opened to the sounds of the city. Fay looked at Paddy. “Free? Doesn’t someone make us pay?”

Paddy said, “All the utilities were put in by the Langtry family. They’re so wealthy that they don’t need our miserly coins.
Noblesse oblige
. We’re on the biggest family estate in the universe.”

They stepped out on a broad street lined with low heavy buildings, all with plate-glass fronts on the lower levels. Fay read a legend on the portico of a long arcade. “‘Slettevold Inn’—that sounds good. Let’s get ourselves a bath and some fresh food.”

“
Hah!
” Paddy laughed. “That’s not for the likes of us, young lady. We’re Earthers. They’d not let us past the doors.”

Fay stared incredulously. “Do you mean that they wouldn’t serve us merely because we’re—”

Paddy nodded. “That’s right. The Earther keeps his place on Badau.”

Fay turned away. “I’m too tired to argue. Let’s go to the Earther hotel.”

The Kamborogian Arrowhead? The desk-clerk, a sour-visaged Badau, told them it was a resort on the shores of the Iath Lake. To Fay’s diffident inquiry he smirked wryly.

“Earthers at the Kamborogian? They’d as soon serve a run of lard-legs. You must understand the quality of Badau take their pleasure at the Kamborogian. It’s where the Son himself goes. Everything must be quiet and elegant.”

Paddy nodded. “Ah—then we miserable Earthers would be out of place indeed.”

Fay asked desperately, “Don’t Earthers go there at all?”

“Only as scullions or entertainers. The Ryeville Ramblers, a trio of acrobats, just returned from an engagement and were well satisfied with their treatment.”

“Hmm.” Paddy rubbed his chin. “How does one get these engagements?”

The clerk turned away. “Oh—through the amusement syndic, I suppose.”

Paddy turned to Fay. “Now young lady, can you dance, sing, mimic, eat fire or turn handsprings?”

Fay said, “I’m no acrobat, not in this gravity. I suppose I could play a comb or recite Gunga Din with gestures.”

“I’m a magician,” said Paddy. “I perform card tricks that’ll mystify them, especially if they’re drunk as they’re apt to be. We’ll be the finest act ever brought on the floor. At least we’ll be allowed on the premises.”

The Kamborogian Arrowhead was a block of concrete five stories high and a quarter mile long, ornamented with a profusion of gold quincunxes, quatrefoils, fleurs-de-lis. Alternate sections were stained pink and light green and the overhanging pediment was light blue.

Iath Lake, rippling, twinkling very swiftly to the strong gravity, half encircled the building and the formal gardens. Beyond, the land fell away in a vast sweep of rolling turf up to a mile-high cliff, running horizon to horizon.

The air of wealth and opulence clung to the hotel. It glistened with crystal panes and bright metal. The canopies glowed like satin. Oval shell-like pleasure boats rode the lake, moving under small square sails.

Paddy and Fay discreetly went to the rear, entered a waiting room, stated their business to a tired-looking Asmasian porter, who brought them to the Chief Steward in a brightly lit office.

The Chief Steward was short and fat even for a Badau. His jowls hung like the wattles on a chicken. His eyes were deep-set and clever.

Paddy said, “The gentleman at the Amusement Syndicate sent us up here to see you. We’re Black and Black, Entertainers Extraordinary.”

The steward looked them up, down, ran his eyes over Fay’s figure. Like some of the other planetary races the Badaus found Earther women attractive. “Did not the Syndic give you a card for me?”

“Ah, we lost it,” said Paddy. “The wind blew it clean out of my hands and away in a twinkling. However the Syndic was much pleased with us and said to say a kind word to you for him.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a magician,” said Paddy. “I’m an accomplished prestidigitator and objects come and go at my command. I change water into purple vapor and then to a swarm of frogs and they melt into a big flash of light. But my specialty is with the cards. I make the ace of spades jump out of the deck and bow from the waist, and there’s a trick I know with the kings and queens that’ll have ’em giggling for months to come.

“Then there’s my wife here. She’s the cleverest thing alive. She’s great. She’ll have them agog with their eyes so you could knock them off with sticks. Sure, they’ll clap your back for giving them such rare enjoyment.”

The steward blinked. “Well—the listing is complete. I’ll give you a try and if you’re as good as you say I’ll let another team go that’s not doing so well.”

“Good,” said Paddy. “A chance is all we want. We’ll be sleeping in the hotel tonight then?”

“Yes, this way. I’ll show you to the entertainers’ barracks. I’ll have to separate you.”

“Ah, no!” cried Paddy.

“Sorry—it’s the rules of the establishment.”

Paddy found himself in a long hall, lined with tubs full of sleep-foam and small closets opposite. The steward assigned him a section and said, “You will be fed from a chow cart in half an hour. When it’s time for your act, about the fourteenth phase, you will be summoned.

“Until then, you can rest or rehearse as you wish. The practise room is through that door. There is to be no loud talking, no quarrelling, no alcohol or narcotics. Under no circumstances are Earthers permitted to wander on the grounds.”

“Faith,” muttered Paddy, “I hope you’ll let me use the bathroom.”

“What’s that? What’s that?”

“I was inquiring about my wife,” said Paddy smoothly. “When do I see her?”

“The recreation hall is open tomorrow. Until then she’ll be well enough.” He departed, a little ball of hard brown flesh in an embroidered surcoat.

Paddy looked up and down the barracks. A few of the sleeping tubs held the bodies of low-caste Shauls, Asmasians, Canopes, the long-limbed Hepetanthroids of New Hellas, a few other Earthers.

In the tub next to him lay a Labirite from Deneb Ten, a small mottled anthropoid with arms like lengths of cable and flabby hands. He was watching Paddy with blind-looking eyes.

“What’s your act, Earther?” he asked in the Badaic language.

“I’m a magician,” replied Paddy morosely. “A good one, it is to be presumed?”

“The best. Flames—lore of the little folk…” Paddy’s voice died to a mutter.

“You’d better be good,” said the Labirite. “A night or so ago they saw through a magician’s tricks and they threw food at him.”

Paddy raised his eyebrows. “Are they then so finicky, these Hunks?”

The Labirite said, “Indeed they are. Never forget, here is the cream of Badau, only the Langtry clan and maybe one or two of the highest lords otherwise. There’s a convention on now and they’re more than usually excitable, vehement, abrupt. And if they chose to stick you with one of their poniards no one would think twice about it.”

“Whisht, whisht!” muttered Paddy. “And me with my cat’s cradle tricks.” Aloud he said, “And where might Suite Ten be?”

The Labirite swivelled his prunelike eyes away. “I don’t know. One of the porters will tell you. If it’s stealing you plan don’t get caught.”

“Indeed, no stealing,” said Paddy. “In Suite Ten is an old friend I’m looking for.”

The Labirite stared. “One of the Badau Langtrys friend to an Earther? Well, I suppose stranger things have happened. Did you save his life?”

Paddy made an absent-minded answer, lay back thinking. Any entrance to Suite 10 must be made very soon, because after one performance there would be no further opportunity. He pictured himself dodging food scraps, ejected from the hotel with curses and insults.

He rose to his feet, set off down the hall. He turned into a corridor with stone walls like a dungeon, lit by a light tube along the top. He came to an open archway, looked through, saw a counter, a wicket, stores of material and behind them a Canope clerk.

Paddy advanced with a swagger and said, “I’m the new porter. The Chief Steward told me to get my outfit here.”

The Canope clerk wheezed, rose to his feet, reached into a bin, tossed a white bumper on the counter, opened a drawer, pulled out white gloves and a masklike inhaler. “They don’t like the air we breath, Earther. Wear the mask over your mouth and nose at all times. Here’s your cap, your sandals, your cleaning kit. Good luck and step lively.”

“Indeed I will and I’m forever grateful to you. Where may Suite Ten be found?”

“Suite Ten? The steward assigns you to Suite Ten on your first day? Strange. That’s the Son’s private library and very hoity-toity too. Go out the door there, turn to the right along the corridor with the rose quartz floor and so on till you come to a statue of the Badau Langtry.

“If there’s anyone within do not enter, because they’re mighty secret and irascible at this time and they don’t like Earthers. For some reason they’re merciless to the Earthers.”

I could tell you why, thought Paddy. He hastily donned the porter’s garments, set off down the corridor.

A narrow door took him from dingy stone into a world of exquisite delicacy and sparkle. The Badaus were clever craftsmen with a love of intricate design and the great hall was walled with a mosaic of rare minerals—jade, lapis, sparkling yellow wulfenite, red chert, jasper, carnelian. The floor was slabbed with bands of rose quartz and an oily black obsidian.

He passed a line of arches opening into a high lobby swimming in a greenish-yellow light. Sitting among clumps of vegetation were groups of the Badaus, conversing, sipping wine or inhaling stimulating confections from tubes.

Paddy moved along with as little ostentation as possible and the gravity helped provide him with a servile crouch. Ahead he saw a statue, a Badau in an heroic posture.

“Ha,” said Paddy angrily, “they don’t even admit any more that Sam Langtry was an Earther. Now look at Sam Langtry’s own son, as true an Earther as Paddy Blackthorne himself, and look how they show him, a scrounched-up wart of a Badau.”

Beside the statue was a high door of carved rosewood. Paddy glanced quickly up and down the hall—no one was close. He put his ear to the door—no sound. He stretched out his hand to the latch-button. Behind came a scrape and the door snapped back. Paddy bowed, sidled to one side, stooped, pretended to be picking up a spot of dust.

The Badau stepped out, paused, turned a long glance down at Paddy. Another followed him out of the room.

“Spies, spies everywhere,” said the first in a bitter voice. “A man can hardly go for a sail on the lake without some Earther pushing his head up from the water.” He turned away. Paddy sighed, watched the broad muscular back with a limp feeling in his knees.

The Badau’s voice came back to him. “They’re like rodents. Everywhere. Indefatigable. To think that one of them… If there were only means to apprehend—” His voice became an indistinct mutter.

Paddy grimaced, eased the muscles at the corner of his mouth, pushed open the door. The first chamber of Suite 10 was empty. It was a large library, with shelves of books running up the walls. A great oval table occupied the center of the room and at the end stood a small screen and file for microfilm. An arch opened into chambers beyond but here was his destination.

He glanced around the walls. Books, books, books—thousands of them, with a subtle air of disuse. He could not inspect each one separately. Where was the catalogue? There, a small case beside the microfilm viewer. He pulled it open, fumbled through his mind for the Badaic alphabet.

The Foolish Man’s Inclination.
There it was. Block Five, Shelf Twelve.

Paddy looked along the shelves, found Block Five in a far corner. Shelf Twelve was at the top.

How to get up? He spied a ladder running on a bronze track across the room, and pushed it around to Block Five. He climbed up to Shelf Twelve, ran his eye down the titles.

The Complete Philosophy of Kobame Biankul… Archaeological Studies at Zabmir… Relation of Planetary Environment to Housing Modes … A Scientist Looks at Aquilan Disk-worms… Neophasm… Botanical Dictionary… The Foolish Man’s Inclination.

Paddy drew it from its place, tucked it in the pouch which held his cleaning equipment. A voice from below said, “Porter. Come down here.”

The words were like chisels. Paddy nearly fell from the ladder, bumped his head on the shelf as he looked down. The same two Badaus that had surprised him at the door stood looking up. He noticed on the chest of the foremost the medallion of a Councillor to the Son.

“Porter. Come down here.”

Paddy descended the ladder. “Yes indeed, your lordship.” The small yellow eyes bored into his. “What were you doing up there?”

“Dusting the books, your lordship.”

“There’s no dust here. These books are sacred, forbidden to your touch.”

“Well, I thought I’d better make sure. I didn’t want your lordships sneezing for my neglect.”

“What book did you take from the shelf?”

“Book, sir?”

“Give it to me.”

Paddy twitched, leaned forward, leaned back. Two Badaus —short but burly, hardened to the gravity of the planet, while he was under the strain of the added weight. They could handle him as easily as he might best a six-year-old child.

“Oh, the book! Well, your lordships, it was just a bit of reading for my spare time. Thanking you for your attention, but I’d better be about my duties or the steward will be calling me to account.”

Paddy started to sidle away. Two arms seized him, the book was taken from his pouch.

The Badau glanced at the title. “‘The Foolish Man’s Inclination’—well-selected, I must say. Hmm.” He looked back at Paddy. “Strange interests for a porter. And you can read Badaic?”

“It was a whim of the moment, sir, and I but meant to look at the pictures.”

The second Badau said, “Better call Intelligence, have them put the man through investigation.”

The Councillor hesitated. “They’re occupied with that off-planet business, all working for the reward.” He grunted. “Now it’s a million marks a year for life, amnesty for all crimes past and future. If it gets much better I’ll be out looking for the fellow myself.”

He released Paddy. “I suppose an Earther stealing a book is no world-shaking event.”

The Councillor shoved Paddy roughly toward the door. “See that you mind your duties.”

Paddy said, “Please may I have the book, your lordship?”

The Badau’s face became rigid with sudden rage, Paddy ran off as nimbly as the gravity would permit. As he left the room he caught a glimpse of the Badau glancing at the book curiously.

In fury, fear, frustration, Paddy returned to the servants’ quarters. He doffed the porter’s garb, found his way to the barracks. The Chief Steward was standing by his sleep-tub.

“So
there
you are! This way, hurry! There’s been an opening and I’ll put you on now. Get your equipment.”

“Just a deck of cards,” said Paddy wearily. How would he tell Fay? She, who depended on his resource and cleverness… They must leave. If the Councillor came to page 100 he’d call for the Chief Steward, and inquire about the strangely literate porter.

Paddy said to the Steward, “I think I’d better see my wife a moment.”