The Moon Moth and Other Stories (14 page)

He turned the air-car east. The Murky Mountains passed below. The party peered from the windows, exclaiming at the marvels of the forbidden landscape.

“How far are the Magnificent Mountains?” asked Ted.

“Not far. Another thousand miles.”

“Why are you hugging the ground?” asked Frobisher Worbeck. “Up in the air, man! Let’s see the countryside!”

Ullward hesitated. Mail was probably asleep. And, in the last analysis, he really had no right to forbid an innocent little—

“Lamster Ullward,” called Runy, “there’s an air-car right behind us.”

The air-car drew up level. Kennes Mail’s blue eyes met Ullward’s across the gap. He motioned Ullward down.

Ullward compressed his mouth, swung the air-car down. From behind him came murmurs of sympathy and outrage.

Below was a dark pine forest; Ullward set down in a pretty little glade. Mail landed nearby, jumped to the ground, signaled to Ullward. The two men walked to the side. The guests murmured together and shook their heads.

Ullward presently returned to the air-car. “Everybody please get in,” he said crisply.

They rose into the air and flew west. “What did the chap have to say for himself?” queried Worbeck.

Ullward chewed at his lips. “Not too much. Wanted to know if I’d lost the way. I told him one or two things. Reached an understanding…” His voice dwindled, then rose in a burst of cheerfulness. “We’ll have a party back at the lodge. What do we care for Mail and his confounded mountains?”

“That’s the spirit, Bruham!” cried Frobisher Worbeck.

Both Ted and Ullward tended bar during the evening. Either one or the other mingled rather more alcohol to rather less esters into the drinks than standard practice recommended. As a result, the party became quite loud and gay. Ullward damned Mail’s interfering habits; Worbeck explored six thousand years of common law in an effort to prove Mail a domineering tyrant; the women giggled; Iugenae and Runy watched cynically, then presently went off to attend to their own affairs.

In the morning, the group slept late. Ullward finally tottered out on the terrace, to be joined one at a time by the others. Runy and Iugenae were missing.

“Young rascals,” groaned Worbeck. “If they’re lost, they’ll have to find their own way back. No search parties for me.”

At noon, Runy and Iugenae returned in Ullward’s air-car.

“Good heavens,” shrieked Ravelin. “Iugenae, come here this instant! Where have you been?”

Juvenal Aquister surveyed Runy sternly. “Have you lost your mind, taking Lamster Ullward’s air-car without his permission?”

“I asked him last night,” Runy declared indignantly. “He said yes, take anything except the volcano because that’s where he slept when his feet got cold, and the swamp because that’s where he dropped his empty containers.”

“Regardless,” said Juvenal in disgust, “you should have had better sense. Where have you been?”

Runy fidgeted. Iugenae said, “Well, we went south for a while, then turned and went east—I think it was east. We thought if we flew low, Lamster Mail wouldn’t see us. So we flew low, through the mountains, and pretty soon we came to an ocean. We went along the beach and came to a house. We landed to see who lived there, but nobody was home.”

Ullward stifled a groan.

“What would anyone want with a pen of birds?” asked Runy.

“Birds? What birds? Where?”

“At the house. There was a pen with a lot of big birds, but they kind of got loose while we were looking at them and all flew away.”

“Anyway,” Iugenae continued briskly, “we decided it was Lamster Mail’s house, so we wrote a note, telling what everybody thinks of him and pinned it to his door.”

Ullward rubbed his forehead. “Is that all?”

“Well, practically all.” Iugenae became diffident. She looked at Runy and the two of them giggled nervously.

“There’s more?” yelled Ullward. “What, in heaven’s name?”

“Nothing very much,” said Iugenae, following a crack in the terrace with her toe. “We put a booby-trap over the door—just a bucket of water. Then we came home.”

The screen buzzer sounded from inside the lodge. Everybody looked at Ullward. Ullward heaved a deep sigh, rose to his feet, went inside.

That very afternoon, the Outer Ring Express packet was due to pass the junction point. Frobisher Worbeck felt sudden and acute qualms of conscience for the neglect his business suffered while he dawdled away hours in idle enjoyment.

“But my dear old chap!” exclaimed Ullward. “Relaxation is good for you!”

True, agreed Frobisher Worbeck, if one could make himself oblivious to the possibility of fiasco through the carelessness of underlings. Much as he deplored the necessity, in spite of his inclination to loiter for weeks, he felt impelled to leave—and not a minute later than that very afternoon.

Others of the group likewise remembered important business which they had to see to, and those remaining felt it would be a shame and an imposition to send up the capsule half-empty and likewise decided to return.

Ullward’s arguments met unyielding walls of obstinacy. Rather glumly, he went down to the capsule to bid his guests farewell. As they climbed through the port, they expressed their parting thanks:

“Bruham, it’s been absolutely marvelous!”

“You’ll never know how we’ve enjoyed this outing, Lamster Ullward!”

“The air, the space, the privacy—I’ll never forget!”

“It was the most, to say the least.”

The port thumped into its socket. Ullward stood back, waving rather uncertainly.

Ted Seehoe reached to press the Active button. Ullward sprang forward, pounded on the port.

“Wait!” he bellowed. “A few things I’ve got to attend to! I’m coming with you!”

“Come in, come in,” said Ullward heartily, opening the door to three of his friends: Coble and his wife Heulia Sansom, and Coble’s young, pretty cousin Landine. “Glad to see you!”

“And we’re glad to come! We’ve heard so much of your wonderful ranch, we’ve been on pins and needles all day!”

“Oh, come now! It’s not so marvelous as all that!”

“Not to you, perhaps—you live here!”

Ullward smiled. “Well, I must say I live here and still like it. Would you like to have lunch, or perhaps you’d prefer to walk around for a few minutes? I’ve just finished making a few changes, but I’m happy to say everything is in order.”

“Can we just take a look?”

“Of course. Come over here. Stand just so. Now—are you ready?”

“Ready.”

Ullward snapped the wall back.

“Ooh!” breathed Landine. “Isn’t it beautiful!”

“The space, the open feeling!”

“Look, a tree! What a wonderful simulation!”

“That’s no simulation,” said Ullward. “That’s a genuine tree!”

“Lamster Ullward, are you telling the truth?”

“I certainly am. I never tell lies to a lovely young lady. Come along, over this way.”

“Lamster Ullward, that cliff is so convincing, it frightens me.”

Ullward grinned. “It’s a good job.” He signaled a halt. “Now—turn around.”

The group turned. They looked out across a great golden savannah, dotted with groves of blue-green trees. A rustic lodge commanded the view, the door being the opening into Ullward’s living room.

The group stood in silent admiration. Then Heulia sighed. “Space. Pure space.”

“I’d swear I was looking miles,” said Coble.

Ullward smiled, a trifle wistfully. “Glad you like my little retreat. Now what about lunch? Genuine algae!”

COUP DE GRÂCE

I

The Hub, a cluster of bubbles in a web of metal, hung in empty space, in that region known to Earthmen as Hither Sagittarius. The owner was Pan Pascoglu, a man short, dark and energetic, almost bald, with restless brown eyes and a thick mustache. A man of ambition, Pascoglu hoped to develop the Hub into a fashionable resort, a glamor-island among the stars—something more than a mere stopover depot and junction point. Working to this end, he added two dozen bright new bubbles—“cottages”, as he called them—around the outer meshes of the Hub, which already resembled the model of an extremely complex molecule.

The cottages were quiet and comfortable; the dining saloon offered an adequate cuisine; a remarkable diversity of company met in the public rooms. Magnus Ridolph found the Hub at once soothing and stimulating. Sitting in the dim dining saloon, the naked stars serving as chandeliers, he contemplated his fellow-guests. At a table to his left, partially obscured by a planting of dendrons, sat four figures. Magnus Ridolph frowned. They ate in utter silence and three of them, at least, hulked over their plates in an uncouth fashion.

“Barbarians,” said Magnus Ridolph, and turned his shoulder. In spite of the mannerless display he was not particularly offended; at the Hub one must expect to mingle with a variety of peoples. Tonight they seemed to range the whole spectrum of evolution, from the boors to his left, across a score of more or less noble civilizations, culminating with—Magnus Ridolph patted his neat white beard with a napkin—himself.

From the corner of his eye he noticed one of the four shapes arise, approach his own table.

“Forgive my intrusion, but I understand that you are Magnus Ridolph.”

Magnus Ridolph acknowledged his identity and the other, without invitation, sat heavily down. Magnus Ridolph wavered between curtness and civility. In the starlight he saw his visitor to be an anthropologist, one Lester Bonfils, who had been pointed out to him earlier. Magnus Ridolph, pleased with his own perspicacity, became civil. The three figures at Bonfils’ table were savages in all reality: palaeolithic inhabitants of S-Cha-6, temporary wards of Bonfils. Their faces were dour, sullen, wary; they seemed disenchanted with such of civilization as they had experienced. They wore metal wristlets and rather heavy metal belts: magnetic pinions. At necessity, Bonfils could instantly immobilize the arms of his charges.

Bonfils himself was a large fair man with thick blond hair, heavy and vaguely flabby. His complexion should have been florid; it was pale. He should have exhaled easy good-fellowship, but he was withdrawn and diffident. His mouth sagged, his nose was pinched; there was no energy to his movements, only a nervous febrility. He leaned forward. “I’m sure you are bored with other people’s troubles, but I need help.”

“At the moment I do not care to accept employment,” said Magnus Ridolph in a definite voice.

Bonfils sat back, looked away, finding not even the strength to protest. The stars glinted on the whites of his eyes; his skin shone the color of cheese. He muttered, “I should have expected no more.”

His expression held such dullness and despair that Magnus Ridolph felt a pang of sympathy. “Out of curiosity—and without committing myself—what is the nature of your difficulty?”

Bonfils laughed briefly—a mournful empty sound. “Basically—my destiny.”

“In that case, I can be of little assistance,” said Magnus Ridolph.

Bonfils laughed again, as hollowly as before. “I use the word ‘destiny’ in the largest sense, to include—” he made a vague gesture “—I don’t know what. I seem predisposed to failure and defeat. I consider myself a man of good-will—yet there is no one with more enemies. I attract them as if I were the most vicious creature alive.”

Magnus Ridolph surveyed Bonfils with a trace of interest. “These enemies, then, have banded together against you?”

“No…at least I think not. I am harassed by a woman. She is busily engaged in killing me.”

“I can give you some rather general advice,” said Magnus Ridolph. “It is this: have nothing more to do with this woman.”

Bonfils spoke in a desperate rush, with a glance over his shoulder toward the palaeolithics. “I had nothing to do with her in the first place! That’s the difficulty! Agreed that I’m a fool; an anthropologist should be careful of such things, but I was absorbed in my work. This took place at the southern tip of Kharesm, on Journey’s End; do you know the place?”

“I have never visited Journey’s End.”

“Some people stopped me on the street—‘We hear you have engaged in intimate relations with our kinswoman!’

“I protested: ‘No, no, that’s not true!’—because naturally, as an anthropologist, I must avoid such things like the plague.”

Magnus Ridolph raised his brows in surprise. “Your profession seems to demand more than monastic detachment.”

Bonfils made his vague gesture; his mind was elsewhere. He turned to inspect his charges; only one remained at the table. Bonfils groaned from the depths of his soul, leapt to his feet—nearly overturning Magnus Ridolph’s table—and plunged away in pursuit.

Magnus Ridolph sighed, and after a moment or two departed the dining saloon. He sauntered the length of the main lobby, but Bonfils was nowhere to be seen. Magnus Ridolph seated himself, ordered a brandy.

The lobby was full. Magnus Ridolph contemplated the other occupants of the room. Where did these various men and women, near-men and near-women, originate? What were their purposes, what had brought them to the Hub? That rotund moon-faced bonze in the stiff red robe, for instance. He was a native of the planet Padme, far across the galaxy: why had he ventured so far from home? And the tall angular man whose narrow shaved skull carried a fantastic set of tantalum ornaments: a Lord of the Dacca. Exiled? In pursuit of an enemy? On some mad crusade? And the anthrope from the planet Hecate sitting by himself: a walking argument to support the theory of parallel evolution. His outward semblance caricatured humanity; internally he was as far removed as a gastropod. His head was bleached bone and black shadow, his mouth a lipless slit. He was a Meth of Maetho, and Magnus Ridolph knew his race to be gentle and diffident, with so little mental contact with human beings as to seem ambiguous and secretive…Magnus Ridolph focused his gaze on a woman, and was taken aback by her miraculous beauty. She was dark and slight, with a complexion the color of clean desert sand; she carried herself with a self-awareness that was immensely provoking…

Into the chair beside Magnus Ridolph dropped a short nearly-bald man with a thick black mustache: Pan Pascoglu, proprietor of the Hub. “Good evening, Mr. Ridolph; how goes it with you tonight?”