The Door Through Space - Marion Zimmer Bradley, ebook, Temp
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
=THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE=
Marion Zimmer Bradley
=Author's Note:--=
I've always wanted to write. But not until I discovered the old pulp
science-fantasy magazines, at the age of sixteen, did this general
desire become a specific urge to write science-fantasy adventures.
I took a lot of detours on the way. I discovered s-f in its golden age:
the age of Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Ed Hamilton and Jack
Vance. But while I was still collecting rejection slips for my early
efforts, the fashion changed. Adventures on faraway worlds and strange
dimensions went out of fashion, and the new look in
science-fiction--emphasis on the _science_--came in.
So my first stories were straight science-fiction, and I'm not trying to
put down that kind of story. It has its place. By and large, the kind of
science-fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this
morning's coffee, has enlarged popular awareness of the modern,
miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of
young people feel at ease with a rapidly changing world.
But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up
the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science-fiction
are willing to wait for tomorrow to read tomorrow's headlines. Once
again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need and hunger for the
wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The
world we _won't_ live to see. That is why I wrote THE DOOR THROUGH
SPACE.
--MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
* * * * *
CHAPTER ONE
Beyond the spaceport gates, the men of the Kharsa were hunting down a
thief. I heard the shrill cries, the pad-padding of feet in strides just
a little too long and loping to be human, raising echoes all down the
dark and dusty streets leading up to the main square.
But the square itself lay empty in the crimson noon of Wolf. Overhead
the dim red ember of Phi Coronis, Wolf's old and dying sun, gave out a
pale and heatless light. The pair of Spaceforce guards at the gates,
wearing the black leathers of the Terran Empire, shockers holstered at
their belts, were drowsing under the arched gateway where the
star-and-rocket emblem proclaimed the domain of Terra. One of them, a
snub-nosed youngster only a few weeks out from Earth, cocked an
inquisitive ear at the cries and scuffling feet, then jerked his head at
me.
 "Hey, Cargill, you can talk their lingo. What's going on out there?"
I stepped out past the gateway to listen. There was still no one to be
seen in the square. It lay white and windswept, a barricade of
emptiness; to one side the spaceport and the white skyscraper of the
Terran Headquarters, and at the other side, the clutter of low
buildings, the street-shrine, the little spaceport cafe smelling of
coffee and _jaco_, and the dark opening mouths of streets that rambled
down into the Kharsa--the old town, the native quarter. But I was alone
in the square with the shrill cries--closer now, raising echoes from the
enclosing walls--and the loping of many feet down one of the dirty
streets.
Then I saw him running, dodging, a hail of stones flying round his head;
someone or something small and cloaked and agile. Behind him the
still-faceless mob howled and threw stones. I could not yet understand
the cries; but they were out for blood, and I knew it.
I said briefly, "Trouble coming," just before the mob spilled out into
the square. The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, his
head jerking from side to side so rapidly that it was impossible to get
even a fleeting impression of his face--human or nonhuman, familiar or
bizarre. Then, like a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight for
the gateway and safety.
And behind him the loping mob yelled and howled and came pouring over
half the square. Just half. Then by that sudden intuition which
permeates even the most crazed mob with some semblance of reason, they
came to a ragged halt, heads turning from side to side.
I stepped up on the lower step of the Headquarters building, and looked
them over.
Most of them were _chaks_, the furred man-tall nonhumans of the Kharsa,
and not the better class. Their fur was unkempt, their tails naked with
filth and disease. Their leather aprons hung in tatters. One or two in
the crowd were humans, the dregs of the Kharsa. But the star-and-rocket
emblem blazoned across the spaceport gates sobered even the wildest
blood-lust somewhat; they milled and shifted uneasily in their half of
the square.
For a moment I did not see where their quarry had gone. Then I saw him
crouched, not four feet from me, in a patch of shadow. Simultaneously
the mob saw him, huddled just beyond the gateway, and a howl of
frustration and rage went ringing round the square. Someone threw a
stone. It zipped over my head, narrowly missing me, and landed at the
feet of the black-leathered guard. He jerked his head up and gestured
with the shocker which had suddenly come unholstered.
The gesture should have been enough. On Wolf, Terran law has been
written in blood and fire and exploding atoms; and the line is drawn
firm and clear. The men of Spaceforce do not interfere in the old town,
or in any of the native cities. But when violence steps over the
threshold, passing the blazon of the star and rocket, punishment is
swift and terrible. The threat should have been enough.
Instead a howl of abuse went up from the crowd.
"_Terranan!_"
 "Son of the Ape!"
The Spaceforce guards were shoulder to shoulder behind me now. The
snub-nosed kid, looking slightly pale, called out. "Get inside the
gates, Cargill! If I have to shoot--"
The older man motioned him to silence. "Wait. Cargill," he called.
I nodded to show that I heard.
"You talk their lingo. Tell them to haul off! Damned if I want to
shoot!"
I stepped down and walked into the open square, across the crumbled
white stones, toward the ragged mob. Even with two armed Spaceforce men
at my back, it made my skin crawl, but I flung up my empty hand in token
of peace:
"Take your mob out of the square," I shouted in the jargon of the
Kharsa. "This territory is held in compact of peace! Settle your
quarrels elsewhere!"
There was a little stirring in the crowd. The shock of being addressed
in their own tongue, instead of the Terran Standard which the Empire has
forced on Wolf, held them silent for a minute. I had learned that long
ago: that speaking in any of the languages of Wolf would give me a
minute's advantage.
But only a minute. Then one of the mob yelled, "We'll go if you give'm
to us! He's no right to Terran sanctuary!"
I walked over to the huddled dwarf, miserably trying to make himself
smaller against the wall. I nudged him with my foot.
"Get up. Who are you?"
The hood fell away from his face as he twitched to his feet. He was
trembling violently. In the shadow of the hood I saw a furred face, a
quivering velvety muzzle, and great soft golden eyes which held
intelligence and terror.
"What have you done? Can't you talk?"
He held out the tray which he had shielded under his cloak, an ordinary
peddler's tray. "Toys. Sell toys. Children. You got'm?"
I shook my head and pushed the creature away, with only a glance at the
array of delicately crafted manikins, tiny animals, prisms and crystal
whirligigs. "You'd better get out of here. Scram. Down that street." I
pointed.
A voice from the crowd shouted again, and it had a very ugly sound. "He
is a spy of Nebran!"
"_Nebran--_" The dwarfish nonhuman gabbled something then doubled
behind me. I saw him dodge, feint in the direction of the gates, then,
as the crowd surged that way, run for the street-shrine across the
square, slipping from recess to recess of the wall. A hail of stones
went flying in that direction. The little toy-seller dodged into the
 street-shrine.
Then there was a hoarse "Ah, aaah!" of terror, and the crowd edged away,
surged backward. The next minute it had begun to melt away, its entity
dissolving into separate creatures, slipping into the side alleys and
the dark streets that disgorged into the square. Within three minutes
the square lay empty again in the pale-crimson noon.
The kid in black leather let his breath go and swore, slipping his
shocker into its holster. He stared and demanded profanely, "Where'd the
little fellow go?"
"Who knows?" the other shrugged. "Probably sneaked into one of the
alleys. Did you see where he went, Cargill?"
I came slowly back to the gateway. To me, it had seemed that he ducked
into the street-shrine and vanished into thin air, but I've lived on
Wolf long enough to know you can't trust your eyes here. I said so, and
the kid swore again, gulping, more upset than he wanted to admit. "Does
this kind of thing happen often?"
"All the time," his companion assured him soberly, with a sidewise wink
at me. I didn't return the wink.
The kid wouldn't let it drop. "Where did you learn their lingo, Mr.
Cargill?"
"I've been on Wolf a long time," I said, spun on my heel and walked
toward Headquarters. I tried not to hear, but their voices followed me
anyhow, discreetly lowered, but not lowered enough.
"Kid, don't you know who he is? That's Cargill of the Secret Service!
Six years ago he was the best man in Intelligence, before--" The voice
lowered another decibel, and then there was the kid's voice asking,
shaken, "But what the hell happened to his face?"
I should have been used to it by now. I'd been hearing it, more or less
behind my back, for six years. Well, if my luck held, I'd never hear it
again. I strode up the white steps of the skyscraper, to finish the
arrangements that would take me away from Wolf forever. To the other end
of the Empire, to the other end of the galaxy--anywhere, so long as I
need not wear my past like a medallion around my neck, or blazoned and
branded on what was left of my ruined face.
CHAPTER TWO
The Terran Empire has set its blazon on four hundred planets circling
more than three hundred suns. But no matter what the color of the sun,
the number of moons overhead, or the geography of the planet, once you
step inside a Headquarters building, you are on Earth. And Earth would
be alien to many who called themselves Earthmen, judging by the
strangeness I always felt when I stepped into that marble-and-glass
world inside the skyscraper. I heard the sound of my steps ringing into
thin resonance along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes,
readjusting them painfully to the cold yellowness of the lights.
 The Traffic Division was efficiency made insolent, in glass and chrome
and polished steel, mirrors and windows and looming electronic clerical
machines. Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor which gave a
view of the spaceport; a vast open space lighted with blue-white mercury
vapor lamps, and a chained-down skyscraper of a starship, littered over
with swarming ants. The process crew was getting the big ship ready for
skylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a third look. I'd
be on it when it lifted.
Turning away from the monitored spaceport, I watched myself stride
forward in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere; a tall man, a
lean man, bleached out by years under a red sun, and deeply scarred on
both cheeks and around the mouth. Even after six years behind a desk, my
neat business clothes--suitable for an Earthman with a desk job--didn't
fit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on the balls of my feet,
approximating the lean stooping walk of a Dry-towner from the Coronis
plains.
The clerk behind the sign marked TRANSPORTATION was a little rabbit of a
man with a sunlamp tan, barricaded by a small-sized spaceport of desk,
and looking as if he liked being shut up there. He looked up in civil
inquiry.
"Can I do something for you?"
"My name's Cargill. Have you a pass for me?"
He stared. A free pass aboard a starship is rare except for professional
spacemen, which I obviously wasn't. "Let me check my records," he
hedged, and punched scanning buttons on the glassy surface. Shadows came
and went, and I saw myself half-reflected, a tipsy shadow in a flurry of
racing colors. The pattern finally stabilized and the clerk read off
names.
"Brill, Cameron ... ah, yes. Cargill, Race Andrew, Department 38,
transfer transportation. Is that you?"
I admitted it and he started punching more buttons when the sound of the
name made connection in whatever desk-clerks use for a brain. He stopped
with his hand halfway to the button.
"Are you Race Cargill of the Secret Service, sir? _The_ Race Cargill?"
"It's right there," I said, gesturing wearily at the projected pattern
under the glassy surface.
"Why, I thought--I mean, everybody took it for granted--that is, I
heard--"
"You thought Cargill had been killed a long time ago because his name
never turned up in news dispatches any more?" I grinned sourly, seeing
my image dissolve in blurring shadows, and feeling the long-healed scar
on my mouth draw up to make the grin hideous. "I'm Cargill, all right.
I've been up on Floor 38 for six years, holding down a desk any clerk
could handle. You for instance."
He gaped. He was a rabbit of a man who had never stepped out of the safe
familiar boundaries of the Terran Trade City. "You mean _you're_ the man
who went to Charin in disguise, and routed out The Lisse? The man who
scouted the Black Ridge and Shainsa? And you've been working at a desk
Â
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]