She left Nik and went to the table by the eazi-rests. She spun a black box around to face a blank wall. And the alien pressed a button on his seat so that it swung about to face the wall also. There was a click from the box, and a picture appeared on the blank surface.
A life-size figure stood there, real enough to step forward into the room – a man, a very young man, of Nik’s height. But Nik’s attention was for the unmarred, sun-browned face whose eyes were now level with his own. The features were regular. He was a good-looking boy; yet there was an oddly mature strength and determination in his expression, the set of his mouth, and the angle of jaw.
The woman had stepped to one side. Now she glanced from the tri-dee cast to Nik and back again.
“He says growth flesh did not take on transplant,” Leeds commented.
“So?” Well, there are ways.” Her reply was almost absent. “But look, Iskhag – the hair! Almost, Strode, I can believe in this luck fetish you swear by. That hair.”
Nik looked from those features to the hair above them. The wiry curls on the pictured head were as tight as his and just as black.
“It would seem,” shrilled Iskhag, “that the FC was right. The probabilities of success at this point outweigh those of failure. If, Gyna, you think you have a chance of performing your own magic – ?”
She shrugged and snapped off the tri-dee cast. “I will do what I can. The results I cannot insure. And – it may be only temporary if the growth fails again”
“You know the newest techniques, Gentle Fem,” Leeds interrupted, “and those are far more successful than the older methods. We can promise you unlimited resources for this.” He looked to Iskhag, and the blue alien nodded.
“Does he understand?” The high chitter of Iskhag’s speech came as he looked at Nik.
Leeds took out a small box and flipped a pellet he took from it into his mouth. “He understands we promise him a face again, but that it has to be earned. Also, I signed him out of the Dipple and will guarantee his Guild fee.”
The woman came back to Nik, her long skirt rustling across the carpet. “So you will earn your face, boy?”
Before he could avoid it, her hand made another of those quick moves, and her fingers closed on his misshapen chin, holding it firmly.
“You are entirely right,” she continued as if the two of them were alone in the room. “Everything must be earned. Even those to whom birth gives much make payment in return, in one form or another. Yes, I shall strive to give you a face, for our price.”
For the first time, Nik summoned up enough courage to take a part in this conversation about him and his affairs.
“What’s the price?”
The woman loosened her hold on him. “Fair enough.” She nodded as if that question had, in some obscure way, pleased her. “Tell him, Leeds.” That was no request but an order.
“So”-Iskhag swung his eazi – rest back to its former position.”take him to his quarters, tell him-make all ready. We have been too long about this matter now!”
Leeds smiled. “In a matter of this kind, haste makes for mistakes. Do you wish for mistakes, Gentle Homo?”
“I wish for nothing but to set a good plan to work, Captain.” Was there a shadow of withdrawal in Iskhag’s reply?
The woman had picked up her plate of pink paste. Once more her tongue licked, in small, tip-touch movements, at its contents, but she watched Nik as Leeds caught him by the shoulder and gave him an encouraging shove toward the door.
Down the corridor, past the alcove where they had entered, then through a second sliding doorway they went, and they were in another luxurious room. Leeds motioned Nik to a seat on a wide divan.
“Hungry?” the captain asked. Without waiting for an answer, he went to a dial server on the wall and spun a combination. A table slid out, drawer fashion, the closed dishes on its surface numbering at least six. Nik watched as it moved into place before the divan, and Leeds sat down beside him to snap up the heat covers.
“Tuck in!” the captain urged, sampling the contents of the nearest dish himself.
Nik ate. The food was so different from the mess-hall fare of the Dipple that he could hardly believe it could be called by the same name. He did not know, could not even guess, at the basic contents of some of those heated platters, but it was a banquet out of his dreams.
When an unaccustomed sense of fullness put an end to his explorations, Nik came to himself again, to the uneasy realization that in accepting this bounty he had taken one more step along a trail that would lead him into very unfamiliar territory and that had its own dangers, perhaps the more formidable because they were unknown.
“Now” – Leeds pressed the return button and the table rolled away from them.”now, Nik, we talk.”
Chapter III
BUT THE CAPTAIN did not begin. He was watching Nik with that same searching scrutiny the woman had turned on him earlier. And under that regard, as always, Nik squirmed, inwardly if not visibly. The boy had to call on strong will power to keep his hand away from his face.
“It’s amazing!” Leeds might have been talking to himself. “Amazing!” he repeated. Then he came briskly to the point. “You must have gathered this is a Guild project?”
“Yes.” Nik kept his answer short.
“That does not bother you?”
“In the Dipple you don’t live by the law.” Nik had never really tried to reason out his stand before, but that statement was true. Those in the Dipple had a brooding resentment of the in-powers who had long since condemned them to that forgotten refuse heap because they could neither protest nor fight back. There were three ways a man could escape the Dipple, and two of those had been closed to Nik from the beginning.
He could not possibly hope to hire out to any businessman on Korwar, and he could not ship in deep sleep to be sold as a laborer on another world. But the fact that he was now allied with the Thieves’ Guild did not bother him at all. In a world – or a life – turned permanently against Nik Kolherne, any ally was to be welcomed.
“You have the proper attitude,” Leeds conceded. “Gyna thinks she can give you a new face. And if she thinks so, you can just about count on it.”
“Gyna?”
“The Gentle Fem you just met. She’s a cosmetic surgeon of the first rank.”
“That tri-dee cast – I’m to look like that?” Nik ventured.
He had heard of the cosmetic surgeons and the wonders they were able to perform for fees impossible for an ordinary man to calculate. That one was tied to the Guild was perfectly in keeping with all else rumored about that shadowy empire. But it still remained something not to be believed that he could ever resemble that picture. Now Nik added a second question before Leeds had replied to the first.
“Who is he – that man in the tri-dee?”
“Someone who has life but no body,” Leeds replied cryptically. He had a drowsy, satisfied look, as if he were content, satisfied in a way that had no relation to the food he had just eaten. “Yes, life – and we hope you’ll provide the body.”
Nik’s imagination leaped. “Parasite!” He tensed again. There were some things worse than his face, and his fantasy-bred thoughts could supply a list of them.
Leeds laughed. “Give you the horrors, Nik? No, this is no monster rally. You’re not being set up to provide a carcass for some other life type to move in. You’re just going to be a dream, a hero out of a dream.”
Completely baffled, Nik waited. Better let Leeds tell it his own way. If the captain did carry out his promise, Nik would owe him more than his life.
“Don’t suppose at your age you pay much attention to politics.” Leeds settled back on the divan. He took out his box again and began to suck one of the pellets from it. He did not wait for the boy to reply.
“The late war ended more or less as a draw – the fighting, that is. Then a real struggle started around the peace table when terms were offered, bargained for, schemed over. No one got as much as he wanted and most of them enough less to leave sores on their hides as tender as blaster burns. We’re still at war in a way, though it’s behind-the-scenes action now – not sending in ships and men and burning off a world here and there. And the Guild’s for hire in some tricks for either side.”