“I’ll turn it on,” Benteley said wearily. “I’m going, anyhow.” He squatted down and snapped on the power. The tv set warmed rapidly; as he made his way out onto the front porch, its tinny scream rose in a frenzy behind him. The metallic cheers of thousands rolled out after him, into the chill night darkness.
“The assassin!” the tv set shrieked, as he plunged down the dark path, hands deep in his pockets. “They’re handing up his name right now—I’ll have it for you in a second.” The cheering rose to an orgiastic crescendo; like the rolling waves of the sea, it momentarily blotted the announcer out. “Pellig,” the announcer’s voice filtered through, rising above the tumult. “By popular acclamation—by the wishes of a planet! The assassin is—Keith Pellig!”
FIVE
THE burnished wisp of cold gray slid silently in front of Ted Benteley. Its doors rolled back and a slim shape stepped out into the chill night darkness.
“Who is it?” Benteley demanded. The wind lashed through the moist foliage growing against the Davis house. The sky was frigid; far off sounds of activity echoed hollowly, the Farben Hill factories booming dully in the darkness.
“Where in God’s name have you been?” a girl’s clipped, anxious contralto came to him.
“Verrick sent for you an hour ago.”
“I was right here,” Benteley answered.
Eleanor Stevens emerged quickly from the shadows. “You should have stayed in touch when the ship landed. He’s angry.” She glanced nervously around. “Where’s Davis? Inside?”
“Of course.” Anger rose inside Benteley. “What’s this all about?”
“Don’t get excited.” The girl’s voice was as taut as the frozen stars shining overhead. “Go back inside and get Davis and his wife. I’ll wait for you in the car.”
Al Davis gaped at him in amazement as Benteley pushed open the front door and entered the warm yellow-bright living room. “He wants us,” Benteley said. “Tell Laura; he wants her along, too.”
Laura was sitting on the edge of the bed unstrapping her sandals. She quickly smoothed her slacks down over her ankles as Al entered the bedroom. “Come on, honey,” Al said to his wife.
“Is something wrong?” Laura leaped quickly up. “What is it?”
The three of them moved out into the chill night darkness, in greatcoats and heavy workboots. Eleanor started up the motor of the car and it purred forward restlessly. “In you go,” Al murmured, as he helped Laura find a seat in the inky gloom. “How about a light?”
“You don’t need a light to sit down,” Eleanor answered. She rolled the doors shut; the car glided out onto the road and instantly gained speed. Dark houses and trees flashed past. Abruptly, with a sickening _whoosh_, the car lifted up above the pavement. It skimmed briefly, then arched high over a row of tension lines. A few minutes later it was gaining altitude over the vast sprawling mass of buildings and streets that made up the parasitic clusters around the Farben Hill.
“What’s this all about?” Benteley demanded. The car shuddered, as magnetic grapple-beams caught it and lowered it toward the winking buildings below. “We have a right to know something.”
“We’re going to have a little party,” Eleanor said, with a smile that barely moved her thin crimson lips. She allowed the car to settle into a concave lock and come finally to rest
against a magnetic disc. With a quick snap she cut the power and threw open the doors.
“Get out. We’re here.”
Their heels clattered in the deserted corridor, as Eleanor led them rapidly from one level to the next. A few silent uniformed guards stood at regular intervals, their pudding faces sleepy and impassive, bulging rifles gripped loosely.
Eleanor waved open a double-sealed door and nodded them briskly inside. A billow of fragrant air lapped around them as they pushed uncertainly past her, inside the chamber.
Reese Verrick stood with his back to them. He was fumbling angrily with something, massive arms moving in a slow grind of rage. “How the hell do you work this damn thing?” he bellowed irritably. The protesting shrill of torn metal grated briefly. “Christ, I think I broke it.”
“Here,” Herb Moore said, emerging from a deep low chair in the corner. “You have no manual dexterity.”
“You bet,” Verrick growled. He turned, a huge hunched-over bear, his shaggy brows protruding bone-hard, thick and belligerent. His blazing eyes bored at the three newcomers as they stood uneasily together. Eleanor Stevens unzipped her greatcoat and tossed it over the back of a luxurious couch.
“Here they are,” she said to Verrick. “They were all together, enjoying themselves.” She stalked over, long-legged in her velvet slacks and leather sandals and stood before the fire warming her breasts and shoulders. In the flickering firelight her naked flesh glowed a deep luminous red.
Verrick turned without ceremony to Benteley. “Always be where I can find you.” He bit his words out contemptuously. “I don’t have any more teeps around to thought-wave people in. I have to find them the hard way.” He jerked his thumb at Eleanor. “She came along, but minus ability.”
Eleanor smiled bleakly and said nothing.
Verrick spun around and shouted at Moore, “Is that damn thing fixed or not?”
“It’s almost ready.”
Verrick grunted sourly. “This is a sort of celebration,” he said to Benteley, “although I don’t know what we’ve got to celebrate.”
Moore strolled over, confident and full of talk, a sleek little model of an interplan rocket in his hands. “We’ve got plenty to celebrate. This is the first time a Quizmaster chose an assassin. Pellig isn’t somebody chosen by a bunch of senile old fogies; Verrick has had him on tap and this whole thing worked out since—”
“You talk too much,” Verrick cut in. “You’re too damn full of easy words. Half of them don’t mean a thing.”
Moore laughed gaily. “That’s what the Corps found out.”
Benteley moved uncomfortably away. Verrick was slightly drunk; he was as menacing and ominous as a bear let out of its cage. But behind his clumsy movements was a slick-edged mind that missed nothing.
The chamber was high-ceilinged, done in ancient wood panels, probably from some ancient monastery. The whole structure was much like a church, domed and ribbed, its upper limits dissolving in amber gloom, thick beams charred and hard-smoked from countless fires roaring in the stone fireplace below. Everything was massive and heavy. There were rich deep colors; the stones themselves were rubbed black with ingrained ash, the upright supports as thick as tree-logs. Benteley touched a dully-gleaming panel. The wood was corroded, but strangely smooth, as if a layer of cloudy light had settled over it and worked its way into the material.
“This wood,” Verrick said, noticing Benteley, “is from a medieval bawdy house.”
Laura was examining stone-weighted tapestries that hung dead and heavy over the lead-sealed windows. On a mantel over the huge fireplace were battered, dented cups. Bentely gingerly took one down. It was a ponderous lump in his hands, an ancient thick-rimmed cup, heavy and simple and oblique, Medieval Saxon.
“You’ll meet Pellig in a few minutes,” Verrick said to them. “Eleanor and Moore have already met him.”
Moore laughed again, his offensive sharp bark, like a thin-toothed dog. “I’ve met him, all right,” he said.
“He’s cute,” Eleanor said tonelessly.
“Pellig is circulating around,” Verrick continued. “Talk to him, stay with him. I want everybody to see him. I only plan to send out one assassin.” He waved his hand impatiently. “There’s no point in sending out an endless stream.”
Eleanor glanced at him sharply.
“Let’s lay it on the line and get it over with.” Verrick strode to the closed double-doors at the end of the room and waved them open. Sound, rolling volumes of light and the flickering movement of many people billowed out. “Get in there,” Verrick ordered. “I’ll locate Pellig.”
“A drink, sir or madam?”
Eleanor Stevens acepted a glass from the tray passed by a blank-faced MacMillan robot. “What about you?” she said to Benteley. She nodded the robot back and took a second glass. “Try it. It’s smooth stuff. It’s some kind of berry that grows on the sunward side of Callisto, in the cracks of a certain kind of shale, one month out of the year. Verrick has a special work-camp to collect it.”
Benteley took the glass. “Thanks.”
“And cheer up.”
“What’s this all about?” Benteley indicated the packed cavern of murmuring, laughing people. They were all well dressed, in a variety of color combinations; every top-level class was represented. “I expect to hear music and see them start dancing.”
“There was dinner and dancing earlier. Good grief, it’s almost two a.m. A lot has happened, today. The twitch, the Challenge Convention, all the excitement.” Eleanor moved off, eyes intent on something. “Here they come.”
A sudden rustle of nervous silence swept over the nearby people. Benteley turned and so did everyone else. They were all watching nervously, avidly, as Reese Verrick approached. With him was another man. The latter was a slender man in an ordinary gray-green suit, his arms loose at his sides, his face blank and expressionless. A taut ripple of sound swirled after him; there were hushed exclamations and a burst of appreciative tribute.