Robert Silverberg - The Planet Killers

“That sounds like a pretty sensible arrangement,” Gardner said. Then, returning to the earlier subject, “So you’re leaving in a month, eh? Guess I’ll be on Terra afore ye, in that case. I’ll be going back in two, two and a half weeks.”

Her eyes brightened. “You can’t imagine how much I envy you. Frankly, I’m sick of this place. If I could get passage back, I’d leave with you, or even earlier. But all the ships out are booked solid for a month. I’ve been checking.”

“And no luck, huh?”

She shook her head. “There isn’t a berth to be had on any ship.”

Gardner felt the dull thudding of his heart beneath his breastbone. She could leave with me, he thought, but the hopeful thought died at once. There was no room for more than five on his little ship, and members of his team had to have priority. Besides, it would be a flat violation of security to take her with him. Terran civilians were not to be evacuated.

She’s expendable, Gardner told himself savagely. Earth Central would never have approved her passport if she had any value to anybody. The fact that she’s young and full of life and wants to live doesn’t matter to the computer. She’s here, and so she’ll have to die with the rest of them.

He gripped the glass he was holding tightly, then released it for fear he would smash it. Getting involved with her was a monstrous mistake; he had known that at the start, and yet he had allowed himself to glide into this tete-a-tete. And now he would have to contend with sticky emotions all the way from here to the end. It made a difficult job practically impossible.

She noticed his mood. “You look pale, Roy. Is something the matter?”

“No, nothing,” he said quickly. “There just isn’t enough alcohol in me yet, that’s all.”

He took a hefty slug of khall and stared broodingly at the swirling greenish liquor that remained in the glass. Khali was cheap. Gordon wondered if his predecessor, Davis, who was probably still wandering some foul back alley of Lurion in a drunkard’s rags, had also met a girl on Lurion. The khall helped to numb the guilt, all right. Not much, but enough.

“You really can’t be feeling all right,” Lori insisted. “You keep staring into your glass that way, or else off into space. Why don’t you tell old Aunt Lori the trouble? Maybe I can help.”

Her hand touched his and, irritably, he snatched it away. “There isn’t any trouble!” he snapped. “Don’t start meddling with—”

He stopped, seeing the shocked, hurt expression on her face, and realized the depth of his boorishness. “I’m sorry, Lori,” he said softly. “That was a miserable thing to say. You were just trying to help me, and I almost yelled your head off.”

“It’s all right, Roy. We all lose our tempers sometimes. Especially when strangers try to butt into our personal problems. Forgive me?”

“I’m the one who needs to be forgiven,” he said.

They patched it up, but Gardner knew he had stung her deeply. He forced himself to look cheerful, to prevent any further inquiries. But, within, he told himself, She’s just a lonely kid on an ugly world, and I had to go and be nasty to her.

“You are a strange one,” she said.

He grinned. “I’m still sober, that’s the real trouble. And so are you. Let’s see if we can’t do something about the situation.”

He called the waiter over and ordered yef another round of khall, and another one when they had finished that. He realized that neither of them had as much as mentioned the thought of dinner, and now it was past the dinner hour. Another insidious effect of khall, he thought with curious clarity. It’s a high-calorie drink, the kind that bamboozles you out of your appetite, but doesn’t nourish you in place of the food you’re skipping.

He got very carefully and meticulously crocked during the next hour, maintaining an iron control over himself all the while. His face felt fuzzy, his hearing was not as acute as it was when he was sober, and he knew that if he stood up he would have some difficulty co-ordinating his movements. But yet he was still his own master. He had had just enough khall to numb the burgeoning guilt growing within him, but not enough to cause him to say or do anything indiscreet.

Lori was considerably less careful. By the time the hour had passed, she was volubly prattiing about her oedipus complex; her very real fear of becoming a spinster schoolteacher in some small college’s anthropology department; her feeling of loathing and repugnance for Lurion and all that happened there. In short, she tossed at Gardner her entire self.

“So you see, I figured it was better to come here first and get a good stiff dose of ugliness, and then I could use Lurion as a sort of yardstick when I moved on to other planets, on my list.”

Gardner nodded gravely. Had he been a little more sober, he would have cut the conversation short before it was too late, before she had given so much of herself that it would be impossible for him ever to make the cold decision that would kill heir.

He sat quietly, listening, until she talked herself out. Perhaps the khall was losing its hold on her, for she smiled suddenly, reddened, and said, “I’ve been talking an awful lot of drivel, haven’t I?”

“On the contrary. It’s all been most fascinating, Lori.”

“But I’ve been hogging the conversation. I’ve hardly let you say a thing. And now you know every littie thing I’ve done since I was seven, and I really don’t know anything more about you than your name, your trade, and where you’re from I”

Gardner smiled lighdy. “Perhaps that’s just as well. I’ve had a horribly dull life. It would only bore you if I went into all the dreary details.”

She seemed to accept that as being reasonably sincere. They finished their drinks. Lori looked at the time and said, with a little gasp, “Oh, dear, its getting terribly late!”

“For both of us. In this place you just can’t sleep past daybreak.”

Gardner took her back upstairs; her room was two floors below his own. They stood for a moment outside her door.

“Goodnight, Roy. And thanks for spending the evening with me. It’did me good to see a Terran face again.”

“The pleasure was mine, Lori. Goodnight.”

He was standing so close to her that a kiss seemed to be in order. But it was a light one, a delicate grazing of lips and no more, a gentle thank-you-for-an-evening’s-company. She opened the door, staggered inside, nearly toppled on the bed, waved to him somewhat giddily, and closed the door. She hadn’t invited him in, and Gardner hadn’t been looking for an invitation. He smiled at her through the closed door, and went up the winding stairs to his own room.

As usual, the seal had been tinkered with. No surprise, that; the management and all the hotel employees knew that he was a jewel merchant, and they were dead set on robbing him before he left the hotel. But, unfortunately for them, there just wasn’t any way for them to penetrate that seal.

Gardner broke it with a quick blast of air—the signal was unaffected by the quantity of alcohol fumes on his breath—entered, and sealed the door carefully from inside.

He slept soundly, waking just after dawn with a ferocious hangover. Triphammers kept exploding behind his forehead, as he made his way muzzily to the washstand and gobbled down a pill. The pill eased the throbbing considerably, but his head continued to ache. Lori was not in the hotel dining room for breakfast when he arrived. Gardner wondered if she were sleeping late, and debated going up to her room to pay her a visit. But he decided against that, and went straight to the jewel exchange from the dining room.