Robert Silverberg - Starhaven

“No—uh—I mean, yes, I have,” he said, realizing the other was referring to the message between the pages, rather than to the text of the work itself. “Yes, I’ve read it.”

“And are you interested in the subject with which it deals?”

He was silent for a moment, knowing that the “subject” she was talking about could only be the death of Ben Thurdan.

“Yes,” he said finally, “I am. But—who are you?”

“You’ll see. But I must have absolute assurance of secrecy in this matter.”

He looked down at himself and felt sweat running down inside his shirt. “All right. I’ll vow secrecy, if that’s what you want.”

The blur opposite moved slightly, lifting one hand to nudge the activating stud on the right side of the mask. Mantell heard a click—and then the unmasked face of a girl appeared before him. He gasped.

Almost immediately she clicked the studs again, and Mantell saw the delicate features, the star-blue eyes he knew so well, fade into a blurred veil of gray light—and Myra Butler became once more as distantly anonymous as any of the other Casino pleasure seekers.

It took him a moment to recover from the double shock of seeing Myra revealed for that brief instant and of finding that she was part of the conspiracy against Ben Thurdan. Then pieces of a puzzle began slowly to form into a pattern. He stared steadily at the blur before him.

“Is this a joke?” he asked hoarsely.

“Hardly. It’s been in the planning stage for a long time. Too long, maybe. But we have to gain strength first, before we can take over.”

“Aren’t you afraid to speak so openly in this booth?” Mantell asked, looking around nervously. “Ben seems to have spies everywhere. There might be a pipehne to—

“No,” she said. “This booth’s all right. The manager of the Casino here is one of us. There isn’t any danger.”

He sat down limply on the bench in the booth. “Okay. Tell me about this thing, then, as long as I’m here. When do you plan to do it?”

Blurred pink lines that might have been soft shoulders lifted in a gentle shrug. “We haven’t set the exact time yet. But we’re certain of one thing: We must get rid of Thurdan.”

Mantell didn’t ask why. He said, “But you’re taking a big chance, aren’t you? How do you know I won’t go running to Ben and tell him all about it? I’m sure he’d be highly interested.”

“You won’t do it,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Your psychprobe patterns. You won’t betray us, Johnny. I saw your charts and I know the sort of a person you are, even if you don’t know yourself. I picked you as one of us from the minute you were probed.”

He sat looking at his fingers and thought about it. He realized that in this the probe had told the truth: it was almost as impossible for him to betray to Thurdan what Myra was telling him as it would be for him to grow wings. She was taking no risk with him.

“How about Marchin?” he asked. “Was he part of this thing, too?”

“No. Marchin knew about us, but he had his own plans. He stayed aloof. That was because he planned to rule the way Ben rules. Alone.”

“And what does your group plan to do?”

“To set up a civilized form of government on Star-haven,” was the steady reply. “To set up a democracy, instead of a tyranny.”

“But tyranny sometimes works out. Ben is doing a good job of running his planet,” Mantell said. “You can’t deny that.”

The blur that was Myra Butler moved from side to side, as if shaking her head in disagreement.

She said, “I won’t try to argue with your statement. Certainly, Ben has Starhaven running on an even keel. But what would happen if he should die today?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I—we know very well what would happen. There would be a fierce scramble for power that would turn this planet into a raging madhouse of civil strife and death. And that’s why we have to kill him and take over the planet ourselves. And nothing less than killing would work; he’s too strong a man to be willing to take part in any other form of government than dictatorship. Ben can’t just be deposed; he has to be put away permanently.”

“I see the logic there. Ben himself is all right as a ruler, but the chances are that the next boss of Starhaven won’t be so enlightened. So you get rid of the boss and the boss system now, and prevent the terrible destructive struggle for the throne before it can begin.”

“You’ve got the idea. Well? Are you with us?”

Mantell hesitated. He was thinking of the giant named Ben Thurdan, who feared dying, and he was thinking also of Myra, and of many possibilities.

There was no longer any doubt in his mind.

“Of course I’m with you!” he said.

She sighed. “Thank God you said that, Johnny. I would have hated to kill you, Darling!”

Knowing of the existence of a plot against Ben Thurdan’s life didn’t keep Mantell from working hard and long on his defense-screen project, even though he was conscious of the irony that success in his research would spell the end of all hopes for an assassination. He was definitely on the track of something, and he didn’t necessarily have to turn it over to Thurdan when he had worked it out. And there would be some use for his personal defense screen, whether it was Thurdan or someone else—himself, perhaps—who benefited from it.

He withdrew almost completely into his laboratory. Myra had warned him not to see her again until everything was settled, and the promise of seeking her later took away most of the pain of not seeing her now.

They met briefly, twice more, in the Casino of Masks during the following week. They identified each other by a prearranged sign and spent a few hours at the tables. But it was a short and unsatisfying contact.

The second time he met her there, Mantell asked her again what was delaying them. His feeling was that they should strike at the first available opportunity. Ben had feed lines of data extending almost everywhere in Star-haven, and the longer they held back and polished their plans, the greater was Thurdan’s chance of discovering their identities and killing both the conspiracy and themselves.

“It’ll come soon, Johnny,” she told him. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces have to be where they belong, to fit exactly and make the picture complete before the game is over.”

Mantell slumped down in his seat, shoulders hunched. “I guess you know what you’re doing,” he said, frowning. “But I don’t like this waiting. I’m getting impatient, and Ben’s bound to find out before long.”

She laughed, and the effect of the mask flattened the laugh into something strange. “ You’re impatient? Johnny, we’ve been living with this thing for years. You’ve only been on Starhaven a few weeks!”

After that, he stopped asking questions. Instead he plunged into his laboratory work with furious energy— the energy of seven years of idleness, dammed up and now rushing down the spillway.

He designed cumbersome defense screens that would be too massive for an elephant, and built them, and then refined and reduced them down, down—until, on one model that might be almost the proper size, the field winked out altogether, lacking sufficient strength. And he had to start all over again. He didn’t mind that. Failure at this stage was only to be expected; success was not immediately to be hoped for. And he was working again, doing something, and that was enough.

Hardly a day went by without a call from Thurdan. Mantell learned that Starhaven was going through a period of peace, untroubled by the universe outside, and so Thurdan rarely visited the lab tower in person except when making routine checks.