Kenneth Bulmer: No Man's World

Sharon laughed and pulled a face. “No soap, Mr. Carter.”

“Can but try.”

He decided to walk. The city scarcely meant a thing to him, apart from his normal orienting interest in any new surroundings. It was a city, clean, bright, filled with traffic and pedestrians, with flashing traffic lights and well-filled shop fronts, the usual mixture of old and new buildings and facilities. He appreciated the sunshine, warm on his shoulders. Gamma-Horakah owned a rather nice sun. He wondered why Rawson had made such a thing out of denying any business or other relationship with Sharon Ogilvie.

A few blocks short of his destination as indicated to him by robotic street guides, he decided to drop into a restaurant for coffee. The walk had made him thirsty. His choice was purely random.

He settled on a discreet place with only four neon signs flashing out front and a glass swing door that reflected odd angles of the street and passing vehicles. He pushed the gilt bar and went round with the door.

The air-conditioning was well-balanced and caused no sudden shivery shock; civilized, the people of Horakah. But then they ought to be, considering their size and importance in the interstellar groupings and their distance from the final periphery of the Blight.

Checking the robot with a thousandth of a Galaxo—the little plastic coin was always called a Joey, no matter where you seemed to go in the galaxy—he crossed over to a side table and sat down. The delivery slot opened and his cup of coffee slid out. He stirred sugar, relaxing, feeling fine.

Well, maybe he wouldn’t get to Alpha-Horakah, after all. Sitting quiedy here with the blood running freely in his veins and arteries after the pleasant morning stroll, with a friendly sun shining in the windows, a good cup of coffee and—well why not?—a Rrono to smoke contemplatively, he really couldn’t see any reason for haste and bustle and the chasing after that tiny extra edge of business so beloved by the high-power salesman. The usual arrangement here seemed to be to sell your stuff to Gamma—any of the other satellite planets might have done—and then to take your commission and let the space fines of Horakah worry about shipping in to Alpha. His business friends and contacts back in Shanstar would be pleased with any business he could put their way.

Maybe the Krono angle was a good one. He knew the smoke to be excellent, well up to his old Earth brands.

Yes, he was roughing it out, now. After the fluttery feeling in passing through customs, the rest of it all was mere routine. Not uninteresting; he still had contacts to make. Even so, he sometimes wondered why he bothered to go from stellar grouping to stellar grouping, doing business, when he could be back on Shanstar, seeing about setting up a new home in the ranch house he had bought last time through. Shanstar… Well, it wasn’t Earth, but it was an acceptable substitute.

One or two other people had entered and left the restaurant. He took little notice. Pretty soon he’d finish up the coffee and walk the few blocks to the travel office. Loud laughter attracted his attention. Over by the counter a group of young men was horse-trading, swapping jokes, living it up. Clerks, probably, out for their mid morning break whilst the robots carried on unsupervised.

He rose to go. He had to pass the group and he was totally unprepared. A foot came from nowhere and he went sprawling. His automatic reflex caused a hand to flash out and grasp a chair leg. Then chair and all came crashing down. The all turned out to be a table, and the table had been’ loaded with cookies, plates, knives and forks, all set for a slap-up meal. That slap-up meal was now a gooey mess on the vinyl flooring.

“Say, mister. Why’n’t you look where you’re going?”

Still unprepared, Caradine said: “Sorry.” He scrambled up.

“The man says he’s sorry.”

He bent to wipe away berry pie from his black trousers.

The same voice, hectoring, patronizing, said: “He says he’s sorry when this lady’s food is all over the floor.”

Caradine remembered the foot. These people were living on Horakah. They belonged to the planet, and were members of a strong interstellar cluster. Take it easy, boy.

“That’s all right.” The girl was speaking in a scared voice. Caradine looked at her. Young, freckled, dressed in a simple frock of lime green that left her arms and knees showing. Brown eyes, brown hair. Nice, pleasant, home-loving type-on the surface.

She was trying to talk out of the bully-boy’s racket. Of those there were four, and Caradine at once selected the leader, the hectoring one.

“Is this lady with you?”

“Wha-at? Say, what’s that got to do with you, mister?”

“I was merely going to suggest that as it was your foot that tripped me up you should offer to pay for her meal.”

The reply was unintelligible to Caradine, but the girl colored and looked embarrassed so it was probably currendy obscene.

“Yon wanting to have your face pushed in, outworlder?”

“Who says I’m outworld?” Caradine said pugnaciously. It might work. He might get out of here without further trouble, but he doubted that. It all made him feel so weary.

“Look at your clothes.”

Certainly the four youths were dressed rather remarkably. Each had a dirty brown-mustardy waistcoat, open down the front to show a three-inch gap of hairy—or almost hairy; they were quite young—chest. The pants puffed at the hips and were slashed to show scarlet tights beneath. The hose came up high and were yellow. Each boot was a different color.

Caradine bad grown so used to odd clothes among the people of the galaxy that these he’d passed over as a retrograde fashion step. He gave a quick glance at his own clothes, as though in obedience to the bully-boy’s command.

A white shirt, short-sleeved, open at the throat and fastened with two magneclamps. Black trousers with a dark-blue cummerbund. A nice, quiet, sensible and conservative outfit. Evidently, it jarred upon these four more enlightened denizens of Horakah.

He only hoped that his shoulder holster wasn’t showing.

The girl stood up and tried to say something about not bothering about the meal, but she was brutally cut off by the leader.

“Sit, Tisha, and do as you’re told.” Perhaps, Caradine wondered critically, he wasn’t supposed to make anything out of that.

“All right, lads,” he said. “You’ve had your fun. Now disappear, scram, flitter. I’ve an appointment.”

“Outworlder poof.” The leader put a hand into the pocket concealed in the puffed pants. Something came out that gleamed. The others followed the leader.

“Get him!” On the words the four thugs bore down on Caradine, their eyes hard and hating, their lips drawn back involuntarily in a rictus of unthinking alien hate.

Cahadine felt immeasurably old, then. He could sense all the alien antagonisms, the feral undefined fury of one species for another, all the insane hatred that had flowed out from culture to culture through the bloody years of the past. These flashy kids were merely carrying to one logical extreme the current status theories: if my planetary grouping is more powerful and influential than yours, I can push you about, buster, and you just grin and like it The girl screamed.

Caradine’s fleeting impression of age vanished. He was still mentally young, alert and vigorous, and the years before the smashup had maintained his body in perfect fighting trim. So these punks wanted to show how high and mighty their planet was? Well, his own experience and the regret he felt did not extend to letting himself be beaten up.

His extended left arm, bent at the elbow, stopped the downwards sweep of the sap. He pushed two fingers forward, hard, and that was the leader out of the fight.