Destiny Doll, Page 3

  I went to an inn nearby and once I'd settled in, went down to the bar.

  I was on my third or fourth when a robot flunky came into the bar and zeroed in on me.

  "You are Captain Ross?"

  I wondered, with a flare of panic, just what trouble I was in for. There wasn't a soul on Earth who knew me or knew that I was coming. The only contacts I had made had been with the customs people and the room clerk at the inn.

  "I have a note for you," said the robot, handing it to me. The envelope was sealed and it had no marks upon it.

  I opened it and took out the card. It read:

  Captain Michael Ross,

  Hilton Inn

  If Captain Ross will be my dinner guest tonight, I would be much obliged. My car will be waiting at the entrance of the inn at eight o'clock. And, captain, may I be among the first to welcome you to Earth.

  Sara Foster

  I sat there staring at it and the bottle robot came sliding down the bar. He picked up the empty glass. "Another one?" be asked.

  "Another one," I said.

  Just who was Sara Foster, and how had she known, an hour after my arrival, that I was on Earth?

  I could ask around, of course, but there seemed no one to ask, and for some reason I could not figure out why I felt disinclined to do so.

  It could be a trap. There were people, I well knew, who hated me enough to have a try at smuggling me off the Earth. They would know by now, of course, that I had obtained a ship, but few who would believe that such a ship would carry me to Earth. And there could be none of them who could even guess I'd already reached the Earth.

  I sat there, drinking, trying to get it straight in mind, and I finally decided I would take a chance.

  Sara Foster lived in a huge house set atop a hill, surrounded by acres of wilderness that in turn surrounded more acres of landscaped lawns and walks, and in the center of all of this sat the huge house, built of sun-warmed bricks, with a wide portico that ran the length of the house, and with many chimneys thrusting from its roof.

  I had expected to be met at the door by a robot, but Sara Foster was there, herself, to greet me. She was wearing a green dinner dress that swept the floor and served to set off, in violent contrast, the flame of her tumbled hair, with the one errant lock forever hanging in her eyes.

  "Captain Ross," she said, giving me her hand, "how nice of you to come. And on such short notice, too. I'm afraid it was impetuous of me, but I did so want to see you."

  The hall in which we stood was high and cool, paneled with white-painted wood and the floor of wood so polished that it shone, with a massive chandelier of crystal hanging from the ceiling. The place breached wealth and a certain spirit of Earth-rooted gentility and it all was very pleasant.

  "The others are in the library," she said. "Let us go and join them."

  She linked her arm through mine and led me down the hail until we came to a door that led into a room that was a far cry from the hall which I had entered. It might have been a library—there were some shelves with books—but it looked more like a trophy room. Mounted heads hung from every wall, a glass-enclosed gun rack ran across one end, and the floor was covered with fur rugs, some with the heads attached, the bared fangs forever snarling.

  Two men were sitting in chairs next to the mammoth fireplace and as we entered one of them got up. He was tall and cadaverous, his face long and lean and dark, not so much darkened, I thought as I looked at him, by the outdoors and the sun as by the thoughts within his skull. He wore a dark brown cassock loosely belted at the waist by a string of beads, and his feet, I saw, were encased in sturdy sandals.

  "Captain Ross," said Sara Foster, "May I present Friar Tuck."

  He held out a bony hand. "My legal name," he said "is Hubert Jackson, but I prefer Friar Tuck. In the course of my wanderings, captain, I have heard many things of you."

  I looked hard at him. "You have done much wandering?" For I had seen his like before and had liked none of what I saw.

  He bent his bony head. "Far enough," he said, "and always in the search of truth?'

  "Truth," I said, "at times is very hard to come by."

  "And captain," Sara said, quickly, "this is George Smith." The second man by this time had fumbled to his feet and was holding out a flabby hand in my direction. He was a tubby little man with a grubby look about him and his eyes were a milky white.

  "As you can see by now," said Smith, "I am quite blind. You'll excuse me for not rising when you first came in the room."

  It was embarrassing. There was no occasion for the man to so thrust his blindness on us.

  I shook his hand and it was as flabby as it looked, as nearly limp as a living hand can be. Immediately he fumbled his way back into the chair again.

  "Perhaps this chair," Sara said to me. "There'll be drinks immediately. I know what the others want, but . . ."

  "If you have some Scotch," I said.

  I sat down in the chair she had indicated and she took another and there were the four of us, huddled in a group before that looming fireplace and surrounded by the heads of creatures from a dozen different planets.

  She saw me looking at them. "I forgot," she said. "You'll excuse me, please. You had never heard of me—until you got my note, I mean."

  "I am sorry, madam."

  "I'm a ballistics hunter," she said, with more pride, it seemed to me, than such a statement called for.

  She could not have missed the fact that I did not understand. "I use only a ballistics rifle," she explained. "One that uses a bullet propelled by an explosive charge. It is," she said, "the only sporting way to hunt. It requires a considerable amount of skill in weapon handling and occasionally some nerve. It you miss a vital spot the thing that you are hunting has a chance at you."

  "I see," I said. "A sporting proposition. Except that you have the first crack at it."

  "That is not always true," she said.

  A robot brought the drinks and we settled down as comfortably as we could, fortified behind our glasses.

  "I have a feeling, captain," Sara said, "that you do not approve."

  "I have no opinion at all," I told her. "I have no information on which opinion could be based."

  "But you have killed wild creatures."

  "A few," I said, "but there was no such thing involved as sporting instinct. For food, occasionally. At times to save my life."

  I took a good long drink. "I took no chance," I told her. "I used a laser gun. I just kept burning them as long as it seemed necessary."

  "Then you're no sportsman, captain."

  "No," I said, "I am—let us say I was—a planet hunter. It seems I'm now retired."

  And I wondered, sitting there, what it was all about. She hadn't invited me, I was sure, just for my company. I didn't fit in this room, nor in this house, any better than the other two who sat there with me. Whatever was going on, they were a part of it and the idea of being lumped with them in any enterprise left me absolutely cold.

  She must have read my mind. "I imagine you are wondering, captain, what is going on."

  "Ma'am," I said, "the thought had crossed my mind."

  "Have you ever heard of Lawrence Arlen Knight?"

  "The Wanderer," I said. "Yes, I've heard of him. Stories told about him. That was long ago. Well before my time."

  "Those stories?"

  "The usual sort of stories. Space yarns. There were and are a lot of others like him. He just happened to snare the imagination of the story tellers. That name of his, perhaps. It has a ring to it. Like Johnny Appleseed or Sir Launcelot."

  "But you heard . . ."

  "That he was hunting something? Sure. They all are hunting something."

  "But he disappeared."

  "Stay out there long enough," I told her, "and keep on poking into strange areas and you're bound to disappear. Sooner or later you'll run into something that will finish you."

  "But you . . ."

  "I quit soon enough," I said. "But I was f
airly safe, at that. All I was hunting were new planets. No Seven Cities of Cibola, no mystic El Dorado, no trance-bound Crusade of the Soul."

  "You mock at us," said Friar Tuck. "I do not like a mocker."

  "I did not mean to mock," I said to Sara Foster. "Space is full of tales. The one you mention is only one of many. They provide good entertainment when there's nothing else to do. And I might add that I dislike correction at the hands of a phony religico with dirty fingernails."

  I put my glass down upon the table that stood beside the chair and got up on my feet.

  "Thanks for the drink," I said. "Perhaps some other time . . ."

  "Just a moment, please," she said. "If you will please sit down. I apologize for Tuck. But it's I you're dealing with, not him. I have a proposal that you may find attractive."

  "I've retired," I said.

  "Perhaps you saw the, ship standing on the field. Two berths from where you landed.

  "Yes, I saw the ship. And admired it. Does it belong to you?"

  She nodded. "Captain, I need someone to run that ship. How would you like the job?"

  "But why me," I asked. "Surely there are other men."

  She shook her head. "On Earth? How many qualified spacemen do you think there are on Earth?"

  "I suppose not many."

  "There are none," 'she said. "Or almost none. None I'd trust that ship to."

  I sat down again. "Let's get this straight," I said. "How do you know you can trust the ship to me? What do you know about me? How did you know I had arrived on Earth?"

  She looked straight at me, squinting just a little, perhaps the way she'd squint down a rifle barrel at a charging beast.

  "I can trust you," she said, "because there's nowhere you can go. You're fair game out in space. Your only safety would lie in sticking with the ship."

  "Fair enough," I admitted. "And how about going out in space? The Patrol . . ."

  "Captain, believe me, there's nothing that can overtake that ship, And if someone should set out to 'do it, we can wear them down. We have a long, hard way to go. It would not be worth their while. And, furthermore, I think it can be arranged so that no one ever knows you've gone into space."

  "That's all very interesting," I said. "Could you bring yourself to tell me where we might be going?"

  She said, "We don't know where we're going."

  And that was damn foolishness, of course. You don't set out on a flight until you know where you are going. If she didn't want to tell, why couldn't she just say so?

  "Mr. Smith," said Sara, "knows where we are going."

  I switched my head to look at him, that great lump huddled in his chair, the sightless, milk-white eyes in his flabby face.

  "I have a voice in my head," he said. "I have contact with someone. I have a friend out there."

  Oh, wonderful! I thought. It all comes down to this. He has a voice in his head.

  "Let me guess," I said to Sara Foster. "This religious gentleman brought Mr. Smith to you."

  She suddenly was angry. Her face turned white and her blue eyes seemed to narrow to gleaming jets of ice.

  "You are right," she said, biting off the words, "but that's not all of it. You know, of course, that Knight was accompanied by a robot."

  I nodded. "A robot by the name of Roscoe."

  "And that Roscoe was a telepathic robot?"

  "There's no such thing," I said.

  "But there is. Or was. I've done my homework, captain. I have the specifications for this particular robot. And I had them long before Mr. Smith showed up. Also letters that Knight had written to certain friends of his. I have, perhaps, the only authentic documentation concerning Knight and what be was looking for. All of it acquired before these two gentlemen showed up and obtained from sources of which they could have had no knowledge."

  "But they could have heard . . ."

  "I didn't tell a soul," she said. "It was—what would you call it? Perhaps no more than a hobby. Maybe an obsession. Bits and pieces picked up here and there, with never any hope of fitting them together. It was such a fascinating legend . . ."

  "And that is all it is," I said. "A legend. Built up through the years by accomplished, but nonmalicious, liars. One tiny fact is taken and twisted and interwoven with other tiny facts until all these interwoven tiny facts, forced into fictitious relationships with one another, become so complicated that there is not a shred of hope of knowing which is solid fact and which is inspired fiction."

  "But letters? And specifications for a special kind of robot?"

  "That would be something else again. If they were authentic."

  "There is no question about their authenticity. I've made sure of that."

  "And what do these letters say?"

  "That he was looking for something."

  "I've told you they all were looking for something. Every one of them. Some of them believed the things they were looking for are there. Some of them simply hypnotized themselves into believing it. That's the way it was in the old days, that's the way it is right now. These kind of people need some excuse for their eternal wandering. They need to graft some purpose to a purposeless existence. They're in love with space and all those new unknown worlds which lie out beyond the next horizon. There is no reason in the world why they should be batting around out there and they know this, so they concoct their reasons and . . ."

  "Captain, you don't believe a word of it?"

  "Not a word," I said.

  It was all right with me if she let these two adventurers lead her on a wild-goose chase, but I was not about to be a party to it. Although, remembering that ship standing out there on the landing field, I admit that I was tempted. But it was impossible, I knew. Earth was sanctuary and needed sanctuary.

  "You do not like me," Friar Tuck paid to me. "And I don't like you, either. But let me tell you, honestly, that I brought my blind companion to Miss Foster with no thought of monetary gain. I am past all need of monetary gain. All I seek is truth."

  I didn't answer him. Of what use would be an answer? I'd 'known his breed before.

  "I cannot see," said Smith, speaking not to us, not even to himself, but to some unknown person that no one knew about. "I have never seen. I know no shape except the shapes that my hands can tell me. I can envision objects in my imagination, but the vision must be wrong, for I do not know of colors, although I am told there is such a thing as color. Red means something to you, but it is meaningless to me. There is no way one can describe a color to a man who cannot see. The feel of texture, yes, but no way in the world to really know of texture. Water to drink, but what does water look like? Whiskey in a glass with ice, but what does whiskey look like? Ice is hard and smooth and has a feel I'm told is cold. It is water that has turned to crystals and I understand it's white, but what is crystal, what is white?

  "I have nothing of this world except the space it gives me and the thoughts of other people, but how am I to know that my interpretations of these thoughts are right? Or that, I can marshal facts correctly? I have little of this world, but I have another world." He lifted his hand and with his fingers tapped his skull. "Another world," he said, "here inside my head. Not an imagined world, but another world that's given me by another being. I do not know where this other being is, although I've been made to know he is very distant from us. That is all I know for certain—the great distance that he lies and the direction of that distance."

  "So that is it," I said, looking at Sara. "He's to be the compass. We set out in the direction that he tells us and we keep on going . . ."

  'That is it," she said. "That was the way it was with Roscoe."

  "Knight's robot?"

  "Knight's robot. That's what the letters say. Knight had it himself—just a little of it. Just enough to know there was someone out there. So he had the robot fabricated."

  "A made-to-order robot? A telepathic robot?" She nodded.

  It was hard to swallow. It was impossible. There was something going on here beyond a
ll belief.

  "There is truth out there," said Tuck. "A truth we cannot even guess. I'm willing to bet my life to go out and see."

  "And that," I said, "is exactly what you would be doing. Even if you found the truth . . ."

  "If it's out there," Sara said, "someone, some time, will find it. Why can't it be us?"

  I looked around the room. The heads glared down at us, fantastic and ferocious creatures from many distant planets, and some of them I'd seen before and others I had only heard about and there were a number of them that I'd never heard about, not even in the alcoholic tales told by lonely, space-worn men when they gathered with their fellows in obscure bars on planets of which perhaps not more than a thousand people knew the names.

  The walls are full, I thought. There is no more room for other heads. And the glamor of hunting and of bringing home more heads may be fading, too. Perhaps not alone for Sara Foster, big game huntress, but for those other people in whose eyes. her adventures on distant planets spelled out a certain kind of status. So what more logical than to hunt another kind of game, to bring home another kind of head, to embark upon a new and more marvelous adventure?

  "No one," said Sara Foster, "would ever know you'd gone into space, that you had left the Earth. You'd come here someday and a man would leave again. He'd look exactly like you, but he would not be you. He'd live here on Earth in your stead and you'd go into space."

  "You have money enough to buy a deal like this?" I asked. "To buy the loyalty of such a man?"

  She shrugged. "I have money enough to buy anything at all. And once we were well out in space what difference would it make if he were unmasked?"

  "None at all," I said, "except I'd like to come back with the ship—if the ship comes back."

  "That could be arranged," she said. "That could be taken care of."

  "The man who would be me here on Earth," I asked, "might meet with a fatal accident?"

  "Not that," she said. "We could never get away with that. There are too many ways to identify a man."

  I got the impression she was just a little sorry so simple a solution was not possible.

  I shied away from it, from the entire deal. I didn't like the people and I didn't like the project. But there was the itch to get my hands upon that ship and be out in space again. A man could die on Earth, I thought; he could suffocate. I'd seen but little of the Earth and the little I had seen I'd liked. But it was the kind of thing a man might like for a little time and then slowly grow to hate. Space was in my blood. I got restless when I was out of it too long. There was something out there that got beneath one's skin, became a part of one. The star-strewn loneliness, the silence, the sense of being anchored nowhere, of being free to go wherever one might wish and to leave whenever one might wish—this was all a part of it, but not all of it. There was something else that no man had ever found a way to put a name to. Perhaps a sense of truth, corny as it sounded.