Chapter VIII

The delivery truck resembled a dog catcher's wagon as it rolled up behind the governor's palace. It was Joel's first glimpse of Priscilla's home--a towering plastic structure in the style of the symbolists.

After the girl had bought him, guards had whisked him from the slave block. He'd been hauled through the streets like a wild beast.

Joel was led inside an office where the major-domo, a tall, tremendously fat man in a white slave tunic, signed the receipt for him. Alpha Centauri A had set. An angry orange light streamed through the windows from Alpha Centauri B.

The major-domo grunted, heaved himself to his feet. He was staring fixedly at Joel's arm.

Joel glanced down. The tattoo mark was fluorescing a vivid green!

"So!" said the major-domo.

Joel opened his mouth. The major-domo put his finger to his lips with a silencing gesture, covered the action with a yawn. But his eyes held a warning.

He slid his hand beneath his desk. Something clicked. The tattoo quit fluorescing.

"Put this on," he said going to a clothes locker and tossing Joel one of the white slave tunics. "Miss Cameron left orders that you weren't to be assigned until she sent for you."

Joel dropped the tunic over his head with a confused feeling.

"This way." The fat man led him into a corridor. As the door shut on the office, he stopped so abruptly that Joel bumped into him.

"All right," he said, "it's safe to talk here. But watch the mirrors. They're televisors! There isn't a room in the palace that isn't equipped with them. We're under constant surveillance."

Joel's brain was reeling. So the palace serfs were organized too!

"Listen close," the major-domo went on low-voiced. "Meeting tonight. You'll be instructed in your part for _the day_."

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the door at the opposite end of the corridor slid aside. The fat man jumped a foot, his face taking on the color of wet clay.

A girl brushed into the passage, stopped with a startled expression. She was young, Joel saw, and pretty with straight brown hair. Her short white tunic exposed long symmetrical legs.

"Hullo!" she said. "I was looking for you." Her brown eyes flicked a glance at Joel. "This the new man?"

The major-domo said, "Yes," in a relieved voice.

"Big devil. Does he bite?"

"He's a legitimate maladjustment case, if that's what you're driving at," the fat man replied stiffly. "What did you want?"

"Miss Cameron sent me to fetch him." She jerked her head at Joel.

The major-domo frowned. "You'll have to go," he said to Joel. "I was hoping she'd give you time to get your bearings. But that's not her way."

"Listen," said the girl turning anxiously to Joel. "I'm Peg--Miss Cameron's maid. You watch your step. That baggage has bought dozens of men off the Star Ships. They would be around for a week, ten days. Then pouf! Gone! Nobody would ever see 'em again!"

Joel looked startled. "What is she? A lady Bluebeard?"

"She's no lady," said the girl. "And it isn't funny. You watch your step. She can see in the dark like a cat!"

"What's that?" Joel's interest quickened. "See in the dark?"

"Like a cat!" Peg repeated. "And that's not the half of it. She can smell a person out like a hound! I mean actually. Just let her get one whiff of you and she knows who you are!"

Joel wasn't surprised. That explained how Priscilla had detected Tamis at the slave market. It also explained why the Ganelon spies had always been caught in the palace. Their alien scent had betrayed them to Priscilla's keen nostrils. Trapping them was easy.

"We've loitered here as long as we dare!" Peg said nervously. "I'll get in trouble."

The major-domo said, "Don't forget tonight," retreated down the passage to his office.

Joel followed the girl through a maze of corridors. Peg switched along, chattering incessantly. Once she hissed out of the corner of her mouth, "Talk! Don't gape at the mirrors. We're not supposed to know they're televisors!"

For the life of him, Joel couldn't think of anything to say. The mirrors were everywhere. They gave him a bad case of stage fright.

At the top floor, Peg paused before a door, pressed a stud. Joel saw that a panel of opaque plastic had been let into the face of the door.

"I'm on the terrace," said Priscilla's voice suddenly. It sounded so close that Joel's head snapped around. "Bring him back here."

And the door opened, silently, disclosing an empty vestibule. The walls were mirrors glowing with a subdued rose light. Their feet made no sound on the dull black plastic floor as they crossed the vestibule, entered the salon.

Like the vestibule, Joel saw, it was paneled in dimly gleaming mirrors. It made the room stretch out forever except where crystal doors gave onto a roof garden. He could see Priscilla Cameron stretched on a deck chair sunning herself in the luminous orange rays of Alpha Centauri B.

Peg pushed aside the crystal doors. "Here he is, Miss Cameron."

* * * * *

At their appearance, some creature set up an excited yap-yapping. Joel stared around trying to locate the beast. Then he swallowed. The yapping noise was issuing from a plant in a green tub!

"Thank you, Peg," Priscilla said. "That's all."

Peg curtsied, backed out.

"What is that thing?" Joel demanded.

"It's an Asgardian lung beast." Priscilla went to the excited plant, stroked it gently. The yapping ceased. "See. It's not a plant at all. It's one of the three known species of Asgardian rooted mammals."

Joel put his hand on the creature. It was like a lump of flesh covered with soft brown hair! He shuddered, snatched his hand away.

Priscilla laughed. She was wearing a short yellow smock and sandals. She said, "Sit down, Joel. I want to talk to you."

He sank into the relaxer she indicated. Instantly, flexible metal bands whipped about his throat, his biceps, his wrists and ankles. He wrenched convulsively, squirmed.

The more he fought the tighter the bands contracted. He couldn't breathe. A red haze swam before his eyes.

"Relax!" he heard Priscilla's voice coming from a great distance.

He slumped in the seat. The bands slacked off. He could breathe again.

"Damn you! Damn you!" he rasped. His throat was raw.

"I'm sorry, Joel!" she said in a scared voice. "I have to know something!"

Sitting stiffly in the chair's metal embrace, he watched her from the corner of his eye. She was wheeling a machine onto the terrace. Wires sprouted from it like the ganglia of the nervous system. Each wire terminated in a tiny saucer-shaped disk. She fastened them to his temple, the base of his skull, his solar plexus, his spine. Sweat burst out on Joel's face.

Priscilla finished attaching the sucker discs. Then she sat down at the machine, began to fiddle with a dial.

The machine went "_Glug--glug--bubble--glug_--"

"What the hell is that thing?" Joel demanded in a tight voice.

Priscilla didn't answer. The only sound was the "_glug--glug--bubble--glug_" of the machine. Then it said, "_What the hell is she up to?_" in an alarmed metallic voice.

Joel jerked as if he'd been slapped.

The machine said, "_No! No!_" And then it became absolutely unintelligible. It babbled.

Joel stared at it in consternation.

It said: "_My Lord, it's reading my thoughts!_"

He turned horrified eyes to Priscilla.

The machine rattled on inexorably: "_Why? Why? What does she want to know? Ganelons. Don't think ... Tamis. Where's Tamis? And Thorp. Wonder--. I'm being verbose. Go around in circles. Circles. Curves. Good legs and--. A hell of a thing to be thinking of now! What happened to those other men? Lady Bluebeard. She's no lady. She sure as hell isn't...._"

"For Pete's sake shut that thing off!" Joel and the machine roared in unison.

Priscilla lifted her eyes, asked, "Have the rebels contacted you?"

"No," said Joel.

The machine said: "_That damned machine will give me away._"

"So they have contacted you?"

"Yes," he replied bitterly.

The machine said: "_What's the use of lying?_"

Priscilla threw back her head and laughed. "Joel, are you in communication with the Ganelons?"

"Ganelons?" he said, "What are they?"

The machine said: "_How did she know that? Ye gods, she'll pull everything out of me. Make my mind a blank. Don't think about Tamis. Don't...._

"Who's Tamis?" Priscilla asked.

"_She's forgotten_," the machine said in surprise. "_No. She didn't know the girl's name; just that she was a Ganelon. Wow, what a horrible, uncontrollable thing a person's mind is. Multiplication tables. Two times two is four.... Damn! I can't remember the multiplication tables!_"

"Joel," said Priscilla, "I'm going to make you my bodyguard."

"Bodyguard!" echoed Joel and the machine together. "Hell fire...." He shut his mouth. The machine went, "_Glug--glug--bubble--glug. Out damned spot! Out, I say! One: Two: Why, then 'tis time to do't...._"

"What's that?" Priscilla demanded suspiciously.

"Macbeth," Joel replied with a grin. And for ten minutes she had to listen to the machine spouting quotations from Shakespeare. After that it started on nursery rhymes, began a dissertation on cattle breeding.

"All right!" said Priscilla savagely. "You win. I can stand anything but hearing about the love life of a cow!" She shut the machine off.

Joel slumped weakly in the seat. Sweat was rolling down his face.

* * * * *

Priscilla was pensive as she removed the suckers, rolled the machine away. When she returned she was carrying a small paralyzer.

"Did you mean it," Joel asked, "when you said I'm to be your bodyguard?"

"Yes."

"But that's absurd!"

"Would you stand by and watch me murdered?"

"No," he admitted.

"Fair enough," she said. "That's all I ask."

She threw a switch on the back of the chair. The bands loosened. Joel stood up, rubbing his throat.

Priscilla shot him an oblique glance, said dryly, "Don't misunderstand me. I need protection. Nothing else."

Turning abruptly she entered the apartment, beckoned for him to follow. She touched a hidden plate in the floor with her toe. Joel saw a section of the mirror paneled wall slide aside revealing a shallow passage beyond.

"This is where you're to stay. So that you can watch the apartment at all times."

Joel entered the passage, gave a low whistle of surprise. It ran all around the salon behind the mirrors. He could see the room through them as if they were the clearest plate glass.

Security glass, he realized. It had been bombarded with chromium so that from one side it acted as a mirror. But from the other it was transparent.

"Who built this?"

"The last governor. He was terrified of assassination. The palace is a rat-run of secret passages and lifts, concealed televisors, electronic eyes and alarms."

Joel said, "Priscilla, why did you buy me?"

The twinkle returned to her green eyes. "You'll learn. Meanwhile you'd better familiarize yourself with these passages." And she shut the panel on him.

Joel spent the next week exploring the labyrinthine passages that ran everywhere from the sub basement to the top floor. He emerged only to eat or when Priscilla called him over the wrist radio.

From the serfs he heard echoes of what was taking place in the outside world. Walt Eriss, he learned from Peg, had joined one of the outlaw bands. He was being talked about constantly among the serfs.

A man of action, they called the ex-surgeon, brutal, ruthless, shrewd. A strong man. Joel held his own counsel. But the reports worried him.

He was exploring between the walls on the ninth level when he came to one of the trick mirrors and peered through. A long magnificent corridor met his eye. Directly across from the mirror was a lift.

General Fredrik Roos had his quarters on this level, Joel knew, but the hall was empty. He was about to turn away when the indicator light on the elevator glowed faintly.

Someone was coming up.

The car stopped, the doors slid back. Joel frowned. There wasn't a soul in the cage.

Then the doors shut and the cage dropped from sight.

Joel bit his lip. All at once, the indicator lit up again. The car was ascending to the ninth floor once more.

Again the doors slid aside. But this time General Fredrik Roos stepped briskly from the cage, turned left down the corridor.

The chief of the Asgardian police had taken only half a dozen steps, though, when he halted. Joel could see his nostrils twitch. Then his hand darted to the jeweled paralyzer at his waist. It was like a man practicing a quick draw--shadow boxing.

Roos pointed the paralyzer at emptiness, pressed the stud. A dazzling yellow beam lanced down the corridor, winked off.

Joel sucked in his breath. The misty outline of a body was materializing on the floor just ahead of Roos!

There had been someone there--someone who'd been invisible until the ray knocked him out!

"Ganelon!" Joel thought. He could see the shape of bare ivory legs and a delicate waist. It was a girl lying huddled on the floor!

Roos had snatched up a heavy vase from a niche in the wall. He was striding toward the unconscious Ganelon girl.

The ray only paralyzed; it didn't kill. Roos was going to murder the spy, Joel realized. At that instant he recognized her.

It was Tamis Ravitz!