The Paradise Game Read online

  There wasn’t room for me to close the door. All he had to do was push, and I’d be out in the dark street, all set up for pulverising. He had about five inches height and a good kilo and a half in hand of me. He was big.

  But first he wanted to insult me.

  ‘Damned slug-lover,’ he said.

  I could almost have laughed at the ineptitude of it. But it was deliberately crude and ridiculous. His idea of the etiquette of the situation was that bestial coarseness was called for rather than oratorical elegance. After all, come morning he was going to have to explain to his superiors that he was blind drunk and didn’t even know what he was doing, let alone who he was doing it to.

  I wished that I was near enough to the lintel to be able to lean back on it with some semblance of casualness. But my position demanded that I stand on my own two feet. I waited for him to carry on. There was more yet.

  ‘I’m gonna kill you...,’ he began. There was a lot more, but I didn’t bother to listen to it. Instead, I picked out his eyes with mine, and I used his abusive interlude to re-institute the staring match I’d abandoned earlier. He finished up with some comment to the effect that ‘...you better protect your hands because it’s them that you’ll be crawlin’ home on. I’m gonna break your legs.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ I said, without moving a muscle.

  The comment made him hesitate. He realised that I was staring at him, and suddenly he couldn’t meet the stare. He almost hit me then, but he’d lost his stride. I think he felt a wave of genuine drunkenness then, because he seemed very uncertain. Doubt washed all over his pig-like features.

  I just kept on staring, feeling fairly sure by now that he wasn’t going to hit me. His fight-starting rhythm had broken down. The fake drunken stupor which—a few moments before—had been his excuse now became his refuge. With a slurred curse, he dropped his head and lurched forward. He shoved me sideways with a savage sweep of his arm that was half a punch, and staggered out into the night.

  The blow sent me sideways into the lintel and I paralysed my arm temporarily jabbing my elbow into the edge of the door, but I didn’t let the pain show. After all, I had my dignity to think of.

  I heard Varly’s voice drifting back from the middle distance, saying ‘damned slugs’ or something similar. I hoped fervently that he didn’t run into any, though by now he would have forced himself into drunken oblivion.

  Nobody said anything to me as I walked back to the Doc Pepper game. They all eased themselves back into the pattern of existence they’d been following before the alien made her entrance.

  My drink was sitting on the card table. The dealer didn’t look up when I retrieved it.

  I looked around at the men standing nearest to me, until one actually permitted me to catch his eye. I raised my drink to him, slightly. He did likewise.

  ‘I know when I’m not wanted,’ I said to him quietly, draining my glass. ‘But I usually stick around anyway.’ The latter sentence I muttered, almost under my breath, but I think he caught the implication. My exit wasn’t nearly as impressive as my entrance.

  It was a warm night. Naturally.

  What a welcome, I commented inwardly.

  You were looking for it, said the wind. Don’t kid yourself that happened to you. You were just crazy to throw your weight about. You knew they couldn’t afford to start trouble.

  Thanks a lot, I said. I wish I knew everything too.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The stars were really beautiful, and the air tasted like....

  And it just felt good. All of it. Nothing in particular, nothing special. I felt at home there. It was a kind of infant Earth. The night wasn’t alien, not at all.

  I felt as sick as a dog.

  It was all so sweet and nice and sickly. It was offensive, the way that world took hold of me like that. It was an insult. I remained apart from myself even while I was busy reacting to it. I could sit back inside my skull, confident that no matter what that walk back to the spacefield made me feel, it couldn’t touch me. I was above it all. I could afford to be cynical.

  They built the town a fair way from the spacefield, of course. It was only a small port—nothing like the miles and miles of New York Port or any of the port cities on the core worlds. Landing ships here would be like dropping footballs on a postage stamp. They had to build the town a mile or two off or no one would be able to stand the noise of the big babies—the ramrods and supply ships—manoeuvring for landing.

  So I had a fair walk back to the Hooded Swan. Long enough to get a real feel of Pharos by night.

  It was easy to see why Pharos was a pawn in the Paradise Game. It was a sugary version of Earth. It was mostly ocean, and it tumbled in its orbit so that its season-cycle was so short it was virtually meaningless. The weather, so rumour had it, could get pretty fierce at times but the climate was wonderful. A few planetary engineers, a couple of botanical beauty surgeons and a few billion dollars could turn the place into heaven in no time at all. In a galactic economy, the sheer abundance of everything makes tangibles almost worthless. The real fortunes, the fortunes that buy and sell worlds and suns and peoples—and there are such fortunes, for the difference between very rich and very poor is measured in galactic terms—are not founded upon the trading of things but on dealing in services.

  New Alexandria was the most powerful world in the galaxy, because it dealt in knowledge. New Rome was vastly powerful because it sold law (in the guise of justice). The Paradise Game was a golden stairway to galactic power because it sold ways of life. A rich man can’t take his worldly wealth to the Kingdom of Heaven (so it’s said), but he can use it to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to him. In this day and age, Muhammad would definitely not have to go to the mountain. Assuming, that is, he had money.

  New Alexandria had a monopoly on its kind of power because knowledge only becomes vital when you have enough of it. New Rome had a monopoly on its kind of power almost by definition—it made the rules that gave it the monopoly. But everybody could play the Paradise Game. You just hop into your ship and you go looking. That’s easy.

  The tough part of the Paradise Game comes when you’ve found it. Then you have to use it.

  Personally, I don’t believe in it. I can understand it, but I don’t believe in it. The recipe is a fairly simple one. Tastes vary, but not much. You don’t fail to recognise Paradise when you find it. It’s a world about so big, about so far from a star that could be Sol’s twin sister. It’s usually got a lot of ocean, a lot of vegetation, and not too much microfauna (though that can always be arranged). It has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, with possibly just a hint more oxygen than Earth. It looks, in fact, like a young, unspoiled Earth. It sounds horribly unimaginative and prosaic. It is. That’s why I don’t believe in it. The Paradise Game panders to the lightest and most superficial of daydreams. The contents of its packages aren’t worth the gaudy shadows they’re wrapped up in. But the packages sell.

  Do you want to buy a ticket to Paradise?

  First class only.

  Not for me. Sure it was beautiful. Pharos was the incarnation of that which we’re all conditioned to think of as beautiful, to revere and to dream of—the unpolluted Earth. Come to Pharos and be conned by your own senses, betrayed by your own emotions. Come to Pharos and live in the perfect environment, tailored to your needs, your wants, your dreams. Come to Pharos and don’t ever ask what life in Paradise is for. Come to Pharos and die.

  Like I said, I felt as sick as a dog. It was only a mood. I knew it would pass. In the morning, I might feel that it was all worthwhile. I might settle down to enjoying myself. But I knew that as long as we were here, the whole nature of the problem that Charlot was trying to sort out was going to sour my outlook on life just that important little bit.

  It was a bad time for Charlot to accost me, but he was waiting for me back at the field. He intercepted me while I was heading for the Swan and took me aside into the ‘office’ that Caradoc had very kindly made available to him fo
r the duration of his stay on Pharos.

  It was a three-room shack, with plastic furniture, plastic filing cabinets and plastic fittings. It also had carpets, which signified that the Caradoc people were trying to put a brave face on the poverty of their facilities.

  I was expecting the Spanish Inquisition, but he didn’t even bother to ask where I’d been, let alone who I’d been upsetting. Nobody else was around, so I knew it wasn’t a mass briefing session.

  ‘I’m going to need your help,’ he said.

  Life is full of surprises. Either this was a new exercise in humility, or a new ploy for handling errant employees.

  I let him carry on.

  ‘We’re pressed for time,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to find out all there is to know about these aliens in a matter of days. I stand no chance on my own. You’re the only other man on the planet who has any chance of reaching an understanding with them.’

  ‘What’s the panic?’ I asked him.

  ‘We have to find a convincing reason for expelling Caradoc from this world, and we have to publicise that reason as widely as possible, before Caradoc decides to throw Aegis, Keith Just and ourselves off the world and just get on with it.’

  ‘I thought that arbitrators were supposed to find out all the facts before they made their decisions,’ I said.

  ‘We already know enough facts,’ said Charlot. ‘What we’re dealing in now is diplomatic excuses. Caradoc has its treaty. We all know it’s worthless, but Caradoc might just be prepared to overlook that and go ahead anyway. We have to come up with an excuse of our own before the Caradoc people decide to act.’

  ‘What difference does it make if they do act, if we can decide they aren’t entitled to?’

  Charlot made a gesture of impatience. ‘Caradoc is too big to push around without any effort,’ he said, as if it ought to be patently obvious to a child of three. ‘If it seizes this world there’s damn all we can do about it, there’s damn all New Rome can do about it, and there’s damn all anyone else can do about it, short of starting a war. We don’t want a fight and we don’t want a precedent. We can’t force Caradoc to back out, so we have to exert the only pressure we can. That’s political pressure and moral pressure. We have to find a very good reason for telling Caradoc to go to hell, and we have only days to do it.’

  I almost winced at his tone of voice—I wished that he wouldn’t talk to me like that. For a politician he was certainly an expert at putting my back up. But I couldn’t really find it in my heart to be too resentful. I’d put his back up quite a bit in my time. In addition, of course, I appreciated what he was saying. I got the message. I could hardly fail to get the message after my little encounter with Varly. Charlot wanted to do what I’d done, on a somewhat larger scale. I sympathised. I was on his side. I doubted that our motives were the same, but what we wanted to see done was the same kind of justice.

  ‘You better pray that this place isn’t bugged,’ I told him. ‘Because if Caradoc catches on to what you just said it’ll be on the move right now.’

  He laughed shortly. He never laughed because something was funny, only because something was wrong.

  ‘It’s no secret,’ he said. ‘Caradoc must know which side of the line the axe will fall. They can’t be a hundred percent certain that the decision’s already been taken, but they’d be fools to think that it might eventually come out in their favour. The only friends they’ve got are those fools from Aegis.’

  That surprised me.

  ‘You mean the Aegis people are plants?’

  ‘Of course not. Just idealists. But their kind of opposition is a lot easier for Caradoc to deal with than ours. Caradoc’s dearest wish is for this conflict to appear in the public eye as one between itself and Aegis. That, it can handle. We have to make it over into a conflict between Caradoc and the aliens. We have to prove that Caradoc’s mode of exploitation is ipso facto bad. What Caradoc is hoping for is a chance to establish that its intentions are no worse than anyone else’s. While Aegis is “anyone else” it has a chance.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Find me something I can use. Anything.’

  ‘What kind of anything?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Prove that it would be a disaster for the aliens to play host to Caradoc’s Paradise gang. Prove that the aliens were coerced into signing that treaty. Prove that Caradoc is importing diseases that will kill off the native population. Anything. But prove it.’

  I thought back to that alien. Absolutely trusting. Absolutely friendly. No fear, no aggression. What did she have against Caradoc? Nothing. She just didn’t know. But would it make any difference if she did?

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ I promised him. ‘But I don’t know if there’s anything I can do. And to be quite honest, I just don’t see how we’re going to stop Caradoc anyhow. I don’t see what’s stopping them now.’

  ‘What’s stopping them now,’ he said, ‘is not knowing how far they can go and get away with it. They don’t know how much money will flow with the morality.’

  It was my turn to laugh.

  ‘You can afford to be cynical,’ said Charlot. ‘You don’t have a profit margin to worry about. They’re gambling with more worlds than this one. It’s a tough game. It’s easier for you to play than for Frank Capella or his bosses. Their fortunes and their futures are tied up in this gamble. There’s no way they can calculate the answers.’

  If in doubt, I thought, hesitate.

  I stood up. ‘I better get some sleep,’ I said, ‘if I’m going to be working tomorrow.’

  He didn’t make any move to follow me. Apparently, he still had some thinking to do. Planning strategy, or just plain worrying.

  He didn’t bother to say thank you, either.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Eve shook me awake. It didn’t feel as though I’d been asleep very long, but I didn’t bother with useless and meaningless questions like ‘What time is it?’ Short sleeping is all part of adjusting to local.

  ‘Are we in a hurry?’ I asked her. She seemed to be in a particularly brisk mood.

  ‘Suddenly, you’re popular,’ she said. ‘The boss wants to see you right away. Not the rest of us just you. What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I assured her.

  ‘What didn’t you do?’

  I answered ‘Nothing’ to that, too. She didn’t seem particularly surprised, but I could tell that she was interested. It wasn’t unknown for Charlot to deputise Nick to help him on a job, but even when he co-opted all of us en masse into his little schemes, his advice to me usually only went so far as ‘Stay out of trouble.’ Obviously, Eve didn’t know about the little tête à tête Titus and I had had the night before. I wondered whether she knew what Titus had told me about the whole operation being a put-up job. As my head cleared, I realised that she almost certainly didn’t. As official monitor on the mission, everything she saw or heard might later become important as an official legal record. It would hardly pay our side to prejudice our position in the record.

  She had breakfast all ready for me. I practically threw it down—not, of course, because I was mad keen to get on, but because that’s the least arduous way to transfer gruel from outside to in.

  Titus apparently couldn’t wait. He appeared in the doorway of the cabin while I was still sipping at my coffee. He glanced at Eve, who was still sitting on the bunk waiting for me, though she ought to have had better things to do, and then he pitched in.

  ‘I’ve got to go out and see the natives right away,’ he said. ‘No time to waste. Holcomb—he’s the Aegis man—and Capella both want to pester me with their cases. Nick will look after Capella, but Holcomb might actually have something to tell us. Can you take care of him?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘It shouldn’t take too long. A couple of hours, if you can keep him off polemics and on evidence.’

  ‘That won’t be easy,’ I pointed out.

  ‘You’ll manage,’ he said, with touching confi
dence.

  ‘What about me?’ asked Eve.

  Charlot hesitated for the barest instant. ‘It’s going to take time making any sort of progress with the natives,’ he said. ‘There are bound to be extreme communication difficulties.’

  ‘Won’t the Caradoc people have interpreters?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Those are the communication difficulties he means,’ I interrupted drily. Charlot looked at me as if I were a scorpion in the bedclothes. I got the message. I was an unbiased investigator, a seeker after truth. Capella’s hypothetical bugs could safely be ignored, but the delicate, shell-like ears of the monitor had to be protected. I tried to signify with a nod and a twitch of my facial muscles that I understood and would be careful.

  Charlot turned back to Eve. ‘I think you’d better go with Grainger,’ he told her. ‘After all, Holcomb stirred up this mess—better have what he has to say on the record face first. Plenty of time to get the Caradoc angle—they won’t let us miss out on it.’

  I was surprised (though Eve was more so) by this decision. It testified to an amazing amount of confidence on Charlot’s part. He was obviously assuming that I was with him one hundred percent and my heart was with him too, if he was trusting me not to say anything the monitor wouldn’t want to hear, even by accident. What he said about procedure was valid enough, but I’d have expected him to tag Eve to honest, upright Captain delArco, who would never put a word in the wrong place, even if he knew there was a wrong place to put it, which I doubted. I figured Nick was almost certainly the fall guy—he fended off the awkward stuff while Titus and I made use of our various expertise in order to sort out the real problem.

  But Titus probably had his reasons. Maybe he wanted to keep a check on me. Maybe he wanted me to keep a check on the monitor. In any case, Eve and I set out together for the nice early morning walk to Caradoc’s shanty town.

  ‘You’ve suddenly become very co-operative,’ she commented, as soon as we were out of Charlot’s sight.