Someone to Watch Over Me, Floyd C. Gale and H. L. Gold [story books to read txt] 📗

I'm getting a little old and tired, too.

"You know," he said to his partner, "maybe we both ought to retire."

"What do you mean?"

"You've been at this long enough and I've got all the money I want. We can see each other sometimes; no reason why I couldn't go into hyperspace just to visit."

The kqyres paled to pearl. "Now that you have Lyddy, you don't want anything else at all?"

"Now that I have Lyddy, what else is there to want?"

The kqyres flickered anxiously. "But the mbretersha has commanded—"

Mattern smiled. "Her commands don't hold good in this universe. You know that. When I was a kid, she could fool me into believing she had a hold over me. But the hold is a psychological one; that's the only thing that could carry over from universe to universe. And I'm strong enough to break it now."

Although he was not quite serious, it might be, he thought, that the hyperspace trade and the trips to Ferr had spoiled him for everyday life, made him too restless for the mundanities of any world. And it was time for him to settle down now.

He let the kqyres win the game, and then he stood up. "I'd better start getting things ready for the trip to Burdon."

"You've definitely decided to go?"

"Yes," Mattern said, pleased with himself, "definitely."

He went to the control room and got out the forms that would need to be filled out before the ship could leave port. Suddenly he remembered his puzzlement about the young spaceman—what was his name?—Raines? He pressed a button on the file, and the boy's records flashed up at him. At first they seemed to be in order: Alard Raines, aged twenty-five, educated on Earth, well and good. But born on Earth ... Mattern was almost positive that could never have been, not from the way the young man spoke. And one false statement meant that the whole record was false.

However, he could not challenge the discrepancy before they left for Capella. If he spoke to Raines, he'd probably have to dismiss him then and there. It would be difficult to find a suitable replacement in Erytheia City. He might have to send for someone from Earth, which would take months, perhaps a year. First he'd take the Queen to Burdon, he decided, and then he would fire Raines.

Nearly three weeks went by before they could leave. Mattern found himself looking forward with some impatience to Burdon. When Lyddy had a house of her own that she could take an interest in, he told himself, things would be different; she would be different. This way she was bored much of the time, and boredom is contagious.

"I've 'vised ahead to Capella, dear," he told her as they boarded ship, "and rented a furnished multiplex, so we'll have some place to stay."

"Yes, honey," she said, with a strange lack of interest. She didn't even seem surprised at the size of the ship. Underneath her elaborate makeup, she was pale; her body was trembling. She saw that an explanation was necessary. "It's been so long since I made the Jump. Silly of me to be so nervous, but you do hear things about hyperspace...."

"You're safer in my ship than anywhere else."

"Yes, I know." Was she merely expressing trust in him, or was there more to her words than that?

At first he was just vaguely suspicious. Then, the second day out, he noticed that Lyddy and Raines seemed to be together a good deal more of the time than chance would account for, and his suspicions secured a focus. The two had some kind of unspoken understanding, he thought, watching them as much out of curiosity as anger. I have become chilled with the years of alien company, he thought. I am incapable of true passion; perhaps that is what she seeks in another.

But, though he might find excuses for her, he would not condone her. A bargain was a bargain. At the end of the first week, he said to her one evening, as he sat on the edge of the bed, watching her brush her long, thick gilded hair, "Darling, I'm a little worried about one of my crewmen."

Lyddy didn't turn from the jeweled dressing table he'd had especially installed for her. "Which one?" she asked.

"Young Raines. Do you know which he is?"

"Yes." She paused. "There's only one young one. Why are you worried about him? Do you think he's sick or something?" But that was the question she should have asked before asking the man's identity.

Mattern let a moment elapse, then said, "His papers appear to be forged."

He glanced at the reflection of her face, but it held neither relief nor fear, merely its usual sweet emptiness. "Maybe he needed a job real bad," she said.

"Maybe," her husband agreed, "but why use forged papers?"

"He might of gotten into some kind of trouble—you know how boys are."

"I'd hardly care to employ the kind of spaceman who gets into trouble serious enough for him to lose his papers. You have to do something pretty drastic to get them taken away, you know."

She said nothing.

He went on, "What I'm beginning to suspect is that he isn't really a trained spaceman at all, that he didn't go to any of the Earth space schools."

"Do you have to go to an Earth space school to be a spaceman? Can't you study somewhere else?"

"Earth's the only place where they give the conditioning." He told the truth, figuring she wouldn't understand.

She turned to look at him. "That's so the men shouldn't—see the things outside when they go through hyperspace, isn't it?"

Mattern was somewhat taken aback. "How did you know? It's not public information."

She shrugged and turned back to the dressing table. "I've known a lot of spacemen, hon."

Her face was pale, but why just now? He wondered just what Raines had told her—how much the boy actually knew. Naturally there could be only one possible reason he had chosen Lyddy as his confidante.

"There's something between you and Raines, isn't there?" he asked.

There was a slight delay. Then her laughter shrilled through the cabin. "Don't be silly, hon; I hardly know the man! All I've done was speak to him a couple of times!" She got up and put her soft arms around her husband. "You're jealous, Len," she said, and there was complacency mixed with the fright in her eyes.

He felt a pang of disgust, but tried not to let it show. Gently, he put her away from him.

"But that's so silly," she murmured. "How could I prefer a dumb pimply kid to you?"

In theory, that was quite true, but Len knew women had strange tastes. And possibly "a dumb pimply kid" had more to offer her emotionally and, in reverse, intellectually, than he had. It was not impossible that she was telling the truth, but Mattern could not, of course, believe her. And there was no point in making a further issue of it now. When they reached Burdon, he would fire Raines simply on the basis of the forged papers. No need to bring Lyddy into it at all. So that problem would be easily solved, but what of the others?

He went to play chess with the kqyres. "I trust you have got over your whimsical notion to retire," the xhind said hopefully.

"No," Len told him maliciously, "I've practically made up my mind to quit. There doesn't seem to be any point to it any more."

"The woman has changed! That's the whole trouble, isn't it? Even though it's not apparent, in some way she has changed?"

"No," Len said again, "she hasn't changed at all. In fact, I think that's what the trouble is. She hasn't changed, but I have."

"I never thought of that," the kqyres confessed.

The night of the Jump, Mattern turned in at the kqyres' suggestion. "For once, your men can take care of the ship," the xhind said, "since there will be no trading stop." Lyddy would be drugged, but Mattern would not need drugs, for hyperspace held no more horrors for him. Or so he thought.

But that night he was awakened by the sound of a screaming so hideous that, if he hadn't known voices don't change during the hyperjump, he would be tempted to think it was one result of the law of mutability—so monstrous were these shrill, worse-than-animal cries.

He rushed out of his cabin.

In the corridor stood Lyddy, still screaming, her face contorted with terror that only the sight of Alard Raines standing there in his normal shape let Mattern know that they had already passed the Jump.

The shrieking separated into words. "I saw it! It was horrible!" And she made an ugly noise in her throat. "You were right, Alard. It's true! There's a monster on board and it did something awful to me...." Her voice ebbed to a bubble as she looked down at her body beneath the thin veil of fabric and found the same voluptuous curves she had started out with.

Mattern sighed. "Better come into my cabin, Lyddy." And then he jerked his head at Raines. "You come, too." He paused in the doorway when he saw there was no need for privacy. "Where are the other crewmen?"

"Asleep," Raines said. "Drugged. As usual. Who do you think you're fooling, anyway?"

Mattern was too disturbed at the news to take notice of the boy's manner. "But they weren't supposed to be drugged this trip! And who's in charge then? You?"

Raines flushed and struggled to pronounce the word he wanted to use in return. "Your kek—kqyres, I'd say, is in charge. Like he always has been," he concluded triumphantly.

Mattern shut the cabin door behind the three of them. Lyddy went over and sat down on the edge of the bunk, quieter now that she found her personal transformation had been ephemeral. Seeing a monster is not, after all, anywhere near as bad as being a monster. Her fright dimmed and was outshone by a strong sense of personal injury.

"I thought all Alard's talk of kek-kek-monsters was just superstition," she babbled, "but it's true. I saw that thing with my own eyes and it's hideous! Len, why do you have it on board, especially when I'm here?"

"I have to," Len said. "He's my partner."

Her blue eyes widened in shock. "Then you've been doing more than just trading with the hyperspacers. You've been associating with them, and they're even worse than extraterrestrials because they're so much more—extraterrestrial!"

She went on talking in this vein, but Mattern ignored her and turned his attention to the boy. "I suppose you told her not to eat or drink anything so she'd see the hyperspacer?"

Raines nodded, his face essaying contempt but imperfectly concealing terror.

"And I suppose you yourself did the same thing, not knowing the men weren't going to be drugged this trip?" Len sat down behind his writing table and looked thoughtfully at the young man. "You must have done the same thing before, on other trips, to know as much as you seem to. You must have heard and seen a great deal, eh?"

"Plenty," Raines said, through brave, stiff lips. "Plenty."

Obviously the boy hates me, Mattern thought. But why? Is Lyddy enough reason?

"Why did you bring her into this?" he asked, almost mildly.

Lyddy didn't give Alard a chance to answer. "Because he wanted me to see you as you really are!" she shrieked.

The boy shuffled his feet. "I had to tell somebody."

"Why my wife, though? She owes you nothing; she owes me everything. The first woman of the streets you picked up would have made a safer confidante."

"Maybe I trusted her."

"Maybe you had no right to trust her!" Mattern cried, almost with sincerity. "It would have been wrong of her not to tell me."

"Maybe it was because I—I love her," Alard said, looking down at the thick rugs that covered the cabin floor. "If you fall in love with somebody, you tell them things."

Mattern couldn't help smiling. "I never do," he said.

"Maybe you've never been in love. Maybe you don't have any human feelings at all."

There was an uncomfortable feeling in Mattern's shoulders, as if his tailor had made a mistake for once. Had he, during sixteen years of alien trade, changed into something not quite human? Was there then a solid basis for the anti-extraterrestrial prejudice? He picked up a slender, sharp thike and ran his thumb absent-mindedly along the blade. Alard stiffened in his effort not to flush.

Mattern smiled and laid the thike down on the table. It was only a paperknife and had never been used for anything more. If he ever had need for such a thing to be done, the time was long past when he would have needed to do it himself. He looked at the crewman.

"One would almost think you told