Anarchaos

V

The sun inched minutely backwards across the sky as I drove eastward toward Ulik, so that I seemed gradually to be outdistancing it, until, when I first saw the city ahead of me, that red ball was in a position behind me that in my friendlier sun at home would indicate, in summer, approximately two o’clock in the afternoon. On Earth, of course, a distance of a thousand miles or more would separate sites two hours apart by the sun, but Anarchaos was in a much closer orbit to its Hell, so that Ni and Ulik were barely four hundred miles apart.

The last fifty miles or so had been across a high barren plateau, rocky and uninviting. Two men mounted on hairhorses had tried to stop me at one point, blocking my path, but I accelerated toward them, and fired a shot from my new pistol, and they whirled away in front of me, cursing and shaking their fists. They were bearded, and dressed in furs, and had heavy-looking swords at their waists. They were the last humans I saw before coming to Ulik.

Ulik was built in the center of a great flat brown valley, the dry bed of a onetime inland sea. The plateau ended here, the road sweeping down the bare eastern slope to the bottom, and then — a thin black line — arrowed straight across the dry seabed to the city.

Ulik, first seen from far away and high atop the eastern edge of the plateau, had a kind of frail grandeur to it, the only sign of man in all this emptiness. The syndicate towers were fewer here than at Ni, but just as tall and just as graceful and just as slender, reflecting blood-red glints of sunlight. Because Hell lay off the zenith there were shadows of the tallest rock formations, long pointing black fingers stretching toward the city across the valley floor, I drove quickly down the long decline.

It had been getting cold atop the plateau, but now as I moved down into the valley the air grew somewhat warmer again. I remembered that the UC man at the spaceport had said the temperature at Ulik was approximately sixty degrees.

Ulik was a fur center, where the trappers brought their pelts for sale, where they were cured and treated and prepared for transport off-world. This paved Union Commission road ended at the city itself, but on the other side broad dirt tracks moved off toward the evening line, showing the routes of the trappers and tradesmen, slavers and solitaries.

The junkyard hovels were all on that side, too, so that the western approach to the city, where I was coming in, was all beauty and shine, as modern as any city anywhere, all towers and spires and graceful arches, sweeping high walkways and gossamer webs of communications lines.

Now for the first time I was seeing the syndicate towers up close. At ground level they were surprisingly heavy and thick in appearance, all steel and concrete, massive and windowless, darkened by their own shadows. Armed guards patrolled in groups at their iron doorways, glowering at me in suspicion as I drove by, and here and there down the side streets raggedly dressed men and women slithered along the concrete walls on minor, urgent, and incomprehensible missions.

Although the off-world corporations owned these syndicates and their towers body and soul, nowhere did a corporate name or logo appear. Instead, above the heavy iron main doors of each structure was mounted the symbol of each syndicate: an inverted triangle containing the letter S, an X of crossed lightning bolts, a sledge hammer with a dog’s head, a raised black grillwork on which was laid a silver stylization of a bird in flight.

Finally I saw the one I wanted: a cornucopia dripping ice. Originally a syndicate of those who made or repaired refrigeration machines — freezers, air conditioners, home refrigerators — it had been taken over long ago by the Wolmak Corporation, a chemical company with some connections to the local mining industry. In the first decade or so of the colony’s existence, refrigeration units had actually been manufactured in this tower, and bartered with other syndicates, and later serviced and repaired by members of this syndicate, but all that was in the long dead past. The factory had long since been stripped bare, the original membership of the syndicate had died out, and the membership now was small, badly-trained for repair work, and totally subservient to the Wolmak Corporation.

Each syndicate, in the beginning, had given itself a one word — usually one syllable — name which implied the syndicate’s purpose, and this one had called itself Ice. The old syndicate names were still used, although today when anyone on Anarchaos spoke of Ice he actually meant Wolmak. The names of the owner corporations were never seen and rarely heard.

I stopped my car in front of the Ice tower, saw to it that I had all my weapons on me, and stepped out onto the ground. The hunting knife was in its sheath against my back, the other knife in my left side pocket, the pistol in my right hip pocket, the gas spray can in my left hip pocket, and the piece of pipe tucked into my belt. I left my knapsack on the car seat.

There were half a dozen guards in front of the Ice tower door, dressed in silver uniforms with pale blue edgings. (Although everything was tinged with red by the light of Hell, the color red was never used by humans here. Blues and greens and yellows were in use everywhere, all mottled by the red light, but the shades of red itself were completely avoided.) These guards had watched me with as much suspicion as anyone else while I was driving toward them, but now that I had stopped and gotten out of the car their suspicion was doubled, tripled. They held automatic rifles in clenched fists and glowered at me in furious silence.

I didn’t move toward them, suspecting their great tension might lead them to kill me without finding out who or what I was. I merely stood beside the car, showed them my hands to demonstrate that they were empty, and called, “Tell Whistler that Rolf Malone is here.”

They looked at one another, consulting together with glances and expressions. Finally, one backed to the building, opened a small plate beside the door, and spoke into a phone. The rest of us waited, in our respective places.

Several minutes went by. The guard at the phone spoke, and waited, and then spoke again, and waited again. Finally he called to me, “You related to Gar Malone?”

“His brother.”

The guard relayed this information, and listened, and nodded, and put the phone away. “Colonel Whistler will see you,” he called. “Come forward.”

I came forward. When I reached them I said, “You’ll watch my car for me.”

“Yes, of course. Leave weapons out here.”

I gave him everything but the sheath knife. However, I was then frisked and the knife found. “This, too,” said the guard, with neither humor nor indignation, and I took it off and gave it to him.

When they were sure I was weaponless, one of them rapped on the iron door. As we stood there, he said, “Who is Gar Malone?”

“My brother,” I said.

He didn’t like that answer, but before he could decide what to do about it the door slid open and I stepped inside.