MARS IS JUST A MEMORY NOW, ATTANIO, AS LOST AS OLD EARTH." She paused and once more seemed to evaluate him. "A new empire has risen in the Pleiades. It's a human-based civilization, but they are allied with a very unpleasant bunch of aliens. Their power has been building for centuries, and less than one standard year ago, they struck the Solar System and sacked Luna and Mars. The devastation was brutal pointless, irrational... "And now they're headed this way..." THE BROKEN WORLDS by Raymond Harris Scanned by Aristotle. A ACE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS NEW YORK I. Poisonous Leisure Two men and a woman carefully made their way through the slums of Ashbeck just as dusk settled in. A light drizzle was falling and wisps of fog swirled up from the pavement. Now and then a sickly biolume flickered on as they passed, and brief shadows stalked them through the dingy glow: otherwise their passage went unremarked. Still, they walked slowly, with many backward glances, and their hands never strayed from the weapons all three carried: needles words and nullbeams of the finest design. When they spoke it was in guarded tones, using the clipped cadences of Middle Galactic. Though common enough in the Home Stars, this tongue was rarely heard here in the clustered worlds beyond Antares. "We know who it is we must deal with, and where to find him." The woman spoke. "But as for how... I confess my ignorance." "No mystery there." Her companion frowned. "We move in secret, strike hard, and cut deep." "Then that leaves us with when." The woman smiled sidelong. "And the more secrecy and the less violence we use the better we'll fare, that I guarantee. If only we could find one good informer! As it is we're probably making all the wrong moves." "Unfortunately," the man replied, "the natives are less than friendly." His companion remained silent: in fact the two men resembled each other so closely that it seemed one could do the talking for both. "We learned all we could at that spacer's dive last night; there's no point in returning." "Oh no!" She winced at the thought. "And our interview with the port authorities was just as useless. They won't tell us a thing. No one will! They're all too afraid of that Ypousef Makhlouf. He's the man we need to see, yet he's impossible 2 Raymond Harris to approach without the right introduction. We do seem to lack credibility as wandering robot merchants." "Everyone thinks we're here to buy drugs." He shrugged helplessly. "Too bad nobody believes we're just innocent star-farers." "Hah! These people suspect the very air they breathe." They turned onto one of Ashbeck's main thoroughfares, Canopus Avenue. The lighting here was more constant but so was the garbage. Since it chiefly contained abandoned and decaying buildings Canopus was almost deserted: most of Ashbeck was the same. Even inhabited structures sometimes gave the appearance of ruins, all bricked and boarded up, with perhaps a concealed entrance around back. This was indeed the home of paranoia. The woman caught sight of a solitary wanderer approaching them and murmured to her companions. The stranger was female, swathed in a voluminous robe that left her head uncovered; they could see that she was shaven bald. Over her shoulders balanced a wooden yoke from which dangled four covered baskets, two from each end. She was young and delicate. When they drew abreast of her, the bald woman seemed to notice them for the first time?though of course she had only been feigning indifference before. She barked a single word in the local argot: "Offworlders!" Her tone was an odd mixture of awe and condescension. She reached inside her robe, whereupon all three of the so-named offworlders put their hands on their weapons. But the young woman merely withdrew a slip of paper, gravely presented it to them, and continued down the avenue. A sinister musty odor hovered in her wake. "Charming," was the offworld lady's only comment. The printout she now held was tissue-thin and contained the following information: Tonight: Succubarium: Cabaret by Attanio Hwin and Skiff Welt: alto relievo by Farelus Delice: danse du ventre, Kpuhdeh Kafu: Poisonous Leisure. "So many words from the dead languages," remarked the young man. "The natives are more erudite than I expected. The Broken Worlds 3 Succubarium?that would be 'Place of Nightmares,' I think." "And cabaret, and ventre?" the woman asked eagerly. "Something to do with wind, and drinking liquor in a... a kind of wheeled carriage." The woman squinted as if trying to picture anything so bizarre. "This Succubarium sounds like the place to go in Ashbeck. Now we need only find it." The prospect of a new environment cheered her. "But first our dinner," the man insisted, and for once his silent partner chimed in. Without further ado they headed for the all-night snackpit they had discovered the day before, tucked away on the Street of Obscure Interiors. Soon they were seated in the dingy cafe over bowls of pods-in-broth, plates of steaming buckwheat, and skewers of roots drenched in hot sauce. Among their fellow diners?a shifty lot of no particular stature or quality, sallow, mouse-haired, and ill-dressed? these three Galactics stood out like aristocrats of the starpaths. The two men were very tall and muscled like greyhounds, without a gram of superfluous weight. Their proportions were elongate and their chests deep, testifying to an origin on some low-gravity world with relatively thin atmosphere. Both were clean-shaven, with chin-length silver manes and wide obsidian eyes set in finely sculpted faces. The metallic luster of their hair contrasted sharply with their coffee-brown complexions, evidence of years spent under fierce ultraviolet light. They answered to the names of Momozon and Tutunchi and could only be brothers. Tutunchi was the quiet one. The woman was Sringle, but they knew this was an alias. She claimed origin on Phayao, a minor planet in the Maung Cluster, but again this was open to speculation. She concealed her true hair color under a luminous violet dye, and spoke so many languages so fluently that her accent was no clue. She had the body of a warrior-goddess: lean rippling arms, a taut narrow waist, firm conical breasts, and the powerful legs of a dancer. Her beauty was a weapon every bit as potent as the gun she carried, sparkling in green eyes and laughing out of heavy lips. "I don't think I can finish this." Sringle pushed her plate away with a grimace. "I have this strange feeling that all the food here is poisoned." 4 Raymond Harris Momozon went on chewing. "Suspicion breeds suspicion," he said between mouthfuls. "The wise man ignores distractions and cleans his plate." She rolled enormous eyes and turned to one of the other patrons, trying to make conversation. But though she spoke the local dialect, a bastard child of Englesce and Romansce, quite flawlessly, most of her questions met with smirks, shrugs, or stony silence. She was used to it by now. Finally, with much patience and perseverance, she managed to get some information out of a hollow-eyed boy in tattered leather overalls. Though barely in mid-adolescence he already sported the yellow bruises of a flicker habit. "The Succubarium, yeah," he mumbled. "That's where all the trendies go. It's too expensive for a loser like me. Just follow the crowds on the Flicker Circuit?and watch your backs." She relayed the directions to her companions, who had finished eating and were sipping cups of hot shekk. In a few more minutes they were ready to hit the streets again. Outside, it was full night. No hint of moon or stars lit the coal-black sky, but at least the rain had stopped. They turned off Canopus Avenue and started down the Flicker Circuit girdling the starport. Shadowy hulks of warehouses and gantries loomed over them; from the middle distance came the soft blue glow of runway lights. A dozen or so shuttlecraft of various descriptions, including their own, were scattered around the landing field. Hundreds of locals strolled or lounged about the area. "The ship is quite secure, isn't it?" Sringle asked absently. This is a fine collection of cutthroats here." "Strictly small time," Momozon assured her. "Our ship has automatic defenses that could pulverize half the port. Not to mention our friend on sentry duty." "Yes, Fsau of Myint," she said, relishing the alien syllables. She loved anything new and exotic. "He seems deadly enough." At least a quarter of the crowd thronging the circuit were drug peddlers, each chanting the list of substances he or she sold. Another quarter might conceivably be prostitutes. Most of the rest were drunken spacers and bored young people of fashion, all with the animation of zombies. Finally came a sprinkling of grotesques, poor wretches who probably slept in The Broken Worlds 5 back alleys and refuse dumps: hunchbacks, eggladies and hermaphrodites, whispering cultists, pinheads, and pale, pale children. ("Infant whores," murmured Sringle'. "Ashbeck isn't so backward after all.") There were very few offworlders and no nonhumans in sight. The Succubarium proved difficult to find. Nothing in Ash-beck advertised itself openly, of course, so their only recourse was to follow the crowd as they had been told. They passed arcades that purported to offer live combat and little shops that sold cheap shatterguns. They smelled meat frying in an unbelievably filthy snackpit. At length, they came upon a knot of reasonably well-dressed people hanging around the cavernous door of a warehouse. "This must be it," Sringle decided. "Shall we?" And they did. Within the Succubarium's huge entrance four bouncers in black vinyl and tarnished stee...
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