Demon princes 01 05 the.., p.21
Demon Princes 01-05 The Star Ki, page 21
Mr. Hoskins cried out in pain and astonishment. Gersen scooped up Billy Windle’s envelope, reached for that which Mr. Hoskins held. Mr. Hoskins staggered back, then as Gersen raised his projac, halted.
Gersen shoved him toward Billy Windle’s air-car. “Quick. Get aboard. Or I’ll punish you.”
Mr. Hoskins’ legs were rubbery; lurching and tottering, he moved at a shambling trot to the air-car. As he climbed aboard, he tried to stuff the envelope into his shirt; Gersen reached, snatched; the envelope tore; there was a brief struggle and Gersen held half the envelope, with the other half somewhere on the ground under the boat. Billy Windle was staggering to his feet. Gersen could delay no longer. The air-car controls were standard; he thrust the lift-arm far across. Billy Windle shouted something Gersen could not hear, then, as the air-car slanted up, brought forth his projac, fired. The bolt sang past Gersen’s ear, cut diagonally across Mr. Hoskins’ head. Gersen fired back as the air-car swung across the sky, but the range was long and he merely kicked up a blaze of lambent dust.
High above Skouse, he swerved, flew west, settled beside his spaceboat. He carried the corpse of Mr. Hoskins aboard, and abandoning the bedizened air-car, took the Model 9B into space. He engaged the intersplit and now was safe: no known human effort could intercept him. Mission accomplished in a workmanlike fashion, without undue exertion: Mr. Moslems killed and en route to Alphanor, as per instructions. In short, sheer routine. Gersen should have been pleased, but this was not the case. He had learned nothing, succeeded with nothing; nothing except the paltry business for which he had been sent to Bissom’s End. Kokor Hekkus had been involved in the affair; with Mr. Hoskins dead, Gersen would never know why or how.
The corpse was a problem. Gersen dragged it into the rear locker, shut the door on it.
He brought forth the envelope he had taken from Billy Windle, opened it. Within was a sheet of pink paper on which someone had written in florid purple ink. The message was titled: How to become a hormagaunt. Gersen raised his eyebrows: Jest? Somehow he did not think so. Gersen read the instructions with a small frisson of horror tickling at his neck. They were unpleasant.
Aging is pursuivant to a condition in which the ichors of youth have been exhausted: so much is inherently obvious. The hormagaunt will desire to replenish himself with these invaluable elixirs from the most obvious source: the persons of those who are young. The process is expensive unless one has access to a sufficient number of such persons, and in this case he proceeds in the following fashion:
Instructions followed:
From the bodies of living children, the hormagaunt must procure certain glands and organs, prepare extracts, from which a waxy nodule might ultimately be derived. This nodule implanted in the hormagaunt’s pineal gland forfends age.
Gersen put the letter aside, and inspected the fragment he had wrenched from Mr. Hoskins. It read:
—crimps, or more properly, bands of density. These apparently occur at random, though in practice they are so casual as to be imperceptible. The critical spacing is in terms of the square root of the first eleven primes. The occurrence of six or more such crimps at any of the designated locations will validate—
Gersen found the reference incomprehensible, but vastly intriguing: what had Mr. Hoskins known so valuable that it might be traded on an even basis for the secret of perpetual youth?
He examined again the horrid directions for becoming a hormagaunt, and wondered if they were sound. Then he destroyed both sets of instructions.
At Avente Spaceport, he called Ben Zaum by visiphone. “I’m back.”
Zaum raised his eyebrows. “So soon?”
“There was no reason to delay.”
Thirty minutes later Zaum and Gersen met in the vestibule to the spaceport’s waiting room. “Where is Mr. Hoskins?” Along with the delicate emphasis on the Hoskins, he gave Gersen a look of narrow inquiry.
“You’ll need a hearse. He’s been dead for some time. Since before I left Bad World—as you identified it.”
“Did he—what were the circumstances?”
“He and a man called Billy Windle had struck some sort of a bargain, but they could not come to terms. Windle seemed very disappointed and killed Mr. Hoskins. I managed to recover the body.”
Zaum gave Gersen a glance of mild suspicion. “Did any papers change hands? In other words, did Windle derive any information from Hoskins?”
“No.”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Absolutely.”
Zaum was still not completely at ease. “This is all you have to report?”
“Isn’t it enough? You have Mr. Hoskins, which is what you wanted.”
Zaum licked his lips, glanced at Gersen from the corners of his eyes. “You found no papers on his body?”
“No. And I want to ask you a question.”
Zaum heaved a deep dissatisfied sigh. “Very well. If possible, I’ll answer.”
“You mentioned Kokor Hekkus. How does he come into the matter?”
Zaum deliberated a moment, scratching his chin. “Kokor Hekkus is a man of many identities. One of them is, or so we have been informed, Billy Windle.”
Gersen nodded sadly. “I feared as much .... I missed my opportunity. It may never come again .... Do you know what a hormagaunt is?”
“A what?”
“A hormagaunt. It seems to he an immortal creature who lives on Thamber.”
In a measured voice Zaum said, “I don’t know what a hormagaunt is and all I know about Thamber is ‘set your course by the old Dog Star till faring past the verge extreme, dead ahead shines Thamber’s gleam’—however the song goes.”
“You forgot the line after ‘old Dog Star’: ‘A point to the north of Achernar.’ ”
“No matter,” said Zaum. “I never found the Land of Oz either.” He sighed lugubriously. “I suspect that you’re not telling me the whole story. But—”
“But what?”
“Be discreet.”
“Oh indeed.”
“And be sure that if you thwarted Kokor Hekkus in one of his schemes you will meet him again. He never repays a favor and never forgets a wrong.”
2
From Introduction to The Demon Princes, by Caril Carphen (Elucidarian Press, New Wexford, Aloysius, Vega):
It may well be asked how, from so many thieves, kidnappers, pirates, slavers, and assassins within—and beyond the Pale, one can isolate five individuals and identify them as ‘Demon Princes.’ The author, while conceding to a certain degree of arbitrariness, can nevertheless in good conscience define the criteria that in his mind establish the Five as arch-fiends and overlords of evil.
First: the Demon Princes are typified by grandeur. Consider the manner in which Kokor Hekkus gained his cognomen ‘The Killing Machine,’ or Attel Malagate’s ‘plantation’ on Grabhorne Planet (a civilization of his own definition), or Lens Larque’s astounding monument to himself, or Viole Falushe’s Palace of Love. Certainly these are not the works of ordinary men, nor the results of ordinary vices (though Viole Falushe is said to be physically vain, and in certain exploits of Kokor Hekkus there is the quaintly horrid quality of a small boy’s experiments with an insect).
Second: these men are constructive geniuses, motivated not by malice, perversity, greed, or misanthropy, but by violent inner purposes, which are for the most part shrouded and obscure. Why does Howard Alan Treesong glory in chaos? What are the goals of the inscrutable Attel Malagate, or that fascinating flamboyant Kokor Hekkus?
Third: each of the Demon Princes is a mystery; each insists on anonymity and facelessness. Even to close associates these men are unknown; each is friendless, loveless (we can safely discount the self-indulgences of the sybaritical Viole Falushe).
Fourth: and obverse to the aforementioned, is a quality best to be described as absolute pride, absolute self-sufficiency. Each considers the relationship between himself and the balance of humanity as no more than a confrontation of equals.
Fifth: and ample in itself, I cite the historic conclave of 1500 at Smade’s Tavern (to be discussed in Chapter One) where the five acknowledged themselves, grudgingly perhaps, as peers, and denned their various areas of interest. Ipsi dixeunt!
Such was Gersen’s second encounter with Kokor Hekkus. The aftermath was a period of depression, during which Gersen spent long mornings and afternoons on the Avente Esplanade, gazing out over the Thaumaturge Ocean. For a period, he had considered a return to Bissom’s End—but the project seemed rash and almost certainly pointless: Kokor Hekkus would not stay long at Bissom’s End. Gersen must somehow make a new contact.
This was a resolve easier to form than to implement. Hair-raising anecdotes by the dozen circulated regarding Kokor Hekkus, but specific information was rare. The reference to Thamber was new, but Gersen gave it small consideration: it could hardly be more than the fantasy of an imaginative boy.
Time passed—a week, two weeks. Kokor Hekkus received mention in the news as the presumptive kidnapper of a Copus, Pi Cassiopeia VIII, mercantilist. Gersen was mildly surprised; the Demon Princes seldom kidnapped for ransom.
Two days later came news of another kidnapping, the scene on this occasion being the Hakluz Mountains of Orpo, Pi Cassiopeia VII; the victim a wealthy packer of sour-spore. Again Kokor Hekkus was reputedly involved: indeed only the possible participation of Kokor Hekkus made the not uncommon crimes noteworthy.
Gersen’s third encounter with Kokor Hekkus arose directly, if deviously, as a result of the kidnappings; and indeed the kidnappings themselves followed as a reverse or backhanded consequence to Gersen’s success at Skouse.
The chain of events was expedited by chance. One midmorning Gersen sat on a bench halfway along the Esplanade; an elderly man, with the pale blue skin-toning, black jacket, and beige trousers of middle-class gentility, took a seat on the other end of the bench. Some minutes later he muttered an expletive, threw aside his newspaper, and looking toward Gersen expressed indignation in regard to the lawlessness of the times. “Another kidnapping, another innocent person whisked off to Interchange! Why cannot these crimes be halted? What is the constabulary about? They warn persons of means to caution. What a sorry condition!”
Gersen expressed whole-hearted agreement, but said that he knew no effective solution to the problem other than making illegal the private ownership of spacecraft.
“Wily not?” demanded the old man. “I possess no spaceship, nor do I feel the need to do so. At best they are instruments of frivolity and ostentation; at worst they facilitate the commission of crime, and especially kidnapping. Look you—” he tapped the newspaper “—ten kidnappings, all made possible by the spaceship!”
“Ten?” asked Gersen in surprise. “So many?”
“Ten in the last two weeks, all persons of extreme wealth and worth. The ransoms go Beyond, to enrich rascals; it is money dissipated in space, a loss to us all!” He went on to remark that moral values had deteriorated since his youth; that respect for law and order had reached an all-time nadir; that only the most inept or unlucky criminal suffered for his acts. To exemplify his convictions, he cited a man he had seen only the day previously, a man whom he recognized as an associate of the notorious Kokor Hekkus, who almost certainly was responsible for at least one of the kidnappings.
Gersen expressed shock and surprise. Was the old man sure of his facts?
“Yes indeed! There is no doubt whatever! I never forget a face, even though, as in this case, it has been eighteen years.”
Gersen’s interest began to wane; the old man continued regardless. Certainly, thought Gersen—or almost certainly—this old man could not be a plant by Kokor Hekkus.
“—at Pontefract on Aloysius, where I served as Chief Notator of the Inquisition. He appeared before the Guldounerie, and, as I recall, displayed a remarkably insolent attitude, considering the gravity of the charges.”
“And what were these?” Gersen asked.
“Disbursion with intent to suborn ransackment, illicit possession of antiquities, and revilery. His arrogance was justified, for he evaded all punishment save admonition. It was evident that Kokor Hekkus had intimidated the panel.”
“And you saw this man yesterday?”
“Beyond question. He passed me on the Route Slideway, proceeding north toward Sailmaker Beach. If by sheer chance I notice this single unregenerate, calculate the number of those I fail to observe.”
“A serious situation,” Gersen declared. “This man should be placed under observation. You do not remember his name?”
“No. What if I did? By all odds it is neither the name he used then nor the name he uses now.”
“He has a distinctive appearance?”
The old man frowned “Not notably. His ears are rather large, as is his nose. His eyes are round and close together. He is not so old as I However I have heard that the folk of the Fomalhaut planet mature late, owing to the nature of their food, which clabbers the bile.”
“Ah. He was a Sandusker.”
“He asserted as much, in an extraordinary fashion I can only describe as vainglory.”
Gersen laughed politely. “You have a remarkable memory. You think then that this Sandusk criminal lives in Sailmaker Beach?”
“Why not? It is where such unorthodox folk tend to collect.”
“True enough.” After a few further remarks, Gersen rose to his feet and took his leave.
The Route Slideway ran north, paralleling the Esplanade, then curved through the LoSasso Tunnel to terminate at Mansh Square in Sailmaker Beach. Gersen was moderately well acquainted with the area, standing in the square and looking up toward Melnoy Heights, he could almost see the house where Hildemar Dasce at one time had resided. And Gersen’s thoughts for a moment became tinged with melancholy . He brought himself back to the matter at hand. Tracing down a nameless Sandusker. It was a problem rather different from that of locating Beauty Dasce, who once seen could never be forgotten. Surrounding the square were low thick-walled structures of coquina concrete, color-washed white, lavender, pale-blue, pink. In the Rigel-light they glowed as if incandescent, emitting tones and overtones of color, the windows and doorways by contrast showing the most intense and utter of blacks. Along one side of the square ran an arcade housing shops and booths catering principally to tourists. Sailmaker Beach with its enclaves of off-world peoples, each with its typical shops and restaurants, was like nowhere else in the Oikumene, with the possible exception of one or two districts on Earth. At a kiosk, Gersen bought a Guide to Sailmaker Beach. It contained no mention of a Sandusker quarter. He returned to the kiosk. The proprietress was a short, fat, in fact almost globular, woman with skin tinted chalk-green perhaps a Krokinole Imp.
Gersen asked, “Where do the Sanduskers quarter themselves?”
The woman considered “Not many Sanduskers that I know of. Down the foot of Ard Street you’ll find a few. Been requested there because the wind blows the smell of the victuals out to sea.”
“Where is their food-shop?”
“Should you call it food I call it rubbish. You’re not a Sandusker? No. I see not. It’s there on Ard Street. Turn down through there—see the two crypt-men in the black cloaks? Right past where they stand, that’s Ard Street. Hold your nose.”
Gersen returned the Guide to Sailmaker Beach, which at once was placed back in stock Gersen crossed the square, stepped around the two pale men in long black cloaks, and entered Ard Street: an alley rather than a street, running on a slight downhill slant all the way to the water. In the first block were tea houses and curtained game-rooms exuding a rather pleasant odor of incense. Then Ard Street passed through a drab section infested by small sloe-eyed children wearing long gold ear chains, red and green shirts to the navel, and little else. Then approaching the waterfront, Ard Street widened, to become a small court at the sea wall Gersen suddenly understood the pertinence of the advice given him by the fat woman of the kiosk. The air of Ard Court smelled richly indeed, with a heavy sweet-sour organic reek that distended the nostrils. Gersen grimaced and went to the shop from which the odors seemed to emanate. Taking a deep breath and bowing his head, he entered. To right and left were wooden tubs, containing pastes, liquids, and submerged solids, overhead hung rows of withered blue-green objects the size of a man’s fist. At the rear, behind a counter stacked with limp pink sausages stood a clown-faced youth of twenty, wearing a patterned black and brown smock, a black velvet head kerchief. He leaned upon the counter without spirit or vitality, and without expression watched Gersen sidle past the tubs.
“You’re a Sandusker?” asked Gersen.
“What else?” This was spoken in a tone Gersen could not identify, a complex mood of many discords: sad pride, whimsical malice, insolent humility. The youth asked, “You wish to eat?”
Gersen shook his head. “I am not of your religion.”
“Ha ho!” said the youth. “You know Sandusk then?”
“Only at second-hand.”
The youth smiled. “You must not believe that old foolish story, that we Sanduskers are religious fanatics who eat vile food rather than flagellate ourselves. It is quite incorrect. Come now. Are you a fair man?”
Gersen considered. “Not unusually so.”
The youth went to one of the tubs, dipped up a wad of glistening black-crusted maroon paste. “Taste! Judge for yourself! Use your mouth rather than your nose!”
Gersen gave a fatalistic shrug, tasted. The inside of his mouth seemed first to tingle, then expand. His tongue coiled back in his throat.
“Well?” asked the youth.
“If anything,” said Gersen at last, “it tastes worse than it smells.”
The youth sighed. “Such is the general consensus.”
Gersen rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “Do you know all the Sanduskers of the neighborhood?”
“I do.”
“I seek a tall man with eyes slightly crossed, who has lost a finger, with hair leaving the rear of his head like a comet’s tail.”
The youth smiled placidly. “His name?”
