Furthest Read online

  “Your sister? I didn’t know you had one, man.”

  “I do, though,” said RK. “I don’t really know her well, because she has almost never lived with our family. I’ve only been with her during visits my parents and I made to her school, and very few of those are allowed. But she has always written to me, and she gave me my first ak’ith.”

  “Ak’ith?”

  “It is a sort of knife,” RK said. “It’s more a decorative thing than a useful one, but it’s important to a boy among our people.”

  “I see. Then you and your sister are close?”

  RK hesitated. “I don’t understand.”

  “You are fond of one another, I mean.”

  “I think so. As much as is possible when you see each other so rarely.”

  “And what is this sister of yours like, RK?”

  “She’s very brilliant,” said the boy slowly, “and very beautiful—and she’s been sentenced to Erasure.”

  Coyote dropped the stack of MFs he had been holding and bent to pick them up, with a long slow whistle. Erasure! That was the second most severe penalty in all the Three Galaxies, surgery by psychoprobe that erased the personality and all memories and left the victim in a state of literally prenatal blankness. It was exceedingly rare, being used only for those criminals who appeared to be totally beyond all hope of rehabilitation by any other means.

  “What has she done, RK? That’s not exactly a mild sentence.”

  “That’s what I can’t tell you.”

  “I see.”

  RK whirled to face Coyote, his face twisted with desperation and rage.

  “I can tell you just one thing,” he blurted. “Her crime was one of religion. That’s all that I can say.”

  Coyote had the feeling he was really in over his head now. How could there be any religious crime on a planet whose religion was almost nonexistent? There was a church in each city, according to those so-average statistics, and Coyote had seen one, only a few blocks away from the MESH. But in spite of the apparent religious excess of the Furthester delegate, according to the material in his briefing papers the religion called the Holy Path was nothing more than a very watered down brand of Ethical Humanism. It was based on such inflammatory doctrines as “be good to your parents.”

  “don’t tell lies, it’s not nice.”

  “do your share of the work that must be done,” that kind of thing. There was a church service of sorts, called Tenth Day Observance, to which everyone was expected to go, and a Years-End Festival that seemed to be connected to the religion. But it was nothing more than a code of ethics and propriety—how could it be possible for someone to rebel against anything so vague and permissive, to the extent of incurring Erasure for it? It didn’t make any sense; it was another empty citydome.

  “Will you help me?”

  RK was staring fixedly at him, his face a mixture of pleading and defiance, his hands clenched in fists at his sides.

  “Will you, Citizen?” he repeated.

  Coyote thought rapidly. Would he dare risk such a thing when the safety of three galaxies depended upon his being allowed to remain on this planet until he could learn what he needed to know?

  “What would you want me to do, RK?” he asked as cauually as he could. “I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me that, at least.”

  “Of course,” said the boy. “All I need is a place for my sister to stay, a place to hide her. That’s all. You don’t even need to see her. There is a little room on the third floor—”

  “But RK, the third floor is padlocked and barred. I wasn’t able to get permission to even go up there, for some reason which I haven’t been able to determine.”

  “That’s because you are an offworlder. I can go up there any time, and my sister would be safe there. Could I bring her, Citizen? She is only nineteen, my sister, and Erasure is… is horrible.”

  “RK?”

  “Yes, Citizen Jones?”

  “Is she guilty?”

  “My sister?”

  “Of course, your sister! It’s your sister we’re discussing, isn’t it? Is she guilty of the crime she’s charged with?”

  “Yes.”

  “She is guilty. And do you think the sentence is too severe?”

  RK swallowed, but he faced Coyote steadily, and Coyote liked him for that.

  “No, I think the sentence is fair.”

  “Then why do you want to hide her?”

  “Because,” said RK, “she is my sister. I know she is guilty. She admits it; she glories in it. I know that what she has done is foul and vile and despicable and that Erasure is what she deserves. Nonetheless, she is my sister, and I love her; I will not let them do that to her if I can help it.”

  He turned his back then and all the pride seemed to go out of him like air from a pricked balloon.

  “I talk such a good line,” he said bitterly, “but that’s all it is, just talk. I will be honest with you, Citizen—there is nothing that I myself can do. It is only you—if you will help me hide her, she has a chance. No member of my people would do it.”

  “Not even your parents, RK?”

  “My parents! To my parents, my sister is dead. She does not even exist. They are like stone, both of them. And besides, they would not dare. They are being watched, of course, and if my sister were to disappear with their help they would be convicted along with her. It is only you who could help, because you are offworld—our laws do not apply to you in this case.”

  “If I should be caught—what then?”

  “My sister and I would be taken away, and Erasure would be the penalty. You would simply be asked to leave; it would be obvious to everyone that you had simply acted in ignorance of our customs and our laws.”

  “I would be asked to leave.” Coyote shook his head. “That would not be good, RK,” he said. “I’ve spent all my life savings to start this business—I would be a pauper, destitute, with nowhere to go, no money to begin again.” Not to mention, as he could not mention, that he would have failed in his mission, and that there would not be even a prayer that the officials of Furthest would allow another offworlder to violate their precious planet after such an experience.

  “You’re going to say no,” said RK exhaustedly. “And I don’t blame you.”

  “You must understand—”

  RK cut him off. “Wait,” he said. “Do this one thing for me. Let me bring my sister here to meet you, only that. Certainly, even if we were caught here, that could cause you no trouble. No one would dream that you had known she was an escaped criminal. Would you do that? And don’t tell me your decision until you have had a chance to speak to her yourself?”

  Coyote considered the matter carefully. He was reasonably sure the boy’s assessment of the situation was accurate. If the police were to come and Coyote were to claim that he had had no knowledge of the girl’s guilt, he would be believed. He could convince a few policemen easily, especially since he was an offworlder and would be considered inferior and stupid and liable to make mistakes in any event. He could surely afford to do that much, just as evidence to RK of his good will. But he had another question first.

  “RK,” he said carefully, “is it taboo to discuss telepathy? I mean, if I don’t ask personal questions, can I talk about it in the abstract sense?”

  He looked at the boy and nodded. “I see, you just don’t like the topic at all, under any circumstances. All right, then. I’ll try to be careful of the phrasing of my question.”

  “Thank you, Citizen.”

  “What I want to know is this—I know your police are trained telepaths. If I were to agree to your sister staying here, what is to prevent the police from learning about it in that way—and learning that I knew all about the whole thing, by the way?”

  “How could they do that?”

  “Wouldn’t they make a routine search, house by house, something like that?”

  “A—a mental search? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “Is that
so horrendous a suggestion?”

  “Citizen Jones,” said RK, white with indignation, “we are not barbarians here, just because we are far from the center of things. No member of our police force would search a mind without a warrant granting him specific permission to do so. No policeman may go around probing houses at random; he must have the permission of a judge, and it is not at all easy to get. Such violations of privacy are taken very seriously by my people.”

  “I see. A warrant would be needed first.”

  “Certainly. And a petition for warrant requires firm, unmistakable evidence that there are grounds to suspect a crime. And a judge is very hesitant about granting such a warrant, because if the probe reveals that the suspect is not guilty, the government is liable for a huge penalty, payable to the wronged person on grounds of invasion of privacy.”

  “I understand. And there would be no reason for anyone to apply for such a warrant for this place.”

  “None at all, Citizen. The government is of the opinion that I do not even know of my sister’s crime—it’s supposed to be a state secret. Only a handful of people know, and all have been sworn to secrecy. I am supposed to believe that my sister is on a holiday.”

  “And after Erasure?”

  “I would probably not be told… they would tell me that she had had an accident and her body destroyed beyond recognition, something like that. Unless they decide to make an example of her—But all that is irrelevant, Citizen. Because she escaped and I do know.”

  “Yes. Yes, well, that’s all clear, RK.”

  “Will you meet her, then?”

  “Yes, I will,” said Coyote. What the hell. He was anxious to find out what a religious criminal, sentenced to Erasure, and only nineteen years old, might look like. Perhaps he would be able to get more of the details from the girl, and there was certainly nothing about this that sounded average. It should be the sort of details he needed.

  “Can you bring her here for dinner?” he asked RK. “A late dinner, of course. After the MESH has closed for the night.”

  “A midnight supper… yes, I can do that.”

  “Good enough, then. We’ll consider it settled.”

  “You are very kind, Citizen. I’m grateful.”

  “I haven’t agreed to anything yet, RK.”

  The boy smiled.

  “Wait until you have talked to my sister,” he said. “We will see, then.”

  “Oh?” Coyote’s eyebrows went up. “It’s like that, is it?”

  RK just kept on smiling.

  “All right, then,” said Coyote, “I’ll wait and see. And now, could you perhaps do me a favor?”

  “Anything!”

  “Could we perhaps get these MFs stocked in the dispensers before time for lunch?”

  RK turned red, and struck an embarrassed fist against his thigh.

  “I am not much help to you, Citizen,” he said apologetically.

  “You’re going to be,” Coyote assured him. “Don’t you worry, young man, you’re going to be a great deal of help.”

  He handed the boy a stack of MFs.

  “Here,” he said. “We’ve lost so much time that I’m going to have to go do the blasted market detail myself. You’ll have to catalog these on your own. Can you handle that?”

  “Certainly I can.”

  “Then do it,” said Coyote. “And be careful, will you?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Matthew Jessup loved a woman

  a highborn Thrail from Astra Three;

  through the sky he heard her call him,

  ‘Starship Captain, rescue me!

  “He followed her because she called him,

  always off the starboard side,

  naked she ran on before him,

  softly, mournfully, she cried.

  “Ware, beware, ye starship captains!

  Ware, beware!

  Ware the witches back of Saturn

  combin’ out their scarlet hair,

  sing ware, beware!”

  (from an old ballad)

  So this was the criminal sister.

  Coyote tried to take her in without obvious staring, gave that up as an unlikely task and stared. Yes indeed. He could see now what RK had meant by the “you just wait” routine.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to work. He knew enough about these people to realize that what confronted him was probably the absolute quintessence of Furthester beauty, supposed to drive him mad enough with lust (worship?… terror?… what was beauty supposed to inspire in a man on this antiquated old chunk of rock?), mad enough with something or other, anyway to jeopardize his entire mission just to be near the source.

  But he didn’t find her beautiful. Intellectually, he could make a note: one furthester woman, raving beauty per her planet standards. Emotionally, though, esthetically, she could not even touch him.

  She stood a good five feet eleven inches tall, nothing of her showed except her hands and face and hair, and she looked mean enough to eat nails. The line from her forehead to the tip of her nose was clean swoop, the skin was flawless burnished copper, and the lips were formed by a master, long and curled and strong, no doubt covering sharp perfect little white teeth like a vixen’s. Her cheekbones set shadows against her skin, and her eyebrows were a permanent hauteur. If it had not been for the dark brown color of her hair and eyes, and the extreme tilt up of the eyes toward the brows at their outside tip, she could have stepped off the wall of an Egyptian tomb. He bet she could ignore three flocks of jeebies before breakfast every morning.

  He could see her as splendid, as magnificent, as handsome, as striking, but not as beautiful. And most definitely, he could not see her as woman. There was no softness here, no roundness, no warmth, and he would as soon have had a pillar of marble in his bed as this sister of RK’s.

  She smiled at him, the long lips curling in a heartbreaking perfection of curve, and spoke in a voice that was far too deep and knowing for nineteen.

  “You needn’t tell me, Citizen,” she said, mockery dancing in the great brown eyes, “because it’s written across your forehead in letters of an extraordinary clearness—Sweet Saints, what a forbidding landscape!”

  Coyote went as far toward blushing as it was possible for him to do, and instantly regretted it, because she chuckled deep in her throat at his unease; apparently he was as transparent to her as a pane of glass.

  “I hope I have not offended you, Citizen—uh, Citizenness,” he said. Along with the rest of their archaic customs, the Furthesters still retained the distinction of sex by address. He thought. He hoped. He was confused enough to be not at all sure.

  “Certainly not,” she said smoothly. “I have seen pictures of your women, and although I can’t see what interest they would hold for a man I do see that our women would not strike you as beautiful.”

  In such a situation even a TGIS agent falls back upon the strategic resource of courtly prevarication; Coyote all but bowed and swept the floor with his plumed hat. “I beg to differ with you,” he said, “you are very beautiful indeed.”

  “And you are a liar,” she said promptly. “I am beautiful to you like a… like a scenic wonder. Not like a woman.”

  “Very well, then. But I remind you that this is the result of my unfortunate offworld tastes, and not some lack in yourself.”

  She laughed again and stood there watching him with dancing eyes while RK tried to tell him her name.

  “I can’t say that,” he said at once. “Spell it for me.”

  “My sister is called Kh’llwythenna Be’essahred Q’ue.”

  “Impossible. It sounds like a cross between Ancient Celtic and Luna Pidgin. I can’t manage it, I’m afraid.”

  “Try!” she said.

  “Absolutely not.” He shook his head firmly. “I’ll give you no further excuse to laugh at me, my girl. RK, will you say that for me one more time?”

  RK repeated it, and Coyote nodded.

  “There’s a ‘Bess’ in there someplace,” he said
, “and Bess it will have to be. Or, of course, Citizenness Q’ue. That’s the best I can do.”

  “‘Bess…’ ” She tried it out, considering it, her head tilted to listen. “That’s quite good enough, Citizen,” she said.

  “Come along then, Bess,” he said, “and you, too, RK, and let’s have something to eat. I’m beginning to feel very exposed standing here.”

  “Here” was the stairway to the third floor. From the way that RK had produced her after the last guest had left the MESH Coyote was quite certain that she must have been up there all that day, even while he and the boy were talking about her coming to stay. But he preferred to act ignorant of that fact.

  He led the way into the central room of the MESH, where the stage was. It had no windows and several doors led out of it, so it seemed safest to him if someone should by some freak come to the front door seeking him. He had set a table there and prepared an excellent dinner, which the plates were keeping warm for them, and a good Betelgeuse wine stood waiting.

  RK seated his sister, and Coyote poured the wine, and they lifted their glasses in a friendly salute. Coyote hoped he looked more pleasant than he felt; it was her fault, she had put that image in his head, and now no matter how he tried he could not shake from his mind the idea that he was dining with a Scenic Wonder. It was grotesque, and funny, and absolutely unshakable, and he knew he was not going to be able to be serious.

  Bess cut a neat bite of her kthor steak, blew on it gently to cool it, much to his additional amusement, and then spoke to him in that amazing voice.

  “My brother has asked you to grant me sanctuary, then?” she asked, and he nodded.

  “He has that.”

  “Have you decided?”

  “Well,” Coyote said, hesitatingly, “you understand that it is not simply a matter of being gallant to a lady. I would not think of saying no to him, except for my situation.”

  “Yes?”

  “Ahem. Bess, my dear Bess, my lovely Scenic Wonder, you must understand that I am not a wealthy man. All my savings have gone into this venture, every penny—”