The Door Through Space | Page 9

left me no choice. I never knew how his mind worked. That

final deal he engineered--have you any idea how much that cost the
Service? And have you taken a good look at your brother's face, Juli
girl?"
Juli raised her eyes slowly, and I saw her flinch. I knew how she felt.
For three years I had kept my mirror covered, growing an untidy
straggle of beard because it hid the scars and saved me the ordeal of
facing myself to shave.
Juli whispered, "Rakhal's is just as bad. Worse."
"That's some satisfaction," I said, and Mack stared at us, baffled. "Even
now I don't know what it was all about."
"And you never will," I said for the hundredth time. "We've been over
this before. Nobody could understand it unless he'd lived in the
Dry-towns. Let's not talk about it. You talk, Juli. What brought you
here like this? What about the kid?"
"There's no way I can tell you the end without telling you the
beginning," she said reasonably. "At first Rakhal worked as a trader in
Shainsa."
I wasn't surprised. The Dry-towns were the core of Terran trade on
Wolf, and it was through their cooperation that Terra existed here
peaceably, on a world only half human, or less.
The men of the Dry-towns existed strangely poised between two worlds.
They had made dealings with the first Terran ships, and thus gave
entrance to the wedge of the Terran Empire. And yet they stood proud
and apart. They alone had never yielded to the Terranizing which
overtakes all Empire planets sooner or later.
There were no Trade Cities in the Dry-towns; an Earthman who went
there unprotected faced a thousand deaths, each one worse than the last.
There were those who said that the men of Shainsa and Daillon and
Ardcarran had sold the rest of Wolf to the Terrans, to keep the Terrans
from their own door.

Even Rakhal, who had worked with Terra since boyhood, had finally
come to a point of decision and gone his own way. And it was not
Terra's way.
That was what Juli was saying now.
"He didn't like what Terra was doing on Wolf. I'm not so sure I like it
myself--"
Magnusson interrupted her again. "Do you know what Wolf was like
when we came here? Have you seen the Slave Colony, the Idiot's
Village? Your own brother went to Shainsa and routed out The Lisse."
"And Rakhal helped him!" Juli reminded him. "Even after he left you,
he tried to keep out of things. He could have told them a good deal that
would hurt you, after ten years in Intelligence, you know."
I knew. It was, although I wasn't going to tell Juli this, one reason why,
at the end--during that terrible explosion of violence which no normal
Terran mind could comprehend--I had done my best to kill him. We
had both known that after this, the planet would not hold the two of us.
We could both go on living only by dividing it unevenly. I had been
given the slow death of the Terran Zone. And he had all the rest.
"But he never told them anything! I tell you, he was one of the most
loyal--"
Mack grunted, "Yeah, he's an angel. Go ahead."
She didn't, not immediately. Instead she asked what sounded like an
irrelevant question. "Is it true what he told me? That the Empire has a
standing offer of a reward for a working model of a matter
transmitter?"
"That offer's been standing for three hundred years, Terran reckoning.
One million credits cash. Don't tell me he was figuring to invent one?"
"I don't think so. But I think he heard rumors about one. He said with

that kind of money he could bargain the Terrans right out of Shainsa.
That was where it started. He began coming and going at odd times, but
he never said any more about it. He wouldn't talk to me at all."
"When was all this?"
"About four months ago."
"In other words, just about the time of the riots in Charin."
She nodded. "Yes. He was away in Charin when the Ghost Wind blew,
and he came back with knife cuts in his thigh. I asked if he had been
mixed-up in the anti-Terran rioting, but he wouldn't tell me. Race, I
don't know anything about politics. I don't really care. But just about
that time, the Great House in Shainsa changed hands. I'm sure Rakhal
had something to do with that.
"And then--" Juli twisted her chained hands together in her lap--"he
tried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her some
sort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. It
was a weird