Part 1

THE ETHIC OF THE ASSASSIN

By HAYDEN HOWARD

_Incorruptible, The Assassin. The best you could do was to buy the delicate Kri-Kri death._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The monotonous cry of the kri-kri hushed with a clap of silence that snapped the young doctor upright in bed. Konrad had stolen his lovely wife. Was it a dream? His hand moved to find Kit's smooth, gently slumbering back. He smiled, already fuddled as to what had awakened him, and settled back comfortably again, stroking his hand along the curve of her body with a certain sleepy pride.

Three months, he thought, and Kit would bear him their first child, a pioneer five light-years from the ancestral home of his protoplasm. I wonder if he will take as long to settle down as I did?

I wonder what's the matter with the kri-kri?

As his eyes widened to note the cluster of seventeen small moons whirling past the window he heard the sputtering flight of the skar.

Quickly he faced the explosion of moonlight that silhouetted the kri-kri's cage against the window screen.

Taen said it isn't strong enough, he thought, fumbling for the light switch, then thinking better of it. The light might attract the skar.

Louder than the ventilators atop the transparent dome of the city rose the staccato airblasting of the skar. With a haunting shriek, it collided with its long, wingless shadow against the window screen. A twang, the glint of a spear quivering in the wire. A hiss and a rustle and it was gone.

By the time it struck again, Jeff had lifted the amulet Taen gave him from the night table. As he squeezed the release button, he could feel the angry vibration of the minute warrior within. A mosquito-like whine faded after a red fleck of light no larger than the eye of an insect. Like a tiny meteor, the prisoner of the amulet flashed across the mirror and quenched within the skar.

The long airsquid stuttered and blundered against the laughing mask with a crackle of its exoskeleton. As it tumbled out of sight behind the foot of the bed, Jeff slid his feet to the rug and fished for his slipper. He was in time to catch the skar slithering weakly across the rug, pumping air like a man with a crushed chest. It popped when he hit it with his slipper. Bending, white-muscled, across the moonlight, he searched for his minute defender. But its light had gone out. What he did see was the ugly gleam of man-made poison on the beak of the skar.

"Konrad, no, please," Kit's little-girl voice called from her sleep. Then she breathed regularly again.

The young doctor gritted his teeth as he closed the window and cautiously fished his pajamas from beneath the bed covers.

* * * * *

Tip-toeing down the cold tile hallway, buttoning up against the cold breath of the dome ventilators with his left hand while he gripped the skar with the strong, surgeon's fingers of his right, he looked more like a tousled-headed boy than a doctor, until a year ago chief surgeon on an intergalactic liner.

Quiet as he was, Taen's huge, fierce eyes met his around the varicose-veined marble pillar in the vestibule.

"Poisoned, sire." Taen's harsh voice contained more statement than question as he hopped forward, three-jointed legs still folded in his servile stance, for erect he would have stood even taller than Jeff, and rising from one's customary place indoors, according to Taen, was unthinkable. At Jeff's suggestions that he stand, he would wave his white, prosthetic hands in horror. It was not in accord with "the unwritten laws."

"Sire, see the three-circle brand on its thorax. And listen: it is said The Assassin has repurchased the necklace of his profession from the moneylenders. A very broad-shouldered Earthman masked in brass climbed the long path to The Assassin's crags two nights ago. No doubt he purchased your wife's life, enabling The Assassin to reclaim his necklace."

Jeff leaned wearily against the pillar. "Konrad."

Taen raised his kauri on its perch-staff in assent. "No doubt he retained clothing that had touched her body and with that The Assassin was able to train the skar." Taen whipped the hood from the kauri and it clattered its beak and hummed its incredibly small wings. "Are we in turn to purchase the death of Konrad?"

"No."

With the mismatched hands the doctor had fitted him from the Body Bank, Taen unsheathed his kauri's spurs. A year before, when Jeff found this mountain man lying with bleeding wrist stumps in the jungle he readily admitted he had killed without hiring The Assassin. Caught, he had been maimed and left to die in the jungle. Since only The Assassin could directly take life, since he was too expensive to be hired to execute any but the most aristocratic murderers, Taen had been merely maimed and deserted. Against his protests of the unthinkableness of it, the young doctor had saved his life and given him arms.

Taen rasped, "Then The Assassin shall not profit from my master. Though I again shatter tradition, though Konrad is Manager of the City and guarded by walking machines and ones of my people who love the imitation of power, I will do the job myself if you so wish, sire."

"You misunderstand," Jeff replied. "I would buy Konrad's life in the customary way if it would give me back my wife's. But while he lives there is a chance he will relent and leave us in peace."

"Peace is gone, sire. The bargain has been made. The honor of the countless generations of his clan demands The Assassin do his job. It has always been so. For him to fail or to accept a bribe is unthinkable. Only the purchasing party, Konrad, could cancel the agreement."

"You can't visualize Konrad doing that, can you."

"Sire, it is said that in this last year he has become a mad man of steel and poison."

The young doctor shook his head. His voice rushed out, a pressure leak of his tension. "No Taen, he was always that way. But before he lost Kit he felt safe. He felt he owned us both. He felt he owned the power of the city, and, since few clashed with his managerial decisions, for they were usually wise ones, this illusion grew in him until he felt like a god holding the world in the palm of his hand. Kit's loss is a blow at everything he thinks he holds. Now he strikes back desperately at Kit and me, at anything that threatens his power."

Jeff fumbled in his pajama pocket for his cigarettes, but they weren't there. "What can I do? He has always been set to go that way. I saw his inability to take the loss of anything, the way he identifies even small possessions with the core of himself. When I first accompanied him into the jungle to hunt suri," Jeff smiled grimly, "he lost his wrist watch, a very ordinary wrist watch, but he made us camp two days while we looked for it. He drove those beaters like animals. We had exhausted our supply of tablets for purifying the water of the jungle puddles, but, no matter, we must find his watch. He had won it in some sort of athletic contest in his youth. Although he began to blister with the fever, that fool wouldn't go to his hammock. He could hardly stand, but he kept thrashing the bushes, looking for his watch. He shouted and raved and finally tried to shoot some of the beaters. We stayed until we found his watch."

* * * * *

Taen shifted uneasily. "Your wife is safe until the spies of The Assassin report they see her alive, that the skar failed. Skars are expensive. He won't send another till then. We have at least until morning to do the only thing we can do, to go to him, to give him presents and please him with us so that he will rub the most expensive poison on the beak of the next skar and let your wife die as painlessly as possible."

Jeff flashed Taen a look of utter hatred. With a curse he smashed the skar against the pillar. Then he swung his fist against it with a grunt of pain, again, as though he would smash the inevitable.

"Don't punish yourself, sire. It is Konrad who must suffer."

Kit ran down the hallway to them with her hair streaming across her sleep-swollen face and her negligee clutched tight across her swelling bosom. She threw her arms about Jeff.

His face must have been very strange, for she said, "Jeff, have I done something? You wanted a baby, you said you did."

Wearily he stroked her brow. "I'm all right. Nightmare. Walking in my sleep."

Taen nodded eager assent, then stalked off as he always did in the face of sentimentality.

"Smile, Kit. I dreamt I was defending you--and our son. Of course I want a son. What gives you such funny ideas?"

She sniffed and rubbed her cheek against his chest. "I don't know. Sometimes when I start thinking of all the planets you've seen, the strange and wonderful people, the monsters and kings you've healed, I get frightened. This one planet--and I--won't be enough to hold you. I'll wake up some morning and where your head should rest I'll find a dent in the pillow. I'll hear the rockets blast off and you'll be gone wandering among the stars the way Konrad said you would."

He stiffened at Konrad's name. But she rushed on: "He used to call you The Wanderer, you know." Then she smiled at him. "I think wanderers are afraid of babies, just like seafaring men in story books were afraid of reefs and mudbanks."

Jeff managed a smile. "You're wrong, dimple cheeks, babies aren't mudbanks, they're anchors. Sure they're troublesome. You have to lug them around, hoist them up and down, clean off the rust. But without an anchor in a storm, a ship, a man and a woman, will go on the rocks.

"Taen?" Jeff called. Hawklike eyes appeared around the pillar. "Would you ask Garth to come sit with Kit."

"You going someplace at this time of night." Then she inhaled with a great gasp of breath as she noticed the crushed skar. "Konrad!"

"Very unlikely. He's probably more interested in bossing the city than in carrying out any crazy threats he once made. This airsquid undoubtedly blundered through the dome ventilators. It's a wild one. Now you go back to bed while Taen and I go raise a fuss with the Security Guards."

"Couldn't you use the telephone?" Quickly she cupped her palm over his lips. "Don't answer that if you don't want to, Doctor Jeff," she laughed. "Keep your secrets. I'm not like--like Konrad." Her voice trailed away.

As Jeff watched her hurrying back down the hall, he felt as though he could close his hands on something solid again. He didn't have a plan yet, but he had a plan for determining one. It was poker, it was play-by-ear, it was the exploratory operation. No one was going to kill his wife.

"Garth," he whirled at the ponderous jungle man. "Get the gas gun out of my gun rack. Taen, give him an amulet with an extra lively skar-killer. Here, I'm writing a note to Kit, Garth. If she should wake up before I get back and want to go outside, give it to her. It will explain why she mustn't. It will explain what I've got to do."

Jeff dressed in his study, slung his sten gun and, pressing the signal-emitter in his pocket, opened the spike-topped gate characteristic of all the great houses of the dome city. They stepped echoingly along the sidewalk.

"Sire," Taen's voice hissed. His face was searching the shadows. "I wouldn't take that sten gun. It would give The Assassin the fear to kill you. The excuse too, if your life has been purchased. If you are unarmed while you are on his territory it would be hardly honorable to kill you. And he may believe you have come to purchase the life of Konrad or to pay a smaller sum to assure that the inevitable death of your wife will be a painless one."

"My intentions are different," Jeff retorted, but at the corner he threw the gun over the wall into his garden.

Taen crowhopped behind, still in his shortlegged stance.

* * * * *

"But sire, to purchase the life of Konrad and a painless end for your wife is the way these things are done. Where could you hide her? There is no rocket leaving this planet for two months, and even in the jungle The Assassin's followers would find her."

Jeff did not reply as they rode the all-night street escalator up the hilly side of the city past the steep-roofed granite houses of the wealthier mountain men, constructed centuries before the city was domed over, past the flat-roofed, functional houses of the Earthmen who cared nothing for the traditional architecture, all for comfort.

"Sire, Konrad's house is still alight."

A waltz tune rose above the drone of the ventilators.

"He's having a party, sire. We could go back for the guns. We may never have another chance like this."

"No. While he lives there is still hope for Kit."

"But such a man does not relent."

"We shall see. But first I want to try to learn The Assassin's thoughts. Perhaps Taen, there are certain conditions under which he does not operate entirely by custom that you do not know about."

"He is incorruptible, sire."

"Sometimes a man's price is not wholly monetary." Jeff fitted on his respirator, then inserted their pass cards into the mouth slot of the automatic gate guard. The rush of wind as the gate of the city swung outward swept them into the ammoniated world of jungles and mountains. A dozen jetcopter drivers rushed at them, jabbering, tugging at their arms. But Taen motioned as if to loose his kauri, rasping: "Back, sons of suri," then to Jeff: "To approach The Assassin afoot is more traditional."

The quick climb up the mountain made Jeff's breath whistle back and forth through his respirator. Below, the city was a glistening bubble, and below it the alien jungle was soft black fur, its lakes and rivers mirrors for The Dancers.

"Sire," Taen fairly screamed with exhilaration. "This clean air sweeps the thick oxygen from my lungs. My soul awakes. Anything is possible."

Hitching up to full height, he raced ahead like a great ground bird and with a challenging war screech hurled his kauri from its perch stick toward the crags of The Assassin, bulbous and black, close-packed like a herd of great bulls upon the field of the Milky Way, a long climb, a high flight for skar or kauri.

The bird arched back in the windmoan, hissed over their heads, plunging toward the dome of the city.

"Sire, she stoops. A mountain man!" Taen shrilled his recall whistle frantically as the kauri pursued and struck repeatedly at a leaping, dodging shadow that silhouetted smaller and smaller against the dome in its pell-mell retreat toward the gate. Finally the bird soared up and back like a dark meteor across the stars and glided with a smack onto her perch.

"The Assassin's spy?"

"Or Konrad's, sire. A pity I called her off without thinking. We could have searched the body and learned whose."

II

The Assassin's outguards picked them up long before they reached the crags. Jeff could see nothing. But the rattle of pebbles, the rumble of dislodged boulders from so many directions was not encouraging. The Assassin had quite an army.

The crag tops winked yellow, flashlight eyes as Taen led the young doctor up a narrow, rock-overhung trail to a moss-bearded hole where an old mountain man motioned them inside with his spear.

Taen forestalled Jeff's question: "Yes sire, it is hardly what one would expect. You see, The Assassin's palace was magicked to sand and steam by the weapons of the first of your comrades to land upon this planet. They did not understand--they never have understood--that The Assassin's person is inviolate. They have blown away his prestige with their own mightier weapons. Every man can now be his own assassin, they say, or at least so my people have understood. Many of The Assassin's followers have joined your Security Guards. Many of his wealthiest clients now deal through them. So he is forced to haggle over the prices of his victims like a common tradesman, not in his mighty castle but in a poor cave." He pointed down the taper-lit passageway that stretched ahead of them.

"But be sure not to offer a bribe for your wife's life, sire. The Assassin will never come to that."

The monster bowed low and his tuberculed face smiled without intelligence as his charred, fingerless paw pointed their way into the labyrinth.

"That was Garnak," whispered Taen. "Sire, the ancestors of The Assassin netted him in the swamps. For generations he was their chief agent of death for those who could not afford a skar; a quick-moving creature with the understanding of a man, they trained him to kill without a sound. He was The Assassin's most prized possession. But the great mushroom of fire and dust your people made rise from The City of Three Spears scorched all the worth from Garnak. The Assassin beat his own head against the altar when they brought back the Garnak that you saw."

A glowing green man stepped from a side passage, and Taen gasped, pointing an unsteady finger at the apparition. But as the green man approached, Jeff realized Taen was not impressed by his luminescence, which was probably the result of a recent bath in a cave pool containing one of the species of phosphorescent algae for which the planet was noted. The mountain man was pointing at his hands, or rather his lack of them. Like Taen, this man had undergone the "treatment" for murder and survived. He was joined by another, a handsome young man convicted of some minor crime, without ears.

"The Assassin awaits, Doctor," said the green man.

"Here, light up a torch for the gentleman, Astro," said the earless one with a voice of minor authority. Turning to Jeff: "Would you care to leave your servant here?"

"My advisor," corrected the young doctor. "Of course he will accompany me."

Carrying the sputtering torch in a mount upon his head, the green man lighted their way toward a water-stained archway that cast faint shadows in their direction from lights within. They walked slowly, for the path was deeply eroded by cave drip.

"Taen," Jeff whispered. "Are all of his followers like that? It seems to me the old man at the entrance had a bent back--there was something wrong with him too."

"No doubt, sire. The Assassin has recently come to favor those who are not whole. They have greater loyalty, for there is no place else they could earn food, and there is another reason he likes their company which you shall soon see."

"Don't they know about the Training House for the Handicapped that we have opened?"

"Perhaps they have heard of it, sire, but what matter. They will have starved long before the waiting line moves up for them." His voice trailed off as they entered the flickering chamber of The Assassin.

A glint of silver shivered into a face. A pool of blood lumped into a red silken pillow. Between the two was brown, wrinkled flesh, old, etched in shadow, backed by candles and shapeless watchers with bright spears, mirrors with spider-cracked glass, and further back, dark holes, the nesting holes of skar.

Jeff's eyes refocused on The Assassin. The face was a mask, that of a newly-made, ruggedly handsome robot. The mouth was a cupid's bow smile. But the flesh of the torso was real. The ribs pushed against it and rearranged the shadows as The Assassin breathed. The arms stretched from it in an open-handed welcome.

Taen bowed low and Jeff followed his example.

* * * * *

"Be seated, reputed healer," croaked the voice of a very old man. "The other may go."

It was not until then, as he tried to find a clue to action, that Jeff noticed the mask had dents, no eyeholes.

"My advisor is inseparable to me, great one," the young doctor replied carefully. "At your pleasure, he will seat himself at my left hand." He wondered if this was too bold a reply.

Indeed, the earless young man stepped quickly from the shadows, poising a skar at shoulder height.

But The Assassin's mask turned with the pulsing of the airsquid. His voice rasped with such painful effort that the doctor in Jeff tentatively listed it as a symptom of cancer of the larynx: "Whoever you are, return my weapon to its cote. If the doctor so wishes, his advisor may remain." His mask stared straight ahead once more. "You have come to purchase the life of Konrad. Good. If I were not The Assassin, with an ethic more rigid than man's, I would have ended him myself, for it is said that he is the Earthman who ordered death to the City of Three Spears."

Jeff glanced at Taen and the mountain man nodded significantly, stroking his prosthetic hands together as if counting out money. The shadows leaned forward eagerly.

"No," Jeff's voice exploded. "I want only the return of Kit's life. Of course I do not ask you to consider anything unethical," he added with more care. "I want to learn from your own lips if there are any legitimate steps I can take to have her restored to me."

"Konrad purchased a life," croaked the voice behind the mask. "Thirty thousand credits made me the instrument of the contract, a traditional one, no side alleys or higher offers. Now only the purchaser may cancel, and will forfeit a third of his purchase price in doing so. For that you must see him."

"It is as I feared," Jeff replied slowly while a germ of a plan propagated in his mind. "All now rests with your skars. I have said I do not wish the life of Konrad. I could easily afford it. But I am a healer and, like you, have responsibilities greater than those of a common man. My purpose is to save life, just as yours is to serve others in its removal. I do not stoop to personal revenge, just as you have not. I will trouble you no more with my personal affairs."

"That is right," replied The Assassin. "You recognize that I am disadvantaged among men. I am a symbol, an institution. For my hereditary self to exact revenge for my personal self would be unthinkable. It would destroy the impartial death symbol for which I stand, for which my clan has stood for generations. Although Garnak was ruined by him and other insults as well have been inflicted on me by Konrad and his followers, like you, I cannot stoop to personal revenge."

"It is good to hear such wisdom in these law-smashing days," Jeff replied, as Taen raised his eyes in disgust toward the vague ceiling.

"Prince of Assassins," Jeff continued. "We will now speak as kindred minds, not buyers and sellers of life. Although as a doctor I can see your life is flickering out, as a friend, I feel what you feel, that to see again, to open one's eyes to the flame of the sunset, the strength of the black crags, would be the pinnacle of life."

The mask nodded quickly.

Jeff continued, his mind eyeing his plan from many angles, "I am a healer. Apart from desire for my wife's life, without obligation, I offer you sight."

The Assassin's fingers rose trembling to his mask.

"This is not a bribe?"

"It is not a bribe unless you accept it in that spirit?"

"I had not realized an Earthman would help a mountain man."

"Let your attendants tell you of my advisor's hands."

As the earless one spoke quickly in The Assassin's ear, the old man's hands struggled clumsily with the straps of his mask. When the equally nervous fingers of the earless young man replaced them, The Assassin croaked breathlessly: "If you can give me sight and your advisor hands, perhaps you will return the arms and legs, the eyes and ears of my followers. Since you are by no means a wealthy man, we will contrive to pay you for your work."

As his hands rose to the heavy circle of gold about his neck, the mask clattered across them to the floor.