E-Book, Englisch, 126 Seiten
Reihe: Classics To Go
Smith The Hellflower
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-98744-858-4
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
E-Book, Englisch, 126 Seiten
Reihe: Classics To Go
ISBN: 978-3-98744-858-4
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
I
The book had been thrown at Charles Farradyne. Then they had added the composing room, the printing press, and the final grand black smear of printer's ink. So when Howard Clevis located Farradyne working in the fungus fields of Venus four years later, Farradyne was a beaten man who no longer burned with resentment because he was all burned out. Farradyne looked up dully when Clevis came into the squalid rooming-house. "I am Howard Clevis," said the visitor. "Fine," mumbled Farradyne. "So what?" He looked at one of the few white shirts in a thousand miles and grunted disapprovingly. "I've got a job for you." "Who do you want killed?" "Take it easy. You're the Charles Farradyne who—" "Who dumped the Semiramide into The Bog ... and you're Santa Claus, here to undo it?" "This is on the level, Farradyne." Farradyne laughed shortly, but the sound was all scorn and no humor. While the raw bark was still echoing in the room, he added, "Can it, Clevis. With a thousand licensed spacemen handy everywhere, willing to latch onto an honest buck, any man that comes halfway across Venus to offer Farradyne a job can't be on the level." Clevis eyed Farradyne calculatingly. "I should think you might enjoy the chance." "It doesn't look good." Clevis smiled calmly. He had the air of a man who knew what he was doing. He was medium tall, with a sprinkle of gray in his hair and determined lines near the eyes and across the forehead. There was character in his face, strong and no doubt about it. "I'm here, Farradyne, just because of the way it looks. But the fact is that I need you. I know you're bitter, but—" "Bitter!" roared Farradyne, getting to his feet and stalking across the squalid room towards Clevis. "Bitter? My God! They haul me home on a shutter so they can give me a fair trial before they kick me out. You don't think I like it in this rat hole, do you?" "No, I don't. But listen, will you?" "Nobody listened to me, why should I listen to you?" "Because I have something to say," said Clevis pointedly. "Do you want to hear it?" "Go ahead." "I'm Howard Clevis of the Solar Anti-Narcotic Department." Farradyne snorted. "Well, I haven't got any. I don't use any. And I don't have much truck with those that do." "Nobody is on trial here—nothing that you say can be used in any way. That's why I came alone. Look ... if I were in your shoes I'd do anything at all to get out of this muck-field." "Some things even a bum won't do. And I don't owe you anything." "Wrong. When you dumped the Semiramide into The Bog four years ago, you killed one of our best operatives. We need you, Farradyne, and you owe us for that. Now?" "When I dumped the Semiramide no one would listen to me. Do you want to listen to me now?" "No, I don't." "I got a raw deal." "So did the man you killed." "I didn't kill anybody!" yelled Farradyne. Clevis eyed Farradyne calmly, even though Farradyne was large enough to take the smaller, older man's hide off if he got angry enough. "I'm not here to argue that point," said Clevis, "and I don't intend to. Regardless of how you feel, I'm offering you a chance to get out of this mess. It's a space job, Farradyne." "What makes you think I'll play stool pigeon?" "It's no informer's job. It's space-piloting." "I'll bet." "You bet and I'll cover it a thousand to one." Farradyne sat down on the dingy bed and said, "Go ahead and talk, Clevis. I'll listen." Clevis dug into his brief case and brought out a flower. "Do you know what this is?" he asked, handing the blossom to Farradyne. Farradyne looked at it briefly. "It might be a gardenia but it isn't." "How can you tell?" asked Clevis eagerly. "Only because you wouldn't be coming halfway across Venus to bring me a gardenia. So that is a love lotus." Clevis looked a bit disappointed. "I thought that maybe you might have some way—" "What makes you think I'd know more than a botanist?" Clevis smiled. "Spacemen tend to come up with some oddly interesting specks of knowledge now and then." "So far as I know, there's only one way of telling. That's to try it out. Thanks, I'll not have my fun that way. That's one thing you can't pin on me." "I wouldn't try. But listen, Farradyne. In the past twelve years we have carefully besmirched the names and reputations of six men, hoping that they could get on the inside. For our pains we have lost all six of them one way or another. The enemy seems to have a good espionage system. Our men roam up and down the solar system making like big time operators and get nowhere. The love-lotus operators seem to be able to tell a phony louse when they see one." "And I'm a real louse?" "You've a convincing record, Farradyne." Farradyne shook his head angrily. "Not that kind," he snapped. "Your pals sloughed off my license and tossed me out on my duff to scratch, but no one ever pinned the crooked label on me and made it stick." "Then why did they take away your license?" "Because someone needed a goat." "And you are innocent?" Farradyne growled hopelessly. "All right," he said, returning to his former lethargy. "So just remember that I was acquitted, remember? Lack of evidence. But they took my license and tossed me out of space and that's as bad as a full conviction. So where am I? I'll stop beating my gums about it, Clevis." Clevis smiled quietly. "You were a good pilot, Farradyne. Maybe a bit too good. You collected a few too many pink tickets for cutting didoes and collecting women to show off in front of. They'd have marked it off as an accident if it hadn't been Farradyne. Your record accused you of being the hot-pants pilot, the fly-fly boy. Maybe that last job of yours was another dido that caught you. But let's leave the ghost alone, Farradyne. We need you, Farradyne." Farradyne grunted and his lips twisted a bit. He got up from the unmade bed and went to the scarred dresser to pour a stiff jolt from an open bottle into a dirty glass. He took a sip and then walked to the window and stood there, staring out into the dusk and talking, half to himself. Clevis listened. Charles Farradyne. "I've had my prayer," said Farradyne. "A prayer in a nightmare. A man fighting against a rigged job, like the girl in the old story who turned up in her mother's hotel room to find that every evidence of her mother's existence had been erased. Bellhops, and cab driver, and the steamship captain, and the hotel register all rigged. Even the police disbelieved her, remember? Well, that's Farradyne, too, Clevis. My first error was telling them that someone came into the control room during landing. They said that no one would do that because everybody knew the danger of diverting the pilot's attention during a landing. No one, they said, would take the chance of killing himself; and the other passengers would stop anybody who tried to go up the stairs at that time because they knew the danger to themselves. "They practically scoffed me into jail when I told them that there were three people in the room. I couldn't look around, you know. A pilot might just as well be blindfolded and manacled to his chair during landing. So I heard three people behind me and couldn't look. All I could do was to snarl for them to get the hell out. Then we rapped the cliff and dumped the ship into The Bog, and I got tossed out through the busted observation dome. They salvaged the Semiramide a few months later and found only one skeleton in the room. That made me a liar. Besides the skeleton was of a woman, and then they all nodded sagely and said, 'Woman? Well, we know our Farradyne!' and I got the works. "So," Farradyne sounded bitter once more, "they suspended me and took away my license. They wouldn't even let me near a spacer; maybe they thought I might steal one, forgetting that there's no place to hide. Maybe they thought I'd steal Mars, too. So if I want a drink they ask me if it's true that jungle juice gives a man hallucinations. If I light a cigarette I'm asked if it is real laughing grass. If I ask for a job they want to know how hard I'll work for my liquor. So I end up in this God-forsaken marsh playing nursemaid to a bunch of stinking toadstools." Farradyne's voice rose to an angry pitch. "The mold grows on your hide and under your nails and in your hair and you forget what it's like to be clean and you lose hope and ambition because you're kicked off the bottom of the ladder, but you still dream of someday being able to show the whole damned solar system that you're not the louse they made you. Then instead of getting a chance, a man comes to you and offers you a job because he needs a professional bastard with a bad record—and its damned small consolation, but I'll take it just to show you and everybody else that I'm not the hot-rock that I've been called." Farradyne sniffed at the glass and then threw it into the dirty sink with a derisive gesture. "I'll ask for a lot of things," he said, quietly now. "The first thing is for enough money to buy White Star Trail instead of this rotgut." "That can be done, but can you take it?" "It'll be hard," admitted Farradyne. "I've been on this diet of soap and vitriol too long. But I'll do it. Give me a month." "I can't offer you much," said Clevis. "But maybe this can be hope for you: help us clean up the hellblossom gang and you'll do a lot towards erasing that black mark on your record." "Just what's the pitch?" Clevis took a small leather folder from his briefcase and handed it over. Farradyne recognized it as a space-pilot's license before...
