Presently, the vessel slowed and, lightly as a balloon with a slow leak, matched its flat underside with Landing Circle Six.
Despite the two-hour layover, Carmody did not leave the ship. He did not care to go through the decontamination process on re-entering the ship; he wanted to read the two letters in his bag, and most of all, he wished to be alone. In the cocktail lounge, he ordered a tall bourbon and then shut the door to the cubicle. After several deep swallows of his drink, he took the letters out. For several minutes, he toyed with the cylinders, his normal decisiveness missing. Which to read first, he thought, as if he had a big decision to make. Then his curiosity got the better of him, and he inserted the unidentified letter into the aperture of the ‘ducer, a small box attached to the wall.
There was also a “reader” on a hook—a lightweight plastic hemisphere with a visor. He placed this over his head, lowered the visor over his eyes, and pressed the button that would run off the contents of the letter.
The interior of the visor sprang into a glow. Something appeared on it that made Carmody straighten in a reflex to get away from it. A mask was before him—a mask that looked as if it were meant to portray a face ruined by an accident.
A man’s deep voice spoke. “Carmody, this letter is from Fratt. By now, your wife will be dead. You won’t know why she was killed or who did it, but I will explain why.
“Many years ago you killed Fratt’s son and blinded Fratt. You did it deliberately and maliciously, when it was not necessary, when you could have carried out your evil plans without harming either Fratt or Fratt’s son.
“Now, if you have any humanity or sense of love in you—which is doubtful—you will know exactly how Fratt grieved, how Fratt suffered at the death of his son.
“And you will keep on suffering. Not only because of your wife, but because you will not know when or where you will die. Because you will die at Fratt’s hands.
“But it will not be an easy or quick death, such as your wife was lucky enough to get. You will die slowly and in much pain, and you will pay for what you did. You will experience the same agonies as those which Fratt, your innocent victim, experienced.
“And you will know then who killed your wife and who has been thinking of nothing but your repayment for all these years.
“You will see who has never forgiven you, you foul and loathsome thing!”
The screen went blank, and the voice stopped. Carmody raised the visor with a trembling hand and stared at the mural on the wall. He was breathing heavily. So, his guesses had been right. Some old enemy, someone he had wronged in the old and evil days had not forgotten. And for what he had done then, he had lost his wife and his greatest happiness. Anna, poor Anna...
He lowered the visor and ran the letter through again. Now he understood from the peculiar wording that the speaker might not be Fratt. Nor did he have a clue to the sex of Fratt. The letter had been designed to avoid this, as it had avoided any specifics of the time or place of the crime of which he was accused.
“ Fratt? Fratt?” he muttered. “Fratt? The name means nothing to me. I remember no Fratt, yet I should. I have an excellent memory. But those few years were so crowded, and I was so careless of the identity of my victims. I, God forgive me, killed or even tortured many whose names I did not know.
“So it may be that I remember no Fratt because I did not know his, or her, name. Fratt’s son? That should be some clue. But I may not even have known that Fratt had a son. God!”
He took another drink and wished that it could wash away all knowledge of his past. He was not the John Carmody that Fratt had known. The name and the body might look the same but within he was not that John Carmody. That man was as dead as if he had truly died on Kareen.
But others had not died, and they had neither forgotten nor forgiven.
He drank another bourbon. There was nothing he could do at the moment. But, at least, he would be on his guard. Fratt would not find it easy to get at him. Nor would he find a passive victim, one weak with contrition and shame and hoping to pay for the deaths through his own, one willing to go to the sacrificial altar of his own conscience.
He struck the top of the table with his fist and almost unbalanced the glass. To hell with Fratt! If Carmody had been evil, he had shed that evil. There was more than Fratt could say for himself. If Fratt had been an innocent victim, Fratt was no longer innocent.
Then he thought, But I am responsible for turning Fratt to evil. If I had not done what I did, I would not have generated this hate in Fratt. Perhaps I twisted Fratt so much that he shed whatever good was in him, as I later shed my evil, and he became the monster that I was. Action and reaction. Turnabout is fair play. Whatever has happened or will happen, I am the guilty one.
Nevertheless, he felt the old vigor flow through his veins. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. But He uses all sorts of weapons with which to effect vengeance.
“No,” he said to himself, and he shook his head, “I am rationalizing. I must forgive and love my enemy as a brother. That is what I have preached all these years, all these years. And I meant it. Or thought I did.”
He struck the tabletop again. “But I hate! I hate! Oh, God, how I hate!”
Self-hate?
“Oh, God!” he said. “Make me see that I am wrong!”
He emptied the glass and buzzed the waitress for another.
After the bourbon had come, he took Fratt’s letter from the ‘ducer and inserted Raspold’s. On the screen of the visor he saw the living room of Raspold’s apartment on the sixtieth level of the city of Denver. Raspold himself was not sitting down to face the screen. As nervous and energetic as Carmody, he found it difficult to sit for any length of time.
Raspold was a rapier clothed in flesh, a tall, very lean man with slick black hair, brown-black eyes as sharp and glittering as two tomahawks. He had a large bulbous nose, like a bloodhound’s. He wore the scarlet coveralls and black neck-ruff of an employee of the Prometheus Interstellar Lines. Carmody was not surprised at this, for he had seen the detective in many disguises.
Raspold stopped pacing long enough to wave at Carmody and say, “Greetings, John, you old reprobate! Forgive me if this is a short letter.”
He resumed walking back and forth, while he spoke loudly in his deep baritone. “I have to be off in a few minutes, and there’s no telling how long I’ll be on this particular scent. Also, the ship that’ll be taking this letter is scheduled to leave in half an hour.
“John, while I was on this case—for which you see me dressed up—I accidentally learned of something irrelevant to the case, but very grave. Believe me, very grave. A group of rich and fanatical laymen, of your religion I’m sorry to say, have determined to assassinate Yess, the god of Kareen. None of their own members will be doing this, but they’ve hired an assassin, maybe several, to do the deed. He’s one of the really big pros. I don’t know his identity. But I believe the killer will be from Earth. Anyway, if the assassin is successful, or even if he fails and is caught, the repercussions will be bad.
“I can’t do anything about this myself, because I’m tied up until this case can be completed. I’ve notified 3-E, and they’ll undoubtedly send agents to Kareen. They’ll also probably warn Yess. Then again, they may not, because they won’t want it known that Earthmen are attempting this.