He could not reach for anything but it was instantly placed before him. He could hardly look at anything but it was offered him. And there were glasses filled and waiting. There were wines and Earth whiskey and a bubbling vintage of infinitely alluring aroma. He tasted one or two of the liquids cagily.
They were a bit too insidious. He had something to think about. He began to have a queer so-far-unjustified hunch that this distinctly novel experience had something to do with the job he'd had on hand when he was shipwrecked.
"You wish music, master?" asked the butler, deferentially.
"Eh? Oh, surely," said Stannard, abstractedly.
His seat did not give him a view of the trail from which a file of black creatures still trotted, bringing burdens. Now he saw an orchestra file before him. It looked real. It had uniforms. He suddenly recognized it—a name band which had made visiphone records that, ten years before, had caught the fancy of half the galaxy.
Servant suits—plastic shapes into which the Pasiki slid themselves—reproduced the builds and faces of the original musicians. There were instruments. Music began. It was an excellent imitation of a visiphone record but after a moment Stannard noted that the movements of the instrumentalists did not match the music.
The sound did not come from the instruments then, but from that diaphragm each of the Pasiki possessed and which vibrated to make speech or sound. It was somehow shocking to realize it.
Then dancers appeared and Stannard almost started up. They were slim and graceful and shapely, and they had plainly studied visiphone records and learned the dances of human beings. But they were Pasiki, clothed in plastic suit-masks. Still, they were astonishingly like lissome human girls in a minimum of costume, dancing to sultry impassioned music.
But all this happened in bright sunshine and Stannard watched from a pavilion in a small clearing, surrounded by strange trees with lenticular leaves. And all about the clearing there were the black glistening bodies of the Pasiki, watching Stannard. It was oddly wrong.
Even the whirling, gracefully alluring figures of the dancers were foamflex, or something similar and inside each there was another glistening black body, faithfully making a marionette of itself for the diversion of the man who was—they said—their master.
Somehow, Stannard felt a little bit sick.
3: Lay That Blaster Down!
The days on Pasik were twenty-two hours long and it was on the third day that Stannard saw the girl. There were times in between when he doubted his sanity and the hunch that said all this connected somehow with the job he'd had on hand when Snark broke down.
There were other times when the temptation to complacent acceptance of his situation and the abandonment of his task was very strong. And there were occasions on which he wanted to smash something out of pure perversity.
The Pasiki were irritating. There is something about abject submissiveness which revolts a normal man and anyhow Stannard could not forget the glee these same Pasiki had shown when they found a human ship had been destroyed—presumably with all its occupants.
The fact that now the Pasiki tended to greet Stannard's rising with songs and cheers and that they raptly assured him each lightest word was inspired and infinite wisdom and that they showed an enormous ingenuity in displaying the most passionate adoration—these things did not jibe. From time to time, at the most unlikely moments, he felt a crawling sensation at the back of his neck.
On the third morning, as he awoke, the butler form hovered about his bed. The bed, like the palace to which he had been conducted, was shoddy and elaborate and falsely elegant. The building had plainly been constructed by the Pasiki under orders from a human being who considered that visiphone records portrayed the everyday life of aristocrats.
"Master," said the butler thing obsequiously, "man master comes to see you. In two hours."
Stannard rolled out of bed. The butler-masked Pasiki helped him to dress. Stannard wore the garments in which he had been wrecked including his belt. As he fastened it, the butler handed him another belt. It contained two hand-blasters in holsters.
"Why weapons?" asked Stannard. "If I'm to have a visitor—"
"Man masters, master," said the butler thing blandly, "always wear weapons to see each other."
He bowed to withdraw.
"But why?" demanded Stannard. "Custom or what?"
"Sometimes they kill," said the butler as if piously regretful. "It is not for Pasiki to understand, master. The master who was here before was killed by another master."
There was a mound, not far from this place, where a human grave was devotedly kept covered with blossoms of a lurid purple. Stannard had been told that it was the grave of his predecessor. But he had gathered an impression of the unknown—from his ideas of luxurious living—which had blunted his curiosity.
He had no morbid interest in the man who'd had all the foam suits of dancing-girl shapes made so that insectile Pasiki could dance for him in the appearance of scantily clad human girls.
Stannard said, "How'd the killing come about?"
"Who knows, master? They drank together and the other master killed our master. You can ask, master, when he comes!"
"The same killer's to be my visitor, eh?" said Stannard. "And what happened after the killing?"
"He went away, master: He did not want our master's possessions."
"How about the law?"
The butler thing said blankly, "Law, master?"
"I see," said Stannard grimly: "Humans are above the law to Pasiki. And there are too few to make laws for themselves. But didn't you Pasiki do anything at all when your master was killed?"
"We asked what the other master wished to do, master," said the butler shape. "We wished to serve him. But he told us to go to the devil. Then he would not tell us how to do that thing and laughed as he went away."
"I see," said Stannard.
He buckled on the extra belt with two blasters. The Pasiki served men, apparently any man would do. There was no feeling of loyalty to an individual. One man killed another man and the Pasiki, who had been joyous slaves to the murdered man, promptly offered themselves as joyous slaves to the murderer.
It was somehow convincing. It looked quite a lot as if this fitted into Stannard's hunch about a connection between Pasik and his job. But there was no mention of a woman master yet. He'd almost forgotten the one mention of her that he'd heard.
He was at breakfast when, utterly without warning, she came into the room. Her entrance was partly hidden by the butler mask with its shiny-skinned occupant, who was serving Stannard his breakfast with elaborate ceremony.
Stannard saw the feminine form, but he had seen enough foamflex servants. This one he had not seen before but he was not interested. He spooned out a morsel of a curious pink-fleshed fruit and put it to his lips. Then the butler thing moved obsequiously aside and bowed.
"Welcome!" said the butler thing profoundly. "Welcome to woman master! Pasiki have gladness!"
Stannard looked up blankly. The girl faced him across the table and she had a blaster in her hand. It pointed straight at Stannard.
"Good morning," said the girl in a taut voice. "I'd like to know something about you, please. Of course I'd better kill you out of hand, but I'd like to be fair."
Stannard blinked. His eyes went to the blaster, to her face. He suddenly noted that her costume was not a part of her body. It was not molded on. It had been donned.
"You—you're human!" he said blankly.
"Quite," said the girl. She was very pale. "And my Pasiki have let slip you were planning to pay me a visit, so I thought I'd visit first. Don't move, please! I'm going to take your blasters."