Citizen of the Galaxy (7 page)

"That's our baby! Where'd he go?"

"Over that fence and between those houses."

"Thanks, mother! Come on, Juby."

Thorby waited. The woman continued whatever she was doing; her feet moved and the tub creaked. Then she stepped down and sat on the tub. She slapped it gently. "Stay where you are," she said softly. A moment later he heard her go away.

Thorby waited until his bones ached. But he resigned himself to staying under that tub until dark. It would be chancy, as the night patrol questioned everyone but nobles after curfew, but leaving this neighborhood in daylight had become impossible. Thorby could not guess why he had been honored by a turn-out of the guard, but he did not want to find out. He heard someone—the woman?—moving around the yard from time to time.

At least an hour later he heard the creak of un-greased wheels. Someone tapped on the tub. "When I lift the tub, get into the cart, fast. It's right in front of you."

Thorby did not answer. Daylight hit his eyes, he saw a small pushcart—and was in it and trying to make himself small. Laundry landed on him. But before that blanked out his sight he saw that the tub was no longer nakedly in the open; sheets had been hung on lines so that it was screened.

Hands arranged bundles over him and a voice said, "Hold still until I tell you to move."

"Okay . . . and thanks a million! I'll pay you back someday."

"Forget it." She breathed heavily. "I had a man once. Now he's in the mines. I don't care what you've done— I don't turn anybody over to the patrol."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Shut up."

The little cart bumped and wobbled and presently Thorby felt the change to pavement. Occasionally they stopped; the woman would remove a bundle, be gone a few minutes, come back and dump dirty clothes into the cart. Thorby took it with the long patience of a beggar.

A long time later the cart left pavement. It stopped and the woman said in a low voice, "When I tell you, get out the righthand side and keep going. Make it fast."

"Okay. And thanks again!"

"Shut up." The cart bumped along a short distance, slowed without stopping, and she said, "Now!"

Thorby threw off his covering, bounced out and landed on his feet, all in one motion. He was facing a passage between two buildings, a serviceway from alley to street. He started down it fast but looked back over his shoulder.

The cart was just disappearing. He never did see her face.

Two hours later he was back in his own neighborhood. He slipped down beside Baslim. "No good."

"Why not?"

"Snoopies. Squads of 'em."

"Alms, gentle sir! You swallowed it? Alms for the sake of your parents!"

"Of course."

"Take the bowl." Baslim got to hands and knee, started away.

"Pop! Don't you want me to help you?"

"You stay here."

Thorby stayed, irked that Pop had not waited for a full report. He hurried home as soon as it was dark, found Baslim in the kitchen-washroom, paraphernalia spread around him and using both recorder and book projector. Thorby glanced at the displayed page, saw that he could not read it and wondered what language it was—an odd one; the words were all seven letters, no more, no less. "Hi, Pop. Shall I start supper?"

"No room . . . and no time. Eat some bread. What happened today?"

Thorby told him, while munching bread. Baslim simply nodded. "Lie down. I've got to use hypnosis on you again. We've got a long night ahead."

The material Baslim wanted him to memorize consisted of figures, dates, and endless three-syllable nonsense words. The light trance felt dreamily pleasant and the droning of Baslim's voice coming out of the recorder was pleasant, too.

During one of the breaks, when Baslim had commanded him to wake up, he said, "Pop, who's this message for?"

"If you ever get a chance to deliver it, you'll know; you won't have any doubts. If you have trouble remembering it, tell him to put you into a light trance; it'll come back."

"Tell whom?"

"Him. Never mind. You are going to sleep. You are asleep." Baslim snapped his fingers.

While the recorder was droning Thorby was vaguely aware once that Baslim had just come in. He was wearing his false leg, which affected Thorby with dreamy surprise; Pop ordinarily wore it only indoors. Once Thorby smelled smoke and thought dimly that something must be burning in the kitchen and he should go check. But he was unable to move and the nonsense words kept droning into his ears.

He became aware that he was droning back to Pop the lesson he had learned. "Did I get it right?"

"Yes. Now go to sleep. Sleep the rest of the night."

Baslim was gone in the morning. Thorby was not surprised; Pop's movements had been even less predictable than usual lately. He ate breakfast, took his bowl and set out for the Plaza. Business was poor—Pop was right; Thorby now looked too healthy and well fed for the profession. Maybe he would have to learn to dislocate his joints like Granny the Snake. Or buy contact lenses with cataracts built into them.

Midafternoon an unscheduled freighter grounded at the port. Thorby started the usual inquiries, found that it was the Free Trader
Sisu
, registered home port New Finlandia, Shiva III.

Ordinarily this would have been a minor datum, to be reported to Pop when he saw him. But Captain Krausa of the
Sisu
was one of the five persons to whom Thorby was someday to deliver a message, if and when.

It fretted Thorby. He knew that he was not to look up Captain Krausa—that was the distant future, for Pop was alive and well. But maybe Pop would be anxious to know that this ship had arrived. Tramp freighters came and went, nobody knew when, and sometimes they were in port only a few hours.

Thorby told himself that he could get home in five minutes—and Pop might thank him. At worst he would bawl him out for leaving the Plaza, but, shucks, he could pick up anything he missed, through gossip.

Thorby left.

The ruins of the old amphitheater extend around one third of the periphery of the new. A dozen holes lead down into the labyrinth which had served the old slave barracks; an unlimited number of routes ran underground from these informal entrances to that part which Baslim had pre-empted as a home. Thorby and he varied their route in random fashion and avoided being seen entering or leaving.

This time, being in a hurry, Thorby went to the nearest—and on past; there was a policeman at it. He continued as if his destination had been a tiny greengrocer's booth on the street rimming the ruins. He stopped and spoke to the proprietress. "Howdy, Inga. Got a nice ripe melon you're going to have to throw away?"

"No melons."

He displayed money. "How about that big one? Half price and I won't notice the rotten spot." He leaned closer. "What's burning?"

Her eyes flicked toward the patrolman. "Get lost."

"Raid?"

"Get lost, I said."

Thorby dropped a coin on the counter, picked up a bellfruit and walked away, sucking the juice. He did not hurry.

A cautious reconnaissance showed him that police were staked out all through the ruins. At one entrance a group of ragged troglodytes huddled sadly under the eye of a patrolman. Baslim had estimated that at least five hundred people lived in the underground ruins. Thorby had not quite believed it, as he had rarely seen anyone else enter or heard them inside. He recognized only two faces among the prisoners.

A half-hour later and more worried every minute Thorby located an entrance which the police did not seem to know. He scanned it for several minutes, then darted from behind a screen of weeds and was down it. Once inside he got quickly into total darkness, then moved cautiously, listening. The police were supposed to have spectacles which let them see in the dark. Thorby wasn't sure this was true as he had always found darkness helpful in evading them. But he took no chances.

There were indeed police down below; he heard two of them and saw them by hand torches they carried—if snoopies could see in the dark these two did not seem equipped for it. They were obviously searching, stun guns drawn. But they were in strange territory whereas Thorby was playing his home field. A specialized speleologist, he knew these corridors the way his tongue knew his teeth; he had been finding his way through them in utter blackness twice a day for years.

At the moment they had him trapped; he kept just far enough ahead to avoid their torches, skirted a hole that reached down into the next level, went beyond it, ducked into a doorway and waited.

They reached the hole, eyed the narrow ledge Thorby had taken so casually in the dark, and one of them said, "We need a ladder."

"Oh, we'll find stairs or a chute." They turned back. Thorby waited, then went back and down the hole.

A few minutes later he was close to his home doorway. He looked and listened and sniffed and waited until he was certain that no one was close, then crept to the door and reached for the thumbhole in the lock. Even as he reached he knew that something was wrong.

The door was gone; there was just a hole.

He froze, straining every sense. There was an odor of strangers but it wasn't fresh and there was no sound of breathing. The only sound was a faint drip-drip in the kitchen.

Thorby decided that he just had to see. He looked behind him, saw no glimmer, reached inside for the light switch and turned it to "dim."

Nothing happened. He tried the switch in all positions, still no light. He went inside, avoided something cluttering Baslim's neat living room, on into the kitchen, and reached for candles. They were not where they belonged but his hand encountered one nearby; he found the match safe and lit the candle.

Ruin and wreckage!

Most of the damage seemed the sort that results from a search which takes no account of cost, aiming solely at speed and thoroughness. Every cupboard, every shelf had been spilled, food dumped on the floor. In the large room the mattresses had been ripped open, stuffing spilled out. But some of it looked like vandalism, unnecessary, pointless.

Thorby looked around with tears welling up and his chin quivering. But when he found, near the door, Pop's false leg, lying dead on the floor with its mechanical perfection smashed as if trampled by boots, he broke into sobs and had to put the candle down to keep from dropping it. He picked up the shattered leg, held it like a doll, sank to the floor and cradled it, rocking back and forth and moaning.

CHAPTER 5

Thorby spent the next several hours in the black corridors outside their ruined home, near the first branching, where he would hear Pop if he came back but where Thorby would have a chance to duck if police showed up.

He caught himself dozing, woke with a start, and decided that he had to find out what time it was; it seemed as if he had been keeping vigil a week. He went back into their home, found a candle and fit it. But their only clock, a household "Eternal," was smashed. No doubt the radioactive capsule was still reckoning eternity but the works were mute. Thorby looked at it and forced himself to think in practical terms.

If Pop were free, he would come back. But the police had taken Pop away. Would they simply question him and turn him loose?

No, they would not. So far as Thorby knew, Pop had never done anything to harm the Sargon—but he had known for a long time that Pop was not simply a harmless old beggar. Thorby did not know why Pop had done the many things which did not fit the idea of "harmless old beggar" but it was clear that the police knew or suspected. About once a year the police had "cleaned out" the ruins by dropping a few retch-gas bombs down the more conspicuous holes; it simply meant having to sleep somewhere else for a couple of nights. But this was a raid in force. They had intended to arrest Pop and they had been searching for something.

The Sargon's police operated on a concept older than justice; they assumed that a man was guilty, they questioned him by increasingly strong methods until he talked . . . methods so notorious that an arrested person was usually anxious to tell all before questioning started. But Thorby was certain that the police would get nothing out of Pop which the old man did not wish to admit.

Therefore the questioning would go on a long time.

They were probably working on Pop this very minute. Thorby's stomach turned over.

He had to get Pop away from them.

How? How does a moth attack the Praesidium? Thorby's chances were not much better. Baslim might be in a back room of the district police barracks, the logical place for a petty prisoner. But Thorby had an unreasoned conviction that Pop was not a petty prisoner . . . in which case he might be anywhere, even in the bowels of the Praesidium.

Thorby could go to the district police office and ask where his patron had been taken—but such was the respect in which the Sargon's police were held that this solution did not occur to him; had he presented himself as next of kin of a prisoner undergoing interrogation Thorby would have found himself in another closed room being interviewed by the same forceful means as a check on the answers (or lack of them) which were being wrung out of Baslim.

Thorby was not a coward; he simply knew that one does not dip water with a knife. Whatever he did for Pop would have to be done indirectly. He could not demand his "rights" because he had none; the idea never entered his head. Bribery was possible—for a man with a poke full of stellars. Thorby had less than two minims. Stealth was all that was left and for that he needed information.

He reached this conclusion as soon as he admitted that there was no reasonable chance that the police would turn Pop loose. But, on the wild chance that Baslim might talk his way free, Thorby wrote a note, telling Pop that he would check back the next day, and left it on a shelf they used as a mail drop. Then he left.

It was night when he stuck his head above ground. He could not decide whether he had been down in the ruins for half a day or a day and a half. It forced him to change plans; he had intended to go first to Inga the greengrocer and find out what she knew. But at least there were no police around now; he could move freely as long as he evaded the night patrol. But where? Who could, or would, give him information?