One of the strings, touched by the travel agent’s magic wand, developed an embolism which sped brightly along it, connecting and passing itself, bing, bang, pop, to other systems. Wanbli looked away to keep his balance.
Pascal was leading him down the central aisle, ignoring the woman, the holo, the picture displays and the artifacts of several cultures and races which lined the three inoperative walls. There was another door behind this front room. The boy palmed it open.
Behind him Wanbli heard the voice of the woman. “Here you are. Gideon Metropolitan. That was a departure on the seventeenth, wasn’t it?”
As Wanbli followed Pascal, he heard the man reply, “I don’t think that’s Gideon, ma’am. Looks like Gibbonsville to me.”
This room was empty but for two files, a desk and numerous spool racks. In the right wall was set a door without plaque or knob. Pascal beat on it with his open hand and after a millidec it slid open.
The light was gray through the filthy window but within it was quite comfortable. Wanbli glanced past the two men at the table to the figure in jodhpur trousers etched black into the window.
“Well, if it isn’t the oldest little boy on Morion. How’s your whizzin, sprout?” It was a third man who spoke: he who had opened the door. He was dark and thin. He wore a large pink pearl in his lapel.
“I keep it clean,” answered Pascal composedly. “And this is Red. He’s new with us.”
The two at the table had cards in their hands. Two other hands lay fan-folded, face down. Wanbli looked casually around the room, but no fourth party was visible.
Pascal stalked to the table and leaned against it. His attitude was pure swagger. He tabbed open his jacket, which was blue, puffy and decorated with racing cars. From an inside pocket he took a box and he emptied it onto the table. Ampoules of glass gleamed yellow in the poor light. “Straight from Shimmertown: uncut.”
Across from him sat a large pale man with very short hair. He gazed from his cards to the ampoules and back again. His fellow, also large, was fashionably hairless. He leaned back in his chair and swiveled slowly out from the table, his eyes lowered.
“Aces and kings,” said the large pale man. “All the rest are mine.” He seemed to be talking to the table, but as he swept in the cards, the ampoules went with them.
Pascal glared at the tabletop, which was almost at eye level for him. “Not yours until you pay for it.”
Bristlehead started to stand. His opposite number was up already. “The baby whore has delusions of some kind. Tell him what he can do with them, Walter. I’ll take care of muscles.”
Wanbli woke himself from his puzzlement and took a step forward. All the men were out of their chairs now. The one with the pearl stood only arm’s distance from Pascal. He smiled, half apologetically. “Nem owes us, cub. This one’s on him.”
Bristlehead had his hand in his pocket. The three men almost hid little Pascal from view.
This was a bad setup; Wanbli would never have let it evolve to this had he known. Why hadn’t the boy told him this could be a fighting matter and what in torment was being played here?
Wanbli decided to focus first on the man with his hand in his pocket. If Pascal could only survive for two seconds on his own…
“On us, is it? Wait till you see what’s on you.” The boy’s hand flashed to his ear.
Thin-dark hopped back as the boy slashed. The man’s hands had gone to protect his crotch, but the boy’s target was just to the side of that. There was a shriek as white slacks went red with arterial blood.
Wanbli had no time to look. His man had a gun—worse, a slicer. He grabbed Bristles’ wrist, pointing down with all his strength, and as the flyer pulled back Wanbli used his left arm to break the elbow. He let his hand continue the arc of that movement until it ended against the large, thick neck.
Fashionably Hairless had knocked Pascal forward and was kicking him. The boy grabbed at the leg. Wanbli leaped over the body of the bleeding man with a thrust kick aimed at Hairless’s head, but already the man had fallen backward, hamstrung by the golden razor earring.
Pascal was cursing. He had blood spattered over his face: not his. He went to the big man Wanbli had brought down, stepping on and over his enemies as uncaring as a cat. He took the ampoules out of the man’s pocket and put them back in his own.
The man with the severed artery was howling and pressing against himself. The other was clawing at the table.
“Pascal. What about number four?” The boy squatted above Bristles, razor in hand, indecisive. Wanbli grabbed him, one hand on the back of the collar, the other on the hand that held the weapon. “What about the other flyer?”
At last he got Pascal’s attention. “There are four hands of cards. Where’s the fourth player?”
Pascal peered vaguely at the table, at the blood on the floor, at Wanbli. At last he said, “Bridge. Dummy.”
Wanbli almost hit him. The boy wriggled out of his grasp. “No, I’m not insulting you. That’s a dummy hand. They’re playing bridge with a dummy. Don’t you know anything?”
Wanbli still paced the room, looking for hidden opponents. “Bridge? Never heard of it.”
The boy called Wanbli a terrible name as he slapped open the side door. Wanbli caught him in the storeroom, but he resisted all temptation and only wiped Pascal’s face with a sheet of spool cleaner. No sound came through the sliding door at all.
As they hurried through the front office the travel agent was saying, “It’s a good thing you caught that for me, Mr. Arbiezen. We didn’t want to go to Gibbonsville at all, did we?”
“I really wish you were easier to hide!” Pascal’s small being was wholly scornful, looking up at Wanbli. They had come fast and far, with the boy half carried, and were now strolling through a very nice residential neighborhood of Poos City, not far from Nem’s.
“Me? You little fart. I have never had any reason to hide, before this deal.” Wanbli wasted very little energy in outrage. He pushed Pascal on ahead. “What was it anyway? The drug, I mean.”
“What’s it to you?”
Wanbli pushed much harder.
“All right, all right. It’s multendorf. Multendorf HS, to be exact.”
Wanbli hadn’t expected to hear that. He had expected it was simply smuggled Povlen, or some opiate. “Multendorf homo sap.? Protectors, Pascal. That’s suicide. That’s hell.”
Pascal snorted and shrugged in his puffy jacket. “I didn’t exactly offer you any.” He brushed ineffectually at an ocher stain and walked on.
Wanbli followed, trying to think. “Wait, Pascal. Before we get back I’ve got to know. Are you doing this on your own, or is this part of Nem’s thing too?”
Pascal stopped very suddenly. “How would an eight-year-old child be doing drug running on his own? I’m Nem’s man.”
Wanbli went on ahead. “You’re Nem’s idiot is what you are.”
“Why?” The boy had to run to catch up. “It trusts me. I’m in a position… a position of responsibility.”
Now it was Wanbli’s turn to express scorn. “And do you think you’ll get something out of it? You don’t see him using his own cub for nasty jobs like this, do you?”
“Not him, it,” the boy answered weakly. “And… and that’s because Covazh is too young. Too dependent. I’m better at dealing.” His breathing was ragged, for Wanbli was setting a very fast pace.
“Hey, Red, Red. Don’t cut up with me, huh? Hey. I don’t feel so good.”
Wanbli glanced down again at the boy, the bloodstain, the stem of the broken earring hanging from his ear. “I don’t wonder at that,” he said, and tweaked the boy’s ear. He was considering what an eight-year-old Wacaan would have made of such a situation. They weren’t expected to handle life and death at the age of eight.
But now Pascal was grinning. It was white, and tight, but it was a grin. “You know we really did them, didn’t we? We did them all, the cheaters.”
“You mean you did,” Wanbli corrected him,
and he watched the boy’s tongue, curled at the corners, sneak in and out through his lips. “You’re still not going to be a Patish, flyer. No matter what you do for them. For it.” He ruffled the silky hair. “You could be something better.”
“Oh, turn it down,” said Pascal, with a taste of his usual scorn. He showed Wanbli a way through the yards and gardens to their own back door.
Wanbli heard him running ahead down the hall, his small feet pattering as he shouted, “Rachel, Kouamie—wait till you hear! I need a new earring, Rachel.” An eight-year-old boy.
“You got a letter, Red,” said Nem. He extended the sealed foil envelope across his desk. Wanbli took it and stuffed it into his purse. “Why didn’t you tell me you were dealing drugs, Nem?”
The Patish folded his hands upon the polished wood desktop and blinked his soft eyes at the human a meter and a half away. The desk was of a kidney shape, and unconventionally he had placed it with the hollow side toward visitors. Though its top was always polished and empty, Nem made great use of that desk. “Why is it your business what I do?” it asked blandly, adding, “Please, Red. Sit down. I hate to be hovered over.”
Wanbli did not sit. “It is my business because it put me into a very bad situation right now. The boy was almost killed.”
Nem showed his double-teeth pleasantly. “I gather the boy did very well. Didn’t he take out two of three attackers?”
“Yes. Leaving the one with the slicer. But beside that danger, trading in multendorf is a maximum-penalty crime almost everywhere. By Mo, I’m guilty and I don’t even know what the maximum penalty is here in Poos.”
“That’s simply said. It’s death,” said Nem, working his tongue. “But you notice you have not been caught, Red. No one in my employ has ever had trouble with the police. Or is likely to.” The Patish hissed and slapped the table. “Would you please sit down; you are too damn tall to hang over me like that!”
Wanbli glanced at the heavy black chair placed in the hollow of the desk and stepped backward. “I’ll slouch.”
Nem let his sleek head hang forward. Absentmindedly he stroked the rosettes against the direction of the hair. “Oh, suit yourself, human.”
“But as for the trading, I can only ask you if you have ever known an artist who did not have to do something else occasionally to support its art?”
Wanbli laughed with real appreciation. He leaned against the wall. “I might think you really believed in that if I hadn’t been working here five ten’ys already. Pascal does believe it. You’ve sold the boy inside and out. Probably because he’s too young to really know what sex is.”
“And what is it, Red?” The Patish drummed its nails on the desk. “What is sex really, if not a high art?”
Wanbli smirked his superior smirk for just a moment, and then it faded. “What we do has an old established name.”
It occurred to him suddenly that all this furor was for nothing, for he could walk out of Nem’s Arrangeurs at any moment. He could go anywhere. He could go home, for instance.
it was an astonishing idea: to go home to Hovart, where the sun rose green and set pink and they knew what good zoning was. To go home and be—he thought hard—not a Paint anymore, but something else. Wanbli laughed out loud. The little furry alien with the spit curls seemed suddenly irrelevant, harmless, like a stuffed toy.
But he had one more point to press with Nem. “You know, you’re not treating the boy right, flyer. You’ve made him think that he’s one of you in spite of being a human.”
“And he’s not?” Nem’s tongue became agitated.
“Is he in line to own the business? Or is he just destined to get used up someday, on a job like this one?”
Used up. Just like a Paint. Raised like a son but not a son: trained, sent out and used up. The analogy seemed so perfect and so unexpected that it swept over Wanbli with religious intensity. A great understanding. No wonder he felt so protective of the little pup.
Nem spat with outrage and stood as tall is it could. “Since you’re such a strong supporter of the boy, Red, perhaps it will please you to know that it was his hand that injected the multendorf into the air currents you have been breathing.” The rosettes on his cheeks stood up in Patish emotion. “It was really not necessary for you to sit in the chair.”
“Multendorf?” Wanbli raised his eyes to the empty white ceiling. He glanced from one wall to another. “It must not have worked, flyer. I feel fine.”
“I’ll bet you do.” The Patish watched and watched as Wanbli stood in place, looking fit, relaxed and progressively more glazed.
He felt absolutely wonderful, truth to tell. Like victory and wide vistas and all pain in the past. It didn’t feel like a drug, it felt like fulfillment. He bit down on his thumb until he drew blood and tasted it. “I see,” he said evenly.
“And now you’re not angry at us anymore, are you, Red?” whispered the Patish.
“Oh, not at all.” Wanbli smiled: not a smirk.
“And you see how foolish it was of you to get upset?”
“I’ve always known it’s foolish to let go temper.” Wanbli turned toward the door. “Big waste.”
“Then sit down and we’ll talk about it.” Now Nem moved around the desk.
Wanbli had his hand on the plaque. “Sorry, Nem, but what I have to do now is head home.”
The Patish was in front of him. “But, Red, you don’t want to oppose all of us: Kouamie, Covazh, Pascal, Rachel… myself? You don’t want to fight?”
Wanbli ruffled the pelty head as he had Pascal’s. “No, I really don’t. Luckily I won’t have to, Nem. Not with you flyers. I’m still Wacaan, you know. Or maybe you don’t.” Wanbli moved his employer aside. He opened the door.
“Red!” Nem shouted and as Wanbli glanced back at him that tongue shot out over a meter through the air, right at his left eye. Wanbli’s body parried without bothering his mind about it and he found himself grasping the end of the thing in his hand. Liquid shot out in a thin stream, hitting the wall, which smoked. Wanbli was much amused; he did not let go of the thing as, with his heel, he kept off the eighteen claws Nem put into the battle. Feet were pounding down the hall, so Wanbli ended the scuffle with a slap under the Patish’s long jawbone. Teeth clicked against teeth and Nem grabbed his tongue with both hands as he watched Wanbli running down the corridor.
It was Kouamie and Ivian, answering Nem’s silent alarm. Kouamie was a Patish, though not of Nem’s family. Wanbli didn’t wait, but twisted its arm so that tongue and all claws were facing away from him, and made as though to throw the Patish at Ivian, who was human and who put her hands in the air in the universal gesture of the noncombatant.
“You got a letter,” she hissed as he darted by. He grinned back at her, exalted afresh by this small gesture of companionship. “Thanks, I got it.”
His room was just around a corner, where from old habits his pack stood, sorted and ready. It was a much bulkier weight than it had been when he left Tawlin: full of clothing.
The door into the car yard was not locked, but when he palmed it open there was Pascal, eight-year-old Pascal, standing with legs braced holding a slicer aimed at his midsection.
“You won’t,” said Wanbli gently.
“I will,” shouted the boy.
“Then that’s too bad.” Very calmly Wanbli walked through, shoving past the barrel of the gun. Pascal kicked at him nastily, but he did not shoot.
“You… you whore,” the boy shouted, and then he threw the slicer down on the steps and ran back down the hall crying.
Wanbli felt such detached sympathy for Pascal that he almost went back.
He went to the Hall of the Seven Sentients, this time to the Patish display, which he had missed. It was very interesting, and would have told him about that tongue. Stomach acid, very concentrated. Fully in the bloom of the multendorf, Wanbli sat on a bench before the exhibit of Patish family life and he opened his letter.
The foil came open in two sheets, one of which was blan
k except for the New Benares dateline and the words ENC. 1. Wanbli interpreted this to mean the letter was forwarded through the only person in New Benares to know his location: Audry. And that she had nothing to say.
Except for the multendorf, that might have hurt.
The inside missive was a full-page (unusual profligacy in a long-distance printgram document) and without greeting. It went:
You were really a fool to pop off like that. I know all about that money you came into—what a farce, ’Bli. You get rich because someone tries to kill me. Can’t really blame you for cutting loose—feathers were made to fly. But your stone-faces in the clan aren’t going to forget it They want their paints under their thumbs. Shit, but you’re so much like me.
They stuck me with two—only two—paints, no brain nor imagination between them. Both men. Can’t learn to operate the machines at all.
Listen. The reason I’m writing is on behalf of all of us who pay too much taxes. What has happened to the Cynthia Conglom? Do they intend to honor our contract? No answers! No answers! You’re out there—do something. Seventy-eight years of payments and do we have a station or no? Check the Elmira reps on NB.
You are not hard to trace, you barefoot dongberry. Pursue this matter if you want to come home unscalped.
That business about your mother wasn’t serious, if that’s what burnt your synapses.
Over the signature was Ake Tawlin’s official seal. Wanbli folded the foil (it could not crease) and put it back in his purse.
He had a very clear memory of Reynaldo’s hesitant remarks concerning Elmira: remarks that would one day, he had known, become very important. Wanbli stared unseeing at the holo of the pink undeveloped Patish baby in its parent’s external pouch. Now was that day. He had used up goal after goal, distraction after distraction, and here it was.
A poor society on a poor planet. Not even the merchant princes of T’chishett were what he would call wealthy, not after seeing New Benares and Poos City. Poor, backward and without opportunities: that was all of Neunacht. Sniping at each other and full of self-importance. Hell, no one out in the big worlds knew who they were.
The Third Eagle Page 16