by Sam Merwin
why? There could, he decided, be all sorts ofMachiavellian motives hidden beneath that smiling face. Then the matchgot under way once more, and Lindsay concentrated on the play.
Once again O'Ryan seemed to be in command--just as the computer hadforetold. Games went to five-two in his favor. Then, as the playerschanged courts once more, the tall Irishman paused to towel off--andpaid special attention to rubbing his eyes.
At that his string ran out. Four straight times his swiftest drives hitthe top of the net and bounced back into his own court. He blew hisservice thanks to a pair of double-faults and three minutes laterYamato-Rau had taken the set while the crowd sat in stunned silence.
The fourth set was pitiful. O'Ryan played like a blind man and theIndonesian ran it out with the loss of exactly one point per game. Thered line on the computer-board yawed wildly toward the bottom instead offollowing the white line as it should have.
"Keep your credits," Lindsay told Senator Anderson. "You were right. Asit turned out I did know something after all."
"It's impossible!" cried the senator. "But it's cheap at theprice--here!" He withdrew his wallet and began pulling out crisphundred-credit notes.
"Look out!" cried Lindsay. Around them the stands had erupted intoviolence. While the players were shaking hands at the net, angry--and,Lindsay suspected, frightened--bettors and spectators leaped the lowbarriers and swarmed out onto the dark court. They hemmed the playersin, driving them toward the wall directly under the UW box in whichLindsay and Anderson were sitting.
Someone threw something and Yamato-Rau stumbled and fell to his handsand knees. Swinging his racquet like one of his ancestors' shillalehs,O'Ryan charged to his rescue, pulled him to his feet, covered hisretreat to the wall. There Lindsay was able to pull first theIndonesian, then the Irishman, up into the box.
"Damned fool!" said Anderson. "Getting us into a riot." But a momentlater Lindsay saw the senator swinging hard at an angry customer with afist in which his wallet was still clenched. The man made a grab for itas someone else hit Anderson over the head with a plastic bottle. Hedropped across a contour-chair, letting his wallet fall from unconsciousfingers.
UW police formed a protective wall around them and Pat O'Ryan,recognizing Lindsay, said, "Thanks, Ambassador. I guess I owe you acouple. If my eyes hadn't gone bad on me...."
Lindsay was tempted to admit his guilt in that matter but decidedagainst it. He had no desire to be caught in another riot. He picked upAnderson's wallet, put it back in the still unconscious senator's breastpocket. A white-clad interne was brought through the police cordon,knelt beside Anderson and began to make repairs.
"You'd better leave now, Ambassador," said one of the boss policemanrespectfully to Lindsay when the senator had been carted away on astretcher. Lindsay nodded. Then he noticed a slip of paper lying beneaththe chair across which Anderson had fallen. It read: _rec. 10,000 cdt. 1em. & di. neck_. It was from Zoffany, the jeweler.
"What the hell!" Lindsay discovered he was speaking aloud. He stuffedthe paper in his pocket and followed the officer through a maze ofunderground passages out of the Colosseum. He still thought, _What thehell!_ What could Nina have reported about him that was worth that sortof money to the senator?
* * * * *
Spy, slattern or not, Nina was efficient, as he realised when a bowingmotley-clad waiter captain smilingly ushered him to a secluded table fortwo in a banquet niche of the Pelican. It was Lindsay's first visit toan Earthly after-dark cafe and he instinctively compared it with certainof its imitations in the comparatively small cities of his nativeplanet.
It was sleeker, better run, far more beautiful. Its general color schemewas darkly opalescent, subtly glowing, flattering to its clients. And,of course, most of them needed flattering, at least to Lindsay's alieneyes. He noted here a pair of scimitar-shaped spectacles whoseturquoise-studded rims caught the light like a pair of small lemon pies,there a harmopan-covered female face that glowed pale green in thedarkness.
But even more numerous and decorative than at the stadium, thegladiators and courtesans were present, reinforced by a larding of vidarstars visiting or entertaining in the capital. And these, Lindsayadmitted to himself with awed reluctance, outshone in sheer beauty andhandsomeness any group of Martian humans.
They ought to, he thought. Direct descendants, figuratively if notactually, of the advertising-Hollywood beauty fetish of the previouscentury, they were selected almost from birth for their callings andtrained rigorously from childhood on, the males to become athletes oractors, the females courtesans or actresses.
There was no race among them, for their only standards were beauty andphysical fitness, no creed but achievement in their lines of individualentertainment. He caught sight of a lissome Euro-African, the classicexoticism of her flower-petal face illumined by joyous laughter beneatha glossy neo-Watusi hairdo, as she glided gracefully over thedance-floor in the arms of a hunch-harnessed and bespectacled partner.
The gladiators and courtesans alone seemed to find joy in living.Lindsay, who had seldom been unhappy in his active existence, felt hissympathies and heart go out to them. He followed the progress of a tinyOriental model whose face was alive with good-humor as she swept pasthis table, her exquisite figure stressed by a glittering jeweledsheathe.
"You really should wear glasses--or else learn not to stare," saidMaria, appearing from nowhere and sitting down at the table. She madeamends by extending a warm soft hand to grip one of his. Though she woreher glasses and her hair was severely pulled back, he had no difficultyin recalling the fact that, unclothed, she was lovely.
"Why don't you get in on the act?" he suggested, nodding toward a pairof models emerging from the harmopan room. "All you'd have to do wouldbe to remove your specs and harness and let your hair down."
"You're sweet, Zale," she said, pleased. Then, with a sigh, "But there'sa lot more to it than that."
"You do all right that way too," he told her boldly.
She slapped the back of his hand and then, growing quickly serious,said, "Zale, I didn't ask you to meet me for that. I've got so much toask you--so much to tell. Did you really find an assassin waiting foryou when you got home last night? And did you kill him?"
"Yes and no," said Lindsay. "I did find one and I didn't kill him. Infact we parted good friends."
"You Martians...." She sighed, then said, "And I understand you havealready broken two computers--this afternoon at the psychiatrist's andthis evening at the Colosseum. It's the most marvelous news, darling.I've got to know how you did it."
"I'm damned if I know how I fouled up Dr. Craven's computer," he toldher, "I'm still trying to figure it out."
Her face fell. She said, "I was hoping you had something.... But nevermind." Then, brightening, "But you're driving them crazy. They ran Dr.Craven's results through Elsac late this afternoon and got the sameanswer. The records checked that you didn't kill your mother and _I_know you're not an invert." She laughed softly.
Spurred by the erotic atmosphere, plus the dizzying speed of recentevents and Maria's nearness, he said, "Let's get out of here and go tomy place."
Her hand covered his again atop the table. "I wish we could," she saidwistfully. "I like you _very_ much, Zale darling. But this is tooimportant. We haven't time. But what about the tennis tonight? There'sgoing to be an investigation, of course. Won't you tell me how you didit?"
"Not until I've figured out both," he said. "I may be on the track ofsomething or it may be sheer chance. Until I understand what happened atDr. Craven's I'm simply not sure of my facts."
"But there simply isn't time, darling," Maria told him. "This is reallywhat I must talk to you about. We got word today that PresidentGiovannini is going to unveil Giac any day now."
"Decided against your sabotage plan?" he asked her.
She wrinkled her pert little nose. "What's the use? They'd simply repairit. Besides, it's much too well guarded. Zale, you're our only hopenow."
He said "If I'm ri
ght, and I'm beginning to hope I am, it won't matterwhether Giac is unveiled or not. In fact, it might be more effective ifit were."
Maria drummed on the table with nervous knuckles. "But you _don't_understand, Zale. You don't think for a minute that the Ministry ofComputation is taking this lying down. I got word less than half an hourago that they are preparing to force your recall as an unsuitableplenipotentiary."
"They can try." Lindsay spoke grimly. This was a move he had failed toforesee, though he supposed he should have. Inadvertently he wasbecoming a major