by Brian Daley
They passed people hurrying to find shelter for the night. There were goitered ragmen and dissipated bar dogs moribund with drugs and drink; leprous beggars; palsied and scabrous fortune-tellers and children with stick legs and bellies swollen by intestinal parasites. All gave the two a wide berth.
Most Tombville dwellings showed no light at all, either abandoned or thoroughly barred and curtained by occupants who rightly feared the night. Alacrity reflected sourly on the fact that Sile's hoard of toys and tidbits hadn't included a simple handlight.
"Alacrity, I'm not so sure about this place," Hobart said as they turned into an alley. "Do any of these shacks look trustworthy to you?" It was getting late; they couldn't even make out one another's face in the gloom. Alacrity flipped up his visor.
"I've got one idea." Alacrity slipped off his proteus and moved off to one side, leaving Floyt in the rain. The Earther stepped back into the shelter of a boarded-up doorway, keeping his hand on the gun under the shawl.
Alacrity went to a nearby wall, the sort of wall he'd been looking for. He could barely make it out, but it was big and smooth and seemed to have peeling handbills on it.
He adjusted his proteus quickly. Unlike Floyt's it had a miniature projection feature for data display. By turning the contrast up to max, he used it as a weak but serviceable light. Holding it, he bent close to the wall.
It was a mural of faded stencils, layered deposits of grafitti, spit and sputum, pockmarks that might have been bullet holes, ominous stains suggesting old blood, childish attempts at art and pornography, primitive scrawls and messages, occult symbols and arcana, unreadable political slogans, and what looked like lovers' initials.
Holding his proteus close to the wall, he examined the markings and indentations, particularly around the edges. He passed a spot, stopped, and went back to it, bending close. Floyt, getting uneasier by the second, swiveled his head, searching the shadows. He could see no one, but from what Alacrity had said about boxtowns, he was sure they were being watched.
Alacrity doused the light and came back, replacing his proteus. "There's a reasonably safe place to stay on the next street over. I saw some Forager cues." '
"How's that again?"
"Cryptoglyphs. The Foragers use 'em to leave each other word about the local setup. Whether it's dangerous or how the pickings are, and so forth. But these ones weren't new; I'm surprised there've been Foragers through here at all. Let's go see how we do."
Alacrity closed his umbrella and tucked it through his game bag straps, leaving his hands free. They were well into the alley before they heard the footsteps. Floyt spun. Alacrity stole a quick glance behind—three men were blocking that end of the alley—then immediately swung to cover the way ahead. Sure enough, two more footpads were just edging their heads around the corner for a peek.
"Get your back up against that wall," Alacrity said, doing the same on his side. That way, a net dropped from above would have less chance of getting them both, and each had a field of fire over the other's head.
Floyt took out the Webley, the lanyard ring jingling, and cocked it. The sound seemed very loud. He plastered himself flat against the wall.
The three men who'd come into the alley after them had stopped. Now the two at the other end edged into silhouette, sliding along the walls on either side.
"No warning shots!" Alacrity declared in lingua franca. "We've got two alley-hoses here; get out or we'll throw a barbecue!"
"Get ready, but don't fire unless I tell you," he whispered. Then, dimly, Floyt saw him turn, move to the middle of the alley, and bring the heavy sidearm up with both hands. The footpads kept coming.
Floyt, knowing what to expect, looked away toward the trio, bringing up his free arm to shield the ear closest to the pistol. The Captain's Sidearm went off with an explosion that seemed too much for the alley to contain. The flash gave Floyt a brief glimpse of three very surprised, disheveled men with beards and tangled hair. Each held something; one had what Floyt was pretty sure was only a knife, but there wasn't enough time to see what the others carried. He cringed, waiting for them to fire back, but no shots came.
Someone was screaming from the direction in which Alacrity had fired. In the other, the trio had frozen. Alacrity was already flattened against the wall again, gun in one hand, the other cupped to his mouth. "Last chance!" Floyt saw that Alacrity's hand was shaking. There was a silent instant as the universe seemed to sit still and listen.
Then there was shuffling. The three made darker shapes against the mouth of the alley. Alacrity moved away from the wall, gun up and pointing, its muzzle twitching and trembling. Floyt caught a look at his friend's face in a stray beam of light. It was a face of unspeakable hatred.
It's not fear that's making him shake, it came to Floyt then. It's the effort not to fire. It was an old, cold wrath from Alacrity's past.
In a moment the trio was gone. "What about the other two?" Floyt whispered.
"I sparked one of them," Alacrity murmured. "The other might've gotten away by now, or he might be there—"
He broke off, staring up wildly, at the sound of loud clapping. It came from above them, one person's applause. They pointed their barrels here and there overhead, but saw no one.
"Not bad, outies," a disembodied voice called, a young male. It spoke Terranglish, not lingua franca.
"Boosk! Nice gun! Real strong! But why didn't you finish the gag?"
"On your way, before we finish you, juviezits," Alacrity warned.
A smiling face leaned into view above them, just barely, lit by a handlight held out of sight. "Whatever you say, skipper." It was a round, sullen face, a kid somewhere past adolescence but short of manhood. He wore a dark beret; his hair, escaping from it, bobbed in loose curls that glittered strangely; so did his smile.
Three other faces crowded into view, two boys and a girl in early- to mid-teens. "It was a pleasure watching," the applauder said. Drawing his companions with him, he pulled back out of sight.
"Stay ready," Alacrity warned. He and Floyt sweated out another full minute, guns trained at the rooftop. Nothing else happened. They resumed their way, sliding along the walls, checking refuse piles carefully before going near them, trying to look in every direction at once.
They found the corpse of the man Alacrity had shot, its cratered flesh still smoking. No one else was around. They splashed through a foul pool and out onto a narrow street covered with decaying garbage, castoffs, and odd hunks of refuse, as softly yielding and treacherous as the floor of a rain forest.
"That must be the place."
Alacrity meant a thirty-meter-long, rusting hulk that had once been a reusable booster rocket. It lay on its side, fitted in workmanlike fashion with a heavy metal door and windows, on its second story, that were covered with stout gratings. It had been sandblasted, soniscoured, and wire-brushed to something like presentability; the street in front of it was clear and clean. It was a rambunctious island of light and noise in the middle of Tombville.
A ciphercrawl panel over the heavy-gauge door radiated the name of the place, THE DIS HILL CARAVANSARY.
The two kept hands on their guns as they came to it. A prowling pack of dog-things hissed at them, then fled as Alacrity stamped his foot.
In an alley off to their left, an old man or woman in layered rags lay slumped against a wall, passed out or dead. Several emaciated, tubercular-looking children were rifling for what pathetic pickings there might be. They gave Alacrity and Floyt feral looks not so different from the dog-things', and went on with what they were doing.
Alacrity flipped down his visor again and rapped on the door of the Dis Hill Caravansary with the improvised door knocker, a detonator cap off an old fusion missile. An enormous fat man with an antique pepperbox laser in his waistband opened up, looked them over, then stepped aside for them.
The interior was lit with weak glow-globes and furnished in a potpourri of whatever the proprietor had been able to salvage, scrounge, or throw together.<
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In booths and at tables and the long bar were toothless bunco steerers, addict-pushers, and devious pimps; one or two cashiered breakabouts trapped in a terminal nightmare; failed con artists; prostitutes of all description except handsome; thugs and cutthroats, informers and bottom-rung racketeers.
The odors of strange food and strong drink competed with vomit, sweat, unwashed bodies, incense, feces, urine, and blood, all overlaid with a disinfectant strong enough to open Floyt's nasal passages to full max.
Alacrity had his brolly back in his hand. He and Floyt paused at the door, glancing around. Everyone in the place was looking them over in return. Half a dozen people were already moving on them, not threateningly but to make some solicitation.
The first to reach them was a pimp, a beringed, white-bearded little man wearing a soiled mirrorflash suit.
Alacrity waited until the man was close enough, then brought the brolly up like a fencer executing the stop-thrust. He'd taken the ferrule cap off its tip; the pimp barely halted in time to avoid impaling himself on its wicked point. The others stopped short, standing where they were or sliding back toward their places. Alacrity advanced, pinking the pimp lightly until he fell backward over a chair.
Floyt and Alacrity looked around. No one else wanted any. Alacrity picked out a booth at the far end of the room. They piled their bags on Floyt's side, between the Earther and the wall. Alacrity turned down the booth's cone-spot, preferring darkness.
The waitress was a light-heavyweight at least, one of the more intimidating people in the place, with a big neurosap tucked in her apron pocket.
Alacrity held up two fingers and said, "Beer." She went away.
He stared distractedly at the door.
"If you're thinking about the man you shot, you shouldn't be blaming yourself, Alacrity."
"You have it wrong, Ho. I was just thinking: those others we chased off will go out and drag down some poor feeb who can't defend himself. Or herself. They'll kill somebody tonight if they get the chance. When I was a kid I swore I'd slaughter 'em all if the opportunity ever came my way. Things never work out the way you picture 'em."
"Amen."
The waitress brought the beers in big, mismatched plastic schooners, keeping them in hand until Alacrity passed over a square silver-alloy piece. She gave them the drinks but no change.
As she turned away a youngster slipped around her and practically into the booth, except that Alacrity was showing the muzzle of his pistol. Floyt's hand, concealed by his shawl, went back to the Webley. It was the kid from the rooftop.
Close up, in better light, they could see his thin fuzz of mustache, the barely there down of beard. The kid's hair was iced in metallic gold and his teeth had been replaced with gold ones set with nova buttons, shimmerettes, and plasmabeads. He held his hands up, all smirking innocence and good intentions.
"Easy, Overmen! Refrain! I'm on your side!" he said in Terranglish.
"We don't need anybody," Alacrity said stiffly. "Keep cruising."
"What're you gonna do, conduct business with the people you meet in here? They'll cheat you just on the principle of the thing and then kill you for fun."
"But you're a good guy, is that it?"
The kid gestured to a nearby table. About a dozen kids, mostly teenagers, were pulling chairs up to it. Other patrons studiously ignored them. They wore an assortment of clothes, mixed and matched and layered indiscriminately. They didn't look at all like anybody's victims or sexual playthings.
"You're in town to do business. You need somebody who knows where the wires are attached," the leader said. "That's me. My name is Notch."
Alacrity said casually. "Now, I'll tell you, Notch: why don't you just find yourself somebody else to crimp? There's nothing you can do for us."
"There is if you want to get on the spacefield grounds," Notch said. "Why don't we talk? A free audition, no charge."
"Sit down," Alacrity said. "But you buy your own drink." He eased over to make room, holstering his gun but sitting so that he could get at it. Floyt held his revolver in his lap.
Notch signaled the waitress, then sat. "I saw you looking through the perimeter fence before. No one knows who you are or where you come from. I figure, you broke off a deal with one of the tribes and you're looking for a way to do your business, right?"
"Just say what you dropped by to say, Notch. One more question and I'm kicking your skinny little rear out the door. And I'll braise your youth group over there if they give me any trouble about it."
"Settle down! Refrain!" Notch protested quickly as the waitress returned with his drink. "All right; I compute that you're looking for a spacefield connection. I've got lots of them, but they cost money."
"Prove to us you know something," Alacrity shot back. "What kind of ships are in port? What vessels call here? What about a rundown on all the action for the last year or so? We might have something special in mind." He unwound the scarf tail from his face and took a drink of the beer.
Floyt hesitated, then did the same. The beer was watered and flat.
"Oo, ooo." Notch smirked, cupping his hands around a shotglass of blended whiskey. "That will cost you. How about something on account?"
"So far you've said just enough for me to pay for your drink, dung-brain," Alacrity snapped. "And if you don't tell me more, I'm gonna kneel on your neck and pour it down your nose."
Notch, still smirking, gave Alacrity a gimlet look. "Don't threaten me anymore, go-blood. It's unhealthy. Check with anybody in Tombville."
"Your time's up, runtbug." Alacrity yawned. His hand was on his pistol again. "I said talk or walk."
"I can tell you whatever you want to know about any ship that's in port or that's been here or that's expected soon," Notch drawled. "Just tell me what it is you're looking for. Say, a hundred ducats now and two hundred more when I get back to you."
Alacrity regarded the smiling Notch for a moment, then reached into an inner pocket. He pulled out a single ten-unit Spican banknote, worth perhaps half what Notch was asking. He carefully tore it in two and tendered one half to Notch.
"You get the other half when you come to us with a complete list of everything that's going on, especially all the shipping that's gone on in the last year. Everything, understand? You're getting twice what the job's worth, so I want to know everything about every ship. Read me?"
"Roger that," Notch said, flashing them his jeweled smile again, but his eyes threatening. "You two staying here? It's as good a place as any." Notch stood up.
"We'll be around," Alacrity said.
"Oh, I'm not worrying about finding you, old poppa. Don't bother yourselves about that."
The kids rose and fell in behind him. They marched out, still ignored by the hardened boxtowners. "They've got everybody scared," Floyt said. "I never saw anything like it, even in the roaming troupe."
Alacrity stared after them. "You get kids that age, place like this, they don't care if they live or die, don't even really understand what death is. They don't know anything but their alley gang. They're quick and fearless and they haven't got one atom of conscience in 'em." He shook his head. "You can't have worse enemies in boxtown."
He looked Floyt in the eye. "You ran with a roaming troop on Earth. You know. If anything happens, don't waste your time feeling sorry. Shoot. Shoot right away. Because what you saw there were people with most of the human being leeched out of 'em."
"I do know. I'll keep it in mind."
"Let's see what they've got in the way of a room. Did we bring any antivermin spray?"
Accommodations in the Dis Hill Caravansary varied according to guests' requirements and wherewithal, of course. They passed on the boblines; sleeping space on the floor was too cramped; conditions among bunks close-stacked in a big flop area would have left them too vulnerable.
The two decided that they could afford to splurge, and negotiated the best the Dis had to offer, a big reefer cargo box that had had its cooling equipment and insulation strip
ped out of it and been spot-welded into place on the second floor. By that time twelve ovals seemed cheap.
Floyt, studying the grimy mattress—a bubblefoam futon on the floor—sighed deeply. At least the single blanket given them by the owner seemed reasonably clean. Floyt suddenly thought of something, got Alacrity's attention with gestures, and mouthed, Do you think this place is bugged?
Alacrity shrugged, putting aside his visor, then nodded that it might well be, and went back to checking the place, making sure the door wasn't gimmicked. He inspected the bars on the windows and spotted possible escape routes.
They lay down still clothed, boots on, heads pillowed on their bags. Alacrity kept his pistol under his right hand; Floyt laid the revolver next to his haversack. Alacrity took first watch and turned down the filament ball.
Floyt woke to Alacrity's touch against his shoulder and took up the revolver. Very light footsteps could be heard on the sheet metal of the hallway. They stopped at the door to the reefer box.
The two friends moved as quietly as they could, off the futon to either side, giving themselves clear fields of fire. Alacrity made sure he could cover the window as well. They were both sweating.
Floyt expected some sort of burst-in or long eavesdropping to begin. Instead there was a light rapping at the door. Floyt could see it took Alacrity somewhat by surprise too.
Alacrity eased over, keeping to one side of the door, and flicked up the latch lever, then moved back fast, bringing up the Captain's Sidearm.
"It's open."
The door opened wide. A man stepped in, framed in the weak light of the hallway. He was empty-handed, squinting into the darkness. "I hope I didn't disturb you and your friend, Citizen Floyt," he said. "Or rather, since you're Astraea Imprimatur's new owner, perhaps I should have said Master Floyt?" Alacrity turned up the light a little. Floyt gasped. It was the man he'd seen in the Whereabouts at the Grapple, and later at the Newsspew at the Complex, the famous outlaw and fugitive from justice, Janusz.
