"I'm Ronnie Carruthers," he said, putting his hand out. "And this is George Mahoney."
The old man looked at his hand, and Ronnie realized it was smeared with blood and tickfly juice. "Sorry," he said, pulling it back to wipe on his slacks.
"No offense," the man said. "I'm Hubert de Vries Michaelson. Retired neurosynthetic chemist. Let me tell you what I already know, before you tell me something else. Truth between gentlemen, y'know."
"Ah . . . yes." Ronnie slapped another tickfly, and swiped his damp hand surreptitiously on his shirt.
"I wouldn't do that, by the way. Won't come out in the wash." Hubert grinned, showing a row of very white, very strong teeth. "Now—Ronald Vortigern Carruthers and George Starbuck Mahoney. Arrived yesterday, in company of a pretty young girl named Raffaele Forrester-Saenz. Right so far?"
"Yes, but—"
"You'd traveled together from the Guerni Republic, specifically from the planet Music. Kept to yourselves, but the girl let it be known that she and you, Mr. Carruthers, were traveling together in blatant disregard of her family's wishes." The old man peered at him, blue eyes suddenly frosty. "I hope that was a cover story."
Ronnie felt his ears going hot. "Well, sir . . . not exactly. That is, we didn't start to—it just happened that we—and anyway, it wasn't like that—"
"I see." The blue glare didn't give a millimeter. "Going to marry the girl, are you?"
Ronnie's spine straightened before he realized it. "Of course!" Then, more calmly, he tried to explain. "We didn't start out together. George and I were on—we had something to do in the Guerni Republic." That sounded weak; he rushed on to the part he could tell strangers. "When Raffa showed up alone—"
"You decided she needed an escort—protection?"
"More or less," said Ronnie. He was not about to explain to this old fellow that the protection had gone the other way. The bright blue eyes blinked, then Hubert grinned.
"Well, well. Young blood. Still runs hot, I see. In that case, young man, you've made a serious mistake."
"What?"
"Letting her go unchaperoned here, of all places."
Ronnie looked around, but saw no particular menace. Besides, Raffa was safely inside.
"You should have registered with her," Hubert said. "The people at the hotel think she's alone."
That had been the idea. Ronnie fumbled for an explanation and came up with partial truth. "The fact is, sir, that hotel—it's the only one fit for her, but—but I couldn't quite—"
"Ah. Funds low, eh? What is it, boy, gambling or chemicals? Give it up, boy. Girl like that is worth it."
"It's not that," Ronnie said, feeling that his ears must be glowing now. "It's . . . it's family." He didn't want to drag Aunt Cecelia into this, and anyway it wouldn't make sense to anyone outside.
"It's his aunt," George said. George never suffered from this sort of embarrassment. "His aunt's suing his parents, and that's why Raffa's parents wanted her to drop him—because his aunt's in the mood to put his parents in the poorhouse, and Ronnie along with them."
"Never mind, George," Ronnie said. "It's not quite right, anyway—Aunt Cecelia isn't vindictive, not really."
"Cecelia . . ." Hubert said.
"Cecelia de Marktos," George said. Helpful, that was George. Ronnie wanted to smack him. "Rides horses. Red hair."
"Ah." Hubert looked Ronnie up and down again. "That Cecelia?"
"You know her?"
"Never met her. Never heard of her. Now I know." He shook his head. "You have a problem, boy. Your young lady may be in serious trouble."
Now Ronnie felt cold. "What? Why do you think that?"
"Because Patchcock in general, and Twoville in particular, are not that friendly to strangers. Especially strangers with a mission." He gave them that toothy grin again. "And no one is going to believe you sneaked off to Patchcock to enjoy the beautiful scenery together."
"I've got to get back." Ronnie turned, and took a long stride without looking. This time it was his boot that smashed into a stingtail mound.
"Look out!" Hubert and George yelled together; Ronnie jumped back from the angry writhing swarm of stingtails that poured out of the hole.
"Not so fast," Hubert said, grabbing his arm. "Here—this way—walk through these—" He led Ronnie a few meters farther from the shore, onto matted rust-brown vegetation that crunched underfoot and released a sharp, garlicky scent. "Now settle down—getting yourself eaten up by stingtails isn't going to help your young lady."
"Eaten up?" George asked. He looked back at the mound, now covered with stingtails.
"Of course. Didn't Marshall tell you? They swarm on you, and start stinging—somewhere between fifty and a hundred stings paralyzes the average human. Unfortunately, it doesn't numb the rest of the stings . . . we lost quite a few settlers at first, people who thought stingtails were no worse than ordinary ants. Luckily, they can't follow a scent across stinkfoil."
"And you didn't tell me!" George glared. "You had me hopping down the shore like an idiot—"
"It worked," Hubert said. "Got your attention, too. Now. Enough flabbery-dabbery. Your young lady."
"She was taking a tour today," Ronnie said. "Her Aunt Marta, you see, sent her here—"
The old man's expression so clearly said Pull the other one; it's got bells on that he didn't have to open his mouth.
"I know she was taking a tour. The operative question is, did she come back?" Ronnie felt a sinking inside; he could easily imagine his heart having turned to iron, slowly plunging through his guts to the center of the planet.
"We're supposed to meet tonight," he said. "At someplace called Black Andy's, for dinner."
The blue eyes rolled up. "Oh, dear. Black Andy's is it? Not wise, not wise at all. Let me tell you what to do. You go back to your digs, get cleaned up. Go by her hotel and see if she's back. If she is, stay with her—eat there—and you'll hear from me tomorrow. If she's not, give me a call—" He fished out an immaculate business card, and handed it over with a flourish. "And do be careful on the way back. No more stingtails."
"Can't we just walk on the . . . er . . . stinkfoil?" asked George.
"Not advisable; it's a bit corrosive—if you'll look at your bootsoles—" George lifted a foot and winced at the lines etched in the sole. "It would probably eat through before you reached town. If you're careful along the shore, you shouldn't have too much trouble. I can't go with you—wouldn't be advisable at all, you see." Ronnie didn't see, exactly, but he was ready to run the whole distance back to their lodgings, if only it would help Raffa.
"Thank you, sir," he said. "We'll—we'll be in touch."
By the time they got back to their lodgings, they were both hot, sweaty, and reeking of stinkfoil. The one-armed man at the desk glared at them. "Tourists!" he said. "Didn't have no more sense than to go dancing on stinkfoil—you'll smell up the whole place." He got up and shuffled around the desk. "Might as well throw the boots away; you'll never get the smell out."
"But—"
"We don't like that stink in here—" Two large, beefy individuals had come out of the door to the right, and another from the door to the left. "We don't really like your stink in here."
A half hour later, Ronnie and George limped barefoot back to their room, where someone had been kind enough to ransack their luggage and sprinkle it with cloying perfume.
"I don't think they're friendly," George said. Their assailants had done no real damage, beyond bundling them into a smelly blanket, wrapping it with sticky repair tape, and then manhandling them downstairs into a storage closet. It had been locked, once they worked their way out of the blanket and tape, but it was a flimsy lock.
"I wish I knew if Raffa's back," Ronnie said. The room's comunit would be no help; he could see the severed cable from here.
"We'll have to go find out," George said. He pawed through the piles of clothes on the floor. "I hope they left us some shoes."
They had left shoes, filled with something tha
t looked and smelled like rancid cottage cheese. "Not friendly at all," George went on, in a tone of voice that made Ronnie forget all about Raffa for a moment. He remembered that tone, and the smile that went with it.
"George—" he started.
"No," George said. "These were my best pair of Millington-Cranz split-lizard, custom-dyed . . . how petty of them. Truly, truly petty."
"George, you aren't—"
"I have some sense," George said. Ronnie doubted it, in that tone of voice. "Priorities, Ronnie. Great minds always keep their priorities straight. First things first, and all that."
"Yes?" Ronnie hoped to encourage that trend, providing they could agree on the priorities.
"Raffa first; as a gentleman, I fully agree that her safety must come first."
"Good. Then suppose we clean up, and—"
"Just how do you suggest we clean up?" George's expression suggested that Ronnie had just lost his senses. "Are you planning to go down that hall, and into those showers, assuming that ordinary decency prevails and you will come back clean and all at peace with the world? While nothing happens to your belongings here?"
"Well . . ." Ronnie had thought, in the brief intervals available while struggling with three very strong men, with the blanket and tape, with the locked door, that a nice hot shower would be next on his list. Followed by clean clothes. Followed by Raffa. He realized now that George had a point—someone, if not the same men, might be lurking in the halls, or in the showers. The clothes on the floor weren't clean anymore. "I guess I thought we could be ready—"
"No." George shook out a cream silk shirt, sniffed it, and shuddered. "No, we'll simply have to wear these things, producing an olfactory melange that should certainly confuse any stingtails we meet, and hope that Raffa doesn't pretend she never saw us before."
Glumly, Ronnie agreed. He found a green knit shirt slightly less fragrant than the rest, poured the odoriferous slimy goo out of his own brown shoes, and watched as George put the gritty stained towels to use wiping out his.
"I think," George said, holding one up for inspection, "that it may be salvageable. Good shoes are tougher than they thought. Here—" He tossed the remaining dry towel to Ronnie.
On their way out, the desk clerk said, "Have fun, boys," without looking up. George waited until he was outside to mutter.
"Schoolboys. That's what it is, really. They didn't steal anything; they didn't take our money or papers. Taking revenge on good clothes just because we have them . . . like those ticks in the fourth-floor end dormitory—"
Ronnie was seized with an unnatural desire to be fair. "We did put cake batter in their things first, George."
"Not in their good things. In their sports clothes. I have never in my life desecrated a pair of Millington-Cranz shoes, and I cannot imagine sinking so low." He stalked on, in silence, through the hot dusk that ended a Patchcock day. Ronnie, aware of an unpleasant dampness between his toes, followed him gingerly.
The hotel's doorman looked them up and down, sniffing ostentatiously. George stared straight ahead; Ronnie gave Raffa's name and smiled. The doorman pointed to the public comunit in the upper lobby.
"What a hole," George said, as they made their way around the open shaft.
"Yes . . . just a moment." Ronnie called the desk, who transferred his call to Raffa's room. It bleeped repeatedly, and just when he was sure she had been kidnapped by vicious thugs who would stake her out over a stingtail nest, the receiver clicked.
"Hello?"
"Raffa! It's Ronnie!"
"Oh—I was in the shower." His mind drifted into a fantasy of Raffa in the shower—of himself in the shower—of both of them—until recalled by her impatient "Ronnie!"
"Yes, sorry. We had a few problems, and I was wondering—could we come down?"
"Here?" She sounded almost as prim as her mother. "I mean—why? We weren't going to be seen together—"
"It's too late, Raffa." He took a deep breath and told her about Hubert, and the men at the transient barracks, as fast as he could. "And we need to use a shower, and get some clean clothes. . . ."
"I suppose," she said. "Or—wait—I'll come up. If you're that raggedy, they might not let you come down."
He and George leaned their elbows on the railing of the open shaft, watching the waterfall and ignoring the disapproving glare of the doorman that periodically scorched their backs. Raffa was safe. That's what mattered.
Raffa emerged from the lift looking clean, cool, and confident. She handed them each a plastic strip. "Here. You can't go back there—not to stay, anyway—so I went ahead and got rooms for you here. I'd be delighted to have you in mine, but there's not enough space. I've got things spread all over."
"Angelic Raffaele," George said. "Are you sure it's Ronnie you want to marry?"
"Absolutely," said Raffa. She gave Ronnie a look. "Don't worry. I don't mind about the smell."
She led them to the lift, smiling brilliantly at the doorman, whose dour expression finally shifted. He shrugged, hands out, and gave the boys a friendly nod. "My mistake, sirs."
"You're on ten," Raffa said. "Adjoining singles—I thought you might prefer that, in case—" In case of what, she didn't say. It meant two showers, anyway. And, in this hotel, modern clothes-freshers. By the time Ronnie had showered, his clothes held no trace of the flowery perfume. His shoes still reeked faintly, but at least they were completely dry.
Dinner, in the hotel's dining room, completed his cure, he thought. Raffa in the cherry-colored backless dress with the full sleeves, the waterfall cascading behind her . . . good food . . . he could live with that. He was not sure he could live with George, who was giving his own version of their day. Finally even Raffa had had enough.
"All right, George. I understand—you had a horrible day and found out nothing useful except that there's a retired neurosynthetic chemist who wants to meet us. Let me tell you about mine." She described a tour of a pharmaceutical plant, a vast production line where gleaming robots ground and mixed chemicals, where the resulting paste, forced into molds, popped out as pills, to be coated with colored liquid that dried hard and shiny. Thence through pill counters, into boxes, past inspectors . . . boring, Ronnie thought. It made his feet ache to think of it.
"But the funniest thing—when I said Aunt Marta was interested in investing here because someone had died in the Morreline family, he turned absolutely white."
"Who?" Ronnie asked.
"My guide. And hustled me back to the corporate offices. You'd think I'd just insulted the CEO or something. I just made it up, really; someone's always dying in big families."
"Ottala!" George said. "It's Ottala who died." The shock hit Ronnie with the same unpleasant thump of reality as the bullies' fists. That made sense of a lot of things.
The disadvantage of a good hotel is that there is no way for guests to sneak out unobserved. Someone is always on duty by the public exits. And Twoville offered no nightlife of the sort to attract three wealthy young tourists . . . not after that afternoon. Raffa had suggested a walk along the shore, but Ronnie explained about stingtails and tickflies. They ended up in Raffa's suite by default; she had a sitting room.
"But if Ottala was killed here—if she was in one of the factories—"
"We're not here to solve Ottala's murder," George said. He paced around the room, peering at everything, before settling into a chair. "Dear heavens, what an ugly lamp! We're here to find out about the rejuvenation drugs—"
"Aren't you forgetting Ottala's Aunt Venezia?" Raffa asked. "She would want us to find out about Ottala's murder."
"Not if it included getting killed," George said, then added hastily, "and even if it did, I personally don't want to get killed finding out. I want to go back to civilization, which this isn't, and let Patchcock stew in its own mess." His shoes, unlike Ronnie's, had peeled in the automated shoe cleaner. The only footwear in the hotel gift shop were sandals, iridescent lime-green straps over black soles.
"It can't all
be the same villains," Raffa said. "The Morrelines making Ottala's aunt do those hideous pots so that she won't have time to interfere in the business is one thing. But they wouldn't have killed Ottala. Whoever killed Ottala had another reason."
"They hated her because she was rich," George said gloomily, staring at his ruined shoes.
"It had to be more than that," Raffa said. "We're all rich, and no one's killed us yet."
"Not for want of trying," George said. "Look at the past few years: we all got shot at on Sirialis. Someone shot Sarah, thinking she was Brun. Ronnie and I were kidnapped by the clones."
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