“Give me the money,” he said, “and I’ll see he gets it.”
“Of course. Goodbye, Lingo.”
“Wait a second,” he said, as I turned away. When I faced him again he said, “You’re the brother of that surveyor who got killed, the one Lastus was with.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s what you want to talk to him about, how your brother got killed.”
“Right again.”
He glanced upward, toward the top of the tower. “And nobody cares? They don’t mind you asking questions?”
“No. Why should they?”
He shrugged heavy shoulders.
I said, “I might have some money for you after all. Who would mind? Who do you think would mind, and why?”
He shook his head. “You give your money to Lastus. I’m no part of it.”
“You can tell me where to find him.”
He considered, and then said, “Why not? It can’t make any difference.”
Except for the center of the city where the towers were, the streets of Ulik—all the streets of all the cities, in fact—were nameless, mere din roads flanked by thrown together shacks and huts and hovels. This namelessness made directions difficult to give, and Lingo eventually had to draw a map, showing me how many blocks to go in this direction, and then which way to turn, and again how many blocks to go, until I should at last arrive at the place where Lastus was living. When we were both satisfied that I could find Lastus without too much trouble, I left Lingo and went out to the auto, still sitting where I’d left it yesterday.
I had made only one stop between leaving Goss and approaching Lingo, and that was at the guardroom on the first floor, near the elevator, where I reclaimed my weaponry, all of which was once again in place on my person. The throwing knife in its sheath was a pleasant presence between my shoulderblades, and the pistol, the gas can, the lead pipe and the other knife were comforting weights here and there in my clothing.
The auto started up at once, and I saw Lingo and the other guards watching me as I drove away, but what thoughts they had about me I couldn’t read in their expressionless faces.
I was soon away from the city center, the towers behind me, the same slovenly filthy slum all around me as the one I’d first seen outside the spaceport at Ni. I was traveling east, the shadow of my auto preceding us along the dirt street, the towers of the city casting their shadow s all about me. pointing long thin black fingers toward the mountains beyond the horizon.
After my night and morning in the normal lighting of the tower, I had to gel used all over again to the blunt redness of everything out here. The shacks I passed looked rusted and scabrous, like wounds that had dried without healing.
No block was empty of people. They moved around as endlessly and purposelessly as wind-up toys on a sidewalk, a kind of defiant hopelessness to the curve of their shoulders, the set of their heads. Children ran after the auto, or flung stones at it, or shouted words at it. Men watched it pass with silent mouths and greedy eves. Women for the most part pretended it didn’t exist, though here and there one would with visual and verbal obscenity inform me of her commercial availability. I drove at a good pace, ignoring everyone, and keeping the pistol handy on the scat beside me.
Lastus lived in a sagging lean-to near the outer edges of this slum, far from the towers, several blocks south of the main road to the east, the one that led eventually to Yoroch Pass. There were fewer people out here, and they showed less reaction to the presence of the auto, whether from jadedness or despair, I couldn’t tell. I pulled off the road and stopped as close to the side of the lean-to as I could get.
When they saw the auto stop, several men and women in the general area began to take an obvious though furtive interest in me, and even began to sidle somewhat closer. I climbed from the auto and stood beside it while very ostentatiously I checked my pistol and then put it away. Interest in me abruptly ceased, and those who had been studying me now went back with renewed conviction to their own pointless preoccupations.
Lastus’ lean-to was broad across the front, but shallow and not very high, the open from barely five feet from ground to roof. Going to the front, I saw that dirt had been piled up over most of the width to make a kind of wall closing the lean-to in, leaving only a narrow opening in which I could see rough steps cut into the ground, leading down and in. So some, maybe most, of Lastus’ home was underground. It was dark down there, too dark to even make a guess of the dimensions of the place, though : I doubted it was much more than a shallow hole in the ground with the lean-to roof erected over it.
I had noticed pervasive stenches in the air while driving out here, the stinks of too many people and too little sanitation, but the smell that now attacked my nostrils seemed twice as bad as anything from before. I supposed it was because I’d been in a moving auto until now, with a breeze of my own making to dilute the aromas and vary them. Now, standing still, I felt the almost physical impact of an odor that seemed to flow up from the dark hole of the lean-to like the exhalations of the minotaur.
But the impression, of course, was wrong. The stink was in the air, all around me, the smell of the neighborhood and not of this one hovel, though surely Lastus’ home was contributing its share to the overall effect.
The other sensation I felt was the chill in the air. Why should it seem so much colder, so much damper, when I was standing still than when I’m in motion in the auto? It was as though Hell, unlike any other sun, gave off cold instead of heat, so that standing in its red light I shivered and felt the air clammy against my skin.
I was impatient to be done here and back in the comfort of the Ice tower. “Lastus!” I called into the black hole. “Lastus! Come up here!”
There were faint rustlings from within, sounds you might hear from some rathole, but I still could see no movement in the blackness. After a minute a reedy voice called, “What is it? Who are you?”
“Come up here, I want to talk to you.”
Now I saw him. He’d moved forward, was very nearly close enough for me to lean forward and touch him, and he blinked up at me like a mole. He was wearing only shorts, and dirt streaked his torso and arms and legs and face. He was short and thin but looked hard-sinewed, strong ropes of muscle defining his arms and legs, his chest strong looking, his stomach flat. His face looked wary, and belligerent, and afraid, as though too frequently in his life he’d tested his obvious strength against men who’d proved to be stronger.
He squinted and blinked at me and said, in his reedy voice, “I don’t know you. What do you want of me? Who are you?”
“I want to hire you,” I said.
He was interested. He wiped his lips with the back of a filthy hand, wiped the back of his hand on his leg. “To do what?”
“Guide me.”
“Guide you where?”
“To Yoroch Pass.”
He’d kept moving closer, was now barely three steps from the entrance. I backed away to permit him to feel safe about coming out the rest of the way, and he said, “Why do you want to go there?”
“I want to see my brother’s grave,” I said.
“Your brother’s grave?” He came up the last three steps, and stood in the entrance. “What brother?”
“Gar Malone. I’m his brother, Rolf.”
His eyes widened. At first I thought it was surprise at what I’d said, but then I saw he was staring beyond me, at something behind me, possibly out in the street. Before I could move, the shooting started.
I heard the first two shots. Number one caught Lastus in the right shoulder, spun him half around like a weathervane when the wind shifts. Number two plunged like an invisible spike into the back of his head, plummeting his corpse down the stairs he’d just come up.
I didn’t hear the third shot, I felt it, in the middle of my back; a blunt punch from a hard metal fist. I opened my mouth, but I had no air. I tried to stand erect, but I had no will; The punch drove me forward and I saw myself hurtle down a
fter Lastus into the darkness below. Then a greater darkness overtook me, and I ceased to know.
XIII
Violent pain in my right hand shocked me awake. I sat up, yelling, into dusty red semi-darkness, a powerful stink, a dirt floor, and a scrawny youth with the third finger of my right hand in his mouth. He hadn’t been able to get Gar’s ring off me any other way, so he’d decided to bite my finger off entirely and take it with him.
I hit him, reflexively, and he fell back, more surprised than hurt, but immediately leaped at me again, his hands going for my throat. The two of us scuffled in the dust.
There was sudden surprised movement in the darkness around us, and a man’s amused shout: “Hey, Alfie! This one’s alive!” And then laughter from the same voice, and, “Hold him, little one! Don’t let him get away!”
But he did let me get away. I flung him off, and scrambled across the floor till I hit a dirt wall. I rolled onto my back—my body was an anthology of pains, too numerous to separate into individual aches—and saw the youth leaping for me again, his eyes wide, his face rigid with terror and determination. I kicked him away with both feet and clawed in my pockets for my weapons.
They were still there! The youth and his friends must have been sure I was dead, so they hadn’t bothered to disarm me before going for my ring. I pulled the pistol from my pocket and fired it into the youth’s face as he came leaping at me yet again. He died in mid-air and crumpled into my lap.
There was a yelp from across the room, and shouting: “He’s got a gun! Alfie, he’s got a gun!” It was the same voice as before, but no longer amused.
I looked toward the sound, and saw a tall rectangle of rusty light where the steps led up to the street. A bulky figure abruptly dashed into that rectangle, bent on escape: my shouter.
I fired at him and he yelped like a stray dog hit with a stone. He ran into the wall beside the door, half-turned, and sprawled backward onto the ground, yelping all the while. He lay there on his back, making a lot of noise and waving his arms around He looked like a turtle flipped over onto its shell.
The dead youth was bleeding in my lap. I pushed him away and took stock of myself, trying to organize my thoughts and understand what had happened.
The finger that had been bitten was bleeding a little, but unless infection set in it shouldn’t be anything to worry about. There was an abrasion on my forehead that stung to the touch, probably the result of my fall down the steps. The other aches and scrapes on my arms and legs were either from the same fall or from the scuffle with the youth.
But these were minor. The pain that drew my attention was in the middle of my back, between my shoulderblades, a wearying ache, a pressure on my back that dulled my movements and hampered my breathing. It was, so far as I knew, the result of a gunshot wound that should have killed me.
I didn’t entirely have my wits about me yet, and was stupid enough to look at my chest to see if the bullet had passed all the way through and come out the other side, but of course it hadn’t.
I was afraid to touch that spot behind me, both because it hurt more when I reached back there and because of what I might find, but it had to be done, and so very cautiously I put my left hand behind my back, and slid it up toward the ache, and felt the crumpled remains of my sheathed knife, still in what was left of the sheath.
That was why I was alive. The bullet had hit the knife, and so hadn’t penetrated my back. But the knife had curled like the edges of a piece of paper at the impact, making sharp creases on the inner side, against my skin, and the force of the bullet had driven those creases into the flesh, cutting a random design into my back as though I’d been engraved. Or branded.
That whole area was bruised and battered, the flesh sensitive to the touch, the back of my shirt sticky with blood. From the pressure I felt when I breathed it seemed to me I might have broken a rib or two besides. If I wasn’t careful how I moved, I was liable to puncture a lung.
Across the way, the turtle shape had begun to slacken, the arm and leg movements getting feebler, the yelps softer, but all at once he screamed, “Alfie! Alfie, come get me!”
We both waited. Nothing happened. The turtle shape began to groan, loud, windy, melodramatic sighs.
I began very cautiously to move, turning over at first onto my hands and knees, then moving my hands up onto the wall in front of me and slowly easing myself up the wall till I was on my feet. Then I tucked the pistol away in my pocket, undid the thong of the sheath around my neck, and carefully removed the knife that had saved me, slipping it up from inside my shirt. Moving it that way made quick stinging pains in my back, but I ignored them and looked instead in the dim red light at the knife.
It was a crumpled mess. The side of the sheath that had been against my back was cut and full of blood, and the other side had been almost completely sheared away by the bullet. The crater of the bullet’s impact was there in the knife, plus a long groove where it had deflected and scratched its way up as far as the hilt.
The lip of the hilt was bent back where the scratch met it, but from that point bullet and knife had parted company.
I tossed the knife away and looked around, for the first time paying real attention to the room itself. It was sparsely furnished with a cot against one wall, a few ramshackle chairs, a battered trunk, a home-made table. Floor and walls were din. There were no decorations of any kind. Oh, brave new world!
There was a thin blanket on the cot. I took it and ripped off several strips, six inches wide, and wrapped two of the strips tightly around my chest, relieving the feeling of pressure and giving some support to my ribs. I thought I could dare to move more freely now.
Lastus lay on his side near the steps, not far from where the groaner lay on his back and made his noises. I went over and checked Lastus and he was dead, as I’d known he must be, his eyes wide open and full of surprise. I searched him, and then searched the room, and found nothing of interest.
The dead youth was dressed in rags so filthy I hardly searched his body at all. I hadn’t expected to find anything noteworthy on him and I didn’t.
I went over and squatted down beside the groaner and slapped his face, saying, “Shut up and listen to me.”
He blinked several times, very rapidly, and stared at me in astonishment. I believe he’d forgotten about me. When he remembered, he shouted, “You killed my boy!” He waved his arms as though he wanted to get at me.
I took out the can of blinding gas and showed it to him and said, “Do you see what this is?”
He just kept waving his arms and glaring at me.
I slapped him again, to attract his attention. “I asked you, do you see what this is I’m holding in my hand?”
”I see it, you rotten thing. I know what it is.”
“It will be the last thing you see,” I told him, “if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
“Rotter.”
“It’s a bad life in a place like this for a blind man,” I said.
He understood me now. He blinked up at me; I saw Kim get frightened, and I knew when he was ready to listen to me.
I said, “You people didn’t do the shooting, you don’t have guns. You came down afterward, to pick the bodies.”
“Why not?” he cried. “Somebody would.”
“It’s a fine system you’ve got,” I said. “You saw who did do the shooting, though.”
He shook his head emphatically. “It was all over when we got there!”
I upped his nose gently with the can. “Be careful,” I said. “Don’t tell foolish lies.”
“It was all over!”
“No,” I said.
“Why not? Why not?”
“One, you wouldn’t have known there were bodies down here to be picked if you hadn’t seen them drop. Two, if you’d come along later you would have been too late because some other scavengers would have beaten you to it.” I tapped him with the can again. “You’re not very good at lying,” I said. “Better not try it anymore,
you’ll just make me impatient.”
“I didn’t know them,” he said.
“Which means you did know them. Who were they?”
“I swear—”
I hit him a little harder. “Don’t waste my time.”
“I’ll tell you what I know!” he shouted. “There were two of them. They came out and shot you.”
“Came out? Came out of where?”
“A place across the street, a house over there.”
“Is that where they live?”
“No. Nobody’s lived there for a long while.”
“They’re both men?”
“Oh, yes.’
“They were already here, eh? Waiting for me. What did they do afterward, go back into the house?”
“No. They took your car and drove away.”
“Did they come down here?”
“No.”
“What are their names?”
“I don’t know,” he said stubbornly.
I started to hit him, then changed my mind. I said, reasonably, “What are they to you? Why protect them? Why get blinded instead of giving me a chance to get near them again? Maybe they’ll kill me after all.”
“They will,” he said. “If you go after them they’ll finish the job on you. I’ll do them a favor, telling you.”
“That’s the way to think.”
“Malik and Rose,” he said.
I repeated the names, and said. “That’s all the names they have?”
“That’s all I know.”
“Rose is a man?”
“Of course.” He seemed surprised at the question.
“What do they look like?”
“Big, like you. Young, like Alfie, or like you. They shave their heads to keep the bugs away.”
“Where do I find them?”
“I don’t know. If I knew I’d tell you, because then you’d go there and they’d kill you, like you killed my boy.”
He was telling the truth. I got to my feet and put the can away and said, “Goodbye.”
Tomorrow's Crimes Page 14
