However cautiously Biag-n moved, the sharp click of his tiny feet on indurated silica rang out alarmingly. He winced with every footstep. All of his instinct of self-preservation demanded flight, but he forced himself to walk, to swing one arm nonchalantly while the other crushed his sample case in a tightening grip of terror, to keep his gaze at street level when he knew that the huge, glowing eyes of the natives regarded him with hatred from behind the tinted transparency of their bulging cupolas.
He slowed his pace as he approached the neighborhood jramp and squinted into the gloomy interior, but he could make out nothing in that mélange of shadows and filter-stained dimness. With a deep, sobbing breath he lunged forward blindly. He had actually reached a destination board, and was haltingly touching off numbers when a proctor sprang out of the shadows with a hoarse cry. “Grilf! Grilf!”
Biag-n ducked under one knobby arm, wrenched free from the grasping, rootlike fingers of another with a rending of cloth, and fled.
Three proctors chased him the full length of the oval, light shields flapping in the breeze, long, segmented legs rattling as they hurdled their way over the riot’s ungainly leavings. Biag-n scrambled through a hedge of sleeping night flowers and plunged into the tall vegetation of an herb garden. He clawed his way forward for a short distance and sank panting to the ground. The proctors ranged along the hedge shrilly mouthing vituperations, but they made no attempt to follow him. Even with their shields the full light of day was painful to them, and they soon returned to the cool dimness of the jramp.
When Biag-n finally mastered his fright and pushed free of the pungent herbs, the abbreviated Quarmian day had passed its high noon. The sun hung low overhead in a ruddy, cloudless sky. Biag-n turned his back on the jramp and resignedly set out to walk. He followed a widely circuitous route about the city’s perimeter, carefully avoiding the elliptical clusters of dwelling domes. Afternoon was already waning when he cautiously stepped out of the protective shadow of an orchard to look down on the small, weather-scoured domes of the Old City.
He glanced anxiously at the setting sun and broke into a run. Soon the short Quarmer day would make its abrupt, orange-tinted plunge into darkness, and his last opportunity would be gone forever. He rushed frantically down the slope and had almost reached the congestion of tiny shops and crude factories when a sudden twist of wind brought him to a shuddering halt. Faintly he heard the slobbering clamor of the mobs: “Grilf! Grilf!”
“They’re out in daylight!” he gasped.
The narrow ovals of the Old City were still peaceful, deserted. Biag-n hurried toward them, seeking illusive concealment in the domes’ humped shadows.
He darted to the first shop and stepped heavily on its call slab. Through the air vents he could see the swirl of colored light. Finally the clumsy door slid open, and the tall proprietor loomed in the doorway. Peering uncertainly through his light shield, at first he did not see Biag-n’s short, rotund figure. Then his body bent forward with a snapping of segments. His large eyes glowered behind the tinted shield.
“Go away!”
Biag-n plucked a circle of cloth from his sample case and offered it with a ceremonious sweep of his arm. “I have something to show you.”
“Go away!”
The proprietor stepped back; the door closed with a crash. Sadly Biag-n turned away.
Even in normal times they would have resented his calling on them in daylight. On this day they hated him for it, but it could not be helped. They hated him anyway, and he did not dare to wait for darkness.
He sprinted from dome to dome. The few proprietors who responded snapped low to snarl into his face; and then slammed their doors. He wondered how long it would be before one of them summoned the proctors.
He had worked three-quarters of the way around the oval before he thought to vary his approach. As the next door opened he said breathlessly, “Cown, I need your help!”
And pushed inside.
For a moment the Quarmer was too thunderstruck to protest. Biag-n faced him desperately. “I’ll have to leave soon. You know that?”
Cown grunted.
“Look at this,” Biag-n said, offering the sample.
Cown’s rooty fingers moved forward, touched, jerked back. “What do you want?”
“I have a hundred gios of this in limited-time storage. If I don’t sell it before I leave Quarm, I’ll lose it all. It’s one of the best bargains I ever happened onto, and you can have it for half what it cost me.”
“Get out!” Cown snarled.
Biag-n regarded him steadily. “Cown, have I ever done you an unkindness?”
The Quarmer looked away.
“The order means a big profit for you,” Biag-n urged, “and it lets me salvage something form a certain loss.”
He searched Cown’s face uneasily. The Quarmer must have been aware that ships already at the transfer stations were not unloading, and that no merchandise ordered from Quarm on this day would ever be consigned.
Cown continued to avoid Biag-n’s eyes. He said nothing.
“I’ll write it up,” Biag-n said tremulously, and fed a message strip into his pocket inditer.
He was rather long about it. He had to make the message look like an ordinary order for textiles, and still code as much information into it as possible. He muttered numbers to himself, concentrating fiercely.
Cown continued to look away, but when Biag-n had finished he handed over his seal without a murmur. Biag-n marked the order with a sigh of relief.
“May you prosper,” he said gravely.
Cown did not reply.
Biag-n turned to the door, which was still open, and gasped with dismay. The abrupt Quarmian dusk was upon them; the yapping of the mobs was closer, and terrifyingly distinct. “Grilf! Grilf!”
He was too late. There had never been more than a wisp of a chance that he could get a message off, that the clerks would accept it from a despised foreigner. Now there was no chance at all. He could never reach a jramp safely.
He took a step toward the door, head bent under the bitter burden of a near-success that had ended in total failure. Suddenly he whirled. “Cown! You send the order!”
Cown stared at him.
“I’ll pay, of course. It’s already coded for my solvency credential. They’ll accept it from you. They might even send it.” He added softly, “It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. I pledge that.”
Cown’s rooty fingers closed on the message strip. He gazed at it dazedly. Behind the tinted hood his face was an expressionless mask of scaly tissue. From somewhere in the circular room came the steady drip, drip, drip of the clepsydra. Biag-n shuddered. He needed no reminder that the fast-moving Quarmer time was running out on him.
Without a word Cown turned and strode toward the door. Biag-n drifted back into the shadows, away from the open doorway and the menace of prying eyes. He counted the clepsydra’s drips and cursed this primitive world where one could not dispatch a message, or travel from one place to another, without walking to the nearest jramp.
The dusk hardened quickly and became night. The mobs were close by, now, and full-throated. Natives were stirring in the neighboring domes.
Finally Cown returned. “You sent it?” Biag-n demanded. “Was it accepted? Was it really transmitted?”
“Of course,” Cown said tonelessly. “I waited for a confirmation. That was what took so long. It also cost you extra.”
“May you prosper,” Biag-n murmured, with a sweeping genuflection. He clutched his sample case and darted into the night. The one way he could show his gratitude was to leave immediately.
Cown’s door crashed shut behind him, and he hunched his shoulders against hostile stares from the neighboring domes as he stumbled off through the thick darkness. He could hear the mobs yapping on all s
ides of him, and the polished tips of the cupolas dimly reflected the flicker of fires that burned beyond the horizon. More warehouses had been touched off; one was an oil storage, and suddenly it exploded long tongues of flame into the night sky.
None of it mattered now. His message had been transmitted. He could begin his wearisome trek home with a light step, humming triumphantly to himself.
He knew that he would never get there, but he had nowhere else to go.
* * * *
In its first month of operation the Universal Transmitting Company killed the commercial airlines. Railroads and bus companies lasted longer, but both were doomed. Subways were doomed. A few taxicabs still prowled the streets of New York City in search of those rare individuals who were unwilling to walk a block to a trans-local; but an overwhelming majority of travelers, whether their destinations were the other side of Manhattan or the other side of the planet, preferred the step through a transmitter frame to a tedious and in varying degrees dangerous ride on plane, ship, train, bus, subway, or taxi.
Jan Darzek’s fortunate investment in Universal Transmitting Company stock ruined his private detective business by making him independently wealthy. His reaction to affluence was the one long-practiced by doctors, lawyers, and other professional men: he raised his prices. A stampede of customers followed. They seemed to think that a man who charged so exorbitantly must be very good—which of course he was—but he found to his chagrin that the clients who could afford his new fees were no more likely to have really interesting problems than those who could not.
He learned something about the detective business that had not been apparent to him while he was earning his living at it. Very few jobs held out much promise at the beginning. The obstruse complications that so delighted him rarely became evident until he had methodically cleared away dead wood and underbrush and probed the problem’s root system. He had to accept ten cases to find one that genuinely interested him; and the tediousness of laboring through nine routine cases he did not care about, for fees that he did not need, destroyed his savor of that exceptional tenth.
He loved his work too much to retire, but he found it impossible to keep occupied with the sort of work he loved. He planned exotic vacations to escape the boredom of unwanted cases, and his vacations were invariably ruined by his impatience to get back to his office in quest of the elusive exception.
He was just beginning to realize that he was an unhappy man.
But Tahiti, now. He wondered how he had managed to overlook Tahiti.
Returning from an extended lunch hour during which he had devised three new ways to say no to prospective clients, he jerked open the door of his office and halted dumbfounded. Miss Schlupe, looking flustered for the first time since he’d known her, leaped from her rocking chair with fluttering hands.
“I told the man there was some mistake,” she wailed. “But he insisted—”
“What—in—the—world—is—this?” Darzek demanded weakly.
Cardboard cartons filled the office, each of them new and neatly taped shut. A narrow alley had been left leading to Darzek’s private office. He opened that door and saw more cartons.
“Your name is on every box,” Miss Schlupe said defensively. She fluttered his hands again. “What could they be?”
“I don’t know. Time bombs, perhaps, though one would think that a dozen or two would satisfy the most bloodthirsty intent. Whatever it is, there must be a couple of hundred of them. Which of my current enemies has no sense of moderation?”
“Are you sure you didn’t order something for your trip, and hit the wrong number on your typewriter?”
“It takes more than a typing error to produce a deluge like this one. Anyway, I haven’t ordered anything. Go down and have your lunch while I open one.”
“Nonsense!”
“Miss Schlupe!” Darzek said sternly. “Your loyalty is not in question here—just your common sense. Go!”
“Nonsense!” She stood on tiptoe to joggle a carton from the top of a pile, caught it deftly, and placed it on her desk. “Open it. It isn’t heavy enough to be a very big bomb.”
“Then we’ll die together, in a small way,” Darzek said cheerfully. He slit the tape with his penknife, peered inside, closed the flap.
“You didn’t even let me see,” Miss Schlupe complained. “What is it?”
“Money.”
“Money? You mean all of these boxes—but that’s ridiculous!”
“It’s more than that. It’s outrageous.” He handed her the penknife. “Try one yourself.”
She lifted down another box and slit the tape. “Money!” she whispered. “Wait’ll Internal Revenue hears about this!”
“I don’t suppose there’s a return address.”
“I don’t see any.”
“Pity. Then I can’t send it back. Do we know anyone who has a room-size vault?”
“Aren’t you going to count it?”
Darzek perched frowning on the edge of her desk. “It would take hours. Anyway, I know how much it is. It’s a million dollars. Did you see the truck that delivered it?”
She shook her head.
“Pity. If you’d gotten the license number—”
“You never left any instructions about getting license numbers.”
“I never thought the occasion would arise. From now on, let’s make it standard procedure. Any time a million dollars is delivered here, get the license number.”
“Have you any idea at all who sent it?” she asked.
“Certainly. Mr. Smith sent it. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was trying to pull some kind of gag.”
“Gag!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Why, there must be hundreds of dollars in every box!”
“Thousands, I think. Who besides the U.S. Treasury would have this much ready cash for a practical joke? Several New York banks, I suppose, but financial institutions have notoriously bad senses of humor. The government has none at all. It has to be Smith.”
“You ought to find out if it’s real. I could take some of it down to the bank and ask.”
“Quiet. I want to think.”
Obediently she returned to her rocking chair, and Darzek remained seated on her desk. “Smith offered me a job,” he said slowly. “I named my price, and he seems to have met it. I think that constitutes a contract.”
“What sort of a job?”
“Quiet. First I’ll have to figure out how to get the money to a bank. Then I’ll cancel the Tahiti trip, and see a lawyer—”
“You need a whole law firm. Internal Revenue—”
“I’m not worried about the taxes. I want to make a will. Smith said the job might take years, with extensive travel, so there’s no point in keeping the office open. It’s a shame.”
“What’s a shame?”
“I’ve never had to do anything that I liked less.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Schluppy,” Darzek said sadly, “I never thought it would come to this, but here it is. You’re fired.”
“Mr. Darzek!”
“I’ll pay you two years’ salary in lieu of a month’s notice. Make that five years. No objections, now—it won’t scratch the surface of that million. You can set up your own detective agency. Or retire, and take my trip to Tahiti.”
Miss Schlupe blew a blast into her hankerchief. “I don’t want to retire,” she blubbered. “I want to work for you.”
“It’s nothing to cry about. There wouldn’t be anything for you to do if I kept you on.”
“I’m not crying about that.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“That’s the first time you ever called me Schluppy!”
Darzek picked up a box of money, hefted it thoughtfully, and put it down
again. “I don’t like this at all. But I made a bad joke, and Smith called me on it, and I feel obligated to take his job. I wonder what it is.”
Chapter 3
There were seventeen new passengers in the ship’s day lounge and three in the night lounge, and none of them possessed a time segment’s worth of solvency. The captain alternately cursed the world of Quarm and all of its workings for inflicting these unwanted passengers on him and pleaded with those who occupied compartments to make room for them.
“They can’t live in the lounges,” the captain said.
“Why not?” asked Gul Brokefa, a wealthy trader whose family was occupying two compartments.
“Because,” the captain said gloomily, “the Quarmers say I have to take at least a hundred more passengers before they’ll release the ship. And if these stay in the lounges, where will I put a hundred more?”
Gul Brokefa rudely suggested a place, and the captain snarled back. There was a spirited exchange before Gul Brokefa flounced away disdainfully.
Biag-n, settled unobtrusively in a remote corner, enjoyed the altercation tremendously. So did the other passengers. They had little enough to occupy themselves. The viewing screen had been turned off at their request; there was nothing to see except the looming silhouette of the transfer station and Quarm’s distant, silvery crescent. The one was uninteresting and none of the refugees wanted to look at the other.
Biag-n was sharing a small compartment with four factors and their families. He considered himself fortunate, but this did not prevent him from finding the factors boring, their wives and mates disgusting, and their children an infernal nuisance. Eventually he would have to move in with them; in the meantime, he was living in the lounge. He liked it there.
[Jan Darzek 02] - Watchers of the Dark Page 2
