don’t know what your life is worth, but I value mine highly, and I think I have the right to set that valuation myself.”
“I was not questioning your right to your own valuation,” Smith said apologetically. “I fear, however, that the fee would vastly exceed my available resources. Is there any possibility that you could accept less? I can assure you that your services are urgently needed. Individuals with your qualifications are exceedingly difficult to find.”
“That’s why we’re so expensive,” Darzek said dryly.
“Yes. A million dollars in advance.” Smith nodded, then shook his head. He got unsteadily to his feet and turned to offer Darzek a limp, dry hand.
“One question, if you don’t mind,” Darzek said. “Who sent you to see me?”
“I am not at liberty to disclose that.”
“I am not at liberty to accept any commission, at any price, without knowing whom I’m working for.”
“To be sure. If we are able to engage you, you will of course be informed fully. However, a million dollars is, I fear—”
“Excessive.”
“Precisely. Thank you, Mr. Darzek.”
Smith nodded jerkily, pivoted, shuffled from the office. Darzek looked out a moment later and found the outer office empty. He sat down in Miss Schlupe’s rocking chair to await her return.
She came in swinging her purse disgustedly, cheeks reddened from the stinging snow, glasses fogged, her protruding gray locks encrusted with white.
“I followed him to the trans-local,” she announced. “I thought he pressed the Central Park West button, but he wasn’t there, and by the time I got to Central Park East—”
“Never mind,” Darzek said. “It wasn’t worth the trouble. Someone with money to throw away and a perverted sense of humor is pulling a gag on me. I played it wrong, and Smith got cold feet. Too bad. It might have been good for a laugh, and I could use one on a day like this. I wonder which of my alleged friends are involved.”
He took his overcoat from the closet.
“Where are you going?” Miss Schlupe asked.
“To Tahiti,” Darzek said dreamily. “Just as quickly as possible.”
Chapter 2
Dawn routed the rioters and sent them scurrying for home.
Biag-n crept from his hiding place to watch them go. Few were wearing light shields, and as the swiftly rising sun streaked the pink sky with glowing orange, they fled from shadow to shadow in a stumbling, groping panic, cupping long, rooty fingers to protect their great, lidless eyes.
An uneasy, smoldering silence settled in their wake. The smoke of a hundred fires choked the horizon; plunder from twice a hundred looted warehouses and dwellings was scattered from one end of Biag-n’s oval to the other. Proctors had marched away the foreign traders and their families, and the mobs had moved in behind them to smash and loot and burn. Even the traders’ prized personal possessions had been carried off, only to be abandoned at whim. A jeweled dinner paten worth a lifetime’s solvency had been casually dropped at Biag-n’s door.
Throughout the flame-flecked night, mob after demented mob had raged unseeing past the humble abode of Biag-n the peddler. He accepted that night’s miracle gratefully, but he had no illusions as to what the next night would bring. As soon as he dared he crept anxiously from his dwelling dome, sample case under his arm.
Already the hot, hushing cloak of day lay limply across the inert city. Large, luminous blossoms, torn from beds of nocturnal flowers by the trampling mobs, sparkled gemlike amidst the abandoned plunder that littered the black pavement. Sadly Biag-n picked his way around them. The sun had shriveled and curled their petals and flecked the glossy surfaces with a darkening blight. Even their delicate, lingering scent carried the taint of death.
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
