Citizen of the Galaxy (7 page)

They reached the hole, eyed the narrow ledge Thorby had taken so casually in the dark, and one of them said, “We need a ladder.”

“Oh, we'll find stairs or a chute.” They turned back. Thorby waited, then went back and down the hole.

A few minutes later he was close to his home doorway. He looked and listened and sniffed and waited until he was certain that no one was close, then crept to the door and reached for the thumbhole in the lock. Even as he reached he knew that something was wrong.

The door was gone; there was just a hole.

He froze, straining every sense. There was an odor of strangers but it wasn't fresh and there was no sound of breathing. The only sound was a faint drip-drip in the kitchen.

Thorby decided that he just had to see. He looked behind him, saw no glimmer, reached inside for the light switch and turned it to “dim.”

Nothing happened. He tried the switch in all positions, still no light. He went inside, avoided something cluttering Baslim's neat living room, on into the kitchen, and reached for candles. They were not where they belonged but his hand encountered one nearby; he found the match safe and lit the candle.

Ruin and wreckage!

Most of the damage seemed the sort that results from a search which takes no account of cost, aiming solely at speed and thoroughness. Every cupboard, every shelf had been spilled, food dumped on the floor. In the large room the mattresses had been ripped open, stuffing spilled out. But some of it looked like vandalism, unnecessary, pointless.

Thorby looked around with tears welling up and his chin quivering. But when he found, near the door. Pop's false leg, lying dead on the floor with its mechanical perfection smashed as if trampled by boots, he broke into sobs and had to put the candle down to keep from dropping it. He picked up the shattered leg, held it like a doll, sank to the floor and cradled it, rocking back and forth and moaning.

Thorby spent the next several hours in the black corridors outside their ruined home, near the first branching, where he would hear Pop if he came back but where Thorby would have a chance to duck if police showed up.

He caught himself dozing, woke with a start, and decided that he had to find out what time it was; it seemed as if he had been keeping vigil a week. He went back into their home, found a candle and lit it. But their only clock, a household “Eternal,” was smashed. No doubt the radioactive capsule was still reckoning eternity but the works were mute. Thorby looked at it and forced himself to think in practical terms.

If Pop were free, he would come back. But the police had taken Pop away. Would they simply question him and turn him loose?

No, they would not. So far as Thorby knew, Pop had never done anything to harm the Sargon -- but he had known for a long time that Pop was not simply a harmless old beggar. Thorby did not know why Pop had done the many things which did not fit the idea of “harmless old beggar” but it was clear that the police knew or suspected. About once a year the police had “cleaned out” the ruins by dropping a few retch-gas bombs down the more conspicuous holes; it simply meant having to sleep somewhere else for a couple of nights. But this was a raid in force. They had intended to arrest Pop and they had been searching for something.

The Sargon's police operated on a concept older than justice; they assumed that a man was guilty, they questioned him by increasingly strong methods until he talked . . . methods so notorious that an arrested person was usually anxious to tell all before questioning started. But Thorby was certain that the police would get nothing out of Pop which the old man did not wish to admit.

Therefore the questioning would go on a long time.

They were probably working on Pop this very minute. Thorby's stomach turned over.

He had to get Pop away from them.

How? How does a moth attack the Presidium? Thorby's chances were not much better. Baslim might be in a back room of the district police barracks, the logical place for a petty prisoner. But Thorby had an unreasoned conviction that Pop was not a petty prisoner . . . in which case he might be anywhere, even in the bowels of the Presidium.

Thorby could go to the district police office and ask where his patron had been taken -- but such was the respect in which the Sargon's police were held that this solution did not occur to him; had he presented himself as next of kin of a prisoner undergoing interrogation Thorby would have found himself in another closed room being interviewed by the same forceful means as a check on the answers (or lack of them) which were being wrung out of Baslim.

Thorby was not a coward; he simply knew that one does not dip water with a knife. Whatever he did for Pop would have to be done indirectly. He could not demand his “rights” because he had none; the idea never entered his head. Bribery was possible -- for a man with a poke full of stellars. Thorby had less than two minims. Stealth was all that was left and for that he needed information.

He reached this conclusion as soon as he admitted that there was no reasonable chance that the police would turn Pop loose. But, on the wild chance that Baslim might talk his way free, Thorby wrote a note, telling Pop that he would check back the next day, and left it on a shelf they used as a mail drop. Then he left.

It was night when he stuck his head above ground. He could not decide whether he had been down in the ruins for half a day or a day and a half. It forced him to change plans; he had intended to go first to Inga the greengrocer and find out what she knew. But at least there were no police around now; he could move freely as long as he evaded the night patrol. But where? Who could, or would, give him information?

Thorby had dozens of friends and knew hundreds by sight. But his acquaintances were subject to curfew; he saw them only in daylight and in most cases did not know where they slept. But there was one neighborhood which was not under curfew; Joy Street and its several adjoining courts never closed. In the name of commerce and for the accommodation of visiting spacemen taprooms and gaming halls and other places of hospitality to strangers in that area near the spaceport never closed their doors. A commoner, even a freedman, might stay up all night there, although he could not leave between curfew and dawn without risking being picked up.

This risk did not bother Thorby; he did not intend to be seen and, although it was patrolled inside, he knew the habits of the police there. They traveled in pairs and stayed on lighted streets, leaving their beats only to suppress noisy forms of lawbreaking. But the virtue of the district, for Thorby's purpose, was that the gossip there was often hours ahead of the news as well as covering matters ignored or suppressed by licensed news services.

Someone on Joy Street would know what had happened to Pop.

Thorby got into the honky-tonk neighborhood by scrambling over rooftops. He went down a drain into a dark court, moved along it to Joy Street, stopped short of the street lights, looked up and down for police and tried to spot someone he knew. There were many people about but most of them were strangers on the town. Thorby knew every proprietor and almost every employee up and down the street but he hesitated to walk into one of the joints; he might walk into the arms of police. He wanted to spot someone he trusted, whom he could motion into the darkness of the court.

No police but no friendly faces, either -- lust a moment; there was Auntie Singham.

Of the many fortunetellers who worked Joy Street Auntie Singham was the best; she never purveyed anything but good fortune. If these things failed to come to pass, no customer ever complained; Auntie's warm voice carried conviction. Some whispered that she improved her own fortunes by passing information to the police, but Thorby did not believe it because Pop did not. She was a likely source of news and Thorby decided to chance it -- the most she could tell the police was that he was alive and on the loose . . . which they knew.

Around the corner to Thorby's right was the Port of Heaven cabaret; Auntie was spreading her rug on the pavement there, anticipating customers spilling out at the end of a performance now going on. ,

Thorby glanced each way and hurried along the wall almost to the cabaret. “Psst! Auntie!”

She looked around, looked startled, then her face became expressionless. Through unmoving lips she said, loud enough to reach him, “Beat it, son! Hide! Are you crazy?”

“Auntie . . . where have they got him?”

“Crawl in a hole and pull it in after you. There's a reward out!”
    
“For me? Don't be silly. Auntie; nobody would pay a reward for me. Just tell me where they're holding him. Do you know?”

“They're not.”

“ 'They're not' what?”

“You don't know? Oh, poor lad! They've shortened him.” Thorby was so shocked that he was speechless. Although Baslim had talked of the time when he would be dead, Thorby had never really believed in it; he was incapable of imagining Pop dead and gone.

He missed her next words; she had to repeat. “Snoopers! Get out!”

Thorby glanced over his shoulder. Two patrolmen, moving this way -- time to leave! But he was caught between street and blank wall, with no bolt hole but the entrance to the cabaret . . . if he ducked in there, dressed as he was, being what he was, the management would simply shout for the patrol.

But there was nowhere else to go. Thorby turned his back on the police and went inside the narrow foyer of the cabaret. There was no one there; the last act was in progress and even the hawker was not in sight. But just inside was a ladder-stool and on it was a box of transparent letters used to change signs billing the entertainers. Thorby saw them and an idea boiled up that would have made Baslim proud of his pupil -- Thorby grabbed the box and stool and went out again.

He paid no attention to the approaching policemen, placed the ladder-stool under the little lighted marquee that surmounted the entrance and pimped up on it, with his back to the patrolmen. It placed most of his body in bright light but his head and shoulders stuck up into the shadow above the row of lights. He began methodically to remove letters spelling the name of the star entertainer.

The two police reached a point right behind him. Thorby tried not to tremble and worked with the steady listlessness of a hired hand with a dull job. He heard Auntie Singham call out, “Good evening, Sergeant.”

“Evening, Auntie. What lies are you telling tonight?”

“Lies indeed! I see a sweet young girl in your future, with hands graceful as birds. Let me see your palm and perhaps I can read her name.”

“What would my wife say? No time to chat tonight, Auntie.” The sergeant glanced at the workman changing the sign, rubbed his chin and said, “We've got to stay on the prowl for Old Baslim's brat. You haven't seen him?” He looked again at the work going on above him and his eyes widened slightly.

“Would I sit here swapping gossip if I had?”

“Hmm . . .” He turned to his partner. “Roj, move along and check Ace's Place, and don't forget the washroom. I'll keep an eye on the street”

“Okay, Sarge.”

The senior patrolman turned to the fortuneteller as his partner moved away. “It's a sad thing, Auntie. Who would have believed that old Baslim could have been spying against the Sargon and him a cripple?”

“Who indeed?” She rocked forward. “Is it true that he died of fright before they shortened him?”

“He had poison ready, knowing what was coming. But dead he was, before they pulled him out of his hole. The captain was furious.”

“If he was dead already, why shorten him?”

“Come, come, Auntie, the law must be served. Shorten him they did, though it's not a job I'd relish.” The sergeant sighed. “It's a sad world, Auntie. Think of that poor boy, led astray by that old rascal . . . and now the captain and the commandant both want to ask the lad questions they meant to ask the old man.”

“What good will that do them?”

“None, likely.” The sergeant poked gutter filth with the butt of his staff. “But if I were the lad, knowing the old man is dead and not knowing any answers to difficult questions, I'd be far, far from here already. I'd find me a farmer a long way from the city, one who needed willing hands cheap and took no interest in the troubles of the city. But since I'm not, why then, as soon as I clap eyes on him, if I do, I'll arrest him and haul him up before the captain.”

“He's probably hiding between rows in a bean field this minute, trembling with fright.”

“Likely. But that's better than walking around with no head on your shoulders.” The police sergeant looked down the street, called out, “Okay, Roj. Right with you.” As he started away he glanced again at Thorby and said, “Night, Auntie. If you see him, shout for us.”

“I'll do that. Hail to the Sargon.”

“Hail.”

Thorby continued to pretend to work and tried not to shake, while the police moved slowly away. Customers trickled out of the cabaret and Auntie took up her chant, promising fame, fortune, and a bright glimpse of the future, all for a coin. Thorby was about to get down, stick the gear back into the entranceway and get lost, when a hand grabbed his ankle.

“What are you doing!”

Thorby froze, then realized it was just the manager of the place, angry at finding his sign disturbed. Without looking down Thorby said, “What's wrong? You paid me to change this blinker.”