The Enemy of My Enemy (2 page)

And then it sprang.

The rat squeaked once, shrill, fearful.

The sounds which had been off there in the dimness back along the hall came advancing. Before: hesitant. Cautious. Now: certain. Confident. Man stooped, shoulders hunched, only a section of face revealed, brow and eye and upper cheek. Almost a moan, then, dismayed disappointment at the sight of the three leeri wrapped around the dying rat. But not for long. Half-cured leather, hard as boards, a whole pack of it crashed down upon him, flung him to the filthy floor. For a slow second his visible hand seemed to stroke the floor, softly, tenderly, lovingly. Then it lay still.

• • •

Atén aDuc pursed out his mouth and squeezed it up so that his thin, red Pemathi moustache was pressed up close to his broad and thick Pemathi nose.

“No, who go-chase you wit leeri?” he asked.

His guest, who had told his story sitting nervously or jumping to his feet in fits and starts, once more composed his long and slim body onto the cushioned up-seat and angrily squinted his eyes. “Oh, jape that chopchop talk, ‘Ten!” he said. “You can speak properly, better than I … .” His back had been dressed, he felt no more actual pain.

Atén aDuc shrugged, sighed. “True, true, Jer. But my opportunities for doing so are so exceedingly limited. For the most part, were I to do so, those who cannot would be humiliated, and those who can would be annoyed. Pemathi are supposed to speak chopchop to foreigners. It’s one of the rules of the game. For one thing, if Pemathi speak foreign languages well, then the implication is that foreigners ought to speak Pemathi well. Which, of course, is quite true. Still … . I have heard of cases where foreigners who met in other countries — and for that matter, on other worlds — found themselves obliged to speak chopchop because it was the only tongue they had in common. Perhaps we should urge its adoption in place of InterGal. Eh, Jer? But we avoid the harsh answer, like an
ekl
sucking eggs.
Who?
”

The room was hung on all its walls from floor to ceiling in those classical Pemathi rug-tapestries which are no longer being woven: red to red-brown to brown were these, at least a hundred shades of each, presenting no discernible pattern or motif at all to the direct glance; then falling into pleasant hints of things around the periphery of vision once one looked away. In the center of the triangle formed by the three long up-seats stood the miniature pavilion of burnished copper which served as cook stove, foot warmer, incense burner, water heater, and so on. In the hollow atop the very center rested a three-quarter-globe bowl from which protruded a jeweled drinking tube, the filigreed bulb at its end protecting the drinker from the pleasantly tart but acid textured pulp of the fruit within. The room was just the sort of place that touring visitors of Pemath always wanted much to see but almost never did see; it was classically Pemathi … at least until you noticed that the carven cask-wood ark in the north corner contained a 3D viewer instead of ancestral effigies, or that Aten aDuc under his long embroidered tunic — the loops and frogs of which, contrary to all etiquette, were left unfastened — wore the kind of waistcoat which Tarnisi women used to affect for winter sports … . Things like that.

“Eh, Jerred?
Who
was chasing you with leeri? Any idea? You — ”

“ — must have some? Sure I have. The trouble is, I’ve got too many. I haven’t exactly been a nice boy, let’s confess it. How many cargoes I’ve cracked and stolen down Portside — I don’t know. You ought to, you bought half of them. Multiply by two … .”

Atén a Duc pulled his head back and thrust his chin out in the typical Pemathi posture of mild protest. “My dear Northi, but who could possibly resent that?
‘Stolen’?
Nonsense. ‘Diverted’ is by far the better word. If the average shipper gets through four cargoes out of five and doesn’t lose more than a quarter of the ones he does get through, why, he’s delighted, my boy, delighted! That’s not a thing to be called theft, that’s normal commercial attrition. Why, if a commodity persists in going through untouched time after time, the agents’ feelings are hurt. They feel a reflection has been cast upon its value. No, no, nobody is going to chase you with leeri for
that
. And, besides, that was years ago. No … .”

“I took Otár oDon’s women away from him. Both of them.
You
remember. He and his group swore — ”

His host rose, yawning, tapping his nose emphatically. “No, no. Otár oDon’s too busy drinking himself to death to bother, and his company has scattered from the back country to the South Coast; besides, really. A fire-charge, just possibly a group type of thing. Just possibly. Knife, club, rope, much more their style of thing. But — leeri?
Pushipushi
. Absurd.”

Jerred Northi grimaced, tugged at his drink. “No, you’re probably right. There are maybe one or two outfits on World Orinel less likely to come leeri-spitting … but I wouldn’t know them. Well. The same objection to ‘Tar’s being behind it applies just as well to most of the other people whose toes I’ve stepped on. And, also: ‘that was years ago.’ So. What’s left? What’s happened lately? Tow-tapping. I suppose I’ve tapped more tows these past two years than anyone else.” His frown lifted a trifle. “And tapped them clean, too. I hate a messy tapping. Waste. Just waste.”

Not the least of the dreadful ironies of overpopulated Pemath, where most people hungered, was that it actually exported edibles. The underfed mass of Pemathi dressed their scanty victuals with the rank, thick oil of the
oron
-nut, produced in the vast plantations of the Lermencasi-owned archipelago of Ran — not because they preferred it, but because they could afford no better. The bulk of Pemathi-produced ry-seed oil, the delicate and savory
tya
, went overseas to Lermencas, Baho, Tarnis, and all the other, richer lands of Planet Orinel. The peasants who picked it, the toilers who pressed it, were forbidden so much as to lick their fingers of it, lest they form the habit of dipping those fingers into it, thus diminishing the amount by a few tickys’ worth per thousand. Oils and syrups and similar commodities arrived and departed in huge sub-surface tankers of foreign registry at Pemath New Port, governed by the Joint Commission on which the Pemathi representation was but the echo to the Interleague members, and patrolled by the Commission’s crack police.

But the cargoes were made up for overseas shipment, or broken up for internal distribution, in Pemath Old Port. Which was something else again. The dirty, slow, powerful paratugs, obsolete elsewhere for years, still plied their ways through the oily, shallow waters of the Inner Sea, north and south of the Double Ports, towing behind them their liqueous cargo in great, fish-shaped tows of tough but flexible plastoid, which ran more below the water than above it. A skilled “tow-tapper,” as these latter-day pirates were called, adjusting his paravanes to a nicety, could sweep down of a dark night, cut the tow loose, and carry it away behind his own — fleeter, armed — vessel, without losing a drop of it. Sometimes a firm of tow-shippers was informed that “a loose tow had been found adrift” — or, “washed ashore” — and those whose prize it was by right of salvage would sell it back at a reasonable price. But often as not no open traces were ever observed again. Owners’ names could not be stamped upon a liquid. The trade, or profession, was a risky one; it usually paid off well, though.

Crime, however, is rarely sterile, and organized crime never is. Infection breeds infection; officials who wink at one class of offenses soon become stone-blind to others. Some who become aware do not always abhor, and very often they envy, and very often they emulate. Behind the lion (so ran a proverb of Ancient Earth: proverb no more than a statement of fact) followed the hyena, and behind the hyena, the jackal. In Pemath a man who merely deprived another man of property suffered little stigma — unless, of course, he should be caught and punished — he paid, instead, in keeping corrupt officials and in risking and often suffering the depredatory attacks of those whose policy was to do unto others what those others had done unto others yet. Big thieves have little thieves to bite ‘em. And bought officials demonstrate their corroded morality by often not staying bought. Tow-tappers, however neatly and cleanly they tapped their tows, had to fight off the human hyenas and jackals who snarled and yelped and snapped for a bite of the carcass …

And those who had owned the carcass while it was still a live thing, however used to the circumstances of Pemathi commerce and Pemathi crime they might be, did not necessarily always shrug philosophically and obey the great eternal commercial adage,
Pass it along to the consumer
.

“Oh, come,” Atén aDuc said, disparagingly, lifting the lid off a section of the bright copper complex, and fishing out a goody which he popped into his mouth; chewed; swallowed; brushed scented water across his lips and wiped them dry. Continued, “Surely you don’t believe that the Joint Commission or the Interleague Powers hired a man to sling leeri at you?”

Jerred Northi stretched out in his up-seat and looked at the carven ceiling. “Not directly, no. But it’s the IL nations who’ve been clamoring for a crackdown on piracy, as they’re pleased to call it. ‘Wherever it may be found’ — a pretty piece of funny talk; where
is
it found? Only here. And the Joint Commission is their local arm and hand. So the JC puts the screws on its Pemathi members until they can’t get by with smiles and lies and promises. Well, ‘Ten … What do you suppose? Your government, or what passes for it, may be resigned, if it has to, to going without the graft that tow-tapping means — for a while. But they’re not for a while or a minute going to risk an actual investigation. Are they? Why should they trust
me
? I don’t trust
them
. Why shouldn’t Governancer uFon or Militar iGer or the rest of them want me out of the way? Think how embarrassing for them if I were got into the interrogation seat and made to answer questions about whom I bribed and with how much or how often? Your governancers and militars would think no more of leeri-ing me than of cracking a flea.”

Atén aDuc sucked a last shred of savor from his teeth. “Or of breaking a butterfly on a wheel, since we seem to be drawing metaphors from the insect world. As far as scruple was concerned. But the effort rules it out. No. I am not convinced.”

Neither was his younger guest. Still, he had no other notions. Once again he went through the night’s events, beginning with the even earlier events — the crackdown on tow-tapping, the raid on the little South Coast harbor where he’d set up headquarters over two years ago, the sequestration of his account in the National Fiscal, the appearance of Pemathi police and militia in three successive places he passed through on his flight north — which, he was convinced, had served somehow as a prelude. “I wasn’t fool enough to keep very much … comparatively … in the NatFisc, of course. I’ve got quite a bit, well, some place else. Not that I mistrust you, you understand. That wasn’t what I went to New Port for, though. And I really had thought that no one there connected me — me, I mean, the tow-tapper, with the me who’d been keeping up my old apartments there. So it was rather a chill to spot the JC’s plaindressmen keeping watch outside. That indefinable, unmistakable look they have, you know —

“Well, that stamped it and sealed it, as far as I was concerned. I’ve been in Pemath most of my life, and despite all my bitching and slanging, I’m used to it and hadn’t planned on quitting it. Not so soon as this, anyway. But what else is there to do? Obviously I can’t leave by any of the open ways. Not now. So I went up to Matan iNac’s three-dish place to make the other kind of connection. Said the right words, everything. And they — he — whoever — was ready and waiting for me. First the fire-charge, then the leeri. So: if it’s not your chiefs of state, then who in the Hell is it?”

Atén aDuc picked up from the little stand beside him a
thular
, long, and dark of wood, and rich with inlays and bandings of silver and gold, and blew a rift of soft, deep notes from it. Only a fragment of music, brief, but it evoked faint conjectures of the time when Pemath and her people were not divided between the oppressing few and the oppressed many. With an abrupt gesture quite different from his usual mannered calm, he put the instrument back on its elaborately carven stand, turned his full attention to his younger friend once more.

“The time to reflect on that and on other matters of philosophical inquiry will be when you are far away and safe. You ought to have realized that Matán iNac can operate only with someone’s — quite a few someones’ — connivance. As it happens, that particular graft is one of the plums of two of my fellow-countrymen whose names you mentioned just a little while ago: Governancer uFon and Militar iGer. They
could
have wanted you out of the way: true. They
could
have figured that sooner or later you would wind up at Tan’s: true. They
could
have had a man waiting to fire-charge you: true. But … they could have the same man — or another — waiting to leeri you?
Not
true. Leeri are too new, and if one thing is sure it is that Pemath does not try new things. That is why we are what we are and how we are. Psychologically, I tell you, it is impossible that what passes for our government should have tried that. And it seems to me equally impossible, psychologically, that anyone who would try leeri would have first tried an attack with anything as old-fashioned and clumsy as a fire-charge. So — well — add it up. What do you get?”

Jerred said, promptly, “I get the message that I better get out of here and far away from here, and quietly, and quickly. Because, although I don’t know who or why, someone (or, as you’d put it) a few someones besides the government of Pemath is after my ass. You know almost everything. Do you know who?”

Atén aDuc shook his head, pulled at his lower lip. “No. I repeat, that’s not the prime question. Better ask:
where
is it you’re going that’s far away from here? And
how
are you going to do it quietly and quickly? I don’t know those answers, either. I know who does, though … for a price of course … need I say? … in Pemath? … for a price … . Lady Mani.”