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They had a galactic empire back when men were still living in caves. Then they fought an ages-long war with a race which no longer exists, the Bahulians--which sapped their energies, racked their industries and decimated their number. Then they gave up their outposts and gradually withdrew to the small system of worlds they inhabit today. Their home world--also called Megapei--had been destroyed by the Bahulians, who by all accounts were ugly, ruthless, vicious, fierce and depraved. Of course, all these accounts were written by the Pei'ans, so I guess we'll never know what the Bahulians were really like. They weren't Strantrians, though, because I read somewhere that they were idolators.
On the side of the shrine opposite the archway, one of the men began chanting a litany that I recognized better than any of the others, and I looked up suddenly to see if it had happened.
It had.
The glassite plate depicting Shimbo of Darktree, Shrugger of Thunders, was glowing now, green and yellow.
Some of their deities are Pei'apomorphic, to coin a term, while others, like the Egyptians', look like crosses between Pei'ans and things you might find in a zoo. Still others are just weird-looking. And somewhere along the line, I'm sure they must have visited the Earth, because Shimbo is a man. Why any intelligent race would care to make a god of a savage is beyond me, but there he stands, naked, with a slight greenish cast to his complexion, his face partly hidden by his upraised left arm, which holds a thunder cloud in the midst of a yellow sky. He bears a great bow in his right hand and a quiver of thunderbolts hangs at his hip. Soon all six Pei'ans and the eight humans were chanting the same litany. More began to file in through the door. The place began to fill up.
A great feeling of light and power began in my middle section and expanded to fill my entire body.
I don't understand what makes it happen, but whenever I enter a Pei'an shrine, Shimbo begins to glow like that, and the power and the ecstasy is always there. When I completed my thirty-year course of training and my twenty-year apprenticeship in the trade that made me my fortune, I was the only Earthman in the business. The other worldscapers are all Pei'ans. Each of us bears a Name--one of the Pei'an deities'--and this aids us in our work, in a complex and unique fashion. I chose Shimbo--or he chose me--because he seemed to be a man. For so long as I live, it is believed that he will be manifest in the physical universe. When I die, he returns to the happy nothing, until another may bear the Name. Whenever a Name-bearer enters a Pei'an shrine, that deity is illuminated in his place--in every shrine in the galaxy. I do not understand the bond. Even the Pei'ans don't, really.
I had thought that Shimbo had long since forsaken me, because of what I had done with the Power and with my life. I had come to this shrine, I guess, to see if it was true.
I rose and made my way to the archway. As I passed through it, I felt an uncontrollable desire to raise my left hand. Then I clenched my fist and drew it back down to shoulder level. As I did, there came a peal of thunder from almost directly overhead.
Shimbo still shone upon the wall and the chanting filled my head as I walked up the stairway and out into the world where a light rain had begun to falL
II
Glidden and I met in DuBois' office at 6:30 and concluded the deal, for fifty-six thousand. DuBois was a short man with a weatherbeaten face and a long shock of white hair. He'd opened his office at that hour because of my insistence on dealing that afternoon. I paid the money, the papers were signed, the keys were in my pocket, hands were shaken all around and the three of us departed. As we walked across the damp pavement toward our respective vehicles, I said, "Damni I left my pen on your desk, DuBois!"
"I'll have it sent to you. You're staying at the Spectrum?"
"I'm afraid I'll be checking out very shortly."
"I can send it to the place on Nuage."
I shook my head. "I'll be needing it tonight."
"Here. Take this one." He offered me his own.
By then Glidden had entered his vehicle and was out of earshot. I waved to him, then said, "That was for his benefit. I want to speak with you in private."
The squint that suddenly surrounded his dark eyes removed their look of incipient disgust and replaced it with one of curiosity.
"All right," he said, and we reentered the building and he unlocked his office door again.
"What is it?" he asked, reassuniing the padded chair behind his desk.
"I'm looking for Ruth Laris," I said.
He lit a cigarette, which is always a good way to buy a little thinking time.
"Why?" he asked.
"She's an old friend. Do you know where she is?"
"No," he said.
"Isn't it a trifle--unusual--to conserve assets in this quantity for a person whose whereabouts you don't even know?"
"Yes," he said, "I'd say so. But that is what I've been retained to do."
"By Ruth Laris?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Did she retain you personally, or did somebody else do it on her behalf?"
"I don't see that this is any business of yours, Mister Co
I thought a second, made a quick decision.
"Before you do," I said, "I want you to know that I bought her house only to search it for clues as to her whereabouts. After that, I'm going to indulge a whim and convert it into a hacienda, because I don't like the architecture in this city. What does that indicate to you?"
"That you're something of a nut," he observed.
I nodded and added, "A nut who can afford to indulge his whims. Therefore a crackpot who can cause a lot of trouble. What's _this_ building worth? A couple million?"
"I don't know." He looked a little uneasy.
"What if someone bought it for an apartment building and you had to go looking for another office?"
"My lease would not be that easy to cancel, Mister Co
I chuckled. "... And then," I said, "you were suddenly to find yourself the subject of an inquiry by the local Bar Association?"
He sprang to his feet.
"You _are_ a madman."
"Are you sure? I don't know what the charges would be," I said, "yet. But you know that even an inquiry would give you some trouble--and then if you started ru
Then, "No," he said, "I'm not."
"Then, if you've nothing to hide, why not tell me how the arrangements were made? I'm not interested in the substance of any privileged communications, simply the circumstances surrounding the house's being put up for sale. It puzzles me that Ruth didn't leave a message of any sort."
He leaned his head against the back of his chair and studied me through smoke.
"The arrangements were made by phone--"
"She could have been drugged, threatened ..."
"That is ridiculous," he said. "What is your interest in this, anyway?"
"Like I said, she's an old friend."
His eyes widened and then narrowed. A few people still knew who one of Ruth's old friends had been.
"... Also," I continued, "I received a message from her recently, asking me to come see her on a matter of some urgency. She is not here and there is no message, no forwarding address. It smells fu
He was not blind to the cut and therefore the cost of my suit, and maybe my voice has a somewhat authoritarian edge from years of giving orders. At any rate, he didn't switch on the phone and call for the cops.