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Never had the sun shone so warmly and brightly. The afternoon sun. I smiled back at it just as warmly, bereft of any guilt, filled full with happiness. Nibbling a bit of fruit and sipping some wine. Turning languidly from the window as Bibs reentered the room.
“You mean it?” she asked. “You won’t go ofiplanet with me? You don’t want to?”
“Of course I want to. But not until I have found Garth.”
“He’ll find you first and kill you.”
“Perhaps he might be the one who gets killed.” She cocked her head most prettily to one side, then nodded. “From anyone but you I would think that bragging. But you might just do it.” She sighed. “But I won’t be here to see it. I rate survival ahead of vengeance. He put me into jail—you got me out. Case closed. Though I admit to a big bundle of curiosity. If you do get out of this, will you let me know what happened? A message care of the Venian Crewmembers’ Union will get to me eventually.” She passed over a slip of paper. “I’ve written down everything that I remembered, just like you asked.”
“General,” I read. “Either Ze
“I never saw it spelled out. Just overheard one of the officers talking to him when they didn’t know I could hear them.”
“What is Mortstertoro?”
“A big military base, perhaps their biggest. That’s where we landed to take on cargo. They wouldn’t let us out of the spacer, but what we could see was very impressive. A big limousine, all flags and stars, would come for Garth and take him away. There was a lot of saluting—and they always saluted him first. He is something big, high-up, and whatever he is involved with has to do with that base. I’m sorry, I know it’s not much.”
“It’s a lot, all I need now.” I folded the paper and put it away. “What next.”
“We should have identification documents by tonight. They are expensive but real. Issued by one of the smaller duchies that needs the foreign exchange. So I can ship out on any spacer I want to. As long as the League agents don’t recognize me. But I’ve managed to bribe my way onto a trade delegation that made their flight arrangements months ago. One of them has been well paid to get ~•”
“When do you leave?”
“Midnight,” she said in a very quiet voice. “No! So soon…”
“I felt the same way—which is why I am leaving. I am not the kind of person that gets tied down in a relationship, Jimmy.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Good. Then I am getting away before you find out.” This sort of conversation was all very new and confusing. I am reluctantly forced to admit that up until the previous evening my contact with the opposite sex had been, shall we say, more distant. Now I was at an unaccustomed loss for words, indecisive and more than a little bewildered. When I blurted this out Bibs had nodded in apparent complete understanding. I realized now that there was an awful lot I did not know about women, a mountain of knowledge I might never acquire.
“My plans aren’t that fixed…” I started to say, but she silenced me with a warm finger to my lips.
“Yes they are. And you’re not going to change them on my account. You seemed very certain this morning about what you felt you had to do.”
“And I am still certain,” I said firmly, with more firmness and certainty than I felt. “The bribe to get me over to Nevenkebia was taken?”
“Doubled before accepted. If you are going to go missing then old Grbonja will never be permitted to go ashore there again. But he has been ready to retire for years. The bribe is just the financial cushion he needs.”
“What does he do?”
“Exports fruit and vegetables. You’ll go along as one of his laborers. He won’t be punished if you get away from the market—but they will take away his landing pass. He won’t mind.”
“When do I get to see him?”
“We go to his warehouse tonight, after dark.”
“Then…”
“I leave you there. Are you hungry?”
“We just ate. ”
“That is not what I mean,” she answered in a very husky voice.
The dark streets were lit only by occasional torches at the corners, the air heavy with menace. We walked in silence; perhaps everything that might be said had already been said. I had bought a sharp dagger which hung at my waist, and another club that I slammed against a wall occasionally to be sure any watchers knew it was there. All too soon we reached our destination, for Bibs knocked on a small gate let into a high wall. There were some whispered words and the gate creaked open. I could smell the sweetness of fruit all about us as we threaded through the dark mounds, to the lamplit corner where an elderly man slumped in a chair. He was all gray beard and gray hair to his waist, where the hair spread out over a monstrous paunch held up by spindly legs. One eye was covered by a cloth wound round his head, but the other looked at me closely as I came up.
“This is the one you are taking,” Bibs said. “Does he speak Esperanto?”
“Like a native,” I said.
“Give me the money now.” He held out his hand.
“No. You’ll just leave him behind. Ploveci will give it to you after you land.”
“Let me see it then.” He turned his beady eye on me and I realized that I was Ploveci. I took out the leathern bag, spread the coins out on my hands, then put them back into the bag. Grbonja grunted what I assumed was a sign of assent. I felt a breeze on my neck and wheeled about.
The gate was just closing. Bibs was gone.
“You can sleep here,” he said pointing to a heap of tumbled sacks against the wall. “We load and leave at dawn.”
When he left he took the lamp with him. I looked into the darkness, toward the closed gate.
I had little choice in the matter. I sat on the sacks with my back to the wall, the club across my legs and thought about what I was doing, what I had done, what we had done, what I was going to do, and about the conflicting emotions that washed back and forth through my body. This was apparently too much thinking because the next thing I knew I was blinking at the sunlight coming through the opening door, my face buried in the sacks and my club beside me on the floor. I scrambled up, felt for the money—still there—and was just about ready for what the day would bring. Yawning and stretching the stifiness from my muscles. Reluctantly.
The large door was pulled wider and I saw now that it opened onto a wharf with the fog-covered ocean beyond.
A sizable sailing vessel was tied up there and Grbonja was coming down the gangway from the deck.
“Ploveci,help them load,” he ordered and passed on.
A scrufiy gang oflaborers followed him into the warehouse and seized up filled sacks from the pile closest to the door. I couldn’t understand a word they said, nor did I need to. The work was hot, boring, and exhausting, and consisted simply of humping a sack from the warehouse to the ship, then returning for another. There was some pungent vegetable in the sacks that soon had my eyes ru
Grbonja reappeared, as soon as the work was done, and gurgled what were obviously orders. The longshoremen became sailors, pulled in the gangplank, let go the lines and ran up the sail. I stood to one side and fondled my club until Grbonja ordered me into the cabin and out of sight. He joined me there a few moments later. “I’ll take the money now,” he said.
“Not quite yet, grandpop. You get it when I am safely ashore, as agreed.”
“They must not see me take it!”
“Fear not. Just stand close to the top of the gangplank and I will stumble against you. When I’m gone you will find the bag tucked into your belt. Now tell me what I will find when I get ashore.”