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"Yeah," said Joh
"Meeting," Jino said; fill-in for their retired boss, he took such jokes with a sour frown, not the good humor they tried with him. "You worry too much," Joh
The women were dressed already, waiting. "Where's Jino gone now?" Sam asked. The women shrugged.
"Got to be careful of him," Sarah said. "Think we hurt his feelings."
"Ah," Joh
"Worm," Sarah proposed, a favorite haunt.
"Pillar," Poll said.
"Go your way; we'll go ours."
"Right," Sam said; and that was well enough: Sam and Sarah had business; and he and Poll did, and he was already thinking on it with a warm glow. . . on that and di
"Going my way?" Sarah asked of Sam, and off they went, by the stairs to the next level down, to the ancient Worm; but Joh
He and Poll ordered di
They had of course other pleasures in mind, because there was more to the Pillar than this smoky, music-pulsing den, and the food and drink; there were the rooms below, down the stairs beyond, for such rest as they had deserved.
He finished his good meal, and Poll did, and they sat there sipping their brew and eyeing one another with the anticipation of long acquaintance, but the brew was good too, and what they had been waiting for all day, with the world swinging under their feet and exertion sucking the juices out of them. They were that, old friends, and it could wait on the drink, slow love, and slow quiet sleep in the Bottom, with all the comforting weight of the City on their backs, where the world was solid and warm.
"Tallfeather."
He looked about, in the music and the smoke. No one used his last name, not among the highliners; but it was not a voice he knew. . . a thin man in Builders' blue coveralls and without a Builders' drawling accent either.
"Tallfeather, I'd like to talk with you. Privately."
He frowned, looked at Poll, who looked worried, tilted his head to one side. "Rude man, that."
"Mr. Tallfeather."
No onesaid Mister in the Bottom. That intrigued him. "Poll, you mind? This man doesn't get much of my time."
"I'll leave," Poll said. There was a shadow in Poll's eyes, the least hint of fear, he would have said, but there was no cause of it that he could reckon.
"No matter," the man said, hooking his arm to pull him up. "We've a place to go."
"No." He rose to his feet all right, and planted them, glared up at the man's face. Shook his arm free. "You're begging trouble. What's your name? Let me see your card." The man reached for his pocket and took one out. Manley, it said, Joseph, and identified him as an East Face Builder, and that was a lie, with that accent. Company number 687. Private employ.
So money was behind this, that could get false cards. He looked for Poll's opinion, but she had slipped away, and he was alone with this man. He sat down at the table again, pointed to the other chair. "I'd be crazy to walk out of here with you. You sit down there and talk sense or I do some talking to security, and I don't think you'd like that, would you?" Manley sat down, held out his hand for the card. Joh
There was no one, at the moment, near them. The huge pillar cut them off from sight and sound of others, and the serving boy was gone into the kitchen or round the bend.
"You're of the 48 East," Manley said, "and this project you're on. . . you know what kind of money that throws around. You want to stay on the lines all your life, Tallfeather, or do you think about old age?"
"I don't mind the lines," he said. "That's what I do."
"It's worth your while to come with me. Not far. No tricks. I have a friend of yours will confirm what I say. You'll trust him."
"What friend?"
"Jino Brown."
That disturbed him. Jino. Jino involved with something that had to sneak about like this. Jino had money troubles. Gambled. This was something else again. "Got a witness of my own, remember?
My teammate's going to know who you are, just in case you have ideas."
"Oh, she does know me, Mr. Tallfeather." That shook his confidence further, because he had known Poll all his life, and Poll was honest. And scared.
"All right. Suppose we take that walk."
"Good," Manley said, and got to his feet. Joh