"You've got the ring?"
"Yes, indeed. Yes. I've had it three days, and I haven't entirely known what to do with it. It should be sent to the next of kin, of course, in this case the parents, but how to explain its turning up so belatedly or its not having been buried with the body? llie customs on Anarchaos are difficult to explain in a letter."
"I can see that," I said.
He said, "But now I can give the ring to you! Would you mind? You'd relieve me of quite a responsibility, quite a responsibility."
I said, "Mr. Goss, you are nothing more than you seem—a good man, fussy, a bit of a bureaucrat. Why were you wary when I first asked you to tell me about my brother's death?"
He blinked at me in amazement, and blushed with embarrassment, trying to start a dozen sentences at once, so that for half a minute or so he merely garbled at me. Finally he shut his mouth, swallowed, licked his h'ps, and said, "I simply do my job, Mr. Malone; that's all I do, I simply do my job. I hate complications that aren't my concern, aren't my fault. I'm no good at this sort of thing, at conniving, at—at— Your brother's death was a tragedy, a tragedy, but it's done and over. Nothing can bring him back. And nothing can be done about it, not here, not on Anarchaos. Nothing."
45
"Ill take the ring," I said.
"Thank you," he said, trying for stiff formality. Then, more honestly, he said, "I considered your brother a friend of mine, Mr. Malone, despite the difference of our ages, our positions. I admired him, I expected some day that he would be my supervisor. I wish something could be done, and I'll help in in any way open to me. I can say nothing more than that. I'll get you the ring."
It was in his desk drawer. He found it right away and gave it to me and I put it on the ring finger of my left hand, where it felt artificial but comforting, like responsibility.
I said, "Do you know where I can find LastusP"
"I'm sorry, no. But one of the guards knows him well, and should be able to tell you. Lingo, his name is. He should be on duty at the main door right now."
"Is he the one who had the ring?"
"Yes."
"Lingo," I said.
Goss and I shook hands at his door, where he assured me again he would offer me assistance of any sort, "in any way open to me." He seemed ashamed of this escape clause even while he was saying it.
XII
lingo looked like a shaved gorilla, wearing sunglasses and fondling an automatic rifle. At first he professed total ignorance of Lastus or anything else I might want to talk about, and then he more openly stated bis position: he wanted trade information for money.
"I have money to give Lastus," I told him, "but nobody else. If Lastus wants to split with you later, that's up to him."
"How much you got for him?"
"It depends."
"On whatr
"On things that aren't your business." I showed him impatience which wasn't entirely feigned, saying, "If you won't tell me where to find him, I'll get the information somewhere else."
"Give me the money," he said, "and I'll see he gets it"
46
"Of course. Goodbye, Lingo."
"Wait a second," he said, as I turned away. When I faced him again he said, "You're the brother of that surveyor got killed, the one Lastus was with."
"That's right."
"That's what you want to talk to him about, how your brother got killed."
"Right again."
He glanced upward, toward the top of the tower. "And nobody cares? They don't mind you asking questions?"
"No. Why should they?"
He shrugged heavy shoulders.
I said, "I might have some money for you after all. Who would mind? Who do you think would mind, and why?"
He shook his head. "You give your money to Lastus. I'm np part of it."
"You can tell me where to find him."
He considered, and then said, "Why not? It can't make any diiference."
Except for the center of the city, where the towers were, the streets of Ulik—all the streets of all the cities, in fact-were nameless, mere dirt roads flanked by thrown-together shacks and huts and hovels. This namelessness made directions difficult to give, and Lingo eventually had to draw a map, showing me how many blocks to go in this direction, and then which way to turn, and again how many blocks to go, until I should at last arrive at the place where Lastus was living. When we were both satisfied that I could find Lastus without too much trouble, I left Lingo and went out to the auto, still sitting where I'd left it yesterday.
I had made only one stop between leaving Goss and ap-approaching Lingo, and that was at the guardroom on the first floor, near the elevator, where I reclaimed my weaponry, all of which was once again in place on my person. The throwing knife in its sheath was a pleasant presence between my shoulderblades, and the pistol, the gas can, the lead pipe and the other knife were comforting weights here and there in my clothing.
The auto started up at once, and I saw Lingo and the other guards watching me as I drove away, but what thoughts
47
they had about me I couldn't read in their expressionless faces.
I was soon away from the city center, the towers behind me, the same slovenly filthy slum all around me as the one I'd first seen outside the spaceport at Ni. I was traveling east, the shadow of my auto preceding us along the dirt street, the towers of the city casting their shadows all about me, pointing long thin black fingers toward the mountains beyond the horizon.
After my night and morning in the normal lighting of the tower I had to get used all over again to the blunt redness of everything out here. The shacks I passed looked rusted and scabrous, like wounds that had dried without healing.
No block was empty of people. They moved around as endlessly and purposelessly as wind-up toys on a sidewalk, a kind of defiant hopelessness to the curve of their shoulders, the set of their heads. Children ran after the auto, or flung stones at it, or shouted words at it. Men watched it pass with silent mouths and greedy eyes. Women for the most part pretended it didn't exist, though here and there one would with visual and verbal obscenity inform me of her commercial availability. I drove at a good pace, ignoring everyone, and keeping the pistol handy on the seat beside me.
Lastus lived in a sagging lean-to near the outer edges of this slum, far from the towers, several blocks south of the main road to the east, the one that led eventually to Yoroch Pass. There were fewer people out here, and they showed less reaction to the presence of the auto, whether from jaded-ness or despair I couldn't tell. I pulled off the road and stopped as close to the side of the lean-to as I could get.
When they saw the auto stop, several men and women in the general area began to take an obvious though furtive interest in me, and even began to sidle somewhat closer. I climbed from the auto and stood beside it while very ostentatiously I checked my pistol and then put it away. Interest in me abruptly ceased, and those who had been studying me now went back with renewed conviction to their own pointless preoccupations.
Lastus' lean-to was broad across the front, but shallow and not very high, the open front barely five feet from ground to roof. Going to the front, I saw that dirt had been piled up
48
over most of the width to make a land of wall closing the lean-to in, leaving only a narrow opening in which I could see rough steps cut into the ground, leading down and in. So some, maybe most, of Lastus' home was underground. It was dark down there, too dark to even make a guess of the dimensions of the place, though I doubted it was much more than a shallow hole in the ground with the lean-to roof erected over it.