“Look at your brother, E’ikasus, who is now resuming his normal shape. He let me put him in animal form and send him out among the stars. He took risks without committing the impudence of enjoying risk. It is not necessary to do your duty joyfully — just to do it. Now he has homed to the old lair and I know he brings us good luck in many little things, perhaps in big things. Do you understand, my daughter?”

She said that she did, but there was still a wild blank disappointed look in her eyes as she said it.

“The robot sergeant says he can do no more without violating the rule against hurting human beings.” The subchief looked at his chief, licking his chops for a chance to get out of the office and to wander among the vexations of the city. He was tired of view-screens, computers, buttons, cards, and routines. He wanted raw life and high adventure.

“Which offworlder is this?”

“Tostig Amaral, from the planet of Amazonas Triste. He has to stay wet all the time. He is just a licensed trader, not an honored guest of the Instrumentality. He was assigned a girlygirl and now he thinks she belongs to him.”

“Send the girlygirl to him. What is she, mouse-derived?”

“No, a c’girl. Her name is C’mell and she has been requisitioned by the Lord Jestocost.”

“I know all about that,” said the chief, wishing that he really did. “She’s now assigned to that Old North Australian who has bought most of this planet, Earth.”

“But this hominid wants her, just the same!” the subchief was urgent.

“He can’t have her, not if a Lord of the Instrumentality interrupts his services.”

“He is threatening to fight. He says he will kill people.”

“Hmm. Is he in a room?”

“Yes, Sir and Chief.”

“With standard outlets?”

“I’ll look, sir.” The subchief twisted a knob and an electronic design appeared on the left-hand screen in front of him. “Yes, sir, that’s it.”

“Let’s have a look at him.”

“He got permission, sir, to run the fire sprinkler system all the time. It seems he comes from a rain-world.”

“Try, anyhow.”

“Yes, sir.” The subchief whistled a call to the board.

The picture dissolved, whirled and resolved itself into the image of a dark room. There seemed to be a bundle of wet rags in one corner, out of which a well-shaped human hand protruded.

“Nasty type,” said the chief, “and probably poisonous. Knock him out for exactly one hour. We’ll be getting orders meanwhile.”

Two girls talking.

“…and I will tell you the biggest secret in the whole world, if you will never, never tell anyone.”

“I’ll bet it’s not much of a secret. You don’t have to tell me.”

“I’ll never tell you then. Never.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Really, if you even suspected it, you would be mad with curiosity.”

“If you want to tell me, you can tell me.”

“But it’s a secret.”

“All right, I’ll never tell anybody.”

“That man from the stars. He’s going to marry me.”

“You? That’s ridiculous.”

“Why is it so ridiculous? He’s bought my dower right already.”

“I know it’s ridiculous. There’s something wrong.”

“I don’t see why you should think he doesn’t like me if he has already bought my dower rights.”

“Fool! I know it’s ridiculous, because he has bought mine.”

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

“Both of us?”

“What for?”

“Search me.”

“Maybe he is going to put us both in the same harem. Wouldn’t that be romantic?”

“They don’t have harems in Old North Australia. All they do is live like prudish old farmers and raise stroon and murder anybody at all that even gets near them.”

“That sounds bad.”

“Let’s go to the police.”

“You know, he’s hurt our feelings. Maybe we can make him pay extra for buying our dower rights if he doesn’t mean to use them.”

A man, drunk.

“I will get drunk every night and I will have musicians to play me to sleep and I will have all the money I need and it won’t be that play money out of a barrel but it will be real money registered in the computer and I will make everybody do what I say and I know he will do it for me because my mother was named MacArthur in her genetic code before everybody got numbers and you have no call to laugh at me because his name really is MacArthur McBan the eleventh and I am probably the closest friend and relative he has on Earth…”

Rod McBan left the Department Store of Hearts’ Desires simply, humbly; he carried a package of books, wrapped in dustproofing paper, and he looked like any other first-class cat-man messenger. The human beings in the market were still making their uproar, their smells of food, spices, and odd objects, but he walked so calmly and so straightforwardly through their scattered groups that even the robot police, weapons on the buzz, paid no attention to him.

When he had come across the Thieves’ Market going the other way with C’mell and A’gentur he had been ill at ease. As a Mister and Owner from Old North Australia, he had been compelled to keep his external dignity, but he had not felt ease within his heart. These people were strange, his destination had been unfamiliar, and the problems of wealth and survival lay heavy upon him.

Now, it was all different. Cat-man he might still be on the outside, but on the inside he once again felt his proper pride of home and planet.

And more.

He felt calm, down to the very tips of his nerve endings.

The hiering-spieking device should have alerted him, excited him: it did not. As he walked through the market, he noticed that very few of the Earth people were communicating with one another telepathically. They preferred to babble in their loud airborne language, of which they had not one but many kinds, with the Old Common Tongue serving as a referent to those who had been endowed with different kinds of ancient language by the processes of the Rediscovery of Man. He even heard Ancient Inglish, the Queen’s Own Language, sounding remarkably close to his own spoken language of Norstrilian. These things caused neither stimulation nor excitement, not even pity. He had his own problems, but they were no longer the problems of wealth or of survival. Somehow he had a confidence that a hidden, friendly power in the universe would take care of him, if he took care of others. He wanted to get Eleanor out of trouble, to disembarrass the Hon. Sec., to see Lavinia, to reassure Doris, to say a good goodbye to C’mell, to get back to his sheep, to protect his computer, and to keep the Lord Redlady away from his bad habit of killing other people lawfully on too slight an occasion for manslaughter.

One of the robot police, a little more perceptive than the others, watched this cat-man who walked with preternatural assurance through the crowds of men, but “C’roderick” did nothing but enter the market from one side, thread his way through it, and leave at the other side, still carrying his package; the robot turned away: his dreadful, milky eyes, always ready for disorder and death, scanned the marketplace again and again with fatigue-free vigilance.

Rod went down the ramp and turned right.

There was the underpeople commissary with the bear-man cashier. The cashier remembered him.

“It’s been a long day, cat-sir, since I saw you. Would you like another special order of fish?”

“Where’s my girl?” said Rod bluntly.

“C’mell?” said the bear-cashier. “She waited here a long time but then she went on and she left this message, ‘Tell my man C’rod that he should eat before following me, but that when he has eaten he can either follow me by going to Upshaft Four, Ground Level, Hostel of the Singing Birds, Room Nine, where I am taking care of an offworld visitor, or he can send a robot to me and I will come to him.’ Don’t you think, cat-sir, that I’ve done well, remembering so complicated a message?” The bear-man flushed a little and the edge went off his pride as he confessed, for the sake of some abstract honesty, “Of course, that address part, I wrote that down. It would be very bad and very confusing if I sent you to the wrong address in people’s country. Somebody might burn you down if you came into an unauthorized corridor.”