Calvin M. Knox (5 page)

"What about Miss Estil?" he asked.

"She's
vanished," was the twittering reply. "Her bed wasn't slept in all
night. She left her note with her father, saying she was running away—running
away with the man she loved."

v.

The hubbub
at the Embassy lasted well into the night.
Catton stayed out of the foreground. He was interrogated briefly by Barnevelt,
the head of the Embassy security staff, who looked flustered and chagrined, and
then he was interviewed all over again by a Morilaru crime-prevention officer
who seemed not too terribly interested in the disappearance at all.

Carton told the same story word-for-word to
both of them. He had been on Morilar only a couple of days, had met the
Ambassador's daughter twice,
had
had a brief conversation
with her at the ball the night before. She had talked obliquely of being in
love, but Catton could provide no details. After all, he had hardly known the
girl.

The
interrogation over, Catton made his way up to his room and settled down. He was
puzzled and not happy over the girl's disappearance. Doveril was a criminal, as
Estil had suspected—but yet she had run away with him the very day after she
had asked Catton to check on Dov-eril's record. Perhaps she had had a sudden
change of heart, and decided to elope before Catton could provide her with the
information she did not want to have; or else there had been some coercion
involved in her abrupt disappearance. Catton hoped not. But for the sake of his
own investigations he decided to keep quiet about those aspects of die case he
had data on.

The
next day he kept his appointment with Nuuri Gryain, meeting her once again at
The Five Planets shortly after noon. It was a swelteringly hot day. Catton was
growing accustomed to the oven heat of Dyelleran.

The
Morilaru woman was waiting for him at the table nearest the door. She was bent
over a local news-sheet, puzzling out the wedge-shaped characters. As he came
in she looked up, smiling coldly.

"Morning greetings,
Catton."

"Hello, Nuuri. What's
in the paper?"

"That's
what I'm trying to figure out. My reading isn't so good, Earthman." She
chuckled. "I find this item interesting. Can you read our language?"

"Well
enough to decipher a newspaper," Catton said. She shoved the sheet over to
him and tapped a front-page story meaningfully. Catton frowned. The headline
said, clearly enough,
DAUGHTER
OF TERRAN AMBASSADOR VAN-

1SHES.
It was an article about
Estil Seeman. He read slowly though it. About all it said was that the Earthgirl
had disappeared yesterday, leaving a note for her father—contents
unspecified—and that a galaxy-wide search was being instituted for her.

"It
seems Doveril has lost a pupil," Nuuri commented when Catton looked up.

The
Earthman frowned. "It would seem that way. Think shell be found?"

"Who
knows? The galaxy is a big place; a young girl can lose herself easily enough.
I doubt they'll ever find her."

"Enough
talk of the girl," Catton said. "You know why I'm here today."

"Of course.
I'll take you where you can buy what you're
looking for. But first a disguise is in order. Come—let's leave."

Catton followed her out into the street,
which was all but empty because of the mid-day heat. She strode purposefully
along at a rapid pace, turning comers twice, and stopped finally in front of a
shabby shop with darkened windows.

She threw open the door.

"In here," she
muttered to Catton.

The
Earthman stepped inside. An old Morilaru, so old his skin had faded from its
one-time purple to a musty grayish-blue, sprawled dozing behind a counter.
Nuuri slapped the flat of her hand down on the wood inches from his face. The
Morilaru awoke with a start.

"Nuuri!
What-"

"A job for you, you old fool." She
indicated Catton. "Turn him into a Dargonid, and do a good job of it for
your money."
"Right now?"

"This very
moment," Nuuri snapped.

The
ancient Morilaru elbowed himself wearily upward, beckoned to Catton, and
shambled off into a back room partitioned from the front of the shop by a
frayed and dilapidated curtain of glass beads. Nuuri followed, standing in the
doorway with her arms knotted together across her chest, hands gripping
shoulder-spikes in a typical Morilaru posture of relaxation.

Carton
blinked uneasily. "Just how permanent is this transformation going to
be?"

"It
will take fifteen minutes to make the change, half that time to restore
you," the old man said. "It is a simple enough process. Remove your
clothes."

Carton
eyed Nuuri questioningly, but she made no motion to leave. He shrugged and
stripped off his clothing, tossing it carelessly in a comer. The Morilaru
selected a spraysqueeze vial from a rack and advanced on Catton.

"Shut your eyes."

Catton
did so. A moment later he smelled an acrid chemical odor and felt a faint
coolness playing about his body. The application took several minutes. When it
was complete, Catton opened his eyes again and saw that his body was now
colored iron-gray from head to foot.

The rest of the disguise followed in short
order. Catton was fitted for contact lenses that provided him with yellow
pupils on a black background; another spray turned his hair from brown to blue;
lovingly-applied strips of collodion accented his cheekbones, tripled the
length of his earlobes, and gave a downward slant to his eyebrows. The final
touch was the clothing; the Morilaru stored Carton's Earthman clothes in a
locker and gave him the brief tunic of a Dargonid.

Nuuri
came forward, jabbed a finger against the flesh of Carton's shoulder, and
scrubbed it up and down to test the permanence of the color-spray. It held
fast. She nodded in critical approval.

"A fine job.
Catton, you look like a native-born of
Dargon!"

"Will it convince your friends?"

"I'm
sure of it." She nodded at the old man. "Pay him, Catton."

"How much?"

"Five thrones?" the old man
suggested hopefully.

Nuuri
snorted. "Give him a hundred units
now,
and a
hundred more when we return—for the safekeeping of your clothes. Two thrones
is
more than enough."

Disappointment was evident on the venerable
Morilaru's seamed face. But Carton did not care to cross Nuuri. He took two
fifty-unit pieces from his money belt and gave them to the Morilaru.

"Here's a throne for you," Carton
said.
"Another for you later in the day."

"My gratitude, good
sir."

"Come on," Nuuri said. "Let's
get out of here."

They
left through a back exit and walked briskly through the crooked, vile-smelling
streets. Carton was steaming beneath his layer of coloring, but he forced
himself to keep pace with the girl.

"What's my name?" he asked.
"And why am I here?"

Nuuri
thought for a moment. "You're—ah—Zord Karlsrunig. I once knew a Dargonid
of that name. You're a merchant here on business, leaving for Dargon at the end
of the week. Don't worry about the other details. Hide behind your passion for
anonymity. The purchaser has certain rights of silence too, you know."

"Zord
Karlsrunig," Catton repeated.
"All right.
And the story is that I'm in the market for a hypnojewel, and am willing to pay
cash down for it."

"Yes.
We'll make all the necessary negotiations. Then you'll tell them you have to
return to the bank to get the cash. Instead, of course, you notify the
authorities."

Some
minutes later, they paused in front of another saloon, this one emblazoned with
the name, The Deeper Draught. It was smaller and, if anything, dingier-looking
than the other bar, The Five Planets, where Catton had first met Nuuri.

"Wait
here and don't get into trouble," Nuuri whispered. "I'll be back in a
moment."

Carton nodded. The alien woman went inside.
He waited at the door, trying to rehearse his lines, struggling to don the
character of a Dargonid. He would have to introduce a slight guttural quality
into his speech, and perhaps adopt some clumsy locutions of construction. He
would have to remember never to display a characteristically Terran
posture—crossing his legs was out,
and steepling his
fingertips. Dargonids—how the devil did Dargonids hold themselves, he
wondered?—Dargonids customarily sat with one hand on their kneecap, the other
gripping the first arm's elbow. It would be awkward for him, but he knew he had
better perform the gesture as if he had been doing it all his life.

Nuuri
returned a few moments later. She looked angry. "They're all there—except
Doverill Except the one I was most anxious to have apprehended!"

That
was no surprise, Catton thought, in view of the fact that the Morilaru music
teacher was by now many light-years away, bound outward for—where—with his
beloved. But he did not want Nuuri to know that.

"Take me inside anyway," he said.
"We'll round up this batch whether Doveril's here or not."

"But
I don't care if the others are arrested. I'm.
only
interested
in arranging Doveril's downfall."

Catton
scowled. "I'll see to it that Doveril is implicated somehow." His
hand darted out, seized her wrist. "You've taken me this far. Don't back
out now. Well catch these, and one of them will confess Doveril's complicity."

Sighing, she said,
"Very well. Come inside with me."

They
passed through a poorly lit, foul-smelling saloon whose only customers were two
bedraggled Morilaru drabs, and he followed her up a creaking stairway to the
upper floor of the tavern, where, inn-fashion, there were a few rooms available
for lodging.

Nuuri paused in front of the furthermost of
the rooms and knocked twice, then twice more. The door opened. A Morilaru head
popped warily out, looked around, stared curiously at Catton.

"You may enter."

Catton
followed Nuuri into the room. There were five male Morilaru there, of
indeterminate ages. The Earthman realized with a sudden jolt of shock that one
of the aliens was Gonnimor
Cleeren,
the friend of
Doveril's who had been present at the music-lesson the afternoon of the
Ambassadors ball. Cleeren was staring at Catton keenly, but gave no outward
indication that he had penetrated the Earthman's disguise.

One of the other Morilaru said, "You
speak our language, Dargonid?"

"Well enough," Catton answered,
putting the accent on the wrong syllable in each of the two Morilaru words.
"I understand you, and my money speaks even
more well
for me, Morilaru."

"The woman tells us you wish to
buy."

Catton
tipped his head to one side, a Dargonid affirmative gesture. Thank God, he
thought, that he had once carried out an assignment on Dargon. It had been
years ago, but he still remembered many behavior patterns of that predominantly
mercantile world.

"I
wish to buy, yes.
And you, to sell.
But can you give
immediate delivery? I return to Dargon shortly."

"If you can pay, we
can deliver."

"My
account is large at the great bank," Catton said.
"Though
I will not be cheated on the price."

"The price," said another of the
Morilaru,
"is ten thousand thrones."

Catton
inserted a finger in his mouth to show annoyance. After a brief silence he
said, "It is much for a piece of polished stone. I will give you six
thousand."

"Ten
thousand," repeated the Morilaru, "and not a unit less."

Carton shook his head. "Six thousand is
too high. But I will extend my price another few thousand units. I offer you
six thousand five hundred thrones."