Citizen of the Galaxy (6 page)

Thorby looked startled, then dropped his eyes to his food. He busied himself building little mountains of mush that slumped as soon as he shaped them. Finally he said, "I wish you hadn't."

"If they picked you up, I didn't want you to have 'escaped slave' against you."

"Oh." Thorby looked thoughtful. "That's 'F&B,' isn't it? Thanks, Pop. I guess I acted kind of silly."

"Possibly. But it wasn't the punishment I was thinking of. Flogging is over quickly, and so is branding. I was thinking of a possible second offense. It's better to be shortened than to be caught again after a branding."

Thorby abandoned his mush entirely. "Pop? Just what does a lobotomy do to you?"

"Mmm . . . you might say it makes the thorium mines endurable. But let's not go into it, not at meal times. Speaking of such, if you are through, get your bowl and let's not dally. There's an auction this morning."

"You mean I can stay?"

"This is your home."

Baslim never again suggested that Thorby leave him. Manumission made no difference in their routine or relationship. Thorby did go to the Royal Archives, paid the fee and the customary gift and had a line tattooed through his serial number, the Sargon's seal tattooed beside it with book and page number of the record which declared him to be a free subject of the Sargon, entitled to taxes, military service, and starvation without let or hindrance. The clerk who did the tattooing looked at Thorby's serial number and said, "Doesn't look like a birthday job, kid. Your old man go bankrupt? Or did your folks sell you just to get shut of you?"

"None of your business!"

"Don't get smart, kid, or you'll find that this needle can hurt even more. Now give me a civil answer. I see it's a factor's mark, not a private owner's, and from the way it has spread and faded, you were maybe five or six. When and where was it?"

"I don't know. Honest I don't."

"So? That's what I tell my wife when she asks personal questions. Quit wiggling; I'm almost through. There . . . congratulations and welcome to the ranks of free men. I've been free a parcel of years now and I predict that you will find it looser but not always more comfortable."

CHAPTER 4

Thorby's leg hurt for a couple of days; otherwise manumission left his life unchanged. But he really was becoming inefficient as a beggar; a strong healthy youth does not draw the alms that a skinny child can. Often Baslim would have Thorby place him on his pitch, then send him on errands or tell him to go home and study. However, one or the other was always in the Plaza. Baslim sometimes disappeared, with or without warning; when this happened it was Thorby's duty to spend daylight hours on the pitch, noting arrivals and departures, keeping mental notes of slave auctions, and picking up information about both traffics through contacts around the port, in the wineshops, and among the unveiled women.

Once Baslim was gone for a double nineday; he was simply missing when Thorby woke up. It was much longer than he had ever been away before; Thorby kept telling himself that Pop could look out for himself, while having visions of the old man dead in a gutter. But he kept track of the doings at the Plaza, including three auctions, and recorded everything that he had seen and had been able to pick up.

Then Baslim returned. His only comment was, "Why didn't you memorize it instead of recording?"

"Well, I did. But I was afraid I would forget something, there was so much."

"Hummph!"

After that Baslim seemed even quieter, more reserved, than he had always been. Thorby wondered if he had displeased him, but it was not the sort of question Baslim answered. Finally one night the old man said, "Son, we never did settle what you are to do after I'm gone."

"Huh? But I thought we had decided that, Pop. It's my problem."

"No, I simply postponed it . . . because of your thick-headed stubbornness. But I can't wait any longer. I've got orders for you and you are going to carry them out."

"Now, wait a minute, Pop! If you think you can bully me into leaving you—"

"Shut up! I said, 'After I'm gone.' When I'm dead, I mean; not one of these little business trips . . . you are to look up a man and give him a message. Can I depend on you? Not goof off and forget it?"

"Why, of course, Pop. But I don't like to hear you talk that way. You're going to live a long time—you might even outlive me."

"Possibly. But will you shut up and listen, then do as I tell you?"

"Yes, sir."

"You'll find this man—it may take a while—and deliver this message. Then he will have something for you to do . . . I think. If he does, I want you to do exactly what he tells you to. Will you do that also?"

"Why, of course, Pop, if that's what you want."

"Count it as one last favor to an old man who tried to do right by you and would have done better had he been able. It's the very last thing I want from you, son. Don't bother to burn an offering for me at the temple, just do these two things: deliver a message and one more thing, whatever the man suggests that you do."

"I will, Pop," Thorby answered solemnly.

"All right. Let's get busy."

The "man" turned out to be any one of five men. Each was skipper of a starship, a tramp trader, not of the Nine Worlds but occasionally picking up cargoes from ports of the Nine Worlds. Thorby thought over the list. "Pop, there's only one of these ships I recall ever putting down here."

"They all have, one time or another."

"It might be a long time before one showed up."

"It might be years. But when it happens, I want the message delivered exactly."

"To any of them? Or all of them?"

"The first one who shows up."

The message was short but not easy, for it was in three languages, depending on who was to receive it, and none of the languages was among those Thorby knew. Nor did Baslim explain the words; he wanted it learned by rote in all three.

After Thorby had stumbled through the first version of the message for the seventh time Baslim covered his ears. "No, no! It won't do, son. That accent!"

"I'm doing my best," Thorby answered sullenly.

"I know. But I want the message understood. See here, do you remember a time when I made you sleepy and talked to you?"

"Huh? I get sleepy every night. I'm sleepy now."

"So much the better." Baslim put him into a light trance—with difficulty as Thorby was not as receptive as he had been as a child. But Baslim managed it, recorded the message in the sleep instructor, set it running and let Thorby listen, with post-hypnotic suggestion that he would be able to say it perfectly when he awakened.

He was able to. The second and third versions were implanted in him the following night. Baslim tested him repeatedly thereafter, using the name of a skipper and a ship to bring each version forth.

Baslim never sent Thorby out of the city; a slave required a travel permit and even a freedman was required to check in and out. But he did send him all over the metropolis. Three ninedays after Thorby had learned the messages Baslim gave him a note to deliver in the shipyard area, which was a reserve of the Sargon rather than part of the city. "Carry your freedman's tag and leave your bowl behind. If a policeman stops you, tell him you're looking for work in the yards."

"He'll think I'm crazy."

"But he'll let you through. They do use freedmen, as sweepers and such. Carry the message in your mouth. Who are you looking for?"

"A short, red-haired man," Thorby repeated, "with a big wart on the left side of his nose. He runs a lunch stand across from the main gate. No beard. I'm to buy a meat pie and slip him the message with the money."

"Right."

Thorby enjoyed the outing. He did not wonder why Pop didn't viewphone messages instead of sending him a half day's journey; people of their class did not use such luxuries. As for the royal mails, Thorby had never sent or received a letter and would have regarded the mails as a most chancy way to send a note.

His route followed one arc of the spaceport through the factory district. He relished that part of the city; there was always so much going on, so much life and noise. He dodged traffic, with truck drivers cursing him and Thorby answering with interest; he peered in each open door, wondering what all the machines were for and why commoners would stand all day in one place, doing the same thing over and over—or were they slaves? No, they couldn't be; slaves weren't allowed to touch power machinery except on plantations—that was what the riots had been about last year and the Sargon had lifted his hand in favor of the commoners.

Was it true that the Sargon never slept and that his eye could see anything in the Nine Worlds? Pop said that was nonsense, the Sargon was just a man, like anybody. But if so, how did he get to be Sargon?

He left the factories and skirted the shipyards. He had never been this far before. Several ships were in for overhaul and two small ships were being built, cradled in lacy patterns of steel. Ships made his heart lift and he wished he were going somewhere. He knew that he had traveled by starship twice—or was it three times?—but that was long ago and he didn't mean traveling in the hold of a slaver, that wasn't traveling!

He got so interested that he almost walked past the lunch stand. The main gate reminded him; it was twice as big as the others, had a guard on it, and a big sign curving over it with the seal of the Sargon on top. The lunch stand was across from it; Thorby dodged traffic pouring through the gate and went to it.

The man behind the counter was not the right man; what little hair he had was black and his nose had no wart.

Thorby walked up the road, killed a half-hour and came back. There was still no sign of his man. The counterman noticed the inspection, so Thorby stepped forward and said, "Do you have sunberry crush?"

The man looked him over. "Money?"

Thorby was used to being required to prove his solvency; he dug out the coin. The man scooped it up, opened a bottle for him. "Don't drink at the counter, I need the stools."

There were plenty of stools, but Thorby was not offended; he knew his social status. He stood back but not so far as to be accused of trying to abscond with the bottle, then made the drink last a long time. Customers came and went; he checked each, on the chance that the red-headed man might have picked this time to eat. He kept his ears cocked.

Presently the counterman looked up. "You trying to wear that bottle out?"

"Just through, thanks." Thorby came up to put the bottle down and said, "Last time I was over this way a red-headed chap was running this place."

The man looked at him. "You a friend of Red?"

"Well, not exactly. I just used to see him here, when I'd stop for a cold drink, or—"

"Let's see your permit."

"What? I don't need—" The man grabbed at Thorby's wrist. But Thorby's profession had made him adept at dodging kicks, cuffs, canes, and such; the man clutched air.

The man came around the counter, fast; Thorby ducked into traffic. He was halfway across the street and had had two narrow escapes before he realized that he was running toward the gate—and that the counterman was shouting for the guard there.

Thorby turned and started dodging traffic endwise. Fortunately it was dense; this road carried the burden of the yards. He racked up three more brushes with death, saw a side street that dead-ended into the throughway, ducked between two trucks, down the side street as fast as he could go, turned into the first alley, ran down it, hid behind an outbuilding and waited.

He heard no pursuit.

He had been chased many times before, it did not panic him. A chase was always two parts: first breaking contact, second the retiring action to divorce oneself from the incident. He had accomplished the first; now he had to get out of the neighborhood without being spotted—slow march and no suspicious moves. In losing himself he had run away from the city, turned left into the side street, turned left again into the alley; he was now almost behind the lunch stand—it had been a subconscious tactic. The chase always moved away from the center; the lunch stand was one place where they would not expect him to be. Thorby estimated that in five minutes, or ten, the counterman would be back at his job and the guard back at the gate; neither one could leave his post unwatched. Shortly, Thorby could go on through the alley and head home.

He looked around. The neighborhood was commercial land not yet occupied by factories, jumble of small shops, marginal businesses, hovels, and hopeless minor enterprise. He appeared to be in back of a very small hand laundry; there were poles and lines and wooden tubs and steam came out a pipe in the outbuilding. He knew his location now—two doors from the lunch stand; he recalled a homemade sign: "Majestic Home Laundry—
Lowest Prices."

He could cut around this building and—but better check first. He dropped flat and stuck an eye around the corner of the outbuilding, sighted back down the alley.

Oh, oh!—two patrolmen moving up the alley . . . he had been wrong, wrong! They hadn't dropped the matter, they had sent out the alarm. He pulled back and looked around. The laundry? No. The outbuilding? The patrol would check it. Nothing but to run for it—right into the arms of another patrol. Thorby knew how fast the police could put a cordon around a district. Near the Plaza he could go through their nets, but here he was in strange terrain.

His eye lit on a worn-out washtub . . . then he was under it. It was a tight fit, with knees to his chin and splinters in his spine. He was afraid that his clout was sticking out but it was too late to correct it; he heard someone coming.

Footsteps came toward the tub and he stopped breathing. Someone stepped on the tub and stood on it.

"Hi there, mother!" It was a man's voice. "You been out here long?"

"Long enough. Mind that pole, you'll knock the clothes down."

"See anything of a boy?"

"What boy?"

"Youngster, getting man-tall. Fuzz on his chin. Breech clout, no sandals."

"Somebody," the woman's voice above him answered indifferently, "came running through here like his ghost was after him. I didn't really see him—I was trying to get this pesky line up."