Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (92 page)

If it did, it was efficient.

Now to see.

There was no sense in using the Terran language except perhaps as an incantation when one was necessary. Nobody here understood Terran, to them it was just an alien gabble. Besides, his delaying tactic of pretending to be slow to learn the local tongue was no longer effective. They knew that he could speak it almost as well as they could themselves.

Holding the loop assembly in his left hand, he went to the door, applied his ear to the closed spyhole, listened for the sound of patrolling feet. It was twenty minutes before heavy boots came clumping toward him.

“Are you there?” he called, not too loudly but enough to be heard. “Are you there?”

Backing off fast, he lay on his belly on the floor and stood the loop six inches in front of his face.

“Are you there?”

The spyhole clicked open, the light came on, a sour eye looked through.

Completely ignoring the watcher and behaving with the air of one far too absorbed in his task to notice that he was being observed, Leeming spoke through the coiled loop.

“Are you there?”

“What are you doing?” demanded the guard.

Recognizing the other’s voice, Leeming decided that for once luck must be turning his way. This character, a chump named Marsin, knew enough to point a gun and fire it, or, if unable to do so, yell for help. In all other matters he was not of the elite. In fact Marsin would have to think twice to pass muster as a half-wit.

“What are you doing?” insisted Marsin, raising his voice.

“Calling,” said Leeming, apparently just waking up to the other’s existence.

“Calling? Calling what or where?”

“Mind your own quilpole business,” Leeming ordered, giving a nice display of impatience. Concentrating attention upon the loop, he turned it round a couple of degrees. “Are you there?”

“It is forbidden,” insisted Marsin.

Letting go the loud sigh of one compelled to bear fools gladly, Leeming said, “What is forbidden?”

“To call.”

“Don’t display your ignorance. My species is
always
allowed to call. Where would we be if we couldn’t,
enk?”

That got Marsin badly tangled. He knew nothing about Earthmen or what peculiar privileges they considered essential to life. Neither could he give a guess as to where they’d be without them.

Moreover, he dared not enter the cell and put a stop to whatever was going on. An armed guard was strictly prohibited from going into a cell by himself and that rule had been rigid ever since a fed-up Rigellian had slugged one, snatched his gun and killed six while trying to make a break.

If he wanted to interfere he’d have to go and see the sergeant of the guard and demand that something be done to stop pink-skinned aliens making noises through loops. The sergeant was an unlovely character with a tendency to shout the most intimate details of personal histories all over the landscape. It was the witching hour between midnight and dawn, a time when the sergeant’s liver malfunctioned most audibly. And lastly he, Marsin, had proved himself a misbegotten faplap far too often.

“You will cease calling and go to sleep,” ordered Marsin with a touch of desperation, “or in the morning I shall report your insubordination to the officer of the day.”

“Go ride a camel,” Leeming invited. He rotated the loop in manner of one making careful adjustment. “Are you there?”

“I have warned you,” Marsin persisted, his only visible eye popping at the loop.

“Fibble off!” roared Leeming.

Marsin shut the spyhole and fibbled off.

As was inevitable after being up most of the night, Leeming overslept. His awakening was abrupt and rude.

The door burst open with a loud crash, three guards plunged in followed by an officer.

Without ceremony the prisoner was jerked off the bench, stripped and shoved into the corridor stark naked. The guards then searched through the clothing while the officer minced around watching them. He was, decided Leeming, definitely a fairy.

Finding nothing in the clothes, they started examining the cell. Right off one of them discovered the loop-assembly and gave it to the officer, who held it gingerly as if it were a bouquet suspected of being a bomb.

Another guard trod on the second piece of wood, kicked it aside and ignored it. They tapped the floor and walls, seeking hollow sounds. Dragging the bench away from the wall, they looked over the other side of it but failed to turn it upside-down and see anything underneath. However, they handled the bench so much that it got on Leeming’s nerves and he decided that now was the time to take a walk. He started along the corridor, a picture of nonchalant nudity.

The officer let go a howl of rage and pointed. The guard erupted from the cell, bawled orders to halt. A fourth guard, attracted by the noise, came round the bend of the corridor, aimed his gun threateningly. Leeming turned round and ambled back.

He stopped as he reached the officer, who was now outside the cell and fuming with temper. Striking a modest pose, he said, “Look
—September Morn. ”

It meant nothing to the other, who flourished the loop, did a little dance of rage and yelled, “What is this thing?”

“My property,” declared Leeming with naked dignity.

“You are not entitled to possess it. As a prisoner of war you are not allowed to have anything.”

“Who says so?”

“I
say so!” informed the fairy somewhat violently.

“Who’re you?” asked Leeming, showing no more than academic interest.

“By the Great Blue Sun, I’ll show you who I am! Guards, take him inside and—”

“You’re not the boss,” interrupted Leeming, impressively cocksure. “The Commandant is the boss here. I say so and he says so. If you want to dispute it, let’s go ask him.”

The guards hesitated, assumed expressions of chronic uncertainty. They were unanimous in passing the buck to the officer. That worthy was taken aback. Staring incredulously at the prisoner, he became wary.

“Are you asserting that the Commandant has given permission for you to have this object?”

“I’m telling you that he hasn’t refused permission. Also that it is not for you to give it or refuse it. You roll in your own hog-pen and don’t try usurp the position of your betters.”

“Hog-pen? What is that?”

“You wouldn’t know.”

“I shall consult the Commandant about this.” Deflated and unsure of himself, the officer turned to the guards. “Put him back in his cell and give him his breakfast as usual.”

“How about returning my property,
enk
?” Leeming prompted.

“Not until I have seen the Commandant.”

They hustled him into the cell. He got dressed. Breakfast came, the inevitable bowl of slop. He cussed the guards for not making it bacon and eggs. That was deliberate and of malice aforethought. A display of self-assurance and some aggressiveness was necessary to push the game along.

For some reason the tutor did not appear, so he spent the morning furbishing his fluency with the aid of the books. At mid-day they let him into the yard and he could detect no evidence of a special watch being kept upon him while he mingled with the crowd.

The Rigellian whispered, “I got the opportunity to take another coil of wire. So I grabbed it in case you wanted more.” He slipped it across, saw it vanish into a pocket. “That’s all I intend to steal. Don’t ask me again. One can tempt fate too often.”

“What’s the matter? Is it getting risky? Are they suspicious of you?”

“Everything is all right so far.” He glanced cautiously around. “It some of the other prisoners learn that I’m pinching wire they’ll start taking it too. They’ll snatch it in the hope of discovering what I intend to do with it, so that they can use it for the same purpose. Two years in prison is two years of education in unmitigated selfishness. Everybody is always on the watch for some advantage, real or imaginary, that he can grab off somebody else. This lousy life brings out the worst in us as well as the best.”

"I see."

”A couple of small coils will never be missed,” the other went on. “But once the rush starts the stuff will evaporate in wholesale quantities. And that’s when all hell will break loose. I daren’t take the chance of creating a general ruckus.”

“Meaning you fellows can’t afford to risk a detailed search right now?” suggested Leeming pointedly.

The Rigellian shied like a frightened horse. “I didn’t say that.”

“I can put two and two together as expertly as anyone else.” Leeming favored him with a reassuring wink. “I can also keep my mouth shut.”

He watched the other mooch away. Then he sought around the yard for more pieces of wood but failed to find any. Oh, well, no matter. At a pinch he could do without. Come to that, he’d darned well have to do without.

The afternoon was given over to linguistic studies on which he was able to concentrate without interruption. That was one advantage of being in the clink, perhaps the only one. A fellow could educate himself. When the light became too poor and the first pale stars showed through the barred opening in the wall he kicked the door until the sound of it thundered all over the block.

Feet came running and the spyhole opened. It was Marsin again.

“So it’s you, faplap,” greeted Leeming. He let go a snort of contempt. “You had to blab, of course. You had to curry favor by reporting me to the officer.” He drew himself up to full height. “Well, I am sorry for you. I’d fifty times rather be me than you.”

“Sorry for me?” Marsin registered confusion. “Why?”

“Because you are going to suffer.”

“I
am?”

“Yes, you! Not immediately, if that is any consolation. First of all it is necessary for you to undergo the normal period of horrid anticipation. But eventually you are going to suffer. I don’t expect you to believe me. All you need do is wait and see.

“It was my duty,” explained Marsin semi-apologetically.

“That fact will be considered in mitigation,” Leeming assured, “and your agonies will be modified in due proportion.”

“I don’t understand,” complained Marsin, developing a node of worry somewhere within the solid bone.

“You will—some dire day. So also will those stinking faplaps who beat me up in the yard. You can inform them from me that their quota of pain is being arranged. ” “I am not supposed to talk to you,” said Marsin, dimly perceiving that the longer he stood by the spyhole the bigger the fix he got into. “I shall have to go.”

“All right. But I want something.”

“What is it?”

“I want my bopamagilvie—that thing the officer took away.”

“You cannot have it unless the Commandant gives permission. He is absent today and will not return before tomorrow morning.”

“That’s no use. I want it now.”

“You cannot have it now.”

“Forget it.” Leeming gave an airy wave of his hand. “I’ll create another one.”

“It is forbidden,” reminded Marsin very feebly.

“Ha-ha!” said Leeming.

After darkness had grown complete he got the wire from under the bench and manufactured a second whatzit to all intents identical with the first one. Twice he was interrupted but not caught.

That job finished, he up-ended the bench and climbed it. Taking the newly received coil of wire from his pocket, he tied one end tightly around the middle bar and hung the coil outside the window-gap. With spit and dust he camouflaged the bright tin surface of the one visible strand, made sure that it could not be seen at farther than nose-tip distance. He slid down, replaced the bench. The window-gap was so high in the wall that all of its ledge and the bottom three inches of its bars were invisible from below.

Going to the door, he listened and at the right time called, “Are you there?” When the light came on and the spyhole had opened he got the instinctive feeling that a bunch of them were clustered outside the door, also that the eye in the hole was not Marsin’s.

Ignoring everything else, he rotated the loop slowly and carefully, meanwhile calling, “Are you there? Are you there?”

After traversing about forty degrees he paused, gave his voice a tone of intense satisfaction and exclaimed, “So you are there at last! Why don’t you keep within easy reach so that we can talk without me having to summon you through a loop?” Going silent, he put on the expression of one who listens intently. The eye in the spyhole widened, got shoved away, was replaced by another.

“Well,” said Leeming, settling himself down for a cozy gossip, “I’ll point them out to you first chance I get and leave you to deal with them as you think fit. Let’s switch to our own language. There are too many big ears around for my liking.” Taking a deep breath, he rattled off at tremendous speed and without pause, “Out sprang the web and opened wide the mirror cracked from side to side the curse has come upon me cried the Lady of—”

Out sprang the door and opened wide and two guards almost fell headlong into the cell in their eagerness to make a quick snatch. Two more posed outside with the fairy glowering between them. Marsin mooned fearfully in the background.

A guard grabbed the loop-assembly, yelled, “I’ve got it!” and rushed out. His companion followed at full gallop. Both seemed hysterical with excitement. There was a pause of ten seconds before the door shut. Leeming exploited the fact. Pointing the two middle fingers of one hand at the group, he made horizontal stabbing motions toward them. Giving ’em the Devil’s Horns they’d called it when he was a kid. The classic gesture of donating the evil eye.

“There you are,” he declaimed dramatically, talking to something that nobody else could see. “Those are the scaly-skinned bums I’ve been telling you about. They want trouble. They like it, they love it, they dote on it. Give them all they can take.”

The whole bunch managed to look alarmed before the door cut them from sight with a vicious slam. Listening at the spyhole, he heard them tramp away muttering steadily between themselves.

Within ten minutes he had broken a length off the coil hanging from the window-bars, restored the spit and dust disguise of the holding strand. Half an hour later he had another neatly made bopamagilvie. Practice was making him expert in the swift and accurate manufacture of these things.