"I have no idea, Mr. Sollenar. But I know Cortwright Burr's character.
And isn't that he, seated there in the corner? The light is poor, but
I think he's recognizable."
Across the lounge, Burr raised his head and looked into Sollenar's
eyes. He raised a hand near his face, perhaps merely to signify
greeting. Rufus Sollenar faced front.
"A worthy opponent, Mr. Sollenar," Ermine said. "A persevering,
unforgiving, ingenious man. And yet--" Ermine seemed a little touched
by bafflement. "And yet it seems to me, Mr. Sollenar, that he got you
running rather easily. What _did_ happen between you, after my advisory
call?"
Sollenar turned a terrible smile on Ermine. "I shot him to pieces. If
you'd peel his face, you'd see."
Ermine sighed. "Up to this moment, I had thought perhaps you might
still salvage your affairs."
"Pity, Mr. Ermine? Pity for the insane?"
"Interest. I can take no part in your world. Be grateful, Mr. Sollenar.
I am not the same gullible man I was when I signed my contract with
IAB, so many years ago."
Sollenar laughed. Then he stole a glance at Burr's corner.
* * * * *
The ship came down at Abernathy Field, in Aresia, the Terrestrial
city. Industrialized, prefabricated, jerry-built and clamorous, the
storm-proofed buildings huddled, but huddled proudly, at the desert's
edge.
Low on the horizon was the Martian settlement--the buildings so
skillfully blended with the landscape, so eroded, so much abandoned
that the uninformed eye saw nothing. Sollenar had been to Mars--on
a tour. He had seen the natives in their nameless dwelling place;
arrogant, venomous and weak. He had been told, by the paid guide, they
trafficked with Earthmen as much as they cared to, and kept to their
place on the rim of Earth's encroachment, observing.
"Tell me, Ermine," Sollenar said quietly as they walked across the
terminal lobby. "You're to kill me, aren't you, if I try to go on
without you?"
"A matter of procedure, Mr. Sollenar," Ermine said evenly. "We cannot
risk the investment capital of so many IAB members."
Sollenar sighed. "If I were any other member, how I would commend you,
Mr. Ermine! Can we hire a car for ourselves, then, somewhere nearby?"
"Going out to see the engineers?" Ermine asked. "Who would have thought
they'd have something valuable for sale?"
"I want to show them something," Sollenar said.
"What thing, Mr. Sollenar?"
They turned the corner of a corridor, with branching hallways here and
there, not all of them busy. "Come here," Sollenar said, nodding toward
one of them.
They stopped out of sight of the lobby and the main corridor. "Come
on," Sollenar said. "A little further."
"No," Ermine said. "This is farther than I really wish. It's dark here."
"Wise too late, Mr. Ermine," Sollenar said, his arms flashing out.
One palm impacted against Ermine's solar plexus, and the other against
the muscle at the side of his neck, but not hard enough to kill. Ermine
collapsed, starved for oxygen, while Sollenar silently cursed having
been cured of murder. Then Sollenar turned and ran.
Behind him Ermine's body struggled to draw breath by reflex alone.
Moving as fast as he dared, Sollenar walked back and reached the taxi
lock, pulling a respirator from a wall rack as he went. He flagged a
car and gave his destination, looking behind him. He had seen nothing
of Cortwright Burr since setting foot on Mars. But he knew that soon or
late, Burr would find him.
A few moments later Ermine got to his feet. Sollenar's car was well
away. Ermine shrugged and went to the local broadcasting station.
He commandeered a private desk, a firearm and immediate time on the IAB
interoffice circuit to Earth. When his call acknowledgement had come
back to him from his office there, he reported:
"Sollenar is enroute to the Martian city. He wants a duplicate of
Burr's device, of course, since he smashed the original when he killed
Burr. I'll follow and make final disposition. The disorientation I
reported previously is progressing rapidly. Almost all his responses
now are inappropriate. On the flight out, he seemed to be staring at
something in an empty seat. Quite often when spoken to he obviously
hears something else entirely. I expect to catch one of the next few
flights back."
There was no point in waiting for comment to wend its way back from
Earth. Ermine left. He went to a cab rank and paid the exorbitant fee
for transportation outside Aresian city limits.
* * * * *
Close at hand, the Martian city was like a welter of broken pots.
Shards of wall and roof joined at savage angles and pointed to
nothing. Underfoot, drifts of vitreous material, shaped to fit no sane
configuration, and broken to fit such a mosaic as no church would
contain, rocked and slid under Sollenar's hurrying feet.
What from Aresia had been a solid front of dun color was here a facade
of red, green and blue splashed about centuries ago and since then
weathered only enough to show how bitter the colors had once been. The
plum-colored sky stretched over all this like a frigid membrane, and
the wind blew and blew.
Here and there, as he progressed, Sollenar saw Martian arms and heads
protruding from the rubble. Sculptures.
He was moving toward the heart of the city, where some few unbroken
structures persisted. At the top of a heap of shards he turned to look
behind him. There was the dust-plume of his cab, returning to the
city. He expected to walk back--perhaps to meet someone on the road,
all alone on the Martian plain if only Ermine would forebear from
interfering. Searching the flat, thin-aired landscape, he tried to pick
out the plodding dot of Cortwright Burr. But not yet.
He turned and ran down the untrustworthy slope.
He reached the edge of the maintained area. Here the rubble was gone,
the ancient walks swept, the statues kept upright on their pediments.
But only broken walls suggested the fronts of the houses that had stood
here. Knifing their sides up through the wind-rippled sand that only
constant care kept off the street, the shadow-houses fenced his way
and the sculptures were motionless as hope. Ahead of him, he saw the
buildings of the engineers. There was no heap to climb and look to see
if Ermine followed close behind.
Sucking his respirator, he reached the building of the Martian
engineers.
A sounding strip ran down the doorjamb. He scratched his fingernails
sharply along it, and the magnified vibration, ducted throughout the
hollow walls, rattled his plea for entrance.
V
The door opened, and Martians stood looking. They were spindly-limbed
and slight, their faces framed by folds of leathery tissue. Their
mouths were lipped with horn as hard as dentures, and pursed, forever
ready to masticate. They were pleasant neither to look at nor, Sollenar
knew, to deal with. But Cortwright Burr had done it. And Sollenar
needed to do it.
"Does anyone here speak English?" he asked.
"I," said the central Martian, his mouth opening to the sound, closing
to end the reply.
"I would like to deal with you."
"Whenever," the Martian said, and the group at the doorway parted
deliberately to let Sollenar in.
Before the door closed behind him, Sollenar looked back. But the rubble
of the abandoned sectors blocked his line of sight into the desert.
"What can you offer? And what do you want?" the Martian asked. Sollenar
stood half-ringed by them, in a room whose corners he could not see in
the uncertain light.
"I offer you Terrestrial currency."
The English-speaking Martian--the Martian who had admitted to speaking
English--turned his head slightly and spoke to his fellows. There were
clacking sounds as his lips met. The others reacted variously, one of
them suddenly gesturing with what seemed a disgusted flip of his arm
before he turned without further word and stalked away, his shoulders
looking like the shawled back of a very old and very hungry woman.
"What did Burr give you?" Sollenar asked.
"Burr." The Martian cocked his head. His eyes were not multi-faceted,
but gave that impression.
"He was here and he dealt with you. Not long ago. On what basis?"
"Burr. Yes. Burr gave us currency. We will take currency from you. For
the same thing we gave him?"
"For immortality, yes."
"Im--This is a new word."
"Is it? For the secret of not dying?"
"Not dying? You think we have not-dying for sale here?" The Martian
spoke to the others again. Their lips clattered. Others left, like the
first one had, moving with great precision and very slow step, and no
remaining tolerance for Sollenar.