"Pleasure."
Sollenar opened the door slightly. Mr. Ermine stood in the cleared
street, motionless as the shadow buildings behind him. He raised one
hand in a gesture of unfelt greeting as he saw Sollenar, then put it
back on the stock of his rifle. Sollenar closed the door, and turned to
the Martian. "How much currency do you want?"
"Oh, all you have with you. You people always have a good deal with you
when you travel."
Sollenar plunged his hands into his pockets and pulled out his
billfold, his change, his keys, his jeweled radio; whatever was there,
he rummaged out onto the floor, listening to the sound of rolling coins.
"I wish I had more here," he laughed. "I wish I had the amount that man
out there is going to recover when he shoots me."
The Martian engineer cocked his head. "But your dream is over, Mr.
Sollenar," he clacked drily. "Isn't it?"
"Quite so. But you to your purposes and I to mine. Now give me one of
those projectors. And set it to predispose a situation I am about to
specify to you. Take however long it needs. The audience is a patient
one." He laughed, and tears gathered in his eyes.
* * * * *
Mr. Ermine waited, isolated from the cold, listening to hear whether
the rifle stock was slipping out of his fingers. He had no desire to
go into the Martian building after Sollenar and involve third parties.
All he wanted was to put Sollenar's body under a dated marker, with as
little trouble as possible.
Now and then he walked a few paces backward and forward, to keep
from losing muscular control at his extremities because of low skin
temperature. Sollenar must come out soon enough. He had no food supply
with him, and though Ermine did not like the risk of engaging a man
like Sollenar in a starvation contest, there was no doubt that a man
with no taste for fuel could outlast one with the acquired reflexes of
eating.
The door opened and Sollenar came out.
He was carrying something. Perhaps a weapon. Ermine let him come
closer while he raised and carefully sighted his rifle. Sollenar might
have some Martian weapon or he might not. Ermine did not particularly
care. If Ermine died, he would hardly notice it--far less than he would
notice a botched ending to a job of work already roiled by Sollenar's
break away at the space field. If Ermine died, some other SPRO agent
would be assigned almost immediately. No matter what happened, SPRO
would stop Sollenar before he ever reached Abernathy Field.
So there was plenty of time to aim an unhurried, clean shot.
Sollenar was closer, now. He seemed to be in a very agitated frame of
mind. He held out whatever he had in his hand.
It was another one of the Martian entertainment machines. Sollenar
seemed to be offering it as a token to Ermine. Ermine smiled.
"What can you offer me, Mr. Sollenar?" he said, and shot.
The golden ball rolled away over the sand. "There, now," Ermine said.
"_Now_, wouldn't you sooner be me than you? And where is the thing that
made the difference between us?"
He shivered. He was chilly. Sand was blowing against his tender face,
which had been somewhat abraded during his long wait.
He stopped, transfixed.
He lifted his head.
Then, with a great swing of his arms, he sent the rifle whirling
away. "The wind!" he sighed into the thin air. "I feel the wind." He
leapt into the air, and sand flew away from his feet as he landed. He
whispered to himself: "I feel the ground!"
He stared in tremblant joy at Sollenar's empty body. "What have you
given me?" Full of his own rebirth, he swung his head up at the sky
again, and cried in the direction of the Sun: "Oh, you squeezing,
nibbling people who made me incorruptible and thought that was the end
of me!"
With love he buried Sollenar, and with reverence he put up the marker,
but he had plans for what he might accomplish with the facts of this
transaction, and the myriad others he was privy to.
A sharp bit of pottery had penetrated the sole of his shoe and gashed
his foot, but he, not having seen it, hadn't felt it. Nor would he
see it or feel it even when he changed his stockings; for he had not
noticed the wound when it was made. It didn't matter. In a few days it
would heal, though not as rapidly as if it had been properly attended
to.
Vaguely, he heard the sound of Martians clacking behind their closed
door as he hurried out of the city, full of revenge, and reverence for
his savior.