"Mickey, don't be naughty," Joanna chided.
"Please let me see," Juli coaxed, and he brought it out, slowly, still
suspicious. It was an angled prism of crystal, star-shaped, set in a
frame which could get the star spinning like a solidopic. But it
displayed a new and comical face every time it was turned.
Mickey turned it round and round, charmed at being the center of
attention. There seemed to be dozens of faces, shifting with each spin
of the prism, human and nonhuman, all dim and slightly distorted. My own
face, Juli's, Joanna's came out of the crystal surface, not a reflection
but a caricature.
A choked sound from Juli made me turn in dismay. She had let herself
drop to the floor and was sitting there, white as death, supporting
herself with her two hands.
"Race! Find out where he got that--that _thing_!"
I bent and shook her. "What's the matter with you?" I demanded. She had
lapsed into the dazed, sleepwalking horror of this morning. She
whispered, "It's not a toy. Rindy had one. Joanna, _where did he get
it_?" She pointed at the shining thing with an expression of horror
which would have been laughable had it been less real, less filled with
terror.
Joanna cocked her head to one side and wrinkled her forehead,
reflectively. "Why, I don't know, now you come to ask me. I thought
maybe one of the _chaks_ had given it to Mickey. Bought it in the
bazaar, maybe. He loves it. Do get up off the floor, Juli!"
Juli scrambled to her feet. She said, "Rindy had one. It--it terrified
me. She would sit and look at it by the hour, and--I told you about it,
Race. I threw it out once, and she woke up and screamed. She shrieked
for hours and hours and she ran out in the dark and dug for it in the
trash pile, where I'd buried it. She went out in the dark, broke all her
fingernails, but she dug it out again." She checked herself, staring at
Joanna, her eyes wide in appeal.
"Well, dear," said Joanna with mild, rebuking kindness, "you needn't be
so upset. I don't think Mickey's so attached to it as all that, and
anyhow I'm not going to throw it away." She patted Juli reassuringly on
the shoulder, then gave Mickey a little shove toward the door and turned
to follow him. "You'll want to talk alone before Race leaves. Good luck,
wherever you're going, Race." She held out her hand forthrightly.
"And don't worry about Juli," she added in an undertone. "We'll take
good care of her."
When I came back to Juli she was standing by the window, looking through
the oddly filtered glass that dimmed the red sun to orange. "Joanna
thinks I'm crazy, Race."
"She thinks you're upset."
"Rindy's an odd child, a real Dry-towner. But it's not my imagination,
Race, it's not. There's something--" Suddenly she sobbed aloud again.
"Homesick, Juli?"
"I was, a little, the first years. But I was happy, believe me." She
turned her face to me, shining with tears. "You've got to believe I
never regretted it for a minute."
"I'm glad," I said dully. _That made it just fine._
"Only that toy--"
"Who knows? It might be a clue to something." The toy had reminded me of
something, too, and I tried to remember what it was. I'd seen nonhuman
toys in the Kharsa, even bought them for Mack's kids. When a single man
is invited frequently to a home with five youngsters, it's about the
only way he can repay that hospitality, by bringing the children odd
trifles and knicknacks. But I had never seen anything quite like this
one, until--
--Until yesterday. The toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa, the
one who had fled into the shrine of Nebran and vanished. He had had half
a dozen of those prism-and-star sparklers.
I tried to call up a mental picture of the little toy-seller. I didn't
have much luck. I'd seen him only in that one swift glance from beneath
his hood. "Juli, have you ever seen a little man, like a _chak_ only
smaller, twisted, hunchbacked? He sells toys--"
She looked blank. "I don't think so, although there are dwarf _chaks_ in
the Polar Cities. But I'm sure I've never seen one."
"It was just an idea." But it was something to think about. A toy-seller
had vanished. Rakhal, before disappearing, had smashed all Rindy's toys.
And the sight of a plaything of cunningly-cut crystal had sent Juli into
hysterics.
"I'd better go before it's too dark," I said. I buckled the final clasp
of my shirtcloak, fitted my skean another notch into it, and counted the
money Mack had advanced me for expenses. "I want to get into the Kharsa
and hunt up the caravan to Shainsa."
"You're going there first?"
"Where else?"
Juli turned, leaning one hand against the wall. She looked frail and
ill, years older than she was. Suddenly she flung her thin arms around
me, and a link of the chain on her fettered hands struck me hard, as she
cried out, "Race, Race, he'll kill you! How can I live with that on my
conscience too?"
"You can live with a hell of a lot on your conscience." I disengaged her
arms firmly from my neck. A link of the chain caught on the clasp of my
shirtcloak, and again something snapped inside me. I grasped the chain
in my two hands and gave a mighty heave, bracing my foot against the
wall. The links snapped asunder. A flying end struck Juli under the eye.
I ripped at the seals of the jeweled cuffs, tore them from her arms,
find threw the whole assembly into a corner, where it fell with a
clash.
"Damn it," I roared, "that's over! You're never going to wear _those_
things again!" Maybe after six years in the Dry-towns, Juli was
beginning to guess what those six years behind a desk had meant to me.
"Juli, I'll find your Rindy for you, and I'll bring Rakhal in alive. But
don't ask more than that. Just _alive_. And don't ask me how."
He'd be alive when I got through with him. Sure, he'd be alive.
Just.