It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled--shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"_Mrs._," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out--even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
* * * * *
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your--your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my--of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise--I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps--and this was the most likely hypothesis--he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course--so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime--for it was crime in law as well as
nature--in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
* * * * *
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits--there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent--as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law--they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns--you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places--hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.