The little lawyer took a deep breath. "Mr. Lockard, I'm sorry, but I'm
afraid I really cannot do anything for you."
Gabe rose. "Okay," he said softly. "If that's your pattern, I'll just
put a call through to Ortiz." He turned to go.
"Wait a minute!" the lawyer cried.
Lockard stopped.
"Well?"
Gorman swallowed. "Possibly I may be able to do something for you,
after all.... I just happened to have heard Jed Carmody is in town."
Gabriel looked at him inquiringly.
"Oh ... I thought you might have heard the name. He's a killer, I
understand, a professional exterminator ... on the run right now. But
this is his head-quarters--I'm told--and he probably would come here.
And he might be short on folio. Naturally, I've never had any dealings
with him myself."
"Naturally," Gabe mocked.
"But I'll see what I can do." Gorman's voice was pleading. "You'll
wait, Mr. Lockard, won't you? It may be a little while before I can
find out where he is. This isn't--" his voice thinned--"at all my type
of pattern, you know."
"I'll wait ... a reasonable length of time."
The door closed behind him. Descending pneumo tubes hissed outside.
The little lawyer rose and went to the window--a flat expanse of
transparent plastic set immovably into the wall of the building, an old
building, an old town, an old planet. As he watched the street below, a
faint half-smile curved his almost feminine mouth. He went back to the
desk and punched a code on the vidiphone.
* * * * *
Gabriel crossed the street to the little cafe with the gold letters
FOR HUMANS ONLY embedded in the one-way glass front; this was
a town that adhered rigidly to the ancient privileges of the indigenous
species. He entered as the shrillness of a vidiphone bell cut through
the babble inside without in any way checking it. After a moment, his
eyes grew accustomed to the dimness and he could see his wife waiting
at a table near the entrance, daintily peeling a tigi fruit.
"Well," she asked as she put a plump pink section into her mouth, "did
you hire your killer?"
"Shhh, not so loud!" He threw himself into the chair next to hers. "Do
you want me to get into trouble...? And I wouldn't put it past you,"
he continued without waiting for an answer. "Remember, it's your boy
friend's body that gets into trouble."
"He's not my boy friend."
A waiter beckoned from the vidiphone booth to someone sitting in the
dark shadows at the rear of the restaurant.
"Where is he?" Gabriel exclaimed suddenly. "He must be here somewhere.
Tell me which he is, Helen?"
His hand gripped her arm cruelly, as he swung her around on her chair
to face each part of the room. "Is it that guy over there...? That
one...? That one?"
She could not repress a start of surprise as her eyes met those of the
thin-featured young man entering the vidiphone booth. He returned her
gaze with somber interest.
Gabe relaxed. "So that's the one, eh? Not very formidable. Looks the
way he always should have looked." He lit a milgot. "I'll get Gorman to
tip off the zarquil boys--only one game in this parish, I'm told--that
that life-form's not to be allowed to play; I'll make any loss good
out of my own pocket. That'll keep him onstage for the nonce. He won't
leave to get himself fixed up somewhere else as long as I stay. And I'm
going to stay ... to the bitter end." He smiled lovingly to himself.
_But it's not the right man_, Helen thought gladly. _He did manage to
change, after all. Gabe has the wrong man._ She felt a little sorry
for the unknown and doomed individual who inhabited the delicate,
angular body, but it was so close to death anyhow that the immediate
threat didn't matter. And Gabriel--the real Gabriel--was safe.