Eckert's mind raced. It might be nothing at all, and then again it
might be disaster. But there was still a chance that Templin might be
wrong. And there were more immediate reasons.
"How many charges do you have for that?"
"Twelve."
"You think you can stand there and hold them off with only twelve
charges for your needle gun?"
"There's my power pack."
"It's no good," Eckert said softly. "The batteries in it are dead. I
was afraid you might do something foolish with it."
The footsteps were only yards away. He listened intently, but it was
hard to tell how many there were by the sound.
"What do we do then?"
"See if they're following us first," Eckert said practically. "They
might not be, you know."
They slid out from the shadows and ducked down another lane between the
houses. The footsteps behind them speeded up and came down the same
lane.
"We'll have to head back for our house," Eckert whispered.
They started running as quietly as they could, slipping and sliding
in the mud. Another stretch past the shuttered, crouching houses and
they found themselves in the square they had visited on the day they
had landed. It was deserted, the looms and pottery wheels covered with
cloth and reeds to keep off the rain. They darted across it, two thin
shadows racing across the open plaza, and hurried down another path.
The last path led to the small river that cut through the city. Templin
looked around, gestured to Eckert, waded into the water and crouched
under the small bridge that spanned it. Eckert swore silently to
himself, then followed Templin in.
The cold water swirled under his armpits and he bit his lips to keep
himself from sneezing. Templin's emotions were contagious. Would he
have worried about the footsteps? He frowned and tried to be honest
with himself. Perhaps he would--and perhaps he wouldn't have. But he
couldn't have let Templin stay there and face the unknown approachers.
Not Templin.
Footsteps approached the bridge, hesitated a moment, then pattered on
the wooden structure and faded off down the muddy path. Eckert let his
breath out slowly. The footsteps were curiously light.
There was only one pair of them.
* * * * *
"I would like to know something," Templin said coldly. He stripped off
his power pack and let it fall to the floor of their house. "Why did
you decide to substitute dead batteries in the pack?"
"Because," Eckert said shortly, "I was afraid you would do something
with it that you might regret later. You're inexperienced in situations
like this. Your reactions aren't to be trusted. One false move here and
we could follow Pendleton, however he died. You know that." He wriggled
out of his tunic and slowly peeled off his wet trousers.
There was a timid knock at the door. He wrapped a blanket about
himself and motioned to Templin to stand to one side. Templin grabbed a
small stool, hefted it in one hand, and complied.
Eckert went to the door and casually threw it open.
A girl stood there, half in the outer darkness and half in the
yellowish light from the room, covered with mud to the knees and
drenched to the skin.
"The _menshar_ forgot this at the _halera_," she said softly. She
quickly handed him his pipe and a soggy bag of tobacco, and disappeared
instantly into the rain. He listened for the sound of her footsteps in
the soft mud and then closed the door.
Templin put down the stool and stared stupidly at the pipe and the
tobacco sack. Eckert placed them carefully on the table and began to
towel himself.
"We probably face as much danger from our own imaginations as from
anything else," he said grimly. "Tell me, would you have fired first,
or would you have waited until you found out for sure who she was and
what she wanted when she first started to follow us?"
"I don't know," Templin said sullenly.
"Then I'll leave to your imagination the position we would be in now,
if you had given in to your impulse."
* * * * *
"We haven't found out much, have we?" Templin demanded some days later.
"No," Eckert admitted. "We haven't."
He riffled through the thick stack of cards on the table.
Statistically, the results were not only interesting but slightly
phenomenal. During the three years or so that Pendleton had been
on Tunpesh, he had met and known approximately seven hundred of
the natives. By far the greater majority of these, of course, were
purely casual and meant nothing. Almost a hundred, though, had had
extended relations with Pendleton in business or social affairs. Of
this hundred, none--not a single one--would admit that he had known
Pendleton well or could be considered a friend of his. About all they
had to say was that Pendleton had been healthy and easy to get along
with, and one warm night he had shocked the community by going off and
shooting himself.
"Like Richard Cory," Eckert said aloud.
"Like who?" Templin asked.
"Richard Cory. A character in a poem by a Twentieth Century poet,
Edwin Arlington Robinson. Apparently he had everything to live for,
but 'Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet
through his head.'"
"I'll have to look it up some day," Templin said. He pointed to the
stack of cards. "That's so much waste paper, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," Eckert said reluctantly. "To be frank, I had hoped we'd
know a lot more by now. I still can't understand why we haven't dug up
anybody who will admit having been his friend."
"How do you know they're telling the truth? Or, for that matter, how do
you know that the ones we've seen so far are the ones who _actually_
knew Pendleton?"
Eckert drummed his fingers on the table. _You handle different human
cultures for twenty-five years and you get to the point where you can
tell if people are lying or not. Or do you? Maybe just an old man's
conceit. Age alone never lent wisdom. Regardless of the personal
reasons that Templin might have for thinking the Tunpeshans are lying,
the fact remains that they very easily could be. And what should you do
if they are?_
There was a polite knock at the door.
"We've got another visitor," Templin said sarcastically. "He probably
saw Pendleton at a _halera_ four years ago and wants to be sure we know
all about it."
The Tunpeshan looked faintly familiar to Eckert. There was something
about the man's carriage....
"I met you the day you landed," the Tunpeshan began, and Eckert
remembered. Jathong, the guide who had shown them to the house.
"You knew Pendleton?"
Jathong nodded. "I and a fellow weaver took over his small office after
he had left it." Eckert recalled the small office in the square with
the bolts of cloth on display, and the small mud brick on the window
ledge with the incised lettering reading: