The plum colored man took him and ran him to a door and put him through
it. From there a servall took over. It was very efficient.
"Are you through, sir?"
"God, no. Not nearly."
One more word and you would have been through. Forever. Drunken
blabbermouth Durham, smart aleck Durham, would-be big shot Durham,
ready to babble out his secret and blow his last chance of a comeback.
But why did Baya have to be so insistently curious?
Why, indeed?
He began to feel both sick and scared. After a time he made it to the
row of basins and splashed cold water on his face and head. There was a
mirror above the basin. He looked into it. "Hello, bum," he said.
Face it, Durham. You're a drunken bum. You are exactly what Willa
Paulsen said you were, what Susan Hawtree said you were, what they all
said you were. You get a second chance, and you go right out and get
drunk and blow it. Or, almost. Another minute and you'd have blabbed
everything you know to Baya.
Baya, who cried because he wouldn't tell her; who had brought him to
this rathole.
He took a clearer look at it when he went shakily out of the men's
room. The place was almost empty, and it had a close, smothery feeling.
Durham had never liked these underground streets, this vaguely unsavory
demi-world that wound itself around the foundations of the city. It was
considered smart to go slumming here, but this place was somehow wrong.
There were a man and woman at a table across the room, a young, pale
green couple who pretended too carefully not to see him. There was
Varnik, the plum colored proprietor, at a tall desk beside the main
door. And there was Baya at their table.
She handed him a glass when he came over. "Feel better? I ordered you a
sedative."
Without sitting down he put the glass to his lips. It did not taste
like any sedative he could remember, and he thought he had tried them
all.
"I don't want it."
"Don't be a fool, Lloyd. Take it." Her eyes were cold now, and he was
suddenly quite sure why he had been brought here.
Durham said softly, "Good night, tramp. Good night and good-bye." He
ran around the table and made a rush for the entrance.
Varnik stepped from the tall desk to bar his way, holding out a piece
of paper. "Sir," he said. "Your check."
Durham heard three chairs scrape behind him. He did not pause. He bent
and drove the point of his shoulder as hard as he could at a spot just
above Varnik's wide belt. Varnik let go a gasping sigh and wheeled
away. Durham went out the door.
The underground street was brightly lighted. It ran straight to right
and left, under a low roof, and disappeared on either hand around a
right angle turn. Durham went to the left for no particular reason.
There were people on the street. He dodged among them, running. They
stopped and stared at him, and there was an echo of other feet behind
him, also running. He sped around the corner, and it occurred to him
that he was completely lost, that he did not even know what part of the
city lay above him, or how far. There were different levels to this
under-city, following down the foundations, the conduits and tubes
and sewers and pumping stations. For the first time he began to feel
genuinely trapped, and genuinely afraid.
The street ran straight ahead until it ended against a buttressed
foundation wall. There were doors and windows on either side of it.
People lived here. There were joints, some fancy-exotic for the
carriage trade, others just joints. A couple of smaller streets opened
off it, darker and more winding. Durham plunged into one, pausing
briefly to look back. Fleeting like deer around the corner were the
young pale green couple who had sat at the other table in Varnik's.
There was something about the purposeful way they ran that sent a
quiver of pure terror through Durham's insides.
He ran again, as hard as he could, wondering who the devil they were
and what they wanted with him.
What did anyone want with him, and the small bit of a secret that he
carried?
* * * * *
The narrow street wound and twined. Clearly echoing along the vault
of the roof he could hear footsteps. One. Two. Coming fast. He saw an
opening no wider than a crack in the wall. He turned into it. It was
quite dark in there and he knew he could not go much farther, and that
fact added to his burden of shame. There had been a time when this much
of a sprint would hardly have breathed him. He tottered on, looking
for a place to hide in, and there wasn't any, and his heart banged and
floundered against his ribs, and the muscles of his thighs were like
wet strings.
There was a square opening with blank walls all around it and a great
big manhole cover in the middle. There was the way he had come in, and
there was another narrow way he might have come out, but Varnik was
coming through it, running a little crooked and breathing hard. He
stopped when he saw Durham. Baya, panting up behind, almost ran into
him. Varnik grunted and sprang.
With feeble fierceness, Durham resisted. It got him nowhere. The plum
colored man struck him several times out of pure pique, cursing Durham
for making trouble, for bruising his gut, for making him run like this.
Baya stood by and watched.
"Will you behave now?" Varnik demanded. He whacked Durham again, and
Durham glared at him out of dazed eyes and felt the world tilt and
slide away from him.
Suddenly there were new voices, footsteps, confusion. He fell, what
seemed a long way but was really only to his hands and knees.
The young couple had come into the square space. They were small lithe
people, muscled like ocelots, and their skin color was a pale green,
very pretty, and characteristic of several different races, but no good
for identification here. The girl's tunic had slipped aside over the
breast, and the skin there was a clear gold, like new country butter.
They both had guns in their strong little fists, and they were speaking
over Durham to Varnik and Baya.
"We will question this man alone."
"Oh, no," said Varnik angrily. "You don't get away with that." Baya
bent over Durham. "Come on, lover," she said. "Get up." Her voice was
cooing. To the strangers she said, "That wasn't our deal at all."
"You failed," said the girl with the two-colored skin, and she fired a
beam with frightening accuracy, exactly between them. A piece of the
wall behind them fused and flared. Varnik's eyes came wide open.
"Well," he said. "Well, if that's the way you feel about it."
He turned. Baya hesitated, and the muzzle of the gun began to move her
way. She snarled something in her own language and decided to go after
Varnik.
Durham got his hands and feet bunched under him. He didn't know what he
was going to do, but he knew that once he was left alone with the two
small fleet strangers he would eventually talk, and after that it would
not matter much what happened to him.