"Hail, Shol."
The chair swung up and moved away at a trot. As they rounded the corner she slowed them to a walk and drew all curtains. Then she patted the cushions billowing around her. "Doing all right?"
"I'm squashed," a voice answered faintly.
"Better squashed than shortened. I'll ease over a bit. Your lap is bony."
For the next mile she was busy modifying her costume, and putting on jewels. She veiled her face until only her live, black eyes showed. Finished, she stuck her head out and called instructions to the head porter; the chair swung right toward the spaceport. When they reached the road girdling its high, impregnable fence it was almost dark.
The gate for spacemen is at the foot of Joy Street, the gate for passengers is east of there in the Emigration Control Building. Beyond that, in tbe warehouse district, is Traders' Gate—freight and outgoing customs. Miles beyond are shipyard gates. But between the shipyards and Traders' Gate is a small gate reserved for nobles rich enough to own space yachts.
The chair reached the spaceport fence short of Traders' Gate, turned and went along the fence toward it. Traders' Gate is several gates, each a loading dock built through the barrier, so that a warehouse truck can back up, unload; the Sargon's inspectors can weigh, measure, grade, prod, open, and ray the merchandise, as may be indicated, before it is slid across the dock into spaceport trucks on the other side, to be delivered to waiting ships.
This night dock-three of the gate had its barricade open; Free Trader Sisu was finishing loading. Her master watched, arguing with inspectors, and oiling their functioning in the immemorial fashion. A ship's junior officer helped him, keeping tally with pad and pencil.
The sedan chair weaved among waiting trucks and passed close to the dock. The master of the Sisu looked up as the veiled lady in the chair peered out at the activity. He glanced at his watch and spoke to his junior officer. "One more load, Jan. You go in with the loaded truck and I'll follow with the last one."
"Aye aye, sir." The young man climbed on the tail of the truck and told the driver to take it away. An empty truck pulled into its place. It loaded quickly as the ship's master seemed to find fewer things to argue about with the inspectors. Then he was not satisfied and demanded that it be done over. The boss stevedore was pained but the master soothed him, glanced at his watch again and said, "There's time. I don't want these crates cracked before we get them into the ship; the stuff costs money. So let's do it right."
The sedan chair had moved on along the fence. Shortly it was dark; the veiled lady looked at the glowing face of her finger watch and urged her bearers into a trot.
They came at last to the gate reserved for nobles. The veiled lady leaned her head out and snapped, "Open up!"
There were two guards on the gate, one in a little watch room, the other lounging outside. The one outside opened the gate, but placed his staff across it when the sedan chair started to go through. Stopped, the bearers lowered it to the ground with the right-hand or door side facing into the gate.
The veiled lady called out, "Clear the way, you! Lord Marlin's yacht."
The guard blocking the gate hesitated. "My lady has a pass?"
"Are you a fool?"
"If my lady has no pass," he said slowly, "perhaps my lady will suggest some way to assure the guard that My Lord Marlin is expecting her?"
The veiled lady was a voice in the dark—the guard had sense enough not to shine a light in her face; he had long experience with nobles and gentry. But the voice was an angry one, it bubbled and fumed. "If you insist on being a fool, call my lord at his yacht! Phone him—and I trust you'll find you've pleased him!"
The guard in the watch room came out. "Trouble, Sean?"
"Uh, no." They held a whispered consultation. The junior went inside to phone Lord Marlin's yacht, while the other waited outside.
But it appeared that the lady had had all the nonsense she was willing to endure. She threw open the door of the chair, burst out, and stormed into the watch room with the other startled guard after her. The one making the call stopped punching keys with connection uncompleted and looked up . . . and felt sick. This was even worse than he had thought. This was no flighty young girl, escaped from her chaperones; this was an angry dowager, the sort with enough influence to break a man to common labor or worse—with a temper that made her capable of it. He listened open-mouthed to the richest tongue-lashing it had been his misfortune to endure in all the years he had been checking lords and ladies through their gate.
While the attention of both guards was monopolized by Mother Shaum's rich rhetoric, a figure detached itself from the sedan chair, faded through the gate and kept going, until it was lost in the gloom of the field. As Thorby ran, even as he expected the burning tingle of a stun gun bolt in his guts, he watched for a road on the right joining the one from the gate. When he came to it he threw himself down and lay panting.
Back at the gate, Mother Shaum stopped for breath. "My lady," one of them said placatingly, "if you will just let us complete the call—"
"Forget it! No, remember it!—for tomorrow you'll hear from My Lord Marlin." She flounced back to her chair.
"Please, my lady!"
She ignored them, spoke sharply to the slaves; they swung the chair up, broke into a trot. One guard's hand went to his belt, as a feeling of something badly wrong possessed him. But his hand stopped. Right or wrong, knocking down a lady's bearer was not to be risked, no matter what she might be up to.
And, after all, she hadn't actually done anything wrong.
When the master of the Sisu finally okayed the loading of the last truck, he climbed onto its bed, waved the driver to start, then worked his way forward. "Hey, there!" He knocked on the back of the cab.
"Yes, Captain?" The driver's voice came through faintly.
"There's a stop sign where this road joins the one out to the ships. I notice most of you drivers don't bother with it."
"That one? There's never any traffic on that road. That road is a stop just because the nobles use it."
"That's what I mean. One of them might pop up and I'd miss my jump time just for a silly traffic accident with one of your nobles. They could hold me here for many ninedays. So come to a full stop, will you?"
"Whatever you say, Captain. You're paying the bill."
"So I am." A half-stellar note went through a crack in the cab.
When the truck slowed, Krausa went to the tail gate. As it stopped he reached down and snaked Thorby inside. "Quiet!" Thorby nodded and trembled. Krausa took tools from his pockets, attacked one of the crates. Shortly he had one side open, burlap pulled back, and he started dumping verga leaves, priceless on any other planet. Soon he had a largish hole and a hundred pounds of valuable leaves were scattered over the plain. "Get in!"
Thorby crawled into the space, made himself small. Krausa pulled burlap over him, sewed it, crimped slats back into place, and finished by strapping it and sealing it with a good imitation of the seal used by the inspectors—it was a handcrafted product of his ship's machine shop. He straightened up and wiped sweat from his face. The truck was turning into the loading circle for the Sisu.
He supervised the final loads himself, with the Sargon's field inspector at his elbow, checking off each crate, each bale, each carton as it went into the sling. Then Krausa thanked the inspector appropriately and rode the sling up instead of the passenger hoist. Since a man was riding it, the hoist man let down the sling with more than usual care. The hold was almost filled and stowed for jump; there was very little head room. Crewmen started wrestling crates free of the sling and even the Captain lent a hand, at least to the extent of one crate. Once the sling was dragged clear, they closed the cargo door and started dogging it for space. Captain Krausa reached into his pocket again and started tearing open that crate.
Two hours later Mother Shaum stood at her bedroom window and looked out across the spaceport. She glanced at her watch. A green rocket rose from the control tower; seconds later a column of
white light climbed to the sky. When the noise reached her, she smiled grimly and went downstairs to supervise the business—Mura couldn't really handle it properly alone.
CHAPTER 7
Inside the first few million miles Thorby was unhappily convinced that he had made a mistake.
He passed out from inhaling fumes of verga leaves and awakened in a tiny, one-bunk stateroom. Waking was painful; although the Sisu maintained one standard gravity of internal field throughout a jump his body had recognized both the slight difference from Jubbul-surface gravity and the more subtle difference between an artificial field and the natural condition. His body decided that he was in the hold of a slaver and threw him into the first nightmare he had had in years.
Then his tired, fume-sodden brain took a long time struggling up out of the horror.
At last he was awake, aware of his surrounding, and concluded that he was aboard the Sisu and safe. He felt a glow of relief and gathering excitement that he was traveling, going somewhere. His grief over Baslim was pushed aside by strangeness and change. He looked around.
The compartment was a cube, only a foot or so higher and wider than his own height. He was resting on a shelf that filled half the room and under him was a mattress strangely and delightfully soft, of material warm and springy and smooth. He stretched and yawned in surprised wonder that traders lived in such luxury. Then he swung his feet over and stood up.
The bunk swung noiselessly up and fitted itself into the bulkhead. Thorby could not puzzle out how to open it again. Presently he gave up. He did not want a bed then; he did want to look around.
When he woke the ceiling was glowing faintly. When he stood up it glowed brightly and remained so. But the light did not show where the door was. There were vertical metal panels on three sides, any of which might have been a door, save that none displayed thumb slot, hinge, or other familiar mark.
He considered the possibility that he had been locked in, but was not troubled. Living in a cave, working in the Plaza, he was afflicted neither with claustrophobia nor agoraphobia; he simply wanted to find the door and was annoyed that he could not recognize it. If it were locked, he did not think that Captain Krausa would let it stay locked unduly long. But he could not find it.
He did find a pair of shorts and a singlet, on the deck. When he woke he had been bare, the way he usually slept. He picked up these garments, touched them timidly, wondered at their magnificence. He recognized them as being the sort of thing most spacemen wore and for a moment let himself be dazzled at the thought of wearing such luxuries. But his mind shied away from such impudence.
Then he recalled Captain Krausa's distaste at his coming aboard in the clothes he normally wore—why, the Captain had even intended to take him to a tailoring shop in Joy Street which catered to spacemen! He had said so.
Thorby concluded that these clothes must be for him. For him! His breech cloth was missing and the Captain certainly had not intended him to appear in the Sisu naked. Thorby was not troubled by modesty; the taboo was spotty on Jubbul and applied more to the upper classes. Nevertheless clothes were worn.
Marveling at his own daring, Thorby tried them on. He got the shorts on backwards, figured out his mistake, and put them on properly. He got the pullover shirt on backwards, too, but the error was not as glaring; he left it that way, thinking that he had it right. Then he wished mightily that he could see himself.
Both garments were of simple cut, undecorated light green, and fashioned of strong, cheap material; they were working clothes from the ship's slop chest, a type of garment much used by both sexes on many planets through many centuries. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as Thorby! He smoothed the cloth against his skin and wanted someone to see him in his finery. He set about finding the door with renewed eagerness.
It found him. While running his hands over the panels on one bulkhead he became aware of a breeze, turned and found that one panel had disappeared. The door let out into a passageway.
A young man dressed much as Thorby was (Thorby was overjoyed to find that he had dressed properly for the occasion) was walking down the curved corridor toward Thorby. Thorby stepped out and spoke a greeting in Sargonese trade talk.
The man's eyes flicked toward Thorby, then he marched on past as if no one were there. Thorby blinked, puzzled and a little hurt. Then he called out to the receding back in Interlingua.
No answer and the man disappeared before he could try other languages.
Thorby shrugged and let it roll off; a beggar does not gain by being touchy. He set out to explore.
In twenty minutes he discovered many things. First, the Sisu was much larger than he had imagined. He had never before seen a starship close up, other than from the doubtful vantage of a slaver's hold. Ships in the distance, sitting on the field of Jubbul's port, had seemed large but not this enormous. Second, he was surprised to find so many people. He understood that the Sargon's freighters operating among the Nine Worlds were usually worked by crews of six or seven. But in his first few minutes he encountered several times that number of both sexes and all ages.
Third, he became dismally aware that he was being snubbed. People did not look at him, nor did they answer when he spoke; they walked right through him if he did not jump. The nearest he accomplished to social relations was with a female child, a toddler who regarded him with steady, grave eyes in answer to his overtures—until snatched up by a woman who did not even glance at Thorby.
Thorby recognized the treatment; it was the way a noble treated one of Thorby's caste. A noble could not see him, he did not exist—even a noble giving alms usually did so by handing it through a slave. Thorby had not been hurt by such treatment on Jubbul; that was natural, that was the way things had always been. It had made him neither lonely nor depressed; he had had plenty of warm company in his misery and had not known that it was misery.
But had he known ahead of time that the entire ship's company of the Sisu would behave like nobles he would never have shipped in her, snoopies or not. But he had not expected such treatment. Captain Krausa, once Baslim's message had been delivered, had been friendly and gruffly paternal; Thorby had expected the crew of the Sisu to reflect the attitude of her master.
He wandered the steel corridors, feeling like a ghost among living, and at last decided sadly to go back to the cubicle in which he had awakened. Then he discovered that he was lost. He retraced what he thought was the route—and in fact was; Baslim's renshawing had not been wasted—but all he found was a featureless tunnel. So he set out again, uncomfortably aware that whether he found his own room or not, he must soon find where they hid the washroom, even if he had to grab someone and shake him.
He blundered into a place where he was greeted by squeals of female indignation; he retreated hastily and heard a door slam behind him.
Shortly thereafter he was overtaken by a hurrying man who spoke to him, in Interlingua: "What the dickens are you doing wandering around and butting into things?"
Thorby felt a wave of relief. The grimmest place in the world, lonelier than being alone, is Coventry, and even a reprimand is better than being ignored. "I'm lost," he said meekly.
"Why didn't you stay where you were?"
"I didn't know I was supposed to—I'm sorry, noble sir—and there wasn't any washroom."
"Oh. But there is, right across from your bunkie."
"Noble sir, I did not know."
"Mmm . . . I suppose you didn't. I'm not 'noble sir'; I'm First Assistant Power Boss—see that you remember it. Come along." He grabbed Thorby by an arm, hurried him back through the maze, stopped in the same tunnel that had stumped Thorby, ran his hand down a seam in the metal. "Here's your bunkie." The panel slid aside.
The man turned, did the same on the other side. "Here's the starboard bachelors' washroom." The man advised him scornfully when Thorby was confused by strange fixtures, then chaperoned him back to his room. "Now stay here. Your meals will be fetched."
"First Assista
nt Power Boss, sir?"
"Eh?"
"Could I speak with Captain Krausa?"
The man looked astonished. "Do you think the Skipper has nothing better to do than talk to you?"
"But—"
The man had left; Thorby was talking to a steel panel.
Food appeared eventually, served by a youngster who behaved as if he were placing a tray in an empty room. More food appeared later and the first tray was removed. Thorby almost managed to be noticed; he hung onto the first tray and spoke to the boy in Interlingua. He detected a flicker of understanding, but he was answered by one short word. The word was "Fraki!" and Thorby did not recognize it . . . but he could recognize the contempt with which it was uttered. A fraki is a small, shapeless, semi-saurian scavenger of Alpha Centauri Prime III, one of the first worlds populated by men. It is ugly, almost mindless, and has disgusting habits. Its flesh can be eaten only by a starving man. Its skin is unpleasant to touch and leaves a foul odor.
But "fraki" means more than this. It means a groundhog, an earthcrawler, a dirt dweller, one who never goes into space, not of our tribe, not human, a goy, an auslander, a savage, beneath contempt. In Old Terran cultures almost every animal name has been used as an insult: pig, dog, sow, cow, shark, louse, skunk, worm—the list is endless. No such idiom carries more insult than "fraki."
Fortunately all Thorby got was the fact that the youngster did not care for him . . . which he knew.
Presently Thorby became sleepy. But, although he had mastered the gesture by which doors were opened, he still could not find any combination of swipes, scratches, punches, or other actions which would open the bed; he spent that night on the floorplates. His breakfast appeared next morning but he was unable to detain the person serving it, even to be insulted again. He did encounter other boys and young men in the washroom across the corridor; while he was still ignored, he learned one thing by watching—he could wash his clothing there. A gadget would accept a garment, hold it a few minutes, spew it forth dry and fresh. He was so delighted that he laundered his new finery three times that day. Besides, he had nothing else to do. He again slept on the floor that night.