Watchers of the Dark. Lloyd Biggle jr.
of humor is pulling a gag on me. I played it wrong, and Smith got cold feet. Too bad. It might have been good for a laugh, and I could use one on a day like this. I wonder which of my alleged friends are involved.”
He took his overcoat from the closet.
“Where are you going?” Miss Schlupe asked.
“To Tahiti,” Darzek said dreamily. “Just as quickly as possible.”
Chapter 2
Dawn routed the rioters and sent them scurrying for home.
Biag-n crept from his hiding place to watch them go. Few were wearing light shields, and as the swiftly rising sun streaked the pink sky with glowing orange, they fled from shadow to shadow in a stumbling, groping panic, cupping long, rooty fingers to protect their great, lidless eyes.
An uneasy, smoldering silence settled in their wake. The smoke of a hundred fires choked the horizon; plunder from twice a hundred looted warehouses and dwellings was scattered from one end of Biag-n’s oval to the other. Proctors had marched away the foreign traders and their families, and the mobs had moved in behind them to smash and loot and burn. Even the traders’ prized personal possessions had been carried off, only to be abandoned at whim. A jeweled dinner paten worth a lifetime’s solvency had been casually dropped at Biag-n’s door.
Throughout the flame-flecked night, mob after demented mob had raged unseeing past the humble abode of Biag-n the peddler. He accepted that night’s miracle gratefully, but he had no illusions as to what the next night would bring. As soon as he dared he crept anxiously from his dwelling dome, sample case under his arm.
Already the hot, hushing cloak of day lay limply across the inert city. Large, luminous blossoms, torn from beds of nocturnal flowers by the trampling mobs, sparkled gemlike amidst the abandoned plunder that littered the black pavement. Sadly Biag-n picked his way around them. The sun had shriveled and curled their petals and flecked the glossy surfaces with a darkening blight. Even their delicate, lingering scent carried the taint of death.
However cautiously Biag-n moved, the sharp click of his tiny feet on indurated silica rang out alarmingly. He winced with every footstep. All of his instinct of self-preservation demanded flight, but he forced himself to walk, to swing one arm nonchalantly while the other crushed his sample case in a tightening grip of terror, to keep his gaze at street level when he knew that the huge, glowing eyes of the natives regarded him with hatred from behind the tinted transparency of their bulging cupolas.
He slowed his pace as he approached the neighborhood jramp and squinted into the gloomy interior, but he could make out nothing in that mélange of shadows and filter-stained dimness. With a deep, sobbing breath he lunged forward blindly. He had actually reached a destination board, and was haltingly touching off numbers when a proctor sprang out of the shadows with a hoarse cry. “Grilf! Grilf!”
Biag-n ducked under one knobby arm, wrenched free from the grasping, rootlike fingers of another with a rending of cloth, and fled.
Three proctors chased him the full length of the oval, light shields flapping in the breeze, long, segmented legs rattling as they hurdled their way over the riot’s ungainly leavings. Biag-n scrambled through a hedge of sleeping night flowers and plunged into the tall vegetation of an herb garden. He clawed his way forward for a short distance and sank panting to the ground. The proctors ranged along the hedge shrilly mouthing vituperations, but they made no attempt to follow him. Even with their shields the full light of day was painful to them, and they soon returned to the cool dimness of the jramp.
When Biag-n finally mastered his fright and pushed free of the pungent herbs, the abbreviated Quarmian day had passed its high noon. The sun hung low overhead in a ruddy, cloudless sky. Biag-n turned his back on the jramp and resignedly set out to walk. He followed a widely circuitous route about the city’s perimeter, carefully avoiding the elliptical clusters of dwelling domes. Afternoon was already waning when he cautiously stepped out of the protective shadow of an orchard to look down on the small, weather-scoured domes of the Old City.
He glanced anxiously at the setting sun and broke into a run. Soon the short Quarmer day would make its abrupt, orange-tinted plunge into darkness, and his last opportunity would be gone forever. He rushed frantically down the slope and had almost reached the congestion of tiny shops and crude factories when a sudden twist of wind brought him to a shuddering halt. Faintly he heard the slobbering clamor of the mobs: “Grilf! Grilf!”
“They’re out in daylight!” he gasped.
The narrow ovals of the Old City were still peaceful, deserted. Biag-n hurried toward them, seeking illusive concealment in the domes’ humped shadows.
He darted to the first shop and stepped heavily on its call slab. Through the air vents he could see the swirl of colored light. Finally the clumsy door slid open, and the tall proprietor loomed in the doorway. Peering uncertainly through his light shield, at first he did not see Biag-n’s short, rotund figure. Then his body bent forward with a snapping of segments. His large eyes glowered behind the tinted shield.
“Go away!”
Biag-n plucked a circle of cloth from his sample case and offered it with a ceremonious sweep of his arm. “I have something to show you.”
“Go away!”
The proprietor stepped back; the door closed with a crash. Sadly Biag-n turned away.
Even in normal times they would have resented his calling on them in daylight. On this day they hated him for it, but it could not be helped. They hated him anyway, and he did not dare to wait for darkness.
He sprinted from dome to dome. The few proprietors who responded snapped low to snarl into his face; and then slammed their doors. He wondered how long it would be before one of them summoned the proctors.
He had worked three-quarters of the way around the oval before he thought to vary his approach. As the next door opened he said breathlessly, “Cown, I need your help!”
And pushed inside.
For a moment the Quarmer was too thunderstruck to protest. Biag-n faced him desperately. “I’ll have to leave soon. You know that?”
Cown grunted.
“Look at this,” Biag-n said, offering the sample.
Cown’s rooty fingers moved forward, touched, jerked back. “What do you want?”
“I have a hundred gios of this in limited-time storage. If I don’t sell it before I leave Quarm, I’ll lose it all. It’s one of the best bargains I ever happened onto, and you can have it for half what it cost me.”
“Get out!” Cown snarled.
Biag-n regarded him steadily. “Cown, have I ever done you an unkindness?”
The Quarmer looked away.
“The order means a big profit for you,” Biag-n urged, “and it lets me salvage something form a certain loss.”
He searched Cown’s face uneasily. The Quarmer must have been aware that ships already at the transfer stations were not unloading, and that no merchandise ordered from Quarm on this day would ever be consigned.
Cown continued to avoid Biag-n’s eyes. He said nothing.
“I’ll write it up,” Biag-n said tremulously, and fed a message strip into his pocket inditer.
He was rather long about it. He had to make the message look like an ordinary order for textiles, and still code as much information into it as possible. He muttered numbers to himself, concentrating fiercely.
Cown continued to look away, but when Biag-n had finished he handed over his seal without a murmur. Biag-n marked the order with a sigh of relief.
“May you prosper,” he said gravely.
Cown did not reply.
Biag-n turned to the door, which was still open, and gasped with dismay. The abrupt Quarmian dusk was upon them; the yapping