Gordon R. Dickson (17 page)

He
came toward Kil, the two behind him, following. He reached Kil's table and
leaned on it with both hands.

"Hello S." he
said. His eyes, blue and bright and small in comparison with the rest of his
otherwise goodlooking face, carefully scanned Kil, clothes and expression.
"Or are you still S., Juby?"

Silently,
Kil tilted the Key on his wrist so that the other could read the classificatipn
on its face.

"Twol"
said the boy. "Well, Twol Big S. into Two goes once. I suppose you think
that makes you one of us riggers, don't you?"

Kil
still said nothing. His mind was working swiftly and calmly, but a hot coal was
fanning itself into burning anger inside him.

"Well,
it don't!" said the boy, thrusting out his jaw and pushing his face so
close to Kil that Kil could see the white, curling hair in his nostrils.
"You're still S. to me, Juby. And you know what we do to S.'s down here.
We shake them out."

"Juby,"
said the boy. "Juby, I'm talking to you. And I want an answer."

Kil threw the coffee in the boy's face; and
followed that with the cup itself at one of the two others. He flipped the
table in front of him, over against them and jumped to his feet. Then, taking
advantage of the confusion, he threw himself at them.

He punched low, feeling a thrill of savage
satisfaction as his fist sank into the blond boy's groin. Kicking out blindly,
he connected with the ankle of one of the others; and that one went down, abruptly,
hitting his head on the floor with an ugly, thick, cracking sound. I've killed
him, thought Kil without emotion, seeing the man sprawl limply and lie still.
But then he had no more time to think, because the third man was on top of him.

The third man was small and hard. He
literally tried to climb up Kil's tall body, chopping viciously with the side
of his right hand as he did so. Kil, all fear lost now in the pure white flame
of battle, wrenched him free and swung wildly at his face. The fist missed, but
his elbow did not, and the man went down, blood spurting from nose and mouth.

Staggering,
with a tingling elbow, Kil felt a sudden heavy blow low on the back of his
head, which drove him forward, tottering, until a nearby table blocked his
progress and kept him from falling forward on his face. He rolled to the right,
just as the heavy body of the blond boy drove past him and crashed into the
table where Kil had been. Kil swung with all his strength at the averted jaw of
the boy, but the blow missed and skidded off the other's shoulder as he turned
to face Kil.

Kil
threw himself forward, head low. He butted the blond boy high on the chest and
they both crashed to the floor, rolling over and over among the chair and table
legs, both struggling to get their arms free to fight and at the same time keep
their opponent's arms imprisoned. Kil could feel the blond boy's legs trying
for a scissors grip around his waist. A fragment from a near-forgotten history
of flatboating on the Mississippi nearly three hundred years before came to
him.
Bite
his
ear,
he thought. And with grim relish, he did. The
blond boy screamed like a hurt animal and by mutual consent they rolled apart
and staggered to their feet.

The
blond boy was frantically pawing through his clothing. Abruptly, he stopped
and ran across to the man who had knocked himself out on the floor. Flinging
his hand into the recumbent one's tunic, he pulled out a thin cylinder about
fifteen centimeters long, which suddenly, in his hand, sprouted a narrow, wavy-edged
blade three times its own length. With this weapon, longer than his own
forearm, he advanced on Kil.

There
was a soft ringing from behind the bar. So incongruous was it in that tense
atmosphere that for a moment, everything halted. Kil even tunned his head to
look; and the blond boy's face swung momentarily and inquiringly in the same
direction.

The
bartender was nodding his head and listening to something inaudible from below
the bar. He looked up suddenly at the blond boy.

"Clab it!" he
said. "He's dyked."

The
blond boy breathed heavily through his nostrils and swung back to Kil.

"Clab
you!" he threw over his shoulder at the bartender. Beside him, the man
with the smashed nose was helping the man who had knocked himself unconscious
to his feet. The blond boy glanced at them. "Cover me," he said.

"I tell you he's dyked!" shouted
the bartender.

The
blond boy fumbled in his tunic and this time found a twin to the cylinder which
had sprouted a knife blade in his hand. He tossed it back in the direction of
his two friends. "Hold 'em. I'm going to viv this Juby even if he's been
dyked by Ace himself."

The man with the smashed nose produced his
own cylinder and extended its blade. The other man, looking rather sick, picked
up the one from the floor and extended it. They moved in to stand with their
backs to the blond boy, facing outward to the crowd with their blades ready.
The blond boy looked at Kil and grinned in a white, unnatural way, moving the
tip of his blade in small, slow circles.

"Ever
been vived, Juby?" he said.
"Well, now's your time
to learn."

"Do
me!" cried the bartender in exasperation. He swung furiously about to look
up and down the bar.
"Singles!
Where's a Singles?
Pull that dyke for me. It's worth a hundred."

A
slim little middle-aged man at the end of the bar slid off his seat, patting
his lips dry with a napkin.

"I'm
a Singles," he said. From under his chair he drew a slim, limber-looking,
highly polished cane about five-sixths of a meter in length. It looked rather
like the sort of swagger stick affected by ornate dressers, with evening
clothes. With mincing steps, he approached the three men holding knives and
stopped a little more than his own length from them.

"All right
viv-boys," he said. "Fun's done."

The two friends of the
blond boy stirred uneasily.

"Hey,
Fabe," the man with the smashed nose said to him, "
let's
slip. It's not worth the fun."

The
blond boy, however, had turned slowly to face the middle-aged man; and his face
still held that unnaturally white look.

"What's loose in your guts?" he
said to his friend. "
There's
three of us."

"But there's no room, Fabe," said
the third man.

"Do
me!" murmured the blond. "Who needs room?" He snarled suddenly
at the other two. "Who do you want to take—him with me, or me by
yourselves?"

Reluctantly,
the other two turned toward the little man.
As if this had
been a signal, the stick in the little man's hand suddenly blurred into a
spinning fan of motion as he twirled it in a humming circle whose center was
his wrist.
Like a gauzy blur of motion, it floated beside him, in front
of him, flatly over his head. Quite calmly, he walked forward and the three men
with knives jumped to meet him.

What
followed was too fast for Kil to see in detail. There was a series of sharp,
cracking sounds and one of the knife men broke and ran for the door, while the
other screamed hoarsely and staggered across the room with his hands pressed to
his face and blood seeping from between the fingers.

"I'm blind!" he
screamed. "I'm
blind!"

He
collapsed sobbing in a corner. No one paid any attention to him. The blond boy
lay still on the floor, face down. Hardly able to believe it was all over, Kil
walked slowly forward.

"Thanks," he said
to the middle-aged man, who shrugged.

"A
job," he answered. He was wiping the metal ferule at the end of his stick,
with a handkerchief. "You got the hundred, or do I get it from
Drinks?"

Kil
reached in his pocket for the money; and, after he had handed it over, turned
his attention to the blond boy.

"I'd
better get that knife of his while he's out," he said, stooping over.

The Singles stopped him
with the end of his cane.

"What
for?" he asked. With his foot, he rolled the blond boy over indifferently.
The blue eyes were still wide open. They would never close themselves now. The
whole right temple above them was caved in as if by a small, blunt hatchet.

Kil
stared at the slim, almost toy-like stick in the man's hand with horrified
amazement. The man smiled agreeably.

"It's
not the single-stick," he said. "It's what you do with it. Any Juby
can use a knife." He turned and walked back to the bar. Kil followed him.
The bartender leaned across and spoke to Kil.

"Why
didn't you call help earlier?" he said. "If I'd known you were
willing to pay, I could've tagged Singles for you right away. From the way you
talked, I figured you could take care of yourself."

Kil shrugged. Reaction was setting in and he felt too shaky
to venture an argument.
                                                                
»

"Xou
got dyked by Uncle George," went on the bartender. "Somebodv wants to
see you."

Kil blinked.

"Uncle George? Who wants to see me?"

"How'd
I know who want's to see you?" said the bartender. "Uncle George's a
dyker—a bond dyker. Somebody got in touch with him and got you dyked for five
thousand worth of trouble money. That's enough to buy you out of anything but a
small scale war in this district. You go to your hotel. Uncle George'll meet
you there."

Still
somewhat dazed, Kil turned away and went slowly to the door and out into the
street. He took the roadway toward his hotel.

He
reached the hotel without incident. The glass front door opened to his Key and
the lobby was deserted. He crossed to the desk. The human clerk was off duty
and the simulacrum behind the counter informed him that there had been no
messages, or anyone to see him. It stood, a very fine, dapper imitation of a
man; but Kil could see, without leaning too far over the counter, the cable
that protruded from the desk and attached to its ankle, the cable connecting it
with the automation brain of the hotel. For some reason, although he had seen
this _sort of thing thousands of times before in his lifetime, it was subtly
disturbing tonight to realize the falsity and inhumanity of the imitation
before him. And there came back to him, suddenly, something he had heard
casually a long time ago: that Unstabs were said to have an unreasoning dislike
of automation and anything connected with it. And he wondered for a second if
this were symptomatic of some new decay in himself. Then he put the notion
from his mind.

The disk elevator was at its ceaseless motion
at one end of the lobby. He stepped aboard one of the disks and let it carry
him up. At his floor he got off and went down the empty hallway to his room.
The door was closed and he faced his Key into the cup. It swung open and he
entered.

And
stopped.

Across
from him, seated in one of the room's armchairs, was a strangely familiar
figure. He had seen it once before slumped over a table in the bar he had just
left, on a certain occasion as he was following the tall Unstab named Birb out
the door to meet Ace. It was the figure of a paunchy man on the brink of old
age. He was swathed in heavy tunic, slacks and cape, and his face had a red,
doughy consistency as he smiled at Kil.

"You're
Uncle George?" asked Kil, all but sure of his visitor, but brought to
caution by the experience he had just passed. Uncle George opened his mouth and
laughed. "Sometimes," he answered, "but not always." And
the voice was the voice of Dekko.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Kil
stared at him. The disguise was so good he
found himself doubting his ears.

"Dekko?" he said,
at last, wonderingly.

"Me,"
said the voice of Dekko, as sharp and wise as ever and coming with incongruous
effect from the soft aging-man's face. The wrinkled hands went up under the
double chin, fumbled and pulled. The whole face seemed to crumple and pull
upward; and Dekko skinned off an amazing flesh-tight mask that varied from
tissue thinness in spots to thicknesses of an inch or-more in others.
"Sit, Kil, while I seal this place."