Castor did not have that skill. When Manyface's gaze fell on him he shrank back. Not only was Fung Bohsien a freak, he was old. The face was wrinkled; there were age spots on the hands; the voice (voices?) tremulous. There was a faint musty smell that managed to register itself even through the miasma of the animal pens. It was the smell of old age, Castor thought, wondering. Old Yankees were nothing new. Old Han Chinese, however, were exceedingly rare on North America. Why had this man not gone back to the Mainland to live out the last years of his life like everyone else? "Who?" demanded the scientist, and Castor licked his lips before he answered.
"I'm Pettyman Castor. You sent for me. You saw me at the hearing, I think."
And all the voices tried to respond at once: "What hearing? That hearing, damn it, the one Alicia dragged us—I didn't drag anybody, I simply wanted—Oh," said the least confused voice of Manyface, "I remember. You're from the Heavenly Grain Village—what village?—please— SHUT UP—and one of us has a special interest—wait." The massive head turned aside for a moment while the voices muttered to each other. When Manyface looked back at Castor the voice was different:
"I'm the one," it said. "Potter Alicia. Do you know the village well?"
"I've lived there all my life."
"Well, then—ah, let's go—SHUT UP!— well, then, do you know a little girl named Grootenbart Maria?"
"Maria? Certainly I know her, but she's not a little girl. She's my wife."
More confused internal argument among Manyface's personalities; it lasted for a half a minute, and then the twitching face settled into an expression half-joyful, half-pleading; and the voice said:
"Well, I'm her mother!"
VI
The city apartment of Renmin Police Inspector Tsoong Delilah was even grander than her beachfront place and a lot more lived-in. To begin with it had five rooms. What any single human being could do with five whole rooms Castor couldn't imagine, but the quiet Yankee maid who let him in assured him they were all for Tsoong Delilah—and, of course, for her "guests." No other guest was in sight this evening. Neither was Tsoong Delilah because, the maid explained, she was detained on duty but would be with him in time for dinner.
In fact, she was earlier than that. She came in behind Castor without warning while he was gazing at an extra bedroom, larger than the whole apartment he and Maria had shared, complete with closets and washstand and screen. "Like it?" she said to the back of his head. "You can have it—to keep your things in, anyway." When he turned she was smiling. If there was a touch of rue in her smile, at least she did not seem angry at having him thrust on her. He started to apologize, but she shook her head. "A request from Fung Bohsien is an honor for me—I think a pleasure, too," she added, looking at him boldly. "I must shower and change before dinner—make yourself at home. Although I see you have already done that."
Dinner was interrupted twice by faint beeps from the screen. Each time Tsoong Delilah got up to take the call in another room, and the second time she returned, frowning. "You don't have to worry about the old man from River of Pearl anymore," she reported. "He committed suicide in his cell."
"Oh," he said, startled. It had not occurred to him that even a convicted murderer might want to take his own life. "What a pity!"
"It is a pity, Castor. He was a good man," she said softly. He was silent for a moment, thinking about the old man and about why a police inspector should care about a felon's death, and then he forgot about the old man. What was much more interesting was what had happened to him that day—above all, what might yet happen! Tsoong Delilah let him do all the talking while she picked at her food. Then, when the maid had put the dishes in the washer and departed, they sat at opposite ends of a huge couch and the policewoman smoked her little pipe and let him go on talking. Castor did not object. There was so much to say!
"Manyface likes me," he boasted. "He even asked if I might be willing to work for him, what do you think of that? That could be a very good deal, although working for a freak like Manyface isn't my idea—what?"
Delilah was smiling, but only just. "Not 'Manyface,'" she corrected. "'Senior Party Cadre Fung Bohsien.' And not 'freak' under any circumstances."
"Oh, hell, Delilah," he said scornfully, "there's no need to be so formal." He observed the smile chill and changed his mind. "But you're right," he added quickly. "One has to respect authority, of course! He does like me, though. Or part of him does. Do you think I could stand working for him? I'm to see him again in the morning. Will you take me there?"
"Of course," said Delilah, watching him.
"But he's so hard to talk to! Not so much when he's quiet, but when he gets excited. Then they all try to speak at once—of course, he's excited a lot of the time..." He remembered, "And, oh yes, I punched up my own dossier. I'm qualified for the observatory! If Manyface will just put in a word for me—"
"Why the observatory?" the policewoman asked. "The telescope is only a tool. If you wanted to run your farm collective, would you assign yourself as a plow?"
He paused, blinking. "What do you mean?"
"If Fung Bohsien would help you get transferred to the observatory, he could just as easily get you admitted to the university."
Castor sat up straight, gasping. "The university?"
"Why not?"
"Can he do such a thing?"
She only laughed. Obviously he could. Perhaps he would! Perhaps that great sullen dream might come true after all, and all because he had had the dumb luck to kick a dead man's head one afternoon in the rice paddy!
He realized the policewoman was smiling at him indulgently, almost fondly, and he recollected himself. "I forgot!" he cried. "I brought you a present."
Tsoong Delilah actually looked startled. "A present?"
"They let me use their screen," he said, getting up to rummage in his backpack, "and—may I use yours?—I remembered what we were talking about last night." He sat before the small living-room screen, studied it a moment and then punched for display mode. "They can access anything! SKYWATCH didn't have what I wanted, and neither did the IAF, but the university's astronomy department had all the plates—all the way to the big Lhasa scope, and some Indian ones, too. So I took the best radar scans from each, corrected for rotation and tumbling and scale—it's coming toward us—and programmed a comparison mode to pick the best features of each—it was easy, really," he boasted, though that wasn't true, and pushed the button for display. On the screen an object took form, surrounded by blackness pierced with tiny dots of blinding white.
It was a spaceship.
Tsoong Delilah gazed at it wonderingly. "But we don't have any spacecraft out there," she said, her voice husky.
"Exactly! Isn't it wonderful?" Castor was thrilled.
VII
The morning sky was blue and fine; the odor of hydrocarbons from the Gulf was no more than a suspicion ; even the New Orleans traffic was no more than a challenge to the rapidly evolving Pettyman Castor, who became an order of magnitude more sophisticated every day. He did not even get lost on his way to Manyface's office. He made his way unerringly to the proper building, floor, and even room. The only thing that went wrong was that Manyface was not there, nor even expected.
The faithful secretary said so. She was picking desultorily at her screen with a cursor rod when Castor came in. She did not seem either surprised or particularly apologetic when it developed that Senior Party Cadre Fung Bohsien had forgotten to mention Castor's arrival. She was friendly enough, though. "You have to allow for him at times like this, Pettyman," she said absently, eyes on the screen. Craning his neck, Castor caught a glimpse of what was on the screen. The secretary was playing a game of Go with the computer. She made her move and then went on: "He's always this way when he gets a new implant."