Calories
L. Sprague de Camp
SlNGER took a quick look up and down the street. Few were abroad in the long spring twilight, especially since a light snow had begun and the wind whipped a thin surface-drift over the cobbles. Nothing to hold a footprint yet, so he'd be sweet for a while before the Johns mooched along.
Hoping the stories of Syechas's hospitality to fugitives were true, he darted through the door with more agility than one would expect of a man of his bulk. Inside, the sweet smell of nyomnigë met his nose. Luckily he didn't have to worry about letting that drug get him. A difference between the superficially human-looking Krishnans and Earthmen was that instead of giving the latter visions of love, wealth, and other fine things, nyomnigë simply made them sick.
Syechas loomed in the gloom, his shaven skull reflecting feeble yellow lamplight. "Yes?"
Singer swept off his heavy fur cap, baring his own polished pate. Since coming to Nichnyamadze he had taken up this local custom, because it saved an Earthman a picnic in the form of messing around with green hair-dye.
"My name is Dinki," said Singer in stumbling Nichnyami. "They say that you—that you shelter people who wish to be left—uh—severely alone."
"They say many things," said Syechas, bulking immovably before him.
"I can pay," said Singer with a smile.
Syechas raised his antennae. "How much?"
Singer felt into his surcoat and brought out one of the two platinum candlesticks.
"Hm," said Syechas, narrowing heavy-lidded eyes as he held the bauble up to the lamp in the wall-bracket. "This is from the high priest's palace." He turned the object so that the jewels threw little sharp beams of light here and there.. "It would be risky to sell."
"Still," said Singer, "it should be worth—let us say—sixty days' lodging at—at a minimum? In strict—uh—privacy?"
"Have you another?" said Syechas, looking at Singer's big gold ring.
"No," replied Singer, feeling the other hard against his chest.
"Then make it forty days' minimum and I will take you."
"Done."
"Come then." Syechas led down the dark corridor. From the rooms on either side came silence or various sounds: -song here, mutterings there. Singer would have liked to have dropped an eave, since Syechas was said to have a finger in every conspiratorial pie in the city of Vyutr. However, he dared not annoy his new landlord by lagging.
Up a flight of dingy stairs they went; up another; into a room containing an unmade bed and a few crude movables. Syechas took a step-ladder out of the closet and set it up directly under a trapdoor in the ceiling, climbed, and rapped. Then he pushed up the trapdoor, came down, and said: "Up there."
Singer climbed. When he put his head through the opening he found it not quite so dark as an attic should be. He climbed the rest of the way and saw why: a table against a partition on which stood a lamp shaded by a piece of board.
Somebody was breathing.
Singer whirled, hand on his knife, and hit his head on a rafter. As the stars cleared he saw a man crouching in the gloom with a thing in his hand.
"Who are you?" said Singer.
"I might ask the same question."
"Stsa!" came Syechas's heavy voice. "Carve each other not; you're in like condition. Dinki, I'll fetch you a pallet. Have you supped?"
"No," said Singer.
"Very well." Sounds indicated that Syechas was securing the ladder. "Close the trap, and open not save on my knock: two, and again three."
"All right now," said Singer. "As I'm a—a fugitive like yourself, you can put up that thing. What is it, a pistol?" He picked the board off the table, so that the little oil-lamp shone unimpeded.
He saw a short man with a flat oriental-looking face and shaven head—typical Nichnyami. The man looked younger than Singer. However, you couldn't tell with Krishnans, who, lacking the benefits of Earthly science, seldom surpassed a century and a half, Earth time. The man held what he now saw to be a cocked crossbow-pistol. He shook out the bolt, let down the string, and said:
"As you see, no. Where should I get the magic weapons of the Earthmen?" Then after a pause: "Syechas played me foul, putting another in my suite—" (he indicated the attic with a faint smile) "—when I'd paid him for exclusive use. But he has us by the antennae. Whence hail you, stranger? From your accent I'd say not from Nichnyamadze."
"You're right. I—"
Singer paused, watching the other twirl one finger round his right antenna, and then take that organ of smell between thumb and finger and tug it gently, thrice.
Singer casually did likewise. This was a high-sign among Earthmen travelling in disguise on the planet Krishna, implying their feelers were false and glued on.
"Do you speak Portuguese?" said the stranger in that tongue.
"Sim, senhor" replied Singer in the language of the spaceways. "Enough to get by."
"Was your original language by any chance English?"
Singer's plump face took on a broad grin as he thrust out a beefy hand. "Good-o! Shike on it, cobber!"
The other man shook with a steely grip, saying: "Are you English?"
"D'you tike me for a bleeding Pommy? Hell no, I'm an Austrylian! But ain't it a hang of a thing to yarn in the good old English language agine?"
"Sure is," said the man with a faintly ironical grin for which Singer could see no reason. "What's your name?"
"Born Cuthwih Singer, but me pals calls me 'Dinky.' Yours?"
"I'm Earl Okagamut."
"The Earl of what?"
"No; that's my name. Okagamut. Earl Okagamut."
"Oh. How'd you land in this hell-hole?"
"Studying for a Ph. D.," said Okagamut.
"That don't sound reasonable, now. Explain."
"Sure. I'm studying for a degree in xenanthropology, and for my thesis I took Krishnan religious customs. By a little bribery and a lot of damn foolishness I got into the purity ceremony in the Fprochan Temple, disguised as a Kangandite priest."
"You are a doer! And they caught you digging the jewel out of the idol's eye, I suppose?"
"No; they only worship geometrical abstractions."
"I know; I was Yadjye's butler. Maybe that's what makes 'em such wowsers. What happened?"
"You were Yadjye's butler? It was old Yadjye himself who caught me. I must have turned right when I should have turned left, or gotten up when I should have prostrated myself, for the first thing I knew the high priest was yelling 'sacrilege!' and a hundred minor Kangandites, not being supposed to shed blood, were trying to strangle me with the belt-cords of their robes."
"How d'you get out?" cried Singer excitedly.
"This." Okagamut whisked out his blade: slightly curved, too long for a knife though rather short for a sword, with a fancy knuckle-guard. "I had to prick a couple, for which my next incarnation will no doubt be in the body of an unha. Luckily I got out before the temple guards were alerted, and came here. How about you?"
"Oh, nothing much about me," said Singer with an air of false modesty. "But since you insist, I had a good pozzer at Novorecife and married a bonzer sheila, when who blows in from Earth but another wife I'd forgot about, complete with documents to prove it. Well, you know how it is there—for a Brazzy, Abreu's the worst wowser I ever seen ..."
"I know," said Okagamut. "Being scared of his own wife, he won't stand for liberties on the part of anyone else."
"That's the dinkum oil. I thought it wise to up stick before he put his Johns on me, and ever since then I've been a sundowner wandering the face of Krishna and living by what wits I've got. By devious methods I wormed my way into the household of His Sacredness High-Priest Yadjye, Archbishop or Chief Rabbi or whatever you call him of the Church of the Divine Space, otherwise the Kangandite Cult, for the Diocese of Nichnyamadze."