If Pop were free, he would come back. But the police had taken Pop away. Would they simply question him and turn him loose?
No, they would not. So far as Thorby knew, Pop had never done anything to harm the Sargon -- but he had known for a long time that Pop was not simply a harmless old beggar. Thorby did not know why Pop had done the many things which did not fit the idea of "harmless old beggar" but it was clear that the police knew or suspected. About once a year the police had "cleaned out" the ruins by dropping a few retch-gas bombs down the more conspicuous holes; it simply meant having to sleep somewhere else for a couple of nights. But this was a raid in force. They had intended to arrest Pop and they had been searching for something.
The Sargon's police operated on a concept older than justice; they assumed that a man was guilty, they questioned him by increasingly strong methods until he talked... methods so notorious that an arrested person was usually anxious to tell all before questioning started. But Thorby was certain that the police would get nothing out of Pop which the old man did not wish to admit.
Therefore the questioning would go on a long time.
They were probably working on Pop this very minute. Thorby's stomach turned over.
He had to get Pop away from them.
How? How does a moth attack the Presidium? Thorby's chances were not much better. Baslim might be in a back room of the district police barracks, the logical place for a petty prisoner. But Thorby had an unreasoned conviction that Pop was not a petty prisoner... in which case he might be anywhere, even in the bowels of the Presidium.
Thorby could go to the district police office and ask where his patron had been taken -- but such was the respect in which the Sargon's police were held that this solution did not occur to him; had he presented himself as next of kin of a prisoner undergoing interrogation Thorby would have found himself in another closed room being interviewed by the same forceful means as a check on the answers (or lack of them) which were being wrung out of Baslim.
Thorby was not a coward; he simply knew that one does not dip water with a knife. Whatever he did for Pop would have to be done indirectly. He could not demand his "rights" because he had none; the idea never entered his head. Bribery was possible -- for a man with a poke full of stellars. Thorby had less than two minims. Stealth was all that was left and for that he needed information.
He reached this conclusion as soon as he admitted that there was no reasonable chance that the police would turn Pop loose. But, on the wild chance that Baslim might talk his way free, Thorby wrote a note, telling Pop that he would check back the next day, and left it on a shelf they used as a mail drop. Then he left.
It was night when he stuck his head above ground. He could not decide whether he had been down in the ruins for half a day or a day and a half. It forced him to change plans; he had intended to go first to Inga the greengrocer and find out what she knew. But at least there were no police around now; he could move freely as long as he evaded the night patrol. But where? Who could, or would, give him information?
Thorby had dozens of friends and knew hundreds by sight. But his acquaintances were subject to curfew; he saw them only in daylight and in most cases did not know where they slept. But there was one neighborhood which was not under curfew; Joy Street and its several adjoining courts never closed. In the name of commerce and for the accommodation of visiting spacemen taprooms and gaming halls and other places of hospitality to strangers in that area near the spaceport never closed their doors. A commoner, even a freedman, might stay up all night there, although he could not leave between curfew and dawn without risking being picked up.
This risk did not bother Thorby; he did not intend to be seen and, although it was patrolled inside, he knew the habits of the police there. They traveled in pairs and stayed on lighted streets, leaving their beats only to suppress noisy forms of lawbreaking. But the virtue of the district, for Thorby's purpose, was that the gossip there was often hours ahead of the news as well as covering matters ignored or suppressed by licensed news services.
Someone on Joy Street would know what had happened to Pop.
Thorby got into the honky-tonk neighborhood by scrambling over rooftops. He went down a drain into a dark court, moved along it to Joy Street, stopped short of the street lights, looked up and down for police and tried to spot someone he knew. There were many people about but most of them were strangers on the town. Thorby knew every proprietor and almost every employee up and down the street but he hesitated to walk into one of the joints; he might walk into the arms of police. He wanted to spot someone he trusted, whom he could motion into the darkness of the court.
No police but no friendly faces, either -- lust a moment; there was Auntie Singham.
Of the many fortunetellers who worked Joy Street Auntie Singham was the best; she never purveyed anything but good fortune. If these things failed to come to pass, no customer ever complained; Auntie's warm voice carried conviction. Some whispered that she improved her own fortunes by passing information to the police, but Thorby did not believe it because Pop did not. She was a likely source of news and Thorby decided to chance it -- the most she could tell the police was that he was alive and on the loose... which they knew.
Around the corner to Thorby's right was the Port of Heaven cabaret; Auntie was spreading her rug on the pavement there, anticipating customers spilling out at the end of a performance now going on. ,
Thorby glanced each way and hurried along the wall almost to the cabaret. "Psst! Auntie!"
She looked around, looked startled, then her face became expressionless. Through unmoving lips she said, loud enough to reach him, "Beat it, son! Hide! Are you crazy?"
"Auntie... where have they got him?"
"Crawl in a hole and pull it in after you. There's a reward out!" "For me? Don't be silly. Auntie; nobody would pay a reward for me. Just tell me where they're holding him. Do you know?"
"They're not."
" 'They're not' what?"
"You don't know? Oh, poor lad! They've shortened him." Thorby was so shocked that he was speechless. Although Baslim had talked of the time when he would be dead, Thorby had never really believed in it; he was incapable of imagining Pop dead and gone.
He missed her next words; she had to repeat. "Snoopers! Get out!"
Thorby glanced over his shoulder. Two patrolmen, moving this way -- time to leave! But he was caught between street and blank wall, with no bolt hole but the entrance to the cabaret... if he ducked in there, dressed as he was, being what he was, the management would simply shout for the patrol.
But there was nowhere else to go. Thorby turned his back on the police and went inside the narrow foyer of the cabaret. There was no one there; the last act was in progress and even the hawker was not in sight. But just inside was a ladder-stool and on it was a box of transparent letters used to change signs billing the entertainers. Thorby saw them and an idea boiled up that would have made Baslim proud of his pupil -- Thorby grabbed the box and stool and went out again.
He paid no attention to the approaching policemen, placed the ladder-stool under the little lighted marquee that surmounted the entrance and pimped up on it, with his back to the patrolmen. It placed most of his body in bright light but his head and shoulders stuck up into the shadow above the row of lights. He began methodically to remove letters spelling the name of the star entertainer.
The two police reached a point right behind him. Thorby tried not to tremble and worked with the steady listlessness of a hired hand with a dull job. He heard Auntie Singham call out, "Good evening, Sergeant."
"Evening, Auntie. What lies are you telling tonight?"