Of course, if the worst comes to the worst-but that’s just what it’s likely to do-
Hoy! What’s this?
Flandry stopped. Another man had left the trail and was walking across the slope. A boy, rather: couldn’t be more than sixteen, with so round a face and slender a body. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten lately and had hocked everything but his kilt. Yet that was of shimmery velvety cloth, not cheap at all. Odd.
Something about his blind purposefulness jabbed understanding into Flandry. The Terran began to run. The boy sprang up on the wall. He stood there a moment, gazing into the wan sky of Unan Besar. Sunlight flooded across him. Then he jumped.
Flandry did a belly whopper across the wall and caught an ankle. He almost went over too. “Oof!” he said, and lay draped with the boy squirming and swinging at the end of his arm. When his breath returned, he hauled his burden back over and dumped it on the ground. The boy gave one enormous shudder and passed out.
A crowd was gathering, quite agog. “All right,” panted Flandry, “all right, the show’s over. I thank you for your kind attention. Anyone who wishes to pass the hat is free to do so.” A Guard shoved through. No mistaking that green kilt and medallion, the knife and club, or the built-in swagger.
“What’s this?” he said, in the manner of policemen the universe over.
“Nothing,” said Flandry. “The boy got a little reckless and nearly had an accident.”
“So? Looked to me as if he jumped.”
“Only a game. Boys,” said Flandry with sparkling wit, “will be boys.”
“If he’s contracted or enslaved, suicide would be an evasion of obligations and attempted suicide would rate a flogging.”
“No, he’s free. I know him, Guardsman.”
“Even a free man has no right to jump within city limits. He might have hit somebody underneath him. He’d have made a mess for someone to clean up, that’s certain. Both of you come with me now, and we’ll look into this.”
Flandry’s spine tingled. If he got himself arrested on so much as a malicious mopery charge, that was the end of the party. He smiled and reached inside his kilt pocket. “I swear it was only a near accident, Guardsman,” he said. “And I’m a busy man.” He extracted one of his purses. “I haven’t time to argue this officially. Why don’t you… ah… take ten silvers and go settle any claims there may be? It would be so much easier all around.”
“What? Do you mean—”
“Quite right. The aggrieved parties ought to have at least two goldens between them. You know this city, Guardsman, and I’m a newcomer. You can find who deserves the payment. I beg you, do not burden my soul with debts I cannot settle.” Flandry thrust the coins into his hand.
“Ah. Ah, yes.” The Guard nodded. “Yes, it would be best that way, wouldn’t it? Seeing that no actual damage was done.”
“I am always pleased to meet a man of discretion.” Flandry bowed. The Guard bowed. They parted with murmurs of mutual esteem. The crowd lost interest and continued on its various ways. Flandry knelt beside the boy, who was coming to, and cradled the dark head in his arms.
“Take it easy, son,” he advised.
“Oa-he, tuan, why did you stop me?” A shaken whisper. “Now I must nerve myself all over again.”
“Ridiculous project,” snorted Flandry. “Here, can you get up? Lean on me.”
The boy staggered to his feet. Flandry supported him. “When was your last meal?” he inquired.
“I don’t remember.” The boy knuckled his eyes, like a small child.
“Well, I was on my way to breakfast, which by How is more like luncheon. Come join me.”
The thin body stiffened. “A man of Ranau takes no beggar’s wage.”
“I’m not offering charity, you gruntbrain. I want to feed you so you can talk rationally, which is the only way I can learn whether you’re the person I want to hire for a certain job.”
Flandry looked away from the sudden, bitterly resisted tears. “Come!” he snapped. His guess had been right, the youngster was out of work and starving. A stranger to this area: obviously so, from the intricate foreign pattern of his batik and from his dialect. Well, an outlander might prove of some use to a stranded Imperialist.
A tea house wasn’t far off. At this sunny time of day, most of its customers sat on a ledge outside beneath giant red parasols, and looked down on a ravine full of clouds. Flandry and the boy took cushions at one table. “Tea with a jug of arrack to lace it,” Flandry told the waiter. “And two of your best rijstaffels.”
“Two, sir?”
“To begin with, anyhow.” Flandry offered the boy a cigarette. It was refused. “What’s your name, younker?”
“Djuanda, son of Tembesi, who is chief ecologist of the Tree Where the Ketjils Nest, which is in Ranau.” The head bowed above folded hands. “You are kind to a stranger, tuan.”
“I’m one myself.” Flandry lit his own tobacco and reached for his tea cup as it arrived. “From, ah, Pegunungan Gradjugang, across the Tindjil Ocean. Name’s Dominic. I came here in hopes of my fortune.”
“Half the world does, I think.” Djuanda slurped his tea in the approved Pulaoic manner. His voice had strengthened already, which underlined the anger in it. “So half the world are fools.”
“Commoners have become rich men here, I am told.”
“One in a million, perhaps… for a while… until he loses it to a cheat. But the rest? They rot their lungs in the mines, and their wives and children cough like amphibians in the rice paddies, and at the end they are so far in debt they must become slaves. Oh, tuan, the sun hates Gunung Utara!”
“What brought you, then?”
Djuanda sighed. “I thought the Trees of Ranau were not high enough.”
“Eh?”
“I mean… it is a saying of my folk. A tree which grows too high will topple at last. Surulangun Ridge is the earth-buried bole of such a tree. It fell a thousand years ago, three hundred meters tall, and the forest still bears the scars of its falling, and the Ridge is still hot from its slow decay. The old people made a parable of it, and told us not to strive beyond reason. But I always thought-how splendid the great tree must have been while it lived!”
“So you ran away from home?”
“Couldn’t you write home for help?” Flandry asked.
The immature face grew stiff with pride. “I had defied my father’s will, tuan. In the hearing of all our Tree, I said I was now a man able to look after myself. Did I not at least make my own way home again, his dignity would suffer as much as mine. No. I found another eager young man, the gods be pitiful toward him, who wanted my position and could pay me somewhat for it. I sold all I owned. It was still not enough. I went to the dispenser and told him he could keep my last pill, recording it as issued to me, for fifty goldens. He would only give me five.” (Black market resale value, one hundred goldens, Flandry remembered. The poor rube from Ranau had had no concept of haggling.) “So I could not buy passage home. But at least I now had enough to clear my name from debt. I flung the coins in the moneylender’s face. Then for days I tried to find other work, any work, but it was only offered to me if I would become a slave. No man of Ranau has ever been a slave. I went forth at last to die honorably. But you came by, tuan. So I suppose the gods do not want me yet,” finished Djuanda naively.