She went up to the counter. “I understand you deal in crystal.”
His round face settled. “Call me Mr. Overwood.”
“I’m from the Committee.”
“Oh.” He reached his hand out to her, smiling again. “Whyn’t you say so? Sure, I traffic in crystal. But it’ll cost you.”
“Where does it come from?”
“Uranus. Farmed in the White Side.” Overwood ducked down behind the counter and brought up a stack of black and white holographs. “One thousand dollars the ounce.”
She lifted off the top photograph. Against the black background the crystal polyhedron looked like a jewel. Overwood tapped the photograph.
“That’s Relleno. There are five grades, all I deal in are the premier grades, Relleno and Ebelos. Sixteen O-Z’s of Ebelos would power the whole California dome for six months.”
Paula leafed through the photographs. “I don’t believe you.”
Overwood muttered something.
“How do you get it?” she said.
“Oh, now—”
She put the holographs down. “We have a message for someone in the Styth Empire. Can you arrange to deliver it?”
His wide eyebrows rose. “I see. That will cost you, too.”
“Can you guarantee?”
“Who do you want to reach?”
“Melleno. The Saturn Akellar.”
Overwood leaned his forearm on the counter. “Maybe.”
“For a maybe, you’d better not ask much.”
He gathered up the photographs and put them away under the counter. Even here on the Earth, where there were no laws and no police, he was cautious. She wondered who his enemies were. Maybe other smugglers. He said, “My connection can get into Saturn-Keda.”
The doorbell jangled. She turned to watch a woman with a white dog cross the dark shop. Overwood went from behind the counter.
“Help you?”
“I’m looking at your splendid glassware.”
Paula strolled around the display cases along the wall. They showed rows of incense jars, plates, figures of animals. Amulets and books on Zen. She admired an old ivory and ebony chess set. On the wall above it was a corkboard, with bits of paper pinned to it.
Commune share 25/mo. Drugs check, one kid check.
Overwood sprayed foam around a dish of Venusian glass. While the casing dried, he took the woman’s money and gave her change. She tucked her white dog under one arm and the foam case under the other. The bell rang her out.
“Cost you fifteen hundred dollars to send a message to Saturn-Keda,” Overwood said. “In advance.”
Paula glanced at him over her shoulder. “For a maybe?”
“For certain. He’ll deliver.”
“One thousand. When we know it’s delivered.”
“No chance. My connection is a busy man.”
“I don’t doubt it. Where does he go? Does he go to Uranus?”
“Vribulo. Matuko. Flying around in a Gas Planet isn’t something I’d do, for instance. These spacemen are crazy.” Overwood took a tray out of the counter. “Direct from Saturn.” With a little flourish he turned back the lid. “Genuine reproductions.”
There were five big medals inside the box. Paula lifted one out by the chain. “What are they?”
“When a Styth warrior goes into military orders, you see, he wears a medal with his sign, here.” He pointed at the design cut into the medal’s face. “That’s the Fish. They’re very superstitious people.”
She reached for another. “What’s this one mean?”
“Unh—”
“Twelve hundred. Seven in advance, five when we know it’s delivered.”
“Now, my connection is a busy man.”
“So are we.”
He pursed his lips. “For the Committee.” He offered his wide hand, and Paula shook it.
The SoCal dome reached out to the deep water. The surf was too dirty to swim in. She walked along the beach, watching the waves break sluggishly over, brown with dirt. Garbage encrusted the sand. The filth lowered her mood, or maybe she had come here because her mood was already low and needed celebration.
The poet Fuldah had thought that all societies contained a finite number of persona, and the people left over from this cast could only wander around outside making trouble. She felt herself being forced into a role. Her life was closing in on her. She hated the Committee job, even the Styth case bored her, but it paid well and she kept putting off quitting because she liked the money. Tony would make her pregnant which would determine the next eighteen or twenty years while she raised her child. She felt as if her life were over.
The beach was studded with black rocks. Ahead, the brown cliffs rose, cut with gulleys. The edge of the water was strewn with purple and white jellyfish. A sea carrot, alive with flies, lay rotting along the high-tide line. She swerved away from its stink toward the cliffs, took her clothes off, and sat on a warm rock.
In spite of her restlessness she could not think of anything to do. Free as a bird, her father would have said. Free to do what every other bird did. She picked at the white scale on the rock. Out past the surf, the dome wall shone in the sunlight. It was not solid: ionized gas, held by a magnetic field, because of the earthquakes. Two boys came down the beach looking for rocks. She waved; they waved. After a while she put her clothes on and went back to the rooming house to eat.
Bunker was coming in on the underground train; at ten in the evening she went to meet him. He came across the platform toward her, putting on his sweater. “I thought it never got cold here.” Paula turned to walk beside him. They climbed the stairs to the ground level. She handed him an envelope.
“That’s the message to Melleno.”
They went out of the tube station and the cold wind struck her in the face. The paper flapped in Bunker’s hands. He turned to shelter it. Although the night had fallen long since, the domelight was bright enough to read by. Paula looked up at the hills. The wind was roaring out of the canyon behind them. The SoCal dome was huge; they were proud of their winds.
Bunker nodded. “I hope he can read it.” He gave her back the paper and they walked along the flat desert, their backs to the wind. The tall palm trees that marked the path milled their broad leaves like arms. “Do you suppose anybody there speaks the Common Speech?”
Paula shrugged. “Overwood does business with them. Overwood thinks crystal is some kind of super-battery.”
“I take it from your tone of voice that that shows his ignorance.”
“It’s not a battery. A transformer, sort of. Maybe.”
The path took them in toward the flank of the steep hills, where the houses clustered like a colony of barnacles above the bare dusty desert floor. A bike was wheeling toward her and she moved out of the way. They went up a steep path into the Old Town. The wind had blown weeds and leaves up against Overwood’s door. It was locked and the shop was dark. Paula stood looking in the window. Bunker turned.
“He must live around here somewhere.”
“I called him,” Paula said. “He said if he wasn’t at the shop, he’d be in the bar.” She pointed down the street. Two men were just going in a bright doorway. “I’ll bet that’s it.”
As they went through the doorway a bell clanged. There were three tiltball machines against the far wall, half-hidden behind a crowd of players. The room smelled of beer. Overwood was sitting in a booth in the back, behind a potted jacaranda tree, his hands laced over his little round stomach. Paula went up to him.
“Hello, there,” he said. “Have a seat. I’ll sit you a drink.”
Bunker shook his hand. “My name’s Richard Butler.”
“Whatever you say. Thomas Overwood here.”
Another chorus of bells rang out behind her. She slid between the jacaranda and the wall into the booth across from Overwood and held out the envelope to him. “For the Saturn Akellar.”