"Armand Ramhed?"
"The same. And you?" Armand craned forward, blinking. Tall, his head came level with Dumarest's own but his bulk was only half as much. His skin was creped, mottled, sagging in tiny pouches. His watery eyes were bagged and his throat resembled the scrawny limb of a starved bird. "Who are you, sir?" He blinked again as Dumarest gave his name and that of the woman who had sent him. Now he knew why she had asked him to be gentle.
"Hilda?" Armand smiled with genuine pleasure. "A wonderful woman, sir, and a true friend. Come in. Come in. Anything I can do to help I will do. For her I can do no less."
Inside the house was surprisingly clean though thinly furnished. Some bottles stood against a wall, all empty. Another stood on a table together with a glass. From the rear came the stench of fermenting fluids.
"You will drink with me?" Armand, without waiting for an answer, found a second glass. It was thick, smeared, the edge chipped a little. "It is only home-brew but it has some merit. A good body and the flavor, though I say it myself, is rewarding to those of discernment. A trifle young, of course, but there, we can't have everything can we? To your very good health, sir."
Dumarest watched as he swallowed the contents of his glass then took a sip of his own. He was pleasantly surprised. The wine, though a little rough, did hold the body Armand had claimed and the flavor, while strange, was not repulsive. And it was strong.
"You like it?" Like a child the man was eager for praise but there was no need to lie.
"I've drunk worse on a score of worlds," said Dumarest. "And been on as many more where a bottle of this would fetch a full mettre." Deliberately he emptied his glass.
"Some more?"
"Later." Dumarest produced the strip of film. "Hilda said that perhaps you could help me. If you can it will be worth some money."
"Is friendship to be bought?"
"No, but service is to be paid for." Dumarest explained the problem. "What can you do?"
"Perhaps nothing." Armand squinted at the film. "This needs to be magnified and projected-come into the other room."
It was a crude laboratory, a mess of variegated equipment strewn over a table and the floor, wires running from rough assemblies, hand-made mechanisms to all sides.
"Sit," ordered Armand. "Help yourself to drink if you want, but don't disturb me. This will take some time."
Time to sit and think and plan a little. Time to appreciate the irony of the situation and taste the bitter gall of defeat. He had, Dumarest was certain, the long-sought key to the whereabouts of the world he had searched to find for so long. Over the years he had gathered a handful of clues; a name, a sector, a mnemonic, some distances and names of nearby stars and then, finally, the one sure means to identify the primary from all others. The spectrogram he had found; the lost treasure of a forgotten cult.
It held the answer, he was sure of it. It would tell him what he wanted to know. Information which would yield the essential coordinates and put an end to the bitter search. The answer at last-all he needed was the money to pay for it.
Chapter Three
Armand Ramhed lived alone in a house which held little more than a bed, a table, a few chairs, some kitchen equipment and the apparatus he had assembled in his study. Dumarest roved through it, checking the contents of the cupboards and finding nothing but empty packets and scraps of mouldering food. The air in the kitchen stank of the fermenting liquid; a thick slime coated with a yellow crust ornamented with a shimmer of bursting bubbles. It contained a mixture of fruits, vegetables, sugars and traces of acids, syrups and crushed roots. Garbage, Dumarest guessed, collected from the market place, pounded, boiled, diluted, used as food by the yeasts which clouded it, their waste the alcohol which had come to dominate Armand's life.
The man waved an irritable hand as Dumarest entered his study.
"Go away, Earl. Don't interrupt me. I haven't finished yet."
"It's late."
"Is it?" Armand lifted his head, blinking. The windows were shuttered, the only light that coming from the crude apparatus over which he crouched. Colored beams streamed from it to paint his face with a rainbow. In the illumination his thin features took on the grotesque appearance of a clown. "I hadn't noticed. How late is it?"
"It's dark. Are you hungry?" Dumarest had expected the shake of the head. Alcohol, especially when loaded with organic particles, could feed as well as numb. "Well, I am. You've nothing to eat in the house. Where's the nearest store?"
It lay down the road, a small automat which swallowed coins and disgorged pre-packed items. Dumarest returned loaded with a package stuffed with basic commodities together with more perishable viands. An hour later he dragged Armand from his study and sat him at the table.
"Earl, this is a waste. I'm not hungry. I'm-" The man broke off, sniffing. "Meat? Is that meat?"
It was steak, thick and rare, served with three kinds of vegetable, flavored and rich in spiced oils. As Armand stared at it Dumarest said, shortly, "Eat."
"But-"
"Eat." He set an example, cutting, lifting slivers of meat to his mouth. "Take your time, chew it well, but eat."
The food had little obvious effect, it would take a month of such feeding to even begin to plump out the sunken cheeks, but a trace of color graced the shallow flesh and the eyes held a sharper directness than before.
"That was good." Armand sighed as he wiped oil from his mouth. "You certainly know how to cook, Earl. But then you would, wouldn't you?"
"Why?"
"A traveler has to be the master of many skills. To hunt, trap, butcher, cook-without that ability how to survive? And to eat when food is available because there can never be any certainty of when the next meal will offer the chance to eat again. You see? I know a little about such things."
"You've traveled?"
"A little when young. It is a disease of youth, is it not? The urge to be up and moving, to see new worlds, new places. To find adventure and excitement and, perhaps, romance. Well, I found no treasure and no rich women waiting to fall into my arms. I was offered no exotic employment and found no natural advantage. But some things I did find."
"Dirt," said Dumarest softly. "Discomfort. Pain and hunger. Cold indifference, men who cheated, women who lied. Poverty and what it can bring."
"The need to be utterly selfish," whispered Armand. "To be greedy, to give nothing away which could be sold, to concentrate every thought and action on the need to survive. And the loneliness. The loneliness."
"So you returned to Harald?"
"After a couple of years, yes. I'd made a friend, together we traveled Low, but when we landed he had died in transit. It decided things for me. Some men are not made in an adventurer's mold. So I came back home and took up a post with-well, never mind. And then-but that doesn't matter now either."
"Perhaps one thing does."
"Hilda?" Armand looked bleakly at his hands. "It's too late for that now. Once we could have made a life together but I was weak while she was strong. Weak!" His fist slammed against the table. "The story of my life. Always I have been weak. Earl!"
He needed his demon and it would do little harm on top of such richly oiled food. And his metabolism, accustomed to alcohol, would be demanding it. Silently Dumarest handed the man a glass, watched as he plunged it into the bubbling vat. A gulp and it was empty.
"How are you progressing?"
"On the spectrogram?" Armand helped himself to another drink. "Slowly. The work is engrossing and a puzzle of interest but there are so many variables to take into account before it will be possible to present a final picture."