"So?"
"I kept to our original plan. It worked up to a point but I had to wait until the stranger had left Ahdram and me alone. His greed made him show me the cube and I accused him of theft. He was distraught and offered restitution and recompense-the cunning bastard!"
Dumarest said dryly, "He found out what you wanted and offered to help-and demanded a price for his aid."
"You know?"
"I guessed. Dealers are much the same and Ahdram had to be shrewd in order to survive." An expert in a field in which she was an amateur. "The cube?"
"And the jewelry." A bracelet of ornate workmanship set with brilliant gems. "He demanded them both in return for information and I had no choice but to agree." Her hands clenched, the knuckles taut beneath the skin, the nails making small crescents in the flesh of her palms. "The swine!"
"He cheated you? He lied?"
"No," she said bitterly. "He didn't lie. The paintings were genuine and he told me how he got them. But he was playing with me-they don't come from Juba at all!"
Chapter Four
From outside the pavilion in which they sat, rising above the susurration of tinkling bells, came the sound of childish laughter and a woman's voice calling a warning. A small boy, chasing a brilliantly colored ball, had edged too close to the rim of the lake. His mother, a smoothly rounded woman with crested hair and tapering legs which flashed through the slitted skirt, ran after him, lifted him and carried him, gurgling, to safety.
Dumarest watched them, then looked at the man who sauntered close behind. Not the father or he would have run toward the child. Not even a friend who would have been concerned. And even a stranger would have made some move to avert a possible disaster-unless that stranger had other things on his mind.
"Earl?"
"Sardia was engrossed with her own problems. "What are we going to do?"
Dumarest remembered their agreement; the partnership she had proposed.
"The stranger," he said. "The one who sold the paintings. A spacer doing a little private trading?"
"A captain," she corrected. "One plying the Rift. He'd gone into a back room and Ahdram called him out to meet me. I think it amused him to introduce us." She added bitterly, "Captain Lon Tuvey chose to be difficult."
"He wouldn't tell you from where he got the paintings?" Dumarest restrained his impatience, the woman would tell it in her own way. "Is that it?"
"Oh, he told me," she admitted. "But it doesn't help. The paintings come from a world in the Rift but he wouldn't tell me the name of the artist. Instead he offered to take me to him and introduce me-for a price." She saw his expression, the shift of his eyes. "No, Earl, not that. He made a point of making it clear he had no use for my body. We wants money. A lot of it."
"For an introduction?"
"That and passage, Earl. A high passage to a world called Ath."
Ath?
Arth?
Earth?
It was incredible, such a coincidence was against all probability, but names could change when affected by time and distance. A shortening, a blurring, a growing carelessness in speech and writing-and one could become the other.
Ath! It was possible, and he couldn't forget the painted moon.
"Earth?" Sardia was staring at him, her eyes widely luminous in the shadowed gloom of the pavilion. "Earl, is something wrong?"
"No." He drew a deep breath. "Are you certain as to the name?"
He saw her nod and fought the sudden blaze of hope within him. Earth, he was certain, could not lie in the Rift. It had to be in a place where stars were few and scattered thin across the sky. The Rift was a swarm of suns burning within a cleft formed by some cosmic disturbance in a cloud of interstellar dust. And yet that very dust would have thinned the stars and created the illusion of remoteness.
Could Ath be the planet for which he had searched for so long?
Could it be Earth?
"Earl!" Sardia was impatient. "We have to decide what to do. We must ride with Tuvey. Even though we know the name of the world we still have to be introduced to the artist so it won't help us to take another ship. And if Tuvey is willing to sell the information to me then he'd sell it to another. He knows the information is valuable now. He could hawk it around-anyone who knows good art will spot the value of those paintings at once and spare no cost to find who produced them."
"He could have lied."
"Yes," she admitted. "But unless we go with him we'll never know. And those paintings he had were genuine. It's a chance we daren't miss. We've got to find the money and arrange the passage. And we have to do it soon. He leaves tomorrow at sunset."
Dumarest glanced at the sky, already the sun was well past the zenith and lowering toward the horizon. Little more than a day to raise how much?
He frowned as she told him. "So much?"
"He's charging high, Earl, but what can we do about it? And we'll need money to arrange a return passage as well as to pay the artist. You have money?"
"A little. And you?"
"My clothes, an open return passage booked to Tonge on the Cheedha Line. I could cancel it and get a refund."
"No." To do that would be to attract possible attention, a fact from which associations could be drawn- never did Dumarest underestimate the power of the Cyclan. "Anything else? You surely didn't give me all of your jewelry? And cash? If you find the artist on Juba you must be able to pay."
"With credit arranged through a commercial house," she explained. "Earl, I'm doing this on my own and I've gone into debt already. Either I find the artist and get his works or I go broke. On Tonge that is serious."
As it was on most commercial worlds with debtors placed under restraint, their labor sold under contract and harsh penalties extracted for non-cooperation. On other worlds, more rigorous, there were no debtors. A man paid for what he got when he got it and if he couldn't pay, then he went without.
"Earl!" She touched his hand and now her voice held pleading. "Please, tell me what to do?"
"Cut your losses and go back home." Advice she didn't want and which he had been stupid to give. His own problems were more serious than hers and to escape the trap closing around him he would need her aid. "But if you want to go ahead then turn everything you've got into money. Your clothes, jewels, everything."
"I have little, Earl. It won't be enough."
"We'll make it grow." Dumarest stared through the lattice-work of the pavilion. At the far edge of the sward a man stood studying the lake, apparently lost in contemplation of the birds which drifted across the surface. "Get moving now. Walk straight ahead and don't look back but when you reach the edge of the grass start running as if you'd seen someone you know."
"Why, Earl?"
"Just do it. Go straight home and sell everything you can. Make sure it's done by sunset After that wait by your phone."
"And you, Earl?" She shrugged as he didn't answer. "All right, I'll do as you say. But remember-we only have a day to raise the money."
Money-with it the universe was a place of enticing delights, without it a living hell. Money could buy food and comfort, luxury and safety and to get it men were willing to kill and risk being killed, to murder and to die.
Experience?" The man was plump, sweating, his thin hair plastered over a domed skull. The fabric of his blouse was stained, his belt tightly drawn over a sagging gut. As he spoke he chewed and, at times, spat. "Well?"
"A little," said Dumarest, then quickly corrected himself. "I mean a lot. I'm good and can take care of myself. Just give me a chance, mister, and you won't regret it."
Dowton spat. He'd seen too many like this one before; men with an inflated sense of their own skill and eager to step into the ring and collect the fame and rewards a knife could bring. The game needed them and they could bleed as well as the next, but the crowd was impatient and it was past the time when they would be satisfied with innocents led to the slaughter.