“What’s the trouble?” Brazil managed between swallows. “Problems?”
“It’s quite safe to eat,” Ortega assured her. “There are no microorganisms that will give you any real problems here—not until you go out, anyway. The stuff’s biologically compatible.”
“No, no—it’s—” she stammered. “Well, I have never seen food like it before. How do you…?”
“Just watch me and follow my example,” Brazil laughingly replied. “See? You cut it with a knife and fork like this, then—”
They dug into the meal, Vardia getting the hang of it, although she protested several times that she thought the food tasted terrible. But they were all too hungry to protest.
Ortega’s eyes fell on Wu Julee, who just sat there staring at the food, not eating at all. “The girl—she is ill?” he asked them.
Brazil suddenly stopped eating and looked at Hain, who had already finished and was just letting out an extremely noisy belch. The captain’s face had a grave expression on it, and the fine food suddenly felt like lead in his stomach.
“She’s a spongie,” Brazil said softly. Hain’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
Ortega’s face, too, turned serious. “How far gone?” he asked.
“Fairly bad, I’d say,” Brazil replied. “Deep mental maybe five years old, voluntary action basically emotive only.” Suddenly he whirled in his chair and faced Hain, cold fury in his eyes. “How about it, Hain?” he snarled. “Would you agree?”
Hain’s piggish face remained impassive, his tone of voice seemed almost one of relief. “So you found out. I thought perhaps I was overdoing the routine at that dinner.”
“If we hadn’t been trapped on Dalgonia, I’d have had you and her down on Arkadrian before you realized what was what,” Brazil told him.
Hain’s face showed both shock and surprise. Brazil’s remarks had gotten to him. Then, suddenly, a thought occurred to him and the old, smug self-confidence returned.
“It would seem, then, that I have fallen not into a terrible situation, but into a most fortunate one by this—er, circumstance,” he said calmly. “A pity for the lady, though,” he added in mock sympathy.
“Why you son of a bitch!” Brazil snarled and leaped at the fat man’s throat, spilling food everywhere. The big man was a head taller and twice the weight of the attacker, but Brazil’s quickness and the sheer hatred in his soul flowed into his arms and hands as they tightened around the other’s neck.
Hain thrashed and tried to push the smaller attacker away, but all he managed was to cause both of them to roll onto the floor, the small man still squeezing. Hain’s mouth was open, face red, as he gasped for breath. The expression on Brazil’s face was almost demonic; nothing would keep him from his goal.
Vardia watched openmouthed, understanding the situation only in the vaguest way and finding Brazil’s actions, both recounted and current, incomprehensible. In her private universe, there were no people, only cells composing a whole body. A diseased cell was simply eliminated. So there was no place in her mind for one who caused such a disease.
Wu Julee watched the two grapple impassively, her meal still on her lap.
Suddenly Ortega bounded over his desk and grabbed Brazil with massive arms. The giant creature moved almost too fast for the eye to follow; Vardia was stunned at the speed and surety with which the creature acted.
Brazil fought to get free of the grip, and Ortega’s middle arm suddenly came from nowhere and punched the small man hard in the jaw. He went slack, still held aloft in the creature’s strong grip.
Freed of his attacker, Hain gasped and choked for air, finally rolling flat on his back and lying there, his huge stomach rising and falling. He felt his neck, where the imprint of Brazil’s murderous hands could still be seen.
Ortega began examining the unconscious man. Satisfied that no bones were broken, nor permanent damage done, he grunted and put the man down on the floor. Brazil collapsed in a heap, and the snakeman turned his attention to Hain.
“I thank you, sir,” Hain gasped, his hand going involuntarily to his throat. “You have surely saved my life.”
“I didn’t want to do it, nor would I have done so in normal times,” Ortega snapped back acidly. “And if Nate ever catches up to you on the outside, I won’t be there to save you—and, if I am, I’ll cheerfully join him in tearing you limb from limb. But I will not allow such a thing here!” He turned his attention back to Brazil, who was just coming around.
Hain seemed taken aback by the creature’s comments, then saw that his pulse pistol had fallen when they had tumbled and now was a foot or so from him on the floor. Slowly, his hand crept toward it.
“No!” Wu Julee suddenly screamed, but Hain already had the weapon, and was pointing it at both the snakeman and Brazil, who was sitting up, shaking his head and rubbing his jaw. Ortega’s back was to Hain, but Brazil suddenly looked up and spotted the gun. Ortega saw him stare and turned to face the fat man.
“Now both of you behave and I won’t do anything rash,” Hain told them in that same cool, confident tone he always used. “But I am leaving this charming place right now.”
“How?” asked Serge Ortega.
The question seemed to bother Hain, who was used to simple answers to simple questions. “The—the way we came in,” he said at last.
“The doorway leads to a corridor. The corridor leads to the Well in one direction—and that is strictly one way,” Ortega told him. “In the other direction are more rooms like this—seven hundred and eighty of them, in a honeycombed labyrinth. Beyond them are housing and recreation facilities for the types of creatures that use those offices—seven hundred and eighty different types of creatures, Hain. Some of them don’t breathe what you do. Some of them won’t like you a bit and may just kill you.”
“There is a way out,” Hain snarled, but there was desperation in his voice. “There must be. I’ll find it.”
“And then what?” Ortega asked calmly. “You’re out in a world that is moderately large. The surface area is best expressed as five point one times ten to the eighth power kilometers squared. And you don’t even know what the planet looks like, the languages, anything. You’re a smart man, Hain. What are the odds?”
Hain seemed confused, hesitant. Suddenly he looked at the pistol in his hand and brightened. “This gives me the odds,” he said firmly.
“Never play the odds until you know the rules of the game,” Ortega warned softly, and advanced slowly toward him.
“I’ll shoot!” Hain threatened, his voice an octave higher than usual.
“Go ahead,” Ortega invited, his great serpentine body sliding slowly toward the panicked man.
“All right, dammit!” Hain cried, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Hain pulled the trigger again and again. It clicked, making contact with the solenoid firing pin, but did nothing else.
Ortega suddenly moved with that blinding speed, and the gun seemed to vanish from the fat man’s hand.
“No weapon works in this room,” Ortega said crisply. Hain sat, a stupefied expression on his face, mouth half open. Possibly for the first time in his life that arrogant self-confidence was gone out of him.
“You all right, Nate?” Ortega shot to the small man, who still sat half-rising, holding his sore jaw.
“Yeah, you son of a bitch,” Brazil replied mushily, shaking his head to clear it. “Man! You sure as hell pack a wallop!”
Ortega chuckled. “I was the only man smaller than you once in a bar on Siprianos. I was full of booze and dope, and ready to take on the house, all of whom would have cheerfully slit my throat for the floor show. I just started to pick a fight with the bouncer when you grabbed me and knocked me cold. Took me ten weeks before I realized that you’d saved my neck.”