“Father, you can’t be here. You never come here!”
“But I have,” said Lord William Not-from-here. “And it’s important.” .
“Important?” laughed Ruth. “Then it’s not me. I’m not important. Your work up there is.” She looked toward the rim of the Earthport, which floated, distinct and circular, beyond the crests of some faraway clouds.
The overdressed lord squatted incongruously on the sand.
“Listen, girl,” said he slowly and emphatically, “I’ve never asked much of you but I am asking now.”
“Yes, father,” she said, a little frightened by this totally unaccustomed air: her father was usually playfully casual with her, and equally forgot her ten seconds after he got through talking to her.
“Ruth, you know we are Old North Australians?”
“We’re rich, if that’s what you mean. Not that it matters, the way things go.”
“I’m not talking about riches now, I’m talking about home, and I mean it!”
“Home? We never had a home, father.”
“Norstrilia!” he snarled at her.
“I never saw it, father. Nor did you. Nor your father. Nor great-grandpa. What are you talking about?’
“We can go home again!”
“Father, what’s happened? Have you lost your mind? You’ve always told me that our family bought out and could never go back. What’s happened now? Have they changed the rules? I’m not even sure I want to go there, anyhow. No water, no beaches, no cities. Just a dry dull planet with sick sheep and a lot of immortal farmers who go around armed to the teeth!”
“Ruth, you can take us back!”
She jumped to her feet and slapped the sand off her bottom. She was a little taller than her father; though he was an extremely handsome, aristocratic-looking man, she was an even more distinctive person. It would be obvious to anyone that she would never lack for suitors or pursuers.
“All right, father. You always have schemes. Usually it’s antique money. This time I’m mixed up with it somehow, or you wouldn’t be here. Father, just what do you want me to do?”
“To marry. To marry the richest man who has ever been known in the universe.”
“Is that all?” she laughed. “Of course I’ll marry him. I’ve never married an offworlder before. Have you made a date with him?”
“You don’t understand, Ruth. This isn’t Earth marriage. In Norstrilian law and custom you marry only one man, you marry only once, and you stay married to him for as long as you live.”
A cloud passed over the sun. The beach became cooler. She looked at her father with a funny mixture of sympathy, contempt, and curiosity.
“That,” she said, “is a cat of another breed. I’ll have to see him first…”
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing. Or make up stories about blue men. You go back to that top deck and take it apart, molecule by molecule, until you find out where that brainbomb went off!”
“But, sir—”
“Don’t but me! I’ve been in battle and you haven’t. I know a bomb when I feel one. The blasted thing still gives me a headache. Now you take your men back up to that top deck and find out where that bomb went off.”
“Yes, sir,” said the young subchief gloomily, never thinking for a moment that he would have the least success in his mission. He saluted dispiritedly.
When he met his men at the door, he gave them an almost imperceptible shake of his head. In consequence, he and his men were the sorriest collection of slouching scarecrows ever seen at Earthport as they trudged their weary way up the ramp to the top deck of Earthport.
“We got the bull-man, B’dank, but somehow he escaped. Probably he is down in the sewers, hiding out. I haven’t got the heart to send the police after him. He won’t last long, down there. And it would make a fuss if I pardoned him. You might agree with me, but the rest of the Council wouldn’t.”
“And Commissioner Teadrinker, my lord? What are you going to do about him? That’s sticky wicket, my lord. He’s a former Lord of the Instrumentality. We can’t have people like that committing crimes.” The Lady Johanna Gnade was emphatic.
“I have the punishment for him,” said Jestocost, with a bland smile.
“Oblivion and reconditioning?” said the Lady Johanna. “He’s basically talented material.”
“Nothing that simple.”
“What, my lord?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, ‘nothing,’ Jestocost? It does not make sense.” The Lady Johanna let a rare note of petulance come into her voice.
“I meant what I said, my lady. Nothing. He knows that I know something. The spider is dead. The robot is demolished. Nine other Rod McBans are causing a bit of chaos in the lower city. But Teadrinker doesn’t know that I know everything. I have my own sources.”
“We know you pride yourself on that,” said the Lady Johanna, with a charming wry smile. “We also know that you like to keep individual secrets from the rest of us. We put up with it, my lord, because we love you and trust you, but it could be a very dangerous practice if it were carried out by other persons, less judicious than you, or less skilful. And it could even be dangerous if—” she hesitated, looked at him appraisingly, and then went on, “—if, my lord, you lost your shrewdness, or died suddenly.”
“I haven’t,” said he crisply, dismissing the subject,
“You haven’t told me what you are going to do with Teadrinker.”
“Nothing, I said,” said Jestocost a little crossly. “I’m going to do nothing at all and let him wait for me to bring destruction down on him. If he begins to think that I have forgotten, I will find some little way of reminding him that somebody or something is on his trail. Teadrinker is going to be a very unhappy man before I get through with him.”
“That sounds inhumane, my lord. He might appeal.”
“And be tried for murder?”
She gave up. “Your ways are new, my lord. You have seen your way into the Rediscovery of Man. Letting people suffer. Letting things go wrong. I was brought up on the old philosophy — if you see wrong, right it.”
“And I saw,” said Jestocost, “that we were dying of perfection.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said she wearily. “You have this rich man covered, I suppose?”
“As well as I can manage,” said Jestocost.
“That’s perfect, then,” said she with an air of finality. “I just hope you haven’t gotten him mixed up with that queer hobby of yours.”
“Queer hobby?” said Jestocost in a courtly fashion, with a lift of his eyebrows.
“Underpeople,” she said with a tone of disgust. “Underpeople. I like you, Jestocost, but your fussing about those animals sometimes makes me sick.”
He did not argue. He stood very still and looked at her. She knew he was avoiding a provocation. He was her senior, so she offered him a very slight curtsey and left the room.
A bear-woman, complete with starched cap and nurse’s uniform, pushed the wheelchair of the Lord Crudelta into the room. Jestocost looked up from the situation shows which he had been watching. When he saw who it was, he offered Crudelta a deep bow indeed. The bear-woman, flustered by this famous place and all the great dignitaries whom she was meeting, spoke up in a singularly high voice,
“My lord and master Crudelta, may I leave you here?”
“Yes. Go. I will call for you later. Go to the bathroom on your way out. It’s on the right.”
“My lord — !” she gasped with embarrassment.
“You wouldnt have dared if I hadn’t told you. I’ve been watching your mind for the last half-hour. Now go along.”