Ten minutes later he looked at the suit on himself, in a full-length mirror cube, and smiled at his sudden change from Underclass Watcher Themus to a sheeted and fetish-festooned member of the Toad Revelers cult found on Fewb-huh IV.
His earrings hung in shining loops to his shoulders, and the bag of toad shavings on his belt felt heavier than he thought it should. He pulled the drawstring on the bag and gasped. They were toad shavings. He tucked the bottom folds of the multicolored sheet into his boot tops, swung the lantern onto his back, and looked at Darfla in expectation.
He caught her grinning, and when he, too, smiled, her face went back to its recent stoniness.
Darfla made some kind of arrangement with Elgis, shook his hand, bit his ear, said, “How are the twins, Elgis?” to which the costumer replied, “Eh!” in a lackadaisical tone, and they left.
The rest of the trip through the patchwork quilt of Valasah was spent in silence.
The Crackpots were not what they seemed. Of that Themus was certain. He had been very stupid not to notice it before, and he thought the Watchers must be even more stupid for not having seen it in all their hundreds of years on Kyba.
But there was a factor he did not possess. Garbage and water that ran in different directions through the same pipe, a beggar that knew how many coins he had in his pocket, a girl who could rip out the innards of a dictobox, leaving it so it would work — and somehow he was now certain it would work — without a human behind it, and a full-sized cave built inside a concrete block. These were not the achievements of madmen.
But they were mad!
They had to be. All the things which seemed mysterious and superhuman were offset by a million acts of out-and-out insanity. They lived in a world of no standardization, no conformity at all. There was no way to gauge the way these people would act, as you could with the Kyben of the stars. It was — it was — well, insane!
Themus’s nose itched in confusion, but he refrained from unseemly scratching.
“Don’t I look like Santa Claus?” he said.
“Who?” asked Themus, looking at the roly-poly florid face and bushy beard. He tried to ignore the jaggedly yellow scar that reached from temple to temple.
“Santa Claus, Santa Claus, you lout? Haven’t you ever heard of the Earthmen’s mythical hero, Santa Claus? He was the hero of the Battle of the Alamo, he discovered what they call the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, he was the greatest drinker of milk out of wooden shoes that planet ever knew!”
“What’s milk?” asked Themus.
“Lords, what a clod!” He screwed up his lips in a childish pout. “I did immense research work on the subject. Immense!” Then he muttered, under his breath, almost an afterthought, “Immense.”
The old man was frightened. It showed, even through the joviality of his garb and appearance.
Themus could not understand the old man. He looked as though he would be quite the maddest of the lot, but he talked in a soft, almost whispering voice, lucidly and, for the most part, of familiar things. Yet there was something about him which set him apart from the other Crackpots. He did not have the wild-eyed look.
No one was saying anything and the sounds of their breathing in the basement hideout was loud in Themus’s ears. “Are you Boolbak, the steel pincher?” the Watcher asked, to make conversation. It seemed like the thing to say.
The bearded oldster shifted his position on the coal pile on which he was sitting, blackening his beard, covering his red suit with dust. His voice changed from a whisper to a shrill. “A spy! A spy! They’ve come after me. You’ll do it to me! You’ll bend it! Get away from me, get away from me, gedda way from me, geddawayfromee!” The old man was peering out from over the top of the pile, pointing a shaking finger at Themus.
“Uncle Boolbak!” Darfla’s brows drew down and she clapped her hands together. The old man stopped shouting and looked at her.
“What?” he asked, pouting childishly.
“He’s no spy, whatever he is,” she said, casting a definitely contemptuous glance at Themus. “He was a Watcher alerted to find you. I liked him,” she said looking toward the ceiling to find salvation for such a foul deed, “and I thought that it was about time you stopped this nonsense of yours and spoke to one of them. So I brought him here.”
“Nonsense? Nonsense, is it! Well, you’ve sealed my doom, girl! Now they’ll bend it around your poor uncle’s head as sure as Koobis and Poorah rise every morning. Oh, what have you done?”
The girl shook her head sadly, “Oh, stop it, will you. No one wants to hurt you. Show him your steel pinching.”
“No!” he answered, pouting again.
Themus watched in amazement. The man was senile. He was a tottering, doddering child. Of what possible use could he be? Of what possible interest could he be to both the Watchers and the Crackpots who had tried to stop Darfla’s bringing him here?
Suddenly the old man smiled secretly and moved in closer, sidling up to the Watcher as though he had a treasure everyone was after. He made small motions with his pudgy fingers, indicating he wanted Themus’s attention, his patience, his silence, and his ear, in that order. It was a most eloquent motioning, and Themus found he was complying, though no vocal request had been made. He bent closer.
Uncle Boolbak dug into a pocket of the red coal-coated jacket, and fished out a cane-shaped, striped piece of candy. “Want a piece of candy? Huh, want it, huh?”
Themus felt an urge to bolt and run, but he summoned all his dignity and said, “I’m Themus, Underclass Watcher, and I was told you — pinch steel. Is that right?”
For a moment the old man looked unhappy that the Watcher did not want any candy, then suddenly his face hardened. The eyes lost their twinkle and looked like two cold diamonds blazing at him. Boolbak’s voice, too, became harder, more mature, actually older. “Yes, that’s right, I ‘pinch’ steel, as you put it. You wonder what that means, eh?”
Themus found himself unable to talk. The man’s whole demeanor had changed. The Watcher suddenly felt like a child before a great intellect. He could only nod.
“Here. Let me show you.” The old man went behind the furnace and brought out two plates of steel. From a workbench along one wall he took a metal punch and double-headed hammer. He threw down one of the plates, and handed Themus the punch and hammer.
“Put a hole in this with that punch,” he said, motioning Themus toward the other plate, which he had laid flat on the workbench.
Themus hesitated. “Come, come, boy. Don’t dawdle.”
The Watcher stepped to the workbench, set the punch on the plate and tapped lightly till he had a hole started. Then he placed the punch in it again and brought the hammer down on its head with two swift strokes. The clangs rang loud in the dim basement. The punch sank through the plate and went a quarter-inch into the table. “I didn’t hit it very hard,” Themus explained, looking over his shoulder at “Santa Claus.”
“That’s all right. It’s very soft steel. Too many impurities. Kyben spacecraft are made of a steel which isn’t too much better than this, though they back it with strong reinforcers. Now watch.”
He took the plate in his hand, holding it between thumb and forefinger at one corner, letting it hang down. With the other hand he pinched it at the opposite corner, pressing thumb and forefinger together tightly.
The plate crumbled to dust, drifting down over the old man’s pinching hand in a bright stream.
Themus’s mouth opened of its own accord, his chest tightened. Such a thing wasn’t possible. The old man was a magician.
The dust glowed up at him from the floor. It was slightly luminous. He goggled, unable to help himself.
“Now,” said Boolbak, taking the other plate. “Put a hole in this one.”
Themus found he was unable to lift the hammer. His hands refused to obey. One did not see such things and remain untouched.