"Keep out of the way, boy!" He spoke in English, but in a light, singing tone which lacked the customary American accentuation.
Thomas jumped into the gutter -- "They like to look down, not up" -- and clasped his hands together in the form required. He ducked his head and replied, "The master speaks; the servant obeys."
"That's better," acknowledged the Asiatic, apparently somewhat mollified. "Your ticket."
The man's accent was not bad, but Thomas did not comprehend immediately, possibly because the emotional impact of his experience in the role of slave was all out of proportion to what he had expected. To say that he raged inwardly is meaninglessly inadequate.
The swagger cane cut across his face. "Your ticket!"
Thomas produced his registration card. The time the Oriental spent in examining it gave Thomas an opportunity to pull himself together to some extent. At the moment he did not care greatly whether the card passed muster or not; if it came to trouble, he would take this one apart with his bare hands.
But it passed. The Asiatic grudgingly handed it back and strutted away, unaware that death had brushed his elbow.
It turned out that there was little to be picked up in town that he had not already acquired secondhand in the hobo jungles. He had a chance to estimate for himself the proportion of rulers to ruled, and saw for himself that the schools were closed and the newspapers had vanished. He noted with interest that church services were still held, although any other gathering together of white men in assembly was strictly forbidden.
But it was the dead, wooden faces of the people, the quiet children, that got under his skin and made him decide to sleep in the jungles rather than in town.
Thomas ran across an old friend at one of the hobo hideouts. Frank Roosevelt Mitsui was as American as Will Rogers, and much more American than that English aristocrat, George Washington. His grandfather had brought his grandmother, half Chinese and half wahini, from Honolulu to Los Angeles, where he opened a nursery and raised flowers, plants, and little yellow children, children that knew neither Chinese nor Japanese, nor cared.
Frank's father met his mother, Thelma Wang, part Chinese but mostly Caucasian, at the International Club at the University of Southern California. He took her to the Imperial Valley and installed her on a nice ranch with a nice mortgage. By the time Frank was raised, so was the mortgage.
Jet Thomas had cropped lettuce and honeydew melon for Frank Mitsui three seasons and knew him as a good boss. He had become almost intimate with his employer because of his liking for the swarm of brown kids that were Frank's most important crop. But the sight of a flat, yellow face in a hobo jungle made Thomas' hackles rise and almost interfered with his recognizing his old acquaintance.
It was an awkward meeting. Well as he knew Frank, Thomas was in no mood to trust an Oriental. It was Frank's eyes that convinced him; they held a tortured look that was even more intense than that found in the eyes of white men, a look that did not lessen even while he smiled and shook hands.
"Well, Frank," Jeff improvised inanely, "who'd expect to find you here? I should think you'd find it easy to get along with the new regime."
Frank Mitsui looked still more unhappy and seemed to be fumbling for words. One of the other hobos cut in. "Don't be a fool, Jeff. Don't you know what they've done to people like Frank?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, you're on the dodge. If they catch you, it's the labor camp. So is Frank. But if they catch him, it's curtains -- right now. They'll shoot him on sight --."
"So? What did you do, Frank?"
Mitsui shook his head miserably.
"He didn't do anything," the other continued. "The empire has no use for American Asiatics. They're liquidating them."
It was quite simple. The Pacific coast Japanese, Chinese, and the like did not fit into the pattern of serfs and overlords -- particularly the half-breeds. They were a danger to the stability of the pattern. With cold logic they were being hunted down and killed.
Thomas listened to Frank's story. "When I got home they were dead -- all of them. My little Shirley, Junior, Jimmy, the baby -- and Alice." He put his face in his hands and wept. Alice was his wife. Thomas remembered her as a brown, stocky woman in overalls and straw hat, who talked very little but smiled a lot.
"At first I thought I would kill myself," Mitsui went on when he had sufficient control of himself, "then I knew better. I hid in an irrigation ditch for two days, and then I got away over the mountains. Then some whites almost killed me before I could convince them I was on their side."
Thomas could understand how that would happen, and could think of nothing to say. Frank was damned two ways; there was no hope for him. "What do you intend to do now, Frank?"
He saw a sudden return of the will to live in the man's face. "That is why I will not let myself die! Ten for each one" -- he counted them off on his brown fingers -- "ten of those devils for each one of my babies -- and twenty for Alice. Then maybe ten more for myself, and I can die."
"Hm-m-m. Any luck?"
"Thirteen, so far. It is slow, for I have to be very sure, so that they won't kill me before I finish."
Thomas pondered it in his mind, trying to fit this new knowledge into his own purpose. Such fixed determination should be useful, if directed. But it was some hours later before he approached Mitsui again.
"How would you," he asked gently, "like to raise your quota from ten to a thousand each -- two thousand for Alice?"
CHAPTER THREE
The exterior alarms brought Ardmore to the portal long before Thomas whistled the tune that activated the door. Ardmore watched the door by televisor from the guard room, his thumb resting on a control, ready to burn out of existence any unexpected visitor. When he saw Thomas enter his thumb relaxed, but at the sight of his companion it tightened again. A PanAsian! He almost blasted them in sheer reflex before he checked himself. It was possible, barely possible, that Thomas had brought a prisoner to question..
"Major! Major Ardmore! It's Thomas."
"Stand where you are. Both of you."
"It's all right, Major. He's an American. I vouch for him."
"Maybe." The voice that reached Thomas over the announcing phone was still grimly suspicious. "Just the same -- peel off all of your clothes, both of you." They did so, Thomas biting his lip in humiliation, Mitsui trembling in agitation. He did not understand it and he felt trapped. "Now turn around slowly and let me look you over," the voice commanded.
Having satisfied himself that they were unarmed, Ardmore told them to stand still and wait, then called Graham on the intercommunication circuit. "Graham!"
"Yes, sir."
"Report to me at once in the guard room."
"But, Major, I can't. Dinner will be --"
"Never mind dinner! Move!"
"Yes, sir!"
Ardmore pointed out the situation to him in the screen. "You go down there and handcuff both of them from behind. Secure the Asiatic first. Make him back up to you, and watch yourself. If he tries to jump you, I may have to wing you, too."
"I don't like this, Major," Graham protested. "Thomas is all right. He wouldn't be up to any hanky-panky."
"Sure, man, 1 know he's all right, too. But he may be drugged and under control. This set-up could be a Trojan Horse gag. Now get down and do as you are told. "