“Jove, you must’ve commenced your drudgery while still a wee babe,” he said.
“I’m a bit older than you imagine, Jiggs.”
He’d told her, when he manufactured a meeting last night on the esplanade, that his name was Jiggs Sandington. “The years have been kind to you then, my dear.”
“May I confess something to you?”
“Do, dear girl,” he invited.
“Until I met you, I’d never dated anyone who was…um…tinted as you are.” Esme lowered her eyes. “Mostly because I didn’t think I would go well with green, because of my blondeness. Wasn’t that silly of me?”
“All I can say is that I’m deuced glad you overcame your qualms.”
She said, “I’ve never cared much for men with red hair either. Yet, in your case, Jiggs…”
“My hair is orange.”
“Orange, red. You know what I mean.”
“One hesitates to state the obvious,” Saint said, letting the guitar settle into the bottom of their gently drifting craft, “yet an inborn honesty compels me to point out, fair lady, that love knows no boundaries.”
After giggling yet again, she said, “You know, that’s absolutely true. Because I didn’t even much fancy short men until you came into my life. No matter what color they were, since I’m rather a tall, fullfigured woman myself.”
“Actually, Esme dear, I’m not short,” Saint clarified. “If you take the height of all the myriad denizens of the universe into account, then the average male is only four foot six.”
“He really must be a shrimp,” said Esme. “You’re taller than that, aren’t you?”
“By nearly a foot, yes.”
“Well, it just goes to show what my grandmother used to say. ‘Never judge a vombis by its snoog.’”
“What does that mean precisely?”
“Well, it’s supposed to indicate that…I’m not exactly sure what a vombis is, but they had scads of them on the planet where granny grew up.”
“Some sort of beast, eh?”
Esme rubbed at her dimpled chin. “I think so, unless it’s a vegetable,” she replied. “Granny was a vegetarian in her final years and a good many of her maxims had a vegetable slant. Anyway, the proverb sort of means, the way she used it, that someone may well be repulsive on the outside but marvelously attractive on the inside.”
“Thank you so much.”
She sighed, blushing. “I swear I’m all tongue-tied today,” she said. “What I mean is, even though you’re little and green, I’m quite fond of you. You’ve been so nice and attentive, without trying to put your little green hands on the more intimate parts of my body. A girl likes that in a man. I also appreciate the way you took the time, when you picked me up at the office for lunch, to allow me to show you around the Confidential Records offices and even the Top Secret Room. Most men never ever take that much interest in me or my work.”
“To me, don’t you see, old girl, everything you do is of the utmost interest.” He reached over to take hold of her hand, the one that had been dragging in the stream.
“This is marvelous,” Esme said contentedly. “I’m glad fate brought us together.”
“It wasn’t fate,” murmured Saint as he kissed her pudgy fingers.
Saint wasn’t interested in the window display. In fact, he found it quite difficult to understand why anyone would be at all desirous of feasting his or her eyes on the nearly lifesize automatons that were cavorting therein. Simulacra of a quartet of lizardwomen they were, decked out in neon-trimmed gowns and mouthing the lyrics of the tune that was blasting forth from the talkboxes overhead.
“Beat me, daddy, with a solid jive…”
Wincing, Saint took another careful glance back the way he’d come. Yes, the lean chap in the ill-fitting two-piece canal-blue cazsuit had halted three shop windows behind him.
“Let me see,” thought Saint, “is the bloke with the Trinidad Law Bureau, Syndek…or is he interested in one of my earlier escapades?”
Didn’t really matter much, the chap had to be shaken off.
After patting his bright orange hair, Saint resumed his stroll.
Up ahead, an escalator walkway led down to another level of the mall.
“Poor lad’s going to take rather a nasty spill.”
Saint was halfway down the escalator when the man who was tailing him stepped on it. Concentrating, he caused the shadow’s right foot to fly out from under him.
“Yow,” he heard the man cry out as he fell over onto the chubby birdwoman in front of him.
Before everyone was untangled, Saint was far away.
Safe in his hotel room, certain no eavesdropping devices had been introduced while he was gone, Saint settled into a comfortable rubber armchair. Crossing his legs, steepling his fingers, shutting his eyes, he thought about the layout of the Top Secret Room at Triplan.
Within that room buttons were depressed, orders were given to various mechanisms and safety checks were overridden. The information Smith required was printed out without anyone’s being aware of it. And seconds later it teleported right to Saint’s lap.
Letting out his breath, the green man gathered up the dozen pages he’d teleported out of the data storage area of Triplan.
After scanning the first three pages, he said, “Ah, so that’s what the blighters are really so anxious about, is it?”
Two pages further along Saint came to the list of the ten former Horizon Kids who carried the secret.
“Jove!” He sat up straight. “This blooming list doesn’t quite match the one the lady provided us with. Not exactly, no.”
Jared Smith’s name was on this one.
CHAPTER 12
“More buzzards,” observed Cruz, gazing through the passenger side of the landvan windshield. “Two blue ones, three yellow. Death certainly comes in colorful shapes in the Trinidads.”
Smith, in the driveseat, said, “Could be they’re circling whatever it is that’s sending up that column of black smoke yonder.”
“The Oasis can’t be on fire?”
“We’re still about ten miles from there.”
Cruz leaned back in his seat. “Are we inquisitive enough to go over and take a gander?”
“Might as well.”
After they’d rolled through the hazy desert afternoon for another ten minutes they crested a dune and saw the source of the smoke.
A tourist landbus, sprawled on its side on the orangish sand, was just finishing burning up. Grouped a safe distance away were two dozen pilgrims and tourists.
“What’s that godawful wailing?” asked Crux. “There don’t seem to be any dead or wounded.”
“It’s the Sophisticates.” Smith guided their van down toward the cluster of people. “Those four lizardladies on the right there. They’re singing.”
“Some kind of shock reaction, is it?”
“Nope, I imagine they’re trying to boost folks’ morale after this accident.”
“I note laz holes in the roof of yonder vehicle, indicating this wasn’t exactly an accident.”
“Somebody strafed them.” Smith parked the landvan and stepped out.
“…so don’t sit under the utumbo tree with anyone else but me,” the green quartet was concluding, “till I come marching home.”
One of them smiled around at the dusty bedraggled passengers. “What would you like to hear next to cheer you up, dears?”
“Silence,” suggested a pudgy catman in a two-piece black clericsuit.
“Girls,” said Norman Vincent Bagdad, the lugubrious gentleman who had accosted Smith on the space-liner, “give everybody a break and pipe down for a while.”
“Honestly, Norm, you’re not at all supportive of-”
“Hey, look, here comes Smith.” Bagdad waved. “What a funny coincidence.”
“What happened?” Smith asked.
“We were attacked by a stray strafingdrone,” said the catman cleric. “A representative of the idiotic Mizayen Commandos. It’s almost a divine miracle we all escaped with our lives.”