“Possibly,” Macduff ruminated, trudging on, “something might be arranged. Let me see, now. Item One. There’s Ao.” Ao was the Lesser Vegan girl whose remarkable semi-hypnotic powers would make her such an excellent front man, figuratively speaking.
“Borrowing ticket money won’t solve Item One. If I succeed in getting Ao I’ll have to deal with her guardian, Item Two.”
Item Two represented an Algolian native named Ess Pu Macduff* [* An approximation. The actual name is unspellable.] had taken pains to keep himself informed of Ess Pu’s whereabouts and so knew that the Algolian was no doubt still involved in the same game of dice he had begun two days ago at the UV Lantern Dream-Mill, not far from the center of town. His opponent was probably still the Mayor of Aldebaran City.
“Moreover,” Macduff reflected, “both Ess Pu and Ao have tickets on the Sutter. Very good. The answer is obvious. All I have to do is get in that dice game, win Ao and both tickets and shake the dust of this inferior planet from my feet.”
Swinging the suitcase jauntily, he scuttled along by back alleys, conscious of a distant, mounting tumult, until he reached the door of the UV Lantern Dream-Mill, a low broad arch closed with leather curtains. On the threshold he paused to glance back, puzzled by the apparent riot that had broken out.
Submerged feelings of guilt, plus his natural self-esteem, made him wonder if he himself might be the cause of all that uproar. However, since he had only once roused the inhabitants of an entire planet against himf he concluded vaguely that perhaps there was a fire.
So he pushed the curtains aside and entered the UV Lantern, looking around sharply to make certain Angus Ramsay wasn’t present. Ramsay, as the reader will guess, was the red-haired gentleman last heard defaming Macduff in the theater.
“And, after all, he was the one who insisted on buying a bottle of the Elixir,” Macduff mused. “Well, he isn’t here. Ess Pu, however, is. In all fairness, I’ve given him every chance to sell me Ao. Now let him take the consequences.”
Squaring his narrow shoulders (for it cannot be denied that Macduff was somewhat bottle-shaped in appearance) he moved through the crowd toward the back of the room, where Ess Pu crouched over a green-topped table with his companion, the Mayor of the city.
To a non-cosmopolitan observer it would have seemed that a lobster was playing PK dice with one of the local plant men. But Macduff was a cosmopolitan in the literal sense of the word. And from his first meeting with Ess Pu, some weeks ago, he had recognized a worthy and formidable opponent.
As a result of having sold them the Earth.
All Algolians are dangerous. They are noted for their feuds, furies and their inverted affective tone scale. “It’s extraordinary,” Macduff mused, looking pensively at Ess Pu. “They feel fine only when they’re hating someone. The sensations of pleasure and pain are reversed. Algolians find the emotions of rage, hate and cruelty pro-survival. A lamentable state of affairs.”
Ess Pu clanked a scaly elbow on the table and rattled the dice cup in the face of his cringing opponent. As everyone is familiar with Aldebaranese plant men, in view of their popular video films, the Mayor need not be described.
Macduff sank into a nearby chair and opened the suitcase on his lap, rummaging through its varied contents which included a deck of tarots, some engraved plutonium stock (worthless) and a number of sample bottles of hormones and isotopes.
There was also a small capsule of Lethean dust, that unpleasant drug which affects the psychokinetic feedback mechanism. As an injury to the cerebellum causes purpose tremor, so Lethean dust causes PK
tremor. Macduff felt that a reasonable amount of psychic oscillation in Ess Pu might prove profitable to Macduff. With this in mind, he watched the game intently.
The Algolian waved his stalked eyes over the table. Crinkled membranes around his mouth turned pale blue. The dice spun madly. They fell-seven. Ess Pu’s membranes turned green. One of the dice quivered, strained, rolled over. The Algolian’s claws clicked shut with satisfaction, the Mayor wrung his hands and Macduff, emitting cries of admiration, leaned forward to pat Ess Pu’s sloping shoulder while he deftly emptied the unlidded capsule into the Algolian’s drink.
“My lad,” Macduff said raptly, “I have travelled the Galaxy from end to end and never before—”
“Tchah!” Ess Pu said sourly, pulling his winnings across the board. He added that he wouldn’t sell Ao to Macduff now even if he could. “So get out!” he finished, snapping a claw contemptuously in Macduff’s face.
“Why can’t you sell Ao?” Macduff demanded. “Though sell, of course, is a misleading verb. What I mean—”
He understood the Algolian to say that Ao now belonged to the Mayor.
Macduff turned surprised eyes on this personage, who furtively evaded the look.
“I didn’t recognize your Honor,” he said. “So many non-humanoid species are hard to tell apart. But did I understand you to say you sold her to the Mayor, Ess Pu? As I remember, Lesser Vegan Control merely leases its subjects to suitable guardians—”
“It was a transfer of guardianship,” the Mayor said hastily, lying in his teeth.
“Get out,” Ess Pu snarled. “You’ve got no use for Ao. She’s an object d’art.”
“Your French is excellent, for a lobster,” Macduff said with delicate tact. “And as for having a use for the lovely creature my scientific researches will shortly include the prognostication of mood responses in large groups. As we all know, Lesser Vegans have the curious ability to make people punch drunk. With a girl like Ao on the platform I could feel perfectly sure of my audience—”
A video screen burst in with a wild squawk. Everyone looked ‘up sharply. Supplementary screens in infrared and UV, for the use of customers with specialized vision, hummed with invisibly duplicated pictures of an announcer’s popeyed face.
“-Citizens’ Purity Organization has just called a mass meeting—” The Mayor, looking frightened, started to get up and then thought better of it. There seemed to be something on his conscience.
Ess Pu told Macduff profanely to go away. He enlarged insultingly on the suggestion.
“Pah,” Macduff said bravely, knowing himself more agile than the Algolian. “Drop dead.”
Ess Pu’s mouth membranes turned scarlet. Before he could speak, Macduff offered quickly to buy Ao’s ticket, a proposition he had neither intention nor ability to fulfill.
“I haven’t got her ticket!” Ess Pu roared. “She still has it! Now get out before I—” He strangled on his own fury, coughed and took a stiff drink. Ignoring Macduff, he threw a six and shoved a stack of chips to the center of the table. The Mayor, with nervous reluctance, glanced at the video screen and faded the bet. At that point the videos broke in with a squeal.
“-mobs marching on Administration! Aroused populace demands ousting of present officials, charging long-term corruption! This political pot was brought to a boil tonight by the exposure of an alleged swindler named Macduff—”
The Mayor of Aldebaran City jumped up and tried to run. One of Ess Pu’s claws caught him by the coat tail. The video squawked on, giving an all-too-accurate description of the Radio-isotopic Elixir swindler and only the thick haze in the air kept Macduff from immediate exposure.
He hesitated uncertainly, reason telling him that something of interest was developing at the dice table while instinct urged him to run.
“I’ve got to get home!” the Mayor wailed. “Vital matters—”
“You’re staking Ao?” the crustacean demanded, with a significant brandish of his claws. “You are, eh? Bight? Then say so!”