On Venus it is always bird-walking weather. Silently the trio slogged on.
“I thought Indians knew how to live off the land,” Underhill presently remarked to the Navaho.
Mike Soaring Eagle looked at him quizzically. -
“I’m not a Venusian Indian,” he explained. “Maybe I could make a bow and arrow and bring down a Venusian-but that wouldn’t help, unless he had a lot of sofals in his purse.”
“We might eat him,” Underhill murmured. “Wonder what roast Venusian would taste like?”
“Find out and you can write a best seller when you get back home,” Munn remarked. “If you get back home. Vyring’s got a police force, chum.”
“Oh, well,” Underhill said, and left it at that. “Here’s the Water Gate. Lord-I smell somebody’s dinner!”
“So do I,” the Navaho grunted, “but I hoped nobody would mention it. Shut up and keep walking.”
The wall around Vyring was in the nature of a dike, not a fortification. Venus was both civilized and unified; there were, apparently, no wars and no tariffs-a natural development for a world state. Air transports made sizzling noises as they shot past, out of sight in the fog overhead. Mist shrouded the streets, torn into tatters by occasional huge fans. Vyring, shielded from the winds, was unpleasantly hot, except indoors where artificial air conditioning could be brought into use.
Underhill was reminded of Venice: the streets were canals. Water craft of various shapes and sizes drifted, glided or raced past. Even the beggars travelled by water. There were rutted, muddy footpaths beside the canals, but no one with a fal to his name ever walked.
The Earthmen walked, cursing fervently as they splashed through the muck. They were, for the most part, ignored.
A water taxi scooted towards the bank, its pilot, wearing the blue badge of his tarkoinar, hailing them. “May I escort you?” he wanted to know.
Underhill exhibited a silver dollar. “If you’ll take this-sure.” All the Earthmen had learned Venusian quickly; they were good linguists, having been chosen for this as well as other transpianetary virtues.
The phonetic Venusian tongue was far from difficult.
It was no trouble at all to understand the taxi pilot when he said no.
“Toss you for it,” Underhill said hopefully. “Double or nothing.”
But the Venusians weren’t gamblers. “Double what?” the pilot inquired. “That coin? It’s silver.” He indicated the silver, rococo filigree on the prow of his craft. “Junk!”
“This would be a swell place for Benjamin Franklin,” Mike Soaring Eagle remarked. “His false teeth were made of iron, weren’t they?”
“If they were, he had a Venusian fortune in his mouth,” Underhill said.
“Not quite.”
“If it could buy a full-course dinner, it’s a fortune,” Underhill insisted.
The pilot, eyeing the Earthmen scornfully, drifted off in search of wealthier fares. Munn, doggedly plodding on, wiped sweat from his forehead. Swell place, Vyring, he thought. Swell place to starve to death.
Half an hour of difficult hiking roused Munn to a slow, dull anger. If Jorust refused to see him, he thought, there was going to be trouble, even though they’d taken away his guns. He felt capable of tearing down Vyring with his teeth. And eating the more edible portions.
Luckily, Jorust was available. The Earthmen were ushered into her office, a big, luxurious room high above the city, with windows open to the cooling breezes. Jorust was skittering around the room on a high chair, equipped with wheels and some sort of motor. Along the walls ran a slanting shelf, like a desk and presumably serving the same function. It was shoulder-high, but Jorust’s chair raised her to its level. She probably started in one corner in the morning, Munn thought, and worked her way around the room during the day.
Jorust was a slim, gray-haired Venusian woman with a skin the texture of fine shagreen, and alert black eyes that were wary now. She climbed down from her chair, gestured the men to seats, and took one herself. She lit a pipe that looked like an oversized cigarette holder, stuffing it with a cylinder of pressed yellow herbs. Aromatic smoke drifted up. Underhill sniffed wistfully.
“May you be worthy of your fathers,” Jorust said politely, extending her six-fingered hand in greeting. “What brings you?”
“Hunger,” Munn said bluntly. “I think it’s about time for a showdown.”
Jorust watched him inscrutably. “Well?”
“We don’t like being pushed around.”
“Have we harmed you?” the Council head asked.
Munn looked at her. “Let’s put our cards on the table. We’re getting the squeeze play. You’re a big shot here, and you’re either responsible or you know why. How about it?”
“No,” Jorust said after a pause, “no, I’m not as powerful as you seem to think. I am one of the administrators. I do not make the laws. I merely see that they are carried out. We are not enemies.”
“That might happen,” Munn said grimly. “If another expedition comes from Earth and finds us dead—”
“We would not kill you. It is untraditional.”
“You could starve us to death, though.”
Jorust narrowed her eyes. “Buy food. Any man can do that, no matter what his race.”
“And what do we use for money?” Munn asked. “You won’t take our currency. We haven’t any of yours.”
“Your currency is worthless,” Jorust explained. “We have gold and silver for the mining-it is common here. A difal-twelve fals-will buy a good deal of food. A sofal will buy even more than that.”
She was right, of course, Munn knew. A sofal was one thousand seven hundred twenty-eight fals.
Yeah!
“And how do you expect us to get any of your iron money?” he snapped.
“Work for it, as our own people do. The fact that you are from another world does not dispose of your obligatory duty to create through labor.”
“All right,” Munn pursued, “we’re willing. Get us a job.”
“What kind?”
“Dredging canals! Anything!”
“Are you a member of the canal dredgers’ tarkoinar?”
“No,” Munn said. “How could I have forgotten to join?” Jorust ignored the sarcasm. “You must join.
All trades here have their tarkomars.”
“Lend me a thousand sofals and I’ll join one.”
“You have tried that before,” Jorust told him. “Our moneylenders reported that your collateral was worthless.”
“Worthless! D’you mean to say we’ve nothing in our ship worth a thousand sofals to your race? It’s a squeeze play and you know it. Our water purifier alone is worth six times that to you.”
Jorust seemed affronted. “For a thousand years we have cleansed our water with charcoal. If we changed now, we would be naming our ancestors fools. They were not fools; they were great and wise.”
“What about progress?”
“I see no need for it,” Jorust said. “Our civilization is a perfect unit as it stands. Even the beggars are well fed. There is no unhappiness on Venus. The ways of our ancestors have been tested and found good. So why change?”
“But—”
“We would merely upset the status quo if we altered the balance,” Jorust said decisively, rising.
“May you be worthy of your fathers’ names.”
“Listen—” Munn began.
But Jorust was back on her chair, no longer listening.
The three Earthmen looked at one another, shrugged and went out. The answer was definitely no.
“And that,” Munn said, as they descended in the elevator, “is emphatically that. Jorust plans to have us starve to death. The word’s out.”