“I will have you tortured to death—which is illegal,” said the Authority. “Then I will commit suicide—which is shameful but convenient.”
“Why do all that?” said Coley, enunciating clearly in spite of a slight unavoidable dryness of the mouth—for though he had planned this, he realized the extreme touchiness of the situation at this stage. “Let me and the girl go. Then you can declare a moratorium on all debts and blame it on the fact I absconded with the funds.”
The Authority thought a moment.
“A very good suggestion,” he said, finally. “However, there’s no reason I should actually let you go. I might as well have a little fun out of all this.”
“Somebody might find out, if I didn’t actually escape with the girl. Then the blame would fall on you.”
The Authority considered again.
“Very well. A pity,” he said. “Perhaps I shall lay hands on you again, some day, Human.’
“I don’t think so,” said Coley. “Not if I can help it.”
“Yes,” said the Authority. He went to the entrance of the room and gave orders. Half an hour later, Coley found himself, his belongings, and the girl hurrying on a pair of first-class riding animals out the far end of the pass, headed down toward the seacoast. The early sunset of Yara was upon them and twilight was closing down.
“Great hero,” breathed the girl in Yaran. Coley jerked about and stared at her through the gathering gloom. But her expression was as innocuous as ever, and for all the expression there was on her face, it might have been somebody else entirely who had spoken.
“Say that again,” said Coley.
But she was through speaking—at least for the present.
Coley had managed to get away with the money hidden in his room. He wore it in a double fold of heavy cloth—a sort of homemade money belt—wrapped around his waist under his shirt; and a few coins taken from it supplied himself and the girl with a room for the night at a way-station that they came to that night after the second moon rose in the sky. The coins also supplied Coley with food—raw meat which he cooked himself over the brazier filled with soft coal which the way-station help brought in to heat the room. He offered some to the girl, but she would not eat it; and if he had not thought of the notion of ordering in some fruit, she might have gone to sleep without any food at all. The last thing he saw, by the dim glow of the dying coals in the brazier was the girl half-curled, half-sitting in a far corner of the room on some cushions and looking in his direction steadily, but still without expression or a word.
The following morning, they left the way-station early. Coley had been wary that in spite of his decision the military Authority might have sent men after them. But evidently the Yaran mind did not work that way. They saw no signs of any threat or soldiers.
By mid-day, between the clumps of bush-like fern that covered the seaward side of these mountains, they began to catch glimpses of the coast below them, and when they stopped to rest their animals in a spot giving them an open view of the lowlands, it was possible for Coley to make out the glittering spire of the traffic control tower in the Human Compound.
He pointed. “We’re almost home,” he said, in Basic. The girl looked at him interestedly for a long second.
“Hawmn,” she said, finally.
“Well!” said Coley, straightening up in his saddle. “Starting to come to life, are you? Say that again.”
She looked at him.
“Say that again,” repeated Coley, this time in Yaran.
“Hawmn,” she said.
“Wonderful! Marvelous!” said Coley. He applauded. “Now say something else in Basic for the nice man.”
“Hawmn,” she said.
“No,” said Coley. “You’ve said that. Try something else. Say—say—” He leaned toward her, enunciating the words carefully in Basic. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen—”
She hesitated.
“Frendz, Rawmans, Cundzrememns—” she managed.
“Lend me your ears—”
“Lenz me ur ears—”
“Come on, kid,” said Coley, turning his own riding animal’s head once more back onto the downtrail, “this is too good to let drop. I come not to bury—”
“I cauzm nodt do burrey—”
They rode on. By the time they reached the first gate of the walled town, as dusk was falling, the girl was reciting in Basic like a veteran. The guard at the gate stared at the strange sounds coming from her mouth.
“What’s the matter with her? You can’t go in, Human; the gate’s already closed for the night. What’s your business in Akalede?”
Coley gave the Yaran a handful of coins.
“Does that answer your questions?” he asked.
“Partly—” said the guard, peering at the coins in the falling dusk.
“In that case,” said Coley, smoothly, “I suppose I’ll just have to wait outside tonight; and perhaps some of my good friends inside the city, tomorrow, can fill out the answer for you. Although,” said Coley, “perhaps a fuller answer may not be quite what you—”
“Pass, worthy person,” said the gateman, swinging the door wide and standing back deferentially. Coley and the girl rode on into the city of Akalede.
The streets they found themselves in were full of Yarans pushing either homeward, or wherever Yarans went at sundown. From his experience with the commercial area outside the military compound, Coley suspected a majority of the males at least were on their way to get drunk. Or drugged, thought Coley, suddenly remembering he had not been able to drink enough of things Yaran to discover what it was in their potables that addicted the populace to them. He had seen Yarans become stupefied from drinking, but what kind of stupefaction it was, he suddenly realized, he had not the slightest idea. This made him abruptly thoughtful; and he rode on automatically, trying to chase down an elusive conclusion that seemed to skitter through his mind just out of reach.
His riding animal stopped suddenly. Coming to himself with a start, he saw he had ridden full up against a barricade that blocked the street.
“What the—”
His bridle strap was seized and he looked down at a kilted Yaran whose clothes bore the cut, if not the color of the army.
“Human, you’re under arrest,” said the lean face. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the Compound,’ said Coley. “I and this female Human have to get back—”
“Permissions?”
“Well, you see,” said Coley, “We—”
But the Yaran was already leading him off; and other kilted Yarans had fallen in around the mounts of Coley and his companion.
Coley stood, cursing inwardly, but with a bland smile on his face. Behind him, the girl was silent. The heavy drapes of the room in the building to which they had both been brought did not stir. The only thing that stirred was the lips of the rather heavy-set, obviously middle-aged Yaran standing behind a tall desk.
“You have made a mistake,” said the middle-aged Yaran.
Coley was fully prepared to admit it. The middle-aged native before him was apparently a local magistrate. As such, he had made it obvious that it was up to him whether Coley and the girl were to be allowed through the barricades into the restricted area of the city that lay between them and the Human Compound. And Coley, judging by his past experience with these people, had just made the mistake of trying to bribe him.