"Percy, you're going to dance! You can do a simple two-step, I'm sure."
Mjipa rose with a sigh. "By God, if I don't apply for extra hardship pay on account of this, my name's not Percy Kuruman Mjipa ..."
VII
DELIVERANCE
While Alicia mended sword-cuts in her new kilt, the consul worked late on a revised forgery. This had the same wording as the other, save that it added the sentence: THE PREVIOUS ORDER, TO CONDUCT THE PRISONER ISAYIN TO THE PALACE FOR EXAMINATION, IS HEREBY REVOKED.
Next morning, Mjipa arose before sunrise. He told Minyev: "I'm going to the tower and hope to return in an hour or two. Tell Irants to save me some breakfast."
He slipped out of the inn and hailed a street car. He could have walked to the tower as quickly, but by pulling the curtains of the car across, he hoped to make his visit less conspicuous.
Mjipa arrived at the tower before the work had begun. A group of Krishnans stood around the main doors, awaiting the boss's arrival. Mjipa went up to the group to stand, whereupon they turned to face him, staring. More arrived from moment to moment. The two soldiers on guard at the door also marched up and took their posts.
After a moment of silence, one workman began asking questions, and then others chimed in: "Tell me, Master Terran, is't true that on Terra none hath to work, but all live in idle luxe?" "Be there slavery on Terra?""Eat ye one another, as do the wild men of Fossanderan?" "What do ye for sickness?" "Is't true ye worship a machine, which doth all the thinking for you?" "If your world be a disk, like unto ours, how come ye thence to be here?"
The last question embarrassed Mjipa, since to discuss space travel would bring into question the Heshvavu's flat-world belief. Mjipa was relieved when, as he fumbled for a noncommittal answer, Chief Engineer Arraj appeared. Seeing Mjipa, he cried: "Thrice welcome, dear my Terran! What brings you hither?"
"I so enjoyed your account of the building the other day that I hoped you could spare me the time for more of the same."
"Certes, good my sir. It shall be as ye request, as soon as I put my men to their appointed tasks."
Arraj produced a massive key, twenty centimeters long, and unlocked the front doors. As the workmen streamed in, he issued orders to the foremen and straw bosses. Then he went in, beckoning Mjipa.
Arraj led the way to his office on the ground floor. He unlocked the door of that room with another key and entered.
Inside, Mjipa observed a row of pegs protruding from one wall, on which hung several keys. Arraj hung the big front-door key on one peg and the smaller office-door key on another. Mjipa saw that similar keys, which appeared to be duplicates, already hung on those pegs.
Arraj fumbled in a chest for papers and unrolled a huge scroll on a low table. "Here," he said, "is the master drawing of the plan of the tower. Note the thickness of the lower wall. Ye wite, we know not for certain when we shall pierce the vault of Heaven. At a height of half a regaku? Or one regaku? Or two regakit? Hence must we make the base of prodigious stoutness, to withstand the weight of a shaft of such abnormous height. Now, if ye'll come with me, I'll show you some especial features built into the structure ..."
The small engineer led the way out the door. As he followed, Mjipa snatched one of the front-door keys from its peg and dropped it into his wallet. Having his back to him, Arraj did not notice.
Mjipa soon discovered that with the chief engineer, the difficulty was not in getting him to talk; it was in stopping him once started. Krishnans were on the whole a garrulous species, and in Arraj the consul seemed to have come upon the most loquacious Krishnan of them all. The spry oldster, talking a stream, led Mjipa up and down flight after flight of stairs, up ladders, and down into underground crypts. "... and observe, Master Mjipa, the angle of the windows. The aim is to make the tower, besides its wonted purpose, also a defensive structure; hence the angled windows for shooting bolts and arrows at besiegers below. As an ensample, I cite the well-known incident at the siege of Marinjid, in the Year of the 'Avval, forty-ninth cycle ..."
A visit that Mjipa had estimated to take a fraction of an hour stretched on and on past noon of the long Krishnan day. The flow of talk rattled on, until Mjipa was tempted to strangle the engineer to get a word in edgewise.
As they passed the empty tool room that Mjipa had seen on his earlier visit, the consul paused to examine the door. It opened outward and was kept closed on the outside by a simple drop latch without a lock.
At last Arraj ran down. Seizing the moment, Mjipa gave effusive thanks and bade farewell.
When Mjipa returned to the inn, he was surprised to see, standing across the narrow street from the hostelry, the Mutabwcian herald, Kuimaj, with several strange but rough-looking Khaldonians. When Mjipa looked at Kuimaj, the latter gave a sinister Krishnan smile, calling: "I warned you, Terran!" Mjipa was glad that this time he was wearing his sword.
In the inn, Mjipa found that dinner, cooked by Irants's wife and daughter, would soon be ready. He went to his room and began to make out a list. For long minutes he sat gazing, trying to think of every contingency and what might be needed to cope with it. Across the room, Minyev said:
"What, no potation ere meat, my lord?"
"Not now," said Mjipa. "I must think."
The dinner gong sounded. Mjipa went down to find Alicia already at table. He said: "Ah there, my lady, how passed your morning?"
"Washing." I suppose you were out trying to break your record for virility?"
"Good lord, no! I was over at the tower ..."
"I was only kidding."
"Well, don't. That's a sore subject with me."
"Okay, Percy. What's that list?"
"Things for Minyev to buy. I need your help in translating it into Khaldoni."
Mjipa gave Minyev another strip of paper, and he and Alicia dictated. When the list was complete, the factotum said: "My lord, the hour grows late. I know not how I shall get through this list of purchases ere dark. A day's supply of aliment ... a basket wherein to carry it ... a wooden wedge and a hammer ... skin paint of the following hues ... brushes wherewith to apply it . .
"Let me see that," said Alicia. "This is to spring the old professor, isn't it?" - "Uh-huh," grunted Mjipa.
"How do you plan to get him out?"
"Better that you don't know."
"Oh, come on! We're all in this, willy nilly."
"Well then, a forged order from the palace. Didn't know I had a talent for forgery, and in an unfamiliar language at that."
"When does this happen?"
"This afternoon, as soon as I can get away."
"But the ship doesn't sail till the day after tomorrow. What'll you do with him in the meantime? I can't see keeping him here."
"I've got a place for him in the tower. He'll spend tomorrow there, and tomorrow night I'll bring him to the ship."
"How will you get into the tower? Scale the walls?"
"Thanks to Maibud, god of thieves, I pinched one of Arraj's keys."
"But when they find he's missing, they'll turn the kingdom upside down looking for him. If you 're involved, they'll come looking for you, too."
Mjipa shrugged. "I've dealt with these natives for many years. Some are amusing blokes; but efficient they ain't. It'll take a fiftnight before somebody at the palace remembers that Isayin was supposed to have been delivered there."
"I hope you're right. Look, it's getting late, as Minyev says. Make a list of half those things—say, the food items— and give it to me. I can buy them to save time. I've lived on Krishnan foods I bought in their markets before."
"Thought you wanted nothing to do with the plan?" said Mjipa.
"Oh, fooey! If we're in it, I'll do my share. I won't let a mere man take all the risk."