"Yes," said Chuen. "I got to collect depositions and other evidence."
"Okay, then—"
"But!" cried Julnar. "If I go back with you, it'll be years by Krishnan time before I can see Tony again, even though it seems only weeks to me!"
"I'll fix that," said Hasselborg, fishing out his precious pills. "Here, Tony. Trance pills. Know the formula?"
"Certainly we do," said Fallon sullenly.
"Fine. Haste, before I go, I want to borrow the amount I left in my rooms in the royal place. I'll give you a note, and after I've left you can take it around to the palace. If King Eqrar's feeling honest, maybe he'll let you have the stuff. Ferzao, put King Antane back in his cell; then choose half the men to come with me to Novorecife. The other half I'm turning over to Master Li-yau, to do as he commands, together with the money to pay them. Then get my carriage ready, with food for a long fast journey. And cups of hot shurab for Queen Julnar and me before we start—" i
Hasselborg was well away from Hershid, trotting briskly through the multiple moonlight, when Julnar asked: "Isn't this the road back to Majbur?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, isn't that a roundabout way of getting to Novorecife?"
"Yes; we're going up the Pichide by boat. The only other route lies via Rosid, and I'm afraid I'm not popular in Ruz just now."
She relapsed into gloom. The escort clop-clopped behind them. Hasselborg suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead.
"Tamates! It just occurred to me: if Haste's an Earth-man, Fouri can't be his niece, unless she's human to—say, d'you know anything about their background?"
"No," said Julnar, "and if I did I wouldn't tell you, you home-wrecker!"
Hasselborg subsided. As far as he was concerned, the many loose ends in this case would have to be left adrift. And he must remember to send Yeshram bad-Yeshram the jailer the other half of his bribe. He grinned as he thought how much easier it was to be scrupulous with Batruni's money than with his own.
Hasselborg walked down the ramp from the side of his ship at the Barcelona spaceport, followed by Jul-nar Batruni. Her suitcase had already gone down the chute; he insisted on carrying his own by hand rather than risk his professional equipment and medicines. In the other hand, he twirled the carved Gozashtando umbrella, an incongruous sight in this sunny city.
"What now?" she asked as they stood in line at the passport desk.
"First I'm going to wire your old man in Aleppo, and a—a friend of mine in London. Then I'll hunt up a doctor for a physical checkup."
"Why, are you sick? I thought the Viagens doctor checked you."
"So he did," he said seriously, "but you can't be too careful. Then I thought we'd take in some of the high life. While most of it's estincamente, I know some good places over on the Montjuich."
"How simply divine! You're an extraordinary man, Victor," she said.
"How?"
"I don't seem to be able to loathe you as much as I should for breaking into my life."
"That's my insidious charm. Watch out for it." He handed over his passport.
He had just finished sending his telegrams when somebody at his elbow said in Spanish: "Excuse me, but are you Senor Hasselborg?"
"Si, soy Hasselborg." The fellow was dressed in the uniform of an Iberian Federation cop, and flanked by two Viagens men.
"Lo siento mucho," said the Spaniard with an apologetic bow, "but I must place you under arrest."
"Huh? What for?"
"These gentlemen have a warrant. Will you explain, Senor Ndombu?"
One of the Viagens men, a Negro, said: "Violation of Regulation 368 of the Interplanetary Council rules, Section Four, Subsection Twenty-six, fifteenth paragraph."
"Whew! Which is that?"
"The one relating to the introduction of mechanical devices or inventions on the planet Krishna."
"I never—"
"Queira, senhor, don't savage me about it! All I know is what's in this warrant. Something about putting a sight on a crossbow."
"Oh." Hasselborg turned to Julnar. "Here's some money. Take a cab to the Cristobal Hotel. Call up the firm of Montejo and Durruti and tell 'em to bail me out of the calabozo, will you like a good kid?"
Then he went with the men.
Whether Julnar took the chance of getting even with him, or whether his Catalan colleagues were having an attack of mahana, nothing happened to get Hasselborg out of his cell as evening came on. This could be serious. They had the goods on him with respect to those sights, even if they were only a pair of corsage pins. The spectators had taken note at the time, and the imitative Krishnans were no doubt spreading the device all over their planet. Not that it was really important; a man is as dead when beaten to death with a club as when blown up with a plutonium bomb.
There would be a hearing, whenever the local magistrate got around to it, at which said magistrate would either dismiss the case or bind Hasselborg over and assign him to the court of first instance for trial. For an offense by an earthman on Krishna against an Interplanetary Council regulation en-forced by the Viagens Interplanetarias security force, and arrested in Iberia on Earth, that would be—let's see—Lower Division, Earth World Court for the Third International Judicial District, which sat in— hm-m-m—Paris, didn't it? With appeal to— He'd have to dig out his old law texts when he got back to London. The maze of jurisdictions was so complicated that sometimes interplanetary cases simply got lost in the shuffle and never were tried at all, while the principals lived out their long lives on bail.
No, if he got back to London. This could result in a stiff sentence, especially if Chuen broke a big scandal inside the Viagens ranks about now, and the word was passed down to tighten up and make an example. And it did no good to have a trance pill smuggled in to knock yourself out with; Earth penal systems were wise to that one and simply added the time you spent in trance to your sentence.
Hasselborg reflected that he who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client. He had better round up some high-powered advice muy pronto. Lawyer though he was by training, he was too rusty to cope with this problem himself. Maybe he should have stuck to law in the first place, instead of getting involved in investigation. The glamour of detecting soon wore off…
Obviously Montejo and Durruti were not going to call, whatever the reason. Although the jail people let him telephone, their office failed to answer, he did not know their home numbers, and the directory listed so many Montejos and Durrutis that he decided that it would take all night to go through them.
Next he tried the Cristobal Hotel. No, they had no Miss Batruni. Nor any Senora Fallon either. Did they have the Queen of Zamba? Come, senior, you are joking with us and we do not appreciate… oh, wait a minute! We have a Hoolnar de Thamba; would that be the one?
But Julnar's room did not answer. Hasselborg disgustedly went to bed. At least the Barcelona munici-pal clink, unlike many in the Peninsula, was a reasonably sanitary one, although Hasselborg doubted whether any Iberians could be trusted to display sufficient vigilance towards germs.
Hasselborg was at the telephone again next morning when a warden said: "A Senorita Garshin to see you."
He hung up unsteadily, missing the cradle with the handset twice, and followed the man to the visitors' room. There she was, looking just as he'd imagined her, only prettier if anything.
"Alexandra!" he said. "I—you—you're Miss Gar-shin now?"
"Yes. Why Victor, your hair!"
"It's green, isn't it?"
"You mean you see it, too? I thought I was having hallucinations."