He picked his way past piled goods and piled rubbish, the vacant storehouses and the vacant faces of the mob, trying to keep his own face expressionless. There were fisher folk among them, in clothing enough like his own; but there were shopkeepers, laborers, others whose clothing matched their occupations and whose occupations he couldn’t even imagine. And everywhere there were what seemed to be sexless semi human beings doing with mindless precision tasks that no two humans could have done. He had approached one of them timidly; asked, inanely, “How do you do that?” The thing had gone on loading crates, not dignifying the question with an answer.
He began to feel as though he had been walking forever along the Street, that he had only been going in circles. Every alley was like every other, the noise and the crowds and the stink of fumes clogged his senses to overload. Makeshift buildings cluttered the cracks of the city’s hive form, sand and plaster, sagging and peeling; aging scabrously, ungracefully, against the support of far more ancient buildings as eternal as the sea itself. Nothing happened singly here, but in twos and threes and dozens, until every impression became a beating. The crushing weight of the city bore down on the fragile ceiling above his head, on his own shoulders. The catacomb of walls converged on him, closed in around him, until… Help me! He stumbled back against the unnatural warmth of a building side, cowered in a nest of cast-off wrappers, covering his eyes.
“Hey, friend, you all right?” A hand nudged his side tentatively.
He raised his head, opened his eyes, blinked them clear. A sturdy woman in laborer’s coveralls stood beside him, shaking her head. “No, you don’t look all right to me. You look a little green, in fact. Are you land sick sailor?”
Sparks grinned feebly, feeling the green go red over his face. “I guess so,” grateful that his voice didn’t shake. “I guess that’s what it was.”
The woman bent her head with a faint frown. “You a Summer?”
Sparks shrank back against the wall. “How’d you know that?”
But the woman only shrugged. “Your accent. And nobody but a Summer would dress up in greasy hides. Fresh from the fish farms, huh?”
He looked down at his slicker, suddenly embarrassed by it. “Yeah.”
“Well, that’s all right. Don’t let the big city beat you down, kid; you’ll learn. Won’t he, Polly?”
“Whatever you say, Tor.”
Sparks leaned forward, peering past her as he realized that they weren’t alone. Behind her stood one of the metal half-humans, its dull skin dimly reflecting light. He had no idea whether the thing was male or female. He realized that it had lowered a third leg, almost like a tail, on which it was now sitting, rigidly at ease. Where its face should have been, a clear window showed him the sensor panels set into its head.
Tor produced a small flat bottle from a sealed pocket in her coveralls and un stoppered it. “Here. This’ll stiffen your spine.”
He took the bottle, took a swig from it… gasped as a cloying sweetness burst into flame in his mouth. He swallowed convulsively, eyes watering.
Tor laughed. “You’re a trusting one!”
Sparks took another mouthful deliberately, swallowed it without gagging before he said, “Not bad.” He handed the bottle back. She laughed again.
“Is… um… is—” Sparks pushed himself away from the wall, looking at the metal being, trying to find a way to ask the question without offending.
“Is that a man in a tin suit?” Tor grinned, pushing a finger of drab-colored hair behind her ear. He guessed that she was maybe half again as old as he was. “No, he just thinks he is. Don’t you, Pollux?”
“Whatever you say, Tor.”
“Is he… uh—”
“Alive? Not in the way we think of it. He’s a servo — an automaton, a robot, whatever you want to call it. A servo mechanical device. He doesn’t act, he only reacts.”
Sparks realized that he was staring, glanced up, down, uncertain. “Doesn’t he—?”
“Mind us talking about him? No, he doesn’t mind anything, he’s above all that. A regular saint. Aren’t you, Polly?”
“Whatever you say, Tor.”
She slung an arm over his shoulder, bumping against him familiarly. “I do his maintenance myself, and I can guarantee he’s got no missing parts. He’s got a short circuit somewhere, though — tends to limit his vocabulary. You may have noticed.”
“Well, yeah… kind of.” Sparks shifted from foot to foot, wondering if it was catching.
Tor laughed. “At least he isn’t stuck on ‘screw you.” Say, where’d you get that, anyway?” She reached out abruptly toward the off world medal on his chest.
“It was my—” Sparks pulled back, keeping it out of reach. “I-uh — got it from a trader.”
Tor looked at him; he had the sudden feeling that his skull was made of glass. But she only let her hand drop. “Well, listen, Summer — why don’t you stick with me and Polly here, until you get used to the way we do things in Carbuncle? As a matter of fact, I just got off shift; we were heading down to check out a little subterranean action. Have a good time, a little excitement, maybe pick up a bet or two on the side… Got any money on you?”
Sparks nodded.
“Well, this could be your chance to double it! Come on along with us… I’ve got a feeling this’s going to be a real education for him, Pollux.”
“Whatever you say, Tor.”
Sparks followed them down the alleyway, toward the twilight fading beyond the storm walls. Somewhere along the way Tor stopped at an unobtrusive door in a paint-thick warehouse front, rapped twice, then three times, with her fist. The door slid open a crack, then wider, to let them into a cavernous darkness. Sparks hung back, went forward again at Tor’s impatient gesture as he heard the rising murmur of sound and realized they were not alone.
“How much are you betting?” Tor called back at him through the noise from across the vast room. She was already passing a fistful of coins to a shrunken man drowned in a cloak. She stood on the edge of a crowd of watchers who kneeled, squatted, sat, their attention fixed on the small arena closed off in their midst. Sparks joined her, trying to see through the pall of throat-catching smoke that lay in the stifling air. “Betting on what?”
“On the blood wart of course! Only a fool would bet on a star against a blood wart Come on, how much are you good for?” Her eyes flashed the eager electricity that he felt rising around him everywhere, like the tide.
“ Lot of people are fools, then.” The man in the cloak stretched his mouth, and jingled the markers in his fist.
Tor made a rude noise. Behind her the crowd murmur crested and broke, the echoes flowed away into cracks and shadows; the room waited. Sparks saw two beings — one human, one not — step into the empty space carrying oblong boxes. The alien’s skin had an oily gleam, its arms were fingered with long tentacles. “Are they going to—?”
“Them? Gods, no! Those are just the handlers. Come on, come on, place your bet!” Tor pulled his arm.
He rummaged in his sack of belongings, fished out two coins. “Well, here’s — uh, twenty.”
“Twenty! Is that all you’ve got?” Tor looked crestfallen.
“That’s all I’m betting.” He held them out.
The shrunken man took his coins without comment, and flowed away into the crowd.
“Hey, this isn’t illegal or anything, is it?” Sparks hesitated.
“Sure is… Clear us a path through these highborns, Pollux. We want a front-row seat for the last of the big spenders here.”
“Whatever you say, Tor.” Pollux pressed forward with single minded purpose. Sparks heard curses and sudden yelps of pain marking his progress through the crowd.