When his bare feet touched the ground, the sensation was like nothing he had known before. The grass tickled, and unable to restrain himself, he flung himself down in it and rolled from side to side.
When he paused from this luxury to look up, the man was gone.
If he lay down, the grass seemed to cover him. Pout began to think. To get away from here quickly was good advice. And yet…
He felt frightened and helpless. What he needed was a weapon. A hand scangun he could hide in his new garment and use if he was threatened (or, he thought excitedly, on anyone he didn’t like). Then he would feel less defenceless.
The pale green buildings of the museum stood scattered all around him. Pout, in a partial and confused way, was familiar with the layout. He had peeked into the data files when in the care of the robots, who had presumed that museum administration was the only thing anyone could be interested in. That hangar-like structure, with the grey metallic tinge, was the weapons house. He clearly remembered it was the weapons house.
The museum rarely had casual visitors, but in theory was supposed to be open to all comers. Nascimento had taken a precaution with the weapons house: its entrance was from the house of ancient-style footwear, a small and dusty gallery which gave the peruser no idea that the unprepossessing door led not to a cleaning closet but to a complete and treasured armoury…
Crawling through the grass, Pout made his way by degrees to where he felt he could run upright without being seen. Soon he had slipped through the vine-wreathed door of the ancient footwear house.
Stacked all around him were cases of shoes of every description—boots, clogs, slippers, in an endless but boring series, each pair carefully displayed and described. Pout did not glance at them. He satisfied himself he was alone, then slipped to the half-hidden door that led to a bare, square corridor, whose length he sprinted.
Then through the other door at the far end, an imposing and heavy door, needing all his strength to push it open.
Guns! Guns of every type!
In pride of place in the centre of the hangar was a huge feetol cannon such as were used by fighting starships. Pout experienced no curiosity as to how Nascimento could have acquired so impressive a weapon, for he did not know what it was apart from the fact that it was a very big gun, nor that it was impossible to make it work unless installed in a starship. He just stood, glorying in its sense of power.
Nervously he coughed. The sound echoed around the building, but for the moment he was not worried; Even the robots rarely came here. Usually the only time the heavy door opened was when a new exhibit was to be put on display.
He began to stroll past the cases, unsure as to how the exhibition was organised. He peered at weapon after weapon, but being unable to read could make no sense of descriptive plates. Finally he leaned against a case to stare at a long rifle with stock of mother-of-pearl and a golden barrel. Suddenly a soft voice spoke out of the air, startling him.
“Force rifle, thirty-first century. This weapon projects a radiant beam whose main effect is pressure. It will punch a hole in ten-point titanium at a range of…” Pout continued listening in fascination as the voice went on to detail specification and history of usage. Most of it, however, was incomprehensible to him, and the gun was bigger than he wanted.
He passed on. All the guns in the section were of the long sort, and they seemed to be old. Where were the scanguns? Scanguns were really the only kind he had heard about. When with the robots, he had seen something on the data files. Though he didn’t quite realise it, what he had seen was a fragment of an animated drama with psych-dimension—that is, it used a set of subliminal signals to manipulate the feelings of the watcher and make him feel a part of the action. In the fragment, there had been a shoot-out between people using scanguns. It was the most thrilling thing Pout had ever participated in. Because, of course, the watcher-identification was with the victor.
Rounding a corner, he came to a new section. Here the cases were smaller. Handguns!
But they seemed very old. He peered at the first one, and pressed against the side of the case to evoke the explanatory voice as he had just learned to do.
“Colt forty-five, nineteenth century. This weapon projects lead bullets at a velocity of…”
He heard no more than the first few words. Nineteenth century! What century was it now? He wasn’t sure, but it was a lot more than the nineteenth.
Quickly he walked up the aisle past a long line of variegated handguns, hoping he would at last come to the modern scangun section. He could not, however, resist a look at some of the guns of the past, with their strange handgrips, their barrels that sometimes were fluted, sometimes snub-nosed, or square, or slitted—or no barrel at all—and their variously shaped triggers, studs and slides. In his ignorance it did not occur to Pout that in all probability not a single weapon in the collection would be complete with ammunition or charge, and many would not even be in working order. His idea of a gun was something he could simply pick up and shoot people with.
He thought he heard a sudden noise and stopped in fright. There was nothing. But then his eye lit on the case nearest to him, and he lingered to inspect its contents.
The gun was unprepossessing. Its handgrip and shaft seemed to be made mostly of wood or some grainy material. It was light in colour, as if the wood had been carved with a knife and then left untreated. Indeed, it could have been a toy.
The barrel, or shaft, was studded with buttons and was rectangular in shape. The stock was raked just a little, and lacked either sight or range-finder. Pout would have passed on, but some indefinable quality in the gun made him pause again. He pressed the side of the cabinet.
“Electric gun, date unknown. Connection with Bushido. Has sympathetic circuits. Projects electricity.”
That was all. None of the lengthy details on performance, construction and history that accompanied the other exhibits. For some reason this absence of information made Pout want to see the gun work. He searched for some means of switching off the screen separating him from the exhibit, and finding none, put his hand directly into the case.
He felt the pressure of the force-field resisting his hand. His fingers closed over the stock. As he had guessed, it was wood, a friendly-feeling substance. As he lifted it, this feeling seemed to transmit itself to him through his skin, and quiet words spoke in his mind.
“I am yours.”
But as soon as he had taken the gun from its case another quiet voice spoke, not in his mind but in the air. “You have removed an exhibit from its case. Please replace the exhibit at once. An attendant has been summoned.”
Pout whirled about, looking for the source of the voice, his mouth open with alarm.
Instinctively his forefinger pushed the long trigger-stud obtruding from the stock just beneath the shaft.
The result was unexpected. A row of short pale glowing lines, pink in colour, appeared in the air, stitching through space. The row had emanated from the end of the gun’s shaft.
Looking afresh at his new acquisition, Pout grinned and felt pleased. Perhaps it wasn’t a scangun (he couldn’t see any control to make it scan) but it worked!
“I note you have not yet replaced the exhibit,” the soft voice said after a pause. “Please do so, as the attendant is about to arrive.” Pout’s grin turned to a snarl, lips pulled back over the yellow teeth in his protruding jaw. He heard a near-silent purring behind him, and looked round to see a small robot wheeling towards him along the aisle.
Where has it come from? Pout hadn’t heard the door open. Pout didn’t know it, but this was no more than an idler robot, such as stood in a recess in every department of the museum and wheeled out only to deliver guided tours, lectures, or to caution visitors. It could not have done him any harm. But to Pout it represented the power of Torth Nascimento and he was terrified of it.