“Go away, Al — I’m busy.” Morlacher continued staring upwards, his eyes hidden behind chips of pale blue sky. He was a large, overweight man with copper-coloured hair and a triangular patch of bright pink on each cheek. His lips were drawn back, exposing teeth which seemed to be inhumanly thick and strong, with heavy molars in place of incisors, Hasson immediately felt afraid of him.
“I can see you’re busy,” Werry said pleasantly. “Just wondered what you’re busy at.”
“What’s the matter with you?” A look of impatience appeared on Morlacher’s face as he lowered his head to stare at Werry. “You know I’m doing the work you should be doing — if you’d any balls. Why don’t you just get back into your kiddycar and leave me to it? All right?”
Werry glanced back at Hasson, who had managed to draw himself into a standing position with his arms along the top of the car door. “Now you listen to me, Buck,” Werry said. “What makes you…?” “They were up there last night again,” Morlacher cut in. “Having one of their dirty parties — violating my property — violating it, do you hear? And what do you do about it? Nothing. That’s what you do — nothing!” Morlacher scowled, pulling his colourless eyebrows together, and directed his mirrored gaze towards Hasson as though becoming aware of him for the first time. Hasson, still trying to establish whether or not he could stand up unsupported, looked away into the distance. He detected a movement at the upper edge of his vision and raised his eyes to see a flier swooping down from the hotel.
“There might be one or two of them still holed out up there,” Morlacher went on, “and if that’s so, Starr and I are going to flush them out and deal with them ourselves. The old way.”
“There’s no need for that sort of talk,” Werry protested. He was staring, perplexed, at Morlacher when the descending flier closed in on him from above and behind. He was a wispy- bearded youngster, wearing a blue flying suit and carrying a pump-action shotgun slung across his back. As Hasson watched, he moved a hand to his belt and deliberately switched off his counter-gravity field while still three metes in the air. He dropped instantaneously, but the momentum remaining from his curving descent brought him into a thudding collision with Werry’s shoulder. Werry sprawled on the ground, his face driven into the snow.
“Sorry, Al. Sorry. Sorry.” The young man helped Werry to his feet and began brushing show from his uniform. “It was a pure accident — the glare from the snow blinded me.” He was winking at Morlacher as he spoke.
Hasson felt a rush of adrenaline through his system as he looked at Al Werry, waiting for him to take the action the situation cried out for. Werry straightened up and looked uncertainly down at the newcomer who was stooped before him brushing his clothes with exaggerated gestures of concern. Now, Hasson willed. Now, before any more time passes. Now, while he’s set up for you in all his arrogance.
Werry shook his head and — disastrously — began to smile. “Know something, Starr Pridgeon? I don’t think you’re ever going to get the hang of that harness.”
“Know something, Al? I think you’re right.” The youngster gave a bray of laughter and in the middle of it, just as Morlacher had done, turned and fixed his gaze on Hasson as though seeing him for the first time. Hasson, veteran of a thousand such encounters, recognised the imitative borrowing of a mannerism and guessed at once that Morlacher was the dominant partner of the pair. He remained leaning on the car door, tentatively trying to straighten his back as Pridgeon came towards him. Pain flared in his joints. They were machine bearings which had been sabotaged with carborundum powder, robbing him of mobility.
“This must be Al’s cousin from England,” Pridgeon said. “What do you think of Canada, Al’s cousin?”
I haven’t had time to form an opinion,” Hasson said steadily.
Pridgeon glanced at the others. “Don’t he talk nice?” He ruined back to Hasson. “Wasn’t that accident the dumbest thing you ever saw?”
“I didn’t really see it.”
“No?” Pridgeon examined him critically for a moment. “You a cripple or something?”
To his horror, Hasson found his lips arranging themselves in the shape of a smile. “Almost.”
“Huh!” Pridgeon walked away looking dissatisfied and stood beside Morlacher, and Hasson realized the older man had summoned him with a slight inclination of his head. His guess about the relationship was confirmed, but the insight was worthless.
“Did you see anything up there?” Morlacher said to Pridgeon, as though they were alone together and nothing had happened.
“Nope. Anybody’s up there, they’re keeping away from the windows.”
“I’ll go up with you.” Morlacher began tightening the straps of his harness.
“Just so long as you don’t carry that shotgun with you,” Werry said severely. “We can’t have you just blasting off at people.”
Morlacher continued addressing Pridgeon. “I’ll take this shotgun up with me, and if I see anybody I’ll blast off at them.”
“Well, I don’t know how you characters feel, but I’m hungry,” Werry said, suddenly breezy and jovial as he turned to Hasson. “Come on, Rob — May’s going to get mad at us if we don’t show up in time for those steaks.” He walked to his car and dropped into the driving seat, causing the vehicle to rock on its suspension. Hasson, who had just established that it was now safe for him to move, lowered himself back into the car and closed the door. He placed his hands on his knees and gazed fixedly at them while Werry started the car, drove it in a semicircle across the uneven snow and took them back out to the road. A minute of silence was all he could endure.
“Al,” he said quietly, “are you going to put in a call?”
“A call?” Werry sounded genuinely surprised. “What for?”
“You saw Pridgeon commit a TDO — he was carrying a shotgun on an ordinary shoulder sling. And Morlacher’s going to do it, too.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Besides, it was on Buck’s private property.”
“Which doesn’t count in air law.”
Werry laughed. “Relax, Rob. This isn’t the old country. People aren’t shoulder to shoulder on the ground here. We’ve got millions of square kilometres of open land you could drop whole city blocks on without anybody paying any heed.”
“But …” Hasson tightened his grip on his knees, and the knuckles shone through the skin like ivory hillocks, each bifurcated by a thin pink line. He had realized why he could not remember his first meeting with Werry — the man he had believed Werry to be simply did not exist.
“Pridgeon knocked you down on purpose, you know,” he said, reminding himself it was none of his business, but unable to keep the words in check.
He’s always horsing around like that,” Werry replied carelessly. “High spirits. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Hasson thought. The symbolism meant every thing. “From what I saw…”
“I thought you didn’t see anything,” Werry cut in. “When Starr asked you, you said you hadn’t seen anything.”
“Yes, but…” Hasson was stung by Werry’s remark, mainly because there was no denying it, and he lapsed into a shamed, recriminatory silence. The car reached the business section of Tripletree and he began to study the unfamiliar design of the various stores and office buildings, retreating inwards, picking out unfamiliar elements, noting the different ways in which it was possible to combine windows, walls and doors, and nostalgically comparing what he saw to the homely architecture of English rural villages. The pavements were crowded with lunch- time shoppers, many of whom wore brightly coloured flying suits as protection against the cold. Two policemen — one of them fat and middle-aged, the other looking barely pubescent — nodded amiably at Werry as the car paused at an intersection. He gave them a parody of an official salute, then nodded and grinned, secure and comfortable again in his role, as the fat man wielded an imaginary knife and fork. Both policemen turned immediately and hurried into a hamburger bar.