[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
it was wrong, and then Jon was very persistent. He was tall, curly-haired, he
has a baby's face-do you know, he only shaved twice a week. Well, I married
him. It lasted three months. Then he just had to get away." She leaned forward
earnestly. "Don't think he was just a bum, Milo! He really was quite a good
artist. But we didn't have enough money for paints, even, and then it seems
that the colors are all wrong here. Jon explained it. In order to paint
landscapes that sell you have to be on a planet with Earth-type colors;
they're all the vogue. And there's too much altamycin in the clouds here."
Pulcher said stiffly, "I see." But he didn't, really. There was at least one
unexplained part. If there hadn't been enough money for paint, then where had
the money come from for a starship ticket, physical transport? It meant at
least ten thousand dollars. There just was no way to raise ten thousand
dollars on Altair Nine, not without taking a rather extreme step. .
The girl wasn't looking at him.
Her eyes were fixed on a table across the restaurant, a table with a loud,
drunken party. It was only lunch time, but they had a three o'clock-in-
the-morning air about them. They were stinking. There were four of them, two
men and two women; and their physical bodies were those of young, healthy,
quite good-looking, perfectly normal Niners. The appearance of the physical
bodies was entirely irrelevant, though, because they were tourists. Around the
neck of each of them was a bright golden choker with a glowing red signal
jewel in the middle. It was the mark of the tourist Agency; the sign that the
bodies were rented.
Milo Pulcher looked away quickly. His eyes stopped on the white face of the
girl, and abruptly he knew how she had raised the money to send Jon to another
star.
II
Pulcher found the girl a room and left her there. It was not what he wanted.
What he wanted was to spend the evening with her and to go on spending time
with her, until time came to an end: but there was the matter of her trial.
Twenty-four hours ago he had got the letter notifying him that the court had
appointed him attorney for six suspected kidnapers and looked on it as a fast
fee, no work to speak of, no hope for success. He would lose the case,
certainly. Well, what of it?
But now he wanted to win!
It meant some fast, hard work if he was to have even a chance- and at
best, he admitted to himself, the chance would not be good. Still, he wasn't
going to give up without a try.
The snow stopped as he located the home of Jimmy Lasser's parents. It was a
sporting-goods shop, not far from the main Tourist Agency; it had a window
full of guns and boots and scuba gear. He walked in, tinkling a bell as he
opened the door.
"Mr. Lasser?" A plump little man, leaning back in a chair by the door, got
slowly up, looking him over.
"In back," he said shortly.
He led Pulcher behind the store, to a three-room apartment. The living room
was comfortable enough, but for some reason it seemed unbalanced. One side was
somehow heavier than the other. He noticed the nap of the rug, still flattened
out where something heavy had been, something rectangular and large, about the
size of a T-V electronic entertainment unit. "Repossessed," said
Lasser shortly. "Sit down. Dickon called you a minute ago."
"Oh?" It had to be something important. Dickon wouldn't have tracked him down
for any trivial matter.
"Don't know what he wanted, but he said you weren't to leave till he called
Page 127
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
back. Sit down. May'll bring you a cup of tea."
Pulcher chatted with them for a minute, while the woman fussed over a teapot
and a plate of soft cookies. He was trying to get the feel of the home.
He could understand Madeleine Gaultry's desperation, he could understand the
Foltis boy, a misfit in society anywhere. What about Jimmy Lasser?
The elder Lassers were both pushing sixty. They were first-
generation Niners, off an Earth colonizing ship. They hadn't been born on
Earth, of course-the trip took nearly a hundred years, physical transport.
They had been born in transit, had married on the ship. As the ship had
reached maximum population level shortly after they were born, they were
allowed to have no children until they landed. At that time they were all of
forty. May Lasser said suddenly, "Please help our boy, Mr. Pulcher! It isn't
Jimmy's fault. He got in with a bad crowd. You know how it is: no work,
nothing for a boy to do."
"I'll do my best." But it was funny, Pulcher thought, how it was always
"the crowd" that was bad. It was never Jimmy-and never Avery, never Sam, never
Walter. Pulcher sorted out the five boys and remembered Jimmy: nineteen years
old, quite colorless, polite, not very interested. What had struck the lawyer
about him was only surprise that this rabbity boy should have had the
enterprise to get into a criminal conspiracy in the first place.
"He's a good boy," said May Lasser pathetically. "That trouble with the parked
cars two years ago wasn't his fault. He got a fine job right after that, you
know. Ask his probation officer. Then the Icicle Works closed. - .
." She poured more tea, slopping it over the side of the cup. "Oh, sorry! But-
But when he went to the unemployment office, Mr. Pulcher, do you know what
they said to him?"
"I know."
"They asked him would he take a job if offered," she hurried on, unheeding. "A
job. As if I didn't know what they meant by a 'job!' They meant renting." She
plumped the teapot down on the table and began to weep. "Mr.
Pulcher, I wouldn't let him rent if I died for it! There isn't anything in the
Bible that says you can let someone else use your body and not be responsible
for what it does! You know what tourists do! 'If thy right hand offend thee,
cut it off.' It doesn't say, unless somebody else is using it. Mr. Pulcher,
renting is a sin!
"May." Mr. Lasser put his teacup down and looked directly at Pulcher.
"What about it, Pulcher? Can you get Jimmy off?"
The attorney reflected. He hadn't known about Jimmy Lasser's probation before,
and that was a bad sign. If the county prosecutor was holding out on
information of that sort, it meant he wasn't willing to cooperate. Probably he
would be trying for a conviction with maximum sentence. Of course, he didn't
have to tell a defense attorney anything about the previous criminal records
of his clients. But in a juvenile case, where all parties were usually willing
to go easy on the defendants, it was customary. . . . "I don't know, Mr.
Lasser. I'll do the best I can."
"Damn right you will!" barked Lasser. "Dickon tell you who I am?
I was committeeman here before him, you know. So get busy. Pull strings.
Dickon will back you, or I'll know why!"
Pulcher managed to control himself. "I'll do the best I can. I already told
you that. If you want strings pulled, you'd better talk to Dickon yourself. I
only know law. I don't know anything about politics."
The atmosphere was becoming unpleasant. Pulcher was glad to hear the ringing
of the phone in the store outside. May Lasser answered it and said:
"For you, Mr. Pulcher. Charley Dickon."
Pulcher gratefully picked up the phone. Dickon's rich, political voice said
sorrowfully, "Milo? Listen, I been talking to Judge Pegrim's secretary.
He isn't gonna let the kids off with a slap on the wrist. There's a lot of
heat from the mayor's office."
Page 128
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Pulcher protested desperately: "But the Swinbume kid wasn't hurt! He got
better care with Madeleine than he was getting at home."
"I know, Milo," the committeeman agreed, "but that's the way she lies.
So what I wanted to say to you, Milo, is don't knock yourself out on this one
because you aren't going to win it."
"But-" Pulcher suddenly became aware of the Lassers just behind him.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]