Forsake the Sky

Chapter 1

Dominion, it was called—a network that eventually encompassed a hundred stars in a field five thousand light-years across—and it was the most ambitious social experiment humans had ever embarked upon. It was a nation of more than a hundred planets, united by the Transport spaceships, the freighters that made possible the complex economic equations of supply and demand that kept the unthinkably vast Dominion empire running smoothly. Food from the fertile plains and seas of planets like Earth was shipped out to the worlds that produced ore, or vacuum-and-low-gravity industry, or simply provided office space; and the machinery and nutrients and pesticides from the manufactory worlds kept the farm worlds functioning at peak efficiency. Planetary independence was a necessity of the past—now no planet’s government need struggle to be self-sufficient; each world simply produced the things it was best suited to, and relied on the Transport ships to provide such necessities as were lacking.

For centuries Dominion was a healthy organism, nourished by its varied and widespread resources, which the bloodstream of the Transport ships distributed to all its parts.

FRANK Rovzar sat slouched against the back of the horse-drawn cart, hemmed in by a dozen hot, unhappy kitchen servants. They were all moaning and asking each other questions that none of them knew the answers to: Where are we going? What happened? Who are these people? Frank was the only silent one in the cart; he sat where he’d been thrown, staring intensely at nothing. From time to time he flexed his tightly bound wrists.

The cart rattled along southward on the Cromlech Road, making good time, for the Cromlech was one of the few highways on the planet that received regular maintenance. Within two hours of leaving the devastated palace they had arrived at the Barclay Transport Depot southwest of Munson, by the banks of the Malachi River. The cart, along with fifteen others like it, was taken through a gate in the chain-link fence that enclosed the depot, and across the wide, scorched concrete plain, and finally was brought to a halt in front of a bleak gray four-storey edifice.

Small-cargo scales had been dragged up from somewhere and now stood in a row by the doors. The bedraggled occupants of the carts were pulled and prodded out onto the pavement, weighed, lined up according to sex and mass, and then divided into groups and escorted into the building.

AFTER many centuries and dozens of local Golden Ages, Dominion began to weaken. It had expanded too rapidly, and the expected breakthroughs in faster-than-light communication and portable nuclear-fusion reactors simply never happened. Fossil fuels and Uranium-235 were inadequate in quantity and distribution. Transportation became increasingly expensive, and many things were no longer worth shipping. The smooth pulse of the import/export network had taken on a lurching, strained pace.

“NAME.” The officer’s voice had no intonation.

“Francisco de Goya Rovzar.”

“Age.”

“Twenty.”

“Occupation.”

“Uh ... apprentice painter.”

“Okay, Rovzar, step over there with the others.” Frank walked away from the desk and joined a crowd of other prisoners. The room they were in seemed calculated to induce depression. The floor was of damp cement, with drains set in at regular intervals; the paint was blistering off the pale green walls; the ceiling was corrugated aluminum, and naked light bulbs swung on the ends of long cords in the perpetual chilly draft.

The perfunctory interrogation continued until all the prisoners taken that morning had been questioned and stood in a milling, spiritless crowd. The officer who had been asking the questions now stood up and, flanked by two others who carried machine guns, faced the prisoners. He was short, with close-cropped sandy hair and a bristly moustache; his uniform was faultlessly neat.

“Give me your attention for a moment,” he said, unnecessarily. “You are here as prisoners of the Transport Authority, and of Costa, who two hours ago was confirmed as the new Duke of this planet. Ordinarily each of you would be allowed a court hearing in which to contest the charge of treason laid against you, but the entire planet of Octavio has, as of this morning, been declared to be under martial law.” He was reciting all this as dispassionately as a tired waiter announcing that the daily special is all gone. “When this condition is lifted you will be free to appeal your sentence. The sentence, like the crime, is the same for each of you: you are to be lifted tomorrow on a Transport freighter and ferried to the Orestes system to atone for your offenses in the uranium industry. Are there any questions?”

There were none. A few people laughed incredulously, for it was actually illegal for uranium miners to reenter normal society. Frank, his mind only now beginning to recover from the shock of his father’s murder, heard the sentence, but its irony, whether intentional or just negligent, was wasted on him. He filed the news away without thinking about it.

THE situation did not improve. Transportation became more and more sporadic and unreliable. Industrial planets were often left for weeks without food shipments, and agricultural planets were unable to replace broken machinery or obtain fuel for what worked. The Transport Company was losing its grip on the wide-flung empire; the outer sections were dying. Transport rates climbed, and the poorer planets, unable to maintain contact with the Dominion, were forced to drop out and try to survive alone. In time even the richest planets began working to be self-sufficient, in case the Transport Company should one day collapse entirely.

LATE that night Frank sat awake in the darkness of one of the depot detention pens. His cot and thin mattress were not particularly uncomfortable, but his thoughts were too vivid and alarming for him to sleep. The six other men in the pen with him apparently didn’t care to think, and slept deeply.

My father is dead, Frank told himself; but he couldn’t really believe it yet, not emotionally. Impressions of his father alive were too strong—he could still see the old man laughing over a mug of beer in a tavern, or sketching strangers’ faces in a pocket notebook, or shaking Frank awake in the predawn dimness so that they could gulp some coffee while they bundled up canvas and brushes and paints and thinners before getting on the horses and galloping off somewhere to catch a subject in the perfect light. Frank thought of how his life would be without old Rovzar to take care of, and he shied away from the lonely vision.

His destination was the Orestes mines. That was bad—about as bad as it could be. The mines riddled all four planets of the relatively young Orestes system, and working conditions ranged from desiccating desert heat to cold that could kill an exposed man in seconds. But the sovereign danger—and eventual certainty—was radiation poisoning. Panic grew in him as it became clear that he was about to be devastatingly punished by men who had never seen him before and were totally indifferent to him.

Only this morning—or was it now past midnight? Probably; only yesterday morning, then—he’d been playing with practice weapons at the Strand Fencing Academy. Now in this disinfectant-smelling darkness he wondered how he could have failed to see the shadow of the world’s true nature in the formalities of the stylized combat—the points and edges were imaginary, but the foils were models of a killing-tool ... a killing-tool every bit as real and routinely used as the pot in which a cook boils lobsters.

His father’s appointment with Duke Topo—Costa’s father—hadn’t been until noon, and the portrait his father was doing was well under way and needed no particular preparation from the apprentice, so Frank had strapped his foil and mask to the back of his saddle and ridden to Strand’s.

The place was just one room, but it was huge, a hundred feet by a hundred feet, with a ceiling so far above the floor that in decades no one had brushed the ropy cobwebs away from the very highest frames and trophies. A class was in session when Frank arrived, so he sat down on a bench between two of the tall windows and watched the sons of the aristocracy hop and plunge and flail about. He hoped it was a beginners’ class. The classes were getting bigger; a generation or two ago the young men were all taking shooting lessons.

When old Strand finally declared the lesson ended and told the students to pair off and bout with one another, and warned them which moves they weren’t to attempt yet, he walked over to Frank’s bench. “Hello, Frankie. Looking for a bout?”

“Yes sir. Is Tom around?”

“No, I sent the boy off on some errands. I’ll go around with you, though, if you like.”

“Well ... okay.”

It was always intimidating to fence with Tom’s father, for the old man would frequently halt a bout to point out, loudly, his opponent’s errors, and if the opponent managed to score even one touch against old Strand’s five it was a rare feat; but it was true too that one’s next opponent, no matter who it was, seemed much less daunting.

Frank was left-handed, and once they’d found a vacant strip, put on their masks and jackets, saluted and come on guard, he kept his blade well-extended in an exaggeratedly outside-twisted sixte position, for this pretty much forced the right-hander to attack into his inside line, and it was such a long way to reach that Frank could generally let an incoming blade come close enough to be totally committed before he parried, and thus he wasted a lot less effort—and exposure—trying to parry thrusts that turned out to be mere feints.

But it did little good against Tom’s father, who could, almost supernaturally, wait until the last split instant before deciding whether his attack was genuine, or just a feint to open Frank’s defenses for an attack somewhere else. Frank took four touches in two minutes, and his only consolation was that the old man once shouted “Not bad!” when a compound riposte of Frank’s nearly hit him.

After the fourth touch Strand stepped back. “Have you been practicing the Self-Inflicted Foot Thrust?” he asked. His voice, it seemed to Frank, was as relaxed as if he’d just now looked up from reading a book.

“Well,” Frank panted, “yeah—some.”

“Put me into it.”

“Okay.” Frank took a deep breath and then hopped backward, his sword raised; Strand beat it aside and advanced with a thrust; Frank caught the older man’s blade in a bind from below, whipped it upward with his own blade, and then flung it downward; but not only did Strand’s point fail to strike Strand’s own foot, as it would have if Frank had done the move correctly, but Strand’s blade had lashed back up, knocked Frank’s aside, and then darted in to flex firmly against Frank’s chest.

“Not yet, lad.” Strand laughed, flipping his mask back and stepping forward to shake hands. “But keep practicing it.”

“Yes sir.”

As Frank turned away he saw that Strand’s son Tom had returned sometime during the bout and was now grinning and shaking his head at him. “At least,” he called cheerfully to Frank, “you almost hit your own foot that time.”

“You want to fence,” Frank asked with a defiant smile, “or just stand there and criticize your betters?”

“Might as well play chess as fence with those foils," said Tom, nevertheless crossing to the weapons rack. “That kind of fencing’s got no bearing on real sword-fighting.” He spoke almost automatically, for this was just one more thrust in a long-standing argument between Tom and Frank. Tom was always emphasizing the combat aspects of the sport, and talking about edges and points and blood-channels. He insisted that, to have any real value, fencing should approximate as closely as possible the conditions of real sword-fighting: the weapons should be heavier, the boundary lines on the floor dispensed with, “off-target” touches acknowledged with some physical handicap like an imposed limp and a bleed-to-death time limit. Frank usually countered by pretending to agree enthusiastically and then going on to suggest that touched fencers be required to groan, too, and fall dramatically, and maybe splash some artificial blood on the touched spot.

Generally Frank refused to do any saber fencing with Tom, for the fencing master’s son tended to lean into the blows too much—even though Frank nearly always won, his back and arms would be welted afterward from hits that, though mistimed or delivered after valid hits of Frank’s, nevertheless stung; but today, with Tom still grinning reminiscently about Frank’s failure at the Self-Inflicted Foot Thrust, he wanted to beat him at something Tom considered worthwhile.

“Okay,” he said carelessly, “dig out a couple of sabers, then.”

Tom laughed in surprise. “All right! You want to lose at something that counts, eh?” He swerved toward the saber-and-épée cabinet, digging in his pocket for his keys.

“Something ... not too abstract,” said Frank. “Hell, you’d probably be good at chess, too, if you could always use pieces that were made to look like little people.”

Tom Strand had found the right key, and he unlocked the cabinet and swung its door open. “Well,” he began, his smile a little forced now, “at least—at least I—”

“And if they bleated when you knocked them over,” Frank went on, “like those little perforated cans they give to kids, where each one makes the noise of the animal whose picture’s on the outside. A bishop could, like, make praying noises when you tipped him over, and the queen could yell rape or something—”

Tom selected a saber and then looked at Frank. He was squinting in what Frank had come to recognize as his man-of-the-world style. “Take a flight a few thousand feet over Munson,” he advised. “The streets look as ordered and geometrical as a checkerboard. But then come down and look closer.” He whirled his saber through the air fast enough to make it whistle. “The universe is one big jungle, and you’ve got to—”

“I know,” said Frank wearily as he took a left-handed blade for himself, “become a jungle creature to survive. I bet you use camouflage-pattern condoms.”

Tom laughed delightedly, and then winked at Frank. “You think it’s my idea? They demand ’em.”

“Snake women you hang out with,” said Frank. “They’d like you even better with a set of rattles.”

The conversation deteriorated even further then as their friendship and humor smoothed over the momentary edginess, and soon they were masked and slashing enthusiastically at each other as they stamped back and forth along one of the fencing strips. Frank beat Tom in the first bout, and in the second one they lost track of the score and just fenced until Frank had to leave to meet his father and ride to the palace.

Tom Strand hadn’t, this time, wielded the saber as if he were trying to beat dust out of a carpet, and as Frank rode home he reflected that even Tom was beginning to realize that it could be a civilized sport.

SOMEONE in a nearby cell whimpered now in the darkness, and Frank wondered whether the man’s nightmare could possibly be worse than what he’d presently be waking up to. Frank remembered young Costa’s grunt of effort as he drove the blade of his dress sword into his own father’s belly; a civilized sport, he thought.

Chapter 2

Only in death had Topo, the old Duke, taken on any dignity in Frank’s eyes; before he was murdered by his son he had always seemed to be nothing more than a caricature of a planetary duke—either draping his ludicrously fat body in multicolored jewelled robes in order to ride a gaudy float in a parade or to publicly sign some obscure proclamation, or disappearing into the Ducal Palace to indulge himself in his dining room and harem. Rumor had it that even in the harem the old Duke would not permit himself to be seen without a suitable tunic and turban; the more utilitarian of his visits there were said to be conducted in absolute darkness to preserve the dignity of his station.

When Frank’s father had begun doing the old Duke’s portrait two weeks ago, the old painter had jokingly suggested that the Duke pose nude. Frank, who’d been setting up the easel, actually thought for a moment that Topo was going to have his father flung out of the palace. The Duke had managed to swallow his rage, though, and then force a laugh and decline the offer, but it was lucky that Frank’s father had been in the early, blocking-in-with-pencil stage of the portrait, for Topo’s face didn’t lose its redness during that entire session.

Only at one other session had Frank’s father apparently deviated from strictly respectful professionalism; Frank wasn’t sure, for he didn’t understand the bit of dialogue he’d overheard when he returned, more quickly than usual, from a turpentine-fetching errand. On their way home that evening Frank had asked his father about it, but the old painter had just laughed and said he couldn’t discuss it, that it was a state secret. Frank had puzzled over it later. “Sure you don’t want me to make it either all-bird or all-girl?” his father had muttered quietly to the Duke, before either of them had noticed that Frank had returned. “I still could, you know.” The Duke had replied with some remark about a stretched canvas, and then saw Frank and hastily changed the subject.

The session yesterday, which had ended with the murders of Topo and old Rovzar, had begun ordinarily. The guards at the barbican gate had recognized the old painter and his son, and waved the pair on inside with sociably slack slingshots. The wait in front of the palace doors was perhaps a little longer than usual, but they were in the cool shadow of the wall, and the page who took their horse brought them a bucket of chilly beer and two wooden mugs when he returned, and they used the extra time to comb their sweaty hair and stamp some of the road dust off their boots.

At last the doors were unbolted from the inside and swung open by an expressionless guard—Frank thought now that it had not been the usual doorguard—who beckoned them inside and escorted them up the stairs and along the familiar hall to the throne room. The man pulled the doors open for them and stepped back, and Frank, getting a fresh grip on the satchel of painting supplies, followed his father inside.

“Ah, there you are, Rovzar!” boomed Duke Topo from the tall chair of mosaic-inlaid ebony in the center of the room. As usual for these sessions, his bulky person was enclosed in a baggy pair of blue silk trousers and a green velvet coat. Ringlets of hair so shiny as to seem varnished, covered his head and clustered about his shoulders.

“Your Grace,” acknowledged the older Rovzar. Father and son both bowed. The room was lit by tall, open windows in the eastern wall; bookcases hid the other three walls, and a desk and chair were set in one corner. In the middle of the room, facing the throne in which the Duke sat, was a wooden stand supporting a canvas five feet tall and three feet wide. The canvas, which was framed temporarily in plain wood, was the nearly finished portrait of the Duke, done in oils. It presented him dressed and seated as he now was, but it conveyed a dignity and strength, even a touch of sadness, that were lacking in the model.

“You think you’ll finish it this session?” the Duke asked.

“It’s not unlikely,” answered Frank’s father. “But I can’t say for sure, of course.”

“Of course,” nodded the Duke.

Old Rovzar put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Okay, now, Frank,” he said, “you set up the palette and turp and oil while I say hello to the picture.” He crossed to the painting and stood in front of it, staring intently. Frank unbuckled the satchel, set up a small folding table and laid out on it a dozen crumpled paint tubes, then poured linseed oil and turpentine into two metal cups. He unwound a rubber band from a bundle of brushes and set them in another cup. A young page, standing beside the sitting Duke, looked on with great interest.

The doors opened and a slim, pale young man entered. He wore powder blue tights and a matching tunic with ruffles at the throat. A fancy-hilted sword hung at his belt.

“Costa, my boy!” greeted the Duke. “Finished with your piano lesson so soon?”

“I despise pianos,” the prince informed him. “Is he still working on that picture?” He walked over and peered closely at the canvas. “Hmmm,” he grunted, before turning and walking to the window. His attitude implied that this painting wasn’t bad, in a provincial way, but that he’d frequently seen better. Frank remembered the prince’s tantrums after he had been told that he was not to be included in the painting—for a week Costa had sulked, and then in the days since tried to make it clear that he regarded Rovzar as an inferior painter.

Frank’s father was sketching lightly in a background area of the canvas, oblivious to the world. What is it that’s different about young Prince Costa this morning? Frank had wondered. He’s quiet, for one thing; usually he makes himself tiresome with frequent questions and distractions. Frank suppressed a smile as he remembered one day when Costa had brought a drawing pad and pastels and made an attempt to portray the Duke himself, with much squinting and many theatrical gestures. But now he simply stood at the window, staring down into the courtyard.

Frank’s attention was caught by his father’s blocking in of the background. With a few passes of a pencil the artist’s hand had converted a patch of blank canvas into several bookshelves in perfect perspective. He set about defining the shadows with quick cross-hatching.

Suddenly it occurred to Frank what was different about Prince Costa. This was the first time Frank had seen him wearing a sword.

“Where’s my number eight camel hair?” asked old Rovzar, pawing through the brushes. “Right here, Dad,” replied Frank, pointing out the one in question. “Oh, yes.” The painter took the brush, dipped it into the linseed oil, and began mixing a dab of paint.

A loud bang echoed up from the courtyard.

“What was that?” asked the Duke.

Several more bangs rattled the glass in the windows, then there was a series of them like a string of firecrackers going off.

“By God,” said Frank, “I think it’s gunfire." He spoke incredulously, guns and powder being so prohibitively rare and expensive these days. Panicky yells sounded, punctuated by more shots.

“We’re beset!” gasped the Duke. Prince Costa ran out of the room, and the Duke took his place at the window. “Troops!” he shouted. “A hundred Transport soldiers are within the bailey!”

Old Rovzar looked up. “What?” he asked. “I trust my painting won’t be interrupted?”

“Interrupted?” The Duke waved his fists. “The Transports will probably use your canvas to polish their boots!” An explosion shook the palace, and the Duke scrambled back from the window. The pandemonium of shouts, shots and screams was a mounting roar.

The Duke ran bobbing and puffing across the carpeted floor to the desk. He yanked out drawers and began throwing bundles of letters and documents in a pile on the floor. “How did they get in?” he kept whining. “How in the devil’s name did they get in?”

Frank glanced at his father. “Do we run for it?” he asked tensely. The young page stared at them with wide eyes.

Frank’s father scratched his chin. “No, I guess not. We’re better off here than down in that madhouse of a courtyard. Just don’t panic. Damn, I hope nobody sticks a bayonet through this,” he said, staring at the painting.

The hollow booms of two more explosions jarred Frank’s teeth. “This attack must be costing a fortune,” he said, awed.

The Duke had struck a match and set it to his pile of papers; most of them were yellowed with age, and they were consumed quickly, scorching the rug under them. When they had burned to fragile black curls he stamped them into powder. “What else, what else?” the distraught Duke moaned, wringing his hands.

Suddenly from beyond the throne room doors Frank heard a hoarse, triumphant yell, and then heavy-booted footsteps running up the hall toward the room they were in. The page ran to the doors and threw a more-or-less decorative-looking bolt into the locked position.

The Duke had heard it too and sprang to one of the bookcases. His pudgy hands snatched one of the books from the shelf, and then he stood holding it, staring wildly around the room. The attackers were pounding on the doors now. The Duke’s eyes lit on the painting and he ran to it with a glad cry. He stuffed the book—which, Frank noticed, was a leather-bound copy of Winnie the Pooh—behind the picture’s frame, so that it lay hidden between the canvas and the thick cross-bracing. This done, he ran back to his throne and sat down, exhausted. Frank and the old painter stared at him, even in this crisis puzzled by the Duke’s action.

Six bullets splintered downward through the doors, one snapping the bolt and two more tearing through the page’s chest, the impact throwing him to the floor. Frank’s numbed mind had time to be amazed at the quickness of it.

The doors were kicked open and a dozen men strode into the room. Eleven of them were soldiers who wore the gray Transport uniform and carried rifles, but it was the twelfth, the apparent leader, who held the attention of Rovzar, his son and the Duke.

“Costa!” exclaimed the astounded Duke. “Not you ...?”

Costa drew his sword with a sharp rasp of steel. “On guard, your Grace,” he whispered tightly, holding the blade forward and crouching a bit. Terrible form, thought Frank.

It was adequate against the Duke, though, whose only defensive action was to cover his face with his hands. Prince Costa hesitated, his face palely blotchy and his sword trembling, then cursed and drove the blade into Duke Topo’s chest. He wrenched it out, and the Duke sighed and bowed forward, leaning farther and farther, until he overbalanced and tumbled messily to the floor.

One of the Transport soldiers stepped to the still-open window and waved. “He’s dead!” he bellowed. “Topo is dead!” Cheers, wails and renewed shooting greeted this announcement. Frank could smell smoke, laced with the unfamiliar tang of gunpowder and high explosives.

The other soldiers seized Frank and his father. “Damn it,” old Rovzar snarled, “you apes had better—” One of the soldiers twisted the old man’s arm, and the painter kicked him expertly, leaving him rolling in pain on the floor. Another raised his rifle clubwise.

“Duck, Dad!” yelled Frank, earning himself a slap in the side of the head.

His father had leaped away from the descending gun butt and made a grab at Costa’s ruffle-bordered throat. One of the soldiers next to Frank stepped aside to have a clear field of fire. “No!” screamed Frank, twisting furiously in his captor’s grasp. The soldier fired his rifle from the hip, almost casually, and the bang was startlingly loud. The bullet caught old Rovzar in the temple and spun him away from the surprised-looking prince. Frank, painfully held by two soldiers now, stared unbelievingly at his father’s body stretched beside the bookcase.

“Take the kid along with the servants,” said Costa, and as the soldiers, one of them limping and cursing, filed out, carrying Frank like a piece of furniture, the only coherent thought in Frank’s stunned mind was that he was, if anything, somewhat older than Costa.

FRANK shifted now on his cot. The man who’d been having the nightmare seemed to have come to terms with his dreams, for the dark cells were silent except for the perpetual susurration of many people breathing, a sound like water quietly flowing through pipes underground. We’d all better come to terms with our dreams, Frank thought. They’ll be the best part of our lives, in the Orestes system.

No more painting, he thought, trying to make himself grasp the idea. No more friends, fencing, decent food and drink, girls—not ever again would he ride a horse through woods at dawn, not ever again swim in the surf, never again, in fact, feel the gravitational field of Octavio, the planet on which he’d been born. Did you get sufficient use out of ... everything ... while you still had it?

My God, he thought as the sudden sweat of comprehension misted his forehead and chilled his belly, isn’t there anyone who can get me out of this? What about Tom Strand, or his father? Couldn’t either of them do anything? Of course not, rasped the logical part of his mind. How could they reverse the decision of the Transport and the planetary government? The idea, he was forced to admit, was ridiculous.

Panic eventually gave way to a decision. I am not going to Orestes, he thought. I simply am not going. I will escape.

He got up from his cot and felt his way through the inky blackness to one of the sleeping men and shook him by the shoulder. The man started violently.

“Who is it?” he whispered in terror.

“I’m a fellow prisoner,” Frank hissed. “Listen, we’ve got to escape. Are you with me?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, kid,” the man almost sobbed, “go back to sleep and leave me alone.”

“You want to go to Orestes?” Frank asked wonderingly.

“Kid—you can’t escape. Forget it. Your life won’t be real great now, but make an escape attempt and you’ll be surprised how sorry you’ll be, and for how long.”

Frank left the man to his sleep and returned to his cot, his confident mood deflated.

After another half hour of sitting on his mattress, Frank was again convinced of the necessity of escape. Wasn’t there a wide ventilation grille set in the center of the ceiling? He tried to remember. Let’s see, he thought, they marched us in here, showed us each a cot, and then turned off the lights. But it seems to me I did notice a slotted plate set in the ceiling. I could escape through the ventilation system!

He stood up again. It seemed to be in the center of the ceiling, he recalled. He made his way to a wall and counted the number of steps it took to walk its length; then did the same with the other wall. Twelve by eight, he thought. He then went back to the midpoint of the twelve-pace wall and took four paces out into the room, thanking Chance that no sleeping prisoners lay in his path.

By my calculations, he mused, I should now be directly beneath that ventilation grille. He crouched; when he leaped upward with a strong kick, his fingers crooked to catch the vent. Instead, they cracked against unyielding concrete.

He fell back to the floor, strangling a curse. His hands stung, and he could feel blood trickling down one finger. Bit of a miscalculation, Rovzar, he told himself.

He pulled himself to his feet and got ready to jump again, this time only intending to brush the ceiling with his fingers, to feel for the vent. This is what I should have done to begin with, he thought.

After four jumps, muffled by his rubber-soled shoes, he found the vent. His next leap gained him two fingerholds and in a moment he had got a firm grip with both hands. Now what?

Why, he thought, I’ll bring my legs up and kick the plate until it comes loose, and then I’ll pull myself up into the hole and be off. Righto. He drew his legs up, and with a sort of half flip he kicked the plate with one toe. It made hardly any noise, but he was disappointed at how weak the blow was. This time he got swinging first, and then used the momentum of his pendulum motion to emphasize the kick as he flipped again and drove his heel at the grille.

With an echoing clang of broken metal his foot punched completely through the grille. The recoil of the kick wrenched his hands free, but he didn’t fall back to the floor; instead he hung upside down, his foot caught in the twisted wreck of the vent.

Shouts echoed eerily through the corridors, and the prisoners below Frank whimpered in uncomprehending fear. An alarm added its flat howl to the confusion. Frank, dangling from the ceiling, pulled at his trapped foot, hoping to be able to return to his cot before the guards arrived. Footsteps thudded in the corridor, and immediately the lights in Frank’s cell flashed on, blinding him. The will to move left his body and he relaxed, swinging limp from the mooring of his foot. He heard the door rattle and squeak open, and then something hard was driven with savage force into his stomach and consciousness left him.

FRANK came back to wakefulness by degrees, like a length of seaweed being gradually nudged to shore by succeeding waves. First he was aware of a hum of voices and a sense of being carried about. None of it seemed to demand a response.

Then he dimly knew he was sleeping, but it was a deep, heavy sleep, and he did not want to wake up yet even though it sounded as if some people were up already.

Abruptly, a cold finger and thumb pried his right eyelid open. Frank saw an unfocused sea of bright gray.

“This kid’s okay,” came a loud, gravelly voice. “Throw him over there with that clown who set his bed on fire.”

Frank had groggily assumed that the voice was speaking figuratively when it said “throw,” but now unseen hands clamped on his ankles and wrists. “Wait, wait—” Frank began mumbling. “Heave ho!” called someone cheerily, and Frank found himself lifted from whatever he’d been lying on and tossed sprawling into the air. His eyes sprang open wide and he grabbed convulsively at nothing. He saw the concrete floor rushing up at him and he managed to twist around in midair so that he landed on his hip instead of his head. The sharp, aching pain of the impact was his first clear sensation of the morning.

Laughter rang loud in the room, and Frank looked up from where he lay to see what sort of people were amused by this. A Transport captain and four guards returned his gaze with a mixture of humor and scornful contempt in their eyes. All of them wore pistols, and two of the guards held coils of rope.

“Take these two jerks first,” said the captain, pointing in Frank’s direction. “And tie their hands.” The man exited and the four guards walked over to Frank and rolled him over onto his face, then quickly and securely tied his wrists together behind him. They left him lying there and moved on to someone behind him.

“Get up now,” one of the guards said. Frank struggled to his knees and then stood up. His stomach was a collage of pain and numbness, and he sagged when he straightened up; the colors of unconsciousness began to glitter before his eyes. He lowered his head and breathed deeply, and the weakness passed. He heard a sigh behind him and turned to see a tall, thin man with graying hair. It must be the guy who set fire to his bed, Frank realized.

“All right, you two, get moving,” a guard said. “Out that door.”

Frank and his sad-eyed companion shambled out of the little room and, escorted by the guards, made their way down a corridor to an open doorway. Morning sunlight glared on wet asphalt outside, and the air was cold.

Somehow Frank was not very depressed. The light of day had dispelled the fears of the night, and his system was buoyed up by the realization that he was embarking on a perilous journey. Anything can happen, he thought.

The guards prodded the two blinking prisoners outside. Five hundred yards away the silver needle of a Transport ship stood up against the sky, gleaming in the sun like a polished sword. Even though it was the vehicle that was to carry him to Orestes, Frank was overcome with the beauty of the thing.

“Are these our two escapees?” asked a Transport officer who had walked up while Frank was staring at the rocket. He carried in his hand an object that looked like a rubber stamp or a wax seal.

“Yes, sir,” answered one of the guards.

“Open their shirts,” the officer said. A guard took hold of Frank’s shirt-collar ends and yanked them apart. Three buttons clicked on the asphalt. I’m glad this is just an old painting shirt, Frank thought automatically. He heard his companion’s shirt being dealt with in the same way.

“Now, boys, this won’t hurt a bit,” said the officer with a cold smile as he pressed the seal onto Frank’s chest. The metal felt warm and itched a little, but was not uncomfortable. “There,” the officer said. “Now everyone will know at a glance who you are.”

Frank looked down past his chin and saw a mark on his chest. It was a circle with a capital E inside it. “Escapee,” the officer explained. He turned to the guards. “Get these monkeys aboard. We lift at nine-seventeen.” He strode off without another word.

“You heard the man, lads,” grinned a guard. “Start walking. Your friends will be coming along as soon as you two maniacs are aboard.” Flanked by the arrogant guards, Frank and the bed-burner set off across the tarmac toward the ship. Frank’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the daylight and he looked around as he walked. To his right, a hundred yards away, was a chain-link fence topped with strands of barbed wire. Half-a-dozen big tractor motors were stacked against it at one point. Beyond the fence, he knew, was the channel in which the Malachi River surged its way to the distant sea. At his left was visible a cluster of undistinguished gray buildings. Not a really fine view, Frank thought, considering it’s probably the last time I’ll see this planet. The thought raised a clamoring flock of emotions in him, which he determinedly strangled and put away. It simply would not do, he told himself, to burst into tears out here.

The gray-haired prisoner who paced along beside Frank was acting oddly. He was whimpering, and his wide-open eyes flicked around as if he were watching the quick, erratic course of a wasp. “Are you okay?” asked Frank quietly.

“There’s no way,” the man said.

“What’s that?” asked a guard.

“There’s no way!” the man shouted. The guards, sensing a dangerous frenzy, backed away a pace. Frank did, too. The guards were all concentrating their attention on the crazed bed-burner, and it occurred to Frank that since Francisco Rovzar was already branded as an escapee, he had nothing to lose by trying it again. He took another step back, so that the guards were all in front of him.

“Oh my God, there’s no way!” shrieked the grayhaired man, who now took off at a dead run toward the buildings. At the same moment Frank turned and sprinted, as quietly as he could, toward the chain-link fence and the tractor motors. He heard, without thinking about it, angry calls behind him. Forget it, he thought, they’re after that old guy. Keep running.

“Hey. You!” sounded an exasperated shout. That’s probably me he’s yelling at; well, I have to play out the hand now, he thought. He strained for more speed, ignoring the shortness of his breath and the pain in his stomach. The fence seemed to slowly jerk closer. Vividly, he pictured the guard unsnapping the flap on his holster, lifting out the pistol, and raising it to eye level. Should I weave right and left to spoil their aim? No, that’d slow me down, he thought.

“Hold it right there, kid, or I’ll shoot,” called one of the guards. Frank covered the last ten feet and leaped, arms still bound, to the oily top of one of the tractor motors; without stopping he sprang up the stairs they formed, and then jumped with all his strength to clear the barbed wire. A gunshot cracked and his body jerked as it fell away, awkwardly, on the other side of the fence.

“You get him?” asked one of the guards.

“Sure I got him,” the other guard replied, holstering his gun.

“A lucky shot at this range. You must have aimed high,” commented another. “I’ll send the grounds patrol to pick up the body. Come on, help me get this guy stowed.” The guards picked up the unconscious, bleeding form of the unfortunate bed-burner and strode off toward the ship.

Chapter 3

Frank’s flying leap ended in a ragged slide down a dirt embankment to a service road below. The breath was knocked out of him, and the side of his head stung where the bullet had creased him. He lay still for a minute or two to get his breath back, but he knew he couldn’t rest yet. He struggled to his skinned knees and spit dirt out of his mouth. I’ve got to untie my hands, he realized, looking around desperately for some object with a sharp edge. He saw nothing but the hill and the road.

He got shakily to his feet, but didn’t feel able to walk. Blood from his right ear ran down his neck and stained his ruined shirt. I can’t take a whole lot more of this, he thought. Looking south, away from the slope, he could see the steep banks of the Malachi. That’s where I want to go, he told himself. The Malachi flows right into Munson, and that ancient metropolis has been harboring fugitives for five hundred years.

The grating roar of a jeep interrupted his thoughts. He knew there was no place to hide, so he flopped down on his stomach beside the road, lying on his good ear. A few moments later the jeep rounded the corner and bore down on his lifeless-looking body. It squealed to a halt beside him, its motor still chugging. Frank held his breath.

“Look at him,” remarked the driver. “The bullet went right through his head.”

“Lemme see,” spoke up his partner. “Wow. I wish they’d issue guns to us.”

“Hah,” replied the driver. “Like to see you try to handle a gun.”

“I could do it.”

“Yeah, sure. Throw our friend here into the back, will you?”

“Aren’t you gonna give me a hand?”

“No, I’ve got to stay here and keep my foot on the clutch. Hurry up.”

“Oh, man,” whined the other, climbing out of the vehicle. Frank heard his boots crunch in the dirt as the man walked over to his prostrate form. Rough hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled. I can’t keep playing dead, Frank thought, terrified; I can't. Any second now they’re going to notice.

“This guy’s heavy," the man complained.

“For God’s sake, Howard, he’s skinny. Now stop bitching and toss him in here.”

Howard lifted Frank by the belt and slipped an arm under his stomach. Then with an exaggerated groan he heaved the limp body up onto his shoulder. Frank managed to keep from tensing any muscles during the maneuver, but couldn’t help opening his eyes as Howard flung him into the back of the jeep. There was a spare tire, and he bent a little to let his head land on the rubber; a jack jabbed painfully into his shoulder, but he found himself basically uninjured. He was very tempted to give himself up. I’ve taken as much as anyone could have expected of me, he thought. All I want is a little rest.

With the lurching rattle of engaging gears the jeep got underway. Frank lay face up on the spare tire, his right foot only a short distance from the back of the driver’s head. The machine picked up speed, and the driver clanked the stick shift into second gear; after a couple of minutes he pushed it up into third.

Frank risked raising his head. The road took a sharp curve to the left in front of them, and the driver’s hand reached out to downshift. Without stopping to think, Frank drew his right leg all the way back and slammed his foot like a piston into the base of the driver’s skull. The man’s head bounced off the steering wheel and the jeep spun to the right in a bucking dry skid. Off balance from his kick, Frank was pitched over the jeep’s side panel; he hit the dirt in a sitting position and slid, taking most of the abrasion on his left thigh and shoulder. When he found himself motionless at last, he decided to die there, right there in the road. I should have died a long time ago, he thought.

He cautiously opened his eyes. The jeep lay on its side a hundred feet away—the tires on the top side were still spinning, and the motor was ticking in a staccato rattle. Frank was about to close his eyes again when he noticed a jagged strip of the hood protruding like a knife. Squinting against dizziness, he got to his feet after overcoming a short spasm in one knee that had him genuflecting like a madman. He limped across the road to the jeep, and backed up against the tom piece of metal, rocking back and forth to saw through the rope binding him. The rhythm of the motion brought to his dazed mind the memory of a song his father used to sing, and after a brief time of rocking in the morning sun he began to sing it:

“I open my study window

And into the twilight peer,

And my anxious eyes are watching

For the man with my evening beer.”

The rope frayed, then snapped, and Frank’s hands were free at last. He flexed them to get the blood circulating.

“Who’s singing?” came an angry voice. Howard, his shirt tom, lurched around the corner of the upended jeep. His service sword, a short rapier, was drawn. Frank ran around the other side, and saw the driver’s body lifeless in the road, face down with his knees drawn up like a supplicant in church. Frank hobbled over to the body and drew the sword from the scabbard on the dead man’s belt. Its hilt was a right-handed one, but Frank held it in his left, trying to grip it with his skinned thumb and forefinger as Mr. Strand had taught him. Awkward, he thought. How good is Howard?

Howard came out from behind the barrier of the jeep; he was running at Frank, his sword held straight out before him like the horn of a charging rhinoceros. Frank parried it, but Howard had lumbered past before Frank could riposte. The big guard turned and aimed a slash at his young opponent’s head; Frank ducked the blow and jabbed Howard in the right elbow.

“Damn!” Howard exploded. “Want to mess around, eh? Swallow this!” He jumped forward, thrusting at Frank’s stomach. Frank, who had been through this move a hundred times in the fencing academy, parried the sword down and outward in seconde, flipped his own sword back in line and lunged at Howard’s chest. The point entered just beneath the breastbone, and Howard’s forward impetus drove the blade into the heart. Frank watched, both horrified and fascinated, as Howard sagged and slid away from the streaked blade that had transfixed him. His body went to its knees and then fell forward into the dust of the road.

Frank backed away. Old Strand was right, he realized; hardly anybody can really fence. Since guns were rapidly becoming unavailable, the sword was coming back into fashion, but there had not yet been time for fencing strategy to become widely known.

A breath of wind stirred Frank’s hair. I can’t rest quite yet, he realized. I’ve got to get down to the Malachi. He half-climbed, half-slid down the embankment on the south side of the road. His ear had stopped bleeding and only throbbed now, but his scraped knees and legs shot pain at him every time he bent them. It was an annoying pain, and it roused in him a powerful anger against the self-righteous Transports who had done this to him. And who killed your father, he reminded himself.

He swore that if the opportunity ever presented itself, he would take revenge against the Transports and Duke Costa.

He soon came to level ground—an expanse of slick clay soil, littered with rocks and thriving shrubs. He crossed this quickly and found himself standing at the top of a forty-foot cliff; below him, through a bed of white sand, flowed the green water of the Malachi. During the summer the river was a leisurely, curling stream, knotted with oxbows, but it was a spring breeze that now plucked at Frank’s tattered clothes, and the river was young and quick.

The painstaking labor of ten minutes got him to the bottom of the cliff. After diving into the cool water and incautiously drinking a quantity of it, he set about looking for objects on which to float downstream. He found two warped wooden doors dumped behind a clump of bushes and decided to use these, one on top of the other, as a raft. If he sat up on it, he discovered, his raft had a tendency to flip over; but a passenger lying down had no difficulties. He tore a wide frond from one of the dwarf palm trees that abounded and used it to shade his face from the midmorning sun. Soon he was moving along with the current, and when he remembered Howard’s rapier it was too late to turn back to retrieve the weapon. He shrugged at the loss and drifted on, warmed by the sun above him, cooled by the water below, shaded by his palm frond, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.

THUS he drifted east, through the Madstone Marshes, under the towering marble spans of the Cromlech Bridge, and through miles of forests. Any eyes that may have spied the makeshift raft felt that neither it nor its passenger were worth bothering. By midafternoon the walls and towers of Munson rose massive ahead.

At the western boundary of Munson, the Malachi divided in two; the first channel, its natural one, took it under the carved bridges and around the gondola docks, across the sandy delta to the Deptford Sea, sometimes called the Eastern Sea. The other channel, built two centuries previously by Duke Giroud, entered a great arched tunnel and passed underground, beneath the southern section of the city, to facilitate the disposal of sewage. The city had declined since Giroud’s day, and most of the sewers were no longer in use, but the southern branch of the Malachi River, the branch called the Leethee by the citizens, still flowed under Munson’s streets.

Frank was still asleep when he drifted near the ancient gothic masonry of Munson’s high walls. Two arches loomed before him, foam splashing between them where the waters parted. The great walls with their flying buttresses dwarfed even the couriers’ car-racks that sometimes passed this way, and none of the river scavengers of the west end noticed as an unwieldy bit of rectangular debris hesitated, rocked in the swirl, and then drifted through the Leethee arch and slid down into the darkness beyond.

BEARDO Jackson tamped his clay pipe and sucked at it with relish, blowing clouds of smoke up at the stones of the ceiling. Below him in the darkness the waters of one of the many branches of the Leethee could be heard gurgling and slapping against the brickwork, washing in a dark tide below the cellars of the city.

He struck another match and held it to the wick of a rusty lantern beside him. A bright yellow flame sprang up, illuminating the cavernlike chamber in which Beardo sat perched on a swaying bridge. The light flickered over the walls of tight-fitted stones reinforced with timber in many places; the arched tunnel-openings that gaped at either end of the bridge remained in deep shadow.

“Morgan!” Beardo called. “Come along, the tide’s high!” His voice echoed weirdly, receding up the watercourse until it reverberated like a distant chorus of operatic frogs.

A woman appeared at the opening on Beardo’s right. She carried a coil of fifty-pound fishing line; before stepping out onto the bridge, she looped one end of it around an iron hook imbedded in the wall.

“Don’t yell like that,” she said. “You never know who might be around.”

“Oh, to hell with that,” he sneered. “Everybody within a cubic mile of here is scared stiff of me.” He slapped the sheathed knife at his belt and laughed in what he believed was a sinister fashion. The woman spat over the rope rail and stepped out onto the bridge. She was sloppily fat, and the bridge creaked and quivered as it took her weight.

“Easy, woman,” Beardo said. “The bridge was built for frailer girls.” He grinned up at her. The whites of his eyes were almost brown, and his face, loosely draped over the bones of his skull, was as wrinkled and creased as a long-unchanged bedsheet. His beard was ragged and patchy, as were his clothes.

“And what would frailer girls be doing on it?” she asked scornfully. Beardo rolled his eyes and made lascivious motions with his hands, implying that there were any number of things frail girls might do on it.

“You rotten toad,” Morgan snarled, slapping the old man affectionately in the side of the head.

“We’ve no time for fooling around,” Beardo declared. “Where’s the hooks?”

Morgan pulled a chain of small grappling hooks from a bag at her belt, and proceeded to tie one of them to the fishing line. She tossed it into the water so that it trailed downstream.

“Okay now, keep your eyes open on this side, so we’ll know where to swing the line,” Beardo said, facing upstream. “If anything scares you, just call me,” he added sarcastically. A week ago a dead lion had floated by under the bridge—its hide would have made a fine catch, but Morgan, terrified by the glazed feline eyes, had twitched the trailing hook away from it. Beardo had not yet entirely forgiven her for it.

“Oh, bite a crawdad,” she said.

They were silent then, staring intently into the lamplit water. Beardo and his woman were, in the understreet slang, “working the shores”: scavenging the debris the Leethee brought in from the upper world. Many of the understreet population of Munson made a profitable living at this trade.

Suddenly Beardo stiffened; something was drifting downstream, something that bumped frequently against the brick walls. “Look sharp, girl,” he whispered. “Sounds like a piece of wood coming along.”

Presently the thing was dimly visible. “It’s a midget raft! With a guy on it!” whispered Morgan. Beardo poked her with his elbow to shut her up. The raft, which was indeed a notably small one, rocked forward into the light. Morgan gasped when she saw the passenger, for its head appeared to be a cluster of rigid green tentacles.

“Beelzebub!” she cried.

The figure sat up on the raft abruptly, making hooting sounds. Morgan screamed. The tiny craft flipped over, dumping its rider into the cold black water.

Beardo, who had seen the palm frond fall away, and knew that this underground mariner was only a puzzled-looking young man, slithered under the rope bridge-rail and dropped into the water ten feet below. He caught the floundering intruder and pushed him toward the ladder rungs set in the brick wall. The young man caught the rungs and began to haul himself out of the bad-smelling tide. His black hair was down across his face, and he stared up through it with bloodshot eyes. Morgan wailed and scrambled on all fours off of the bridge; she disappeared into one of the tunnel mouths, still wailing.

The dark-haired youth pulled himself up onto the bridge and sat there shivering. Beardo climbed up right behind and sat down beside him. The old scavenger smiled, pulled out a long knife and began cleaning his hideous fingernails.

“And what might they call you at home, lad?” Beardo queried.

“What?”

“What’s your name?”

“Francisco Rovzar. Uh, Frank ... what’s yours?” asked the young man.

“Puddin’ Tame,” answered Beardo gleefully. “Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.” The old man giggled like a manic parrot, slapping his thigh with his free hand.

“Where is this?” asked Frank. “Am I in Munson?”

“Oh aye,” nodded Beardo. “Or under it, to be more precise. What port was it you sailed from, sir?”

“I’ve been drifting east on the Malachi from the Barclay Transport Depot.” Frank wished the old man would put away the knife. He didn’t like the look or smell of the ancient stone watercourse, and he wondered just how far under Munson he was.

“Barclay, eh? You a jailbird?”

Frank considered lying, but this old creature didn’t look like he had police connections; and Frank desperately needed friends and food and safe lodging. It’s almost certainly an error to trust this guy, he thought. But the next one I meet could be a lot worse.

“Yes,” he answered. “That is, I was a prisoner until about eight this morning.”

“Released you, did they?”

“No. I escaped. ”

Beardo started to laugh derisively, then noticed Frank’s scrapes and bruises and ruined ear. “You did?” he asked, surprised. “Well, you don’t often hear of that being done. Anyway, Frank, what I really want to ... uh ... ascertain, is whether or not you have a family that would be willing to pay an old gentleman like myself for your safe return. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Frank.

“Ransom, Frank, ransom. Do you have a rich family?” Before Frank could think of a safe answer, Beardo answered himself. “No, I suppose you don’t. If you did, they would have bought you out of Barclay. Or maybe the whole family got arrested, hmm?” Frank shook his head. “No family at all,” he said hopelessly. “My father was all I had, and the Transports shot him yesterday.”

“Ah!” said Beardo sadly, testing his knife’s edge with a discolored thumb. “I’m afraid that narrows down the possibilities for you, Frank my boy.”

Do I have the strength to fight old Puddin’ Tame? Frank asked himself. I don’t think I do. Maybe I could get into the water again.

“Your father and you were thieves, I take it?” Beardo asked, squinting speculatively at Frank’s bared throat.

“No!” Frank exclaimed, stung now in his much abused pride. “My father is ... was Claude M. Rovzar, the best portrait painter on this planet.” Beardo blinked. He was inclined to doubt this, but then saw the paint stains on the ragged remains of the youth’s shirt.

“You’re full of surprises, Frank,” he said. “All right, let’s say you are Rovzar’s son. Why would the Transports shoot Claude Rovzar?”

“My father was doing a portrait of Duke Topo yesterday. Transport troops invaded the palace. Costa was with them, and he killed the old Duke. The Transports grabbed my father and me, and my father resisted. They shot him.”

“You keep saying they shot him. You don’t mean that literally, do you?”

“Yes. There was more gunfire yesterday than I’ve ever heard of, anywhere, in a hundred years. Bombs, even.”

“Hmm,” grunted Beardo, scratching his furry chin. “There just might be something to all this.” He stood up, setting the bridge swaying. “One thing, anyway,” he said, “you’ve earned a reprieve.” He slapped his knife back into its sheath. “Come with me. We’ll get your wounds cleaned up and feed you. Then you can tell your story to a friend of mine.” Beardo picked up his lantern and Frank followed him into one of the tunnels.

Chapter 4

Alarmingly, the tunnel Beardo and Frank followed led down. The dim, shifty light cast by the old man’s lantern did little to dispel the darkness, and several times Frank heard anonymous scrabbling, splashing and low moans echo out of side corridors. Beardo held his drawn knife in his right hand and tapped it against the damp brick walls as he led Frank along. “Why are you doing that?” Frank whispered.

“It shows any hole-lurkers that we’re armed. Got to let ’em know we mean business.”

Good God, Frank thought. I wonder what sort of creatures lurk in these holes. In spite of himself, Frank began thinking of tentacles and green, fanged faces under old slouch hats.

“Good sirs! Good sirs!” came a wheezing voice from the blackness ahead, causing Frank to start violently. “A penny to see a dancing dog?”

“No,” rasped Beardo, advancing on the voice. “We don’t want to see a dancing dog.”

Frank peered ahead over Beardo’s shoulder and saw an old person of indeterminate sex, as withered and dark as a dried apple. The figure was slumped against the wall as though it had been thrown there, but one upraised skeletal hand held crossed sticks from which dangled a malodorous puppet. Frank looked more closely at it and saw that it was the dried corpse of a dog.

“Just keep walking,” whispered Beardo to Frank. “I’ve seen this one before.”

The old puppeteer began to sing, and Frank knew it was a woman. “Tirra lee, tirra lee, dance hound,” she crooned, and jiggled the horrible puppet merrily. Beardo stepped around her, smiling ingratiatingly. Frank followed, also attempting to smile.

“Beardo, by the stars!” the old woman exclaimed. “You’ll give me some money, now, eh?”

“Certainly, soon as I get some,” replied the old man, walking on down the tunnel and pulling Frank by the wrist.

“Soon as you get some? Damn your treacherous eyes!” the woman brayed. She struggled to her feet and stumbled after them for a few paces, flailing Frank’s back with her mummified dog, before sinking exhausted to the flagstones once more. “A penny to see a dancing dog?” she inquired of the darkness.

BEARDO’S home was an abandoned section of a spiral stairwell, left over from God-knew-what derelict subway system. The old man hung his lantern on a wall peg and touched a match to three kerosene lamps; the comparatively bright light enabled Frank to see the place in some detail. The shaft was roughly twenty-five feet from stone floor to boarded-up roof, and the ascending iron stairs circled the shaft twice before disappearing beyond the boards of the ceiling. Stacks of books, chipped statues, rusted ironmongery and clothes lined the outer edges of the stairs, with the other half, near the wall, left clear for ascending and descending. In the middle of the floor was a sunken tub in whose murky waters several large toads sported.

“Well, Frankie lad, what think you of the old homestead, eh?” asked Beardo, unscrewing the lid of a coffee jar.

Even in his cold, wet state, Frank could see that Beardo fairly radiated the homeowner’s pride, so he answered tactfully. “It’s beautiful, Mr. Tame. A regular palace. I didn’t know underground homes were so ... roomy.”

“Hardly any of them are, Frank. This is one of the finest dwellings, I believe, in all of Munson Understreet. Oh, and my name is Beardo, Beardo Jackson; that Puddin’ Tame business was a joke.” The old man put a pan of water over a gas flame, and then turned to Frank, “Well now, off with those old rags and hop in the tub.”

“The tub? But ... there’s frogs in the tub.”

“Toads. They thrive on the warm water. No poisonous frogs in my home. Hop in.”

Come on, Frank told himself. This tub is the least of your worries. He undraped the tatters of cloth from his shivering body and lowered himself gingerly into the tub, which actually was warm. He splashed around for a while with the toads and then crawled out, feeling, to his surprise, considerably better for the bath. The old man dressed and bandaged Frank’s bullet-torn right ear.

Beardo had selected clothes to replace his ruined ones and had not spared the finery. Frank donned a pair of purple silk trousers, red leather shoes, and a black shirt with pearl buttons. Over all went a white quilled smoking jacket with tassels and embroidered dragons.

“How do I look?” Frank asked.

“Like a prince. Come on, down this coffee and we’ll be off to visit Mr. Orcrist.”

SAM ORCRIST liked to think of himself as a ruler-in-the-shadows, a confidant of kings, a prompter behind the scenes. He was privy to the secrets of almost everyone, and his unstable fortune was spread about in hundreds of obscure and fabulous investments. Pages in the Ducal Palace left reports for him in certain unused sewer grates; ladies at court passed on to him incriminating letters through waiters and footmen; and children, above and below the streets, were sent by his agents on all sorts of furtive tracking-and-finding missions.

Orcrist entertained often, but selectively. The doors of his understreet apartment were closed to some of the most influential citizens on the planet, and warmly open to a few of the most unsavory.

“Mr. Beardo Jackson and a young man wish to see you, sir,” said Orcrist’s doorman, standing beside the chair in which Orcrist sat reading a book of Keats.

“Well don’t leave them standing out there for the footpads, Pons. Show them in.” He closed his book and took a bottle and three glasses out of a cabinet. He was pouring the liquor when Beardo and Frank entered.

“Beardo!” he said. “Good to see you again. What have you been doing to throw Morgan into a hysterical fright?”

“Good evening, Sam,” Beardo replied. “Poor old Morgan mistook my young friend here for an archfiend.”

“I see. Who is your young friend?”

“He’s Frank Rovzar, the son of Claude Rovzar the painter. And he has an interesting and timely story to tell you. Frank, sit down and tell Sam what happened yesterday.”

Comfortable in his new clothes and warmed by Orcrist’s brandy, Frank told him about the rebellion at the palace and the deaths of his father and Duke Topo.

“Holy smokes,” said Orcrist when Frank finished. “And you’re sure it was Transport troops that took the palace?”

“Yes,” Frank answered. “Led by Prince Costa.”

“I wondered why there’s been no news from the palace in the last twenty-four hours. They’re certainly keeping the lid on this.” He stood up. “Pons!”

“Yes sir?” answered the doorman.

“Get up to the land office fast, and sell all my holdings in the Goriot Valley. Don’t start a run on it, but be willing to take a loss. And for God’s sake get there before the office closes. Go!” Pons dashed from the room. “Don’t come back until I no longer own one square foot of farmland!” Orcrist called after him.

He strode to the table and drummed his fingers on its polished surface. “How old is this news, Beardo?” he asked.

“I pulled Frank out of the water less than an hour ago.”

“Excellent. To show my gratitude for your prompt action, Beardo, I insist that Mr. Rovzar and yourself consent to be my guests for dinner. You'll sleep here, of course; I’ll have Pons show you your rooms when he returns.”

Frank was beginning to feel dizzy, and doubtful of his own perceptions. Whatever response he had expected Orcrist to have to his story, this had not been it.

“What’s the connection,” Frank asked, “between a rebellion at the palace and farmland in the Goriot Valley?”

Orcrist smiled, not unkindly. “I’m sorry if I seem callous about all this,” he said. “I’m an investor, you see. About ten years ago Duke Topo, in an attempt to make Octavio an autonomous—that is, self-sufficient—planet, planted and irrigated the entire length of the Goriot Valley. That way we didn’t have to import produce. It was a flourishing undertaking, and I am at this moment the owner of much of that farmland. But if the Transport has taken control of us, I don’t want any part of that damned valley. The Transport doesn’t approve of independent planets, and I don’t see a bright future for agriculture on Octavio.” He tossed off the last of his drink. “And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few other little matters to take care of.”

With a stately bow, Orcrist left the room. Beardo crossed to the table and refilled his glass. “A real gentleman!” he smiled, luxuriously sniffing his brandy.

“He certainly is,” agreed Frank, to whom, right now, the word “dinner” was like a loved one’s name. “It was nice of him to ask us to stay the night here,” he added, wondering where he would have slept in Beardo’s odd dwelling.

“Ah, well that wasn’t so much good manners as caution, you see,” Beardo said. “Any time someone brings him really hot news he insists that they remain here until the news isn’t hot anymore. He doesn’t want us telling your story to anyone else.” The old fellow sipped the brandy and pulled out his pipe. “And his hospitality, Frankie, is such that no one has ever been known to object to the temporary captivity.”

The dinner, which was served an hour later in Orcrist’s high-ceilinged dining room, was lavish. A dozen stuffed game hens were piled on a platter in the center of the table, and salads, baked potatoes, toast, cold meats and steaming sauces flanked them. Carafes of chilled wines stood next to the roasted hens; Frank was amazed to find out that the whole production was intended only for himself, Beardo, Orcrist, and one other house-bound guest.

“Frank Rovzar, Beardo Jackson, this is George Tyler,” said Orcrist as the four of them sat down at the table. “George, Frank and Beardo.”

Frank looked across a dish of mustard sauce at George Tyler. He looks like he drinks more than he ought to, Frank thought, though he’s still too young for it to really show. Oblivious to Frank’s scrutiny,. Tyler brushed a lock of blond hair out of his face and speared a baked potato.

“I must request, friends, that you do not discuss the respective businesses that have brought you here,” said Orcrist. “Not that any of it would provide suitable dinner conversation anyway.”

He took a long sip of wine, holding it in his mouth to warm it and taste it before he swallowed. “Not bad,” he decided. “You and Frank should get along well, George,” he said. “You have the artistic temperament in common. Frank is a painter, and George,” he added, turning to Frank, “is a poet.” The two young men smiled at each other embarrassedly.

“To hell with the talk, I say,” put in Beardo, gnawing a greasy hen from whose open abdomen pearl onions cascaded onto his plate. “Mother of God!” he exclaimed, observing the phenomenon.

The dinner progressed with considerable gusto, and by ten o’clock most of the wine and food had disappeared. Frank was feeling powerfully sleepy, though the others seemed to be just blooming, and Beardo had begun singing vulgar songs.

Tyler tossed a clean-picked bone onto his plate. “Not bad fare, Sam,” he said. “Nearly as good as what they used to serve at the palace.”

“At the palace?” inquired Frank politely.

“Oh, yes,” Tyler nodded, a little clumsily. “Didn’t old Sam tell you? I’m the eldest son of Topo.” Orcrist caught Frank’s eye and frowned warningly. Don’t worry, Frank thought, I won’t say anything.

“Oh, hell yes,” Tyler went on. “Many’s the morning Dad and I would go hunting deer with the game wardens. I had my own horse, naturally, a speckled roan named ... uh ... Lighthoof.” He drank the last of his wine and refilled his glass. “Oh, and the long evenings on the seaside terrace, the sunset light reflecting in our drinking cups carved of single emeralds! Sitting in our adjustable recliners, fanned by tall, silent slaves from the lands where the bong trees grow!”

“For God’s sake, George,” said Orcrist.

“Oh, I know, Sam,” Tyler said with a broad wave of his hand. “I shouldn’t ... dwell on these things now that I move in lower circles ... present company excluded, of course. But I long even now for that old life, to mount old ... Lightboy and ride off on adventures and quests and whatnot.”

At this point Frank slumped forward onto the tablecloth, fast asleep.

FRANK opened his eyes, but closed them again when he saw that the room was in pitch blackness. Not dawn yet, he thought. I wonder if Dad is home. A raucous, choking snore from another room made him sit up, completely awake. That’s not Dad, he thought; and this isn’t my room. Where am I? He felt around on the top of the table beside the bed, and soon had struck a match to a candle.

I’m in one of Orcrist’s guest rooms, he realized. And we’re underground, so God knows what time it is. He got out of bed and found his gaudy clothes draped over a chair. Odd as they were, he felt better when he was dressed. Now then, he thought. What are Orcrist’s breakfast customs?

He sighted the door, and then snuffed the candle and groped to it in the dark. To his relief the silent hallway beyond was lit by wall cressets, and he wandered along it until he came to Orcrist’s sitting room.

“Ah, Frank,” said Orcrist, who sat in an easy chair with a book and a cup of coffee. “Up with the sun even down here, eh? As a matter of fact, I’ve been waiting for you.” He stood up and took two rolls of parchment out from behind a bust of Byron on one of his bookshelves. Then he unrolled them on the carpet, using books to hold the corners down. On one of them had been done a finely shaded drawing of a girl’s head; the other was blank.

“What do you think of that picture, Frank?” Orcrist asked.

“I’d say it’s one of Gascoyne’s best sketches of Dora Wakefield. People used to say he was having an affair with her, but my father never believed it.” Orcrist blinked. “Well, you know your field, Frank, that’s certain. Yes, it is a Gascoyne, though I didn’t know the name of the model. What I want to know is whether you can, without compromising any principles, copy it for me on this blank sheet. Hm?”

“Sure I can,” Frank answered carelessly. “Have you got black ink, a little water, and a ... number eight point pen?”

Orcrist pointed to them on the bookcase. “I’ll be back in an hour to get you for breakfast,” he said, and left the room, carrying his coffee.

Frank rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and got to work. He lightly sketched the face onto the blank sheet using a dry pen to lay down some guide-scratches; then he dipped the pen in the ink and began carefully mimicking Gascoyne’s delicate stippling and cross-hatching. The discipline of his craft took his mind off of the uncertainty of his current situation. Except for the occasional clink of pen-nib against ink bottle, the room was silent.

When Orcrist returned, he found Frank sitting in the easy chair, reading.

“Given up?” he asked with a little annoyance.

Frank handed him the two rolls of parchment. “Which one is Gascoyne’s?” he asked. Orcrist unrolled one, looked at it, and replaced it on the table. He unrolled the other one more carelessly, stared at it closely, and then spread both of them out on the floor.

“Given up?” asked Frank.

Abruptly, Orcrist laughed. “Yes, by God,” he said. “Which is yours?”

“The one whose ear lobe is showing. I didn’t want to do an absolute copy.”

Orcrist laughed again and clapped Frank on the shoulder. “Come along to breakfast,” he said. “And we can discuss your career possibilities.”

Chapter 5

Beardo was staring with ill-concealed distaste at a glistening fried egg on his plate. With a petulant jab of his fork he ripped open the yolk.

“There’s a sad sight for you, poet,” he said somberly.

“Oh, quit playing with it,” said Tyler.

Both of them were frowning and squinting, and they seemed to have occasional trouble in breathing.

“Beardo,” said Orcrist, leading Frank into the breakfast room, which was cheerily lit by actual sunlight reflected down a shaft from the surface. “Your boy here proves to be a competent art forger. I propose to buy him from you. How does sixty malories sound?”

“You’re too generous, I’m sure,” smiled Beardo, cheered by this unexpected windfall. “Sixty it is.”

Frank was surprised to find that he was a buyable article, but he said nothing.

“How do you feel about that, Frank?” asked Orcrist.

“You’d be a licensed art forger, bonded to me. You can have room and board here, plus a good salary, half of which, for the first two years, goes to me. Then when your bond is paid off you keep all of it. Will you take it?”

How can I not take it, Frank thought. It sounds like a good deal, and there’s absolutely nothing else I can do. He bowed. “I’d be delighted, Mr. Orcrist. Where do I sign?”

“After breakfast, can’t do business before breakfast. Why, gentlemen, you’ve eaten nothing! Not hungry?” He winked at Frank. Beardo and Tyler shook their heads.

“Well I thank you for your company anyway. I assume two such busy citizens as yourselves must have many appointments, so I won’t inconvenience you by insisting that you stay for lunch.”

ORCRIST told Frank that they’d get him registered with the Subterranean Companions that night. In honor of the occasion he provided Frank with some clothes of a more sober nature: a suit of brown corduroy, black boots and a black overcoat. “It’s not a good idea to be too conspicuous down here,” he confided. “If you went out dressed in those other clothes, the first thief who saw you would figure it was Ali Baba himself walking by, and bash you before you could blink.”

Frank examined the conservative lines of his new overcoat with some relief. “Who are the Subterranean Companions?” he asked.

“A brotherhood of laborers engaged in extralegal work. A thieves’ union, actually. And we’ve got to get your name on the roll. Freelance work simply isn’t permitted.”

“Well, I want to do this right,” Frank put in.

“Of course you do.”

That evening, after a much simpler dinner than the previous night’s, Orcrist and Frank set off down Sheol Boulevard, a grand street whose brick roof stood a full twenty feet above the cobblestones. Streetlamps were hung from chains at intervals of roughly fifteen paces, and taverns, fuel stores and barber shops cast light through their open doorways onto the pavement.

“This, I guess you could say, is Downtown Understreet,” said Orcrist. “Three blocks farther are the good restaurants. We’ve even got a couple of good bookstores down here.”

“Will we be passing them?” asked Frank.

“Not tonight. We’ve got to turn south on Bolt after this next cross street.”

They walked on without speaking, listening to the sounds of the understreet metropolis—laughter, shouts, clanking dishes and lively accordion music—echoing up and down the dim avenues.

At Bolt Street they turned right, and then took a sharp jog left, into an alley mouth, and stopped. They were in almost total darkness.

“Where are we?” whispered Frank.

“Sh!”

He heard the rattle of keys, and then the scratch and snap of a lock turning. Orcrist’s hand closed on his shoulder and guided him forward a few paces. There was a breath of air, and the sound of the lock again, and then a match flared in the blackness and Orcrist was holding it to the wick of a small pocket lantern. The narrow hallway smelled of old french fries. Orcrist put his finger to his lips and led Frank forward, past several similar doors, to a stairway.

“Going down,” Orcrist whispered.

At the bottom of the stairs, six flights down, Orcrist relaxed and began chatting. “Got to be careful, you see, Frank,” he said. “There are people who’d pay a lot for the death of a ranking member of the Companions, so I never come by the same route twice in a row.” They were walking along another corridor now, but it was brighter and wider, and Orcrist extinguished his lantern and put it away.

“Why aren’t you armed?” asked Frank, who had noticed the absence of a sword under Orcrist’s cape.

“Oh, I’m adequately armed, never fear. Ah, and here we are.”

They stepped through a high open arch into a huge hall that Frank thought must once have been a church. The pews, if it ever did have any, had been ripped out and replaced by ranks of folding wooden chairs, but the place was still lit by eight ancient baroque chandeliers. A big, altarlike block of marble up front was currently being used as a speaker’s platform.

Frank followed Orcrist up a ramp to an overhanging structure that might have been a side-wall choir loft or a theater box. “Make yourself at home,” Orcrist told him, gesturing at the dusty chairs and music stands that littered the box. “I’ve got to count the house.” He pulled a pair of opera glasses from his pocket and began scrutinizing the crowd below. Frank sat down. His injured ear was throbbing, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

After about ten minutes Orcrist put the glasses away and turned to Frank. “I’ll be back soon,” he said. “I’ve got to give your name to the registrar and pay your first month’s dues. Don’t leave the box.” He waved and ducked out.

Frank leaned on the balcony rail, looked out over the restless throng, and soon saw Orcrist’s dark, curly hair and drab cape appear from a side door. He watched him make his way to the speaker’s stand and huddle for a moment with one of the men there. Frank’s attention was distracted then by a fight that broke out in the middle of the hall, and when he glanced back at the speaker’s stand Orcrist was gone. He was still trying to sight him when Orcrist’s voice spoke softly behind him.

“Don’t look so eager, Frank. Don’t be conspicuous.” The older man pulled a couple of chairs close to the rail. “Sit down and relax,” he said. “This may take a while.”

Frank had been expecting great things of this secret, underground meeting of thieves, but soon found himself bored. The speaker, a pudgy man named Hodges, spent the first few minutes exchanging casual jokes with members of the audience. Frank understood none of the references, though Orcrist frequently chuckled beside him. Hodges addressed everyone by their first names, and Frank felt more excluded than he had at any time in the past three days. He felt a little more at home when Hodges read the list of newly-bonded apprentices and he heard “Rovzar, Frank” read out as loudly as any of them.

What would Dad say, Frank wondered briefly, if he knew I was making a living as an art forger? He’d understand. As he once told me, while squinting against the sunlight of a cold morning, “Frankie, if it was easy, they’d have got somebody else to do it.” The meeting dragged on interminably, and just when Frank was convinced that he must fall asleep, a new figure appeared on the speaker’s platform. It was a burly old man with a close-cropped white beard, and Frank saw the other officials who were standing about bow as the old man nodded to them. “Who’s that?” Frank asked.

“I thought you were asleep,” Orcrist said. “That bearded guy? That’s Blanchard. He’s the king of the Subterranean Companions. I expected to see him here. He must have heard about the palace rebellion— it’s only something big that brings him to one of these meetings.”

Blanchard now rapped the speaker’s table with a fist. The crowd quieted much more quickly than it had for Hodges.

“My friends and colleagues,” he began in a strong, booming voice. “I’m sure many of you have noticed evidences of a concealed crisis in the Ducal Palace.” There was a pause while the more literate thieves explained the sentence to their slower-witted fellows. “Well, I am now able to tell you what’s going on. Prince Costa has formed an alliance with the Transport Company and, day before yesterday, overthrown and killed Duke Topo.” There were scattered cheers and outraged shouts. “We now have a new duke, gentlemen. It is too early to estimate the effects this change will have upon us and our operations, but I will say this: proceed with caution. The Transport spacers are no longer just drunken marks whose pockets you can pick and whose girls you can abuse. They are now our rulers. They will almost certainly function as police. Therefore I abjure you”—again there was a flurry of interpretation for the less bright thieves—“step carefully; don’t cause unnecessary trouble; and keep your eyes open.” The old man glared out at the cathedral-like hall. “I hope you ignorant bastards are paying attention. Maybe some of you remember Duke Ovidi, and how he hung a thief’s head on every merlon of the Ducal Palace. Those days, friends, may very well be upon us once more.”

On the way home from the meeting Frank’s ear began to bleed again, and he passed out on the Sheol Boulevard sidewalk. Orcrist carried him back to the apartment, changed his bandage and put him to bed.

FRANK tossed a paintbrush into a cup of turpentine and ran his hands through his unruly hair. It’s going well, he thought. He’d been trying to get this painting in line for three days and had finally mastered Bate’s style. He raised his head and stared at his still-wet painting, then turned and studied the original, hung next to it. I’ll have this canvas finished this afternoon, Frank thought, which leaves the problem of darkening it and cracking it so that it looks as old as the original. But that was purely a technical detail, and he didn’t anticipate any trouble with it.

The front door swung open and Orcrist strode in. He took off his black leather gloves and tossed them ’ onto a chair.

“By God, Frank,” he said, studying the forgery, “you have got the soul of Chandler Bate on canvas better than he did himself.”

“Thanks,” Frank said, wiping off a brush. “I’ve got to admit I’m pleased with it myself.”

“It was the philosopher Aurelius,” said Orcrist, sinking into his habitual easy chair, “who observed that ‘the universe is change.’ If he’d thought of it, he’d probably have added ‘and an art forger’s duties vary with the season.’ ”

“Ah. Are my duties about to vary?”

“As a matter of fact, they are.” Orcrist poured two glasses of sherry and handed one to Frank. “For three weeks now you’ve been working away here, and you’ve copied four paintings and eleven drawings that I’ve brought you. Where do you suppose those art works have come from?”

“Stolen from museums and private collections,” answered Frank promptly.

“Exactly. And whom do you suppose I had do the stealing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you. A cousin of mine named Bob Dill. And two nights ago he was stabbed to death by a zealous pair of guards at the Amory Gallery. They chased him all over the building, hacking at him, and finally brought him down in the Pre-Raphaelite room.” Frank was unable to guess the appropriate response to this story, so he said nothing.

“What with one thing and another,” Orcrist continued, “I find it impractical to hire another thief. The fine art market is suffering these days; Costa’s damned taxes have taken up a good deal of the money that should rightfully go to people like you and me. The market isn’t dead, you understand, just a trifle unsteady.”

“So how will you get your paintings now?” Frank asked with a little trepidation.

“You and I will pinch them ourselves,” Orcrist announced with a smile and a wave of his glass.

Frank had a quick vision of himself bleeding out the last of his lifeblood on the floor of the Pre-Raphaelite room. “Make Pons do it,” he suggested.

“Now Frank, I know you don’t mean that. I knew when I first saw you that you had an adventurer’s heart. ‘The lad’s got an adventurer’s heart,’ I said to myself.” Frank looked closely at Orcrist, unable to tell whether or not he was being kidded. “Besides,” Orcrist went on, “I once gave Pons a chance to ... prove himself under fire, and he absolutely failed to measure up. He’s a fine doorman and butler, but he does not have an adventurer’s heart.”

“Oh,” said Frank, wondering how adventurous his own heart really was.

“At any rate, Frank, we’ll begin tonight. Since it’s your first crack at this sort of thing, I plan to start with the Hauteur Museum. It’s an easy place.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“Relax, you’ll enjoy it. Now go get something to eat. We’ll leave at ten.”

As Frank crossed to the door, he heard a soft creak behind it, and when he stepped into the hall he saw the door of Pons’s room being eased quietly shut.

THE Hauteur Museum had once been Munson’s pride, but with the building of several new theaters in the Ishmael Village district to the north, the Hauteur found itself no longer the heart of metropolitan culture. It was still well-thought-of when anyone did think of it, and it could still boast some influential paintings and sculptures, but its heyday had passed.

At eleven o’clock Frank and Orcrist entered its cellar, having wormed their way up a laundry chute that had once, when the Hauteur had been a hotel two centuries before, emptied into a now-abandoned sub-basement. Orcrist had carefully lifted off the mahogany panel that hid the forgotten laundry chute. “We want to replace it when we’re done, you see,” he told Frank in a whisper, “in case we ever want to come back again.”

They stole silently up the carpeted cellar stairs. Their way was lit by moonlight filtering through street-level grates set high in the walls, and Frank realized with a pang of homesickness how long it had been since he had seen real moonlight. I hope the museum has windows, he thought.

The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked, which Frank thought was careless of the owners. The two adventurers swung it open as quietly as they could. Orcrist motioned Frank to wait while he padded off into the darkness of the museum. Frank waited nervously, only now beginning to realize just how much trouble this night’s enterprise could lead to. Holy saints, he thought with a chill of real fear, if I’m caught they’ll send me back to Barclay! I’ve still got that tattoo on my chest.

After a few uneasy minutes he heard a thump, then a multiple thud like a bag of logs thrown on a floor. God help us, he thought. What was that?

“Frank!” Orcrist’s whisper cut the thick silence. “It’s all clear! Carefully, now, go down the aisle on your left!”

When Frank did as he was told, he found himself in the main room. Paintings hung on every side, and he saw with delight a window opening on a quiet street and a deep, starry sky.

“Get away from the window, for God’s sake,” whispered Orcrist. Frank turned back to the room to see the older man standing over an unconscious uniformed body. “Come on,” he hissed to Frank. “There are two paintings over here we ought to get.”

Working in silence, Frank helped Orcrist unframe and roll two mediocre Havreville canvases. Orcrist thrust them inside his coat. “See anything else worth carrying?” he asked.

Frank was beginning to relax, and he strolled up and down the dim aisles, peering at paintings and statues with a critical eye. Not bad, most of it, he thought, but none of it seems worth the trouble to forge. I’m not even very impressed with those Havrevilles. As he turned to rejoin Orcrist he noticed, with a thrill of recognition, a small portrait hung between two gross seascapes. He stared intently at it, remembering the hot July day on which it had been painted. His father had been very fond of the model, and had frequently sent young Frank out for coffee or paint or simply “fresh air.”

“Anything?” Orcrist inquired impatiently.

“No,” whispered Frank in reply. “Let’s clear out.”

Chapter 6

The Schilling Gallery, on which they made an assault four days later, was “not such an easy peach to pluck,” as Orcrist was subsequently to observe to Frank. They failed to locate the drain that Orcrist swore would lead them directly into the gallery’s office, and they had to bash a hole in the tile floor from beneath with an old wooden piling they found in the sewer. The noise was horribly loud, and they weren’t in the gallery five minutes before armed guards were pounding at the doors. Orcrist refused to flee, though, determined to make off with a genuine Monet, which the Schilling had on loan from another planet.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” pleaded Frank, who saw the doors shaking as they were battered by boots and sword hilts on the other side. “One of them may have gone to get a key! We don’t have thirty seconds!”

“Wait, I found it!” called Orcrist. He carefully took the canvas out of its frame and rolled it. He was sliding it into his pocket when the east door gave way with a rending crack of splintering wood. Four yelling, sword-waving guards raced toward the two thieves.

Frank leaped sideways, grabbed a life-size bronze statue of a man by the shoulder, and with a wrenching effort pulled it over. It broke on the tiles directly in front of the charging guards, and one of them pitched headlong over the hollow trunk which was ringing like a great bell from the impact of its fall. Frank snatched up a cracked bronze arm and swung it at another guard’s head—it hit him hard over the eye and he fell without a word.

“Come on, Frank!” called Orcrist, standing over the jagged hole through which they’d entered. Frank impulsively picked up one of the statue’s ears, which had broken off; then he ran toward Orcrist. The other two guards were also running toward Orcrist from the other side of the room, their rapiers held straight out in front of them. Orcrist’s hand darted under his cape, and then the front of the cape exploded outward in a spray of fire, and the two guards were slammed away from him as if they’d been hit by a truck. They lay where they fell, their faces splashed with blood and their uniforms tom up across the front. The harsh smell of gunpowder rasped in Frank’s nose as he leaped down through the hole after Orcrist.

Twenty minutes later, as they caught their breath in Orcrist’s sitting room after a furtive race through a dozen narrow, low-ceilinged understreet alleys, Frank showed Orcrist the bronze ear he’d stolen.

“And what do you mean to do with that?” asked Orcrist, painfully flexing his right hand.

“I’m going to run a string through it, and wear it where my right ear used to be. Like an eye patch, you know.”

“An ear patch.”

“Exactly,” agreed Frank. “How’s the Monet?” Orcrist gingerly pulled the canvas out of his jacket and unrolled it. “No harm done,” he said, examining it. “Monet is a durable painter.”

“I guess so. What the hell was that weapon?” Frank asked in an awed tone.

“That impressed you, did it? That was a two-barrelled twelve gauge shotgun, barrels sawed down to six inches, and equipped with a pistol grip. I think I broke my hand shooting it. Ruined my cape for sure. We’re lucky I didn’t put the canvas in the line of fire.”

Frank sighed wearily. “Mr. Orcrist, in honor of our coup tonight, do you suppose a bit of scotch would be out of order?”

“Not at all, Frank, help yourself.” Frank opened the liquor cabinet. Orcrist sat silently, massaging the wrist and fingers of his right hand.

“Oh, by the way, Mr. Orcrist. ...”

“Yes?”

“What becomes of the paintings once they’re duplicated here? Do you sell both the original and the copy to collectors?”

“Uh ... no. If I steal one painting and sell two versions of it, the word would eventually get around. I only sell the forgeries.”

Frank waited vainly for Orcrist to go on. “Well,” he said finally, “what do you do with the originals?” Orcrist looked up. “I keep them. I’m a collector myself, you see.”

DURING the following week Frank worked on the forgery of the Monet. It was difficult for him to assume the impressionist style, and he tore up two attempts with a palette knife. As the second imperfect copy was being hacked into ragged strips, Orcrist, sitting in his easy chair, looked up from his book. “Not making a lot of headway?” he asked.

“No,” said Frank, trying to keep a rein on his temper. What a cheap waste of good canvas, he thought. Dad never would have behaved this childishly. Where’s my discipline?

“What you need, Frank, is a bit of recreation. Go spend some of your wages. You know the safe areas of Understreet Munson—go have some beer at Huselor’s, it’s a good place.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Say, what’s the date?”

“The tenth. Of May. Why?”

“The Doublon Festival is going on in Munson! On the surface, I mean. I haven’t missed it in the last six years! Why don’t I take my wages and spend the evening there?”

Orcrist frowned doubtfully. “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” he said. “You can’t really afford to be seen topside yet. You’re wanted by the police, you know. Stay underground.”

“It’ll be all right,” Frank insisted. “I’ll go when it’s dark; and everyone wears masks anyway. You’ve shown me a couple of safe routes to the surface streets, and I’ve been to the Doublon Festival a dozen times, so I won’t get lost. I won’t do anything foolish.”

“I’ll send a couple of bodyguards with you, anyway.”

“No, I’d rather be on my own.”

Orcrist considered it for a minute. “Well, it’s a bad idea, but I won’t stop you.” He stood up and crossed to a desk against the wall. “Be back by one o’clock in the morning or I’ll send some rough friends to bring you back. Here's ten malories. That ought to buy you a good time.”

Frank gratefully took the money and turned to get dressed.

“Wait a minute,” said Orcrist.

Frank turned around in the doorway. Orcrist was rummaging in another drawer. “Take this, too, in case of a real emergency,” he said, holding a small silver pistol. “It only holds one bullet, but it’s a forty-five. And don’t lose it; the damned thing cost me quite a bit.”

“I won’t lose it,” said Frank, taking the little gun. It was the first time he’d ever held a gun, and he felt ridiculously over-armed.

“The safety catch is that button above the trigger. Push it in and the gun will shoot. Leave it where it is for now. And for God’s sake keep it in a secure pocket.”

“I will,” said Frank. “And thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

After Frank had left the room, Orcrist rang for Pons. “Pons,” he said, “young Rovzar is determined to go to the Doublon Festival tonight. I could have forbidden it, of course, but I don’t like to operate that way. So I want you to contact Bartlett and ... oh, Fallworth, and tell them to follow him and keep an eye on him.”

“Yes sir.”

“No, dammit. Wait a minute.” Orcrist scowled. “I guess he’s able to take care of himself. Forget it, Pons.”

“With pleasure, sir.”

FRANK dressed in the subdued clothes Orcrist had given him, put on his newly-polished bronze ear, and then left the apartment, the gun and the ten malories each occupying a safe inner pocket. He cut across Sheol to a street that was really little more than a tunnel. After following it for three hundred feet, he turned suddenly to the right, into an alcove that could not be seen a yard away. It led into a much narrower, darker tunnel, and Frank proceeded slowly, his hand on his knife. He still didn’t think of the gun as a practical weapon.

Water swirled around his heels, and he was glad when his groping right hand found the rungs of the ladder he’d been heading for. He climbed up it through a round brick shaft whose sides were slippery with moss and flowing water, and eventually came to the underside of a manhole cover. This he pushed up cautiously, peering about carefully before sliding it aside. He quickly climbed out of the shaft and pushed the manhole cover back into place with his foot.

He was now on the surface, breathing fresh night air for the first time in almost a month. The stars looked beautifully distant, and he felt almost uneasy to see no roof overhead. The manhole was several blocks away from Kudeau Street, where the Doublon Festival was held, but he could hear the shouts and music already.

I’ve been cooped up too long in that little sewer world, he realized. Let’s see how much money I can spend in one night.

He followed the alley to Pantheon Boulevard and headed east toward Kudeau Street. Long before he reached it, he was surrounded by masked dancers, and the curbs were crowded with the crepe-decorated plywood stands of vendors. The music was a crashing, howling thing, yelping out of guitars, slide whistles, trumpets and kazoos, and crowds reeled drunkenly down the streets, swaying unevenly to the chaotic melody. The warm night air smelled of garlic and beer.

Frank bought a sequined cardboard mask and a cup of cloudy, potent beer from the nearest booth. After putting on the mask and downing the beer at a gulp, he joined the dancing mob. He linked arms with a groaning rummy on his right and a startlingly fat woman on his left, following Pantheon’s tide of revellers as they emptied slowly into the packed expanse of Kudeau Street. The moon was up now, shining full behind the ragged Munson skyline.

After an hour of dancing and drinking, Frank stumbled over a curb and crossed the sidewalk to lean against a pillar and catch his breath. He was somewhat drunk, but he could see a great difference in the Doublon Festival this year; in past years, when he had come with his father, it had been a festive, fairly formalized celebration of the spring.

This year it was something else. Screams that began as singing were degenerating into insane shrieks. The dancing had become a huge game of snap-the-whip, and people were being flung spinning from the end of the line with increasing force. People had stopped paying for the beer. Couples were making frantic love in doorways, under the vendors’ booths, even in the street. And over all, from every direction, skirled the maddening noise that could no longer really be called music.

Time for a decision, Frank told himself. Go home now or stay and take whatever consequences are floating around unclaimed. I need another beer to decide, he compromised, and began elbowing his way toward a beer-seller’s stand.

Before he reached it he sensed a change in the crowd. People paused, and were craning their necks, peering up and down the street.

“What is it?” Frank shouted to the man next to him.

“Costa!” the man answered. “The Duke!”

Frank looked around but could see nothing because of the crowd. His drunkenness left him, and he felt a cold emptiness in his stomach. Costa! he thought. Here! He ducked into the nearest building, ran up the stairs, and blundered his way out onto a second floor balcony that overlooked the choked street.

From this vantage point he saw the procession bulling its way through the mob of drunken, torch-waving revellers; he saw the elegant litter being carried at shoulder height and the languid youth who waved from within at the merrymakers. Even from a distance of fifty feet he recognized the pale, contemptuous face of Costa, the parricide, the Duke who had had Frank’s father killed.

He can’t see me in the shadow of the awning here, Frank thought. Even if he could, I’m masked. He drew his coat tighter about his chest to cover his damning tattoo, and his fingers brushed the lump under the fabric that covered the gun. Suddenly and completely, he knew what he had to do. The shot wouldn’t be difficult at this range, and a forty-five calibre bullet ought to do the job.

Trembling, he took the gun out of his pocket and pushed off the safety catch. The procession had drawn even with him in the street. Costa was as close now as he would ever be. Stepping back, Frank raised the gun. I can’t, he thought. There must be twenty guards down there. Some of them have guns, and I’ve only got one bullet. I’d never get away through this crowd. I can't.

He stood there, shaking, with the gun pointed at Costa’s face. The procession was slowly moving past. In another few seconds he’ll be out of my line of sight. Frank thought.

There was a commotion in the crowd below, and a man ran at the litter and jumped up onto its running board. Frank saw a brief gleam of moonlight on a knife blade. Four quick gunshots broke the continuity of the crazy music, and the man with the knife stumbled to the ground. His weapon fell on the paving stones. He walked lurchingly back toward the crowd, and Frank could see the blood on his shirt. Two more shots cracked, and the man fell sideways onto the street.

Costa leaned out of the litter and waved to show that he was unhurt. The guards cheered, but the crowd almost booed him. An ugly tension was building; Costa and his attendants left quickly.

Frank replaced the gun in his pocket, feeling sick. He returned to Orcrist’s underground apartment, stopping twice along the route to throw up.

THE next morning he gave Orcrist back his gun and told him about the abortive assassination attempt by the man with the knife.

“I heard about it,” Orcrist said. “I knew the man slightly.”

“It was a crazy thing to do,” Frank declared.

“Yes, it was. Did you hear that Costa has abolished the Doublon Festival? He said it’s a ‘free-for-all crime fest,’ to use his words. It won’t even finish out the week, as it normally would.”

“It was pretty wild last night. I’ve been to it a dozen times and it was never nearly as bad as it was last night.”

“That’s because times were prosperous under old Duke Topo. Times are very bad now and getting worse; that’s why the festival was such a madhouse. People figured it was their last chance to enjoy themselves, and they’d do it or know the reason why.”

“Times aren’t that bad, are they?”

“I don’t know, Frank. They seem to be. The Transport is a bankrupt organization, but determined not to admit it. The interplanetary shipping lines are collapsing. The Transport seems to have decided to make Octavio its home planet, and so Costa, having sold out to them, is taxing the guts out of the people to support it. The end isn’t in sight—and we haven’t even hit bottom yet.”

Chapter 7

Two months later Orcrist once again had occasion to quote Aurelius to Frank.

“You see, Frank,” he explained, “when a man proves himself capable, he is likely to be given more tasks. You began as simply an art forger, and then also took on the duties of a quality art procurer.”

“Am I about to take on someone else’s duties? Did you lose another cousin?” Frank’s bronze ear gleamed in the lamplight.

“What a horrible thing to say, Frank. But yes, as a matter of fact, I was thinking of broadening your functions, giving you some experience in another field—now that my art collectors are so tax-strangled and the museums so heavily guarded and our night runs are becoming so few and far between.”

“My new field being ...?”

“Well, I entertain quite a bit, you know. Pons handles the details quite well, but the kitchen is a chaos. Kitchen boys come and go like sailors in a brothel, and now my chief cook has walked out. So I thought that, in the free time between our night runs and your painting, you might help Pons out with the dinners, cooking and washing up, and all.”

Frank swallowed the indignant anger that Orcrist’s suggestion raised in him. Take it easy, he thought. Orcrist’s employment is all that stands between you and the lean life of a fugitive. He’s fed you and taken care of you, and it isn’t his fault that the new government has made affluence an archaic word. Orcrist works as hard as you do (harder, probably), and risks his neck as well as your own on the night raids.

“What do you say?” asked Orcrist, and Frank suddenly realized that the older man was embarrassed to be making the request.

“It sounds okay to me,” Frank said. “I guess a little kitchen experience is a valuable thing to have.”

“Of course it is,” Orcrist agreed heartily. “I propose we celebrate it with a couple of glasses of this excellent Tamarisk brandy.”

After downing his brandy Frank went to the kitchen to get acquainted with the layout. He found Pons sitting on a stool, nibbling a chunk of Jack cheese. The tall, skinny servant regarded Frank skeptically. “Don’t tell me you took it,” he said.

“Matter of fact, I did,” answered Frank. “What is it I do?”

Pons stood up and ran his fingers through his graying hair. “Well now, you’ll find that kitchen work isn’t as easy as painting.” He peered at Frank, who said nothing. “But at least it’s honest work.” Frank smiled coldly.

Encouraged by Frank’s silence, Pons grinned and took another bite of cheese. “Yessir,” he said. “Liquor and books is all very well, but you don’t get time for that sort of trash in here. You know what I say?”

“What do you say?”

“I say, if you’ve got time enough to lean, you’ve got time enough to clean. Now we don’t have to get started on dinner for another two hours yet, so why don’t you get a rag and a bucket of hot water and clean off the oven hood? And then after that you can clean out these drains. What?”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Frank.

“Well, see that you don’t. I don’t like noisy help.” Pons took his cheese and left the room, on his lips the smile of the man who has had the last word.

Now what, thought Frank, have I done to provoke all that? He looked helplessly around himself at the kitchen. A big, gleaming oven stood in the center of the room. Around the walls were sinks and refrigerators and freezers. Years of airborne grease had darkened the yellow walls near the ceiling.

With a fatalistic sigh he began looking for a mop, a rag and a bucket.

WHEN Pons returned at four, he criticized Frank’s cleaning and asked him if his father and he had been accustomed to living in a pigpen.

“No,” said Frank evenly. I will deal with this Pons fellow, he told himself, when the opportunity arises.

“Well, that’s what anyone would think, to see the lazy-man job you did on these sinks.” He looked around the room with a dissatisfied air. “It’s high time we got started on dinner. And let me tell you, sonny, the best way to get on Sam’s bad side is to serve him bad food.”

Spare me your pompous master-chef act, thought Frank. And I’d like to see you call him Sam.to his face.

“He’s having eight guests to dinner tonight, and I’m serving them chicken curry. Chop a pound apiece of green onions and peanuts and put them in those silver bowls up there. Also, fill two more bowls with chutney and raisins. Then decant six bottles of the Rigby Chablis, which you’ll find in the cooler yonder. Do you think you can handle all that?”

“Time will tell,” said Frank with false gaiety, hoping it would annoy Pons, as he set out to find the onions and peanuts.

WHEN the guests had all arrived, the table was set and dinner was ready to be served, Pons strode into the kitchen and grabbed Frank’s arm.

“I’ve got to keep an eye on things here,” he said. “You serve the dinner.”

“Me! I don’t know anything about it! I can’t serve the damned dinner!”

“Keep your voice down. Of course you can serve it. I’m giving you a chance to ... prove yourself under fire, you might say. Here’s the wine. Go!” Frank swung through the kitchen doors into the dining room, carrying a silver tray on which were perched two decanters of Chablis and eight glasses, all clinking dangerously. He had to set the tray down carefully on the tablecloth before he dared raise his eyes to the assembled company.

The first eyes he met were Orcrist’s, who looked both surprised and angry. The two white-haired men flanking him looked amused, and their two thin old women regarded Frank with discreet distaste. Bad business, Frank thought, as he pulled desperately at the crystal stopper on one of the decanters. On the other side of the table sat a slender man with slick, gleaming hair; he winked at Frank. Next to him was a good-looking young woman with deep brown eyes and slightly kinky brown hair; very close to her sat a healthy-looking young man who was clearly holding the girl’s hand under the table.

Some guests, Frank thought. He’d got the stopper out, poured a half inch of wine into one glass and gravely passed it to Orcrist. This may not be correct, he thought, but at least it’s formal.

Orcrist raised his eyebrows, but took the glass. He sipped it and nodded. Frank filled the glass, and then proceeded to fill all the glasses, moving clockwise around the table. When he had finished he set the decanter in the middle of the table, bowed, and fled into the kitchen.

“How’d it go?” asked Pons.

“Not bad. What’s next?”

“Salad. In five minutes. Put the dressing on it in four and a half minutes.”

As Frank strode out carrying the salad bowl five minutes later, he felt a premonition of disaster. Pons had thrown a handful of garbanzo beans on top of the salad at the last minute, and Frank, foreseeing them rolling all over the table, thought it an unwise move.

I’ll serve the pretty girl first, he thought. He walked smiling to her place and holding the bowl in one hand, reached for the salad tongs with the other. Smooth, he told himself.

Pons had, earlier, set the bowl down in a puddle of salad oil, and now Frank’s grip on the bowl slipped an inch. A garbanzo bean rolled off the mound of lettuce and plunked into the girl’s wine. She squealed. Her escort turned a face of outrage on Frank, who tried to back away and perhaps get a new wine glass.

“Idiot!” barked the escort as he stood up, shoving his chair violently backward against Frank’s leg. The greased salad bowl left Frank’s hand, rolled over in the air, and landed on the brown-eyed girl’s chest, from there sliding down into her lap. Covered with gleaming lettuce, carrots and garbanzo beans, the surprised girl looked like a tropical hillside.

“For God’s sake, Frank!” boomed Orcrist after a stunned pause. “Go get Pons!”

Frank hurried into the kitchen. “You take over,” he told Pons, and then went to his room, feeling monumentally inadequate.

AFTER the guests had left, Orcrist asked Frank to accompany him on a walk. Frank nodded and fetched a coat. They walked for two blocks along an empty stretch of Sheol before Orcrist spoke.

“Bad show, there, Frank.”

“That’s true, sir.”

They walked on, past another block.

“I am not going to relieve you of your kitchen duties, though. Oh, I know it was an accident! That’s not what I mean. I think you should continue to work in the kitchen, under Pons’s direction, for the same reason I’d tell you to keep trying to ride a horse that had thrown you, or to keep practicing fencing after you’d taken a bad cut. Don’t let these things defeat you, eh?”

“Right,” agreed Frank without much enthusiasm. “Good. Kathrin Figaro’s boyfriend wanted to cut your throat, by the way. I told him he’d probably need a bit of help, and he stormed out. Next time, spill the salad on him.”

Frank laughed weakly.

“A penny to see a dancing dog?” came a plaintive cry from the alleymouth they were passing. Orcrist stepped aside and handed the old woman some coins before he and Frank continued their walk.

“That was Beardo’s mother,” Orcrist remarked: “They don’t get along real well.”

Frank didn’t say anything.

THE next time he saw Kathrin Figaro he was relaxing in Orcrist’s sitting room, having finished his forgery of the difficult Monet canvas. He was dressed in an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt, over which he had thrown the white silk smoking jacket Beardo had given him.

The front door opened just as Frank was pouring himself a well deserved (he told himself) glass of scotch. Assuming that it was Orcrist, he spoke casually over his shoulder. “I figured you wouldn’t mind my taking a glass, sir,” he said, and turned around to see Orcrist standing in the doorway with Miss Figaro on his arm.

“You’ve grown lax in your treatment of kitchen boys, Sam,” said Miss Figaro sharply. She stepped forward and slapped the glass out of Frank’s hand. It bounced on the carpet, splashing scotch on the bookshelves.

“I hate this sort of thing,” declared Orcrist. “Kathrin, he isn't a kitchen boy. He’s an apprenticed thief, and a junior partner of mine. Frank, pour yourself another glass. Pour me one too. Will you join us, Kathrin?”

“No,” she said icily. “Why is he dressed like a hobo mandarin? And why do you have him serve dinner if he’s a junior partner?” Plainly, she thought Orcrist was having a joke at her expense.

“I was doing that because we felt I’d be better off for some kitchen experience,” explained Frank, who was beginning to enjoy this. “And I’m dressed in my painting clothes. This is a smoking jacket.”

“He paints as well, does he?”

“Yes,” Orcrist answered. “It’s a hobby of his. Still lifes, puppies, sad children with big eyes—you know.”

Kathrin looked close to tears. “Sam, if you and this horrible boy are making fun of me, I’ll....”

“We’re not, I swear,” said Orcrist placatingly as he put his arm around her shoulders. “Frank, draw something, show her we’re not kidding.”

“All right.” There was a salt shaker on the coffee table, a relic of a bout of tequila drinking the night before, and Frank shook salt onto the dark tabletop until it had a uniformly frosted look. Then, with his left forefinger, he drew a quick picture of Kathrin. It caught a likeness, and even conveyed some of her apparently habitual irritability.

“There, you see?” said Orcrist. “I wasn’t kidding.”

“You aren’t a kitchen boy?”

“Not basically, no,” Frank answered.

“Oh. Well then, I’m sorry I spilled your drink. No, I’m not! You ruined my dress.”

“Let’s forget all of it,” said Orcrist, “and be friends.”

“Okay,” said Frank agreeably.

“All right.” Kathrin still seemed sulky.

The afternoon progressed civilly, and once, when Orcrist left the room, Kathrin turned to Frank with a hesitant smile.

“Could you ... teach me how to draw, sometime?” She looks much younger when she smiles, he thought. I’ll bet she’s about my age.

“Sure,” he said.

RAIN was somehow falling down the sunlight shaft onto Orcrist’s breakfast table. Frank sat watching it drip onto the remains of his scrambled eggs; he was puffing at a pipe and wondering how the devil pipe smokers kept the things lit. Across the table George Tyler was slumped dejectedly in a chair, his blond hair sticking out at odd angles from his head.

Orcrist walked in, carrying a plate of fried eggs and bacon and potatoes. “What’s this?” he asked, nodding at the growing puddle of rain water.

“It’s raining on the surface,” said Frank. “I suppose we ought to put a pan under it.” He resumed puffing on the pipe.

“Oh, your plate will do for now,” Orcrist said. “What are you trying to smoke?”

Frank waved at a pack of tobacco lying on the table. Orcrist picked it up and stared at it. “ ‘Cherry Brandy Flavored.’ Frank, you can’t smoke that." He tossed it down. “Let me get you some real tobacco.”

“And what’s real tobacco?” asked Tyler irritably. It had been he who’d recommended the Cherry Brandy blend to Frank.

“Something with latakia in it,” Orcrist said. “This fruit syrup stuff is no good for smoking; it’s only fit for impressing ignorant girls.”

Tyler shrugged, as if to say that that was reason enough to smoke it right there.

“Anyway, I have better things to talk about than bad tobacco,” Orcrist went on. “Tomorrow night I’m giving a dinner for ten of the High Lords of the Subterranean Companions. I’m hiring three guys to help out in the kitchen; you and Pons will be in charge, Frank. We’re going to have Giant Tacos, Beans Jaime, and dark beer—I’ve got Pons out buying supplies now. I think you ought to be the beer steward, Frank; you simply stand by with a pitcher of it and refill any glasses that become less than half full.”

“Doesn’t sound bad,” Frank said. “Will anyone I know be there?”

“No, she won’t,” said Orcrist.

THE next afternoon Frank strolled into the kitchen, where Pons and the three new cooks were already at work. One of the new men was chopping bell peppers on a wooden board; another was stirring a pot of hot sauce; and the third was grating block after block of cheese. On a stool to one side sat Pons, criticizing their work and telling them what needed doing afterward.

“It’s about time you got here,” Pons said. “Keep an eye on these dopes for a while.” He got up and strode out, shaking his head contemptuously.

“Oh, man,” said one of the cooks. “Who was that guy?”

“His name’s Pons,” said Frank. “I don’t like him either. Do you guys know how to do all this? Because I sure can’t tell you.”

“Oh, hell yes,” said another. “We work in a restaurant together. We’ve been making this stuff since we were kids. And then old Bon-Bon comes in here and wants to tell me how to cut bell peppers.”

“Well, cut them any way you want,” said Frank.

The big oven was turned on, and the room heated up pretty quickly, especially when one of the cooks began frying the ground beef in two huge pans. Frank was only doing peripheral jobs, chopping onions and fetching tomatoes, but he soon found himself sweating like a long-distance runner.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m ready for a beer. Who’ll join me?”

They all assented, and Frank opened four bottles of Orcrist’s favorite light beer. He passed these around, and then was amazed at how much more smoothly the kitchen ran when the cooks had bottles of beer beside them. There’s some principle at work there, he thought.

The door was kicked open and Pons entered.

“You’re letting them drink?" he gasped. He snatched all the bottles, which were empty now anyway, and flung them into a trash can. “Sam will hear about this,” he snarled at Frank. “You’ll be out of a job.”

“I don’t think so,” Frank said.

“Clear out, Bon-Bon,” said one of the cooks.

“You’ve gone too far,” Pons whispered. “You can’t undermine me. Tomorrow you’ll be out on the street.”

“Time will tell,” smiled Frank.

“The guests are here,” said Pons in a strangled voice. “Take out fifteen glasses and two pitchers of beer. Now!”

Frank did so, and managed without mishap to present each guest with a glass of the dark beer. There were ten, all older men, and they were dressed in fine clothes and wore decorated swords. When Frank had filled their glasses he stepped back from the table, but Orcrist beckoned him forward.

“Gentlemen,” Orcrist said, “I’d like you to meet Francisco de Goya Rovzar, my junior partner.” Orcrist introduced Frank to each lord in turn. Frank bowed respectfully to each, and then resumed his stewardship. The lords and Orcrist chatted and laughed among themselves, and Frank listened in from time to time, but found their talk either boring or incomprehensible.

Eventually Pons appeared, pushing a cart on which were set ten plates, each with a huge taco resting on it like a giant, lettuce-choked clam. The assembled lords exclaimed delightedly at the spectacle. Pons served them, and the guests began hesitantly prodding their tacos with forks. Frank was kept busy seeing that the glasses were filled and frequently had to dash to the kitchen for a fresh pitcher.

“Damn fine dinner, Sam,” said Lord Tolley Christensen as he threw down his fork for the last time. The other lords all nodded agreement. “And I hope such dinners never become a thing of the past.” Again they all nodded.

“Do you know, Tolley,” spoke up Lord Rutledge, “I was walking alone the other day or night and an armed policeman, in the Transport uniform, tried to arrest me?”

“Times are worse than I thought,” said Orcrist. “What did you do?”

“Oh, he drew his sword on me, so I killed him.”

“How?” asked Tolley. “As one craftsman to another.”

“He took my blade on the outside of his, in the high line, so I did a non-resisting parry and then just spiralled in over his bell guard, then under it, and nailed him.”

“He must not have been real sharp,” put in Orcrist. “I’d never have given you time to do all that.”

“Well, I am fairly fast,” Rutledge said. “Besides, that’s the only move you can make if the other guy takes your blade that way.”

“Well,” spoke Frank, “you could parry and riposte in prime.”

“What?” growled Rutledge, shifting around in his chair.

“I said you could have parried him in prime. One, you know.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

Frank was beginning to suspect that he shouldn’t have spoken. “Never mind, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry I interrupted.”

“Wait a minute,” said Orcrist. “Here, Frank, use my sword. Rutledge, will you let me borrow yours for a moment? Thank you. Now, Frank, slowly, show me what you mean.”

Frank put the pitcher of beer down on a side table, took the sword in his left hand, and crouched into the on guard position. “All right,” he said. “Take my blade in sixte—come in over my sword arm.”

Orcrist extended his blade as he was told. When the point was within a foot of Frank’s chest, Frank suddenly inverted his sword by flipping his elbow up and deflected Orcrist’s blade to the side; then he riposted, thrusting at Orcrist’s chest with his arm twisted around so that his thumb and fingers were uppermost.

“That’s parrying in prime,” he said, holding the position with his point an inch or two away from Orcrist’s chest. “It’s a bit awkward, but if you use it at the right moment it’s unanswerable.”

“The boy’s making fun of us,” growled Rutledge. “Maybe not,” said Orcrist. “Let’s try a few thrusts, Frank. Gently.”

For the first minute Frank let Orcrist do all the work, and simply parried every thrust without even stepping back. Orcrist’s thrusts became faster and stronger, but Frank was able to hold him off effortlessly. He can’t really be trying, Frank thought. These attacks are fairly quick, but there’s almost no strategy. “Shall I begin replying?” asked Frank.

“Any time you like,” panted Orcrist.

Frank parried the next attack and feinted in quarte, then riposted in sixte to Orcrist’s chest, poking him lightly with the point. He then tapped Orcrist’s elbow twice in a row, and then did a faultless bind-eight culminating in a full-extension lunge. He held the position for a moment; his rear leg straight out behind him, lead leg bent in a ninety-degree angle, weapon arm straight and his sword point pressing a button on Orcrist’s coat. Then he relaxed back into the on guard posture. It felt good to get back into the disciplines of fencing—it reminded him of the old days with Tom in the Strand Fencing Academy.

“There is ... no end to your talents, Frank,” Orcrist panted. “Where did you study? Who taught you all this?”

“Jacob Strand, in a fencing school about twenty miles north and ten miles west.”

“Hmm.” Orcrist sat down and finished his beer. “Do you remember the words of our old friend Aurelius, Frank?”

“Yes, I do. ‘The universe is change.’ Might he have added ‘and talented lads are soon promoted out of the kitchen’?”

“Consider it added,” said Orcrist.