Robert Silverberg - Blindsight

That’s my mark, Juanito told himself. That one, there. That one for sure.

He stared at the new dudes coming off the midday shuttle from Earth. The one he meant to go for was the one with no eyes at all, blank from brow to bridge of nose, just the merest suggestions of shadowy pits below the smooth skin of the forehead. As if the eyes had been erased, Juanito thought. But in fact they had probably never been there in the first place. It didn’t look like a retrofit gene job, more like a prenatal splice.

He knew he had to move fast. There was plenty of competition. Fifteen, twenty couriers here in the waiting room, gathering like vultures, and they were some of the best: Ricky, Lola, Kluge. Nattathaniel. Delilah. Everybody looked hungry today. Juanito couldn’t afford to get shut out. He hadn’t worked in six weeks, and it was time. His last job had been a fast-talking fancy-dancing Hungarian, wanted on Commonplace and maybe two or three other satellite worlds for dealing in plutonium. Juanito had milked that one for all it was worth, but you can milk only so long. The newcomers learn the system, they melt in and become invisible, and there’s no reason for them to go on paying. So then you have to find a new client.

“Okay,” Juanito said, looking around challengingly. “There’s mine. The weird one. The one with half a face. Anybody else want him?”

Kluge laughed and said, “He’s all yours, man.”

“Yeah,” Delilah said, with a little shudder. “All yours.” That saddened him, her chiming in like that. It had always disappointed Juanito that Delilah didn’t have his kind of imagination. “Christ,” she said. “I bet he’ll be plenty trouble.”

“Trouble’s what pays best,” Juanito said. “You want to go for the easy ones, that’s fine with me.” He grinned at her and waved at the others. “If we’re all agreed, I think I’ll head downstairs now. See you later, people.”

He started to move inward and downward along the shuttle-hub wall. Dazzling sunlight glinted off the docking module’s silvery rim, and off the Earth shuttle’s thick columnar docking shaft, wedged into the center of the module like a spear through a doughnut. On the far side of the wall the new dinkos were making their wobbly way past the glowing ten-meter-high portrait of El Supremo and on into the red fiberglass tent that was the fumigation chamber. As usual, they were having a hard time with the low gravity. Here at the hub it was one-sixteenth G, max.

Juanito always wondered about the newcomers, why they were here, what they were fleeing. Only two kinds of people ever came to Valparaiso, those who wanted to hide and those who wanted to seek. The place was nothing but an enormous spacegoing safe house. You wanted to be left alone, you came to Valparaiso and bought yourself some privacy. But that implied that you had done something that made other people not want to let you alone. There was always some of both going on here, some hiding, some seeking, El Supremo looking down benignly on it all, raking in his cut. And not just El Supremo.

Down below, the new dinkos were trying to walk jaunty, to walk mean. But that was hard to do when you were keeping your body all clenched up as if you were afraid of drifting into mid-air if you put your foot down too hard. Juanito loved it, the way they were crunching along, that constipated shuffle of theirs.

Gravity stuff didn’t ever bother Juanito. He had spent all his life out here in the satellite worlds and he took it for granted that the pull was going to fluctuate according to your distance from the hub. You automatically made compensating adjustments, that was all. Juanito found it hard to understand a place where the gravity would be the same everywhere all the time. He had never set foot on Earth or any of the other natural planets, didn’t care to, didn’t expect to.

The guard on duty at the quarantine gate was an android. His name, his label, whatever it was, was something like Velcro Exxon. Juanito had seen him at this gate before. As he came up close the android glanced at him and said, “Working again so soon, Juanito?”

“Man has to eat, no?”

The android shrugged. Eating wasn’t all that important to him, most likely. “Weren’t you working that plutonium peddler out of Commonplace?”

Juanito said, smiling, “What plutonium peddler?”

“Sure,” said the android. “I hear you.”

He held out his waxy-skinned hand and Juanito put a 50 callaghano currency plaque in it. The usual fee for illicit entry to the customs tank was only 35 callies, but Juanito believed in spreading the wealth, especially where the authorities were concerned. They didn’t have to let you in here, after all. Some days more couriers showed up than there were dinkos, and then the gate guards had to allocate. Overpaying the guards was simply a smart investment.

“Thank you kindly,” the android said. “Thank you very much.” He hit the scanner override. Juanito stepped through the security shield into the customs tank and looked around for his mark.

The new dinkos were being herded into the fumigation chamber now. They were annoyed about that—they always were—but the guards kept them moving right along through the puffy bursts of pink and green and yellow sprays that came from the ceiling nozzles. Nobody got out of customs quarantine without passing through that chamber. El Supremo was paranoid about the entry of exotic microorganisms into Valparaiso’s closed-cycle ecology. El Supremo was paranoid about a lot of things. You didn’t get to be sole and absolute ruler of your own little satellite world, and stay that way for 37 years, without a heavy component of paranoia in your makeup.

Juanito leaned up against the great curving glass wall of the customs tank and peered through the mists of sterilizer fog. The rest of the couriers were starting to come in now. Juanito watched them singling out potential clients. Most of the dinkos were signing up as soon as the deal was explained, but as always a few were shaking off help and setting out by themselves. Cheapskates, Juanito thought. Assholes and wimps, Juanito thought. But they’d find out. It wasn’t possible to get started on Valparaiso without a courier, no matter how sharp you thought you were. Valparaiso was a free enterprise zone, after all. If you knew the rules, you were pretty much safe from all harm here forever. If not, not.

Time to make the approach, Juanito figured.

It was easy enough finding the blind man. He was much taller than the other dinkos, a big burly man some thirty-odd years old, heavy bones, powerful muscles. In the bright glaring light his blank forehead gleamed like a reflecting beacon. The low gravity didn’t seem to trouble him much, nor his blindness. His movements along the customs track were easy, confident, almost graceful.

Juanito sauntered over and said, “I’ll be your courier, sir. Juanito Holt.” He barely came up to the blind man’s elbow.

“Courier?”

“New arrival assistance service. Facilitate your entry arrangements. Customs clearance, currency exchange, hotel accomodations, permanent settlement papers if that’s what you intend. Also special services by arrangement.”

Juanito stared up expectantly at the blank face. The eyeless man looked back at him in a blunt straight-on way, what would have been strong eye contact if the dinko had had eyes. That was eerie. What was even eerier was the sense Juanito had that the eyeless man was seeing him clearly. For just a moment he wondered who was going to be controlling whom in this deal.

“What kind of special services?”

“Anything else you need,” Juanito said.

“Anything?”

“Anything. This is Valparaiso, sir.”