Гарднер Дозуа - The Good Old Stuff

“Come, now,” wheedled the gem dealer. “Let us be men of the world about this. One must give a little and take a little. Everybody knows he can’t have his own way forever. I shall offer a good, round eight hundred credits and we’ll close on it, eh? Pilquis, fetch us a pen and ink!” One of the burly guards was right there with an inkpot and a reed pen. Garthkint had a Customs form out of his tunic and was busily filling it in to specify the size, number, and fire of gems to be released to him. “What’s it now?” asked blackbeard.

“Eight hundred.”

“Take it!”

“Garthkint,” said Men regretfully, “you heard the firmness and decision in my trader’s voice? What can I do? I am only speaking for him. He is a hard man but perhaps I can talk him around later. I offer you the gems at a ruinous fifteen hundred credits.”

“Split the difference,” said Garthkint resignedly.

“Done at eleven-fifty,” said Alen.

That blackbeard understood. “Well done!” he boomed at Alen and took a swig at Garthkint’s wine cup. “Have him fill in ‘Sack eighteen’ on his paper. It’s five hundred of that grade.”

The gem dealer counted out twenty-three fifty-credit notes and black-beard signed and fingerprinted the release.

“Now,” said Garthkint, “you will please remain here while I take a trip to the spaceport for my property.” Three or four of the guards were suddenly quite close.

“You will find,” said Alen dryly, “that our standard of commercial morality is no lower than yours.”

The dealer smiled politely and left.

“Who will be the next?” asked Alen of the room at large.

“I’ll look at your gems,” said another dealer, sitting at the table.

With the ice breaking down, the transactions went quicker. Alen had disposed of a dozen lots by the time their first buyer returned.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ve been tricked before, but your gems are as represented. I congratulate you, Herald, on driving a hard, fair bargain.”

“That means,” said Alen regretfully, “that I should have asked for more.” The guards were once more lounging in corners and no longer seemed so menacing.

They had a midday meal and continued to dispose of their wares. At sunset Alen held a final auction to clean up the odd lots that remained over and was urged to stay to dinner.

The trader, counting a huge wad of the Lyran manpower-based notes, shook his head. “We should be off before dawn, Herald,” he told Alen.

“Time is money, time is money.”

“They are very insistent.”

“And I am very stubborn. Thank them and let us be on our way before anything else is done to increase my overhead.”

Something did turn up—a city watchman with a bloody nose and split lip.

He demanded of the Herald, “Are you responsible for the Cephean maniac known as Elwon?”

Garthkint glided up to mutter in Men’s ear, “Beware how you answer!”

Alen needed no warning. His grounding included Lyran legal concepts—and on the backward little planet touched with many relics of feudalism, “responsible” covered much territory.

“What has Chief Elwon done?” he parried.

“As you see,” the watchman glumly replied, pointing to his wounds.

“And the same to three others before we got him out of the wrecked wine shop and into the castle. Are you responsible for him?”

“Let me speak with my trader for a moment. Will you have some wine meantime?” He signaled and one of the guards brought a mug.

“Don’t mind if I do. I can use it,” sighed the watchman.

“We are in trouble,” said Men to blackbeard. “Chief Elwon is in the cas-fie—prison—for drunk and disorderly conduct. You as his master are considered responsible for his conduct under Lyran law. You must pay his fines or serve his penalties. Or you can disown him, which is considered dishonorable but sometimes necessary. For paying his fine or serving his time you have a prior lien on his services, without pay—but of course that’s unenforceable off Lyra.”

Blackbeard was sweating a little. “Find out from the policeman how long all this is likely to take. I don’t want to leave Elwon here and I do want us to get off as soon as possible. Keep him occupied, now, while I go about some business.”

The trader retreated to a corner of the darkening barnlike tavern, beckoning Garthkint and a guard with him as Alen returned to the watchman. “Good keeper of the peace,” he said, “will you have another?” He would.

“My trader wishes to know what penalties are likely to be levied against the unfortunate Chief Elwon.”

“Going to leave him in the lurch, eh?” asked the watchman a little belligerendy. “A fine master you have!”

One of the dealers at the table indignantly corroborated him. “If you foreigners aren’t prepared to live up to your obligations, why did you come here in the first place? What happens to business if a master can send his man to steal and cheat and then say ‘Don’t blame me—it was his doing!’” Men patiently explained, “On other planets, good Lyrans, the tie of master and man is not so strong that a man would obey if he were ordered to go and steal or cheat.”

They shook their heads and muttered. It was unheard off “Good watchman,” pressed the Herald, “my trader does not want to disown Chief Elwon. Can you tell me what recompense would be necessary-and how long it would take to manage the business?”

The watchman started on a third cup which Men had unostentatiously signaled for. “It’s hard to say,” he told the Herald weightily. “For my damages, I would demand a hundred credits at least. The three other members of the watch battered by your lunatic could ask no less. The wine shop suffered easily five hundred credits’ damage. The owner of it was beaten, but that doesn’t matter, of course.”

“No imprisonment?”

“Oh, a flogging, of course.” Alen started before he recalled that the “flogging” was a few half-hearted symbolic strokes on the covered shoulders with a light cane. “But no imprisonment. His Honor, Judge Krarl, does not sit on the night bench. Judge Krarl is a newfangled reformer, stranger. He professes to believe that mulcting is unjust—that it makes it easy for the rich to commit crime and go scot-free.”

“But doesn’t it?” asked Alen, drawn off course in spite of himself.

There was pitying laughter around him.

“Look you,” a dealer explained kindly. “The good watchman suffers battery, the mad Cephean or his master is mulcted for damages, the watchman is repaid for his injuries. What kind of justice is it to the watchman if the mad Cephean is locked away in a cell, unfined?”

The watchman nodded approvingly. “Well said,” he told the dealer.

“Luckily we have on the night bench a justice of the old school, His Honor, Judge Treel. Stern, but fair. You should hear him! ‘Fifty credits! A hundred credits and the lash! Robbed a ship, eh? Two thousand credits!’” He returned to his own voice and said with awe, “For a murder, he never assesses less than ten thousand credits!” And if the murderer couldn’t pay, Alen knew, he became a “public charge,” “responsible to the state”—that is, a slave. If he could pay, of course, he was named loose.

“And His Honor, Judge Treel,” he pressed, “is sitting tonight? Can we possibly appear before him, pay the fines, and be off?”

“To be sure, stranger. I’d be a fool if! waited until morning, wouldn’t I?”

The wine had loosened his tongue a little too far and he evidently realized it. “Enough of this,” he said. “Does your master honorably accept responsibility of the Cephean? If so, come along with me, the two of you, and we’ll get this over with.”