Уильям Макгиверн - Collected Fiction - 1940-1963

“He’s Garr Symm, that’s who.”

Ramsey smiled at her without mirth. “Do I bow down in awe or run from here screaming? I never heard of Garr Symm.”

“Oh you fool!” she whispered furiously. “Garr Symm is the brand new number one man of the Irwadi Security Police. Don’t you read the ‘casts?”

Before Ramsey could answer or adjust to his surprise, the Irwadian repeated:

“I’m telling you for the third time. Get out.”

Ostentatiously, Ramsey reached into his cloak-pocket for a single credit bill and tossed it on the table.

“The denomination is not sufficient, sir,” the albino Sirian croupier said indifferently. Ramsey had known it was not.

Garr Symm’s face turned a darker green. The Vegan girl retreated from Ramsey’s side in fright. Symm raised his hand and an Irwadian waiter brought over a drink in a purple stem glass with a filigree pattern of titanium, bowing obsequiously. Symm lurched with the glass toward Ramsey. “I’m telling you to go,” he said in a loud voice.

Ramsey picked up his credit note but stood there. With a little sigh of drunken contentment, Garr Symm sloshed the contents of his stem glass in Ramsey’s face.

The liquor stung Ramsey’s eyes. Many of the other outworlders, neither Irwadian nor Earthmen, laughed nervously.

Ramsey wiped his eyes but otherwise did not move. He was in a rough spot and he knew it. The fact that their new Security Chief went out drunk at night with a chip on his shoulder was the Irwadian government’s affair, not Ramsey’s. He’d been insulted before. An Earthman in the outworlds, particularly an Earthman fugitive who knew he dared not get into the kind of trouble that could bring the Earth consul to investigate, was used to insults. For Earth was the leading economic and military power of the galaxy, and the fact that Earth really tried to deal fairly with its galactic neighbors meant nothing. Earth, being top dog, was resented.

The thing which got Ramsey, though, was this Garr Symm. He had never heard of Garr Symm, and he thought he knew most of the big shots in the Irwadian Security Police by name. But there must have been a reason for his appointment. A government throwing off outworld influence had a reason for everything. So, why Garr Symm?

“You, Mith Vegan!” Garr Symm called suddenly. “You whithpered to the Earthman. What did you tell him?”

“Not to look for trouble,” the Vegan girl said in a frightened voice.

“But what elth?”

“Honest, that’s all.”

“Come here, pleath.”

Her blue skin all at once very pale, the Vegan girl walked back toward Garr Symm. He leered at her quite drunkenly and took hold of her slender arm. “What did you tell him? For the latht time.”

The girl whimpered: “You are hurting my arm.”

Thoughts raced through Ramsey’s mind. As an administrator, as an Irwadian public servant in a touchy job, Garr Symm, a drunkard, was obviously grossly incompetent. What other qualifications did he have which gave him the top Irwadian Security job? Ramsey didn’t know. He sighed. The Vegan girl’s mouth formed a rictus of pain. Ramsey had a hunch he was going to find out.

He said curtly: “Let go of her, Symm. She told me nothing that would interest you.”

Garr Symm ignored him. The blue-skinned girl cried.

Ramsey grimaced and hit Garr Symm in the belly as hard as he could.

Symm thudded back against the table. It overturned with a crash and the Security Chief crashed down on top of it. There wasn’t a sound in the gambling hall except Ramsey’s sudden hard breathing, the Vegan girl’s sniffling, and Garr Symm’s noisy attempts to get air into his lungs. Then Garr Symm gagged and was sick. He writhed in pain, still unable to breathe. His hands fluttered near his weapons belt.

“Come on,” Ramsey told the Vegan girl. “We’d better get out of here.” He took her arm. Dumbly she went with him. None of the outworlders there tried to stop them. Ramsey looked back at Garr Symm. The Irwadian was shaking his fist. He had finally managed to draw his m.g. gun, but the crowd of outworlders closed between them and there was no chance he could hit Ramsey or the girl. Retching, he had dirtied the glossy green scales of his chest.

“I’ll get you,” he vowed. “I’ll get you.”

Ramsey took the girl outside. It was very cold. “I’m so afraid,” she said. “What will I do? What can I do?” She shook with fear.

“You got a place to sleep?”

“Y-yes, but I’m the only Vegan girl in Irwadi City. He’ll find me. He’ll find me when he’s ready.”

“O.K. Then come home with me.”

“I—”

“For crying out loud, I don’t look that lecherous, do I? We can’t just stand here.”

“I— I’m sorry. I’ll go with you of course.”

Ramsey took her hand again and they ran. The cold black Irwadian night swallowed them.

“So you live in the Old Quarter too,” the Vegan girl said.

“Heck yeah. Did you expect a palace?”

Ramsey had a room, rent one Irwadi month in arrears, in a cold-water tenement near the river which demarked the Old and the New Quarters. The façade of the old building was dark now. His landlady was probably asleep, although you never could tell with that old witch. Ramsey knew it wouldn’t be the first time she stayed up through half the night to await a delinquent tenant.

“I— I never went to a man’s room before,” the blue-skinned Vegan girl said. She was rather pretty in a slender, muscleless, big-eyed, female-helpless mode.

“You’re a dance-hall girl, aren’t you?”

“Still, I never spent the night in a man’s—”

“What’s the matter with you? You think we’re going to spend the night here? Somebody over at those gaming tables will be able to identify me. Garr Symm’ll be on his way before long.”

“Then what are we going to do?” The girl was shivering with cold.

“Hide,” Jason Ramsey said. “Somewhere. I just came back to get my things. There isn’t much, but there’s an old m.g. gun which we might need.”

“But they’ll find us, and—”

“You coming upstairs or will you wait out here and freeze to death in the cold?”

“I’m coming.”

They went upstairs together, on tip-toe. Ramsey’s room was on the third floor, with a besooted view of the industrial complex on the river by day. The narrow hall was dark and silent. Behind one of the closed doors an outworlder cried out in his sleep. Ramsey had to cup a hand over the Vegan girl’s mouth so she wouldn’t scream in empathic fear. He opened the door of his room, surprised that it was not locked. He thought he had left it locked.

At once he was wary. It was dark in the hall, just as dark in the room. He could see nothing. The door hinges squeaked.

“Come in, Captain Ramsey,” a voice said. “I thought you would never get here.”

He stood on the threshold, uncertain. The voice had spoken not Interstellar Coine , but English. It had spoken English, without a foreign accent.

And it was a girl’s voice.

Still, it could have been an elaborate trick. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that Garr Symm had learned Ramsey’s identity already and had sent an operative here to await him. Ramsey and the Vegan girl had come on foot. It was a long walk.

“I’m armed,” Ramsey lied. “Come over here. Slowly. Don’t put any lights on.” He could feel the Vegan girl trembling next to him. Not able to understand English, she didn’t know what was going on.

“You’re armed,” the unseen girl’s voice said in crisp, amused English, “like I’m a six-legged Antarean spider-man. You have an m.g. gun, Ramsey. It’s in this room. I have it. That’s all you have. No, don’t try to lie to me. I’m a telepath. I can read you. Come in and put the light on and shut the door. You may bring the girl with you if you want. Brother, is she ever radiating fear! It’s practically drowning your own mind out.”