A Borrowed Man (20 page)

Let me admit right here that what I was doing was dumb. If I had good sense I would have gone up there alone first and tried it out before I got Georges and Mahala; the trouble was that I had felt certain I had the whole works figured out. But by the time I stood in front of that door holding
Murder on Mars,
I was trying to think of what I would say when the door would not open.

First the back. Something clicked, but the door would not open. Then the spine, which got me nothing. Then the front cover.

That brought another soft click, but I could not be sure I had not imagined it. I felt like throwing myself against that steel door hard enough to break my shoulder, but I shoved down the handle and gave the door a good hard push instead.

It swung back, and I walked in and took a deep breath; the wrench was still bad enough to make me feel sick, but I guess I was a little bit used to it by then. I filled my lungs with that air, and wow! Home was good, sure it was—but this was magic and I could have floated away. I had not motioned for Georges and Mahala to follow; I knew what I was going to do if they did and what I was going to do if they did not. I had both those all worked out, and the book had done the trick, and I was on cloud nine.

Behind me, one of them gasped. I still have no idea which it was. I turned around to see whether both of them had come in, and told Georges to shut the door.

“You're going to want to have a look around,” I told them. “Do it, but don't go so far you get lost. I'm going to climb that rock face. Maybe I can spot a good place for us to talk.”

Although climbing was easier than it would have been on Earth, I climbed slowly, stopping pretty often to look around. Also, I was trying to spare Junior's shirt and wondering if his pants would fit me. Whether his shoes would, as far as that was concerned. There had been six or eight pairs in his closet.

After ten or fifteen minutes, I reached that dark hole in the rocks I had noticed before. I took a good look at it, and one of the first things I noticed was that you did not have to climb like I had to get to it. There was a steep little path off to one side. Another was there were no bones or anything like that around the entrance. Sure, it still might have been the den of some animal, but now that seemed less likely.

When I got back down as far as the hole, I took the path the rest of the way. Maybe Georges or Mahala noticed; I do not know.

If Georges had, he did not say anything about it, just asked what I'd seen.

“Over that way,” I pointed, “I could catch glimpses of what looked like water and some white stuff that might be a beach. Let's go over and have a look.”

He nodded, grinning. “Good news! There's water here. Wherever ‘here' is.”

“There has to be.” I pointed again, up this time. “That's a blue sky. Must I tell you what makes the sky blue?”

Mahala giggled, and Georges said, “Water vapor, isn't it?”

“Correct.” I started walking. “On Mars the sky's red with dust. There's water on Mars, but not much—or anyway not much left. Probably it would be better to say it like that. Earth still has a great deal, because Earth has more gravity.” I have already said how I feel about the way I have to talk, and I felt that way more than ever just then. I said, “Do I sound like a professor?”

Behind me, Georges said, “You sure do. I was starting to wonder if you really were one.”

“I'm not, and I wish to God I could learn how to stop sounding like one. We're on an alien planet, an Earth-type planet of another star system. Had you already figured that out?”

“I wasn't sure.” After a moment Georges added, “You know, I feel lighter here.”

“In the book—Did I leave that behind? How stupid can I be?”

Georges said, “Mahala picked it up,” and she tapped my shoulder and handed it to me.

I thanked her. “I remember now—I laid it down to climb the rocks. Maybe we should leave it behind, in the house somewhere.”

“That house can't have a door that opens on another planet.” I heard Georges gulp. “Much less on a planet in another system.”

“It does,” I told him. “It will have as long as the circuitry that connects our world with this one runs. Now where should we hold our meeting?” We had reached a rocky beach.

After a couple of false starts, Georges and Mahala sat side by side on a driftwood log and I rolled another into position and sat down on that. “First question, and this is an important one. While you were searching, did either one of you find a camera or a listening device, or anything that might be one?”

Mahala shook her head. Georges said, “No. Nothing. How about you, Mr. Smithe?”

It had been no dice for me, too, and I told them so. “The people who kidnapped Colette brought her here. I know that, because I know it was she whom we heard speak, then scream, when I opened the door. While she was here, she may have left some sort of note—some clue that might tell us where they were taking her. Did you find anything like that?”

Mahala shook her head again. Georges said, “It seems to me they did, if they left that ground car. There could be a note in the ground car, and there ought to be things that will tell us where it came from. The license plate, registration card, and so forth.”

“You're right. As soon as we get back to the house, we'll look; but while we're here I want to tell you about this.” I held the book up. “Colette had it when I met her. She told me it was found in her father's safe when it was opened after his death. She said it was the only thing in there.”

Georges said, “But you're not sure she was telling you the truth?”

“Correct, I'm not. Perhaps you can imagine yourself opening a safe that belonged to your late father. Might you not find things either too important or too personal to reveal to a new acquaintance?”

They nodded, Mahala reluctantly.

“One of the things I want to do while we're in New Delphi is to find the person who opened that safe for her and ask him or her what was in it when it was opened. A screen ought to give us a city directory. We'll talk to all the locksmiths listed. With luck, we may locate the right person.”

Georges said, “You want to talk to a housekeeper, too—or do you really want to hire one?”

I shook my head. “I want to talk to the one who used to work here. After Mrs. Coldbrook died, her husband hired several human servants. I haven't been able to find out just how many there were, but it would appear there were at least three. My guess is that they had a cook, a maid, and a housekeeper.” I waited for Georges to speak, wondering how much ultraviolet there was in the white sunlight, and grateful for the steady breeze that ruffled the glowing sapphire waves.

“You think the housekeeper will know something that may help you.”

“Correct. It might be any servant, of course. But a housekeeper is apt to know more than a maid or a cook—or so I imagine. Almost certainly, a housekeeper will know who fired her.”

Georges shrugged. “I can't see how that'll help you.”

“It may help me learn who's taken Colette; if I knew that, I'd have a better chance of guessing where they've taken her. I hope so, at least. Have you anything more valuable to suggest? Believe me, I'll listen; and if we can do both, we'll do both.”

“I'll work on it.”

“Good. Here's my next question. I'm going by what Colette told me about her father, Conrad Coldbrook, Senior. She called him brilliant and a minor executive. He held executive positions, apparently, in several different companies here, not keeping any of those positions for more than one or two years. I don't know whether he was fired or quit.”

Georges nodded.

“Then he stopped working for other people. He began publishing a financial news bulletin—a tip sheet. I don't know much about those, but apparently their readers pay a good deal of money to receive them.”

Georges nodded again. “A couple of hundred at least. Sometimes a thousand or more. Whether they're worth the money…” He shrugged. “You tell me.”

“I can't. All I know is that Colette told me he had thousands of subscribers, and it sounded as though they brought him a considerable amount of money every year.” I paused to think. “Electronic publication, of course, so his costs must have been next to nothing.”

“Well, look at it. Say five hundred a year, and we'll be conservative and say he had two thousand subscribers. That's half a million coming in every year. A year of that would set you, or Mahala and me, up for life.”

I was thinking. “I wish I knew whether he quit those jobs or resigned.”

“Pretty often they call a guy in and tell him they're letting him quit, but if he doesn't they're going to fire him. Naturally he quits, and that muddies the water—you know what I mean?”

“I do, and I wish that I could talk to a few of the people who worked with him.”

Mahala raised her hand, and Georges said, “She thinks she can locate some for you. Want her to try?”

“Yes, indeed! Please do, Mahala.” I stopped again to think. “I've never seen one of these expensive financial news bulletins, Georges, but you seem to know quite a bit about them.”

“I used to subscribe to a couple. This was back when.”

“I won't ask when that was. Wouldn't it take years to build up a substantial list of subscribers? I'm asking because from what Colette said, her father appears to have done it quickly.”

“Depends. Say that the guy putting it out was a financial journalist who'd been reporting two or three nights a week on some news show. If he'd made right-on predictions there, he might get eight or ten thousand subscribers for his first bulletin.”

“What if he himself had made profitable investments?”

“If he was a big investor—we're talking millions—sure. If he had the rep, that would do it. Want to tell me what's up?”

I shook my head. “It's still too nebulous. I think I'm getting closer, but … no. Not yet, and perhaps not ever. I'm about finished. Have you got anything we need to talk about?”

“Mahala wasn't through in the lab, and now she's going to be looking for the father's old pals from work. I've about finished searching the master bedroom. I'd like to suggest we check out the mysterious ground car as soon as we get back to the house. Are we still hoping to find a few guns?”

“Yes. For listening devices, cards, and weapons, in that order. Have you noticed the trees over there? On the horizon?”

Georges hadn't. He stood up to look, saluting this new planet's white sun.

I said it again, “On the horizon.”

“You're right. Those are treetops, and there's a little white cloud over them. There's an island over there. The cloud's not very big, so the island's not very big either.”

“Agreed. We've been here for a while, and we haven't seen anything much bigger than insects. Certainly nothing bigger than mice. Or at least I haven't. What about you two?”

Georges shook his head.

“I think this is an island, too, and not very large. If so, it's unlikely to have large animals. Of course, I may be wrong on either point, which is why I'd like you to keep looking.”

Mahala got up and started down the beach, motioning for us to stay put.

Georges said, “She's heard something. She has good ears, that girl.”

I got up and went after her. She motioned for me to stay back.

Pretty soon, I heard what Mahala'd been hearing; it sounded like a big kettledrum being beaten in a regular, monotonous rhythm.
Boom! Biddy-boom! Biddy-boom, boom, BOOM!

After that, I was out in front and thinking what a jerk I was. Georges was three or four meters behind me, with Mahala right behind him.

We smelled smoke, and Mahala wanted to go back. In a whisper I told her she could go back to the door if she wanted to, or go through it into the house. She shook her head and held Georges's arm. It meant where he was going, she was going.

He whispered, “I'm sticking with Mr. Smithe. You go on back, honey. Finish searching the lab.”

It was no go. She stuck with Georges.

We went quite a way farther before we saw them, and it was like nothing I'd ever seen or even heard of.

 

13

R
ENTED
IN
O
WENBRIGHT

Except for their tails, faces, and fangs, they looked more like people than I would have expected, but they must have been forty or fifty centimeters over two meters tall, with arms, legs, and necks not much bigger than broomsticks. My first impression was of four eyes, two widely spaced and two narrowly. All the eyes were small and may not really have been eyes at all.

So many thoughts flashed through my mind when I saw those creatures that I know I cannot possibly give them all here. For one thing, it would probably take me days to write them all down. For another—I guess this is the important one—I know I could not remember them all. I will try to give some idea, though, of the ones that have stuck with me. I cannot even make a stab at getting them in order. They came too fast for that.

One was that I wanted to call them aliens, only I realized that they were not; that we were the aliens there. They looked weird to me, but we would have looked weird to them if they had seen us. (I did not know then that they were about to.)

Another was that we were watching some kind of ceremony. I could not even guess what it was about, they could have been getting in touch with God, or calling up the spirits of their dead, or making them stay dead, or maybe swearing in a new mayor. Only it was probably something else, something I would never have understood even if they had tried to explain it.

Another was that I was glad we had never found any guns, because if we had we might have ended up shooting two or three of them, and we had no more business shooting them than a burglar has shooting the owner of the house he is robbing.