“Penny,” I said hastily, “why all the tears, hon? You’ll wreck this car.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Well-put me in it. What’s wrong? You told me they had got him back; you didn’t tell me anything else.” I had a sudden horrid but logical suspicion. “He was alive-wasn’t he?”
“Yes-he’s alive-but, oh, they’ve hurt him!” She started to sob and I had to grab the wheel.
She straightened up quickly. “Sorry.”
“Want me to drive?”
“I’ll be all right. Besides, you don’t know how-I mean you aren’t supposed to know how to drive.”
“Huh? Don’t be silly. I do know how and it no longer matters that-” I broke off, suddenly realizing that it might still matter. If they had roughed up Bonforte so that it showed, then he could not appear in public in that shape-at least not only fifteen minutes after being adopted into the Kkkah nest. Maybe I would have to take that press conference and depart publicly, while Bonforte would be the one they would sneak aboard. Well, all right-hardly more than a curtain call. “Penny, do Dak and Rog want me to stay in character for a bit? Do I play to the reporters? Or don’t I?”
“I don’t know. There wasn’t time.”
We were already approaching the stretch of godowns by the field, and the giant bubble domes of Goddard City were in sight. “Penny, slow this car down and talk sense. I’ve got to have my cues.”
The driver had talked-I neglected to ask whether or not the bobby-pin treatment had been used. He had then been turned loose to walk back but had not been deprived of his mask; the others had barreled back to Goddard City, with Dak at the wheel. I felt lucky to have been left behind; voyageurs should not be allowed to drive anything but spaceships.
They went to the address the driver had given them, in Old Town under the original bubble. I gathered that it was the sort of jungle every port has had since the Phoenicians sailed through the shoulder of Africa, a place of released transportees, prostitutes, monkey-pushers, rangees, and other dregs-a neighborhood where policemen travel only in pairs.
The information they had squeezed out of the driver had been correct but a few minutes out of date. The room had housed the prisoner, certainly, for there was a bed in it which seemed to have been occupied continuously for at least a week, a pot of coffee was still hot-and wrapped in a towel on a shelf was an old- fashioned removable denture which Clifton identified as belonging to Bonforte. But Bonforte himself was missing and so were his captors.
They had left there with the intention of carrying out the original plan, that of claiming that the kidnapping had taken place immediately after the adoption and putting pressure on Boothroyd by threatening to appeal to the Nest of Kkkah. But they had found Bonforte, had simply run across him in the street before they left Old Town-a poor old stumblebum with a week’s beard, dirty and dazed. The men had not recognized him, but Penny had known him and made them stop.
She broke into sobs again as she told me this part and we almost ran down a truck train snaking up to one of the loading
A reasonable reconstruction seemed to be that the laddies in the second car-the one that was to crash us-had reported back, whereupon the faceless leaders of our opponents had decided that the kidnaping no longer served their purposes. Despite the arguments I had heard about it, I was surprised that they had not simply killed him; it was not until later that I understood that what they had done was subtler, more suited to their purposes, and much crueler than mere killing.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“Dak took him to the voyageurs’ hostel in Dome 3.”
“Is that where we are headed?”
“I don’t know. Rog just said to go pick you up, then they disappeared in the service door of the hostel. Uh, no, I don’t think we dare go there. I don’t know what to do.”
“Penny, stop the car.”
“Huh?”