“Who are you kidding? The Ganymeans would never go with anything like that,” Murray said. But his eyes were nervous, and the attempt didn’t quite come off.
“We might forget to ask them,” Hunt said.
Cullen stared at Murray for a moment longer, then snorted impatiently. “Get him out of here,” he said, motioning at Koberg. Then he called toward the door, “Lebansky, call the wagon. We’re not gonna—”
Murray raised both hands protectively. “Okay, okay. . . they’re called the China—”
“We know about them,” Cullen murmured to Hunt. “Protection rake-offs, intimidation and persuasion, a lot of black-market operations with the situation we’ve got right now.” Hunt nodded.
Murray went on. “They’ve got a racket going for the headworld freaks. Ever since the Gs pulled the plug on JEVEX, the price has been going outtalk sight.” He showed a palm briefly. “There are still places you can go if you know the right people and you’ve got the bread.”
“How come, if JEVEX is shut down?” Hunt asked, more to see how much Murray knew and if he was straight.
“Hell, how do I know? I’m not a tech. It’s not completely shut down—I don’t know why. There are people around who can get a hookup into it, or who look the other way if the price is right. Get the idea?”
“How does this tie in with Baumer?” Cullen asked.
“He’s a headword. He got hooked soon after he got here. There’s this club, kind of exclusive, known as the Gondola. It’s got booths out back that you only get to know about if you’ve got the connections. That’s where he goes all the time.”
“Where is this place?” Cullen asked.
“Not too far. Five or six blocks.”
“Can you get us in? Nobody’s going to bust the place. We just want to see if Baumer’s there.”
Murray shook his head. “Hell, what do you think I am? I’m just a guy who hitched a ride to this planet.”
“But you’ve got contacts,” Hunt said. “Do you know someone who can? It’s urgent, Murray.”
“Maybe . . . I’d have to make a few calls.”
“Then start making them.”
“What am I supposed to tell them? Why should they be interested in helping you?”
“If they don’t, it could be the end of their operation.”
“Give me a few minutes.” Murray went over to the COM panel and sat down.
Hunt looked at Cullen curiously. “So how did Baumer come to get the connections so quickly?” he mused. “From what Murray says, he’d only just arrived.”
“They gave him a freebie as a hook,” Cullen said. “Got themselves a tame Terran inside PAC.”
Hunt nodded slowly. It was all beginning to make sense. Baumer had been identified early on as a likely potential addict. That was how they had controlled him. So at least that answered one of the sets of questions on Hunt’s list. He looked across anxiously at Murray, who was tapping a code into the touchpad. Baumer’s motivation wasn’t an aspect of it all that Hunt was particularly concerned about just at that moment.
At PAC, Danchekker and Shilohin were putting further questions to Nixie, who was coupled into VISAR. Nixie was allowing VISAR to monitor her thought processes and recollections as she described them.
“You’re saying that in this world that you claim to be from, there weren’t any gadgets at all as we know them, beyond simple implements?” Shilohin said. “No machines, even rudimentary ones?”
“It wasn’t possible to put pieces together that could work the way they can here,” Nixie answered. She made a helpless gesture. “How do I explain this?” She leveled a forearm to point at Shilohin. “If a thing is that long, maybe this way, then it is different when it goes that way.” She rotated her arm horizontally through a right angle. “And all through the day everything changes, too,, even without moving. But in this world nothing makes any difference. Everything’s always the same. Everywhere there’s this magical lawfulness, and impossible things become possible.” She looked questioningly from one to the other.
“The images are consistent with a physics in which the relative dimensions of an object, and hence its shape, are not invariant with its state of motion,” VISAR interpreted, analyzing the pictures in Nixie’s mind. “So it was not possible to construct mechanisms whose parts would move freely under all conditions. The changes with directional orientation and the regular, superposed daily cycle can be understood as secondary effects due to planetary rotation.”