I put a hand up and felt the lumps and ridges along the side of my throat and jaw. “I know; it looks like hell. But I’m not asking for any beauty prizes. I’ll pay my way.”
“I suppose you must make your try. But after, Biridanju—remember: We’re based nearby, and call here at Inciro ever and anon. I’ll welcome you as shipmate whenever you’re ready.”
We landed a few hours later on a windswept ramp between a gray sea and a town growing on a hillside. Captain Ancu-Uriru was there ahead of us. He talked earnestly with In-Ruhic for a while, then invited me to his quarters aboard the yacht. There he sat me down and offered me a drink and a double-barreled cigar, rolled from two different weeds which, when combined, produced a smoke worse than any three nickle stogies.
“Biridanju, I tell you freely, you’ve made me a rich man,” he said. “I thought at first you were a shill who’d bring pirates down on me. Almost, I had you shot before you boarded.” He made a face that might have been a smile. “Your cat saved you. It passed reason that a man with your wounds, and an animal-lover, could be but a decoy for corsairs. I ordered In-Ruhic to watch you closely, and for long I slept but little, watching these beautiful screens for signs of mischief. Now I know I did you an injury.”
“You saved my life,” I said. “No apologies needed.”
He lifted a flat box from a drawer of the gorgeous inlaid desk. “I am a just man, Biridanju; or so I hope. I sold the special stores aboard this cutter for a sum greater than any year’s profits I’ve known since I first captained a trader. The proceeds are yours, your fair share.”
I lifted the lid and looked at an array of little colored sticks an eighth of an inch square and an inch long.
“There is enough there to keep you in comfort for many years,” he said. “If you squander it not on follies, such as star-messages or passenger fares—not that there’s enough to take you far.” He gave me a sharp look that meant In-Ruhic had told him my plans.
I thanked him and assured him I’d make it go as far as I could.
It took me ten minutes to collect my personal belongings from the ship and buckle Eureka into the harness I’d made for him. Then Ancu-Uriru took me through the port formalities, which weren’t much for anyone with a bankroll, and found me an inn in the town. In-Ruhic joined us for a final drink in my room, and then they left, and I sat on the side of the plain little bunk in the plain little room in the yellow twilight and scratched Eureka behind the ears and felt the loneliness close in.
3
The town was named Inciro, like the planet. It was one of half a dozen ports that had been built ages past to handle the long-vanished trade in minerals and hides and timber from the interior of the one big continent. The population of about ten thousand people, many of whom had six fingers on each hand for some reason, were tall, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, gloomy-looking, with a sort of Black Irish family resemblance, like Eskimos or Hottentots. I spent a few days wandering around the town, sampling the food in different chophouses and seafood dives—they were all good—and drinking a tasty red beer called “izm.” The mixed dialect I’d learned from In-Ruhic and his men was good enough to carry on a basic conversation. I soon learned there was no Zeridajhi Embassy anywhere on the planet; the nearest thing to it was a consular agent representing the commercial interest of the half dozen worlds within five light-years of Inciro.
I called on him. He was a fattish, hairy man in a stale-smelling office over a warehouse. He steepled his pudgy fingers and listened to what I had to say, then solemnly suggested I forget the whole thing. It seemed it was a big Galaxy, and the things that had maimed me and stolen Milady Raire could be anywhere in it—probably at the far side of it by now. No belligerent nonhuman had been seen in these parts for more centuries than I had years. He would have liked to have told me I’d imagined it all, but his eyes kept straying back to my scars.
Eureka went with me on my walks, attracting quite a bit of attention at first. The Incirinos had seen a few cats before, but none his size. He did more than keep me company; one evening a trio of roughnecks with too many bowls of izm inside them came over to get a closer look at my scars, and he came to his feet from where he’d been curled up under the table and made a sound like tearing canvas and showed a mouthful of teeth, and they backed away fast.
I found a little old man who hung around one of the bars who knew half a dozen useful dialects. For the price of enough drinks each evening to keep him in a talking mood, he gave me language lessons, plus the beginnings of an education on the state of this end of the Galaxy. He told me how the human race had developed a long time ago on a world near Galactic Center, had spread outward in all directions for what must have been a couple of hundred thousand years, settled every habitable planet they found and built a giant empire that collapsed peacefully after a while of its own weight. That had been over twenty thousand years earlier; and since then the many separate tribes of Man had gone their own ways.
“Now, take you,” he poked a skinny finger at me. “From a planet you call ‘Eart.’ Thought you were the only people in the Universe. But all you were was a passed-over colony, or maybe what was left of a party marooned by an accident; or a downed battleship. Or maybe you were a penal colony. Or perhaps a few people wandered out there, just wanting to be alone. A few thousand years pass, and—there you are!” He looked triumphant, as if he’d just delivered a rigorous proof of the trisection of the angle.
“But we’ve dug up bones,” I told him. “Ape-men, and missing links. They show practically the whole chain of evolution, from animals to men. And we’ve got gorillas and chimps and monkeys that look too much like us to just be coincidence.”
“Who said anything about coincidence?” he came back. “Life adapts to conditions. Similar conditions, similar life. You ever look at the legs and feet on a plink-lizard? Swear they were human, except they’re only so long. Look at flying creatures; birds, mammals, reptiles, goranos, or mikls; they all have wings, all flap ’em, all have hollow bones, use two legs for walking—”
“Even Eureka here is related to humanity,” I pressed on. “We have more similarities than we have differences. As embryos of a few weeks, you can’t tell us apart.”
He nodded and grinned. “Uh-huh. And where’d you say you got him? Not on Eart.”
It was like arguing religion. Talking about it just confirmed everyone in his original opinion. But the talking was good experience. By the time I’d been on Inciro for three months, Earth time, I was fluent in the lingua franca that the spacers used, and had a pretty good working vocabulary in a couple of other dialects. And I kept my Zeridajhi sharpened up with long imaginary conversations with the Lady Raire, in which I explained over and over again how we should have greeted the midgets.
I looked up a local surgeon who examined my wounds and clucked and after a lot of lab studies and allergy tests, put me under an anesthetic and rebuilt my shoulder with metal and plastic to replace what was missing. When the synthetic skin had stitched itself in with the surrounding hide, he operated again, to straighten out my ribs. He wanted to reupholster the side of my neck and jaw next, but the synthetic hide was the same pale color as the locals; it wouldn’t have improved my looks much. And by then, I was tired of the pain and boredom of plastic surgery. My arm worked all right now, and I could stand straight again instead of cradling my smashed side. And it was time to move on.
In-Ruhic’s ship called about then, and I asked his advice.
“I don’t want to sign on for just a local run,” I told him. “I want to work my way toward Zeridajh, and ask questions along the way. Sooner or later I’ll find a lead to the midgets.”
“This is a long quest you set yourself, Biridanju,” he said. “And a vain one.” But he took me along to a local shipowner and got me a place as an apprentice power-section tender on a freighter bound inward toward a world called Topaz.