“Uh, I guess not. Just my clothes and these bags.”
“No jewelry?”
“Well, I’ve got a ring but I don’t suppose it’s worth much.”
“Let me see it.”
Don took off the ring Dr. Jefferson had mailed to him and handed it over. The Chinese stuck a watchmaker’s loop in his eye and examined it. “I’m afraid you are right. Not even true amber—merely plastic. Still—a symbol of security will bind the honest man quite as much as chains. I’ll advance fifty credits on it.”
Don took the ring back and hesitated. The ring could not possibly be worth a tenth of that sum… and his stomach was reminding him that flesh has its insistent demands. Still-his mother had spent at least twice that amount to make sure that this ring reached him (or the paper it had been wrapped in, he corrected himself) and Dr. Jefferson had died in a fashion somehow connected with this same bauble.
He put it back on his finger. “That wouldn’t be fair. I guess I had better find a job.”
“A man of pride. There is always work to be found in a new and growing city; good luck. When you have found employment come back and we can arrange an advance against your wages.” The banker reached into the folds of his gown, pulled out a single credit note. “But eat first—a full belly steadies the judgment. Do me the honor of accepting this as our welcome to the newcomer.”
His pride said no; his stomach said YES! Don took it and said, “Uh, thanks! That’s awfully kind of you. I’ll pay it back, first chance.”
“Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it.” The banker touched a button on his desk, then stood up.
Don said goodbye and left.
There was a man loitering at the door of the bank. He let Don get a step or two ahead, then followed him, but Don paid him no attention, being very busy with his own worries. It was slowly beginning to grow on him that the bottom had dropped out of his world and that there might be no way to put it back together. He had lived in security all his life; he had never experienced emotionally, in his own person, the basic historical fact that mankind lives always by the skin of its teeth, sometimes winning but more often losing—and dying.
But never quitting. In a hundred yards of muddy street he began to grow up, take stock of his situation. He was more than a hundred million miles from where he meant to be. He had no way at once to let his parents know where be was, nor was it a simple matter of waiting two weeks—he was flat broke, unable to pay the high tariff.
Broke, hungry, and no place to sleep… no friends, not even an acquaintance unless, he recalled, you counted “Sir Isaac,” but, for all he knew, his dragon friend might be on the other side of the planet. Certainly not close enough at hand to affect the ham-and-eggs problem!
He decided to settle that problem at once by spending the note the banker had given him. He recalled a restaurant a short distance back and stopped suddenly, whereupon a man jostled him.
Don said, “Excuse me,” and noted that the man was another Chinese—noted it without surprise as nearly half of the contract labor shipped in during the early days of the Venerian colonies had been Orientals. It did seem to him that the man’s face was familiar—a fellow passenger in the Nautilus? Then he recalled that he had seen him at the dock at the foot of the street.
“My fault,” the man answered. “I should look where I’m going. Sorry I bumped you.” He smiled most charmingly.
“No harm done,” Don replied, “but it was my fault. I suddenly decided to turn around and go back.”
“Back to the bank?”
“Huh?”
“None of my business, but I saw you coming out of the bank.”
“As a matter of fact,” Don answered, “I wasn’t going back to the bank. I’m looking for a restaurant and I remembered seeing one back there.”