“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ve been tricked before, but your gems are as represented. I congratulate you, Herald, on driving a hard, fair bargain.”
“That means,” said Alen regretfully, “that I should have asked for more.” The guards were once more lounging in corners and no longer seemed so menacing.
They had a mid-day meal and continued to dispose of their wares. At sunset Alen held a final auction to clean up the odd lots that remained over and was urged to stay to dinner.
The trader, counting a huge wad of the Lyran manpower-based notes, shook his head. “We should be off before dawn, Herald,” he told Alen. “Time is money, time is money.”
“They are very insistent.”
“And I am very stubborn. Thank them and let us be on our way before anything else is done to increase my overhead.”
[Something did turn up—a city watchman with a bloody nose and split lip.
He demanded of the Herald: “Are you responsible for the Cephean maniac known as Elwon?”
Garthkint glided up to mutter in Alen’s ear: “Beware how you answer!”
Alen needed no warning. His grounding included Lyran legal concepts—and on the backward little planet touched with many relics of feudalism; “responsible” covered much territory.
“What has Chief Elwon done?” he parried.
“As you see,” the watchman glumly replied, pointing to his wounds. “And the same to three others before we got him out of the wrecked wineshop and into the castle. Are you responsible for him?”
“Let me speak with my trader for a moment. Will you have some wine meantime?” He signaled and one of the guards brought a mug.
“Don’t mind if I do. I can use it,” sighed the watchman.
“We are in trouble,” said Alen to blackboard. “Chief Elwon is in the ‘castle’—prison—for drunk and disorderly conduct. You as his master are considered responsible for his conduct under Lyran law. You must pay his fines or serve his penalties. Or you can ‘disown’ him, which is considered dishonorable but sometimes necessary. For paying his fine or serving his time you have a prior lien on his services, without pay— but of course that’s unenforceable off Lyra.”
Blackboard was sweating a little. “Find out from the policeman how long all this is likely to take. I don’t want to leave Elwon here and I do want us to get off as soon as possible. Keep him occupied, now, while I go about some business.”
The trader retreated to a corner of the darkening barnlike tavern, beckoning Garthkint and a guard with him as Alen returned to the watchman.
“Good keeper of the peace,” he said, “will you have another?”
He would. .,
“My trader wishes to know what penalties are likely to be levied against the unfortunate Chief Elwon.”
“Going to leave him in the lurch, eh?” asked the watchman a little belligerently. “A fine master you have!”
One of the dealers at the table indignantly corroborated him. “If you foreigners aren’t prepared to live up to your obligations, why did you come here in the first place?-What happens to business if a master can send his man to steal and cheat and then say: ‘Don’t blame me—it was his doing!'”
Alen patiently explained: “On other planets, good Lyrans, the tie of master and man is not so strong that a man would obey if he were ordered to go and steal or cheat.”
They shook their heads and muttered. It was unheard-of.
“Good watchman,” pressed the Herald, “my trader does not want to disown Chief Elwon. Can you tell me what recompense would be necessary—and how long it would take to manage the business?”
The watchman started, on a third cup which Alen had unostentatiously signaled for. “It’s hard to say,” he told the Herald weightily. “For my damages, I would demand a hundred credits at least. The three other members of the watch battered by your lunatic could ask no less. The wineshop suffered easily five hundred credits’ damage. The owner of it was beaten, but that doesn’t matter, of course.”
“No imprisonment?”
“Oh, a flogging, of course”—Alen started before he recalled that the “flogging” was a few half-hearted symbolic strokes on the covered shoulders with a light cane—”but no imprisonment. His H6nor, Judge Krarl, does not sit on the night bench. Judge Krarl is a newfangled reformer, stranger. He professes to believe that mulcting is unjust—that it makes it easy for the rich to commit crime and go scot-free.”