“But doesn’t it?” asked Alen, drawn off-course in spite of himself. There was pitying laughter around him.
“Look you,” a dealer explained kindly. “The good watchman suffers battery, the mad Cephean or his master is mulcted for damages, the watchman is repaid for his injuries. What kind of justice is it to the watchman if the mad Cephean is locked away in a cell unfined?”
The watchman nodded approvingly. “Well-said,” he told the dealer. “Luckily we have on the night bench a justice of the old school, His Honor, Judge Treel. Stern, but fair. You should hear him! ‘Fifty credits! A hundred credits and the lash! Robbed a ship, eh? Two thousand credits!’ ” He returned to his own voice and said with awe: “For a murder, he never assesses less than ten thousand credits!”
And if the murderer couldn’t pay, Alen knew, he became a “public charge,” “responsible to the state”—that is, a slave. If he could pay, of course, he was turned loose.
“And His Honor, Judge Treel,” he pressed, “is sitting tonight? Can we possibly appear before him, pay the fines and be off?”
“To be sure, stranger. I’d be a fool if I waited until morning, wouldn’t I?” The wine had loosened his tongue a little too far and he evidently realized it. “Enough of this,” he said. “Does your master honorably accept responsibility for the Cephean? If so, corne along with me, the two of you, and we’ll get this over with.”
“Thanks, good watchman. We are coming.”
He went to blackbeard, now alone in his corner, and said: “It’s all right. We can pay off—about a thousand credits— and be on our way.”
The trader muttered darkly: “Lyran jurisdiction or not, it’s coming out of Elwon’s pay. The bloody fool!”
They rattled through the darkening streets of the town in
one of the turbine-powered wagons, the watchman sitting up front with the driver and the trader and the Herald behind.
“Something’s burning,” said Alen to the trader, sniffing the air.
“This stinking buggy—” began blackbeard. “Oops,” he said, interrupting himself and slapping at his cloak.
“Let me, trader,” said Alen. He turned back the cloak, licked his thumb, and rubbed out a crawling ring of sparks spreading across a few centimeters of the cloak’s silk lining. And he looked fixedly at what had started the little fire. It was an improperly-covered slow-match protruding from a bolstered device that was unquestionably a hand weapon.
“I bought it from one* of their guards while you were parleying with the policeman,” explained blackbeard embar-rassedly. “I had a time making him understand. That Garth-kint fellow helped.” He fiddled with the perforated cover of the slow-match, screwing it on more firmly.
“A pitiful excuse for a weapon,” he went on, carefully arranging his cloak over it. “The trigger isn’t a trigger and the thumb-safety isn’t a safety. You pump the trigger a few times to build up pressure, and a little air squirts out to blow the match to life. Then you uncover the match and pull back the cocking-piece. This levers a dart into the barrel. Then you push the thumb-safety which puffs coaldust into the firing chamber and also swivels down the slow-match onto a touch-hole. Poof, and away goes the dart if you didn’t forget any of the steps or do them in the wrong order. Luckily, I also got a knife.”
He patted the nape of his neck and said, “That’s where they carry ’em here. A little sheath between the shoulder-blades—wonderful for a fast draw-and-throw, though it exposes you a little more than I like when you reach. The knife’s black glass. Splendid edge and good balance.
“And the thieving Lyrans knew they had me where it hurt. Seven thousand, five hundred credits for the knife and gun— if you can call it that—and the holsters. By rights I should dock Elwon for them, the bloody fool. Still, it’s better to buy his way out and leave no hard feelings behind us, eh, Herald?”
“Incomparably better,” said Alen. “And I am amazed that you even entertained the idea of an armed jail-delivery. What if Chief Elwon had to serve a few days in a prison? Would that be worse than forever barring yourself from the planet