Fan shook his head, puzzled by that glare; and then, astoundingly, Mayor Dale pointed a finger at him, and said in a voice that trembled:
“There’s the man who’s responsible for the trouble that’s come upon us. Stand forward, Fara Clark, and show yourself. You’ve cost this town seven hundred credits that we could ill afford to spend.”
Fara couldn’t have moved or spoken to save his life. He just stood there in a maze of dumb bewilderment. Before he could even think, the mayor went on, and there was quivering self-pity in his tone:
“We’ve all known that it wasn’t wise to interfere with these weapon shops. So long as the Imperial government leaves them alone, what right have we to set up guards, or act against them? That’s what I’ve thought from the beginning, but this man . . . this • . . this Fara Clark kept after all of us, forcing us to move against our wills, and so now we’ve got a seven-hundred-credit bill to meet and—”
He broke off with: “I might as well make it brief. ‘When I called the garrison, the commander just laughed and said that Jor would turn up. And I had barely disconnected when there was a money call from Jor. He’s on Mars.”
He waited for the shouts of amazement to die down. “It’ll take three weeks for him to come back by ship, and we’ve got to pay for it, and Fara Clark is responsible. He—”
The shock was over. Fara stood cold, his mind hard. 1-le said finally, scathingly: “So you’re giving up, and trying to blame me all in one breath. I say you’re all fools.” As he turned away, he heard Mayor Dale saying something about the situation not being completely lost, as he had learned that the weapon shop had been set up in Clay because the village was equidistant from four cities, and that it was the city business the shop was after. This would mean tourists, and accessory trade for the village stores and— Fara heard no more. Head high, he walked back toward his shop. There were one or two catcalls from the mob, but he ignored them. He had no sense of approaching disaster, simply a gathering fury against the weapon shop, which had brought him to this miserable status among his neighbors.
The worst of it, as the days passed, was the realization, that the people of the weapon shop had no personal interest in him. They were remote, superior, undefeatable. That unconquerableness was a dim, suppressed awareness inside Fara.
When he thought of it, he felt a vague fear at the way they had with his anger against Cayle. How could he have had such a worthless son, he who paid his debts and worked hard, and tried to be decent and to live up to the highest standards of the empress?
A brief, dark thought came to Fara that maybe there was some bad blood on Creel’s side. Not from her mother, of course—Fara added the mental thought hastily. There was a fine, hard-working woman, who hung on to her money, and who would leave Creel a tidy sum one of these days.
But Creel’s father had disappeared when Creel was only a child, and there had been some vague scandal about his having taken up with a telestat actress. And now Cayle with this weapon-shop girl. A girl who had let herself be picked up— He saw them, as he turned the corner onto Second Avenue. They were walking a hundred feet distant, and heading away from Fara. The girl was tall and slender, almost as big as Cayle, and, as Fara came up, she was saying:
“You have the wrong idea about us. A person like you can’t get a job in our organization. You belong in the Imperial Service, where they can use young men of good educatiOn, good appearance and no scruples. I—”
Fara grasped only dimly that Cayle must have been trying to get a job with these people. It was not clear; and his own mind was too intent on his purpose for it to mean anything at the moment. He said harshly:
“Cayle!”
The cohple turned, Cayle with the measured unhurriedness of a young man who has gone a long way on the road to steellikc nerves; the girl was quicker, but withal dignified.
Fara had a vague, terrified feeling that his anger was too great, self-destroying, but the very violence of his emotions ended that thought even as it came. He said thickly:
“Cayle, get home—at once.”
Fara was aware of the girl looking at him curiously from strange, gray-green eyes. No shame, he thought, and his rage mounted several degrees, driving away the alarm that came at the sight of the flush that crept into Cayle’s cheeks.
The flush faded into a pale, tight-lipped anger; Cayle half-turned to the girl, said:
“This is the childish old fool I’ve got to put up with. Fortunately, we seldom see each other; we don’t even eat together. What do you think of him?”
The girl smiled impersonally: “Oh, we know Fara Clark; he’s the backbone of the empress in Clay.”
“Yes,” the boy sneered. “You ought to hear him. He thinks we’re living in heaven; and the empress is the divine power. The worst part of it is that there’s no chance of his ever getting that stuffy look wiped off his face.”
They walked off; and Fara stood there. The very extent of what had happened had drained anger from him as if it had never been. There was the realization that he had made a mistake so great that— He couldn’t grasp it. For long, long now, since Cayle had refused to work in his shop, he had felt this building up to a climax. Suddenly, his own uncontrollable ferocity stood revealed as a partial product of that—deeper—problem. Only, now that the smash was here, he didn’t want to face it— All through the day in his shop, he kept pushing it out of his mind, kept thinking:
Would this go on now, as before, Cayle and he living in the same house, not even looking at each other when they met, going to bed at different times, getting up, Fara at 6:30, Cayle at noon? Would that go on through all the days and years to come?
When he arrived home, Creel was waiting for him. She said:
“Fara, he wants you to loan him five hundred credits, so that he can go to Imperial City.”
Fara nodded wordlessly. He brought the money back to the house the next morning, and gave it to Creel, who took it into the bedroom.
She came out a minute later. “He says to tell you good-by.” When Fara came home that evening, Cayle was gone. He wondered whether he ought to feel relieved or—what?
The days passed. Fara worked. He had nothing else to do, and the gray thought was often in his mind that now he would be doing it till the day he died. Except— Fool that he was—he told himself a thousand times how big a fool—he kept hoping that Cayle would walk into the shop and say:
“Father, I’ve learned my lesson. If you can ever forgive me, teach me the business, and then you retire to a well-earned rest.”
It was exactly a month to a day after Cayle’s departure that the telestat clicked on just after Fara had finished lunch. “Money call,” it sighed, “money call.”
Fara and Creel looked at each other. “Eh,” said Fara finally, “money call for us.”
He could see from the gray look in Creel’s face the thought that was in her mind. He said under his breath: “Damn that boy!” But he felt relieved. Amazingly, relieved! Cayle was beginning to appreciate the value of parents and— He switched on the viewer. “Come and collect,” he said. The face that came on the screen was heavy-jowled, beetle-browed —and strange. The man said:
“This is Clerk Pearton of the Fifth Bank of Ferd. We have received a sight draft on you for ten thousand credits. With carrying charges and government tax, the sum required will be twelve thousand one hundred credits. Will you pay it now or will you come in this afternoon and pay it?”
“B-but . . . b-but—” said Fara. “W-who—”
He stopped, conscious of the stupidity of the question, dimly conscious of the heavy-faced man saying something about the money having been paid out to one Cayle Clark, that morning, in Imperial City. At last, Fara found his voice:
“But the bank had no right,” he expostulated, “to pay out the money without my authority. I—”
The voice cut him off coldly: “Are we then to inform our central that the money was obtained under false pretenses? Naturally, an order will be issued immediately for the arrest of your son.”
“Wait . . . wait—” Fara spoke blindly. He was aware of Creel beside him, shaking her head at him. She was as white as a sheet, and her voice was a sick, stricken thing, as she said: