Chapter 8

“STUPID old bat,” Ross muttered. They were walking aimlessly down Fifteen Street, the nicely-landscaped machine tool works behind them.

Helena said timidly: “You really shouldn’t talk that way, Ross. She is older than you, after all. Old heads are——”

“——wisest,” he wearily agreed. “Also the most conservative. Also the most rigidly inflexible; also the most firmly closed to the reception of new ideas. With one exception.”

She reeled under the triple blasphemy and then faintly asked: “What’s the exception?”

Ross became aware that they were not alone. Their very manner of walking, he a little ahead, obviously leading the way, was drawing unfavorable attention from passers-by. Nothing organized or even definite—just looks ranging from puzzled distaste to anger. He said, “Somebody named Haarland. Never mind,” and in a lower voice: “Straighten up. Step out a little ahead of me. Scowl.”

She managed it all except the scowl. The expression on her face got some stupefied looks from other pedestrians, but nothing worse.

Helena said loudly and plaintively: “I don’t like it here after all, Ross. Can’t we get away from all these women?”

Should the impulse seize you, placard ancient Brooklyn with twenty-four sheets proclaiming the Dodgers to be cellar-dwelling bums. Mount a detergent box and inform a crowd of Altairians that they are degenerate slith-fondlers if you must. Announce in a crowded Cephean bar room that Sadkia Revall is no better than she should be. From these situations you have some chance of emerging intact. But never, never pronounce the word “women” as Helena pronounced it on Fifteen Street, Novj Grad, Azor.

The mob took only seconds to form.

Ross and Helena found themselves with their backs to the glass doors of a food store. The handful of women who had actually heard the remark were all talking to them simultaneously, with fist-shaking. Behind them stood as many as a dozen women who knew only that something had happened and that there were comfortably outnumbered victims available. The noise was deafening, and Helena began to cry. Ross first wondered if he could bring himself to knock down a woman; then realized after studying the hulking virago in their foreground that he might bring himself to try but probably would not succeed.

She seemed to be accusing Helena of masquerading, of advocating equality, of uttering obscenely antisocial statements in the public road, to the affront of all decent-minded girls.

There was violence in the air. Ross was on the point of blocking a roundhouse right when the glass doors opened behind them. The small diversion distracted the imbecile collective brain of the mob.

“What’s going on here?” a suety voice demanded. “Ladies, may I please get through?”

It was a man trying to emerge from the food shop with a double armful of cartons. He was a great fat slob, quite hairless, and smelling powerfully of kitchen. He wore the gravy-spotted whites of any cook anywhere.

The virago said to him, “Keep out of this, Willie. This fellow here’s a masquerader. The thing I heard him say——!”

“I’m not,” Helena wept. “I’m not!”

The cook stooped to look into her face and turned on the mob. “She isn’t,” he said definitely. “She’s a lady from another system. She was slopping up triple antigravs at my place last night with a gang of jet pilots.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing!” the virago yelled.

“Madam,” the cook said wearily, “after her third antigrav I had to trip her up and crown her. She was about to climb the bar and corner my barman.”

Ross looked at her fixedly. She stopped crying and nervously cleared her throat.

“So if you’ll just let us through,” the cook bustled, seizing the psychological moment of doubt. His enormous belly bulldozed a lane for them. “Beg pardon. Excuse us. Madam, will you—thank you. Beg pardon——”

The lynchers were beginning to drift away, embarrassed. The party had collapsed. “Faster,” the cook hissed at them. “Beg pardon——” And they were in the clear and well down the street.

“Thank you, Sir,” Helena said humbly.

“Just ‘Willie’, if you please,” the fat man said.

One hand descended on Ross’s shoulder and another on Helena’s. They both belonged to the virago. She spun them around, glaring. “I’m not satisfied with the brush-off,” she snapped. “Exactly what did you mean by that remark you made?”

Helena wailed, “It’s just that you and all these other women here seem so young.”

The virago’s granite face softened. She let go and tucked in a strand of steel-wool hair. “Did you really think so, dear?” she asked, beaming. “There, I’m sorry I got excited. A wee bit jealous, were you? Well, we’re broad-minded here in Novj Grad.” She patted Helena’s arm and walked off, smiling and jaunty.

Virgin Willie led off and they followed him. Ross’s knees were shaky. The virago had not known that to Helena “young” meant “stupid.”

The cook absently acknowledged smiles and nods as they walked. He was, obviously, a character. Between salutes he delivered a low-voiced, rapid-fire reaming to Ross and Helena. “Silly stunt. Didn’t you hear about the riots? Supposed to be arms caches somewhere here on the south side. Everybody’s nerves absolutely ragged. Somebody gets smashed up in traffic, they blame it on us. Don’t care where you’re from. Watch it next time.”

“We will, Willie,” Helena said contritely. “And I think you run an awfully nice restaurant.”

“Yeah,” said Ross, looking at her.

Willie muttered, “I guess you’re clear. You still staying at that hot pilot’s hangout? This is where we say good-by, then. You turn left.”

He waddled on down the street. Helena said instantly, “I don’t remember a thing, Ross.”

“Okay,” he said. “You don’t remember a thing.”

She looked relieved and said brightly, “So let’s get back to the hotel.”

“Okay,” he said. Climbed the bar and tried to corner the ... Halfway to the hotel he slowed, then stopped, and said, “I just thought of something. Maybe we’re not staying there any more. After last night why should Breuer carry us on her tab? I thought we’d have some money to carry us from the Cavallos by now——”

“The ship?” she asked in a small voice.

“Across the continent. Hell! Maybe Breuer forgave and forgot. Let’s try, anyway.”

They never got as far as the hotel. When they reached the square it stood on, there was a breathless rush and Bernie stood before them, panting and holding a hand over his chest. “In here,” he gasped, and nodded at a shopfront that announced hot brew. Ross thoughtlessly started first through the door and caught Bernie’s look of alarm. He opened the door for Helena, who went through smiling nervously.

They settled at a small table in an empty corner in stiff silence. “I’ve been walking around that square all morning,” Bernie said, with a cowed look at Helena.

Ross told her: “This young man and I had a talk yesterday at the plane while you were eating. What is it, Bernie?”

He still couldn’t believe that he was doing it, but Bernie said in a scared whisper: “Wanted to head you off and warn you. Breuer was down at the field cafe this morning, talking loud to the other hot-shots. She said you—both of you—talked equality. Said she got up with a hangover and you were gone. But she said there’d be six policewomen waiting in your room when you got back.” He leaned forward on the table. Ross remembered that he had been forced to sell his ration card.

“Here comes the waiter,” he said softly. “Order something for all of us. We have a little money. And thanks, Bernie.”

Helena asked, “What do we do?”

“We eat,” Ross said practically. “Then we think. Shut up; let Bernie order.”

They ate; and then they thought. Nothing much seemed to come from all the thinking, though.

They were a long, long way from the spaceship. Ross commandeered all of Helena’s leftover cash. It was almost, not quite, enough for one person to get halfway back to Azor City. He and Bernie turned out their pockets and added everything they had, including pawnable valuables. That helped. It made the total almost enough for one person to get three-quarters of the way back.

It didn’t help enough.

Ross said, “Bernie, what would happen if we, well, stole something?”

Bernie shrugged. “It’s against the law, of course. They probably wouldn’t prosecute, though.”

“They wouldn’t?”

“Not if they can prove egalitarianism on you. Stealing’s against the law; preaching equality is against the state. You get the maximum penalty for that.”

Helena choked on her drink, but Ross merely nodded. “So we might as well take a chance,” he said. “Thanks, Bernie. We won’t bother you any more. You’ll forget you heard this, won’t you?”

“The hell I will!” Bernie squawked. “If you’re getting out of here, I want to go with you! You aren’t leaving me behind!”

“But Bernie——” Ross started. He was interrupted by the manager, a battleship-class female with a mighty prow, who came scowling toward them.

“Pipe down,” she ordered coarsely. “This place is for decent people; we don’t want no disturbances here. If you can’t act decent, get out.”

“Awk,” said Helena as Ross kicked her under the table. “I mean, yes ma’am. Sorry if we were talking too loud.” They watched the manager walk away in silence.

As soon as she was fairly away, Ross hissed, “It’s out of the question, Bernie. You might be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.”

Bernie asked, startled, “The what?”

“The—never mind, it’s just an expression where I come from. It means you might get out of this place and find yourself somewhere worse. We don’t know where we’re going next; you might wish to God you were back here within the next three days.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Bernie said earnestly. “Look, Ross, I played square with you. I didn’t have to stick my neck out and warn you. How about giving me a break too?”

Helena interrupted, “He’s right, Ross. After all, we owe him that much, don’t we? I mean, if a person does that much for a person, a person ought to——”

“Oh, shut up.” Ross glared at both of them. “You two seem to think this is a game,” he said bitterly. “Let me set you straight, both of you. It isn’t. More hangs on what happens to me than either of you realize. The fate of the human race, for instance.”

Helena flashed a look at Bernie. “Of course, Ross,” she said soothingly. “Both of us know that, don’t we, Bernie?”

Bernie stammered, “Sure—sure we do, Ross.” He rubbed his ankle. He went on, “Honest, Ross, I want to get the hell away from Azor once and for all. I don’t care where you’re going. Anything would be better than this place and the damned female bloodsuckers that——”

He stopped, petrified. His eyes, looking over Ross’s shoulder, were enormous.

“Go on, sonny,” said a rich female voice from behind Ross. “Don’t let me and the lieutenant stop you just when you’re going good.”

“It must have been that damn manager,” Bernie said for the fifteenth time.

Ross uncrossed his legs painfully and tried lying on the floor on his side. “What’s the difference?” he asked. “They got us; we’re in the jug. And face it: somebody would have caught us sooner or later, and we might have wound up in a worse jail than this one.” He shifted uncomfortably. “If that’s possible, I mean. Why don’t they at least have beds in these places?”

“Oh,” said Bernie immediately, “some do. The jails in Azor City and Nuevo Reykjavik have beds; Novj Grad, Eleanor, and Milo don’t. I mean, that’s what they tell me,” he added virtuously.

“Sure,” Ross growled. “Well, what do they tell you usually happens next?”

Bernie spread his hands. “Different things. First there’s a hearing. That’s all over by now. Then an indictment and trial. Maybe that’s started already; sometimes they get it in on the same day as the hearing, sometimes not. Then—tomorrow sometime, most likely—comes the sentencing. We’ll know about that, though, because we’ll be there. The law’s very strict on that—they always have you in the court for sentencing.”

Ross cried, “You mean the trial might be going on right now without us?”

“Of course. What else? Think they’d take a chance on having the prisoners creating a disturbance during the trial?”

Ross groaned and turned his face to the wall. For this, he thought, he had come the better part of a hundred light years; for this he had left a comfortable job with a brilliant future. He spent a measurable period of time cursing the memory of old Haarland and his double-jointed, persuasive tongue.