Meeting at Infinity Read Online Free PDF Page B

The relief which overwhelmed him was as violent as the blow the pug had given him in the face.
    He had never really expected it to work. He had just had to do something more than wait passively and skulk in corners. He had sustained himself on a hope he did not believe, and the strain of lying to himself for weeks on end had sapped his energy to the point of collapse. Now that the gamble hadcome off, he found dismayingly that he had no plan prepared, no scheme for survival past this crucial point. And he was too weak to prepare one now.
    Nonetheless, illogical elation started to possess him.
    For the first few minutes of the humming journey, Lyken seemed to have forgotten his new passenger. He drew the face-piece of a transceiver from a concealed panel in the side of the cruiser, put it on, and spoke and listened with intent concentration. Nevada judged that he was giving orders. Although he had spent his working life successfully speculating in the products which men like Ahmed Lyken had imported, he had no very clear picture of their world. Sometimes people had suggested to him that if he went about it the right way he might get a franchise of his own in ten years’ time. But he felt temperamentally ill-equipped for the task, and had never considered the idea seriously. Now, therefore, his mind filled with vague impressions of vast trading deals—buy this, sell that, send another team into unexplored country, trace the source of those strange textiles—which Lyken might now be setting in motion.
    He waited passively till Lyken was through.
    Suddenly eyes hard and penetrating seemed to slap his face as Lyken detached the transceiver and thrust it back in its compartment. A brittle voice betraying no real interest demanded of him, “What do you know of Akkilmar?”
    “Where and what it is,” said Nevada promptly. It was at least half a lie. Erlking’s ramshackle mind had released little more than the simple name and a hint of its importance. But he had staked his future on that; he was willing to ride his luck a little further.
    “I see.” Lyken’s tone was brusque. “What do you want?”
    “Refuge,” said Nevada, letting the words come as they would. “I’ve been hounded for months by the vice-sheriff of the Eastern Quarter, for attempting to murder my wife. He says: She says. I didn’t do it. I’ve been told that once on theterritory of a franchise, no one can touch you without the concessionary’s permission.”
    “True,” said Lyken bleakly. “So—?”
    “So I want six months’ refuge in your franchise. I’ll do anything useful. And what’s more, I’ll pay.”
    “How much?”
    “Half a million,” he said. He would find that.
    “How soon?”
    “Today, if you like.”
    “Done,” said Lyken, and the ghost of a smile crossed his face. He put the transceiver facepiece back on and went on talking to his unseen correspondent.
    The blood had dried on Nevada’s face. He mopped at it with a kerchief and let his mind blank out with utter weariness.

4
    C URDY W ENCE was in the front rank of the crowd when Nevada got taken up into Lyken’s cruiser. He was seventeen years old, born rankless, determined not to stay that way, and as measured as anything, as measured as a foot-rule, as measured as time. He was everything the yonder boys admired about themselves. And he was on the way up.
    So far, working for Jockey Hole was the only upward path he’d found. And that was strictly piecework. Still, if you were good at it, it paid all right. Curdy Wence was better than good at it. He was born lucky. That was why he, and not another of Jockey’s hangabouts, was in this particular crowd at this particular time.
    There were dozens like him assembled to watch Lyken’s departure—young dregs in artificially broad-shouldered jackets of dull gold, maroon or sage green and high boots decorated painstakingly by hand with chrome appliqué work. Their barberclips were personalized with tints of carrot-red or