The Five Gold Bands Read Online Free PDF Page B

“A hundred thousand, maybe a little more. Say a hundred thirty.”
    Paddy rubbed his face, already red-bearded. “Hmmm. The drive alone is worth a million on Earth.”
    “This ain’t Earth, Red.”
    “If what I hear of prices here in the cluster is so, that’ll feed me about a month.”
    The Earther laughed. “Not quite that bad. Depends on what kind of service you like. The Casino Lodge up Napoleon Street is high. If you want something cheaper, try the Bowsprit, down Pickpocket Alley. It’s clean but not too stylish.”
    Paddy thanked the man gravely. “And perhaps you can tell me the best place to sell the boat because in truth I haven’t a cent in my pocket.”
    The tall man pointed across the field. “If you want a quick deal to go in that door with the yellow glass. Tell the Canope girl you want to talk to Ike.”
    Paddy drove a hard bargain, eloquently describing the luxury, the comfort, the appointments of the spaceboat.
    “—the former property of one of the highest lords of Shaul! Like his private boudoir! Marvellous, my friend Ike, and the anti-gravs over-powered so that you never know when you leave the ground…”
    He left the space-field with a hundred and forty-five thousand marks in assorted notes—yellow, blue and blue-green. He turned his face toward the central part of town, passed through a district of warehouses, second-hand shops, rooming-houses. Then, climbing a slight rise, he came to the quarter of the restaurants, taverns, bordellos.
    Farther up the hill were the concrete and glass hotels, catering to exiles and regular visitors—smugglers, black-birders, ship-stealers, spies. The city was crowded, the streets filled with sauntering men of all races and variants—first-stage types like the Canopes, Maeves, Dyoks, varying in only a few details, then along the metamorphological gamut. The Shauls and Kotons, Labirites and Green-Rassins and then the Alpheratz Eagles, gaunt, sharp, bony as herons, the elfin Asmasians, the fat butter-yellow Loristanese.
    Paddy ate a slow meal at an Earth-style restaurant, then crossed the street to a barber shop, where he bought a shave and a haircut. At a clothing store he dressed himself in clean underclothes, a somber blue jumper, soft boots.
    The proprietress was an ancient Loristanese woman, whose youthful yellow had darkened to a horse-chestnut color. As paddy paid, he leaned confidentially across the counter, winked.
    “And where might I find a good beauty shop, my knowledgeable charmer?”
    The old woman gave him his change and the directions together. “Upstairs and down the hall. The doctor gives you a new face as easy as I change your clothes.”
    Upstairs walked Paddy, down a long corridor broken by a line of cheap wooden doors, each door bearing a name-plate: Galtee Stowage—Chiutt Explosive Supply—Pretagni and Dha, Loristanese Financial Consultants—Ramadh Singh, Funeral Consultant and Insurance, Corpses Buried anywhere—Dr. Ira Tallogg, Dermatologist.
    Three hours later Paddy was a different man. His hair was black with Optichrome B. No longer was his nose broken. Instead it resembled the nose Paddy had worn during his youth. Even his fingers had been capped with new prints and his tongue had been slightly stitched, changing his voice and altering the pattern of the surface.
    Paddy surveyed the new man in the full-length mirror. Behind him the doctor stood silently—a fat neatly-shaved Earther with a sour expression.
    Paddy turned. “How much, doctor?”
    “Five thousand marks.”
    As Paddy counted out the money it came as a sudden sharp discovery that the doctor was the sole link between the old and the new. He said, “How much for the operation and how much for keeping your mouth shut?”
    The doctor said, “All of it either way. I don’t talk. I get asked plenty. There’s more spies in Eleanor than there is in Novo Mundo. All I need to do is talk once and I’m done. The Blue-nose Gang would get me inside the day.”
    Paddy