"You could show me, couldn't you?" Hart asked, almost pleadingly.
"It's far too complicated. I've tinkered with it for years," said Jasper.
Hart managed a feeble grin. "I'm sorry, I thought —»
Jasper draped an arm around his shoulder. "Anything else. Just ask me anything."
"Thanks," said Hart, turning to go.
"Drink?"
"No, thanks," said Hart, and walked out of the door.
He climbed two more flights to the topmost floor and went into his room. His door was never locked. There was nothing in it for anyone to steal. And for that matter, he wondered, what did Jasper have that anyone might want?
He sat down in a rickety chair and stared at his yarner. It was old and battered and ornery, and he hated it.
It was worthless, absolutely worthless, and yet he knew he would have to work with it. It was all he had. He'd slave and reason with it and kick it and swear at it and he'd spend sleepless nights with it. And gurgling and clucking with overweaning gratitude, it would turn out endless reams of mediocrity that no one would buy.
He got up, and walked to the window. Far below lay the river and at the wharfs a dozen ships were moored, disgorging rolls of paper to feed the hungry presses that thundered day and night. Across the river a spaceship was rising from the spaceport, with the faint blue flicker of the ion stream wisping from the tubes. He watched it until it was out of sight.
There were other ships, with their noses pointed at the sky, waiting for the signal — the punched button, the flipped switch, the flicker of a piece of navigation tape — that would send them bounding homeward. First out into the blackness and then into that other place of weird other-worldness that annihilated time and space, setting at defiance the theoretic limit of the speed of light. Ships from many stars, all come to Earth for one thing only, for the one commodity that Earthmen had to sell.
He pulled his eyes from the fascination of the spaceport and looked across the sprawling city, the tumbled, canted, box-like rectangles of the district where he lived, while far to the north shone the faerie towers and the massive greatness of the famous and the wise.
A fantastic world, he thought. A fantastic world to live in. Not the kind of world that H. G. Wells and Stapledon had dreamed. With them it had been a far wandering and galactic empire, a glory and a greatness that Earth had somehow missed when the doors to space had finally been opened. Not the thunder of the rocket, but the thunder of the press. Not the great and lofty purpose, but the faint, quiet, persistent voice spinning out a yarn. Not the far sweep of new planets, but the attic room and the driving fear that the machine would fail you, that the tapes had been used too often, that the data was all wrong.
He went to the desk and pulled all three of the drawers. He found the camera in the bottom one beneath a pile of junk. He hunted for and found the film in the middle drawer, wrapped in aluminum foil.
Rough and tough, he thought, and it shouldn't be too hard to find a man like that in one of the dives along the riverfront, where the space crews on planet leave squandered their pay checks.
The first dive he entered was oppressive with the stink of a group of spidery creatures from Spica and he didn't stay. He grimaced distastefully and got out as fast as he could. The second was repellently patronized by a few cat-like denizens of Dahib and they were not what he was looking for.
But in the third he hit the jackpot, a dozen burly humanoids from Caph — great brawling creatures with a flair for extravagance in dress, a swashbuckling attitude and a prodigious appetite for lusty living. They were grouped about a large round table out in the center of the room and they were whooping it up. They were pounding the table with their tankards and chivvying the scuttling proprietor about and breaking into songs that they repeatedly interrupted with loud talk and argument.
Hart slipped into an unoccupied booth and watched the Caphians celebrate. One of them, bigger and louder and rowdier than the rest, wore red trousers, and a bright green shirt. Looped necklaces of platinum and outlandish alien gems encircled his throat and glittered on his chest, and his hair had not been trimmed for months. He wore a beard that was faintly satanic, and, startlingly enough, his ears were slightly pointed. He looked like an ugly customer to get into a fracas with. -And so-, thought Hart, — he's just the boy I want.-
The proprietor finally lumbered over to the booth.
"Beer,"said Hart. "A big glass."
"Buster," said the man, "no one drinks beer here."
"Well, then, what have you got?"
"I got — bocca- and — igno- and — hzbut- and — greno- and —»
"— Bocca-," said Hart. He knew what — bocca- was and he didn't recognize any of the others. Lord knows what some of them might do to the human constitution. -Bocca-, at least, one could survive.
The man went away and in a little while came back with a mug of — bocca-. It was faintly greenish and it sizzled just a little. What was worse, it tasted like a very dilute solution of sulphuric acid.
Hart squeezed himself back into the corner of the booth and opened his camera case. He set the camera on the table, no farther forward than was necessary to catch Green Shirt in the lens. Sighting through the finder, he got the Caphian in focus, and then quickly pressed the button that set the instrument in motion.
Once that was done, he settled down to drinking — bocca-.
He sat there, gagging down the — bocca- and manipulating the camera. Fifteen minutes was all he needed. A the end of fifteen minutes Green Shirt would be on film. Probably not as good as if he had been using the new fangled spools that Angela was using, but at least he'd have him.
The camera ground on, recording the Caphian's physical characteristics, his personal mannerisms, his habits of speech, his thought processes (if any), his way of life, his background, his theoretic reaction in the face of any circumstance.
Not three-dimensional, thought Hart, not too concise, nor too distinctive, not digging deep into the character and analyzing him — but good enough for the kind of tripe he'd have to write for Irving.
Take this joker and surround him with a few other ruffians chosen haphazardly from the file. Use one of the films from the Deep Dark Villain reel, throw in an ingenious treasure situation and a glob of violence, dream up some God-awful background, and he'd have it, that is, if the yarner worked…
Ten minutes gone. Just five more to go. In five more minutes he'd stop the camera, put it back into its case, slip the case into his pocket and get out of the place as fast as he could. Without causing undue notice, of course.
It had been simple, he thought — much simpler than he could possibly have imagined.
• They're getting on to us-, Angela had said. -Even these crummy aliens.-
Only three more minutes to go.
A hand came down from nowhere, and picked up the camera. Hart swiveled around. The proprietor stood directly behind him, with the camera under his arm.
• Good Lord-, thought Hart, — I was watching the Caphians so closely I forgot about this guy!-
The proprietor roared at him: "So! You sneak in here under false pretences to get your film! Are you trying to give my place a bad name?"
Swiftly Hart flung himself out of the booth, one frantic eye on the door. There was just a chance that he might make it. But the proprietor stuck out an expert foot and tripped him. Hart landed on his shoulders and somersaulted. He skidded across the floor, smashed into a table and rolled half under it.
The Caphians had come to their feet and were looking at him. He could see that they were hoping he'd get his head bashed in.