An hour later he had lost interest in the book and had begun writing a sonnet to Kathrin. He painstakingly constructed six awkward lines, then gave it up as a bad idea and crumpled the paper.
“Not much of a poet, eh?” came a voice from the doorway at his left. Frank jumped as if he’d been stabbed. He whirled toward the door and then laughed with relief to see Pons standing there.
“Good God, Pons! You just about stopped my heart.” It occurred to Frank to become angry. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
Pons took his left hand out of his coat pocket—he was holding Orcrist’s silver pistol. “I followed Sam here,” he said in a toneless voice. “I’m going to kill you.”
Just what I needed, thought Frank, a maniac. He wondered if the gun was loaded—Orcrist had fired it during that ambush a few weeks ago, and he might not have reloaded it. Of course Pons wouldn’t know it had been fired.
“You’re going to kill me? Why?” Frank furtively slid open the top drawer of the desk.
“It’s because of you that I’ve got to kill myself.”
“Well, that’s real sharp reasoning,” said Frank, gently feeling around in the drawer with his right hand. “It wasn’t me that put your wife in a second-rate asylum with cheap ceilings.”
“It was a good asylum!” Pons said loudly. “Your bomb killed her.”
No point in using logic with this guy, Frank told himself. He’s gone round the bend. At that moment the fingers of his right hand closed on the grip of the small pistol Orcrist had told him would be there. He curled his first finger around the trigger and slowly raised the barrel until it touched the underside of the desk-top. He moved it minutely back and forth until he figured it was pointed at Pons’s chest.
“And you’ve got to die for it,” Pons said, raising the silver gun.
Frank pulled the trigger of his own gun. There was a muffled bang and smoke spurted out of the drawer, but the bullet failed to penetrate the thick desk-top. Pons convulsively squeezed the trigger of his gun, and the hammer clicked into an empty chamber. For a moment both men stared at each other tensely.
Frank started laughing. “You idiot,” he gasped. “Sam fired that gun a long time ago.”
Tears welled in Pons’s eyes and spilled down his left cheek. He flung his useless gun onto the floor and ran out of the room. Frank heard him dash up the stairs and out of the cabin; there were footsteps on the deck and then, faintly, he heard the sound of oars clacking in oarlocks.
Perhaps I wasn’t as sympathetic as I ought to have been, Frank thought. Oh well; at least I didn’t kill him. I’m glad it worked out as painlessly as it did. He thoughtfully closed the still-smoking drawer and picked up his book again.
THE sun had climbed midway to noon when Frank’s first pupil arrived the next day. Frank sat smoking in a canvas chair by the rail and watched Lord Gilbert’s body-servant maneuver the skiff alongside Frank’s boat.
Lord Gilbert was a good-natured, very fat man, whose most sophisticated fencing style consisted of taking great, ponderous hops toward his opponent and flailing his sword like a madman with a fly-swatter. Thirty seconds of this always reduced him to a sweating, panting wreck, and Frank was trying to teach him to relax and wait for his opponent to attack.
“What ho, Lord Gilbert!” called Frank cheerfully. “How goes life in the rabbit warrens?”
“Most distressing, Rovzar,” Gilbert puffed, clambering over the gunwale. “Transports keep coming understreet, and getting killed, and are in turn followed by meaner and more vengeful Transports.”
“Well, doubtless they’ll run out of them eventually.”
“Doubtless. And now hundreds of homeless Goriot Valley farmers have settled, or tried to, understreet, and you know how crowded we were even before.”
“True. What you ought to be doing, though, is training all those farmers in the arts of warfare, and then you should weld them and the understreet citizenry into an army to wipe out the Transports with.”
“Yes, you’ve been advising that for some time, haven’t you? But a farmer is only a farmer, Rovzar, and you can’t really beat a plowshare into much of a sword.”
“Oh well. Speaking of swords, let’s go below and see how your parries are coming along.”
“Another thing happened, last night,” said Gilbert, stopping short. “Orcrist’s servant. Pons, died.” Frank stopped also. “He did? How?”
“He walked into one of the methane pits near the southern tunnels and struck a match. I just heard about it this morning.”
“Poor bastard. He never was a very pleasant person, but. ...”
“You knew him, I see!” grinned Gilbert. “Come on, show me those parries.”
Frank worked for two hours with Gilbert, to almost no avail. Finally he advised the lord to carry a shotgun and sent him on his way. Cheerful always, the lord shook Frank’s hand and promised to practice up on everything and come back soon.
At about two in the afternoon another boat, wearing the insignia of the harbor patrol, pulled alongside. A tall blond man in a blue uniform climbed onto Frank’s desk. “Afternoon,” he said to Frank. “Are you the owner of this craft?”
“No sir,” said Frank. “I’m leasing it.”
“And what’s your name?” The man was leafing through papers on a clipboard he carried.
“John Pine,” said Frank, using the name he and Orcrist had agreed on.
“I have a Samuel Brendan Orcrist listed as the owner.”
“That’s right. He’s leased it to me. Wait here and I’ll get the papers for you.” Frank hurried below, found the blue slip and brought it to the man.
The officer looked at it closely and then handed it back. “Looks okay,” he said. “Just checking. Thanks for your time. Be seeing you!” He climbed back into his own boat, got the small steam engine puffing, and with a casual salute motored away across the basin.
WHEN Orcrist visited Frank again, late one afternoon, he brought an ornate envelope with “Francisco Rovzar, Esq.” written in a florid script across the front.
“What is it?” Frank asked.
“It’s an invitation to a party George Tyler is giving in two weeks. It’s in honor of his book being published, I guess. He’s invited all kinds of artists and writers, he tells me. More importantly, there’ll be a lot of good food and drink.”
“Do you think it’d be safe for me to attend? Where’s it being held?”
“In George’s new place, a big house about fifteen levels below the surface, near the Tartarus district. Yes, it ought to be safe enough; the Transports never venture that deep, and no informers will be specifically looking for you, I don’t think. Just call yourself John Pine and all will be well.” Orcrist poked two holes in a beer can and handed the foaming thing to Frank. “I’d say you could even bring a young lady if you cared to.”
“Good idea. Would you convey my invitation to Kathrin?”
“Consider it conveyed.”
It was windy, so they took their beers into the cabin. “Oh, I’ve got something of yours, Sam,” Frank said. He went into his room and came back with the silver pistol. “Here.”
Orcrist took it and looked up at Frank curiously. “I noticed it was gone. Where did you get it?”