Growing hungry, I bought a fried cylinder of meat-on-a-stick from a sidewalk vendor. I ate it to the accompaniment of a large and thoroughly incompetent brass band.
The Lunglance would set sail tomorrow morning. It was imperative that I be aboard’before midnight There was plenty of time left, though. My head was beginning to dear again and I took another short blast of Flare. A large batallion of Nullaquan urchins, clad in identical lilac blue uniforms, were marching down Star cross Street and chanting in unison. The sight would have been absolutely intolerable had I been sober.
I repressed any thoughts about Dalusa. Soon enough I would be back in the emotional pressure cooker of the Lunglance. At the thought a drug-inspired depression settled over me. Already I was beginning to feel sick, trapped, frustrated, and weak. A quick watery glimpse of Dalusa’s blistered face appeared in my mind, and I shuddered. I was like a man sick almost to death with nausea, wanting to thrash and struggle but knowing it could only increase the misery.
The Flare was getting me down, I concluded suddenly. An enterprising Nullaquan had set up a bar outside his establishment and I ordered a light beer. I liked Nullaquan light beers, the lighter the better. The lightest ones were almost tasteless.
Four or five beers later I found myself on a whirring electric-powered commuter train, heading north to the second, northern, cluster of docks. From there one could take ferries to the other four islands in the Pentacle group. The train moved with irritating sluggishness, perhaps six miles an hour, the speed of a fast walk. I felt like getting out and pushing, but settled back against the whalehide seat, jostling the kerchief-headed, suspicious Nullaquan matron beside me. Her natural distrust of sailors was only amplified by my being an off-worlder.
The train cars were little metal and plastic cubicles with room for only four people. Each car had two whalehide couches, one facing forward, one backward. With the return of sobriety I noted that the two dour Nullaquan businessmen in the seats facing me were giving me the stern benefit of their attention. I looked away and leaned against the side of the car, letting one arm droop languidly over the side. The car had a sunroof, but no windows. It didn’t need them. It never rained on Nullaqua.
Nullaquan sunsets were impressive, I noted comfortably to myself sometime later. The train was returning from the docks and was full of mustachioed fishermen. Shrimpers, mostly. They waxed the ends of their mustaches.
The sun had already sunk in the west. Now the ridged edge of sunlight was slowly crawling up the eastern cliff wall. The light was much sharper, much less roseate than the dust-altered clifllight at sea level. Up and up it went, unnaturally sharp, already far above the limits of the atmosphere. The rocks had an albedo of around 30 percent, more in spots where long melted streaks had given the cliff-side an obsidianoid sheen, piercingly bright where veins of metal were exposed. The stars were coming out.
The sunlight finished its performance by climbing to the lip of the cliffs. For an instant the broken crags at the very peak shone with stellar brilliance; then they winked out and joined the rest of the crater in shadowed dimness.
And at that very instant, calculated no doubt by parsimonious mathematicians, the Arnar streetlights came on. They were weak. The light in the railroad car flickered on also, a single dim yellow bulb set above our heads in the sunroof.
Only the areas around the cliffside elevators were well lit. There were no excuses for sailors. I piled into the elevator with a dozen glum Nullaquans, and we flew down the cliffside with stomach-turning speed.
The docks were lit, too. There was no chance of stumbling off a pier jnto the dust. And, there was a faint green glow by the docks. A sparse population of Nullaquan plankton had sprung up around them, nourished by water from occasional spills in loading and unloading.
The repairmen had finished their work; the Lunglance was in fine shape. Hie repair crew had even returned the tents and try-pots to the deck, now that it was newly sheathed in plastic. Government workers from the Synod of Ecology were loading whale eggs into the Lunglance’s port hull. The eggs, already fertilized, would be released overboard, three of them for every whale killed. It was no small task; the white, dimpled eggs were a foot across and weighed fifty pounds each. They came from the whale farm on another of the Pentacle Islands. There was a large depression in the top of one of the islands and it had been laboriously filled with dust, ton by ton. Now, captive whales fed and spawned in the shallow lake, and some attempts at specialized breeding were being made. Their young replenished the ocean, and for most of the incubation period their eggs were safe from the needle-beaked octopi that, sucked most eggs dry and normally kept the whale population within bounds.
Very big on ecology, the Nullaquans. Very concerned with stability. Since I was growing a little dehydrated from processing the alcohol I had drunk, I went down to the kitchen for some water.
I had just finished my first glass when young Dumonty Calothrick came clattering down the stairs.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You were robbed. All your money’s gone.”
Calothrick looked puzzled. “Money? I got all my money. Somebody stole my Flare!”
“You mean that daisy didn’t rob you blind?”
“Aw, death, ho,” Calothrick said impatiently. “She charged me a monune and a half for bed space and left me alone. I wasnt in the mood. Especially not with her.” Calothrick shuddered. “Hey . . . you got some Flare left, right? Give me some.”
I noticed for the first time that the whites of Calothrick’s eyes were tinged with a film of yellow, a film like the thin striated layer that first forms on the surface of a pot of molten wax.
“I’ve got your packet,” I said. “I took it when we were in the alley.” I pulled the packet out of my shirt and held it out; Calothrick snatched it from my fingers. “You got the dropper too, huh?”
I handed him the dropper; he took it and glared at me resentfully. “You’re sharp, Newhouse. Mighty sharp. I see you’ve been helping yourself.” He looked at the lowered level of Flare in the packet and slurped up a full dropper.
“I was afraid you’d be searched. It’s illegal now, remember?”
“Illegal. What makes you think any of these deadheads would have known what it was? I would have told them it was medicine.”
“You were pretty blasted.”
“You must think I’m some kind of rube!” snapped Calothrick, tilting his head back and taking a blast from the eyedropper. “Get this straight. I may be young, but I’m not blind.” He paused to belch. “You’ve been keeping most of the money and all of the Flare. I want some more. Maybe a bottleful. Especially if you’re going to be using mine all the time.”
I was angry. I stopped to yawn. “A bottle. What would you do with it? Where would you put it? The mates would find it for sure. If you want more, you can come down here after it.”
Calothrick hesitated; the Flare was taking hold. “Well, listen, man,” he said vaguely. “I’m not addicted to it or anything, see, but I’m getting more interested in it, and I feel like it’d be better if I always had some with me. What if it all gets stolen again? I need plenty. A couple of weeks’ worth at least.”
“How much is that?”
“Oh . . . about four dropperfuls a day . . . two or three packetfuls, I guess.”
“You’ve got till midnight,” I said. “Go up to Arnar and buy yourself some packets.”
Calothrick left, scowling. Four droppers a day, I reflected. A dosage of that size would probably kill me. And if he kept it up at such a rate, Calothrick’s brain cells would be destroyed. Burnt out. Unless he was of unusual physical resilience, Calothrick would be reduced to a condition of imbecility within a few years.