“Well,” said Leeming, settling himself down for a cosy gossip, “I’ll point them out to you the first chance I get and leave you to deal with them as you think fit. Let’s switch to our own language. There are too many big ears around for my liking.” Taking a deep breath, he rattled off at tremendous speed and without pause, “Out sprang the web and opened wide the mirror cracked from side to side the curse has come upon me cried the Lady of—”
Out sprang the door and opened wide and two guards almost fell headlong into the cell in their eagerness to make a quick snatch. Two more posed outside with the fairy glowering between them. Marsin mooned fearfully in the background.
A guard grabbed the loop-assembly, yelled, “I’ve got it!” and rushed out. His companion followed at full gallop. Both seemed hysterical with excitement. There was a pause of ten seconds before the door shut. Leeming exploited the fact. Pointing two fingers of one hand at the group, he made horizontal stabbing motions toward them. Giving ’em Devil’s Horns they’d called it when he was a kid. The classic gesture of donating the evil eye.
“There you are,” he declaimed dramatically; talking to something that nobody else could see. “Those are the scaly-skinned bums I’ve been telling you about. They want trouble. They like it, they love it, they dote on it. Give them all they can take.”
The whole bunch managed to look alarmed before the door cut them from sight with a vicious slam. Listening at the spyhole he heard them tramp away muttering steadily between themselves.
Within ten minutes he had broken a length off the coil hanging from the window-bars, restored the spit and dust disguise of the holding strand. Half an hour later he had another neatly made bopamagilvie. Practice was making him expert in the swift and accurate manufacture of these things. Lacking wood for a base he used the loose nail to dig a hole in the dirt between the big stone slabs composing the floor of his cell. He rammed the legs of the loop into the hole, twisted the contraption this way and that to make ceremonial rotation easy. Then he booted the door something cruel.
When the right moment arrived he lay on his belly and commenced reciting through the loop the third paragraph of Rule 27, Section 9, Subsection B, of Space Regulations. He chose it because it was a gem of bureaucratic phraseology, a single sentence one thousand words long meaning something known only to God.
“Where refuelling must be carried out as an emergency measure at a station not officially listed as a home-station or definable for special purposes as a home-station under Section A(5) amendment A(5)B the said station shall be treated as if it were definable as a home-station under Section A(5) amendment A(5)B providing that the emergency falls within the authorised list of technical necessities as given in Section J(29-33) with addenda subsequent thereto as applicable to home-stations where such are—”
The spyhole flipped open and shut. Somebody scooted away at top speed. A minute afterward the corridor shook to what sounded like a massed cavalry charge. The spyhole again opened and shut. The door crashed inward.
This time they reduced him to his bare pelt, searched his clothes, raked the cell from end to end. Their manner was that of those singularly lacking in brotherly love. Turning the bench upside-down, they tapped it, knocked it, kicked it; did everything but run a large magnifying glass over it.
Watching this operation, Leeming encouraged them by emitting a sinister snigger. There had been a time when he could not have produced a sinister snigger even to win a very large bet. But he could do it now. The ways in which a man can rise to the occasion are without limit.
Giving him a look of sudden death and total destruction, a guard went out, staggered back with a heavy ladder mounted it and suspiciously surveyed the window-gap. As an intelligent examination it was a dead loss because. his mind was concerned only with the solidity of the bars. He grasped each bar with both hands and shook vigorously. Hi fingers did not touch the thread of wire nor did his eyes detect it. Satisfied, he got down and tottered out with the ladder.
The others departed. Leeming dressed himself, listened at the spyhole. Just a very faint hiss of breath and an occasional rustle of clothes nearby. He sat on the bench and waited. In short time the lights blazed on and the spyhole popped open.
Stabbing two fingers toward the hole, he declaimed, “Die, faplap!”
The hole snapped shut. Feet moved away, stamping much too loudly. He waited. After half an hour of complete silence the eye offered itself again and for its pains received another two-fingered curse. Five minutes later it had yet another bestowed upon it. If it was the same eye all the time it was a glutton for punishment.
This game continued at erratic intervals for four hours before the eye had had enough. Leeming immediately made another coiled-loop, gabbled through it at the top of his voice and precipitated another raid. They did not strip him and search the cell this time. They contented themselves with confiscating the gadget. And they showed symptoms of aggravation.
There was just enough wire life for one more blood-pressure booster. He decided to keep it against a future need and get some sleep. Inadequate food and not enough slumber were combining to make inroads upon his physical reserves: Flopping full length on the bench, he sighed and closed red-rimmed eyes. In due time he started snoring fit to saw through the bars. That caused a panic in the passage and brought the gang along in another rush.
Wakened by the uproar, he damned them to perdition. Then he lay down again. He was plain bone-tuckered—but so were they.
He slept solidly until mid-day without a break except for the usual lousy breakfast. Then came the usual lousy dinner. At exercise time they kept him locked in. He hammered and kicked on the door, demanded to know why he wasn’t being allowed to walk in the yard, shouted threats of glandular dissection for all and sundry. They took no notice.
So he sat on the bench and thought things over. Perhaps this denial of his only measure of freedom was a form of retaliation for making them hop around like agitated fleas in the middle of the night. Or perhaps the Rigellian was under suspicion and they’d decided to prevent contact.
Anyway, he had got the enemy bothered. He was messing them about single-handed, far behind the lines. That was something. The fact that a combatant is a prisoner doesn’t mean he’s out of the battle. Even behind thick walls, he can still harass the foe, absorbing his time and energy, undermining his morale, pinning down at least a few of his forces.
The next step, he concluded, was to widen and strengthen the curse. He must do it as comprehensively as possible. The more he spread it and the more ambiguous the terms in which he expressed it the more plausibly he could grab the credit for any and every misfortune that was certain to occur sooner or later.
It was the technique of the gypsy’s warning. People tend to attach specific meanings to ambiguities when circumstances arise and shape themselves to give especial meanings. People don’t have to be very credulous, either. It is sufficient for them to be made expectant, with a tendency to wonder—after the event.
“In the near future a tall, dark man will cross your path.” After which any male above average height, and not a blond, fits the picture. And any time from five minutes to five years is accepted as the near future.
“Mamma, when the insurance man called he really smiled at me. Do you remember what the gypsy said?”
To accomplish anything worth-while one must adapt to one’s own environment. If the said environment is radically different from everyone else’s the method of accommodating to it must be equally different. So far as he knew, he, Leeming, was the only Terran in this prison and the only prisoner held in solitary confinement. Therefore his tactics could have nothing in common with any schemes the Rigellians had in mind.