‘That’s where you’re wrong, Vince. I told you. He bribes the saposaurs with steel knives so they’ll go after the other plantations, but leave his alone. But it takes a lot of knives. There are lots of saposaurs. And it’s against the law, of course.’
‘So?’
‘So he can’t get all the knives he wants,’ I explained patiently. ‘But I can get them for him. Plenty! We talked about it, Diane and I; that was what we were going to offer him. But now - no. Now it’s war.’
Dunlap said tenaciously: ‘Explain that a little, will you? Where were you going to get them?’
‘I know where there’s a shipload! Did you ever hear of the Formidable? Old rocket ship - oh, twenty-five years back. It crashed. They did that, in those days. It missed Glendoon by twenty miles, smashes itself up and sank in forty feet of mud. But I know where it is.’ I let that sink in as the old rocket had sunk into the greasy mud. ‘I found it while I was working for Quayle, digging his own drainage ditches, blasting with his own plutonium. I thought of telling him about it. But I told Diane first, and then the two of us.... Well - anyway, we didn’t tell him. And it’s loaded with knives. That was twenty-five years ago, you see. They used to try to trade with the saposaurs then.’
Dunlap cleared his throat, ‘I, uh, I think I left my wallet at the table. Wait a minute, will you? I’ll be right back.’
Vince Borton stared after him. Then, lowering his voice so that the unhearing doorman would really not hear, he blazed: ‘Oliver, you idiot! What’s the use of telling him all those lies?’
‘No, Vince. Don’t get me wrong. They’re only part lies. I do know where the Formidable crashed - but it isn’t forty feet of mud, it’s four hundred and Quayle’s own thousand-acre drainage lake is right on top of it now. He’ll never recover it. But he’ll want those knives, as long as he thinks they can be had.’
‘So? Then why did you tell the Earthie about it? Why not tell Quayle?’
I stepped back to the entrance of the Terra Club. The noise of revelry was loud inside it, loud enough to drown out most of the distant full roll of blasting. But I could see clearly through the double glass door.
Even through the door, across the crowded dance floor, I could see someone bending to talk to Albert Quayle; I could see his look of worry, then the change of expression. Avarice gleamed out of his eyes, like golden glints from a pawnbroker’s sign.
‘Don’t worry, Vince, I said softly. ‘Quayle knows.’
It wasn’t far to the Wallow. Borton led us by the taped path to the water’s edge. We were quiet, especially Dunlap.
The torches were gone. Most of the people were gone. Only scattered couples and groups were left, many drunk, all invisible in the clotted fog. The thick water in the Wallow had risen to the very edge of the tapewalk.
‘Under here.’ Vince held the tape for us. We stepped off into sucking mud. The distant rumble of explosions was still drumming at the horizons. Venus is an enormous planet, bigger in land area than four Earths. There is much blasting to be done and the sound of plutonium carries.
But above the distant boom, suddenly I heard something else. A thin, distant voice cut like piano wire at my heart. Out in the middle of the Wallow, Diane, invisible, was moaning. ‘Help me! Please, the water’s getting higher.’
And there were people within the sound of her voice - a good many, though most had left - and they had boats if they chose to use them. But she wasn’t there for them. She was nobody. A ghost. If anyone knew she was alive, there was no sign shown.
‘Dunlap. Get a boat.’
He looked at me.
‘Go ahead, man. Ask someone - anybody. They’ll lend it to you because you’re wearing the brassard. But they won’t talk to Borton or me.’
He trudged off, muttering.
As soon as he had disappeared into the fog, I said: ‘All right, Vince. You remember what I told you in front of the Club. Now do it!’
‘Aw, Oliver! You’re crazy! Do you know what you’re getting into?’
‘Do you want to be shunned all the short rest of your life?’
He grunted once and walked away. But I knew he didn’t approve. That didn’t matter. What mattered was Diane and life.
So now I was all alone in the hot slimy fog with Diane’s distant sobs tearing at me. I wanted to call to her, but there was a reason for not doing it.
But time was passing.
The Wallow was filling rapidly now with the run-off from the hills. The air was twenty degrees colder. Still hot - terribly hot by Earth standards, but as our portion of Venus rolled into shadow, water was wrung out of the sodden air and it had to go somewhere. Now the Wallow was a hundred acres of steaming muddy water. All that was left of the red mud of six hours before was a few islands poking up. Diane was on one of them. But in a while, maybe a very short while, all of the islands would disappear. By full flood time the shallowest point in the Wallow would be sixty feet deep.
And it was not merely drowning that endangered her. That water was hot.
Time was passing...
Then I heard Dunlap’s wheezing breath, and a moment later the thunk of his oars moving blindly towards me in the fog.
‘Here!’I cried.
He found me a moment later.
I scrambled aboard, and we rowed clumsily out on the soupy lake, following the sound of Diane’s sobbing voice.
She cried out unbelievingly: ‘Oh god!’
I clutched at her in the mist. It was like Leander embracing Hero, still wet from the raging Hellespont; it was the meaning and purpose of all my life.
Then I felt her go suddenly tense.
She strained to see through the hot fog. In a voice that cracked a little she said: ‘It’s - it’s the Earthie.’
I looked around politely.
Dunlap was standing there in an awkward, embarrassed stance. His face was half turned away.
He cleared his throat. ‘I can explain,’ he apologized.
‘Explained what, Mr. Dunlap?’
He felt his throat. ‘I mean, I thought she’d take this attitude. I knew she wouldn’t understand about what happened. Here I am trying to help you, and -’
‘What did happen, Dunlap?’
Diane rasped furiously: ‘He’s the one! He got you away on purpose, I swear it! And then the fog closed in, remember? And somebody grabbed me. Grabbed me! ‘
‘I know, dear.’
‘But it was physical! Like an Earthie. It must have been him. He grabbed me, and brought me out here on a boat. And left me. And then some people came by and I called to them, and - they shunned me. He did it!’
‘But it wasn’t me, I swear. Ask your friend here! I was with him, wasn’t I?’
‘You were with me for about three minutes.’ I patted his arm with my free hand. ‘But you didn’t do it,’ I reassured him. ‘I know that. It wasn’t him, Diane.’
‘Then who?’
I stopped her. ‘Be patient, Diane. Just for a few moments.’
We stood there. Then there were voices in the fog... a canoe’s paddling ... and then a familiar whining voice, droning the nobody’s familiar whimpering cry. ‘Mister? Please, mister. I haven’t eaten in three days -’
‘Vince!’ I shouted. ‘Here we are.’
In a moment he came up out of the fog, looked us over and nodded. Behind him there were other figures in the fog.
‘Who the devil are they?’ Dunlap demanded, fingering his brassard.
‘Nobody,’ I told him. ‘Nobody at all.’
There were four of them, ghostly in the mist. In the fog they had no faces, only vague mottled shapes, and faint voices that agreed: ‘Nobody, mister. Nobody.’