“Charley Dickon! What the devil are you doing here like that?”
Pulcher jerked upright. Dickon here? He looked around.
But Dickon was not in sight. Only Yoder was coming down the corridor toward him; oddly, Yoder was looking straight at him! And it had been Yoder’s voice.
Yoder’s face froze.
The expression on Yoder’s face was an odd one but not unfamiliar to Milo Pulcher. He had seen it once before that day. It was the identical expression he had seen on the face of that young punk who had replaced him in court, Donley.
Yoder said awkwardly, “Oh, Milo, it’s you. Hello. I, uh, thought you were Charley Dickon.”
Pulcher felt the hairs at the back of his neck tingle. Something was odd here. Very odd. “It’s a perfectly natural mistake,” he said. “I’m six feet tall and Charley’s five feet three. I’m thirty-one years old. He’s fifty. I’m dark and he’s almost bald. I don’t know how anybody ever tells us apart anyway.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” Yoder blustered.
Pulcher looked at him thoughtfully for a second.
“You’re lucky,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I know. But I hope to find out.”
V
Some things never change. Across the entrance to The New Metropolitan Cafe & Men’s Grille a long scarlet banner carried the words:
VOTE THE STRAIGHT TICKET
Big poster portraits of the mayor and Committeeman Dickon flanked the door itself. A squat little soundtruck parked outside the door blared ancient marches of the sort that political conventions had suffered through for more than two centuries back on Earth. It was an absolutely conventional political fund-raising dinner; it would have the absolutely conventional embalmed roast beef, the one conventionally free watery Manhattan at each place, and the conventionally boring after-dinner speeches. (Except for one.) Milo Pulcher, stamping about in the slush outside the entrance, looked up at the constellations visible from Altair Nine and wondered if those same stars were looking down on just such another thousand dinners all over the Galaxy. Politics went on, wherever you were. The constellations would be different, of course; the Squirrel and the Nut were all local stars and would have no shape at all from any other system. But- He caught sight of the tall thin figure he was waiting for and stepped out into the stream of small-time political workers, ignoring their greetings. “Judge, I’m glad you came.”
Judge Pegrim said frostily, “I gave you my word, Milo. But you’ve got a lot to answer to me for if this is a false alarm. I don’t ordinarily attend partisan political affairs.”
“It isn’t an ordinary affair, Judge.” Pulcher conducted him into the room and sat him at the table he had prepared. Once it had held place cards for four election-board workers from the warehouse district, who now buzzed from table to table angrily; Pulcher had filched their cards. The judge was grumbling:
“It doesn’t comport well with the bench to attend this sort of thing, Milo. I don’t like it.”
“I know, Judge. You’re an honest man. That’s why I wanted you here.”
“Mmm.” Pulcher left him before the Mmm could develop into a question. He had fended off enough questions since the thoughtful half hour he had spent pacing back and forth in front of the mayor’s mansion. He didn’t want to fend off any more. As he skirted the tables, heading for the private room where he had left his special guests, Charley Dickon caught his arm.
“Hey, Milo! I see you got the judge out. Good boy! He’s just what we needed to make this dinner complete.”
“You have no idea how complete,” said Pulcher pleasantly, and walked away. He didn’t look back. There was another fine potential question-source; and the committeeman’s would be even more difficult to answer than the judge’s. Besides, he wanted to see Madeleine.
The girl and her five accomplices were where he had left them. The private bar where they were sitting was never used for affairs like this. You couldn’t see the floor from it. Still, you could hear well enough, and that was more important.
The boys were showing nervousness in their separate ways. Although they had been convicted hardly more than a day, had been sentenced only a few hours, they had fallen quickly into the convict habit. Being out on bail so abruptly was a surprise. They hadn’t expected it. It made them nervous. Young Foltis was jittering about, muttering to himself. The Hopgood boy was slumped despondently in a corner, blowing smoke rings. Jimmy Lasser was making a castle out of sugar cubes.
Only Madeleine was relaxed.
As Pulcher came in she looked up calmly. “Is everything all right?” He crossed his fingers and nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said. Pulcher blinked. Don’t worry. It should have been he who was saying that to her, not the other way around. It came to him that there was only one possible reason for her calm confidence.
She trusted him.
But he couldn’t stay. The ballroom was full now, and irritable banquet waiters were crashing plates down in front of the loyal Party workers. He had a couple of last-minute things to attend to. He carefully avoided the eye of Judge Pegrim, militantly alone at the table by the speaker’s dais, and walked quickly across the room to Jimmy Lasser’s father. He said without preamble: “Do you want to help your son?”
Tim Lasser snarled, “You cheap shyster! You wouldn’t even show up for the trial! Where do you get the nerve to ask me a question like that?”
“Shut up. I asked you something.”
Lasser hesitated, then read something in Pulcher’s eyes. “Well, of course I do,” he grumbled.
“Then tell me something. It won’t sound important. But it is. How many rifles did you sell in the past year?”
Lasser looked puzzled, but he said, “Not many. Maybe half a dozen. Business is lousy all over, you know, since the Icicle Works closed.”
“And in a normal year?”
“Oh, three or four hundred. It’s a big tourist item. You see, they need cold-shot rifles for hunting the fish. A regular bullet’ll set them on fire-touches off the hydrogen. I’m the only sporting-goods merchant in town that carries them, and-say, what does that have to do with Jimmy?”
Pulcher took a deep breath. “Stick around and you’ll find out. Meanwhile, think about what you just told me. If rifles are a tourist item, why did closing the Icicle Works hurt your sales?” He left.
But not quickly enough. Charley Dickon scuttled over and clutched his arm, his face furious. “Hey, Milo, what the hell! I just heard from Sam Apfel-the bondsman-that you got that whole bunch out of jail again on bail. How come?”
“They’re my clients, Charley.”
“Don’t give me that! How’d you get them out when they’re convicted, anyway?”
“I’m going to appeal the case,” Pulcher said gently.
“You don’t have a leg to stand on. Why would Pegrim grant bail anyhow?”
Pulcher pointed to Judge Pegrim’s solitary table. “Ask him,” he invited, and broke away.
He was burning a great many bridges behind him, he knew. It was an exhilarating feeling. Chancy but tingly; he decided he liked it. There was just one job to do. As soon as he was clear of the scowling but stopped committeeman, he walked by a circular route to the dais. Dickon was walking back to his table, turned away from the dais; Pulcher’s chance would never be better. “Hello, Pop,” he said.
Pop Craig looked up over his glasses. “Oh, Milo. I’ve been going over the list. You think I got everybody? Charley wanted me to introduce all the block captains and anybody else important. You know anybody important that ain’t on this list?”