"Looks real," he said, handing it back quickly, like it was poison. "Who you planning to kill off? The whole of Camp Endurance?" That was none of his business and he knew it. So I began to arrange the money in stacks. But the more I looked at it, the less willing I was to simply give it away. Thriftiness is a trait.
I decided I had better not be going around with a wallet looking so empty. So I took a couple hundreds, a few fifties, a couple twenties, some fives and quite a few ones. My wallet looked nice and fat. Good for show, even though I could get killed for passing it. I put the wallet in my tunic where it felt very comfortable.
Then I studied the problem of buying information from the crew. I was just plain unwilling to part with very much of this money. It looked so real.
There is a toolbox compartment in the rear floor of an airbus. My driver, of course, had long since sold the tools and the hole was pretty big. Lifting the cover, I studied things out.
I made a firm decision. I removed the remaining ones and fives from the mass and put them in the magic bag. And then I put all the rest of that lovely looking, deadly money in the tool compartment and locked it. I had fought the battle of giving it away or keeping it and giving it away had lost! I put the thin stack of ones and fives in the hidden compartment of the magic bag. Then, with sudden inspiration, also hid the poisoned food in it. I had just decided on a new course of bribery.
We were past the mountains now and I spent my time looking down. According to Lombar's orders, there should be the burned-out wreck of a patrol craft in the Great Desert. The whitish expanses were white. The sun-dancers danced but not over any trace of a wreck. Never mind, I would first see if the crew had ever arrived at Spiteos and after that I could search for the wreck. Maybe the newssheets hadn't heard of it: after all, they are just newssheets, mostly trash.
We landed at Camp Kill. The driver ground-wheeled along the cluttered streets of the slummy place and, at my direction, stopped at the brothel control office. I went in, carrying the magic bag.
The commandant of Camp Endurance might make a fortune out of the place but actually the superannuated females who run it don't much care whether it runs or not. Sloppy. There was garbage lying all over the floors and the bulletin boards hadn't been posted for years. The female in charge didn't even have a desk.
She may have once been beautiful, now she looked like an executive. Four hundred pounds of fat slumped over the edges of a half-recline chair, wearing a dirty towel, she didn't even look up until I stamped my foot.
"I want a mute for fortress bribery," I said. They often take hill girls from other planets and cut out their larynx: they can't speak Voltarian anyway. Only a prostitute that is mute can be passed through the tunnel. Others at Camp Kill might suspect what was in Spiteos but none must be able to talk about it. It was common enough to entice a prisoner with a woman if it was thought he would not talk under torture. A lot of riffraff will do anything in return for a female.
She looked at me with contempt. Then she put out a filthy hand. Her attitude was such that I decided she would be better off executed anyway. I got out my wallet and put a counterfeit fifty in her palm with a great show of reluctance.
Really, it was like shooting a blaster into a jelly bowl, the way she shattered. She reassembled the globs into an ingratiating smile. She crooned over the fifty. She was no trained cashier!
"I may need her for some time," I said.
That had no bearing on it. She screeched in the direction of a hall and shortly a couple other old hags dragged out a young girl. Dirty, bedraggled, she was nevertheless fairly pretty. I checked the larynx: it had been removed. She stood there, beaten, dejected. From the back country of Flisten, I guessed, kidnapped on some government raid into the primitive country. She certainly did not look able to arouse anyone, pretty or not.
"And some tricks," I demanded. They have a lot of erotic gadgets that vibrate and do other things.
No trouble with that. Another screech and another crone came out with hands full of tricks. I dumped them into the visible compartment of the magic bag.
The girl only had a loincloth on, a dirty one. But clothes were no point. Then I thought of something. "There's a lot of men involved. She may get pretty used up." The fat old bat said, "We got 'em by the hundreds." She kissed the fifty. "Kill her. Who cares?" One of the other old hags looked at me archly and pulled back her loincloth. "You want something for yourself, dearie?" Not a Camp Kill prostitute! I got out of there.
I gave the girl the bag to carry. It was a very cunning move. If any counterfeits were traced, they would be traced to her.
At the tunnel barricade, I told the guards, "Bribe meat. I'd appreciate it if you would search her for weapons and all that. She's too dirty." A guardsman grinned, put on a pair of gloves, took her aside and had himself some nice feels. He and the barricade officer were so engrossed, I had to tell them to search the bag. Of course they would find only the erotic tricks.
When they had, I said, "Note the search on the pass."
"For how long?" said the barricade officer.
"Mark it indefinite," I said. "They might not talk just on the promise of one go." The guard officer laughed. "Wish I had a secret good enough for this." He let me put my identoplate on the pass and then handed it over.
The girl looked more beaten down. I had been surprised to see her blush at the guard's handling of certain places. Prostitutes are very cold meat usually. Riffraff.
Riding the zipbus, she began to look terrified. Maybe she had never ridden a zipbus before. It was true that now and then a prostitute taken into the fortress never came out again, got overworked and died at it or was simply murdered for kicks. But how would she know? She didn't understand Voltarian and couldn't talk either.
When we got off at the Spiteos end, she didn't want to get off the bus! I had to hit her, drag her off and then had trouble making her stand up. I kicked her and forced the bag into her hands. I actively had to keep thrusting at her back to keep her walking ahead.
It dawned on me that I had been swindled. This was one of those noncompliant, won'ttypes the customers reject. They had given me this girl because she was useless to them! Ah, well, I had my revenge already. The brothel executive would be no more if she tried to pass that fifty. It amused me. Trouble for trouble, fair exchange!
But one trouble seems to breed another. In the roster office, the half-naked, yellow-man clerk spent a long time over the records. Spiteos records are pretty bad-nobody ever gets out. But to have no trace at all of an entrance is pretty unusual.
I gave him the probable date and hour. No, nothing. I was just beginning to believe they had never arrived when the yellow-man said, "Military? Did you say military? Well, you should have given me that data. They would be in the military section." With considerable directions, taking some more tubes, finding out I had gone too deep and coming back – and all the while enduring the trouble of thrusting this girl ahead of me – I wound up in another section of Spiteos with an office even closer to the entrance than I had first visited. Spiteos is quite a snarl.
I found myself in a guardroom. There were about twenty-four actual guards, uniformed and in riot helmets, sprawled about, some of them shaking dice, others snoring.
The officer was a shabby type – what else in the Apparatus. His contingent was evidently a daily guard from the camp. These were not the usual wardens.