Méarana smiled. “No, thank you.”
“Hey, don’t mention it. After all, if yuh don’t ask…”
The Amazon chuckled. “You see what they’re like. That’s why we keep them off the planet.”
Méarana did not want to argue with the escort. “I wonder if he even knows why he is here.”
The Wildman grinned. “I stole the Queen’s girdle.”
“What!”
The Amazon growled. “And you set foot on the Holy Motherland.”
Nagarajan twisted in the chair so that he could see the sergeant. “Well, I couldn’t very well steal the girdle without coming planetside, now could I?”
Méarana shook her head. “Why?”
“The girldle? Oh, me and this alfven-tech on the Gopher Broke—that’s a trade ship I hitched a ride on. He told me about some ancient hero name of Herglee what pulled off these ten stunts. Which I told him doing the scuppers below the engines to pay my passage qualified as cleaning out some old horse stable. Well, another stunt was stealing this queen’s girdle. So I said, big deal; and he said, so’s why’n’t you do it; and one thing led to another, and…” He spread his arms wide. “Here I am.” He grinned and added, “We was drinking at the time.”
“You mean you took a bet with a stranger to steal the Queen’s girdle?”
“Well, it’s more like one of them belts wrasslin’ champeens wear; but…Yeah.”
He was so matter-of-fact about it that Méarana decided not to pursue the matter. “How are they treating you here?”
“Not too bad. Ol’ Johnson’s getting a workout, but after a while it’s hard to keep up.” Snicker. “Problem is, they’s all so you-gee-ell-why.”
Méarana thought she picked up about half his dialect. In some ways, it was worse than Billy’s patois. “Who is Johnson?” she asked.
Nagarajan winked and fondled his crotch. The Amazon laughed and when Méarana looked her way, the sergeant explained, “He talks about his sperm-ejector in the third person.”
And the sergeant distanced it with technical terms, but that wasn’t her business. “I notice you wear a rather striking medallion,” she said to the prisoner. “May I see it?”
The door opened behind her and the two news faces entered with their female assistants. They took seats to the side and studied their note-screens and discussed image angles and lighting while they waited for their turn. From their hesitant speech, Méarana deduced that they were ‘facing with their male technical crews on Charming Moon, and had to wait four beats for the lightspeed lag. To the harper’s surprise, the door opened again and Dame Teffna bint Howard also entered.
“Oh! You were so right, Jwana,” the blue-garbed woman purred. “He is a hunk.”
Nagarajan leaned toward Méarana and spoke as if they were old friends. “That must be one ugly babe.”
“Why so, sahb Nagarajan?”
“Hey, call me Teddy. Only one reason for a gal to cover herself up like that.”
“She might prefer to hide her beauty to avoid harassment.”
The Wildman considered that possibility. “One buck gets yuh five yer wrong. Smart money’s on ugly.”
Considering what had happened the last time Nagarajan had made a bet, Méarana was not about to take him up on it. He was quite capable of leaping the chairs and disrobing the Angletar dame on the spot. She did not ask him what a “buck” was. “I was wondering where you had gotten that medallion.”
Of all the questions the Wildman expected to be asked, that one seemed pretty far down the list. He lifted the medallion and studied it as if he had never seen it before. The disc was ruby red and yellow amethysts had been worked into it like the flames of a fire, reaching up around and through it. Minute diamond dust suggested sparks when the light caught it. “This? I taken it off a dead Nyaka warrior.”
“Ah. And do you know where he got it?”
The massive shoulders shrugged. “Uh, no? He was dead?”
“You’re sure.”
“I killed him, didn’t I? They stay dead when I do that.”
“Where do these Nyakas live?”
“Some boonie planet out in the Burnt-Over District. Why you so interested?”
“Do you know the name of the planet, or how to get there?”
Nagarajan’s hand shot out like lightning, and seized hold of the leather thong by which Méarana’s own medallion hung.
But Méarana was not called Swiftfingers for no good cause, and her knife had leapt from its sleeve and hovered now underfisted a scant thumbwidth from the Wildman’s left eye.
Dame Teffna and the two news crews fell silent. The Amazon sergeant stood away from the wall and her hand had dropped to her stunner. But she made no move to draw it.
A frozen moment passed. Then a smile blossomed on Nagarajan’s face. “No harm, Sarge. The lady and me was just showing off our jewelry.” He tucked the medallion back into Méarana’s blouse. He had barely glanced at it, but the harper suspected he had examined it quite carefully in that instant. He was a man quick with his senses. He smiled again, catlike. “Yuh need to put the killer in your eye,” he murmured so she alone could hear. “A man sees in your eye that yuh ain’t gonna stick him first, he maybe feels too cocky. I ain’t no enemy, so I tell yuh this. Never threaten your enemy and let him be. Better t’ just let him be and forget the threats.”
Méarana made the knife disappear. Nagarajan sat back in his chair. The leg once more swung over the chair arm. “So, you come in from the District, too?” he continued in a low voice. “An’ now you can’t find your way back? No worries. I got all the roads mem’rized.” He tapped his temple with a finger like a tent peg. “Oh, wait. One problemo. The memory’s inside my head, which is gonna get lopped off the next couple days. That’s why those ghouls…” He meant the news faces. “…come to gawk. Heads roll around Lafrontera like bowling balls, but when is it a head so handsome as mine?”
“I’m surprised they haven’t shortened you already,” said Méarana. “Your modesty is hard to take.”
Nagarajan guffawed and slapped the arm of the chair. “But they still wanna know what I done with the Queen’s girdle, which I ain’t telling. An’ no, before you ask, they won’t let me go if’n I do. But they’re getting tired of asking, and are just about ready to cut things short, so to speak. Tell yuh what. You’re a harper by your nails. I want yuh to sing my story, so I don’t die forever. Come back tomorrow after these ghouls are done and I tell yuh chapter an’ verse on the Exploit of the Girdle.”
“And you’ll tell me how to find the source of these medallions?”
The barbarian smiled. “Whaddaya think?”
When Méarana stood to leave, Dame Teffna did, too. She embraced each of the news faces, bidding each good fortune with their interviews. “Ta,” she said, “I shan’t stay about to have that beast sticking his paw between my breasts! My dear,” she purred to the harper as she caught up, “that must have been simply awful.”
On Josang Avenue, Méarana hailed a jitney, one of the open-sided electric cars that cruised the streets of Boditown. “Are you staying at the Hotel Clytemnestra?” Teffna asked. “May I share the taxi? Oh, thank you.” She lowered herself onto the bench beside the harper and snapped open a fan hand-painted with chrysanthemums and waved it briskly before the grill in her hood. “Terribly arid here. Would you like some lotion? This heat cannot be good for your skin.”