Chapter Twenty
“I don’t like it, letting Raffa go off by herself like this,” Ronnie said. He slapped at a tickfly, and hit it, which left an itchy wet spot on his arm and a mess on his hand.
“She’ll be all right,” George said. “She’s inside, isn’t she? Not out here being eaten up by these . . . things.” He flapped the gray-green cloth hanging down from his hat and swung his arms in a sort of uncoordinated dance. He had draped himself in the recommended insect-proof veil for their trek along the shore, only to discover that tickflies could crawl up the arms . . . and once inside the veil, they couldn’t get back out. Even satiated with blood, they still whined around inside the veil with annoying persistence.
Ronnie looked seaward, where sullen waves lifted murky brown backs; they rolled sluggishly landward and slapped the crumbling shore with spiteful warm hands. Far out, a line of dirty white might mark the reefs he’d seen mentioned in the tourist brochure. Landward, the low boxy shapes of Twoville’s monotonous architecture cast uninteresting shadows as square as the buildings. He hadn’t seen the hotel, but in the transient workers’ hostel, the cramped room smelled of disinfectant and the ventilation fans squeaked monotonously.
“It’s not exactly . . . exotic,” he said. “Not even the planet itself.”
“No.” George kicked at a mound of crumbly stuff, and jumped back as a horde of many-legged, shiny-backed things ran out. He backed up a couple of steps. “Look at that—what d’you suppose . . .”
“Stingtails,” said a voice. They both looked up, to find a tall, lean individual with a slouch hat and long, white, perfectly pointed moustaches grinning at them in a way that emphasized their ignorance. “If I were you,” the man said, “I’d move farther away. Stingtails know the scent of their nest on the critter that kicked it—” George, who had been fascinated by the fast-moving swarm, backed up again and watched as the swarm continued to move toward him. When he shifted sideways, the front end followed his path, but the swarm kinked in the middle as some of the followers caught the scent and cut the corner.
“Dammit!” George backed away faster. “Now what?”
“Hop,” the man advised. “Big hops. When you’re twenty meters away, they’ll lose track.”
George hopped, looking ridiculous with his veil bouncing up and down; Ronnie jogged along, keeping wide of the swarm just in case, and the stranger strolled at ease, hands in his pockets. When they halted again, George breathless and disheveled, Ronnie took a longer look at the stranger.
Despite the old battered hat, with odd decorations stuck in its band (a tiny horseshoe? a fish-hook with feathers? a long, curling quill from some exotic bird? a blue rosette?), the man was otherwise tidily, even foppishly, dressed in crisp khaki slacks and shirt, the pleats pressed to a knife edge. A tiny pink flower in his buttonhole, a perfectly folded white handkerchief peeking from one pleated pocket. Stout low boots of fawn leather. And those moustaches . . . which matched bushy white eyebrows over bright blue eyes.
“You boys must have let Marshall at the station tell you what to buy,” he said. Ronnie would have been annoyed, but he was already hot, sweaty, and bug-bitten. “I can smell the Fly-B-Gone from here . . . but of course it doesn’t repel tickflies. Marshall got it by mistake three years ago, and none of us will buy it—he has to foist it off on tourists.” Another pause; Ronnie slapped at his neck, and missed that tickfly. “Not that we get many tourists,” the old man said. “Certainly not your sort.”
“And what is our sort?” asked George, whose grumpiness always found voice.
“Rich young idiots,” the man said. “More money than sense. I mean, we’d heard the Royals were disbanding, letting loose a plague of your sort, but I thought Patchcock was too far away and too boring to attract any. . . .” His friendly smile mitigated, but did not negate, the sting of that. “And that veil will only trap the tickflies inside,” he said to George. “Besides making you hotter.”
George tore off the veil and glared. “I know that. I was just about to take it off, when—”
“When you kicked a stingtail nest. And now you’re angry with me. I understand.” Ronnie had the odd feeling that he did. In fact, he liked the old fellow, and he hoped George wouldn’t say anything too rude.
“I’m Ronnie Carruthers,” he said, putting his hand out. “And this is George Mahoney.”
The old man looked at his hand, and Ronnie realized it was smeared with blood and tickfly juice. “Sorry,” he said, pulling it back to wipe on his slacks.
“No offense,” the man said. “I’m Hubert de Vries Michaelson. Retired neurosynthetic chemist. Let me tell you what I already know, before you tell me something else. Truth between gentlemen, y’know.”
“Ah . . . yes.” Ronnie slapped another tickfly, and swiped his damp hand surreptitiously on his shirt.
“I wouldn’t do that, by the way. Won’t come out in the wash.” Hubert grinned, showing a row of very white, very strong teeth. “Now—Ronald Vortigern Carruthers and George Starbuck Mahoney. Arrived yesterday, in company of a pretty young girl named Raffaele Forrester-Saenz. Right so far?”
“Yes, but—”
“You’d traveled together from the Guerni Republic, specifically from the planet Music. Kept to yourselves, but the girl let it be known that she and you, Mr. Carruthers, were traveling together in blatant disregard of her family’s wishes.” The old man peered at him, blue eyes suddenly frosty. “I hope that was a cover story.”
Ronnie felt his ears going hot. “Well, sir . . . not exactly. That is, we didn’t start to—it just happened that we—and anyway, it wasn’t like that—”
“I see.” The blue glare didn’t give a millimeter. “Going to marry the girl, are you?”
Ronnie’s spine straightened before he realized it. “Of course!” Then, more calmly, he tried to explain. “We didn’t start out together. George and I were on—we had something to do in the Guerni Republic.” That sounded weak; he rushed on to the part he could tell strangers. “When Raffa showed up alone—”
“You decided she needed an escort—protection?”
“More or less,” said Ronnie. He was not about to explain to this old fellow that the protection had gone the other way. The bright blue eyes blinked, then Hubert grinned.
“Well, well. Young blood. Still runs hot, I see. In that case, young man, you’ve made a serious mistake.”
“What?”
“Letting her go unchaperoned here, of all places.”
Ronnie looked around, but saw no particular menace. Besides, Raffa was safely inside.
“You should have registered with her,” Hubert said. “The people at the hotel think she’s alone.”
That had been the idea. Ronnie fumbled for an explanation and came up with partial truth. “The fact is, sir, that hotel—it’s the only one fit for her, but—but I couldn’t quite—”
“Ah. Funds low, eh? What is it, boy, gambling or chemicals? Give it up, boy. Girl like that is worth it.”
“It’s not that,” Ronnie said, feeling that his ears must be glowing now. “It’s . . . it’s family.” He didn’t want to drag Aunt Cecelia into this, and anyway it wouldn’t make sense to anyone outside.
“It’s his aunt,” George said. George never suffered from this sort of embarrassment. “His aunt’s suing his parents, and that’s why Raffa’s parents wanted her to drop him—because his aunt’s in the mood to put his parents in the poorhouse, and Ronnie along with them.”
“Never mind, George,” Ronnie said. “It’s not quite right, anyway—Aunt Cecelia isn’t vindictive, not really.”
“Cecelia . . .” Hubert said.
“Cecelia de Marktos,” George said. Helpful, that was George. Ronnie wanted to smack him. “Rides horses. Red hair.”