'This stinks,' Pamir muttered.
'Sir?' said the apartment. 'Is there a problem? Might I help?'
Pamir considered, and said, 'No.'
He sat up and said, 'Clothes,' and his technician's uniform pulled itself around him. Its fabric had healed, if not quite so thoroughly as his own body. He examined what could be a fleck of dried blood, and after a moment, he said, 'Boots?'
'Under your seat, sir.'
Pamir was giving his feet to his boots when she walked out through the bedroom door.
'I have to thank you,' Sorrel remarked. She was tall and elegant in a shopworn way, wearing a long gray robe and no shoes. In the face, she looked pretty but sorrowful, and up close, that sadness was a deep thing reaching well past today. 'For everything you did, thank you.'
A marathon of tears had left her eyes red and puffy.
He stared, and she stared back. For a moment, it was as if she saw nothing. Then Sorrel seemed to grow aware of his interest, and with a shiver, she told him, 'Stay as long as you wish. My home will feed you and if you want, you can take anything that interests you. As a memento…'
'Where's the crystal?' he interrupted.
She touched herself between her breasts. The Darmion was back home, resting beside her enduring heart. According to half a dozen species, the crystal gave its possessor a keen love of life and endless joy-a bit of mystic noise refuted by the depressed woman who was wearing it.
'I don't want your little rock,' he muttered.
She didn't seem relieved or amused. With a nod, she said, 'Thank you,' one last time, planning to end this here.
'You need a better security net,' Pamir remarked.
'Perhaps so,' she admitted, without much interest.
'What's your name?'
She said, 'Sorrel,' and then the rest of it. Human names were long and complex and unwieldy. But she said it all, and then she looked at him in a new fashion. 'What do I call you?'
He used his most recent identity.
'Are you any good with security systems?' Sorrel inquired.
'Better than most.'
She nodded.
'You want me to upgrade yours?' That amused her somehow. A little smile broke across the milky face, and for a moment, the bright pink tip of her tongue pointed at him. Then she shook her head, saying, 'No, not for me,' as if he should have realized as much. 'I have a good friend… a dear old friend… who has some rather heavy fears…'
'Can he pay?'
'I will pay. Tell him it's my gift.'
'So who's this worried fellow?'
She said, 'Gallium,' in an alien language.
Genuinely surprised, Pamir asked, 'What the hell is a harum-scarum doing, admitting he's scared?'
Sorrel nodded appreciatively.
'He admits nothing,' she added. Then again, she smiled… a warmer expression, this time. Fetching and sweet, even wonderful, and for Pamir, that expression seemed to last long after he walked out of the apartment and on to his next job.
The harum-scarum was nearly three meters tall, massive and thickly armored, loud and yet oddly serene at the same time, passionate about his endless bravery and completely transparent when he told his lies. His home was close to Fall Away, tucked high inside one of the minor avenues. He was standing behind his final door-a slab of hyperfiber-braced diamond -and with a distinctly human gesture, he waved off the uninvited visitor. 'I do not need any favors,' he claimed, speaking through his breathing mouth. 'I am as secure as anyone and twelve times more competent than you when it comes to defending myself.' Then with a blatant rudeness, he allowed his eating mouth to deliver a long wet belch.
'Funny,' said Pamir. 'A woman wishes to buy my services, and you are Gallium, her dear old friend. Is that correct?'
'What is the woman's name?'
'Why? Didn't you hear me the first time?'
'Sorrel, you claimed.' He pretended to concentrate, and then with a little too much certainty said, 'I do not know this ape-woman.'
'Is that so?' Pamir shook his head. 'She knows you.'
'She is mistaken.'
'So then how did you know she was human? Since I hadn't quite mentioned that yet.'
The question won a blustery look from the big black eyes. 'What are you implying to me, little ape-man?'
Pamir laughed at him. 'Why? Can't you figure it out for yourself?'
'Are you insulting me?'
'Sure.'
That won a deep silence.
With a fist only a little larger than one of the alien's knuckles, Pamir wrapped on the diamond door. 'I'm insulting you and your ancestors. There. By the ship's codes and your own painful customs, you are now free to step out here, in the open, and beat me until I am dead for a full week.'
The giant shook with fury, and nothing happened. One mouth expanded, gulping down deep long breaths, while the other mouth puckered into a tiny dimple -a harum-scarum on the brink of a pure vengeful rage. But Gallium forced himself to do nothing, and when the anger finally began to diminish, he gave an inaudible signal, causing the outer two doors to drop and seal tight.
Pamir looked left and then right. The narrow avenue was well-lit and empty, and by every appearance, it was safe.
Yet the creature had been terrified.
One more time, he paged his way through Sorrel's journal. Among those husbands were two harum-scarums. No useful name had been mentioned in the journal, but it was obvious which of them was Gallium. Lying about his fear was in character for the species. But how could a confirmed practitioner of this singular faith deny that he had even met the woman?
Pamir needed to find the other husbands.
A hundred different routes lay before him. But as harum-scarums liked to say, 'The shortest line stretches between points that touch.'
Gallium's security system was ordinary, and it was porous, and with thousands of years of experience in these matters, it took Pamir less than a day to subvert codes and walk through the front doors.
'Who is with me?' a voice cried out from the farthest room.
In J'Jal, curiously.
Then, 'Who's there?' in human.
And finally, as an afterthought, the alien screamed, 'You are in my realm, and unwelcome.' In his own tongue, he promised, 'I will forgive you, if you run away at this moment.'
'Sorrel won't let me run,' Pamir replied.
The last room was a minor fortress buttressed with slabs of high-grade hyperfiber and bristling with weapons, legal and otherwise. A pair of rail-guns followed Pamir's head, ready to batter his mind if not quite kill it. Tightness built in his throat, but he managed to keep the fear out of his voice. 'Is this where you live now? In a little room at the bottom of an ugly home?'
'You like to insult,' the harum-scarum observed.
'It passes my time,' he replied.
