Very beautiful…
He jammed the brake down suddenly and goggled.
After a long moment, he brought the little hovercar over to the curb and left it to walk to the display advertising the show within. There were various posters in the old-fashioned style. Basically photographs, he decided, but then touched up with an artist’s imagination. It was evidently some sort of variety show, a vaudeville sort of thing, beloved of all centuries. But it was the poster’s subject that had caused him to come to a halt, for there stood Clete in a gaudy costume. In her left hand she held half a dozen throwing knives by their points. In her right hand she had a single knife, ready for a cast. Beyond her stood what was obviously an assistant, an apple on the top of his head. The old but ageless William Tell bit.
But that wasn’t all.
In one of the other posters he recognized still another face. A face that made it too utterly much.
He walked back to the hovercar in thought. Some of the pieces, just some of them, were beginning to fit into place.
When he got back into the hovercar, he sat for a moment, ignoring anyone who might have been looking at him. His mouth worked, and he rubbed it thoughtfully, roughly with the knuckles of his left hand, so roughly that it stung.
A woman was coming up the street and was due to pass within a few feet of him.
He said to her suddenly. “I beg your pardon. I’m from out of town. Could you tell me where I can get a newspaper?”
She smiled at him. “Right up the street there at the entrance to the pneumatics. Don’t you have a screen in your car? You’d get exactly the same thing by dialing NEWS.”
“Thanks,” he told her, without inflection.
When she was gone, he sat and concentrated some more. Finally he took the shooter he had appropriated from Minythyia and holding it low, between his knees, inspected it. He had never seen the model before, but he was experienced enough with handguns to figure out its working. It was evidently constructed to throw some sort of projectile, probably a small bullet, with or without either an explosive or a gas cartridge. A somewhat primitive weapon, by the standards of the more militaristically inclined planets of UP, but one that had its uses under circumstances.
The difficulty was, there was no clip in the butt.
It was useless.
He looked at it and grunted. Some warrior Minythyia had turned out to be.
He tossed the shooter to the floor at his feet and started up the car again. He brought back, before memory’s eye, the map of the city and directed the speedy little vehicle at a definite destination this time. However, he drove more slowly than he had before. There was still quite a bit to think about.
He passed the bachelor sanctuary, as the major had called it, drove around to its rear and parked the car.
He stood there for a moment, looking at the building, and figuring out where his quarters had been. Then he found a path that wandered through, the garden and made his way to the area beneath the windows of that suite. Looking up now, he was mildly surprised that he had been able to climb down the wall with such ease. The handholds and footholds didn’t look as promising as all that.
He found the gun he had ditched only that morning, in the bush where he had thrown it.
He couldn’t afford to be spotted with it in his hand, and tucked it into his belt, without further examination. He had checked it this morning, knew it was charged, knew how it was operated. He doubted if he’d be overly accurate with the weapon at any range at all, at first, but, then, he doubted that he would be using it at any great distance.
He walked around the building and into the entrance he had used before. Inside, he walked up one of the halls aimlessly until he met an inhabitant.
The other was hurrying to some destination or other, but Ronny asked him, “Could you tell me what apartment Podner has?”
“Podner Bates? He’s in forty, isn’t he?” The man hustled on.
Ronny Bronston figured out the numbering system of the apartments and finally found forty.
He pulled the same trick that Minythyia had at Pat O’Gara’s place. He put his hand over the door’s eye before activating it. Inside, Podner, if he was at home, would see nothing but black on his screen.
The door opened and Podner was there, blinking.
Ronny pushed his way past him. He looked about the room. It was far from the frilly affair he had been given the night before. It was a man’s apartment—comfortable, scruffed-up furniture that had seen many a shoe rested upon it, a bar with a goodly selection of liquor. Paintings on the wall that would appeal to the masculine taste whether it be on Earth, New Delos, Victoria, or, Ronny Bronston was beginning to understand, Amazonia.
Ronny looked at the other. “You’ve forgotten your curly wig.”
Podner fluttered a hand at him. “Oh, darling, you know how it is. A boy simply has to get out of his frills once in awhile. Don’t you just hate girdles?”
Ronny looked at him wryly, “I never had one on,” he said. “And I doubt if you have either.”
He held a moment’s silence and then said, “You’re an actor.”
Podner blinked at him. He looked disgusted. “Damn it,” he said, “What’d I do wrong?”
“Nothing,” Ronny said. “Come along. I’ve got to talk with you, and I don’t think I’m safe here.”
“Why should I come with you?” Podner said sourly. “Damn it, I thought I was doing fine in that part. Minythyia is going to be furious with me.”
Ronny put his tunic back a few inches so that the gun in his belt was revealed. He tapped it two or three times with his forefinger. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice cold.
The other stared at the gun. “Holy Ultimate,” he said, all the astonishment in the galaxy in his voice. “You mean it. You’re threatening me with violence.”
They marched out of the building and toward the car.
Ronny said, “What happened to my luggage?”
“Major Oreithyia and some others came and got it a couple of hours ago.”
Ronny grunted disgust, but he couldn’t have expected anything else. They climbed into the car, and he looked at the other man, remembering his own attack upon Minythyia shortly before. He said, “Look, Podner, don’t try anything. I realize that sissy act of yours was laid on and that you’re no molly, however, in this sort of thing, I’m a pro.”
“I’m sure you are,” Podner muttered unhappily. “I’m not resisting. I’m not a hero.”
Ronny got under way. He looked from the side of his eyes at the other, trying to dope him out. “What are you? Obviously, you support the Amazonian government.”
“Of course,” the other said strongly. “Why not?” It’s the best government I’ve ever heard or read about, and I’m interested in the subject.”
Ronny said evenly, “Oh? My own ideas would lead a little nearer to democracy. You’re like a dog licking the hand of the master that has just clobbered him.”
“Democracy!” Podner snorted in scorn. “We’ve gone far beyond democracy on Amazonia.”
“Oh, you have, eh? And just what do you find beyond democracy?”
“In the first place, I doubt if you know what the word means,” the actor said in high scorn. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out. So I don’t know what democracy means. Please enlighten me.”
“Very well. As you possibly know, ancient man’s governmental institutions were based on the
Ronny continued to tool the speedster down the boulevard. “So everybody’s been telling me,” he complained.
“Very well, when city states began to form and new institutions take the place of old, the former ways needed change. A council of chiefs was inadequate to handle municipal affairs. The first attempt to handle the problem is credited in legend to Theuseus, but that’s undoubtedly nonsense. It wasn’t until Solon, about 549 B.C. that they took the first big step to end gentile society and begin a new form of representation based on geographic factors and on property, rather than on family. In Athens, by the time of Cleisthenes in 509 B.C. the changes were
