And there was a girl with a watering can, carefully giving water to a row of radishes.
“Thana,” said Harl, troubled. “This’s Link Denham. He came down in that noise we heard a while ago. It was a spaceship. That whiskery fella came in it too. I’m goin’ to have to hang Link along with him—I hate to do it, because he seems a nice fella—but I thought I’d have you talk to him beforehand. Coming from far off, he might be able to tell you some of those things you’re always wishin’ you knew.”
To Link he added, “This’s my sister Thana. She runs this growin’ place and not many Households eat as fancy as mine does! See that apple tree?”
Link said, “Very pretty” and looked carefully at the girl. At this stage in his affairs he wasn’t overlooking any bets. She’d be a pretty girl if she had a less troubled expression. But she did not smile when she looked at him.
“You’d better talk to that whiskery man,” she said severely to her brother. “I had to have him put in a cage.”
“Why not just have a fella watch him?” demanded Harl. ‘Even if a man is goin’ to be hung, it ain’t manners not to make him comfortable.”
The girl looked at Link. She was embarrassed. She moved a little distance away. Harl went to her and she reported something in a low tone. Harl said vexedly, “Sput! I never heard of such a thing! I… never… heard of such a thing! Link, I’m goin’ to ask you to do me a favor.”
Link was in a state of very considerable confusion. It seemed settled that he faced a very undesirable experience. Hanging. But he was not treated as a criminal. Harl, in fact, seemed to feel rather apologetic about it and to wish Link well in everything but continued existence. But now he returned to Link, very angry.
“I’m going to ask you, Link,” he said indignantly, “to go see that whiskery fella and tell him there’s a end to my patience! He insulted me, an’ that’s all right. He’ll get hung for it and that’s the end of it. But you tell him he’s got to behave himself until he does get hung! When it comes to tryin’ to send a message to my sister—my
Link opened his mouth to suggest that perhaps Thistlethwaite wanted to get a message to Old Man Addison. But it did not seem tactful.
“You see him,” said Harl wrathfully. “If I was to go I’d prob’ly have him hung right off, and all my fellas that didn’t see it would think it was unmannerly of me not to wait. So you talk to him, will you?”
Link swallowed. Then he asked:
“How will I find him?”
“Go in yonder,” said Harl, pointing, “and ask an ufft to show you. There’ll be some house-uffts around. Ask any one of ’em.”
He turned back to his sister. Link headed for the pointed-out door. He heard Harl, behind him, saying angrily:
“If he don’t behave himself, sput! Hangin’s too good for him!”
But then Link passed through the door and heard no more. Uffts in their own village were openly derisive of Harl. But they sauntered about his house and slept on his floors and he certainly tolerated it. He found himself in a hallway with doors on either side and an unusually heavy door at the end. It occurred to him that he was nearly in the same fix as Thistlethwaite, though Thistlethwaite had wanted to send a message, while he’d only made a speech to the uffts. He groped for something that would make sense out of the situation.
An ufft slept tranquilly in the hall. It was very pig-like indeed. It looked like about a hundred-pound shote, with pinkish hide under a sparse coating of hair. Link stirred the creature with his foot. The ufft waked with a convulsive, frightened scramble of small hoofs.
“Where’s the jail?” asked Link. He’d just realized that he couldn’t make plans for himself alone, since Thistlethwaite was in the same fix. It made things look more difficult.
The ufft said sulkily, “What’s a jail?”
“In this case, the room where that man who’s to be hung is locked up,” said Link. “Where is it?”
“There isn’t any,” said the ufft, more sulkily than before. “And he’s not locked up in a room. He’s in a cage.”
“Then where’s the cage?”
“Around him,” said the ufft with an air of extreme fretfulness. “Just because you humans have paws isn’t any reason to wake people up when they’re resting.”
“You!” snapped Link. “Where’s that cage?
The ufft backed away affrightedly.
“Don’t do that!” it protested nervously. “Don’t threaten me! Don’t get me upset!”
It began to back away again. Link advanced upon the ufft. “Then tell me what I want to know!”
The ufft summoned courage. It bolted. Some distance away it halted at a branching passage to stare at Link in the same extreme unease.
“He’s in the cellar,” said the ufft. “Down there!”
It pointed with a fore-hoof.
“Thanks,” said Link, with irony.
The ufft protested, complainingly:
“It’s all very well for you to say thanks after you’ve scared a person.”
Link moved forward, and the ufft fled. But Link’s intentions were not offensive. He was simply following instructions. He moved doggedly down the hallway. It was carpeted. But the carpet was worn and frayed, though once it had been luxurious. He noted that the plastering was the work of a less than skilled workman.
He came to a corner in the hallway wall. A flight of steps went downward, to the left. He went down them. He heard voices. One of them had the quality of an ufft’s speech.
“Now, we can do it. The fee will be five thousand beers.”
Thistlethwaite sounded enraged.
“Outrageous! Robbery! One thousand bottles!”
“Business is business,” said the other voice. “Four. After all, you’re a human!”
Link’s foot made a scraping sound on the floor. There was an instant scuffling and low-voiced whispers and mutterings of alarm. Link went toward the sound and came to a place where a wick burned in a dish of oil. The light played upon an oversized cage of four-by-four timbers elaborately lashed together with rope. Inside the cage, Thistlethwaite glared toward the sound of the interruption.
Beyond the cage there was a very neat pile of vision-receivers, all seemingly new and every one dusty. The combination of unused vision-receivers and a wick floating in a disk of oil for light was startling. The light was primitive and smoky. The vision-sets were not. But the light worked and the vision-sets didn’t. Evidently. There were electric-light panels. But they wouldn’t work either, or the oil lamp would not exist. Thistlethwaite didn’t see Link, as yet.
“You’d better tell your boss,” rasped Thistlethwaite to the sound that was Link, “that if he ever expects to do any business with Old Man Addison he’d better let me loose and give me back my clothes and—”
He stopped short. He and Link could see each other now. Thistlethwaite was bare and hairy and caged. At sight of Link he uttered a bellow of rage through the heavy wooden bars.
“You!” he roared. “What’ you doin’ here? I told you to keep ship! You go back there! You want the ship to be claimed as jetsam, an abandoned ship with no representative of the owner on board? You get there! Lock y’self in! You stay on board till I finish my business dealin’ and come an’ tell you what to do next!”
“There’s someone in charge,” said Link mildly. “One of Harl’s retainers is acting as watchman. For me. There’ve been developments since then, but that’s that about the ship. I’ve got a message for you from Harl.”
Thistlethwaite sputtered naughty words in naughtier combinations.
“It seems,” said Link, “that to offer to pay a Householder for something is insult amounting to a crime. That’s what you’re to be hung for. Offering to pay a Householder’s sister for something is a worse crime. It appears that doing business, except with uffts, is considered disgraceful. I don’t see how they make it work, but there you are. If you’ll apologize, I think there’s a chance.”
Thistlethwaite cried out, furiously, “How can you do business without doin’ business? You go tell him—”
“I’d like to get you off,” said Link mildly. “I’m supposed to be hanged, too. But if I get you a pardon I might get one for myself as a
