while I wouldn't be poisoned, I'd get sick as a pup if I had any. We had found that we couldn't eat Nogon food, even though its peptide configurations weren't too far divergent from Terran ones.
By the time we got back, Susan was out of the fitting booth.
'My survival suit'll be ready in an hour or two,' Susan said. 'I even got to design it myself. Custom tailored- how about that!'
'Good. Now let's?'
'Oh, look over here,' Susan said, walking off.
We followed her over to a stall offering a wide variety of weaponry.
'Guns.' Susan curled her lip in distaste. 'I'm going to buy one.'
'Whatever for?' I asked.
'Everybody else is armed to the teeth. Even John's carrying a gun now. Hell, with all the trouble we've been running into, I'd be foolish not to be packing some kind of shooting iron.'
'I think we have enough to go around, Suzie.'
'No, I want something that doesn't kill.'
'Oh.'
'Something that'll stop an enemy but not hurt him. I don't believe in killing.'
'That might be a tall order, but let's see.'
The merchant was a Nogon, and we found that the extent to which the alien had engaged in ritualizing and dickering had been a mere nod to local custom. Done properly, complete with nuances and byplay, the real thing could take hours. By being brusque almost to the point of insult, Tivi cut it down to twenty minutes. Meantime, Ragna went off to buy Susan a torch and some other camping gear. By the time he returned, the merchant had sold Susan a box containing three components which supposedly fit together. The sale of completely functional weapons inside the faln was illegal.
'They are scanning all the time for operative armaments,' Ragna told me.
The sale complete, our merchant growled something and stepped behind a curtain. He didn't come out again.
'What was that all about?' I asked Tivi.
'He is saying that such a show of crass materialism and greed has been making him sick, at which point he will be expelling the contents of his gastric sac.'
'Oh.' I turned and yelled, 'Sorry!'
'I wonder if this thing works,' Susan said, examining the contents of the box.
'I wonder what it does,' I said. 'Wouldn't look like a gun, no matter how you'd put the parts together. What did the salesman say?'
'Who knows. Tivi?'
'He was saying that this particular weapon would not be killing one's opponent. However, he was not saying in exactitude what in matter of fact it would be doing.'
'That's what came out of all that conversation?' I wanted to know.
'Much was being spoken,' Tivi said, 'but little was being said.'
'Is it that these articles are to your satisfaction?' Ragna asked, displaying the various oddments he had bought for Susan?torch, mess kit, toilet articles, some sort of bedroll, other stuff, all of which were Nogon-made but eminently adaptable to human use.
'Oh, they're fine. Thank you so much, Ragna. Here, let me pay you.'
'We may be settling monetary business dealings later, you are welcome.'
I said, 'We can't thank you enough for exchanging our gold for currency.'
Hokar had let slip that gold prices had taken a dive recently. Apparently, the economy of the Nogon maze was booming.
'You are to think nothing of it, Jake, friend of mine. These things are not spoken of, not much.'
'Here, Jake,' Susan said, dumping a load of parcels on me. 'Now, let me check back at the dressmaker's and we'll?'
'Look,' I said, 'I'm going to take Tivi and get those parts. You go get your outfit and we'll meet you here in an hour.'
'Okay. Let's divvy up these things. You take that and that, I'll take this thing… don't they give out shopping bags in this place?'
'You may be needing this?' Tivi was unfolding a gray cloth sack which she had brought out from under her cape.
Susan shook her head. 'And we didn't even think to bring a bag or something.' She stuffed the small sack, but the gun box wouldn't fit. 'This bulky thing. Maybe if we took the stuff out of the box. Ragna?'
'No, let me take it,' I said. 'Maybe I can find out what kind of weapon it is.'
'But you'll have the parts to carry.'
'I have two of these,' Tivi said, producing another sack.
'Tivi, darling, you're indispensable.'
'I am thanking you for not dispensing with me.'
We finally split up.
Tivi led me across the mall and up a ramp to a mezzanine. From there we took a connecting corridor and came out onto a curving balcony at least fifteen stories above a vast central floor alive with commerce and every- other sort of activity. We walked along the balcony until it swung out over the floor and became a ramp leading down to platform. There were bunches of transparent tubes shooting up from the floor, and inside the tubes were platforms moving up and down. These were elevators, certainly, but I couldn't figure out how they worked. We ran into a crush of shoppers well before we reached the boarding platform.
'Too much crowd,' Tivi said. 'We should be going back this way.'
We walked back up the ramp and onto the balcony, then through another connecting corridor, coming out into a smaller open area that was a disconcerting architectural jumble. Nogon ideas of interior design were perceptually disorienting. Walkways made odd angles as they shot overhead without visible support. Ramps spiraled dizzily, walls bulged and sucked in, staircases obtruded into overhead spaces. Control, I thought. Control is what arcologies are all about-but what's all this madness? Maybe arcologies were just about containment.
Tivi led me into a side corridor. We stopped by a pair of doors set into the wall.
'These freight-lifting mechanisms are not being in so much use,' she maintained.
It looked like a conventional elevator, but when we got it going, it went up diagonally for a while, stopped for a moment, then continued vertically. In all, we went up about twenty stories.
These upper levels seemed devoted to non-consumer items and were a little quieter, but not much. 'Auctions' were being held here, too, complete with the pushing and shoving I had observed below. There were stores here, of a sort, though you couldn't tell where one ended and one began. We found an area stacked with crates of what Tivi said were electronics parts. The store was full of shoppers, but there wasn't the crush there was below.
'I will be going to fetch a sales individual. Be waiting here, please.'
'Right.'
Tivi left and I examined some of the stuff. I could see now that my coming along had been unnecessary. I had thought that my experience with alien technologies back in the known mazes would have helped. No chance. This junk looked like dried fruit to me. Boxes and boxes of dried fruit. Looked good, too; handy for long trips when you can't stop to eat.
Damn, I was tired. I sat on a box of delicious-looking Nogon technology and took a deep breath. Mall fatigue? Hell. Getting old.
I spent the next few minutes thinking about nothing in particular. Memories of the last four weeks were a jumble. Running and hiding, capture and escape, over and over again. Nothing made sense. The universe was a senseless machine, grinding away to no purpose. I was caught in its gears.
I digested that for a while. A faint feeling of nausea was the result.
Where was Tivi?
I got up and walked around the store looking for her. She was nowhere in sight. I went back out into the mall, walked one way, then turned around and walked back. I searched the store again, checked out the
