Sea Legs by Frank Quattrocchi (read a book txt) 📕

As a miniature Pluto swung on its slow arc, an image of it was projected on the girl's dusky face. She seemed to be staring at nothing.

"Why d'you call me over here? You a purist, or don't you like the brand of sensatia-tapes they're peddlin' these days?"

"I don't understand," Craig said.

She smiled crookedly at him. Not a bad face, Craig decided, but hard, hard as the ceramiplate of a ship. She could not be very old. It was the kind of wild look in her eyes that gave her a false appearance of age.

"Maybe you're writing a book—you got me over here for something."

"I just got in," Craig answered.

"What am I supposed to do for this drink?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. I suppose. I thought ... just skip it. I'm lonesome, that's all."

"Lonely, huh?" said the girl. "Lonely and just in, huh? Just in from space." She turned away from him to signal the bartender. "What you need is drinks."

There were more drinks. Many more drinks. The girl kept them coming, kept talking to him about—what was it? Craig looked at the girl and then at the globe lamp. He watched as the tiny bright orbs of light projected their images on the girl opposite him. He was aware of the gradual dimming of the lights, the suppression of sound in the bar. He watched the tiny lights of other globes appear around shadows, watched as the lights traced fiery trails across the dusky skin of the girl opposite him, watched as they crossed the warm, rounded flesh....

"I tell ya we didn't give him nothing but a coupla tazes."

"The pump will determine that. You might as well tell the truth."

"I am tellin' the truth. He drank, let's see ... two, three."

"Four, five, six. You let her pump him full."

"Hey, look, this guy's a spaceman, or was."

"I didn't know that. Honest I didn't. He never told us."

"All right, you didn't know. What you put in those tazes—ether?"

"We denature the polyester just like the law says."

"And you get it straight from M'cadii, eh?"

"We put in some syn. So what? That ain't against the law."

"He's probably got grav trouble, Chief."

"Who was the girl?"

"Girl? What girl?"

"You know what girl!"

"Just a girl, like a million of 'em these days."

"Professional?"

"There ain't any any more. You know, sensatia-tapes."

"Know her name?"

"I don't ask no names. How you going to know names? She's a girl. Just like ten million of 'em these days."

"What you think a guy like this is doing here, Chief?"

"Why not?"

"Well, look at his clothes. He's got units, too. Can't figure that out. She must've been after something else."

"How about his clothing and food tickets?"

"Uh ... that's it. She got his tickets."

"Come on, give me a hand. Lug him into the hold."

The hard face of the Civil Control chief peered down at him. It was a thick, red face that displayed no trace of feeling except perhaps toughness. It was long yet full, and it contained the proper features; but it added nothing of expression to the harsh, rasping voice.

"First time in, eh? Or else Central's too damned lazy to check the file. Okay, I ain't going to cite you. Waste of time. But listen to me. You got problems, we got problems. You solve yours and don't come back here."

Craig was aware of officers glowering at his back as he fumbled with the door button. The door opened onto a city street. It was entirely foreign to Craig. It was not a clean, straight thoroughfare at the bottom of a canyon of towering white buildings and contrived but bright parks. It was an old street, a dirty street; an incredible welter of color and line, of big and little shops, of dirty human shapes in drab gray. A flood of tone and noise hit Craig as he emerged from the station and descended the long, broad steps.

Craig's head was in a whirl despite the strong dose of paraoxylnebutal he had taken in the station clinic. He felt closed in and befogged. He could remember almost nothing of the night in Civil Control. Even the clinic was fading from his memory. He was aware that he stank, that he was dirty, that his clothing clung to his body. He was miserable.

He must call Import. He was due to begin work this morning, his period of personal adjustment complete. Instead, Craig turned and began to walk. He could not carry on a coherent conversation in his present state. He could never find his way unassisted back to his apartment; he was not even sure he remembered the address. But the thought of returning to his quarters, to Import sickened him.

What was his address? East 71, North.... No, that would be old lady Brockman. The association irritated him. He had completely forgotten the unwanted assignment, had forgotten to inquire where the address could be found.

Craig became aware of the heavy flow of vehicular traffic that roared a scant eight feet away. Large surface carriers whistled in the nearest lane of the complex four-lane pattern. Then there were the private surface craft; they were of many sizes and shapes. He guessed that they were turbine-powered, but he could not identify the odor of their exhausts.

There was an odd, unreal quality about the busy thoroughfare. Even myriad sounds from it were sounds he had never heard before and could not break down into their component parts.

Craig became aware of other humans, many of them, on the sidewalk. Again they were of a class that he could not identify. They had none of the brisk, purposeful stride of those he had seen near Import. They lacked also the graceful, colorful dress. Their faces, so far as he could separate them from the blurring film over his eyes, were different.

They seemed somehow looser faces, though Craig did not know exactly what he meant by the term. They were not tight, pinched, set, as were the faces he had seen before on Terra. There were bulbous noses, large ears, squint eyes, disheveled hair, the men's and women's faces strangely similar. Some were young, some old, but few were hard or fixed. They seemed more plastic, more full of expression than those he had come to know elsewhere in the city. He felt an inexplicable craving to know someone of this strange street.

"You looking for something, mister?" asked a voice near him.

Craig turned to find a middle-aged man eying him from the doorway of an empty building.

"I got it," the man added.

"Got what?" Craig asked.

"Anything a guy just outa the can would want."

"What would a 'guy just outa the can' want that you have?" Craig examined the weathered, sharp face. It was an unpleasant one, but it belonged to this street; it would do to tell him what he wanted to know of the place.

"Follow me." The man quickly inserted a magnikey into the door of the vacant store building.

"There's a station just up the street," Craig warned.

"Sure. So what?"

The empty room was dusty and dark and received little light through the grimy display windows that faced on the street. What kind of store it had been, Craig could not guess. The man led him through a kind of storage room which was piled high with moldy paper cartons and back to a rear door. With quick, dextrous movements, the man swung an ancient bar assembly and pushed open the rear door. It led to a litter-strewn yard enclosed by rough, eroded shacks and a wooden garage.

They entered the garage through a creaking hinged door. It was a dank, almost completely dark room. Craig stumbled over something on the floor and fell against a packing box of some kind.

"Just stand still," said the man. He was shuffling invisibly about in the darkness. Craig could hear him opening a kind of cabinet or drawer while saying in a steady monotone, "You got the right man, mister. My stuff is pure. You can test it. But you'd rather drink it, right?"

For the tenth time, Craig asked himself why he had accepted the furtive invitation. The thought of this man's kind of intoxicant—however 'pure'—nauseated him. Nevertheless, he felt himself compelled by a kind of insatiable curiosity to follow out the part he had accepted. Perhaps through this man, through this somehow fascinating street, he could....

"You got ten; I know that. Maybe you got more, huh?" the man interrupted his confused train of thought.

"What makes you think I got ten?" Craig asked. He did not know himself how many units his wallet contained—certainly not after the previous night.

"Don't get sore. I'm honest. But I know you got ten. Otherwise you wouldn't have got out of the station."

The lack of clearly defined objects by which to orient himself in the darkness of the garage made his head begin to swim once more. He wanted to leave.

"Don't get scared, buddy. They don't ever come in here."

Craig fumbled for support in the darkness. He was afraid he would be sick. Fulfillment for the half-formed plan that was beginning to take shape in his mind would not come with the bootlegger. It would come into being somehow in the tawdry street he had just left, only he did not know how.

"They don't really go after polyester. They don't want to stop the stuff. It makes their job easier. You don't have to worry, buddy. Come on, how much you want? You might have trouble finding more for a while."

Craig said nothing. He fumbled for a grip on a packing box.

"You're from Out, aren't you, buddy? You ain't used to us here yet. Most of my customers are from Out. What jam'd you get into?"

"I got ten units, I think," Craig evaded.

"It ain't none of my business what you done. Nobody around here is going to ask you any questions. Long as you got units, you get poly like the big shots that come over here all the way from Uptown."

"Yeah," said Craig. "Gimme what I get for ten units and let's beat it out of here."

"Myself, I never been Out. Not even Luna. Never wanted to. I stay here and have my little business—you can call it a business. You'll see, buddy, there are millions of guys like me. The controllers don't stop us. We're respectable. A damned sight more respectable than those...."

"All right," snapped Craig. "Let's get out of here."

"You got it bad, huh? This poly will fix that up. It's pure. You just come back to old Nave and get poly."

"How ... how you get out of here?" asked Craig, nauseated.

"Get lost pretty easy in the dark, huh?" The man was beginning to mock him.

Craig lashed out suddenly at the unseen face in the darkness. He caught the thin throat in his left hand. His right left the packing box and cocked to deliver a blow. But he began to fall and had to let go.

"Okay, buddy, okay," the other man said soothingly as Craig was forced to catch himself. "I like ex-spacemen. I know lots of you. I sell you poly. You don't want to get tough with me."

He shoved a block of ten small cubes into Craig's hand and, while Craig fished for his wallet, he produced a tiny, narrow-beamed flash. The transaction was quickly over. The cube was small enough to be forced without much difficulty into Craig's jacket pocket.

The man led him back across the littered yard, through the empty store building, and out the front door. When Craig emerged onto the street once more, a uniformed figure was standing nearby.

"He'll need two," whispered the man from behind him.

Craig reached into his pocket and mechanically fumbled two of the small cubes of waxlike substance from the loose package. He placed them on the outstretched hand of the Civil Control officer. The officer did not look in his direction at any time, but accepted the offer and walked slowly on toward the station.

Craig continued aimlessly down the long street. His head cleared as he walked and once more began to form a kind of vague plan. There was anonymity to a street such as this. There was also a kind of freedom. Everywhere in the universe, there were such streets. Neutralized streets, where a kind of compromise was reached between law and lawlessness. They were permitted because it was always necessary to provide such a place