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thousand-dollar bills to the rigid Ditmar. "Anyway now you're satisfied and I
hope you'll be good enough to leave." He gestured to the tiny figures,
swaying, posturing, to the rapturous music. "We've
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already missed the Devotional Dance, the main reason we tuned it on."
"Zaer," said Mario haltingly. The gay youthful eyes swung to him.
"Yes?-politely.
"Is this all the report we get? After all, we acted in good faith."
Zaer stared back coldly. "You have eight thousand dollars. I don't know you
from Adam's off ox.
You claim it, I pay it. That's pretty good faith on my part."
Breaugh pulled at Mario's arm. "Let's go."
Chapter III
Blind Plunge
Soberly they sat at a table in an unpretentious tavern, drinking beer. For a
while none of the four spoke. Four silent figures - tall strong Janniver, with
the rough features, the Baltic hah-, the African fiber, the Oriental
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restraint; Breaugh, the nimble-eyed, black browed and long-nosed;
Ditmar, the sardonic autumn-colored man with the sick liver; Mario, normal,
modest, pleasant.
Mario spoke first. "If that's what eight thousand buys at the Chateau d'lf,
I'll volunteer."
"If," said Breaugh shortly.
"It's not reasonable," rumbled Janniver. Among them, his emotions were
probably the least disturbed, his sense of order and fitness the most
outraged.
Breaugh struck the table with his fist, a light blow, but nevertheless
vehement. "It's not reasonable! It violates logic."
"Your logic," Ditmar pointed out.
Breaugh cocked his head sideways. "What's yours?"
"I haven't any."
"I maintain that the Chateau d'lf is an enterprise," said Breaugh. "At the fee
they charged, I
figured it for a money-making scheme. It looks like I'm wrong. Zaer was broke
a month ago. Or almost so. We gave him eight thousand dollars. He goes to the
Chateau d'lf, he comes out, takes a suite at the Atlantic-Empire, buys an
expensive woman, shoves money at us by the fistful. The only place he could
have got it is at the Chateau d'lf. Now there's no profit in that kind of
business."
"Some of them pay ten million dollars," said Mario softly. "That could take up
some of the slack."
Ditmar drank his beer. "What now? Want to shake again?"
No one spoke. At last Breaugh said, "Frankly, I'm afraid to."
Mario raised his eyebrows. "What? With Zaer's climb to riches right in front
of you?"
"Odd," mused Breaugh, "that's just what he was saying. That he was one of the
meteoric schoolboy wonders who hadn't meteored yet. Now he'll probably turn
out to be an unsung genius."
"The Chateau still sounds good, if that's what it does for you."
"If," sneered Breaugh.
"If," assented Mario mildly.
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Ditmar said with a harsh chuckle, "I've got eight thousand dollars here. Our
mutual property. As far as I'm concerned, it's all yours, if you want to take
on Zaer's assignment."
Breaugh and Janniver gave acquiescent shrugs.
Mario toyed with the idea. His life was idle, useless. He dabbled in
architecture, played handball, slept, ate. A pleasant but meaningless
existence. He rose to his feet. "I'm on my way, right now. Give me the eight
thousand before I change my mind."
"Here you are," said Ditmar. "Er-in spite of Zaer's example, we'll expect a
report, Tuesdays and
Fridays at three, on the Oxonian Terrace."
Mario waved gaily, as he pushed out the door into the late afternoon.
"Tuesdays and Fridays at three. Be seeing you."
Ditmar shook his head. "I doubt it."
Breaugh compressed his mouth. "I doubt it too."
Janniver merely shook his head....
Exmoor Avenue began in Lanchester, in front of the Power Bank, on the fourth
level, swung north, rose briefly to the fifth level where it crossed the
Continental Highway, curved back to the west, slanted under Grimshaw
Boulevard, dropped to the surface in Meadowlands.
Mario found 5600 Exmoor to be a gray block of a building, not precisely
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dilapidated, but evidently unloved and uncared-for. A thin indecisive strip of
lawn separated it from the road, and a walkway led to a small excrescence of a
portico.
With the level afternoon sun shining full on his back, Mario walked to the
portico, pressed the button.
A moment passed, then the door slid aside, revealing a short hall. "Please
come in," said the soft voice of a commercial welcome-box.
Mario advanced down the hall, aware that radiation was scanning his body for
metal or weapons. The hall opened into a green and brown reception room,
furnished with a leather settee, a desk, a painting of three slim wide-eyed
nudes against a background of a dark forest. A door flicked back, a young
woman entered.
Mario tightened his mouth. It was an adventure to look at the girl. She was
amazingly beautiful, with a beauty that grew more poignant the longer he
considered it. She was silent, small-boned.
Her eyes were cool, direct, her jaw and chin fine and firm. She was beautiful
in herself, without ornament, ruse or adornment; beautiful almost in spite of
herself, as if she regretted the magic of her face. Mario felt cool detachment
in her gaze, an impersonal unfriendliness. Human perversity immediately
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