The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories Read online

  “Unprepossessing. I fail to understand how it attracts visitors.”

  Boek joined him at the window. “Well—it’s a strange world, certainly.” He nodded at the roofs below. “Down in that confusion live at least a dozen different types of intelligent creatures—expatriates, exiles, fugitives—all crowded together cheek by jowl. Unquestionably it’s amazing, the adjustments they’ve made to each other.”

  “Hm…” said Magnus Ridolph noncommittally. Then: “This McInch—is he a man?”

  Boek shrugged. “No one knows. And anyone who finds out dies almost at once. Twice Headquarters has sent out key men to investigate. Both of them dropped dead in the middle of town—one by the Export Warehouse, the other in the Mayor’s office.”

  Magnus Ridolph coughed slightly.

  “And the cause of their deaths?”

  “Unclassified disease.” Boek stared down at the roofs, the walls, lanes, arcades below. “The Mission tries to stand apart from local politics, though naturally in rubbing alien noses into Earth culture we’re propagandizing our own system of life. And sometimes—” he grinned sourly “—circumstances like McInch arise.”

  “Of course,” said Magnus Ridolph. “Just what form do McInch’s depredations take?”

  “Graft,” said Boek. “Graft, pure and simple. Old-fashioned Earth-style civic corruption. I should have mentioned—” another sour grin for Magnus Ridolph “—but Sclerotto City has a duly elected mayor, and a group of civic officers. There’s a fire department, a postal service, a garbage disposal unit, police force—wait till you see ’em!” He chuckled, a noise like a bucket scraping on a stone floor. “That’s actually what brings the tourists—the way these creatures go about making a living Earth-style.”

  Magnus Ridolph bent forward slightly, a furrow appearing in his forehead. “There seems to be no ostentation, no buildings of pretension—other than that one there by the bay.”

  “That’s the tourist hotel,” said Boek. “The Pondicherry House.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Magnus Ridolph abstractedly. “I admit that at first sight Sclerotto City’s form of government seems improbable.”

  “It becomes more sensible when you think of the city’s history,” said Boek. “Fifty years ago, a colony of Ordinationalists was founded here—the only flat spot on the planet. Gradually—Sclerotto hangs just about outside the Commonwealth and no questions asked—misfits from everywhere in the cluster accumulated, and one way or another found means to survive. Those who failed—” he waved his hand “—merely didn’t survive.

  “When you come upon it fresh, like the tourists, it’s astounding. The first time I walked down the main street, I thought I was having a nightmare. The Kmaush, in tanks, secreting pearls in their gizzards…centipedes from Portmar’s Planet, the Tau Geminis, the Armadillos from Carnegie Twelve…Yellowbirds, Zeeks, even a few Aldebaranese—not to mention several types of anthropoids. How they get along without tearing each other to pieces still bothers me once in a while.”

  “The difficulty is perhaps more apparent than real,” said Magnus Ridolph, his voice taking on a certain resonance.

  Boek glanced sidewise at his guest, curled his lip. “You haven’t lived here as long as I have.” He turned his eyes back down to Sclerotto City. “With that dust, that smell, that…” He struggled for a word.

  “In any event,” said Magnus Ridolph, “these are all intelligent creatures…Just a few more questions. First, how does McInch collect his graft?”

  Boek returned to his own chair, leaned back heavily. “Apparently he helps himself outright to city funds. The municipal taxes are collected in cash, taken to the city hall and locked in a safe. McInch merely opens the safe when he finds himself short, takes what he needs, closes the safe again.”

  “And the citizens do not object?”

  “Indignation is an emotion,” said Boek with heavy sarcasm. “The bulk of the population are non-human, and don’t have emotions.”

  “And those of the population that are men, and therefore can know indignation?”

  “Being men—they’re afraid.”

  Magnus Ridolph stroked his beard gently. “Let me put it this way. Do the citizens show any reluctance toward paying their taxes?”

  “They have no choice,” said Boek. “All the imports and exports are handled by a municipal cooperative. Taxes are assessed there.”

  “Why isn’t the safe moved, or guarded?”

  “That’s been tried—by our late mayor. The guards he posted were also found dead. Unclassifiable disease.”

  “In all probability,” said Magnus Ridolph, “McInch is one of the city officials. They would be the first to be exposed to temptation.”

  “I agree with you,” said Boek. “But which one?”

  “How many are there?”

  “Well—there’s the postmaster, a Portmar multipede. There’s the fire-chief, a man; the chief of police, a Sirius Fifth; the garbage collector, he’s a—a—I can’t think of the name. From 1012 Aurigae.”

  “A Golespod?”

  “That’s right. He’s the only one of them in the city. Then there’s the manager of the municipal warehouse, who is also the tax collector—one of the Tau Gemini ant-things—and last but not least, there’s the Mayor. His name is Juju Jeejee—that’s what it sounds like to me. He’s a Yellowbird.”

  “I see…”

  After a pause Boek said, “Well, what do you think?”

  “The problem has points of interest,” admitted Magnus Ridolph. “Naturally I want to look around the city.”

  Boek looked at his watch. “When would you like to go?”

  “I’ll change my linen,” said Magnus Ridolph, rising to his feet. “Then, if it’s convenient to you, we’ll look around at once.”

  “You understand now,” said Boek gruffly, “the minute you start asking questions about McInch, McInch knows it and he’ll try to kill you.”

  “The Uni-Culture Mission is paying me a large fee to take that chance,” declared Magnus Ridolph. “I am, so to speak, a latter-day gladiator. Logic is my sword, vigilance is my shield. And also—” he touched his short well-tended beard “—I will wear air-filters up my nostrils, and will spray myself with antiseptic. To complete my precautions, I’ll carry a small germicidal radiator.”

  “Gladiator, eh?” snorted Boek. “You’re more like a turtle. Well, how long before you’ll be ready?”

  “If you’ll show me my quarters,” said Magnus Ridolph, “I’ll be with you in half an hour.”

  In gloomy triumph Boek said, “There’s all that’s left of the Ordinationalists.”

  Magnus Ridolph looked at the cubical stone building. Small dunes of gray dust lay piled against the walls, the door gaped into blankness.

  “At that, it’s the solidest building in Sclerotto,” said Boek.

  “A wonder McInch hasn’t moved in,” observed Magnus Ridolph.

  “It’s now the municipal dump. The garbage collector has his offices behind. I’ll show you, if you like. It’s one of the sights. Er—by the way, are you incognito?”

  “No,” said Magnus Ridolph. “I think not. I see no special need for subterfuge.”

  “Just as you like,” said Boek, jumping out of the car. He watched with pursed lips as Magnus Ridolph soberly donned a gleaming sun-helmet, adjusted his nasal air-filters and dark glasses.

  They plowed through fine gray dust, which, disturbed by their steps, rose into the dual sunlight in whorls of red, blue and a hundred intermediate shades.

  Magnus Ridolph suddenly tilted his head. Boek grinned. “Quite a smell, isn’t it? Almost call it a stink, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would indeed,” assented Magnus Ridolph. “What in the name of Pluto are we approaching?”

  “It’s the garbage collector, the Golespod. Actually, he doesn’t collect the garbage, the citizens bring it here and throw it on him. He absorbs it.”

  They circled the ancient Ordinationalist church, and Magnus Ridolph now saw that th
e back wall had been battered open, permitting the occupant light and air, but shading him from the two suns. This, the Golespod, was a wide rubbery creature, somewhat like a giant ray, though blockier, thicker in cross-section. It had a number of pale short legs on its underside, a blank milk-blue eye on its front, a row of pliant tendrils dangling under the eye. It crouched half-submerged in semi-solid rottenness—scraps of food, fish entrails, organic refuse of every sort.

  “He gets paid for it,” said Boek. “The pay is all velvet, as his board and room are thrown in with the job.”

  A rhythmic shuffling sound came to their ears. Around the corner of the old stone church came a snakelike creature suspended on thirty skinny jointed legs.

  “That’s one of the mail carriers,” said Boek. “They’re all multipedes—and pretty good at it too.”

  The creature was long, wiry, and his body shone a burnished copper-red. He had a flat caterpillar face, four black shiny eyes, a small horny beak. A tray hung under his body containing letters and small parcels. One of these latter he seized with a foot, whistled shrilly. The Golespod grunted, flung back its front, tossing the trailing tentacles away from a black maw underneath.

  The multipede tossed the little parcel into the mouth, and with a bright blank stare at Boek and Magnus Ridolph, turned in a supple arc and trundled around the building. The Golespod grunted, honked, burrowed deeper into the filth, where it lay staring at Boek and Magnus Ridolph—these two returning the scrutiny with much the same detached, faintly contemptuous, curiosity.

  “Does he understand human speech?” inquired Magnus Ridolph.

  Boek nodded. “But don’t go too near him. He’s an irascible brute.”

  Magnus Ridolph took a cautious step or two forward, looked into the milky blue eye.

  “I’m trying to identify a criminal named McInch. Can you help me?”

  The black body moved in sudden agitation, and a furious honking came from the pale under-body. The eye distended, swelled. Boek cocked an ear.

  “It’s saying, ‘Go away, go away’.”

  Magnus Ridolph said, “You are unable to help me, then?”

  The creature redoubled its angry demonstrations, suddenly lurched back, flung up its head, spewed a gout of vile-smelling fluid. Magnus Ridolph jumped nimbly back, but a few drops struck his tunic, inundated him with a choking fetor.

  Boek watched with an undisguised smile as Magnus Ridolph scrubbed at the spot with his handkerchief. “It’ll wear off after a while.”

  “Umph,” said Magnus Ridolph.

  They returned through the dust to the car.

  “I’ll take you to the Export Warehouse,” said Boek. “That’s about the center of town, and we can go on foot from there. You can see more on foot.”

  To either side of the street now, the shacks and small shops, built of slate and split dried seaweed stalks, pressed ever closer, and life clotted more thickly about them. Human children, grimed and ragged, played in the street with near-featureless Capella-anthropoids, young, immature Carnegie Twelve Armadillos, Martian frog-children.

  Hundreds of small Portmar multipedes darted underfoot like lizards, most of whom would be killed by their parents for reasons never quite understood by men. Yellowbirds—ostrichlike bipeds with soft yellow scales—strode quietly through the crowd, heads raised high, eyes rolled up. Like a parade of monsters in a dipsomaniac’s delirium passed the population of Sclerotto City.

  Stalls at either side of the street displayed simple goods—baskets, pans, a thousand utensils whose use only the seller and the buyer knew. Other shops sold what loosely might be termed food—fruits and canned goods for men, hard brown capsules for the Yellowbirds, squirming red worm-things for the Aldebaranese. And Magnus Ridolph noticed here and there little knots of tourists, for the most part natives of Earth, peering, talking, laughing, pointing.

  Boek pulled his car up to a long corrugated-metal shed, and again they stepped out into the dust.

  The warehouse was full of a hushed murmur. Scores of tourists walked about, buying trinkets—carved rock, elaborately patterned fabrics, nacreous jewels that were secreted in the bellies of the Kmaush, perfumes pressed from seaweed, statuettes, tiny aquaria in sealed globes, with a microscopic lens through which could be seen weirdly beautiful seascapes peopled with infusoria, tiny sponges, corals, darting squids, infinitesimal fish. Behind loomed bales of the planet’s staple exports: seaweed resin, split dried seaweed for surfacing veneer, sacks of rare metallic salts.

  “There’s the warehouse manager,” said Boek, nodding toward an antlike creature standing waist high on six legs. It had doglike eyes, a pelt of satiny gray fur, a relatively short thick thorax. “Do you want to meet him? He can talk, understand you. Mind like an adding-machine.”

  Interpreting Magnus Ridolph’s silence as assent, Boek threaded the aisles to the Tau Gemini insect-thing.

  “I can’t introduce you,” said Boek jovially—Magnus Ridolph noticed that he assumed affability like a cloak in the presence of the town’s citizens—“because the manager here has no name.”

  “On my planet,” said the insect in a droning accentless voice, “we are marked by chords, as you call them. Mine is—” a quick series of tones came from the two flaps near the base of his head.

  “This is Magnus Ridolph, representing the Mission Headquarters.”

  “I’m interested,” said Magnus Ridolph, “in identifying the criminal known as McInch. Can you help me?”

  “I’m sorry,” came the ant-creature’s even vibrations. “I have heard the name. I am aware of his thefts. I do not know who he is.”

  Magnus Ridolph bowed.

  “I’ll take you to the fire-chief,” said Boek.

  The fire-chief was a tall blue-eyed Negro with dull bronze hair, wearing only a pair of knee-length scarlet trousers. Boek and Magnus Ridolph found him at an observation tower near the central square, with one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. He nodded to Boek.

  “Joe, a friend of mine from home,” said Boek. “Mr. Magnus Ridolph, Mr. Joe Bertrand, our fire-chief.”

  The fire-chief darted a swift surprised glance at Magnus Ridolph, at Boek, and back again. “How do you do,” he said as they shook hands. “I think I’ve heard your name somewhere before.”

  “It’s an uncommon name,” said Magnus Ridolph, “but I presume there are other Ridolphs in the Commonwealth.”

  Boek looked from one to the other, shifted his weight on his short legs, sighed, looked off down the street.

  “Not many Magnus Ridolphs, though,” said the fire-chief.

  “Very few,” agreed the white-bearded sage.

  “I suppose you’re after McInch.”

  “I am. Can you help me?”

  “I know nothing about him. I don’t want to. It’s healthier.”

  Magnus Ridolph nodded. “I see. Thank you, in any event.”

  Boek jerked his plump thumb at a tall building built of woven seaweed panels between bleached bone-white poles. “That’s the city hall,” he said. “The Mayor lives upstairs, where he can, ha, ha, guard the city funds.”

  “Just what are his other duties?” Magnus Ridolph asked, gently beating the dust from the front of his tunic.

  “He meets all the tourist ships, walks around town wearing a red fez. He’s the local magistrate, and then he’s in charge of town funds and pays the municipal salaries. Personally, I don’t think he’s got the brains to be McInch.”

  “I’d like to see the safe that McInch is so free with,” said Magnus Ridolph.

  They pushed through a flimsy creaking door, into a long low room. The seaweed paneling of the walls was old, worn, shot with cracks, and each crack admitted twin rays of light, these painting twin red and blue images on the floor. The safe bulked against the opposite side of the room, an antique steel box with button combination.

  A long yellow-scaled neck pushed down through a hole in the ceiling, and a flat head topped by a ridiculous little red fez turned a purple eye at them.
A sleek yellow body followed the head, landing on thin flexible legs.

  “Hello there, Mayor,” said Boek heartily. “A man from Mission Headquarters—Mr. Ridolph, our Mayor, Juju Jeejee.”

  “Pleased-to-meet-you,” said the Mayor shrilly. “Would you like my autograph?”

  “Certainly,” said Magnus Ridolph. “I’d be delighted.”

  The Mayor ducked his head between his legs, plucked a card from a body pouch. The characters were unintelligible to Magnus Ridolph.

  “That is my name in the script of my native planet. The translation is roughly ‘Enchanting Vibration’.”

  “Thank you,” said Magnus Ridolph. “I’ll treasure this memento of Sclerotto. By the way, I’m here to apprehend the creature known as McInch—” the Mayor gave a sharp squawk, darted its head back and forth “—and thought that perhaps you might be able to assist me.”

  The Mayor wove his neck in a series of S’s. “No, no, no,” he piped, “I know nothing, I am the Mayor.”

  Boek glanced at Magnus Ridolph, who nodded.

  “Well, we’ll be leaving, Mayor,” said Boek. “I wanted my friend to meet you.”

  “Delighted,” rasped the Mayor, and tensing his legs, hopped up through the hole in the ceiling.

  A hundred yards through the red and blue shimmer brought them to the jail, a long barracks built of slate. The cells faced directly out on the street. Visible were the disconsolate head of a Yellowbird, the blank face of a Capella anthropoid, a man who stared as Boek and Magnus Ridolph passed, and spit speculatively into the dust.

  “And what are their sins?” inquired Magnus Ridolph.

  “The man stole some roofing; the Yellowbird assaulted a young Portmar centipede; the Capellan, I don’t know. The chief of police—a Sirius Fifth—has his office behind.”

  The office was a tentlike lean-to, the chief of police an enormous torpedo-shaped amphibian. His flippers ended in long maniples, his skin was black and shiny, he smelled sickly-sweet. A ring of beady deep-sunk eyes completely circled his head.

  When Boek and Magnus Ridolph—both perspiring, dirty and tired—appeared around the corner of the lean-to, he rose quivering and swaying on spring foot-flippers, drew one of his flippers across his barrel. Where the fingers had passed words sprang out on the black hide in startling white.