"Uh. Where do I find the Saipese?"

"A girl he likes lives two doors down, across the way. If you was to wait there ..."

"I hope he comes," Gelor said, and bent as he spoke.

With one hand, he seized her by her hair. The other he thrust down the neck of her scarlet dress, into the warmth between her warheads. He clutched, jerked, twisted, jerked again. The garment ripped the rest of the way down the front. He ignored the very naked loveliness he exposed.

When she tried convulsing into biting and scratching, he whipped her clear-by that ma.s.s of violet hair-and slapped her across her crimson mouth. At the same time he let go. She was slammed back to the floor, against the wall. Another slap-accompanied yank and he had the dress 39.free of her writhing body. He ripped off a narrow strip. She tried to bite his leg and his foot thumped into her breast, which enveloped the toe of his boot.

While she moaned, hurt too much to scream, he wrenched one of her arms behind her. He tied the ribbon of her destroyed dress tight around her thumb. Then he lashed the other thumb to it.

A second strip bound her knees together. When he turned her over, he noticed the dye or paint on her breast. A word in blue script, outlined in yellow and artfully curving along her warhead's shape: Amera. Gelor stuffed a wad of Amera's late dress into her mouth and tied it in place with still another ragged strip of scarlet.

He rose and surveyed the room. A stout iron lamp fixture extended from high in one wall, bearing an A-curved neon bulb. Tying another strip of her garment to it, he heaved Amera to her feet and looped that strip's free end under the length of red joining her (red, now) thumbs. He tugged upward and she bent over. Way over, arms twisted back, thumbs high behind her.

He stepped back. She was helpless. Bound, gagged, and naked. Very s.e.xy, really. Gelor was not in the least interested.

"Is there really a Saipese, Amera?"

Staring at the floor because she had to, she stood immobile, legs pressed together as if primly. It made her taller, relieving the strain.

"If there isn't, your thumbs go, eventually. Too bad."

Abruptly she lost all trace of hardness and maturity. Only a frightened girl, now, she twitched her head and spoke with her eyes. Black-rimmed eyes stared, huge. Rolled. Gelor loosened the gag.

"The Saipese drinks at the bar next street over. They call him Quong." Her voice was high, girlish, strained and quaky with fear.

"How your memory improves!" Gelor smiled thinly. Shoving her back against the wall, he reinserted the gag. I'll come back if I find him and he helps me. Otherwise ..."

He left her to make his way back down the alley and on, to find that bar. His excitement was almost enough to 40.balance his earlier, stomach-wrenching panic. Victory has that effect on my nerves! He tried to paste a confident smile on his face.

The Saipese called Quong was in the place just as she'd said. A small man, slight, with yellowish skin and a flamestone necklace. He looked smoother than the Reshi. Less menacing. That helped. Gelor even found the boldness to approach him directly.

Quong seemed not at all affrighted at the mention of tetrazombase. "TZ?" He eyed Gelor with a con man's bland, bright-eyed speculation. His hand came up, thumb and first two fingers rubbing each other in the immemorial sign. "Danger. That costs. Ten mil, 'tleast. You got 't?"

"I got it." Gelor felt a tingle of gratification that he'd managed to match the other's slurred slum-speak.

"Lessee the color ya cred."

Gelor showed him a bill big enough to widen Quong's eyes.

"Five now," he said. "Res' when uh ge' back. No lock on price. May come higher'n ten. Pos?"

"Negatory," Gelor came back bluntly. His voice didn't even quiver. "You go out 'ith my five and don' come back-where'm I?"

"Shaft City." The Saipese grinned. He had small, sharp eyeteeth like a cat or the creature called a Xerxes weasel. "A'righ'. You've saw the short side. I get the stuff, I bring 't here. You stake one bill'th the bar ri' now. Tha.s.s my lock so you don' change ya mind V drift. Done?"

"Done."

Gelor laid out the five-stell note. Quong called the bartender and instructed him to hold it. With a final needle-toothed grin, Quong vanished out the door in a flurry of balloonpants.

Gelor ordered a beer and settled down to wait. Once again panic was rearing in him. His victory over Amera had gone flat all at once. What did it matter that he'd twisted her? The Saipese had twisted him even more, and with words, not kicks or slaps. Who knew whether the little bra.s.s-hued man would ever come back? Or if he'd bring the TZ if he did return. Or maybe come with an 41.escort of policers. They'd have questions for a stranger trying to buy TZ! And the barman looked just the sort to go along with whatever Quong said.

It was more than Gelor could handle. Unable to sit longer, he rose and went out into the street.

No sign of Quong. Gelor was having trouble controlling his breathing. It came too fast, too shallow, and he couldn't slow it. When he tried deep-breathing his heart seemed to stutter.

What if Quong came back with some thug, a ruffo? -that Reshi! Gelor cringed at the thought. Instinctively, he knew he lacked the nerve to fight back.

A windowless building-warehouse?-stood across and down from the bar. What appeared to be b.u.t.tresses thrust out on either side of heavy doors. Trying to stay inconspicuous, Gelor ambled that way. He had to walk carefully. Tension had set his bowels to churning. Any sudden move might pull a humiliating trigger.

He reached the far b.u.t.tress. To his delight, its shadows provided nice cover. He could see the bar's door with minimal exposure of himself.

"Ya lookin' the wrong way," a voice said, from behind him.

Gelor spun to face Quong, bare sems away, teeth bared in an evil smirk. While Gelor groped unsuccessfully for words, Quong drew aside one flap of his coat to reveal a small, flat package.

"Product here. Your bit?"

Hastily Gelor fumbled big bills from his tunic. The Saipese counted them carefully, looked at him.

"Nine-?"

"Your bartending friend has the other."

"The deposit, pos." Quong's black eyes sparkled wickedly. "Hoped ya'd fergot." He handed over the flat packet. "Done an'done, frien'. Come 'roun' nex' time ya got some bizness."

He walked off toward the bar. Only after he had gone did it occur to Gelor that there remained a point at issue. He hurried after the man in the balloonpants. Inside the 42.bar, he peered this way and that. No Quong. Gelor popped an agitated question.

The barman jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "He left. Back way."

Numbly, Gelor once more stumbled out onto the footway. Back in the b.u.t.tress's shelter, he unwrapped the flat package with stiff fingers. It contained a plastipak holding four injectabs. A black skull was stamped into each tab. Gelor chewed his lip. Was this really tetrazombase? He had no answer. He didn't even know what the nasty illegal stuff was supposed to look like.

Quong's air and hasty exit said something, though, and Gelor didn't like it. He didn't like to think about it, either. He'd seldom felt lower, less adequate. To come this far, take all these risks, even kill . . . only to be played for a fool by a Saipese rascal!-It left him shaking with helpless fury.

And with fear. He knew it well.

Yet he dared not let himself be caught up by that fatal flaw in his character, that inner weakness he knew so well and hid so desperately. Somehow, he had to drive himself to action.

Slowly, he moved off down the footway, back past the bar. Back in the direction he'd originally come from. A mixed din of voices, movement, street sounds impinged on him from the left. Moving down an alley toward it, not quite knowing why, he entered a small, crowded open market.

A hag wrapped in a ragged sari was peddling skweez-paks of everchil pop. Gelor bought one. He drank thirstily, even though the taste of the stuff was vile. He was still sipping, walking, when a man thrust a cap of liquid flamo at him. Gelor jerked away from it: cooking heat for the poorest of the poor. Dangerous stuff. If spilled it seared the flesh in a flash, stronger than the strongest acid. The stuff had military use, too. Gelor pushed on past . . .

And stopped short. Could it be that part of his pervasive panic was born of his very defenselessness, his lack of any sort of weapon?

He turned back and bought the cap of flamo. In a niche 43.out of view of pa.s.sersby, heart thuttering, he emptied his purchase into the empty pop pak.

A quick compression of his fingers sent flame spurting from the skweez-pak-a thin jet that fired the nearest can of trash like magic.

Like magic, too, was the feeling that welled up in Gel Gelor. Of a sudden he felt less helpless. More in command-dangerous, even. Pivoting, he left the market. Another pedlar was thrust away by a firm-faced Gelor. In minutes he was at the bed-shed of the Ganji hust who'd sent him to Quong.

The door was latched. That made him stop and step back, once more caught up in surging panic. He had left the hust-Amera-hanging and helpless. How could she have worked the latching lever?

He knew that if he paused to think that through now, he'd be lost. His lifetime companion would paralyze him- fear. He battled it. With all his might he drove his foot at the latch. The savage kick burst the hust-hole's door open. He followed, fast and ready.

The girl-woman no longer hung from the lamp bracket and the lamp was alight, in dull burnt orange and ruddy pink. Amera lay at full length on her crib-cot. The Saipese dealer half-knelt beside her.

It made sense, of course. Gelor cursed himself for a fool for not having seen the real scrute sooner. Quong-if that was really his name-was the hust's man, or pimp! That was why she had turned the action in his direction. Now he stared around at the intruder. His first thought was that maybe he'd done bad business with an undercover policer.

"You burned me," Gelor said. "The tabs you sold me aren't TZ." It was a shot in the dark, but worth the gamble.

Of course it also told Quong that this was no policer. "Tha.s.s ri', handsome." Quong was on his feet and a knife had appeared in his hand as if from nowhere. His left hand drew a slender, wand-like shaft. The black eyes glittered. The eyeteeth shone sharper than ever. "Wha' d'you think you' gointa do 'bout it?"

The old panic rose again in Gelor, but only for a moment.

44."A burn for a burn," he said, and managed to keep his voice even and cold.

His fingers convulsed on the pop container. Flamo shot forth in a blazing, liquid stream--straight into the bronze man's face. More specifically: his eyes. His scream was like nothing Gelor had ever heard. The sound of it was a clawing hand in his lurching stomach. He stared at the Saipese.

Quong had dropped his knife to rush his clawing hands to his eyes. Staggering, moaning with a keening sound, he beat his head against the wall.

Gelor picked up the knife and did things with it. It could have been called a mercy killing. It stopped Quong's screams, and his pain, and Quong.

With a strange sense of wonder, Gelor realized that he had never in his life felt so good. It was the first time he had used a knife on a man. Now this feeling made him know it would not be the last time. All traces of the panic that had ridden him so unrelentingly had vanished. In their stead swelled a soaring sense of exultation and exaltation. Power surged in his blood. Excitement engulfed him so that he quivered. Even the moment of his murdering Pearl was but a guttering candle beside this feeling. Nothing would stop him now.

Nothing can!

Fulfillment of his dream of triumph and domination was as if ordained. Shiva, Lord of Destruction, G.o.d of death, lived and surged in Gel Gelor. He wanted to shout it forth, to proclaim it to all this world called Samanna-to the Galaxy, the universe!

Instead, he deftly reclaimed the bills he had given Quong. Next he checked the wand-shaft the dead man had gripped in his left hand. Gelor frowned. Too light and thin to be a bludgeon. Too blunt for slashing or stabbing, he mused. He examined the . . . thing. Perhaps as long as his forearm from wrist to elbow, it was no bigger around than a tool-handle. Designed for a grasping hand. Close to one end protruded what appeared to be a triggering b.u.t.ton, a rocking switch. Gingerly, Gelor snicked it backward.

45.A heavy spring shot out of the shaft's other end. The top hit one leg of the crib-cot. The leg splintered.

A staring Gelor understood why: the tip was weighted with a solid cylinder of some heavy or ma.s.s-compacted metal. He felt a warm glow of pleasure. This was a devastatingly deadly weapon! It was one that gave a man an unexpected reach beyond the length of his arm-and impact to shatter any skull or crush sternum or backbone! This prize made Quong worthwhile.

Rising, he forced the spring back into its handle-that took some strength!-and locked it with the trigger. At that moment Amera stopped cringing in the corner and made for the door. An orchid-colored wrap-robe rustled. Gelor whirled and acted instinctively.

The spring-thing crushed skulls, all right.

He was about to leave when he had another thought. He looked around. Checked the crib-cot. Felt, pulled, grinned. Neither Amera nor Quong would be needing all these stell-notes! Gelor hurried back out into the alley.

His impulse was to go directly in quest of the scientist he needed. DeyMeox. Yet euphoria rose high, and he instead turned vindictively in the direction of the first bar, where he'd met the Reshi strangle-thief.

As he had suspected, an alley lay behind it. Sensible; low dives should have rear doors opening onto alleys! He thought about that as he returned to the fronting street. He saw and heard no policer action. Good. He was in a bad area, and he had a weapon for each hand. Calling over a sharp-eyed boy from a group playing coin-toss in the filth, he held up a coin bigger than any he saw them using. The boy's eyes flicked their eager stare from the coin to Gelor to coin to Gelor.

"Wha' do uh do?"

"In that bar's a man in an orange turban," Gelor said, hoping he was right. "Moustache on him, turned up." He watched the boy nod. "Tell him I sent you to get him."

"Tha.s.sall?"

"That's all. Your job's over when you tell him."

The boy's lips parted in a crooked smile. He reached for the coin. Gelor pocketed it and produced his smallest bill.

46.The boy watched him tear it in half. He gave the urchin one piece.

"You get the other half when the man comes out."

"Wha'f he won' come?"

"We both lose cred."

"Unnerstan'." The boy shoved the half-bill into his grubby pants with a grubby hand and turned to trot off toward the bar.

The moment he entered, Gelor sprinted for the alley. At the bar's rear entrance he took up a stance with his back against the wall. The spring-club was close by his side, with his thumb on the nigh-invisible trigger. He didn't expect to wait long, and he didn't.

The dirty blue door opened. The turbaned head came out to peer warily this way and that. Gelor stepped into view.

"Peace," he said, raising his left hand in an open-palmed gesture. "I brought you a present." He showed the man the skull-stamped injectab.

A guttural sound rose in the Reshi's throat. Not a word. His eyes flared in shock and fear and-knife out, he lunged. And Gelor brought up the spring-thing and thumbed the rocker-switch.

The spring released. The weighted tip rushed out. It caught his attacker in the throat-the Adam's apple. The fellow stopped as if cast in stone, instantly. Mouth horridly agape and eyes bulging. For the second time in less than an hour, an attacker of Gel Gelor dropped his knife.

Gelor stepped back and this time he lashed out with the weapon as a club, to the swine's temple. With a sound of bone shattering, the man toppled sideward. His shoulder hit the building's wall and he began sliding down.

It was easy to hold the dead man against the wall with one hand while the other slipped into the shirt beneath the sleeveless jacket. A swift riffling produced Gelor's stolen cred-pouch. He noted with pleasure that it was thicker than it had been when he had lost it. Smiling, he let the Reshi slide on down to sit against the wall, dead.

Gelor started moving. Meanwhile, he considered: the effect of the tab on that swine, for one thing. There'd been 47.no mistaking his terror, his panic. Fake or not, the skull-stamped tab had come through to him as TZ.

If it would dupe a bottom-level thug, mightn't it also deceive-a scientist?-DeyMeox, for instance. It was, Gelor felt, an avenue definitely worth pursuing. Even more to the point is the way I'm reacting!

Street-smart or not, he had taken the initiative in more than one deadly dangerous confrontation. Yet he hadn't hesitated. Hadn't faltered. The only emotion he felt was one of soaring triumph, of mastery. At last he had isolated the secret that would carry him to triumph!

Death, death, with my own hand to deal it!

For him, he had discovered just now, dealing death flashed him free of his old panic-even unsureness! The stimulant supreme, beyond food or drink or s.e.x or intellect, drugs or booze. Death. Killing.

He left the alley. Shoulders back, head high, he walked taller than he ever had in his life. His blood sang. His heart thrummed. It was time to go see DeyMeox-crober!

4.