But not for Cheee-pruitt.
If Sharn-igon had not been a professional empathist he could not have broken through the barriers between villages. As it was, it took much time and all of his persuasion; but at the end of it Tsharr-p’fleng helped him to a dwelling pen and ministered to his needs.
Sharn-igon devoured the crabrat they brought him while Tsharr-p’fleng engaged in agitated conversation with others of the village just outside the wall. Then they came in and ranged themselves around Sharn-igon, listening to him eat. He ignored their polite scratches of curiosity and concern until every morsel was gone. Then he pushed away the splintered carapace and spoke.
“Poison Ghosts killed my he-wife and did not eat him.”
A flickering sound of disgust.
“They captured me and held me in a place without doors. They removed my backlings and took them away. I do not think they were eaten, but I have not heard them since.”
Brighter sounds — disgust mixed with sympathy and anger.
“Moreover, they have also captured Ghosts Above and Ghosts Below and many of the lesser living things, and have eaten none of them. I therefore killed three of the Poison Ghosts. Intend to kill more. Are you back-mates with the Poison Ghosts?”
The he-mother rustled and spoke with contempt. “Not those! Their back-mates are the Ghosts Below.”
Another said, “But Poison Ghosts have ways of killing. They have spoken to us in our language and told us to beware of them, lest they kill us.”
“Beware of what? What did they tell you to do?”
“Only to refrain from harming any of them, for then they will kill all in our village.”
Sharn-igon said, “The Poison Ghosts do not speak truth. Listen! They say they come from another world, like stars in sky. What are these stars?”
“They say they are like heat from sky,” muttered the other.
“Have felt heat from sky. Have felt no heat from these other stars. I hear nothing from them. No matter how loud I shout, hear no echo from any of them.”
“We have said these things ourselves,” said Tsharr-p’fleng slowly. “But we are afraid of the Poison Ghosts. They will kill us, without eating.”
“They will; it is true,” said Sharn-igon. He paused. Then he went on. “Unless we kill them first. Unless all of our villages together fall upon them and kill them, without eating.”
ELEVEN
MARGE MENNINGER’S HAIR was no longer blond. The name on her passport was not Margie Menninger. According to her travel orders, she was now a major, en route to a new duty station; and although the orders authorized a delay en route, it was unlikely that the general who signed them had contemplated that it would be spent in Paris.
In the little room of her hotel she fidgeted over the so-called croissant and what passed for orange juice, and phoned down to the concierge to see if the message she was expecting had arrived.
“I regret it, Meez Bernardi, but there is nothing,” sighed the concierge. Marge took another bite of the croissant and gave it up. France was nominally part of the Food Bloc — by the skin of its teeth, and by the relabeling of Algerian wine for export — but you couldn’t prove it by what they gave you for breakfast.
She was tired of this room, with its leftover smells of khef and sexual athletics from its previous occupants. She wanted to move around and couldn’t. And while she was fretting away time in this room, the Peep ships were going through pre-launch, the training of backup crews for the next Food Bloc mission was limping along without her, and God only knew what disasters were taking place in Washington and at the UN.
She abandoned the breakfast and dressed quickly. When she came downstairs, of course there was a message at the concierge’s desk, on a flimsy blue slip of paper:
Miss Hester Bernardi will be picked up at 1500 hours for her appointment.
It had obviously been there all along. Margie did not bother to reprimand the concierge; she would take care of that at tipping time. She pushed her way out into the Rue Caumartin, deciding what to do next. Six hours to kill! And for the life of her she could not think of any productive use to make of them.
It was a warm, drizzly day. The stink of gasoline drenched the air over the Place de l’Opera. Food Bloc or not, France was cozy with the Ay-rabs, as well as with the Peeps. That was another reason you could not trust the frogs, Margie thought darkly. One of her grandfathers had marched into this city in Wehrmacht gray, and the other, in the opposite direction a few years later, in American olive drab, and both of them had passed on to her their feelings about the French. They were inconstant allies and unreliable subjects, and the few who ever seemed to have any sense of national purpose usually wound up having their heads shaved or chopped by the many who did not. In Margie’s view, the French were not a bit better than the English, the Spanish, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Asians, the Africans, the Latins — and about ninety percent of the Americans too, when you came right down to it.
But the immediate problem was not what was wrong with humanity, but what she could do with this day. There was only one answer. She could do the thing most American women came to Paris to do. She could shop.
She not only could shop, she must; it was the best way of avoiding attention. She not only must, she wanted to.
It was one of Margie’s most closely guarded secrets that periodically she went on shopping binges, out of one store and into another, pricing fabric, trying on dresses, matching shoes with gowns. In her little Houston apartment there were two closets, plus half of what was meant to be a guest room, filled with her purchases. They were thrown jumbled onto shelves, pushed under a bed in their original store bags: sweaters she would never wear, material half-sewn into drapes that would never be hung. Her living room was spartan, and her bedroom was always immaculate, because you never knew who might drop in. But the secret rooms were part of the hidden personality of Margie Menninger. None of what she bought was very expensive. It was not because she was economical. She had unaccounted funds at her disposal, and the prices never mattered. But her taste was for quantity rather than quality. Periodically she would wage war against the overflow, and then for awhile Goodwill and the Salvation Army would fatten off her discards. But a week later the hoard would have grown again.
Margie did not bother with the tourist traps along the Champs Йlysйes or with the tucked-away boutiques. Her tastes were for stores like Printemps, Uniprix, and the Galeries Lafayette. The only fly in the ointment was that she could not buy anything. She could not carry it where she was going and did not want to attract attention by leaving it, so she tried on, and she priced, and for six hours she made the lives of a score of Parisian shopgirls a living hell. That didn’t bother Margie Menninger at all. By the time the taxicab picked her up at her hotel, punctually on the tick of three o’clock, her good nature was restored. She leaned back against the hard plastic seat of the cab, ready for what was to come next.
The driver stopped at the Place Vendome long enough for another passenger to jump in. Behind tourist shades was the face of her father, which was no surprise to Margie.
“Bonjour, honey,” he said. “I brought you your toy.”
She took the camera he offered her and hefted it critically. It was heavier than it looked; she would have to be careful not to let anyone else pick it up.
“Don’t try to take pictures with it,” he said, “because it won’t. Just hang it around your neck on the strap. Then, when you get where you’re going” — he pushed the shutter lever, and the casing opened to reveal a dull metal object inside — “this is what you give your contact. Along with a hundred thousand petrodollars. They’re in the carrying case.”