The Project Gutenberg eBook of Time out for redheads, by Miriam Allen deFord

Title: Time out for redheads

Author: Miriam Allen deFord

Illustrator: Kelly Freas

Release Date: October 29, 2022 [eBook #69257]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

His name was Mikel Skot. He was thirty-four, five-feet-ten and lean, with decent features and all his hair and quite nice brown eyes. But somehow he always seemed to give the impression of being of indeterminate age, and slightly dusty. He lived alone, he gravitated between his job and his lodgings, and since the age of fourteen he had never known a girl well enough to call her by her first name.

For twelve years, ever since 2827, he had sold tickets at one of the windows of Time Travel Tours, Unlimited. If raises hadn't been automatic, he would never have had one, though he was punctual, faithful, honest, quick and accurate. Even the other ticket-sellers still called him Citizen Skot.

He had never budged from his cozy era—even though, as an employee, he was entitled to take any tour he wished, on his semi-annual vacation, at no cost to him beyond the planetary sales tax—nor had he ever left his native city, let alone his native planet. He was too shy even to realize he was lonely.

This morning there was the usual rush. Staggered vacations meant that any time of the year was the busy season for TTT. Skillfully Mikel Skot arranged tours and calculated rates.

"Two weeks in Rome, 45 B.C.? That will be creds 850, Citizen. You get your costume and equipment in Room 104, right off the Teleport. Yes, I'm sure they'll have a Latin language-transformer you can hire." "England in 1600, one month, reservation in the name of Chas Rusl. Yes, I have it right here. That will be creds 500, please." "You mean you want a ticket for here in Los, for a week six years ago in February? Why, yes, it's a little unusual, but—oh, certainly, I understand—a second honeymoon. Congrats, Citizen—not many couples stay together that long! Just a min, while I look up the rate for two."

The queue seemed endless, and crowds of travelers who already had their tickets were pushing their way through the doors back of the ticket-office to the Teleport itself, together with the friends who were seeing them off. If Mikel had had a moment to spare, which he hadn't, he might have wondered, as so often before, at the numbers of people everybody except himself seemed to know.

The morning wore on, and he was beginning to think longingly of 13:30 o'clock, when his lunchtime relief would arrive and he could sit in a quiet corner of an Autocaf and watch the tridimens screen for the day's news while he ate his favorite vitatabs and smoked a healthcig.

Then everything happened all at once.

The girl standing at his ticket-window was a redhead. Her eyes were green, with little dancing amber lights in them, and she smiled at him as if he were the kind of man girls do smile at, and not ineffectual Mikel Skot.

"Can you tell me," she began, in a warm, slightly husky voice.

Then she screamed loudly and collapsed.

There were shouts and jostling and milling around, and somebody leaned over the counter and abruptly thrust something into his hand. He stood there dazed, grabbing the object, whatever it was. Then he leaned over the counter. The girl was lying there, very still. On one side of her a pool of blood was slowly forming on the floor.

The guards were coming from all directions, trying to get some kind of quiet and order into the excited throng. Mikel looked down at the thing in his hand.

It was a knife, a steel knife with a wooden handle. It was obviously an antique, and of great value. And it was smeared with fresh blood.

Mikel Skot lost his head entirely. Never before had he, or anyone he had ever heard of, been involved even remotely in any kind of violence. He never even took in historical crime plays. The redheaded girl was dead, and he held in his hand the knife that had killed her. And she had been the first girl who had smiled at him for years.

He wanted out—now!

He reached behind him and grabbed a ticket at random, not even looking to see what date it was. He punched it hastily for a week. Nobody was looking at him; everybody was still yelling at everybody else, and the sweating guards were trying to line people up and blocking the doors so that they could not get away. Mikel ran to the corridor back of the counters, which the ticket-sellers used, and saw that the company door to the Teleport was open. Out there, what with parties singing "Happy Timetrav to You," or noisily greeting homecomers, and the loudspeaker directing passengers to their proper stations, and the roar of the take-offs and returnjets, nobody seemed to have noticed that anything was wrong in the ticket-office.

Mikel glanced around once to be sure that nobody was watching him, and slipped through the door. He was still holding the knife. Automatically he thrust it into his belt-pouch.

It was typical of him that after twelve years not one of the Teleport attendants knew him by sight. He thrust his ticket at the nearest one. The man glanced at it (three other travelers were trying to get his attention at the same time) and said "Platform Eight." Mikel hurried there.

Before he reached it he remembered something. He had punched the ticket for duration, but not for place. Well, that was all right. If it had no place-punch, it would mean Los itself. He was escaping into his own city.

The attendant at Eight took his ticket, then peered at him dubiously.

"You haven't clothes for the period, Citizen. Go to Room 104 and—"

"It doesn't matter," Mikel interrupted him. He was in a fever to be gone. "I'm—it's a research project," he added in a sudden inspiration which didn't make sense even to himself, but which the attendant, used to strange statements from travelers, accepted without comment. He sealed the timeporter on to Mikel's wrist, set it for return in a week, and helped him into the telechamber.

There was a swift moment when his head felt empty and his stomach heaved: and Mikel Skot found himself sitting on an iron bench in a park.

He had a week now to think things over. He was in Los—he had to be, his ticket said so.

But when?

He looked about him. It must be the middle of the day, the same time it had been before, and the park was full of people on their lunch-hour. They were dressed weirdly—the men and half the women wore tight cylindrical garments, one on each leg. The upper part of their bodies were covered with various kinds of brightly-colored cloth, though occasionally he saw a woman who wore only a breast-holder above her bare midriff! Mikel, in his belted tunic, huddled in a corner of his bench, fearful of notice. But nobody paid any attention to him, and once a man passed who had on a tunic too—a long white one, over bare feet and under long hair and a flowing beard. Apparently in this period people dressed as they pleased—at least in Los.

The city itself, what part of it he could see from his vantage-point, was stranger than the people. There were no moving sidewalks, and no weather-canopies over the streets—though perhaps these had only been removed for the dry season. The buildings looked shrunken and tiny—hardly one seemed to be more than thirty or forty stories high. Archaic buses and motor-cars, apparently powered by some non-atomic fuel, plied the actual streets, instead of being confined to subways. The skies were almost empty of planes, and those he saw were incredibly clumsy and slow. There was obviously no freeway for helicopters.

It was self-evident that he was in some year of the remote past, though just which, he had no idea. He wished he had taken time to glance at the ticket before he handed it in. He wished he had studied history komikbooks, or given more than a cursory glance at the telescreen propinforms of TTT. There was something to be said, after all, for the General Educationalists, cranks as they were.

Certainly this was not his Los—his giant city stretching from Mex to Sanfran without a break. This was a little place of probably not much more than two million inhabitants. Well, here he was for a week, and he'd better find out how he was going to eat and sleep. Properly equipped time travelers had money of the right period, but the cred checks in his pouch would do him no good now. What did he have on him that could be exchanged for board and lodging?

Only one object of undoubted value. The knife.

Surreptitiously and with distaste he took it out and looked at it. The blood had dried on it and doubtless left traces on the lining of his pouch. It was probably covered with the fingerprints of the murderer as well as with his own. But it was all he had.

In the middle of the park there was a fountain, with a pool around it. Casually Mikel Skot strolled over to it and sat down on the ledge. When he was sure nobody was looking he dipped the knife in the water and scrubbed it dry on the inner hem of his tunic. There would still be traces of blood which any chemist could find, of course; but nobody here would be examining it for that. Since anyone could see that it was of immense value, he would have to account for possession of it. He could say it was an heirloom.

Putting it back in his pouch he approached a fat man on a bench nearby.

"Where is the nearest history museum, please, Citizen?" he asked politely.

The man looked up. He had been scanning a large piece of paper which Mikel, with a thrill, recognized from one of his few visits to the Museum of Antiquities. It was a thing called a newspaper, which had antedated the tridimens telescreen. He remembered that the specimens he had seen had borne dates at the top, and if he could read the archaic printing he could find out what year it was. But the man folded it up and thrust it under his arms as he answered.

"History museum?" he echoed. "Gosh, bud, I don't know. I'm a stranger here myself—just got in from Kansas yesterday. You a foreigner?" he asked with frank curiosity. "You got a funny accent. And you sure look funny."

A foreigner—that was a good one! But Mikel had no time to waste. He murmured "Excuse," and left. The man stared after him and made a gesture which Mikel did not understand—describing a circle in the air near his forehead.

Mikel walked to the edge of the little park and looked about him. Across the street was a store with newspapers in racks in front of it. He could go over there and see the dates. But what did it really matter? With his ignorance of all but the haziest generalities of history—he thought that once, thousands of years ago, Los had belonged to the Spaniards, and after that there was some kind of war that was maybe called the American Revolution or the Civil War or the World War, he was not sure which—it wouldn't do him much good to know whether he was in, say, 1820 or 1960 or 2080. Besides, he was afraid to cross that street full of clumsy vehicles, and with neither an overpass nor an underpass. Nowhere could he see anything that resembled a museum.

Farther down on the same side of the street on which he stood, he saw something that looked faintly promising. He walked down to it, and found a window full of odd-looking primitive objects, the nature of some of which he could not guess. But there were knives among them, and a sign said, in ancient spelling, "Jewelry Bought and Sold." On an impulse he walked in.

A man in another queer garment—some kind of cloth upper, with a white linen thing beneath it and a ribbon tied around his neck—looked up without surprise at Mikel's literally untimely garb, and said: "Yes, sir?"

Mikel drew out the knife.

"Very valuable," he said. "An heirloom. How much will you give me?"

The man shrank back, not as if he were afraid of the knife, but as if he were suddenly afraid of Mikel.

"You kidding me?" he asked. "Or is this a stick-up?"

Mikel was not sure what the words meant, so he merely shook his head.

"Then are you nuts? There's nothing valuable about that thing. It's just an ordinary kitchen knife."

"Not valuable?" Mikel's face fell. "But look—wooden handle, steel blade."

"So what? Every knife has a wooden handle and a steel blade."

"You will not give me money for it?"

"Of course not. We don't buy junk."

There was no use arguing. One age's antique is another age's junk. Mikel sighed and departed quietly. How was he to get food and shelter for a week?

He went back to the park and sat down again on a bench. He put the knife back in his pouch.

This was what came of panicking for the first time in his humdrum life. A sudden image of the redheaded girl came before his mind—her green eyes and her smile. That girl—she was so pretty—and she had smiled at him, whom girls never noticed. And then she had been killed. Now that it was too late, he wished he had stayed, whatever might have happened to him. He wanted to help, to avenge her; he wanted to be home again.

His stomach reminded him sharply that he had had no lunch. He had never heard how long a man could go without eating. Could he even live through the week?

He sat there disconsolately, his eyes fixed on the ground. On his wrist was sealed the little gadget that was his only means of ever seeing 2839 again.

Somebody came and sat down beside him. Deep in thought, he did not even glance up. A voice said, "Can you tell me what time it is? My watch is broken and there's no clock around here."

"Watch"—that meant "to be alert." "Clock"—that was an ancient time-measuring device, he thought. The only way Mikel knew to tell the time was to glance at the ceiling of any room, or if he were outdoors to tune in on his miniature tridimens gadget, attached to his belt. He dialed it now, but there was no response. Of course not—it wouldn't work across perhaps a thousand years.

"I'm sorry," he answered. "I can't."

He turned as he spoke. He jumped violently.

The speaker was a girl. She had red hair and green eyes. Otherwise there was no resemblance, though she too was pretty. But red hair and green eyes seemed to be haunting him.

"What's that thing on your left wrist, then?" asked the girl spunkily.

Mikel reddened. Rule Five of the booklets he handed out with the tickets to all travelers leaped into his mind: "Remember, you cannot change the course of history. To avoid confusion and difficulty, avoid revealing to any person you meet in other time-periods the true nature of your presence there."

He broke the rule, and was sorry at once.

"It's a timeporter," he said, "set for my return home."

The girl laughed.

"That's a good one. I thought I'd heard everything since I came to this crazy place. What are you, an Arab, dressed in that tablecloth?"

"I was born right here in Los," Mikel announced with dignity. "I've always lived here."

"So they grow them crazy here right from the start! Then where's your home you're 'set' to return to?"

"Here in Los."

The girl stood up hastily, a look of alarm on her face.

"Oh, please," Mikel cried, "don't go. I can explain. Perhaps you can help me."

She sat down again dubiously.

"Well, I'm a sucker for a good story," she said. "Shoot."

"I—I wouldn't shoot. I have no weapon."

That wasn't true—he did have a weapon: the knife. But he could hardly mention that. Anyway, the girl only laughed again.

"Wisecracks, yet," she said unintelligibly. "Well, what's the story?"

"I am from this place, but I am not from your time," Mikel began laboriously; he was utterly unaccustomed to social conversation with a woman. "I am from—with me it is 2839."

"What in the—look, what are you advertising? Some science fiction magazine?"

"I don't understand that word—adver—what is it? Please believe me. I shouldn't tell you, I'm breaking a rule. But it is true."

"Go on." She fixed him with a skeptical glance.

"I was—I am a ticket-seller for Time Travel Tours. This morning—I mean what was to me this morning—a customer was killed at my window."

He plunged ahead. She listened in silence, a peculiar expression in her eyes.

"So you see," he concluded, "I am here for a week. But then I go back—the timeporter will see to that. I want to go—I'm sorry I ran away. But I'm sure the police will say I did it, because of the knife."

"Let's see it."

He brought it out.

"Why, that's just an ordinary kitchen carving knife," she said, just as the man in the store had done. "I suppose you would call it an antique in—what was it?—2839. I still say you're haywire—or else this is some new racket I don't get."

"I don't understand."

"Okay, I guess you wouldn't—in 2839. The language would change plenty in 886 years." Once more her laugh rang out. "I'll say you keep it up fine—that funny half-foreign way you pronounce your words. But I'll play along, and pretend this is all on the up-and-up. Even so, it's haywire—crazy. Because the dumbest cop in the world wouldn't suspect you of the murder. Anybody'd know the murderer just got rid of the knife the quickest way he could. Gosh, you were behind your window, weren't you, and she was in front of it? Where was her stab wound?"

"Wait—it's hard for me to understand. 'Cop'—is that slang for police? And the blood"—he shuddered—"came from her side. Either someone in front or someone behind her could have done it."

"But they'll find out right away, won't they, that you didn't know the girl? They'll find out who she was, and they'll grill everybody she knew, to see who had a reason for wanting her out of the way.... Listen to me! I'm as big a nut as you are. I'm talking just as if the whole thing really happened."

"It did happen," Mikel assured her earnestly. "No, I didn't know her. I don't know any girls at all. I'm—I'm not attractive to women."

"Why, you're not so bad," said the girl kindly. "I think you're kind of cute—or would be, if you weren't rigged up in those outlandish clothes," she paused, then continued, "Well, if you can prove you didn't know her, what have you got to worry about?"

"The knife. And that I lost my head and ran."

The girl nodded. "Leave the knife here, then. Or would that change the course of history?" She smiled. "Of course, what you ought to have done was hand it right over. Then if it was such a great antique they'd not only have the guy's fingerprints but they'd also find out who knew her that worked in a museum or had a chance to steal it from one. That's elementary homicide procedure."

"You see," said Mikel, "this also you won't believe. But our police are not conditioned to take care of killings. This is the first time in my whole life that I have ever even heard of one, except by accident. The psychologists wouldn't allow anyone to grow up who had murderous tendencies that couldn't be sublimated."

"They let that one slip by them, didn't they? And do you mean that in the great scientific future they tell us about, the police won't know as much about handling a homicide case as any hick constable knows today? Who're you trying to kid?"

"We do not have crime. The police are to guard traffic and to take up for reconditioning anybody who doesn't obey the civil rules. I don't know much history, but I know there once were wars, and then there were experts in war. Now—in my time—we have no wars, so there are no experts. In the same way we have no experts in crime."

"Then what would they do to you, if they did convict you of this murder you didn't commit?"

"I don't know. There is no penalty for murder because there have been no murders for so long. This will be a world affair; the police will refer it to the Supreme Council, and they will decide what to do. I suppose they will have me euthanized as an atavistic deviant. That's why I lost my head. It was a totally new experience and I haven't been conditioned to new experiences. But even if they don't convict me, they'll punish me for running away. They'll demote me, perhaps all the way back to where I started twelve years ago."

"It doesn't sound like much of a brave new world to me," said the girl in a disparaging tone. "What's your name—or do you just have numbers?"

"My name is Mikel Skot."

"Michael Scott—well, that sounds like a regular name, anyway. Mine's Betty French, by the way."

"Many grats to you, Citizen French. You have given me good advice. I know now it is my duty to take the knife back with me, and give it to the police. I shall tell them also about looking for somebody in a museum, as you suggested. But there will be no fingerprints—I washed the knife in that fountain, when I hoped to sell it. I forgot it must exist in my era, or the murder could not have occurred.

"But that is not my big problem now. I have no money of your time. How shall I live until I can go home?"

Betty French seemed to stiffen. She looked at him disgustedly. "I get it now," she said. "I might have known. This is just a new way of panhandling. I certainly admire it—it's a work of art. Well, I got my money's worth. I'll pay for it."

She opened her handbag, drew out a dollar bill, and laid it on Mikel's knee. He gazed at it curiously, but made no attempt to pick it up.

"Is that your kind of money?" he asked. "What do I do in exchange for it?"

"Oh, let's drop it," she sighed wearily. "My lunch-hour's up, anyway. Take it—it'll buy you a hamburger and coffee, and then you can tell your tale to the next comer and maybe get enough for a bed in a flophouse. Brother, you must have told it plenty, to get it all down so pat. It's a wonder I've missed you before—or are you just starting to work this neighborhood?"

She snapped her bag shut and stood up.

"Please—I don't understand—why are you so angry?"

At the desperation in his voice she turned and stopped.

"Look—I really have to get back to the office. This is an act, isn't it? Come clean—aren't you panhandling?"

"What does 'panhandling' mean?"

"Oh, I give up! I guess you're just looney, after all. All right, Mike, let's call it a day. You keep that buck, and now you just go to the nearest police station and tell them your story. They'll take you over to the psychiatric ward of the county hospital and you can get free board and lodging there."

Mikel turned pale and shivered.

"Oh, no," he breathed. "I'm not insane. If you don't believe me, no one else will. And the hospital will euthanize me."

"Is that what they do to crazy people in—in your time?"

"Of course. And they punish the psychologist who didn't detect the tendency and have the person euthanized in childhood."

"Suppose I give you my word they won't do that to you here and now? They'll just observe you for a few days and then they'll have you committed to a state hospital."

"You are quite positive? If I can be sure of being alive a week from now, no matter where I am, when the timeporter checks I'll go back home."

"Even if you're in a padded cell?"

"It won't matter where."

"Well, then, your problem's solved, isn't it? I'll show you how to get to the station."

"I must eat first. I'm very hungry. And what were those things you said if I should get—hamburger and coffee? They are—original foods? Our food is all synthetic."

"You don't have to keep this up with me any more. There's a quick lunch place." She pointed.

"And they won't mind in this Autocaf that I'm not dressed like the others?"

"In this burg? They wouldn't notice if you wandered around in a loincloth. Now I've got to go. This is the wackiest thing that ever happened to me, whatever it really means. Well, good luck, Mike!"

"Grats to you, Citizen French, from deep in my pineal. Oh, wait just one min more please!"

"What is it now?"

"You have given me so much to tell our police. But won't they wonder why this man killed the girl?"

"They can ask him when they catch them, can't they? But it's perfectly obvious. She was buying a ticket, wasn't she?"

"Yes, certainly."

"Well, that meant she was going away—leaving him, doesn't it? So he was in love with her—maybe she was his wife—and he couldn't take it. Maybe she was going to some other guy—how do I know? He found out she was deserting him, so he got hold of the knife, and followed her."

"But I don't see why." Mikel was utterly bewildered. "She was a free agent, like anybody else. He couldn't object to her leaving if she no longer loved him—he didn't own her. That doesn't make sense. If I tell one of our police that theory, she will surely think I'm insane."

"She?"

"All our police are women, of course. Women are naturally gifted at keeping order."

"You tell that to our cops, and they'll surely get you tucked away in a nice hospital, but fast. Well, why else would he kill her?"

"I don't know. That's why I asked you—you know so much more about such things, in your barb—in your time."

"Your policewoman will have to figure it out for herself. So long, Mike." She shook her head, smiling. "Will I have a tale to tell the crowd—if they don't decide I've gone nuts myself! Good-by!"

"Goobie, Citizen, and grats again."

Still smiling, she hurried down the path out of the park.

When he could see her no longer, Mikel stood up and began hesitantly to walk toward the restaurant she had pointed out. Fortunately, it was on the same side of the street, not far past the shop where he tried to sell the knife.

This was not going to be plez, not at all plez. Despite what this Beti French had told him, he was nervous about putting himself in the hands of either the police or psychologist of this barbarous era. But there didn't seem to be anything else he could do. His conversation with the redheaded girl had shown him clearly what kind of reception he would meet from anyone else he ventured to approach.

First he must eat—he was ravenous. He dared not ask for any food except the two things the girl had mentioned, whatever they were like. Presumably the money she had given him would be enough.

The restaurant had a long counter of some white substance, with stools fixed before it. Only one man sat there eating, but behind it stood another man dressed in white, with a white cap on his head. Mikel perched himself on the nearest stool.

"Hamburger, coffee, please," he said, and laid Beti's money beside him on the counter.

The other customer looked up and eyed him sharply, but the man behind the counter merely yelled "One on a bun!" through a hole in the wall. "Mustard?" he asked, "Onions? Cream?"

"No, Citizen. Hamburger, coffee," Mikel repeated, flustered.

"A joker!" the man grunted. "This town! You in the movies, bud?"

Mikel stared.

"He wants a burger without and coffee with," the other customer put in suddenly. He picked up his dishes and slid down to the next stool. He was a heavy-set, middle-aged man, dressed as the man in the store had been—in dark cloth bifurcated leg-coverings and a dark, long-sleeved upper garment over a light-colored under-garment, with a gaudy ribbon around his neck.

"Okay, okay," said the man in white placatingly, and set down before Mikel something on a plate and something else in a cup, both hot. Mikel began sampling them gingerly with the unaccustomed implements. The restaurant man took the money, put it in a box that rang a bell, and laid down some small metal objects in its place. Then he disappeared through a door behind the counter.

Mikel's neighbor waited until he had gone. Then in a low voice he said:

"Finish the food, Citizen Skot. Then we'll talk."

Mikel looked up, frozen. The stranger shot his left wrist out from the sleeve. Sealed to it was a timeporter.

"From TTT executive, Citizen," he said briskly. "I didn't think I'd find you quite so soon, but I knew it wouldn't be long, since you didn't wait to get proper equipment for your journey. It is fort for you that this is perhaps the only place in this era where you would not have been taken up at sight for wandering around in unusual clothing."

"How—how did you know what period—"

"We only had to check the tickets, to see which was missing. Have you the knife?"

Mikel brought it out dumbly and laid it on the counter. The man put it in a pouch sewed into his lower garment.

"I didn't do it! I didn't!" Mikel cried despairingly. He had lost his appetite completely.

"Sh! We don't want a fuss here. I am rechecking your timeporter, Citizen Skot. We are going back immediately."

"I—I didn't even know the girl!" Mikel pleaded, remembering Beti French's instructions.

"We shall see as to that, when we get home," said the TTT executive grimly.

Then suddenly he burst out laughing. He laughed until he had to take a small piece of white material from his upper garment and wipe his eyes.

"I meant to give you a good scare, to put some sense into you," he gasped finally. "But I can't keep it up. Citizen Skot, you are a fool."

"I know that, Citizen," said Mikel humbly.

"The psychologists really conditioned you a bit too well. I am told that you live for your work and have no recreation at all. You are as ignorant of the world as a small child. Come, did you ever hear of a murder in our time, anywhere, in all your life?"

"No. But I know such things occur."

"In the past, not in our time. How could there be a murder in our era? In the old times, people killed one another for jealousy, for revenge, for greed. Such incentives do not exist in the 29th century. The only other possibility would be insanity, and the psychologists would never allow that to proceed to such a point—the diseased person would be euthanized at the very first symptoms."

"But the girl was killed, right before my eyes."

"My poor man, you were a victim of your own ridiculously retired existence. Anyone else would have guessed at once. It was planned that way so as to get a good effect of a crowd in confusion—most of them were extras. Of course all the arrangements had been made with us beforehand, and the concealed telcams were focused away from any Time Travel signs."

"Telecams?"

"World Theater was making a historical crime tridimens in modern dress, Citizen Skot. The girl was an actress. The blood was faked. They thought it would be more effective not to put an actor behind the ticket-window, but to use a real ticket-seller without warning him, just as part of the crowd wasn't warned. It worked beautifully—they tell me your fright and horror showed up wonderfully well.

"They picked your window because they said they liked your looks—I can't imagine why. That was their big mistake. Any other of our ticket-sellers would have waited to see what happened next. You, you dumble, fell into a panic and ran away. And I've had to leave my desk in the middle of a busy aftern to go and fetch you. We couldn't let you wander around here for a week without means of subsistence, and thinking you were suspected of murder!"

"I suppose I'll be demoted now," Mikel said gloomily.

"That wouldn't be fair. This wasn't one of the known responsibilities of your position. No, but I imagine you'll come in for a lot of whiffing, to use a slang expression."

"Kidding—that's what they call it here, I think. Well, I'm used to that."

"And Dafne Dart says she's wild to meet you."

"Dafne Dart? Who's she?" Mikel looked alarmed again.

"Your performance made a tremend impression on her. She told me to tell you she thinks 'you're purely vlumpish.' She's the actress who played the murder victim."

"That red-haired girl with the green eyes with flecks of amber in them?" asked Mikel eagerly. "With the streely smile and the gorge voice?"

"You seem to have noticed her," said the TTT executive dryly. "Yes, that's the one. I thought you didn't go for women."

"But that's different!" Mikel Skot caroled. "Redheads with green eyes—that's the one kind that crashes me and that I crash—I just found it out today.

"Come on, Citizen, what are we waiting for? Let's Go!"