Read Online Narabedla Ltd by Frederik Pohl - Free Book Online Page B

Bach’het, and everybody’s pretty tired of song recitals anyway. No,” he warned, as I started to open my mouth, “don’t give me an argument right now. Just keep it down while I think.”
    I didn’t see any alternative to that, and besides I wanted to finish my sandwich. So I did.
    Whatever Shipperton was, he didn’t look like a traditional booking agent. He wasn’t one of the female ones in a tailored suit, and he wasn’t one of the fat and fifty ones with a big cigar. Shipperton looked to be about thirty-five. He was wearing a plaid lumberjack’s shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, showing a blue tattoo of a peace sign. He had a strong, long nose, and red sideburns to go with his red hair. The hair came down to his shoulders. He pulled restlessly at a strand of it as he said, “You can’t tap-dance or anything, can you?”
    I almost choked on the last of my sandwich. “No, I can’t tap-dance! Let’s get to the point. I was knocked out and kidnapped, and I want to go home right away.”
    “Forget that,” he snapped. “That’s just out. O-u-t, out. You know, I really hate it when I have to do orientation. They’re suppose to take care of that on Earth.” On Earth echoed awfully in my mind. So it was all true, then! “So just listen up. First, you can start out by forgetting about American kidnapping laws, Stennis. You’re not in the United States now.”
    I stuck to my guns—unloaded though they might be. “Henry Davidson-Jones is. Sometimes, anyway. He’ll have a lot to explain to the cops as soon as Mar—”
    I swallowed the rest of Marlene’s name … a little too late, maybe.
    “You were going to mention a name?” he asked politely.
    “Woody,” I said promptly. “Woody Calderon. Where is he?” Shipperton looked puzzled, and I amplified: “He’s a cellist. You snatched him maybe three, four months ago.”
    “Oh, that guy.” Shipperton nodded and reached for his desk top. “Let’s see if I can skry him for you.” When he touched things on the desk top, it turned into a mosaic of panels, like the one on his walls. Each little square had an image—a piano, a woman’s face straining in song, kettledrums—there were dozens of them. Shipperton put his finger on the one that displayed a cello.
    At once nearly all the wall pictures disappeared. The few that remained expanded and turned into human faces with cryptic numbers and figures around them.
    Woody Calderon’s sad, smiling, ineffectual face looked at me out of one of the pictures. As Shipperton did something else, the other pictures disappeared and next to Calderon appeared a drawing of an alien. It was a sort of sticklike, praying-mantis parody of a more or less human, or anyway biped and erect, figure.
    “Woody Calderon, right,” Shipperton said. “He’s fine. He’s on tour with the Ptrreek right now. He ought to be back here in—let’s see—well, maybe a week. It might be more than that; depends on whether Barak wants him for anything. Friend of yours?”
    “A very good friend,” I said belligerently. “I was the one who reported him missing to the police.” That was a stretch of the truth, but, I thought, worth putting in on the chance that it might worry Shipperton.
    It didn’t at all. The word “police” didn’t even register. He just said, “Well, your friend Calderon’s doing all right for himself here. He’s made a good adjustment. He’s done three tours already—all modem stuff that the other cellists never learned—and he’s got a nice cash balance in his bank account to show for it. Now, let’s talk about you.”
    “The only thing about me is I want to go home!”
    “But we can’t let you do that, Stennis,” he said gently. “Get used to the idea, will you? You’re on Narabedla for good. There’s no sense in getting on my case about it. I don’t have anything to say about it; I can’t go home either.”
    He didn’t sound as though that bothered him. “Well, who can