Minneola seemed confused, and finally admitted that he had no knowledge whatsoever of Jamal's military record.
It was my turn to be confused, for I had never heard of a Man referred to as a hero unless he had excelled in military action. My host explained that I was mistaken, departed the room for a moment, and returned with a scrapbook of circus posters from all over the galaxy, explaining that he was an enthusiastic patron of circuses and a student of their history. He thumbed through the book until he came to a colorful if poorly rendered poster of a very young, athletic-looking man in skintight, sequin-covered garments, swinging on a device called a trapeze. This was Jamal, and according to Mr. Minneola he was a famed circus entertainer whose specialty was a quintuple somersault from one trapeze to another without benefit of a net. His career had ended with a tragic accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and he had died some four years later.
I thanked Mr. Minneola for his time and courtesy, began the search for a hotel (a number of them had vacancies, but non-humans were not permitted inside them), finally found a dilapidated hostelry on the outskirts of what the colonists termed the Native Quarter (although there were no sentient natives on New Rhodesia, and indeed it was simply a euphemism for ghetto), and reported to Mr. Abercrombie that I had located the painting but that the owner refused to part with it for any price. Far from seeming discouraged, the news seemed to excite him; like most Men, he seemed to cherish only those things for which he had to fight.
On the return flight, I was supposed to transfer ships at the orbiting hangar at Pellinath IV, but at the last moment we had to divert to Pico II, as the Bellum, Pellinath's only sentient race, were resisting incorporation into the Oligarchy's economic system, and the Navy had moved in to forcibly convince them to reconsider. No citizens or associate members of the Oligarchy were allowed in the area, and I had to wait on Pico for three days, until the Bellum had been beaten into acquiescence.
Though I found its bleak landscape and extinct volcanoes fascinating, I was told that Pico II was considered a minor and unimportant world by the Oligarchy, its sole claim to fame being the fact that the notorious criminal Santiago had once been imprisoned there more than two thousand years ago. It was a relatively underpopulated world then, and so it remains today.
I visited the local library and asked its computer for biographical data on Rafael Jamal, with special attention to his military record. It searched its memory for almost three minutes before replying that the only reference it had to Jamal was a single newstape article concerning his accident. I suggested that it tie in to a larger computer on Pellinath or some other nearby world, discovered that the fee for expending so much energy on this energy-poor planet was exorbitant, and decided to start running the names of the artists in Abercrombie's collection through it instead. The first seven names had indeed served in the military— but the eighth had not, and by the time the computer had processed the nineteen names it could find, it turned out that five of them had no record of military service. I refused to abandon my theory that the woman was some ancient military myth-figure until I had determined whether the five had seen some sort of unofficial guerrilla action, but I realized that I would have to wait until I could access the Far London computer.
When it became apparent that our stay on Pico II was to last more than a few hours, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Rarities and Collectibles Room. There were a number of books there— actual books, with paper and binding— and since I had never seen one before, I selected a number of hefty ancient volumes dealing with human art, went off to a cubicle in the Alien Section, and began thumbing through the pages of a book
It was my turn to be confused, for I had never heard of a Man referred to as a hero unless he had excelled in military action. My host explained that I was mistaken, departed the room for a moment, and returned with a scrapbook of circus posters from all over the galaxy, explaining that he was an enthusiastic patron of circuses and a student of their history. He thumbed through the book until he came to a colorful if poorly rendered poster of a very young, athletic-looking man in skintight, sequin-covered garments, swinging on a device called a trapeze. This was Jamal, and according to Mr. Minneola he was a famed circus entertainer whose specialty was a quintuple somersault from one trapeze to another without benefit of a net. His career had ended with a tragic accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and he had died some four years later.
I thanked Mr. Minneola for his time and courtesy, began the search for a hotel (a number of them had vacancies, but non-humans were not permitted inside them), finally found a dilapidated hostelry on the outskirts of what the colonists termed the Native Quarter (although there were no sentient natives on New Rhodesia, and indeed it was simply a euphemism for ghetto), and reported to Mr. Abercrombie that I had located the painting but that the owner refused to part with it for any price. Far from seeming discouraged, the news seemed to excite him; like most Men, he seemed to cherish only those things for which he had to fight.
On the return flight, I was supposed to transfer ships at the orbiting hangar at Pellinath IV, but at the last moment we had to divert to Pico II, as the Bellum, Pellinath's only sentient race, were resisting incorporation into the Oligarchy's economic system, and the Navy had moved in to forcibly convince them to reconsider. No citizens or associate members of the Oligarchy were allowed in the area, and I had to wait on Pico for three days, until the Bellum had been beaten into acquiescence.
Though I found its bleak landscape and extinct volcanoes fascinating, I was told that Pico II was considered a minor and unimportant world by the Oligarchy, its sole claim to fame being the fact that the notorious criminal Santiago had once been imprisoned there more than two thousand years ago. It was a relatively underpopulated world then, and so it remains today.
I visited the local library and asked its computer for biographical data on Rafael Jamal, with special attention to his military record. It searched its memory for almost three minutes before replying that the only reference it had to Jamal was a single newstape article concerning his accident. I suggested that it tie in to a larger computer on Pellinath or some other nearby world, discovered that the fee for expending so much energy on this energy-poor planet was exorbitant, and decided to start running the names of the artists in Abercrombie's collection through it instead. The first seven names had indeed served in the military— but the eighth had not, and by the time the computer had processed the nineteen names it could find, it turned out that five of them had no record of military service. I refused to abandon my theory that the woman was some ancient military myth-figure until I had determined whether the five had seen some sort of unofficial guerrilla action, but I realized that I would have to wait until I could access the Far London computer.
When it became apparent that our stay on Pico II was to last more than a few hours, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Rarities and Collectibles Room. There were a number of books there— actual books, with paper and binding— and since I had never seen one before, I selected a number of hefty ancient volumes dealing with human art, went off to a cubicle in the Alien Section, and began thumbing through the pages of a book
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