‘Damn things,’ he grumbled, wiping the sweat off his chin and fiddling aimlessly with the thermostat. ‘They gave me a booklet when I got it, but it doesn’t say anything about it eating a whole beach every day.’ He spaded in another couple of shovels from a low dune of sand heaped on the floor behind him. ‘You have to keep them at exactly 5750°K. or they start getting nervous. Can I help you?’
‘I thought there was a vacation agency here,’ Tony said.
‘Sure. I’ll call the girls for you.’ He pressed a bell.
‘Wait a minute,’ Tony cut in. ‘You advertise something about cultural parties. What exactly are they?’
The fat man chuckled. ‘That must be my partner. He’s a professor at Vega Tech. Likes to keep the tone up.’ He winked at Tony.
Tony sat on one of the stools, looking out over the crazy spiral roof-tops of the Bazaar. A mile away the police patrols circled over the big apartment batteries which marked the perimeter of the Bazaar, keeping their distance.
A tall slim woman appeared from behind the foliage and sauntered across the terrace to him. She was a Canopan slave, hot-housed out of imported germ, a slender green-skinned beauty with moth-like fluttering gills.
The fat man introduced Tony. ‘Lucille, take him up to the arbour and give him a run through.’
Tony tried to protest but the pressure brazier was hissing fiercely. The fat man started feeding sand in furiously, the exhaust flames flaring across the terrace.
Quickly, Tony turned and backed up the stairway to the arbour. ‘Lucille,’ he reminded her firmly, ‘this is strictly cultural, remember.’
Half an hour later a dull boom reverberated up from the terrace.
‘Poor Jumbo,’ Lucille said sadly as a fine rain of sand came down over them.
‘Poor Jumbo,’ Tony agreed, sitting back and playing with a coil of her hair. Like a soft sinuous snake, it circled around his arm, sleek with blue oil. He drained the flask of Five-Anchor and tossed it lightly over the balustrade. ‘Now tell me more about these Canopan prayerbeds…’
When, after two days, Tony reported back to the Gorrells he looked hollow-eyed and exhausted, like a man who had been brain-washed by the Wardens.
‘What happened to you?’ Margot asked anxiously, ‘we thought you’d been going round the agencies.’
‘Exactly,’ Tony said. He slumped down in a sofa and tossed a thick folder across to Clifford. ‘Take your pick. You’ve got about 250 schemes there in complete detail, but I’ve written out a synopsis which gives one or two principal suggestions from each agency. Most of them are out of the question.’
Clifford unclipped the synopsis and started to read through it.
