"Andre Norton - Dipple 2 - Janus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

there were few here. Those who had been lucky enough to find casual labor for the day were long since
gone; the others were in the communal dining hall for the noon meal. But there were still those who had
business in certain rooms, furtive business.
 Korwar was, except for the Dipple, a pleasure planet. Its native population lived by serving the great
and the wealthy of half a hundred solar systems. And in addition to the usual luxuries and pleasures, there
were the fashionable vices, forbidden joys fed by smuggled and outlawed merchandise. A man could, if
he were able to raise the necessary credits, buy into the Thieves' Guild and become a member of one of
those supply lines. But there was also a fringe of small dealers who grabbed at the crumbs the Thieves'
captains did not bother to touch.
They lived dangerously and they were recruited from the hopelessly reckless--from the Dipple
dregs, such as Stowar. What he sold were pleasures of a kind. Pleasure--or a way of easy dying for a
beaten and helpless woman.
Naill faced the pale boy lounging beside a certain doorway, met squarely the narrow eyes in that
ratlike face. He said only a name: "Stowar."
"Business, boot?"
"Business."
The boy jerked a thumb over his shoulders, rapped twice on the door.
"Take it, boot."
Naill pushed open the door. He felt like coughing; the smoke of a hebel stick was thick and cloying.
There were four men sitting on cushions about a bros table playing star-and-comet, the click of their
counters broken now and then by a grunt of dissatisfaction as some player failed to complete his star.
"What is it?" Stowar's head lifted perhaps two inches. He glanced at Naill, acknowledging his
presence with that demand. "Go on--say something--we're all mates here."
One of the players giggled; the other two made no sign they heard, their attention glued to the table.
"You have haluce--how much?" Naill came to the point at once.
"How much do you want?"
Naill had made his calculation on the way over. If Mara Disa could be relied upon, one pack . . . no,
better two, to be safe.
"Two packs."
"Two packs--two hundred credits," Stowar returned. "Stuff's uncut--I give full measure."
Naill nodded. Stowar was honest in his fashion, and you paid for that honesty. Two hundred credits.
Well, he hardly expected to have it for less. The stuff was smuggled, of course, brought in from off-world
by some crewman who wanted to pick up extra funds and was willing to run the risk of port inspection.
"I'll have it--in an hour."
Stowar nodded. "You do that, and the stuff's yours . . . My deal, Gram."
Naill breathed deeply in the open, driving the stink from his lungs. There was no use going back to
their own room, turning over their miserable collection of belongings to raise twenty credits--let alone
two hundred. He had long ago sold everything worth while to bring in the specialist from the upper city.
No, there was only one thing left worth two hundred credits--himself. He began to walk, his pace
increasing as he went, as if he must do this swiftly, before his courage failed. He was trotting when he
reached that other building set so conveniently and threateningly near the main gate of the Dipple--the
Off-Planet Labor Recruiting Station.
There were still worlds, plenty of them, where cheap labor was human labor, not imported machines
which required expert maintenance and for which parts had to be imported at ruinous shipping rates. And
such places as the Dipple were forcing beds for that labor. A man or woman could sign up, receive
"settlement pay," be shipped out in frozen sleep, and then work for freedom--in five years, ten, twenty.
On the surface that was a way of escape out of the rot of the Dipple. Only--frozen sleep was chancy:
there were those who never awoke on those other worlds. And what awaited those who did was also
chancy--arctic worlds, tropical worlds, worlds where men toiled under the lash of nature run wild. To
sign was a gamble in which no one but the agency ever won.