Free Silence is Deadly by Jr. Lloyd Biggle

it. A stream of moonlight clearly delineated the face peering down at him.
    It was a child, a female whose Earth age might have been nine or ten. Her appearance starkly contrasted with those of the children Darzek had seen in the mart that day. Her hair was its natural, rather grubby color, arranged in a matted tangle instead of a piled hairdo. She was skinny and obviously undernourished, and she had an unwashed, unhealthy look about her. She wore only an undergarment, something like a baggy slip of coarse cloth.
    She leaned forward, and her fingers moved. What are you looking for?
    He hesitated. Then, feeling that he had nothing to lose, he raised his hands and answered. Clothes.
    The dark, serious eyes regarded him steadily. Then her fingers spoke again. Come up.
    Before Darzek could reply, a rope ladder dropped through the opening. He regarded it uncertainly for a moment; but he still had nothing to lose, so he climbed up.
    The child had disappeared when he reached the top. The upper floor had rows of giant crocks down the center and along the walls were enormous bins filled with grain. Darzek looked about for the child.
    She stepped from behind a crock at the far end of the building and gestured to him. She had raised a section of the flooring, and she was fumbling in a sack like those he’d seen on the lower level. It was her secret hiding place, and from it she was pulling garments and arranging them into sets.
    Whose clothing is it? Darzek asked, holding his fingers under her nose as he spoke because the light there was dim. He didn’t want the child to get into trouble.
    My father’s, she answered.
    Darzek held his fingers under her nose again. Where’s your father?
    The Winged Beast took him.
    He examined one of the sets of clothing. It was work apparel, dull brown in color, and it seemed clean and smelled fresh, but there was no hat or cape or apron.
    He asked, What was your father’s work?
    Sweep, she answered.
    Earlier that night he had seen crews of males in the distance, sweeping nabrula manure from the lanes by torchlight. By sheer accident he had found clothing for the one job on Kamm he could perform.
    The child disappeared the moment he began to undress. He stripped to his undergarment. Then he removed all of the coins from his perfumer’s clothing and fashioned a money belt from a leg wrapping he found with her father’s clothing. He concealed most of the coins around his waist. Then he dressed himself.
    When he finished, he saw the child standing on a crock at the other end of the building, looking out of a high window. He wondered how she lived and whether anyone looked after her. When she saw him walking toward her, she scrambled down and hurried to meet him. He held up his discarded perfumer’s clothing. Can this be sold?
    She fingered it as carefully as a tailor, examining with a scowl the cut left by the whip, holding the cape up to the light to inspect its lining. Yes, she answered.
    Will you accept it in payment for your father’s clothing?
    She smiled and hunched her shoulder affirmatively.
    Where do you live?
    She gestured. Here.
    She was a street urchin. He should have been aware that even such a prosperous and beautiful city as Northpor would have its slums, its poor, and its destitute, who lived where they could and scrounged for survival. Perhaps her father had been employed in some way by the warehouse’s owner, and she knew her way in and out and simply continued to live there, in hiding.
    They smiled at each other. Her youthful features gave Darzek a new insight into feminine beauty on Kamm: large eyes and perfect features; and, without the towering hairdo and ornate clothing, a delightful, unspoiled freshness.
    Her smile illuminated even such drab surroundings as these.
    He asked her, Is there a safe place to sleep?
    She led him to the side of one of the bins and removed a panel. The bin’s bottom was slanted steeply to facilitate the flow of grain, leaving a vacant, triangular