Free Deathworld by Harry Harrison

ignore his discomfort and match the boy’s pace.
    The walk was a depressing one. The heavy, squat buildings loomed grayly through the rain, more than half of them in ruins. They walked on a pedestrian way in the middle of the street. The occasional armored trucks went by on both sides of them. The midstreet sidewalk puzzled Jason until Grif blasted something that hurtled out of a ruined building towards them. The central location gave them some chance to see what was coming. Suddenly Jason was very tired.
    “Grif, this city of yours is sure down at the heels. I hope the other ones are in better shape.”
    “I don’t know what you mean talking about heels. But there are no other cities. Some mining camps that can’t be located inside the perimeter. But no other cities.”
    This surprised Jason. He had always visualized the planet with more than one city. There were a lot of things he didn’t know about Pyrrus, he realized suddenly. All of his efforts since landing had been taken up with the survival studies. There were a number of questions he wanted to ask. But ask them of somebody other than his grouchy eight-year-old bodyguard. There was one person who would be best equipped to tell him what he wanted to know.
    “Do you know Kerk,” he asked the boy. “Apparently he’s your ambassador to a lot of places, but his last name —”
    “Sure, everybody knows Kerk. But he’s busy, you shouldn’t see him.”
    Jason shook a finger at him. “Minder of my body you may be. But minder of my soul you are not. What do you say I call the shots and you go along to shoot the monsters? Okay?”
    * * * *
    They took shelter from a sudden storm of fist-sized hailstones. Then, with ill grace, Grif led the way to one of the larger, central buildings. There were more people here and some of them even glanced at Jason for a minute, before turning back to their business. Jason dragged himself up two flights of stairs before they reached a door marked CO-ORDINATION AND SUPPLY.
    “Kerk in here?” Jason asked.
    “Sure,” the boy told him. “He’s in charge.”
    “Fine. Now you get a nice cold drink, or your lunch, or something, and meet me back here in a couple of hours. I imagine Kerk can do as good a job of looking after me as you can.”
    The boy stood doubtfully for a few seconds, then turned away. Jason wiped off some more sweat and pushed through the door.
    There were a handful of people in the office beyond. None of them looked up at Jason or asked his business. Everything has a purpose on Pyrrus. If he came there — he must have had a good reason. No one would ever think to ask him what he wanted. Jason, used to the petty officialdom of a thousand worlds, waited for a few moments before he understood. There was only one other door. He shuffled over and opened it.
    Kerk looked up from a desk strewed about with papers and ledgers. “I was wondering when you would show up,” he said.
    “A lot sooner if you hadn’t prevented it,” Jason told him as he dropped wearily into a chair. “It finally dawned on me that I could spend the rest of my life in your blood-thirsty nursery school if I didn’t do something about it. So here I am.”
    “Ready to return to the ‘civilized’ worlds, now that you’ve seen enough of Pyrrus?”
    “I am not,” Jason said. “And I’m getting very tired of everyone telling me to leave. I’m beginning to think that you and the rest of the Pyrrans are trying to hide something.”
    Kerk smiled at the thought. “What could we have to hide? I doubt if any planet has as simple and one-directional an existence as ours.”
    “If that’s true, then you certainly wouldn’t mind answering a few direct questions about Pyrrus?”
    Kerk started to protest, then laughed. “Well done. I should know better by now than to argue with you. What do you want to know?”
    Jason tried to find a comfortable position on the hard chair, then gave up. “What’s the population of your planet,” he