Free The Super Barbarians by John Brunner Page B

straighten as I walked through the city curl into a natural pose, and settled my head at an Earthly angle on my neck. Nobody troubled me as I made my way to Kramer’s.
    Instead of the front door I had used yesterday—which was locked from inside, I found—I went to the back entrance, and a small boy of ten or twelve answered my knock suspiciously.
    “Who’re you?” he said.
    Tm Gareth Shaw,” I said, and explained my business. When I showed him one of the new bright coins I carried, he let me enter.
    “Fathers got a client at the moment,” he said, indicating a chair for me. “A Vorrish noblewoman, I think. She usually stays quite a long time. Mind waiting?”
    “Not at all,” I said. “How’s your mother today?”
    A look of deep unhappiness passed over the boy’s face. He muttered something I didn’t catch, and turned back to a table on which he had been preparing some food—paring mouldy vegetables of their rotten parts. He wasn’t very good at his work; he held the knife awkwardly and seemed to peer at each vegetable he picked up, though the light was fairly good. At first I thought he might be backward. Then the weariness of his movements made it clear to me what the real reason was. He was ill himself with undernourishment, although he probably ate as much as he could hold in his narrow belly.
    I thought of the vegetables I had in my bag, and I was going to bring them out and offer them to him, when Kramer’s voice rose in the adjacent room uttering a formal Vorrish farewell. I decided to wait. I heard the front door open and shut, and a few moments afterwards Kramer came grinning through from his mumbo-jumbo parlor, stripping off his huge black cloak.
    “Well, that’s another on the hook—” he began. Then he caught sight of me and broke off, his face darkening.
    “You again, Shaw,” he said flatly. “What’s it for this time?”
    “You don’t seem exactly pleased to see me,” I countered, holding my bag on my knee.
    “I’m not,” he agreed after a pause. “No, I happened to be speaking to Ken Lee last evening. I think you met him.”
    “Ken Lee was told by Judge Olafsson not to mention me to anyone,” I said.
    “Are you sure?” Kramer hesitated.
    “Certain sure,” I said. “Ask Olafsson himself, if you like. I don’t think a loose tongue is a good thing to have around the Acre.”
    He nodded, but his look of hostility didn’t fade. I held out the balance of his fee on my palm, and he took it quickly. “You squeezed it out of her, then.”
    “I didn’t squeeze it,” I said. “She paid it as the price of my discretion, because she knew I would ask you what I was bringing her.”
    Again he nodded:
    “Still, if you’re not glad to see me,” I went on, “at least you’ll welcome these.” I produced some heads of salad from my bag.
    Kramer’s jaw dropped. It was a satisfying sight. He said in a voice near whispered-level, “Where the—?”
    “I have some I grow my self. For I don’t get any vitamins or diet supplements from back home. I thought your wife might be helped a little by these, since obviously pills aren’t doing her any good.”
    Reverently he took the few undersized knobs of greenery I handed him, shaking his head and moving his Lips soundlessly. At length he said, “That’s a very kind thought, Shaw. I’m sorry. I think I must have misjudged you. But—” He set the salad on a table, and the boy stopped his paring and began to sniff at and finger What I had brought.
    “But what was that yen said about stuff from home?” Kramer pursued.
    “Well, didn’t I hear, back home, that you in the Acre were allowed one shipload a month of supplies?” “That’s so, yes.”
    “And isn’t that mainly vitamins and so on?”
    “You’d never been to the Acre before yesterday, had you?”
    “No, I hadn’t.”
    “I see. What’s the mark on your cheek?”
    I explained. Kramer was carried away with enthusiasm when I finished. Slapping his hands together,