Free Meeting at Infinity by John Brunner

snapped.
    The landlady nodded, glancing from the picture to Athlone’s face and back again, nervously. “That’s—that’s Gower in number ninety. Has he done something?”
    Athlone didn’t answer directly. He took back the picture and grunted. “Want to search his rooms,” he said. “Which way?”
    Gaffles hardly heard the landlady’s answer. He’d caught one quick glimpse of the picture, and things had suddenly begun to make sense.
    It was a picture of Luis Nevada.

8
    F OR REASONS that outsiders were ignorant of, Ahmed Lyken had his office low down in the great tower dominating the complex of buildings which formed his base of operations. To one of his rivals, the knowledge might have been significant, or simply an example of eccentricity. Usually, the merchant princes preferred to look down on their domains, and Clostrides was copying them when he looked down on The Market.
    Looking through the window-wall of the office, Lyken could not see much of what he controlled. But he could hold it inhis mind, and what he saw there pleased him. It had doubled its size since he took on his franchise. When he won, it would double again. He promised himself that.
    Somehow, it was no longer quite as easy to think
“when
he won.” “If he won” kept creeping back.
    He turned as a casual beep sounded on the door speaker, and the panels slid back to admit his baseman, Shane Malco, his hands full of documents, his face set in an expression of defeat. Lyken had his answer before he asked his question; he uttered it nonetheless.
    “Did you get him?”
    Malco shook his head. He dropped his documents on Lyken’s huge desk and stepped back. “That’s the finance and equipment report you called for,” he said parenthetically. And shifted to the main subject.
    “We got the address where he was last living, and went to it. It was a dreg’s lodging block on the edge of the Quarter. The team I sent spent almost an hour working the landlady over. All they got was that Erlking got money from somewhere, enough to pay off his back rent, and moved out. He left no address.”
    “Sure? Beyond doubt?”
    “There isn’t room for doubt.” Malco passed a tired hand across his face. “You shouldn’t just have fired him, Ahmed. You should have—”
    “Shot him?” interrupted Lyken with deceptive gentleness. “Pensioned him off in the franchise? I hope you were going to suggest the latter, Shane. Erlking had given me long and good service, and I wouldn’t have killed him off. Know that, Shane?”
    Malco licked dry lips and nodded. He said, “But you’re staking so much on this place Akkilmar!”
    Lyken shrugged. It cost him a lot of effort to make the shrug casual. “He was properly hypnoed,” he said shortly. “The fact that one of his locks was opened was a million-to-onechance. And it didn’t seem to have been opened very far, to judge from what truth serum dug out of Nevada’s mind. What have you done with him, by the way?”
    After a pause, Malco said, “Nothing—yet. What do you want done with him?”
    “Was his money good? Did you get the half million?”
    Taken aback, Malco nodded. He pointed at the documents on the desk. “You’ll find it there, under ‘contingencies reserve,’ ” he said. “It’s good, all right.”
    “Then take him through to the franchise, the way he asked to be taken,” said Lyken, and gave a curiously bitter laugh. “No one can say I don’t keep my bargains.”
    “Will do,” agreed Malco.
    “What else are you doing about Erlking?”
    “What can I do? I’ve got all the agents I can spare out scouring the city for him. But it’s getting very difficult.”
    “Trouble?”
    “I came mainly to tell you. Rioting. Started a few minutes ago. Several of our ’cruiters have been set upon by gangs of cultists. All the avenues leading to the base have been effectively blocked by crowds. I suspect that some of the cultists
aren’t,
if you get me. They’re trained rabblerousers.