Free Silence is Deadly by Jr. Lloyd Biggle Page B

was deserted.
    He climbed onto a crock and looked out of a high window. In his meanderings the night before he had lost his sense of direction. Now he saw how far he’d wandered from the center of the city. Only the Winged Beast and the top of the life pyramid were visible above the buildings to mark the site of the distant mart. His hiding place was one of a cluster of warehouses located along the shore. In the opposite direction he could see the city wall and rolling country beyond, marked off in small land holdings.
    Several ships were tied up at the docks, and workers swarmed about them. Stevedores, carts, wagons, and a type of two-wheeled barrow were involved in the unloadings, but no part of the cargoes seemed destined for the empty bins or crocks in this warehouse. He continued to move from window to window, studying his surroundings and exercising his sore arm.
    Now he regretted discarding the perfumer’s clothing. He didn’t know whether he dared move about freely and purchase necessities for himself as an unemployed sweep. He had a temporary refuge, but he was dependent on the child for food and drink. His position actually seemed worse than it had been the previous night. He paced about the enormous room, continuing to exercise his arm, and the day slowly waned to dusk.
    Then the child returned. She said nothing at all to him, since her hands were full. She brought a sandwich for each of them, and she made a second trip up the rope ladder with the refilled mugs. This time they sat on the overturned bottom of a broken crock to eat. Again she kept her eyes on Darzek.
    When they had finished, she gathered up the sandwich wrappings and the mugs and carefully wrapped them in a piece of sacking that she slung over her shoulder. Then her hands formed a word. Come.
    Once again Darzek decided he had nothing to lose. He followed her.
    They descended a simple wood ladder in the far corner of the building and crawled through a window casement into a shed attached to the warehouse. She removed a piece of the shed’s wall, which provided an exit hidden behind a row of crocks. Darzek followed her through the narrow opening. She replaced the wall after them and hurried ahead to guide him.
    Night was coming on quickly as they moved along the docks. The stevedores had finished their day’s work and left; candles glimmered in the ships’ cabins, and a few sailors were returning to their ships from forays on the mart, their arms laden with purchases.
    They followed the docks to the far end of the harbor, where the shore curved sharply outward to form one of the two protective arms that almost enclosed the Bay of Northpor. There the haphazard array of warehouses gave way to majestic logs stored in carefully sited, crisscrossed piles. The storage area was checkerboarded with wagon paths, and they followed one of them. At the far side they came to a road that led directly to a gate in the city wall just beyond. Parked beside the road was a caravan, an enormous wagon with a wood building perched awkwardly on its box. Gathered around it, in the light of a cluster of flares, were the dregs of Northpor—the poor, the halt, the diseased. They were applying for work.
    Darzek moved close enough to the flares so they could see to talk. He asked the child, What sort of work?
    Forest, she answered.
    Is it good work?
    Her face brightened. Yes. Good.
    Did your father do that kind of work?
    Once. Before he was hurt.
    Obviously the scruffy applicants thought it good work. They seemed pathetically eager.
    But the employers weren’t hiring just anyone. There were two doctors present, a purger and a manipulator, and both had to approve an applicant before the three males in dusky green work clothing would look at him. Those the doctors accepted were waved to a log that lay on the ground near the caravan. They had to pick it up and walk the length of the caravan and back with it. Few of the applicants got past the doctors, and few of those who did