Robert A Heinlein - Citizen of the Galaxy

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Citizen of the Galaxy

Robert A. Heinlein

Chapter 1

"Lot ninety-seven," the auctioneer announced. "A boy."

The boy was dizzy and half sick from the feel of ground underfoot The slave ship had come more than

forty light-years; it carried in its holds the stink of all slave ships, a reek of crowded unwashed bodies, of

fear and vomit and ancient grief. Yet in it the boy had been someone, a recognized member of a group,

entitled to his meal each day, entitled to fight for his right to eat it in peace. He had even had friends.

Now he was again nothing and nobody, again about to be sold.

A lot had been knocked down on the auction block, matched blonde girls, alleged to be twins; the

bidding had been brisk, the price high. The auctioneer turned with a smile of satisfaction and pointed at

the boy. "Lot ninety-seven. Shove him up here."

The boy was cuffed and prodded onto the block, stood tense while his feral eyes darted around, taking

in what he had not been able to see from the pen. The slave market lies on the spaceport side of the

famous Plaza of Liberty, facing the hill crowned by the still more famous Praesidium of the Sargon,

capitol of the Nine Worlds. The boy did not recognize it; he did not even know what planet he was on.

He looked at the crowd.

Closest to the slave block were beggars, ready to wheedle each buyer as he claimed his property.

Beyond them, in a semi-circle, were seats for the rich and privileged. On each flank of this elite group

waited their slaves, bearers, and bodyguards and drivers, idling near the ground cars of the rich and the

palanquins and sedan chairs of the still richer. Behind the lords and ladies were commoners, idlers and

curious, freedmen and pickpockets and vendors of cold drinks, an occasional commoner merchant not

privileged to sit but alert for a bargain in a porter, a clerk, a mechanic, or even a house servant for his

wives.

"Lot ninety-seven," the auctioneer repeated. "A fine, healthy lad, suitable as page or tireboy. Imagine

him, my lords and ladies, in the livery of your house. Look at--" His words were lost in the scream of a

ship, dopplering in at the spaceport behind him.

The old beggar Baslim the Cripple twisted his half-naked body and squinted his one eye over the edge

of the block. The boy did not look like a docile house servant to Baslim; he looked a hunted animal,

dirty, skinny, and bruised. Under the dirt, the boy's back showed white scar streaks, endorsements of

former owners' opinions.

The boy's eyes and the shape of his ears caused Baslim to guess that he might be of unmutated Earth

ancestry, but not much could be certain save that he was small, scared, male, and still defiant The boy

caught the beggar staring at him and glared back.

The din died out and a wealthy dandy seated in front waved a kerchief lazily at the auctioneer. "Don't

waste our time, you rascal. Show us something like that last lot."

"Please, noble sir. I must dispose of the lots in catalog order."

"Then get on with it! Or cuff that starved varmint aside and show us merchandise."

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"You are kind, my lord." The auctioneer raised his voice. "I have been asked to be quick and I am sure

my noble employer would agree. Let me be frank. This beautiful lad is young; his new owner must

invest instruction in him. Therefore--" The boy hardly listened. He knew only a smattering of this

language and what was said did not matter anyhow. He looked over the veiled ladies and elegant men,

wondering which one would be his new problem.

"--a low starting price and a quick turnover. A bargain! Do I hear twenty stellars?"

The silence grew awkward. A lady, sleek and expensive from sandaled feet to lace-veiled face, leaned

toward the dandy, whispered and giggled. He frowned, took out a dagger and pretended to groom his

nails. "I said to get on with it," he growled.

The auctioneer sighed. "I beg you to remember, gentlefolk, that I must answer to my patron. But we'll

start still lower. Ten stellars--yes, I said. 'Ten.' Fantastic!"

He looked amazed. "Am I growing deaf? Did someone lift a finger and I fail to see it? Consider, I beg

you. Here you have a fresh young lad like a clean sheet of paper; you can draw any design you like. At

this unbelievably low price you can afford to make a mute of him, or alter him as your fancy pleases."

"Or feed him to the fish!"

" 'Or feed him--' Oh, you are witty, noble sir!"

"I'm bored. What makes you think that sorry item is worth anything? Your son, perhaps?"

The auctioneer forced a smile. "I would be proud if he were. I wish I were permitted to tell you this

lad's ancestry--"

"Which means you don't know."

"Though my lips must be sealed, I can point out the shape of his skull, the perfectly rounded curve of

his ears." The auctioneer nipped the boy's ear, pulled it.

The boy twisted and bit his hand. The crowd laughed.

The man snatched his hand away. "A spirited lad. Nothing a taste of leather won't cure. Good stock,

look at his ears. The best in the Galaxy, some say."

The auctioneer had overlooked something; the young dandy was from Syndon IV. He removed his

helmet, uncovering typical Syndonian ears, long, hairy, and pointed. He leaned forward and his ears

twitched. "Who is your noble protector?"

The old beggar Baslim scooted near the corner of the block, ready to duck. The boy tensed and looked

around, aware of trouble without understanding why. The auctioneer went white--no one sneered at

Syndonians face to face . . . not more than once. "My lord," he gasped, "you misunderstood me."

"Repeat that crack about 'ears' and 'the best stock.' "

Police were in sight but not close. The auctioneer wet his lips. "Be gracious, gentle lord. My children

would starve. I quoted a common saying--not my opinion. I was trying to hasten a bid for this chattel . . .

as you yourself urged."

The silence was broken by a female voice saying, "Oh, let him go, Dwarol. It's not his fault how the

slave's ears are shaped; he has to sell him."

The Syndonian breathed heavily. "Sell him, then!"

The auctioneer took a breath. "Yes, my lord." He pulled himself together and went on, "I beg my

lords' and ladies' pardons for wasting time on a minor lot. I now ask for any bid at all."

He waited, said nervously, "I hear no bid, I see no bid. No bid once . . . if you do not bid, I am

required to return this lot to stock and consult my patron before continuing. No bid twice. There are

many beautiful items to be offered; it would be a shame not to show them. No bid three--"

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"There's your bid," the Syndonian said.

"Eh?" The old beggar was holding up two fingers. The auctioneer stared. "Are you offering a bid?"

"Yes," croaked the old man, "if the lords and ladies permit."

The auctioneer glanced at the seated circle. Someone in the crowd shouted, "Why not? Money is

money."

The Syndonian nodded; the auctioneer said quickly, "You offer two stellars for this boy?"

"No, no, no, no, no!" Baslim screamed. "Two minims!"

The auctioneer lacked at him; the beggar jerked his head aside. The auctioneer shouted, "Get out! I'll

teach you to make fun of your betters!"

"Auctioneer!"

"Sir? Yes, my lord?"

The Syndonian said, "Your words were 'any bid at all.' Sell him the boy."

"But--"

"You heard me."

"My lord, I cannot sell on one bid. The law is clear; one bid is not an auction. Nor even two unless the

auctioneer has set a minimum. With no minimum, I am not allowed to sell with less than three bids.

Noble sir, this law was given to protect the owner, not my unhappy self."

Someone shouted, "That's the law!"

The Syndonian frowned. "Then declare the bid."

"Whatever pleases my lords and ladies." He faced the crowd. "For lot ninety-seven: I heard a bid of

two minims. Who'll make it four?"

"Four," stated the Syndonian.

"Five!" a voice called out.

The Syndonian motioned the beggar to him. Baslim moved on hands and one knee, with the stump of

the other leg dragging and was hampered by his alms bowl. The auctioneer started droning, "Going at

five minims once . . . five minims twice . . ."

"Six!" snapped the Syndonian, glanced into the beggar's bowl, reached in his purse and threw him a

handful of change.

"I hear six. Do I hear seven?"

"Seven," croaked Baslim.

"I'm bid seven. You, over there, with your thumb tip. You make it eight?"

"Nine!" interposed the beggar.

The auctioneer glared but put the bid. The price was approaching one stellar, too expensive a joke for

most of the crowd. The lords and ladies neither wanted the worthless slave nor wished to queer the

Syndonian's jest.

The auctioneer chanted, "Going once at nine . . . going twice at nine . . . going three times--sold at

nine minims!" He shoved the boy off the block almost into the beggar's lap. "Take him and get out!"

"Softly," cautioned the Syndonian. "The bill of sale."

Restraining himself, the auctioneer filled in price and new owner on a form already prepared for lot

ninety-seven. Baslim paid over nine minims--then had to be subsidized again by the Syndonian, as the

stamp tax was more than the selling price. The boy stood quietly by. He knew that he had been sold

again and he was getting it through his head that the old man was his new master--not that it mattered;

he wanted neither of them. While all were busy with the tax, he made a break.

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Without appearing to look the old beggar made a long arm, snagged an ankle, pulled him back. Then

Baslim heaved himself erect, placed an arm across the boy's shoulders and used him for a crutch. The

boy felt a bony hand clutch his elbow in a strong grip and relaxed himself to the inevitable--another

time; they always got careless if you waited.

Supported, the beggar bowed with great dignity. "My lord," he said huskily, "I and my servant thank

you."

"Nothing, nothing." The Syndonian flourished his kerchief in dismissal.

From the Plaza of Liberty to the hole where Baslim lived was less than a li, no more than a half mile,

but it took them longer than such distance implies. The hopping progress the old man could manage

using the boy as one leg was even slower than his speed on two hands and one knee, and it was

interrupted frequently by rests for business--not that business ceased while they shuffled along, as the

old man required the boy to thrust the bowl under the nose of every pedestrian.

Baslim accomplished this without words. He had tried Interlingua, Space Dutch, Sargonese, half a

dozen forms of patois, thieves' kitchen, cant, slave lingo, and trade talk--even System English--without

result, although he suspected that the boy had understood him more than once. Then he dropped the

attempt and made his wishes known by sign language and a cuff or two. If the boy and he had no words

in common, he would teach him--all in good time, all in good time. Baslim was in no hurry. Baslim was

never in a hurry; he took the long view.

Baslim's home lay under the old amphitheater. When Sargon Augustus of imperial memory decreed a

larger circus only part of the old one was demolished; the work was interrupted by the Second Cetan

War and never resumed. Baslim led the boy into these, ruins. The going was rough and it was necessary

for the old man to resume crawling. But he never let go his grip. Once he had the boy only by

breechclout; the boy almost wriggled out of his one bit of clothing before the beggar snatched a wrist.

After that they went more slowly.

They went down a hole at the dark end of a ruined passage, the boy being forced to go first. They

crawled over shards and rubble and came into a night-black but smooth corridor. Down again . . . and

they were in the performers' barracks of the old amphitheater, under the old arena.

They came in the dark to a well-carpentered door. Baslim shoved the boy through, followed him and

closed it, pressed his thumb to a personal lock, touched a switch; light came on. "Well, lad, we're home."

The boy stared. Long ago he had given up having expectations of any sort. But what he saw was not

anything he could have expected. It was a modest decent small living room, tight, neat, and clean.

Ceiling panels gave pleasant glareless light. Furniture was sparse but adequate. The boy looked around

in awe; poor as it was, it was better than anything he remembered having lived in.

The beggar let go his shoulder, hopped to a stack of shelves, put down his bowl, and took up a

complicated something. It was not until the beggar shucked his clout and strapped the thing in place that

the boy figured out what it was: an artificial leg, so well articulated that it rivaled the efficiency of flesh

and blood. The man stood up, took trousers from a chest, drew them on, and hardly seemed crippled.

"Come here," he said, in Interlingua.

The boy did not move. Baslim repeated it in other languages, shrugged, took the boy by an arm, led

him into a room beyond. It was small, both kitchen and wash room; Baslim filled a pan, handed the boy

a bit of soap and said, "Take a bath." He pantomimed what he wanted.

The boy stood in mute stubbornness. The man sighed, picked up a brush suitable for floors and started

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as if to scrub the boy. He stopped with stiff bristles touching skin and repeated, "Take a bath. Wash

yourself," saying it in Interlingua and System English.

The boy hesitated, took off his clout and started slowly to lather himself.

Baslim said, "That's better," picked up the filthy breech clout, dropped it in a waste can, laid out a

towel, and, turning to the kitchen side, started preparing a meal.

A few minutes later he turned and the boy was gone.

Unhurriedly he walked into the living room, found the boy naked and wet and trying very hard to

open the door. The boy saw him but redoubled his futile efforts. Baslim tapped him on the shoulder,

hooked a thumb toward the smaller room. "Finish your bath."

He turned away. The boy slunk after him.

When the boy was washed and dry, Baslim put the stew he had been freshening back on the burner,

turned the switch to "simmer" and opened a cupboard, from which he removed a bottle and daubs of

vegetable flock. Clean, the boy was a pattern of scars and bruises, unhealed sores and cuts and abrasions,

old and new. "Hold still."

The stuff stung; the boy started to wiggle. "Hold still!" Baslim repeated in a pleasant firm tone and

slapped him. The boy relaxed, tensing only as the medicine touched him. The man looked carefully at an

old ulcer on the boy's knee, then, humming softly, went again to the cupboard, came back and injected

the boy in one buttock--first acting out the idea that he would slap his head off his shoulders if he failed

to take it quietly. That done, he found an old cloth, motioned the boy to wrap himself a clout, turned

back to his cooking.

Presently Baslim placed big bowls of stew on the table in the living room, first moving chair and table

so that the boy might sit on the chest while eating. He added a handful of fresh green lentils and a couple

of generous chunks of country bread, blade and hard. "Soup's on, lad. Come and get it."

The boy sat down on the edge of the chest but remained poised for flight and did not eat.

Baslim stopped eating. "What's the matter?" He saw the boy's eyes flick toward the door, then drop.

"Oh, so that's it." He got up, steadying himself to get his false leg under him, went to the door, pressed

his thumb in the lock. He faced the boy. "The door is unlocked," he announced. "Either eat your dinner,

or leave." He repeated it several ways and was pleased when he thought that he detected understanding

on using the language he surmised might be the slave's native tongue.

But he let the matter rest, went back to the table, got carefully into his chair and picked up his spoon.

The boy reached for his own, then suddenly was off the chest and out the door. Baslim went on

eating. The door remained ajar, light streaming into the labyrinth.

Later, when Baslim had finished a leisurely dinner, he became aware that the boy was watching him

from the shadows. He avoided looking, lounged back, and started picking his teeth. Without turning, he

said in the language he had decided might be the boy's own, "Will you come eat your dinner? Or shall I

throw it away?"

The boy did not answer. "All right," Baslim went on, "if you won't, I'll have to close the door. I can't

risk leaving it open with the light on." He slowly got up, went to the door, and started to close it. "Last

call," he announced. "Closing up for the night."

As the door was almost closed the boy squealed, "Wait!" in the language Baslim expected, and

scurried inside.

"Welcome," Baslim said quietly. "I'll leave it unlocked, in case you change your mind." He sighed. "If

I had my way, no one would ever be locked in."

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The boy did not answer but sat down, huddled himself over the food and began wolfing it as if afraid

it might be snatched away. His eyes flicked from right to left. Baslim sat down and watched.

The extreme pace slowed but chewing and gulping never ceased until the last bit of stew had been

chased with the last honk of bread, the last lentil crunched and swallowed. The final bites appeared to go

down by sheer will power, but swallow them he did, sat up, looked Baslim in the eye and smiled shyly.

Baslim smiled back.

The boy's smile vanished. He turned white, then a light green. A rope of drool came willy-nilly from a

corner of his mouth--and he was disastrously sick.

Baslim moved to avoid the explosion. "Stars in heaven, I'm an idiot!" he exclaimed, in his native

language. He went into the kitchen, returned with rags and pail, wiped the boy's face and told him

sharply to quiet down, then cleaned the stone floor.

After a bit he returned with a much smaller ration, only broth and a small piece of bread. "Soak the

bread and eat it."

"I better not."

"Eat it. You won't be sick again. I should have known better, seeing your belly against your backbone,

than to give you a man-sized meal. But eat slowly."

The boy looked up and his chin quivered. Then he took a small spoonful. Baslim watched while he

finished the broth and most of the bread.

"Good," Baslim said at last. "Well, I'm for bed, lad. By the way, what's your name?"

The boy hesitated. "Thorby."

" 'Thorby'--a good name. You can call me 'Pop.' Good night." He unstrapped his leg, hopped to the

shelf and put it away, hopped to his bed. It was a peasant bed, a hard mattress in a corner. He scrunched

close to the wall to leave room for the boy and said, "Put out the light before you come to bed." Then he

closed his eyes and waited.

There was long silence. He heard the boy go to the door; the light went out Baslim waited, listening

for noise of the door opening. It did not come; instead he felt the mattress give as the boy crawled in.

"Good night," he repeated.

"G'night."

He had almost dozed when he realized that the boy was trembling violently. He reached behind him,

felt skinny ribs, patted them; the boy broke into sobs.

He turned over, eased his stump into a comfortable position, put an arm around the boy's shaking

shoulders and pulled his face against his own chest "It's all right, Thorby," he said gently, "it's all right

It's over now. It'll never happen again."

The boy cried out loud and clung to him. Baslim held him, speaking softly until the spasms stopped.

Then he held still until he was sure that Thorby was asleep.

Chapter 2

Thorby's wounds healed, those outside quickly, those inside slowly. The old beggar acquired another

mattress and stuck it in the other corner. But Baslim would sometimes wake to find a small warm bundle

snuggled against his spine and know thereby that the boy had had another nightmare. Baslim was a light

sleeper and hated sharing a bed. But he never forced Thorby to go back to his own bed when this

happened.

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Sometimes the boy would cry out his distress without waking. Once Baslim was jerked awake by

hearing Thorby wail, "Mama, Mama!" Without making a light he crawled quickly to the boy's pallet and

bent over him. "There, there, son, it's all right"

"Papa?"

"Go back to sleep, son. You'll wake Mama." He added, "I'll stay with you -- you're safe. Now be

quiet. We don't want to wake Mama . . . do we?"

"All right, Papa."

The old man waited, almost without breathing, until he was stiff and cold and his stump ached. When

he was satisfied that the boy was asleep he crawled to his own bed.

That incident caused the old man to try hypnosis. A long time earlier, when Baslim had had two eyes,

two legs, and no reason to beg, he had learned the art. But he had never liked hypnosis, even for therapy;

he had an almost religious concept of the dignity of the individual; hypnotizing another person did not fit

his basic evaluation.

But this was an emergency.

He was sure that Thorby had been taken from his parents so young that he had no conscious memory

of them. The boy's notion of life was a jumbled recollection of masters, some bad, some worse, all of

whom had tried to break the spirit of a "bad" boy. Thorby had explicit memories of some of these

masters and described them in gutter speech vivid and violent. But he was never sure of time or place --

"place" was some estate, or household, or factor's compound, never a particular planet or sun (his

notions of astronomy were mostly wrong and he was innocent of galactography) and "time" was simply

"before" or "after," "short" or "long." While each planet has its day, its year, its own method of dating,

while they are reconciled for science in terms of the standard second as defined by radioactive decay, the

standard year of the birthplace of mankind, and a standard reference date, the first jump from that planet.

Sol III, to its satellite, it was impossible for an illiterate boy to date anything that way. Earth was a myth

to Thorby and a "day" was the time between two sleeps.

Baslim could not guess the lad's age. The boy looked like unmutated Earth stock and was pre-

adolescent, but any guess would be based on unproved assumption. Vandorians and Italo-Glyphs look

like the original stock, but Vandorians take three times as long to mature -- Baslim recalled the odd tale

about the consular agent's daughter whose second husband was the great grandson of her first and she

had outlived them both. Mutations do not necessarily show up in appearance.

It was conceivable that this boy was "older" in standard seconds than Baslim himself; space is deep

and mankind adapted itself in many ways to many conditions. Never mind! -- he was a youngster and he

needed help.

Thorby was not afraid of hypnosis; the word meant nothing to him, nor did Baslim explain. After

supper one evening the old man simply said, "Thorby, I want you to do something."

"Sure, Pop. What?"

"Lie down on your bed. Then I'm going to make you sleepy and we'll talk."

"Huh? You mean the other way around, don't you?"

"No. This is a different sort of sleep. You'll be able to talk."

Thorby was dubious but willing. The old man lighted a candle, switched off the glow plates. Using

the flame to focus attention he started the ancient routines of monotonous suggestion, of relaxation,

drowsiness . . . sleep.

"Thorby, you are asleep but you can hear me. You can answer."

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"Yes, Pop."

"You will stay asleep until I tell you to wake. But you will be able to answer any question I ask."

"Yes, Pop."

"You remember the ship that brought you here. What was its name?"

"The Merry Widow. Only that wasn't what we called it."

"You remember getting into that ship. Now you are in it -- you can see it. You remember all about it.

Now go back to where you were when you went aboard."

The boy stiffened without waking. "I don't want to!"

"I'll be right with you. You'll be safe. Now what is the name of the place? Go back to it. Look at it."

An hour and a half later Baslim still squatted beside the sleeping boy. Sweat poured down wrinkles in

his face and he felt badly shaken. To get the boy back to the time he wanted to explore it had been

necessary to force him back through experiences disgusting even to Baslim, old and hardened as he was.

Repeatedly Thorby had fought against it, nor could Baslim blame him -- he felt now that he could count

the scars on the boy's back and assign a villain to each.

But he had achieved his purpose; to delve farther back than the boy's waking memory ran, back into

his very early childhood, and at last to the traumatic moment when the baby manchild had been taken

from his parents.

He left the boy in deep coma while he collected his shattered thoughts. The last few moments of the

quest had been so bad that the old man doubted his judgment in trying to dig out the source of the

trouble.

Well, let's see . . . what had he found out?

The boy was born free. But he had always been sure of that.

The boys native language was System English, spoken with an accent Baslim could not place; it had

been blurred by baby speech. That placed him inside the Terran Hegemony; it was even possible (though

not likely) that the boy had been born on Earth. That was a surprise; he had thought the boy's native

language was Interlingua, since he spoke it better than he did the other three he knew.

What else? Well, the boy's parents were certainly dead, if the confused and terror-ridden memory he

had pried out of the boy's skull could be trusted. He had been unable to dig out their family name nor

any way of identifying them -- they were just "Papa" and "Mama" -- so Baslim gave up a half-formed

plan of trying to get word to relatives of the boy.

Well, now to make this ordeal he had put the lad through worth the cost --

"Thorby?"

The boy moaned and stirred. "Yes, Pop?"

"You are asleep. You won't wake up until I tell you to."

"I won't wake up until you tell me to."

"When I tell you, you will wake at once. You will feel fine and you won't remember anything we've

talked about."

"Yes, Pop."

"You will forget. But you will feel fine. About half an hour later you will feel sleepy again. I'll tell

you to go to bed and you will go to bed and go right to sleep. You'll sleep all night, good sleep and

pleasant dreams. You won't have any more bad dreams. Say it."

"I won't have any more bad dreams."

"You won't ever have any more bad dreams. Not ever."

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"Not ever."

"Papa and Mama don't want you to have any bad dreams. They're happy and they want you to be

happy. When you dream about them, it will always be happy dreams."

"Happy dreams."

"Everything is all right now, Thorby. You are starting to wake. You're waking up and you can't

remember what we've been talking about. But you'll never have bad dreams again. Wake up, Thorby."

The boy sat up, rubbed his eyes, yawned, and grinned. "Gee, I fell asleep. Guess I played out on you,

Pop. Didn't work, huh?"

"Everything's all right, Thorby."

It took more than one session to lay those ghosts, but the nightmares dwindled and stopped. Baslim

was not technician enough to remove the bad memories; they were still there. All he did was to implant

suggestions to keep them from making Thorby unhappy. Nor would Baslim have removed memories

had he been skilled enough; he had a stiff-necked belief that a man's experiences belonged to him and

that even the worst should not be taken from him without his consent.

Thorby's days were as busy as his nights had become peaceful. During their early partnership Baslim

kept the boy always with him. After breakfast they would hobble to the Plaza of Liberty, Baslim would

sprawl on the pavement and Thorby would stand or squat beside him, looking starved and holding the

bowl. The spot was always picked to obstruct foot traffic, but not enough to cause police to do more than

growl. Thorby learned that none of the regular police in the Plaza would ever do more than growl:

Baslim's arrangements with them were beneficial to underpaid police.

Thorby learned the ancient trade quickly -- learned that men with women were generous but that the

appeal should be made to the woman, that it was usually a waste of time to ask alms of unaccompanied

women (except unveiled women), that it was an even bet between a lack and a gift in bracing a man

alone, that spacemen hitting dirt gave handsomely. Baslim taught him to keep a little money in the bowl,

neither smallest change nor high denominations.

At first Thorby was just right for the trade; small, half-starved, covered with sores, his appearance

alone was enough. Unfortunately he soon looked better. Baslim repaired that with make-up, putting

shadows under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks. A horrible plastic device stuck on his shinbone

provided a realistic large "ulcer" in place of the sores he no longer had; sugar water made it attractive to

flies -- people looked away even as they dropped coins in the bowl.

His better-fed condition was not as easy to disguise but he shot up fast for a year or two and continued

skinny, despite two hearty meals a day and a bed to doss on.

Thorby soaked up a gutter education beyond price. Jubbulpore, capital of Jubbul and of the Nine

Worlds, residence in chief of the Great Sargon, boasts more than three thousand licensed beggars, twice

that number of street vendors, more grog shops than temples and more temples than any other city in the

Nine Worlds, plus numbers uncountable of sneak thieves, tattoo artists, griva pushers, doxies, cat

burglars, back-alley money changers, pickpockets, fortune tellers, muggers, assassins, and grifters large

and small. Its inhabitants brag that within a li of the pylon at the spaceport end of the Avenue of Nine

anything in the explored universe can be had by a man with cash, from a starship to ten grains of

stardust, from the ruin of a reputation to the robes of a senator with the senator inside.

Technically Thorby was not part of the underworld, since he had a legally recognized status (slave)

and a licensed profession (beggar). Nevertheless he was in it, with a worm's-eye view. There were no

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file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•anovi ptá•koviny/kn...c eBooks/Heinlein, Robert A/Heinlein, Robert A - Citizen of the Galaxy.txt

rungs below his on the social ladder.

As a slave he had learned to lie and steal as naturally as other children learn company manners, and

much more quickly. But he discovered that these common talents were raised to high art in the seamy

underside of the city. As he grew older, learned the language and the streets, Baslim began to send him

out on his own, to run errands, to shop for food, and sometimes to make a pitch by himself while the old

man stayed in. Thus he "fell into evil company" if one can fall from elevation zero.

He returned one day with nothing in his bowl. Baslim made no comment but the boy explained.

"Look, Pop, I did all right!" From under his clout he drew a fancy scarf and proudly displayed it

Baslim did not smile and did not touch it. "Where did you get that?"

"I inherited it!"

"Obviously. But from whom?"

"A lady. A nice lady, pretty.

"Let me see the house mark. Mmm . . . probably Lady Fascia. Yes, she is pretty, I suppose. But why

aren't you in jail?"

"Why, gee, Pop, it was easy! Ziggie has been teaching me. He knows all the tricks. He's smooth -- you

should see him work."

Baslim wondered how one taught morals to a stray kitten? He did not consider discussing it in abstract

ethical terms; there was nothing in the boy's background, nothing in his present environment, to make it

possible to communicate on such a level.

"Thorby, why do you want to change trades? In our business you pay the police their commission, pay

your dues to the guild, make an offering at the temple on holy day, and you've no worries. Have we ever

gone hungry?"

"No, Pop -- but look at it! It must have cost almost a stellar!"

"At least two stellars, I'd say. But a fence would give you two minims -- if he was feeling generous.

You should have brought more than that back in your bowl."

"Well . . . I'll get better at it. And it's more fun than begging. You ought to see how Ziggie goes about

it."

"I've seen Ziggie work. He's skillful."

"He's the best!"

"Still, I suppose he could do better with two hands."

"Well, maybe, though you only use one hand. But he's teaching me to use either hand."

"That's good. You might need to know -- some day you might find yourself short one, the way Ziggie

is. You know how Ziggie lost his hand?"

"Huh?"

"You know the penalty? If they catch you?"

Thorby did not answer. Baslim went on, "One hand for the first offense -- that's what it cost Ziggie to

learn his trade. Oh, he's good, for he's still around and plying his trade. You know what the second

offense carries? Not just the other hand. You know?"

Thorby gulped. "I'm not sure."

"I think you must have heard; you don't want to remember." Baslim drew his thumb across his throat.

"That's what Ziggie gets next time -- they shorten him. His Serenity's justices figure that a boy who can't

learn once won't learn twice, so they shorten him."

"But, Pop, I won't be caught! I'll be awful careful . . . just like today. I promise!"

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