Read The Super Barbarians for Free Online

me for jumping to conclusions. I thought anyone low enough to be a serf was low enough to sell out his own kind, spy for the Vorra—anything!”
    “Well, I’m not that low,” I said curtly. “I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t been genuinely sent on a genuineerrand. If I’d refused, that would have made worse trouble, though.”
    Her eyebrows drew together. There was a trace of black on her forehead as though she’d wiped away perspiration with a grimy hand. With six wells to all these people, probably you didn’t get to wash very much.
    I could tell it cost her an effort to throw her original view of me away; still, she did it, and I was grateful. She said, There’s Kramer’s—over there, next block. I won’t bother you any more. Good luck, anyway.”
    She was turning to leave. “Just a moment!” I said. “In case things get better, can I know your name, and where to find you?”
    “I’m Marijane Lee. Ken’s sister. You’ll usually find me around the alley where you came into the Acre. But for choice I’d rather you didn’t.”
    She didn’t have to state a reason in words. I shrugged. “Fair enough. But maybe things will get better, hey?”
    She shrugged and went on walking away.

    K RAMER. ARCANE LORE.
    I looked at the hand-painted sign swinging from an iron peg driven into the wall of the house. That was the place all right. But—arcane lore?
    Frowning, I pushed open the rickety door and found myself in a dark waiting room, stinking of some sort of incense and fit with candles in glass chimneys. Their flickering glow showed me cushions on the floor, heaped up in untidy piles, skin rugs, whitish squares pinned to the walls. I went to examine one of these squares more closely, It was a chart of part of the Vorrish night-sky, the constellations represented by dabs of red ink and the paths of the local planetsindicated by dotted black lines. There were Vorrish inscriptions against some of the star groups: fortune, malevolence, health, rivalry.
    There was a creaking noise behind me. I started and swung round. A doorway—a vague yellowness in the murk-had appeared in the far wall. Something huge and humped and black moved indistinctly in the frame of twilight.
    In perfect Vorrish a booming voice asked me my business.
    “I-I’m Gareth Shaw,” I said. The Under-lady Shavarri sent me.”
    “Earthman?” the booming voice demanded. “Yes!”
    “Oh, that’s all right then. We needn’t waste time on the mumbo-jumbo. Come on through to the back.” The boom had gone from the voice, as though an echo chamber had been switched out of circuit. Perhaps it had.
    Because when I went through the doorway I found myself in a perfectly ordinary room, the walls lined with tables on which were stacked cans, jars and jugs capped with plastic membranes. There was a thick animal smell which I couldn’t identify.
    “I’m Hans Kramer,” the humped shape said, shrugging off a black cape from his head and shoulders and revealing a round face, pasty in complexion, with eyes in it like currants stuck in a bun. “What can I do for you? Shavarril Isn’t she one of the Pwill wives?”
    He suddenly quickened with interest. I nodded.
    “Did you have anything to do with organizing this?” he pressed me.
    “No, I’m afraid not. I don’t even know what it’s all about.” “Hrm! I wonder who fixed it, then. Well, never mind. I suppose you’re in a hurry?”
    Before I could answer, there was a faint moan from a room beyond the one in which we stood. Kramer’s face showed alarm. “Hope that isn’t bad,” he murmured.
    “Uh—do you want to go see? I can hang on if you like.”
    “Can you?” He sounded grateful. “Well, why not come through? Do her good, maybe—see a strange face.” He pushed aside a thick drape and led me into the third room.
    Here a woman lay ill. She was very much like Kramer to look at—plump, round-faced—except that her cheeks were wasted and beginning to be hollow, and her skin