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He still could not believe that this was happening. The other pressed the refresher button, and this time he handed Lansor the brimming cup. "Drink on the bargain." His words had the ring of command. Lansor drank, gulping down the contents of the cup, and suddenly was aware of being tired. He leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed.
It was hard now to think back to Nahuatl as if the Vye Lansor who had been swamper in that den of the port town was a different person altogether. In that patch of memories into which Rynch Brodie still intruded he hunted for the proper answer. "I couldn't hold the state jobs. And once you get the habit of eating, you don't starve willingly." "Why not the state jobs?"
A flicker of light winked below the name, the wall to the right shimmered, and produced a doorway. Steering Vye to it, Hume nodded to the man waiting there. He was a flat-faced Eucorian of the servant caste, and now he reached out to draw Lansor over the threshold. "I have him, gentlehomo." His voice was as expressionless as his face. There was another shimmer and the door disappeared.
It was still very early; the chance he must run in getting Lansor out of this building was small if they went at once. Guiding the younger man with a light hold above the elbow, he walked him out back to the flitter landing stage. The air-car was waiting.
He'd done him a real kindness, given him a chance at a future less than one man in a billion ever had the power to even dream about. Why, if Vye Lansor had known what was going to happen to him, he would have been so willing to volunteer, that he would have dragged Hume here. There was no reason to have any regrets over the boy, he had never had it so good never!
The stranger waved Lansor through a doorway, down a short corridor into a room of private quarters. Vye sat down gingerly on the foam seat extending from the wall as he neared. He stared about. Dimly he could just remember rooms which had this degree of comfort, but so dimly now he could not be sure they did not exist only in his vivid imagination.
He feasted on its color, on the sense of freedom and off-world wonders which it raised in him. "Who are you?" The stranger's abrupt question brought him back, not only to the room but to his own precarious position. He moistened his lips, no longer quite so aglow with confidence. "Vye Vye Lansor." Then he added his other identification, "S. C. C. 425061." "State child, eh?"
Now he looked at Vye again as if the younger man did have a brain, emotions, some call on his interest as a personality. "Want a job?" Lansor pressed his hand deeper into the foam seat. "What what kind?" He was angry and ashamed at that small betraying break in his voice. "You have scruples?" The stranger appeared to think that amusing.
"Could have taken off in the spacer." "Wass doesn't have the reputation of letting any project get out of his hands." Vye remembered. "Oh your billion credit deal." To his surprise Hume laughed. "Seems all very far and out of orbit now, doesn't it, Lansor? Yes, our billion credit deal but that was thought out before we knew there were more players around the table than we counted. I wonder...."
Ras Hume took the cup from the lax fingers of the young man. So far, very good. Chance appeared to be playing on his side of the board. It had been chance which had steered him into the Starfall just three nights ago when he had been in quest of his imposter. And Vye Lansor was better than he dared hope to find.
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