why.
‘Now
use your intelligence, miss,’ he pleaded. ‘You can’t come telling a man to go
pinching pigs without giving him the griff about why he’s doing it and who for
and what not. Who’s after that pig this time?’
Lavender
Briggs decided to be frank. She was a fair-minded girl and saw that he had
reason on his side. Even the humblest hired assassin in the Middle Ages
probably wanted to know, before setting out to stick a poignard into someone,
whom he was acting for.
‘The
Duke of Dunstable,’ she said. ‘You would be requiahed to take the animal to his
house in Wiltshire.’
‘Wiltshire?’
George Cyril seemed incredulous. ‘Did you say Wiltshire?’
‘That
is where the Duke lives.’
‘And
how do we get to Wiltshire, me and the pig? Walk?’
Lavender
Briggs clicked her tongue impatiently.
‘I
assume that you have some disreputable friend who has a motor vehicle of some
kind and is as free from scruples as yourself. And if you are thinking that you
may be suspected, you need have no uneasiness. The operation will be carried
through early in the morning and nobody will suppose that you were not asleep
in bed at the time.’
George
Cyril nodded. This was talking sense.
‘Yes,
so far so good. But aren’t you overlooking what I might call a technical point?
I can’t pinch a pig that size all by myself.’
‘You
will have a colleague, working with you.’
‘I
will?’
‘Quate.’
‘Who
pays him?’
‘He will
not requiah payment.’
‘Must
be barmy. All right, then, we’ve got that straight. We now come to the
financial aspect of the thing. To speak expleasantly, what is there in it for
me?’
‘Five
pounds.’
‘Five?’
‘Let us
say ten.’
‘Let us
ruddy well say fifty.’
‘That
is a lot of money.’
‘I like
a lot of money.’
It was
a moment for swift decisions. Lavender Briggs shared the Duke’s views on
watching the pennies, but she was a realist sad knew that if you do not
speculate, you cannot accumulate.
‘Very
well. No doubt I can persuade the Duke to meet you on the point. He is a rich
man.’
‘R!’ said
George Cyril Wellbeloved, so far forgetting himself as to spit out of the side
of his mouth. ‘And how did he get his riches? By grinding the face of the poor
and taking the bread out of the mouths of the widow and the orphan. But the red
dawn will come,’ he said, warming up to his subject. ‘One of these days you’ll
see blood flowing in streams down Park Lane and the corpses of the oppressors
hanging from lampposts. And His Nibs of Dunstable’ll be one of them. And who’ll
be there, pulling on the rope? Me, and happy to do it.’
Lavender
Briggs made no comment on this. She was not interested in her companion’s plans
for the future, though in principle she approved of suspending Dukes from
lamp-posts. All she was thinking at the moment was that she had concluded a
most satisfactory business deal, and hike a good business girl she was feeling
quietly elated. She stood to make four hundred and fifty pounds instead of five
hundred, but then she had always foreseen that there would be overheads.
The
conference having been concluded and terms arranged, George Cyril Wellbeloved
felt justified in raising the beer bottle to his lips, and the spectacle
reminded her that there was something else that must be added.
‘There
is just one thing,’ she said. ‘No more fuddling yourself with alcoholic
liquor. This is a very delicate operation which you will be undertaking, and we
cannot risk failure. I want you bright and alert. So no more drinking.’
‘Except
beer, of course.’
‘No
beer.’
If
George Cyril had not been sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow, he would have
reeled.
‘No
beer?’
‘No
beer.’
‘When
you say no beer, do you mean no beer?’
‘Quate.
I shall be keeping an eye on you, and I have my way of finding out things. If I
discover that you have been drinking, you will lose your fifty pounds. Do I
make myself
Larry Niven, Nancy Kress, Mercedes Lackey, Ken Liu, Brad R. Torgersen, C. L. Moore, Tina Gower