The Venus Belt by L. Neil Smith

yellowed by ha n dling and hard use. “There ain’t much...point, but somebody call a He a ler!”
    He thrust a tumbler into my hands. I sipped it absently—it burned.
    But the Healer was already there, along with security people, alerted by the fighting. He set his bag on a barstool, glanced around the rapidly empt y ing room, then knelt down by the body, confirming that’s what it was. He looked up at me. “Haven’t I seen you once already tonight?”
    I sat there, nodding dumbly, my hands beginning to shake. “Earlier th-this evening. Someone b-broke into my—”
    “So you said ” answered the gorilla. He stood, glared down at my dri p ping knife lying on the bar beside the tiny autopistol, then back at the dead woman—girl, really, I could see that now—and gave me an expre s sion I’d never had before from anyone on the right side of the law. “Call the Ca p tain,” he instructed the bartender. “Something stinks in here.”
    Morrison started to speak, paused, twisting the thin gold circlet around his massive wrist. “I saw the whole...thing, bureaucrat.” Then he looked at me. “She’s the one shoved that borracho into ya, an’ started this whole...brannigan. Lookin’ t’backshoot ya’n all the excitement.” He stopped, running a large confident hand through his thinning, crewcut hair, then continued in that relaxed, inexorable, singsongy tone.
    “Pilgrim, you gonna play with that, or drink it? An’ don’t fret s’much. I mean t’see you vouched for with security, at Cap’n Spoo n bill’s...convenience.”
    He stepped away, one knee bent slightly inward, a shoulder carried low, then paused and turned back to me. “Pilgrim, you’ll be all right. I like your...sand.” Then he limped out of my life and into the sunset.
    In whichever tower that was going on.
    ***
    Tuesday, March 2, 223 A.L.
    As played out as I was, sleeping soundly that night should have been a cinch, especially with the armed guards outside my stateroom door to pr o tect me from the boogie-person. Though if I’d tried to leave, it might have looked like something else. Those suddenly widening eyes kept coming back to me, but the Healer had a pill for that.
    It almost worked, too.
    Next morning, they brought me back my Bowie knife, cleaned and po l ished, along with my victim’s tiny gun and holster. It was a Bauer .25, a nine-ounce stainless-steel seven-shot vest-pocket number, of practically no stopping-power.
    Made in the United States.
    Somehow, I’d been reprieved. With the grisly trophies came a message from the Captain to look him up as soon as I got dressed. I peeked outside my cabin. The guard was still there, but she smiled sympathetically and promised to escort me to the infirmary, which was where the brass seemed to be awaiting my pleasure. The sick bay’s down in the re c tangular stern, as buried in the middle of the ship as anything can be, and not too far from all those crates for Mr., Ms., or Mrs. Tormount. Inside, Healer Pololo stood waiting, along with Koko and a grim-visaged fellow in Spartan black and gold.
    We sat down in the waiting room.
    “Mr. Bear,” the simian physician offered, “I owe you an apology. I simply figured that no wholly innocent party could be involved in two vi o lent incidents in the same evening.”
    “Try running a liquor store on East Colfax Avenue sometime.”
    He removed his wire-rimmed glasses and gave them a self-conscious scrub. “Well, you know what I mean. Captain Spoonbill, this is Mr. Bear.”
    Sounded like feeding time at the zoo. Spoonbill was an imposing block of a man, conveying in attitude and bearing, rather than literal a p pearance, the same frozen unreachability as those statues on Easter Is l and. He shook my hand, striving for the neutral expression that served him for a smile.
    “Mr. Bear, concerning your detention last night...”
    “That’s okay, I’d already done my partying. I take it you’ve decided I’m ‘wholly innocent,’ too?” I