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never be able to sleep easily until she was one hundred percent certain that no Bellers were alive in the
one thousand and eight known universes. Nor would Red Orc sleep any more easily.
Kickaha tied Kleist's hands behind him, tied his feet together, and taped his mouth. Anana could
not understand why he didn't just kill the man. Kickaha explained, as he had done a number of tunes, that
he would not do so unless he thought it was necessary. Besides, they were in enough trouble without
leaving a corpse behind them.
After removing Kleist's wallet, he put him in the closet. "He can stay there until tomorrow when
the cleaning woman comes in. But I think we'll move on. Let's go across the street and eat. We have to
put something in our bellies."
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They walked across the street at the corner, and went down half a block to the restaurant. They
got a booth by the window, from which he could see the motel.
While they were eating, he told her what his plans were. "A Lord will come as swiftly for a
pseudo-Beller as for the real thing, because he won't know for sure which is which. We make our own
Beller and get some publicity, too, and so make sure that Red Orc finds out about it."
"There's still a good chance that he won't come personally," she said.
"How's he going to know whether or not the Beller is for real unless he does show?" he said. "Or
has the Beller brought to him."
"But you couldn't get out then!" she said.
"Maybe I couldn't get out, but I'm not there yet. We've got to play this by ear. I don't see
anything else to do, do you?"
They rose, and he stopped at the register to pay their bill. Anana whispered to him to look
through the big plate glass window at the motel. A police car was turning into the motel grounds.
Kickaha watched the two policemen get out and look at the license plate on the rear of the Rolls.
Then one went into the manager's office while the other checked out the Rolls. In a moment, the officer
and the manager came out, and all three went into the motel room that Anana and Kickaha had just left.
"They'll find Kleist in the closet," Kickaha murmured. "We'll take a taxi back to L.A. and find
lodging somewhere else."
They had the clothes they were wearing, the case with the Horn of Shambarimen, their beamer
rings with a number of power charges, the beamer-pen, their ear receivers and wrist chronometer
transmitters, and the money they'd taken from Baum, Cambring, and Kleist. The latter had provided
another hundred and thirty-five dollars.
They went outside into the heat and the eye-burning, sinus-searing smog. He picked up the
morning Los Angeles Times from a corner box, and then waited for a taxi. Presently, one came along,
and they rode out of the Valley. On the way, he read the personals column, which contained his ad.
None of the personals read as if it had been planted by Wolff. The two got out of the taxi, walked two
blocks, and took another taxi to a place chosen at random by Kickaha.
They walked around for a while. He got a haircut and purchased a hat and also talked the clerk
out of a woman's hatbox. At a drugstore, he bought some hair dye and other items, including shaving
equipment, toothbrushes and paste, and a nail file. In a pawnshop he bought two suitcases, a knife which
had an excellent balance, and a knife-sheath.
Two blocks away, they checked in at a third-rate hotel. The desk clerk seemed interested only in
whether they could pay in advance or not. Kickaha, wearing his hat and dark glasses, hoped that the
clerk wasn't paying them much attention. Judging from the stink of cheap whiskey on his breath he was
not very perceptive at the moment.
Anana, looking around their room, said, "The place we just left was a hovel. But it's a palace
compared to this!"
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"I've been in worse," he said. "Just so the cockroaches aren't big enough to carry us off."
They spent some time dying their hair. His red-bronze became a dark brown, and her hair, as [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]