The dark side of the sun - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,27
have located a Joker building, description and position as noted.’
He pressed a copy of the One Jump’s log into a recess below the disc.
‘Bounty will be paid on verification.’
Dom wondered if the assassin lurking at the tower had also registered discovery. He knew there had been an assassin. Somewhere in totality was a universe where Dom Sabalos was dead. But of course, there would be many such universes. According to p-math there was at least one universe for every probability, even the unthinkable ones.
‘Business completed?’ asked the disc.
Dom frowned. It was his first visit to the Bank, although it was officially his godfather. The Bank sent him greetings on the appropriate ceremonies, like his minor twenty-eighth-year birthdays, and small, interesting presents like the gravity sandals he was still wearing. The gifts suggested a thoughtful personality. The greetings cards told nothing at all, except that they were generally signed in crescive High-Degree Creapii IV, a favourite script for multi-dextral amateur calligraphers. The problem now was making contact.
‘I am Dom Sabalos, the Bank’s godson. I would like to see him.’
‘You have only to look around, sir.’ The machine meant it seriously. Dom realized it was not equipped to handle figurative speech.
‘I meant that I wanted to confront him, converse with his, uh, seat of consciousness.’
There was a pause. At last the disc said: ‘Very well, sir, I will see what can be arranged.’
Dom hurried out of the booth. Hrsh-Hgn was lurking suspiciously behind a glittering germanian pillar that soared up half a mile above the paved cavern floor. The next essential was fresh clothing, and then a real meal – there was something curiously unsatisfying about the reconstituted molecules of the ship’s auto-chef. He pushed past a party of medium-degree Creapii and hailed a cab.
The main cavern of the First Sirian Bank was big enough to need a sophisticated weather control system, to prevent the formation of thunderclouds. The cab looped up from the crowded floor and threaded its way at speed between coruscating pillars, each with its cluster of booths at the base. The red junction points glowed everywhere. Occasionally a ring of static electricity would flash up a pillar and burst vividly into an ozone-reeking haze. And the hot dry air hummed with a million voices, felt rather than heard, as money spoke to money across the light years.
In fact, Dom considered, it looked like an early conception of Hell. With tourists. Certainly some of the tourists would have fitted the concept nicely.
In one of the sub-caverns a robot tailor outfitted him with an anonymous grey ship suit, the sort worn on every earth-human world. He also bought a cuber, a cloak striped on the bias in purple, orange and yellow, and hoped that an observer would take him for what he appeared to be – a back-planet rube, a stock Whole Erse character of comedy sketches, the gawping rim-colonist with a nasal twang, unfortunate personal habits and a pocketful of rare earths.
He turned and looked critically at Hrsh-Hgn, who stood watching in the old ceremonial garb of a beta-male.
‘Couldn’t you wear something a bit more colourful? Some phnobes do. I’d rather you didn’t look conspicuous.’
Hrsh-Hgn took a nervous step backwards and clutched at his robe.
‘Is it against the law? I mean, will it offend some sexual more? If so, of course, I—’
‘It’ss not exactly that. I do not think I could carry off the character of an alpha, you understand, they are somewhat more flamboyant, more warlike, lesss given to featss of the intellect …’
At Dom’s command the little robot dressed the phnobe in a complicated toga of heavy blue and olive-green fibres, shot with flecks of silver. A tshuri knife fully twice the length of Hrsh-Hgn’s old one hung on an ornate belt.
‘If an alpha challenges me I shall make a poor showing.’
‘Still, you look different.’ He paid the robot, and they walked out with Hrsh-Hgn making a brave attempt at a swagger.
The temperate lifeforms dining room of the Grand Hotel, the only provision on the Bank for accommodation, seemed almost as big as the main cavern and more impressive because the size was made up in human terms. The long cavern was filled with the roar of appetites in the process of satiation, reeked with the aromas of many foods and narcotics, and looked rather more like Hell than the main cavern.
Dom found two places at a table in the Human section. The previous occupants, a thickset Earthman with a face criss-crossed with duelling scars and a