"I mean if they're on paper they can be bought."
"I have no money."
"Well, I have." She looked up at him sharply. "I've got enough money to buy passage to Venus. It can buy information if I can get free passage to Venus. It can buy information like nothing."
He sat down, his face very close to hers. "I want to know what's happened to other Free Agents," he said. "I can give you some names. I want their records, everything that's known about them, where they've gone, where they are now. I want them in a hurry."
The girl stared at him for a long minute. "You are scared," she said. She lit a cigarette, and tossed the match on the floor. "Let's get moving," she said.
She said her name was Nan Baker, and that was about all she would say. Griffin doubted even that, but he didn't press conversation as they left the surface car at the Lower Level junction, and moved down the roads and alleys into the depths of the Old City. The itinerary itself was more illuminating than any words; her very familiarity with their route offered more lethal insight into the girl's background and motives and trustworthiness than anything she could possibly have told him. She knew her way through this jungle of crowded, dilapidated buildings; without hesitation they threaded their way through a bewildering tangle of dirty streets and darkened alleys.
Some of the buildings were in ruins, but many still showed signs of dismal habitation. This was the Old City, the area of decay and violence and crime where no one in his right mind would think of going, or allow himself to be taken. It was the crumbling ruin of the earlier city that had been here, ignored by advancing architecture and a more savory society, its reputation falling to the level of the dregs who had sunk here. And the girl found her way through the streets with an air of long familiarity.
They moved down a long, dank tunnel, formed of dripping concrete and decaying beams, obviously an old viaduct, long since decaying in disuse. At the far end was a building with a screen across the window. There was the sound of a juke box, and a roar of loud laughter as they stepped inside and shouldered through the crowd of people sitting at the long bar in the half-light.
A woman was dancing on a walkway behind the bar, totally nude, and the crowd were laughing and shouting at her as a sick-looking drummer pounded a cymbal and the juke box whined. Griffin followed the girl through the fringes of the crowd and back along a dark, dripping corridor. They found a room, a frowsy makeshift of a dressing room that reeked of cheap perfume and dead rats. The girl motioned him inside. "You wait here. I'll be back."