Then, with a bound that took my breath away, the sugarfoot sprang upward from the street and landed on the rooftop of one of the nearby stores. It landed running, and as I watched, it reached the rear of the store and took a soaring leap out over the molten river between it and the next rooftop. Then it vanished into the blackness beyond the trough alley. I turned to await the arrival of the Security men.
11
Charlie and the other Security Agent, whose name turned out to be Foster, sat stolidly listening as I recounted events since I'd last seen them.
"You say," Charlie interrupted with a frown, "this here sugarfoot told you why he didn't shoot you down?"
"Not quite," I said. "He didn't seem to have the time. But he said he'd see me l—"
"Look, Delvin, that's not what I mean. Everybody from Mars to Venus knows that the sugarfoots are dumb animals. So I'd like to know what you're trying to hand us."
There was something funny in his tone. As though he were saying, not "It can't be true," but, "It's not supposed to be true, and that's the way things stay!"
I paused, considering. I'd had a hard time for a while, when I was first picked up. But I'd been able to get myself brought, by the men who found me, to Charlie and Foster, after giving Charlie's name and describing the two. They'd identified me, and gotten me off the hook for the damage to that bar. It was damage possible only by a collapser. And I, of course, had been picked up wearing a collapser holster.
But from the time I'd been left with them, there was a bothersome something about their attitude; an impatience, as though they had something to say to me, or even do to me, but had to hold off until I was through.