"They're window-dressing," said Terry. "My former business associate tried to run an appliance shop. But the people who buy such things in Manila only want the latest models. He got stuck with these from last year. So we do—I did do—especialidades electrónicas y físicas. But I'm shutting up shop. What are you looking for?"
The shop was in an appropriate place for its former products. Outside on the Calle Enero there were places where one could buy sea food in quantity, mother-of-pearl, pitch, coir rope, bêche-de-mer, copra, fuel oil, Diesel repair-parts and edible birds' nests. Especialidades fitted in. But though it was certainly respectable enough, this neighborhood wasn't exactly where one would have expected to find a girl like this shopping for what a girl like this would shop for.
"I'm looking," she explained, "for somebody to make up a special device, probably electronic, for my father's boat."
"Ah!" said Terry regretfully. "That's my line exactly, as is evidenced in Spanish on the window and in Tagalog, Malay and Chinese on cards you can read through the glass. But I'm suspending operations for a while. What kind of special device? Radar—No. I doubt you'd want orejas de ellos...."
"What are they?"
"Submarine ears," said Terry. "For fishing boats. The name is no clue at all. They pick up underwater sounds, enabling one to hear surf a long way off. Which may be useful. And some fish make noises and the fishermen use these ears to eavesdrop on them and catch them. You wouldn't be interested in anything of that sort!"
The girl brightened visibly.
"But I am! Something very much like it, at any rate. Take a look at this and see what my father wants to have made."
She put her parcel on a deep-freeze unit and pulled off its paper covering. The object inside was a sort of curved paddle with a handle at one end. It was about three feet long, made of a light-colored fibrous wood, and on the convex part of its curvature it was deeply carved in peculiar transverse ridges.
"A fish-driving paddle," she explained. "From Alua."