Hide and seek Read Free Page A

Town Hall closed for the night, Morland had set up his kit and worked until dawn. He had to work at night because his optical instruments were sensitive to minor vibrations, like footsteps–
“What the hell?” –the tremor of which now caused Morland to look up and whirl around angrily.
     
“You! Look what you’ve done, Chin! Twenty minutes’ recording ruined.”
     
Chin’s only reply was a look of distaste bordering on contempt.
    Morland was a disheveled fellow with a pasty complexion, a patchy beard, and sticky blond hair that hadn’t been cut in recent months; split ends curled over the collar of his expensive tweed jacket, which had long ago sagged into shapelessness. Those bulging pockets, Chin knew, contained a pipe and a bag of shredded tobacco, the paraphernalia of a habit that people who live in controlled environments regarded as not only offensive but extraordinarily quaint.
“First that cow tromping through here and now you ,” Morland screeched. “What does it take to get it through your provincial skulls? I need absolute stillness.”
     
On the floor beside Morland’s chair, Chin noted an open briefcase; from what Chin could see, it contained a few fax copies and the remains of a portable dinner. “Would you step aside, Dr. Morland?”
     
“What did you say?”
     
“Please move to one side.”
     
“Listen, do you want me to get an order barring you from these premises while I’m working? It can be swiftly arranged, I assure you. The Council of Worlds executive building is only a few steps away.”
     
Chin leaned forward and his features darkened. “ Move , fat man,” he bellowed, “before I break your stupid face!”
    It was a convincing display of homicidal rage; Morland recoiled. “That’s . . . This . . . I’m reporting this to the commission tomorrow,” he choked, meanwhile dancing rapidly away from the display case. “You’ll rue this, Chin. . . .”
    Chin ignored him as he stepped forward to examine the plaque. It rested on a cushion of red velvet, glittering in the converging beams of light. The silvery fragment had been broken from some larger piece by a blow of unimaginable force, but nothing that had happened to it in the billion years since had left so much as a hair’s-width scratch upon it. The perfect surface in which Chin now observed his own features proved that this was not a copy of metal or plastic, and when he breathed upon it and saw his cloudy breath obscure his reflection, he knew without touching it that this was no hologram. It was the real thing.
    Morland was still yammering at him. “You must realize, of course,” he said with all the venom he could muster, “that even the condensation of your foul breath on that surface renders everything I have done tonight utterly useless. I shall have to wait hours before . . .”
Chin straightened. “Shut up.”
     
“I most certainly will not shut . . .”
    “I’ve been talking to people about you, Morland. Yesterday, to the Musée de l’Homme,” Chin said over Morland’s breathless monologue. “The University of Arizona this morning. An hour ago, the Museum of Surviving Antiquities in New Beirut.” He held the yellow faxgrams up in front of Morland’s face.
    Morland, for the first time since Chin had entered the hall, stopped talking and eyed the faxes warily. He did not ask to read them. “All right, Chin. I despise your primitive behavior but now at least I comprehend your pathetic excuse,” he said more quietly. “I should like to remind you that penalties for libel are spelled out quite specifically in the Uniform Code of . . .”
    “I’m not going to bother to tell anyone anything about you, Morland,” Chin said coldly. “You’re on Mars.” He nodded to the nearest wall of glass. “There’s not enough oxygen outside that wall worth mentioning. The temperature tonight is minus fifty cees. Our pressure tubes require constant maintenance, and every once in a while we still get