Tom Brangwyn went to the table, taking off his belt and holster and
laying his pistol aside. The others, crowding into the room, added their
weapons to his.
That was something else Conn was seeing with new eyes. It had been five
years since he had carried a gun and he was wondering why any of them
bothered. A gun was what a boy put on to show that he had reached
manhood, and a man carried for the rest of his life out of habit.
Why, there wouldn't be a shooting a year in Litchfield, if you didn't
count the farm tramps and drifters, who kept to the lower level or
camped in the empty buildings at the edge of town. Or maybe that was it;
maybe Litchfield was peaceful because everybody was armed. It certainly
wasn't because of anything the Planetary Government at Storisende did to
maintain order.
After divesting himself of his gun, Tom Brangwyn took over the
bartending, getting out glasses and filling a pitcher of brandy from a
keg in the corner.
"Everybody supplied?" Fawzi was asking. "Well, let's drink to our
returned emissary. We're all anxious to hear what you found out, Conn.
Gentlemen, here's to our friend Conn Maxwell. Welcome home, Conn!"
"Well, it's wonderful to be back, Mr. Fawzi--"
"No, let's not have any of this mister foolishness! You're one of the
gang now. And drink up, everybody. We have plenty of brandy, even if we
don't have anything else."
"You telling us, Kurt?" somebody demanded. One of the distillery
company; the name would come back to Conn in a moment. "When this crop
gets pressed and fermented--"
"When I start pressing, I don't know where in Gehenna I'm going to vat
the stuff till it ferments," Colonel Zareff said. "Or why. You won't be
able to handle all of it."
"Now, now!" Fawzi reproved. "Let's not start moaning about our troubles.
Not the day Conn's come home. Not when he's going to tell us how to find
the Third Fleet-Army Force Brain."
"You _did_ find out where the Brain is, didn't you, Conn?" Brangwyn
asked anxiously.
That set half a dozen of them off at once. They had all sat down after
the toast; now they were fidgeting in their chairs, leaning forward,
looking at Conn fixedly.
"What did you find out, Conn?"
"It's still here on Poictesme, isn't it?"
"Did you find out where it is?"
He wanted to tell them in one quick sentence and get it over with. He
couldn't, any more than he could force himself to squeeze the trigger of
a pistol he knew would blow up in his hand.
"Wait a minute, gentlemen." He finished the brandy, and held out the
glass to Tom Brangwyn, nodding toward the pitcher. Even the first drink
had warmed him and he could feel the constriction easing in his throat
and the lump at the pit of his stomach dissolving. "I hope none of you
expect me to spread out a map and show you the cross on it, where the
Brain is. I can't. I can't even give the approximate location of the
thing."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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