Tourist Trade

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After a moment Eitel’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and the glare of the clashing crisscrossing spotlights. But he didn’t need his eyes to tell him what sort of bizarre zoo he had walked into. His sensitive nostrils picked up the whole astonishing olfactory blast at once: a weird hodgepodge of extraterrestrial body odors, offworld pheromones, transgalactic cosmetics, the ozone radiation of personal protection screens, minute quantities of unearthly atmospheres leaking out of breathing devices.

“Something wrong?” David asked.

“The odors. They overwhelm me.”

“The smoking, eh? You hate it that much?”

“Not the tobacco, fool. The aliens! The E-Ts!”

“Ah. The smell of money, you mean. I agree, it is very overwhelming in here.”

“For a shrewd man you can sometimes be very stupid,” Eitel muttered. “Unless you say such things deliberately, which you must, because I have never known a stupid Moroccan.”

“For a Moroccan, I am very stupid,” said David serenely. “And so it was very stupid of you to choose me as your partner, eh? Your grandfathers in Zurich would be shamed if they knew. Eh?” He gave Eitel a maddeningly seraphic smile.

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