Catseye (9 page)

The edge of the plains where the pansta ran dropped behind them, and now there were ridges and rising slopes once again, until the flitter climbed to a tableland open to the sky, seeming otherwise cut off from any contact with the lower stretches. Under the golden light of a perfect morning there spread a patched flooring of flowering grasses, a few scattered trees, so removed from any touch of man's passing that Troy thought they might have been the first to find that place if his companion's knowledge of it had not argued otherwise.

Rerne brought the flitter down on a stretch of gravel beside quiet water that was neither as large as a lake nor as small as a pond. They climbed out and stood with the breeze pushing against their bodies. The fussel spread wings, gave voice.

“Let him hunt! Ollllahuuuu!”

Troy gave the wrist flex that was a signal of freedom to the bird he bore. And the fussel arose in great sweeps, beating into the topaz sky until neither man could see him clearly.

SEVEN

The sun was hot, and from under and around Troy as he lay, the smell of the grass flowers and the grass itself was heady in his nostrils, long pinched by the town and the Dipple. He was relaxed, drowsy, yet not ready to sleep.

It had been a wonderful morning on this piece of Korwar raised into the skies and kept inviolate. Now even the fussel had had enough of the freedom of the wind and the clouds and was content to perch on a tree limb Troy had trimmed and set in the ground for the bird's comfort.

Here the insects seemed few or innocuous. There was no stinging or biting to plague the would-be sleeper. Yet a part of Troy argued that this was very fleeting and that it was a pity to waste a moment in such sloth.

He levered himself up from the warmth. Avoiding the fussel's perch and Rerne's chosen couch, he walked out alone into the open, away from the flitter and all intrusions of Tikil. And as he stood there, the wind trying in vain to pull at his close-cropped hair, pushing protestingly against his straight body, Troy suddenly had a mental picture of a far different place—an artificially lighted room ranked with cages, and the brown-furred back of a creature that had curled into a ball to escape.

The cats—the kinkajou—Here was the fussel, intelligent after its kind—to be trained as another, if beloved, tool or weapon for the use of man. But the Terran creatures—there was a difference, as if somehow they had taken a huge step forward to close ranks with man himself. And Troy knew a tiny flame of excitement. What if that were true? The new world it would open!

He glanced back at Rerne, more than half tempted now to share with the Hunter what was hardly a definite secret—more a series of guesses and surmises. Somehow he thought that in Rerne he would find a believer. Nowhere else on Korwar had he met another with whom he dared be himself, Troy Horan—not a Dippleman, but a free equal. Ever since they had entered the Wild together, this sense of being alive and real again—not aloof from his fellows, but entering once more into a pattern that made for security and solidity—had been growing in him. Now Troy moved slowly, still wary of the wisdom of his half-made decision, but drawn to it. He turned toward Rerne—too late, for the sky was no longer an unoccupied arch of gold. There was a second flitter descending at a speed and angle of approach that suggested urgency.

Rerne sat up in his grassy nest, instantly alert and ready for action. The flyer touched earth not far from their own flitter. The man swinging out of its cabin wore not the tanned-hide uniform of a ranger on duty, but the more elaborate kilt and tunic of a city dweller. He spoke hastily to the Hunter, and then Rerne beckoned Troy to join them.

“Harse will fly you back to Tikil,” he said abruptly, making no explanation for the change of plan. “Tell Kyger that I want the fussel. I will call for it later.” He paused, his gaze lingering for a second or two on Troy, almost as if he wanted to add something to that rather curt dismissal. But then he turned away, without any other farewell, climbing into his own flitter.

Troy, chilled, shut out again, a little angry at his own thoughts of only a few moments before, took the fussel on his wrist and joined Harse in the second flyer. Rerne's ship took off in a steep climb and continued north—toward the Clan holdings.

Harse chose the shortest lane back to Tikil. It was late afternoon when, after steady flight. Troy once more entered Kyger's shop. The merchant met him in the courtyard corridor.

“Hunter Rerne?” The ex-spacer looked beyond Troy in search of the other.

Troy explained. Kyger heard him out, his fingers tracing the scar on his cheek as he listened. And it seemed to the younger man that the merchant was waiting to hear something of greater importance than just the confirmation of the fussel's sale.

“Cage it then,” Kyger ordered. “And you are in time to help with the last feeding. Get to it!”

One of the yardmen was busy with the water pans in the animal room, but he did not look up as Troy went down the line of cages to that which had held the kinkajou. Only this time there was no round ball of fur in its corner. Another quite different creature, pointed-nosed, sharp-eyed, gazed back at him.

“Back, eh?” The yardman lounged over to lean against the wall. “'Bout time you got to it, Dippleman. We have done your work an' ours too, an' we have had 'bout enough of that. How did your ride with one of the lords-high-an'-mighty go?”

“Sold the fussel.” Troy made a noncommittal answer. He was more interested in what had happened here. Though one Terran animal had disappeared during his absence from the shop, here was another established in the same cage, for he was sure that this newcomer was the beast Kyger had shown to the Grand Leader One, via tri-dee, as a fox.

One Terran animal—no, two! He saw the second one now, curled up much as the kinkajou had been, its back to the world, in the far part of the cage. And he noted that the eyes of the one on guard were as searching in their inspection of him as had been the eyes of the cats. The one on guard—why had he thought that?

“One guards—one sleeps—”

Out of nowhere had come the answer. The fox seated himself now, much as the cats had done in their traveling cage, no longer so wary, more as if ready for some answering move on Troy's part.

“New—what are they?” Troy appealed to the yardman merely to cover his interest in the occupants of the cage.

“Extra-special. And you do not take care of these, Dippleman. Boss's orders. He takes care of them himself.”

“Horan!”

Hoping he was able to disguise his somewhat guilty start, Troy glanced back to see Kyger standing at the door of the cage room beckoning.

“Get over here and help Jingu.” He shepherded Troy into the tank room where the marine creatures were on display.

On the table at the far end of the room stood a traveling container into which Jingu, the attendant of those particular wares, was measuring a quantity of liquid with an oily sheen to it. A small aquarium containing the same liquid stood before him. And plastered against the side of that was something Troy, at first sight, could not believe existed outside the imagination of some V-dee fantasy creator.

He had seen many weird life forms, either in the flesh or in Kyger's range of tri-dees. But this was not strange; it was impossible—impossible with a kind of stomach-turning horror. He did not want to look at it and yet his eyes were continually drawn back to the aquarium, and, when the thing moved, he fought an answering heave of his stomach.

Leaning against the end of the table, intent upon Jingu's task, was a stranger, a small man wearing the tunic of one of the minor administrative bureaus. He was a colorless man whom one might not have noted or remembered unless seen as he was now, both hands set on the table top as if to lever his slack-muscled body closer to the monster in the aquarium, his eyes avid with—Troy realized—greed, his pale tongue moving back and forth like a lizard's over pale lips. He turned his head as they came up and his eyes were bright.

“Beautiful, Merchant Kyger, beautiful!”

Kyger regarded the aquarium occupant bleakly. “Not to me, Citizen. Those hur-hurs are”—he shook his head as might a man at a loss for a descriptive word pungent enough, and then ended rather mildly—“hardly considered beautiful, Citizen Dragur.”

The small man might have been the fussel lifting its wings, ready to dart head forward in a beak-sharp attack. “They are a rarity, Merchant Kyger, and of their kind beautiful!” He bristled. “A splendid addition to my collection.” He looked from Kyger to Troy. “This young man is to aid in the transporting? I trust that he knows how to handle such valuables safely? I shall hold you responsible, Kyger, until this magnificent specimen is safely installed in my pond room.”

Troy opened his mouth to deny that he was going to have any part in the transportation of the hur-hur. Then he caught Kyger's glare and remembered that the seven-day contract was close to renewal time. After all, the carrying jug, or bucket, or whatever they termed it, which Jingu was filling so carefully, did have solid sides, and a cover was waiting to be placed on it. If he did lug the thing around, he did not have to continue to look at it.

Jingu now took up a rod and inserted it carefully, a few inches at a time, beneath the surface of the water in the aquarium. Then he prodded the hur-hur gently. Troy, unable to look away, watched with fascinated disgust as the monster embraced the rod with its profusion of thread-thin tentacles, planting the suckers beading those same tentacles fast on the rod. Then Jingu whipped the rod and hur-hur out of the aquarium into the container and clapped on the lid, adjusting a carrying strap.

Troy lifted the cylinder gingerly, felt it quiver between his hands as apparently the hur-hur chose to resent its new prison with some spirited movements. His fingers shrank from even that contact with the thing inside.

“Be careful!” Dragur shuffled along beside him as he steadied the strap across his shoulder. But Kyger came to his employee's rescue.

“They are not as fragile as all that, Citizen. And here are your obaws for feeding.”

He almost thrust a small cage into his customer's hold. The small animals inside were running madly about, squeaking wildly as if they had foreknowledge of their dismal future. Troy, knowing just what that future was in connection with the hur-hur, fought another sharp skirmish with his stomach.

His task was not just to carry the container as far as the flitter awaiting Citizen Dragur, Troy discovered, but to accompany the patron to his home, insuring the safety of the hur-hur while Dragur himself piloted the flyer, at a pace hardly faster than a brisk walk on the ground. Dragur, unlike Rerne, proved to be a babbler. Not that much of his conversation was directed to Horan. Instead, the words that flowed were thoughts uttered aloud and mainly concerned with his now present ability to confound some fellow collector by the name of Supervisor Mazeli, who might outrank Dragur in the hierarchy of the department in which they were both incarcerated until they reached age-for-ease pay, but whose ambitious collection of marine life did
not
embrace a hur-hur.

“Beautiful!” Dragur crawled the flitter across an intersection of avenues, turned into the slightly wider one that led to the outskirts of Tikil. “He will never believe it—never! Next Fellowsday I shall invite him and, say, Wilvins and Sorker. And then I shall escort him around the room, show him the Lupan snails, and the throwworms, give him a chance to enlarge on what
he
has—then—” Dragur lifted one hand from the controls, reached out to pat the top of the container now riding on Troy's knees. “Then—the hur-hur! He will never, never be able to match it. Never!”

For the first time the small man seemed to recollect he did have a human companion in the flitter. “That is correct, is it not, young man? When Merchant Kyger gives a certificate of one-of-a-kind, he does not import during the lifetime of the first specimen? That is truly correct?”

Troy had not heard of that arrangement, but prudence dictated a reply in the affirmative. “I believe so, Citizen.”

“Then Mazeli will never have a hur-hur—never! Their life span is two hundred years—maybe three—and Kyger has certified that this is a young one. Oh, Mazeli may wish but he cannot have! Not one such as you, my little beauty!” Dragur delivered another pat to the top of the cylinder. And perhaps some of his elation did register on the monstrosity inside, for the thing gave such a determined lurch against one side that Troy had to hold it steady with both hands.

“Careful! Careful! I say, young man! What are you doing?” Dragur brought the flitter to a complete stop and fronted Troy indignantly.

“I think it is excited, Citizen.” Troy held the quivering container with both hands. “It probably wants back in an aquarium.”

“Yes, of course.” This time Dragur started the flitter with a jerk, and his rate of speed increased appreciably. “We shall soon be there, very soon now—”

Dragur had one of the small share-houses along the merchant zone. He unsealed the palm lock of the door with one hand, waved Troy in with the other. But the atmosphere that met Horan upon entrance was anything but enticing.

There were strange smells to be met in plenty at Kyger's, but a clever system of ventilation and deodorization kept the air from anything but a suggestion of the wares to be offered under that roof. Here the marine reek of the fish room at the shop was multiplied a thousand times.

What had been intended as the meeting room of the sharehouse was now a miniature sea bottom. The light itself was subdued, in a manner greenish, when compared to the daylight entering through specially tinted panels. And aquariums were set along the walls in banks with what might be a naturally formed pool in the center.

“Stand where you are, right where you are, young man!” Dragur pushed ahead, skirted the floor pool, and approached a table in the darkest corner of that dim chamber. He pulled and pushed at an empty aquarium there until he had it in line with its fellows and then proceeded to lift, with every appearance of exertion, a series of glass containers, pouring from first one and then the other, now and then leaning well over to sniff loudly and rather dramatically at the mixture.