Masters of Everon (6 page)

The big rancher's voice was thick with anger, intensifying a tendency Jef had been hearing without really noticing it, ever since his landing—a sort of small, rhythmic halting in the local speech. He had never paid much attention to the stated fact that Basic One, the common commercial and technological language of Earth and the newly planted worlds nowadays, was said to be changing rapidly on many of those new worlds. Now it registered on him that all of those around him, except Martin, had some variation of that same rhythmic halt in their speech—ranging from hardly noticeable in the case of Armage to highly apparent in the case of this rancher.

"The nature of the beasts, no doubt," put in Martin pacifically.

"Their nature?" Starkke turned on him. "The nature of everything that runs, flies or swims on this planet! It's a fight for survival every day, here."

"Now then, it's a pretty, comfortable-seeming planet," said Martin. "It can't be all that bad."

Murmurs of disagreement came from all around him.

"Sir, it is that bad!" said Starkke. "Bad? It's worse! We fight this world for everything we get from it. You clear land and before you turn around there's new growth of grass over everything. Your animals eat it and it turns out to poison them. You plow—and you've barely put your plow away before there's a plague of insects that fly in, light, and burrow into the soil. Before you're ready to plant, the field is sprouting with all sorts of tough, useless growth; and it turns out the tracheae of the insects in the swarm were filled with seeds from somewhere else, and your ground is now a tangle of roots your plow won't cut through. Dam a river and before the dam is done, there's a cloudburst, a flood, and everything you've built gets washed away. You saw that hailstorm we had here just this afternoon?"

"Yes," said Martin.

"That hailstorm, sir, came along just in time to flatten a few hundred acres of spring grain that would have been ready for cutting in a week. If it'd done it on purpose, it couldn't have timed the destruction better. None of you Earth-siders have any idea what it's like being a planter on a new world like this!"

"But there're great rewards, are there not?" said Martin. "For example, when your cleared land ends up as downtown blocks in a city such as this, with correspondingly increased value to your credit account?"

"Some of us pile up credit, yes—" began Starkke.

"Everyone in this room—or am I wrong?" Martin said.

"Of course. No. You're not wrong," said Starkke. "The point is—the point is, though, sir—"

"Sit!"
said Yvis Suchi sharply, twitching her jimi back on to his haunches. The Everon creature had half-risen to peer at the female jimi across the room. "All right, then, take my glass and get it filled again!"

She unsnapped the leash. The jimi took her glass in both front paws, lifted itself up on its hind legs and walked crouchingly across the room to the table where Tibur presided. There it circled around to Tibur's side of the table and sniffed at all the open bottles. Selecting a couple of them it proceeded to mix a drink and bring it back to Suchi. The group around Martin had stopped talking to watch.

"Very good!" said Suchi, reconnecting the leash as the jimi brought the drink back to her. She turned to the other humans. "Actually, it's not that good a drink. But you've got to praise them after they've done something, or they'll simply sit there and shake the next time you give them an order."

"There was some thought of using them in factory-type work, assembling parts," a male member of the group said to Martin. "But it didn't work out."

"No, no. Of course not," Suchi said. "They can't understand the concept of work. It's all play to them..."

She continued with a description of the limitations of the jimis in practice; but Jef found his attention distracted. Through the doorway of the room he had just caught sight of someone he had not seen before, a younger man with black hair receding from a high forehead and carrying something like a small attaché case. He stood talking to Armage in the hall outside the lounge for a second, then turned and stepped on the ramp leading to the second story of Armage's home. As his weight came upon it, the ramp surface began to move, carrying the newcomer up, out of sight. Armage turned and went away down the hall in the direction of the dining room's other entrance.

Jef frowned for a second, feeling uneasy for some reason that would not quite identify itself to him. Then suddenly his mind put the second story of the building and the attaché case together.

He went swiftly to the ramp; but the new man had already reached the top and disappeared. Jef ran up the ramp after him, not waiting for its automatic machinery to transport him at its leisurely pace. The upper hall was also empty; but Jef turned directly to the door of the room that had been assigned to him, punched its latch button and stepped through as it rolled aside.

Inside was Mikey, his head lifted questioningly from the patch of sunlit carpet where he lay; and less than three meters from him, the thin man was opening his attaché case.

"What's going on here?" Jef asked.

The man stopped with the attaché case half open.

"Who—who're you?" he demanded, with the Everon dialectical halt in his voice very evident. He closed the case quickly and went on before Jef could answer. "I'm Doctor Chavel. What're you doing here?"

"This is my room," said Jef. "What are you doing here?"

"I—Constable Armage asked me to look at your maolot—"

"You're a veterinarian?"

"I am. Avery—the Constable wanted to be sure that beast hadn't brought in any animal infections or diseases that might affect our native stock. You're quite lucky the Constable called me in like this. Otherwise your maolot would have had to have been impounded and taken down to the local menagerie house for examination when the schedule permitted—a wait of at least three weeks—"

"Mikey doesn't have any diseases," Jef said. "There's a veterinarian's certificate from Earth in my papers. The constable must have seen that."

"If he did, he didn't mention it to me. Now—" Chavel had been opening his attaché case as he talked. Abruptly he produced a small, green, pressure syringe. "There's no need to make a fuss about this. I'll just give your beast a prophylactic injection—"

"You're not giving Mikey anything," said Jef. "He doesn't need a prophylactic injection."

"I'd advise you not to stop me." Chavel turned toward Mikey.

"I'd advise you not to try it!" said Jef.
"Mikey!"

The maolot was suddenly on his feet at the new sound in Jef's voice. His blind head swung to aim its muzzle at Chavel, and a drone began to issue from his throat. Chavel was pale.

"If—if I must use a tranquilizer gun—"

"Don't take it out of your case," said Jef. "I can get to you long before you could get it out and aimed. So can Mikey."

"This is—outrageous." Chavel backed away toward a nearby table on which a desk phone sat. Still keeping Mikey in view, he reached down and punched it on. "Constable Armage! Avery—"

The screen did not light up. But after a second Armage's voice came from it.

"Well?"

"I—there's someone here that won't let me do my job. The beast's owner, I think..."

"I'll be right up." The phone fell silent.

"Now you'll see," said Chavel thinly to Jef.

Jef's mind spun; but no helpful ideas were thrown up. He was bluffing about letting Mikey attack the veterinarian; that would be a sure way to get the maolot killed, eventually if not immediately. Chavel did not seem to see through him. But the back of Jef's head was cold with the feeling that Armage would.

He was still trying to think of something when the door to the room slid aside and the big Constable stepped in.

"What's the matter, Doctor?" he said almost gently, ignoring Jef.

"This gentleman refuses to let me give his maolot a prophylactic shot."

"Oh?" Armage turned at that, and smiled at Jef. "It's for your animal's own good, you know."

"I don't believe it," said Jef.

"Nor indeed," said the voice of Martin, "do I."

The door was opening once more; and this time it was Martin who stepped into the room.

"There you are, Jef," he said. "First you disappear and then our host here does likewise. I began to feel lost with not one familiar face about me. And now I hear that our Mikey must be given some medication for his own good. But you know, I wonder. How much do we really know about maolot metabolism? Mightn't this medication have some unwished for, even fatal side effects?"

"Sir!" said Chavel stiffly. "We're quite familiar with maolots here on Everon—on their native world."

"To be sure. But you see, this isn't an Everon maolot. He's grown up on Earth, and perhaps that makes a difference. Who can tell for sure? But, in any case my dear Doctor—it is Doctor, isn't it—you haven't answered my question. I asked if it wasn't possible that such a medication might not turn out to have some unforeseen, even fatal, side effects."

"Ah—" said Chavel, and stopped. He threw a glance at Armage; but Armage merely raised his eyebrows interestedly and said nothing. "Ah, naturally, in choosing a drug we don't anticipate—"

"Yes," said Martin softly, "or no, Doctor?"

"Who knows?" cried Chavel furiously. "We don't even understand all the differences in human beings. How can I give you a guarantee this maolot might not have some individual, farfetched, bad reaction—"

"Exactly," said Martin. "And, seeing that's so, and the maolot being important, as I've mentioned to the Constable here, perhaps it's best that no such thing be given Mikey. Wouldn't you say so, Constable?"

He looked at Armage.

"I quite agree," said Armage, and smiled a small cold smile at Chavel. "We don't want to take any risks with this valuable beast, Doctor."

"All—right!" Chavel was getting his attaché case closed again, but his fingers fumbled and made a clumsy job of it. When the closure was finally made, he nodded abruptly to them all.

"Good evening..."

He was gone before the sound of his voice had died on the ear. "And now, back down to the dinner?" Martin said to Armage. "By all means," said the Constable.

Armage led the way out of the room. Behind the big man's back Martin paused to wink at Jef, before he followed. Jef turned to go too, but Mikey made a small, questioning, humming sound deep in his throat. Turning back, Jef saw the maolot standing in the center of the room, his head seeking blindly from side to side. A shivering motion trembled the massive shoulders.

"It's all right," said Jef. He came back to Mikey and put his hand on the maolot's head. "I'm not going. I'll stay here with you."

Mikey shoved his blunt muzzle gratefully against Jef, almost knocking him over. Jef sat down on a chair and let the maolot drop his head on one knee.

"They can send me up a sandwich—I hope," said Jef.

It turned out that something more than a sandwich could be sent up. Tibur rolled in a wheeled table with the same dinner the rest would be sitting down to below in about half an hour.

Jef ate, and fed Mikey with the wisent meat Tibur had provided for the maolot. Afterwards, however, sitting listening to the faint sound of voices filtering up from the dining room on the floor below, he found himself back mulling an old problem. Once more Martin had come to the rescue, this time with a glib explanation of Jef's reason for being here with the maolot.

It was not that these efforts of Martin's were not welcome. It was just that they had become too frequent to be comfortable and the unanswered question of why he should exercise himself in this way was becoming a clamor in the back of Jef's mind. If the reason was a good or honest one, why had Martin been so shy about giving it, when Jef had asked? A deep-felt suspicion that there was something less than right about Martin had been solidifying in Jef's mind for some time now.

If only there was some way he could find out more about the man. Jef got up and paced the floor of the room, causing Mikey to lift his head and follow the sound of Jef's movements with it.

"I'll be right back," Jef said to the maolot after a few minutes. "I'm just going to look next door."

He stepped out the door of his own room, locking it behind him, and walked to the door of Martin's suite. But, as he had expected, it was also firmly locked. When he put his hand on the door panel and pushed on it, it did not open—but it did move slightly, making a clunking sound.

Jef lifted his hand away, then pushed again. Once more there was the sound. He tried pushing this way several times, and found that not merely the door, but the frame and door moved slightly when he pushed on it. A little further investigation gave the reason. For all of its colonial impressiveness, Armage's house had been put together either hastily or carelessly. The door was a unit taken from some space-going cargo vessel. But it had evidently been set in a frame in the wall of the corridor that had been cut just a little too large.

Jef checked the amount of looseness. The door could be lifted almost enough to free the latch-bar from its socket in the frame. But not quite. It held just enough to keep him barred from Martin's room. For a second, as he stood staring at the door, he was struck with the incongruity of his sense of outrage that some inanimate object should be frustrating his attempt to make an unlawful entry. Then common sense was put aside. He must get in, somehow.

He could lift the door, using the very tips of his fingers—which were all that could get a purchase on the barely raised ornamental molding that crossed the door panel halfway up. But the minute he lifted it more than a centimeter, the angle of his fingertips became such that his hold slipped. If he could somehow lift, let go and grab for the handhold he had just made available by lifting the bottom edge of frame and door clear of the floor...

He tried. It was impossible. Frustration increased. It was not that the door was too heavy to lift. It was the fact that he could not get a good grip on it.

He was about to give up, when inspiration struck. He went back to open the door of his own room and call Mikey out. He lifted the door, explaining to Mikey all the while.