Catseye (10 page)

Troy shifted his feet. The weight of the container was not light, and it kept jerking on the shoulder strap as the hur-hur continued to resent transportation. Horan was eager to be out of this cave of bad smells and marine monsters, for some of the things that bumped sides of bowls and aquariums to stare at him, or seem to stare at him, were not far removed from the hur-hur in general frightfulness.

At last the concoction appeared to satisfy Dragur. He added, with the air of an artist supplying the last touch to a masterpiece, a long string of what looked like badly decayed root fibers and beckoned to Troy.

Did Dragur think that
he
was going to transfer the hur-hur via the rod method Jingu had used? If so, this customer was not going to be a satisfied one. Troy had no intention of trying such action.

But apparently Dragur had no idea of leaving such a delicate task to a novice. He waved Troy away again as soon as the other had put down the container and took off the lid. Playing the hur-hur into clinging once more to the rod, the little man whipped the creature with even more dexterity than Jingu had displayed into its new home.

“Now!” Dragur gave the shop container back to Troy. “We must let it alone, strictly alone, two days—maybe three—only visiting it for feeding.”

Troy wondered if the other imagined that he was going to be in this smelly room for another few moments, let alone two or three days!

“Is that all, Citizen?” He asked firmly.

Dragur again seemed to notice him as a person. “What? Ha—yes, that will be all, young man. I have not seen you before, have I? You did not come with me last time for a delivery.”

“No. I am new at Kyger's.”

“Yes, it was Zul who came last time, I remember. And who are you, young man?”

“Troy Horan.”

“Horan? Horan—that is an off-world name, surely?”

“I am from Norden,” Troy returned as he edged toward the outer door with its promise of fresh air.

“Norden?” Dragur blinked as if trying to visualize some solar chart on which he could place Norden with dispatch and precision. “You are a former spacer then, as is Merchant Kyger?”

“I am from the Dipple.”

“Oh.” Dragur displayed the conventional citizen's reaction to that, embarrassment intermixed with irritation. “Assure Merchant Kyger that I am pleased, very pleased. I shall be in myself, of course, with my supply list. And please remind him that this is a one-of-a-species sale—that must be plain, very plain.”

“I am sure the merchant understands, Citizen.”

Dragur followed him to the door, pointed out the nearest roll walk. He did not reenter the house until Troy was several paces away. Probably, thought Horan bitterly, he just wants to make sure a Dippleman is well off the premises.

But this was not the end of a day of minor irritations and disappointements. The morning had begun so well with the awakening in the lodge of the Wild. It was ending in the evening in Tikil with his re-entering the shop to discover Zul very much the master of the cage room. Though the small yellow man walked with a limp, he walked briskly, and he did not welcome Troy back.

End of the seven-day contract—Troy was very conscious of that. He could continue here to the limit of that time and then Kyger was under no obligation to renew. With Zul back he probably would not. When Troy brought in water for the fox cage, the other waved him off, attending to the Terran animals himself. In fact he zealously preempted so many of the tasks Troy had done that the latter was elbowed out of the work almost entirely. And each time Horan saw Kyger he expected to be told that his employment would be over as soon as it was legally possible to dismiss him.

However, the merchant said nothing—until a few moments immediately preceding the official closing of the shop. Then Troy was summoned to where Kyger and Zul stood by the door of the animal room. And he could see that Zul was not pleased.

“You will take the night inspection tours as usual,” Kyger ordered. His broad fingers rested on Zul's shoulder, and now he pulled the smaller man with him as easily as if Zul were powerless in his hold. The yellow man favored Troy with a glare that made the latter wish, not for the first time, that he had a right to wear a belt knife.

With the shop closed and the animals settled, Troy made his first round, starting with the now silent customer's lounges, checking each room. What he was hunting, or why he had this growing compulsion that was almost a search, he could not have told.

The lounges contained nothing out of the ordinary; the bird room was as always. He lingered before the fussel. It was hard to remember this morning. The bird permitted him to run a forefinger along its crest, drew the bill that could stab and kill across his hand in return.

Then he was in the animal room. And now he thought he knew what had driven him to this restless seeking. What
had
become of the kinkajou? No one had mentioned it since his return. The foxes had been settled in its place as if they had been there for days. Had it been returned to the Sattor Commander Di's heirs as a valuable part of his estate?

Suddenly Troy knew that he would have to discover what had become of the animal that had claimed his aid and that he might have unknowingly left unprotected, for he remembered all too well that strange conversation in the night.

On impulse he turned and left the cage room, walked straight to his bunk and stretched out on it. If he could not find the kinkajou one way, there was a chance—just a very faint chance—another and more devious path might serve.

EIGHT

Troy's eyes were shut. He willed nerves and muscles to relax, trying to hit by chance, since he had no better guide, on the pattern that had aided him that other night to tune in upon the exchange that was not conversation. Through the corns all the usual noises from the bird and animal rooms reached him, and he tried not to listen.

“—here. Out—”

Not really words, rather impressions—a signal, a plea. Troy's eyes opened; he sat up—and that whisper of contact was gone. Angry at his own lack of control, he settled himself once more on the bunk, tried again to tap that band of communication.

“Out—out—danger—”

He lay, hardly breathing, trying to hold that line.

“Out—”

Yes, it was a plea; he was certain of that. But there was no way of discovering from whom or from where it came. He might have stumbled upon a small loop of rope in the middle of a large room, to be told to find the coil from which it had been cut.

“Where?” He tried to frame that word in his own mind, force the inquiry into the band he could not locate.

Then he received an impression of surprise—so strong it was like an exclamation his ears could pick up.

“Who? Who?” The query was eager, demanding.

“Troy—” He thought his own name but was answered by a sense of bafflement, disappointment. Maybe names meant nothing in this eerie exchange. Troy tried to build up a mental picture of his own face as he had seen it in mirrors. He thought intensely of that face, of each detail of his own features.

The sensation of bafflement faded, though he was sure he had not lost contact.

“Who?” he asked silently in return, certain that he was communicating with the kinkajou.

But instead an oddly shaped and distorted picture of a triangular mask, sharp-pointed nose, glittering eyes, pricked ears—the fox!

Troy slipped out of his bunk. He did not foresee any trouble. If Kyger or Zul turned up, he could always say he was investigating some unusual sound. Yet he took the stunner from its wall niche before he left the small room and went as noiselessly as he could down the corridor to the animal room.

There was a cover over the front of the fox cage. Troy raised that flap. Both animals sat there, watching him. He glanced about the room. Even in the dim night light he could see nothing amiss. This could not be a case of an intruder as it had been when the kinkajou's warning had saved his life.

“What is wrong?” At the moment there was nothing strange in his standing there thinking that question at a pair of Terran foxes.

“The big one—he threatens.”

It was as if someone with a strictly curtailed number of words was trying to convey a complex thought. The big one—Kyger?

“Yes!” The assent was quick, eager.

“What is wrong?”

“He fears—thinks better dead—”

“Who is better dead?” Troy's grip on the stunner tightened. He felt a cold stab between his shoulders giving birth to a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

“Those who know—all those who know—”

“Me?” Troy countered quickly. Though of what Kyger might suspect him or why he had no idea.

There was no answer. Either he had presented them with a new puzzle, or, unable to give a definite reply, they gave none at all.

“You?”

“Yes—” But there was an element of doubt in that yes.

“Others like you?” Troy pushed.

“Yes!” now there was no mistaking the vehemence of that.

He thought of the kinkajou. One of the foxes reared, put front paws against the screening of the cage. “It was here. Now it is there.”

“Where?” Troy tried to follow.

His mind pictured for him a cage, hodded and stored—but not in any room of the shop he had seen.

“In the yard pens?” he asked.

There was a long moment before the answer came and then it was evasive.

“Cool air, many smells—maybe outside.”

Was the fox only relaying for the kinkajou? Troy thought that might be true.

“Cage covered—not to see—”

That fitted. The animal might well be in one of the outside pens still in a carrying cage. But to find it tonight would be a risky project, and what could he do if he did locate it?

“Hide!”

They had picked that out of his thoughts, replied to it. The standing fox was panting a little, its red tongue lolling from its jaws.

Troy considered the problem. For some reason Kyger had hidden the kinkajou, intending to get rid of it. To meddle in this at all was simply asking for trouble. Not only would the merchant break contract, but he was entitled to black-list Troy with the C.L.C. so that he could never hope for another day's labor on Korwar. That had happened to Dipplemen in the past, and for less cause. He had only to fasten down the cover of the foxes' cage, leave the room, forget everything, and he was safe.

How safe? He stared down at the fox. The kinkajou, the foxes, even the cats, all knew that he was able to communicate with them. Suppose they passed that information on to Kyger? That interrupted conversation the other night—if Kyger knew he had “heard” that—Yes, a refusal to help might cut two ways now.

He jerked the flap of the cage cover into place, making no further attempt to talk to the foxes. Then, thrusting the stunner into the top of his rider's belt, he padded to the rear door and let himself out cautiously, ducking into a convenient pool of shadow.

Just as he patrolled the shop during the night, the senior yardman made the rounds out here. And Troy's presence near some of the larger animal pens could arouse their inhabitants to noisy protest, betraying him at once. Nor did Horan have the least idea in which of those enclosures the kinkajou was now housed, if it was here at all.

He slipped along the wall, his left shoulder against it, making a quick dart across an open space to the shelter of a doorway. From that came the scent of hay, seeds, dried vegetation. And those mingled odors took him back to his twenty-four hours in the Wild. Perhaps it was then that the first flick of an idea was born—not concrete enough yet to be called a plan, just a hazy half-dream suggesting a way of escape if Kyger did dismiss him again to the Dipple.

Troy felt the door yield to his gentle push and he went in. Under his hand the panel swung almost closed once more, but through the crack he was able to reconnoiter the rest of the courtyard. In which of the pens and cages about its circumference could what he sought be effectively hidden? And would Kyger have undertaken that mission himself or left it to one of the yardmen—or Zul?

Kyger—or Zul, the most likely. Zul had not wanted Troy to be left in the shop tonight; he was certain of that. He wished he knew where that small man was right now.

There was a stir by the door that gave on the passage leading to Kyger's private apartment. A figure moved into the open and Troy saw Zul, by his present actions a Zul who did not want to be observed, for, as Troy had done, the other took advantage of every shadow to cover his journey along the row of pens.

Perhaps the creatures penned there were used to his scent and such nighttime journeys, for none of them roused. Then Zul disappeared, seemingly into a patch of wall. Where his flitting had been soundless, the tap of footsteps now sounded briskly down the opposite side of the yard, and Troy held his breath as they approached the supply room. He gently eased the panel fully shut and waited tensely to see if the patrolling guard would try it.

When the footfalls passed without pausing, Horan again opened the door a crack. He could not see the retreating yardman from this position, but he heard the door at the other end of the court close. Then he saw Zul detach himself from the wall and move on. So—Zul was keeping this a secret from the regular guard? That was most intersting.

Two, three more pens the other passed. Then he stopped before the last in that row, a larger enclosure where two small trasi from Longus were kept. They were very tame and most affectionate creatures of a subspecies of deer.

The pen door opened and Zul disappeared within, the darkness there hiding him entirely.

“Obey!”

Troy's hand went to his head at the force of that menacing thought-order, which struck like a blow. But to it there was not the faintest trace of an answer, either agreement or protest. Somehow Troy could imagine Zul stooped above a shrouded cage, trying to arouse a ball of fur that remained stubbornly impervious to his commands.