The Alien Trace [Cord 01] (28 page)

    Once he had checked everyone in the port, if no one tested out as guilty, he again could shift his attention to the lower levels and ducts and tunnels, and have no difficulty persuading K to help him.

    Now that he had determined a course of action, he felt better. He went back to the lab, where he found a message waiting on his screen, requesting that he go to Hamilton K's office at the eleventh hour.

    

    

    He arrived at precisely the eleventh hour and was admitted to K's office.

    Hamilton was speaking to someone-another Mehiran. Cord hid his surprise. The other's clothing and bearing told Cord he was from the Council.

    "Cord, this is Mayon, who has come here representing the Council," K said. "He wants to talk to you. Would you like to use the office next door?"

    Whatever the Council wished to tell him, Cord had no doubt it was meant to be secret. He was equally sure that it wouldn't be, in any room K offered.

    "Thank you. However, I must check on something in my workroom. If the Respected Mayon will come with me…?"

    The Council agent bowed assent and followed Cord out.

    They were some paces down the corridor before either spoke.

    "I am grateful you made an excuse to talk elsewhere," Mayon said. "I assume we are going to a place where we will not be intruded upon?"

    The man's tone was cold. Cord noticed that Mayon avoided looking at him. It wasn't surprising. He had been keeping clear of the occasional Mehiran visitors to the port to spare them-and himself-embarrassment. His reputation as a killer, as a slayer of even Catchers like himself, must have circled Mehira by now. Probably his name was being used to frighten badly behaved children into obedience.

    "Of course," Cord replied, masking his feelings.

    "Excellent."

    Mayon did not say anything more until they were inside Cord's workshop. The Council's representative looked around at the workbenches and the tools with faint disdain.

    "Well," he began, "the Council naturally assumed you had ceased to work for it."

    When he paused, Cord answered as he would not have dared a short time before: "I felt sure the Council would reach the correct conclusion."

    Mayon glanced at him in amazement. The Council was not used to flippant answers.

    "The Council would not have sent me to contact you," he continued, "but for extraordinary circumstances. You were asked to investigate an… act of violence which took place near the port's wall."

    "I was," Cord agreed. In the tumble of recent events, he nad forgotten the strange crime he had been instructed to solve. It seemed as distant as childhood. He never had gotten the chance to examine the corpse. Was it still in stasis at Council headquarters? Quite possibly.

    "After you… left the Council's service, another Catcher was assigned the task. He has not produced results. As you pay have been told, the original crime was not of overwhelming interest to the Council. It was merely a puzzle, of concern because of the proximity of the humans' compound."

    "Yes, I understood as much."

    "Since that time, there have been three more killings. One was a guard at a gate near the port. And then, two nights ago, a young couple, who had been enjoying themselves in the River Park, were found horribly mutilated."

    Cord's breath caught in his throat.

    "What is it? Do you know something about it?" Mayon demanded.

    "Two nights ago I had an odd nightmare," Cord admitted. "It concerned two love-friends in a park. They screamed."

    "That's how they came to be found," the Council representative said. "There were others in the wood, of course. If no one had heard the cries, both audible and emotional, the bodies might not have been discovered at all. And their signals reached you while you slept? You must be unusually sensitive." His tone implied doubt that such receptivity was likely in a Catcher.

    "I must be," Cord agreed. He wanted more details of the eerie coincidence. The man's roundabout description gave Cord an appreciation for the humans' blunt reports.

    "Had the skulls been opened, as in the first case?" he asked brutally.

    "Not exactly, I am told. I have not seen them, needless to say." Mayon turned pale, his skin yellow rather than a healthy gold.

    "Neither have I, unfortunately. But I was informed that the first victim's skull had been sawed apart with almost surgical neatness."

    "Not this time. The couple had been savaged, as if by an animal. Such ferociousness was not evident at the death of the guard."

    "Had anything been eaten?"

    "Yes. Parts of the brains and some of the other tissues as well. Not a great deal-there could not have been much time between the shouts and the arrival of the first people on the scene."

    "They saw nothing?"

    "No. Of course, they made a certain amount of noise in approaching, and between the dark and the shrubbery it took them a while to find the source of the screams."

    "If the Council recognizes a similarity between the crimes, they must have been perpetrated by the same person," Cord mused. "And the Council wishes me to do something about it?"

    "Yes." For the first time, Mayon looked directly at him.

    Cord knew what he saw: a man with the reputation of a savage beast, a tool to be used but not respected or liked.

    "I don't know what I can do," Cord replied. "I have taken up residence here at the port, and I doubt the Council really wishes me back on Mehiran soil."

    "That's true. But the Council very earnestly desires the end of whatever creature committed these acts. The Council believes it comes from inside the spaceport."

    Mayon must have interpreted Cord's answering stare as disbelief. He pointed out. "Nothing like this happened before the arrival of the aliens. Now there have been three violent attacks in the First District in less than half a year. Until now, there had been only four in the city in fifteen years. You must look for someone inside the port-some insane human who slips outside at night."

    "And if I do?"

    "The Council will pay well."

    Cord shrugged and curled his tail. "The humans are paying me as much as I need or want. Really, the Council has little to offer me."

    Mayon's lips tightened. "The Council will drop all charges against you so that you may leave the port and live again in a civilized fashion. It will give you an estate in some isolated region where-where your neighbors will not be an annoyance to you…"

    Cord smiled inwardly at the choice of language.

    "And they will supply you with a woman," Mayon concluded. "What more could you ask?"

    Cord thought about it. He thought about the ancestors' injunction that he leave Mehira, and he thought about all the human women who were willing to sleep with him without being ordered to do so by the Council. They didn't have lithe, saucy tails, perhaps, or velvety, upstanding ears, but they were enthusiastic, and there was a fascination in variety. And here he was respected.

    "I must decline the Council's generous offer," he said. "However, I will most likely uncover the murderer in the course of my current investigations within the spaceport. You can tell the Council it stands to benefit no matter what my own fate might be."

    "The Council will surely accept your kindness. I will report to it at once." Mayon seemed able to find his own way out of the port, so Cord let him. Certainly he had not sullied a Council representative's reputation by lingering a moment longer than required.

    Well, Cord had made a grand gesture to show his magnanimity and yet committed himself to nothing, since he was taking no pay. Seizing control of his life while danger swirled around him made Cord feel like the eye of a hurricane. He felt stronger than ever before, and he thought of Julia's inner calm. Perhaps her alien religion did contain some truth. In any case it was time for action-time to use the telepathy device to find a killer…

    

    

    "I did not expect to see you again so soon," Hamilton K remarked wryly. He stared in confusion at the litter of strange devices Cord had dumped on his desk. "Did you finish your business with Mayon?"

    "Yes," Cord replied. "But I didn't come to bore you with my private affairs. I have a number of questions to ask you, before we get on with our trading."

    Hamilton K. sighed and, nudging the devices aside carefully, put his feet up on the desk. "I can see this is going to be a long session."

    Cord ignored the remark and paced back and forth in front of him, tail whipping. "Could someone leave the spaceport without being seen?" He preferred not to divulge his suspicions to a man he did not quite trust. Furthermore, he could not reveal all that was known of the outside murders without betraying the Mehiran empathic ability and its corollary aversion to violence. Even though there was no longer a tie to bind him to Mehira, he could not put his race in danger.

    "Difficult," K answered immediately. "Whether or not the port is on alert, whether it is day or night, everyone has to have a pass and be let out or admitted by the guard. And we've been on alert status since the bombing."

    "That's only at the main entrance," Cord pointed out.

    "I assumed you meant out of the compound, not only out of the building. Getting out onto the landing area is easy enough. There are several entrances, including the loading dock-by which you entered once, I hear."

    "Yes." Cord frowned. "The field is surrounded by the wall, however. There's no way out except through the main entrance at the front or by climbing the wall?"

    "There is a freight entrance at the south end, where Mehiran goods can be taken in. That's sealed up tighter than the main door. You could fly out. Or…"

    "What?"

    "Let's be honest. The port is designed with a few discreet exits-for emergency use only."

    "I would like to examine them to see if anyone has gone out that way."

    "I can't allow it, I'm afraid. Their locations are a secret. They wouldn't be any use if they weren't."

    "Does O'as Garatua know about them?"

    "Certainly."

    "If she checks them for tampering, that will be adequate."

    "I will have her take care of it," Hamilton said. "Why do you want to know?"

    "That is also a secret."

    K grinned, acknowledging that Cord had outmaneuvered him. With delicate irony he inquired, "Is there any other way in which I can be of service?"

    "Yes. Help me catch a murderer-provided you're not one yourself."

    It required neither telepathy nor empathy to read K's surprise. "Then what was Lion Pars-a coincidence?"

    "Or an attempt to mislead us. O'as agrees with me."

    "I find it strange that Garatua did not see fit to advise me that Pars was not the culprit," K snapped ill-temperedly. "As Trade Agent of Mehira Port, the presence of a psychopath is of some interest to me. I want him found." Then he added, "Sometimes I've the feeling you don't entirely trust me, Cord."

    "I don't," Cord responded.

    "In matters of trade I am trustworthy only to a point. If I give my word, I'll keep it-but you'd better be very careful about what you agree to do. If I can buy from you at less than the article's worth, I will. That's good business. On the other hand, there are things I will not do. I won't sell poison by claiming it's wholesome. I won't practice piracy. I won't deal in slaves. I won't commit murder except in self-defense."

    Cord stared at the Trade Agent. The human was urbane, half smiling, but there was sincerity in the words. Cord remembered that a partial truth is sometimes the most convincing kind of lie.

    "And did you?" he queried.

    "Kill? I have done so when my life was in danger. Once, to save a friend. Did I kill your parents and try to remove you? No."

    "Are you willing to prove it?"

    "How?" The Trade Agent was too wary to agree before finding out what he was volunteering to do.

    "I have a working telepathic receiver. Will you let me read your mind?"

    "I would prefer to finish our business here first."

    Cord smiled. "Understandably so. However, I am not interested in anything but discovering the murderer. I promise I won't take advantage of your trading knowledge."

    "Good enough. What do you want me to do?" K removed his feet from the desk and stood up.

    "Hold out your hand." Cord stretched out his own to meet the human's.

    …
damnedest thing I ever-certainly led to excitement- thought this would be a dull station
…

    "Did you kill my father and mother?"

    "No."…
against my own interests to kill the goose that lays… wish she had… mustn't think that with her son listening in if he is
…

    "Did you try to kill me?"

    "No."…
sort of like the kid… the commission will make me wealthy-get me a different assignment… but if poor old Lion didn't… nasty situation
…

    "It is," Cord observed, freeing K's hand.

    "You really were receiving my thoughts?"

    "Of course."

    "Fascinating. Ten Suns will want to buy that gadget, you realize." K was doing his best to hide his excitement.

    "It has drawbacks," Cord confessed.

    "You have to touch the subject? Still, with some development it would be useful."

    "I'll discuss the terms after we catch the murderer."

    K frowned. "What about all this other stuff you dumped on my desk?"