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 to 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 toward 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 this 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 share-house
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.
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
disappointments. 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
the 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.
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 to 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 toward 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 this 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 share-house
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.
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
disappointments. 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
the 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.