Catseye (3 page)

Troy settled back as far as he could in a seat adjusted to Zul's comfort, not his own, and waited for further enlightenment. Once more he was conscious of activity in the cage, mental activity. It was no longer directed toward him, but at their surroundings. Troy's breath caught in a tiny gasp as he realized—picking impressions and hints out of those vague, strange currents—that the occupants of the cage were engrossed in studying their new surroundings. Yet how could they see through the thickly padded covering of the cage—unless that covering was not what it seemed to superficial examination?

He would have given a great deal at that moment to be able to turn and sweep the covering to the floor of the flitter, to see the unseen. A great deal, but not today's employment. Troy was very sure that such a move on his part would see Zul's summoning of the nearest patroller, his own ignominious and disastrous return to the Dipple. Curiosity was not spur enough to risk that.

They made two more unnecessary turns. There were other flitters wheeling—usually private jobs delivering passengers to the buildings, so Zul's method of progress was in no way extraordinary. But Troy's attention went now to the visa-screen above the controls. He watched for Varms—was the other still trailing?

He could pick out no following flitter that seemed suspicious. But Troy would be the first to admit that he could not match skills with any of the Guild. For all he knew, every one of those flyers and the men and women in them could be part of some fantastic scheme to loot the one in which he was traveling. Should he warn Zul?

The latter was driving at a rate well within the safety regulations of ground level. A portion of vulnerable skin and muscles between Troy's shoulders began to itch as the feeling of expectancy built up inside him. And his growing distrust was shared by those in the cage. Their interest had changed to a desire to warn—to alert—

Troy opened his mouth to speak. A yowling wail burst from the cage, loud enough to drown out any spoken word. Zul's head jerked up. The yowl sank into silence but Troy caught the message—danger was coming, and fast. His hand shot out, fingers fumbling with the catch of the arms locker. But his thumb pressure could not unlock it.

Zul sent the flitter into a burst of speed, which tore them out of the mouth of an avenue into one of the circles of space surrounded by the first ring of shops. With an expert's skill the small man wove a devious pattern among the other flitters there. Troy, tense, kept his attention divided between the path ahead and the near misses Zul guided them through. There had been no further outburst from the cage. But he did not need the wave of expectation issuing from there to warn him of trouble yet to come.

They might have made it free and clear had not Zul miscalculated, or been outplayed, by inches. Troy was slammed against the arms locker, his raised arm protecting his head, as the flitter smashed into an ornamental standard, edged into that to avoid the forward ram of another flyer.

The shock of his impact must have sprung the lock on the arms compartment. As Troy pushed back from it, the panel gaped and he grabbed the butt of a stunner inside. The arm that had taken the shock of his weight was numb, hanging heavy from his shoulder, but the other was all right and his fingers curled hungrily about the weapon.

On Zul's left the door had burst open, spilling the little man into the street. He was already dragging himself up, blood pouring from a cut over one eye. When he tried to stand, he gave a grunt and reeled back against the flitter, apparently unable to rest his weight on his right ankle.

Troy sent his shoulder against the door on his own side, went out and down in a roll, the stunner in his hand and ready. He was sure he was going to face some aggressor more dangerous than any indignant flitter owner Zul might have scraped. As he brought up against the twin of the pillar they had crashed, he saw Zul draw his knife and a man leap with the ease of a trained street fighter from between two parked flitters.

There were pedestrians, a crowd of them, gathering. But until they knew that this was not some private challenge-fight, none would call a patroller. By drawing his belt knife instead of trying for a stunner, Zul had labeled this a meeting-of-honor, unorthodox as its setting might be. And had not Troy been warned, he might have hesitated to come to the other's assistance.

His numbed arm bothered him, and he rested the barrel of the stunner on his knees to take aim against the attacker. Knife blades flashed in the sunlight. Zul, his back braced against the wrecked flitter, was seemingly cornered and on the defensive from the first.

Troy pressed the firing stud of his weapon, remembering the long-ago training by Lang: “Point your barrel as you would your finger, boy. Aim means more than speed.”

There was the faint “pssst” from the stunner. The man fronting Zul wavered, slewed partly around, and staggered back, bringing up against one of the parked vehicles, shaking his head dazedly. But the small man he had attacked did not try to follow up the advantage. Troy tapped with his thumb, sending another charge into the stunner.

He was just in time, for again that ear-torturing wail sounded from the interior of the flitter, and the impact of warning reached him full blast. Instinctively he hurled himself to the right. A knife struck the pillar and clattered to the ground.

The man who had hurled it was holding back, but his companion came on, ready for another try, his eyes narrow and calculating. Troy aimed at the other's head, praying he would not be wearing a force screen. The determination of the attack, and the time and place it had been delivered, argued that the Guild men either were after some fabulous loot or had been hired at the high rate, which in turn suggested they would have top equipment.

But Troy never had a chance to discover if his fears were correct. A white coil materialized out of thin air only a foot or so above the head of the advancing knifeman. It whirled in a circle, throwing off, with almost dizzying speed, a web of white filaments that fell about the attacker, touching and then clinging to shoulders, arms, body, and, finally, legs. The man struggled against the enwebment fruitlessly. Within a matter of moments he was down, as well packaged as a spider's prey. And a second web had taken care of his companion.

Troy straightened up, dropped the stunner to the ground well out in view, not having any wish for the patrollers to start in on him. Leaving the weapon where it lay, he went to Zul.

Blood made a gory and devilish mask of the small man's face, and he clung to the swinging door of the wrecked flitter with one hand, as if he needed that support badly. As Troy came to him, the younger man was suddenly aware of the fact that the warnings that had flowed from the cage were at an end; there was no contact with its inhabitants now.

The first patroller took charge. Troy answered questions with the strict truth concerning what he had seen—but he did not mention the unheard warnings. And Zul either could not or would not elaborate on that report. Somewhat to Troy's surprise, Kyger himself stepped out of the second patrol flitter. And his efficiency matched that of the law. Zul was sent off to have his hurts tended before Kyger examined the cage. When Troy helped him swing it out to the pavement, he was brisk.

“No harm done, officer,” he informed the patroller. “Apparently it was just an attempted highjack—not that such a theft would have done them any good.”

“Why not?” The patroller was a Swatzerkan, his green-tinged skin showing a faint lacing of scales across the backs of his hands as he held a small recorder to catch their answers.

“Because these animals cannot live long without their own imported food and trained care, officer. They are a special order—for the Gentle Fem San duk Var—”

The Swatzerkan did not exactly blink, but perhaps there was a shade more deference in his voice when he replied, “You have indeed been favored by fortune, Merchant, in that your shipment did not fall into the hands of these worms' castings.” His eyes touched briefly on the bound, or webbed, prisoners. “It will be your wishing to take these precious creatures to your shop. But one fears that your flitter is beyond the power of rising—”

“An accommodation will serve.”

“Ah—so. Mulat, an accommodation for the merchant!”

One of the other patrollers went to the com unit of the official flitter. And for the first time Kyger appeared to really notice Troy.

“You used that?” He nodded toward the stunner still lying by the knife-scored pillar.

“Yes.”

“Good enough.” Kyger crossed to retrieve the weapon and hand it to the Swatzerkan. “I witness my man used this in defense of my goods,” he said, using the formal, responsibility-assuming phrase.

“It is so noted, Merchant.”

Troy stared at Kyger. Such a move was made on the behalf of a full-time employee, a subcitizen, not for a day laborer out of the Dipple. Did Kyger mean—?

But this was no time to ask questions. An accommodation flitter set down on the clear oval beyond the pillars, and Troy helped Kyger move the cage and the two crates into it. There was still nothing from the transport box. One could almost imagine that he had dreamed that questing thought process. But Troy's curiosity pricked the more fiercely after the events of the past half hour.

Any pets offered to the wife of Var suk Sark would indeed be the most exotic as well as the most expensive obtainable. Suk Sark was of one of the Fifty Noble Families on Wolf Three. But the Gentle Fem San duk Var was not accepted in that lineage-conscious assemblage. Gossip was undoubtedly correct in ascribing the present residence of the Var household on Korwar to that fact. One could not buy one's way into the Fifty, no matter how limitless was the pile of credits one could dip into. But there were other circles one could impress with one's importance—many such on Korwar.

Troy wondered how suk Sark enjoyed running his autocratic government of the Sweepers from so far away. The Sweepers in the galaxy as a whole were small fry, a collection of six minor solar systems, and they never ventured too far into the conflicts between the real lords of space. But sometimes even such organizations had moments when their allegiance or enmity could tip the scales of an uneasy balance of power. Suk Sark was only one of the “powers” who, for one reason or another, made Korwar their residence, apart from their official headquarters.

“You have a family in the Dipple?” Kyger's abrupt question broke Troy's line of thought.

“No, Merchant.”

“Would you take contract, for a limit of time?”

“With you, Merchant?”

“With me. Zul will be of little use for a while. I will need an extra pair of hands in his place. Who knows?” Kyger glanced at him and then away. “It may lead to something better, Dippleman.”

“I will take contract, Merchant.” Troy schooled his voice, hoping his elation was not too apparent. Somehow he did not wish this spacer-turned-merchant to know just how much that offer meant to him.

They lifted from the square of the crash and took the straightest line to the court at the rear of the shop. Troy was told to load the two crates on a runner and put them in the storeroom. Kyger himself remained by the curtained cage once he had returned the accommodation flitter on auto-control to the rental station. So far he made no move to open the cage, and Troy's desire to see what was inside grew.

“Shall I take this also, Merchant?” Troy asked as he returned and brought the runner to a halt beside the cage.

Kyger turned on him once more the searching stare with which he had measured him at their first meeting that morning. Then the shop owner pulled at some hidden fastening. The padded curtains fell away and Troy looked into a very well-appointed traveling box. The flooring, sides, and roof were padded with plasta-foam, a precaution against the pressure of ship acceleration, and there were two inset feeding and watering niches. But the occupants were close to the mesh front, sitting on their haunches, their front paws placed neatly together, the tips of their tails folded over those paws.

One was black, a black so deep as to have, in the sunlight, a bluish tinge—or perhaps that was a reflection from its companion's coat, for the second and slightly smaller animal
was
blue—or parts of its close, thick fur coat held that shade, muting into a gray that was very dark on head, legs, and tail. And the four eyes of the pair, regarding both men impartially, were as vividly blue-green as aquamarines.

“Terran,” Kyger announced with a note of pride plain in his voice. “Terran cats!”

THREE

Troy studied the animals. Although those blue eyes regarded him squarely, there was no other contact. Yet he was sure it had not been only his imagination that had stirred him earlier.

Kyger opened the cage. The black cat arose, arched its satin-smooth back, extended forelegs in a luxurious stretch, and then padded out into the courtyard, its blue companion remaining behind while the black scouted with eyes and nose.

“Sooooo—” Kyger subdued his usual authoritative tone into a coaxing murmur and held out his hand for the black to sniff.

Cats were part of the crew of every spaceship. Troy had seen them about the docks. But centuries of such star voyaging must have radically mutated the strain if these were the parent stock. None of those possessed such sleek length of limb, or the sharply pointed muzzle, large, delicately shaped ears, color and rich beauty of fur. He might have compared his own bony, work-scarred hand to the well-kept fingers of a Korwarian villa dweller.

The black leaped, effortlessly, to the top of the cage, and its smaller mate emerged. From that mouth ringed in dark gray came no soft appeal but a sound closer to the ear-shattering wail that had screeched through the flitter before the crash. Kyger laughed.

“Hungry, eh?” He spoke to one of the yardmen.” Bring me a food packet.”

Troy watched the merchant break open the sealed container and shake a portion of its contents into the bowls he had loosed from the interior of the cage. The stuff—tough, dry-looking as it sifted down—turned moist and puffy in the dishes. The cats sniffed and then ate decorously.