Gordon R. Dickson (8 page)

Toy's
wife found them a room in the building and suggested that they rest until
evening. Shortly after nightfall, she came for them and led them out to a
garage. The cool coastal air blew about them as they got into a small personal
flyer and the roof above them rumbled back to reveal the stars. As soon as they
were in, Toy's wife closed the transparent canopy of the flyer, and opaqued it,
taking a pair of depoling glasses from the flyers glove compartment to insure
her own vision, and putting them on.

"Sorry
about this," she smiled at Kil below the twin darknesses of the lenses.
"Until you're accepted, the route to the meeting place has to be secret.
We'll be there in about fifteen minutes."

They
took off; and a quarter of an hour later the flyer came down with a soft thump,
to roll for some little distance along a smooth surface. Then the womah stopped
it and opened the canopy.

"Here we are, all
out," she said.

She
took his hand to lead him, and Kil felt a tingle travel through his spine. From
that moment on, he remembered nothing of his initiation into the Panthers,
except for the vague feeling of having been wandering through a jungle. . . .
Slowly the jungle faded about him. He came back to himself, standing in the
draped and shadowy corner of a large room where people moved languidly about.
Some sort of cocktail party seemed to be in progress. He crossed the room and
got a drink, which he took thirstily. Then he went in search of Dekko, or Toy's
wife.

Toy's
wife was nowhere to be found, but he discovered Dekko in conversation with a
thickset, gray-haired man in black tunic and kilt.

"I
don't know," the gray-haired man was saying.
"Nobody
in the Duluth area at the moment that I know personally.
It doesn't
matter, I can give you two a visa, so they know you've been checked here
recently, sir." He broke off, turning to Kil, as Kil came up.

"That's him,"
said Dekko.

"Oh
yes; Jacques Shriner, Mr. Bruner." The gray-haired man offered his hand,
beaming out of a plump and ruddy face. "If you two'11 come back to the
office, I'll make out the visas."

He
turned and led the way across the room to a small door. Facing his Key into the
cup, he let them in and care-fuly closed the door behind them. They found
themselves in a small business room furnished with a desk and microfile
cabinet. Shriner went across to the desk and produced a coupie of small,
plastic disks, which he made out with their names and the date, signing each
with his own name and thumbprint.

"Not
that you need these—your arm marks are sufficient," he said, lifting his
own arm, and Kil saw on it scratches like those of a cat, and suddenly felt the
sting of scratches on his own arm. "But just in case—"

"Thanks," said Dekko.

"Not
at all," replied Shriner. "Enjoy yourselves in Duluth. He beamed them
out of his office.

They
crossed the room again to a further door that Dekko appeared to know about. It
let them into a small, circular hallway where a bored-looking attendant stood.
From this hallway, several exits led in different directions.

"Which one, Chief?" asked
Dekko.

"Any
one," replied the attendant. He was dressed in conventional dark slacks
and a dramatically slashed tunic with a hoop collar, but there was an unusual
glassiness about his appearance that drew Kil's attention. It was something
just on the edge of visibility, like an almost perfectly transparent
soap-bubble sort of film, just above the surface of his limbs and body. Then he
turned so that Kil saw a heavy gasgun hanging at his side; and suddenly Kil
recognized the glassiness as body armor of the magnetic shield type. He was
confirmed in this recognition as the attendant waddled a few steps forward.
The metal mesh supporting the shield under his clothing must be cruelly heavy.

Dekko,
however, appeared to pay no attention to the attendant and his illegal
equipment; but turned and vanished down the nearest tunnel entrance. Kil
followed. A short distance on they passed through a door and into a sort of
cave that ascended steeply.

"What's
all this about Duluth?" asked Kil, when they had gone some ways up the
cave.

"Close
to the top," answered Dekko. "Like any business, you got to know what
the competition's doing. It's Stick headquarters, so headquarters of eyerything
else isn't far off. For us, that means the O.T.L."

The cave had leveled off now. They went on a
short distance, opened a final door and stepped out on a strip of shelving
pebbly beach. Overhead, gulls swooped, crying; the early morning sun washed the
ocean shore in white light. For a minute Kil felt shock to discover that his
period of hypnosis had lasted so long. Then this feeling was lost forever in
something greater that crept over and buried it like an avalanche on some
solitary mountain climber—for he saw the sea.

Water—water.
Water and Ellen—Ellen as she had been the night she had gone away; and the
ocean then stretching wide and silver-dark to the horizon. Like a man in a
dream, Kil turned and took one step toward the curling waves.

"Kil!
Kil!"
And then Dekko had him by the arm, holding him back. For-a moment he
began a half-convulsive struggle to free himself. Then the spell snapped and he
turned his back on the wide sea.

And Dekko drew him away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

They
took the noon rocket back to Duluth and found
themselves a set of rooms in an unclassified hotel outside the Slums. That
night they went to the Northern Star, Duluth's largest entertainment center.
Kil had already gone out during the afternoon to draw from his account and
replenish his dwindling cash reserves. He drew three thousand for himself and
an additional thousand for Dekko. It occurred to him that the little humpback
was still unpaid; and probably, therefore, in need of
cash
himself.

This
could hardly have been the case. When he got back to the hotel, he found that
Dekko had spent what could only have been a sizable amount on some evening
clothes. These were not throwaways of plastic like their ordinary, daily dress,
but trousers, tunic and short jacket of pressed silk. Their color was a heavy
yellow, shot with black; a startling combination. And not only that, but the
jacket was squared and stiffened with a high, hooped collar and boxed shoulders
that all but disguised the fact of his hump.

Kil stared.

Dekko smiled. It was a different expression
from his former grin, tight-lipped and a little sardonic.

"We're
working a different territory from here on," he said. "I got you an
outfit, too."

Kil followed his pointing finger and went to
a closet recess. On the wire, he saw a kilt and tunic also of silk, scarlet
tunic and scarlet and black checkerboard design, pleated kilt. A silver weapon
belt holding a little dress gun and a silver-handle poniard went with it.
A fourragère
looped from one shoulder of the tunic, and a heavy ring, with a
square-cut emerald hung by
a
thread from the wire.

Kil scowled blackly.

"You expect me to wear this?" he
demanded.
"Ill look like a damned pruce."

Dekko shook with silent laughter.

"Put it on," he
said. "And get the dye out of your hair."

Growling,
Kil got into the rig. When it was on, complete to the emerald ring on the index
finger of his left hand, he examined himself in the mirror. The effect was not
as bad as he had expected. He was undeniably overdressed, but a certain sort of
genius seemed to have guided Dekko in his selections. Kil looked not so much
affected as dissipated, in a dark and reckless way. His own harsh features took
the curse off the prettiness of the costume.

"I
still don't see why this—how much did it all cost?" he asked.

"Seven
hundred and eighty for both," replied Dekko. "You can pay me."
He looked at Kil. "Know anything about using a gun or a knife?"

"No."

"Good.
Then you won't be tempted." Dekko accepted the money for the clothes and
his own month's stipend. "Keep it on you now that you've got it on. I want
you to get used to it."

They
wore their new clothes down to dinner. It was not as bad as Kil had expected.
People stared at him, but not with the accompanying snickers he had expected.
By eleven that night, when they got to the Northern Star, four hours wear and
as many drinks had him all but reconciled to the figure he cut. He and Dekko
paused at the edge of a crowded dance floor and Dekko consulted a waiter.

"All right, we got a table,' he said,
turning back to Kil.

Kil
allowed himself to be drawn over to a table on the far edge of the dance floor.
They sat down.

"Now what?" he
looked at Dekko.

"We wait. Put your arm
on the table, out in sight."

He
had already done so himself. The white lines of
his own
scars were almost invisible in the shifting lights of the dance floor. Kil
sighed and followed suit. His scratches, now scabbed over, stood out blackly against
the tan skin. Dekko ordered drinks and they sat, sipping.

Before
them the crowd swirled as dancing couples went by. Kil sat stiffly, expecting
momentarily that some one of the spinning, weaving swarm before him would stop
and speak. But it was not from the dance floor before them that recognition
finally came, but from behind them. Abruptly, Kil felt a soft, warm breath on
his cheek and slim fingertips reached around his shoulder to stroke gently the
scratches.

"Oooh,"
sighed
a soft voice.
"Panther."

Kil
turned to look up into the flushed, pretty face of a dark-haired girl in a
brief green gown. Her shadowed eyes glistened with a strange excitement and the
scent of perfumed wine was on her breath. Slowly, she lifted her arm, sliding
it around his chest until he, looking down, saw the faint white scars of healed
scratches also on her skin.

"Will you be there
tonight?" she asked, softly.

Dekko
said nothing; and after a second Kil realized it was up to him to ask.

"Where?"

"The Hill—at one this
morning.
Come to the cave beyond the pool in the jungle." "The cave—"

"I'll
wait for you—at the cave—panther—" Her hand slid back and away from across
his chest. She slipped out of sight and into the crowd.

Kil,
looking over across the table at Dekko, caught the little man's smile.

"All right," Kil said, harshly.
"She said the Hill. How do we find out where that is?" "I
know," said Dekko.

Dekko
did know. A little over an hour later they caught an air-cab to the older area
of the city, up on the hillside above Duluth. The cab set them down in front of
an ancient building, sealed up and with the appearance of having been shut for
some time.

"How do we get
in?" Kil wanted to know.

Dekko
did not answer. He was prowling along the side of the building. After a
momentary hesitation, Kil followed him. The small man was testing the plastic
seals of the ground floor windows as he went—apparently without success. But as
Kil passed a window Dekko had already tested, the faintest of whispers came to
his ears.

"What
is
real?"

Kil stopped.

"Only,"
he said, the words coming to him from some dim memory,
"the
jungle
is
real." "Brother,
come
in."
"DekkoI"
called Kil, softly.

Dekko
turned and came back. The plastic seal was already swinging inward, and they
stepped through the opening into darkness.

"Arms,"
said the voice.

A single shaft of white light stabbed down
out of nowhere. There was no perceptible diffusion; merely one small area of
brilliance, and all the rest in darkness. They extended their arms into the fight
and revealed their scars. The light winked out.