Masters of Everon (18 page)

But as they went on, the calls became more frequent even if they sounded no closer than the one that had touched off the warning from Jef to the maolot. Mikey became more restive with each one. At length he was breaking away from Jef's side to run several steps in the direction from which a call had come; and he did this even when Jef spoke sharply and caught hold of him to try—futilely—to hold him back. The unconscious ease with which he broke loose from Jef's grip sent a small shiver down between Jef's shoulder blades. Even back on Earth before they had come to Everon Mikey had been unusually powerful for his size. But here and now that he was almost full-grown, his strength had become awesome. Worried, Jef spoke sharply to him. Mikey apologized each time he returned to Jef's side, butting his head against Jef's shoulder and almost knocking Jef off his feet, but there was now something absent-minded and almost cursory about this familiar gesture—as if the maolot's mind was elsewhere.

"I tell you," said Jarji at last to Jef, "leave him alone. He's got his own reasons for what he's doing. Not that you could stop him from doing it, in any case."

"I don't like it," Jef said. "How far are we from leCourboisier's now?"

"Minutes, I'd say," said Jarji. "Never been in this area, myself, but I've heard about it. If Beau's where I think he is, we might as likely—"

She was interrupted by the deep-throated call of a mature maolot—this time close at hand. She and Jef stopped instinctively and the crossbow came up in her hands, as the spring-pull whirred and the weapon cocked itself. But Mikey broke loose from Jef's grip and went loping off in the direction from which the call had come. This time he vanished among the willy-trees and did not return.

"Mikey!"
shouted Jef. "Mikey, get back here!"

He swung about and started to run after the maolot. He had not taken three steps, however, before a small and determined anchor attached itself to his left arm, almost pulling him off balance.

"Give up, you knothead!" snapped Jarji. "Do you think you can catch him on foot? He's half a kilometer gone by now—oh, you will, will you?"

Jef felt himself tripped suddenly and went down on his face. He rolled over on his back and looked up to see Jarji standing at his feet, glaring at him.

"You better act sensible if you get up," she said, "or I'll put you down again in a way'll give you time to cool off before you get up a second time. Didn't you hear me? I said he's gone. Your maolot's gone. I don't know why, any more than you do. But I know you're not getting him back until he wants to come back. Now, can you understand that?"

Jef hooked the toe of one boot behind her left ankle, placed the sole of the other boot against the front of her same lower leg, and flipped her over on her back. He was on his own feet looking down at her by the time she had scrambled into crouching position.

"Yes," he said, and she stopped. "I can understand it. And no, I don't want to fight you, mentally or physically. Maybe you can take me, with no trouble. But there's a few things I know to do, and a few things I can do right, and if you push me to it, I'll do them. But there's no sense I can see in the two of us chewing each other up, so why don't we both just not push?"

She was looking at him rather strangely. He stayed alert, unable to tell whether she was about to launch herself at him, or not. However, she got to her feet, picked up her crossbow, and turned away in the direction they had been traveling. He watched her go for a moment and then stretched his legs to join her. When he caught up with her, she had the same abstracted look on her face he had seen there earlier.

They walked on in silence for another ten minutes, and suddenly the forest opened out before them. They looked slightly downhill into a miniature cliff of bare rocks rising above the tree-height of the vegetation at its far end. Beyond and above the rocks, there was nothing to be seen but the blue of the high afternoon sky and a few torn streamers of cirrus clouds.

Below the rocks, in the clearing on either side of the stream, were four log buildings, each one roughly the size of the trading post Jef had seen. There were no figures moving around between the buildings; but Jarji, without stopping, made straight for them. Jef went along. All the buildings, he saw, had the shake-shingled roofs of the main building at Post Fifty, sharply peaked to shed snow. But here, much more so than at Post Fifty, it was possible for Jef to imagine, in spite of the signs of summer all about him, how, seven months from now these uplands would be under two to three meters of snow and ice; and that the eland would be yarded up in forest clearings, the wisent out on the plains huddled on the northwestern slopes of slight rises in the ground where the wind would have scoured the snow cover from the frozen moss-grass they needed to survive.

He and Jarji were close to the buildings now, and had still to see any signs of inhabitants. But when they were less than ten meters from the nearest door of the long building, it swung open and a tall man came down the five steps of the stair that connected it with the ground.

"Just hold it there," he said, "and we'll find out who you are before you go any farther."

His voice was a soft, but deep, bass; with a strange resonance like a woodwind, as if his chest had a much greater cavity than an ordinary man's. As a voice, it was pleasant rather than intimidating, but his words were backed up by the weapon in his fist. It was no crossbow, but a laser handgun; not a handgun of the military weight and complexity possessed by the gun Jef had seen in Armage's possession, but still something that could cut a human body in half in one second.

"Lift your hands, if you will," he said. "And I'll check you out."

Jef raised his hands; and out of the corner of his eyes saw Jarji doing likewise. The man with the handweapon came toward them.

McDermott had been clean-shaven; but this individual wore a full, grey-white beard. He was a tall whiplash of a man, narrow-waisted and broad-shouldered with slimness that seemed far too young for his beard; and he moved like a man half his apparent age.

He came first to Jef, and ran his free hand lightly over Jef's sides and hips. Then he opened Jef's pack and felt around inside it.

"Clean," he said. "But then I thought you'd be." Unexpectedly, he winked at Jef. Then he moved on to Jarji.

Jef turned to see him holding Jarji's crossbow and searching her—but taking more time and good deal more care. He stepped back at last, holding a smaller version of his own laser.

"Cute," he said, hefting it. "Where'd you get it, Hillegas?"

"You think you're the only one knows how to bribe those city apes?" she retorted.

The bearded man nodded, sticking Jarji's laser into his belt.

"I'm Bill Eschak," he said, stepping back and holstering his own handgun. He looked at Jef. "You'll be Jef Aram Robini?"

"Yes, sir," said Jef. "My brother was William Robini. I understand Beau leCourboisier was once a friend of his."

"Don't 'sir' me. I'm no downcountry type," answered Bill. He turned to Jarji. "Which Hillegas are you?"

"Jarji," said Jarji.

"Ah. Number six," he nodded. "Saw you in your cradle, once."

"Is Mr. leCourboisier inside?" Jef asked.

"Beau's away, right now." The soft, humming bass voice of Bill Eschak seemed to linger in Jef's ears. "But we've been expecting you. I'll put you up in the main cabin quarters; and Beau'll talk to the both of you as soon as he comes back, tomorrow."

He turned and led the way back up the steps toward the door from which he had emerged.

"This way," he said.

They followed him up the steps and through the door into a long corridor not unlike the one down which the factor at Post Fifty had led Jef and Mikey to the room in which he had locked them up. The main difference was that this building did not smell—or at least, it did not smell unpleasantly. In this corridor the odor was one of pine wood, leather, and fresh, not stale, cooking scents.

The corridor ended at a larger door; and this let them through into what seemed a wide living room, with a number of wooden chairs and settees, their leather-corded seats covered with cushions made of heavy cloth of various colors.

"Bedrooms through there," said Bill, waving at one of the other doors set around the walls of the room. "Bathroom the same way. We've got power and plumbing here. But you'll find doors that are locked. Just let them be. Until Beau comes home, we've kind of got to keep you boxed in this part of the place. —You hungry? We'll be having dinner in half an hour."

"Good," said Jef automatically. Freeze-dried camping foods were all right; but a steady diet of them for several days was quite enough for a while.

"Come along, then," said Bill.

He led them across the room and through a further door. They crossed another room walled with racks for book spools, like a library, and went out yet one more door into a hall that led them to the largest room they had yet seen, which turned out to be a sort of combination mess hall and recreation room.

The place was indeed not small. Something like fifteen or twenty men and half a dozen women were scattered around it, evidently waiting for dinner, most of them holding clay mugs holding some foamy brown drink that Jef took to be some sort of fermented beverage. The dining-room area at one end consisted of two long tables made of planks set up on trestles with benches pulled up to them. One table was set for a meal, but no food was to be seen. The other was bare, and perhaps a third of the men in the room were seated at the bare table, playing cards or chess.

Bill Eschak took Jef and Jarji around the room, introducing them; but the names came so fast that when the process was over, Jef could not remember more than two or three of those he had met. But by this time food was being brought in to the table set for eating. Bill steered Jef to a seat across from him near the table's far end.

"Steak, eggs and fried potatoes," Bill said. "How does that sound to you?"

"Fine," said Jef. His mouth watered. He took his seat at the table and after a while a man in a white apron came in with already loaded plates, which were passed down the table. Jef accepted the one that came to him and dug into it.

He had not thought it was possible to be so hungry. But, a few moments after he had wolfed down part of the steak, the eggs, and even some of the fried potatoes, he began to slow down. At the same time he became conscious of the men and women nearby him at the table, watching him. Even Jarji had her gaze on him.

"Something wrong, Jef?" asked the deep voice of Bill, across the table. Looking toward the other man, Jef thought he saw a particular intensity in the pale blue eyes above the beard.

"Wrong?" Jef echoed.

Of course there was something wrong. The steak was steak, all right—but it was undoubtedly variform eland steak; and eland, at that, which had fed all its life on Everon greenery. The eggs may have or may not have been chicken eggs—but if from chickens, these birds also were variforms and had been feeding on Everon produce. Even the potatoes were variform and paid a tribute to having been grown in Everon soil.

Everything, in short, tasted subtly wrong to someone with taste buds trained on Earth. No, thought Jef grimly, that wasn't the way to think about it. These things did not taste wrong, they tasted
different.
At the Constable's—as on the spaceship—the food had not. Clearly, therefore, when the Constable had kept Martin and himself overnight at his home outside Spaceport City, what they and the dinner guests had been fed then must have been from special Earth supplies, brought in by spaceship—no doubt at outrageous prices. The freeze-dried foods he had carried in his pack, of course, were also of Earth origin; since he had imported them himself as part of his passage expense, not knowing if anything like that would be available on Everon.

To sum it all up—what was happening was that for the first time he was encountering the way Everon foods tasted, and the difference of their tastes from those of Earth was more of a shock than he would have imagined. It did not help that there were no good words to express that difference—the best he could do was that it was as if everything he ate tasted strangely woody and a little bitter.

Unconsciously, as he paused to figure this out, Jef had stopped eating altogether. Now, however, something else struck him. The food still tasted strange to him, but now that he had stopped putting it in his mouth he realized he was still hungry; and not just politely hungry—he could have eaten a horse. In fact, he told himself, he could have eaten an Everon horse if there was such a beast.

He laughed and dug into his plate again. The eyes of the others continued to watch him; but since he continued to shovel in the food, they seemed to accept the fact that this was no act. Gradually, they withdrew their attention from him. Jef continued to eat heartily; and a curious result began to make itself noticed. Either the taste of the Everon food was becoming less noticeable, or he was getting used to it.

"I think I'd like some more," Jef told Bill, when his plate was empty.

"I'll get it for you," said Bill.

He took Jef's plate and rose from the table. When he came back with it refilled, a few moments later, the others who had been eating were already finishing up and leaving; and by the time Jef had cleaned his plate for a second time and—with genuine regret by this time—turned down some sort of fruit pie, the table was empty except for Bill, Jarji and himself.

"That was the first time you'd eaten Everon stuff?" Bill asked.

Jef nodded.

"I saw everyone was thinking I wouldn't eat it," he said. "Why all the interest in my finding the taste different?"

"Well," Bill said, "you've got to remember this is our food and we work hard for it. The eland, the eggs and the potatoes don't just appear out of nowhere, and jump on to the plate ready-cooked. When somebody from off-planet turns his nose up at our food, the way lots of them do, it's sort of like he was turning his nose up at us. You ought to see sometime what some people say or do, first time they bite into something that's been homegrown here."