Masters of Everon (14 page)

But it wasn't. Jef went over to the single window of the room. The window itself was large enough for him, and even for Mikey, to crawl through; and it was no more than a meter and a half from the floor. But a heavy wire mesh had been fastened over it beyond the window pane. With some trouble he finally managed to open the window latch in the right edge of the window's frame; and open the window by swinging it inward upon its hinges on the left side of the frame. But when he took hold of the wire mesh and shook it, he only bruised his fingers. The wire was as thick as fence wire and could not have been more immovable if it had been anchored in concrete rather than wood.

"All right, Mikey. It's all right, I tell you." Jef turned from the window and went back to soothing the worried maolot. "We'll just wait. They can't keep us here forever."

But, as the day wore on and the shadows of the variform oak branches and leaves above the window lengthened on the small patch of bare ground and moss-grass visible outside, Jef began to lose his confidence about someone eventually coming to let them out. Doty would only need to leave them here without food or water until they died—simply forget about them until it was all over; and who would bother to check up on them? The Constable down in Spaceport City would simply assume that Jef had gone off someplace with Beau leCourboisier. Eventually, of course, the Research Service back on Earth would get worried having no word from him, and send an inquiry to Everon. But by that time, he and Mikey could be buried someplace in the woods and their graves hidden beyond discovery under a new growth of ground vine or moss-grass...

Jef reined in his thoughts with a jerk. Mikey was obviously sensing his present dark mood and getting more and more upset. Besides, the mental picture he was painting was too far-fetched to be true. If the wild-ranchers wanted to get rid of him and Mikey for some reason, it would have been a lot simpler to shoot them with a crossbow such as Jarji had been carrying and then bury them somewhere in the forest, than to go to all this trouble of locking them up and waiting for them to die from lack of water and food.

It was unreasonable to think of any possibility but that somebody would be along eventually to open the door of their prison; and when that door was opened—Jef told himself grimly—he and Mikey would have something to say about things before whoever opened it managed to lock them in again.

They settled down to waiting. Jef investigated the pile of rags in the corner, but they were so dirty that he decided against having anything to do with them. He and Mikey made themselves comfortable on the floor against the wall holding the open window, through which a faint breeze drifted, now and then, to cut the thick atmosphere inside.

Happily, he still had his pack and the rations in it. He shared some food and water with Mikey, although he was wary of using more than a little of the water. There was no telling how long they might have to live off what was in the pack—

A distant whirring sound brought him out of his thoughts with a jerk. The sound grew rapidly louder. He got to his feet and stepped to the open window.

The sound was the sound of a ducted-fan aircraft—the same sort of aircraft that the Constable had told him was forbidden by law from flying this far from Spaceport City. He craned his neck, peering up through the window; but could not see the craft. Then, suddenly, it dropped into view, coming down vertically on to the moss-grass between the building he was in and the next one to it. For a second Jef thought it had landed; but then it lifted again, lightly, and drifted through the air to his right until it was out of sight from his window.

Jef heard the fans of the craft shut down. In the new silence the late afternoon outside went back to its normal noises, the chiming of the distant clock-birds and other creature cries starting up again from the surrounding forest.

Jef himself went back to waiting. Time went past. The afternoon had already begun to fade into twilight outside his window, leaving the unlighted room deep in shadow, when he once more heard the sounds of footsteps in the corridor outside.

Jef got to his feet. The door opened, and Avery Armage walked into the room.

"Constable!" said Jef, moving forward, "you don't know how glad I am—"

"Stay right where you are!" Armage said.

Jef stopped, and Mikey with him. He stared at the laser handgun the Constable held pointed at Mikey.

"That's better," said Armage, closing the door behind him. "You think a lot of that maolot. Just remember, if you start anything I'll shoot him; and probably I'll shoot you, too. Understand?"

Jef opened his mouth, then closed it again. He nodded. He could feel his mind racing.

"Good," said the Constable. "Now, I'm putting this laser back in its holster. Don't fool yourself I can't get it out in plenty of time, before you or your animal can reach me."

Slowly, watching Jef closely all the while, he lowered the weapon and slid it into the holster at his belt. Then he took his hand from it, but he left unbuttoned and open the weather flap that normally snapped down over the butt of it.

"All right, tell me," said the Constable. "Who sent you here? What are you doing on Everon?"

He loomed over Jef like a mountain. There was nothing now in his face of humor, or of the effort to be pleasant that he had shown down at Spaceport City. Jef struggled to control his galloping thoughts and keep his voice calm.

"You saw my papers," he said.

"I saw them," answered the Constable. "I also saw the forged papers your friend had. We've got all the evidence we need to take care of him; and we'll have the man himself in a day or two. So you might as well tell the truth and make it easier on yourself—it's the last chance you'll get."

Jef was still trying to straighten his thoughts. The final words of the Constable sent them spinning again.

"My friend?" he echoed. "What do you mean forged papers? Who's got forged papers?"

"Curragh. Don't play games."

"I'm not playing any games," said Jef. "I just don't know anything about any of this."

The Constable merely stood, staring down at him, the thick lower lip in the big man's face slightly outthrust.

"You're telling me the man you call Curragh
isn't
a Planetary Inspector after all?" Jef asked.

"You know that!" said the Constable. "Anyway, it's not Curragh we're concerned with now, it's his friend. You."

"His friend?" Jef stared at him. "Me? But I only talked to him for a minute or so, just before the spaceship landed."

"And you're just now getting around to telling me so." The Constable's irony was as heavy-handed as the man himself.

"I didn't get much of a chance to tell you anything," Jef retorted. "You'll remember I was stuck in a room in your house with Mikey; and the only times I talked to you were when you looked at my papers, then for a few moments later on when your vet tried to inject Mikey, and on the next day when you put us on the aircraft to start us on our way up here. Come to think of it, how about that law of yours, that you said wouldn't let any aircraft be flown this far away from Spaceport City? You flew up here just now, didn't you?"

"Police and necessary craft are permitted, of course." Armage stared down at him. "Stay with the subject. We know you're Curragh's partner, just as we know he's no John Smith. Now we want the truth about you."

"You've got the truth about me!" Jef stared. "Anyway, what makes you so sure he's a fake? You can't have had time to check his papers with E. Corps on Earth in two days."

"It won't take us long. We're checking with Earth now. We found his real papers hidden in his luggage. In two weeks we'll know all about him. Just as we'll know about you."

"But my papers are legitimate!" exploded Jef—and then had to break off to calm Mikey, who suddenly pushed past Jef and began droning a warning in the direction of the Constable.

"That's right," said the Constable. He had put his hand back on the butt of the laser at his belt, although he had not drawn the weapon again. "If you want the maolot alive, keep him quiet. Quiet and calm."

"I tell you," said Jef, forcing his voice back to a normal level as he straightened up from Mikey to face the Constable once more, "I'm who my papers say I am. Check with the Research Service on Earth, and see!"

"Don't worry, they'll be checked," said the Constable. "But there's no hurry about it. We're spending the funds to send for an emergency check on Curragh; but we can afford to take our time with you. Meanwhile, I'm starting to run out of patience. If you want to save your own neck, stop playing around and tell me the truth. What are you doing on Everon?"

"I keep telling you. I'm here to do what my papers said, study Mikey in the context of his native environment."

The Constable did not say anything more for a moment. He merely stood staring down at Jef.

"You come here," the big man said at last, "with a man who tries to pass himself off as one of the top E. Corps Inspectors. You say you're looking for information about the death, eight years ago, of your brother—who just happens to have had his last contact with Beau leCourboisier. We know Beau leCourboisier. These woods up here are full of hardheads and outlaws; and he's the worst of the lot. Finally, I turn you loose to walk through a couple of areas belonging to wild-ranchers who ordinarily don't let a clock-bird cross their territory without finding out what it's up to; and you stroll through with no trouble at all—"

"You deliberately sent me into those woods, knowing the eland ranchers might shoot me?" Jef demanded.

"They're not quite that trigger-happy. But I thought I might learn something about you—and I did." The Constable stared at him for a second. "Nothing happened but a radio call from that young Hillegas to the wild-ranchers farther up, saying to let you pass."

He watched Jef for a minute.

"You're too damn cool about all this," he said, "not to know what I'm talking about."

"Cool?" The sad bitterness in Jef had swelled in him until he almost felt it would choke him; but the years of training kept his voice level whether he wanted it that way or not. "I don't know what you think you're trying to do. But my papers are legal. I'm legal; and it's up to you to prove differently if you believe so. What does Curragh say? Does he claim I'm some friend of his?"

"We'll ask him that—just as soon as we lay hands on him. He disappeared the moment you took off, just before I was going to ask him about the papers we'd found with his real name. But we'll catch him. Everon's not that big. And meanwhile—we've got you, and you'll tell us what we want to know."

Something snapped in Jef. His voice stayed level and his face calm; but interiorly he crossed some sort of dividing line.

"I've told you everything there is to tell," he said. "You've got no reason, no right, to question me or hold me. Whether Curragh's a John Smith or not, at the spaceport he reminded you of one thing you might think about now—supraplanetary law. If I'm not out of here in two minutes, you're going to have to answer the charges I'll bring against you in the interplanetary courts!"

"Oh?" said the Constable. He stared at Jef strangely for a moment before going on slowly.

"You push me to it, and I'll find a way to learn what you're holding back—trust me if I don't."

He stepped back suddenly toward the door, the handgun level.

"Maybe," he said, and the note was still in his voice, "you'd better sleep on that thought. By tomorrow morning perhaps you'll have come to your senses—and that'd save us both trouble all around."

He reached behind him without turning and touched the door, which swung open. He backed into the corridor.

"Sleep on it," he said. "Or don't sleep—whichever you want. But you better be ready to answer questions with the right answers by morning."

The door closed with a crash.

Jef was left standing, Mikey pressed against him. But the worried noises had died in Mikey's throat—and suddenly Jef recognized that in spite of the threat in Armage's last words, he was feeling decidedly more solid and in command of the situation than he had before the Constable had walked through the door. Why? Certainly he had not backed down before Armage's questions; but he was still a prisoner in this small room of the trading post, with the top representative of local planetary law apparently convinced that he was illegal in some sense or another. Why should he feel as if he had won any sort of victory...

Abruptly, Mikey stopped making his throat noises and jerked about to stare blindly toward the window. Jef turned to look, himself.

Against the now darkening sky in the upper part of the window, a dark round shape, as of a head, obscured part of the band of twinkling stars visible there; and the voice of Jarji Hillegas came softly but clearly through the wire mesh that was all that barred the open window from the evening air.

"I knew you were bound to get yourself in trouble," it said, "the moment I first got a look at you. It's a good thing for you I followed up to see for myself."

Jef stared.

"Stand back from the window, now," Jarji's voice ordered. "Stand well out of line with it and me."

A thin finger of shadow came up beside the round shadow of Jarji's head. There was a little wink of light and one of the loops of wire in the lower right corner of the mesh covering the window glowed suddenly white-hot and disappeared in a tiny spurt of red sparks. The loop of wire just above it abruptly glowed with white heat in its turn—

"Wait," said Jef. "What're you doing?"

For a long moment from the first sound of Jarji's voice at the window, he had stood dumb, too jarred by unexpected happenings to react with hope or any other feeling at the appearance of the game-rancher. Then the burning through of the wire mesh had jolted him back to feeling and thinking again.

"Doing?" Jarji said. "I'm cutting this screen from your window. What did you figure I was doing?"

"I shouldn't escape," said Jef. "I'm under arrest... I think."

The words came from him unplanned, as if another person within him had uttered them. From beyond the night-dark square of window there was a long second of silence, and then something very like a snort.