Masters of Everon (15 page)

"Well, pardon me!" said Jarji. "Pardon me all to hell. I'll just wander on back down to my woods and hope you'll find it in your heart to forgive me for nearly getting you into trouble with the downcountry law."

"He's the Planetary Constable—the local police authority," said Jef.

"Sure, he is," said Jarji. "Well, as I say, so long—" Her voice began to move off.

"Wait—" called Jef in a throat-tearing whisper, crowding up against the window. "Wait! I mean, come back. You're right. I do want to get Mikey and myself out of here, law or no law."

There was no response from outside.

"Come back!" cried Jef in a desperately throttled shout.

"All right, all right, keep your mouth shut for a moment!" said Jarji's voice, directly under the window. "Stand back."

Jef stood back. Strands of wire glowed and sparked.

"Now push," said Jarji. "Look out, it's hot."

Jef took off his jacket, wrapped it around his fists and pushed with it on the mesh. The mesh gave and there was a soft thump outside.

"Now, climb through," said Jarji. "I am," said Jef.

He struggled gingerly through the window, only scratching himself a little. A second later he stood panting on the ground outside.

"Mikey—" he began, turning to the window. But Mikey was already sailing through the window without touching anything, in a beautifully calculated leap.

"Let's go," said Jarji. "Stay right with me, now."

She led off through the darkness. There was no moon presently overhead, but in this latitude of Everon, a cluster of close, bright stars clumped thickly in the western center of the sky gave Jef just enough light to follow her. They passed the lumpy black shape of the ducted-fan aircraft and Jef reached out to touch her on the shoulder.

"Why don't we take that?" he whispered.

"Because they'd find it a half a day after we left it and know that wherever we'd left it was only a half a day's walk from where they could find us," Jarji whispered back. "On foot we'll face them with the distance of a full night's traveling in any direction to wonder about."

They went on, and the deeper darkness of the forest closed about them. But it was not as bad as Jef had expected. His eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom—all the more readily in that he had been locked in an ill-lighted room for several hours previously. Shortly, however, the light about them began to increase.

"Moonrise," said Jarji. Now that they were clear of the post, she spoke aloud in a normal voice. "I suppose you didn't think we even had a moon."

"Of course I know you've got a moon," said Jef. "I read—"

"Actually, we've got two. Two natural satellites, only you can't see the little one in this latitude, except in the summer. You can't even see the bigger one, the one that just rose, until about midnight. The trees hide it unless it's right overhead."

"It's nice to have light," said Jef peaceably.

In fact, it was. As the illumination strengthened about them from the invisible moon, the forest floor brightened until, in contrast to the darkness earlier, it seemed brighter than Jef could remember seeing a night scene under a full moon back on Earth. It was almost as strongly illuminated, Jef thought, as it might be on a heavily overcast day. —Come to think of it, he could not remember ever seeing clouds in the Everon sky, except for the hailstorm. He checked himself on that thought, suddenly remembering he had only been down on the surface of this world for a little over four days. It felt as if he had been here for weeks.

The night air seemed to be intoxicating Mikey—it could hardly be the moonlight, since the young maolot's eyes were, as always, firmly closed. But Mikey was once more running ahead of Jef, as he had been on the hike to Post Fifty. Now he was making little dashes and darts of twenty or thirty meters off into the woods as they moved along the route on which Jarji was leading them. Which reminded Jef...

"Where are we going?" he asked the girl.

"As close as possible to where Beau leCourboisier used to have his game ranch," Jarji answered. "Somebody's going to meet you there."

"Somebody is? How do you know?"

"You," said Jarji, "are something to tell the clock-birds about. You really are. How'd you manage to live this long back on Earth?"

"What'd I do?" said Jef, bewildered. "I just asked—"

"Don't," said Jarji. "Don't ask?"

"That's right."

Jef slowly exhaled. His temper might be deeply buried, but this pocket-sized game rancher seemed to have a knack for excavating very nearly deep enough to unearth it. Not that he was feeling his usual sad bitterness. It was simply that he was... almost irritated.

"As a matter of fact," said Jarji, "word got passed. That's all you have to know. I heard it and thought I'd tell you. That's all."

"Well, I appreciate it of course," said Jef. "In fact thank you for all you've done for me—including getting Mikey and me out of that room we were locked in. But you mean you're going to take me to wherever this person is who's going to meet me? I don't understand. There's no reason for you to put yourself out for me like that."

"Here on Everon, we call it neighborliness," said Jarji.

"Nobody else I've met seems to be all that neighborly," Jef told her. "The Constable. The officer at Post Fifty—"

Jarji snorted. There was no doubt about it being a snort this time.

"Save your breath," she said. "We've got a ways to go."

That more or less ended conversation for the next few hours.

They tramped on in silence. Jef found his thoughts working their way back to his recent confrontation with Armage. He had not had the opportunity to ponder about it until now, but on this silent night walk, he at last had time to consider why he had wound up that meeting with a definite feeling of having come out of it better than the Constable, in spite of Armage appearing to have all of the advantage.

Why? Jef's own solitary nature and way of life had made him an expert at replaying conversations in his head. If he had been asked, point-blank, what Armage's first words were on entering the room, he would have been as much at a loss as anyone might to suddenly summon them up. But if, as he was doing now, he cast his mind back to the time when he had been in the room and recalled how Armage had entered it, then the whole incident unrolled once more in his mind like a memory tape with built-in sounds and scents.

He ran back over this particular personal memory now, trying to put his finger on the moment at which he had ceased to feel helpless before Armage and had begun to feel he was in control of the situation. But it was not until the conversation was almost over that he located the point at which his change in feelings had taken place—it was the point at which Armage had promised that Jef would tell him what he wanted to know, and Jef had retorted that the Constable had no right to do what he was doing. Remembering that instant, now, Jef recalled threatening the Constable with legal reprisals for his actions and those of the Post Officer. Armage had replied with a threat that he could find a way to make Jef talk, and suggested that Jef sleep on that prospect.

A written transcript might have shown Armage as having come off sounding dangerous enough; but Jef, remembering, was once more left with the firm impression that the Constable's promise had a hollow ring to it; and that, on the other hand, his own threat had struck home in some area where Armage felt vulnerable. There was nothing physical, no definite item of evidence to back this up. It was only a feeling—but it was a very certain feeling.

Armage had bluffed; and he, Jef, had called that bluff.

If Armage had been bluffing, if he was not as in control of the situation as he had tried to seem, then his reason for coming to the room had been only to try to scare information out of Jef. Consider, Jef told himself now, if he had told the Constable whatever it was Armage needed to know, the Constable could have gone out, left the door unlocked, and Jef would have been at liberty to set himself free. Afterwards, Jef could have claimed he had been held prisoner and questioned; but if the Constable and everyone else at Post Fifty denied this, who would listen—particularly when Jef had no proof and obviously there had been no harm done to him?

But if Armage indeed had not been that much in command of the situation, then there must be something he was concerned about—something even, perhaps, of which he was afraid. Martin Curragh?

And if it was Martin, why was it Martin?

Up until that point Jef's mind had seemed to be making great progress. But facing the mystery of what the Constable might fear, it bogged down completely. Any one of numberless possibilities could be the answer. And there was no way of choosing the most likely. As he, Jarji, and Mikey proceeded through the dim woods, Jef struggled with the problem but got nowhere. After a while the light brightened, as the single moon in the local sky became visible overhead. It made the Everon night about them twice as bright as a full moon would have done back on Earth. Jarji called a halt at last beside a small creek they had been about to wade.

"We're far enough away from the post, now," she said. "It ought to be safe enough to stop for a bit of food. With this much natural light, we can risk a small campfire even if they've got aircraft already in the skies looking for sign of us—which I don't think they have."

They unslung their packs and Jarji started a small fire under a collapsible pot filled with clear creek water set on the flames to heat. Both Jef and she dug freeze-dried stew portions from their packs and dropped the cork-light chunks into the water to absorb the liquid and the heat together.

"We'll need some more water," said Jarji, gazing into the pot. "Didn't guess you'd be so hungry."

"I put in a double portion—half of it's for Mikey," said Jef. "It's nowhere near as much as he ought to have. He's been eating everything I could give him; and he ran me out. I'd thought I'd restock with food for both of us at Post Fifty, but of course... I'll get some more water."

He poured from his canteen into the pot and then went down to the flowing stream to refill the canteen. When he came back, Jarji was sitting on her heels, stirring the food that was cooking. Her back was to him and her crossbow was laid aside on the grass. Apart from that heavy weapon, Jef thought, she looked like someone out on a picnic. Her appearance and her attitudes were, it seemed, worlds apart. Jef was tempted to ask her about them, so that he could try to make some sense out of her answers. But then, every time he had started out asking her questions so far, they had ended up in something very like an argument.

He decided to say nothing. They ate, put out the fire, packed up and hiked on. It was some hours later and the light of the moon had perceptibly lessened, when the trees thinned abruptly before them and they came to the edge of open country filled with the tall version of the moss-grass standing like a near-two-meter-thick carpet over the treeless earth. They stopped, gazing out at it.

"Look
at that—" Jef was beginning; for the sea of grasslike stems stretched as far as the eye could see in the light of the low moon and the night breeze wandering over the surface of the sea made it seem to undulate like an actual ocean. But before he could finish, he was interrupted.

Off to their left there was the sound of a thumping and rustling amongst the tall moss-grass at the very edge of the trees. Jef and Jarji turned sharply to face in that direction, Jarji's right hand snapping the crossbow up into aimed position. The spring-pull whirred as the wire string of the weapon drew back. Without warning Mikey suddenly dashed blindly away from Jef in the direction of the noise, making a variety of sounds of his own.

Without thinking, Jef ran after him.

"Wait—" he heard Jarji call behind him; but Mikey was plainly not going to wait, and Jef could not. He ran on.

Jef caught up with the maolot almost immediately. Mikey had a large shape pinned to the earth, his wide muzzle on its throat; and as Jef came up, the shape gave one last thrashing convulsion and lay still.

"Mikey!" snapped Jef, hauling the maolot back by the fur of his neck. Jef stopped in front of Mikey and bent over the shape.

It was a young eland doe, dead, its head twisted back from its body where Mikey's powerful jaws had plainly broken its neck.

"Mikey—" began Jef and broke off. He had been hoping that a hunting instinct would reawaken in Mikey, not only because the maolot would need it eventually as he returned to his normal life in his normal environment, but because Mikey had now developed food demands that were impossible to meet out of the freeze-dried foods Jef had been packing. At the same time, however, the slender, dead body of the doe was an uncomfortable sight to see. Dropping the carcass, Mikey turned and began butting his head proudly into Jef's chest and shoulder, making the sounds that asked for praise and approval. Illogically—in view of his emotional reaction to the sight of the killed eland—Jef found himself petting the maolot at the same time as he felt the instinct to withdraw from Mikey's bloody jaws.

"All right, Mikey," he found himself saying, "—all right."

"Looks like that eland was already mostly gone when your beast got to her," Jarji commented dryly at Jef's shoulder. "Look at her belly and mouth. She's been poisoned."

Jef took another look. Jarji was quite right. There was a yellowish foam around the muzzle of the eland, and her stomach was swollen drum-tight. Jef stared at it and pulled Mikey back once more from the carcass.

"No, Mikey!" he said sharply, adding to Jarji, "Was this what you meant when you said something about the wisent ranchers poisoning the elands on Beau leCourboisier's game ranch, because they wanted to clear it for their own herds?"

"That's right," said Jarji. "Well, let's find a place to camp. We're here."

"Here?" echoed Jef. For a second, with his mind on the doe and Mikey, he had forgotten where they were headed.

"At the edge of where Beau leCourboisier used to run his elands." Jarji waved out over the wind-rippled sea of moss-grass. "That was his forest land out there."