Masters of Everon (19 page)

"I wouldn't be like that," said Jef. "My brother was a planetary ecologist for the E. Corps here for eight years. He liked all new worlds; and he liked Everon almost as much as Earth. I do, too."

"But you're not figuring on staying," observed Bill.

"I don't know. The Constable's hunting me..." The memory of his present situation on Everon came back on Jef all at once, quenching the glow of good feeling that had been kindled by the fullness of his stomach.

"Constable's only one man," said Bill. "Wisent ranchers and city people're only part of everyone on Everon. Don't be so sure you can't do anything you want."

The deep, musical voice of the grey-bearded man was oddly comforting. Jef found himself thinking how different Bill Eschak was from Jarji, with whom conversation was more like an armed encounter. Jef found himself wanting to talk. He had been isolated from communication with other people almost completely since his parents' death, until he found himself opening up to Martin on the spaceliner. Following that first conversation, however, Martin had seemed to lose interest; and Jarji, as noted, had been as prickly as a thornbush from the first moment of their acquaintance. Bill Eschak, here, on the other hand, was like a comfortable grandfather to talk with.

"You know," said Jef to Bill, "I've been trying to understand things here on Everon. You know on the way here, I saw a lot of elands—"

"Oops!" said Jarji; and Jef leaped hastily up from the bench he was sitting on, as Jarji's spilled cup of coffee flooded over the front of his pants.

"Here," said Bill, "I'll get something to mop it up with."

Jef glared at Jarji as Bill came back with what looked like a piece of clean, but old, shirt. Jef opened his mouth to tell her off, plainly and openly for once.

"Here, I'll take it," said Jarji briskly. She jerked her head at Jef. "Stand back out of the way, Robini. And next time don't jog my elbow."

The enormity of this ploy that put all the blame on him, took Jef's breath away. Looking about the room, he was willing to swear that everyone else there was watching him with amusement, completely taken in by what Jarji had just said. What was the use? he thought wearily. The only way to exist with her was not to exist with her—get away from her at the first opportunity and make sure to stay away.

"I think that's got it," said Jarji, handing the cloth back to Bill. "Thanks."

"How about you, Robini?" Bill said. "You got another pair of pants along, or you want to borrow a pair?"

"I've got an extra pair," growled Jef. He gave up the futile effort to wring wetness out of the cloth of his pants legs.

"Come on, then." Bill tossed the wet shirt cloth on to the table top. "I'll show you to the room we'll be putting you up in and you can change."

He led the way out of the dining-recreation room they had eaten in, and back the way they had crossed, down a different hall to a plain door that opened to a room about five meters square. It had a bunk bed, a rough wooden armchair with a colorful blanket draped over its seat and back, and a plain, small wooden table in front of it that looked as if it had recently been used as a writing desk. Beside a thick grey, unlit candle, some charcoal stick pens stood upright in a holder of willy-tree bark and there was a pad of heavy paper lying beside it. Jef's and Jarji's packs were on the bed.

"Get your pack," Bill told Jarji. "We'll be putting you up over in the regular bunkhouse."

"That suits me fine," said Jarji. "This outworlder snores—can you figure that? Step out for now, though, Eschak, we want a couple of minutes to ourselves."

Bill's eyebrows rose above the blue eyes.

"Well, now," he said. "I don't know. Beau—"

"Just latch the door on the way out," said Jarji. "This part's none of Beau's business—or yours."

Bill laughed. It was a strange, almost noiseless chuckle that did not quite fit with the man as Jef had come to think of him.

"I'll give you time to change his pants," Bill said. He went out.

Jef opened his mouth. Jarji slapped a hand quickly over his lips and held it there.

"Now, get out of those pants," she said loudly. She took her hand from his mouth, held her finger to her lips, made shooing motions toward his pack on the bed, and went to listen at the door.

Feeling awkward and embarrassed, Jef struggled out of the clingingly wet brush pants he was wearing, and got into the spare pair from his pack. He was pressing the dry belt tabs together when Jarji came back from the door.

"All right," she whispered, "there's no one listening. We can talk. But keep your voice down."

"Whisper, damn it!"

"All right," whispered Jef. "What makes you so sure no one's listening?"

"Just take my word for it. I had my ear to that door panel. If anyone can breath in that corridor and I can't hear him, then he's got lungs no bigger than a crawling mite's. Besides I can smell old Bill Eschak on a dark night five meters away."

"Smell?" he echoed.

"You can't? That's right, you're like those downcountry city people. No nose. No ears. Never mind that, though. Listen, you know why they're putting me in the bunkhouse?"

"Uh. No," said Jef.

"Because they don't trust me. With thirty-forty woodspeople around me, there's not much I can do. That means you're on your own."

"They trust me?" Jef whispered.

"Trust you? They don't trust you, they just know you can't do anything by yourself, so they don't figure to worry about you once they've got me away from you. But pay attention, now. I've done all I can for you. From here out you're on your own; and if you keep on talking about things that don't concern you, these people are going to start thinking you know a lot more than you do. So, if you haven't learned yet to keep that mouth of yours shut, you better do it now, unless you want Bill Eschak cutting your throat for you before tomorrow sunset."

"Come on, now," said Jef. "You can't tell me he's the sort of man to do anything like that!"

"Isn't he? Why d'you think he's Beau's first officer? These people here are all spring-pulls. Old Bill's had his blade into more people than there're teeth in your head. This is a bad group, Robini, and don't you ever forget that. —Now," she broke off suddenly, "you're on your own."

She turned, went swiftly to the door, and pulled it open.

"Come on in, Eschak," she said. "No need to try and sneak up. I'm ready for my own bunk, now."

"Well, that's good," said Bill, appearing in the doorway. He looked past her to Jef. "Word just came Beau'll be in real early in the morning. He'll talk to you at breakfast. Have a good sleep."

Bill stepped back from the doorway and Jarji followed him out. The door closed and Jef heard the sound of their footsteps die away.

He sat down on the bed. Perfect silence surrounded him. Jarji was one of the woods ranchers herself. She ought to know what she was talking about. On the other hand, what she had been telling him about Bill was incredible. People just didn't go around knifing each other, even on the newly settled worlds—barring an occasional psychotic or badly disturbed person. The human race was just too civilized for that, nowadays. Or was it?

He looked at the plank and log walls surrounding him, but they offered no answer. The room was dimming as the sunset died outside its one window. He looked for some way to light the candle, but could find none. Slowly, almost automatically, he got his camping light out of his pack and set it on the table by his bed. He began to undress. He was tired enough to welcome the idea of sleep, at any rate.

He took his clean pants and put them back in his pack, spreading out the coffee-soaked ones on the table to dry. Slowly he climbed in between the rough covers of the bed and put out the camping light. The various scents of the woods of the building around him filled his nostrils and some night-creature sounds filtered to his ears through the window across the room. It was all very pleasant.

Images of Jarji flitted through his mind. She was apparently able to irritate him with a word; but, illogically, at the same time, he continued privately certain that under her prickly exterior she was warm, friendly, and honestly concerned about him—perhaps more so than she wanted to show. On his part, for some time now he had deliberately been trying to avoid dwelling on the thought of her as female and attractive, ever since she had rescued him from Post Fifty. But the effort was beginning to be a little ridiculous, like pretending that the sun was not in the sky during daylit hours. In fact, his reaction to her seemed part—a strange part at that for someone as naturally solitary as himself—of the general good feelings he had been permeated with ever since he had stepped out on to the landing stairs of the spaceship. They were good feelings that affected him almost as strongly as a narcotic. Right now, in spite of Jarji's warning, he could not seem to summon up anything but a comfortable feeling of content with the universe. It was impossible to worry about Bill Eschak and these other people he had come among.

Intellectually, he gave due credit to Jarji's warning that he be on guard against Beau's people, and particularly Bill Eschak. Undoubtedly she knew what she was talking about. Undoubtedly, she was right. But, emotionally, the warning did not seem to have the power to disturb him.

It was probably these general good feelings of his that were lulling him in such a fashion. If that was so, he did not have to look far to find reasons for the way he felt. For one thing, he was healthily tired after tramping through the woods this way for several days. It was true he had been careful to exercise himself into shape before he left Earth. But the difference between practice and reality was still perceptible. He had not woken up stiff on any of these mornings, but he had slept like a log every night. His body was naturally relaxed and that was a good share of it.

In addition, he was here at last, doing what he always wanted to do, in the research with Mikey. In effect he was finally enjoying the fruits of something he had struggled and worked for, for some years. Things were going well; and a lot of the urgency had gone out of matters that otherwise might have had him wound up tight. He was remarkably unconcerned about the Constable, for example, in spite of the fact that technically he was now a fugitive from planetary justice, with the other duty bound to bring him to book. Even the matter of Will's death, and his long-held wish to locate Will's grave, had lost a great deal of their urgency. The hurt and resentment he had always felt where his dead brother had been concerned, had largely faded. He could no longer manage to work himself up over it. Which was strange... in fact, everything was a little strange. Give due credit to exercise and success, and there was still a large part of his present contentment unexplained.

It had to be Everon itself, that was the cause. It was a world that seemed as if it had been waiting here for him to fall in love with, all the years of its existence. He wondered sleepily if the colonists felt, or had ever felt, the way he now did about this planet. There was no way to tell. Maybe only some of them felt it. Jarji, perhaps? He should ask her—sometime when she herself was not busy lecturing him or spilling cups of coffee on him.

His thoughts drifted away, back to the pair of pants he had spread out on the table. Half-asleep, he found himself thinking that they should be dry enough to wear by morning. It had hardly been worthwhile, after all, putting the spare pair on.

Jef came suddenly and completely awake. He lay tense, not knowing what had wakened him, staring into the gloom about him. High in the room, a little distance from the bed, he thought he could see something glowing faintly, the way the eyes of certain Earth animals shine with reflected light in the dark. He blinked, but the illusion persisted, although whatever might be there was so faint that he could not be sure he was actually seeing it. For a second he wondered if he was not merely having some very vivid dream, rather than being awake.

There was only one way to find out. He reached out with one hand to the corner of the table, found his camping lamp, and switched it on.

The room sprang into existence around him in the sudden illumination from the little nuclear-fueled lamp—standing at the foot of his bed was Mikey.

"Mikey!" Jef said. "Where have you been?"

He was out of bed in an instant. At his present size Mikey loomed enormous in the small room, his head upright on his powerful neck so that his eyes would have been at the point where Jef had imagined he had seen something glowing. But it could not have been Mikey's eyes he had thought he was seeing, for these were still, as always, tightly closed.

"How did you get in here?" asked Jef, running his hands over the massive shoulders.

For once Mikey made no move to lower his head and butt his forehead against Jef in the usual fashion. Instead he stood for a second, then turned about to the door, lifted one paw, and with a surprising articulation of two of the pads of his enormous toes, seized and opened the door latch. He pushed the door open a crack and stood, turning back his head over his shoulder to Jef in invitation.

"Where do you want to go, Mikey?" said Jef, perplexed, but remembering to keep his voice down. "Wait—I can't go anywhere until I get some boots and clothes on."

He turned and started to dress. Mikey let go of the latch and put his forepaw back on the floor; the maolot stood waiting patiently while Jef dressed.

"All right," said Jef at last, clipping the camping lamp to his belt. The pants that had been coffee-soaked were not completely dry yet, but their dampness was not enough to worry about. He walked toward the door himself. "Let's go."

Mikey pushed open the door and went into the corridor. Jef followed. There was no one to be seen in the corridors and rooms they passed. Mikey led Jef to the door by which Jef had entered the building, and they went out into the night. Outside it was dark in spite of the fact that there was a moon in the sky. Clearly, the night was almost over. Mikey, however, moved as surely as if it was broad daylight and he had eyes to see with. Whatever sense it was that allowed him to get around on his native world, it was serving him as well now in the outside dark as it had inside the building a few minutes earlier.