“Where is the other?” he thought, trying to get into that demand a little of the force Zul had used in his questioning of the kinkajou.
The waking fox yawned, then brought its jaws together with a snap, its eyes still bemused—with no outward interest in Troy at all. The man tried again, throttling down his impatience, using the same gentle approach he had brought to the soothing of the fussel—with no result. If there was any contact between the foxes and the fugitive, they would not employ it for Troy. He would have to hunt on his own.
He was on his way back to the courtyard when the corn shrilled, drawing him to the nearest viewplate. The clouded image there settled into a rather fuzzy focus of Kyger’s features.
“Horan?”
Troy thumbed the answer lever. “Here, Merchant.”
“You will turn guard duty over to Jingu and deliver the fussel to the Hunter Headquarters in the Torrent District. Understand?”
“Understood,” Troy assented”. There went his hopes for exploring the storeroom. He went to tidy his clothes, and then to select a traveling cage for the bird. Would Rerne be there, back from his mysterious errand? He found himself hoping so.
Nine
Tikil at night, or at least during the early hours of the night, was more crowded than by day. Horan called an accommodation flitter for his crosstown journey to the Hunter Headquarters, but he decided to use the roll walk on his return. He was going toward it when Harse hailed him, just in front of the building.
“You seek Rerne?”
“I brought the fussel, by Merchant Kyger’s orders.” Troy was put on the defensive by the other’s attitude. During their brief time together Reme had never made him conscious of the Dipple. With the other rangers Horan was ever aware of his knifeless belt and the fact he was a planetless man.
“There is a message,” Harse replied aloofly. “Reme wishes to speak with you—“
“But I was just told he is not here.”
“So he is elsewhere. Come!”
Troy was tempted to reply “no” to that curt order. After all, he was not under contract to Rerne. Yet he could not deny that he was interested to learn why Harse had been sent to find him.
The other was as adept at threading a fast passage through the crowds as he might have been in finding a path through the forests. And he brought Troy not to any office or lounge, but to one of those small eating places that sprang up overnight by public favor and disappeared as quickly when some newer attraction drew the fickle pleasure seekers.
“Fourth booth,” Harse said and left him.
Troy pushed his way in and discovered that his shop livery did not make him conspicuous here. This cafe definitely catered to subcitizens and the lower ranks of shop employees. Two of the booths were curtained, signifying private parties. But there were two men without feminine company in the one to which he had been directed.
Reme, wearing shop livery, sat with his back against the wall. And with him was an older man in a dark tunic lacking any emblems of rank, yet equipped with that indefinable aura of authority that Troy recognized as the inborn assurance of a man who has held respon- sibility from his early years.
“Horan—“ Rerne uttered his name in what might be a greeting, but more likely was an introduction for the stranger’s benefit.
“Rogarkil.” Now the stranger nodded to Troy.
“You have taken permanent contract with Kyger?” Rerne shot that question at him bluntly, even as he waved the younger man to a seat.
“I will—tomorrow—“ A subtle tone in the other’s demand made him uneasy, put him on the defensive— why, he could not have said.
“You are now under a short-term one?” That was Rogarkil.
“That is so.”
“And if you should be offered employment elsewhere?”
“I have given my word to Merchant Kyger. He would have to agree to my going.”
Rogarkil smiled wryly. “There are always such disadvantages when one deals with honorable men. And to deal with dishonorable ones is to lose before one takes the first stride in a race. So at this hour you are still Merchant Kyger’s man?”
“I am.”
What did they want of him? This talk of honor and dishonor made Troy uncomfortable. But Rerne did not give him time to speculate about the meanings that might lie behind their fencing blades of words.
“There are questions you can answer, which will in no way break contract. For example: Is it not true that Merchant Kyger is now in the process of importing a Terran animal known as a fox at the express order of the Great Leader?”
“You yourself heard that order given, Gentle Homo.”
“And he has imported other Terran animals?”
“As you say, Gentle Homo, he has imported other Terran animals. This must be general knowledge, since the display of such pets is the pleasure of those who buy them.”
“A pair of cats for the Gentle Fern San duk Var, a kinkajou for Sattor Commander Di—“
“I am a cleaner of cages and do general labor for the worthy merchant,” Troy returned stiffly. “I do not make sales, nor do I see many of the great ones who buy.”
“But among those cages that you clean,” cut in Rogarkil, “are doubtless those of some of these exotics You have seen some of them with your own eyes, young man?”
Troy kept strictly to the record. “I was with Subcitizen Zul when he went to the port to accept delivery of the cats—“
“And you met with some trouble that morning—“
Troy looked slowly from one man to the other. “Gentle Homos,” he said softly, “if I speak now to patrollers not in uniform, I have the right to know that fact. There is still law to protect a man in Tikil—even one from the Dipple.”
Rogarkil grimaced. “Yes, you are entirely within your rights, young man, to deliver such a counterthrust as that. No, we are not patrollers—nor do we represent the law of Tikil. This is a Clan matter. Do you understand what that means?”
“Even in the Dipple, Gentle Homo, men have ears and lips. Yes, I know that the Clans are older than the city law, that they are rumored to have powers even beyond those of the Council Governor-General. But they are of the Clans and for the Clans. I am of the Dipple and if I am to climb out of the Dipple, I must do so under the laws of Tikil. Why you ask me these questions I do not know, but I hold by contract rights. This much I will say—and it is no more than you can learn from the patroller records—I have seen the cats. And I took the kinkajou from the villa of Sattor Commander Di. It had been frightened by rough handling there. I have seen the foxes, which are now in the shop. Why should these facts be of any importance?”
“That is what we are striving to learn,” Rogarkil answered enigmatically. “You are right, Horan. Clan law does not run in Tikil. But remember that it does run elsewhere—“
“A threat—or a warning, Gentle Homo?”
“A warning. We have reason to believe that you walk on the rim of a whirlpool, young man. Take good care that you do not leap into its current.”
“That is all you have to ask me?”
Rogarkil waved his hand in dismissal. But Rerne arose as Troy did.
“I will see Merchant Kyger.”
“Not tonight. The shop is closed.”
Both men eyed him now as if he had made some fateful announcement.
“Why?”
“Kyger had an errand—“
Rerne turned to his companion, spoke a sharply accented sentence in a language that was not Gal- basic. Rogarkil asked Troy another question: “Is not this foreign to your regular routine?”
“Yes.”
“So—well, maybe Merchant Kyger’s personal affairs are beginning to press him more acutely,” he com- mented. “One cannot carry a knife in two quarrels and give equal attention to both. But the foxes are still there?” He turned to Troy. “And where is the kinkajou you took from Di’s villa—also in the shop?”
Troy shrugged. “When I returned from the Wild, it was gone from the cage room. Perhaps it was restored to the Sattor Commander’s heirs. It is a very valuable asset of the estate.”
“Kyger did not return it so,” Rerne stated with finality. He was watching Troy narrowly now, coldly.
“It was gone from its cage.” Troy repeated the part- truth stubbornly. He was not going to add to that when he did not know the game they were playing—the nature of this “whirlpool” in which he, too, could be trapped.
“The boy is right, of course,” Rogarkil said. “Employed as casual labor, he would have no reason to know more than he has noticed. And he is a man under contract, apart from our problems. It is a pity this is so now, Horan. Under other circumstances we might have been of mutual assistance to one another. A rider of Norden is not too far removed in aspirations and desires from a Hunter of Korwar.”