“Zul furnished night watch inside here. One man inside, a yardman out, a patroller on alarm call. Some of the stock are delicate. You’ll make two rounds—“
He was interrupted by the showroom gong and pulled himself to his feet. “Change and get to work,” he ordered as he left the office.
Troy sealed the fore seam of the shop coveralls and strapped on again his rider’s belt. The Kyger livery was of the same dark blue that Kyger affected in his own garments, and it did not include the reptileskin boots Zul had worn—nor was there any knife for the belt. He had risen one short step above the Dipple, but that was all.
Shopping hours ran on into the late evening, and twice Troy was summoned to the display rooms to carry in some animate treasure for inspection. He had just returned a squirming cub, listed as an animal but with fluffy feathers instead of fur and six legs waving wildly in the air, a big-eared head digging chin point into Troy’s shoulder as it looked with avid interest at the world, to a cage, where three more of its kind immediately fell upon it in mock attack, when Kyger came to the door.
“That closes us for tonight. Guard quarters are next to the storeroom. I’m aloft—over there.” He jerked a thumb at the back wall of the courtyard and the line of windows looking out from a second level. “Here—“ His hand cupped over a knob of brilliant scarlet just inside the door and now glowing in the subdued light of the cage room. “Need help, hit one of these. There’s one in each room. You’ll make rounds at three, again at six. Mean- while”—below the knob was a lever he pushed up— “you’ll be able to hear them through the corn if there’s any disturbance. The yard cages are not your concern.”
“Yes, Merchant,” Troy assented.
Kyger went on down the corridor, stopping to thumb-seal the door of his office—almost ostentatiously, as if he wanted his most recent employee to witness that act.
Then, without any good night, he was gone. Troy felt the nudge of responsibility. He stepped inside each bird room. The light was dimmed; many of the inhabitants were now asleep. In every room the lever was up, the corn safely on. Then he went to the padded wall shelf in the cubby off the storeroom, still a little too excited to sleep.
Within a matter of three days the pattern of Kyger’s had become a routine into which Troy fitted easily. He had been successful in caring for a delicate and rare fussel hawk, which Kyger himself had been unable to handle, and had begun to hope that perhaps his week’s contract might indeed be renewed. He also discovered that Kyger’s not only sold—but bought.
There was a second entrance to the shop through the courtyard, an inconspicuous covered way through which men, mostly wearing spacer uniform, found their way, with either carrying cages or other wild-life containers. All of these, he had his orders, were to be shown directly to Kyger’s private office. And should the merchant be busied with customers, a certain signal of gong notes was to be sounded.
At the conclusion of one of these visits Troy, or a yardman, would be summoned to take away a purchase. But the majority of these were sheltered in the yard, not among the rarities of the inner shop. And it appeared to Troy that the number of such sellers did not match the number of visitors—as if some of those unobtrusive men might have visited the ex-spacer for another reason. But that too might have an easy explanation; shipmates from old runs could well drop in while in port. Or there might be still a third reason—one that fitted the attack made upon Zul himself with the interest Varms had shown.
Tikil was a luxury port. And the luxuries were not always within the bands of legal imports. Troy could name four forbidden drugs, a banned liquor, and several other items that would never arrive openly on the planet but would promise high returns for the men or man reckless enough to run them through port scanners. If Kyger had activities outside the port laws, however, that was none of his cage cleaner’s concern.
On the fourth afternoon after he had taken contract, Troy was called to the showrooms. Two customers were present, and Kyger’s attention had been claimed by the one who, with her party, was in the outer lounge. He waved Horan to the man waiting.
“Show this Gentle Homo the box of tri-dees from Hathor. Yes. Gentle Fern”—the merchant turned back to the glittering party he was serving—“there are many other Terran beasts which one might consider, fully equal in beauty and intelligence to cats. Let me show you—“
When Troy would have led the way to the next lounge, the man he was to assist stopped him with a shake of the head. It appeared that he also wanted to see the wonder Kyger was about to reveal.
The merchant pressed a button. A small viewing screen moved outward from the wall at a comfortable eye level for the woman in the foreseat of the party. She was older than Var’s consort, and far more elaborately dressed, affecting the semitransparent robes of Cynus, though they were not in the least flattering to her emaciated figure. Her voice was a shrill caw, but as Troy caught sight of her sharp-featured profile, he knew her for the Grand Leader One from Sidona. That was a matriarchate in name only now, a cluster of three small planets about a dying sun. But it still occupied a strategic point on an important star lane, and what power the Grand Leader Ones might have lost in battle they still possessed in alliances.
“This, Gentle Fern”—Kyger clicked thumb and finger together and was answered by the instant appearance on the screen of a tri-dee—“is a fox. I have already a pair in transit so I can promise an early delivery.”
“So?” The Grand Leader One leaned forward a little, the corners of her pinched mouth drawing down to deepen lines from a beak nose. “And how many credits will the coming of such take from my purse, Merchant?”
Kyger named a sum that five days earlier would have made Troy incredulous. Now he merely wondered how long the bargaining would continue.
“A fox, now,” the man standing beside him said very softly, his observation hardly above a whisper, as if he were thinking aloud.
The animal in the tri-dee was clearly depicted life- size, the usual procedure for smaller beasts. It had a thick coat of orange-red, black legs and feet, a white tip on its brush of tail. The head was almost triangular with sharp-pointed ears and muzzle, and greenish eyes slanted in that alert and mischievous mask. It was larger than the cats, but its expression of sly intelligence was most marked.
But something in the way his own waiting customer had said “fox” suggested to Troy that the other was not unacquainted with the Terran exotic. However, he did not linger now but stepped into the second lounge, and Horan had to accompany him.
“I understand you have a fussel hawk.”
“That is so, Gentle Homo.”
“Have you flown it yet?”
“No, Gentle Homo. The ship passage left it fretful— we have allowed it cage rest.”
Those strangely golden eyes flickered to Troy’s middle and the wide belt there.
“You are of Norden?”
“I was born there,” Troy replied shortly.
“Then you have perhaps already hunted with a fussel.”
Troy’s lips twitched. “I have seen such hunting. But Norden is many years behind me, Gentle Homo. There was a war.” He kept his tone respectful; in fact, he was a little surprised. The stranger had no signs, such as Kyger carried, of being an ex-spacer. Yet not one Korwarian in ten thousand would have recognized Troy’s belt, or would have known that the riders of the Norden-that-was had hunted with fussel hawks in the mountain valleys. He studied the other covertly as he made ready the viewing screen.
They were nearly the same height, but the Korwarian was perhaps ten planet years older. He did not have the look of a villa aristocrat, not even of one who played hard and kept his body in top condition. Since he wore no official uniform, he was not a member of any of the three services. Yet plainly he was a man who knew action and the outdoors. His skin must be as fair as Troy’s under the even tan of much exposure.
In a concession to fashion he had a braided topknot of hair, banded with two golden hold rings, and that hair was a dull red-gold, not far removed in shade from the metal. His loose tunic and kilt were of a creamy- brown nubb-metalla in which a small golden spark flashed here and there as he moved. There were yellow gems in the hilt of his belt knife and ringing his wrist bracelets, so that the whole effect was that of a golden man, yet did not in any way suggest a villa fop.