“I have not seen you here before. Where is Zul?” There was no arrogance in the question. The stranger asked as if he had a real interest in who might serve him.
“He was injured—there was a flitter smash,” Troy replied somewhat evasively, and then added with the strict truth, “I am C.L., on a fill-time contract.”
“From the Dipple?” The other gave the name none of the accent that had made that place of abode a fighting word in Tikil. “Well, and what has Kyger got to offer in his Hathor tri-dees?”
He seated himself at last, waving aside the selection of smoke sticks and drinks Troy offered. Horan snapped the button and the first of the views flashed on the screen. It was apparent from the series that this would- be customer was interested only in birds of prey that could be trained for the hunt. But when Troy had run through the entire Hathor collection, the man shook his head.
“When one knows there is a fine weapon within reach, one does not pick up the second best. If Kyger has a fussel worth training, I shall not order from these.” Now he did pick a smoke stick, struck it against his fingernail to set it burning with its herb-scented smoke. “Ah, Kyger!” He looked up as the merchant entered. “And did you make that stellar sale? How long will the august mother of three worlds have to wait for her new toy?”
There was something in the lounge, as invisible as the touch from the cats’ cage. This was a tenseness, the faintest possible suggestion of strain. Yet both men were outwardly at ease. Kyger seated himself in another chair as if there were no barriers of rank between them.
“Not too long. I have a pair arriving on the Shammer.”
“So? Gambling in Terran imports now, Kyger?”
The ex-spacer shrugged. “They want to build up their export trade—and they are willing to pare prices to open a new market. My friends on the ships pass the word—“
His customer nodded. “Yes. Well, trade makes ties to defeat war. And if you can get the Terrans well tied up, you’ll have the smiles of the Council, Kyger.”
Again that flash of feeling. Troy could not be sure which man was involved. The golden man stubbed out his smoke stick.
“You have a fussel—“
Kyger picked up a refreshment bulb, squeezed its contents into his mouth. “I have. It’ll have to prove itself in flight, though, before I market it.”
“Just so. I am due to make an inspection trip through the Wild. Trust me with that testing—send along your man here.”
Kyger glanced at Horan. “All right. He knows how to handle the bird, uncrated it when the rest of us couldn’t get near. Very well, Hunter. When do you wish to leave, and for how long?”
“Three days to be gone. I must swing up as far as the Marches. As to when—well, shall we say in two days? That will give your bird that much longer to rest before we take him out.”
Kyger crushed the beverage bulb in one hand.
“Agreed. You,” he said to Troy, “will hold yourself ready for the Hunter Rerne’s orders.”
The golden man left, walking with an almost sound- less tread that Troy did not now find surprising. Kyger continued to sit for a long moment, his eyes still on the door through which the other had gone.
“Reme.” He repeated that name very softly. If there was any expression in his tone, Troy failed to read it. The Hunters, the rangers of the Wild, were conservation experts. Guardians of the vast sections of carefully preserved forest and unsettled lands, into which parties of visitors or the villa dwellers of Korwar might be guided to enjoy the thrills of primitive living while still in flyer touch with the safety and luxury of civilization, they were almost legendary in Tikil. And the office had become, through two centuries, hereditary, going to the members of some ten or twelve families, all of them First-Ship pioneers on Korwar. Reme’s Clan lived to the north. And this man, because of his youth, must be one of the two ^brothers whose discovery of the ill-fated Fauklow expedition was still something of a saga in the port city. Troy fingered the belt from which no knife hung. Even a subcitizen could seldom hope for a chance to penetrate the Wild. The trackers, foresters, woodsmen themselves all came of lesser families allied by old ties to the Clans. Yet he was going with Reme in two days’ time!
Four
The news flash came during the slack time at the shop. Those visitors who favored the afternoon had gone, and the evening strollers were not yet abroad. Kyger had retreated to his office; his employees gathered for their evening meal. Troy balanced a plate on his knee in the courtyard. Through the window vent over his head he could hear the mechanical recitation of the day’s events over Kyger’s corn.
“—the so-far unexplainable and sudden death of Sattor Commander Varan Di.”
Troy stopped chewing. Two feet away stood the flitter, and right now there was a box resting in it intended for the hillside villa of Sattor Commander Varan Di, a special shipment of food for the Commander’s pet.
“—resigned from the overlordship of the Council during the previous year,” continued the drone from within. “But his years of experience led him to agree to continue as consultant on special problems. It is rumored that he was acting at present as adviser on the terms of the Treaty of Panarc Five. This has been neither confirmed nor denied by government spokes- men. Statement issued by the Council: ‘It is with deep regret—‘”
The monotone of the corn snapped into a silence, the more noticeable because of that sudden break. Troy went on eating. The death, “unexplainable and sudden” as the corn had it, of a retired military leader and former Council lord now had very little to do with Troy Horan. Ten years ago—again Troy’s hand paused on its way to his mouth—ten years ago matters might have been different. It had been Varan Di who had arbitrarily decided to make a military depot for Sattor-class ships out of Norden. Not that that made any difference now. “Horan!” Kyger came to the courtyard entrance.
Troy put down his plate, noting small signs of irritation in his employer. “Take the flitter up to the Di villa and deliver that package.” Well, Troy supposed, eating, even for a pet, went on when the master was dead. But why the rush to send him now—and why him at all? The yardman usually took the flitter out on such errands. But this was no time to ask questions. He folded his long legs into the driver’s seat, made a creditable lift from the courtyard. The journey tape had already been set for the trip; he had nothing to do but take off and land, and be ready to assume manual control if any remote emergency arose. In the meantime he settled back in the cramped seat to enjoy this small time of privacy and ease. The golden haze, which was Korwar’s fair-weather sky, somehow reminded him ofRerne and the promised trip into the Wild. Troy had taken time twice that afternoon, after the Hunter had left, to visit the fussel. And on the second inspection the big bird had stirred on his perch and stretched his wings, which was a very encouraging sign. The fussel was male, perhaps two years old, so just entering the best training age.
Wild as he had been when loosed from the traveling cage, he had not struck at Troy, as he had attempted to do at both Kyger and the assisting yardman, which could—or might—mean that the bird would be willing to ride with Horan.
“Lane warning—lane warning!” The words spat from the mike on the control board, a light flashing in additional emphasis.
Troy looked up. A patroller hung poised, as the fussel might poise, over the flitter, ready to swoop for the kill.
“Identify yourself!” came the order Troy expected. He pushed the button that would report to the law the destination and reason for the errand as it appeared on his journey tape, expecting instructions to take manuals and sheer off. If the patrollers were investigating a suspicious death, they would not allow him to set down at the Di villa.
But surprisingly enough he was told to proceed. Nor was he challenged again as the flitter settled before the service quarters of the late Sattor Commander’s mountainside retreat.
Like all Korwar aristocrats, Varan Di had constructed a dwelling on a plan native to another world, choosing for a model the stark simplicity of the Pa-ta-du of the sea mountains of Qwan. Even a growth of pink- gray lace bushes could not disguise the rugged wall posts, though their softening color was reflected by the sheets of barmush shell that formed the wall surfaces between those posts. Troy tried to estimate the number of credits that must have been spent to import posts, shell sheets, and doubtless all the rest from across stellar space. And he doubted if it all could have been done on the legal pay of either a sattor commander or a Council lord’s post.