Using his new second vision, Teg chose one of the farmers, a squat, dark-skinned man with heavy features and thickly calloused hands. The man walked with a defiant sense of independence. He towed eight large panniers piled with rough-skinned melons. The smell of them was a mouth-watering agony to Teg as he matched his stride to that of the farmer. Teg strode for a few minutes in silence, then ventured: “Is this the best road to Ysai?”
“It is a long way,” the man said. He had a guttural voice, something cautious in it.
Teg glanced back at the loaded panniers.
The farmer looked sidelong at Teg. “We go to a market center. Others take our produce from there to Ysai.”
As they talked, Teg realized the farmer had guided (almost herded) him close to the edge of the road. The man glanced back and jerked his head slightly, nodding forward. Three more farmers came up beside them and closed in around Teg and his companion until tall panniers concealed them from the rest of the traffic.
Teg tensed. What were they planning? He sensed no menace, though. His doubled vision detected nothing violent in his immediate vicinity.
A heavy vehicle sped past them and on ahead. Teg knew of its passage only by the smell of burned fuel, the wind that shook the panniers, the thrumming of a powerful engine and sudden tension in his companions. The high panniers completely hid the passing vehicle.
“We have been looking for you to protect you, Bashar,” the farmer beside him said. “There are many who hunt you but none of them with us along here.”
Teg shot a startled glance at the man.
“We served with you at Renditai,” the farmer said.
Teg swallowed. Renditai? He was a moment recalling it — only a minor skirmish in his long history of conflicts and negotiations.
“I am sorry but I do not know your name,” Teg said.
“Be glad that you do not know our names. It is better that way.”
“But I’m grateful.”
“This is a small repayment, which we are glad to make, Bashar.”
“I must get to Ysai,” Teg said.
“It is dangerous there.”
“It is dangerous everywhere.”
“We guessed you would go to Ysai. Someone will come soon and you will ride in concealment. Ahhhh, here he comes. We have not seen you here, Bashar. You have not been here.”
One of the other farmers took over the towing of his companion’s load, pulling two strings of panniers while the farmer Teg had chosen hustled Teg under a tow rope and into a dark vehicle. Teg glimpsed shiny plasteel and plaz as the vehicle slowed only briefly for the pickup. The door closed sharply behind him and he found himself on a soft upholstered seat, alone in the back of a groundcar. The car picked up speed and soon was beyond the marching farmers. The windows around Teg had been darkened, giving him a dusky view of the passing scene. The driver was a shaded silhouette.
This first chance to relax in warm comfort since his capture almost lured Teg into sleep. He sensed no threats. His body still ached from the demands he had made on it and from the agonies of the T-probe.
He told himself, though, that he must stay awake and alert.
The driver leaned sideways and spoke over his shoulder without turning: “They have been hunting for you for two days, Bashar. Some think you already off-planet.”
Two days?
The stunner and whatever else they had done to him had left him unconscious for a long time. This only added to his hunger. He tried to make the flesh-embedded chrono play against his vision centers and it only flickered as it had done each time he consulted it since the T-probe. His time sense and all references to it were changed.
So some thought he had left Gammu.
Teg did not ask who hunted him. Tleilaxu and people from the Scattering had been in that attack and the subsequent torture.
Teg glanced around his conveyance. It was one of those beautiful old pre-Scattering groundcars, the marks of the finest Ixian manufacture on it. He had never before ridden in one but he knew about them. Restorers picked them up to renew, rebuild — whatever they did that brought back the ancient sense of quality. Teg had been told that such vehicles often were found abandoned in strange places — in old broken-down buildings, in culverts, locked away in machinery warehouses, in farm fields.