Klayung nodded. “For now. I’ll fill you in. The Tongi Phon’s not partial to the Service. They’ve been working hard at developing a psi technology of their own. They’ve got farther than most, but still not very far. Their approach is much too conservative—paradoxes disturb them. But they’ve learned enough to be aware of a number of possibilities. That’s made them suspicious of us.”
“Well, they might have a good deal to hide,” Telzey said.
“Definitely. They do what they can to limit our activities. A majority of the commercial and private circuits are psi-blocked, as a result of a carefully underplayed campaign of psi and psi machine scares. The Tongi Phon Institute is blocked, of course; the Phons wear mind shields. Tinokti in general presents extraordinary operational difficulties. So it was something of a surprise when we got a request for help today from the Tongi Phon.”
“Help in what?” Telzey asked.
“Four high-ranking Phons,” Klayung explained, “were found dead together in a locked and guarded vault area at the Institute. Their necks had been broken and the backs of the skulls caved in—in each case apparently by a single violent blow. The bodies showed bruises but no other significant damage.”
She said after a moment, “Did the Institute find out anything?”
“Yes. The investigators assumed at first a temporary portal had been set up secretly to the vault. But there should have been residual portal energy detectable, and there wasn’t. They did establish then that a life form of unknown type had been present at the time of the killings. Estimated body weight close to ten hundred pounds.”
Telzey nodded. “That was one of Bozo’s relatives, all right!”
“We can assume it. The vault area was psi-blocked. So that’s no obstacle to them. The Phons are badly frightened. Political assassinations are no novelty at the Institute, but here all factions lost leading members. Nobody feels safe. They don’t know the source of the threat or the reason for it, but they’ve decided psi may have been involved. Within limits, they’re willing to cooperate with the Service.”
He added, “As it happens, we’d already been giving Tinokti special attention. It’s one of perhaps a dozen Hub worlds where a secret psi organization would find almost ideal conditions. Since they’ve demonstrated an interest in psi machines, the Institute’s intensive work in the area should be a further attraction. Mind shields or not, it wouldn’t be surprising to discover the psis have been following that project for some time. So the Service will move to Tinokti in strength. If we can trap a sizable nest, it might be a long step toward rounding up the lot wherever they’re hiding.”
He regarded Telzey a moment. She responded by saying, “I assume you’re telling me all this because you want me to go to Tinokti?”
“Yes. We should be able to make very good use of you. The fact that you’re sensitized to the psis’ mind type gives you an advantage over our operators. And your sudden interest in Tinokti after what’s occurred might stimulate some reaction from the local group.”
“I’ll be bait?” Telzey said.
“In part. Our moment to moment tactics will depend on developments, of course.”
She nodded. “Well, I’m bait here, and I want them off my neck. What will the arrangement be?”
“You’re making the arrangement,” Klayung told her. “A psi arrangement, to keep you in character—the junior Service operator who’s maintaining her well-established cover as a law student. You’ll have Pehanron assign you to a field trip to Tinokti to do a paper on the legalistic aspects of the Tongi Phon government.”
“It’ll have to be cleared with the Institute,” Telzey said.
“We’ll take care of that.”
“All right.” She considered. “I may have to work on three or four minds. When do I leave?”
“A week from today.”
Telzey nodded. “That’s no problem then. There’s one thing. . . .”
“Yes?”
“The psis have been so careful not to give themselves away here. Why should they create an obvious mystery on Tinokti?”
Klayung said, “I’m wondering. There may be something the Phons haven’t told us. However, the supposition at present is that the beast failed to follow its instructions exactly—as the creatures may, in fact, have done on other occasions with less revealing results. You had the impression that Bozo wasn’t too intelligent.”
“Yes, I did,” Telzey said. “But it doesn’t seem very intelligent either to use an animal like that where something could go seriously wrong, as it certainly might in a place like the Institute. Particularly when they still haven’t found out what happened to their other psi beast on Orado.”
* * *
What were they?
Telzey had fed questions to information centers. Reports about psi mutant strains weren’t uncommon, but one had to go a long way back to find something like confirming evidence. She condensed the information she obtained, gave it, combined with her own recent experiences, to Pehanron’s probability computer to digest. The machine stated that she was dealing with descendants of the historical mind masters of Nalakia, the Elaigar.
She mentioned it to Klayung. He wasn’t surprised. The Service’s probability computers concurred.
“But that’s impossible!” Telzey said, startled. The information centers had provided her with a great deal of material on the Elaigar. “If the records are right, they averaged out at more than five hundred pounds. Besides, they looked like ogres! How could someone like that be moving around in a Hub city without being noticed?”
Klayung said they wouldn’t necessarily have to let themselves be seen, at least not by people who could talk about them. If they’d returned to the Hub from some other galactic section, they might have set up bases on unused nonoxygen worlds a few hours from their points of operation, almost safe from detection so long as their presence wasn’t suspected. He wasn’t discounting the possibility.
Telzey, going over the material again later, found that she didn’t much care for the possibility. The Elaigar belonged to the Hub’s early colonial period. They’d been physical giants with psi minds, a biostructure believed to be of human origin, developed by a science-based cult called the Grisands, which had moved out from the Old Territory not long before and established itself in a stronghold on Nalakia. In the Grisand idiom, Elaigar meant the Lion People. It suggested what the Grisands intended to achieve—a controlled formidable strain through which they could dominate the other humans on Nalakia and on neighboring colony worlds. But they lost command of their creation. The Elaigar turned on them, and the Grisands died in the ruins of their stronghold. Then the Elaigar set out on conquests of their own.
Apparently they’d been the terrors of that area of space for a number of years, taking over one colony after another. The humans they met and didn’t kill were mentally enslaved and thereafter lived to serve them. Eventually, war fleets were assembled in other parts of the Hub; and the prowess of the Elaigar proved to be no match for superior space firepower. The survivors among them fled in ships crewed by their slaves and hadn’t been heard from again.
Visual reproductions of a few of the slain mutants were included in the data Telzey had gathered. There hadn’t been many available. The Hub’s War Centuries lay between that time and her own; most of the colonial period’s records had been destroyed or lost. Even dead and seen in the faded recordings, the Elaigar appeared as alarming as their reputation had been. There were a variety of giant strains in the Hub, but most of them looked reasonably human. The Elaigar seemed a different species. The massive bodies were like those of powerful animals, and the broad hairless faces brought to mind the faces of great cats.
But human the prototype must have been, Telzey thought—if it was Elaigar she’d met briefly on the psi level in Orado’s Melna Park. The basic human mental patterns were discernible in the thought forms she’d registered. What was different might fit these images of the Nalakian mind masters and their brief, bloody Hub history. Klayung could be right.
“Well, just be sure,” Jessamine Amberdon commented when Telzey informed her parents by ComWeb one evening that she’d be off on a field assignment to Tinokti next day, “that you’re back ten days from now.”
“Why?” asked Telzey.
“For the celebration, of course.”
“Eh?”
Jessamine sighed. “Oh, Telzey! You’ve become the most absent-minded dear lately! That’s your birthday, remember? You’ll be sixteen.”
Chapter 3
Citizens of Tinokti tended to regard the megacities of other Federation worlds as overgrown primitive villages. They, or some seventy percent of them, lived and worked in the enclosed portal systems called circuits. For most it was a comfortable existence; for many a luxurious one.
A portal, for practical purposes, was two points in space clamped together to form one. It was a method of moving in a step from here to there, within a limited but considerable range. Portal circuits could be found on many Hub worlds. On Tinokti they were everywhere. Varying widely in extent and complexity, serving many purposes, they formed the framework of the planet’s culture.