by Jerry
Telzey strolled about the garden a while, maintaining a pretense of nonchalant interest in Jontarou’s flowers and colorful bug life. She experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time, but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then, for half an hour or more, she’d just sat cross-legged in the grass, waiting quietly for Tick-Tock to show up of her own accord. And the big lunk-head hadn’t obliged.
Telzey scratched a tanned knee-cap, scowling at Port Nichay’s park trees beyond the garden wall. It seemed idiotic to feel scared when she couldn’t even tell whether there was anything to be scared about! And, aside from that, another unreasonable feeling kept growing stronger by the minute now. This was to the effect that she should be doing some unstated but specific thing . . .
In fact, that Tick-Tock wanted her to do some specific thing!
Completely idiotic!
Abruptly, Telzey closed her eyes, thought sharply, “Tick-Tock?” and waited—suddenly very angry at herself for having given in to her fancies to this extent—for whatever might happen.
She had never really established that she was able to tell, by a kind of symbolic mind-picture method, like a short waking dream, approximately what TT was thinking and feeling. Five years before, when she’d discovered Tick-Tock—an odd-looking and odder-behaved stray kitten then—in the woods near the Amberdons’ summer home on Orado, Telzey had thought so. But it might never have been more than a colorful play of her imagination; and after she got into law school and grew increasingly absorbed in her studies, she almost forgot the matter again.
Today, perhaps because she was disturbed about Tick-Tock’s behavior, the customary response was extraordinarily prompt. The warm glow of sunlight shining through her closed eyelids faded out quickly and was replaced by some inner darkness. In the darkness there appeared then an image of Tick-Tock sitting a little way off beside an open door in an old stone wall, green eyes fixed on Telzey. Telzey got the impression that TT was inviting her to go through the door, and, for some reason, the thought frightened her.
Again, there was an immediate reaction. The scene with Tick-Tock and the door vanished; and Telzey felt she was standing in a pitch-black room, knowing that if she moved even one step forwards, something that was waiting there silently would reach out and grab her.
Naturally, she recoiled . . . and at once found herself sitting, eyes still closed and the sunlight bathing her lids, in the grass of the guest house garden.
She opened her eyes, looked around. Her heart was thumping rapidly. The experience couldn’t have lasted more than four or five seconds, but it had been extremely vivid, a whole, compact little nightmare. None of her earlier experiments at getting into mental communication with TT had been like that.
It served her right, Telzey thought, for trying such a childish stunt at the moment! What she should have done at once was to make a methodical search for the foolish beast—TT was bound to be somewhere nearby—locate her behind her camouflage, and hang on to her then until this nonsense in the garden was explained! Talented as Tick-Tock was at blotting herself out, it usually was possible to spot her if one directed one’s attention to shadow patterns. Telzey began a surreptitious study of the flowering bushes about her.
Three minutes later, off to her right, where the ground was banked beneath a six-foot step in the garden’s terraces, Tick-Tock’s outline suddenly caught her eye. Flat on her belly, head lifted above her paws, quite motionless, TT seemed like a transparent wraith stretched out along the terrace, barely discernible even when stared at directly. It was a convincing illusion; but what seemed to be rocks, plant leaves, and sun-splotched earth seen through the wraith-outline was simply the camouflage pattern TT had printed for the moment on her hide. She could have changed it completely in an instant to conform to a different background.
Telzey pointed an accusing finger.
“See you!” she announced, feeling a surge of relief which seemed as unaccountable as the rest of it.
The wraith twitched one ear in acknowledgment, the head outlines shifting as the camouflaged face turned towards Telzey. Then the inwardly uncamouflaged, very substantial looking mouth opened slowly, showing Tick-Tock’s red tongue and curved white tusks. The mouth stretched in a wide yawn, snapped shut with a click of meshing teeth, became indistinguishable again. Next, a pair of camouflaged lids drew back from TT’s round, brilliant-green eyes. The eyes stared across the lawn at Telzey.
Telzey said irritably, “Quit clowning around, TT!”
The eyes blinked, and Tick-Tock’s natural bronze-brown color suddenly flowed over her head, down her neck and across her body into legs and tail. Against the side of the terrace, as if materializing into solidity at that moment, appeared two hundred pounds of supple, rangy, long-tailed cat . . . or catlike creature. TT’s actual origin had never been established. The best guesses were that what Telzey had found playing around in the woods five years ago was either a bio-structural experiment which had got away from a private laboratory on Orado, or some spaceman’s lost pet, brought to the capital planet from one of the remote colonies beyond the Hub. On top of TT’s head was a large, fluffy pompom of white fur, which might have looked ridiculous on another animal, but didn’t on her. Even as a fat kitten, hanging head down from the side of a wall by the broad sucker pads in her paws, TT had possessed enormous dignity.
Telzey studied her, the feeling of relief fading again. Tick-Tock, ordinarily the most restful and composed of companions, definitely was still tensed up about something. That big, lazy yawn a moment ago, the attitude of stretched-out relaxation . . . all pure sham!
“What is eating you?” she asked in exasperation.
The green eyes stared at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now? After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year, nobody had cared any more.
For a moment, Telzey had the uncanny certainty of having had the answer to this situation almost in her grasp. An answer which appeared to involve the world of Jontarou, Tick-Tock, and of all unlikely factors—Aunt Halet.
She shook her head, TT’s impassive green eyes blinked.
Jontarou? The planet lay outside Telzey’s sphere of personal interests, but she’d read up on it on the way here from Orado. Among all the worlds of the Hub, Jontarou was the paradise for zoologists and sportsmen, a gigantic animal preserve, its continents and seas swarming with magnificent game. Under Federation law, it was being retained deliberately in the primitive state in which it had been discovered. Port Nichay, the only city, actually the only inhabited point on Jontarou, was beautiful and quiet, a pattern of vast but elegantly slender towers, each separated from the others by four or five miles of rolling parkland and interconnected only by the threads of transparent skyways. Near the horizon, just visible from the garden, rose the tallest towers of all, the green and gold spires of the Shikaris’ Club, a center of Federation affairs and of social activity. From the aircar which brought them across Port Nichay the evening before, Telzey had seen occasional strings of guest houses, similar to the one Halet had rented, nestling along the park slopes.
Nothing very sinister about Port Nichay or green Jontarou, surely!
Halet? That blond, slinky, would-be Machiavelli? What could—?
Telzey’s eyes narrowed reflectively. There’d been a minor occurrence—at least, it had seemed minor—just before the spaceliner docked last night. A young woman from one of the newscasting services had asked for an interview with the daughter of Federation Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon. This happened occasionally; and Telzey had no objections until the newshen’s gossipy persistence in inquiring about the “unusual pet” she was bringing to Port Nichay with her began to be annoying. TT might be somewhat unusual, but that was not a matter of general interest; and Telzey said so. Then Halet moved smoothly into the act and held forth on Tick-Tock’s appe
arance, habits, and mysterious antecedents, in considerable detail.
Telzey had assumed that Halet was simply going out of her way to be irritating, as usual. Looking back on the incident, however, it occurred to her that the chatter between her aunt and the newscast woman had sounded oddly stilted—almost like something the two might have rehearsed.
Rehearsed for what purpose? Tick-Tock . . . Jontarou.
Telzey chewed gently on her lower lip. A vacation on Jontarou for the two of them and TT had been Halet’s idea, and Halet had enthused about it so much that Telzey’s mother at last talked her into accepting. Halet, Jessamine explained privately to Telzey, had felt they were intruders in the Amberdon family, had bitterly resented Jessamine’s political honors and, more recently, Telzey’s own emerging promise of brilliance. This invitation was Halet’s way of indicating a change of heart. Wouldn’t Telzey oblige?
So Telzey had obliged, though she took very little stock in Halet’s change of heart. She wasn’t, in fact, putting it past her aunt to have some involved dirty trick up her sleeve with this trip to Jontarou. Halet’s mind worked like that.
So far there had been no actual indications of purposeful mischief. But logic did seem to require a connection between the various puzzling events here . . . A newscaster’s rather forced looking interest in Tick-Tock—Halet could easily have paid for that interview. Then TT’s disturbed behavior during their first night in Port Nichay, and Telzey’s own formless anxieties and fancies in connection with the guest house garden.
The last remained hard to explain. But Tick-Tock . . . and Halet . . . might know something about Jontarou that she didn’t know.
Her mind returned to the results of the half-serious attempt she’d made to find out whether there was something Tick-Tock “wanted her to do.” An open door? A darkness where somebody waited to grab her if she took even one step forwards? It couldn’t have had any significance. Or could it?
So you’d like to try magic, Telzey scoffed at herself. Baby games . . . How far would you have got at law school if you’d asked TT to help with your problems?
Then why had she been thinking about it again?
She shivered, because an eerie stillness seemed to settle on the garden. From the side of the terrace, TT’s green eyes watched her.
Telzey had a feeling of sinking down slowly into a sunlit dream, into something very remote from law school problems.
“Should I go through the door?” she whispered.
The bronze cat-shape raised its head slowly. TT began to purr.
Tick-Tock’s name had been derived in kittenhood from the manner in which she purred—a measured, oscillating sound, shifting from high to low, as comfortable and often as continuous as the unobtrusive pulse of an old clock. It was the first time, Telzey realized now, that she’d heard the sound since their arrival on Jontarou. It went on for a dozen seconds or so, then stopped. Tick-Tock continued to look at her.
It appeared to have been an expression of definite assent . . .
The dreamlike sensation increased, hazing over Telzey’s thoughts. If there was nothing to this mind-communication thing, what harm could symbols do? This time, she wouldn’t let them alarm her. And if they did mean something . . .
She closed her eyes.
The sunglow outside faded instantly. Telzey caught a fleeting picture of the door in the wall, and knew in the same moment that she’d already passed through it.
She was not in the dark room then, but poised at the edge of a brightness which seemed featureless and without limit, spread out around her with a feeling-tone like “sea” or “sky.” But it was an unquiet place. There was a sense of unseen things on all sides watching her and waiting.
Was this another form of the dark room—a trap set up in her mind? Telzey’s attention did a quick shift. She was seated in the grass again; the sunlight beyond her closed eyelids seemed to shine in quietly through rose-tinted curtains. Cautiously, she let her awareness return to the bright area; and it was still there. She had a moment of excited elation. She was controlling this! And why not, she asked herself. These things were happening in her mind, after all!
She would find out what they seemed to mean; but she would be in no rush to . . .
An impression as if, behind her, Tick-Tock had thought, “Now I can help again!”
Then a feeling of being swept swiftly, irresistibly forwards, thrust out and down. The brightness exploded in thundering colors around her. In fright, she made the effort to snap her eyes open, to be back in the garden; but now she couldn’t make it work. The colors continued to roar about her, like a confusion of excited, laughing, triumphant voices. Telzey felt caught in the middle of it all, suspended in invisible spider webs. Tick-Tock seemed to be somewhere nearby, looking on. Faithless, treacherous TT!
Telzey’s mind made another wrenching effort, and there was a change. She hadn’t got back into the garden, but the noisy, swirling colors were gone and she had the feeling of reading a rapidly moving microtape now, though she didn’t actually see the tape.
The tape, she realized, was another symbol for what was happening, a symbol easier for her to understand. There were voices, or what might be voices, around her; on the invisible tape she seemed to be reading what they said.
A number of speakers, apparently involved in a fast, hot argument about what to do with her. Impressions flashed past . . .
Why waste time with her? It was clear that kitten-talk was all she was capable of!. . . Not necessarily; that was a normal first step. Give her a little time!. . . But what—exasperatedly—could such a small-bite possibly know that would be of significant value?
There was a slow, blurred, awkward-seeming interruption. Its content was not comprehensible to Telzey at all, but in some unmistakable manner it was defined as Tick-Tock’s thought.
A pause as the circle of speakers stopped to consider whatever TT had thrown into the debate.
Then another impression . . . one that sent a shock of fear through Telzey as it rose heavily into her awareness. Its sheer intensity momentarily displaced the tape-reading symbolism. A savage voice seemed to rumble:
“Toss the tender small-bite to me”—malevolent crimson eyes fixed on Telzey from somewhere not far away—“and let’s be done here!”
Startled, stammering protest from Tick-Tock, accompanied by gusts of laughter from the circle. Great sense of humor these characters had, Telzey thought bitterly. That crimson-eyed thing wasn’t joking at all!
More laughter as the circle caught her thought. Then a kind of majority opinion found sudden expression:
“Small-bite is learning! No harm to wait—We’ll find out quickly—Let’s . . .”
The tape ended; the voices faded; the colors went blank. In whatever jumbled-up form she’d been getting the impressions at that point—Telzey couldn’t have begun to describe it—the whole thing suddenly stopped.
She found herself sitting in the grass, shaky, scared, eyes open. Tick-Tock stood beside the terrace, looking at her. An air of hazy unreality still hung about the garden.
She might have flipped! She didn’t think so; but it certainly seemed possible! Otherwise . . . Telzey made an attempt to sort over what had happened.
Something had been in the garden! Something had been inside her mind. Something that was at home on Jontarou.
There’d been a feeling of perhaps fifty or sixty of these . . . well, beings. Alarming beings! Reckless, wild, hard . . . and that red-eyed nightmare! Telzey shuddered.
They’d contacted Tick-Tock first, during the night. TT understood them better than she could. Why? Telzey found no immediate answer.
Then Tick-Tock had tricked her into letting her mind be invaded by these beings. There must have been a very definite reason for that.
She looked over at Tick-Tock. TT looked back. Nothing stirred in Telzey’s thoughts. Between them there was still no direct communication.
Then how had the beings been able to get through to her?
&
nbsp; Telzey wrinkled her nose. Assuming this was real, it seemed clear that the game of symbols she’d made up between herself and TT had provided the opening. Her whole experience just now had been in the form of symbols, translating whatever occurred into something she could consciously grasp.
“Kitten-talk” was how the beings referred to the use of symbols; they seemed contemptuous of it. Never mind, Telzey told herself; they’d agreed she was learning.
The air over the grass appeared to flicker. Again she had the impression of reading words off a quickly moving, not quite visible tape.
“You’re being taught and you’re learning,” was what she seemed to read. “The question was whether you were capable of partial understanding as your friend insisted. Since you were, everything else that can be done will be accomplished very quickly.”
A pause, then with a touch of approval, “You’re a well-formed mind, small-bite! Odd and with incomprehensibilities, but well-formed—”
One of the beings, and a fairly friendly one—at least not unfriendly. Telzey framed a tentative mental question. “Who are you?”
“You’ll know very soon.” The flickering ended; she realized she and the question had been dismissed for the moment. She looked over at Tick-Tock again.
“Can’t you talk to me now, TT?” she asked silently.
A feeling of hesitation.
“Kitten-talk!” was the impression that formed itself with difficulty then. It was awkward, searching; but it came unquestionably from TT. “Still learning too, Telzey!” TT seemed half anxious, half angry. “We—”
A sharp buzz-note reached Telzey’s ears, wiping out the groping thought-impression. She jumped a little, glanced down. Her wrist-talker was signaling. For a moment, she seemed poised uncertainly between a world where unseen, dangerous-sounding beings referred to one as small-bite and where TT was learning to talk, and the familiar other world where wrist-communicators buzzed periodically in a matter-of-fact manner. Settling back into the more familiar world, she switched on the talker.