She smiled. “That makes us even. I’ve wondered a bit about yours.”
But it had startled her. So he’d been studying her, too. She’d tried to be careful, but tensions were heavy now and she’d been preoccupied. She wasn’t sure how much she might have revealed.
It was true she couldn’t afford to leave yet. There were possibilities in the overall situation no one could have suspected, and her information wasn’t definite enough. A faulty or incomplete report might do more harm than none; she simply wasn’t sure. Through Neto she could see to it that the Service would at least know everything she was able to guess at present. So Neto would be maneuvered safely out of the circuit here—if possible.
But Neto wouldn’t report immediately. The planetary exit opened into an old, unused Phon villa. Neto would find money and aircars there. She’d get out of her Fossily disguise, move on and lie low in one of Tinokti’s cities for the next ten days. If Telzey hadn’t showed up by that time, Neto would contact the Psychology Service.
Telzey leaned forward suddenly, hands shifting toward the controls she’d marked. Thrakell stirred in his corner.
“Stay where you are!” she told him, without taking her eyes from the screen. Essu’s gun lay on the stand beside her. With neither Essu nor Neto to watch him, Thrakell was going to take careful handling.
She nudged Neto, Korm. Alert! Neto responded. Korm didn’t. He hadn’t felt the nudge consciously, but he was now aware that the action might be about to begin. He was eager for it Telzey had spent forty minutes working on him before he led them out of the hospital area. It was a patchwork job, but it would hold up as long as it had to. Korm’s fears and hesitancies had been blocked away; in his mind, he was the lordly Suan Uwin of a few years ago. Insult had been offered him, and there was a raging thirst for vengeance simmering just below the surface, ready to be triggered. His great knife hung from his belt along with two Elaigar guns.
Two of the four Otessans who’d been in view in the screen still stood near the shielded portal recess. The other pair had moved toward the corner of the structure, and a Sattaram now had appeared there and was speaking to them. Telzey’s finger rested on the door’s lock switch. She watched the three, biting her lip.
The Sattaram turned, went around the side of the structure. The two Otessans followed. As they vanished, she unlocked the door in the room below. Whisper of acknowledgment from Neto.
And now to keep Korm’s shield tight—tight . . .
He came into view below. The two remaining Otessans turned to look at him. He strode toward them, the fake Fossily mechanic trotting nimbly at his heels, keeping Korm between herself and the Otessans. Korm was huge, even among Sattarams. He was in the uniform of an officer of Boragost’s command, and his age-ravaged face was half hidden by black rank markings which identified him as one of Boragost’s temporary deputies. The two might be curious about what special duty brought him here, but no more than that.
He came up to them. His knife was abruptly deep in an Otessan chest.
They had flash reactions. The other had leaped sideways and back, and his gun was in his hand. It wasn’t Korm but the gun already waiting in Neto’s hand which brought that one down. She darted past him as the recess shield opened and the exit portal woke into gleaming life behind it. Through recess and portal—gone! The recess shield closed.
Korm’s guns and his fury erupted together. Turning from the screen, Telzey had a glimpse of Elaigar shapes appearing at the side of the structure, of two or three going down. Korm roared in savage triumph. He wouldn’t last long, but she’d locked the door on the lower level again. Survivors couldn’t get out until someone came to let them out . . .
That, however, might happen at any time.
She was seen twice on the way to the brightly lit big room where she and Tscharen had been captured, but nobody paid the purposefully moving mechanic any attention; and, of course, nobody saw Thrakell Dees. Another time they spotted an approaching Fossily work party led by a pair of Otessans, and got out of sight. They had to stay out of sight a while then—the mechanics were busy not far from their hiding place. Telzey drifted mentally about the Otessans, presently was following much of their talk.
There were interesting rumors going around about the accident in the headquarters compound of Stiltik’s command. The two had heard different versions. It was clear that the Suan Uwin’s mind hound had slipped its controls and made a shambles of the place. Stiltik’s carelessness . . . or could wily old Boragost have had a hand in that slipping? They argued the point. The mind hound was dead; so were an unspecified number of Stiltik’s top officers. Neither fact would hurt Boragost! But how could he have gone about it?
Stiltik, unfortunately, wasn’t among the casualties. She’d killed the dagen herself. Telzey thought it might at least keep her mind off the human psi for a while, though that wasn’t certain. The ambushed Boragost patrol apparently hadn’t been missed yet; nor was there mention of a maniac Sattaram who’d tried to wipe out the guards at Planetary Exit Three. The circuit should be simmering with rumors and speculations presently.
They reached the big room at last. Telzey motioned Thrakell to stand off to one side, then went toward the paneled wall through which she’d stepped with Tscharen, trying to remember the exact location of the portal. Not far from the center line of the room . . . She came to that point, and no dim portal outline appeared in the wall. She turned right, moved along the wall, left hand sliding across the panels. Eight steps on, her hand dipped into the wall. Now the portal was there in ghostly semivisibility.
She turned, beckoned to Thrakell Dees.
She’d memorized the route along which Tscharen had taken her, almost automatically, but thinking even then it wasn’t impossible she’d be returning over it by herself. She found now she had very little searching to do. It helped that these were small circuit sections, a few rooms cut here and there out of Tinokti’s buildings. It helped, too, that Thrakell remained on his best behavior. When they passed through the glimmering of a portal into another dim hall or room, he was closer to her than she liked, but that couldn’t be avoided. Essu’s gun was in a pocket on the side she kept turned away from him. Between portals he walked ahead of her without waiting to be told.
He knew they’d entered a sealed area and should know they were getting close to the place where she’d been brought into the circuit. Neither of them mentioned it. Telzey felt sure he didn’t have the slightest intention of letting her look into his mind, couldn’t afford to do it. What he did intend, beyond getting one of the key packs, remained obscure. Not a trickle of comprehensible thought had come through the blur of reproduced alien patterns, which now seemed to change from moment to moment as if Thrakell were mimicking first one species, then another. He might be trying to distract her. She had no further need of him as a guide; in fact, he soon could become a liability. The question was what to do with him.
She located the eight portals along the route in twice as many minutes. Then, at the end of a passage, there was a door. She motioned Thrakell aside again, tried the handle, drew the door back, and was looking down one side of the ell-shaped room into which she’d been transported from the Luerral Circuit. The other door, the one by which the three Alattas had entered, stood open. The big wall closet they’d used for storage was also open. A stink of burned materials came from it. So Stiltik’s searchers had been here.
She glanced at Thrakell. His intent little eyes met hers for an instant. She indicated the room. “Stand over there against the wall! I want to look around. And keep quiet—Stiltik had gadgets installed here. They still might be operating.”
He nodded, entered the room and stopped by the wall. Telzey went past him, to the comer of the ell. There were no signs of damage in the other part of the room. The portal which had brought her into the circuit might still be there, undetected, and one of the keys Tscharen had carried might activate it.
She’d wanted to find out about that. In an emergency, it c
ould be the last remaining way of escape.
There was an abrupt crashing sound high above her, to her left. Startled, she spun around, looking up-
Something whipped about her ankles and drew her legs together in a sudden violent jerk, throwing her off balance.
IX
She went down, turning, as the metal ring Thrakell had pitched against the overhead window strip to deflect her attention clattered to the floor. The Fossily bag on her back padded her fall. Thrakell, plunging toward her, came to an abrupt stop five feet away.
“You almost made it!” Telzey said softly. “But don’t you dare move now!”
He looked at the gun pointed at his middle. His face whitened. “I meant no harm! I—”
“Don’t talk either, Thrakell. You know I may have to kill you. So be careful!”
Thrakell was silent then. Telzey got into a sitting position, drew her legs up, looked at her ankles and back at Thrakell. The thing that clamped her legs together, held them locked tightly enough to be painful, was the round white cord which had been wrapped about his waist as a belt. No belt—a weapon, and one which had fooled Essu and his search instruments.
“How do you make it stop squeezing and come loose?” she asked.
It seemed there were controls installed in each tapered end of the slick white rope. Telzey told Thrakell to get down on hands and knees, stretched her legs out toward him, and had him crawl up until he could reach her ankles and free her. Then she edged back, got to her feet. The gun had remained pointed at Thrakell throughout. “Show me how to work it,” she said.
Thrakell looked glum, but showed her. It was simple enough. Hold the thing by one end, press the setting that prepared it to coil with the degree of force desired. Whatever it touched next was instantly wrapped up.
Telzey put the information to use, and the device soon held Thrakell’s wrists pinned together behind him.
“Now let me explain,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I realized the circuit exit of which you spoke must be somewhere nearby—probably in this room! I was afraid you might have decided to use it and leave me here. I only wanted to be certain you didn’t. Surely, you understand that!”
“Just stay where you are,” Telzey said.
The key packs she carried evoked no portal glimmer anywhere in the big room. The one which had transported her here probably had been destructured immediately afterwards. So there’d be no emergency escape open to her now by that route. Part of one of the walls of the adjoining room had been blasted away, down to the point where its materials were turned into unyielding slickness by the force field net pressing against them.
Telzey looked at the spot a moment. There had been a portal there, the one by which the three Atlattas had entered. But Stiltik’s search party had located it, and made sure it wouldn’t be used again. No other portal led away from the room.
She went back into the big room, told Thrakell, “Go stand against the wall over there, facing me.”
“Why?” he asked warily.
“Go ahead. We have to settle something.”
Thrakell moved over to the wall with obvious reluctance. “You haven’t accepted my explanation?”
“No,” Telzey said.
“If I’d wanted to hurt you, I could have set the cord as easily to break your legs!”
“Or my neck,” Telzey agreed. “I know you weren’t trying to do that. But I have to find out what you were trying to do. So get rid of that blur over your mind, and open your screens.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Thrakell said.
“You won’t do it?”
“I’m unable to do it. I can dispel one pattern only by forming another.” Thrakell shrugged, smiled. “I have no psi screen otherwise, and my mind evidently refuses to expose itself! I can do nothing about it consciously.”
“That’s about what I told Stiltik when she wanted me to open my screens,” Telzey said thoughtfully. “She didn’t believe me. I don’t believe you either.” She took Essu’s gun from her pocket.
Thrakell looked at the gun, at her face. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You might have killed me after I tripped you up. You felt threatened. But you won’t kill someone who’s helpless and can’t endanger you.”
“Don’t count on it,” Telzey said. “Right now, I’ll be trying not to kill you—but I probably will, anyway.”
Alarm showed in Thrakell’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to shoot as close to you as I can without hitting you,” Telzey explained. “But I’m not really that good a shot. Sooner or later, you’ll get hit.”
She lifted the gun, pointed it, pressed the trigger button. There was a thudding sound, and a blazing patch twice the size of her palm appeared on the wall four inches from Thrakell’s left ear. He cried out in fright, jerked away from it.
Telzey said, somewhat shakily, “That wasn’t where I was aiming! And you’d better not move again because I’ll be shooting on both sides . . . like this!”
She didn’t come quite as close to him this time, but Thrakell yelled and dropped to his knees.
“Above your head!” Telzey told him.
The concealing blur of mind patterns vanished. Thrakell was making harsh sobbing noises. Telzey placed the gun back in her pocket. Her hands were trembling. She drew in a slow breath.
“Keep it open,” she said.
Presently, she added, “I’ve got what I wanted—and I see you’re somebody I can’t control. You can blur up again. And stand up. We’re leaving. How long have you been working for Boragost?”
Thrakell swallowed. “Two years. I had no choice. I faced torture and death!”
“I saw that,” Telzey said. “Come along.”
She led the way from the room toward the portaled sections. She’d seen more than that. Thrakell Dees, as she’d suspected, hadn’t joined her with the intention of getting out of the Elaigar circuit. He couldn’t afford being investigated on Tinokti, particularly not by the Psychology Service; and if the Service learned about him from Neto or Telzey, he’d have no chance of avoiding an investigation. Besides, he’d made a rather good thing out of being a secret operator for Boragost. As he judged it, the Elaigar would remain securely entrenched on Tinokti and elsewhere in the Hub for a considerable time. There was no immediate reason to think of changing his way of life. However, he should be prepared to shift allegiance in case the showdown between Boragost and Stiltik left Stiltik on top, as it probably would. The return of Telzey alive was an offering which would smooth his way with Stiltik. He’d hoped to be able to add to it the report of an undiscovered portal used by Alattas.
Under its blurring patterns, Thrakell’s mind was wide open and unprotected. But Telzey couldn’t simply take control of him as she’d intended. She’d heard there were psi minds like that; Thrakell’s was the first she’d encountered. There seemed to be none of the standard control points by which a mind could be secured, and she didn’t have time for experimentation. Boragost hadn’t found a way to control Thrakell directly. It wasn’t likely she would.
She said over her shoulder, “I’m taking you along because the only other thing I can do at the moment is kill you, and I’d still rather not. Don’t ask questions—I’m not telling you anything. You’ll just be there. Don’t interfere or try to get away! If I shoot at you again, I won’t be trying to miss.”
There were portals in the string of sections she’d come through which led deeper into the circuit’s sealed areas. At least, there had to be one such portal. The three Alattas had used it in effecting their withdrawal; so had Stiltik’s hunters in following them. It should open to one of the keys that had been part of Tscharen’s pack.
Telzey found the portal in the second section up from the big room, passed through it with Thrakell Dees into another nondescript place, dingy and windowless. A portal presently awoke to glimmering life in one of the walls. They went on.
The next section was very dimly lit and
apparently extensive. Telzey stationed Thrakell in the main passage, went into a room, checked it and an adjoining room out, returned to the passage, started along it—
Slight creak of the neglected flooring—and abrupt blazing awareness of something overlooked! She dropped to her knees, bent forward, clawing out Essu’s gun.
Thrakell’s strangle rope slapped against the passage wall above her. She rolled away from it as it fell, and Thrakell pounced on her, pinning her to the floor on her side, the gun beneath her. She forced it out, twisted the muzzle up, pressed the trigger blindly. There was the thudding sound of the charge, and a yell of alarm from Thrakell. Something ripped at the Fossily suit. Then his weight was abruptly off her. She rolled over, saw him darting along the passage toward the portal through which they’d come, knew he’d got one or both of her key packs.
She pointed the gun at the moving figure, pressed the trigger five or six times as quickly as she could. She missed Thrakell. But the charges formed a sudden blazing pattern on the portal wall ahead of him, and he veered aside out of the line of fire and vanished through a doorspace that opened on the passage.
Breathing hard, Telzey came up on her knees, saw one of the key packs lying beside her, picked it up, looked at it and put it in her left suit pocket. The pocket on the right side had been almost torn off, and Thrakell had got away with the other pack. Something stirred behind her. She glanced around, saw the white rope lying against the wall a few feet away—stretched out, shifting, turning with stiff springy motions, unable to grip what it had touched. She stood up on shaky legs, reached down until the gun almost touched the thing, and blasted it apart. Thrakell wasn’t going to be able to use that device against her again—this time it had been aimed at her neck.
She started quietly down the passage toward the doorspace, gun held ready to fire. No sounds came from anywhere in the section, and she could pick up no trace of Thrakell’s camouflage patterns. She didn’t like that. He might have tricks he hadn’t revealed so far.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 240