Catseye

by Andre Norton

  “There is still Zul,” Simba agreed. “But let Zul follow us before we lay a trap for his feet.”

  Troy must have slept. He aroused with light in his eyes, sat up groggily, for a moment unable to remember where he was. Then the golden sky of morning, patterned with the clouds of fair weather, recalled the immediate past. Under him the flitter rode steadily on the course he had set—eastward.

  He looked down through the bubble, expecting to see the rolling plains he had hoped to find. They spread beneath him right enough, only ahead was a distant smudge of darker vegetation, the sign of a forest or more broken ground. They must have passed over a large section of the open territory during the night and were leagues deep into the reserve, farther than the Tikil hunting parties ever went. Troy rubbed his eyes, began to think again.

  The only way they could be traced now was by the flitter. Suppose he were to land by the edge of that distant wood and then send the flyer off on remote control—back to the west? One way of confusing the pursuit.

  But, as he reached for the controls, to take the flyer back under manual pilotage again, his time had run out. The flitter plunged crazily, caught in the side sweep of a traction beam. Troy gave one startled look to the rear, saw another flyer boring down his track.

  Perhaps a more skilled pilot could have done better. His evasive swings only kept him out of the direct core of the beam the other had trained upon his craft. He set the air speed to the top notch, striving to reach the wood before the other pinned him squarely.

  At last Troy set down, felt the wheels of the flitter catch and tear through the long grass. But that grass could cover his passengers’ escape. He slewed the flyer about, broadside to the first tongue of woods cover. Opening the door of the cabin before they bumped to a complete halt, he gave his last command to the animals: “Out and hide!”

  Sahiba he set down himself, saw her limp into a tangle of grass with her mate, the foxes and the kinkajou already gone. Then Troy sent the flyer on, scuttling along the ground as far and as fast from the point where he had dropped his live cargo as he could get.

  The flitter rocked, half lifted from the ground. Now he was pinned to his seat, helpless, unable to raise as much as a finger from the controls. They had a pinner beam on him, and he was a captive forced to wait for the arrival of his pursuer.

  Unable to as much as turn his head, Troy sat sweating out the minutes of that wait. At least they wanted to take him prisoner, not just blast him out of the air as they might have done. Whether this was good or bad he had yet to learn. And whether his captors were rangers, patrollers, or Zul’s ambiguous force he would know shortly.

  The cabin door was pulled open. Though he could not turn his head, Troy rolled his eyes to the right far enough to see that the man who had thrust head and shoulders into that confined space was not wearing the hide forest dress of the Clans, nor the uniform of a patroller. Zul’s party—?

  Paying little or no attention to the helpless prisoner before the controls, the other searched the floor, squeezed behind the seat to survey the storage space. Undoubtedly he was looking for the animals. And, guessing that, Troy’s spirits rose a small fraction. They had either not noted his brief pause by the tongue of woodland, or they had not understood the reason for it. They had expected to find not one but six helpless in the flitter.

  The man backed out of the door. “Not here.” Troy heard his call.

  Though he knew he could not fight the tension bands of a pinner, Troy strove to move just his hand. The blaster butt was a painful knob against his chest, held upright by his belt. If he could only close his fingers about that, the man by the door and the one he reported to—he could turn tables on both of them. But, though blood throbbed in his temples from his efforts, he was held motionless and unable to resist any attack the others chose to make.

  His eyes began to ache with the strain of trying to keep watch on the door of the cabin. But he did not have too long to wait. Zul, his yellow face a mask of pure and unshielded malignancy, took the place of his hireling there. As the other had done, he searched the floor of the machine, apparently unwilling or unable to accept that first report. Then he looked directly at Troy.

  “They are gone!” He said that flatly.

  At least vocal cords and throat muscles were not governed by the pinner. Troy was able to answer. “Where you will not find them.”

  Zul did not reply to that. Withdrawing from the cabin, he gave a low-voiced order. After a moment the door beside Troy was opened, and his disobedient muscles could not save him from hilling through it, dropping to the ground on his face.

  But the fall had removed him from the direct line of the pinner, and now he was free to move as the others, protected by countercharge buttons, had moved within the machine. He tried to get to his knees but he was not quick enough. A sharp pain burst at the nape of his neck, and he sprawled forward again, into the trampled grass of the plains.

  Troy roused to utter darkness, a black that was frightening with its suggestion of blindness. And as he tried to raise his hand to his eyes, he made the discovery that he was bound, this time by no pinner but by very real cords, which chafed his wrists, drew hard loops about his ankles. A moment’s experimentation informed him that it was no easier to loosen those than it had been to fight the beam. And he also learned that the dark came from an efficient and bewildering blindfold.

  Whatever the intentions of his captors, they wanted to keep him alive for the present—and in reasonably good shape. Having made sure of his status as a wrapped package, Troy tried to figure out where he now was. The vibration, the small rough jolts of a swift air flight, were transmitted to his body through the surface on which he lay. His legs were curled behind him in a manner to stiffen muscles with cramp if he did not change position, and he could not. So Troy guessed that he now lay in the storage compartment of a flitter, in either the one in which he had made the dash from Ruhkarv, or the one in which Zul had tracked him.

  And with Zul in command of that party, Troy thought that they must now be headed back toward Tikil—Tikil and perhaps the man who gave the orders now that Kyger was dead. The animals—They had expected to find them in the flitter. After they had stunned him had they discovered the animals? With nothing to bring them out of the woodland as Zul had drawn them with the summoner, Troy doubted that any of those who held him prisoner could have picked up the four-footed fugitives.

  He tested his hope by trying to reach one of the animals with the mind touch. There was no response; he apparently had no fellow captives. Nor could he hear anything except the normal noises of a competently piloted flitter going at top legal speed—which meant they were flying high.

  He had no way of telling how long he had been unconscious. But his middle was a hollow ache of hunger, and the thirst drying his throat was an additional pain; it was hard to remember now just when he had eaten last, harder yet to think back to a full drink of water. And these torments, added to the discomfort of his present position, spoiled his efforts to plan clearly, to try to speculate concerning what lay ahead of him at the end of this journey.

  Troy wriggled, trying to work his legs straighter, then became aware of a change in the tempo of their flight. The pilot was cutting air speed, with a jerk that shook the flyer every time they dropped a notch—which argued the need for saving time. They must be ready to drop into a lower lane—could they be approaching Tikil?

  Lying in his cramped curl, Troy tried to sort out the few impressions he could gather through the vibration of the flyer, the difference in small sounds. Yes, they were definitely dropping to a lower lane. Then he caught the whistle of a patroller flitter.

  Troy tensed. Was this flyer being overhauled by the law?

  But if the pilot had been questioned, he had been able to give the right signal answer, for there was no change in the beat of the engine—they had not been ordered to set down. However, the speed decreased another notch. They were now traveling at the placid rate required for a low
city lane, one used preparatory to landing.

  Landing where? Troy’s whole body ached now with the strain of trying to evaluate what he heard and felt. The swoop of the flitter he had been expecting. Then came the slight bound of a too-quick wheel touch, and the engine was snapped off.

  Play dead, Troy thought. Let them haul him about as if he were still unconscious until he learned what he could. He forced his muscles to relax as well as he was able.

  Air blew through the flitter. He heard the scrape of boots. Then another panel was opened only a few inches beyond his head. Hands, hooked in his armpits, jerked him roughly backward so that his legs hit the pavement. Grunting, the man who had unloaded him continued to drag Troy along.

  But the air was providing the blindfolded prisoner with a clue to his whereabouts. Only one place had ever held that particular combination of strong odors—the courtyard of Kyger’s shop. He was back to where he had started from days before.

  He thudded to the ground, dropped by his guard, then heard the faint squeak of a panel door. Once more hands hooked under him and he was manhandled along. Again his nose supplied a destination. This was the storeroom off the courtyard. Troy was allowed to fall unceremoniously, his head and shoulders against a bag of grain, so that he was half sitting. He made his head loll forward in what he hoped was a convincing display of unconsciousness.

  But if this convinced his captors, they were no longer willing to let him remain unaware of his plight. Out of nowhere the flat of a palm smacked one cheek, snapping his head back against the bag. And a second stinging slap shook him equally as much.

  “What—?” He did not need to counterfeit that dazed query.

  “Wake up, Dippleman!” That was Zul. Yet Troy was sure the small man did not have the strength to drag him here. There must be at least two of them beside him in the storeroom.

  “What—?” Troy began again.

  “Use your mouth for this.”

  A hard metal edge was thrust against his lips with force enough to pinch flesh painfully against his teeth, and then he almost choked as a substance that was neither liquid nor solid but more nearly a thick soup filled his mouth and he had to swallow, a portion trickling out greasily over his chin. It had a bitter taste, but he could not struggle against their force-feeding methods, and about a cupful of it burned down his throat into his stomach.

  “Will that hold?” someone, he thought it was Zul, asked.

  “Never failed yet,” returned a stranger briskly. “He’ll be as frisky as one of those Dandle pups of yours about five hours from now. That’s what you want, is it not? Up until then you can leave him here with all the doors wide open and he will not get lost. We know our job, Citizen.”

  Troy’s head flopped forward on his chest once more as the other released his grip. There was no need to sham helplessness. Spreading outward from that warmth in his stomach was a numbness that attacked muscles and nerves; he was completely unable to move. One of the notorious drugs used by the Guild. But, Troy thought dimly, that made this a highly expensive job—to include scientific drugging would put the price in the upper credit brackets. And where had Zul managed to lay his hands on that kind of funds—and the proper connections?

  The numbness that had first affected his body now reached his mind. There was a dreamy lassitude in which nothing mattered. He lay quietly, drifting along on a softly swaying cloud that spiraled up lazily higher than any flitter could climb—

  Cold—very cold—The cold centered in his head—no, in his mouth. Troy swallowed convulsively and the cold was in his throat—his middle—

  “Thought you said he would be ready—” Words, the very sound of which jarred in his head.

  “Does not usually work this way—unless he had an empty stomach to begin with.” More words—protesting—hurting his head.

  The cold spread outward, up through his shoulders, down his thighs, into his arms, hands, fingers, legs, and toes—a cold that bit, though he was unable to shiver.

  “Get some sub-four into him now!” The order was rapped out in a louder tone.

  More liquid splashed into his mouth, to dribble out again because he had no control over slack lips. Then his mouth was refilled, a palm held with brutal force over his lips, and he swallowed. The taste this time was sweet, cloying. But it drove out the ice as it went down him, bringing a glow, a feeling of returning energy and fitness, which was like a raw life force being pumped into his veins to supply new vigor for his body.

  “That does it.” The hand that had been over his lips slipped down to rest on the pulse in his throat, then farther, inside his tunic, to touch directly over his heart. “He is coming around all right. He will be ripe and ready when you want him.”

  The fatigue, the hunger, the thirst of which Troy had been so conscious were gone. He was fully alert, not only physically but mentally, with an added fillip of rising self-confidence—though he mistrusted the latter, for that emotion might be born of the succession of drugs they had forced into him. A haffer addict, for example, simply did not believe that failure of any of his projects was possible. Had they pumped him full of something that would make him as amenable to their will or wills as the animals had been to Kyger’s summoning tube?

  However, for the moment they left him. His nose told Troy he was still in the storeroom of the shop, the bag of grain propping his shoulders. Beyond that there was little that hearing, touch, or smell could add. Time had long ceased to have any meaning at all in his blindfolded world—this might be tomorrow, or several tomorrows, after that hour when he had dumped the animals in the Wild.

  The animals! Once more he put his newly alerted mind to trying to establish contact with them. If they had been located and captured, he could not tell, for to all his soundless calls there came no replies.

  Click of boot soles, the scrape of the door panel, boot soles again much louder. Then the smell of clothes worn about animals too long—the odor of a human body. Troy found a snatch of time in which to marvel at his heightened sense of smell.

  There was a tug at the bindings about his ankles, those bonds pulled off. Then a hand dug fingers into his shoulder.

  “Up and walk, Dippleman! You go on your own two feet this time.”

  He staggered a step or two, brought up painfully against the sharp edge of a box. The hand came again to steer him with a shove that made him waver. So propelled, he emerged into the courtyard, heard the purr of a waiting flitter ready to take off.

  His guard steered him to the flyer, and he was loaded by two men, not into the driver’s seat but once more into that storage space in which he had ridden back to Tikil. He was sure of only two things: that Zul was in charge of his transportation—he had heard the small man’s grunt of assent from the pilot’s seat before they lifted—and that the Thieves’ Guild, Blasterman’s Section (highest paid of all the illegal services on Korwar), was in command of the prisoner’s keeping, which was enough to dampen thoroughly all hopes of escape, or even of a try at defense.

  SEVENTEEN

  But their lift into space was a very short one—perhaps it only cleared the division between courtyard and street. They descended gently, the wheels touched pavement, and the flitter proceeded as a ground car. Which meant that their destination was somewhere within the business sector of the city and not one of the outlying villas. A warehouse—an office? It would have to be where the entrance of a blindfolded, bound man, accompanied by at least one guard, would not attract attention. If this was night, a goal in the business district or among the warehouses would meet those requirements.

  Troy tried to remember the geography of Tikil in relation to Kyger’s but found that a hopeless task. Unless he was on his feet in the open, his eyes unbandaged, he could not even effectively retrace his way to the Dipple.

  They turned once, twice, their speed a decorous one well within the limit. And undoubtedly they were taking every precaution against any irregularity of action or appearance that could awaken suspicion in a patroller�
��s mind. The Guild were skilled workmen and this was a Guild protection project, which meant that Troy might well be on his way to some hidden headquarters of that power. Only he did not believe so. It was more likely he was being taken to face, or at least be inspected by, Zul’s new employer.

  Another turn. Neither man in the driver’s seat spoke. Troy deduced by the volume of street noise that the hour must be one of late evening. They had joined homeward-bound traffic, which meant they were not heading toward the warehouses.

  The flitter came to a stop. Troy, with his heightened senses of smell and hearing, knew that one of the men had leaned across the partition and was hanging head and shoulders above him.

  “Listen, you.” The words were bitten off dryly, and Troy knew that the speaker meant them. “You are going to get out and walk, Dippleman. And you are going to do it nice and easy without any noise or confusion. I’ll have a nerve-block grip on you all the way. Make any trouble and you will still walk—but not nice and easy. You will sweat blood with every step. Understand?”

  Troy nodded his head violently, hoping that the other could see that gesture. He had not the slightest desire to suffer the promised correction for the fault of causing his captor any trouble.

  The other assisted him out of the flitter and kept a tight fingerhold on him. They walked, as his guard had promised, “nice and easy” across a strip of pavement.

  Troy sniffed vegetation. They must be in a dwelling-house district. There was a slight pause, probably waiting for the householder to release a door-panel lock. Then their slow march started once again, the click of boot heels deadened by foam-set floor covering.

  Troy’s head jerked suddenly. Just as he had known they had returned him to Kyger’s storeroom, so did he now guess where he stood. There could not be two such establishments in Tikill But knowledge brought with it complete bewilderment—almost shock.

  What did the clerk Dragur, living in the midst of a collection of marine horrors, have to do with Kyger’s secret employment?