by Andre Norton
Once or twice he wondered if they looked upon him also as an animal, one with superior talents for communication. But better to be an animal, with such a life as they were giving him, than Dung. Always they talked to him as if he were straight and tall and of as fair a body as they. At length (though he never asked any questions, lest by doing so he would offend) he learned that it was in their minds to gather together animals, even such as Toggor, and to transport them from world to world showing that indeed all life was kin and that creatures were to be welcomed as brothers and sisters rather than be kept in such slavery as Russtif had held the smux.
So far they only had three such – for the venture depended, Farree came swiftly to understand, on the ability to communicate by the mind touch. There was Yazz, who also had been bought from a showman and remembered a past in the high mountain country before she was entrapped by hunters; there was the smux; and, kept in a hut near the ship, there was a bartle the spacers named Bojor.
Had Farree not seen the bartle loosed from a chain and coming to pay homage to Maelen by licking her feet, he would have raced from the hut as fast as his bent legs would carry him. For a bartle was one of the menaces in stories of the early days on Grant's World. He had seen bartle claws strung on ident disc chains and worn with pride by any fortunate to have them.
When the bartle arose on his hind paws, he topped Lord-One Krip. His body was massive enough to make three of the man's. This being the shedding season, great patches of coarse hair lay on the floor of the hut, and the sleek underhide shone through in green-gray spots.
The off-worlders visited the bartle for many hours each day, the man grooming out the dead fur, both of them communicating with the beast. Farree, who knew that only one of those huge paws needed to descend on him to leave a smear of broken bones and blood, kept his distance at first. But, caught up in the mind exchange that held the other, he began to think of the shaggy beast as another person – odd and queer to be sure, but no different in that respect from many of the aliens which he had viewed from hiding around the port.
The alterations in the ship were slow, and soon Lord-One Krip spent more time there, urging on the fitters, for it would seem that for some reason he and the Lady Maelen wished to be in space as soon as possible.
In space! Farree's thought shied away from that, and he refused to think again into the future. Then he would be back in the Limits again. This time – this time when there was no more – Sitting in the doorway of the bartle's place he had begun that train of thought that he could no longer shove away. They would go with the bartle, Toggor, and Yazz, and He – he would —
"Come with us!"
Farree gave a start. His hands clenched and his head swung at a painful angle so he could see the Lady Maelen's face. He had thought her busy with clipping the bartle's claws. The big beast had been biting at them, being no longer able to wear them out upon the stones of the distant canyons. No, she was not looking to Farree but he was sure that he had caught that thought.
"You did. You come with us."
"Off-world?" He swallowed, and it hurt as if his inner throat was raw.
"If you wish it, it is so." She did not look at him even now, but there was such certainty in her thought that he had to accept that she meant it.
"If I wish – " He could not quite believe. This was more of the dream from which he hoped there would be no more waking. "If I wish – Lady – " His hands twisted the robe across his misshapen breast. "There is no other wish in me – "
"Then it is so." Now she did look at him, and she smiled.
He felt as if he were Yazz, and wished to creep close and nuzzle at her hands and signal with a tail he did not have.
The dream was continuing!
"There is trouble again with Kem-fu." Lord-One Krip had come up without Farree noting. "The fittings must be relaid." The man was frowning and tapping his fingertips on his cal as he did, Farree knew, whenever he was disturbed.
"Yet he set those himself." Lady Maelen got to her feet.
"Why now this difficulty?"
"Ask me not. It was almost as if – " Farree saw the frown on the man's face deepen. "As if," he continued after a moment, "he was deliberately delaying us. And the moon – "
"Why would he deliberately delay us? There would be no reason for it."
"No reason except Sehkmet and what was wrought there. That was a raider snatch first, and, when we spoiled that game and uncovered the great treasure, the Guild did not take it kindly. It depends upon how far the true story has been spread. And who was really behind that operation to loot the tombs of the sleepers."
"But what would they get from us? Our share of the finding fee is safe now, and they would have no chance at it. What we do here has nothing to do with any Guild or raider plotting. That is finished, and on Yiktor there is nothing which would draw them. They seek large returns, not the looting of a small planet where lordling has fought lordling until nothing flourishes to tempt even a Free Trader."
"Revenge, perhaps, or for us to furnish a lesson. I will have the inspectors out before we up ship, and that is the truth if I ever spoke it!"
The Lady Maelen smiled. "It is probably just that this contractor deals with such a ship as he has never seen before. Thus he goes slow and makes mistakes."
"The moon," returned Lord-One Krip shortly.
Now it was Lady Maelen's turn to frown. "We have allowed time; surely we have allowed enough time."
"True enough, but time runs fast. We must lift ship in the next seven days if we are to make it."
"Kem-fu – " Farree did not understand all this about moons and treasure, but he did know much of what went on in the Limits. "He loses much at the tables in the Go-far. It is known that he is in debt to Gerog L'Kumb."
Lord-One Krip looked down, startled. "What else do you know, Farree? This is of importance. Great importance."
Chapter 3.
Though Farree had half, or maybe more, of the lore of the Limits collected mindwise, he had to do some sorting before he answered.
"It is said . . ."He stopped. He wanted to be very careful to separate rumor and what he knew from observation and actual overhearing of news. Such a one as he was so much a part of the general trash of the Limits that few watched their tongues when he crouched or shuffled nearby.
"It is said," he began slowly once again, "that Gerog L'Kumb has as much power in the Limits as the Lawspeakers of the Great City. Yet he is seldom seen or heard to use it. For one to speak his name is enough to make a desire an act. He has his own eyes and ears everywhere. And, Lord-One – "
"Krip," the other corrected him mechanically.
"K-Krip." Farree stumbled over the saying of that name without any honorifics. "If it be his wish to delay the work upon your ship, then it will – be delayed. It is said that oftentimes he does such until he is paid more, and then out of the ground come the needed men and straightaway all is done as was first ordered."
"Extortion." The Lord-One's mouth became a thin line. The Lady Maelen nodded. "And we are fit victims for such a game. Perhaps that he also knows."
Farree drew as deep a breath as his constricted lungs would allow. "Let this one," he said then, "put on rags and go back to the Limits. To no one he matters, and that he has been gone for days – that would not have been noted. While he was sheltered by you, few here knew it, either. Is that not so?"
"And if it has been noted and reported to the Lord of the Limits, and you appeared again, what excuse – "
Farree lifted his head as far as he could. "There are Lords in the upper town who keep twisted ones such as I for as long as we afford them a certain amusement. When we are no longer of interest we return to the Limits—if we are lucky."
"And if you are not lucky?" asked Lady Maelen. Farree shivered and doubled his fists. "There are other ways of amusement. Lady. To them such mistakes of birth are to be used and discarded at will."
"I do not think that I like the customs here," she declared. "So,
little one, you could return to the Limits as one who has served your purpose with us?"
"As long as I stay well away from Russtif, yes, that I could do. And men talk before beasts – though you have shown me that perhaps the beasts might also undo plans if they met such great ones as you thereafter. In the Limits I am such a one as is not worth as much as Toggor would win in a battle match."
"I do not like it," she returned promptly. "To put you into such danger as that—"
"Lady, I have had ten seasons in the Limits and still I live." Farree held himself as erect as possible. "I am not lacking in a game of peering and prying. If time is what you fear, then it is best for you to use any tool to hand – such as Dung." For the first time in days he used his old name, the one he had hoped to forget.
Lord-One Krip looked to the woman over Farree's upward-straining head. "If this is meant to hold us planet down as he thinks, the Guild may be behind it. They would not have taken kindly to our interference with their looting on Sehkmet. And if we are bucking the Guild—the sooner we know it the better. What do you know of the Thieves Guild, Farree? And are you still as willing to venture in, if it is a matter of theirs this L'Kumb busies himself with now?"
The Thieves Guild! Farree's pointed tongue caressed his lower lip. To go up against the all-powerful Guild – yes, that was a different matter. Yet he believed that he could sink once more into the Limits and pass from sight of anyone save perhaps some grotesque scavenger such as he had been.
"You will take me, Lord-One, to the gate. Perhaps you should drive me forth with kicks and curses, having discovered that I stole from you. That would be as they expect." He put a hand out to the door of the bartle's hut. "It is moon dark for three nights, and the shadows are my old home. I can listen very well."
A small body thudded against his own, and, as limited as that force was, he near lost his balance. Toggor had crawled out of Lady Maelen's belt pouch to spring at Farree. He scuttled up to that unsightly hump and squatted in the narrow hollow between head and shoulder. When the Lady reached for him, he hissed sharply, warning her off.
Farree strove also to dislodge the smux, but the mental contact came sharper and clearer than he had ever received it before, as if the days spent with the off-worlders had honed a weapon to an edge fit to shave a hair.
"Go with. Hide, but go with!"
The Lady drew back and nodded as if the smux was suddenly one of her own kind with whom she was in full communication. Perhaps contact with the creature for some days had given her that power. But Farree was afraid.
"Russtif – " He made a mental picture of the beast seller.
"No see – hide." With that the smux burrowed under the edge of Farree's robe, his claw tips tickling as he made his way from hump to breast and there settled himself, the stiff bristles of his hair rasping Parree's skin as he clung to the inside of the garment.
"So be it," the Lord-One said. "Two days we shall wait, while I also shall try to discover why our work goes so slowly. Then you will return, whether you have learned anything or not." He slipped one of his long-fingered hands under Farree's pointed chin and stared down into the hunchback's wide eyes with such command that Farree was forced to agree, knowing well that he could not deny that order. These two were not like any others he had known, and he could not guess what form their control might take – even an unrecognized molding of his own mind to obey.
He stood as soon as the Lord-One released him and scooped up some of the dust and straw by the door, smearing it with a careful hand down the fore of his robe.
"You shall shout evil after me, kick me forth – " he told the Lord-One. "Do this with no lightness. Any who watch – as you may be watched – must be deceived."
"Well enough!" The Lord-One reached down to grab his knotted shoulder and hurled him out of the hut. As Farree sprawled forward on the ground, one hand curved over the hidden smux to protect it from harm, he felt the pain of a well-placed kick. Loud in his ears were curses noted in the trade lingo and others which must be in the Lord-One's own tongue.
A booted toe scraped along the side of his tousled head, and he uttered a cry of fear as he scuttled, first on hands and knees, and then on his feet, away from the hut across the field toward the gate. Behind him came the Lord-One, yelling curses and accusations that this was a thief no honest man would want around, and when Farree slowed by the gate the boot caught him again, this time in his side and with enough force to leave a bruised hurt. The two guards on duty only laughed, and one of them swung the stock of his gas rod, thudding it home with such vigor above the hump that Farree nearly lost his balance again.
He ran as he had run many times in the past, heading for the nearest straggle of buildings marking the Limits. Out of somewhere a clod of hard earth struck his ear and brought another cry out of him.
He scuttled between buildings, twice slipping in the noisome scum that marked all but the main ways of the Limits, and kept on running until a sharp pain under his ribs brought him up to hold a tent rope, gasping.
Though his robe was not tattered, it was bespattered with dirt and foulness, and he believed that his appearance was little better than when the lordly ones had led him forth from this place of ever-abiding terror and despair.
However, his wits had not been dimmed along with the cleanliness of his robe. Now, even as he breathed in gasps, he looked about him, trying to fathom where to lurk to learn what he had come to pick up. To keep well away from Russtif's section of the Limits was also necessary.
This was a section of drinking booths ready to catch the lower ranks from any ship which finned down on the landing field. Though it was not alive with custom as it would be later on, there were enough men in the shacks to make a din that Farree found loud after his days in the upper town. He dodged a staggering, singing couple who wavered out of the nearest den and slunk along behind the crude buildings.
Toggor was riding right under his chin now, eyestalks were extending over the collar of the robe. The smux seemed to be watching their surroundings with a purpose, Farree thought, equal to his own.
He approached L'Kumb's gambling establishment and squatted down near its door. There was an old superstition which he loathed – that to rub the hump of such as he would increase a man's luck. He had never willingly allowed it before, but now he had a purpose in which he could accept debasement. Thus, he squatted with his thin knees poked up, both hands resting in the dust of the ground, his head turned up as far as he could. His back was to the wall of the shack. He tried to tune in the voices inside, but he found them too muffled to follow – save for the cries brought about by success or failure.
A man wearing the worn leather of a space officer – lighter spots on the breast from which insignia had been ripped away – trod purposefully forward. Farree recognized the type: a planeted junior officer who had been fired from or missed his ship and was on the downward road into the floating trash of the Limits. He was darkly browned as became an off-worlder – even his scalp, for it had either been shaved or he was naturally hairless.
In spite of the evidence of his worn clothing, he did not look like one of the lost. There were no dribbles of Graz from the comers of his wide mouth and he walked with the alert stride of one who had purpose in life. As he came, Farree saw that he shot sharp glances about him, even over his shoulders, as if he thought he might be under surveillance. From one of the Limits guards who wanted a larger bribe than could be gotten out of that shabby belt pouch? The pouch was not flat, Farree saw, and he noted that the spacer's hand was never far from it. Therefore he must be in funds – and so would be welcome in L'Kumb's establishment.
Then those keen eyes, which seemed to belie the role the other was playing, caught and held on Farree, and the spacer swung a little out of his way, his hand dropping to thump the hunchback sharply between his bowed shoulders.
"Wish me luck, Dung." He fumbled inside the vest he wore and from an inner pocket produced a bit, a section split from a well-worn stella
r, snapping it to the ground before Farree's bare toes.
"Luck." Farree mouthed the word obediently but absently for he was surprised. To his memory this off-worlder was a stranger. How could he use the noisome name known to the Limits? How many strangers might then have heard of Dung and would mark his coming and going?
The man had already turned away and was passing through the doorless entrance of the shack. Farree's hand closed over the fragment of metal he had been thrown. Though he wanted to hurl it from him, that gesture would be foolish. He needed to eat if he stayed for any time in the Limits, and this would provide him with a bowl of stew at Hangstna's tent, as long as he was content to enter the kitchen half and bestow it on Mug the waiter-bartender.
Toggor moved and wriggled out of the neck of Farree's tunic, swinging down onto the hunchback's knee where he squatted, retracting three of his eyestalks and whirling the others about in a way which could make a viewer a little dizzy to watch.
"What? What see?"
Perhaps his association with the two spacers and their communication from mind to mind had strengthened Farree's own powers. The swing of touch in and out that had always been a part of his contact with Toggor was less, and he had caught what was surely a question much more easily than he ever had before. A thought of his own struck Farree, and he touched the smux on his bristled back just below the head. Could he use the small creature to go where he could not venture without risking an end to his mission?
"Toggor see?" He shaped the message so that it was a question, and promptly enough came the answer.
"Toggor see—what?"
"In." Farree jerked a claw thumb at the shed. "Hide – see?" But it was not going to be easy. The smux drew together into a ball as always when threatened by something greater than himself. The sense of refusal struck without words to center it. It had been only a passing thought. Farree resigned himself regretfully. All kinds of parasites and vermin roamed the Limits – some of them deadly. He had fought twice for his own life against the slashing-toothed vir that hunted in packs and, when forced by hunger, were known to have set upon sleeping drunks and left nothing but well-stripped bones behind.