That told me two things, neither of which gave me any great measure of comfort; Hayes had spotted me and was staying close. And Sam was near, somewhere out in the darkening forest.
Sam's tracks were heading northwest. I swung the horse in that direction and bent forward in the saddle, reaching down for the tranquilizer gun.
The boom of the gun's report shattered the stillness, and a shower of splinters ripped at my face as the slug tore into the tree directly behind me. It was followed by a second shot, but I was already huddled down over the horse's neck, urging him on at full speed through the brush. Suddenly the trees were gone and we were floundering in the deep snow at the edge of a clearing.
My head down, I had no warning save for an intense, electrical sensation along my spine a split second before the horse screamed and reared. The reins were jerked out of my hands and I made a grab at the horse's mane, but it was useless; I flew off his back, landing on my side in the snow, half stunned.
I was still gripping the tranquilizer gun, and the bag of bloody meat had fallen off with me, but the rest of my supplies, including the rifle, were still on the horse that was galloping off through the snow.
I sat up and let loose a selected string of obscenities, vowing that I would never again go to see another Western.
I felt his presence before I actually saw him. That presence was very real, yet somehow out of place, like a half-remembered nightmare from childhood. I turned my head slowly, straining to pierce the gathering dusk. Finally I saw him, about thirty yards away, his tawny shape almost hidden by the shadow of the forest.
"Sam," I whispered. "Easy, Sam."
He seemed bigger than I remembered, magnified rather than diminished by the vastness of his surroundings. Thousands of miles away from his native India, crouched in alien snow, he was still, in a very real sense, home, freed from the smells of men and popcorn.
Sam flowed, rather than moved; his belly slid across the snow, and his eyes glittered. I was being stalked.
The snow around me was spattered red from the contents of the broken bag; I was the piece de resistance, sitting in the middle of a pool of beef and chicken blood.
I began to giggle. Whether it was from the shock of the fall, or out of sheer terror, or an appreciation of the ultimate absurdity of my position, I wasn't sure. It simply struck me as enormously funny that a dwarf should be sitting in the snow facing a hurt, hungry tiger, with nothing but a tranquilizer gun and pockets full of dog biscuits.
As a last line of defense, I had the flare gun and one flare in an inner pocket, but that would have to be removed and loaded. It was obvious that I wasn't going to have time, even if I chose to use it.
Still giggling, my hair standing on end, I slowly crawled away from the patches of blood. Sam, seeing me move, stopped and crouched still lower, his ears pointed and his lips curled back in a snarl.
I slowly cocked the tranquilizer gun and brought it around to a firing position. The muscles on Sam's flanks fluttered; the movement had made him nervous, and he was ready to charge.
Still I waited. There was only one cartridge in the gun. One shot. I would have to make it count, waiting until the last moment to make sure I didn't miss.
The muscles bunched in Sam's hind legs, and I brought my gun up to firing position. At the same time I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, to the left, behind Sam.
Hayes. Ignoring me, he had drawn a bead on Sam. My next action was pure reflex. It had nothing to do with conscious thought, but with some mad emotional need deep within my being. I wheeled on Hayes and pulled the trigger on my gun.
The dart caught him in the left side, slicing neatly through the layers of his clothing and piercing his flesh.
His gun discharged harmlessly in the air as he clawed at the dart in his side. But the effect of the drug was almost instantaneous; Hayes stiffened, then toppled over in the snow, out of my line of sight.
Now I was in a bit of a jam. Sam had already begun his charge, and about all I could do was throw my arms up in front of my face. But the report of the gun had startled Sam, frightened him and thrown him off his stride. By the time he reached me, he was already trying to brake his charge, looking back over his shoulder.
He veered to the side, ramming into me and knocking me over. I rolled, frantically clawing at the zipper on my parka. But rolling in the snow, fingers frozen with fear, is not the optimum condition under which to unzip a jacket. Besides, it was stuck.
I ended up on my knees, staring at Sam, who was squatting about fifteen yards away. I could see the wound on his leg now where Hayes or one of his men had jabbed him; it was raw and festering, enough to drive any animal wild with pain.
But Sam wasn't moving, and he had his head cocked to one side. He seemed almost uncertain. I was past my giggling stage, and it occurred to me that there was just a chance he might have gotten a good whiff of me as he went past, and that it might have stirred memories.
A romantic thought, indeed. But it was the only hope I had.
"Sam." My voice was so weak I could hardly hear myself. I cleared my throat. "Sam! Hey, Sam! Hey, Sam!"
Animals occasionally grunt. Sam grunted.
"Hi! Sam!" It was time to assert myself. Gripping the tranquilizer gun by the barrel, I rose and slowly began to walk forward. "Okay, Sam. Easy Sam. It's all right. I'm not going to-"
I'd made a mistake, gone too far too fast. Sam was going to charge; I could see that now. He reared back, the muscles in his hind legs forming great knots. His ears lay flat against his head, and his lips curled back in a snarl. Suddenly he let out a thunderous roar.
And rolled over.
Sam was somewhat hampered by the wound on his leg, but he still managed a pretty fine roll. He came up and squatted, tongue out, staring at me. Not getting any reaction from me save a frozen, open-mouthed mumble, Sam decided to try it again. He rolled back the other way, sat up and whined. One paw was raised a few inches off the snow.
It took me almost a full minute to realize that I was crying. Sam waited patiently.
"Sam," I murmured. "Oh damn, Sam. You damn animal."
From that point on, I never hesitated. I threw the gun into the snow, walked forward and wrapped my arms around Sam's neck. Sam purred contentedly while I groped in the snow for some of the meat, stuffing it into his mouth.
I was laughing again, loud and long.
I gathered the meat together in a pile and left Sam long enough to check out Hayes. The sheriff was breathing fairly regularly. As far as I could tell, his only lingering problem from the drug would be a pronounced desire to want to sleep for the next few weeks. But he'd make it.
If I made it. There was still the problem of Sam, and the meat was gone. Sam was looking around for more. I walked slowly forward, holding a dog biscuit. Sam's tongue flicked out and it disappeared.
At that rate, they wouldn't last long. I gave him a handful, then sat down in the snow. I managed to loose the zipper and reach the flares. Still muttering words of encouragement that I hoped a tiger would find soothing, I fired one off into the sky.
The flare burst in the night with an eye-piercing flash of blues and yellows, and then it was once again dark. Sam started, but settled down when I gave him another biscuit.
I vaguely wondered what the reaction of Phil and the state troopers would be when they arrived and discovered one very wide awake tiger waiting for them.
"Roll over, Sam."
Sam rolled over. I figured the biscuits would last longer if I made Sam work for them.
Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard the sound of snowmobiles. Sam heard them too, and his ears snapped back.
"Roll over, Sam. Play it again, Sam." Sam rolled over, but this time I withheld the biscuit for just a moment. "Now, Sam, you must be a very good tiger or you are going to be shot. Boom. Do you understand?"
Sam rolled over.
I was hungry. I took one of the biscuits out of my pocket and stared at it. It had a greeni
sh tint. I took a small bite out of it, then gave the rest to the waiting tiger. It tasted terrible.
Candala
1
Indiri Tamidian wafted into my downtown office like a gossamer breath of incense from some Hindu temple in her native India. Her young, lithe body rippled beneath the rustling silk folds of her sari; her coal black eyes, sheened by that enormous zest for life that was Indiri's very quintessence, smoldered in their sockets. Blue-black hair tumbled to her shoulders, perfectly complementing the translucent, light chocolate-colored flesh of her face. Indiri was stunningly beautiful. And troubled; the light from her eyes could not disguise the fact that she had been crying.
Self-pity, unexpected and unbidden, welled up within me like a poisonous cloud, a hated stench from a dark, secret place deep inside my soul. Some thoughts have teeth; just as it is dangerous for an artist to search too hard for the murky headwaters of his power, it is folly for a dwarf to entertain romantic thoughts of beautiful women. I fall into the second category.
I pushed the cloud back to its wet place and clamped the lid on. I stood and smiled as Indiri glanced around her.
"So this is where the famous criminologist spends his time when he's not teaching," Indiri said with a forced gaiety that fell just short of its mark.
I grunted. "You could have seen the criminology professor anytime on campus, even if you are majoring in agriculture," I said easily. "You didn't have to come all the way down here."
"I didn't come to see the professor," Indiri said, leaning forward on my desk. "I came to see the detective. I would like to hire you."
"Now, what would a lovely, intelligent young woman like you want with a seedy private detective?" Immediately my smile faded. The girl's flesh had paled, isolating the painted ceremonial dot in the center of her forehead, lending it the appearance of an accusing third eye. It had been a stupid thing to say. Worse, it had sounded patronizing, and Indiri Tamidian was not a woman to be patronized. "How can I help you, Indiri?"
"I want you to find out what's bothering Pram."
"What makes you think anything is bothering him?"
"He hasn't called or come to see me for a week. Yesterday I went over to his room and he refused to see me."
I turned away before my first reaction could wander across my face. Pram Sakhuntala was one of my graduate students, and a friend of sorts. A good athlete, Pram often worked out with me in the gym as I struggled to retain and polish the skills that were a legacy of the nightmare years I had spent headlining with the circus as Mongo the Magnificent. Like Indiri, Pram was part of a U.N.-funded exchange program designed to train promising young Indians for eventual return to their own land, where their newly acquired skills could be put to optimum use. Pram was taking a degree in sociology, which explained his presence in one of my criminology sections. He was also Indiri's fiance and lover. Or had been. Losing interest in a woman like Indiri might be an indication that Pram was losing his mind, but that was his business. It certainly did not seem the proper concern of a private detective, and that's what I told Indiri.
"No, Dr. Frederickson, you don't understand," Indiri said, shaking her head. "There would be no problem if it were simply a matter of Pram not loving me anymore. That I could understand and accept. But he does love me, as I love him. I know that because I see it in his eyes; I feel it. Perhaps that sounds silly, but it is true."
It did not sound silly; Indiri came from a people who had produced the Kama Sutra, a land where life is always a question of basics. "Still, you don't have any idea what could have caused him to stop seeing you?"
"I'm not sure," Indiri said hesitantly.
"But you do have a suspicion."
"Yes. Do you know Dr. Dev Reja?"
"Dev Reja. He's chairman of Far Eastern Studies." I knew him, and didn't like him. He strode about the campus with all the imperiousness of a reincarnated Gautama Buddha, with none of the Buddha's compensating humility.
"Yes," Indiri said softly. "He is also the adviser to the Indo-American Student Union, and coordinator of our exchange program. Last week Pram told me that Dr. Dev Reja had asked to speak with him. I don't know if there's any connection, but it was after that meeting that Pram changed toward me."
It suddenly occurred to me that I had not seen Pram for more than a week. He had missed my last class. This, in itself, was not significant. At least it hadn't seemed so at the time.
"What could Dev Reja have said to Pram that would cause him to change his attitude toward you?"
"That is what I would like you to find out for me, Dr. Frederickson."
I absently scratched my head. Indiri reached for her purse and I asked her what she was doing.
"I don't know how much you charge for your services," the girl said, looking straight into my eyes. "I don't have too much-"
"I only charge for cases," I said abruptly. "So far, this doesn't look like anything I could help you with." Tears welled in Indiri's eyes. "Not yet, it doesn't," I added quickly. "First I'll have to talk to Dr. Dev Reja before I can decide whether or not there's going to be any money in this for me. If I think there's anything I can do, we'll talk about fees later."
I was beginning to feel like the editor of an advice-to-the-lovelorn column, but the look Indiri gave me shook me right down to my rather modest dwarf toes and made it all worthwhile.
2
Famous. That was the word Indiri had used-half in jest, half seriously-to describe me. It was true that I'd generated some heat and some headlines with my last two cases, both of which I'd literally stumbled across. But famous? Perhaps. I never gave it much thought. I'd had enough of fame; Mongo the Magnificent had been famous, and that kind of freak fame had almost destroyed me. What Indiri-or anyone else, for that matter, with the possible exceptions of my parents and Garth, my six-foot-plus police detective brother-could not be expected to understand were the special needs and perspective of a dwarf with an I.Q. of 156 who had been forced to finance his way to a Ph.D. by working in a circus, entertaining people who saw nothing more than a freak who just happened to be a highly gifted tumbler and acrobat. Long ago I had developed the habit of not looking back, even to yesterday. There were just too many seemingly impossible obstacles I had already crossed, not to mention the ones coming up; the look of disbelief in the eyes of an unsuspecting client seeing me for the first time, choking back laughter at the idea of a dwarf trying to make it as a private detective.
I squeezed the genie of my past back into its psychic bottle as I neared the building housing the Center for Far Eastern Studies. Mahajar Dev Reja was in his office. I knocked and went in.
Dev Reja continued working at his desk a full minute before finally glancing up and acknowledging my presence. In the meantime I had glanced around his office; elephant tusks and other Indian trinkets cluttered the walls. I found the display rather gauche compared to the Indian presence Indiri carried within her. Finally Dev Reja stood up and nodded to me.
"I'm Frederickson," I said, extending my hand. "I don't think we've ever been formally introduced. I teach criminology."
Dev Reja considered my hand in such a way that he gave the impression he believed dwarfism might be catching. But I left it there and finally he took it.
"Frederickson," Dev Reja said. "You're the circus performer I've heard so much about."
"Ex-performer," I said quickly. "Actually, I'd like to speak to you about a mutual acquaintance. Pram Sakhuntala."
That raised Dev Reja's eyebrows a notch, and I thought I detected a slight flush high on his cheekbones.
"My time is limited, Mr.-Dr.-Frederickson. How does your business with Pram Sakhuntala concern me?"
I decided there was just no way to sneak up on it. "Pram has been having some difficulty in my class," I lied. "There's an indication his troubles may stem from a talk he had with you." It wasn't diplomatic, but Dev Reja didn't exactly bring out the rosy side of my personality. "I thought I would see if there was any way I could help."
"He to
ld you of our conversation?" This time his reaction was much more obvious and recognizable; it was called anger. I said nothing. "Candala" Dev Reja hissed. It sounded like a curse.
"How's that?"
"Pram asked you to come and see me?"
"Is Pram in some kind of trouble?"
Dev Reja's sudden calm was costing him. "It must have occurred to you before you came here that any discussion Pram and I may have had would be none of your business. You were right."
I didn't have to be told that the interview was at an end. I turned and walked to the door past a blown-up photograph of a tiger in an Indian jungle. It was night and the eyes of the startled beast glittered like fractured diamonds in the light of the enterprising photographer's flash. In the background the underbrush was impenetrably dark and tangled. I wondered what had happened to the man who took the shot.
Pram showed up at the gym that evening for our scheduled workout. His usually expressive mouth was set in a grim line and he looked shaky. I made small talk as we rolled out the mats and began our warm-up exercises. Soon Pram's finely sculpted body began to glisten, and he seemed to relax as his tension melted and merged with the sweat flowing from his pores.
"Pram, what's a 'candala'?"
His reaction was immediate and shocking. Pram blanched bone white, then jumped up and away as though I had grazed his stomach with a white-hot poker.
"Where did you hear that?" His words came at me like bullets from the smoking barrel of a machine gun.
"Oh, Dr. Dev Reja dropped it in conversation the other day and I didn't have time to ask him what it meant."
"He was talking about me, wasn't he?!"
Pram's face and voice were a torrent of emotions, a river of tortured human feeling I was not yet prepared to cross. I'd stuck my foot in the water and found it icy cold and dark. I backed out.
"As far as I know, it had nothing to do with you," I said lamely. Pram wasn't fooled.
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