Rerne was oddly silent; he had made no reply to
Troy’s accusation. That bothered the younger man; he wanted
an explanation, to know that the other had not purposely led him
into a trap. Now that he had a moment to think, he believed that
scrap of uniform so briefly glimpsed had not been ranger dress.
“Men here—” Again that alert from the
animals.
Troy, holding the unresisting Rerne to him, stood—back to
the dome wall—surveying the scene. He could see those others
waiting—and they were unmistakably rangers, the hunting dress
blending into the earth color of the ruins. A little beyond was
what he had not dared to hope for—a flitter!
“Tell your men,” he said harshly to his prisoner,
“to stand away from the flitter—now!”
“Leave the flitter,” Rerne repeated obediently, his
voice as toneless as that of a com robot. His features were set and
hard, and Troy sensed his rage.
The rangers moved. When they were well away from the flyer, Troy
began a crablike journey in its direction, keeping Rerne between
him and the Clan men, knowing the animals were well ahead of him.
Then he was at his goal, his hand on the cabin door.
His anger and fear driving him, Troy swung the blaster, laid the
barrel against Rerne’s head. The Hunter gasped, his knees
buckled, and he dropped to the ground. Troy scrambled into the
flyer, knocked down the rise lever. They climbed in a jump, which
shook him across the control board and made Sahiba yowl in protest
as she was scraped against that obstruction. But they were safe for
the moment; he was sure the zoom had lifted them out of range of
blaster fire. Free and in a flitter.
He twirled the journey dial to the east, knowing that the flyer,
without any tending from him, would keep straight for the heart of
the Wild. They would be after him surely. But unless they had
another flitter at Ruhkarv, there would be precious time lost until
they could summon one, and time was all he dared hope to gain
now.
Troy’s eyes were fixed unseeingly on the night sky that
held them. Food—water—shelter—His mind felt as
sapped of energy as his body. He could not think properly. Of only
one thing was he sure: a stubborn determination to set down the
flyer somewhere in the Wild where the animals could take to the
country for their own concealment.
“It is well.” That was Simba. “Good hunting
here. Men cannot shake us out of these lands.”
“There is still Zul,” Troy warned sluggishly.
“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, not 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 falling 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
of 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 m 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.
Rerne was oddly silent; he had made no reply to
Troy’s accusation. That bothered the younger man; he wanted
an explanation, to know that the other had not purposely led him
into a trap. Now that he had a moment to think, he believed that
scrap of uniform so briefly glimpsed had not been ranger dress.
“Men here—” Again that alert from the
animals.
Troy, holding the unresisting Rerne to him, stood—back to
the dome wall—surveying the scene. He could see those others
waiting—and they were unmistakably rangers, the hunting dress
blending into the earth color of the ruins. A little beyond was
what he had not dared to hope for—a flitter!
“Tell your men,” he said harshly to his prisoner,
“to stand away from the flitter—now!”
“Leave the flitter,” Rerne repeated obediently, his
voice as toneless as that of a com robot. His features were set and
hard, and Troy sensed his rage.
The rangers moved. When they were well away from the flyer, Troy
began a crablike journey in its direction, keeping Rerne between
him and the Clan men, knowing the animals were well ahead of him.
Then he was at his goal, his hand on the cabin door.
His anger and fear driving him, Troy swung the blaster, laid the
barrel against Rerne’s head. The Hunter gasped, his knees
buckled, and he dropped to the ground. Troy scrambled into the
flyer, knocked down the rise lever. They climbed in a jump, which
shook him across the control board and made Sahiba yowl in protest
as she was scraped against that obstruction. But they were safe for
the moment; he was sure the zoom had lifted them out of range of
blaster fire. Free and in a flitter.
He twirled the journey dial to the east, knowing that the flyer,
without any tending from him, would keep straight for the heart of
the Wild. They would be after him surely. But unless they had
another flitter at Ruhkarv, there would be precious time lost until
they could summon one, and time was all he dared hope to gain
now.
Troy’s eyes were fixed unseeingly on the night sky that
held them. Food—water—shelter—His mind felt as
sapped of energy as his body. He could not think properly. Of only
one thing was he sure: a stubborn determination to set down the
flyer somewhere in the Wild where the animals could take to the
country for their own concealment.
“It is well.” That was Simba. “Good hunting
here. Men cannot shake us out of these lands.”
“There is still Zul,” Troy warned sluggishly.
“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, not 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 falling 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
of 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 m 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.