I was glad she was not more specific about my empathic talent. I still did not want Levi to have that information, and I had no misconceptions that Levi did not read all Roxanne’s missives, even if he said he didn’t.
Now, all I have to deal with is the paperwork. The number of cattle lost is staggering, but somehow on paper they are just numbers. The need to be there to euthanize even a small number was far worse, as you well know. I have been working with the techs on the cloning and forced embryonic maturation of the replacement cattle. That, at least, feels like I’m doing something positive. I’m learning a lot. When you get to using the technology, you will be surprised at its value.
I know you’ve said that most of the work you have had on the new worlds is prosaic, but at least it is in an exciting setting. Hey, sorry. That sounded demeaning. I wish I could spend a few days in a clinic dealing with some routine cases. I have not used most of what I learned in school yet. Anyway, keep the messages coming. Take care of yourself. Give my best to Fur and Levi.
As always,
Roxanne
I was glad she added regards to Levi. I did not want him to think I had biased her against him, much less spilled the beans about his spy mission.
The messages had chased away the aftereffects of the fight, so Fur and I went to the hotel for lunch before we had to follow up on more appointments. We had ordered beers when the local constabulary showed up.
“You two,” a beefy officer said, “are under arrest.”
I assumed an innocent expression. “Us? Whatever for, officer?”
“Felonious assault and disturbing the peace. We’ve got complaints from one citizen who says you broke his arm, another who is in neck traction, and a third whose back is twisted out of joint.”
I smiled. “Is that all?”
“Well, there is another guy in the hospital with damage to his, um, privates.”
Fur could not suppress a snigger.
“Hmm. And there are just two of you to arrest us?” I said.
The officer’s face turned red. Anger and apprehension fought for supremacy in his mind.
Fur broke into our little tête-a-tête. “Officer, it was self-defense. Those thugs assaulted us. They tried to steal Dr. Berger’s medical bag.”
“Tell it to the judge,” the officer said.
God, couldn’t he come up with a better line than that? Maybe he watched old vids, too. “Can I go to my room to get something and use the facilities?” I asked.
The two constables looked at one another and then the leader nodded. “But don’t think you can skip out on us.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
This was obviously Fredo’s work, the creep. I should have gotten the clue to the political set-up here from his moniker, Master.
In our room, I used the john and made a quick switch of my bags. I left one behind for Fredo’s cronies. The police kept us at the station for a couple of hours, long enough for Fredo to pull off his heist, then released us. They actually had outstanding warrants on two of our assailants. That let us off the hook.
Of course, the bottles labeled anti-inflammatories and painkillers had disappeared from our room. Even though I knew it would happen, I was pissed. I wanted to teach the gonifs a lesson. It was bad enough to screw around with people, but when they did it to animals, that was crossing the line.
***
The next morning, before the race, Fur and I watched from behind some scrub on a low hill above the paddock. I figured Fredo’s people would dose his phrook about an hour before the start—at least those were the instructions on the bottles I had mislabeled. Of course, both bottles contained a sedative. It wouldn’t hurt the beast, but it would make it impossible for him to run. Just what he needed in the way of care.
A few minutes after administration of the medications, the phrook staggered and hung his head. Then he sank to the ground and wouldn’t budge. The jockey and trainer went nuts and yelled at each other. When Fredo showed up a few minutes later, the real fun began. The guy was no dummy. He put two and two together and screamed for some guards.
“That vet has poisoned Lightspeed. He bet on another phrook and is fixing the race. Arrest him.”
It was a good story on the spur of the moment. The guards ran off, to alert the authorities, I assumed. We already knew Fredo had the local law in his well-padded pocket.
The racer would be fine now, but I had one more thing I wanted to accomplish. I raised my gas-powered rifle, took careful aim, and shot Fredo in his fat ass with a trank dart. Then we hightailed it for the ship.
***
I dropped into the command chair and scanned the board.
“Ruthie, get us out of here. Now.”
“I must wait for Control Center clearance, Cy,” she replied.
Shit. We might not have the time. It depended on how long it took Fredo to get spaceport control alerted. I had put a small trank dose in the dart; it would have done no more than make him loopy for maybe half an hour. I did not want a murder charge against me, after all. I thumbed the comm to Control. “GCVS, ready for takeoff. Clearance, please.”
When approval came back, I let out a deep breath. The engines powered up; we were ready to lift off. Just then, the red light on the comm flashed a baleful strobe.
“Control to Galactic Circle Veterinary Service. Please respond.”
“Ruthie, don’t answer. That’s an order.”
“But Cy, that will create difficulties with the authorities.”
“Not as much as what will happen if we stay. Ruthie, just get us out of here.”
Levi entered the bridge as I said this. He looked at me, then at Fur in the second’s chair. “What are you doing?”
Neither of us answered him.
The comm lit up again. “Galactic Circle, you are no longer authorized for takeoff. Shut down your engines immediately.”
“Why are we—?” Levi began again.
“Quiet,” I snapped.
I knew this would kill any return to this system, but there were plenty of others out there. I hoped there weren’t any patrol ships close by. GCVS could outrun them once we hit vacuum, but not in the atmosphere. And we had no way to fight—not that I wanted to.
The red light blinked again and I heard Fredo’s voice. “Berger, you son of a bitch, I’ll kill you—”
I cut the transmission off.
“What are you doing?” Levi screamed.
I continued to ignore him as we cleared the field on the antigravs.
Ruthie announced, “Cy, a patrol craft is on an interception bearing. ETA five minutes. What shall I do?”
“Damn it. Give us every bit of lift you have. Use the antimatter drive.”
“That is prohibited in the atmosphere by Galactic Convention. You know that, Cy.”
I also knew that I’d see the inside of a cell on Beta Cygnus IV for the next five years if we didn’t get out of there. “Just do it as soon as you can.”
“If you insist...” crooned Ruthie.
I felt Levi’s hands on my shoulder, digging hard enough to make me wince. “Stop this,” he grated. “Computer, return this ship to the ground.”
The pressure on my shoulder stopped. I looked back to see Levi in Fur’s grasp. “Not now, Reb Levi. We need to leave. We’ll explain later.” Fur ushered him into a chair.
Even though the antigravity drive kept us at one-g, the sense of increased g-force stayed with me as we accelerated. I trusted that would keep Levi in his seat. My face and underarms were soaked with sweat. The bridge’s climcontrol system could not keep up with my body. I watched the sensors for signs of pursuit.
Just as Ruthie kicked in the antimatter drive, the patrol ship appeared on the sensors. I hoped they would be more conservative engaging their antimatter drive. There wasn’t all that much danger if the ship was above the troposphere as we were now, but a few nasty explosions had led to strict regulations. I trusted the modern safeguards to protect us. We cleared orbit and left the
pursuit behind.
“What have you done, Berger?” Levi’s voice was shrill. “We are not done here. You have ruined my efforts to gather information on Beta Cygnus. My contacts in the Jewish commun–” He snapped his mouth shut.
I wondered what in hell that last bit meant. Why was he reticent about contacting members of the Jewish community?
“Get us out to our jump point, Ruthie,” I said. “I want out of this system. Now.”
“Why is the patrol chasing us?” Levi snapped. “We had a contract. You had a responsibility to fulfill that. If you have caused us to forfeit our due payment, it will come out of your pocketbook, Berger.”
Something besides money was at issue. I got a sickening vision of weapons and bombs, whatever that meant. I made a mental note to ask Fur if he knew. He spent enough time spying on the rebbe.
I had no patience to deal with Levi. Ruthie could handle the ship from there, so I left the bridge. Let Fur give him the story.
***
Later, I questioned Fur about the impressions I had gotten from Levi. I leveled with the big man about my empathic ability to read emotions in people and other sentient races.
His aura became deeply disturbed as I spoke. He poked his big finger into my chest. “So you’ve been reading me all this time without my knowing it? That sucks, Cy. I feel like I’ve been violated.”
“Now you know how I felt about your lying to me about the SOD.”
He pursed his lips. Embarrassment colored his thoughts. “Okay. Fair enough. But when I owned up, you should have, too.”
“It’s not something I talk about. And I don’t ‘read’ you all the time. I get sick as hell when I open myself up to peoples’ emotions.” I explained my reactions. “I feel like enough of a freak when people know about the animal empathy, much less the human part. But how about we call it even and go from there?”
Fur smiled. “I may be a member of the SOD, but can you tell that I think you’re a real SOB?”
I smiled back and punched his arm.
“Anyway, when Levi kvetched about not bailing out of Beta Cygnus, I got some strange vibes about weapons. Do you know what’s up with that?”
Fur tugged at his beard. “Our rebbe has been contacting the Jewish communities on each place we make planetfall.”
“That’s no surprise, is it? I imagine he wants to worship in a synagogue whenever he can.”
“Be nice if that was the whole of it. He has clandestine meetings with the underworld elements on each planet.”
“The Jewish Mafia?”
Fur drew his eyebrows together in puzzlement.
“Never mind. An ancient term. Go on.”
“I can’t tell you exactly what goes on in those meetings, but it isn’t good. I found one sleazy character willing to talk after I greased his voice with credits and booze. Levi is offering money for the gangsters to stockpile weapons and to give support to the Test-Lits should they invade that world. He promises to elevate those criminals to positions of power when their world is subdued.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. “The Test-Lits are going to invade other worlds beyond NewSol? They couldn’t even pull it off on Sammara.”
“They’re obviously testing the water before they jump in with both feet. You know a basic tenet of the Test-Lits is to spread their brand of fundamentalism. I guess the next time they’ll try to undermine the society before they attack.”
“God. What chutzpah. But what can we do?”
“I’ve already been doing it. I make sure that someone in each government knows about Levi and his intrigues. They are not very happy. I doubt the Test-Lits will get very far.”
After our talk, I felt guilty that I had been buckling under to Levi’s demands and ignoring his activities. Not for the first time, I wondered how I could do anything to oppose the Test-Lits to free my parents. Was the threat that Levi and his ilk represented enough to make the people on the worlds we visited willing to help me? Or even the aliens like the Pronacians? Maybe, but how to make that happen was another story.
CHAPTER 10
“You sit here, Captain-Doctor Cy Berger.” Our host, He-Who-Eats-with-Gusto, motioned with a talon as long as my hand. I always obeyed a being that resembled a tyrannosaur with wings.
Ruthie’s translation in my earbud converted the dragon’s mélange of grunts, hisses, and subsonic tones to Galactic Common.
“Your food.” Our host pointed again. His teeth and his sapphire scales glinted in the sunlight from the high windows of the hall.
Platters held small carcasses of something covered with a brown pelt. I gave Fur a dubious look.
“At least it’s been cooked,” he muttered.
Levi’s eyes were wide, his mouth turned down at the corners. “This must be trefe.”
Like he expected the dragons to keep kosher?
The dragons prided themselves on having become civilized by their exposure to spacefaring races. Cooking was one of the civilized proclivities they had acquired. Unfortunately, this did not extend to gutting or skinning their guests’ food items. Moreover, the dragons still ate their food while it was still live.
The furred creatures penned at one end of the banquet hall bore an unfortunate resemblance to teddy bears. Dragons, all males, left their seats and lined up to select their dinners. The line-up was by size, the largest dragon—who happened to be our host—first. He-Who-Eats-With-Gusto was not so much bigger-framed than the others, but he out-massed the next largest by a significant margin. He lived up to his name. A few altercations broke out between like-size dragons as they pushed and shoved for position in line. These were put to rest by a roar from our host, but not until some blood was spilled. This did not seem to bother the dragons at all.
Consultation on a medical problem had brought the Galactic Circle Veterinary Service to Dragonworld—our name for their planet since we couldn’t pronounce theirs. This was our welcome banquet.
While the dragons wore no clothing, they adorned themselves with variety of necklaces, finger and toe rings, bracelets and anklets, earrings, and jewels embedded in their skin, some in quite surprising parts of their anatomy. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, opals, amethysts, turquoise, jade, were all in evidence. But these were no fairytale dragons that sat on an ill-assorted hoard of gold, silver, and gem-bestudded treasures. The bigger the dragon, the more elaborate the adornment, but each had exquisite taste; no clash of colors or mismatched gems, here.
Gold chains complemented by topaz stones as large as my head hung from the emerald scales of one large specimen. A great ruby dragon wore rings, bracelets, and necklaces of silver and platinum that contrasted with one large black stone embedded in the center of his forehead. A golden Goliath scintillated with a belt and earrings of diamonds that radiated every color of the rainbow. I gaped as I watched this panoply of splendor march by my place at the table.
Once the dragons sat again, I looked from their dinners to the thing on my plate and swallowed hard. The fear that emanated from the mass of furry creatures stretched my empathic defenses to the breaking point. Our host’s hunger enveloped me as he grabbed one of his morsels and popped it past his jagged array of teeth. A squeal, then a loud crunch. My stomach and brain rebelled, and I fought to retain control as I bent over in my chair.
Not so, Levi. He jumped to his feet and screamed, “Stop this, you Godless creature. You are disgusting. You and your barbaric world should be isolated from decent humans.”
I presumed that Ruthie’s translation projected from the small speakers pinned to our tunics was all too literal. The rumble I felt through my shoes came from the dragons that surrounded us; it was not a happy feeling.
He-Who-Eats-With-Gusto leaned across the table toward Levi. He used a talon to extract a morsel of teddy bear from between his teeth before pointing it at the chunky rebbe. “This one looks like juicy appetizer.”
A vision of slavering jaws accompanied a surge of anger from the big dragon.
I fought my nausea and splitting headache and grabbed Levi’s arm as he screamed, “Your savage, heathen world should be exterminated.”
“Fur, apologize,” I yelled, as I dragged Levi from his seat and toward the door. I hoped we would see Fur again. Unharmed.
Outside, I turned to Levi. No time for dominance games now. “What in hell are you doing? You can’t insult anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of behavior.” My voice shook.
He turned to me and his eye twitched as he snarled, “Berger, watch your tongue. Remember who you are and what is at stake.”
“You could get us killed. That’s what’s at stake. Fur is still in danger because of you.”
He looked away and rubbed his scar. “I did not put us in danger from those...things.” He looked back at me. “Cohen will be fine.” He hesitated. “But there is no Godly reason for beasts like that. We should not even be here.”
I threw up my hands and turned away. “Let’s get out of here before our host decides we should join the feast as the second course.”
Levi shot me a look as nasty as his thought, but followed me to the road that led back to the ship. Dragonworld was a dry planet, and the hot wind blasted us like a furnace. I did not see how Levi could stand to wear his suit coat and fedora. Sweat ran in rivulets down his red face. It would serve him right to collapse from heat stroke. The thought gave me a modicum of vindictive pleasure.
The city was a contrast in splendor and barbarity. Its buildings were golden towers that seemed like a reflection of the mountain spires that surrounded us. Dragons preferred heights for their abodes, being fliers that evolved by nesting on high peaks. While the dragons wore nothing but their own colorful skins and jewelry, bright flags and banners adorned their buildings, shops, and open-air stalls. Shops and stalls held a variety of wares, including rugs, furry hides, ornate wooden chests, and an assortment of metal implements: knives, axes, saws, hammers, and the like. Many shops displayed woven wall hangings dominated by scenes of gory dragon fights or by depictions of dragons dispatching large beasts that I assumed were prey. The majority of shops displayed fantastic jewelry.
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