Murdoc Jern #2 - Uncharted Stars

by Andre Norton

  A flash of my beamer showed that the wall did not reach the roof, so there might be a passage along its top to take us out of the paths of the roving machines— though such a way might well lead to a dead end.

  I stood up cautiously on the feeder, and Eet took the beamer between his stubby pookha paws. The bag was easy to toss to the top of the wall, my furry companion less so, since his new body did not lend itself well to such feats. However, once aloft, he squatted, holding the beamer in his mouth, his teeth gripping more easily than his paws.

  With that as my guide I leaped and caught the top of the wall, though I was afraid for a moment my fingers would slip from its slick surface. Then I made an effort which seemed enough to tear my muscles, and drew my whole body up on an unpleasantly narrow surface.

  Not only was it narrow but it throbbed and vibrated under me, and I mentally pictured some form of combustion reducing the debris dumped in, or else a conveyer belt running on into a reducer of such refuse.

  Above me, near enough to keep me hunched on my hams, was the roof of the place. A careful use of the beamer showed me that the wall on which I crouched ran into a dark opening in another wall met at right angles, as if it were a path leading into a cave.

  For want of a better solution I began to edge along, dragging my bag, my destination that hole. Luckily Eet did not need my assistance but balanced on his wide pookha feet behind me.

  When I reached that opening I found it large enough to give me standing room in a small cubby. The beam lighted a series of ladder steps bolted to the wall, as though this was an inspection site visited at intervals by a human maintenance man. Blessing my luck, I was ready to try that ladder, for the clanging din of the rushing machines, the whir of their passing rung in my ears, making me dizzy. The sooner I was out of their domain the better.

  Eet's paws were not made for climbing, and I wondered if he would loose the disguise for the attempt. I had no desire to carry him; in fact I did not see how I could.

  But if he could release the disguise he was not choosing to do so. Thus, in the end, I had to sling the bag on my back by its carrying strap and loosen my tunic to form a sling, with Eet crawling part-way down inside my collar at my. shoulders. Both burdens interfered cruelly with my balance as I began to climb. And I had had to put away the beamer, not being conveniently endowed with a third hand.

  For the moment all I wanted was to get out of the dark country of the robo-servers, even though I was climbing into the unknown. Perhaps I had come to depend too much on Eet's warnings against approaching dangers. But he had not communicated with me since we had taken transport on the feeder.

  "Eet, what is ahead?" I sent that demand urgently as I became aware of just what might lie ahead of us.

  "Nothing—yet." But his mind-send was faint, as a voiced whisper might be, or as if most of his mind was occupied with some other pressing problem.

  I found, a second or two later, the end of the ladder, as my hand, rising to grope for a new hold, struck painfully instead against a hard surface. I spread my fingers to read what was there. What I traced by touch was a circular depression which must mark a trap door. Having made sure of that, I applied pressure, first gently and then with more force. When there was no reassuring yield I began to be alarmed. If the bolt hole of this door was locked, we would have to recourse but to return to the level of the robos, and I did not want to think of that.

  But my final desperate shove must have triggered whatever stiff mechanism held the door and it gave, letting in a weak light. I had wit and control enough left to wait for a very long moment for any warning from Eet.

  When he sent nothing I scrambled out into a place where the walls were studded with gauges, levers, and the like, perhaps the nerve center that controlled the robos. Since there was no one there and a very ordinary door in the nearest wall, I breathed a sigh of heart-felt relief and set about making myself more presentable, plucking Eet out of my unsealed tunic and fastening that smoothly. As far as I could tell, examining my clothes with care, I bore no traces of my late venture through the bowels of the caravansary and I should be able to take to the streets without notice. Always providing that the door opposite me would eventually lead me to freedom.

  What it did give on was a very small grav lift. I set the indicator for street level and was wafted up to a short corridor with doors at either end. One gave upon a walled court with an entrance for luggage conveyers. And I hop-skipped with what speed I could along one of those, to drop into an alley where a flitter from the port unloaded heavier transport boxes.

  "Now!" Eet had been riding on my shoulder, his pookha body less well adapted to that form of transport than his true form. I felt his paws clamp on either side of my head as he had earlier done when showing me how one's face could be altered. "Wait!"

  I did not know his purpose, since he did not demand I "think" a face. And though that waiting period spun out, making me uneasy, he did not alter his position. I was sure he was using his own thought power to provide me with a disguise.

  "Best—I—can—do—" The paws fell away from my head and I reached up to catch him as he tumbled from his place. He was shaking as if from extreme fatigue and his eyes were closed, while he breathed in short gasps. Once before I had seen him so drained—even rendered unconscious—when he had forced me to share minds with the Patrolman.

  Carrying Eet as I might a child, and shouldering my flight bag, I went down the alley. A back look at the building had given me directions. If I had a tail who had not been confused by our exit, he had no place to hide here.

  The side way fed into a packed commercial street where the bulk of the freight from the port must pass. There were six heavy-duty transport belts down its middle, flanked on either side by two light-duty, and there remained room for a single man-way, narrow indeed, which scraped along the sides of the buildings it passed. There was enough travel on it to keep me from being unduly conspicuous, mainly people employed at the port to handle the shipments. I dropped my bag between my feet and stood, letting the way carry me along, not adding speed by walking.

  Eet had spoken of the Diving Lokworm, which was still a mystery to me, and I had no intention of visiting the Off-port before nightfall. Daytime visitors, save for tourists herded along on a carefully supervised route, were very noticeable there. Thus I would have to hole up somewhere. Another hotel was the best answer. With what I thought a gift of inspiration I chose one directly across from the Seven Planets, from where I had just made my unusual exit.

  This was several steps down from the Seven Planets in class, which suited my reduced means. And I was especially pleased that instead of a human desk clerk, who would have added to the prestige, there was a robo—though I knew that my person was now recorded in the files from its scanners. Whether the confusing tactics on my behalf via Eet's efforts would hold here I did not know.

  I accepted the thumb lock plate with its incised number, took the grav to the cheapest second-floor corridor, found my room, inserted the lock, and once inside, relaxed. They could force that door now only with super lasers.

  Depositing Eet on the bed, I went to the wall mirror to see what he had done to me. What I did sight was not a new face, but a blurring, and I felt a disinclination to look long at my reflection. To watch with any concentration was upsetting, as if I found my present appearance so distasteful that I could not bear to study it.

  I sat down on the chair near the mirror. And as I continued to force myself to look at that reflection I was aware that the odd feeling of disorientation was fading, that in the glass my own features were becoming clearer, sharper, visible and ordinary as they had always been.

  That Eet could work such a transformation again when the time came to leave here, I doubted. Such a strain might be too much, especially when it was imperative that his esper talents be fully alert. So I might well walk out straight into the sight of those hunting me. But—could I reproduce Eet's effect by my own powers? My trial with Faskel's features ha
d certainly not been any success. And I had had to call upon Eet's help to achieve even that.

  But suppose I did not try for so radical a disguise? Eet had supplied me this time, not with a new face, but with merely an overcast of some weird kind which had made me difficult to look at. Suppose one did not try to change a whole face, but only a portion of it? My mind fastened upon that idea, played with it. Eet did not comment, as I thought he might. I looked to the bed. By all outward appearances he was asleep.

  If one did not subtract from a face but added to it— in such a startling fashion that the addition claimed the attention, thus overshadowing features. There had been a time in the immediate past when my skin was piebald, due to Eet's counterfeiting of a plague stigma. I could remember only too well those loathsome purple patches. No return to those! I had no wish to be considered again a plague victim. However, a scar—

  My mind wandered to the days when my father had kept the hock-lock shop at the space port on my home planet. Many spacers had sought out his inner room to sell finds into whose origin it was best not to inquire too closely. And more than one of those had been scarred or marked unpleasantly.

  A scar—yes. Now where—and what? A healed knife gash, a laser burn, an odd seam set by some unknown wounding? I decided on a laser burn which I had seen and which should fit in well with the Off-port. With it as clear in my mind as I could picture it, I stared into the mirror, striving to pucker and discolor the skin along the left side of my jaw and cheek.

  Three

  It was an exercise against all the logic of my species. Had I not seen it succeed with Eet, seen my partial change under his aid, I would not have believed it possible. Whether I could do it without Eet's help was another question, but one I was eager to prove. My dependence upon the mutant, who tended to dominate our relationship, irked me at times.

  There is a saying: If you close doors on all errors, truth also remains outside. Thus I began my struggle with errors aplenty, hoping that a small fraction of the truth would come to my aid. I had not, since I had known Eet, been lax in trying to develop any esper talents I might have. Primarily because, I was sure, it was not in my breed to admit that a creature who looked so much an animal could out-think, out-act a man—though in the galaxy the term "man" is, of course, relative, having to do with a certain level of intelligence rather than a humanoid form. In the beginning, this fact was also difficult for my breed, with their many inborn prejudices, to realize. We learned the hard way until the lesson stuck.

  I closed the channels of my mind as best I could, tamping down a mental lid on my worries about our lack of a pilot, a shrinking number of credits, and the fact that I might right now be the quarry in a hunt I could sense but not see or hear. The scar—that must be the most important, the only thing in my mind. I concentrated on my reflection in the mirror, on what I wanted to see there.

  Perhaps Eet was right, as he most always was—we of Terran stock do not use the full powers which might be ours. Since I had been Eet's charge, as it were, I must have stretched, pulled, without even being aware of that fact, in a manner totally unknown to my species heretofore. Now something happened which startled me. It was as if, in that part of me which fought to achieve Eet's ability, a ghostly finger set tip to a lever and pressed it firmly. I could almost feel the answering vibration through my body—and following on that, a flood of certainty that this I could do, a heady confidence which yet another part of me observed in alarm and fear.

  But the face in the mirror— Yes! I had that disfiguring seam, not raw and new, which would have been a give-away to the observant, but puckered and dark, as though it had not been tended quickly enough by plasta restoration, or else such a repair job had been badly botched—as might be true for a crewman down on his luck, or some survivor of a planetary war raid.

  So real! Tentatively I raised my hand, not quite daring to touch that rough, ridged skin. Eet's illusion had been—was—tactile as well as visual. Would mine hold as well? I touched. No, I was not Eet's equal as yet, if I could ever be. My fingers traced no scar, as they seemed to do when I looked into the mirror. But visually the scar was there and that was the best protection I could have.

  "A beginning, a promising beginning—"

  My head jerked as I was startled out of absorption. Eet was sitting up on the bed, his unblinking pookha eyes watching me in return. Then I feared the break in my concentration and looked back to the mirror. But contrary to my fears, the scar was still there. Not only that, but I had chosen rightly—it drew attention, the face behind it blotted out by that line of seamed and darkened skin—as good as a mask.

  "How long will it last?" If I ventured out of this room, went delving into the Off-port as I must, I would not be able to find another hole in a hurry into which I could settle safely for the period of intense concentration I would need to renew my disfigurement.

  Eet's round head tilted a little to one side, giving the appearance of critical observation of my thought work.

  "It is not a large illusion. You were wise to start small," he commented. "With my aid, I think it will hold for tonight. Which is all we need. Though I shall have to change myself—"

  "You? Why?"

  "Need you parade your incomprehension of danger?" The whisker mane had already winked out of being. "Take a pookha into the Off-port?"

  He was right as ever. Pookhas alive were worth more than their weight in credits. To carry one into the Off-port would be to welcome a stun ray, if lucky, a laser burn if not, with Eet popped into a bag and off to some black-market dealer. I was angry with myself for having made such a display of nonthinking, though it was due to the need for concentration on maintaining the scar.

  "You must hold it, yes, but not with your whole mind," Eet said. "You have very much to learn."

  I held. Under my eyes Eet changed. The pookha dissolved, vanished as though it were an outer husk of plasta meeting the cold of space and so shattering into bits too tiny for the human eye to see. Now he was Eet again, but as unusual to the observer as the pookha had been.

  "Just so," he agreed. "But I shall not be observed. I need not change. It will simply be a matter of not allowing the eye to light on me."

  "As you did with my face, coming here?"

  "Yes. And the dark will aid. We'll head straight for the Diving Lokworm—"

  "Why?"

  One of my own species might have given an exaggerated sigh of annoyance. The mental sensation which emanated from my companion was not audible but it had the same meaning.

  "The Diving Lokworm is a possible meeting place for the type of pilot we must find. And you need not waste time asking me how I know that. It is the truth."

  How much Eet could pick out of nearby minds I did not know; I thought that I did not want to know. But his certainty now convinced me that he had some concrete lead. And I could not argue when I had nothing of my own to offer in return.

  He made one of his sudden leaps to my shoulder and there arranged himself in his favorite riding position, curled about my neck as if he were an inanimate roll of fur. I gave a last look into the mirror, to reassure myself that my creation was as solid-seeming as ever, and knew a spark of triumph when I saw that it was, even though I might later have to depend upon Eet to maintain it.

  So prepared, we went out and took the main crawl walk toward the port, ready to drop off at the first turn which led to the murk of the Off-port. It was dusk, the clouds spreading like smoke across a dark-green sky in which the first of Theba's moons pricked as a single jewel of light.

  But the Off-port was awake as we entered it by the side way. Garish signs, not in any one language (though Basic was the main tongue here), formed the symbols, legible to spacemen of many species and races, which advertised the particular wares or strange delights offered within. Many of them were a medley of colors meant to attract nonhuman races, and so, hurtful to our organs of vision. Thus one was better advised not to look above street level. There was also such a blare of noise as was
enough to deafen the passerby, and scents to make one long for the protection of a space suit which could be set to shut out the clamor and provide breathable, filtered air.

  To come into this maze was to believe one had been decanted on another world, not only dangerous but inhospitable. How I was to find Eet's Diving Lokworm in this pool of confusion was a problem I saw no way of solving. And to wander, deafened and half asphyxiated, through the streets and lanes was to ask for disaster. I had no belted weapon and I was carrying a flight bag, so perhaps ten or more pairs of eyes had already marked me down as possible prey for a port-side rolling.

  "Right here—" Eet's thought made as clean a cut as a force blade might make through the muddle of my mind.

  Right I turned, out of the stridence of the main street, into a small, very small, lessening of the clamor, with a fraction less light, and perhaps one or two breaths now and then of real air. And Eet seemed to know where we were going, if I did not.

  We turned right a second time and then left. The spacemen's rests now about were such holes of crime that I feared to poke a nose into any of them. We were fast approaching the last refuge of the desperate, and the stinking hideups of those who preyed upon them, driven from the fatter profits of the main streets.

  The Diving Lokworm had, not its name, but a representation of that unwholesome creature set in glow lines about its door. The designer had chosen to arrange it so that one apparently entered through the open mouth—which was perhaps an apt prophecy of what might really await the unwary within. The stench of the outside was here magnified materially by the fumes of several kinds of drink and drug smoke. Two I recognized as lethal indeed to those who settled down to make their consumption the main business of what little life remained to them.