Murdoc Jern #2 - Uncharted Stars

by Andre Norton

  Ryzk punched a course with flying fingers, and then signaled a hyper entrance, as if he feared that at any moment we might feel the drag of a traction beam holding us fast. His concern was so apparent it banished most of my elation.

  But that returned as I brought out the greenstones, examined them for flaws, weighed, measured, set down my minimum bids. Had I had more training, I might have attempted cutting the two smaller. But it was better to take less than to spoil the stones, and I distrusted my skill. I had cut gems, but only inferior stones, suitable for practice.

  The largest piece would cut into three, and the next make one flawless one. The other two might provide four stones. Not of the first class. But, because greenstone was so rare, even second- and third-quality stones would find eager bidders.

  I had been to auctions on Baltis and Amon with Vondar, though I had never visited the more famous one of Lylestane. Only two planet years ago one of Vondar's friends, whom I knew, had accepted the position of appraiser there, and I did not doubt that he would remember me and be prepared to steer me through the local legalities to offer my stones. He might even suggest a private buyer or two to be warned that such were up for sale. I dreamed my dreams and spun my fantasies, turning the stones around in my fingers and thinking I had redeemed my stupidity on Lorgal.

  But when we had set down on Lylestane, being relegated to a far corner of the teeming port, I suddenly realized that coming to such as a spectator, with Vondar responsible for sales and myself merely acting as a com-bination recording clerk and bodyguard, was far different from this. Alone— For the first time I was almost willing to ask Eet's advice again. Only the need to reassure myself that I could if I wished deal for and by my lone kept me from that plea. But as I put on the best of my limited wardrobe—inner-planet men are apt to dress by station and judge a man by the covering on his back—the mutant sought me out.

  "I go with you—" Eet sat on my bunk. But when I turned to face him I saw him become indistinct, hazy, and when the outlines of his person again sharpened I did not see Eet, but rather a pookha. On this world such a pet would indeed be a status symbol.

  Nor was I ready to say no. I needed that extra feeling of confidence Eet would supply by just riding on my shoulder. I went out, to meet Ryzk in the corridor.

  "Going planetside?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "Not here. The Off-port is too rich for anyone less than a combine mate. This air's too thick for me. I'll stay ramp-up. How long will you be?"

  "I shall see Kafu, set up the auction entry, if he will do it, then come straight back."

  "I'll seal ship. Give me the tone call." I wondered a little at his answer. To seal ship meant expectation of trouble. Yet of all the worlds we might have visited we had the least to fear from violence here.

  There were hire flitters in the lanes down-field and I climbed into the nearest, dropping in one of my now very few credit pieces and so engaging it for the rest of the day. At Kafu's name it took off, flying one of the low lanes toward the heart of the city.

  Lylestane was so long a settled world that for the most part its four continents were great cities. But for some reason the inhabitants had no liking for building very high in the air. None of the structures stood more than a dozen stories high—though underground each went down level by level deep under the surface.

  The robo-flitter set down without a jar on a rooftop and then flipped out an occupied sign and trundled oft to a waiting zone. I crossed, to repeat Kafu's name into the disk beside the grav shaft, and received a voiced direction in return:

  "Fourth level, second crossing, sixth door."

  The grav float was well occupied, mostly by men in the foppish inner-planet dress, wherein even those of lower rank went with laced, puffed, tagged tunics. To my frontier-trained eyes they seemed more ridiculous than in fashion. And my own plain tunic and cropped hair attracted sideways eyeing until I began to wish I had applied some of the hallucinatory arts at least to cloud my appearance.

  Fourth level down beneath the ground gave Kafu's standing as one of reasonably high rank. Not that of a Veep, who would have a windowed room or series of rooms above surface, but not down to the two- and three-mile depth of an underling.

  I found the second crossing and stopped at the sixth door. There was an announce com screwed in its surface, a pick-up visa-plate above it—a one-way visa-plate which would allow the inhabitant to see me but not reveal himself in return.

  I fingered the com to on, saw the visa-plate come to life.

  "Murdoc Jern," I said, "assistant to Vondar Ustle."

  The wait before any answer came was so long I began to wonder if perhaps Kafu was out. Then there did come a muffled response from the com.

  "Leave to enter." The barrier rolled back to let me into a room in vivid contrast to the stone-walled Sororisan house where I had done my last trading.

  Though men went in gaudy and colorful wear, this room was in subdued and muted tones. My space boots trod springy summead moss, a living carpet of pale yellow. And along the walls it had raised longer stalks with dangling green berries which had been carefully twined and massed together to form patterns.

  There were easirests, the kind which yielded to one's weight and size upon bodily contact, all covered in earth-brown. And the light diffused from the ceiling was that of the gentle sun of spring. Directly ahead of me as I came in, one of the easirests had been set by the wall where the berry stalks had been trained to frame an open space. One might have been looking out of a window, viewing miles upon miles of landscape. And this was not static but flowed after holding for a time into yet another view, and with such changes in vegetation one could well believe that the views were meant to show not just one pin net but many.

  In the easirest by this "window" sat Kafu. He was a Thothian by birth, below what was considered to be the norm in height for Terran stock. His very brown skin was pulled so tightly over his fragile bones that it would seem he was the victim of starvation, hardly still alive. But from the deep sockets of his prominent skull, his eyes watched me alertly.

  Instead of the fripperies of Lylestane he wore the robe of his home world, somewhat primly, and it covered him from throat, a stiffened collar standing up in a frame behind his skull, to ankles, with wide sleeves coming down over his hands to the knucklebones.

  Across the easirest a table level had been swung, and set out on that were flashing stones which he was not so much examining as arranging in patterns. They might be counters in some exotic game.

  But he swept these together as if he intended to clear the board for business, and they disappeared into a sleeve pocket. He touched his fingers to forehead in the salute of his people.

  "I see you, Murdoc Jern."

  "And I, you, Kafu." The Thothians accepted no address of honor, making a virtue of an apparent humbleness which was really a very great sense of their own superiority.

  "It has been many years—"

  "Five." Just as I had been suddenly restless on Sororis, so this room, half alive with its careful tended growth, affected me with a desire to be done with my business and out of it.

  Eet shifted weight on my shoulder and I saw, I thought, a flicker of interest in Kafu's eyes.

  "You have a new companion, Murdoc Jern."

  "A pookha," I returned, tamping down impatience.

  "So? Very interesting. But you are thinking now that you did not come to discuss alien life forms or the passage of years. What have you to say to me?"

  I was truly startled then. Kafu had thrown aside custom in coming so quickly to the point. Nor had he offered me a seat or refreshment, or gone through any of the forms always used. I did not know whether I faced veiled hostility, or something else. But that I was not received with any desire to please I did know.

  And I decided that such an approach might be met by me with its equal in curtness.

  "I have gems for auction."

  Kafu's hands came up in a gesture which served his race for that repu
diation mine signified by a shake of the head.

  "You have nothing to sell, Murdoc Jern."

  "No? What of these?" I did not advance to spill the greenstones onto his lap table as I might have done had his attitude been welcoming, but held the best on the palm of my hand in the full light of the room. And I saw that that light had special properties—no false, doctored, or flawed stone could reveal aught but its imperfections in that glow. That my greenstones would pass this first test I did not doubt.

  "You have nothing to sell. Murdoc Jern. Here or with any of the legally established auctions or merchants."

  "Why?" His calmness carried conviction. It was not in such a man as Kafu to use a lie to influence a sale. If he said no sale, that was. true and I was going to find every legitimate market closed to me. But the magnitude of such a blow had not yet sunk in, and as yet I only wanted an answer.

  "You have been listed as unreliable by the authorities," he told me then.

  "The lister?" I clung desperately to that one way of possible clearance. Had my detractor a name, I could legally demand a public hearing, always supposing I could raise the fees to cover it.

  "From off world. The name is Vondar Ustle."

  "But—he is dead! He was my master and he is dead!"

  "Just so," Kafu agreed. "It was done in his name, under his estate seal."

  This meant I had no way of fighting it. At least not now, and maybe never, unless I raised the astronomical fees of those legal experts who would be able to fight through perhaps more than one planet's courts.

  Listed, I had no hope of dealing with any reputable merchant. And Kafu said I had been listed in the name of a dead man. By whom, and for what purpose? The Patrol, still wishing to use me in some game for the source of the zero stones? Or the Guild? The zero stone—I had not really thought of it for days; I had been too intent on trying my trade again. But perhaps it was like a poison seeping in to disrupt my whole life.

  "It is a pity. They look like fine stones—" Kafu continued.

  I slapped the gems back in their bag, stowing it inside my tunic. Then I bowed with what outward impassiveness I could summon.

  "I beg the Gentle Homo's pardon for troubling him with this matter."

  Kafu made another small gesture. "You have some powerful enemy, Murdoc Jern. It would be best for you to walk very softly and look into the shadows."

  "If I go walking at all," I muttered and bowed again, somehow getting myself out of that room where all my triumph had been crushed into nothingness.

  This was bottom. I would lose the ship now, since I could not pay field fees and it would be attached by the port authorities. I had a small fortune in gems I could not legally sell.

  Legally—

  "This may be what they wish." Eet followed my thoughts.

  "Yes, but when there is only one road left, that is the one you walk," I told him grimly.

  Eight

  On some worlds I might have moved into the shadowy places with greater ease than I could on Lylestane. I did not know any contacts here. Yet it seemed to me when I had a moment to think that there had been something in Kafu's talk with me—perhaps a small hint—

  What had he said? "You have nothing to sell with any of the legally established merchants or auctions—" Had he or had he not stressed that word "legally"? And was he so trying to bait me into an illegal act which would bring him an informer's cut of what I now carried? With a lesser man than Kafu my suspicions might be true. But I believed that the Thothian would not lend his name and reputation to any such murky game. Vondar had considered Kafu one of those he could trust and I knew there had been an old and deep friendship between my late master and the little brown man. Did some small feeling of friendliness born of that lap over to me, so that he had been subtly trying to give me a lead? Or was I now fishing so desperately for anything which might save me that I was letting my imagination rule my common sense?

  "Not so—" For the second time Eet interrupted my train of thought "You are right in supposing he had friendly feelings for you. But there was such in that room that he could not express them—"

  "A spy snoop?"

  "A pick-up of some sort," Eet returned. "I am not as well attuned to such when they are born of machines rather than the mind. But while this Kafu spoke for more than your ears alone, his thoughts followed different paths, and they were thoughts of regret that he must do this thing. What does the name Tacktile mean to you?"

  "Tacktile?" I repeated, speculating now as to why Kafu had been under observation and who had set the spy snoop. My only solution was that the Patrol was not done with me and were bringing pressure to bear so that I would agree to the scheme their man had outlined when he offered me a pilot of their choosing.

  "Yes—yes!" Eet was impatient now. "But the past does not matter at this moment—it is the future. Who is Tacktile?"

  "I do not know. Why?"

  "The name was foremost in this Kafu's mind when he hinted of an illegal sale. And there was a dim picture there also of a building with a sharply pointed roof. But of that I could see little and it was gone in an instant. Kafu has rudimentary esper powers and he felt the mind-touch. Luckily he believed it some refinement of the spy snoop and did not suspect us."

  Us? Was Eet trying to flatter me?

  "He had a crude shield," the mutant continued. "Enough of a one to muddle reception when I did not have time to work on him. But this Tacktile, I believe, would be of benefit to you now."

  "If he is an IGB—a buyer of illegal gems—he might just be the bait in someone's trap."

  "No, I think not. For Kafu saw in him a solution for you but no way to make that clear. And he is on this planet."

  "Which is helpful," I returned bitterly, "since I lack the years it could take to run him down on name alone. This is one of the most densely populated worlds in the inner systems."

  "True. But if a man such as Kafu saw this Tacktile as your aid, then he would be known to other gem dealers also, would he not? And I would suggest—"

  But this time I was ahead of him. "I make the rounds, not accepting Kafu's word that I am listed. While you try to mind-pick those I meet."

  It might just work, though I must depend upon Eet's gifts and not my own this time. However, there was also the thin chance that some one of the minor merchants might take a chance at an undercounter sale when they saw the quality of the stones I had to offer. And I decided to begin with these smaller men.

  Evening was close when I had finished that round of disappointing refusals. Disappointing, that is, on the surface. For though some of those I had visited looked with greed on what I had to offer, all of them repeated the formula that I was listed and there was no deal. Only Eet had done his picking of minds, and as I sat in the ship's cabin again, very tired, I was not quite so discouraged as I might have been, for we knew now who Tacktile was and that he was right here in the Off-port.

  As my father had done, so did Tacktile here—he operated a hock-lock for spacers wherein those who had tasted too deeply of the pleasures of the Off-port parted with small portable treasures in return for enough either to hit the gaming tables unsuccessfully again or to eat until they shipped out.

  Being a hock-lock, he undoubtedly had dealings with the Guild, no matter how well policed his establishment might be. But, and this was both strange and significant, he was an alien from Warlock, a male Wyvern, which was queer. Having for some reason fled that matriarchy and reached Lylestane, he kept his own planet's citizenship and had some contact with it still which the Patrol did not challenge. Thus his holding was almost a quasi consulate for the world of his birth. His relationship with the female rulers of Warlock no one understood, but he was able to handle some off-world matters for them and was given a semidiplomatic status here which allowed him the privilege of breaking minor laws.

  Tacktile was not his right name, but a human approximation of the sounds of his clacking speech—for audible speech was used by the males of Warlock while the femal
es were telepathic.

  "Well"—Ryzk faced me—"what luck?"

  There was no reason to keep the worst from him. And I did not think he would jump ship here in a port where he had already decided he could not even afford to visit the spacer's resorts.

  "Bad. I am listed. No merchant will buy."

  "So? Do we move out now or in the morning?" He leaned back against the wall of the cabin. "I don't have anything to be attached. And I can always try the labor exchange." His tone was dry and what lay behind it was the dull despair of any planet-bound spacer.

  "We do nothing—until I make one more visit—tonight." Time, as it had been since the start of our venture, was our enemy. We must raise our port fees in a twenty-four hour period or we would have the ship base-locked and confiscated.

  "But not," I continued, "as Murdoc Jern." For I had this one small thread of hope left. If I were listed and suspect, then this ship and its crew of two—for Eet might well be overlooked as a factor in our company—would be watched and known. I would have to go in disguise. And already I was working out how that might be done.

  "Dark first, then the port passenger section—" I thought out loud. Ryzk shook his head.

  "You'll never make it. Even a Guild runner could be picked up here. That entrance is the focus of every scanner in the place. They screen out all the undesirables when they are funneled through at landing."

  "I shall chance it." But I did not tell him how. My attempts at Eet's art were still a secret. And all the advantages of any secret lie in the fact that it is not shared.

  We ate and Ryzk went back to his own cabin—I think to consider gloomily what appeared to be a black future. That he had any faith in me was now improbable. And I could not be sure he was not right