His shape was catlike, but his bones—and in particular the heavy head—were massive even in terms of that size. In the books Jef had read about Everon, there had been mention of an adult male maolot picking up a full-grown wisent—one of those heavy, buffalo shapes—in his mouth and carrying the wisent off the way a cat might carry a mouse. Now, face to face with this wild hunter of the Everon woods, Jef realized that there had perhaps been more understanding than he had thought in Jarji, when she had refused to supply him with a crossbow. Perhaps in her trained hands a crossbow could do some damage to such a beast as Jef now faced. Certainly if Jef had been holding it now, it would have seemed of as much use as a slingshot.
Jef's knees felt weakened. He began to breathe again, but shallowly. He was as helpless before this adult male as a small bird would have been at the paws of a house cat, back on Earth. One cold, long shiver ran through him and for the first time in his life he faced the fact that in a few seconds he could be dead.
Then the miracle happened.
Mikey had been pressing against Jef's legs in ordinary fashion. But when Jef shivered, without warning Mikey stepped away from Jef, toward the adult male. Roughly three body lengths he moved forward, placing himself between Jef and the other maolot; and from his throat came the droning, rising note of warning with which he had challenged the appearance of Jarji the night before.
That one, long moment in which Mikey faced the great, silent form of the other male, seemed to Jef to go on forever. But at last Mikey's drone died away and the two maolots confronted each other in silence.
Something happened.
Jef blinked. Neither he nor the two maolots had moved; neither Mikey nor the adult male had made any further sound; but something non-physical had taken place. Something had been accomplished. Without warning, silently as a cloud passing away from the face of the sun, the huge male turned and disappeared. All at once the place where he had stood was empty except for the sunlight and the moss-grass. Off to the right a flicker of blue and green caught Jef's eye as the leaf-stalker began to move and feed again.
Mikey turned about, came back and rubbed against Jef as if nothing had happened. The touch of the young maolot brought Jef back to full breath and movement. He let the air out of his lungs with a gasp and stared down at Mikey. "Mikey?" he said. "What happened?"
Mikey butted his head into Jef's stomach as if he had never had a thought in his life beyond play and food. Jef leaned on him for a second, letting the strong, four-footed body support him while the weakness in his knees disappeared.
"All right," he said finally, straightening up. "Let's go, Mikey. But why couldn't you have shown us whatever you just did with that other maolot, in those years back on Earth when the research team was testing you every week?"
Mikey rubbed against him once more. Jef sighed and they moved ahead through the woods.
But now Jef's mind had been pushed back to the whole matter of Mikey's failure to mature and all the other unsolved questions about him and maolots in general. Nowadays, at least in ranching areas, the maolots seemed to live mainly on the wisent and eland that the colonists had imported. But before the coming of this alien source of food, they had apparently lived off a host of native species, including smaller predators like the galushas. The maolots were plainly at the top of the food chain on Everon, but—like the mileposts—their exact role in the ecosystem was unknown.
Most predators on most worlds had a pruning effect on the species that were their natural prey. That is, they normally preyed on the old and sick of those species on which they lived. But the adult maolots, with their speed and their power, seemed able to take any prey they wanted, well or sick, strong or weak, and they did not normally restrict their hunting to those that could best be spared.
In addition, there was a peculiarity about Everon fauna that so far had resisted all explanation. At certain times prey would literally choose to walk into the jaws of a predator, without the predator needing to make any effort whatsoever. Jef had seen no demonstrations of this so far; but the records of the E. Corps during the early survey period on the planet were adequately supplied with eyewitness incidents testifying to it. Everon, in many ways, was the most puzzling of the worlds humanity had tried to settle so far. So it was not merely a stroke of good fortune after all that a research grant had been forthcoming to allow Jef to bring Mikey back here for observation in his native environment.
Because the interest of the Research Service and the E. Corps itself went far beyond the question of why he had failed to grow into an adult on what to him was an alien world. The real interest even went beyond the value to Everon of what Jef might learn. Despite all the studies that had been made by reputable researchers over the last hundred years, no solid evidence of the so-called extrasensory talents—telepathy, clairvoyance, poltergeistism —had been established. But the maolots, among themselves, and particularly with their male young that remained blind until they were almost fully grown, showed some indication of possibly having a method of communication involving something other than the ordinary senses.
The maolots showed no sign of being intelligent in the human sense—although for animals they were as bright as some of the more intelligent non-human species of Earth. That much had been definitely established. But establishing it did not help in solving the question of whether they could, indeed, communicate to any great extent with one another. Why would they need an extrasensory means of communication? Certainly, it would have seemed simpler for the maolot young simply to have been born with their eyes open; or to have them open their eyes shortly after birth, as humans and the young of most Earth species did.
So said common sense. Imagination, however, suggested something different—something attractive to the human mind. What if, through maolots, humans might finally find a way to unlock an extrasensory means of communication of their own?
On Earth the Research Service had brought Mikey into contact with a number of humans who had been reported to demonstrate extrasensory abilities. But the results of such contacts had always been without result. None of the humans involved had been able to "receive" anything from Mikey; and in his turn Mikey had ignored them completely. In fact, the young maolot had always been indifferent to most humans unless he felt threatened by them—the special exceptions being Jef, Jef's father and mother. Mikey would go frantic if he was isolated from all three of them for more than about six hours, and calm down only when at least one of them was reunited with him.
Nonetheless, Jef himself had always been convinced that something beyond the ordinary was going on in the case of Mikey and himself. Of course, he had always had a special relationship to Mikey; and it was probably true that familiarity with each other had trained them both to read each other's non-verbal signals. Visual signals were no good to Mikey, but his sensitivities in all other physical respects were not merely good, they were superb. However, signal-reading could not explain Mikey's empathy with Jef when Jef was physically separated from the maolot by some distance.
Still, Jef had always been privately inclined to believe that something beyond ordinary explanation was going on between Mikey and himself; and since his landing here on Everon, Mikey's ability to race around in unfamiliar forest without bumping into anything, plus what had just taken place between the young maolot and the adult male, were both startling evidence in support of that belief.
Particularly strong evidence was whatever Jef had seemed to sense happening between the young maolot and the older male. Just as he had never been able to offer solid evidence for Mikey's empathic abilities in the past, so now he had no way of proving what he had felt when the two maolots had confronted each other. But he was damn sure he had felt it. He had "heard" or "witnessed" something. He had been there and knew what he had felt. It occurred to him now that there could be a time to stop pretending to have an open mind and to begin to entertain the proposition that you might know something that no one else did.
Deep in thought as he w
as, Jef hardly noticed that he had left the shelter of the woods until the sun hit him strongly and hotly in the face. He stopped and looked about him.
He had emerged into a clearing filled with several long, low log buildings. Automatically he checked the mapcase, but there was no real need to do so.
This had to be Post Fifty.
He went forward again toward one of the log buildings in front of which the flag of Everon—a single gold star in a blue field-floated in the noon breeze.
Chapter Eight
the building he approached was a single-story structure, solid with its chinked log walls. Five steps up on the side that faced the flagpole led to a solid door made of three unusually wide, rough, dark-brown planks. A square latch-button of white plastic was set in the door. Jef pressed it and the door opened. He went in, accompanied by Mikey.
His first impression was that he had walked into a warehouse of some sort. The full width of the building before him was filled with what seemed to be Everon-manufactured equipment of all kinds. Parts for water-wheel electric generators and steam electric generators made dark stacks under the log rafters of the peaked roof. Kegs of nails, tall coils of wire, two-handled crosscut saws two meters long, axes, shovels, hammers, tub panels, tubs and containers of white plastic, covered the plank floor. Toward the back of the room Jef saw pole racks hung with clothing, most of it in bright colors and bold patterns, made of cloth like that Jarji had been wearing.
The place stank—with an odor that was a combination of the smells of grease and wet fur. "That's him," said a voice, off to Jef's left. Jef turned toward the sound.
To his left the stacks of supplies came to an end after about three meters. Beyond this was a good-sized area, open to the plank walls, holding several straight chairs, and with a bar, or counter, along its back wall. The near end of the bar had a sign above it, reading Pharmacy; and the wall behind it was built into cupboards, several of them sealed in white plastic as if they might be refrigerated or vacuum-lined to protect their contents. The far end of the bar had a large white container with a faucet in it and shelves behind it filled with rows of white plastic bottles bearing labels Jef was too far away to read.
There were four men sitting around the room holding grey pottery mugs; and another man seated behind the counter on a high stool, as if he was in charge of the place. Jef went toward this fifth man with Mikey beside him and in the face of a dead silence. Since the first words Jef had heard, no one there had spoken.
"I'm Jefrey Aram Robini," he said, when he reached the counter. "And I've got a special E. Corps permit for this maolot. This is Post Fifty, isn't it? Sir, I take it you're the Post Officer, here?"
The man behind the bar smiled without moving off his stool. In contrast to the other men sitting about, he looked almost pale. He was a long-chinned, long-handed man in his fifties, gone heavily to fat, so that what had once been the sharp angle made by his jawbone was now only a crease in a thick dewlap of skin bulging above his collar.
"That's right, Mr. Robini," he said. "Herbert Doty, officer in charge of Post Fifty. We just got a call you and your maolot were on the way here."
"Call?" echoed Jef. "Oh, from Jarji."
"Jarji? Jarji Jo Hillegas?" Herbert Doty's smile shortened. "No, sir. From the Constable down in the city, of course. Where'd you meet that Hillegas girl?"
"I was crossing her game-ranch area," said Jef. "She said I should have radioed ahead I was coming and she told me she'd pass the word along to people farther up."
"Ah," said Doty. He had his smile back again. "Well, she didn't get word to us. You'll find a lot like Jarji in the uplands here, sir. Good people, but no telling when they'll get things done. The only people to count on—" his glance went past Jef to the other men, "are Post-ranchers. Responsible people like these men."
Jef turned to look at the responsible men and found them closely watching, not merely him, but Mikey.
"It's all right," Jef said to them. "Mikey only does what I tell him."
"Yes," said Doty, and coughed, a thick, throaty cough. "The message about you said that. Otherwise, we'd be bothered, seeing a maolot inside here. We shoot them on sight, you know."
Jef looked back sharply at him.
"You do?" he said. "Jarji said-"
"Oh, Jarji!" Doty waved a hand with long, slender fingers and a plump wrist. "You don't want to go paying any attention to what people like Jarji Jo say. She comes out with all sorts of wild tales."
He slipped down off the stool. For all his appearance of size while he had been sitting up on it, on his feet he turned out to be half a head shorter than Jef, fat-bodied but with skinny legs.
"You've come up here to find Beau leCourboisier," he went on. "Beau'll be here in just a little bit. An hour or two. He wanted to be here when you got here yourself; but he had things still to do at his ranch."
"At his ranch?" echoed Jef.
"Yes, at his ranch—" Doty checked and looked keenly at Jef over the rolls of fat beneath his eyes. "You were going to say something?"
"No," said Jef. In fact, he had been about to mention Jarji's claim that Beau's ranch had been cleared for wisent grazing, four years before.
"You'll be staying overnight, I guess," said Doty, walking away from the end of the bar to a door set in the adjoining wall right beside one of the seated men with the mugs. "If you'll just come this way, Mr. Robini. We'll put your maolot in one of my storerooms, then you and I—"
"Wait a minute," said Jef, stopping. "Mikey stays with me wherever I go. We don't put him in a storeroom if I'm going to be someplace else."
Doty glanced at the other men; and Jef himself turned to stare at them. But their faces were blank; and when he looked back at the Post Officer, Doty's face was also without expression. They were silent, watching him. The atmosphere in the room was heavy. Mikey pressed against Jef's leg.
"I'm sorry," said Jef after a moment, when none of them made any effort to speak. "That's the way it is. Mikey stays with me. If necessary, we'll both wait in a storeroom."
"Well now, Mr. Robini..." said Doty slowly, then checked himself. "No, come to think of it, I guess it'll be all right. The maolot can stay with you. We just aren't all that used to them as pets."
"He's not a pet," said Jef. "He's a research subject."
But there was no answer from any of them to that, either. Doty turned and opened the door toward which he had headed. Jef followed him through it, Mikey close beside him, into a narrow corridor lit with electric glow-tubes, where the smell of grease and fur was, if anything, even thicker than it had been before. Doty led the way past several plank doors set in the walls of the corridor, until he came to one on the right that seemed to be locked. A key from his pocket unlocked it and he swung it open.
"There you are, sir," he said, standing aside with something that was almost a flourish. "You'll find a comfortable bed, in case you want to rest, and a washstand in case you want to clean up. You won't have to wait long."
Jef passed him and went in, Mikey at his heels. The room was dark except for one window in its far wall; and for a moment on entering he had to stop and blink to make out his surroundings, even after the rather dim artificial light of the corridor.
As he stood, trying to see, the door closed behind him, cutting off what little additional light from the corridor there was. He turned to open it, but it refused to yield to the white plastic button of the latch.
"Just a minute!" he called through the plank panel to Doty. "The door's stuck!"
There was a low-pitched laugh, almost a gurgle, from beyond the door, then silence.
Jef looked back into the room; and his eyes, now beginning to adjust, picked out a bare box of an enclosure. There was no bed and no washstand—in fact, no furniture at all, except a heap of what seemed to be rags and old clothing in one corner. He spun about and hammered on the door with his fists.
"What is this?" he shouted. "What's the idea of locking me in here?"
Again, he heard the
gurgling laugh; and, after that, the sound of boots going away down the plank floor of the corridor outside. Then there was no sound whatsoever.
Mikey pressed close against him, making throaty sounds.
"All right, Mikey," he murmured absently, petting the maolot reassuringly, "it's all right."
But it wasn't. Jef went over to the single window of the room. The window itself was large enough for him, and even for Mikey, to crawl through; and it was no more than a meter and a half from the floor. But a heavy wire mesh had been fastened over it beyond the window pane. With some trouble he finally managed to open the window latch in the right edge of the window's frame; and open the window by swinging it inward upon its hinges on the left side of the frame. But when he took hold of the wire mesh and shook it, he only bruised his fingers. The wire was as thick as fence wire and could not have been more immovable if it had been anchored in concrete rather than wood.
"All right, Mikey. It's all right, I tell you." Jef turned from the window and went back to soothing the worried maolot. "We'll just wait. They can't keep us here forever."
But, as the day wore on and the shadows of the variform oak branches and leaves above the window lengthened on the small patch of bare ground and moss-grass visible outside, Jef began to lose his confidence about someone eventually coming to let them out. Doty would only need to leave them here without food or water until they died—simply forget about them until it was all over; and who would bother to check up on them? The Constable down in Spaceport City would simply assume that Jef had gone off someplace with Beau leCourboisier. Eventually, of course, the Research Service back on Earth would get worried having no word from him, and send an inquiry to Everon. But by that time, he and Mikey could be buried someplace in the woods and their graves hidden beyond discovery under a new growth of ground vine or moss-grass....
Jef reined in his thoughts with a jerk. Mikey was obviously sensing his present dark mood and getting more and more upset. Besides, the mental picture he was painting was too far-fetched to be true. If the wild-ranchers wanted to get rid of him and Mikey for some reason, it would have been a lot simpler to shoot them with a crossbow such as Jarji had been carrying and then bury them somewhere in the forest, than to go to all this trouble of locking them up and waiting for them to die from lack of water and food.