Norton, Andre - Cat's eye

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Tikil was really three cities loosely bound together,
two properly recognized on the maps of Korwar's
northern continent, the third a sore—rather than a
scar—of war, still unhealed. To the north and west
Tikil was an exotic bloom on a planet that had harbored
wealth almost from the year of its first settlement. To
the east, fronting on the spaceport, was the part of
Tikil in which lay the warehouses, shops, and estab-
lishments of the thousands of businesses necessary for
the smooth running of a pleasure city, this exotic
bloom where three-quarters of the elite of a galactic
sector gathered to indulge their whims and play.
To the south was the Dipple, a collection of utili-
tarian, stark, unattractive housing. To live there was
a badge of inferiority. A man from the Dipple had
three choices for a cloudy future. He could try to exist
without subcitizenship and a work permit, haunting
the Casual Labor Center to compete with too many of
his fellows for the very limited crumbs of employment;
he could somehow raise the stiff entrance fee and buy
his way into the strictly illegal but flourishing and
perilous Thieves' Guild; or he could sign on as contract
labor and be shipped off world in deep freeze with no
beforehand knowledge of his destination or work.
The War of the Two Sectors had been fought to a
5
stalemate five years ago. Afterwards, the two leading
powers had shared out the spoils—"spheres of influ-
ence." Several major and once richer planets had to be
written off entirely, since worlds reduced to cinders on
which no human being dared land were not attractive
property. But a fringe of frontier worlds had passed
into the grasp of one or the other of the major
powers—the Confederation or the Council. As a result,
the citizens of several small nations suddenly found
themselves homeless.
At the outbreak of the war ten years earlier, there
had been forced evacuations from such frontier worlds;
pioneers had been removed from their lands so that
military outposts and masked solar batteries could be
placed in their stead. In this fashion, the Dipple had
been set up on Korwar, far back from the fighting
line. During the first fervor of patriotism the Dipple
dwellers met with good will. But later, when their
home worlds were ruined or traded away across the
conference tables, there was resentment, and on some
planets there were organized moves to get rid of these
rootless inhabitants.
Now, before dawn in Tikil, men from the Dipple
leaned their bowed shoulders against the outer wall of
the Casual Labor Center or squatted on their heels
before the door that marked the meeting place between
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the haves and the havenots.
Troy Horan watched the pale gold in the morning
sky deepen. Too late to mark stars now. He tried to
remember the sky over Norden—and had again one of
those sharp picture flashes of recollection.
A silver bowl arching above a waving plain of grass,
grass that was pale green, mauve, and silver all at
6
once, changing as the wind rippled it. He knew the
warmth of a sun always half veiled in rainbow haze,
felt the play of muscles as the animal he perched upon
as a small boy, rather than bestrode, broke into a
rocking canter. That was one of his last memories of
Norden. They had been out "riding track," cutting a
wide circle about the grazing herd of tupan to check
that none of the animals had drifted toward the
quicksands near the river.
It had been that same morning that the Council
ships had cut out of the sky, burning portions of the
plain to charred earth and slag with their tailbursts.
Within three days Troy and his people had left Norden
for Korwar—three Horans, a small clan among all the
others. But not three for long. His father—big body,
laughing voice, quiet steady eyes, a pair of hands that
did everything'well, a man who was able to establish
a strange bond of sympathy with any animal—had
put on a trooper's tunic and vanished into the maw of
a transport. Lang Horan had not returned.
After that the Big Cough had hit the Dipple, leaving
only Troy Horan, a lanky adolescent who inherited
skills and desires for which there was no need on
Korwar. He also possessed a stubborn, almost fierce
independence, which had so far kept him either from
signing on as contract labor or from the temptation
offered by the Guild. Troy Horan was a loner; he did
not take orders well. And since his mother's death, he
had no close attachments in the Dipple. There were
few left there now who had come from Norden. The men
had volunteered as troopers, and, for some reason, their
families had been particularly susceptible to the Cough.
The door that was their gate to the day's future slid
7
back. Men stood away from the wall, got up. Mechani-
cally Troy made a brushing gesture down the length
of his thin torso, though nothing would restore a vestige
of trimness to his clothing.
Spacer's breeches, fifth-hand, clean enough but with
their sky blue now a neutral, dusty gray; spacer's
boots, a little wide for his narrow feet, the magnetic
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insets clicking as he walked; an upper tunic that was
hardly more than a sleeveless jerkin, all in contrast to
the single piece of his old life that he wore pulled
tight about his flat middle. That wide belt of a Norden
rider was well oiled, every one of its silver studs
polished and free of tarnish. Those studs formed a
design that was Troy's only heritage. If he ever rode
the grass plains again, with tupan galloping ahead—
well, those tupan might bear that same pattern on their
cream-white hides. Lang Horan had been Range Master
and Brand Owner.
Because he was young, tough, and stubborn, Troy
was well to the fore of the line at the mechanical
assignor. He watched with alert jealousy as three men
ahead ran toward the stamper, assured of work—the
mark on their wrists giving them the freedom of the
city, if only for a day. Then he was facing that
featureless, impersonal mike himself.
"Horan, class two, Norden, lawful work—" The same
old formula he uttered there day after day. He stood,
his feet a little apart, balancing as if the machine
were an opponent ready for battle. Under his breath
he counted five quickly, and a tiny hope was born.
Since he had not been rejected at once, the assignor
did have some request that might be matched by his
meager qualifications.
-8
The five he had counted doubled into ten before the
assignor asked a question: "Knowledge of animals?"
"That of a Norden herd rider—" Troy stretched the
truth to a very thin band, but his small hope was
growing fast.
The assignor meditated. Troy, through his excite-
ment, felt the impatience of the men behind him. Yet
the length of time the machine was taking was so
promising—
"Employed." Troy gave a small gasp of relief. "Time
of employment—indefinite. Employer—Kossi Kyger,
first level, Sixth Square. Report there at once."
The plates in his boot soles beat a rataplan as he
hurried to the stamper, thrust his hand into the slot,
and felt that instant of heat that set the work mark
on his tanned wrist.
"First level, Sixth Square," he repeated aloud, not
because it was so necessary to impress his memory,
but for the pure pleasure of being able to claim a work
address.
Sixth Square lay on the outer fringe of the business
district, which meant that Kyger was engaged in one
of the upper-bracket luxury trades. Rather surprising
that such a merchant would have need for a C.L.C.
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hireling. The maintenance force and highly trained
salesmen of those shops were usually of the full-
citizen class. And why animals? Horan swung on one of
the fast-moving roll walks, his temporarily tattooed
wrist held in plain sight across his wide belt to prevent
questions from any patroller.
Because it was early, the roll walks were not crowded,
and few private flitters held the air lanes overhead.
Most of the shutters were still in place across the
9
display fronts of the shops. It would be midday before
the tourists from the pleasure hotels and the shoppers
from the villas would move into town. On Korwar,
shopping was a fashionable form of amusement, and
the treasures of half the galaxy were pouring into
Tikil, the result of stepped-up production after the
war.
Troy changed to another roll walk. The farther
westward he went, the more conspicuous he became.
Not that clothing was standardized here, but the
material, no matter how fantastically cut and pieced
together, was always rich. And the elaborate hair
arrangements of the men who shared the roller with
Troy, their jeweled wristbands, neck chains, and
citizens' belt knives, took on a uniformity in which his
own close-cropped yellow hair, his weaponless belt,
his too-thin, fine-boned face were very noticeable. Twice
a patroller stirred at a "heck point and then relaxed
again at the sight of the stamp on the boy's bony
wrist.
Sixth Square was one of the areas of carefully tended
vegetation intended by the city planners to break the
structure pattern of the district. Troy jumped from the
roller and went to the map on a side pillar.
"Kyger," he said into the mike.
"Kyger's," the finder announced. "Gentle Homoa,
Gentle Ferns—visit Kyger's, where the living treasures
of a thousand worlds are paraded before you! See and
hear the Lumian talking fish, the dofuld, the priceless
Phaxian change-coat—the only one of its kind known
to be in captivity alive. Follow the light, Gentle Homo,
Gentle Fern, to Kyger's—merchant dealer in extraor-
dinary pets!"
10
A small spark, which had glowed into life on the
wall below the map, loosed itself and now danced
through the air ahead, blinking with a gem flash. A
pet shop! The inquiry about animal knowledge was
now explained. But Troy lost some of his zest. The
thin story he had told the assignor was now thinner,
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to the point of being full of holes. He was ten years
out of Norden, ten years away from any contact with
animals at all. Yet Troy clung to one hope. The assignor
had sent him, and the machine was supposed to be
always right in its selection.
He looked about him. The massed foliage of the
center square was a riot of luxuriant vegetation, which
combined plants and shrubs from half-a-dozen worlds
into a pattern of growing—red-green, yellow-green,
blue-green, silver— And he began to long with every
fiber of his semistarved body that he would be the one
Kyger wanted, even for just one day.
His spark guide danced up and down, as if to center
his attention on the doorway before which it had
paused, and then snuffed out. Troy faced Kyger's display
and drew a deep breath of wonder, for he seemed to be
staring at four different landscapes, each occupying
one-quarter of the space. And each landscape was
skillfully contrived so that a section of an outlandish
planet had been transported in miniature. In each,
small creatures moved about the business of living
and dying. It was all art tri-dee, of course, but the
workmanship was superb and would completely en-
thrall any prospective customer.
Reluctantly Troy approached the door itself, a barrier
where plexaglass had been impressed with a startling
and vivid pattern of weird and colorful insects, none of
11
which he recognized. There was no sign that the
establishment was open for business, and he had no
guide to lead him behind the mass of buildings to a
rear entrance. Troy hesitated uncertainly before the
closed door until, among the imprisoned creatures of
the center panel, a portion of face with reasonable
human features appeared. Round dark eyes set in
yellow skin regarded him with no trace of interest or
emotion.
Troy held up his wrist so that the employment mark
might be fully visible to those eyes. Unblinkingly
they centered upon it. Then the stretch of yellow cheek,
the broad nose, vanished. The creatures in the panel
seemed to flutter as that barrier arose. And a flow of
warm air, redolent with many strange smells, engulfed
Troy. As if drawn by an invisible cord, he entered
Kyger's.
He was given no time to look about the outer
reception lounge with its wall cabinets of more min-
iature other-world scenes, for the owner of the eyes
was awaiting him impatiently. Used as he was to
oddities, human, humanoid, and nonhuman, Troy still
found the small man strange enough to study covertly.
He could have walked under Horan's out-stretched
arm but his small, wiry body was well proportioned
and not that of a dwarf. What hair he had was black
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and grew in small tufted knobs tight to the rounded
bowl of the skull. In addition, there was a rough brush
of the same black on his upper lip and two tufts or
knots on his chin, one just below the center of his
lower lip and the other on the point ofthejawbeneath.
His clothing was the conventional one-piece suit of
an employed subcitizen, with the striking addition of
12
a pair of boots clinging tightly to his thin legs and
extending knee-high, fashioned of reptile skin as soft
as glove leather, giving off tiny prismatic sparks with
every movement of their wearer. About a slight potbelly
he had a belt of the same hide, and the knife that
swung from it was not only longer but also wider than
those usually worn in Tikil.
"Come—" His voice was guttural. A crook of finger
pointed the way, and Troy followed him through two
more showrooms into a passage from which opened a
number of screened doors. Now the effluvium of
animal—a great many animals—was strong, and
sounds from each of the screened doors they passed
testified to the stock Kyger kept on hand. Troy's guide
continued to the end of the hall, set his small hand
into the larger impression of a palm lock, and then
stood aside for Horan to enter.
If the yellow man was an oddity, the man who sat
waiting for Troy to cross his office was almost as great
a surprise. Horan had seen many of the merchants of
Tikil, and all of them had been glittering objects indeed.
Their jewels, their ultrafashionable dress, their eye-
catching coiffures had all been designed as advertise-
ments to attract general attention.
But Kyger, if this was Kyger, was no such starburst.
His muscular body was covered with a hora-silk half
tunic and kilt, but the color was a dark and sober
blue, and he wore no jewels at all. On his right wrist
was the broad service bracelet of a veteran spacer
with at least two constellations starring its sweep,
while his skull was completely shaven as if to accom-
modate the helmet of a scout-ship man. The bareness
of that deeply tanned stretch of skin made the red,
13
puckered acar down along his right ear the more
noticeable. Troy wondered fleetingly why he chose to
keep that disfiguring brand; plastic surgery could have
erased it completely.
The other regarded Troy for a long moment, his
stare both as aloof and as searching as that the yellow
man had used through the door panel.
"The assignor reported you as Norden," he remarked,
but gave the planet name a slight accent new to Troy.
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"I would rather have thought Midgard—"
Troy met him eye to eye. This man had a spacer's
knowledge of racial types and other worlds right
enough.
"I was born on Norden—"
The other might not have heard him. "Midgard—or
even Terra—"
Troy flushed. "Norden," he repeated firmly. Lang
Horan's father had been from Midgard, right enough.
Before that—well, who traced any planet-pioneering
family back through generations and star systems to
the first hop?
"Norden. And you think that you know something
about animals." Those gray eyes, cold as space between
far-flung suns, dropped from Troy's face to the belt
with its lovingly polished silver studs. "Range Master,
eh?"
Troy refused to be drawn. He shrugged, not knowing
why the other was trying to bait him. Everyone knew
that Norden had been handed over to the Confederation,
that none of her former inhabitants could hope to
return to her plains.
"All right. If the assignor sent you, you're the best
it could find." Kyger arose from the enveloping embrace
14
of his eazi-rest. The yellow man slipped to his side.
"Zul will give you your orders. We are expecting a
shipment in on the Chasgar. You'll go to the dock
with Zul and do just as he tells you—no more, certainly
no less. Understand?" There was a flick of razor-sharp
whip in that. Troy nodded.
Zul was certainly not a talkative companion. He
merely beckoned Troy out through another door into a
courtyard. This, too, was sided with pens and cages,
but Troy was given no time to inspect their inhabitants.
Zul waved him to a waiting flitter. As Troy took his
place in the foreseat, the small man reached for the
controls and they lifted with practiced ease to the air
lanes. Zul circled, then headed them toward the west
and the spaceport.
There was more traffic aloft now, personal flitters,
heavier vans, and small flyers such as their own. Zul
slipped through the lanes with a maximum of speed
and a minimum of effort, bringing them down without
a jar on the landing strip behind the receiver station.
Again a jerk of thumb served to bring Troy, trailing
his guide, into one of the many entrances of the
clearance section. His small companion was well known
here, for he bypassed two barriers without explanation,
their guardians waving him on.
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"Kyger's." Zul spoke at last, putting a claim disk
down before the man in charge of the third grill.
"Right section, third block—"
Now they were in a corridor with a wall on one side,
a series of bins, room size, on the other, each well
filled with shipping crates, bales, and containers. There
were men hauling these in and out, which testified
that the contents of the packages in this particular
15
section were too precious to be left to the mechanical
transportation of the port robots.
Zul located the proper bin room and dropped his
disk into the release frame at the door. The protecting
mesh rolled up, and a light flashed on above two crates
and a large, well-padded travel cage. All three packages
were bulky, and Zul, fists on hips, eyed them closely
before he said over his shoulder, "Get a truck."
Troy went back up the corridor to claim one of the
motored platforms. He was wriggling that out of a
line of its fellows when he caught a half glimpse of a
face, a familiar face. As he jumped on the platform,
dug his boot toe into the activating button, and headed
the vehicle down the line, he wondered just what
would happen if he shouted out that a newly accepted
member of the Thieves' Guild was working here, in
the very center of the supposedly best-protected trea-
sure-transhipping center on Korwar. Every man who
entered this building had been scanned by the psycho-
check at the door, and everyone not on legitimate
business would have been unmasked by that latest
weapon in the armory of the patrollers. Yet Troy was
certain he had seen Julnuk Varms shifting a crate,
and he knew for a fact that Varms had crossed the
line into the apprenticeship ranks of the Guild.
The platform rolled to a stop before Zul, and they
went to work shifting their cargo to its surface. Each
piece was heavy enough to require the combined efforts
of the mismatched workers, and Troy wiped his hand
across his face as the second settled into place. He
eyed the curtains covering the sides of the cage,
wondering just what kind of exotic creature cowered
within.
16
Cowered? That was the wrong word. The inmate of
that cage was curious, interested, alertly eager—not
in any way cowed. Inmate? Inmates—two of them—
Troy stood very still, staring at the closely curtained
transport cage. How did he know that?
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Interest—now increasing— Something touched him,
not physically, but as if a very soft, inquiring paw had
been drawn lightly along his arm to test the quality of
his skin, the strength of his muscles, the toughness of
the bone beneath that covering. Just so did he feel
that something had very lightly touched what was his
inner self in exploration. Touched—and flashed in-
stantly away—so that the sensation was cut off almost
the same moment that he was aware of it. Troy helped
Zul boost the cage onto the platform. There was no
feeling of movement from within—nothing at all. Had
there ever been?
Two
The cage was stowed with extra care just behind the
driver's seat in the flitter, and during the transfer
from warehouse to flyer there had been not the slightest
sound from its interior. Yet twice more Troy had been
aware of those paw taps of exploration, touches that
were gone the instant he was alert to them. He was
thinking hard as he left Zul in the flitter and went to
return the platform. The other had shown no signs of
17
surprise or interest in the cage. Did Zul find those
subtle inquiries ordinary—or did he not feel them at
all? What kind or species of animal traveled in that
container?
Native life on a thousand worlds was now known to
spacers, explorer scouts, pioneers. And Troy had heard
tales told in the Dipple by men gathered from planets
in a wide sector of the galaxy. Yet never before had
there been any suggestion that a form of life existed
that was able to contact men mentally. Mentally!
Troy paused. Mentally! So—that was it! He had put
a name to that elusive touch. But—
He did not know that his eyes had narrowed, that
his fingers were drumming a faint tattoo on his belt.
This was something to consider by himself. Out of the
far past an emotion other than surprise awoke, sent a
warning through him. Look, listen, and keep one's
thoughts to oneself—the law of survival.
Troy swung around so suddenly that he caught the
slight movement of a man he must have startled into
that tiny betrayal. Varms stood just outside, his elbow
resting on a pile of boxes, obviously waiting for orders.
Yet he had been watching Troy, just as he was so
patently not watching him now. Did Varms expect (
Horan to spark a patroller? He knew the inner laws of
the Dipple better than that. As long as Varms made
no move toward looting Kyger's, where Troy's loyalty
was temporarily pledged, Horan would not reveal any
knowledge of him.
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He walked past Varms without a sign, heading
toward the flitter. It was only chance that dictated the
next warning. A porter was wrangling with one of the
bin attendants, and they now carried their quarrel to
18
the section manager. Since the object of their dispute
was large, they were hot-tonguing it, not in the inner
office but outside in the corridor. A length of crystal
mirror, bright and backed with red-gold, bore a
disfiguring crack down its side.
.That crack might distort a reflection, but it could
not conceal it. And in that patch of mirror Troy caught
a glimpse of a tailer—Varms! The interest a new
recruit of the Guild might have in a C.L. from the
Dipple was negligible, but in a cargo—that was a
different matter. And Varms, clumsy and inept as he
was, might well be after the contents of the cage—or
of the two crates that accompanied it.
Troy came out into the brightness of the flitter
park. There were rows of waiting vans, very few
passenger flyers. A series of two-story patroller towers
quartered the whole area. There must be spy rays
throughout every lane here. No one had ever dared a
highjacking job in this place. And he did not see how
he and Zul could be tackled once they were in the
air— If they had been on wheel lock, now—
But he discovered that surface travel was just what
Zul was intending. The wheels were extended from
the body flaps, and the little man edged the vehicle
out on ground level.
"What's the idea?" Troy folded his long legs into the
cramped quarters beside Zul. "Don't we lift back?"
For the first time those wide lips split in something
approaching a grin.
"No, no lift back." The other mimicked his tone.
"We carry those who must ride easy."
Not much of an explanation, Troy thought. If the
occupants of the cage had managed to survive passage
19
in a space freighter, they certainly could take very
easily a short air flight back to Sixth Square. He had
something other to chew on also—that move by Varms.
Taken together with this action of Zul's, it began to
make sense. Could the yellow man and the novice
thief have rigged a highjack between them, with himself !
set up to pin the blame upon?
Troy dismissed that thought. Too many loose ends.
He was not driving; Zul was. He could prove that he
had had no connection with Kyger's before this morn-
ing, knew nothing of any cargo that was coming in for I
the shop. And somehow he was certain Zul was not
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Andre%20Norton/Norton,%20Andre%20-%20Cat's%20Eye.txtTikilwasreallythreecitieslooselyboundtogether,twoproperlyrecognizedonthemapsofKorwar'snortherncontinent,thethirdasore—ratherthanascar—ofwar,stillunhealed.TothenorthandwestTikilwasanexoticbloomonaplanetthathadharboredwealthalmostfromt...

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