Andre Norton - Flight in Yiktor

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1.

; void, cold. Fold in the legs—do not move.

', Cold—pain—the big one was using the prod again—pain.

Stand—jump—but it is cold—so——cold.

The small body edged between the two large woven bas-

I kets uttered a mewing cry. Then one claw hand flew to

• provide a gag against any more sound. But shivers continued

| to shake the too thin body.

Cold—where is cold—where is pain?

^ The curled body jerked as if a tormenting lash had been

i applied to the wrinkled greenish skin only too visible through

'. the tatters which were not true clothing. No one had shouted

' those words. Yet they had come as clear and loud as if

Russtif his ugly self were standing over the hider. In the

head—not in the ear. Talking in the head!

^ The small one tried to wedge even more out of sight, and

; now the shudders of fear were worse.

; Where is cold? Where is pain?

The demand came again, imperative—to be obeyed.

Wrinkled hands covered ears, but that did not keep the ques-

tions from opening like dry and curled leaves under the touch

1

2 . Andre Norton

of water—an opening in the head. Once more the body

jerked—

Pain—Russtif was using the prod on the other side of the

tent wall, using it with the skill of a trained showman to stir

up a sulky or frightened beast. And, like the words out of the

air, the pain reached the lurker with a hot burst that brought a

second whimper.

"Here!"

There were legs beyond the crack where the small one

crouched—two pairs of them in space boots.

"No harm—there is nothing to fear."

A pallid tongue licked cracked lips. But there was some-

thing that made the fear less, lulled it a little. Beyond the

wall Russtif growled and spat threats. His anger and love of

tormenting that which could not fight back was like a spurt of

fire.

"Nothing to fear." Again the words spun into a mind that

had to listen even if the ears were stoppered against sound.

Nor did either pair of boots move toward or away from the

lurker. Crouch, wait for a hand to reach down and jerk out

the small body, perhaps cuff hard for being there—for exist-

ing at all.

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But this was not Russtif and the boots did not move.

Slowly the head, covered with dry tangles of thick hair, came

up, drawn against all will by the new note—the very strange

note—in that mind voice. Large eyes looked up and out.

Very far from Russtif these two. There were always strang-

ers about, some of them as odd in their way as Russtif's

imprisoned performers. So it was not their difference, rather

the way they stood shoulder to shoulder looking down. Not

with disgust nor cruel curiosity but in another way the lurker

could not understand.

"Do not be afraid." It was the male who spoke now,

uttering words in the trade lingo that was common speech all

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 3

through this quarter which catered to the entertainment of

ship people.

He was very fair of skin and his hair was white—though

he was not an old man. Those eyebrows so pale even against

his skin ran up at the temples to join the hairline, and his

eyes were green, luminous as if there were tiny fires behind

each.

"There is nothing to fear." That was the other one, the

female, who spoke now. Beside the fairness of her compan-

ion she was a fire glowing—hair as red as one of Russtifs oil

lamps was braided and looped about her head to look like a

heavy crown. She was—

The small body uncoiled. Claw hands went out to the big

basket and drew the hunched body up as far as nature would

let it. For it was a very crooked body, hunched forward by a

misshapen burden at shoulder level, so that the head had to

be raised to an uncomfortable angle to see the other two at

all.

Arms and legs were thin, their greenish skin encrusted

with dirt. The mass of uncombed hair was black, gray with

dust at places, but black underneath.

"A child." It was the spaceman who said that aloud.

"What—"

The woman made a gesture with one hand. There was a

listening look about her. Could she hear Toggor, too?

"This one, yes," she said. "But also another. Is that not

so, little one?"

The answer was pulled out by the intent gaze of her

eyes—coming before thought muffled it with caution.

"He—Russtif—he would make Toggor play. It is cold—

too cold. Toggor hurts from the cold—from the pain whip."

"So?"

She stooped to set a hand beneath the chin of the small,

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bent and maimed figure. From her touch, from the tips of her

4 Andre Norton

fingers, something warm and good flooded right into the

shaking body.

"Toggor is what?"

"My—my friend." That was not quite the way of it either,

but they were the closest words could be found.

There was a hiss of breath from the man; the woman's lips

fitted tightly together. She was angry—not like Russtif, all

noise and quick to aim a blow—but neither was her anger

turned toward the one before her.

"We may have found what we seek." She spoke above

the bowed head to her companion. "And who are you?"

Again warmth flowed from her.

"The Dung one." Long ago had that name of the lowest

been accepted. There was no other. "I run errands. I do what

I can." A pride which was seldom felt made shoulders hunch

a little higher.

"For Russtif?" The man indicated the tent behind.

Dung shook his head. "Russtif has Jusas and Sem."

"Yet you are here."

"It is Toggor. I—I bring him—" The claw hand rumbled

in the front of the single ragged garment. Once more truth

was pulled forth by that warmth of the other. "I bring this."

He held an unwholesome-looking lump of stuff. "Russtif

does not feed Toggor enough. He wants him to fight for

food. Toggor will die"—the sharply pointed chin quivered

—"there!"

They could all hear the crackle of the prod and a rising

mutter of obscenities from beyond the tent wall.

"Toggor fights and they bet on him. Russtif never had so

good a clawed one before."

"So," the man said, "let us see this fighter, Maelen. Also

Russtif. He interests me."

The woman nodded. She dropped her hand from beneath

the pointed chin to lace a hold in the tatters which crossed the

bowed shoulder hump.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 5

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What did she want with Dung?

"Come." Her hold unchanging, she urged him forward

just behind the man who walked with the swing of one who

has spent most of his years in space, and who was now

heading toward the entrance to Russtif's domain at the other

end of the tent. Whether or not the lurker wished to accom-

pany them was not asked. There was no breaking that hold

which was drawing Dung along. Somehow the thought of

fighting for freedom had vanished.

There was the thick and nasty smell which was Russtif s—

one of uncleaned cages with weak and sickening captives—to

fill the nose as soon as they had pushed past the open flap.

Things rustled and squeaked until Russtif roared and the

silence of fear snapped down.

He was a big man who had once been proud of his strength

but now was entombed in rolls of greasy fat. His bare skull

shone with oil in the light of the lantern he had set on the

table where there was also a cage—Toggor's place of prison.

Now he looked up with a sullen scowl. Then that changed,

by a visible effort, into a showman's ingratiating grin.

"Gentle Fern, Gentle Homo, how can I serve you?" His

back was to the table now, and he had dropped the prod on

it. It was then he caught sight of Dung.

"Has the trash made some trouble?" He took a ponderous

step forward, his hand lifted as if to aim a blow at the

hunchback.

"What trouble is this one noted for making?" asked the

woman.

"A thief, a piece of walking dung, a monster like that?

Why, whatever comes to hand to upset honest people—"

"Such as Beastmerchant Russtif perhaps?" asked the man.

Russtifs smile slipped and slid but still he caught it.

"Such as me and everyone else. 1 caught this sewer scum

tampering with a cage just two eves ago. Luck was with him

6 Andre Norton

then, or else he would have smarted for a good lessoning.

Trash should be thrown away and not come to annoy others."

"Opening a cage? Is perhaps the cage that one?" The man

pointed to the one on the table.

Russtifs smile did vanish then. With the hand in sight he

made a fist which might have fallen like a hammer blow on

the hunchback.

"Why do you wonder that. Gentle Homo? Has the trash

been spewing out some vomit that you would believe?"

"You have a fighting smux is what 1 believe," the woman

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cut in, and Russtif hastened to draw on his showman's smirk

again.

"The best. Gentle Fern, the best! There have been stellars

wagered on this one—not just market coppers—and stellars

won!" He moved along the edge of the table now so they

could better view his possession.

The woman stooped a little so she could see most of what

looked like a ball of hairy rags squatting in the center of the

cage. Under her hold Dung gave a quick start and then stood

very still. She was mind speaking to Toggor. The smux did

not answer. It was as if he did not or would not listen.

"These be—good." Unknowingly at first. Dung's mind

reached out to become a part of that other steady stream of

reassurance.

Toggor's answer never came in words such as those that

had struck Dung. Rather it was feeling: pain, fear, and

sometimes but very seldom, a rough kind of contentment.

Thus Dung thought "good," even "help," which Toggor

somehow seized upon avidly, as if Dung had indeed flung

open his place of hopeless captivity.

The handful of legs folded tightly to the haired body was

visible. Those vicious-looking claws at the end of the first four

were clamped together as the creature answered Dung's reas-

surance rather than the more concise broadcast of the woman.

The smux was no tiling of beauty. Had he grown larger he

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 7

might have been such a monster as to set human kind to

flight. His body, covered with spiky hairs thick enough to

look like quills, was a grayish red like a fire coal smoldering

in ashes. Each quill was tipped also with a darker red as if

blood-dipped. There were eight of the long hairy legs, the

fore pairs equipped with claws which were sawtoothed on the

inner sides.

His body was two ovals attached, the smaller fore one to

larger hind one with a waist no thicker than two of his legs

held side by side. His eyes—all six of them—were now

retracted into his ball of head, concealing the stalks on which

they were mounted. All in all he was ugly, and, with that

ugliness, he gave off the promise of quick and vicious attack.

Now his abdomen dragged on the floor of the cage, and

Dung knew Toggor was both filthy and hungry. To be dropped

into a rounded half sphere with another of his kind and a

piece of raw meat flung in for a victory prize should arouse

every fighting instinct of the smux. At Dung's thrust of

thought he raised one foreleg and clicked the claw there in

entreaty—a friend had food.

Russtif kept his hand well away from the prod. Would he

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dare to move when these two strangers were here? Dung did

not know, but breaking the long-held rule of his own sur-

vival, he wadded together the bit of offal he had sneaked

from behind the butcher's and, measuring the distance care-

fully, while Russtif was watching the woman, his small eyes

leering. Dung threw the bit of food into the cage. Toggor was

on it in an instant, grasping the unwholesome-looking piece

and bringing it to his mandibles.

Russtif roared and swung one of those hammer fists at

Dung, but it did not crash against the side of the hunchback's

head as he expected. It was the woman who swung her

lightly held captive out of the way, and it was the man whose

hand came down in a sharp chop across the beast seller's

wrist, bringing an angry cry out of him.

Andre Norton

"What you do?" Russtif seemed to swell as if his bulk had

suddenly increased.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? You let this trash throw poison to my smux and

it is nothing? Ho, let the wardens decide whether this is

nothing."

That Dung had not expected. That Russtif would allow the

law such interference was unheard of. Yet the beastmerchant

was slipping farther along the edge of the table, his eyes

turning from the spaceman standing at quiet ease, to Toggor,

to the woman, almost as if he expected they were about to

unite against him. Dung made a second attempt to wring free

of the grasp which had brought his misshapen body into the

tent, fruitlessly. Though that hand twisted in the rags across

the hump did not tighten, yet moving away was impossible.

"The smux—quote a price on it." That was not the man

but the woman who said that quietly. Russtif grinned a little,

showing broken, black, rotted teeth.

"There is no price for good fortune. Gentle Fern." He had

stopped his crabwise retreat from the two, standing now at

the end of the table with Toggor's cage between them. The

smux had finished the bit of near-carrion Dung had scraped

out of a discarded E tube and had closed himself once more

into ball form which was his only protection, since Russtif

had soaked the poison from his claws only an hour ago.

"There is always an end to good fortune," said the woman,

standing tall so that only the tips of her fingers touched

Dung, yet light as that touch was now, captivity remained.

"Also for everything there is a price. You have fought that

smux ten—double ten—triple ten times, starving it between

so that it will come to battle as you wish. There is a flicking

of life force in it now. Would you kill it rather than profit?"

Dung's dark tongue swept across pale lips. "Toggor." He

was not aware that he had spoken aloud until he heard his

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own word.

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR

The spaceman moved his wrist out into the open, closer to

the lantern. That light showed a cal dial, its light steady. As

Russtif saw that, his small eyes held a new glitter. Every-

thing this off-worlder said was true. The smux was—or had

been—a strong contender, the best he had ever been able to

find. He had marked the day he had had it out of the hands of

the drunken crewman who had wanted to raise a stellar to see

him back to his ship, as a fortunate one for him. But who

knew how long the thing would continue to live? Russtif was

greedy, but there was an undercurrent of sly profit sense in

him, too.

"Off-worlders cannot run gaming," he pointed out. He

was absentmindedly rubbing the wrist the spacer had struck

with the fingers of his other hand.

"We have a license to buy," the woman cut in. "We do

not choose fighters as such, but only strange beings or

creatures."

Now Russtif made a wide gesture that took in the other

cages and prisoners. "Take then your choice. Gentle Fern;

we have such in abundance here. There is a hopper from

Grogon, a dry tongue sucker from Basil, a—"

"Smux from—from where, Beastmerchant? From which

world comes your lucky fighter?"

Russtif s thick shoulders arose in a shrug. "Who knows?

By the time such come—and they come seldom—they have

been traded perhaps a dozen times. And surely the thing itself

is not prepared to snicker out its home world. It fights—

fights to eat. It sleeps. It lives after a fashion, but no one can

bring charges that Russtif deals in a thinking species. These

are all below the official recording, and the records will tell

you so."

Dung could have protested. Alone among Russtif s cap-

tives had the hunchback made contact with Toggor. The

creature's mind pattern was different, very hard to follow. It

wove in and out when he tried to communicate more than the

10

Andre Norton

most primitive messages or emotions. Yet he was sure that

smux had more powers of thought than Russtif believed.

The spaceman tapped the edge of his cal dial with a

forefinger, the small click-click underlining the restlessness

of the caged creatures about. Russtif's own cal dial showed.

"The thing brings in a stellar—"

Now the woman laughed, and there was a note of scorn in

that sound. "A stellar a battle? And for how much longer? It

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is weakening, is it not? At the last fight did it not nearly lose

a claw?"

Russtif s eyes narrowed. He stared at her insolently, though

he was careful to keep his voice at a respectful pitch as he

answered.

"I did not see you there among the wagerers. Gentle

Fern."

"Nor would you," she replied. "But I speak the truth."

Again Russtif shrugged. "A stellar this bit of ugliness did

win. And he will win again."

"Two stellars." That was from the spaceman and it came

crisply.

Dung gasped and then raised his stick-thin fingers to cover

his betraying mouth. Two stellars—it was a fortune beyond

imagining in the haunts of the outcasts where the hunchback

sheltered.

"Two stellars, um?" Russtif rolled the words around in his

mouth as if he could taste the sweetness of such an offer.

"Three." A brainsick fool who would make such an offer

could perhaps be edged upward yet again.

"Do not bargain." The woman's voice was not raised. It

was neither harsh nor threatening. Yet Dung shivered and

sunk his head lower, not wishing to see her face. Though the

hunchback had scurried away from threats all the years of

harsh memory he had never heard such a tone before. What

was this woman? Certainly some great lady, such as one

would never think might venture into such a hole. She should

PLIGHT IN YIKTOR 11

come carried on the shoulders of stout chair veeks with

outrunners and speakers-for-the-great in attendance. Who or

what was she?

The effect her order had on Russtif was made plain in the

way his fists fell upon the table and his eyes took on a

reddish glare. Dung expected to hear foul words ordering

these two out of the trader's sight. Yet no words came.

Instead, a purplish flush covered the beastmerchant's oily

jowls and he looked as one who might be choking on his own

spittle.

"Two stellars," the man said again, and his speech was as

quiet as the woman's, although with none of that compulsion

in it. Yet it was also not to be denied.

Russtif made a noise like the honk of an enraged grop, the

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purpling color still in his cheeks waxing deeper. He gave a

sharp shove to the smux's cage, sending it skidding along the

greasy tabletop.

"Two stellars." He choked out the words with the same

enthusiasm he might have given had the offer been only

copper.

The man began tapping out on his cal the transfer from his

own holdings to Russtif s.

The skidding cage was about to dive over the edge of the

table. Dung's skeleton hand caught it, and for the first time

the hunchback dared to try to reach Toggor again.

"These are good." Anyone would be better than Russtif,

to be sure, but there was the additional promise in the mind

touch of the woman. One could not lie with thoughts as one

could with words.

The woman did not try to take the cage, but neither did she

loosen her hold on Dung's rags. Instead, she gave a slight

pull which brought him around and started him for the open

tent flap. Then they were out in the twilight where other

tents' smoky torches and impulse lamps gave a measure of

sight.

12 Andre Norton

A moment later the man joined them.

"Trouble?" The woman did not use speech, but had mind

touch that Dung found easy to catch.

The man could not laugh in that mind-to-mind communica-

tion, but there was something in his answer which was light

as laughter.

"Trouble? No, he will be slightly puzzled perhaps for a

space, and then congratulate himself on a bargain that he

made. I wish we could clear out that whole den of his."

"Think freedom?"

Dung caught not only words but a picture—a picture that

showed paws, and insectile legs, and tentacles looping through

wire, mastering the catches on the cages in the tent behind.

"Bend so—push. Go, little ones, go!"

Dung felt a touch on his own grime-blackened hand. The

smux had thrust a foreleg through the wire netting, was

grasping with a claw the catch of the cage. Like those in the

tent, Toggor had caught that message and was following the

promise that was like an order.

Gasping, Dung held the cage against his body. But that

gesture came too late. Toggor had already freed himself and

caught with all four claws at the rags across the pinched chest

of the hunchback. Dung dropped the cage, then nearly stum-

bled over it, except a strong hand caught at his bony shoul-

der, pulling the small figure back on balance.

Dung cupped both hands about Toggor, having no fear of

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any cutting slash from those claws, for the smux fitted itself

into the hollows of his palms as if those were a safe home

nest. Now those hands swung out to the man who stood so

straight and tall that Dung had to stretch his neck painfully to

see his face, offering Toggor to him who had paid that

unbelievable sum to free the smux.

"Hold him well, little one. Bring him that we may tend

him—he still hungers and thirsts. And"—the mind speech

FLIGHT IN YIKTOR 13

was softer than any Dung had ever heard in a short hard

life—'' so do you."

Thus one who had always slunk through shadows now

walked as straight as an ungainly and broken body would

allow, a friend sheltered in hand and a stranger on either side

acting as if one was as tall and well formed as themselves. It

was beyond belief yet it was the truth!

2.

1 wice when they passed some patrolling guard, sent to

keep the peace among the dealers in the strange and rare who

gathered like an untidy fringe about any space port. Dung

hung back, and would even have dived for the shadows, but

for that grip on the rags across his hump, steering him

straight ahead until they passed the invisible boundary which

kept those in the Limits from the respectable portions of

town.

The lingering twilight was enough for Dung to see the

stares which greeted their party. Passersby, used to strange

sights issuing from the Limits, seemed to judge their small

group even stranger. Yet neither of the spacers appeared

aware of the comment they caused, and Dung was brought

along as one who had every right to walk there.

They came to one of the large shelters for travelers, light

beaming richly from its wide doorway, house guards on duty.

Dung, straining his neck upward, ready to twist away from a

blow or kick, saw that the guard on the right did move

forward a step as if to question their passage, but retreated

again when the spacers paid him no attention.

15

16 Andre Norton

Together the three crossed the wide lobby with its ring of

luxury shops, its throngs of people, making for one of the

transport plates Dung had heard of but had never seen. They

had it to themselves, other people drawing back as they

approached. Their carrier whirled upward and then sped into

one of the open hallways three stories above the lobby. It was

stomach-turning for Dung, who gulped and gulped again.

The invisible plastaglass sides did not give any suggestion of

protection.

Dung swallowed hard for the third time as they stopped

before a door and the spaceman put out a hand to press

against the lockplate, letting the door withdraw into the wall

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Andre Norton - Flight in Yiktor

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