“A creature of the devil!” said Kelly in a hard voice. “Critters that look like police dogs, only twice their size. They got sense like men. They can talk to each other an’ we slaves hadda learn to understan’ their orders.”
Sam waited. He felt very lonely. It had seemed to him that he was the only man left with the purpose of fighting the Other World. He wanted to believe this man, but he did not quite dare. Not yet.
“The ruhk took me to—her.” He nodded in the general direction from which Nancy’s voice had come. “There she was. White as a sheet but game, talkin’ to the ruhks who were lookin’ at her an’ waggin’ their tails an’ crawlin’ on the ground when she looked at them. I never seen a ruhk wag his tail before. An’ she was dressed.” He was eating again, but at Sam’s expression he explained: “Slaves get stripped soon as they’re caught. Men an’ women both. That’s a sign they’re slaves. Overseers wear things like shirts. Long ones. But she was dressed like N’York, so she wasn’t no slave, an’ she wasn’t no master, either.”
The word “master” evidently referred to males and females alike, of a class of humans concerning which Kelly had evidently only indefinite ideas.
“When I got there, she says to me, ‘I—I’m here and I don’t know where here is, and—I’m afraid I’ve gone insane. These—animals seem to understand when I talk. Can you—tell me what’s happened?’ “
That was convincing. It sounded like Nancy.
“What had happened?” asked Sam. His hands weren’t clenched so tightly on his pistol-butts, now.
“She’d found herself in a cage-trap,” said Kelly. “Same as me. When they want slaves they set a trap somewheres where only one fella at a time is likely to be. Or they fix it for times when there won’t be many folks around. You get in the trap-space an’ somethin’ drops over you, an’ you are—yonder.. There’s a ruhk watchin’ the trap. Always. He makes sure you don’t do nothin’ funny. Me—when I was caught the ruhk just snarled every time I moved, then some more ruhks come with a overseer. They turned me outa the trap an’ the ruhks threw me, neat, an’ tore my clothes off. I thought they was gonna kill me, but when I was stripped they marched me to the slave pen. A man that’s been stripped an’ herded by ruhks has all the starch took out of him somehow. For a woman it’s worse. It took a long time to figger out why when she—” again the nod toward the other room “—found herself in a cage-trap the ruhk on watch pulled the latch an’ let her out right away an’ whined anxious tryin’ to say he was sorry. Acted like a puppy, she said. There was moonlight enough for her to see his tail waggin’ like crazy. Come mornin’, she started to walk away, scared, an’ he follered her, an’ presently a couple more ruhks come up, trailin’ by scent, an’ they acted like bashful puppies, too.”
Kelly took a mouthful of food. What he said was not reasonable, but Sam found that he believed it. He tried to guess at an explanation.
“It was the next day before she asked ‘em pretty if they would bring her somebody human to talk to. She’d found out they could understand better’n dogs. As good as men. They just can’t say words, not havin’ the throat for it. Anyhow, one of ‘em run off an’ brought her me. An’ I told her where she was an’ what’d happened as best I knew, but it took two days to figure out what made them ruhks act like they did. They caught some animals an’ brought ‘em when she said she was hungry. I managed to make a fire an’ cook. The ruhks hung around like they were crazy about her. When we got things figured out, we made ‘em crazy about me!”
He laughed suddenly.
“What was it?” asked Sam.
“Her grandma’s perfume,” said Kelly sardonically. “The perfume she used that she had made up after her grandma’s recipe. They’re crazy about it. When I’d told her everything I knew, she said she must smell like the masters they had—the masters that boss ruhks an’ overseers together. I never seen a master, but she said the ruhks acted like cats with the smell of catnip, or dogs with the smell of—what is it? Anise? Maybe ruhks are bred to be crazy about that scent, like dogs are bred to be crazy about the scent of different animals they’re s’pposed to hunt. She said if that kinda breedin’ was kept up long enough—”
“Five thousand years, more or less,” said Sam quietly. “That’s long enough to breed in a special instinct, all right! And it’s clever. Damnably clever! That’s why they can trust the beasts. That’s why there can’t even be a revolt of overseers; much less slaves! Go on!”
“That’s all,” said Kelly. “When she had it all figured out—she had a little perfume thing in her purse. She sprayed some smell-stuff on me. Her kind. Them rukhs got bewildered, then. I’d been a slave, an’ all of a sudden I was a master. All of a sudden they loved me. They hadda do like I said. It was bred in ‘em. An’ still underneath the master-smell I stunk like a slave! Funny, huh? So that part was okay an’ we told ‘em to take us to a cage-trap that was set, an’ we went in, an’ they let down the thing on us, an’ we were back in New York. We stepped off an’ I was in a fix without enough clo’es on to walk a block. She grabbed a taxi an’ we come here.”
He poured a huge glass of milk—it was strange to see this brawny, hairy man drinking milk—and turned from the table.
“I’m goin’ back,” he added coldly. “We kinda agreed on that. She’s goin’ to get some more of that perfume—gallons an’ gallons of it—an’ I got use for it! We got those particular ruhks waitin’ by that trap for us. I don’t know how long they will. We got to hurry. We need guns ...”
Sam felt sick again, but now it was relief. This narrative had just that quality of convincing unreason that nobody in the world would devise to deceive him. So much more plausible stories could have been contrived! And he had been so horribly afraid that Nancy would have been enslaved in a fashion akin to drug-addiction!
She came in the room, smiling.
She had been his secretary for almost a year, and he had admired her efficiency and respected her intelligence, but he hadn’t thought about her as a girl. She was helping him get set to be a consulting criminologist. But for four days he’d felt horrible self-reproach because she’d been the victim of a crime literally within arms’ reach of him, and he’d been unable to help her. Now—she was beautiful.
She was freshly bathed and brushed. She was dressed in a sort of whipcord costume. She looked tense, but without fear. She looked at him, smiled, and then said urgently:
“Sam! You said Dick’s in the Other World after me! Where and how, Sam? We’ve got to catch up with him and give him some of that master-scent so he’ll be safe from the ruhks! And we’ve simply got to do something about the slaves, Sam! People from right here are made into work-animals and—and worse, Sam! Kelly told me!”
Sam Todd released his two pistols. He took a deep breath.
“List what you need, Nancy,” he said grimly. “I’ll get a suit for Kelly first. I’ve got plenty of money for that and anything else we need. Then—Kelly, can we move that doorway if we’ve both got the master-smell on us?”
“If you mean the thing we come through, sure!” said Kelly. “There’s always a ruhk on guard over them things in case somebody managed to get outa a cage after bein’ caught. An’ in case a slave got loose an’ found one. No slave is ever loose outside a slave pen without a ruhk guardin’ him. But ruhks won’t bother us, now!”