Eyes opened behind her own. *Be cautious, sister-one. Too little said is better than too much.*
*Come with me and listen when he calls me then. Maybe you can think of something to say.* Prauo was not a talker without cause but his advice was good once he did.
*I will do that.*
The intercom on the hold wall began to whistle her name. Dedran wanted to speak to her. She obeyed, trotting from the hold with deliberate haste. Let him also believe that she was eager to be cooperative in the face of his threats.
Dedran eyed her prompt arrival with approval. Bondservants. They all needed a touch of the whip occasionally. The girl was more valuable to him than she knew but if she did not bend to his designs, then he'd have to break her.
He addressed the small figure as she stood before him submissively. "Sit down." She obeyed. "Now, I've listened to your talk with this Logan. So he's going to High Peaks ranch. Tell me about it."
Laris talked, making the difficulties sound just a bit greater than they were.
"So they send few copters up there," she informed him. "The winds as they come from the peaks are dangerous. Logan will have coptered to the lower reaches of their land, then ridden the rest of the way." She watched as he absorbed that then shifted to prattle about the animals.
"And they have coyotes. They're so cute, and smart—why once I saw them..." She recounted a hunting story making much of the animal's intelligence. "They're a mated breeding pair too. It's a pity, but they won't be at the Peaks. Storm's wife took them to some native camp to hunt again. But you want the others, not a pair of coyotes."
"Don't tell me what I want," Dedran said absently. Laris kept her face bland and submissive. Had he taken the bait? He looked at her. "Tell me about this Tani. Is she a trained beast master?"
He had! She shook her head. "No, Storm said once she has the abilities. But the war ended too soon. She was never even in the services. Her aunt and uncle are scientists and she worked with them. Mostly washing bottles and lab equipment I think." She mustn't make him think Tani worth taking or killing. "She's only about nineteen I think." A lie but Dedran might not know, she thought. Tani didn't look older and he'd only seen her briefly a couple of times. Dedran equated age with wisdom, youth with stupidity. Let him see Tani as no threat.
Dedran scowled thoughtfully. "Tell me about this girl and the coyotes."
A mind voice came, *Quickly, protest their importance.*
Laris wrinkled her forehead. "But she's not even trained. And if you take one of the coyotes it would pine away like some of the other animals you've brought in."
"You said she has the abilities, and so do her animals, yes?"
"Well, so Storm said. But he's her husband. He could have been just, well, bragging about it."
*Well done, sister-without-fur. Gently, not too firm.*
"I don't know. Anyway, Tani and her team are over on the fringe of the desert. It'd take longer to get to them." She allowed her face to frown a little. "Of course Storm did say it was easy to get there in a copter. There isn't the same wind gust problem as they have at High Peaks..." She allowed her voice to trail away.
Dedran nodded once in decision. "I'll want you to speak to Cregar tomorrow. Tell him all you know about this girl and the coyotes. I presume you have some idea of where the natives she's visiting are camped."
Laris agreed. Logan had talked about the Djimbut clan and their lands enough to allow her to give some direction to Cregar's search.
"Then get out and check that wolf. Is the stupid brute going to survive or are we talking samples from another dead beast?"
Laris mumbled that the latter was probable and fled. To her distress that information was almost certainly true since the will to live was broken in the large gray animal. It lay there refusing to eat or drink. She could provide nourishment intravenously but when she'd tried that before, the wolf had roused as soon as she left just enough to rip the tube free each time. She was using stimulants but they had worked with less and less effect. She had kept it alive for several days but she was losing the battle and knew it.
Inside herself she raged at the necessity of torturing the animal. But if she didn't Dedran would see that someone else did who would be less kind. She counted. Five days since liftoff. If the wolf died now Dedran wouldn't blame her. She'd kept it alive long enough to show she was trying. She removed the tube, cut off the trickle of stimulant, then stroked the harsh pelt. She bent over and whispered softly into one furred ear.
"Go free, friend. Run free. I give you leave to go."
The lungs heaved up, hesitated, and then the breath went out slowly. The body seemed to flatten. She waited a few minutes to be sure before taking with a steady hand the samples Dedran would require. She placed those in the chiller, labeled them, added a warning to the lid, and went to find the circus boss.
"The wolf died. It tore out the tubes again while I was with you. I've taken the samples. They're safely in the chiller. Three sets."
He hurled a paperweight at the wall. "I had it! It wasn't even hurt. Damned beasts, damned beast masters." His eyes suddenly looked frightened as his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. "I have to get one that stays alive. Maybe a beast would stay alive if its mate was with it." He turned on Laris. "Get out!" She edged to the door as he slumped in his seat. Her ears caught his mutter as she slid the door shut.
"Nhara will kill me if I fail."
Nhara? Laris drove the name deep into her mind. It sounded like an inner systems name. She wondered if Nhara might well be Dedran's mysterious patron and backer. She'd long since deduced that Dedran owned only a small percentage of the circus. It was a decoy, used as a screen, as through it moved people and animals which would have been noticed as illegal in some way without it.
Cregar came to talk about Tani and the coyotes just before the Lereyne landing. He listened to all Laris could say. Dedran was there as well and the men talked over the girl's head.
"Coyotes are smart even without genetic enhancement." That was Cregar.
"So why did the beast master HQ switch mostly to wolves?"
"I'm not certain. I think they may have found coyotes more independent. Wolves are pack animals."
Dedran was onto that. "So coyotes are less likely to suffer separation trauma, and with the girl not having been trained at all they may be less strongly bonded." He smiled nastily. "Think of it, Cregar. You could even end up with them bonded to you." He turned to Laris. "You say the girl went to this native camp alone? None of her family are with her?"
"She went alone but," Laris said, choosing her words carefully, "there's nothing to say one of the family won't go after her. Although I did get the impression she was to stay there alone several weeks. But I could be wrong." That should cover her. If anything happened then she could quote her own words. She hadn't been sure and had said so.
Dedran discounted her warnings as she'd expected. He had fastened onto this idea of a young harmless girl unable to protect two enhanced beasts. Two animals bonded to each other as a mated pair. He discounted the natives too. Dedran came originally from a long-settled inner planet. Any native race there had died out long before humanity lifted its face to the stars. He despised native races as primitive. He'd never been called on to live as they did and had no idea of how much intelligence and ingenuity—and ferocity—such a life could take.
They were only a step up from the animals they used, he thought. Cregar could copter in, sneak up after dark, stun as many as was necessary, and escape with the stunned coyotes. He could pick up assistance from local criminals as always. Make sure they had no ID. Hire the copter under a false name. And anyway, one thing he had found about Arzor: The native lands were theirs by treaty. The natives had no copters and by government decree no one over-flew tribal lands. It would take them days to get a message out about his raid. By then Cregar would be long gone.