“That’s right,” Sim Starle agreed. “We’ll keep our coms on a circle hookup and with the alert on. Anybody learns anything, he sends the word out on the beam. I’m for sittin’ quiet until we’re sure about what’s happenin’ and why. Maybe these Norbies are havin’ them a medicine powwow—and that’s none of our danged business!”
Hosteen, sinking deeper into his fog of weariness, watched the settlers leave for their ’copters, to fly back to the scattered holdings of the Peak country. He was still too torpid to move when Brad Quade re-entered, having seen off the company. But he roused himself to ask the one question bothering him most.
“Where’s Logan?”
“Gone—”
The tone of the other’s voice pulled Hosteen out of his lethargy of fatigue. “Gone! Where?”
“To Krotag’s camp—at least that’s what I think—”
Hosteen was on his feet now. “The young fool! This is medicine business, Gorgol said so—”
Brad Quade turned. His face might seem impassive to an outsider, but it did not hide his feelings from Hosteen. “I know. But he has drunk blood with Kavok, Krotag’s first son. That makes him a clansman—”
Hosteen bit back his protest. “Medicine” was tricky. A man could be an adopted clansman, living in blood brotherhood with a Norbie, but that might not cover prying into the inner beliefs of the natives. There was no use putting his thoughts and fears into words. Brad Quade knew all that and more.
“I can make it back up to the washes. How much of a start has he?”
“No. This was his choice; he took it with his eyes open. You won’t ride after him. Tomorrow, if you will, I want you on the way to Gal-wadi in the ’copter.”
“Galwadi!”
Brad Quade picked up the claim map. “You have this to record, remember? Then—have a talk with Kelson. He knows Logan.” Quade ran one hand through his thick black cap of wiry hair. “I wish Kelson had got that bill through the Council—Logan was so keen on that Ranger business they talked about. If that had gone through, maybe he’d have had a job he’d really settle down to. But you can’t make the Council hump just the way you want them to—even when you prod. Anyway—you see Kelson and try to get a line on what’s happening. There may have been an official clamp on Norbie news—I suspect that. And I’d better stay here for now. Dumaroy’s just hotheaded enough to try one of those dangerous schemes of his if there’s no one to talk him down—and just one incident might set off big trouble.”
“What do you think is happening?”
Brad Quade hooked his thumbs in his wide rider’s belt and stared at the floor as if he had never seen such a pattern of river stones before. “I have no idea. This is ‘medicine’ right enough—but it’s unique at this time of the year. The Quades were First Ship people. I’ve found nothing in our family records like this—”
“Gorgol told me the peace poles were up for the wild tribes.”
His stepfather nodded. “I know; he told me, too. But just to sit and wait—”
Hosteen made one of his rare gestures of feeling toward this man he had once sworn to kill, resting a brown hand on the other’s wide shoulder.
“To wait is always the hardest. Tomorrow night I will go to Gal-wadi. Logan—he is Norbie under the skin, and he has drunk blood with the Zamle Shosonna. That is a sacred thing—big medicine—”
Brad Quade’s hand came up to cover Hosteen’s for a moment of shared warmth. “Big enough—we can hope that. Now, you look like a two-day marcher in the flats. Get to bed and rest!”
To wait—Hosteen felt the first pinch of his own private kind of waiting as he sat in the ’copter boring through the night sky on the way to Galwadi. Behind him he left everything that counted on Arzor—a soft-furred, keen-eyed cat with a coat of yellow and a brain that perhaps matched his own in intelligence, though that intelligence might be of a different order, a horse he had trained, Hing, the meercat, a small, tumbling, clownish animal that had waddled four half-grown kits out for his inspection earlier that very evening, Baku, perched on the top corral bar, bidding him farewell with a falcon scream. And a man, a man whom he had once respected even while he hated him and whom he would now follow anywhere, anytime, and for any purpose. He left all those in what might be the heart of enemy territory if their forebodings crystallized into the worst of futures.
To all outward seeming, there was no tension in Galwadi. Hosteen, coming from the land registration office, eyed the traffic on the street speculatively. The hour was far into dusk, and the small city, which had been dead in the day’s heat, was alive now, the streets and shops busy. But whether he could hire any riders here was another question. To get new light-and-tie men at this season was a problem. There were several gather-ins in the lower town, and those would be a starting place for his quest. But first—dinner.
He chose a small, quiet eating place and was surprised at the wide array of dish dials he was offered. Food on the holdings was usually plentiful but plain, with little variety. The few off-world luxury items were carefully saved for holidays. But here he was fronted with a choice such as was more usual in a Port city catering to off-world visitors. Then he noted a Zacathan in the next booth and realized that a restaurant in the capital needs must satisfy the alien government representatives as well as the settlers.
Deciding to plunge, Hosteen dialed three dishes he had not tasted since his last service leave. He was sipping at a tube planted in a dalee bulb when someone paused by his table, and he glanced up to see Kelson, the Peace Officer of the Peak section.
“Heard you were looking for me, Storm.”
“Tried your office com,” Hosteen assented. He was a little at a loss as to how to word his question. Should he just bluntly ask what was up—if there was any news being withheld from the holdings? But Kelson continued.
“Coincidence. I was trying to reach you. Called the Peaks—Quade said you were here registering your squares. You’ve decided to settle in the Peak country then?”
“Yes—horse breeding with Put Larkin. He’s off-world now. Heard of a new crossbreed on Astra—Terran blood interbred with the local species of duicorn. Can stand up to desert heat there—or so the breeder claims.”
“So they might do for the Big Dry here, eh? It’s a thought. But your range isn’t open yet—”
What did that matter, Hosteen wondered. No one would start on holding work until the rains came. But Kelson was beckoning to someone across the room.
“There’s a problem—maybe you can help us,” the Peace Officer continued. “Mind if we join you? Time’s essential in this one—”
The man who came up was an off-worlder of a type usually not seen on a frontier world. His sleek form-fitting tunic, picked out with a silver-thread pattern, and the long hose-breeches of flat black were those of a business executive on one of the densely populated merchant worlds, and fashionable though they might have been on his home planet, they were as incongruous here as they were ill-becoming to his pudgy figure. Ridiculous as he might look in this Ar-zoran restaurant, one did not think him a figure of fun when one observed his craggy face, saw the square set of a determined and forceful chin and the bleak eyes that were those of a man used to giving orders. Hosteen recognized the breed and stiffened—it was one with which he had little sympathy.
“Gentle Homo Lass Widders, Beast Master Storm.” Kelson made the introductions, using the title of respect from the inner planets for the stranger, who seated himself without invitation across the table from Hosteen and proceeded to survey the Terran with an appraisal the other found insolent.