Hulann nodded. They were facing the window again, and he could not take his eyes off the view, like a man hypnotized by the wild lion stalking him. The Swiss header station whirled dizzyingly back and forth. Again, it seemed as if it were the building that moved while the bright cablecar remained still. Yet, if that were the case, then the pines below were also moving, performing an eerie ritual dance. And the sky was coming closer, then receding, the great masses of blue-gray clouds scuddying forward, then reversing their direction.
"Shut it off!" Leo insisted. He was afraid to let go with either of his small hands, for he knew he would be torn free, sent stumbling, crashing across the room again.
Hulann reached out to the console.
The car moved forward, jolted against whatever was halting it, reeled backwards, setting up an even more torturous arc.
He shut down the systems. The car ceased to challenge the obstruction, settled to a halt on the cable. Gradually, the swaying began to settle until it was no more severe than it had been before the trouble started. The wind kidded it into a gende rocking, nothing more.
"What now?" Hulann asked, obviously quite shaken, Leo released the safety rail, looked at it as if he expected it to be bent where he had grasped it. He flexed his hands, trying to take the numbness out of them. "There's something wrong with the cable. We'll have to see what."
"How?"
Leo examined the ceiling. "There's the access door."
Halfway back the room, against the right wall, rungs led up to a trap door in the ceiling.
"You'll have to be the one," Leo said. "I'd get blown away out there."
Hulann shook his long head in agreement. His tail was still wrapped tightly around his thigh.
Chapter Eight
Banalog sat stiffly in the heavy green chair in the dimly lit chambers of the Hunter Docanil. If he had been a scientist of any lesser form of knowledge, he would not have been able to withstand the probing interrogation of the Hunter. He would have made an error in detail, would have betrayed himself with a stutter or a flicker of fear across his wide features. But a traumatist was a man with total knowledge of the mind, its physical functions and the more refined thought processes of the overmind. He knew how to control his own emotions to a degree that no other naoli-aside from a Hunter-could manage. He repressed his fear, sheltered his deceit, and amplified a projected image of sincerety, honesty, and professional concern. He thought Docanil was fooled. He could not be certain, of course; no one could ever really know what a Hunter thought. But it did seem as if he were pulling this off quite well.
Docanil stood next to the room's only window. The heavy, amber velvet drapes had been tied back with thick cord. Outside, the early morning light was weak. The snow continued. Docanil seemed to be looking beyond the snow, beyond the ruins, into some pocket universe only he had the vision to penetrate.
Banalog watched the other creature with barely concealed interest. He was fascinated by every detail of a Hunter, always had been. This was a professional concern that was not faked. He longed to take a Hunter under analysis, longed to work deep into one of their minds to find out what went on in there. But a Hunter would never need a traumatist's care and counseling. They were totally in control of themselves at all times. Or so the legend said
Docanil was dressed in snug, blue slacks that were tucked into black boots. A sweater-like garment cloaked his torso, came up high on his long, thick neck. The blue of these was almost dark enough to be called black. Around his waist was a stretch belt with dull, silver buckle and over the buckle the insignia of his trade: the reaching hand, claws extended to capture the enemy, the circle of wicked-looking nails enclosing this. Tossed across another chair was his greatcoat, a heavy, fuzzy thing that looked like it was made of fur-lined velvet. This was black. On the shoulders there were black leather decorative straps. A black leather belt around the middle. There were buttons instead of a pressure seal, and they were as large around as a naoli eye, stamped from heavy black metal, each with the reaching claw and the ring of nails.
Banalog shuddered.
He knew that Hunters wore clothes for a practical reason: as Hunters, destined to their trade even before birth, they were in all ways more sensitive to external stimuli than other naoli. Their body temperature could not easily adjust to changes in the atmosphere as could those of normal naoli. In intense summer heat, they were forced to remain in shadows as much as possible and to drink great quantities of fluids to replace those lost by their bodies. In bitter winter cold, they needed protection against the elements just as fragile humans did.
Yet, there was something sinister in their clothes. Not just in the fact that they wore them-but in the type of garments they chose. Or was this just a childish fear of the unknown? Banalog thought not. He could not pinpoint what, exactly, disturbed him about the sort of uniform the Hunters had adopted, but his uneasiness persisted.
Docanil turned away from the window, looked across the gloomy chamber to the traumatist. Hunters did not seem to need much light to see well
"What you have told me is of little value," he said. His voice was haunting, a deep, whispered hiss of a voice that somehow managed to carry as well as Banalog's own.
"I have tried to-"
"You have told me about the guilt. About the sort of trauma growing more common which has caused Hulann to act as he has. I understand what you say-though I do not understand the trauma. But I must have more information, more theories about how this individual will act now that he is on the run. I cannot go by normal standards."
"You haven't tracked naoli before?" Banalog asked.
"It is rare, as you know. Once before. But he was a common criminal, similar in his reaction patterns to our enemies. He was not, however, a traitor. I cannot understand Hulann."
"I don't know what else I can say."
Docanil crossed the room.
His boots made soft ticking sounds on the floor.
He stopped by Banalog's chair, looked down from his great height, his hideously high cranium picking up bits of the glow lamps. He looked down, smiling the most frightening smile Banalog had ever seen. Beneath his blue-black sweater, his heavy, abnormal muscles bulged and rippled as if they were alive.
"You will help me further," he hissed to Banalog.
"How? I have told you-"
"You will accompany me in the chase. You will give me your advice. You will try to analyze Hulann from what he does and try to project his next move."
"I do not see how I-"
"I will use the Phasersystem in an attempt to get his general location. That should succeed. Whether it does or not, we will then begin. Be ready in an hour."
The Hunter turned away, started for the door into the other room of his quarters.
"But-"
"An hour," he said as he passed through the portal and closed it behind him, leaving Banalog alone.
The tone of his voice permitted no argument
On the northernmost petal of the daisy-shaped continent of the home world of the naoli system, next to a pincer-formed cove where the green sea beat softly insistent, stood the House of Jonovel, a respected and ancient establishment. Deep within the rock-walled, hand-hewn cellars of the venerable mansion was the family's brood hole in which the most recent Jonovel children rested and grew. There were six of them-blind and deaf and mostly dumb as well-snuggled in the warm, wet richness of the brood hole mothermud. Each was no larger than a human thumb, looked more like a small fish than a naoli. There were no visible legs, though the tail had already formed and would remain. The arms were little more than filaments. The tiny heads were buds that could be crushed between thumb and forefinger with little effort. They laid in their individual womb-wads, the slimy white semi-living discharges that had carried them out of their mother after the first stage of their development had been achieved. Fine amber-red ganglia connected them to the wads. Traceries of darker wine-hued blood vessels fed them fluid and took away their wastes. The wads pulsated around their charges, regulating all the delicate processes of life. In two months time, the wombwads would no longer be needed. The Jonovel children would squirm loose of them. The wads, deprived of their patients, would die. The rich mothermud of the hole would then begin to break them down and absorb their protein-laden tissues to maintain a healthy mixture for future births. The children, moving now, no longer blind nor deaf-and totally free to speak their nonsense words-would feed upon the cultures of fungus ringing the walls, sucking for their own life upon the mothermud. The children, at the end of six months, would be brought forth. The Phasersystem contact would be surgically implanted. Education, then, would be rapid, fed right into their overminds without need for vocal instruction.