“Mine!” he cried.
“You’ve bought it, or somebody bought it for you. Most of that water is yours, too. When you have things that big, people ask you for things. Or they take them from you. Earth is a beautiful place but I think it is a dangerous place, too, for offworlders like you who are used to just one way of life. You have not caused all the crime and meanness in the world, but it’s been sleeping and now wakes up for you.”
“Why for me?”
“Because,” said A’gentur, “you’re the richest person who has ever touched this planet. You own most of it already. Millions of human lives depend on your thoughts and your decisions.”
They had reached the opposite side of the top platform. Here, on the land side, the rivers were all leaking badly. Most of the land was covered with steam-clouds, such as they saw on Norstrilia when a covered canal burst out of its covering. These clouds represented incalculable treasures of rain. He saw that they parted at the foot of the tower.
“Weather machines,” said C’mell. “The cities are all covered with weather machines. Don’t you have weather machines in Old North Australia?”
“Of course we do,” said Rod, “but we don’t waste water by letting it float around in the open air like that. It’s pretty, though. I guess the extravagance of it makes me feel critical. Don’t you Earth people have anything better to do with your water than to leave it lying on the ground or having it float over open land?”
“We’re not Earth people,” said C’mell. “We’re underpeople. I’m a cat-person and he’s made from apes. Don’t call us people. It’s not decent.”
“Fudgel” said Rod. “I was just asking a question about Earth, not pestering your feelings when—”
He stopped short.
They all three spun around.
Out of the ramp there came something like a mowing machine. A human voice, a man’s voice screamed from within it, expressing rage and fear.
Rod started to move forward.
C’mell started to move forward.
C’mell held his arm, dragging back with all her weight.
“No! Rod, no! No!”
A’gentur slowed him down better by jumping into his face, so that Rod suddenly saw nothing but a universe of brown belly-fur and felt tiny hands gripping his hair and pulling it. He stopped and reached for the monkey. A’gentur anticipated him and dropped to the ground before Rod could hit him.
The machine was racing up the outside of the steeple and almost disappearing into the sky above. The voice had become thin.
Rod looked at C’mell, “All right. What was it? What’s happening?”
“That’s a spider, a giant spider. It’s kidnapping or killing Rod McBan.”
“Me?” keened Rod. “It’d better not touch me. I’ll tear it apart.”
“Sh-h-hl” said C’mell.
“Quiet!” said the monkey.
“Don’t ‘sh-sh-sh’ me and don’t ‘quiet’ me,” said Rod. “I’m not going to let that poor blighter suffer on my account. Tell that thing to come down. What is it, anyhow, this spider? A robot?”
“No,” said C’mell, “an insect.”
Rod was narrowing his eyes, watching the mowing machine which hung on the outside of the tower. He could barely see the man within its grip. When C’mell said “insect,” it triggered something in his mind. Hate. Revulsion. Resistance to dirt. Insects on Old North Australia were small, serially numbered and licensed. Even at that, he felt them to be his hereditary enemies. (Somebody had told him that Earth insects had done terrible things to the Norstrilians when they lived on Paradise VII.) Rod yelled at the spider, making his voice as loud as possible,
“You — come — down!”
The filthy thing on the tower quivered with sheer smugness and seemed to bring its machine-like legs closer together, settling down to be comfortable.
Rod forgot he was supposed to be a cat.
He gasped for air. Earth air was wet but thin. He closed his eyes for a moment or two. He thought hate, hate, hate for the insect. Then he shrieked telepathically, louder than he had ever shrieked at home:
hate-spit-spit-vomit!
dirt, dirt, dirt,
explode!
crush:
ruin:
stink, collapse, putrefy, disappear!
hate-hate-hate!
The fierce red roar of his inarticulate spieking hurt even him. He saw the little monkey fall to the ground in a dead faint. C’mell was pale and looked as though she might throw up her food.
He looked away from them and up at the “spider.” Had he reached it?
He had.
Slowly, slowly, the long legs moved out in spasms, releasing the man, whose body flashed downward. Rod’s eyes followed the movement of “Rod McBan” and he cringed when a wet crunch let him know that the duplicate of his own body had been splashed all over the hard deck of the tower, a hundred meters away. He glanced back up at the “spider.” It scrabbled for purchase of the tower and then cartwheeled downward. It too hit the deck hard and lay there dying, its legs twitching as its personality slipped into its private, everlasting night.
Rod gasped. “Eleanor. Oh, maybe that’s Eleanor!” His voice wailed. He started to run to the facsimile of his human body, forgetting that he was a cat-man.
C’mell’s voice was as sharp as a howl, though low in tone. “Shut up! Shut up! Stand still! Close your mind! Shut up! We’re dead if you don’t shut up!”
He stopped, stared at her stupidly. Then he saw she was in mortal earnest. He complied. He stopped moving. He did not try to talk. He capped his mind, closing himself against telepathy until his brainbox began to ache. The little monkey, A’gentur, was crawling up off the floor, looking shaken and sick. C’mell was still pale.
Men came running up the ramp, saw them and headed toward them.
There was the beat of wings in the air.
An enormous bird — no, it was an ornithopter — landed with its claws scratching the deck. A uniformed man jumped out and cried,
“Where is he?”
“He jumped over!” C’mell shouted.
The man started to follow the direction of her gesture and then cut sharply back to her.
“Fool!” he said. “People can’t jump off here. The barrier would hold ships in place. What did you see?”
C’mell was a good actress. She pretended to be getting over shock and gasping for words. The uniformed man looked at her haughtily,
“Cats,” he said, “and a monkey. What are you doing here? Who are you?”
“Name C’mell, profession, girlygirl, Earthport staff, commanded by Commissioner Teadrinker. This — boyfriend, no status, name C’roderick, cashier in night bank down below. Him?” She nodded at A’gentur. “I don’t know much about him.”
“Name A’gentur. Profession, supplementary surgeon. Status, animal. I’m not an underperson. Just an animal. I came in on the ship from Mars with the dead man there and some other true men who looked like him, and they went down first—”
“Shut up,” said the uniformed man. He turned to the approaching men and said, “Honored subchief, Sergeant 387 reporting. The user of the telepathic weapon has disappeared. The only things here are these two cat people, not very bright, and a small monkey. They can talk. The girl says she saw somebody get off the tower.”
The subchief was a tall redhead with a uniform even handsomer than the sergeant’s. He snapped at C’mell, “How did he do it?”
Rod knew C’mell well enough by now to recognize the artfulness of her becoming confused, feminine and incoherent — in appearance. Actually, she was in full control of the situation. Said she, babbling:
“He jumped, I think. I don’t know how.”
“That’s impossible,” said the subchief. “Did you see where he went?” he barked at Rod McBan.
Rod gasped at the suddenness of the question: besides, C’mell had told him to keep quiet. Between these two peremptories, he said, “Er — ah — oh — you see—”
The little monkey-surgeon interrupted drily, “Sir and Master Subchief, that cat-man is not very bright. I do not think you will get much out of him. Handsome but stupid. Strictly breeding stock—”