“The two-legs smells more like a bear than like a wolf,” put in the male cat. “Or more like a bear and a boar, together. He does not eat just meat, this cat thinks, yet he is not really a prey-beast, either. What are you, two-legs?”
“Quite true,” agreed Mio, readily. “My kind consume both flesh and plants, just as do the bear and the boar, and so it is understandable that our scents would be similar. Yes, my kind do ride upon fast-running four-legs and sometimes hurl sticks with sharp points at beasts of many kinds. We also keep together large numbers of other four-legs grass-eaters—these of some three kinds, all with horns; we keep them for their milk and their meat and for other things useful to us. And we guard them closely from cats, bears and wolves, using to help us guard them four-legs much like wolves but larger and fiercer.
“As to what I am, I and my kind, we are creatures who would be friends and allies of your kind of cats. We would join with you in keeping our mutual bellies filled always, in protecting kittens and cubs of both our kinds. I will freely admit that I do not know if it would work out, if it can be done; but such an alliance would benefit both two-legs and cats in many, many ways, and I would be more than willing to try to make such an arrangement work.”
“Perhaps we should just kill him and see if he tastes as foul as he smells?” the female half-questioned the waiting male.
From out the darkness of the den area, the nursing cat came hobbling on her still-healing legs. “Then you must kill this cat, too,” she snarled. “This two-legs has cared for me and my cubs, has hunted for us all and has protected us from the wolves when this cat was too hurt to do so herself. Were he a cat, he now would be my mate, but mate or not, cat or not. I will stand by him in any fight.”
And also from out the darkness of the den-area came stalking, stiff-legged and as threatening as a bristling, snarling, thirty pounds of cub could make himself appear, Killer-of-Two-Legs beaming, “And you must kill this cat, also … if you can.”
James Bedford had been aware that his original hotel reservations had been canceled and that new reservations for him had been booked at a security hotel in the greater Miami area, but it had not been until he actually arrived that he had become aware that the particular security hotel was the Jupiter Offshore Resort Hotel—unreachable save by air, expected surface vessel or the undersea-rail system.
As another VIPSS copter dropped down toward the landing pads atop the spreading hostelry, Bedford regarded the overt armaments placed here and there ready to repel hostile visitors—whether airborne or seaborne—and wondered just how much good any of them would do in event of a hurricane, not even to mention such other natural disturbances as tsunamis, tornados or earth tremors. At that moment, he really yearned for the safe, almost uninhabited isolation of the far-western mountains, where he could go about unarmed without fear or bodyguards.
To the young man beside him—virtually a clone of the one who had flown with him from his uncle’s home to the D.C. airport somewhat earlier in the day—he said, “I wish I could’ve been put upon the mainland, closer to the main business area. These offshore things give me the willies, especially down here in the heart of the hurricane belt. How many were lost back in ’oh-one, when the Kitty Hawk Offshore went under?”
The man shrugged and flitted a brief smile of the kind that seemed to be a mark of his profession—boyish, charming, very reassuring. “You should not worry yourself, sir. Remember, the regrettable disaster of which you speak—the Kitty Hawk thing—that complex was one of the first of its kind built, and it had not, it was subsequently discovered, been properly maintained, not been renovated to keep it abreast of modem technological advances, as it should have been … as it would have been, had my service been connected with it.
“The Jupiter, here, now, is something else, and I speak of personal experience when I say so, sir. I happened to be here on bodyguard duty during the bad hurricane of ’oh-six. Yes, there was some exterior damage to the structure—the surface-docking facilities were torn away or sunk, the subsurface system was damaged and rendered temporarily inoperable from either end, a few of the air-defense pods were damaged or blown off—but inside the entire complex there might have been nothing more life-threatening than a half-gale blowing around the outer surfaces; indeed, there were parties being held in almost all the guest areas during the very worst of the storm.”
Again, the trace of a reassuring smile. “Besides, there is presently not even a tropical depression listed, much less any storm activity or threat, sir. And these offshore complexes have proved far easier to render secure than even the best-planned or -built mainland units. Here at Jupiter we have what amounts to a security complex within a basically secure complex. Them is no way in which anyone or anything can come into or go out of this main complex without being closely observed and monitored … ever, under any circumstances.
“The complex is virtually self-sufficient. A small, well-shielded nuclear pile provides all power for whatever purposes, there are vast stocks of food and supplies, fresh water comes either from distillation of salt water or from an artesian well tapping Pleistocene water a thousand feet below the continental shelf, though it is not generally used because of the terrible shortage of fresh, potable water in Florida, overcrowded as the state is, these days.
“There are no less than six heated saltwater pools within this complex, two of them within the security subcomplex. Also, two of the restaurants are wholly within our confines, along with numerous other facilities. Moreover, because of the singular nature of this type of operation, we can confidently assure real and complete security to all our VIP guests, and that is something that neither we nor any other service can or could offer in even the most carefully guarded mainland facility anywhere in the nation, if not the world, sir.
“So safe are you here at Jupiter, sir, that you do not even need any personal weapons … although you will not be requested to surrender them, of course.”
Bedford did not get to see any of the main resort complex that day; he was conveyed directly from the helipad into the reception area of the security module, properly identified, and then courteously conducted to what they called an executive mini-suite. The suite was far from large, as compared with such accommodations on the mainland, but it included the utterly last words in Luxurious appointments, and Bedford only hoped that as his uncle had booked it, he was paying for it, too, for as the finances of the group now stood, he and they could not afford such opulence.
“Again, thank you, Dr. Harrel/Markov,” he hissed to himself, aloud and with intense venom. “You and your damned spendthrift nature and your triple-damned Project latifrons has very nearly ended the group before it fairly began to do anything worthwhile.”
A soft tone and a blink of subdued light emanated just then from the communications console and a female voice as soothing as warm honey intoned, “Mr. Bedford, you have a call from a Senator Bedford, in Washington, D.C., on the videophone. If you wish scrambling, you will have to do without the video aspect of the call.”
“Did the caller request scrambling?” asked Bedford.
“No, sir,” replied the disembodied voice.
“Then I can do without it, thank you,” said Bedford. “You may put it through to me, please.”