"It will?" Parror murmured, and moved the silver whip jingling in his hand.
"Where's Craddock? What did you do to him?"
"I did nothing. I showed him a certain mirror. Through it he saw—well, I do not know what he saw. But he was tranced."
"Wake him up. Take me to him."
"He is awake now."
"He'd better be," Raft said coldly, his eye on Parror's whip and his fingers touching a cool gun-butt. "You killed da Fonseca with this same funny business, didn't you?"
"Killed him? The mirror is mine. I lent it to him and took it back."
"Yours?" Janissa breathed.
Parror ignored her. "What happened after that is no concern of mine. I had no further use for da Fonseca. And his tongue might have been a danger."
Sudden rage flooded Raft. The bearded man's arrogance, his indifference, even the subtle wrongness he could not put a name to made all the tension of the past three weeks crystallize into a hot fury. A bullet was not enough. Raft wanted to use his hands.
"You bicho!" he snarled. "If Craddock dies I'll break your filthy neck. Take me to him!"
He lunged forward and seized Parror's shoulder, feeling a savage delight in coming to grips with the man at last.
He knew judo. He was well-muscled and agile. But he did not expect Parror to—explode.
It was as if the handsome bearded face vanished and a demon glared out through the flesh and bone of the features. In that instant of utter, inhuman rage Raft saw the lips flatten away from Parror's teeth in a tigerish snarl, and he hissed shockingly as he struggled to tear free. Raft felt the smooth surge of muscles, and the power in them was shocking too, out of all proportion to that sleek, long-limbed slenderness. There was a moment of straining conflict.
Behind him, above the roaring in his ears, Raft heard Janissa's voice.
"Brian! Let him go—quick!"
The desperate urgency of her tone made Raft respond.
Shaken, a little dazed by his own anger and by the sudden, explosive violence it had roused, he released Parror. He felt oddly dazzled. He had never seen any human being, sane or mad, in the grip of a fury as sudden or as demoniac as Parror's.
There was another thing, too. The closeness of the grip had revealed a new, totally unexpected feature. Under the muscular arch of Parror's chest Raft had felt a steady throbbing that was unmistakable.
And yet—back in the base hospital—the man had had no heartbeat!
Parror drew back, shook himself, relaxed into an imperturbable dignity. Miraculously, the insane fury was gone as suddenly as it had been roused.
"You must not touch those of our race in such a way, Brian," Janissa said softly. "If you must kill, then kill. But not maul."
Raft's own voice sounded strange to him.
"What is your race?" he asked, and his questioning gaze moved from the girl's demure face to the man's enigmatic dark eyes.
Parror said nothing. He only smiled, a long, slow, infinitely proud smile. And Raft read the answer. He had been seeing it more and more clearly every moment that passed, in every smooth, flowing motion of his body, even in his insane, inhuman fury at being touched. Inhuman indeed. Raft remembered what Parror had said in the hospital.
"I passed your ancestors, chattering and scratching themselves in the trees. And I passed my ancestors, too."
Yes, Raft knew now that he had passed them in the jungle unseeing, many times. They had gone silently by in the underbrush, on great padding feet, the shadows of the forest gliding across the shadowy markings of their bodies. He had heard their roaring in the dark, and seen their lambent eyes in the firelight.
He thought he knew, now, what race Parror's was. And Janissa's.
Not human. They came from a different stock. As a physician who had done biological and anthropological work, Raft knew that the incredible thing was not theoretically impossible. Evolution is not rigid. It was an accident that had made man the dominant, intelligent race. Accident, and the specialization of opposing thumbs.
Our ancestors were simian, arboreal, using those flexible hands to build the foundations of civilization. But in a different setup, the ruling race might have descended from dogs or reptiles or cats.
Cats.
It struck Raft suddenly, and he was shocked by the realization, that of all animals there is, except for the rodents who do not use it, only one which shows signs of developing an opposing thumb. The domestic cat does occasionally have an extra toe on each forefoot. An opposing toe.
The owner names it Mittens or Boxer and thinks no more about the matter. But given a little flexibility in that extra member, and given time and a favorable environment, such as this secret world of Paititi he did not yet know, what miracles might now develop!
Feline stock. That, perhaps, explained a great deal, but it did not clear up the entire mystery by any means. Raft still had no idea of the connection between Parror and Dan Craddock, nor exactly what was the lens-mirror that had killed da Fonseca. There were many other problems as well. Too many.
He noticed a tenseness ripple through Janissa, as though she had bristled. The word sprang unbidden into his mind. Almost simultaneously, he caught a distant noise, the tramp of feet, the ringing of metal upon metal.
Parror did not seem surprised. He turned toward the translucent door, and shadows loomed against the pale panel. There was a knock.
"Parror?" Janissa said. Her voice held a question.
He spoke to her briefly in the tongue Raft did not understand. She looked quickly toward Raft. Her eyes grew blank. A veil of demure withdrawal dropped down upon her. Suddenly, with a smooth, lithe motion, she was on her feet and vanishing among the trees beyond the arched portal.
Parror called a command. The oval swept up and vanished. Across that threshold, silhouettes against faint light, came men. Men?
They wore close-fitting chain-mail, very finely meshed. Glittering caps of tiny metal links, interwoven into designs, protected their heads. There were ten of them, and each had at his belt a thin, bare blade like a rapier.
They had the same mingled strength and delicacy of features that marked Parror, the same lithe, flowing agility. The taint of the tiger was in the way they moved, and the way their slanted eyes glowed intently on Raft.
Parror had stepped back, with a little shrug, and the ten men, without pausing, closed in on Raft. He realized his danger, though none of them had drawn a sword. He sprang toward the wall where his rifle leaned, saw that he would be intercepted, and snatched out his revolver.
Thin, wiry metal burned like a hot brand about his wrist. Parror had lashed out with his whip. The gun spun from Raft's grip. He felt the onrush of charging bodies, but, curiously, none of the soldiers touched him.
The shining rapiers were out, flickering, gleaming, weaving a deadly mesh all around him. Up and down, feinting, dancing, the steel sang, and Raft drew back, respecting the menace of those glittering swords. He swung toward Parror, but the bearded man had retreated and stood by the open archway, watching alertly.
"He speaks the Indio?" a deep voice asked.
Parror nodded. A soldier with a bronzed, scarred face gestured toward Raft.
"Will you come with us peacefully?"
"Where?" Raft countered.
"To the Great Lord."
"So you're not the big shot around here," Raft said to Parror. "Okay, I'll play it that way. Maybe it won't turn out exactly as you expect."
Parror smiled. "I said I thought I could find a use for you," he murmured in Portuguese. Then he relapsed into the cryptic tongue of the cat-people, and the scarred soldier asked a quick question. Parror's answer seemed to be satisfactory, for the man lowered his rapier.