HISTORY REPEATS-6
914 Words
“STILL GOT IT,” SAID Buregarde, sniffing at the closed door but keeping one eye on the disappearing mercenary and his prisoner.
“I’ve got it, too. Still fright and concern: fear of harm, concern over what happens next.”
“Strong?”
“Definitely,” said Peter closing his eyes and holding his breath.
“Nothing measurable?” asked the dog after a full minute.
“No. Too bad I was never introduced to her. I have no idea of her strength of mind—wait!” Another minute went by in personal silence; Peter Hawley’s concentration far too deep to be disturbed by the sounds of the city’s spaceport slum by night. The dog backed away from the door and took an alert position to guard Peter while the man was immersed in his own mind. Finally Peter alerted and shook his head sadly. “I thought for a moment that she’d caught me. A fleeting thought of rescue or escape, concept of freedom, flight, safety. But wish-thinking. Not communication. Let’s go in.”
“Barge, or slink?” asked the dog.
“Slink.”
“Have it your way,” said Buregarde.
Outside, the place looked closed. The door was solid, a plastic in imitation of bronze through which neither light nor sound passed. The windows were dark. But once the door was cracked, the wave of sound came pouring out along the slit of light and filled the street with echo and re-echo.
“Slink, now,” said the dog.
“So everybody makes mistakes.”
Inside, a woman leaned over a low counter. “Check your weap ... say! You can’t bring that animal in here!”
Buregarde said, “He isn’t bringing me. I’m here because I like it.”
The woman’s eyes bugged. “What ... kind—?”
“I am man’s best friend—the noble dog of Barbarian Terra.”
“Yes ... but—”
“Oh,” said Peter airily, “we’re looking for a friend.”
“Friend? Who is he?”
“It’s a she and her name is Vanessa Lewis.”
“She ain’t here.”
“The dame’s a liar-ess, Peter. I scent her strong.”
“We’ll just take a look around,” said Peter to the check girl.
“You’ll have to check your weapons.”
“I’d rather go in naked. Sorry. Not today. Weapons happen to be my business today. Come on, Buregarde.”
Man and dog started along the hallway warily. Buregarde said, “Any touch?”
“Got a faint impression of alarm, danger, call out the guards.”
“I scent violence,” said the dog. “And—”
The door at the end of the hallway opened and a big man stepped out. “What’s going on here?” he demanded flatly.
The check girl said, “He wouldn’t check ...”
The big man reached for his hip pocket.
Peter said, “Take him high!” and they plunged.
Peter dove for the man’s knees, Buregarde went in a three-stride lope like an accordion folding and unfolding and then arched in a long leap with his snarling fangs aimed at the man’s throat. Man and dog hit him low and high before he could open his mouth, before he could free the snub pencil-ray. There was a short scrabble that ended when Buregarde lifted the man’s head and whammed it down hard against the floor.
Weakly, the check girl finished her statement, “... His weapons!” and keeled over in a dead faint.
Buregarde shook himself violently and worked his jaws, licking blood from his chops. Peter looked in through the open wall-door opposite the check counter; the racket had not been noticed by the roomful of spacemen and riffraff. The babble of a hundred tongues still went on amid the clink of glasses and the disturbing strains of Xanabian music. Smoke from a hundred semi-noxious weeds lay in strata across the room, and at a table in the far corner two men faced one another, their expressions a mixed pair. One held heavily begrudged admiration as he paid off five hundredweight of crystal-cut in the legal tender of Xanabar to the other, whose expression was greedy self-confidence. One of His Excellency’s Peacekeepers presided over the exchange. Coldly he extracted a fiftyweight from the pile and folded it into the signed and completed wager-contract. For his own coffer he extracted a fiveweight and slipped it into his boot top.
Peter Hawley and Buregarde passed on, went through the far door dragging their late adversary ignominiously by the heels. Amid the lessened publicity of the distant hall, Peter checked the man and shrugged. “He may live,” he said coldly, “if he doesn’t bleed to death.”
“You really ought to take ‘em on the high side,” said Buregarde, plaintively. “All I’ve got is my teeth to grab with. They don’t bleed so bad from the ankle.”
“They don’t stay stopped that way either,” said Peter harshly.
“You’d not be getting any praise from the Chief for that sort of brutality.”
“If Xanabar weren’t rotten to the core, we wouldn’t be plowing through it in the first place. Now, let’s get going.”
“Shouldn’t you call for the rest of the crew?”
“Not until I’m certain the girl’s here. I’d hate to cut the city-wide search for cold evidence.”
“She’s here. I scent her.”
“Maybe it’s past tense, Buregarde. Or maybe it’s another woman.”
“Could be. But one thing: It is definitely Terrestrial woman.” The dog sniffed again. “You get anything?”
“No more than before. It’s close and they’re the same set of impressions Yet, any woman would be frantic with fear and concern.”
“I ... shhh!” Buregarde’s sharp ears lifted instinctively at a distant sound not heard by the man. With a toss of his head, the dog folded one ear back, uncovering the inner shell. Like a sonic direction finder, Buregarde turned his head and listened.
“Man,” he said finally with a low growling voice. “Peter, there’ll be hell to pay around here directly. He’s stumbled over our recent conquest.”
“Let’s get cutting!”
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- Writer
