Miellyn darted swiftly between us and caught up the child in her arms.
Rindy began to struggle noiselessly, kicking and whimpering, but Miellyn
took two quick steps, and flung an inner door open. Rakhal took a stride
toward her. She whirled on him, fighting to control the furious little
girl, and gasped, "Settle it between you, without the baby watching!"
Through the open door I briefly saw a bed, a child's small dresses
hanging on a hook, before Miellyn kicked the door shut and I heard a
latch being fastened. Behind the closed door Rindy broke into angry
screams, but I put my back against the door.
"She's right. We'll settle it between the two of us. What have you done
to that child?"
"If you thought--" Rakhal stopped himself in midsentence and stood
watching me without moving for a minute. Then he laughed.
"You're as stupid as ever, Race. Why, you fool, I knew Juli would run
straight to you, if she was scared enough. I knew it would bring you out
of hiding. Why, you damned fool!" He stood mocking me, but there was a
strained fury, almost a frenzy of contempt behind the laughter.
"You filthy coward, Race! Six years hiding in the Terran zone. Six
years, and I gave you six months! If you'd had the guts to walk out
after me, after I rigged that final deal to give you the chance, we
could have gone after the biggest thing on Wolf. And we could have
brought it off together, instead of spending years spying and dodging
and hunting! And now, when I finally get you out of hiding, all you want
to do is run back where you'll be safe! I thought you had more guts!"
"Not for Evarin's dirty work!"
Rakhal swore hideously. "Evarin! Do you really believe--I might have
known he'd get to you too! That girl--and you've managed to wreck all I
did there, too!" Suddenly, so swiftly my eyes could hardly follow, he
whipped out his skean and came at me. "Get away from that door!"
I stood my ground. "You'll have to kill me first. And I won't fight you,
Rakhal. We'll settle this, but we'll do it my way for once, like
Earthmen."
"_Son of the Ape!_ Get your skean out, you stinking coward!"
"I won't do it, Rakhal." I stood and defied him. I had outmaneuvered
Dry-towners in a _shegri_ bet. I knew Rakhal, and I knew he would not
knife an unarmed man. "We fought once with the _kifirgh_ and it didn't
settle anything. This time we'll do it my way. I threw my skean away
before I came here. I won't fight."
He thrust at me. Even I could see that the blow was a feint, and I had a
flashing, instantaneous memory of Dallisa's threat to drive the knife
through my palms. But even while I commanded myself to stand steady,
sheer reflex threw me forward, grabbing at his wrist and the knife.
Between my grappling hand he twisted and I felt the skean drive home,
rip through my jacket with a tearing sound; felt the thin fine line of
touch, not pain yet, as it sliced flesh. Then pain burned through my
ribs and I felt hot blood, and I wanted to kill Rakhal, wanted to get my
hands around his throat and kill him with them. And at the same time I
was raging because I didn't want to fight the crazy fool, I wasn't even
mad at him.
Miellyn flung the door open, shrieking, and suddenly the Toy, released,
was darting a small whirring droning horror, straight at Rakhal's eyes.
I yelled. But there was no time even to warn him. I bent and butted him
in the stomach. He grunted, doubled up in agony and fell out of the path
of the diving Toy. It whirred in frustration, hovered.
He writhed in agony, drawing up his knees, clawing at his shirt, while I
turned on Miellyn in immense fury--and stopped. Hers had been a move of
desperation, an instinctive act to restore the balance between a
weaponless man and one who had a knife. Rakhal gasped, in a hoarse voice
with all the breath gone from it:
"Didn't want to use. Rather fight clean--" Then he opened his closed
fist and suddenly there were _two_ of the little whirring droning
horrors in the room and this one was diving at me, and as I threw myself
headlong to the floor the last puzzle-piece fell into place: Evarin had
made the same bargain with Rakhal as with me!
I rolled over, dodging. Behind me in the room there was a child's shrill
scream: "Daddy! Daddy!" And abruptly the birds collapsed in midair and
went limp. They fell to the floor like dropping stones and lay there
quivering. Rindy dashed across the room, her small skirts flying, and
grabbed up one of the terrible vicious things in either hand.
"Rindy!" I bellowed. "No!"
She stood shaking, tears pouring down her round cheeks, a Toy squeezed
tight in either hand. Dark veins stood out almost black on her fair
temples. "Break them, Daddy," she implored in a little thread of a
voice. "Break them, _quick_. I can't hang on...."
Rakhal staggered to his feet like a drunken man and snatched one of the
Toys, grinding it under his heel. He made a grab at the second, reeled
and drew an anguished breath. He crumpled up, clutching at his belly
where I'd butted him. The bird screamed like a living thing.
Breaking my paralysis of horror I leaped up, ran across the room,
heedless of the searing pain along my side. I snatched the bird from
Rindy and it screamed and shrilled and died as my foot crunched the tiny
feathers. I stamped the still-moving thing into an amorphous mess and
kept on stamping and smashing until it was only a heap of powder.
Rakhal finally managed to haul himself upright again. His face was so
pale that the scars stood out like fresh burns.
"That was a foul blow, Race, but I--I know why you did it." He stopped
and breathed for a minute. Then he muttered, "You ... saved my life, you
know. Did you know you were doing it, when you did it?"
Still breathing hard, I nodded. Done knowingly, it meant an end of
blood-feud. However we had wronged each other, whatever the pledges. I
spoke the words that confirmed it and ended it, finally and forever:
"There is a life between us. Let it stand for a death."
Miellyn was standing in the doorway, her hands pressed to her mouth, her
eyes wide. She said shakily, "You're walking around with a knife in your
ribs, you fool!"
Rakhal whirled and with a quick jerk he pulled the skean loose. It had
simply been caught in my shirtcloak, in a fold of the rough cloth. He
pulled it away, glanced at the red tip, then relaxed. "Not more than an
inch deep," he said. Then, angrily, defending himself: "You did it
yourself, you ape. I was trying to get rid of the knife when you jumped
me."
But I knew that and he knew I knew it. He turned and scooped up Rindy,
who was sobbing noisily. She dug her head into his shoulder and I made
out her strangled words. "The other Toys hurt you when I was mad at
you...." she sobbed, rubbing her fists against smeared cheeks. "I--I
wasn't that mad at you. I wasn't that mad at anybody, not even ... him."
Rakhal pressed his hand against his daughter's fleecy hair and said,
looking at me over her head, "The Toys activate a child's subconscious
resentments against his parents--I found out that much. That also means
a child can control them for a few seconds. No adult can." A stranger
would have seen no change in his expression, but I knew him, and saw.
"Juli said you threatened Rindy."
He chuckled and set the child on her feet. "What else could I say that
would have scared Juli enough to send her running to you? Juli's proud,
almost as proud as you are, you stiff-necked Son of the Ape." The insult
did not sting me now.
"Come on, sit down and let's decide what to do, now we've finished up
the old business." He looked remotely at Miellyn and said, "You must be
Dallisa's sister? I don't suppose your talents include knowing how to
make coffee?"
They didn't, but with Rindy's help Miellyn managed, and while they were
out of the room Rakhal explained briefly. "Rindy has rudimentary ESP.
I've never had it myself, but I could teach her something--not
much--about how to use it. I've been on Evarin's track ever since that
business of The Lisse.
"I'd have got it sooner, if you were still working with me, but I
couldn't do anything as a Terran agent, and I had to be kicked out so
thoroughly that the others wouldn't be afraid I was still working
secretly for Terra. For a long time I was just chasing rumors, but when
Rindy got big enough to look in the crystals of Nebran, I started making
some progress.
"I was afraid to tell Juli; her best safety was the fact that she didn't
know anything. She's always been a stranger in the Dry-towns." He
paused, then said with honest self-evaluation, "Since I left the Secret
Service I've been a stranger there myself."