He could not find his voice.
“He’s sleeping in hotels,” Daria said again.
This time, he only nodded.
“I don’t have proof of any of this,” she said, looking helpless. “And the more I’m telling you now, the less sure I am of any of it, to be honest, but look, if I’m right, well, nine hours out of Pinesborough would put him here-ish.” She uncapped her red marker and drew a wide circle on her map. “There’s three little towns there that look big enough for gas stations and stop lights. I can look online and find phone numbers for every motel in that area. We can call them, ask if they’ve seen your guy or his purple-haired girlfriend, and if someone has—” She looked at her timepiece again. “We can be there by eight. Nine at the latest. Before he’s even woken up.”
“Make your list,” Tagen ordered. He straightened up fast, his heart slamming against his ribs. “And ready your vehicle.” He stared one final moment more at the map on the floor, and then swung around and made for his room.
He took the stairs two and three at a time and ran down the hall to pack his things. He was not completely sure how much time lay between eight and eleven of the human clock, but he suspected it was not enough to allow as many phone calls as would need to be made. Nevertheless, it was more of a lead than he ever could have accomplished on his own and it felt right. He couldn’t say why exactly, but the conviction remained; perhaps he had some insight after all, or at least enough to recognize it when he saw it in others.
He finished dressing speedily and, on the assumption that this trail of Daria’s devising would lead to more than a wild goose (he was more and more fond of that phrase), Tagen packed everything—his computer, his medical kit, even the damned stimulator that Daria had purchased for him—everything apart from his guns. Those he buckled on his hip. That act, more than anything else, made him realize just how much he believed in Daria’s theory, and that in turn made him wonder how many humans which he had met may have mirrored her intellect before their spirits were crushed by enslavement.
That thought disturbed him so deeply that he was forced to shut it away. He could do nothing for the humans already in captivity or in preserves, but that did not render him entirely impotent in the matter. He would arrest E’Var, take him back to Jota, and once the Gate came down, that would be an end to the trafficking of Earth-born humans. And if that was the only legacy of Tagen Pahnee, it would still be a damned fine one to his way of thinking.
He went downstairs in full spirits and waited in the kitchen, trying not to pace, watching Daria work the antiquated model of a modern human computer. The way in which all her fingers moved would have proved hypnotic under other circumstances, but now, he felt only a dull impatience at the need to touch all the keys. Of course, he wished her to be thorough, but…
“You can make pages of these,” he said, takking his talons on the kitchen tiles. “As you did for the…the Watch-Death?”
“Deathwatch Northwest,” she said distractedly. “I guess so, but the phone is right there. I can just call—”
“Please make the pages. I would rather travel now and call once distance has been lessened.”
“But—”
“I realize it may take more than one day before our search sparks,” he continued. “But this feels right, Daria. If not tomorrow, or the next day, then the next, and on until—”
Tagen stopped mid-word. He cocked his head, frowning assiduously at the back of her head. She had ceased to type. She was staring at the screen of her computer but she did not seem to be looking at it. It was difficult to say, exactly, in the synthetic glow of the monitor, but she seemed to have paled.
“Until he is found,” he finished warily.
Her shoulders hunched. She pushed at the keys of her computer and the printing device beside it began to spit out paper. She said nothing.
Tagen’s talons flexed up to tak irritably at the tiles; lowering them in silence required effort enough to make his legs ache. “Do not…think me insensitive to your feelings,” he began.
“It’s not what you think.”
“I cannot do this without you,” he went on forcefully. “I cannot match his distance without a vehicle and a pilot.”
“I can’t—”
“What would you rather do, wait for him to knock at your door? What—” Tagen silenced himself grimly, staring down at the tiles until he trusted himself to speak gently. But when he looked up again, his words died in his throat.
She was sitting very still with her hands folded before her, her expression fixed on the monitor, and tears streaming down her face.
Well. He supposed he could have simply slapped her and ordered her to obey him. Then he could be a real slave-master.
“Daria,” he began.
“It’s not what you think,” she said again. “I can do this…I guess. I can drive, anyway. And I’ve got enough cash and credit saved up for a few days on the road, I don’t even care about that. And I know you need my help. I’m not trying to be difficult.” She reached up and wiped one cheek dry on the back of her hand. “But you have to understand…this could take a
lot
of time. God knows I have plenty of that, but…”
She turned around, but not to face him. Her eyes went to the empty food dish in the cat’s corner of the kitchen. “I didn’t think about it before. I just left the door open and got out of here before I froze up, you know? But we came back and he’d eaten everything and…and I’m in the middle of nowhere. Okay, he’s just a cat, and I know that doesn’t matter for much compared to what’s going on with your guy, but he’s
my
cat, he’s
all
I’ve had for the last six years, and…what’s going to happen to him if something happens to me?”
She wasn’t speaking now of merely taking several unexpected days away from her home. The last of Tagen’s anger left him.
“He started out a stray,” Daria said glumly. “I keep telling myself he could probably wander off and find another home just like he found me, if…if I just left the door open for him, he could—”
“Don’t do that,” Tagen sighed. “The earth will track itself in and distress you.”
She smiled, but it was a lackluster attempt at best.
“Could we not take him with us?” Tagen asked. “What does he need apart from food and scratching sand?”
“I…Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never tried taking him anywhere before. There aren’t many cats who like cars.” She stood up and called the cat’s name, as though she sincerely expected to interview the creature on the subject.
Grendel appeared at once, but took a moment to de-emphasize the speed at which it had arrived by rubbing its head against the doorjamb. It gazed around the room with a convincing show of indifference and uttered an inquiry.
Tagen glanced at Daria, who continued to stand and look uncertain, and then frowned at the cat, who licked its left paw in a pointed snub. Clearly, decisive action was called for. He straightened his jacket and moved briskly to the cupboard.
The instant he laid his hands on the cat’s food tins, Grendel lost all self-respect. It followed at Tagen’s heels, moaning piteously and scratching at Tagen’s shins. Tagen was unmoved. He marched out to Daria’s vehicle and opened the rear hatch. The cat leapt inside eagerly enough when Tagen dropped its food in the open hold. He set his pack beside the purring animals, shut the hatch and turned around.
Daria was standing on the porch with her paper in her hands. She was smiling faintly.
“He seems amenable to travel,” Tagen declared.
“As long as there’s food involved, sure.”
“Command is all about providing the proper motivations to one’s crew.”
“Good luck trying to command a cat,” she said, and then, softly, “Thanks.”
Tagen shrugged. It was a little thing, after all.
“Let me just grab my keys and some kitty litter and we’ll hit the road.” She vanished back into the house, her head high and her step once again certain.
Tagen leaned against the side of the groundcar to wait for her. He glanced behind him at Grendel, who had exhausted its attempts to grow opposing thumbs and open its own tins and who now lay contentedly on its side, watching him through the glass. “I command you to sleep,” he said sternly.
The cat closed its eyes.
Some were simply born to command.
D
aria came out of the motel office with her head down and a beaten twist to her mouth. Looking at her, Tagen knew what he was going to hear. Still, he was not daunted. They had come a great distance in a short time (well, relatively. He had only the vaguest notion of how far they were now from Daria’s home, and an even vaguer impression of the time that had elapsed. He knew that, were this Jota, they could have crossed the span in one-tenth the time. He also knew that, were he still on foot, it would be a journey of so many days that he might see Earth’s miserable summer end before he had reached this place), but now their progress was being measured one motel, and one disappointment, after another.
“No luck,” Daria said, unnecessarily in light of her dispirited expression. She picked up her printed page, pulled a writing stylus from the groundcar’s small fore-compartment, and made a neat line through one of the listings. It was the fourteenth such marking, representing nearly half of the register.
“What is the time?” he asked as soon as she tucked her page away again.
She looked at the narrow band encircling her wrist. “Eleven fifteen,” she said, and sighed. “He’s up and gone by now, wherever he is.”
“Agreed.” Tagen tried to lean back and had to settle for rolling his shoulders instead in the tight confines of the groundcar’s interior. “And it is very hot, so he is likely to travel by day and hunt when it begins to cool.”
“Which will be eight or nine hours from now.” Daria shook her head, her palms rubbing restlessly at her knees. She did not look at him and she made no attempt to start the engine of the vehicle. “I could be wrong about this, Tagen. He might not even be on this road.”
In ordinary circumstances, Tagen Pahnee was a man prone to the contagious effects of pessimism, but not this time. His gut told him they were close. Despite Daria’s obvious discouragement at having checked so many motels with so little to show for it, Tagen remained confidant.
“As I see it, the prisoner will proceed in one of two ways.” Tagen fetched out the printed page and ran his eye critically down the column of neatly-lettered alien words. “He may stay where he is. It seems that there has been a short lull after his larger hunts and the killings at the motel would certainly qualify. If not, he will move on, taking the first westward road he encounters, as has been his habit.”
“We think,” Daria interjected, stressing the second word.
“In either event, our course is clear. We must continue our inquiries until we find the place where either he has stayed or where he is staying even now. The road he takes next may depend greatly on which motel he has taken. Otherwise, we could simply drive on now and hope to overtake him.”
“How do you expect to know—” Daria interrupted herself with a yawn. “—when we’ve overtaken him? I mean, what if he stops early? He doesn’t do all his hunting when it’s cool.”
“No, that he does not. But these larger hunts have drawn swift attention. Your lawmen have come on his victims mere hours after he has passed. That being so, if we should pass by a great number of police vehicles…” He held out one hand to her, inviting conclusion.
“Yeah, I guess.” She looked around at the enclosing walls of forest. “Out here, it’s hardly likely they’d be busting the last of the big-time squirrel rustlers.” She turned to him, frowning and searching his face intently. “You’re putting a hell of a lot of faith in my slap-ass theory, you know that, right?”
“Had we known of this…circle he travels when he hunted Hillmark, I think that we would have him now,” he replied seriously. “In every suggestion you have made, there has been merit. I shall see you—”
He broke off sharply, then faced forward and stared away out the console window, making no attempt to complete the unfinished thought.
From the open hold in the rear of the groundcar came a sleepy cat-sound, and then Grendel’s head insinuated itself over Tagen’s shoulder. Words had not proved intriguing enough to rouse the animal from it’s incessant rest, but this silence had a prickly weight to it that anyone could feel. Tagen pulled the creature over the back of his seat and onto his lap in an attempt to disperse the awkwardness of the moment with interruption.
Daria waited for a short time, and then reached out and stilled the stroking movements of his hand on Grendel’s fur. “See me…?” she prompted, one brow raised.
He felt his lips stretching in a small smile, the humor of which utterly escaped him. “Recommended for commendation to our superiors,” he finished. He did not look at her.
Daria leaned back, and then faced forward as well. After a while, she said, “Daria Cleavon, intergalactic bounty hunter. Got a hell of nice ring to it.”
“Indeed.”
Silence, underscored by cat-growls of contentment.
Since the leave-taking of Daria’s home, Tagen had thought only of his prisoner. After so much stifling inaction, this day’s work left him with a renewal of purpose, even if it hadn’t delivered him E’Var in shackles. He knew with every cell of him that they were closing and he felt only the simmering excitement of pursuit nearing its end.
But now, all his thoughts went for the first time to that morning after, when he had his prisoner in custody or in ashes, and he stood again at his ship’s airlock, ready to leave Earth and all its inhabitants. All of them.
As hellish as this mission had been, as fervently as he hated this world, as much as he wished to be free of Heat…the thought of leaving still filled him with dark emotion. He couldn’t understand why. It was Daria at the heart of it, that much he knew, but it made the matter no clearer. He had taken many mates in his adult life and he had parted from each one when the time came without hesitation, just as they had done. The most emotion he had ever felt on leaving was a rueful wish for more time, spiced with good mating memories. This was not the same.