NINE: Bloodhounds

When he sat straight up in bed, chased awake by the stalker on the broken road, Tina was there to quiet him. She pushed gently against his chest until he lay down again, then sat on the edge of the water mattress.

"How do you feel?"

He licked his lips and found them salty. The inside of his mouth was dry and tasted like dust. "A drink?" he asked.

She got him water, watched him drink, asked if he wanted more, took the gla.s.s back into the bathroom when he said he was done. He watched her go, well enough to be fascinated by the movement of her tight round behind.

When she returned, he said, "Where's Hirschel?"

"In the garden, with Inspector Rainy. They've been scouring the area where it happened."

"Is he under arrest?"

She looked surprised. "Whatever for?"

"Wasn't he the one who tried to kill me-he and his trained wolf?"

She started to smile, stopped, said, "If it hadn't been for Uncle Hirschel, you might be dead. He heard you screaming for help, and when he thought he might not reach you in time, he fired his rifle in hopes he would scare off whatever was after you."

''What was he doing there with a rifle in the first place?" He didn't want to sound quarrelsome, but he did. His head ached so badly that he almost reached up to see if it was all there.

"He was on his way across the gardens. He intended to go down into the valley to hunt for deer, some of the small fast ones that he's never been lucky with so far."

"He saw the wolf?"

"He says not. It was gone when he reached you."

St. Cyr raised his right hand and reached for the wounded left shoulder; he encountered a thick ma.s.s of bandages. He did not have any pain in his shoulder. All the pain was in his head, smack in the center of his forehead. He raised his good hand and felt his forehead, but couldn't find anything out of place, any hole or foot-long arrow sticking out of his skull.

He said, "What did the doctor say about my arm? Claw wound?"

"There wasn't any doctor here," Tina said. "Not, at least, in the sense you mean. We have an autodoc in the library. We fed you into it, asked for a diagnosis, and let the robotic surgeons do the rest."

"How long have I been out?"

She looked at her watch. "Hirschel found you at ten-thirty. You've been unconscious slightly more than six hours. It's now twenty minutes of five."

"What hit me?"

"Drugs of some sort. Inspector Rainy knows all about that. I'll let him fill you in."

St. Cyr suddenly reached to his chest, felt the lines of a human body. "What happened to the sh.e.l.l?"

"We had to take it off to put you in the autodoc receival tray. h.e.l.l of a delay figuring out how to remove it. You could have bled to death."

"Will you help me up?"

"Of course not!" she snapped. "Jesus, you're a first-cla.s.s m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t!"

He smiled, though he didn't want to smile. "I have a job to do; I get a high by-the-day fee."

"You're too racked up to go running around the garden any more just now. Relax."

"I wasn't going to run anywhere. But I could do some clearer thinking if I had the bio-computer data banks to help."

She stood up and crossed the room to the easy chair, picked up the sh.e.l.l and carried it back to the bed. "I don't think you really need this at all right now; you just want want it." it."

"I need it," he said.

"You know what I said before."

"Yes."

"I think you rely on it too much. I know you do. Why do you have to face the world so logically? Why can't you break down and be human now and then? I won't say, 'like the rest of us,' because you know how messed up I am. But when you are an emotional creature, when hypno-keying hasn't ruined you, why fall back on this d.a.m.n thing?"

"I think you're beginning to care about me," he said. "See, I told you it was possible, that you had the capacity."

"Bulls.h.i.+t," she said, handing him the sh.e.l.l as he sat up in bed again. "Do you need help?"

"No."

"Then I'll leave. I don't want to see those d.a.m.ned holes in your chest again."

When she was at the open door between his bedroom and the sitting room, he called to her. "Tell Rainy to come and see me, will you?"

"He already asked me to tell him when you came around."

"Thank you."

But she was gone.

St. Cyr turned the sh.e.l.l on its back, pulled out the two cords that terminated in male jacks, plugged them into the female receptacles in his chest. For a moment he almost stopped at that point, almost unplugged the sh.e.l.l and put it away. Why couldn't it wait until morning? It couldn't wait until morning simply because of the nightmares... But the bio-computer was always bothering him when it attempted to a.n.a.lyze his dreams, wasn't it? Wouldn't it be pleasant to have a reprieve from the inevitable psychoa.n.a.lysis? He reminded himself that the computer itself did not comment on the dreams. The computer was only a compact data bank and logic circuitry. He used it, and he produced results. When it talked to him, he was actually talking to himself, no matter how much like a dialogue the unspoken conversation seemed. Therefore, it was not as great a weakness to rely on the sh.e.l.l as Tina thought it was; in a way, he was only relying on himself. And without the logic circuits, the nightmares would be far worse, terrifying... He lifted the sh.e.l.l against his chest, flicked the switch. In a minute it had thoroughly tapped his body.

"h.e.l.lo?" Inspector Rainy called from the other room.

"In here," St. Cyr replied.

The policeman walked into the room, wiping at his thick hair with one pink hand. He seemed to be dressed exactly as he was the first time St. Cyr had seen him, his clothes still rumpled and frayed at the cuffs. "Feeling well enough to talk?"

"I asked for you."

Rainy nodded, dragged a chair close to the bed, sat down. Though he was plump, he looked positively diminutive in the chair, like a troll or an over-fed elf. He gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles were white, though he gave no other indication that he was ill-at-ease. He was probably trying not to brush his hair back, St. Cyr decided.

"Find anything?" St. Cyr asked.

"The empty darts that got you."

"What was in them?"

"TDX-4, a perfectly legal hallucinogen."

"Why not a narcotic that would have completely disabled me?"

"Perhaps the killer didn't have access to it."

"I'm a.s.suming," St. Cyr said, "that the person who attacked me is a member of the family. There are three narcotic-dart pistols floating around to protect them from the killer."

Rainy leaned forward in his chair, wiped his hair; he looked much less like a troll when he sensed something that applied to the chase. "Who has these pistols?"

"Jubal and Alicia share one. Dane has another, and Tina."

"Not Hirschel? He's the gun man, after all."

"They're his pistols, but he gave them to the others when it was clear that Jubal frowned on deadly weapons. He prefers a projectile weapon anyway, I suppose."

"He only had the three?"

"So he said."

"But he might have concealed a fourth? Then, when he used it, he would be directing the suspicion elsewhere."

"Perhaps. But Tina tells me that it was Hirschel who saved me. I have distorted recollections of the same thing."

Rainy frowned and started back into his troll pose, than sat up again and said, "Suppose Hirschel has a good reason for killing the family but doesn't really want to kill you, just disable you for a while, put you out of action? He could have staged the events this morning-thereby putting you in bed, and also making himself look the hero. It would be a good deed to point to later, if he should end up being the last surviving member of the family, with all that money waiting in the bank."

Good point.

"Good point," St. Cyr said.

"And too, the killer might be an outsider with a gun of his own."

St. Cyr nodded. "Can you trace this TDX-4, find where it's been purchased lately in the area?"

"Impossible. As I said, it's a legal hallucinogen on Darma. It's sold everywhere that chewing gum is sold." Still on the edge of the chair, he combed his hair with his fingers and said, "What exactly did you see in the garden? What got after you?"

"The trees, the brambles, the gra.s.s."

"But those were illusions."

"Yes."

"What ripped your shoulder?"

St. Cyr unconsciously reached for the bandaged arm. "A wolf."

"You saw it?"

"Sort of." St. Cyr tried to explain the chaos in the garden, the way things had looked to him when he was under the influence of the hallucinogen.

Rainy interrupted him. "You don't have to go into much detail. I've used TDX-4 many times, though never with a paranoid reaction."

"I've been feeling paranoid lately." St. Cyr s.h.i.+fted, sat up higher in bed. "Anyway, I saw a wolf, a silver wolf."

"Gray," Rainy said.

"No, silver. Bright s.h.i.+ny silver, in parts."

"That could be part of the illusions."

"Perhaps. But I remember that I also seem to remember that it was always snarling, its mouth opened wide, lots of teeth showing... Funny that it never attempted to bite. It just swatted at me with those G.o.dawful claws..."

"A trained animal?" Rainy asked.

"I thought of that. In fact, I thought it might belong to Hirschel. If a trained animal is is involved, its master has to be a member of the household-to let it in when it killed Leon and Betty." involved, its master has to be a member of the household-to let it in when it killed Leon and Betty."

Rainy sank back in the chair. "We keep getting more and more file pages on this affair, but nothing makes sense when you try to put it together."

St. Cyr squirmed uneasily and turned sideways on the bed, more directly facing the policeman. "I have this bothersome notion that everything I need to know is right before me. I've been hunting the needle in a mound of hay, have gotten down to the last piece of straw, have picked that up and found nothing. All the while, the needle is lying flat on the ground under my knee. If I could just move, see it at a different angle than I've been viewing it from so far, it would all be very obvious."

Rainy pointed at the cyberdetective's chest. "Isn't your machine helping any?"

St. Cyr frowned. "Not much yet. That also bothers me. If it feels feels this close, the bio-computer ought to have more of it worked out than it does." this close, the bio-computer ought to have more of it worked out than it does."

To feel feel is an emotional response. I operate logically is an emotional response. I operate logically.

Rainy said, "Well, everyone in the family was by himself at that hour. No one has an alibi. For all we know, it could have been all of them working in harmony against you."

"Been taking TDX lately?"

Rainy smiled. It was the first time St. Cyr had witnessed any genuine humor in the man. Rainy said, "And what in h.e.l.l do you want me to do with the bloodhounds?"

St. Cyr sat up straight, "They've arrived?"

"Yes," Rainy said. "What a hideous name for such gentle-looking creatures. What are they for?"

"A little-known, seldom-used method of tracking fugitives," St. Cyr told him. "They became pa.s.si when limited-response mechanicals became the big rage in police work."

"You're going to put them onto the wolf?"

"I hope so. I sent for them three days ago, when Dane and I came back from visiting the gypsies. They're from off-planet, though out of this same solar system. Great expense getting them here, but it's Jubal's money being spent." He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and got to his feet. A dull flutter of pain flowed down his left side, most of it masked by whatever narcotics the autodoc had given him.