Star Hunter by Andre Norton (reading fiction .TXT) 📕

“So you do remember.” The other accepted that calmly. “All right. That need not necessarily spoil our plans. You have nothing to return to on Nahuatl⁠—unless you liked the Starfall.” His voice was icy with contempt. “To play our roles will be for your advantage, too.” He paused, his gaze centering on Rynch with the intensity of one willing the desired answer out of his inferior.

Nahuatl. Rynch caught at that. He had been on or in Nahuatl⁠—a planet? a city? If he could make this man believe he remembered everything clearly, more than just the scattered patches that he did.⁠ ⁠…

“You had me planted here, then came back to hunt me. Why? What makes Rynch Brodie so important?”

“Close to a billion credits!” The man from the spacer leaned well back in the hole, his arms spread flat out on either side to keep his body from sinking deeper. “A billion credits,” he repeated softly.

Rynch laughed. “You’ll have to think of a better one than that, fly-boy.”

“The stakes would have to be high, wouldn’t they, for us to go to all this staging? You’ve been conditioned, Brodie, illegally brain-channeled!”

To Rynch the words meant nothing. If they ever had, that was gone, lost in the maze of other things which had been blotted out of his mind by the Brodie past. But he would not give the other the advantage of knowing his uncertainty.

“You need a Brodie for a billion credits. But you don’t have a Brodie now!”

To his surprise the prisoner in the earth trap laughed. “I’ll have a Brodie when he’s needed. Think about a good share of a billion credits, boy, keep thinking of that hard.”

“I will.”

“Thoughts alone won’t work it, you know.” For the first time there was a hint of some emotion in the man’s voice.

“You mean I need you? I don’t think so. I’ve stopped being a plaque for someone to play across the board.” That expression brought another momentary flash of hazy memory⁠—a smoky, crowded room where men slid counters back and forth across tables⁠—not one of Brodie’s edited recalls, but his own.

Rynch stood up, started for the rise of the slope, but before he topped that he glanced back. The damaged com box still smoked where its wearer had flung it. Now the man was already straining forward with both arms, trying to reach a rock just a finger space beyond. Lucky for him the burrow was an old one, uninhabited. In time he should be able to work his way out. Meanwhile there was the whole of a wide countryside in which Rynch could discover a hideout⁠—no one would find him now against his will.

He tried, as he strode along, to piece together more of his memories and the scanty information he had had from the Nahuatl man. So he had been “brain-channeled,” given a set of false memories to fit a Rynch Brodie whose presence on this world meant a billion credits for someone. He could not believe that this was the spaceman’s game alone, for hadn’t he spoken of “we”?

A billion credits! The sum was fantastic, the whole story unbelievable.

There was a hot stab of pain on his instep. Rynch cried out, stamped hard. One of the clawed scavengers was crushed. The man leaped back in time to avoid another step into a swarming mass of them at work on some unidentifiable carrion. Staring down at the welter of scaled, segmented bodies and busy claws, he gasped.

Three dead water-cats were near the man trapped in the pit. Bait to draw these voracious eaters straight to the prisoner. Rynch’s empty stomach heaved. He swung around, ran across the grassy verge of the upper bank, hoping he was not too late.

As he half fell, half slid down to the water, he saw that the man had managed to hook the webbing of the smouldering box to him, was casting it out and dragging it back patiently, aiming at the nearest rock of size, fruitlessly attempting to hitch its straps over the round of stone.

Rynch dashed on, caught at that loop of webbing, and dug his heels into the loose gravel as he began a steady pull. With his aid the other crawled out, lay panting. Rynch grabbed the man’s shoulder, jerked him away from the body of the female water-cat. He was sure he had seen a telltale scurrying around the smaller of the dead cubs.

The man straightened, glanced toward Rynch who was backing off, the needler up and ready between them.

“My turn to ask why?”

Then his gaze followed Rynch’s. The smallest cub twitched from side to side. Not with any faint trace of life, but under the attack of the scavengers. More scuttled towards the second cub.

“Thanks!” The stranger was on his feet. “My name is Ras Hume. I don’t think I told you that when we last met.”

“This doesn’t make any difference. I’m not your man, not Brodie!”

Hume shrugged. “You think about it, Brodie, think about it with care. Come back to camp with me and⁠—”

“No!” Rynch interrupted. “You go your way, I go mine from here on.”

Again the other laughed. “Not so simple as all that, boy. We’ve started something which can’t just be turned off as easily as you snap down a switch.” He took a step or two in Rynch’s direction.

The younger man brought up the needler. “Stay right where you are! Your game, Hume? All right, you play it⁠—but not with me.”

“And what are you going to do, take to the woods?”

“What I do is my business, Hume.”

“No, my business, too, very much so. I’m giving you a warning, boy, in return for your help here.” He nodded at the pit. “There’s something in that woods⁠—something which didn’t show up when the Guild had their survey exploration here.”

“The watchers.” Rynch retreated step by step, keeping the needler ready. “I saw them.”

“You’ve seen them!” Hume was eager. “What do they look like?”

In spite of his desire to be rid of Hume, Rynch found himself answering that in detail,