Footfall

George dropped his voice to a conspiratorial mumble. “Snouts They’ve got snouts down there.”

Roger woke on the living room floor. His head pounded. Snouts. No big secret. Nothing but a hideout for captured snouts. That’s ridiculous! Bellingham vanished from the news before anyone captured a snout! And they wouldn’t put General Gillespi in charge of a snout prison camp.

But Bill Shakes believes it. He didn’t want me to find out. If Shakes doesn’t know what’s really going on in the harbor, nobody out here does. We’ll have to go inside.

He heard Harry’s voice from the other room. “Like Sheena Queen of the Jungle. Miz D. hopped on, and out we came. Hey real coffee! Great!” There were other voices, children, and giggles

Coffee! But to get any, he’d have to listen to Harry’s story yet again…

So. We achieve escape velocity, Pastempeh-keph thought. From here we coast. We’ll hold the African continent forever, and if new resistance rises, we’ll trample it from space. Ultimately the dissidents may rule Message Bearer while my descendants trade them metals for food.

The door to the mudroom opened. Pastempeh-keph waved happily from the mud. His fithp’s mating season had come round at last — “I have a guest,” said K’turfookeph.

You what? Pastempeh-keph didn’t say that. He said, “Enter. Soak your tired selves.” This had better be urgent!

K’turfookeph entered with Chowpeentulk. The females eased into the mud, carefully, under the low spin gravity. A few moments of quiet were allowed to pass, during which none of the tension left Chowpeentulk. Then she said, “My mate was murdered, Herdmaster. What have you done to find the rogue?”

He had thought he could postpone this. There was a war on, and a sufficiency of dead fithp. Some fi’ had removed a problem. The Herdmaster had taken steps to learn who, for he might act again, but there had been yet more urgent problems.

He said, “Tell me first, what would you have done?”

Chowpeentulk considered. “A rogue shows. He does not speak to his fithp, he abandons his mate, he does not trouble to hide who he is.”

“We have rogues enough,” the Herdmaster conceded. “Warriors on Winterhome face strange and terrible pressures. But here? So you must have noticed him. Is there a herdless one aboard? A member of the Traveler Herd whom none will associate with? No? Then who could have come and gone so unnoticed?”

Chowpeentulk shook her head. She was terribly tense. Why not? She had invaded the Herdmaster’s private mudroom!

He said, “Not a rogue. Then he did not act alone, and if he did, he must have shared the secret with someone. What would you do now?”

“I would ask! No Ii’ can lie to the Herdmaster.”

“That statement is too sweeping, but it has some truth. I have interviewed the heads of every fithp aboard Message Bearer. The sleepers do not ask that I seek a killer; they demanded only that I choose an Advisor from among them at once. This seemed promising. I set my attention on them. When that failed me, I questioned randomly chosen fithp: Fistarteh-thuktun’s apprentices, Tashayamp, weapons officers aboard, warriors newly come from Winterhome, mothers, newly mated females, unmated females, humans.

“Some spoke of roguish behavior in others. I challenged the alleged rogues; every accusation was unwarranted. None know how Fathisteh-tulk died. Few even know what his interests were, where he might have overturned a secret worth concealing—”

“Few? What have you learned?”

“I learned what you must have known, Chowpeentulk. Your mate was interested in the human prisoners. He questioned one Dawson, while Dawson was isolated.”

“So.” She said, “In the communal mudbath, days before he disappeared … he wouldn’t tell me what he intended, but he thought to learn something. It had to do with whether Winterhom was worth the taking.”

“It would. And where does that leave me? Did he question the Soviet prisoners? Did he learn anything? Humans may lie even to the Herdmaster, for I cannot read their body language. The Breakers were no help. It doesn’t matter. Even if we consider that surrendered human might murder a ranking fi’, another fi’ murder be involved. No frail human could have pushed him into a vertical wall of mud under minuscule thrust. A fi’ must have chilled the mudroom again after Fathisteh-tulk was dead.

“Meanwhile a fithpless killer walks Message Bearer. He killed among the highest rank, yet nothing shows in his stance. He know that he has played the Herdmaster for a fool.”

“We feared you had forgotten,” K’turfookeph said, with a trace of apology in her tone.

“Losing my fithp to thermonuclear bombs and wooden stick and madness, why should I ignore yet another death? But I hay no more footholds here! What should I seek? Some fi’ appeared and killed and went, unnoticed, speaking to none.”

Chowpeentulk sprayed him. The Herdmaster didn’t react at all “A rogue who came and went. So simple. Chowpeentulk, I will produce your mate’s killer within eight days. Leave us.”