Silence is Deadly by Jr. Lloyd Biggle Page A

surlane. Since the widow and Sajjo were both in splendid health, Darzek hoped they could reach the city early the next morning. If they did not, he intended to hide out during the day and finish the journey the following night.
    As they walked, he listened as intently as his impaired hearing permitted, and a short time later he heard what he had expected: the muddled rhythm of approaching nabrula hoofs.
    He rushed his group into hiding at the laneside, and an instant later six knights galloped past, looking from side to side and obviously searching for something. They took to the laneside again when he heard them returning.
    For the remainder of the night he continued to listen for approaching nabrula and alertly watch for potential hiding places; and he remarked to himself that a society where the nobility sought revenge on innocent wives and children of commoners was disgustingly reminiscent of too much of Earth’s history.
    It was almost morning when he finally became curious about Sajjo’s precious burden. She was reluctant to show it to him, but finally she submitted with a shy smile.
    He opened the sack; it was the electrical generator from the office caravan.
    She had seen his interest in it the night he was hired in Northpor, and she had followed him the night he had inspected it. When she knew they had to leave, she had stolen it for him.
    He burst into laughter, seized her, and kissed her. This was a daughter after any Synthesis agent’s heart.
    Now he could not wait to get to the Synthesis headquarters. His arrival there would electrify the agents in more ways than one.

CHAPTER 8
    The second night after Darzek’s return to Northpor, he drove with Sajjo as far as the mart. It was his first outing with a newly acquired nabrulk and cart, and he preferred to learn how to handle the beast when the city’s lanes were empty.
    They clunked and screeched along the now invisible mosaics of the colored cobblestones, and their cart was the only thing that moved except for the crews of sweeps, whose torch-lit progress could be glimpsed from time to time.
    The mart—the colorful, vibrant center of commerce and entertainment—was dead. Carts, wagons, nabrula were gone. Tents and booths were closed. All was deserted.
    Like the workers and their families in the forest villages, the citizens of Northpor retreated to their dwellings at night. It was the most salient feature of Kammian psychology and the one most difficult for the outsider to comprehend. The Kammians avoided the night. In the rural areas they could be said to have abandoned it to those luminous and pheromonal insect- or reptile-like creatures that shunned the day.
    But the night creatures were rarely seen in cities. City dwellers so despised them that they took pains to leave nothing about for the creatures to eat. Even nabrula droppings were scrupulously swept up each evening and placed in covered crocks. Further, any potential lairs or hiding places for such creatures were ruthlessly sought out by day and their occupants slaughtered. The only locale in the entire city of Northpor where the night creatures went unmolested was the mart.
    Darzek had not been aware of this. He happened upon their luminous display unexpectedly, and he halted the cart to watch it. The night creatures lived in the soil and amid the stones of the life pyramid. And they fed at the shrine of death.
    All of the bits and particles and chunks and pieces of food impaled on the pole during the day as offerings to the Winged Beast were consumed by these nocturnal creatures, who descended on the black shrine like a scintillating plague of thieves. They lighted the mart with their darting luminescence, making bold patterns of colored light as they battled for the Winged Beast’s scraps. There were dozens of species and dozens of color and flight patterns.
    And not all of them were luminescent. Darzek got a whiff of a particularly vile scent and caught his breath.
    He turned to watch Sajjo.