Masters of Everon Read Online Free PDF Page A

of a few pale-blond hairs that were almost invisible. There was a network of hair-fine wrinkles around the corners of his eyes and his mouth that showed sharply in the bright yellow sunlight.
    "John Smith will have the guest suite. Find a room for Mr. Robini close by. Don't worry, Tibur," said Armage, bunching his face in a small smile, for Tibur was staring at Mikey. "Mr. Robini has the maolot completely under control. Haven't you, Mr. Robini?"
    "That's right," said Jef.
    "I'll see you both later. John Smith," Armage turned to Martin, "will you excuse me? There're those other red-flagged passengers for me to check out. I'll join you for dinner this evening. You will be my guests for a dinner tonight, here at my house?"
    "Why not, indeed?" said Martin.
    "It'll be a great pleasure—I'll phone you, Tibur, about the guest list and the details. You two and Tibur will have the place to yourselves here until then, gentlemen. I live by myself. I'll meet you later."
    Armage turned and left. Tibur turned and led the rest of them up an escalator ramp to the second story and showed Martin to a three-room suite taking up one whole end of the second floor.
    Martin stepped in without a word, closing the door behind him. Tibur turned and led Jef with Mikey to another bedroom, two doors down the hall from the suite.
    "I'll see your luggage is sent out here from the spaceport," Tibur said, and went away.
    Jef led Mikey on the leash about a tour of the bedroom, stopping to let the maolot rub against and sniff all the items of furniture. Maolots in the blind stage had unbelievable spatial memories. After one tour of the room Mikey knew its dimensions and the location of all the objects in it. Jef unsnapped the leash and Mikey walked to the center of the space of carpeting by the window and curled up on the patch of sunlight coming through the wide window in that wall of the room, as confidently as if he could see it.
    "Stay there, now. Wait for me," Jef said to the maolot and went out of the bedroom, sliding the door closed behind him. He paused to listen for the tick of the magnetic lock that was now keyed over to his thumbprint. Then he went to the door of the suite into which Martin had vanished and touched the annunciator button above the latch button. "Jef Robini," he said.
    The door slid open almost immediately, to show Martin standing at the far end of the room beyond.
    "I won't say I wasn't expecting you," Martin commented. "Come in. Sit down."
    Martin touched a button on a tabletop control deck that closed the door behind Jef and came to take a gaudy, red-padded, armless chair opposite the one in which Jef had already seated himself. The living room of the suite was considerably larger than Jef's full bedroom and had been furnished and decorated by someone with no eye for color or style.
    "I'd guess," said Martin, looking at him with the shadow of a thin-lipped smile, "you've got something on your mind to discuss."
    "You could put it that way," said Jef. He was once more bracing himself against the strange inclination to like Martin; and the struggle made his voice remote and dry. "I take it you never knew I existed until that moment in the debarkation lounge, just before the ship landed?"
    "Did I not?" said Martin.
    "I don't see how you could have," Jef said. "On the other hand, you clearly gave the Constable the impression we'd had a good deal to do with each other, on the trip out from Earth, at least."
    "Don't be so quick to doubt me, now," said Martin. "Why, it seems to me there may even be a reference to you and your Mikey in my papers."
    Jef stared hard at him.
    "What are you trying to tell me?" he said at last. "My name's not in your papers."
    "Isn't it, then?"
    "Will you give me a straight answer?" The familiar feeling of sad bitterness was beginning to gather once more inside Jef. "Is my name there, or isn't it? And don't tell me you don't know. You'd have to know."
    "Would I?" Martin's black eyebrows lifted on his forehead.