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Updated: June 5, 2025
The present level of the experiment is on the fancy side it has four hearts, for example, and what amounts to a second brain at the lower half of its spine. But it doesn't come equipped with visual organs. Pilli is one of twenty-three of the type. They have compensatory perception of a kind that is still quite mysterious.
Its head seemed turned toward the group, but whatever features it had remained hidden under the fur. Then an arm like the arm of a bear reached out and Trigger saw a great furred hand that in shape seemed completely human clutch the chair's edge. "He was resting," Lyad said. "Not sleeping. Pilli doesn't sleep. He's a perfect guardian. Come here, Pilli meet Trigger Argee."
The smell of ripe apples. She moistened her lips. She whispered, "Pilli keep away!" Eyeless, the dark would mean nothing to it. Seconds later, she heard the thing breathing. She faced the sound. It stopped for a moment, then it came again. A slow animal breathing. It seemed to circle slowly to her left. After a little it stopped. Then it was coming toward her.
She watched the biostructure move off down the terrace, grotesque and huge. She had got its scent as it went past her, a fresh, rather pleasant whiff, like the smell of ripe apples. An almost amiable sort of nightmare figure, Pilli was; the apple smell went with that, seemed to fit it. But nightmare was there too. She found herself feeling rather sorry for Pilli.
Then her mind froze up with a jolt, and thinking stopped completely. Quillan reached over the back of the seat and eased her over on her side. "Got to her finally!" he said. He sat down again. He brooded a moment. "She shouldn't get so disturbed about that Pilli thing," he remarked then. "It couldn't have lived anyway." "Eh?" the Commissioner said absently, watching the screens. "Why not?"
You haven't met Pilli. Virod!" she called. Virod appeared at the far end of the terrace. "Yes, First Lady?" "Bring in Pilli," she told him. Virod bowed. "Pilli is in the room, First Lady." He glanced about, went over to a massive easy chair a few feet way, and swung it aside. Something like a huge ball of golden fur behind it moved and sat up. It was an animal of some sort.
"You're safe when you're in one of those things, Belchik!" Quillan said reassuringly. "Wouldn't you feel a little safer there yourself, Lyad? If you say they're not even sure they've killed the creature...." "I probably shall have a cubicle set up here," Lyad said. "But not as protection against a catassin. It would never get past Pilli, for one thing." She looked at Trigger. "Oh, I forgot.
"Poor Pilli!" she said. "Alas!" Quillan said politely. "I gather you didn't just stun Pilli?" She shook her head. "Couldn't," she said. "Too big. Too fast." "How about the other one?" "Oh, him. Stunned. He's an investigator. They thought he was dead, though. That's what scared Lyad and Flam." "Yeah," Quillan said thoughtfully. "It would."
She said softly, almost pleadingly, "Pilli, stop! Go back, Pilli!" Silence. Pilli's odor lay heavily all around. Trigger heard her blood drumming in her ears, and, for a second then, she imagined she could feel, like a tangible fog, the body warmth of the monster standing in the dark before her. It wasn't imagination.
"In a way," Lyad said, "Pilli brings us to that matter of business I mentioned this afternoon." The group's eyes shifted over to her. She smiled. "We have good scientists on Tranest," she said, "as Pilli, I think, demonstrates." She nodded at Balmordan. "There are good scientists in the Devagas Union.
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