It was an animal of some sort. 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."
Pilli swung up on his feet. It was an impressively effortless motion. There was a thick wide torso on short thick legs under the golden fur. The structure was gorilla-like. Pilli might weigh around four hundred pounds.
He started silently forward and Trigger felt a tingle of alarm. But he stopped six feet away. She looked at him. "Do I say something to Pilli?"
Lyad looked pleased. "No. He's a biostructure. A very intelligent one, but speech isn't included in his pattern."
Trigger kept looking at the golden-furred nightmare. "How can he see to guard you through all that hair?"
"He doesn't see," Lyad said. "At least not as we do. Pilli's part of one of our Tranest experiments—the original stock came from the Maccadon life banks, a small golden-haired Earth monkey. 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. We hope to breed them past the speech barrier so they can tell us what they do instead of seeing.... All right, Pilli. Run along!" She said to Balmordan, "I believe he doesn't like that Vethi thing of yours very much."
Balmordan nodded. "I had the same impression."
Perhaps, Trigger thought, that was why Pilli had been lurking so close to them. 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.
"In a way," Lyad said, "Pilli brings us to that matter of business I mentioned this afternoon."