“HAWKS, I HAVE CONTACT WITH
VULTURE,” STAR Eagle reported.
They were perhaps six weeks out from Chanchuk now, but monitors
and pickups had been left in place there just in case Vulture
needed a hand in escaping.
“Is he calling for assistance?” Hawks asked, feeling
somewhat relieved even if this did bring up new problems.
“No. He wishes to speak with you. It is on a nonstandard
communications channel, but I believe it is legitimate.”
“Put him through,” the leader ordered, sitting
down.
“Hawks? This is Vulture,” came a thin, reedy voice
barely recognizable as Vulture’s, although the tone seemed
familiar. “I’m in bad trouble and I don’t know
what to do about it, and I think I have some information on trouble
coming your way as well—the cause of
my . . . predicament.”
“Go ahead. We’ve been worried about you. Our
monitors show a massed withdrawal from the region. Want us to plan
some kind of pickup?”
There was a pause. “Maybe. I—I don’t know. I
am undecided about this, and about a lot of other things right now.
I got too cocky, too arrogant. We had beaten the machines every
time. Now I got stuck by a damned SPF officer!”
Hawks frowned and leaned forward. “You are
captured?”
“No. Colonel—now Brigadier—Chi never found me.
She, well, deduced me. That’s the most dangerous
agent of the enemy I’ve ever come across or even dreamed of,
Hawks. She’s ruthless, brilliant, and imaginative. So much so
that Master System worked out a system to neutralize me without
even knowing for sure if I existed and appointed her chief of
capturing or killing all of you. She’s even got authority
over Vals, Hawks! She’s no regular military officer,
she’s a detective and a great one.”
“How did they neutralize you? And how do you know all this
about this Chi?” He’d heard of Chi from the Chanchuk
crew, but not as anything extraordinary.
“They isolated and imprisoned all of us,” Vulture
told him. “Naturally I had to appear exactly as the others,
and they never gave me time to either slip away or take over
somebody else, so I had to play along. They did the usual tests and
mindprinter scans, but things got so hot with the Holy Lama
imprisoned in orbit and the holy lineage threatened, they
couldn’t keep us or kill us. By that time, though, the task
force had arrived with a vengeance. After keeping us for days in
isolation they turned us over, one by one, to these Vals—you
know I was always powerless against Vals—and they sent us
down by big military transmuter, and in the process they transmuted
us. Not into anything that would cause notice—one Chanchukian
into another almost identical Chanchukian—but Chi convinced
them that I, somebody like me, was one of us. The stock transmuter
programs I could always beat, but somebody knew this time that I
was there, and some real bright computer figured out how I was made
and made the adjustments in the program. Hawks—the Vulture
will eat no more. I came out a Chanchuk male in all respects, just
like I was born to it. I feel like the walking dead—so much
of me is missing, all my powers gone, even some of my memories and
knowledge. I’m out of the game and I don’t know how
they did it. Ask Clayben. Maybe he can explain it.”
Hawks sighed, feeling suddenly depressed. Up to now the fight
had been costly, but the system had shown itself remarkably brittle
and error prone for all that. They had not been able to really cope
with the pirates of the Thunder, not in an effective,
aggressive manner. Not until now. Still, he had to keep his mind on
business. “How do you know about Chi?” he asked
again.
“The Holy Lama is quite something,” came the reply.
“Take all the smarts of the top chief administrators
you’ve known, put them together with learning in so many
areas that most of us never suspected existed at all and almost
absolute control over mind and body, and you have only a hint.
Except for the shape-changing and memory-transfer aspects, she can
do much of what I could do in the past, only she does it by sheer
force of mind and will alone. Body self-repair and diagnostics.
Control over pain, over all the brain centers. Hawks, she can fool
a mind probe wide awake and with her eyes open using no mechanical
means. Now extend that as well to a near-absolute grasp of every
detail of Center technology. Hawks—she arranged to tap the
SPF’s internal communications here and went through their
code like it was clear text. I’ve been sitting here inside
the Sacred Lodge listening to just about everything the SPF and the
Vals were saying. I’m using one of her taps on a system
monitor to send this. I can’t exactly move freely
here.”
“That kind of information is valuable in and of
itself,” Hawks noted, adding, “She sounds like a far
better friend than enemy.”
“Indeed. The one thing she’s had problems with is
accepting a male as at least the intellectual equal of one of her
sisters. It’s hard on me, too. I don’t have the
self-control I used to have, although I have some of the mental
abilities I talked about because I once was one of her
sisters. Unfortunately, none of those past lives is real anymore,
or living inside me. They’re all like books one read long ago
and remembers parts of, or maybe misremembers. The Holy Lama says
that I used to carry all their souls inside me and that they were
liberated when I was made, well, human, leaving only the
reflections of their lives. I don’t know. I only know that I
feel more imprisoned than enlightened.”
Hawks could not comprehend the magnitude of change that must be
going on inside Vulture, but he analyzed the situation well enough
from his own tactical needs and moral sense. “Could you get
off that planet if you had to?”
“Yes, I believe so. They know we got the ring, so
they’ve withdrawn all but a few local SPF people from here
and just about the entire task force. I still have the fighter that
brought us here stashed well inland, and with the aid of the Holy
Lama I’m sure I could get to it. They might have a trap
waiting just in case I try an escape, but now that the Holy
Lama’s down here and in charge once again she can play a lot
of tricks with their hallowed monitors and frequencies. The
question is whether or not I should.”
“You would die down there as a courtesan, my
friend,” Hawks told him. “Too much of you remains. You
know this Chi and how she thinks. Here, with us, you might not only
save some of us but get a measure of revenge. And there are three
females of Chanchuk here with no male, and they, at least, are free
of those limited racial attitudes and prejudices. Besides, I need
you to keep an eye on Clayben. I assume your feelings for him
remain the same. And you are human now. None has earned the right
to the rings as much as you. For all these reasons, you should join
us. You have served us beyond measure, Vulture, but you are still,
even now, too important for me to allow to curl up and
die.”
Vulture was deeply touched. “Very well. If the Holy Lama
agrees, we will work out something for a pickup. Oh—and this
bit of good news. They have not discovered our Matriyeh operation.
They think we still have to go after that ring, and Chi has had to
divide her forces and her activities between Matriyeh and wherever
the other is. That is a break, but only a slight one. I would
assume Chi would keep some distance from the unknown place, but
that will focus her attention more on Matriyeh. She’s good,
Hawks. If she figured me out, she might spot Ikira or the others in
place there. And if Matriyeh’s secret is blown, they’ll
spare nothing at all to make anyone who goes after that fifth ring
dead meat.”
Raven had his people, and he was doing his utmost to make
certain that none of them was dead meat, especially now they knew
the operation would proceed without Vulture. In addition to Maria,
Midi, Dora, and himself, Chunhoifan contributed Han Li,
Captain Chun’s second wife and Chunhoifan’s
chief gunner. She was so quiet and deferential around Chun that
even after all this time hardly anybody really noticed her, yet she
was proving to be pretty tough in Raven’s evaluation. He was
impressed. Rounding out the team was Peshwar Gobanifar, a very
strange member of Chunhoifan’s crew who somewhat
resembled a great owl, perhaps a meter and a quarter in height,
with a dull green body and huge, round, yellow and black eyes that
reflected the light. The tiny mouth resembled a small beak, adding
to the effect, and the nostrils were but tiny holes. He had thin
arms, however, instead of wings, with long, thick fingers, and the
feathers were not feathers but some sort of protective overlapping
layers of natural insulation, more like giant scales.
Gobanifar was neither fast nor fierce in any real sense, but he
saw as well at night as he did in the daytime if there was any
light at all around, however faint, and he knew the technology the
base camp would require. He was a good choice out of the declining
pool Raven had to choose from, although his wife wasn’t all
that keen about his participation.
Even Hawks, feeling more than a little guilty always sending
others to be transformed and risked, wanted to go, but the same
logic he had used against the captains, the captains now used
against him. The chief was always too important to do battle, no
matter what the romantic legends said.
Thorough searches and tests of the entire solar system showed no
surprises; it was remarkably like it had been the last time
they’d been there. Of course, there could be some kind of
mobile monitor, totally inactive and pretending to be a bit of
space debris, with far too little power to be noticed by even the
most diligent sweep yet ready to spring into action should anything
disturb it or what it watched. They had used that technique
themselves many times with their fighters and they could not chance
risking Thunder no matter what. A quick penetration with
one ship on standby while the others waited in a private punch zone
well off the beaten path, monitoring by remote sensor, was their
best chance to avoid this kind of trap. Considering what Vulture
had said of this Colonel Chi, Hawks began to expect the unexpected,
although that kind of thinking made it very easy to cross the line
between cautious and paranoid.
Even if Chi were more dangerous than the machines she served,
Hawks believed it was highly unlikely that she could accept a new,
dual set of problems, formulate new plans of action, and implement
them before they had arrived. The laws of physics worked the same
for all of them; Chi had nothing faster to work with than they did.
What was much more likely, and potentially more dangerous, was that
Chi would arrive in some manner after they commenced their
operations. If so, it would certainly prove that this was indeed
the place where the ring lay hidden, but if Chi discovered them
already there the rationale for stealth on her part would be gone.
In the end, it would provoke what Master System most wanted and the
pirates most feared: a massed battle against a task force or the
abandonment of not only the people down on the planet but the very
quest for the rings for a long, long time to come.
Because of this fear, Star Eagle dispatched a fighter carried
piggyback by Lightning down to the same island where they
had first made planetfall after escaping the ancestral solar
system. As before, the fighter was outfitted with a transporter
mated to one on Lightning in geostationary orbit. It was
far easier to download supplies and personnel that way, and far
quicker than doing a hard landing. Lightning, however,
would not remain, for that would make it a sitting duck. Instead,
to be on the safe side, a relay monitor on a second automated
fighter would be placed with the debris in stand-down mode so that
Raven could be in communication with Thunder. Lightning
would alternate with other craft in a picket position well away
from the system and hidden in deep space yet able to receive
transmissions and get to the planet in very short order. The
others, including Thunder, would be well away.
Lighting would pull them out if it could, but it was
understood by Raven and his entire party that they were pretty much
on their own.
At the last moment before they left, Hawks met privately with
Raven. “I can’t guarantee anything, but at least for
now you won’t have to be transmuted. Later, probably, some
will, but not right away. The only thing I can do is tell you
within limits what this ring will look like.”
Raven shrugged. “Five birds or no birds. What’s the
difference? Probably five—no birds would be pretty
plain.”
“No. Five circles, probably linked together. And, if I am
correct on this, four of the five rings will be the same size and
one will be either a bit larger or a bit smaller than the others.
No birds at all.”
The Crow sat back and stared at Hawks. “You know a lot
more than you been letting on, don’t you?”
“No. In fact, I should have known—it was
the old thing that Nagy suggested finally surfacing. Something I
knew, a bit of totally useless trivia only one of my specialty
would be likely to ever encounter, that I didn’t know I knew.
When we have this ring, I believe I will be able to tell the
correct sequence, the entire code. That is why this one was so well
hidden. It is the key to the rest.”
“Well, we’ll get it if we can. In a way, it’s
fitting. If we got to go into this cold, on our own, no Vulture to
front for us, then it should be not only the last but the
most important.”
“Not the last—there is one left to go after this, as
you well know, and that one might cause more trouble. But this is
the key. Find it for us, Raven. Find it for all of those who have
died so far, and for all who have become monsters to
themselves.”
The Crow lit a cigar. “At this stage of the game, I
don’t intend to be the one who fails.”
Raven had been away long enough that he’d forgotten just
how bad the heat and humidity on this planet were, and particularly
that very slight stench of sulfur and hydrogen sulfide permeating
the air and everything around. It had taken him a long time to get
used to it before, and it was just as bad now. Any
planetary air smelled somewhat strange and foul after years on the
Thunder’s filtered atmosphere, but this place would
have smelled bad to anybody.
First the Crow had the camp itself established and a security
perimeter installed so they would have some warning if anything
unwelcome approached. This time, at least, they had been able to
take the time and had the equipment to manufacture some decent
tents in proper camouflage colors and treated with materials that
would shield those people and things underneath from most known
automatic probes and surveys. It wouldn’t stand up to visual
inspection, but a planet was a big place and it was unlikely that
even Chi would order a meter-by-meter close-up satellite mapping of
the entire world.
The island itself was actually two fairly tall, old volcanoes
rising up from the water that had, over the ages, connected
themselves together with lava flows that created a low but
above-sea-level land bridge between the two peaks. The dense jungle
vegetation had already reclaimed most of their old campsite, but
the barren black rock near the center of the land bridge still
showed the scars of the early initial outpost. They did not need
anything nearly as large or elaborate as the ragtag band of
refugees had the first time they were there, and so Raven
established camp close to the beach and just at the edge of the
jungle at the black rock area. Then, using tight-beam lasers, they
cleared a small path from where they were down almost to the beach
area. Raven decided to keep a visible wall obscuring the trail from
view by sea, just in case anybody out there had any ideas.
Both Maria and Midi seemed to like the place. It reminded them
somewhat of the volcanic planet where they had been changed and
forced to fight to become Matriyehans. They quickly stripped down
and once again became their warrior selves, and if there was
anything more disconcerting than the sight of two Matriyehan
warriors with machetes, spears, and, most ominously, modern laser
pistols hanging from hip belts, Raven hadn’t seen it. Those
were the two he trusted most to make a security sweep of the flats,
and that took most of the first day while they established their
camp, tested communications, and looked over aerial surveys. On the
second day he sent Midi up one mountain and Maria up the other,
knowing that from high up the sides of those peaks the whole island
and many others in the area could be seen. Both also had cameras to
take detailed pictures of the surrounding water and nearby
islands.
Dura suffered the worst, although she was adapting to it. She
had a naturally thick fur coat and while she might look lionlike,
her native world was anything but hot and humid. Direct sun also
seemed to be bad for Gobanifar, who sought the shade of the tents
or trees quickly and often had a hard time recovering his full wits
for minutes afterward, but such exposures were not the rule. There
were clouds everywhere on this place, and frequent, fierce
thunderstorms that came in with swift and sudden fury.
Han Li’s exoskeleton, in space, had always had a
dark-brown, almost black marblelike sheen, and it was surprising to
see that it changed both its color and its apparent texture in a
more natural environment. In sunlight she was almost a creamy
white; in the dark, jet black. In the more usual gray, she was a
very dull brown that was effective camouflage in the jungle when
she stood absolutely still, as she could for seemingly hours on
end.
Finally the encampment was set up, the area had been scouted,
the equipment had been tested. Now Raven walked with all but
Gobanifar down to the beach as he’d walked with Nagy so long
ago. It had changed very little, almost not at all. They stood
there for a moment, just looking at the scene, not saying
anything.
“What was that?” Maria asked nervously, suddenly on
guard and turning toward the open sea.
“I, too, sensed something,” Han Li told her.
“Out there. But I can see nothing now.”
“It is as if we were being observed,” Midi put in.
“I . . . feel it.”
Raven nodded. “We always got that feeling around here, but
no matter how still you were or what tricks you played it was
always there, in the corner of your eye for just a moment but never
long enough to really see it or tell what it was.” He turned
and pointed to an island that was several kilometers away but
looked almost near enough to touch. “Train your field glasses
on that over there.” He clicked on the electronics and
brought up his own. “Yep. Still there. See what we
meant?”
It didn’t take an expert to understand immediately what he
was talking about. Here, on their island, it was a mess—a
true random jungle. Over there, it was as if someone had planted
the trees in neat rows and evenly spaced on all sides. Another area
looked like rows of neatly planted bushes, and at no point did the
vegetation seem more than ankle high.
“What interests me is that gently sloping beach,”
Maria said after a while. “It seems almost like a ramp
leading up to and into the grove. It’s impossible to tell
from this angle, but there might be a slightly wider opening
between the rows if you drew a center line up that
beach.”
Dura looked around at their beach, which was wild, jagged,
irregular, carved by wind, wave, and storm. Not so the other; it
was smooth as glass. “Dead wood,” she muttered.
Raven turned. “Huh?”
“All along this beach there is dead wood. Some of it is
massive. I assume that it is all washed up here from other places,
or has fallen here from the forest edges and died, or perhaps is
the remains of what once lived here before erosion took its toll.
Perhaps all three. But there is none on that beach over there. Not
a stick that I can make out.”
Raven turned back and looked again. “You’re right!
I’ll be damned! Last time I figured that it was just because
it was facing more or less northeast and we faced due west, but
that wouldn’t protect it from thunderstorms, would it? Not
completely. The lay of that island isn’t right to keep that
beach completely sheltered, even if it is better protected than
here. That tears it, all right. We’re looking at
somebody’s farm or garden or something like that.” He
sighed. “I guess it’s time to go find out.”
Midi whirled and looked out to sea, but whatever she had noticed
had vanished again before even her lightning reflexes could catch
it.
They had not had the personal flying belts until Min had brought
the one back from Chanchuk. The design for that kind of equipment
was not in the usual data bases, not even Clayben’s, and even
though the transmuters could duplicate them for use, the scientist
was still going slightly mad trying to figure out how they worked.
Reconciling them with his understanding of physics had become a
mania with him. So far he had only determined that it used
magnetism in some unusual way, perhaps interacting with the
planetary magnetic field or something else generating such
forces.
Raven and his people didn’t care, so long as they worked.
They were not light, and required a tiny, fixed reactor charged
with several grams of murylium to work. The unit was strapped
tightly on the operator’s back, and rose up, went forward,
and went down controlled by switches in two thin control rods that
extended forward. Clayben had been concerned that the belts might
need fine-tuning for each world because of the magnetic
differences, and he was right, but since they didn’t have the
operator’s manual around, they simply had to practice and
compensate as best they could. Raven had no intention of being too
ambitious with them; he wanted no sudden descents into that water
and whatever lurked just beneath.
They had practiced on and just over the island, and discovered
some limitations. The devices had been capable of kilometers of
lift on Chanchuk; here they tended to become unstable above about
thirty meters. High enough, but inconvenient. They also required
considerable oversteering, particularly in any other direction than
southeast. Even so, they learned how to make the belts work and
what their power supply limits were.
Now Gobanifar watched as the others rose about twenty meters in
the air, keeping a wide spread between them, then drifted off on
the first morning that the weather was decent. There was something
of a wind that caused nervous moments, but there was
always a wind of some sort, particularly above the
treetops.
From above, the sea looked dark, with seams of dull, dark red
interlaced with deep purple and black. The red was a form of
microscopic sea plant that floated in the water in incredible
numbers; it was omnipresent over the planet, and the brown clumps
of it washed up to die on island shores illustrated just how dense
it had to be. In that water, it had to absorb or block almost all
light from getting beneath, and it seemed impossible that
anything could live down there.
The flight over was nerve-racking but short; they landed, one by
one, on the beach and immediately had their weapons at the ready.
Although the flight packs were heavy and awkward, it made no sense
to remove them. No matter what the cost in comfort and
maneuverability, so long as they were worn and charged, they
provided one avenue of escape any threat was unlikely to be able to
block.
The beach did not look nearly so pristine close up as it had
from afar, with large clumps of dead sea plant all about, but it
still looked far too good to be natural. Local conditions might
have piled more driftwood on their island than this one, but one
expected some debris, some irregularities from storm
damage.
The guess about there being a wider central path in from the
beach proved correct, as well, although just off the beach there
were a few surprises.
Tall poles—each carved out of a single great tree by
someone with a fair amount of skill—were sunk deep into the
ground on either side of that path, poles with a multitude of
monstrous, painted faces staring at them. Most of the party had
never seen their like, but Raven was more interested in their
technique than nervous about their terrible visages.
“Totem poles, we call ’em,” he told the
others. “My people never went in for ’em, but lots of
cold-weather tribes did up in the Northwest. Not quite like these,
though.”
“Are they gods of some sort?” Han Li asked,
gaping.
“No. Not in my experience, anyway. They’re signs.
Message signs, if we knew how to read them. The clans of the
various tribes would adopt a spiritual kinship with an animal of
nature. There was the frog clan and the eagle clan and the turtle
clan and you name it. Many greeting poles like this would have the
whole clan listed, with the clan who carved them on top, of course,
and then a descending social pecking order of clans arranged
according to how the boss clan saw it. I’m not sure what
these monstrosities represent, but that’s the way it worked
back home.” He sighed. “At least we know now that this
world is inhabited, that they’re colonials most likely, and
that they have an art and a religion—and they can come up on
land. Hard to tell how old these suckers are, but considering the
storms that blow through here, that paint looks awful
fresh.”
They continued on, the path more a primitive road than a mere
trail or clearing. There were other artifacts along the way, too,
representing individual monstrous creatures, and a series of
pottery jugs filled with a foul-smelling liquid. A quick test
proved Raven’s guess correct: they were twin rows of torches
that could mark this way at night, although Raven did not remember
ever seeing a fire over here. If so, they would have been over
during their first landing no matter what.
Dura studied the area. “You still might not have seen them
if they had been lit, if they weren’t lit but
occasionally,” she pointed out. “The jungle thickens
just over there and the road curves, putting highland between here
and the other beach very quickly.”
No more than two kilometers in they reached the place where the
road was leading. It had walls built of crude-looking but
impressively tight, mortarless stone, and all around were more of
the fierce-looking totems. Inside, a freshwater stream led down to
a small, clear blue lake and a number of low stone structures that
seemed built less for protection than to delineate special areas
within the walled camp. The stream itself was fed by a small but
impressive waterfall that had carved a depression in the volcanic
rock below and swept the back wall clean. That back wall was a
solid hill of smooth, shiny rock, dark brown in color, that seemed
to reflect much of the scene around it and the ever-changing water
as well.
“Obsidian,” Raven told them. “A whole small
mountain of glass rock. I’ve seen similar in the Yellowstone
but not this smooth and this perfect and not with that great
waterfall in the middle.”
Facing the cliff and waterfall was a veritable wall of carved
demonic figures, all staring into the cliff and being reflected,
distortedly, back at them, giving the impression of a tribe of
monsters staring out from just beneath the glass. A row of torches
and flame pots nicely placed around would, if lit, give an even
eerier sensation at night.
“We are trespassing on holy ground,” Midi said
nervously. “This is some sort of temple or holy
place.”
Raven nodded. “I agree. I said all totems were messages,
and it’s clear that all the ones leading here meant a simple
‘Keep Out.’ What I can’t figure out is why
they’d go to all this trouble and then have nobody here
permanently—no high priests, no holy guards, nothin’.
This place is obviously used and well maintained, yet there’s
nobody here. It’s just too damned deserted.”
Dura looked around and shook her shaggy head. “I have been
wondering if perhaps the people did not simply vanish as we
approached. Hiding in the lake, perhaps.”
Maria went over to a barren area and dropped to one knee,
studying the ground. “I find it interesting that even though
it rains as much here as elsewhere on this world, there are no
tracks. No footprints at all. The road and the paths here are well
worn, yet there is no sign of prints. Why?”
Raven stood back and thought about it. “Gobanifar,”
he said at last.
All heads turned to him in puzzlement.
“He’s nocturnal. Oh, he gets around well enough in
the daytime, but he can’t stand direct sunlight and
he’s mostly blind in full daylight. This is a pretty nasty
sun. Suppose these people live in and under the water by day, then
come up at night? Suppose the sun would injure, maybe kill them? If
you lived or hunted or whatever in those seas, with that plankton
or whatever it is hiding most of the sun and keeping what’s
below pretty dark, you’d probably be pretty damned sensitive
to the sun’s rays, wouldn’t you? And if you could see
at all down there, imagine what daylight would do. The only thing
that doesn’t figure is that this stuff implies air breathers,
yet there’s no sign of them surfacing for air or even
skirting the tops of the waves.”
“It makes sense,” Dura agreed. “As to the
tracks—if they’re really sea creatures, maybe they
don’t have much to make tracks with. Suppose they don’t
have legs.”
Raven went over to one of the worn tracks and bent down and
examined it. It was pretty much the size of an average human, and
the worn depression was deep and yet oddly shaped, almost straight
along the sides. “Could be,” he agreed. “If they
had to drag their bodies behind them they’d wipe out any
handprints or whatever. But if they’re designed for the
water, why come out of it at all, particularly to this elaborate
setup?”
“Takya’s people live entirely in the sea,”
Dura noted, “yet they build and maintain structures on rocky
outcrops, some very elaborate. The people of Chanchuk are also
water creatures yet they build in it and live above it.”
“Perhaps it’s simply out of some memory of who and
what they used to be,” Maria suggested. “Or perhaps
they do not come here often. This might be used only for high
religious purposes, for marriages and funerals or for other holy
things. Many ancients had their gods living in the sky. If you
lived in the darkest of waters, and only came out at night, would
not the land be the dwelling place of the gods? This world is
generally more cloudy than clear and has no moon. Think about
it.”
“Yeah, but if they see in the dark, if they see like we do
at all, then why all the torches and fire pots?” Raven mused.
“Unless . . . fire would be almost a
sacred thing to a water culture that only once in a while came up
on land. Yeah. Brightness and fire. Makes sense.” He thought
for a moment. “Now we come to the hard part. I don’t
know about you, but I don’t think I want to get caught in
here in the dead of night even if we can outrun ’em and
outfly ’em. Still this is it. This is where we got to get
some kind of contact going. The first step is to find out just what
the hell these people are like.”
Maria looked around. “I kind of doubt they could climb
trees, although they probably would have some means of knocking
someone out of them if they had to. They harvest those fruits and
coconuts somehow, I think. If someone could stay up there, though,
with a flight pack, infrared viewer perhaps tied in to a
communications link, and remain very, very quiet, perhaps all
night . . . it might be a start.”
Raven grinned. “Nice assignment. I don’t notice
anybody rushing to volunteer.”
“I will do it,” said Dura Panoshka. “My people
are born in the trees.”
Raven nodded. “Agreed—for tonight. I think one of us
can get back over to camp, recharge, and get back here with the
necessary equipment with time to spare before dusk. But this
isn’t someplace they visit every night. It might take a week,
maybe a month. Who knows?” He looked around. “Han Li, I
think this is one duty that you are excused from. You can
remain still for that long but frankly you are too heavy for those
trees to support. Maybe Gobanifar is gonna do more than he figured
after all. As for the rest of us—we’ll all take turns
until somebody gets lucky.”
Pictures of the holy place were taken and transmitted back to
Thunder through the communications link. Everyone was
fascinated, although the regular data bases had nothing specific
about the totems or the design of the place. It remained for
Clayben to make the best guess.
“The totems aren’t northwestern American, that is
certain,” he said. “It is the wrong sort of setting for
them, and isn’t consistent with any of the cultures known to
Raven or Hawks. So many of the totems are really statues—I
think we were thrown by the totem pole aspect of the entry
guardians. Most of the ones inside are single deities, and some are
even repeated many times. The squid-faced thing, and the creature
that is all mean red eyes and teeth. Animism, yes, but not Amerind.
The wood and the technique are wrong. I would say Polynesian,
perhaps Melanesian. South Pacific. The layout of the place very
much resembles the Polynesian heiau. If so, these are
going to be tribal people, with many gods based on nature, very
fierce, possibly if not probably including human sacrifice and,
potentially, even ritual cannibalism.”
Hawks shook his head. “You mean virgins into volcanoes and
all that?”
“Not that way, although that’s the old image. Think
of the Aztecs and Mayans. Like them, sacrifice was never a
girl—their culture was very male-oriented. Young men,
possibly the prime of manhood. None of our people would be
sacrificed, though. They would be flayed alive, their hearts
perhaps removed, and parts of them consumed to gain the
mana of the enemy. That’s if they don’t
consider our people gods. Ancient Hawaiians mistook the earliest
European explorers for gods simply because they had white skin and
Caucasian features. Of course, when one of them cut himself or
bruised himself or had any misfortune, they changed their minds and
attacked. They were an ignorant, insular people—but they
weren’t stupid.”
On the island of the heiau, the advance party went through nine
days of night watches. Several times there seemed to be movement
about the island, either in the direction of the beach or, now and
then, in the direction of the lake, but nothing came near enough to
be seen if, indeed, they were not figments of imaginations that
were both nervous and bored at the same time. Still, Raven was
certain that the wait would not be indefinite; one did not build
such places for use only once or twice a year, and the area was too
well maintained. Indeed, by day there were signs that some of the
ripe fruit from particular groves had been harvested.
On the tenth night it was Raven’s turn once more, and he
hated it. He certainly had counted on something happening before he
had to take another turn, and the last time he’d spent the
night mostly hanging on to the limbs for dear life in a bad storm.
Now, though, the night was fairly calm, the breeze strong but not
unusually so, and there were even occasional breaks in the clouds
through which a few lone stars shone. Such stellar visions were not
daily occurrences here.
About two and a half hours after sundown, when it was completely
dark, there was movement.
He heard them rather than saw them at first—odd, almost
slithering sounds, but intermittent. Swish. Stop.
Swish. Stop. Rhythmic, regular, yet very strange indeed,
and there were far more than just a single one. It was a sound made
by several sources, all tending to move and stop at pretty much the
same time.
They were lighting the flame pots along the road.
He removed his infrared goggles, knowing they would be no help.
At least these folks were gonna light themselves up for him. He
took the transmitter lens and used it alone for the pictures. It
was a nervous, even agonizing wait, but they finally came into
view.
The first thing that startled him was what should have been
obvious: they were the same dark, rust-red color as the plankton.
They swam in it, consumed it, were dyed by it inside and out.
It’s what made them damned near impossible to see even on the
surface.
From their waists down they had a fishlike shape terminating in
a broad, flat, horizontally mounted tail. No hair, no scales that
could be seen, but that skin looked tougher than any hide Raven had
ever known. They were dragging themselves along over rock and hard
ground and hardly noticed it.
From the waist up they were humanoid, but not completely so. The
arms were thick and powerful-looking but had a curious flatness to
them, the undersides seeming to have a different skin
texture—rougher and slightly lighter in color. The hands were
big and appeared fully webbed; they used them like forelegs, and
they were pivoted out from the body, lizardlike. Still, they must
have had real dexterity in them—somebody built this place and
carved and painted those totems. And could they bend their bodies!
As the procession reached a new fire pot, one would stop, then rear
up—so limber and so powerful, bent upright from the waist.
Then the forelegs became true hands, and the creature would take
several objects from a skin pouch strapped around its neck, strike
them together, and toss them into the pot—and the fire would
flare up.
The undersides were also interesting in that they seemed to have
dull but elaborate designs painted or somehow fixed onto them. At
first Raven thought it was natural, but they were too regular and
too complex—and too different from one another—to be
that. Ornamental markings, perhaps, or markings of rank.
The faces—the faces were unforgettable. Thick, lizardlike,
with only a bony ridge where the nose should be, a wide, serpentine
mouth that revealed nasty rows of teeth, and huge, deep-set eyes of
black on yellow that seemed at once inhuman and frightening, and
that reflected the fire’s light in a grotesque catlike way.
There were bony ridges and plates all over their faces that seemed
to freeze them into a permanent grotesque expression. If there were
ears they were but tiny holes in the sides of the head.
Raven couldn’t help but think that these were the meanest,
most monstrous-looking beings his wildest nightmares might conjure
up. Still, he had to hand it to Master System. If it wanted to
guard something precious, these were the very ones to use.
They certainly were talking, although it was a strange series of
sounds—like a recording of a man with a deep voice having a
heart attack played backward—coming from somewhere deep in
the throat.
When they passed right below him he could hear them breathing
heavily, in and out, almost like tiny steam engines. The breathing
was certainly labored; he suspected that these were not really air
breathers in the normal sense, but water breathers with gills who
had a sufficient, if rudimentary, lung system to breathe air from a
pulsating oblong membrane atop their bony heads.
They were not unarmed. Several carried what could only be
weapons in special hide carriers strapped to them, and he had no
doubt that the best of them could stop, fix their weapons, rear up,
aim, and shoot in a very short time.
Raven had a sudden, demanding urge to cough, but he was too
damned scared to allow it.
Finally they were all inside, and he allowed himself a drink
from his canteen and tried to get hold of himself. They were
lighting the pots and torches inside the heiau now, and the place
was taking on an eerie life.
That was all that happened for a couple of hours. There was
plenty of activity inside, but none on the road, which suited him
just fine. Maybe this was the maintenance and cleanup crew or the
housekeeping staff. He repressed a temptation to turn on the belt
and float up and away; not only would it be rough in the dark to
make sure he got well away, but no matter his personal feelings,
his mission was to wait and watch.
Along about midnight local time, down the road came a whole
mess of them, with armed guards flanking a small group
crawling in the center. He could tell immediately that the ones in
the center were different, although they were no less ugly. The one
leading the procession although well protected by guards was
huge and ten times meaner-looking than the rest. He wore
no weapons but some kind of cloak with an elaborate design, and
lots of golden neck chains and other jewelry. The chief,
certainly—maybe even one of higher rank than that.
The others behind him, crawling two abreast, were very
different. They were smaller and a bit sleeker, yet longer, more
serpentine, than the others. Their faces were a little gentler, and
less bony, although still ugly by Raven’s standards. Two bony
plates rose just over the eyes and met near the back of the head,
just behind the nostrils, joining into a single ridge that extended
down the back, tapering off above the waist.
These, then, were the beautiful maidens, if your idea of beauty
was an iguana with a dolphin’s tail. Raven wondered if they
bore their young live and nursed them or what. It was hard to
imagine breasts of any sort somewhere in that ribbed, bony
underplate.
The party came along up the road and seemed to continue forever,
and it wasn’t a silent procession. There was a kind of
chanting going on, echoed from inside the heiau, and after the
chief had entered, drums began a slow, steady beat and there was
the sound of horns being blown. Somebody at least had
lungs, unless they could make those sounds naturally.
He was surprised to see the women following the chief, though.
According to the data Clayben had sent down based on his analysis
of the initial pictures, if this was a Pacific culture, women
shouldn’t be allowed on holy ground or even allowed to walk
in the footsteps of the chief.
Finally the entire procession was inside, with the exception of
the warriors who were left, sitting up in that snake-god pose,
between each flame pot, with what looked like a spear and some kind
of crossbow. He didn’t want to test their range or
accuracy.
Although it was impossible to see just what was going on inside
the heiau, they seemed to be having a fine time chanting and
drumming loudly. Raven could only wonder why they hadn’t
heard this racket years ago, although, as had been pointed out, the
temple was well around the other side of the island from their
encampment and shielded from view. What sounded loud here might
well be rather soft on the other island when masked by the sounds
of wind and surf.
Whatever it was they were doing, the sun would come up at six
twenty-two by Raven’s watch, and it was getting after four.
He himself was miserable and certain that at any time he was going
to make some kind of noise or do something that would bring those
nasties down there after him in large numbers.
Just before dawn they started back out, but not everybody came.
He couldn’t be sure about all the males, but it was clear
that none of the females left the heiau. The big chief did, with
his retinue of guards, looking mean and huge as ever, and so did
most of the exterior guards, although some remained near the
entrance to the heiau. The others brought up the rear of the
chief’s big party, extinguishing the fire pots as they went.
Clearly the girls were going to stay, and so were at least four of
the warriors with the bows and spears. He hadn’t figured on
that. They were supposed to be helpless in daylight, blind and heat
sensitive. This didn’t figure—and would make his
getaway difficult. He could take them out with the pistol, of
course, but that was no way to say hello and ask for favors.
Sooner or later, though, a move would have to be made or they
might have to wait another ten days or more, with that damned Chi
breathing down their necks and time feeling very, very limited.
Idly he wondered if a mindprinter helmet would even go on those
thick heads, let alone work right. It better—these
weren’t the kind of people you just wanted to drop in on with
a cheery smile and upturned palms.
The sun, in fact, was fairly high before he felt relatively
safe. Not that his toad-faced guards had left; instead they had
brought water in large flasks, then poured them on areas behind
their watch stations well within the full shade of the trees, and
then he watched as they got down on their bellies and dug into the
mud until only their blowhole nostrils were exposed. It was an
amazing, and chilling, performance. Raven could only hope that
those resting spots were preprepared; he would hate to think that
they could do this most anywhere there was mud.
Cautiously he increased power on his flight belt, floated up a
bit, then out. For a brief moment he felt totally exposed and
helpless, but he quickly turned, climbed, and floated out toward
the open sea. If they saw or heard him, they hadn’t had
either the time or the vision in daylight to strike him before he
was away and that was good enough for him. All across the strait
though he kept seeing rust-color monster heads poking up from the
waves, staring at him with those mean monster eyes, and he hoped it
was just a trick of wind and wave and his tired mind.
He was all in when he arrived, although they knew by his
lateness combined with the fact that he hadn’t pushed the
emergency signal that he’d found something of value. He just
mumbled to them to see the recordings, made it into the tent, and
collapsed.
He dreamed of monsters, of lizardlike faces all around him,
staring, poking, prodding. At last he dreamed they were chasing him
down that road, and, for some reason, he was crawling just as they
were, but faster. He made the edge of the sea, yet for some reason
it was not choppy but smooth as glass, and reflecting back from the
water’s surface was the face of one of the demon
monsters—his face.
And, suddenly, he was aware of someone else, someone standing
next to him on two human legs. He looked up and saw Arnold Nagy
staring back down at him in pity. “Are you willing to pay the
price?” Nagy asked him, and the question echoed through his
mind.
He awoke, sweating profusely although not from the heat. The
nightmares had been very vivid, very real, and very, very
terrifying, yet until now he had been unable to wake up. He made
his way shakily outside the tent, seeing that it was nearly dark,
and found some food cakes and beer. It was better than nothing.
Dura Panoshka heard him and emerged from the communications tent
and came over to him. “How are you feeling?” she asked
him. “You were
having . . . dreams.”
Raven nodded. “Nightmares. You seen the
pictures?”
She nodded. “We also sent copies of the entire data pack
to Thunder. Takya agrees that they are ugly to look at,
but she suspects they are fast swimmers. Down below, particularly
if they have gills as well, their form and particularly their body
elasticity would make them formidable indeed. They look almost like
carved coral, yet they bend like snakes.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t much for the beauty of
’em one way or another. You sort’a got the impression
watching them that them mean expressions weren’t just locked
on ’em because of their bone structure. The eyes, the way
they moved—they’re a mean bunch of monsters, Dura, by
any human measure. Inside, not outside. And you can bet your ship
that if they got the ring it isn’t in none of those
convenient land temples of theirs. It’s down deep in the dark
and wet.”
“I know. They were able to analyze the speech, anyway.
It’s a variation of one of the Polynesian dialects, all
right. The reason it sounds so strange, other than the fact that
it’s being spoken with different sound equipment than the
usual human larynx, is that it covers a far wider spectrum than you
can hear. It’s very complex, though, and they can’t
make much of it out even though they recognized enough to identify
its origins. It appears that they don’t have a lot of sounds,
but they have an almost infinite number of intonations. Many
languages use tones—usually three or five, so if the same
‘word’ sound is said in a low tone, or ascending, or
descending, it means something different. In their case, the number
of tones is at least in the hundreds.”
He whistled. “So we’re not gonna have an easy
conversation with them. We have to face it, Dura. We got to put the
snatch on a couple of them things, haul ’em up to
Thunder, take a mindprint readout, analyze their language
and culture, and find out what we’re really dealing with. I
wish I knew just what would put ’em out quick and quiet
enough, but we’re just gonna have to trust to luck on that.
But if there aren’t any Centers, if there’s no emperor
or high priest or big lizard, then any damned chief could have it.
Any of ’em. And they don’t carry weapons around on land
unless they figure to get jumped. That chief had a lot of guards.
In the water I might see it—you got to figure them totem
faces are modeled on some pretty nasty animals. But there’s
no big land critters here. We know that. The only reason for
takin’ guards and bows and spears on land and posting guards
is to protect against other people. These guys might have regular
wars with each other. If they do—findin’ even somebody
who knows somebody who once heard that somebody had a ring
someplace is gonna be pretty damn near a career. And there’s
only one way you can make a hunt like that.”
She nodded. “I know. The odds are very good that some of
us will have to become these creatures.”
The first part, at least, was easier than they thought by far.
Thunder suggested that while the guards might be merely
sleeping and trained to be at the ready, Raven was probably right
in his supposition that they were there to guard against attacks by
other tribes. If daylight was hard on the guards, it would be
doubly hard on any attacker. The probability was quite good that
the guards slept rather soundly in the middle of the day,
particularly if it was one of those rare days with mostly clear
skies and direct sun.
Raven took Han Li because of her strength and Maria for her
nerve and reflexes, and they floated over with two extra belts. It
was easy to find two sleeping guards, and a quick mediscan showed
that no matter what might be alien about these creatures, the
basics of human anatomy were still retained as usual—the
brain in the head; spinal cord, heart, and other organs in the
right places. The lungs appeared more primitive and smaller than
expected and oddly shaped and placed, but that was not surprising.
The odds were very good that a beam on stun aimed full at the head
and then widening to the rest of the body would do the same thing
to them as to anybody else.
It did, according to the mediscan, and the job of then digging
the unconscious guard out of the mud was both messy and unpleasant
as well as heavy work. They just wanted to get him rolled over
sufficiently to put one of the belts on him and activate it, then
glide his ugly form back across the strait to the camp.
Lightning came in to handle the beam-up of the body, which
was then placed in a case filled with planetary sea water and
rigged to periodically restun the sleeping warrior. They did not
dare try medications or gases as yet; what worked on others might
well kill their prisoner, and they didn’t want that.
Equally nerve-racking was a return trip for a second warrior,
although it, too, proved more of just a messy job than any real
trouble. Thunder always wanted two specimens, since only
one might not be representative and a control was needed for
comparison. They would have liked to have also had a female, but
Raven decided against going into the heiau itself for one at this
time. If the object was to guard the heiau and the females within,
then it was more than possible that there were traps and alarms
set. Best to go with what they could easily get—for now.
Still, it would be tougher in one way from now on, and they
ordered their defense perimeter strengthened and set up a
twenty-four-hour guard shift as reinforcement. Nobody could tell
what the creatures would think when they woke up later on and
discovered two of their prized warriors vanished from well within
their defenses. Even though they had shown no interest, past or
present, in the base island, to find those two the big chief might
have different ideas.
“HAWKS, I HAVE CONTACT WITH
VULTURE,” STAR Eagle reported.
They were perhaps six weeks out from Chanchuk now, but monitors
and pickups had been left in place there just in case Vulture
needed a hand in escaping.
“Is he calling for assistance?” Hawks asked, feeling
somewhat relieved even if this did bring up new problems.
“No. He wishes to speak with you. It is on a nonstandard
communications channel, but I believe it is legitimate.”
“Put him through,” the leader ordered, sitting
down.
“Hawks? This is Vulture,” came a thin, reedy voice
barely recognizable as Vulture’s, although the tone seemed
familiar. “I’m in bad trouble and I don’t know
what to do about it, and I think I have some information on trouble
coming your way as well—the cause of
my . . . predicament.”
“Go ahead. We’ve been worried about you. Our
monitors show a massed withdrawal from the region. Want us to plan
some kind of pickup?”
There was a pause. “Maybe. I—I don’t know. I
am undecided about this, and about a lot of other things right now.
I got too cocky, too arrogant. We had beaten the machines every
time. Now I got stuck by a damned SPF officer!”
Hawks frowned and leaned forward. “You are
captured?”
“No. Colonel—now Brigadier—Chi never found me.
She, well, deduced me. That’s the most dangerous
agent of the enemy I’ve ever come across or even dreamed of,
Hawks. She’s ruthless, brilliant, and imaginative. So much so
that Master System worked out a system to neutralize me without
even knowing for sure if I existed and appointed her chief of
capturing or killing all of you. She’s even got authority
over Vals, Hawks! She’s no regular military officer,
she’s a detective and a great one.”
“How did they neutralize you? And how do you know all this
about this Chi?” He’d heard of Chi from the Chanchuk
crew, but not as anything extraordinary.
“They isolated and imprisoned all of us,” Vulture
told him. “Naturally I had to appear exactly as the others,
and they never gave me time to either slip away or take over
somebody else, so I had to play along. They did the usual tests and
mindprinter scans, but things got so hot with the Holy Lama
imprisoned in orbit and the holy lineage threatened, they
couldn’t keep us or kill us. By that time, though, the task
force had arrived with a vengeance. After keeping us for days in
isolation they turned us over, one by one, to these Vals—you
know I was always powerless against Vals—and they sent us
down by big military transmuter, and in the process they transmuted
us. Not into anything that would cause notice—one Chanchukian
into another almost identical Chanchukian—but Chi convinced
them that I, somebody like me, was one of us. The stock transmuter
programs I could always beat, but somebody knew this time that I
was there, and some real bright computer figured out how I was made
and made the adjustments in the program. Hawks—the Vulture
will eat no more. I came out a Chanchuk male in all respects, just
like I was born to it. I feel like the walking dead—so much
of me is missing, all my powers gone, even some of my memories and
knowledge. I’m out of the game and I don’t know how
they did it. Ask Clayben. Maybe he can explain it.”
Hawks sighed, feeling suddenly depressed. Up to now the fight
had been costly, but the system had shown itself remarkably brittle
and error prone for all that. They had not been able to really cope
with the pirates of the Thunder, not in an effective,
aggressive manner. Not until now. Still, he had to keep his mind on
business. “How do you know about Chi?” he asked
again.
“The Holy Lama is quite something,” came the reply.
“Take all the smarts of the top chief administrators
you’ve known, put them together with learning in so many
areas that most of us never suspected existed at all and almost
absolute control over mind and body, and you have only a hint.
Except for the shape-changing and memory-transfer aspects, she can
do much of what I could do in the past, only she does it by sheer
force of mind and will alone. Body self-repair and diagnostics.
Control over pain, over all the brain centers. Hawks, she can fool
a mind probe wide awake and with her eyes open using no mechanical
means. Now extend that as well to a near-absolute grasp of every
detail of Center technology. Hawks—she arranged to tap the
SPF’s internal communications here and went through their
code like it was clear text. I’ve been sitting here inside
the Sacred Lodge listening to just about everything the SPF and the
Vals were saying. I’m using one of her taps on a system
monitor to send this. I can’t exactly move freely
here.”
“That kind of information is valuable in and of
itself,” Hawks noted, adding, “She sounds like a far
better friend than enemy.”
“Indeed. The one thing she’s had problems with is
accepting a male as at least the intellectual equal of one of her
sisters. It’s hard on me, too. I don’t have the
self-control I used to have, although I have some of the mental
abilities I talked about because I once was one of her
sisters. Unfortunately, none of those past lives is real anymore,
or living inside me. They’re all like books one read long ago
and remembers parts of, or maybe misremembers. The Holy Lama says
that I used to carry all their souls inside me and that they were
liberated when I was made, well, human, leaving only the
reflections of their lives. I don’t know. I only know that I
feel more imprisoned than enlightened.”
Hawks could not comprehend the magnitude of change that must be
going on inside Vulture, but he analyzed the situation well enough
from his own tactical needs and moral sense. “Could you get
off that planet if you had to?”
“Yes, I believe so. They know we got the ring, so
they’ve withdrawn all but a few local SPF people from here
and just about the entire task force. I still have the fighter that
brought us here stashed well inland, and with the aid of the Holy
Lama I’m sure I could get to it. They might have a trap
waiting just in case I try an escape, but now that the Holy
Lama’s down here and in charge once again she can play a lot
of tricks with their hallowed monitors and frequencies. The
question is whether or not I should.”
“You would die down there as a courtesan, my
friend,” Hawks told him. “Too much of you remains. You
know this Chi and how she thinks. Here, with us, you might not only
save some of us but get a measure of revenge. And there are three
females of Chanchuk here with no male, and they, at least, are free
of those limited racial attitudes and prejudices. Besides, I need
you to keep an eye on Clayben. I assume your feelings for him
remain the same. And you are human now. None has earned the right
to the rings as much as you. For all these reasons, you should join
us. You have served us beyond measure, Vulture, but you are still,
even now, too important for me to allow to curl up and
die.”
Vulture was deeply touched. “Very well. If the Holy Lama
agrees, we will work out something for a pickup. Oh—and this
bit of good news. They have not discovered our Matriyeh operation.
They think we still have to go after that ring, and Chi has had to
divide her forces and her activities between Matriyeh and wherever
the other is. That is a break, but only a slight one. I would
assume Chi would keep some distance from the unknown place, but
that will focus her attention more on Matriyeh. She’s good,
Hawks. If she figured me out, she might spot Ikira or the others in
place there. And if Matriyeh’s secret is blown, they’ll
spare nothing at all to make anyone who goes after that fifth ring
dead meat.”
Raven had his people, and he was doing his utmost to make
certain that none of them was dead meat, especially now they knew
the operation would proceed without Vulture. In addition to Maria,
Midi, Dora, and himself, Chunhoifan contributed Han Li,
Captain Chun’s second wife and Chunhoifan’s
chief gunner. She was so quiet and deferential around Chun that
even after all this time hardly anybody really noticed her, yet she
was proving to be pretty tough in Raven’s evaluation. He was
impressed. Rounding out the team was Peshwar Gobanifar, a very
strange member of Chunhoifan’s crew who somewhat
resembled a great owl, perhaps a meter and a quarter in height,
with a dull green body and huge, round, yellow and black eyes that
reflected the light. The tiny mouth resembled a small beak, adding
to the effect, and the nostrils were but tiny holes. He had thin
arms, however, instead of wings, with long, thick fingers, and the
feathers were not feathers but some sort of protective overlapping
layers of natural insulation, more like giant scales.
Gobanifar was neither fast nor fierce in any real sense, but he
saw as well at night as he did in the daytime if there was any
light at all around, however faint, and he knew the technology the
base camp would require. He was a good choice out of the declining
pool Raven had to choose from, although his wife wasn’t all
that keen about his participation.
Even Hawks, feeling more than a little guilty always sending
others to be transformed and risked, wanted to go, but the same
logic he had used against the captains, the captains now used
against him. The chief was always too important to do battle, no
matter what the romantic legends said.
Thorough searches and tests of the entire solar system showed no
surprises; it was remarkably like it had been the last time
they’d been there. Of course, there could be some kind of
mobile monitor, totally inactive and pretending to be a bit of
space debris, with far too little power to be noticed by even the
most diligent sweep yet ready to spring into action should anything
disturb it or what it watched. They had used that technique
themselves many times with their fighters and they could not chance
risking Thunder no matter what. A quick penetration with
one ship on standby while the others waited in a private punch zone
well off the beaten path, monitoring by remote sensor, was their
best chance to avoid this kind of trap. Considering what Vulture
had said of this Colonel Chi, Hawks began to expect the unexpected,
although that kind of thinking made it very easy to cross the line
between cautious and paranoid.
Even if Chi were more dangerous than the machines she served,
Hawks believed it was highly unlikely that she could accept a new,
dual set of problems, formulate new plans of action, and implement
them before they had arrived. The laws of physics worked the same
for all of them; Chi had nothing faster to work with than they did.
What was much more likely, and potentially more dangerous, was that
Chi would arrive in some manner after they commenced their
operations. If so, it would certainly prove that this was indeed
the place where the ring lay hidden, but if Chi discovered them
already there the rationale for stealth on her part would be gone.
In the end, it would provoke what Master System most wanted and the
pirates most feared: a massed battle against a task force or the
abandonment of not only the people down on the planet but the very
quest for the rings for a long, long time to come.
Because of this fear, Star Eagle dispatched a fighter carried
piggyback by Lightning down to the same island where they
had first made planetfall after escaping the ancestral solar
system. As before, the fighter was outfitted with a transporter
mated to one on Lightning in geostationary orbit. It was
far easier to download supplies and personnel that way, and far
quicker than doing a hard landing. Lightning, however,
would not remain, for that would make it a sitting duck. Instead,
to be on the safe side, a relay monitor on a second automated
fighter would be placed with the debris in stand-down mode so that
Raven could be in communication with Thunder. Lightning
would alternate with other craft in a picket position well away
from the system and hidden in deep space yet able to receive
transmissions and get to the planet in very short order. The
others, including Thunder, would be well away.
Lighting would pull them out if it could, but it was
understood by Raven and his entire party that they were pretty much
on their own.
At the last moment before they left, Hawks met privately with
Raven. “I can’t guarantee anything, but at least for
now you won’t have to be transmuted. Later, probably, some
will, but not right away. The only thing I can do is tell you
within limits what this ring will look like.”
Raven shrugged. “Five birds or no birds. What’s the
difference? Probably five—no birds would be pretty
plain.”
“No. Five circles, probably linked together. And, if I am
correct on this, four of the five rings will be the same size and
one will be either a bit larger or a bit smaller than the others.
No birds at all.”
The Crow sat back and stared at Hawks. “You know a lot
more than you been letting on, don’t you?”
“No. In fact, I should have known—it was
the old thing that Nagy suggested finally surfacing. Something I
knew, a bit of totally useless trivia only one of my specialty
would be likely to ever encounter, that I didn’t know I knew.
When we have this ring, I believe I will be able to tell the
correct sequence, the entire code. That is why this one was so well
hidden. It is the key to the rest.”
“Well, we’ll get it if we can. In a way, it’s
fitting. If we got to go into this cold, on our own, no Vulture to
front for us, then it should be not only the last but the
most important.”
“Not the last—there is one left to go after this, as
you well know, and that one might cause more trouble. But this is
the key. Find it for us, Raven. Find it for all of those who have
died so far, and for all who have become monsters to
themselves.”
The Crow lit a cigar. “At this stage of the game, I
don’t intend to be the one who fails.”
Raven had been away long enough that he’d forgotten just
how bad the heat and humidity on this planet were, and particularly
that very slight stench of sulfur and hydrogen sulfide permeating
the air and everything around. It had taken him a long time to get
used to it before, and it was just as bad now. Any
planetary air smelled somewhat strange and foul after years on the
Thunder’s filtered atmosphere, but this place would
have smelled bad to anybody.
First the Crow had the camp itself established and a security
perimeter installed so they would have some warning if anything
unwelcome approached. This time, at least, they had been able to
take the time and had the equipment to manufacture some decent
tents in proper camouflage colors and treated with materials that
would shield those people and things underneath from most known
automatic probes and surveys. It wouldn’t stand up to visual
inspection, but a planet was a big place and it was unlikely that
even Chi would order a meter-by-meter close-up satellite mapping of
the entire world.
The island itself was actually two fairly tall, old volcanoes
rising up from the water that had, over the ages, connected
themselves together with lava flows that created a low but
above-sea-level land bridge between the two peaks. The dense jungle
vegetation had already reclaimed most of their old campsite, but
the barren black rock near the center of the land bridge still
showed the scars of the early initial outpost. They did not need
anything nearly as large or elaborate as the ragtag band of
refugees had the first time they were there, and so Raven
established camp close to the beach and just at the edge of the
jungle at the black rock area. Then, using tight-beam lasers, they
cleared a small path from where they were down almost to the beach
area. Raven decided to keep a visible wall obscuring the trail from
view by sea, just in case anybody out there had any ideas.
Both Maria and Midi seemed to like the place. It reminded them
somewhat of the volcanic planet where they had been changed and
forced to fight to become Matriyehans. They quickly stripped down
and once again became their warrior selves, and if there was
anything more disconcerting than the sight of two Matriyehan
warriors with machetes, spears, and, most ominously, modern laser
pistols hanging from hip belts, Raven hadn’t seen it. Those
were the two he trusted most to make a security sweep of the flats,
and that took most of the first day while they established their
camp, tested communications, and looked over aerial surveys. On the
second day he sent Midi up one mountain and Maria up the other,
knowing that from high up the sides of those peaks the whole island
and many others in the area could be seen. Both also had cameras to
take detailed pictures of the surrounding water and nearby
islands.
Dura suffered the worst, although she was adapting to it. She
had a naturally thick fur coat and while she might look lionlike,
her native world was anything but hot and humid. Direct sun also
seemed to be bad for Gobanifar, who sought the shade of the tents
or trees quickly and often had a hard time recovering his full wits
for minutes afterward, but such exposures were not the rule. There
were clouds everywhere on this place, and frequent, fierce
thunderstorms that came in with swift and sudden fury.
Han Li’s exoskeleton, in space, had always had a
dark-brown, almost black marblelike sheen, and it was surprising to
see that it changed both its color and its apparent texture in a
more natural environment. In sunlight she was almost a creamy
white; in the dark, jet black. In the more usual gray, she was a
very dull brown that was effective camouflage in the jungle when
she stood absolutely still, as she could for seemingly hours on
end.
Finally the encampment was set up, the area had been scouted,
the equipment had been tested. Now Raven walked with all but
Gobanifar down to the beach as he’d walked with Nagy so long
ago. It had changed very little, almost not at all. They stood
there for a moment, just looking at the scene, not saying
anything.
“What was that?” Maria asked nervously, suddenly on
guard and turning toward the open sea.
“I, too, sensed something,” Han Li told her.
“Out there. But I can see nothing now.”
“It is as if we were being observed,” Midi put in.
“I . . . feel it.”
Raven nodded. “We always got that feeling around here, but
no matter how still you were or what tricks you played it was
always there, in the corner of your eye for just a moment but never
long enough to really see it or tell what it was.” He turned
and pointed to an island that was several kilometers away but
looked almost near enough to touch. “Train your field glasses
on that over there.” He clicked on the electronics and
brought up his own. “Yep. Still there. See what we
meant?”
It didn’t take an expert to understand immediately what he
was talking about. Here, on their island, it was a mess—a
true random jungle. Over there, it was as if someone had planted
the trees in neat rows and evenly spaced on all sides. Another area
looked like rows of neatly planted bushes, and at no point did the
vegetation seem more than ankle high.
“What interests me is that gently sloping beach,”
Maria said after a while. “It seems almost like a ramp
leading up to and into the grove. It’s impossible to tell
from this angle, but there might be a slightly wider opening
between the rows if you drew a center line up that
beach.”
Dura looked around at their beach, which was wild, jagged,
irregular, carved by wind, wave, and storm. Not so the other; it
was smooth as glass. “Dead wood,” she muttered.
Raven turned. “Huh?”
“All along this beach there is dead wood. Some of it is
massive. I assume that it is all washed up here from other places,
or has fallen here from the forest edges and died, or perhaps is
the remains of what once lived here before erosion took its toll.
Perhaps all three. But there is none on that beach over there. Not
a stick that I can make out.”
Raven turned back and looked again. “You’re right!
I’ll be damned! Last time I figured that it was just because
it was facing more or less northeast and we faced due west, but
that wouldn’t protect it from thunderstorms, would it? Not
completely. The lay of that island isn’t right to keep that
beach completely sheltered, even if it is better protected than
here. That tears it, all right. We’re looking at
somebody’s farm or garden or something like that.” He
sighed. “I guess it’s time to go find out.”
Midi whirled and looked out to sea, but whatever she had noticed
had vanished again before even her lightning reflexes could catch
it.
They had not had the personal flying belts until Min had brought
the one back from Chanchuk. The design for that kind of equipment
was not in the usual data bases, not even Clayben’s, and even
though the transmuters could duplicate them for use, the scientist
was still going slightly mad trying to figure out how they worked.
Reconciling them with his understanding of physics had become a
mania with him. So far he had only determined that it used
magnetism in some unusual way, perhaps interacting with the
planetary magnetic field or something else generating such
forces.
Raven and his people didn’t care, so long as they worked.
They were not light, and required a tiny, fixed reactor charged
with several grams of murylium to work. The unit was strapped
tightly on the operator’s back, and rose up, went forward,
and went down controlled by switches in two thin control rods that
extended forward. Clayben had been concerned that the belts might
need fine-tuning for each world because of the magnetic
differences, and he was right, but since they didn’t have the
operator’s manual around, they simply had to practice and
compensate as best they could. Raven had no intention of being too
ambitious with them; he wanted no sudden descents into that water
and whatever lurked just beneath.
They had practiced on and just over the island, and discovered
some limitations. The devices had been capable of kilometers of
lift on Chanchuk; here they tended to become unstable above about
thirty meters. High enough, but inconvenient. They also required
considerable oversteering, particularly in any other direction than
southeast. Even so, they learned how to make the belts work and
what their power supply limits were.
Now Gobanifar watched as the others rose about twenty meters in
the air, keeping a wide spread between them, then drifted off on
the first morning that the weather was decent. There was something
of a wind that caused nervous moments, but there was
always a wind of some sort, particularly above the
treetops.
From above, the sea looked dark, with seams of dull, dark red
interlaced with deep purple and black. The red was a form of
microscopic sea plant that floated in the water in incredible
numbers; it was omnipresent over the planet, and the brown clumps
of it washed up to die on island shores illustrated just how dense
it had to be. In that water, it had to absorb or block almost all
light from getting beneath, and it seemed impossible that
anything could live down there.
The flight over was nerve-racking but short; they landed, one by
one, on the beach and immediately had their weapons at the ready.
Although the flight packs were heavy and awkward, it made no sense
to remove them. No matter what the cost in comfort and
maneuverability, so long as they were worn and charged, they
provided one avenue of escape any threat was unlikely to be able to
block.
The beach did not look nearly so pristine close up as it had
from afar, with large clumps of dead sea plant all about, but it
still looked far too good to be natural. Local conditions might
have piled more driftwood on their island than this one, but one
expected some debris, some irregularities from storm
damage.
The guess about there being a wider central path in from the
beach proved correct, as well, although just off the beach there
were a few surprises.
Tall poles—each carved out of a single great tree by
someone with a fair amount of skill—were sunk deep into the
ground on either side of that path, poles with a multitude of
monstrous, painted faces staring at them. Most of the party had
never seen their like, but Raven was more interested in their
technique than nervous about their terrible visages.
“Totem poles, we call ’em,” he told the
others. “My people never went in for ’em, but lots of
cold-weather tribes did up in the Northwest. Not quite like these,
though.”
“Are they gods of some sort?” Han Li asked,
gaping.
“No. Not in my experience, anyway. They’re signs.
Message signs, if we knew how to read them. The clans of the
various tribes would adopt a spiritual kinship with an animal of
nature. There was the frog clan and the eagle clan and the turtle
clan and you name it. Many greeting poles like this would have the
whole clan listed, with the clan who carved them on top, of course,
and then a descending social pecking order of clans arranged
according to how the boss clan saw it. I’m not sure what
these monstrosities represent, but that’s the way it worked
back home.” He sighed. “At least we know now that this
world is inhabited, that they’re colonials most likely, and
that they have an art and a religion—and they can come up on
land. Hard to tell how old these suckers are, but considering the
storms that blow through here, that paint looks awful
fresh.”
They continued on, the path more a primitive road than a mere
trail or clearing. There were other artifacts along the way, too,
representing individual monstrous creatures, and a series of
pottery jugs filled with a foul-smelling liquid. A quick test
proved Raven’s guess correct: they were twin rows of torches
that could mark this way at night, although Raven did not remember
ever seeing a fire over here. If so, they would have been over
during their first landing no matter what.
Dura studied the area. “You still might not have seen them
if they had been lit, if they weren’t lit but
occasionally,” she pointed out. “The jungle thickens
just over there and the road curves, putting highland between here
and the other beach very quickly.”
No more than two kilometers in they reached the place where the
road was leading. It had walls built of crude-looking but
impressively tight, mortarless stone, and all around were more of
the fierce-looking totems. Inside, a freshwater stream led down to
a small, clear blue lake and a number of low stone structures that
seemed built less for protection than to delineate special areas
within the walled camp. The stream itself was fed by a small but
impressive waterfall that had carved a depression in the volcanic
rock below and swept the back wall clean. That back wall was a
solid hill of smooth, shiny rock, dark brown in color, that seemed
to reflect much of the scene around it and the ever-changing water
as well.
“Obsidian,” Raven told them. “A whole small
mountain of glass rock. I’ve seen similar in the Yellowstone
but not this smooth and this perfect and not with that great
waterfall in the middle.”
Facing the cliff and waterfall was a veritable wall of carved
demonic figures, all staring into the cliff and being reflected,
distortedly, back at them, giving the impression of a tribe of
monsters staring out from just beneath the glass. A row of torches
and flame pots nicely placed around would, if lit, give an even
eerier sensation at night.
“We are trespassing on holy ground,” Midi said
nervously. “This is some sort of temple or holy
place.”
Raven nodded. “I agree. I said all totems were messages,
and it’s clear that all the ones leading here meant a simple
‘Keep Out.’ What I can’t figure out is why
they’d go to all this trouble and then have nobody here
permanently—no high priests, no holy guards, nothin’.
This place is obviously used and well maintained, yet there’s
nobody here. It’s just too damned deserted.”
Dura looked around and shook her shaggy head. “I have been
wondering if perhaps the people did not simply vanish as we
approached. Hiding in the lake, perhaps.”
Maria went over to a barren area and dropped to one knee,
studying the ground. “I find it interesting that even though
it rains as much here as elsewhere on this world, there are no
tracks. No footprints at all. The road and the paths here are well
worn, yet there is no sign of prints. Why?”
Raven stood back and thought about it. “Gobanifar,”
he said at last.
All heads turned to him in puzzlement.
“He’s nocturnal. Oh, he gets around well enough in
the daytime, but he can’t stand direct sunlight and
he’s mostly blind in full daylight. This is a pretty nasty
sun. Suppose these people live in and under the water by day, then
come up at night? Suppose the sun would injure, maybe kill them? If
you lived or hunted or whatever in those seas, with that plankton
or whatever it is hiding most of the sun and keeping what’s
below pretty dark, you’d probably be pretty damned sensitive
to the sun’s rays, wouldn’t you? And if you could see
at all down there, imagine what daylight would do. The only thing
that doesn’t figure is that this stuff implies air breathers,
yet there’s no sign of them surfacing for air or even
skirting the tops of the waves.”
“It makes sense,” Dura agreed. “As to the
tracks—if they’re really sea creatures, maybe they
don’t have much to make tracks with. Suppose they don’t
have legs.”
Raven went over to one of the worn tracks and bent down and
examined it. It was pretty much the size of an average human, and
the worn depression was deep and yet oddly shaped, almost straight
along the sides. “Could be,” he agreed. “If they
had to drag their bodies behind them they’d wipe out any
handprints or whatever. But if they’re designed for the
water, why come out of it at all, particularly to this elaborate
setup?”
“Takya’s people live entirely in the sea,”
Dura noted, “yet they build and maintain structures on rocky
outcrops, some very elaborate. The people of Chanchuk are also
water creatures yet they build in it and live above it.”
“Perhaps it’s simply out of some memory of who and
what they used to be,” Maria suggested. “Or perhaps
they do not come here often. This might be used only for high
religious purposes, for marriages and funerals or for other holy
things. Many ancients had their gods living in the sky. If you
lived in the darkest of waters, and only came out at night, would
not the land be the dwelling place of the gods? This world is
generally more cloudy than clear and has no moon. Think about
it.”
“Yeah, but if they see in the dark, if they see like we do
at all, then why all the torches and fire pots?” Raven mused.
“Unless . . . fire would be almost a
sacred thing to a water culture that only once in a while came up
on land. Yeah. Brightness and fire. Makes sense.” He thought
for a moment. “Now we come to the hard part. I don’t
know about you, but I don’t think I want to get caught in
here in the dead of night even if we can outrun ’em and
outfly ’em. Still this is it. This is where we got to get
some kind of contact going. The first step is to find out just what
the hell these people are like.”
Maria looked around. “I kind of doubt they could climb
trees, although they probably would have some means of knocking
someone out of them if they had to. They harvest those fruits and
coconuts somehow, I think. If someone could stay up there, though,
with a flight pack, infrared viewer perhaps tied in to a
communications link, and remain very, very quiet, perhaps all
night . . . it might be a start.”
Raven grinned. “Nice assignment. I don’t notice
anybody rushing to volunteer.”
“I will do it,” said Dura Panoshka. “My people
are born in the trees.”
Raven nodded. “Agreed—for tonight. I think one of us
can get back over to camp, recharge, and get back here with the
necessary equipment with time to spare before dusk. But this
isn’t someplace they visit every night. It might take a week,
maybe a month. Who knows?” He looked around. “Han Li, I
think this is one duty that you are excused from. You can
remain still for that long but frankly you are too heavy for those
trees to support. Maybe Gobanifar is gonna do more than he figured
after all. As for the rest of us—we’ll all take turns
until somebody gets lucky.”
Pictures of the holy place were taken and transmitted back to
Thunder through the communications link. Everyone was
fascinated, although the regular data bases had nothing specific
about the totems or the design of the place. It remained for
Clayben to make the best guess.
“The totems aren’t northwestern American, that is
certain,” he said. “It is the wrong sort of setting for
them, and isn’t consistent with any of the cultures known to
Raven or Hawks. So many of the totems are really statues—I
think we were thrown by the totem pole aspect of the entry
guardians. Most of the ones inside are single deities, and some are
even repeated many times. The squid-faced thing, and the creature
that is all mean red eyes and teeth. Animism, yes, but not Amerind.
The wood and the technique are wrong. I would say Polynesian,
perhaps Melanesian. South Pacific. The layout of the place very
much resembles the Polynesian heiau. If so, these are
going to be tribal people, with many gods based on nature, very
fierce, possibly if not probably including human sacrifice and,
potentially, even ritual cannibalism.”
Hawks shook his head. “You mean virgins into volcanoes and
all that?”
“Not that way, although that’s the old image. Think
of the Aztecs and Mayans. Like them, sacrifice was never a
girl—their culture was very male-oriented. Young men,
possibly the prime of manhood. None of our people would be
sacrificed, though. They would be flayed alive, their hearts
perhaps removed, and parts of them consumed to gain the
mana of the enemy. That’s if they don’t
consider our people gods. Ancient Hawaiians mistook the earliest
European explorers for gods simply because they had white skin and
Caucasian features. Of course, when one of them cut himself or
bruised himself or had any misfortune, they changed their minds and
attacked. They were an ignorant, insular people—but they
weren’t stupid.”
On the island of the heiau, the advance party went through nine
days of night watches. Several times there seemed to be movement
about the island, either in the direction of the beach or, now and
then, in the direction of the lake, but nothing came near enough to
be seen if, indeed, they were not figments of imaginations that
were both nervous and bored at the same time. Still, Raven was
certain that the wait would not be indefinite; one did not build
such places for use only once or twice a year, and the area was too
well maintained. Indeed, by day there were signs that some of the
ripe fruit from particular groves had been harvested.
On the tenth night it was Raven’s turn once more, and he
hated it. He certainly had counted on something happening before he
had to take another turn, and the last time he’d spent the
night mostly hanging on to the limbs for dear life in a bad storm.
Now, though, the night was fairly calm, the breeze strong but not
unusually so, and there were even occasional breaks in the clouds
through which a few lone stars shone. Such stellar visions were not
daily occurrences here.
About two and a half hours after sundown, when it was completely
dark, there was movement.
He heard them rather than saw them at first—odd, almost
slithering sounds, but intermittent. Swish. Stop.
Swish. Stop. Rhythmic, regular, yet very strange indeed,
and there were far more than just a single one. It was a sound made
by several sources, all tending to move and stop at pretty much the
same time.
They were lighting the flame pots along the road.
He removed his infrared goggles, knowing they would be no help.
At least these folks were gonna light themselves up for him. He
took the transmitter lens and used it alone for the pictures. It
was a nervous, even agonizing wait, but they finally came into
view.
The first thing that startled him was what should have been
obvious: they were the same dark, rust-red color as the plankton.
They swam in it, consumed it, were dyed by it inside and out.
It’s what made them damned near impossible to see even on the
surface.
From their waists down they had a fishlike shape terminating in
a broad, flat, horizontally mounted tail. No hair, no scales that
could be seen, but that skin looked tougher than any hide Raven had
ever known. They were dragging themselves along over rock and hard
ground and hardly noticed it.
From the waist up they were humanoid, but not completely so. The
arms were thick and powerful-looking but had a curious flatness to
them, the undersides seeming to have a different skin
texture—rougher and slightly lighter in color. The hands were
big and appeared fully webbed; they used them like forelegs, and
they were pivoted out from the body, lizardlike. Still, they must
have had real dexterity in them—somebody built this place and
carved and painted those totems. And could they bend their bodies!
As the procession reached a new fire pot, one would stop, then rear
up—so limber and so powerful, bent upright from the waist.
Then the forelegs became true hands, and the creature would take
several objects from a skin pouch strapped around its neck, strike
them together, and toss them into the pot—and the fire would
flare up.
The undersides were also interesting in that they seemed to have
dull but elaborate designs painted or somehow fixed onto them. At
first Raven thought it was natural, but they were too regular and
too complex—and too different from one another—to be
that. Ornamental markings, perhaps, or markings of rank.
The faces—the faces were unforgettable. Thick, lizardlike,
with only a bony ridge where the nose should be, a wide, serpentine
mouth that revealed nasty rows of teeth, and huge, deep-set eyes of
black on yellow that seemed at once inhuman and frightening, and
that reflected the fire’s light in a grotesque catlike way.
There were bony ridges and plates all over their faces that seemed
to freeze them into a permanent grotesque expression. If there were
ears they were but tiny holes in the sides of the head.
Raven couldn’t help but think that these were the meanest,
most monstrous-looking beings his wildest nightmares might conjure
up. Still, he had to hand it to Master System. If it wanted to
guard something precious, these were the very ones to use.
They certainly were talking, although it was a strange series of
sounds—like a recording of a man with a deep voice having a
heart attack played backward—coming from somewhere deep in
the throat.
When they passed right below him he could hear them breathing
heavily, in and out, almost like tiny steam engines. The breathing
was certainly labored; he suspected that these were not really air
breathers in the normal sense, but water breathers with gills who
had a sufficient, if rudimentary, lung system to breathe air from a
pulsating oblong membrane atop their bony heads.
They were not unarmed. Several carried what could only be
weapons in special hide carriers strapped to them, and he had no
doubt that the best of them could stop, fix their weapons, rear up,
aim, and shoot in a very short time.
Raven had a sudden, demanding urge to cough, but he was too
damned scared to allow it.
Finally they were all inside, and he allowed himself a drink
from his canteen and tried to get hold of himself. They were
lighting the pots and torches inside the heiau now, and the place
was taking on an eerie life.
That was all that happened for a couple of hours. There was
plenty of activity inside, but none on the road, which suited him
just fine. Maybe this was the maintenance and cleanup crew or the
housekeeping staff. He repressed a temptation to turn on the belt
and float up and away; not only would it be rough in the dark to
make sure he got well away, but no matter his personal feelings,
his mission was to wait and watch.
Along about midnight local time, down the road came a whole
mess of them, with armed guards flanking a small group
crawling in the center. He could tell immediately that the ones in
the center were different, although they were no less ugly. The one
leading the procession although well protected by guards was
huge and ten times meaner-looking than the rest. He wore
no weapons but some kind of cloak with an elaborate design, and
lots of golden neck chains and other jewelry. The chief,
certainly—maybe even one of higher rank than that.
The others behind him, crawling two abreast, were very
different. They were smaller and a bit sleeker, yet longer, more
serpentine, than the others. Their faces were a little gentler, and
less bony, although still ugly by Raven’s standards. Two bony
plates rose just over the eyes and met near the back of the head,
just behind the nostrils, joining into a single ridge that extended
down the back, tapering off above the waist.
These, then, were the beautiful maidens, if your idea of beauty
was an iguana with a dolphin’s tail. Raven wondered if they
bore their young live and nursed them or what. It was hard to
imagine breasts of any sort somewhere in that ribbed, bony
underplate.
The party came along up the road and seemed to continue forever,
and it wasn’t a silent procession. There was a kind of
chanting going on, echoed from inside the heiau, and after the
chief had entered, drums began a slow, steady beat and there was
the sound of horns being blown. Somebody at least had
lungs, unless they could make those sounds naturally.
He was surprised to see the women following the chief, though.
According to the data Clayben had sent down based on his analysis
of the initial pictures, if this was a Pacific culture, women
shouldn’t be allowed on holy ground or even allowed to walk
in the footsteps of the chief.
Finally the entire procession was inside, with the exception of
the warriors who were left, sitting up in that snake-god pose,
between each flame pot, with what looked like a spear and some kind
of crossbow. He didn’t want to test their range or
accuracy.
Although it was impossible to see just what was going on inside
the heiau, they seemed to be having a fine time chanting and
drumming loudly. Raven could only wonder why they hadn’t
heard this racket years ago, although, as had been pointed out, the
temple was well around the other side of the island from their
encampment and shielded from view. What sounded loud here might
well be rather soft on the other island when masked by the sounds
of wind and surf.
Whatever it was they were doing, the sun would come up at six
twenty-two by Raven’s watch, and it was getting after four.
He himself was miserable and certain that at any time he was going
to make some kind of noise or do something that would bring those
nasties down there after him in large numbers.
Just before dawn they started back out, but not everybody came.
He couldn’t be sure about all the males, but it was clear
that none of the females left the heiau. The big chief did, with
his retinue of guards, looking mean and huge as ever, and so did
most of the exterior guards, although some remained near the
entrance to the heiau. The others brought up the rear of the
chief’s big party, extinguishing the fire pots as they went.
Clearly the girls were going to stay, and so were at least four of
the warriors with the bows and spears. He hadn’t figured on
that. They were supposed to be helpless in daylight, blind and heat
sensitive. This didn’t figure—and would make his
getaway difficult. He could take them out with the pistol, of
course, but that was no way to say hello and ask for favors.
Sooner or later, though, a move would have to be made or they
might have to wait another ten days or more, with that damned Chi
breathing down their necks and time feeling very, very limited.
Idly he wondered if a mindprinter helmet would even go on those
thick heads, let alone work right. It better—these
weren’t the kind of people you just wanted to drop in on with
a cheery smile and upturned palms.
The sun, in fact, was fairly high before he felt relatively
safe. Not that his toad-faced guards had left; instead they had
brought water in large flasks, then poured them on areas behind
their watch stations well within the full shade of the trees, and
then he watched as they got down on their bellies and dug into the
mud until only their blowhole nostrils were exposed. It was an
amazing, and chilling, performance. Raven could only hope that
those resting spots were preprepared; he would hate to think that
they could do this most anywhere there was mud.
Cautiously he increased power on his flight belt, floated up a
bit, then out. For a brief moment he felt totally exposed and
helpless, but he quickly turned, climbed, and floated out toward
the open sea. If they saw or heard him, they hadn’t had
either the time or the vision in daylight to strike him before he
was away and that was good enough for him. All across the strait
though he kept seeing rust-color monster heads poking up from the
waves, staring at him with those mean monster eyes, and he hoped it
was just a trick of wind and wave and his tired mind.
He was all in when he arrived, although they knew by his
lateness combined with the fact that he hadn’t pushed the
emergency signal that he’d found something of value. He just
mumbled to them to see the recordings, made it into the tent, and
collapsed.
He dreamed of monsters, of lizardlike faces all around him,
staring, poking, prodding. At last he dreamed they were chasing him
down that road, and, for some reason, he was crawling just as they
were, but faster. He made the edge of the sea, yet for some reason
it was not choppy but smooth as glass, and reflecting back from the
water’s surface was the face of one of the demon
monsters—his face.
And, suddenly, he was aware of someone else, someone standing
next to him on two human legs. He looked up and saw Arnold Nagy
staring back down at him in pity. “Are you willing to pay the
price?” Nagy asked him, and the question echoed through his
mind.
He awoke, sweating profusely although not from the heat. The
nightmares had been very vivid, very real, and very, very
terrifying, yet until now he had been unable to wake up. He made
his way shakily outside the tent, seeing that it was nearly dark,
and found some food cakes and beer. It was better than nothing.
Dura Panoshka heard him and emerged from the communications tent
and came over to him. “How are you feeling?” she asked
him. “You were
having . . . dreams.”
Raven nodded. “Nightmares. You seen the
pictures?”
She nodded. “We also sent copies of the entire data pack
to Thunder. Takya agrees that they are ugly to look at,
but she suspects they are fast swimmers. Down below, particularly
if they have gills as well, their form and particularly their body
elasticity would make them formidable indeed. They look almost like
carved coral, yet they bend like snakes.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t much for the beauty of
’em one way or another. You sort’a got the impression
watching them that them mean expressions weren’t just locked
on ’em because of their bone structure. The eyes, the way
they moved—they’re a mean bunch of monsters, Dura, by
any human measure. Inside, not outside. And you can bet your ship
that if they got the ring it isn’t in none of those
convenient land temples of theirs. It’s down deep in the dark
and wet.”
“I know. They were able to analyze the speech, anyway.
It’s a variation of one of the Polynesian dialects, all
right. The reason it sounds so strange, other than the fact that
it’s being spoken with different sound equipment than the
usual human larynx, is that it covers a far wider spectrum than you
can hear. It’s very complex, though, and they can’t
make much of it out even though they recognized enough to identify
its origins. It appears that they don’t have a lot of sounds,
but they have an almost infinite number of intonations. Many
languages use tones—usually three or five, so if the same
‘word’ sound is said in a low tone, or ascending, or
descending, it means something different. In their case, the number
of tones is at least in the hundreds.”
He whistled. “So we’re not gonna have an easy
conversation with them. We have to face it, Dura. We got to put the
snatch on a couple of them things, haul ’em up to
Thunder, take a mindprint readout, analyze their language
and culture, and find out what we’re really dealing with. I
wish I knew just what would put ’em out quick and quiet
enough, but we’re just gonna have to trust to luck on that.
But if there aren’t any Centers, if there’s no emperor
or high priest or big lizard, then any damned chief could have it.
Any of ’em. And they don’t carry weapons around on land
unless they figure to get jumped. That chief had a lot of guards.
In the water I might see it—you got to figure them totem
faces are modeled on some pretty nasty animals. But there’s
no big land critters here. We know that. The only reason for
takin’ guards and bows and spears on land and posting guards
is to protect against other people. These guys might have regular
wars with each other. If they do—findin’ even somebody
who knows somebody who once heard that somebody had a ring
someplace is gonna be pretty damn near a career. And there’s
only one way you can make a hunt like that.”
She nodded. “I know. The odds are very good that some of
us will have to become these creatures.”
The first part, at least, was easier than they thought by far.
Thunder suggested that while the guards might be merely
sleeping and trained to be at the ready, Raven was probably right
in his supposition that they were there to guard against attacks by
other tribes. If daylight was hard on the guards, it would be
doubly hard on any attacker. The probability was quite good that
the guards slept rather soundly in the middle of the day,
particularly if it was one of those rare days with mostly clear
skies and direct sun.
Raven took Han Li because of her strength and Maria for her
nerve and reflexes, and they floated over with two extra belts. It
was easy to find two sleeping guards, and a quick mediscan showed
that no matter what might be alien about these creatures, the
basics of human anatomy were still retained as usual—the
brain in the head; spinal cord, heart, and other organs in the
right places. The lungs appeared more primitive and smaller than
expected and oddly shaped and placed, but that was not surprising.
The odds were very good that a beam on stun aimed full at the head
and then widening to the rest of the body would do the same thing
to them as to anybody else.
It did, according to the mediscan, and the job of then digging
the unconscious guard out of the mud was both messy and unpleasant
as well as heavy work. They just wanted to get him rolled over
sufficiently to put one of the belts on him and activate it, then
glide his ugly form back across the strait to the camp.
Lightning came in to handle the beam-up of the body, which
was then placed in a case filled with planetary sea water and
rigged to periodically restun the sleeping warrior. They did not
dare try medications or gases as yet; what worked on others might
well kill their prisoner, and they didn’t want that.
Equally nerve-racking was a return trip for a second warrior,
although it, too, proved more of just a messy job than any real
trouble. Thunder always wanted two specimens, since only
one might not be representative and a control was needed for
comparison. They would have liked to have also had a female, but
Raven decided against going into the heiau itself for one at this
time. If the object was to guard the heiau and the females within,
then it was more than possible that there were traps and alarms
set. Best to go with what they could easily get—for now.
Still, it would be tougher in one way from now on, and they
ordered their defense perimeter strengthened and set up a
twenty-four-hour guard shift as reinforcement. Nobody could tell
what the creatures would think when they woke up later on and
discovered two of their prized warriors vanished from well within
their defenses. Even though they had shown no interest, past or
present, in the base island, to find those two the big chief might
have different ideas.