The stars were no longer sharp points above as
the copter set down under Thorvald’s practiced control. An
hour close to dawn— Dawn of what day? Time had either
stretched slowly or fled swiftly since Charis had walked out onto
the soil of Warlock. She could no longer be sure that it followed
any ordered marking of minutes or hours. She stood now on the rock,
shivering a little in the chill predawn wind.
“Meeerrrreee!” At the cry of welcome, Charis went
down on her knees, holding out her arms to the shadow which sped
toward her. The warmth of that small body pressing tight to hers,
the loving dabs of tongue-tip against her throat, her chin, brought
a measure of comforting confidence. Tsstu was again in the circle
of Charis’s arms, avid for contact, excited in her
welcome.
Then the rasp of harsher, coarser fur against the girl’s
legs signaled Taggi’s arrival. A small grunting growl was his
vocal hail as she put one hand to his upthrust head, scratching
behind his small ears.
“Taggi?” Thorvald walked from the copter.
The wolverine slipped from under Charis’s hand, went to
the Survey officer. He sniffed inquiringly at the other’s
field boots, and then reared up against the man, his forepaws
scraping Thorvald’s thigh as he gave voice to a sound between
a whine and a growl. There was no mistaking the questioning note,
nor the demand for enlightenment which came to Charis mentally.
Taggi wanted the one he knew better than Thorvald.
Charis sat where she was, cradling the nuzzling Tsstu close to
her, but reaching out mentally to capture Taggi’s thought
stream, to try and tap that boiling and, to her, alien flow of
brain energy. She touched and savored again, forcing herself not to
shrink from the raw savagery, the strange stream. Taggi dropped on
all fours. He was swaying from foot to foot, his blunt head
swinging about so that he could eye her.
Thoughts—impressions like small sparks—whirled
through the air above a stirred fire. Charis built up a picture of
Shann Lantee within those sparks—Shann as she had seen him
last on the hillside above the base.
Taggi came to her. His teeth closed upon the hand she held out
in greeting, not with force enough to even pinch the skin but with
the same caress of this kind that she had seen him give to Shann.
And, too, inquiry—stronger and much more demanding.
Charis thought of the base as she had viewed it from the hill,
knew that Taggi caught that. He dropped his hold upon her, turned
halfway around to face in a new direction, and with his head up
began sniffing the wind audibly.
Charis approached with some trepidation the real message she
must pass along to the wolverine. Tsstu was much more in tune with
her. How was she to project into that hunter’s brain the
sense of danger and an understanding of from whence danger came? By
pictures of Shann as a prisoner?
First she thought of Lantee as he stood free by the pool. Then
she added imagined bonds, cords about his wrists and ankles, to
restrain his freedom. There was a loud snarl of rage from Taggi.
She had succeeded so far. But caution! The wolverine must not race
recklessly in under that prodding.
“—reeeeuuu—” Tsstu gave a cry Charis
knew meant warning. The wolverine looked back at them.
Inquiry flashed not at her but at the curl-cat. The animals had
their own band of communication. Perhaps that was her best
answer.
Charis changed the direction of her warning, no longer striving
to hold contact with the wild, rich stream of Taggi’s
thought, but to meet Tsstu’s. Strike back against the enemy,
yes; free Shann, yes. But for now, caution.
The rumbling growl from Taggi grew fainter. He was still
shuffling impatiently from foot to foot, his eagerness to be gone
plain to read, but Tsstu had impressed him with the need for
caution and the old craftiness of his breed was now in command.
Wolverines have great curiosity, but they also have a strong
instinct for self-preservation; they do not walk easily into what
might be a trap, no matter how attractive the bait. And Taggi knew
that he faced a trap.
Again Charis centered on Tsstu, thinking out as simply as she
could her own plan for entering the base. Suddenly she looked to
Thorvald.
“The nullifier—could it stop communication of mind
with mind?”
He gave her the truth. “It could well be so.”
The animals must remain outside. Tsstu—the curl-cat was
small—she could act as liaison between the wolverine and the
base.
“Meeerrreee!” Agreement in that and another swift
tongue-tip touch on Charis’s cheek.
The girl rose to her feet. “There’s no sense in
delaying any longer. Time to go.” Putting down the curl-cat,
she pulled the tie from her hair, shaking the loosened strands
about her neck and shoulders. By the time she reached the base, her
hair would be sufficiently wild-looking, filled with bits of leaf
and twig. She could not tear the Wyvern material of her clothing,
but earth stains would adhere to it and the crawling she had
already done provided dirty blotches. There were raw and healing
scratches on her arms and legs. She would well present the
appearance of someone who had been lost in a wilderness for a time.
Moreover, the nourishment given by the Sustain tablets had worn off
so that she did not have to feign hunger or thirst; she felt them
both.
“Take care—” Thorvald’s hand went out,
almost as if he would hold her back on the very edge of action.
The contrast between that simple warning and what might lie
ahead of her suddenly seemed to Charis so funny that a small,
strangled sound of choked laughter was her first answer. Then she
added, “Remember those words yourself. If you’re
spotted by some air scout—”
“They might spot the copter, they won’t sight me.
I’ll be ready to move in to you when I can.”
That “when I can” rang in Charis’s ears as she
walked away. Better make that “if I can.” Now that she
was committed to the venture, every possible fear—the product
of a vivid imagination—swirled about her. She concentrated
instead on her memory picture of Sheeha. She had to be Sheeha now
as far as the invaders at the base were concerned—Sheeha, a
woman brought in by the traders to contact the Wyverns, one who had
broken at that meeting with the alien power. She had to be
Sheeha.
Taggi played guide and advance scout, leading her down from the
heights where the copter had landed. Here on the lowlands the
predawn was still dark and Charis found the going more difficult.
Her hair caught in branches; she tore free, adding more scratches
to those she already bore. But that was all to the good.
For a while she carried Tsstu, but as they drew near the base,
both animals took to cover and Charis kept touch by mind instead of
sight or hearing.
Sun made silver droplets of the bubble shelters as Charis
lurched into the open ground around the base. There was no need for
her to fake her fatigue, for now she moved in a half-fog of
exhaustion, her mouth dry, her ribs heaving with every gasping
breath she drew. She must indeed look what she claimed to
be—a fugitive, half-crazed, struggling out of the wilderness
of a hostile world to seek the shelter and comfort of her own
kind.
There was an unsealed door in the second of the bubbles. Charis
headed for that. Movement there—a man in yellow coming into
the open, staring at her. Charis forced a cry which was really a
dry croak and slumped forward.
Calls—voices. She did not try to sort them out just yet
but concentrated on lying limply where she had fallen, making no
answer when she was rolled over, raised, and carried into the
dome.
“What’s a woman doing here?” That was one
voice.
“She’s been bush-runnin’. Lookit how
she’s all scratched up and dirty. And that ain’t no
service uniform. She ain’t from here. You tell the captain
what just blew in?”
“She dead?” asked a third voice.
“Naw—just out on her feet. But where’n Dis did
she spring from? Ain’t no settlement on this
planet—”
“In here, captain. She just came runnin’ outta the
brush. Then she sees Forg, gives a kinda yip, and falls on her
face!”
The click-click of magnetic space-boot plates. A fourth man was
coming in to where she lay.
“Off-worlder, all right”—the new
voice—“What’s that rig she’s wearing?
That’s no uniform, she couldn’t be from
here.”
“From the post maybe, captain?”
“From the post? Wait a minute. That’s right. They
did bring in a woman to try to contact the snake-hags. But no, we
found her when we took over their ship.”
“No, there was two women, captain. First one blew up on
’em—went clean out of orbit in her head. So they got
’em another one. And she wasn’t there when we took
over. What about the tape you found here—the one askin’
help from the base? She could be the one who sent it. Got outta the
post and started runnin’—”
There was a twitch at her tunic as if one of those gathered
about her was fingering the material.
“This is the stuff those snake-hags use. She’s been
with them.”
“Prisoner, eh, captain?”
“Maybe—or something else. You, Nonnan, get the medic
over here. He’ll bring her around and then we’ll have
some answers. The rest of you, clear out. She might talk better if
she doesn’t come to with all of you looking her
over.”
Charis stirred. She did not care for the idea of a Company-squad
medic. Such an expert might use the tongue-loosening drugs she had
no guard against. It would be well to regain consciousness before
his arrival. She opened her eyes.
She did not have to counterfeit her shriek. That came naturally
as she faced—not the Company officer she had
expected—but a creature seemingly out of a nightmare. Leaning
toward her was one of the male Wyverns, his snout mouth slightly
open to display the fang-teeth with which he was only too
generously armed, his slit-pupiled eyes measuring her with no
friendly intent.
Charis screamed a second time and jerked her legs up under as
she sat bolt upright, squirming as far from the Wyvern as she could
manage to move on the cot where they had laid her. The
creature’s taloned paw swept out and down, wicked claws
scraping the foam mattress only inches away from her body.
A very human fist connected at the side of that reptilian head,
sending the Wyvern off balance, crashing back against the wall, and
a human in uniform took his place. Charis screamed again and
cowered away from the Wyvern who had righted himself and was now
showing a lipless snarl of rage.
“Keep it off! Snake!” she cried, remembering
Sheeha’s name for the Wyverns. “Don’t let it get
me!”
The officer caught the native by his scaled shoulder and headed
him out the door with a rough shove. Charis found herself crying, a
reaction she did not attempt to control as she shrank against the
wall of the room, drawing herself into as small a space as
possible.
“Don’t let it get me!” she begged as she tried
to appraise the man who now faced her.
He was very much of a type, a Company officer in the mercenary
forces. Charis had seen his like before in space-port cities, and
she thought she dared not depend upon his being less shrewd than
any space officer. His very employment on a grab action would make
him suspicious of her. But he was fairly young and his attack on
the Wyvern made her think that he might be a little prejudiced in
her favor.
“Who are you?” The demand was rapped out in a tone
meant to force a quick and truthful answer. And up to a point she
could supply the truth.
“Charis—Charis Nordholm. You—you are the
Resident?” He would believe that she was ignorant of his
uniform, that she thought him a government man.
“You might say so. I’m in charge at this base. So
your name is Charis Nordholm? And how did you come here to Warlock,
Charis Nordholm?”
Not too much coherence in her answer, Charis decided. She tried
hard to remember Sheeha. “That was a snake,” she
accused. “You have them here.” She eyed him with what
she hoped would register the proper amount of suspicion and
fear.
“I tell you the native won’t harm you—not if
you’re what you seem,” he added the last with some
emphasis.
“What I seem—” she said. “What I
seem—I am Charis Nordholm.” She held her voice to a
colorless recitation of facts as if she repeated some hard-learned
lesson. “They—they brought me here to—to meet the
snakes! I didn’t want to come—they made me!” Her
voice lengthened into a wail.
“Who brought you?”
“Captain Jagan, the trader. I was at the trading
post—”
“So—you were at the trading post. Then what
happened?”
Again she could give him part truth. Charis shook her head.
“I don’t know! The snakes—they gave me to the
snakes—snakes all around—they got inside my
head—in my head.” She set her hands above her ears,
rocked back and forth. “In my head—they made me go with
them—”
The captain was on to that in a flash. “Where?” His
demand was purposely sharp to penetrate the haze that he supposed
held her.
“To—to their place—in the sea—their
place—”
“If you were with them, how did you get away?”
Another man had come into the room and started toward her. The
captain caught him back as he waited alertly for her answer.
“How did you get away from them?” he repeated again
with an emphasis designed to rivet her attention.
“I don’t know—I was there—then I was all
alone—all alone in a woods. I ran—it was
dark—very dark—”
The captain spoke to the newcomer, “Can you get her to
make better sense?”
“How do I know?” the other retorted. “She
needs food—water.”
The medic poured from a container and held out the cup. She had
to steady it in both shaking hands to get it to her mouth. She let
coolness roll over her dry tongue. Then she detected a taste. Some
drug? She might already have lost the game because she had no
defense against drugs and she had finished the draft. As a cover
she kept the cup to her lips as long as possible.
“More—” she pushed the cup at the medic.
“Not now, later.”
“So—” the captain was eager to get her back to
her story “—you just found yourself in a woods and
then? How did you get here?”
“I walked,” Charis replied simply, keeping her eyes
on the cup the medic was now holding as if that mattered far more
than the officer’s questions. She had never tried to play
such a role before and now she hoped that the picture she presented
was a reasonably convincing one.
“Please—more—” she appealed to the
medic.
He filled the cup about a third and gave it to her. She gulped
it down. Drug or not, this was her proper action. Her
thirst allayed, her hunger was worse.
“I’m hungry,” she told them. “Please,
I’m hungry—”
“I’ll get her something,” the medic
volunteered and left.
“You walked,” the captain persisted. “How did
you know which way to walk—to come here?”
“Which way?” Charis returned to her trick of
repetition. “I did not know the way—but it was
easier—not so many bushes—so I went that way where it
was open. Then I saw the building and I ran—”
The medic returned, to put into her hand a soft plasta-skin
tube. Charis, sucking at its cone end, tasted the rich, satisfying
paste it contained. She recognized it as the revive ration of a
well-equipped base.
“What do you think?” the captain asked the medic.
“Could she just head in the right direction that way? Sounds
thin to me.”
The medic was thoughtful. “We don’t know how this
Power works. They could have directed her, without her being aware
of it.”
“Then she’s meant to be their key in!” The
look the captain directed at Charis was now coldly hostile.
“No, any directive such as that would fail once she got
within the Alpha-rim. If they gave her some such hypo-order, it
won’t work now. You’ve seen how the warriors are freed
from control here. If the hags did have some purpose and pointed
her at us, it’s finished.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“You’ve seen it happen with the males. The control
does not operate within the rim.”
“So—what do we do with her?”
“Maybe we can learn something. She has been with
them—that is obvious.”
“Might be more your department than mine,” the
captain observed. “You can take her on with the other one. He
still out?”
“I told you, Lazgah, he’s not unconscious in the
ordinary sense.” The medic was clearly irritated. “I
don’t know what he is except still alive. So far he
hasn’t responded to any restorative. Such a complete
withdrawal—I’ve never seen its like before.”
“Well, at least she isn’t like him. And maybe you
can learn from her. Try to, and the sooner the better.”
“Come.” The medic spoke softly. He held out his hand
to Charis.
She eyed him over the tube from which she was now sucking the
last remnants of paste.
“Where?”
“To a good place, a place where you may rest, where there
is more food—water—”
“Out there?” She used the tube to point to the door
behind him.
“Yes.”
“No. There are snakes there!”
“One of the warriors was here when she came to,” the
captain explained. “Sent her farther off the beam.”
“No, no one will hurt you,” the medic assured her.
“I won’t let them.”
Charis allowed herself to be persuaded. That scrap of
conversation about the “he” who was being
treated—It must be Lantee!
The stars were no longer sharp points above as
the copter set down under Thorvald’s practiced control. An
hour close to dawn— Dawn of what day? Time had either
stretched slowly or fled swiftly since Charis had walked out onto
the soil of Warlock. She could no longer be sure that it followed
any ordered marking of minutes or hours. She stood now on the rock,
shivering a little in the chill predawn wind.
“Meeerrrreee!” At the cry of welcome, Charis went
down on her knees, holding out her arms to the shadow which sped
toward her. The warmth of that small body pressing tight to hers,
the loving dabs of tongue-tip against her throat, her chin, brought
a measure of comforting confidence. Tsstu was again in the circle
of Charis’s arms, avid for contact, excited in her
welcome.
Then the rasp of harsher, coarser fur against the girl’s
legs signaled Taggi’s arrival. A small grunting growl was his
vocal hail as she put one hand to his upthrust head, scratching
behind his small ears.
“Taggi?” Thorvald walked from the copter.
The wolverine slipped from under Charis’s hand, went to
the Survey officer. He sniffed inquiringly at the other’s
field boots, and then reared up against the man, his forepaws
scraping Thorvald’s thigh as he gave voice to a sound between
a whine and a growl. There was no mistaking the questioning note,
nor the demand for enlightenment which came to Charis mentally.
Taggi wanted the one he knew better than Thorvald.
Charis sat where she was, cradling the nuzzling Tsstu close to
her, but reaching out mentally to capture Taggi’s thought
stream, to try and tap that boiling and, to her, alien flow of
brain energy. She touched and savored again, forcing herself not to
shrink from the raw savagery, the strange stream. Taggi dropped on
all fours. He was swaying from foot to foot, his blunt head
swinging about so that he could eye her.
Thoughts—impressions like small sparks—whirled
through the air above a stirred fire. Charis built up a picture of
Shann Lantee within those sparks—Shann as she had seen him
last on the hillside above the base.
Taggi came to her. His teeth closed upon the hand she held out
in greeting, not with force enough to even pinch the skin but with
the same caress of this kind that she had seen him give to Shann.
And, too, inquiry—stronger and much more demanding.
Charis thought of the base as she had viewed it from the hill,
knew that Taggi caught that. He dropped his hold upon her, turned
halfway around to face in a new direction, and with his head up
began sniffing the wind audibly.
Charis approached with some trepidation the real message she
must pass along to the wolverine. Tsstu was much more in tune with
her. How was she to project into that hunter’s brain the
sense of danger and an understanding of from whence danger came? By
pictures of Shann as a prisoner?
First she thought of Lantee as he stood free by the pool. Then
she added imagined bonds, cords about his wrists and ankles, to
restrain his freedom. There was a loud snarl of rage from Taggi.
She had succeeded so far. But caution! The wolverine must not race
recklessly in under that prodding.
“—reeeeuuu—” Tsstu gave a cry Charis
knew meant warning. The wolverine looked back at them.
Inquiry flashed not at her but at the curl-cat. The animals had
their own band of communication. Perhaps that was her best
answer.
Charis changed the direction of her warning, no longer striving
to hold contact with the wild, rich stream of Taggi’s
thought, but to meet Tsstu’s. Strike back against the enemy,
yes; free Shann, yes. But for now, caution.
The rumbling growl from Taggi grew fainter. He was still
shuffling impatiently from foot to foot, his eagerness to be gone
plain to read, but Tsstu had impressed him with the need for
caution and the old craftiness of his breed was now in command.
Wolverines have great curiosity, but they also have a strong
instinct for self-preservation; they do not walk easily into what
might be a trap, no matter how attractive the bait. And Taggi knew
that he faced a trap.
Again Charis centered on Tsstu, thinking out as simply as she
could her own plan for entering the base. Suddenly she looked to
Thorvald.
“The nullifier—could it stop communication of mind
with mind?”
He gave her the truth. “It could well be so.”
The animals must remain outside. Tsstu—the curl-cat was
small—she could act as liaison between the wolverine and the
base.
“Meeerrreee!” Agreement in that and another swift
tongue-tip touch on Charis’s cheek.
The girl rose to her feet. “There’s no sense in
delaying any longer. Time to go.” Putting down the curl-cat,
she pulled the tie from her hair, shaking the loosened strands
about her neck and shoulders. By the time she reached the base, her
hair would be sufficiently wild-looking, filled with bits of leaf
and twig. She could not tear the Wyvern material of her clothing,
but earth stains would adhere to it and the crawling she had
already done provided dirty blotches. There were raw and healing
scratches on her arms and legs. She would well present the
appearance of someone who had been lost in a wilderness for a time.
Moreover, the nourishment given by the Sustain tablets had worn off
so that she did not have to feign hunger or thirst; she felt them
both.
“Take care—” Thorvald’s hand went out,
almost as if he would hold her back on the very edge of action.
The contrast between that simple warning and what might lie
ahead of her suddenly seemed to Charis so funny that a small,
strangled sound of choked laughter was her first answer. Then she
added, “Remember those words yourself. If you’re
spotted by some air scout—”
“They might spot the copter, they won’t sight me.
I’ll be ready to move in to you when I can.”
That “when I can” rang in Charis’s ears as she
walked away. Better make that “if I can.” Now that she
was committed to the venture, every possible fear—the product
of a vivid imagination—swirled about her. She concentrated
instead on her memory picture of Sheeha. She had to be Sheeha now
as far as the invaders at the base were concerned—Sheeha, a
woman brought in by the traders to contact the Wyverns, one who had
broken at that meeting with the alien power. She had to be
Sheeha.
Taggi played guide and advance scout, leading her down from the
heights where the copter had landed. Here on the lowlands the
predawn was still dark and Charis found the going more difficult.
Her hair caught in branches; she tore free, adding more scratches
to those she already bore. But that was all to the good.
For a while she carried Tsstu, but as they drew near the base,
both animals took to cover and Charis kept touch by mind instead of
sight or hearing.
Sun made silver droplets of the bubble shelters as Charis
lurched into the open ground around the base. There was no need for
her to fake her fatigue, for now she moved in a half-fog of
exhaustion, her mouth dry, her ribs heaving with every gasping
breath she drew. She must indeed look what she claimed to
be—a fugitive, half-crazed, struggling out of the wilderness
of a hostile world to seek the shelter and comfort of her own
kind.
There was an unsealed door in the second of the bubbles. Charis
headed for that. Movement there—a man in yellow coming into
the open, staring at her. Charis forced a cry which was really a
dry croak and slumped forward.
Calls—voices. She did not try to sort them out just yet
but concentrated on lying limply where she had fallen, making no
answer when she was rolled over, raised, and carried into the
dome.
“What’s a woman doing here?” That was one
voice.
“She’s been bush-runnin’. Lookit how
she’s all scratched up and dirty. And that ain’t no
service uniform. She ain’t from here. You tell the captain
what just blew in?”
“She dead?” asked a third voice.
“Naw—just out on her feet. But where’n Dis did
she spring from? Ain’t no settlement on this
planet—”
“In here, captain. She just came runnin’ outta the
brush. Then she sees Forg, gives a kinda yip, and falls on her
face!”
The click-click of magnetic space-boot plates. A fourth man was
coming in to where she lay.
“Off-worlder, all right”—the new
voice—“What’s that rig she’s wearing?
That’s no uniform, she couldn’t be from
here.”
“From the post maybe, captain?”
“From the post? Wait a minute. That’s right. They
did bring in a woman to try to contact the snake-hags. But no, we
found her when we took over their ship.”
“No, there was two women, captain. First one blew up on
’em—went clean out of orbit in her head. So they got
’em another one. And she wasn’t there when we took
over. What about the tape you found here—the one askin’
help from the base? She could be the one who sent it. Got outta the
post and started runnin’—”
There was a twitch at her tunic as if one of those gathered
about her was fingering the material.
“This is the stuff those snake-hags use. She’s been
with them.”
“Prisoner, eh, captain?”
“Maybe—or something else. You, Nonnan, get the medic
over here. He’ll bring her around and then we’ll have
some answers. The rest of you, clear out. She might talk better if
she doesn’t come to with all of you looking her
over.”
Charis stirred. She did not care for the idea of a Company-squad
medic. Such an expert might use the tongue-loosening drugs she had
no guard against. It would be well to regain consciousness before
his arrival. She opened her eyes.
She did not have to counterfeit her shriek. That came naturally
as she faced—not the Company officer she had
expected—but a creature seemingly out of a nightmare. Leaning
toward her was one of the male Wyverns, his snout mouth slightly
open to display the fang-teeth with which he was only too
generously armed, his slit-pupiled eyes measuring her with no
friendly intent.
Charis screamed a second time and jerked her legs up under as
she sat bolt upright, squirming as far from the Wyvern as she could
manage to move on the cot where they had laid her. The
creature’s taloned paw swept out and down, wicked claws
scraping the foam mattress only inches away from her body.
A very human fist connected at the side of that reptilian head,
sending the Wyvern off balance, crashing back against the wall, and
a human in uniform took his place. Charis screamed again and
cowered away from the Wyvern who had righted himself and was now
showing a lipless snarl of rage.
“Keep it off! Snake!” she cried, remembering
Sheeha’s name for the Wyverns. “Don’t let it get
me!”
The officer caught the native by his scaled shoulder and headed
him out the door with a rough shove. Charis found herself crying, a
reaction she did not attempt to control as she shrank against the
wall of the room, drawing herself into as small a space as
possible.
“Don’t let it get me!” she begged as she tried
to appraise the man who now faced her.
He was very much of a type, a Company officer in the mercenary
forces. Charis had seen his like before in space-port cities, and
she thought she dared not depend upon his being less shrewd than
any space officer. His very employment on a grab action would make
him suspicious of her. But he was fairly young and his attack on
the Wyvern made her think that he might be a little prejudiced in
her favor.
“Who are you?” The demand was rapped out in a tone
meant to force a quick and truthful answer. And up to a point she
could supply the truth.
“Charis—Charis Nordholm. You—you are the
Resident?” He would believe that she was ignorant of his
uniform, that she thought him a government man.
“You might say so. I’m in charge at this base. So
your name is Charis Nordholm? And how did you come here to Warlock,
Charis Nordholm?”
Not too much coherence in her answer, Charis decided. She tried
hard to remember Sheeha. “That was a snake,” she
accused. “You have them here.” She eyed him with what
she hoped would register the proper amount of suspicion and
fear.
“I tell you the native won’t harm you—not if
you’re what you seem,” he added the last with some
emphasis.
“What I seem—” she said. “What I
seem—I am Charis Nordholm.” She held her voice to a
colorless recitation of facts as if she repeated some hard-learned
lesson. “They—they brought me here to—to meet the
snakes! I didn’t want to come—they made me!” Her
voice lengthened into a wail.
“Who brought you?”
“Captain Jagan, the trader. I was at the trading
post—”
“So—you were at the trading post. Then what
happened?”
Again she could give him part truth. Charis shook her head.
“I don’t know! The snakes—they gave me to the
snakes—snakes all around—they got inside my
head—in my head.” She set her hands above her ears,
rocked back and forth. “In my head—they made me go with
them—”
The captain was on to that in a flash. “Where?” His
demand was purposely sharp to penetrate the haze that he supposed
held her.
“To—to their place—in the sea—their
place—”
“If you were with them, how did you get away?”
Another man had come into the room and started toward her. The
captain caught him back as he waited alertly for her answer.
“How did you get away from them?” he repeated again
with an emphasis designed to rivet her attention.
“I don’t know—I was there—then I was all
alone—all alone in a woods. I ran—it was
dark—very dark—”
The captain spoke to the newcomer, “Can you get her to
make better sense?”
“How do I know?” the other retorted. “She
needs food—water.”
The medic poured from a container and held out the cup. She had
to steady it in both shaking hands to get it to her mouth. She let
coolness roll over her dry tongue. Then she detected a taste. Some
drug? She might already have lost the game because she had no
defense against drugs and she had finished the draft. As a cover
she kept the cup to her lips as long as possible.
“More—” she pushed the cup at the medic.
“Not now, later.”
“So—” the captain was eager to get her back to
her story “—you just found yourself in a woods and
then? How did you get here?”
“I walked,” Charis replied simply, keeping her eyes
on the cup the medic was now holding as if that mattered far more
than the officer’s questions. She had never tried to play
such a role before and now she hoped that the picture she presented
was a reasonably convincing one.
“Please—more—” she appealed to the
medic.
He filled the cup about a third and gave it to her. She gulped
it down. Drug or not, this was her proper action. Her
thirst allayed, her hunger was worse.
“I’m hungry,” she told them. “Please,
I’m hungry—”
“I’ll get her something,” the medic
volunteered and left.
“You walked,” the captain persisted. “How did
you know which way to walk—to come here?”
“Which way?” Charis returned to her trick of
repetition. “I did not know the way—but it was
easier—not so many bushes—so I went that way where it
was open. Then I saw the building and I ran—”
The medic returned, to put into her hand a soft plasta-skin
tube. Charis, sucking at its cone end, tasted the rich, satisfying
paste it contained. She recognized it as the revive ration of a
well-equipped base.
“What do you think?” the captain asked the medic.
“Could she just head in the right direction that way? Sounds
thin to me.”
The medic was thoughtful. “We don’t know how this
Power works. They could have directed her, without her being aware
of it.”
“Then she’s meant to be their key in!” The
look the captain directed at Charis was now coldly hostile.
“No, any directive such as that would fail once she got
within the Alpha-rim. If they gave her some such hypo-order, it
won’t work now. You’ve seen how the warriors are freed
from control here. If the hags did have some purpose and pointed
her at us, it’s finished.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“You’ve seen it happen with the males. The control
does not operate within the rim.”
“So—what do we do with her?”
“Maybe we can learn something. She has been with
them—that is obvious.”
“Might be more your department than mine,” the
captain observed. “You can take her on with the other one. He
still out?”
“I told you, Lazgah, he’s not unconscious in the
ordinary sense.” The medic was clearly irritated. “I
don’t know what he is except still alive. So far he
hasn’t responded to any restorative. Such a complete
withdrawal—I’ve never seen its like before.”
“Well, at least she isn’t like him. And maybe you
can learn from her. Try to, and the sooner the better.”
“Come.” The medic spoke softly. He held out his hand
to Charis.
She eyed him over the tube from which she was now sucking the
last remnants of paste.
“Where?”
“To a good place, a place where you may rest, where there
is more food—water—”
“Out there?” She used the tube to point to the door
behind him.
“Yes.”
“No. There are snakes there!”
“One of the warriors was here when she came to,” the
captain explained. “Sent her farther off the beam.”
“No, no one will hurt you,” the medic assured her.
“I won’t let them.”
Charis allowed herself to be persuaded. That scrap of
conversation about the “he” who was being
treated—It must be Lantee!