The flaw in the pattern was that she could not
build up any mind picture on which to focus the energy. Turan could
have been such a goal, but this man she crouched over now she had
never seen, could not picture as his head lay in the shadows and
she had only touch to guide her. One must have such a
focus—
Did Harath see humans as they were? Could he build such a mind
picture as it should be built in order to search? Ziantha doubted
it. For their swing was failing now, falling back in waning
sweeps.
“Hunt!” Harath’s urging was sharp.
“We must have a picture.” She forced upon him in
return her own conclusion for the reason of their failure.
“Build a picture, Harath!”
Only what wavered then into her mind was so distorted that she
nearly broke contact, so shocked was she by that weird figure
Harath projected, a mixture, unbelievable, of his own species and
Ziantha’s, something which manifestly did not exist.
“We must have a true picture.” They were back in the
hollow, still united by touch, but warring in mind.
The alien’s frustration was fast turning to rage, perhaps
aimed at her because of his own inadequacies. Ziantha summoned
patience.
“This is a man of my kind,” she told Harath.
“But if it is he who followed me into that other time, I do
not know him as himself. I cannot build the picture that we need. I
must see him as he really is—”
Because Harath was so aroused by their failure, which he
appeared to blame on her, she feared he would withdraw altogether.
Their mind-touch was snapped by his will, and his tentacle dropped
from her wrist.
The moon’s greenish light was on the lip of the hollow in
which they crouched. If she could somehow pull the inert man at her
feet up into that—
It seemed to her that there was no other way to learn what she
must. Putting the Eyes into safekeeping once more, she caught the
man’s body, labored to pull it up to the light. But it was a
struggle even though he was smaller, lighter than Ogan or one of
the crewmen. Finally she brought him to where the moon touched his
face.
It was hard to judge in the weird green glow, but she thought
his skin as dark as that of a veteran crewman. His hair was cropped
close, also, as if to make the wearing of a helmet comfortable, and
it was very tightly curled against his skull.
His features were regular; he might be termed pleasantly endowed
according to the standards of her kind. But what she was to do now
was to learn that face, learn every portion of it as well as if she
had seen it each and every day of her existence, fix it so straight
in her mind that she could never forget or lose it.
Ziantha stretched out her hand, drawing fingers, with the
lightest touch, across his forehead, down the bridge of his nose,
tracing the generous curve of his full lips, the firm angle of his
chin and jaw. So was he made and she must remember.
Harath crowded in beside her.
“Hurry—he is lost. If he is too long
lost—”
She knew that ancient, eating horror of all sensitives when they
evoked the trance state—to be lost out of body. But she had
to make sure that she would know now whom they sought in those ways
which were unlike any world her kind walked.
“I know—” Ziantha only trusted that it was now
true that she did indeed know.
Once more she took the Eyes from concealment, gripped them
tightly in her left hand, set the fingers of the right to the
forehead of the stranger, felt Harath loop tentacle touch to her
wrist.
“Now—” This time she gave the signal. But she
was not aware of that swing out into the void as she had been when
the alien had guided their searching. Rather she fastened in her
mind, behind her closed eyes, only one thing: the stranger’s
face.
They were not going in search now; they were calling with all
the power they possessed, all that could be summoned through the
Eyes. Though she did not have a name to call upon, which would have
given her efforts greater accuracy, she must use this picture to
the full.
He who has this seeming—wherever he now wanders—let
him—COME!
Her body, her mind became one summoning cry. That she could long
hold it to this pitch she doubted. But as long as she might, that
she would.
“Come!”
A stirring—faint—far away—as if something
crawled painfully.
“Come!”
There was indeed an answer, weak, but aiming for her with dogged
determination. She dared feel no elation, allow any thought of
success to trouble the resolute pull of her call.
“Come!”
So painfully slow. And she was weakening even with the energy
that flowed into her from the stones, from Harath—
“Come!”
One last effort to put into that drawing all that she had. Then
Ziantha broke, unable any longer to sustain the contact.
The girl fell face down, one arm across the body of the
stranger. She was conscious, but strength was so drained out of
her, she felt so weak and sick, that she could neither move nor
utter a sound, even when she felt the other stir.
He pulled free of her, struggling to sit up. Harath was hopping
about them both, uttering those clicks of beak that in him signaled
unusual emotion. Faintly Ziantha heard the stranger mutter in some
tongue that was not Basic. But there was a roaring in her own ears,
a need to just lie there, unable to so much as raise a hand as the
great weakness that followed her effort held her fast.
She thought the stranger was dazed, that he did not realize at
first where he was or what had happened. But if that were so he
made a quick recovery. For he suddenly stooped to look at her,
exclaiming in his own language.
Then he lifted her up, straightening her body so she could lie
in a more comfortable position, as if he well understood the
malaise that gripped her. But he did not try mind-touch, for which
she was grateful. Perhaps his long ordeal had exhausted his psychic
energy for the time as much as the search had hers.
She watched him stand. Much of his body was still in the shadow,
and what she could see gave her the impression that he was indeed
short in stature and slender. But he was no boy, however much his
face had given the impression of youth. That clicking blob, Harath,
ran to him, scrambled up the stranger who might be now a tree to be
climbed, and settled on his shoulder as if this was a perch he had
known many times before.
The burden of the alien, who was no light weight, might be
nothing, as the stranger pulled up between two of the rocks
guarding this depression, his attitude one of listening. Ziantha
watched him. By rights she should have a long rest now—
But at last her eyes were truly focusing on the other as he
turned around. He was holding night-vision glasses to his eyes, and
his clothing was plain to distinguish even in this baneful
moonlight. There was no mistaking the emblem on the breast of his
planet suit. Patrol!
What had Harath done to her? Even Ogan—or
Iuban—would have been more her friend! What could she do now?
If the sensitive was Patrol, as his uniform clearly testified, he
was a deadly enemy, and one who already knew from his own
participation just what she was doing on this planet. There was no
escape, no form of defense she could offer.
But to be erased—
Black horror worse than any fear she had ever known in her life
closed about Ziantha. Harath had done this to her! She must
escape—she must!
She willed her weak body to obey orders. Though she wavered to a
sitting position, the girl realized that she could not escape
without some aid. Harath? She could never trust him again.
Ogan? Much as she feared and now hated the parapsychologist, he
did not represent the dreaded fate this stranger threatened. But if
she tried to contact Ogan, with her power so depleted, either
Harath, the stranger, or both, could pick up her mind-send with
ease.
With her eyes, wide with fear, on the stranger, she tried to
edge away, put as much space between them as possible. If she could
reach the other side of this hollow, somehow crawl up—get out
among the rocks— But physical efforts were useless; she did
not doubt that Harath would easily track her down. The alien knew
her mind-pattern and could follow it as some tracking animal might
follow footprints or scent.
Yet Harath was in turn physically limited. And if she could
somehow dispose of the stranger, then she might be able to
out-travel the alien. Inch by inch she won away from the spot where
the stranger had left her, working crabwise over the rough ground
without rising to her feet. The effort it cost her left her
trembling with weakness, but her will and the danger hanging over
her drove her on.
She kept her attention fixed upon the other, alert to any change
that would suggest he planned to join her. But he seemed intent on
watching beyond the hollow, centering on it with his back half
toward her. It was apparent, she believed, that he expected no
trouble from her. And at that Ziantha longed to hiss as Yasa might
have done.
Harath she had to fear as well, but the alien’s head was
also turned in the same direction as the attention of the watcher.
Perhaps he was mind-searching, feeding any information he could
pick up to the stranger.
In her progress Ziantha’s hand closed upon a rock. With
that she could perhaps bring the Patrolman down. But she greatly
doubted her accuracy of aim, and to miss would alert him. Now, she
could, she would, fight with all her strength if he tried to master
her physically, but she must concentrate on escape. She had almost
reached the point where she believed she could hope to pull up to
the rim.
Only she was not going to have the chance. For the stranger in a
swift movement dropped the glasses to hang on their strap and
turned to slide down into the hollow. He stopped short when he saw
Ziantha, not where he had left her, but with her back against the
wall, the stone gripped tight as a pitiful weapon.
“What—?” He spoke Basic now.
She raised the stone. As far as she could see he wore no weapon.
And certainly he must be worn from his ordeal in the limbo between
Turan’s world and this.
“Stand off!” she warned him.
“Why?”
Ziantha could not see him face to face, for he was again in the
shadow. But his bulk she could make out. She wondered at the
surprise in his voice. Surely he knew that, being what she was,
they were deadly enemies?
“Keep off,” she repeated.
But he was moving toward her. If she had only left him lost!
Fool to trust Harath—the alien was one with Yasa, Ogan and
all the others who used her with no thought of her life.
“I mean you no harm.” He stood still. “Why do
you—”
She laughed then. Only it did not sound like laughter but a
crazed, harsh sound that hurt as she uttered it.
“No harm? No, no more harm than a pleasant visit to the
Coordinator—then to be erased!”
“No!”
He need not deny that so emphatically. Did he think she was so
brain-weakened by what she had been through (and for him!) that she
did not remember what happened to sensitives who served the Guild
when the Patrol caught them?
“No—you do not understand—”
Weakly, but with all the strength she had, Ziantha threw the
stone she held. Let him come any closer and she was lost. This was
her one chance. And in the same instant as the stone left her
fingers there was a burst of pain in her head, so terrible, so
overwhelming, that she did not even have a chance to voice the
scream it brought to her lips as she wilted down under that thrust
of agony.
The storm was upon them—she must be in the tower. The
Lurla—they lay curled, they would not obey, though she sent
the commands. They must! If they did not, she would be thrown to
the pounding waves below, and the Eyes given to one who could use
them. But when she tried the Eyes were dull—they cracked and
shivered into splinters, then to dust, sifting through her fingers.
And she was left without any weapon.
They were high in the hills, and below them the enemy forces had
gathered. But above and behind, coming steadily with fire beams to
hunt them out, were flyers. This was a trap from which there was no
escape. She must contrive to have death find her quickly when the
jaws of the trap closed. For to be captive in the hands of those
from Singakok was a worse ending than the clean death in battle.
She was Vintra of the Rebels and would not live to be mocked in the
streets of the city. Never! The flyers were very close, already
their beams fused the hidden guns. This was death, and she must
welcome it.
Heat, light, life—she was alive. And they would find her.
She would be captive in Singakok—No! Let her but get her
hands on her own weapons and she would make sure of that. But she
could not move. Had she been wounded? So hurt in the assault that
her body would not obey her?
Fearfully she opened her eyes. There was open sky above her. Of
course, she lay among the Cliffs of Quait. But the sounds of the
flyers were gone. It was very quiet, too quiet. Was she alone in a
camp of the dead? Those dead whom she would speedily join if she
could?
Sound now—someone was coming—if one of the rebels
she would appeal for the mercy thrust, know it would be accorded
her as was her right. She was Vintra; all men knew that she must
not fall alive into the hands of the enemy—
Vintra—but there was someone else—D’Eyree! And
then—Ziantha! As if thinking that name steadied a world that
seemed to spin around her, she ordered her thoughts.
Ziantha—that was right! Unless the Eyes had betrayed her a
second time into another return. She was Ziantha and Ziantha
was—
Her memory seemed oddly full of holes as if parts of it had been
extracted to frighten her. Then she looked up at a down-furred body
perched on two legs ending in clawed feet, a body leaning over her
so round eyes could stare directly into hers.
This was Ziantha’s memory. And that was—Harath! At
first she was joyfully surprised. Then memory was whole. Harath was
an enemy. She fought to move, to even raise her
hand—uselessly. But on wriggling hard to gaze along her body
she saw the telltale cords of a tangler. She was a prisoner, and
she could share to the full Vintra’s despair and hatred for
those who had taken her.
That Harath had changed sides did not surprise her now. He was
an alien, and as such he was not to be subjected to erasure or any
of the penalties the Patrol would inflict on her. Undoubtedly he
would aid them as he had Ogan in the past.
Ziantha made no effort to use mind-touch. Why should she? Harath
had seemed so much in accord with the stranger she did not believe
she could win him back. He had been too frantic when he had begged
her aid to redeem the other’s lost personality. What a fool
she had been to answer his call!
She no longer wanted to look at Harath, wedged her head around
so she could see only sunlit rock. This was not the same hollow in
which she had been struck down. They were in a more open space. And
now she could view the stranger also.
He lay some distance away, belly down, on what might be the edge
of a drop, his head at an angle to watch below. Then she heard the
crackle of weapon fire. Somewhere on a lower level a struggle was
in progress.
Ziantha heard the sharp click of Harath’s bill, apparently
he was trying to gain her attention. Stubbornly she kept her eyes
turned from him, her mind-barrier up. Harath had betrayed her; she
wanted no more contact with him. Then came a sharp and painful pull
of her hair. By force her head was dragged around, Harath had her
in tentacle grip. And, though she closed her eyes instantly against
his compelling gaze, Ziantha could feel the force of his mind-probe
seeking to reach her. There was no use wasting power she might need
later in such a small struggle. She allow mind-touch.
“Why do you fear?”
She could not believe that Harath would ask that. Surely he well
knew what they would do to her.
“You—you gave me to the Patrol. They will—kill
my talent, that which is me!” she hurled back.
“Not so! This one, he seeks to understand. Without him you
might be dead.”
She thought of her escape from D’Eyree’s tomb.
Better she had died there. What would come out of erasure would no
longer be Ziantha!
“Better I had died,” she replied.
She was looking straight up into Harath’s eyes. Suddenly
he loosed his hold on her hair, dropped mind-touch. She watched him
cross the rock, his beak clicking as if he chewed so on her words,
joining the man who still lay watching the battle below.
Harath uncoiled a tentacle, reached out to touch the
stranger’s hand. Ziantha saw the other’s head turn,
though she could catch only a very foreshadowed view of his brown
face. She was sure that Harath and he were in communication, but
she did not try to probe for any passage of thought between
them.
Then the stranger rolled over to look at her. When she stared
back, hostile and defiant, he shrugged, as if this was of no
matter, returning to his view below.
There was a sound. Under them the rock vibrated. Up over the
cliff rose the nose of a ship, pointing outward, the flames of her
thrusters heating the air. On she climbed and was gone, with a
roar, leaving them temporarily deaf.
Surely not Ogan’s L-B. Such a craft was far too small to
have made such a spectacular take-off. That must have been the Jack
ship! The girl lost all hope now; she had been left in Patrol
hands. Ziantha could have wailed aloud. But pride was stubborn
enough to keep her lips locked on any weakling whimper.
Who had driven the Jack ship off? The Patrol? Ogan? If the
latter, he must have been reinforced. If so, feverishly her mind
fastened on that, Ogan was still here—she could reach
him—
The stranger walked back toward her, standing now as if he
feared no danger of detection. She could see him clearly. Turan she
had learned to know, even when she realized that his body was only
a garment worn by another. But now more than the uniform this one
wore was a barrier between them. There was not only the fear of the
Patrol but a kind of shyness.
In the past, on Korwar, she had lived a most retired life. Those
forays Yasa had sent her on were tasks upon which it was necessary
to concentrate deeply, so that during them she observed only those
things that applied directly to the failure or success of her
mission. Yasa’s inner household had been largely female,
Ziantha’s life therein strictly ordered as if she were some
dedicated priestess—which in a way, she had been.
Ogan had never seemed a man, but rather a master of the craft
which exercised her talents—impersonal, remote, a source of
awe and sometimes of fear. And the various male underlings of the
household had been servants, hardly more lifelike to her than a
more efficient metal robo.
But this was a man with a talent akin to hers, equal, she
believed. And she could not forget the actions on Turan’s
time level that had endangered them both, that they had shared as
comrades, though he was now the enemy. He made her feel
self-conscious, wary in a way she had not experienced before.
Yet he was not in any way imposing; only a fraction perhaps over
middle height, and so slender it made him seem less. She had been
right about the hue of his skin: that was a warm dark brown, which
she was sure was natural, and not induced by long exposure to
space. And his hair, in the sun, shown in tight black curls. Of
Terran descent she was sure, but he could be a mutation, as so many
of the First Wave colonists now were, tens and hundreds of
generations later.
He settled down beside her, watching her thoughtfully as if she
presented some type of equation he must solve. And because she
found that silence between them frightening, she asked a
question:
“What ship lifted then?”
“The Jacks’. They tangled with some of their own, at
least it looked so. Beat the attackers off, then lifted. But there
was not much left of the opposition. I think a couple, three at the
most, made it out of range when the ship blasted.”
“Ogan! He will be after—” she said eagerly and
then could have bitten her tongue in anger at that
self-betrayal.
“After you? No—he cannot trace us even if he wants
to. We have a shield up no one can break.”
“So what are you going to do now?” Ziantha came
directly to the point, unwillingly conceding that he might be
truthful. No one should underrate the Patrol.
“For a time we wait. And while we do so, this is a good
time to make you understand that I do not want to hold you like
this.” He pointed to the tangle cords which restrained her so
completely.
“Do you expect me to promise no attempts to escape, with
erasure awaiting me?”
“What would you escape to? This is not exactly a welcoming
world.” There was a reasonableness in his words that awoke
irritation in her. “Food, water—and those
others”—now he waved to the
cliff—“wandering around. You are far safer here. Safer
than you might be in Singakok that was.” For the first time
he gave indication that he remembered their shared past. “At
least the High Consort is not setting her hounds to our
trail.”
He took a packet of smoke sticks from a seal pocket, snapped the
end of one alight, and inhaled thoughtfully the sweet scent. By all
appearances he was as much at ease as he would be in some pleasure
palace on Korwar, and his placidity fed her irritation.
“What are we waiting for?” Ziantha demanded,
determined to know the worst as soon as possible.
“For a chance to get back to my ship. I do not intend to
carry you all the way there. In fact, since I may have to fight for
the privilege of seeing it again, I could not if I would. There is
an alarm broadcast going out; the Patrol ship in this region must
already have picked it up. We can expect company, and we can wait
for it here. Unless you are reasonable and agree to make no
trouble. Then we shall make for the scout and be, I assure you, far
more comfortable.”
“Comfortable for you—not for me. When I know what is
before me!”
He sighed. “I wish you would listen and not believe that
you already know all the answers.”
“With the Patrol I do—as far as I am
concerned!” she flared.
“And who said,” he returned calmly, “that I
represent the Patrol?”
The flaw in the pattern was that she could not
build up any mind picture on which to focus the energy. Turan could
have been such a goal, but this man she crouched over now she had
never seen, could not picture as his head lay in the shadows and
she had only touch to guide her. One must have such a
focus—
Did Harath see humans as they were? Could he build such a mind
picture as it should be built in order to search? Ziantha doubted
it. For their swing was failing now, falling back in waning
sweeps.
“Hunt!” Harath’s urging was sharp.
“We must have a picture.” She forced upon him in
return her own conclusion for the reason of their failure.
“Build a picture, Harath!”
Only what wavered then into her mind was so distorted that she
nearly broke contact, so shocked was she by that weird figure
Harath projected, a mixture, unbelievable, of his own species and
Ziantha’s, something which manifestly did not exist.
“We must have a true picture.” They were back in the
hollow, still united by touch, but warring in mind.
The alien’s frustration was fast turning to rage, perhaps
aimed at her because of his own inadequacies. Ziantha summoned
patience.
“This is a man of my kind,” she told Harath.
“But if it is he who followed me into that other time, I do
not know him as himself. I cannot build the picture that we need. I
must see him as he really is—”
Because Harath was so aroused by their failure, which he
appeared to blame on her, she feared he would withdraw altogether.
Their mind-touch was snapped by his will, and his tentacle dropped
from her wrist.
The moon’s greenish light was on the lip of the hollow in
which they crouched. If she could somehow pull the inert man at her
feet up into that—
It seemed to her that there was no other way to learn what she
must. Putting the Eyes into safekeeping once more, she caught the
man’s body, labored to pull it up to the light. But it was a
struggle even though he was smaller, lighter than Ogan or one of
the crewmen. Finally she brought him to where the moon touched his
face.
It was hard to judge in the weird green glow, but she thought
his skin as dark as that of a veteran crewman. His hair was cropped
close, also, as if to make the wearing of a helmet comfortable, and
it was very tightly curled against his skull.
His features were regular; he might be termed pleasantly endowed
according to the standards of her kind. But what she was to do now
was to learn that face, learn every portion of it as well as if she
had seen it each and every day of her existence, fix it so straight
in her mind that she could never forget or lose it.
Ziantha stretched out her hand, drawing fingers, with the
lightest touch, across his forehead, down the bridge of his nose,
tracing the generous curve of his full lips, the firm angle of his
chin and jaw. So was he made and she must remember.
Harath crowded in beside her.
“Hurry—he is lost. If he is too long
lost—”
She knew that ancient, eating horror of all sensitives when they
evoked the trance state—to be lost out of body. But she had
to make sure that she would know now whom they sought in those ways
which were unlike any world her kind walked.
“I know—” Ziantha only trusted that it was now
true that she did indeed know.
Once more she took the Eyes from concealment, gripped them
tightly in her left hand, set the fingers of the right to the
forehead of the stranger, felt Harath loop tentacle touch to her
wrist.
“Now—” This time she gave the signal. But she
was not aware of that swing out into the void as she had been when
the alien had guided their searching. Rather she fastened in her
mind, behind her closed eyes, only one thing: the stranger’s
face.
They were not going in search now; they were calling with all
the power they possessed, all that could be summoned through the
Eyes. Though she did not have a name to call upon, which would have
given her efforts greater accuracy, she must use this picture to
the full.
He who has this seeming—wherever he now wanders—let
him—COME!
Her body, her mind became one summoning cry. That she could long
hold it to this pitch she doubted. But as long as she might, that
she would.
“Come!”
A stirring—faint—far away—as if something
crawled painfully.
“Come!”
There was indeed an answer, weak, but aiming for her with dogged
determination. She dared feel no elation, allow any thought of
success to trouble the resolute pull of her call.
“Come!”
So painfully slow. And she was weakening even with the energy
that flowed into her from the stones, from Harath—
“Come!”
One last effort to put into that drawing all that she had. Then
Ziantha broke, unable any longer to sustain the contact.
The girl fell face down, one arm across the body of the
stranger. She was conscious, but strength was so drained out of
her, she felt so weak and sick, that she could neither move nor
utter a sound, even when she felt the other stir.
He pulled free of her, struggling to sit up. Harath was hopping
about them both, uttering those clicks of beak that in him signaled
unusual emotion. Faintly Ziantha heard the stranger mutter in some
tongue that was not Basic. But there was a roaring in her own ears,
a need to just lie there, unable to so much as raise a hand as the
great weakness that followed her effort held her fast.
She thought the stranger was dazed, that he did not realize at
first where he was or what had happened. But if that were so he
made a quick recovery. For he suddenly stooped to look at her,
exclaiming in his own language.
Then he lifted her up, straightening her body so she could lie
in a more comfortable position, as if he well understood the
malaise that gripped her. But he did not try mind-touch, for which
she was grateful. Perhaps his long ordeal had exhausted his psychic
energy for the time as much as the search had hers.
She watched him stand. Much of his body was still in the shadow,
and what she could see gave her the impression that he was indeed
short in stature and slender. But he was no boy, however much his
face had given the impression of youth. That clicking blob, Harath,
ran to him, scrambled up the stranger who might be now a tree to be
climbed, and settled on his shoulder as if this was a perch he had
known many times before.
The burden of the alien, who was no light weight, might be
nothing, as the stranger pulled up between two of the rocks
guarding this depression, his attitude one of listening. Ziantha
watched him. By rights she should have a long rest now—
But at last her eyes were truly focusing on the other as he
turned around. He was holding night-vision glasses to his eyes, and
his clothing was plain to distinguish even in this baneful
moonlight. There was no mistaking the emblem on the breast of his
planet suit. Patrol!
What had Harath done to her? Even Ogan—or
Iuban—would have been more her friend! What could she do now?
If the sensitive was Patrol, as his uniform clearly testified, he
was a deadly enemy, and one who already knew from his own
participation just what she was doing on this planet. There was no
escape, no form of defense she could offer.
But to be erased—
Black horror worse than any fear she had ever known in her life
closed about Ziantha. Harath had done this to her! She must
escape—she must!
She willed her weak body to obey orders. Though she wavered to a
sitting position, the girl realized that she could not escape
without some aid. Harath? She could never trust him again.
Ogan? Much as she feared and now hated the parapsychologist, he
did not represent the dreaded fate this stranger threatened. But if
she tried to contact Ogan, with her power so depleted, either
Harath, the stranger, or both, could pick up her mind-send with
ease.
With her eyes, wide with fear, on the stranger, she tried to
edge away, put as much space between them as possible. If she could
reach the other side of this hollow, somehow crawl up—get out
among the rocks— But physical efforts were useless; she did
not doubt that Harath would easily track her down. The alien knew
her mind-pattern and could follow it as some tracking animal might
follow footprints or scent.
Yet Harath was in turn physically limited. And if she could
somehow dispose of the stranger, then she might be able to
out-travel the alien. Inch by inch she won away from the spot where
the stranger had left her, working crabwise over the rough ground
without rising to her feet. The effort it cost her left her
trembling with weakness, but her will and the danger hanging over
her drove her on.
She kept her attention fixed upon the other, alert to any change
that would suggest he planned to join her. But he seemed intent on
watching beyond the hollow, centering on it with his back half
toward her. It was apparent, she believed, that he expected no
trouble from her. And at that Ziantha longed to hiss as Yasa might
have done.
Harath she had to fear as well, but the alien’s head was
also turned in the same direction as the attention of the watcher.
Perhaps he was mind-searching, feeding any information he could
pick up to the stranger.
In her progress Ziantha’s hand closed upon a rock. With
that she could perhaps bring the Patrolman down. But she greatly
doubted her accuracy of aim, and to miss would alert him. Now, she
could, she would, fight with all her strength if he tried to master
her physically, but she must concentrate on escape. She had almost
reached the point where she believed she could hope to pull up to
the rim.
Only she was not going to have the chance. For the stranger in a
swift movement dropped the glasses to hang on their strap and
turned to slide down into the hollow. He stopped short when he saw
Ziantha, not where he had left her, but with her back against the
wall, the stone gripped tight as a pitiful weapon.
“What—?” He spoke Basic now.
She raised the stone. As far as she could see he wore no weapon.
And certainly he must be worn from his ordeal in the limbo between
Turan’s world and this.
“Stand off!” she warned him.
“Why?”
Ziantha could not see him face to face, for he was again in the
shadow. But his bulk she could make out. She wondered at the
surprise in his voice. Surely he knew that, being what she was,
they were deadly enemies?
“Keep off,” she repeated.
But he was moving toward her. If she had only left him lost!
Fool to trust Harath—the alien was one with Yasa, Ogan and
all the others who used her with no thought of her life.
“I mean you no harm.” He stood still. “Why do
you—”
She laughed then. Only it did not sound like laughter but a
crazed, harsh sound that hurt as she uttered it.
“No harm? No, no more harm than a pleasant visit to the
Coordinator—then to be erased!”
“No!”
He need not deny that so emphatically. Did he think she was so
brain-weakened by what she had been through (and for him!) that she
did not remember what happened to sensitives who served the Guild
when the Patrol caught them?
“No—you do not understand—”
Weakly, but with all the strength she had, Ziantha threw the
stone she held. Let him come any closer and she was lost. This was
her one chance. And in the same instant as the stone left her
fingers there was a burst of pain in her head, so terrible, so
overwhelming, that she did not even have a chance to voice the
scream it brought to her lips as she wilted down under that thrust
of agony.
The storm was upon them—she must be in the tower. The
Lurla—they lay curled, they would not obey, though she sent
the commands. They must! If they did not, she would be thrown to
the pounding waves below, and the Eyes given to one who could use
them. But when she tried the Eyes were dull—they cracked and
shivered into splinters, then to dust, sifting through her fingers.
And she was left without any weapon.
They were high in the hills, and below them the enemy forces had
gathered. But above and behind, coming steadily with fire beams to
hunt them out, were flyers. This was a trap from which there was no
escape. She must contrive to have death find her quickly when the
jaws of the trap closed. For to be captive in the hands of those
from Singakok was a worse ending than the clean death in battle.
She was Vintra of the Rebels and would not live to be mocked in the
streets of the city. Never! The flyers were very close, already
their beams fused the hidden guns. This was death, and she must
welcome it.
Heat, light, life—she was alive. And they would find her.
She would be captive in Singakok—No! Let her but get her
hands on her own weapons and she would make sure of that. But she
could not move. Had she been wounded? So hurt in the assault that
her body would not obey her?
Fearfully she opened her eyes. There was open sky above her. Of
course, she lay among the Cliffs of Quait. But the sounds of the
flyers were gone. It was very quiet, too quiet. Was she alone in a
camp of the dead? Those dead whom she would speedily join if she
could?
Sound now—someone was coming—if one of the rebels
she would appeal for the mercy thrust, know it would be accorded
her as was her right. She was Vintra; all men knew that she must
not fall alive into the hands of the enemy—
Vintra—but there was someone else—D’Eyree! And
then—Ziantha! As if thinking that name steadied a world that
seemed to spin around her, she ordered her thoughts.
Ziantha—that was right! Unless the Eyes had betrayed her a
second time into another return. She was Ziantha and Ziantha
was—
Her memory seemed oddly full of holes as if parts of it had been
extracted to frighten her. Then she looked up at a down-furred body
perched on two legs ending in clawed feet, a body leaning over her
so round eyes could stare directly into hers.
This was Ziantha’s memory. And that was—Harath! At
first she was joyfully surprised. Then memory was whole. Harath was
an enemy. She fought to move, to even raise her
hand—uselessly. But on wriggling hard to gaze along her body
she saw the telltale cords of a tangler. She was a prisoner, and
she could share to the full Vintra’s despair and hatred for
those who had taken her.
That Harath had changed sides did not surprise her now. He was
an alien, and as such he was not to be subjected to erasure or any
of the penalties the Patrol would inflict on her. Undoubtedly he
would aid them as he had Ogan in the past.
Ziantha made no effort to use mind-touch. Why should she? Harath
had seemed so much in accord with the stranger she did not believe
she could win him back. He had been too frantic when he had begged
her aid to redeem the other’s lost personality. What a fool
she had been to answer his call!
She no longer wanted to look at Harath, wedged her head around
so she could see only sunlit rock. This was not the same hollow in
which she had been struck down. They were in a more open space. And
now she could view the stranger also.
He lay some distance away, belly down, on what might be the edge
of a drop, his head at an angle to watch below. Then she heard the
crackle of weapon fire. Somewhere on a lower level a struggle was
in progress.
Ziantha heard the sharp click of Harath’s bill, apparently
he was trying to gain her attention. Stubbornly she kept her eyes
turned from him, her mind-barrier up. Harath had betrayed her; she
wanted no more contact with him. Then came a sharp and painful pull
of her hair. By force her head was dragged around, Harath had her
in tentacle grip. And, though she closed her eyes instantly against
his compelling gaze, Ziantha could feel the force of his mind-probe
seeking to reach her. There was no use wasting power she might need
later in such a small struggle. She allow mind-touch.
“Why do you fear?”
She could not believe that Harath would ask that. Surely he well
knew what they would do to her.
“You—you gave me to the Patrol. They will—kill
my talent, that which is me!” she hurled back.
“Not so! This one, he seeks to understand. Without him you
might be dead.”
She thought of her escape from D’Eyree’s tomb.
Better she had died there. What would come out of erasure would no
longer be Ziantha!
“Better I had died,” she replied.
She was looking straight up into Harath’s eyes. Suddenly
he loosed his hold on her hair, dropped mind-touch. She watched him
cross the rock, his beak clicking as if he chewed so on her words,
joining the man who still lay watching the battle below.
Harath uncoiled a tentacle, reached out to touch the
stranger’s hand. Ziantha saw the other’s head turn,
though she could catch only a very foreshadowed view of his brown
face. She was sure that Harath and he were in communication, but
she did not try to probe for any passage of thought between
them.
Then the stranger rolled over to look at her. When she stared
back, hostile and defiant, he shrugged, as if this was of no
matter, returning to his view below.
There was a sound. Under them the rock vibrated. Up over the
cliff rose the nose of a ship, pointing outward, the flames of her
thrusters heating the air. On she climbed and was gone, with a
roar, leaving them temporarily deaf.
Surely not Ogan’s L-B. Such a craft was far too small to
have made such a spectacular take-off. That must have been the Jack
ship! The girl lost all hope now; she had been left in Patrol
hands. Ziantha could have wailed aloud. But pride was stubborn
enough to keep her lips locked on any weakling whimper.
Who had driven the Jack ship off? The Patrol? Ogan? If the
latter, he must have been reinforced. If so, feverishly her mind
fastened on that, Ogan was still here—she could reach
him—
The stranger walked back toward her, standing now as if he
feared no danger of detection. She could see him clearly. Turan she
had learned to know, even when she realized that his body was only
a garment worn by another. But now more than the uniform this one
wore was a barrier between them. There was not only the fear of the
Patrol but a kind of shyness.
In the past, on Korwar, she had lived a most retired life. Those
forays Yasa had sent her on were tasks upon which it was necessary
to concentrate deeply, so that during them she observed only those
things that applied directly to the failure or success of her
mission. Yasa’s inner household had been largely female,
Ziantha’s life therein strictly ordered as if she were some
dedicated priestess—which in a way, she had been.
Ogan had never seemed a man, but rather a master of the craft
which exercised her talents—impersonal, remote, a source of
awe and sometimes of fear. And the various male underlings of the
household had been servants, hardly more lifelike to her than a
more efficient metal robo.
But this was a man with a talent akin to hers, equal, she
believed. And she could not forget the actions on Turan’s
time level that had endangered them both, that they had shared as
comrades, though he was now the enemy. He made her feel
self-conscious, wary in a way she had not experienced before.
Yet he was not in any way imposing; only a fraction perhaps over
middle height, and so slender it made him seem less. She had been
right about the hue of his skin: that was a warm dark brown, which
she was sure was natural, and not induced by long exposure to
space. And his hair, in the sun, shown in tight black curls. Of
Terran descent she was sure, but he could be a mutation, as so many
of the First Wave colonists now were, tens and hundreds of
generations later.
He settled down beside her, watching her thoughtfully as if she
presented some type of equation he must solve. And because she
found that silence between them frightening, she asked a
question:
“What ship lifted then?”
“The Jacks’. They tangled with some of their own, at
least it looked so. Beat the attackers off, then lifted. But there
was not much left of the opposition. I think a couple, three at the
most, made it out of range when the ship blasted.”
“Ogan! He will be after—” she said eagerly and
then could have bitten her tongue in anger at that
self-betrayal.
“After you? No—he cannot trace us even if he wants
to. We have a shield up no one can break.”
“So what are you going to do now?” Ziantha came
directly to the point, unwillingly conceding that he might be
truthful. No one should underrate the Patrol.
“For a time we wait. And while we do so, this is a good
time to make you understand that I do not want to hold you like
this.” He pointed to the tangle cords which restrained her so
completely.
“Do you expect me to promise no attempts to escape, with
erasure awaiting me?”
“What would you escape to? This is not exactly a welcoming
world.” There was a reasonableness in his words that awoke
irritation in her. “Food, water—and those
others”—now he waved to the
cliff—“wandering around. You are far safer here. Safer
than you might be in Singakok that was.” For the first time
he gave indication that he remembered their shared past. “At
least the High Consort is not setting her hounds to our
trail.”
He took a packet of smoke sticks from a seal pocket, snapped the
end of one alight, and inhaled thoughtfully the sweet scent. By all
appearances he was as much at ease as he would be in some pleasure
palace on Korwar, and his placidity fed her irritation.
“What are we waiting for?” Ziantha demanded,
determined to know the worst as soon as possible.
“For a chance to get back to my ship. I do not intend to
carry you all the way there. In fact, since I may have to fight for
the privilege of seeing it again, I could not if I would. There is
an alarm broadcast going out; the Patrol ship in this region must
already have picked it up. We can expect company, and we can wait
for it here. Unless you are reasonable and agree to make no
trouble. Then we shall make for the scout and be, I assure you, far
more comfortable.”
“Comfortable for you—not for me. When I know what is
before me!”
He sighed. “I wish you would listen and not believe that
you already know all the answers.”
“With the Patrol I do—as far as I am
concerned!” she flared.
“And who said,” he returned calmly, “that I
represent the Patrol?”