The Zero Stone

by Andre Norton

  “There was no crime.” How could I make the truth so plain he would believe me? “Do you think a man thrusts a rod into a yaeger-wasp nest and turns it deliberately, when he is in his right mind? We were in a tavern - the Sign of the Mottled Corby. Our business here was done, we had passage on the Voyringer. Then the Green Robes came in and set up that infernal spinning arrow of theirs. We thought we were in no danger, being off-worlders. When it stopped I swear it pointed between the two of us. Then the Robes moved in to take us-“

  “Why?” I saw the disbelief in his eyes. “They do not play such games with off-worlders.”

  “As we thought also, Cargo Master. Yet they did. And Vondar was knifed down when he tried to resist. I burned a priest and was near enough to the door to get free. I had heard of this sanctuary-so-“

  “Tell me - what was Vondar Ustle’s hallmark? And it I have seen, I warn you.” That shot from his lips as a ray might have from his laser.

  “A half-moon wrought in opal with the signet, between its horns, a Gryphon’s head in firestones.” I made prompt reply, though I wondered what this Free Trader would know of a master gemologist’s mark, which he would display for identification only to an equal in rank.

  He nodded and slipped his laser into its holster. “What enemy did Ustle make here?”

  That thought had plagued me also since I had had the time within this hole to think. For it was reasonable that, were a desire for revenge strong enough, my master might have been set up for such a kill. Though their demon was supposed to select his prey by chance alone, without aid from his servant priests, rumor suggested that he sometimes had assistance of mortal means, that a suitable gift to his shrine could produce a sacrifice which would please more than just the Green Robes and their lord. But there had been no clash with any local power. We had visited Hamzar, inspected his wares and purchased what Vondar thought good, exchanged trade gossip with him. There had been one visit to the nomads’ market and some dickering for uncut crystals out of the salt deserts, but both sides had been pleased with the deal. I could see no local tie-up with any trouble. And now, though I would have given much to be able to produce such a neat solution, I had to admit the truth.

  “It need not have been of Tanth at all,” the Cargo Master replied. And he watched me as if I could then supply name and reason. A moment later, he continued. “Some strokes are aimed from longer distances. But- if you wish to take knife-oath for your master later, that is your affair. Always supposing you do come out alive. Now, what do you want of us? You say passage offworld - how?”

  “How would you do it?” I countered. “I will pay well to lift in your ship, and for passage to the nearest planet with a second-stage port. And do not tell me” now I dared push a little; I could lose nothing by it, for my whole chance hung on the slenderest of threads “that you cannot get me forth if you wish. The will of the Free Traders is too well known.”

  “We care for our own. You are not one of us.”

  “You care for your cargo also. Then accept me as cargo - a profitable cargo.”

  He suddenly smiled. “Cargo, is it?” Then his smile vanished and his eyes narrowed as he regarded me, as if by that gaze he could indeed transform me into a box or bale, to be stored in the hold of his ship. “You talk of profit?” he began, brisk again. “What sort of profit and how much?”

  I turned away and sought my safe-belt. Then I showed him what I held and it took fire in the torchlight. Profit of a half year’s careful trading on my own - two of them matched as closely as anyone could hope to find - Eyes of Kelem. They were gold, and scarlet, with flecks of green deep in them. And if you looked upon them long, the color flowed. Not a fortune, no. But, offered in the proper market, worth a whole voyage for a trader who was only average lucky most of the time. They were my best and I knew he guessed that.

  He did not try to bargain, or belittle my offering. Whether he did indeed have some half sympathy for my plight, I do not know. But he looked at the stones and then to me, nodding, holding forth his hand and closing it over them in a manner which showed that he knew the rules of our trade also. Free Traders are alert to any cargo and deal in many things.

  “Come!”

  I followed him out of that room, leaving my offering behind me on the guesting table. For I was satisfied that they had kept their part of the bargain. We were again in the hall where the torches blazed behind the face, but these were now quenched and I saw through the holes the light of day. The Cargo Master stooped and picked up a bundle lying there, shaking it out to show me a worn uniform tunic and the cap of a crewman.

  “Put them on.”

  I laughed, feeling a little lightheaded. “It would seem you came prepared,” I said as I pulled the tunic over my head and shoulders, sealed it at collar and belt. It was small for me, but not too much so.

  “I was-“ He hesitated. “The news is loud. Ustle was known to our Captain. When the message came through he was enough interested to send me.”

  The set of his jaw told me that that was all I would get out of him on the subject. But I was the more heartened by this evidence that he had come prepared to get me out - though I would still have liked to go through the door weapon in hand.

  We were not, however, to go that way, for the Free Trader walked briskly to the wall on our left, slapped his hand against it. Though that touch could not have moved the heavy stone, it swung inward, disclosing another narrow way, and he stepped confidently into that, leaving me to follow. When the stone swung back behind us, we were left in a thick dark, reminding me unpleasantly of the alleys through which I had earlier fled.

  It was a very narrow passage, our shoulders brushing wall on either side. I bumped into my guide, who had stopped short. There was a click and then a blaze of bright light.

  “Come!” He reached out a hand to pull me after him. I blinked and screwed up my eyes against the assault of that brilliant sun. We were in another alley, piled along the wall with containers of refuse. Things scuttled in the slime under our boots and my guide swore roundly as he kicked out at something which hissed at him. Six strides, as long and fast as we could make them, brought us into another and much cleaner byway. I had to fight my desire to run, or to look about me for attackers. It was necessary to put on the cloak of unconcern and match my pace to the Cargo Master’s.

  Then we were through the gates of the port. As I had thought, the Voyringer had lifted and only the trader remained, fins down, on the blast-scorched ground. The Cargo Master caught at my sleeve.

  “Trouble- maybe-“

  But I had already sighted that blaze of bright robes around the ship. There was a reception committee waiting. Perhaps just on the general principle that a hunted off-worlder would make for the only ship left.

  “Drunk- you’re an off-ship drunk!” The Cargo Master hissed at me in a sound much like that made by the alley scavenger. “This ought to do it !” I saw the blow coming, but I was totally unprepared to dodge it. A blast of pain spread from my jaw, and I must have gone down and out in the same moment, for there my memories of Tanth come to an abrupt stop.

  There was a tap-tapping of jeweler’s hammers in my skull, setting tighter and tighter a brazen band about my brain. I could not lift a hand to stop that torment. Then liquid splashed over me and I drew a choking gasp of air, which seemed to subdue for the moment the worst of the hammering. I opened my eyes.

  A face hung over me, two faces, one very close, the other blurry and at a greater distance. The close one was furred, with pricked, tassled ears, green-gold eyes. It opened a blacklipped mouth and I looked into a wedge-shaped space set with fangs, and a curling, roughsurfaced tongue. It was a small face-

  Now the larger approached and I tried to focus on it. Spacetanned, with close-cropped hair, for the rest the face of any crewman, ageless and now expressionless.

  I heard words-“Well, so you are back with us-“

  Back? Back where? Memory stirred sluggishly - back in the cell of the sanctuary? No! I t
ried to sit up and my head whirled so that I was sick. But as ungentle hands thrust me flat again, I felt something else which could never have vibrated through Koongan walls - I was not only aboard a ship, but we were in flight. And the vast flood of relief which followed that realization carried me back into a limbo which was half unconsciousness, half sleep.

  So I found myself aboard the Vestris, though the first days in her were not the usual spent by a passenger. The Cargo Master had indeed knocked me out to carry me aboard as his drunken assistant. But it would seem I was of less hardy structure than those his fists had dealt with heretofore, and I continued semiconscious for a longer space than the medico liked. When I was again fully aware of my surroundings, I lay in a cramped cubby off the medico’s cabin, used by the seriously ill. It was some time before I had my interview with Captain Isuran. Like all Free Traders, he was ship-born, shipbred, of a type growing more and more apart from planetorientated men. All the Free Traders I had known before had been only casual acquaintances, and I found myself oddly ill at ease with these in such close quarters. I told him my story and he listened. And he asked who had wanted Vondar Ustle dead, but that I could not tell him. That there had been some tie in the past between my master and this Captain, I was sure. But Isuran did not explain and I dared not ask questions. It was enough that he would take me to another world, one on which I could contact sources who had known me as Vondar’s assistant.

  I had some time to meditate upon the future, for space travel is sheer monotony once one is off world. The crewmen develop hobbies to occupy mind and hand. For me there was nothing but my thoughts. And they were not so pleasant I cared to dwell long upon them.

  Ustle had had contacts on many worlds, and I thought one or two might be willing to give me a chance at a planetside job. But, though I knew gems as a buyer, I was no designer, nor did I want a settled existence. I had tasted too deeply of Vondar’s way of life. My safe-belt was very light now. And I would have to reach a second-stage port to tap past resources for expense money. Also - my savings were limited. I could not keep on as we had done alone. And there were very few, if any, Vondar Ustles in search of apprentices.

  Also - what had been behind Vondar’s death? That it was planned and not by the Green Robes alone, I had come to accept. But, though I tried - sifting memories - I could not bring to mind a single happening which would plant so deep a reason for someone to wish him dead. And perhaps not only him, for the Green Robes had moved in on both of us.

  This was the second time death had abruptly come so close to me. I thought again of my father, or of him I would always think of as my father, for he had treated me as of his own flesh and blood and had settled for me (knowing as he must have how matters would go after his death) a future he thought would be the best. Who had been his visitor that day? And the space ring - my hand sought the last and deepest pocket of my safe-belt. I did not unseal it, only felt through it the shape of the band and that lusterless stone. Was I right that this was what my father’s killer had sought? If so - could it also be-? I did not see how this could have followed us to Tanth. All the property on the bodies of their victims belonged to the Green Robes and were offered to their dead demon. No one but their order would have had the ring had I fallen prey to them.

  I had a handful of facts and could go on endlessly building many surmises, without ever being sure that any were close to the truth. Although in the meanwhile I must seek some way of earning my living, I would, in time, have to learn what lay behind Vondar’s killing. For I had such ties with him as would indeed demand the equivalent of the Free Traders’ knife-oath.

  But I was still far from the solution of my twin problems when the Vestris prepared for a landing, not on the planet at which I aimed, but on a lesser world. Cargo Master Ostrend briefed me as to their reasons for the landfall. It was a lushly overgrown land, overwarm, too, to our tastes, with a nonhuman, batrachian-evolved native race. What those had to barter was a substance strained and fermented from certain plants, medicinal in nature. What the Vestris gave in return was seed shellfish, to be loosed in beds, considered a great delicacy.

  “You might be interested in these.” Ostrend took from his lockbox three objects and set them out on the top of his swing desk.

  They were a pinkish purple in shade, and each was a tiny figure. I brought out my jeweler’s lens to study them closer. Figures they were, as weirdly grotesque as any of the demons dreamed up by the imaginations of the artists of Tanth. They seemed to be fashioned of nacre, though not carved. I had not seen their like before. They were oddities which might appeal to collectors of the curious.

  “There is a planter of shellfish beds - Salmscar. He has been experimenting with some of the mutated crustaceans. That’s what keeps our trade going here; the things mutate so quickly that they cannot be bred true past about the second year. He plants tiny metallic ‘seeds’ in the mutants and in about three or four years gets these. Just a hobby with him. But you might do a spot of trading if you are interested.”

  I knew the Free Traders and their jealously guarded sources of items. If the mutant pearls had any value, Ostrend would not have made that suggestion. Unless, of course, he was either testing me or setting a trap - now I saw dangers standing to right and left. It was almost as if he were urging me to break their ship law. But I would not tell him so. A very small third mystery to add to the others. I expressed interest, which I did not have to feign, and did wonder what I had that I could offer for some of the things - not that I could use my few assets on a gamble, nor would I attempt any trade without full consent of my present shipmates.

  FOUR

  Since the ingrown community of the Free Traders was a closed clan and an outsider remained that, I was left very much to my own company, save for one member of the crew. The furry face which had hung so close to mine at my first awakening was one I was to see again and again. For Valcyr, the ship’s cat, apparently decided that I was an object of interest second to none, and spent long periods of time crouched on bunk or floor of the cabin allotted to me, simply staring.

  I was not used to companionship with animals and at first her attentions irked me, for I could not throw off the absurd feeling that behind those round, seldomblinking eyes was a mind which marked my every move, sifting and assessing me and all I did. Yet in time I came to tolerate her, and finally, when it became apparent that the crew were not inclined, beyond a distant civility, to friendliness, I found myself talking to her for want of other conversation. For among themselves the Traders spoke a language of their own, unintelligible to me so that any attempt to follow their speech was fruitless.

  After my interview with Ostrend I returned to my cubby to discover Valcyr stretched on my berth taking her ease. She was a lithe and beautiful creature, her fur short and very thick, of a uniform silver-gray, save for her tail, where there were dark rings. She had moments when she displayed affection, and now she raised her head to rub against my hand, while from her throat rumbled a purr. Since such favors were rare, I was flattered enough to continue to stroke her while I considered the Cargo Master’s suggestion.

  We would planet on this world shortly, near a trading post where the men of the Vestris had been before. There were no cities, the natives being nomads by inclination, wandering in family-clan groups along the rivers from one marshy spot to the next. A few more civilized and enterprising clans had staked out semipermanent settlements near places where crustacean beds could be fostered. But these were no more than collections of flimsy reed-and-mud huts.

  What I had brought to the Vestris had been carried on my person. Now I took inventory of my scanty possessions to see if I had anything at all which could serve as a trade item. The few small stones still in my safe-belt were not to be touched. Not that it was likely they would interest Salmscar. I regretted the packs abandoned at the inn on Tanth, the luggage gone with the freighter. But if one permitted regret for little, one might as well remember all the rest lost on Tanth. I had nothing to risk h
ere. I said as much to Valcyr, and she yawned widely and set her teeth gently upon my hand to suggest she was no longer interested in being petted.

  However, when we set down, I was ready enough to go planetside. The chance to get firm earth under one’s feet is always acceptable to any traveler, unless he is as wedded to space as a crewman - and even crewmen must earth now and then.

  What greeted our noses as we went down the outflung landing ramp was more than the scorch of burning from our findown - it was a stink of chemicals, enough to make one hold one’s nose. Ostrend said the natives favored this section of hot springs and volcanic action, and now we could see rocks, water- and steam-worn into strange shapes. At intervals steam and vile smells burst through holes in the ground.

  Beyond this tormented land was the bluish foliage of the marshes, while the various overflows from the caldron lands lapped on to feed a yellow river. The heat from the steam was almost stifling, the more so when combined with the chemical stench. We coughed and sputtered as we picked our way along a path, to find, on the banks of the river, the village we sought.

  Ostrend stood there, his trade board between arm and hip, looking about in open puzzlement. After his description I had not expected to see much in the way of buildings. But certainly we looked now on what was not even the most primitive attempt at providing shelter, but rather an area of ruin and decay.

  Mounds of ill-smelling reed stuff, with dried mud flaking off in great chunks, humped here and there. Among this litter nothing moved until a thing which was more leather-winged lizard than bird arose with a squawk and flapped awkwardly across the river. None of the traders pressed past Ostrend, but their heads swung from left to right and back again as if they were men suddenly suspicious of a trap.

  The Cargo Master took from his belt a slender metal rod. Under his fingers it expanded longer and longer until he had a pole of double his own height. To the tip end he affixed a small pennon of bright yellow before he planted it fast in the soft mud of the riverbank. From comments, I gathered that, the village being deserted for some time by the signs, we could do no more than wait for the return of the natives - always providing that they were able to return. But since the visits of the Vestris were regular this could be expected to occur, again always excepting the fact that some disaster had not put an end to the established custom.