The Zero Stone

by Andre Norton

  “Where did you come from?” Was there a subtle alteration in his tone? Could I make him believe that I was a deportee from a plague ship, and that I expected to be burned down on sight for no other reason than that I had been cast adrift?

  “A ship- Do not kill me! I tell you I am clean now - the fever is gone! Let me go - I will not come near you - your ship - just let me go!”

  “Stand where you are!” His order was sharp. Now he cupped his free hand before his mouth and spoke into a com mike. The words he used were not Basic and I could not understand, save that he must be reporting to a superior. This was a dangerous game I played; a hair’s difference could mean life or death.

  “You-“ He motioned with the laser. “Walk ahead-“

  “No- I will go - I will not infect-“

  “Walk!” A beam, cut to a finger’s breadth in diameter, clipped the stone not far from my left hand. Its heat was searing. I cried out as he expected me to do.

  I saw him grin. “Touched you? Want another - closer this time? I said - walk! The Captain’s interested in you.

  Walk I did, making a clumsy business of pulling myself along as if my bruised leg were hardly more than a dead weight.

  “Got hurt?” my captor asked, viewing my very slow progress with impatience.

  “There are natives- with clubs- they hunted me-‘ I mumbled.

  “So? They have a liking for meat, and you would be that, as far as they are concerned. Not good - meeting with them.” He might have been remembering some earlier experience of his own.

  I lurched along as slowly as I could, magnifying my limp. Once more I rounded the end of the wreck and now both the other human and the X-Tee came toward us. The X-Tee had holstered his lasers, but both those feather fronds inclined in my direction.

  Whether my communication with Eet had sharpened any esper talent I might have had, though I was sure I was not talented at all, I could not tell. But I was aware of an impact from the alien which was not physical, but mental. Only, if he was trying to batter his way into my mind, he was not successful. There was no smooth meeting as I had known with Eet. And I hoped I could completely bar his probe. It was necessary that I remain what I seemed to be-

  “So you flushed him,” the other human observed. “What was he trying to do - scramble?”

  “Not with that leg. And be may have more wrong with him - take a good look at that face.”

  So bidden, he did, with a searching stare. And his expression suggested be was not in favor of what be saw. I wondered just how bad my sloughing skin and the shiny new patching looked. It was no longer so noticeable on my hands or so I thought. But then I was used to seeing it and any fading from those violent purple splotches was an improvement as far as I was concerned.

  “Perhaps you had better keep him well away,” was the newcomer’s verdict. “Tell the Captain about him.”

  “Captain’s waiting - up there. March, you!”

  There was someone standing on the ramp. A jerk of the laser sent me on. I stumbled along, hoping I was indeed a miserable object for anyone’s eyes to rest upon.

  TWELVE

  We came to the foot of the ramp and there they bid me stand, ringing me in, their weapons ready. The man awaiting us came several paces farther down to study me in slow appraisal.

  He was from one of the old worlds, those first colonized. Generations living under alien conditions had given him differences of physique which were noticeable at more than the first glance. His body, under the coverall with the Captain’s shooting star on its standing collar, was thin and lank, his skin dark even beneath the space tan; but his eyes and hair were even more indicative of mutation from the parent stock. The hair, of necessity worn very short to accommodate a helmet, was more blue than gray, thick, and it grew in straight, short spikes. His eyes were a brilliant blue-green, larger than ordinary, and with double eyelids, one almost transparent against the ball, the other, heavier, fitting over it. He visibly lifted both to view me, but I think that the sunlight bothered him, as he quickly dropped the inner ones.

  But - I knew him! Not by name, but from the past. Whether the recognition would be mutual, I did not know. I hoped not. This man had visited my father’s shop, had been one of those escorted into the inner room, exiting through the private door. He had not worn a Captain’s tunic then, nor aught to suggest he was a ship’s officer. In fact his hair had then been long enough to brush the outsized, wing-padded shoulders of his foppish tunic - the elegance of an inner-planet dandy.

  That he was of the Guild I did not now doubt. But would he know me for Jern’s son? And if I were recognized, could such a relationship be useful to me?

  I was not to be left long in doubt on either point. He advanced another step and then laughed, raised his hand to his mouth, and made a vee with his two fingers, through which he spat deliberately right and left.

  “By the Lips and Limbs of Sorelle Herself! After this day will I burn farn leaves to Her in any shrine I see! That which was lost is found. And see, boys, that it be not lost again. Murdoc Jern - how did you get here? I will believe any tale you spin me after this.”

  The three guarding me stirred and moved in, making very sure that I was not going to disappear - or even have a chance to attempt escape. I had only my role of late plague victim left. Aside from that, I would use as much of the truth as could be checked if later they set a scanner on me.

  I allowed my mouth to hang open a little, and wavered as if I kept my feet only through an exhausting effort.

  “Do- do not kill me! The fever- it is gone - I am whole now-“

  “Fever?”

  “Look at him, Captain,” my captor urged. “He is two colors - best take care-“

  “You, Jern, hold your head up! Let us see-“

  I swayed back and forth. They were still afraid of coming too close. The terror of plague deflated the toughest starman when he faced it.

  “I am- am clean-“ I repeated. “They put me off in an LB - but now I am well - I swear it.”

  The Captain palmed his com and spoke into it with a snap in that tongue that was not Basic. We waited in silence until a second man came running lightly out on the ramp. He held before him a small box, from which extended a length of slender cable, ending in a disc not unlike a hand com. I knew it for a portable diagnostic. The ship was apparently very well equipped.

  Advancing within touching distance of me, the medico swung his search disc in careful examination, his eyes ever on the indicators of the box.

  “Well?” It was plain the Captain found this interruption irritating.

  “He is clean, by what we can judge. There is always the possibility though-“

  “To what point?” pressed his commander.

  “The hundreth perhaps. Who can say definitely?” The medico expressed the caution normal to his calling.

  “We shall settle for that.” The Captain waved him back. “So,” he said to me, “it seems you are right. Your fever or whatever it was is, gone and you are no plague risk. But you were on board ship when it struck?”

  “On a Free Trader- out of Tanth-“ I raised my hands to my head, rubbed them across my forehead as if I were dazed or in pain. “I-it is hard to remember. I was on Tanth - I had to escape. There was trouble. So I paid gems and Ostrend gave me passage. There was another world - the natives were all gone. And after that I was sick. They said it was plague - put me out in the LB. It made landing here - but there were natives - they hunted me-“

  “To this place?” The Captain was smiling. “But how fortunate for you. The hunt ended in the one spot you might meet an off-world ship.”

  “There was a wall- I followed it- and the wood people - they seemed afraid. I got in a wrecked ship, they did not come after me-“

  “What fortune favored you, Jern, and us too! We might have met you elsewhere, but time is saved because we meet here. You see, you have been a focus of interest to others. We have long wanted to meet you “

  “I-I do not unders
tand-“

  “What is the matter with him?” The Captain. rounded on the medico. “He is not rated as stupid in our reports.”

  The medico shrugged “Who knows what happens to a man when a plague strikes? He is clean of infection as far as I can tell, but I cannot vouch for any changes a strange virus may have caused in mind or body.”

  “We shall turn him over to you.” The Captain had lost his smile. “Suppose you make all the tests you need, and then let us know whether we have an imbecile or a source of reliable information.”

  “Take him on board?” The medico hesitated.

  “Where else? I thought you said he was clean-“

  “There is always the chance it is something new.”

  I felt rather than saw the Captain’s indecision. But that did not last long.

  “What equipment will you need? Can it be brought out of the ship?” he asked.

  “Most of it - yes. Where will you put him?”

  “In the workings, where else? Segal, Onund, get what the medico needs. And you, Tusratti, take him over to the west tunnel.”

  It was as if I had ceased to exist as a person, but had become an object to be moved around at their desire. In my role of dazed plague survivor I was willing to have it so. The X-Tee crewman urged me down to the riverbank, I moving as slowly and with as much of a limp as I could manage. There were others already at work there. Across the rocks and foaming water a section bridge had been anchored into place. It would appear they knew this place very well and had visited it before, making their preparations for setting up a base, if even a temporary one.

  At the urging of my guard I wavered across the bridge, and through the ruins beyond. Our goal was one of those holes in the cliff face. But not the one to which the other crewmen were heading. What they carried were mining tools of the kind such as were used to pick riches from dead moons and asteroids.

  “In-“ commanded the X-Tee. The hole to which he pointed was the farthest to the left. Then was debris from recent digging dumped on either side of the opening. But whatever they had been hunting they had not found here. They must be taking the holes in turn and were now working that two away from the one into which I was being ushered.

  “I am - am hungry -“ I halted as if to get my breath, being careful to steady myself against a rock. “I am hungry - I need food-“

  There was no readable expression on the X-Tee’s face. The hands of his upper pair of arms rested warningly on the butts of his double supply of lasers. For a long moment he stared at me and then he turned and called to one of the men on his way to the other tunnel.

  In answer the other detached a packet from his belt and tossed it in our general direction. He had trusted to the unusual talents of my guard, and it did not fall short. Instead one of the X-Tee’s upper limbs snapped out to twice the length I would have believed possible, caught the flying object, and pulled back to hand it to me.

  My fingers closed about a tube of E-ration and I did not have to fake the avidity with which I gripped its tip between my teeth, bit through the stopper, and spit it out, before sucking the semiliquid contents. No meal of my imagination could have topped the flavor of what now filled my mouth, or the satisfaction afforded me as it flowed in gulps down into me. The mixture was meant to sustain a man under working conditions; and it would renew my strength even more than usual food.

  “On!” My guard thumped me on the shoulder with a stick which one of the extraordinarily agile limbs had picked up from the ground. He was careful, I noted, not to touch me. Apparently X-Tees also shared the fear of plague.

  Sucking at the tube, I lurched on. And it seemed that the promised strength of the food was already working in me.

  The tunnel was a dark mouth opening to engulf us. But the X-Tee produced a beamer. That this was an artificial way was most apparent. And for some distance inside, the stone showed only the marks of its first working. Then recent scars were displayed in great slashes, both horizontal and vertical, until in places they formed a grid.

  I saw the glisten of crystals still embedded in the slashes or lying in broken lumps on the ground. And my interest almost made me betray myself. But I remembered just in time that I was playing stupid. Apparently these were not what the crewmen had been searching for. Though they now caught and reflected the light as if a wealth of gems were spilled, yet they had been discarded. This struck me as odd, since ordinarily no Guild ship would pass up anything remotely suggesting profit.

  We came to a hollowed-out space where the tunnel ended. Here the walls had been quarried in great rough arches and niches, as if those who had worked here had been so sure they were about to find what they sought that they had used their tools in a frenzy. The X-Tee motioned to a pile of rock. “Sit!”

  I lowered myself stiffly to obey his order, still sucking at the tube of E-ration. He planted the beamer on another pile across the open space and turned it to high-diffuse, to light all but the innermost portions of the hollows in the walls. Then he took his place between me and the tunnel entrance.

  During the silence which followed I could hear the drip-drip of water somewhere, though there was no evidence of moisture in the tunnel. And a little later I could both hear and feel through the rock the activities of those working farther along in the cliff.

  Was this the place to which the zero stone had been pointing us? The discarded crystals here had no resemblance to that murky stone. But that had been exposed to centuries in space, and to whatever use as a source of energy its discoverers had put it to.

  I leaned over to pick up one of the broken prisms. My guard placed a hand on the butt of a laser, but he made no move to stop me. This was a piece of quartz, I thought. But of that I could not be sure. One must never make snap judgments about finds on unknown planets. Vondar would have put any such material through exhaustive tests before he might venture an opinion, and even then I had known him to reserve final classification. He carried with him certain finds he was not sure of, even after years of study, since they possessed qualities which were beyond any code. All dealers accumulated a few such, and one of their principal activities when meeting a fellow gemologist was producing these mystery stones for comparison.

  So what I held could be worthless quartz, or something quite different.

  There was a sound from the tunnel and the medico entered, pushing before him a box which ran on rollers. Behind him came the two crewmen with other equipment. Then I became the object of tests.

  I think first they still tried to find in me some seeds of the disease which had left such visible marks on my body. And the medico also applied a renewing ray to my bruised leg, so that I could no longer use lameness as a cover. But I could not, dared not resist - even when they at last locked me into a reader-helm. The very fact that they carried such a thing with them suggested they found its use necessary, illegal as that was.

  With its pads locked to my forehead and the nape of my neck I could only answer with the strict truth, or what I thought was the truth. After they had reached that stage of the proceedings they summoned the Captain and it was he who fed me the questions.

  “You are one Murdoc Jern, son to Hywel Jern--.”

  “No.”

  He was startled by that and looked to the medico, who leaned quickly to read the dial and then nodded to his commander.

  “You are not Murdoc Jern?” the Captain began again.

  “I am Murdoc Jern.”

  “Then your father was Hywel Jern-“

  “No.”

  The Captain looked once more to the medico and received a second nod of assurance that the machine was functioning properly.

  “Who was your father then?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Were you a member of Hywel Jern’s household?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you consider yourself his son?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you know of your real parents?”

  “Nothing. I was told I was a duty
child.”

  An expression of relief flickered momentarily on the Captains face.

  “But you were in Jern’s confidence?”

  “He taught me.”

  “About gems?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he apprenticed you to Ustle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, I believe, he wanted a future for me. Since his true son would have the shop upon his death.”

  I could not stop the flow of words. It was as if I stood slightly apart and listened, as if it was I who answered. Now I sensed that once again the answer I had given was baffled.

  “Did he ever show you a certain ring, one made to fit over the glove of a space suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you where it came from?”

  “That it had been brought to him for hock-sale. That it had been found on the body of an alien floating in space.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “Nothing except that he believed there was something to be learned about it.”

  “And he wanted you, during your travels with Ustle, to discover what you could?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you discover?”

  “Nothing.”

  The Captain seated himself on a folding stool one of his men had provided. He took from a seal pocket of his tunic a pale-green stick, put it between his teeth, and chewed upon it reflectively, as if studying on some new and vital question. At last he asked:

  “Did you ever see the ring in later years?”

  “Yes.”

  “When and where?”

  “On Angkor after my father’s death.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I took it with me.”

  “You have it now?” He leaned forward, his eyes fully open, both pairs of lids raised.

  “No.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I do not know.”

  Again exasperation, this time strong enough to bring a sharp exclamation from him.

  “State the last time you saw it and under what circumstances.”