by Andre Norton
"Don't hurry!" The captain made a noise not far removed from one of Taggi's snarls. "We don't have much time left. This one knows where those hags have their base. I say—get her under questioning and find that out. Then we move and move fast. We have our orders to cut all corners on this deal."
"Destroy what you want and what good will it do? Sure, you can probably blast your way in and burn out the opposition, but you know what we've learned so far. The Power doesn't work unless you have had the training. It may not operate for males at all. You have a woman here who's already been sensitized to it. Why not use her just as Jagan intended—to pick up the information you need? You won't get that by force—either against her or maybe against the Wyvern females."
Lazgah relaxed his grip on Charis. But he still stood over the girl, staring at her as if he could reach inside her skull by his will and bring her under control.
"I don't like it," he stated, but he did not protest further. "All right—but you keep an eye on her."
The captain tramped out. But the medic did not follow. It was his turn to favor Charis with a measuring survey.
"I wish I knew whether you are playing a game," he said, surprising Charis with his frankness. "Those hags can't possibly control you past the Rim. But—" He shook his head, more at his own thoughts than at her, and did not finish his sentence. Going out abruptly, he closed the seal again.
Charis continued to sit on the cot. The Wyvern male Gathgar had accused her of working with the Power, but she had not. At least not with the aid of the patterns, Wyvern-fashion. Could it be, Charis's hand went to the plasta-board under her tunic, that she did not need such an aid anymore? Was what she had been doing here—her contact with Tsstu, the reach-for Lantee—an easier method of using the same force?
But if that were true, there was a way of using the Power which could not be affected by the nullifier. Charis blinked. That surmise opened up a whole new field of speculations. She could reach Tsstu, and Tsstu could link in turn with the wolverines. Suppose that Tsstu, the wolverines, Charis and Lantee could form a chain to break open the Alpha-rim of the enemy?
Lantee— Somehow her thoughts always returned to Lantee, as if the pattern which was not a pattern needed the element for which he stood—just like the time she could not remember the right design until Tsstu supplied the indentations in her drawing. Charis could not have explained why she was certain of this, but she was.
She lay back on the cot and closed her eyes. Lantee must be summoned out of hiding, be one with them again. Charis released a questing thought, spun it out and away from her as a fisherman might cast a line or as a com beam might search for another installation to activate. A Wyvern witch working under the Power would have been accurate in such a hunt. She herself, using the pattern, could have centered on Tsstu and been reasonably certain of a quick contact, but this blind seeking was a fumbling process.
Touch! Charis tensed. Tsstu! Now she must hold that contact, signal along it her need for energy reserves for the job to be done. But Tsstu was unwilling. It was as if she was in Charis's hand and wriggling for her freedom. But Charis kept the line taut, sent her determined demand along it. There—Taggi came in. The girl braced herself against the impact of the far more savage mind of the wolverine. Through to Taggi went her call for strength and a mutual pointing of their combined wills. Lantee—Charis made that call into form—Lantee. Now a fourth will joined—Togi, the female linked with her mate. The thrusting leap of that striking back to Charis was like a blow.
The girl held that linkage intact for a long moment, as a climber might examine knotted ropes to be sure of his support before facing a dangerous mountainside. Now! The wills were a spear which Charis not only aimed for the throwing but followed in flight.
Into the black of the nothing-place, surely the strangest of those Otherwheres into which the Power of the Wyverns led, she was the point of a fiery arrow shooting on and on, seeking the spark of light there. Now it was before her, very low, an ember close to extinction. But the arrow which was Charis, Tsstu, Taggi, and Togi struck into its heart.
Around them whirled a wild dance of figures. From all the doorways they had come into the corridor to crowd about her. She could not flee from them lest the lifeline break. This was worse than the first time she had walked this forbidden way, for the thoughts and memories of Shann Lantee now gathered more substance in their shadows. Charis knew a terror which balanced her on the thin edge of sanity.
However, the chain held true and pulled her back until she lay again on the cot, aware of its support under her. The contacts broke, the wolverines were gone; Tsstu, gone.
"I am here."
Charis opened her eyes, but no one in a green-brown uniform stood beside her. She turned her head to face the wall which was still between them.
"I am—back."
Again that assurance, clear-cut as audible words but, in her mind, coming with the same ease as the Wyvern witches communicated.
"Why—" Her lips shaped that soundlessly to match the inquiry in her mind.
"It was that or face the scanner," he answered swiftly.
"And now?"
"Who knows? Did they take you too?"
"No." Charis outlined what had happened.
"Thorvald here?" Lantee's thoughts dropped away and she did not try to follow deeper. Then he was back to communication level. "The installation we're after is in the main dome. They have it guarded by Wyvern males who are sensitive to any telepathic waves. And they will fight to the death to keep it in action and themselves free."
"Can we reach it?" Charis asked.
"Little chance. At least, I've seen none so far," was his disappointing answer.
"You mean it's impossible for us to do anything?" Charis protested.
"No, but we have to know more. They've stopped trying to rouse me. Perhaps that will give me a chance to make some move."
"The Wyvern male told them I am using the Power. But I haven't tried it with the pattern and it didn't register on some machine of theirs, so they didn't quite believe him."
"You did this—without a pattern?"
"With Tsstu and the wolverines, yes. Does it mean we don't really need a pattern? That the Wyverns don't need them? But why wouldn't it show up on their machine?"
"May hit another wave length," Lantee returned. "But if the Wyvern males pick it up, they may be more sensitive on other bands than their mistresses credit. I wonder if they could have some Power of their own but don't know how to use it. If they picked you up before—"
"Then this last call for you—they could—"
"Be really alerted now? Yes. Which shaves our time to act. I don't even know how many there are here at the base."
"The witches have promised their help."
"How can they? Any sending of theirs will fail at the Rim."
"Shann, the Wyverns control their males with the Power. And the male I saw here believes that I can use it here. Suppose we all link again. Could we control them inside the Rim?"
There was a moment of pause in the flow of thought and then he answered.
"How do we know what will work and what won't until we put it to the test? But I want to be ready to get out of here on my own two feet. And from here I can see a guard with a blaster at the outer door. We might be able to link against the Wyvern males, but I wouldn't swear we could link to take out an off-worlder who has never been sensitized to mental control."
"What do we do?"
"Link with the others. See if you can reach Thorvald so—" he ordered.
This time the first link was not Charis, but Lantee and his will strengthened hers in her search for the curl-cat. Tsstu replied with a kind of fretfulness, but she picked up the wolverines.
A line cast out, spinning . . . then the catch of response.
"Wait!" That caution came back link by link. "The witches are moving. Wait for their signal." Break off as the animals dropped contact.
"What can they do?" Charis demanded of
Lantee.
"Your guess is as good as mine." He was tense. "The medic's just come in."
Silence. How well could he play his role, Charis wondered a little fretfully. But if the medic had given up hope of reviving the Survey man, he might not examine him too closely now. She lay listening for any sound which might come through the walls.
The door of her room opened and the medic came in with a tray on which there was food, real food, not rations. He put it down on a drop-table and turned around to look at her. Charis tried to look like one awakening from a nap. The man's expression was set and the motion with which he indicated the food was abrupt.
"You'd better eat. You'll need it!"
She sat up, pushing back her hair, striving to present bewilderment.
"If you're smart," he continued, "you'll tell the captain all about it now. He's an expert on grab raids. If you don't know what that means, you'll soon discover the hard way."
Charis was afraid to ask what this warning did mean. To cling to her cloak of being a dazed fugitive was her only defense.
"You can't hide it—not any longer. Not with a complete burn-out of the sensatator this time."
Charis tensed. The linkage—twice the linkage—had at last registered on whatever safeguard the invaders had mounted.
"So you do understand that?" The medic nodded. "I thought you would. Now, you had better talk and fast! The captain might just turn you over to the bulls."
"The snakes!" Charis found words at last. "You mean give me to the snakes?" She did not have to counterfeit her repulsion.
"That gets to you, does it? It should; they hate the Power. And they'll willingly destroy anyone who uses it if they can. So—make your deal with the captain. He's willing to offer a good one."
"Simkin!"
There was such urgency in that hail that the medic whirled to the door. There was a growing murmur of sound—some of it sharp, the rest shouting. The medic ran, leaving the door open. Charis was up and into Lantee's room instantly.
The hissing blatt-blatt of a blaster in action came now. And she had heard that claking before when the birds had hunted her along the Warlockian cliff.
Then, like a swifter beat of her heart, a pulse along all the veins and arteries of her body—
"Now!"
The signal was not spoken but to it all of Charis responded. She saw Lantee slide from the cot in one supple, coordinated movement—as ready as she.
XVIII
Lantee waved Charis back and took the lead as they approached the outer door. The Company guard still stood there, his back blocking their passage, intent upon what was happening outside, his blaster drawn and moving as if he were trying to align its sights on some very elusive mark.
The Survey man crossed the anteroom with the caution of a stalking feline as the din outside covered any sound within. But some instinct must have warned the guard. He turned his head, sighted Lantee and, giving a cry, tried to bring his blaster up and around.
Too late! Just what Lantee did Charis was not sure. The blow he struck was certainly not any conventional one. As the guard crumpled, the blaster fell to the floor and skidded. Charis pounced and closed fingers about the ugly weapon. She tossed it, as she straightened, to Lantee and he caught it easily.
They looked out into a scene of wild confusion, though their view of it was limited to a small segment of the base. Men in yellow uniforms crouched under cover and laced the air with blaster rays, apparently trying to strike back at some menace in the sky. Two of the Wyvern males lay either dead or unconscious by the door of a dome to the right, across from the one in which Shann and Charis had been prisoners. And there were burned and blasted clakers littering the ground in all directions.
"There—" Lantee gestured to the dome by which the Wyvern bodies sprawled. "It's in there."
But to try to reach that would set them up as targets for the marksmen now concentrating on the clakers. The din of the attack cries was lessening; fewer bodies struck the ground. Charis saw Lantee's lips thin, his face assume a grim cast, and she knew he was tensing for action.
"Run! I'll cover you."
She measured the distance by eye. Not far, but at his moment that open space stretched as an endless plain. And the Wyvern males? Those in sight were motionless, but more could be inside that open door.
Charis gave a leap which carried her well into the open. She heard a shout and then the crackle of a blaster beam which was close enough to scorch her upper arm. She cried out, but somehow she kept to her feet and stumbled on into the door, tripping there over the body of a Wyvern. She sprawled forward into the interior, thereby saving her life as one of the murderous, saw-toothed spears flew past her. She rolled, coming up against the wall where she pushed up to look at her assailants.
Wyvern males—three of them, two still holding spears, one of whom raised his weapon with sadistic slowness. The Wyvern was enjoying her fear as well as the fact that he was now in command of the situation.
"Rrrrrrrruuggghhh."
The Wyvern, his spear almost ready to throw, snapped around to face the door. A snarling ball of fury burst through it to launch at the natives. They howled, thrusting wildly at the wolverine. But the animal, using the advantage of its surprise attack to break past them, disappeared into the next room.
"Charis! You all right?"
Shann dodged in. The fabric of his tunic smoldered at rib level and he beat at it with his left hand.
"Surprisingly bad shots for Company men," he commented.
"Maybe they've orders not to kill." Charis tried to match his composure. But though she was on her feet now, she kept her back to the wall, facing the Wyverns, amazed that they had not launched a spear as yet. The eruption of the wolverine into their midst had shaken them oddly.
Shann gestured the three aliens back with his ready blaster.
"Move!" he ordered curtly. And the wariness in their yellow eyes told the two off-worlders that the natives were well aware of the potency of that weapon.
They retreated from the small outer room into the main room of the structure. There had been a good-sized com unit in here, but one glance told Charis that it could not serve them, for the installation had been deliberately rayed with blaster fire until it was half-melted in more than one place.
But that was not all that was in the room. On a base improvised from packing boxes was an intricate machine giving off an aura of rippling light. And, standing about that, almost as if they were cold and were warming their chilled bodies, were six male Wyverns. Now spears were leveled—until they sighted the blaster Shann held.
"Kill!" The word was scorching hate in Charis's mind as it flashed from the warriors.
"And be killed!" Shann returned in the same mental speech.
The snouted, spike-combed heads bobbed. Their surprise, their unease close to the border of fear, played about them much as did the light that rippled from the machine they guarded.
Lantee could do just that—wipe out the Wyverns and the machine they were striving to shield with their bodies. In Charis's thought, the natives were ready to die in that fashion. But was that the only answer?
"There might be a better one." Shann's thought came in reply to hers.
"Kill!" Not from the Wyverns now, but clear and as a feral demand. Taggi emerged from under the wreckage of the com.
"Here!" The small black shadow which had just flitted in sprang at Charis. The girl stooped and gathered up Tsstu. From her arms the curl-cat regarded the Wyverns with an unwinking stare.
"We die—you die!"
Clear-cut that warning. But the Wyvern who had made it did not raise his spear. Instead he placed his four-digited hands on the installation.
"He means it." This time Lantee used audible speech. "There must be some sort of panic button in that that will blow up the whole thing if necessary. Move away!" He changed to mental order and gestured with the blaster.
Not one of the natives stirred, and their determination not to yield to that
command beat back at the off-worlders in a counterblast. How long could such a standoff continue? Charis wondered. Sooner or later the Company men would be in on this.
She put down Tsstu and went back to the anteroom, to discover that while she could close the outer door, there was no way to secure that portal. The palm lock which had once fastened it was now only a blackened hole in the fabric.
"Kill the witch one! With you, we shall bargain."
The thought was clear speech in her head as she reentered the wrecked com room.
"You are as we. Kill the witch and be free!" The males appealed to Lantee.
Tsstu hissed, her ears flattened against her round skull as she backed to a stand before Charis. Taggi growled from where he accompanied Shann, his small eyes alight with battle anger.
The spokesman for the natives glanced at both animals. Charis caught the quiver of uncertainty in his mind. Shann the Wyvern could understand; Charis he hated since he classed her with his own females who had always held the Power. But this link with animals was new and so to be feared.
"Kill the witch and those who are hers." He made his decision, lumping the unfamiliar with Charis. "Be free again as now we are."
"Are you?" From somewhere Charis found the words. "Away from this room or from the base where this off-world machine cannot reach—are you then free?"
Stark, hot hate glowing at her from yellow eyes, a snarl lifting scaled skin away from fangs.
"Are you?" Shann took up, and Charis readily gave way to his leadership. To the Wyvern males, she was a symbol of all they hated most. But Lantee was male and so to them not wholly an enemy.
"Not yet." The truth was hard to admit. "But when the witch ones die, then we shall be!"
"But there may not be a need for such killing or dying."
"What are you thinking of?" Charis asked vocally.
Lantee did not look at her. He was studying the Wyvern leader with intensity, as if he would hold the native in check by his will alone.
"A thought," he said aloud, "just a thought which might resolve the whole problem. Otherwise, this is going to end with a real blood bath. Now that they know what this machine can do for them, do you think the males will ever be anything again but potential murderers of their own kind? And we can destroy this machine—and them, but that will be a failure."