by Andre Norton
His eyes were deeply sunken, or perhaps it was the puffiness of his cheeks which made them appear so, and his brows had been treated to stand out in points to match his beard. Those eyes, for all their retreat behind flesh and hair, were very hard and bright, reminding Ziantha unwillingly of the glitter of that thread which nested the seeing gem, a memory she hastily buried.
He grunted, perhaps an acknowledgment to Yasa's half introduction. Then he launched into a sharp questioning of Ziantha concerning her visit to Jucundus's apartment, though he, of course, did not inquire what had been on the tapes, since Ogan had erased that. He took her step by step through the whole foray from the moment the palm lock on the door had yielded, to the end of her journey on her return to the villa. Having Yasa's unspoken warning, the girl omitted all reference to the artifact and the subsequent apporting of it.
When she had finished, and there had not been the slightest change in Yasa's expression to signal either that she was correctly following subtle directions, or making perhaps a totally irredeemable mistake, Mackry grunted again. Yasa uncurled from her usual lounging position.
"You see. Ogan checked with every scanner. It is exactly as we reported, gentle homo. There was no possible hint of detection."
"So it would seem. But the city is hot, blazing hot, I tell you! In some way that heat is tied to Jucundus. But that has-been had not made a single move to suggest that he knows his microrecords were scanned. They have a sensitive out, sniffing hard. You have kept this one"—again he regarded Ziantha, to her rising irritation, with a look that relegated her to the status of tool—"under wraps?"
"You can ask." Yasa yawned daintily. "She is here, and has been here. Our detection devices have not traced any mind-scan as a probe. With Ogan's lab here do you think such would go undetected?"
"Ogan!" He made that name into a snort, as if he classed the parapsychologist with Ziantha. "Well, you cannot keep her here—not now. So far our plans concerning Jucundus are going well; we want no interference. Get her off-world at once!"
Yasa yawned again. "It is near time for my leave. And I have an excellent excuse to go and visit the Romstk trading post. She shall go with my household."
"Agreed. You shall be told when to return." With no further word he stalked from the room, his rudeness deliberate, Ziantha knew. Her guess was confirmed when she looked at Yasa.
The feline contoured face of the Salarika was expressionless as far as the human eye could tell, except that the alien's lips were drawn very tight against her teeth, showing the sharp white points of what in her ancestors had been tearing, death-dealing fangs.
"Mackry," Yasa observed in a thoughtful tone, her voice almost as emotionless as she could make her features, "takes his missions with a seriousness that suggests he sees before him a flight of stairs climbing to heights. Oftentimes when one's attention is fixed too far ahead and at the wrong angle, one can trip over a crevice before one's very feet. But in so much does he serve our purpose—we needed a reason to take off from Korwar without question from those using Mackry—though he does not reckon the truth that he is my servant here, rather than master."
"You have learned something?" Ziantha asked.
Yasa purred. "Naturally, cubling. When Yasa tells eyes to see, ears to listen, noses to sniff, they obey. We know the general direction from which came Jucundus's toy. Now we go in search of those who make it their mission in life to learn what is unknown or long forgotten. We go to Waystar."
Waystar! Ziantha had heard of it all her short life. It was considered a legend by most of the star rovers, but it existed, as all the Guild knew well, though perhaps only a handful of a handful among them even guessed in what part of the galaxy it was located. It served the Guild in some respects, but it was not a possession of the veeps of the underworld as were some other secret bases.
Long before the Guild came into power, before the first of the Terrans felt their way along unmapped stellar roads, Waystar had been. It was a port of outlaws, a rendezvous for space pirates when piracy existed. Now it was a meeting place for Jacks, those outlaws who raided sparsely settled planets and installations, and for the Guildmen, who bought the loot from such raids, or hired Jacks at times to carry out some ship plan of their own.
According to the stories, it had once been a space station located in a system now so old its planets were cinders in orbit around an almost dead red dwarf sun. If it were as old as the worlds it companied, or even as old as the life that had once ruled them, it was beyond any reckoning of age by those who now used it. It had, however, in recorded time, such a dark history as to overshadow all speculation. Going to Waystar was like saying one planned to venture into the bowels of Ruhkarv, with perhaps as good a reason to expect the worst thereafter.
"This Mackry—if we go to Waystar—" Ziantha ventured. Though the Guild did not rule there, their influence would weigh deeply enough so Yasa might be found to be playing traitor. What would happen then? When a veep fell, his or her personal following were also swept away, unless they were extraordinarily fortunate or had secret ties with the one or ones who brought about that downfall.
Yasa smoothed Harath's downy head, uttered a sound amazingly like the snapping of the creature's beak.
"Mackry is one who runs hither and thither with messages, is that not so, my soft one?" she asked Harath aloud.
His mind-send was clear. "He tries to find something with which he can cause trouble for you. So far his search has brought nothing. He believes his detect shields him." There was such a strong note of scorn in that beaming that Ziantha was startled into a question of her own.
"It does not?"
Harath turned his head to look directly at her. Though that seemed an impossible angle for flesh and bone to endure, he held so, his huge eyes unblinking. "Harath can read." Again he beak-clicked scornfully.
Ziantha had not realized that the alien could penetrate the mind-seals worn as a matter of course by Guild men. She was so inured to the marvels of their techs that she accepted as a fact that such a shield could not be pierced by normal means. But then, of course, Harath was not "normal" by her species' standards at all.
Then Yasa did have a guard when Harath was with her. Doubtless he could have relayed to the Salarika every thought passing through Mackry's mind. Or Ziantha's mind—! The stone! No, do not think of that! The trouble was when there was something not to be brought to the readable fore of one's mind, that is the very thought which haunted one. Something else—Waystar—think of Waystar—
Again the Salarika purred. "Harath reads well." There was warm approval not comment. "And there are those at Waystar before whom, for all his ambition, Mackry would dwindle until he was smaller than our Harath is in body, as he is already smaller in talent and courage."
"One has to reach Waystar to evoke the backing of such," Ziantha found the courage to point out.
"One need not put obvious truths into words, cubling. However we have not been idle. Plans were made before Mackry arrived to provide us with cover. But this will not be a luxurious voyage. We must travel in voyage-sleep and a sealed cabin."
Ziantha wished she dared refuse, though there could not ever be a chance for her to set her will against that of the Salarika. Voyage-sleep and a sealed cabin was primitive travel indeed in these days, generations after the first ships traveled with their crews and passengers in frozen sleep, not knowing if they would ever awaken again. She thought now that perhaps it was not the ruggedness of the accommodations which might force this now ancient process on them, but perhaps the secrecy of Yasa's plan.
But she was not given much time to worry about possibilities, because by dusk one of Yasa's private flitters had brought them to the airport where they were escorted on board an inner world liner. Only they did not remain there. For they had no more than stepped within the cabin assigned to them before Yasa whipped two hooded cloaks from her top luggage case. So with distort outer garments they made a circuitous way along empty corridors to a lower hatch an
d, covered by the dusk and the distorts, swung down to ground level again on a luggage lift.
In spite of her cloak, Ziantha felt vulnerable as she scurried after Yasa across the edge of the landing field and into the shadows. Thus they came to that end of the port where few passenger ships ever sat down, which was reserved for Free Traders and lesser transports. Yasa, without hesitation, seeming to know very well what she sought, caught at Ziantha's hand and urged her to a faster pace to reach the space-scoured side of a transport on which the name and emblem was so badly worn that in this limited light the girl could make out neither symbol.
The landing ramp was out, but there was no crewman on guard at either end. Again Yasa did not hesitate, but, drawing the girl with her, hurried up into the ship. They met no one. It might have been totally deserted; Ziantha decided there must have been orders given that they not be observed entering.
Yasa climbed three levels, bringing them not far above the cargo holds. Here was an open door which they entered, Yasa closing it quickly behind them.
"Pleasant voyaging, gentle fems." Ogan leaned against the wall. He looked oddly out of place in a drab uniform of a workman, as he stood guard over two long, narrow chests. Ziantha could not subdue the shiver which ran through her as she threw off the cloak and looked at those, knowing well what ordeal lay before her now. In spite of all that man had learned to make space flight safe, there were always failures, and she had never been off-world that she could remember. Though, of course, like all those in the Dipple, she had originally come to Korwar from some war-swept planet.
"It has gone well so far." Yasa folded their cloaks small, made pillows of them she stowed in the boxes. "Ziantha, you have the artifact—give it here."
Because she had no reason to defy that, the girl handed over the container for the lump, which she had held tightly to her during their flight across the port. Yasa stood for a moment with it in her hands. If she had intended to open it, to assure herself their prize was within, she did not do so. Instead she set it with extra care beside one of those cloak-pillows.
Ogan smiled. "How perceptive of you, Lady. Naturally if there is any relation between voyage-sleep and trance it should help. Now, Ziantha, in with you, and if our small mystery can answer any questions while you sleep, you can report it later."
Ziantha shrank back against the bulkhead. To sleep with that promise of dark and death so close? She could not! Ogan did not know what he suggested. But he probably did, and did not care. Her talent was of value to the Guild, yes, but she was certain that this was not a Guild operation—that Yasa and Ogan were planning a foray of their own. And in such she would only be useful if she could produce results. She had stepped completely out of any safety she might have known, and there was no turning back, no way to run.
"Come, come!" Ogan put out his hand. "Let us have no child's nonsense. You have been hypnoed before—it is nothing. And think what a tale you may have to tell us later!"
In those close quarters she could not even dodge. He caught her wrists in a grip which brought a gasp from her, pulled her arm out and pressed the injector to her flesh below the elbow. Still holding her, he pulled her to the box. She climbed in numbly, lay down with her head pillowed on the folded cloak. The sides and bottom were well padded, could even be called comfortable, if one did not know the future. Beside her head was the box; she would not allow her eyes to stray in that direction.
"Good. Now you see it is all very simple, not at all painful or frightening. Look here, Ziantha—just as you have done before—before—before—" He repeated the word over and over in a dull even-toned voice as she stared, because she had to, at a swinging disk in his fingers. She had no will left, no defense—
"Before—" The word was gone; she slept.
5
Ziantha had to use all her control to keep from cowering flat on the landing stage with her suited body. Overhead (if there could be "over" or "under" in space) was a threatening mass. They had slept, for how long she never knew, and then awakened, to transfer to another ship which had brought them to the outer ring and through the concealing barrier which protected Waystar.
Such a barrier as perhaps a writer of fantasy tri-dees might have conceived—that was Waystar's first defense. For it was a mass of derelicts and parts of derelicts, as if a giant fleet of some great stellar confederacy had been wrecked by deliberate intent, brought here by traction beams, and welded and tied to form a jagged cover about the station.
Beyond that mass of tortured metal was a stretch of free space, which was reached by traversing a "tunnel" through the wreckage. Centering that was a station which had plainly been the result of intelligent planning and construction. At either end was a landing stage and the rest was encased in a crystalline surface pitted and mended many times. But to land on one of those stages and see the massive roofing of twisted metal overhead was to produce in one, Ziantha thought, the sensation of being under a hammer about to descend. That it had not closed upon the fragile-seeming station in all the generations it had been in position did not somehow reassure her in the least.
Even once Yasa had drawn her into the entrance lock, the memory of that weight around the station was daunting. To the girl's surprise there was a weak gravity within, though how that was maintained she never discovered.
The center was hollow, completely surrounded by corridors and balconies. A greenish light, giving the most unhealthy and unpleasant cast to the faces of the inhabitants, diffused from the walls. And those inhabitants were a mixed lot—X-Tee aliens equaling humanoids in number. In the few moments it took them to leave the lock and traverse a portion of one way, Ziantha saw even more outré forms than she had ever viewed on Korwar, which was famous for being the crossroads of many stellar lines.
The gravity was so weak that it was necessary to hold to bars set into the walls, and there were curved rods with handholds to rise and descend to the various levels. However, Yasa apparently knew the way, traveling at a brisk speed toward one of the upper levels.
Here were very faint tracings of patterns which might once have been painted on the walls, perhaps by those who fashioned this station long before the coming of Ziantha's kind into space. But these were so dimmed that one could make little sense of them; a geometric angle, a curve here and there, was all that could be traced.
They came to a door guarded by a human in space leather, one of the forbidden lasers on his hip, its butt near his hand. But at the sight of Yasa he stepped aside and let them enter. The room beyond was such a crowded space that there was too much to sort out in the first glance, or even the fifth.
The furnishings had apparently been gathered with no thought of harmony; there were pieces which could have been ripped from half a hundred plundered ships. Some were intended for the use of humans, others for alien accommodation. What they had in common was a display of ornate riches (or what had once been that, for they were now battered and dingy).
Stretched at length in the midst of this storehouse of stolen goods was the veep Yasa had chosen to consult about the artifact. He snapped his fingers as they entered and a green-skinned Wyvern male scuttled forward to push and pull out two hassocks for their seating. But the veep did not rise in greeting, only lifted his hand in Yasa's direction in a slight salute.
The Salarika, who on Korwar was accorded the full deference for not only her sex but her standing in the Guild, apparently here was not worthy of formality. But if she were piqued by this reception, she showed no sign of it.
This veep, like his quarters, was a mixture of both magnificence and slovenly disorder. Unlike many beings they had passed outside, he showed almost pure Terran descent in his person, though his clothing was barbaric. Like the heads of mercenaries of some centuries earlier, his skull was shaved save for an upstanding roach of black hair, the stiffness of which was reinforced by a band of green-gold metal. And from this circlet a fine koro stone depended, to rest against his forehead.
His skin was the brown of a spac
eman, and there were purposely shaped scars running from the corner of each eye to his chin on either side of his mouth, giving his features a cruel frame, as if living flesh had been carved to produce a mask meant to terrify.
Breech-leggings of a very soft and pliable fur—white with a ripple pattern—covered him to the waist. Above that was the full-dress tunic of a Patrol Admiral, black-silver, with all the be-gemmed stars and decorations such an officer was entitled to wear. The sleeves had been cut away. On his bare arms, just below his elbows, were cuff bracelets of iridium, one thickly set with Terran rubies, the other with rows of vivid blue-and-green stones.
There was a tray resting across his thighs, but it held no dishes. Instead there was something there so exquisitely beautiful that it was totally out of place in this barbaric setting. It was a miniature garden, with tiny trees, bushes, and a lake in which a minute boat sailed for an island that was a single mountain of rock. Ziantha's attention followed it as the Wyvern carried it to a table.
The veep spoke Basic in an educated voice that did not match his pirate chieftain's dress.
"My garden, gentle fem. This is the best one can do on Waystar, where nothing will grow. But this is of spice wood, with scented water for its lake. One can hold it, close the eyes, and wander in one's imagination—a substitute for the real, but it must serve."
Yasa was holding one of her scent bags to her nose, no longer able to do without the reviving stimulation her species needed. The veep smiled, the scars rendering that stretch of lips no more attractive than the grimace of a night demon would have been.