by Andre Norton
"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 co
ncentrate 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?"
17
For a moment Ziantha did not understand. When she did she smiled derisively. What a fool he must believe her to think she would accept that. When he sat before her wearing a Patrol uniform. When—
"Clothes," he continued, "do not necessarily denote status. Yes, I have been working with the Patrol. But on my own account, and I do this only for a space because my case seemed to match one of theirs. You see, I have been hunting the Eyes—without knowing just what I sought—for a long time."
The Eyes! Where were they now—in his keeping? Ziantha wriggled her shoulders in an abortive struggle against the cords and desisted at once when they tightened warningly about her with a pressure sharp enough to teach a lesson.
"They are still yours." He might have been reading her thoughts, though she was unaware of any probe.
"If you are not Patrol—then who are you—wearing that insignia?" She made that a challenge, refusing to believe that he was more than trying to lull her for his own purposes.
"I am a sensitive associated with the Hist-Techneer Zorbjac, leader of a Zacathan expedition to X One. And for your information X One is the sister planet of this in the Yaka system." He inhaled from the scented stick again. Harath clawed his way up over the rocks behind, as if he had been on a scouting expedition, and settled down by the stranger's knee.
"Ogan there." The alien's thoughts were open. "One other—hurt. The rest are dead."
He snapped out his tentacles and took to smoothing his body down with the same unconcern the stranger displayed.
"A year ago," the other continued, "finds made on X One were plundered by a Jack force. I was asked to trace down the stolen objects, since my field is archaeological psychometry. I followed the trail to Korwar. We recovered seven pieces there; that is when I joined forces with the Patrol. The eighth was the Eye you apported from Jucundus's place. The backlash of that apport was what set me on your track—that and Harath." He dropped one hand to the alien's head in a caress to which Harath responded with a broadcast of content.
"Then—was it you at Waystar, too?"
"Yes. When the apport was made I was certain that a sensitive would know what it was, try to trace it. We have our people on Waystar; they alert us as to unusual finds that come in as loot. During the past seasons we have built up a loose accord with a couple of the Jack captains, offering them more than they can get from fences to sell us pieces or information."
"How did you get Harath to join you?"
He laughed. "Ask him that. He came to me on Korwar of his own. I gathered that he had not been too happy at the use Ogan made of him. And I knew that he could serve as a link with you when I might need one. I was right, as you were willing to link with him at once—though I did not bargain for that linkage to be so tight as to pull me into Turan." He grimaced. "That was a challenge I would not want to face again."
"You knew about the Eyes all the time!" She had an odd feeling of being cheated, as if she had performed a difficult task to no purpose at all.
"Not so! I knew that that ugly little lump Jucundus bought was something more powerful than it looked to be. One could sense that easily. But the Eyes—no, I had no idea of their existence. What they are seems to be infinitely greater than any discovery the Zacathans have made in centuries."
"But," Ziantha came directly back to the part of his story that shadowed her future, "you joined with the Patrol to run us down. You wear their uniform."
He sighed. "It was necessary for me to take rank for a while. I am not Patrol."
"Then who are you?"
Again he laughed. "I see that I have been backward in the ordinary courtesies of life, gentle fem. My name is Ris Lantee, and I am Wyvern trained if that means anything—"
"It means," she flashed, "that you are a liar! Everyone knows that the Wyverns do not deal with males!"
"That is so," he agreed readily. "Most males. But I was born on their world; my parents are mind-linked liaison officers, both of whom the Wyvern council have accepted. When I was born with the power, they bowed to the fact I possessed it, and they gave me training. Can one sensitive lie to another?"
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Though he invited her probe with that, Ziantha was reluctant to let her own barrier down. To hold it against him was her defense. He waited, and when she did not try to test his response, he frowned slightly.
"We waste time with your suspicions," he commented. "Though I suppose they are to be expected. But would I open my mind if I were trying to conceal anything from you? You know that is impossible."
"So far I have thought it impossible. But you say you are Wyvern trained, and the Wyverns deal with hallucinations—"
"You are well schooled."
"Ogan gathered information on every variation of the power known—and some only the Guild know," she answered. "I was given every warning."
"That, too, is to be expected."
"If you are not Patrol"—she pushed aside everything now but what was most important to her—"what do you intend to do with me? Turn me over for erasure when their ship planets in? You know the law."
"It all depends—"
"Upon what—or whom?" Ziantha continued to press.
"Mainly upon you. Give me your word you will not try to escape. Let us go back to my scout."
Ziantha tried to weigh her chances without emotion. Ogan was free; she had no reason to doubt Harath's report. He had said he had hidden a detect-safe L-B connected by a timer to a ship. Therefore he had a way of escape. The Jack ship had lifted, she could not depend on any assistance from Yasa. In fact she was sure she had already been discarded as far as the Salarika veep was concerned. Yasa was never one to hesitate cutting losses.
And somehow, between Ogan and this Ris Lantee, she inclined to trust the latter, even though he admitted connection with the Patrol. At least with freedom she might have a better chance for the future.
"As you have said," she spoke sullenly, trying to let him believe she surrendered because there was no other choice, "where could I escape to? For now, I promise."
"Fair enough." He touched the tangler cords in two places with the point of his belt knife, and they withered away.