by Andre Norton
There was a twitch at her tunic as if one of those gathered about her was fingering the material.
“This is the stuff those snake-hags use. She’s been with them.”
“Prisoner, eh, captain?”
“Maybe—or something else. You, Nonnan, get the medic over here. He’ll bring her around and then we’ll have some answers. The rest of you, clear out. She might talk better if she doesn’t come to with all of you looking her over.”
Charis stirred. She did not care for the idea of a Company-squad medic. Such an expert might use the tongue-loosening drugs she had no guard against. It would be well to regain consciousness before his arrival. She opened her eyes.
She did not have to counterfeit her shriek. That came naturally as she faced—not the Company officer she had expected—but a creature seemingly out of a nightmare. Leaning toward her was one of the male Wyverns, his snout mouth slightly open to display the fang-teeth with which he was only too generously armed, his slit-pupiled eyes measuring her with no friendly intent.
Charis screamed a second time and jerked her legs up under as she sat bolt upright, squirming as far from the Wyvern as she could manage to move on the cot where they had laid her. The creature’s taloned paw swept out and down, wicked claws scraping the foam mattress only inches away from her body.
A very human fist connected at the side of that reptilian head, sending the Wyvern off balance, crashing back against the wall, and a human in uniform took his place. Charis screamed again and cowered away from the Wyvern who had righted himself and was now showing a lipless snarl of rage.
“Keep it off! Snake!” she cried, remembering Sheeha’s name for the Wyverns. “Don’t let it get me!”
The officer caught the native by his scaled shoulder and headed him out the door with a rough shove. Charis found herself crying, a reaction she did not attempt to control as she shrank against the wall of the room, drawing herself into as small a space as possible.
“Don’t let it get me!” she begged as she tried to appraise the man who now faced her.
He was very much of a type, a Company officer in the mercenary forces. Charis had seen his like before in space-port cities, and she thought she dared not depend upon his being less shrewd than any space officer. His very employment on a grab action would make him suspicious of her. But he was fairly young and his attack on the Wyvern made her think that he might be a little prejudiced in her favor.
“Who are you?” The demand was rapped out in a tone meant to force a quick and truthful answer. And up to a point she could supply the truth.
“Charis—Charis Nordholm. You—you are the Resident?” He would believe that she was ignorant of his uniform, that she thought him a government man.
“You might say so. I’m in charge at this base. So your name is Charis Nordholm? And how did you come here to Warlock, Charis Nordholm?”
Not too much coherence in her answer, Charis decided. She tried hard to remember Sheeha. “That was a snake,” she accused. “You have them here.” She eyed him with what she hoped would register the proper amount of suspicion and fear.
“I tell you the native won’t harm you—not if you’re what you seem,” he added the last with some emphasis.
“What I seem—“ she said. “What I seem—I am Charis Nordholm.” She held her voice to a colorless recitation of facts as if she repeated some hard-learned lesson. “They—they brought me here to—to meet the snakes! I didn’t want to come—they made me!” Her voice lengthened into a wail.
“Who brought you?”
“Captain Jagan, the trader. I was at the trading post—“
“So—you were at the trading post. Then what happened?”
Again she could give him part truth. Charis shook her head. “I don’t know! The snakes—they gave me to the snakes—snakes all around—they got inside my head—in my head.” She set her hands above her ears, rocked back and forth. “In my head—they made me go with them—“
The captain was on to that in a flash. “Where?” His demand was purposely sharp to penetrate the haze that he supposed held her.
“To—to their place—in the sea—their place—“
“If you were with them, how did you get away?” Another man had come into the room and started toward her. The captain caught him back as he waited alertly for her answer. “How did you get away from them?” he repeated again with an emphasis designed to rivet her attention.
“I don’t know—I was there—then I was all alone—all alone in a woods. I ran—it was dark—very dark—“
The captain spoke to the newcomer, “Can you get her to make better sense?”
“How do I know?” the other retorted. “She needs food—water.”
The medic poured from a container and held out the cup. She had to steady it in both shaking hands to get it to her mouth. She let coolness roll over her dry tongue. Then she detected a taste. Some drug? She might already have lost the game because she had no defense against drugs and she had finished the draft. As a cover she kept the cup to her lips as long as possible.
“More—“ she pushed the cup at the medic.
“Not now, later.”
“So—“ the captain was eager to get her back to her story “—you just found yourself in a woods and then? How did you get here?”
“I walked,” Charis replied simply, keeping her eyes on the cup the medic was now holding as if that mattered far more than the officer’s questions. She had never tried to play such a role before and now she hoped that the picture she presented was a reasonably convincing one. “Please—more—“ she appealed to the medic.
He filled the cup about a third and gave it to her. She gulped it down. Drug or not, this was her proper action. Her thirst allayed, her hunger was worse.
“I’m hungry,” she told them. “Please, I’m hungry—“
“I’ll get her something,” the medic volunteered and left.
“You walked,” the captain persisted. “How did you know which way to walk—to come here?”
“Which way?” Charis returned to her trick of repetition. “I did not know the way—but it was easier—not so many bushes—so I went that way where it was open. Then I saw the building and I ran—“
The medic returned, to put into her hand a soft plasta-skin tube. Charis, sucking at its cone end, tasted the rich, satisfying paste it contained. She recognized it as the revive ration of a well-equipped base.
“What do you think?” the captain asked the medic. “Could she just head in the right direction that way? Sounds thin to me.”
The medic was thoughtful. “We don’t know how this Power works. They could have directed her, without her being aware of it.”
“Then she’s meant to be their key in!” The look the captain directed at Charis was now coldly hostile.
“No, any directive such as that would fail once she got within the Alpha-rim. If they gave her some such hypo-order, it won’t work now. You’ve seen how the warriors are freed from control here. If the hags did have some purpose and pointed her at us, it’s finished.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“You’ve seen it happen with the males. The control does not operate within the rim.”
“So—what do we do with her?”
“Maybe we can learn something. She has been with them—that is obvious.”
“Might be more your department than mine,” the captain observed. “You can take her on with the other one. He still out?”
“I told you, Lazgah, he’s not unconscious in the ordinary sense.” The medic was clearly irritated. “I don’t know what he is except still alive. So far he hasn’t responded to any restorative. Such a complete withdrawal—I’ve never seen its like before.”
“Well, at least she isn’t like him. And maybe you can learn from her. Try to, and the sooner the better.”
“Come.” The medic spoke softly. He held out his hand to Charis.
She eyed him over the tube from which she was no
w sucking the last remnants of paste.
“Where?”
“To a good place, a place where you may rest, where there is more food—water—“
“Out there?” She used the tube to point to the door behind him.
“Yes.”
“No. There are snakes there!”
“One of the warriors was here when she came to,” the captain explained. “Sent her farther off the beam.”
“No, no one will hurt you,” the medic assured her. “I won’t let them.”
Charis allowed herself to be persuaded. That scrap of conversation about the “he” who was being treated—It must be Lantee!
XVII
Four rooms made up a small but very well-equipped medical unit for the base. The worst feature, as far as Charis was concerned, was the single door to the outside, a door by which a blaster-armed guard already sat. To be free one must pass him.
Now the medic shepherded her on, his hand under her arm half-steering, half-supporting her, and she made her survey of the quarters in a series of seemingly aimless stares. They came into the third room and that touch on her arm brought her to a halt. She swayed, put out a hand against the wall to steady herself, hoping that her start could be attributed to her dazed condition.
Lantee lay on his back on a narrow cot. His eyes were wide open, but his face had that same blankness it had worn when she had found him among the rocks. He had returned to the husk of a living being, his true identity missing.
“Do you know this man?”
“Know this man?” Charis repeated. “Who is he? Know him—why should I—“ Her confusion was the best act she could achieve. She knew the medic was studying her closely.
“Come on.” He took her arm again, led her into the next chamber. Two more cots. He pushed her down on the nearest one.
“Stay here.”
He went out, sealing the door behind him. Charis ran her hands through the wild tangle of her hair. They could be watching her even now via some visa system, so take no chances. Anyway, she was in the base, and so far their suspicions of her were only normal. But just in case there was a spy system, she lay back on the cot and closed her eyes.
Outwardly she was composed for slumber; inwardly her thoughts were busy. Lantee—what had happened to Shann? The first time he had been shocked into such a state by a blast of the Wyvern Power. But that was not in effect here, and those few words Charis had heard exchanged between the captain and the medic suggested that their prisoner’s present withdrawal had not come as a result of anything they had done. They were baffled by it.
“Withdrawal” the medic had phrased it—a way of escape. Charis almost sat up, startled by what she thought was the answer. Lantee had chosen this as a way of escape! He had purposely retreated thus before they could use a scanner or a truth drug, fleeing back into the same blackness, really retreating into what might prove death. And the motive for such a choice must have been a very strong one.
The Power would not work inside this Alpha-rim, whatever that was. Charis’s hand moved against her tunic, feeling the slight bulk of the plasta-board which was her key to the place where Lantee had fled, a key which she could not turn. She had found Lantee, or rather the shell which had encased him. She had yet to find the nullifier or work out a plan against it. Her self-confidence was failing fast.
This was always the worst, this striving to cultivate patience with every nerve in her hammering for action. She must first establish her character as a bewildered fugitive. So she forced herself to lie quietly although she longed to be across that small room, trying the door to see if it was lock-sealed.
It had been early morning when she had come here; now the invaders, both off-worlders and Wyvern males, would be astir. Not a good time to go exploring. Exploring! Charis summoned concentration, sent out a creeping thought—not backed by the Power, but on her own—striving to reach Tsstu. If this avenue of communication was also blocked by their Alpha-rim—
A mind touch lapped against her probe as delicately as if the curl-cat was here in the room to give her a tongue-caress. Charis knew a throb of excitement, that road was not closed! She had contact, faulty and wavering as it was, with the animals outside the base.
The Tsstu link was no longer a touch but a firm uniting, and then came the feral urge she associated with Taggi—and another! Lantee? No. This was not the passageway link, but a heightening of the Taggi strain—his mate, the female wolverine! A piece of luck Charis had not counted on.
Tsstu was trying to send a message, drawing upon the united power of the wolverines to give it added impetus. A warning? No, not quite that; rather a suggestion that any action be delayed. Charis caught a very fuzzy picture of a Wyvern witch mixed in that. The female Wyverns must be taking a hand as they had promised. Then just as Charis tried to learn more, the curl-cat broke contact.
The girl began to think about Lantee. It had taken the Power to reach him before—the Power plus her own will and that of the two animals. But there in the copter she alone had found him, and without consciously drawing on the Power. Now, if he remained too long in that black world, would he ever come forth again? A small fire could die to ashes, never to be rekindled.
Charis willed herself to think of a black which was the entire absence of any light, the swallowing dark from which her species had fled since first they had learned the secret of fire as a weapon against that which prowled in the shadows. Cold crept up her body, the dark gathered in—A spark far in the heart of that dark . . .
A wrenching at her, dragging her back. Charis moaned at the pain of that wrenching. She opened her eyes to look up into the slitted ones set in a reptilian face where a cruel satisfaction gleamed.
“Snake!” She screamed.
The Wyvern male grinned, obviously highly amused by her shock and terror. He caught at her tunic, his claws in the fabric drawing her to the edge of the cot. But as he raised a paw for another grip, his scaled palm spread wide and then contracted quickly as if it had touched fire. A thin cry had burst from the alien; he jumped away from her.
“What’s going on here?” a human voice demanded. Hands appeared on the Wyvern’s shoulder as a figure loomed behind the native, dragging him back.
Charis watched the medic pull the Wyvern out of her room. Then she stumbled after—to see the guard come into Lantee’s room and aid the medic in forcing the struggling native on, the warrior all the while uttering sharp, shrill cries. She paused at the foot of Lantee’s cot as they disappeared toward the outer door.
Shann! She did not cry that name aloud, and even as she made a plea of it in her mind, she knew that there would be no answer. But still she longed now for his support.
His eyes were wide open, but behind them was nothingness. She did not have to touch his limp hand to know that it could not grip hers.
The cries of the Wyvern did not grow fainter. Instead they were augmented outside by a growing chorus. There must be more of the natives gathering. Were the Company men in dispute with their allies?
Charis hesitated. She longed to go to the outer door to see what was going on, but that action would not fit her present role. She should be cowering, frightened to death, in some corner. She listened—the clamor was dying -- Better get back to her own room. She scuttled back.
“You—“ Captain Lazgah stood in the doorway, his shoulders blocking the medic, and the tone of his voice was a warning.
Charis sat up on her cot, her hands were in her hair as if she had been pulling at it. “The snake—“ she took the initiative swiftly “—the snake tried to get me!”
“For good reason.” Lazgah’s quick stride brought him to the cot side. His fingers were steel-tight and punishing about her right wrist as he pulled her about to face him squarely. “You’ve been using those hags’ tricks. Snake—you’re a snake yourself! Those bulls out there have good reason to hate such tricks—they’d like to get their claws into you. Gathgar says you’ve been working with the Power.”
“
That’s impossible!” the medic cut in. “You’ve had the complete reading from sensatator since she’s been here. There’s no indication that anything registered. Gathgar knows that she’s been with the females and he built up all this on that fact alone.”
“What do we know about this Power anyway?” Lazgah asked. “Sure, there’s only been negative register since she’s been here. But she might have some way of blanketing reception on that. A scanner could give us the truth.”
“You put a scanner on her now and you’ll get nothing but a complete burn-out. She’ll be another like that fellow in there. What good will that do?”
“Turn the bulls loose on her and we could learn something.”
“What can you learn from the dead? They’re worked up now to a killing rage. Don’t hurry and maybe—“
“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.