by Andre Norton
“This is Arzor, a frontier settlement world. We had an Xik holdout pocket, yes, but cleaned it up months ago. And it was only one shipload of Xiks. Most of them blew themselves up when they tried to take off. I’m not here as a soldier—this is my home now.”
There were bitter lines about Najar’s mouth. “Just some more of Dean’s lies. You’re Terran, aren’t you?”
Hosteen nodded and then added, “Arzoran now. I’ve taken up land in the plains—”
“And this is a Confederacy settlement planet not an Xik world?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Over two hundred Terran years anyway—second and third generations from First Ship families are holding lands now. You came in on the LB?”
“Yes.” Najar’s bitterness had reached his voice now. “Lafdale was a pilot, and he was a good one—got us down without smashing up. Then we walked out straight into a native attack. They didn’t kill us—might have been better if they had—just herded us up the mountainside and put us in a cave. We lost Lafdale in an underground place full of water. He was pulled off a wharf there by something big—something we never really saw. Then”—Najar shook his head slowly from side to side—“it was a kind of nightmare. Roostav—he went missing; we never found him—that was in a cave full of broken walls. Dean kept urging us on. He was excited, said we were on to something big. And Zolti—he’d been a Histtech before the war—he said that this was a settled planet and we could find help if we could get back to the LB com. We never knew if the signals we sent at landing had ever been picked up. But Dean talked him down, said he knew where we were—right in the territory where the Xik had holdouts all over—that the hostile attitude of the natives proved we were in an Xik influence zone.”
He paused and rubbed his hand across his face. “The other two of us, Widders and I, we didn’t know what to think. Dean and Zolti, they were the big brains. Both of them said we were in a place where there was something big from the old times. And Dean—we were all out of Rehab, you know.” He glanced almost furtively at Hosteen.
“For all Terrans there was Rehab—afterwards,” the Amerindian replied soberly.
“Well, Dean, he—somehow he didn’t want to go back, back to the way he had had it before the war, I mean. He’d been pretty important in the Service, and he liked that. Maybe he was able to cover up in Rehab, but after we landed here he was a different person, excited, alive. Then he just took over, ran us—He kept insisting it was our duty to learn all we could about this place, use it against the Xiks. And he swore Zolti was mistaken, that we had been off course of any settler planet when we dropped here.
“Then we found the place of the path.” Again Najar stopped and Hosteen thought he was trying to pick words to explain something he did not understand himself.
“You found this?” The Terran sketched with a finger tip in the dust the spiral and dot.
“Yes. You must have seen it too!”
“And followed it.”
“Dean said it was a way out. I don’t know how he knew that. He picked information out of the air—or so it seemed. One minute he’d be as puzzled as we were; then all at once he’d explain—and he’d be right! Funny though, he didn’t want to try that path first. Zolti did—walked around and around—then he just wasn’t there!
“Widders, he was out of his head a little by then. Kept saying over and over that things hid behind rocks to watch us. He threw stones into every shadow. When Zolti went like that, Widders started screaming. He ran around and around the coil, hit the center—and then was gone—
“Dean took the same orbit. And I—well, I wasn’t going to stay there alone. So I did it—ended up in a three-cornered box.”
“You saw the hall of the machines?” Hosteen asked.
“Yes. Dean was there. And he was crazy-wild, running up and down, patting them and talking to himself about how all this was the place he had been meant to find—that the voices in his head had told him and that now he held the whole world right in his hand. Listening to him was like being back in Rehab in the early days. I hid out and watched him. Then he ended up in a corner where there was a big hoop—got inside that and lay down on the floor, curled up as if he were asleep. There was a light and noise—I couldn’t watch—something queer happened to your eyes when you tried to. So I went to hunt Widders and Zolti. Only, if they came that way, they were gone again. I didn’t see them—not then.”
“But you did later?”
“Maybe—one. Only nobody could be sure—just bones that looked fresh.” Najar’s eyes closed, and Hosteen felt the shudder that shook his wasted body. “I didn’t stay there to hunt. Somehow I found this valley outside—”
He looked around, gratitude mirrored in his eyes.
“It was wonderful, after all those other places, to be out in the open with things—real things—growing, almost like home. And there was a way higher up to get out—down to where the natives were. I watched them. Then all at once more and more of them kept coming, and I guessed Dean was up to something. Thunder and lightning—not the normal kind—I tried to find out what was going on, mapped some of the ways in and out—”
“You didn’t think of trying to contact Dean again?”
Najar’s gaze dropped to his hands. “No—I didn’t. You may think that’s queer, Storm. But Dean, he’d been changing all the time since we landed here. And when I saw him so wild in that hall—well, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him again. He was raving about being picked to rule a world—it was enough to make you think you were crazy, too. I didn’t want any part of him.”
Hosteen agreed. The man he had fronted at the tunnel mouth had been removed from human kind, unreachable, unless a trained psycho-tech could find a channel to connect Dean again with the world.
“I’m pretty good at trailing”—Najar’s ordinary flat tone now held a spark of pride—“being a Recon scout, and I got around so that the natives didn’t suspect me. Of course, not many of them ever came far up the mountain, and when they did, they kept to paths. Then I saw a ’copter come over, and it was one of ours! That made Dean’s story about an Xik world nonsense, and I thought maybe our boys had moved in and cleaned up.
“So I went down to signal it. There was a flash just after the ’copter set down, and that fire cut around the whole landing area. I couldn’t get to it until afterwards—there was a dead man there, and all the rest burned up. And I’d been counting a lot on getting out—” Again he stared at his hands. “I was sick, straight through to my insides, sick enough to get at Dean. So I took to the mountain passages, hoping to meet him. Got to the machine hall twice, only he was never there. You don’t have any idea, Storm, about how big this digging really is—passages running through the mountains and under them, all sorts of caverns and rooms. I’ve seen things—strictly unhealthy.” Again shudders ran through him. “Sometimes I wondered if I weren’t as crazy as Dean—else I wouldn’t be seeing some of those things.
“But I never caught up with Dean—not until the night there was another fire along the mountain. And I saw this native here beating it ahead of the fire with a big cat and a bird swooping along over them. Dean was watching them come upslope, and he was aiming a tube at them. I cut in and signaled the native into a gap, and the cat and bird came along. The gap led in here, then—”
“Then?” Hosteen asked.
“Then,” Najar reiterated grimly, his features set, “one of those tame lightning bolts smashed down just as we were almost through it—sealed us in with a landslide and knocked us around some so we weren’t much use for days afterwards. Lucky there’s water in here and some fruit—The bird tried to get out, but the way it acted made you think there was some kind of lid up there over this whole place. Then one day the cat was gone, and we guessed she’d found a way out. We’ve been hunting for that ever since. Now you know it all—”
“Yes,” Hosteen replied somewhat absently. One piece of Najar’s story was enlightening�
�all of the survivors’ party had left the spiral path in the valley at the same time, but apparently not all had landed at the same terminal in the big hall when that beyond-time-and-space journey was completed. Logan—had Logan come out at some other point in the mountain maze? Hosteen turned upon Najar now with a sharpness born of renewed hope.
“There’s a way out—do you think you could find your way back to the hall once you were in the tunnels again?”
“I don’t know—I honestly don’t know.”
Hosteen signed to Gorgol across the castaway’s hunched shoulders.
“There is no way across the heights?”
“We can look but we cannot go. Come and see for yourself,” the Norbie responded.
They went on a rough scramble up the slope in which was the rock crevice of Surra’s door. Then they walked a ledge, which ended in a vast pile of debris.
“The mountain fell—” Gorgol indicated the slip. “And from here one can look—”
Another tricky bit of climbing and they could indeed look—a prospect that was enough to leave one giddy. Down—down—a drop no length of rope on Arzor, Hosteen thought, could dangle to touch bottom. And beyond that crack in the earth, well within sight but as far removed from them as if it existed on another world, uplands sere and baked under that sun, which on their side was so abnormally gentle. A window on the outer world but no door.
Swiftly Hosteen signed the facts he had learned in his explorations and what Najar had told him. Gorgol watched the Terran’s fingers with a growing expression of resolution.
“If Ukurti says that this is an ill thing,” Gorgol’s own hands replied, “then will Krotag and those who ride with Krotag listen, for Ukurti is one having wisdom, and always we have hearkened to his drum. To say that one with a twisted mind is using things left by Those-Who-Have-Gone to make him great—that, too, one can believe. And this is true—if he is known to be one who steals from the past to give himself power, then will the tribes turn from him and listen no more to his drumming.”
“But how may it be proved that he is such a one? And do we have the time?” Hosteen countered. “Already he drums raids for the plains. And once there is even one such foray, there will be war—war without truce between your people and mine. Always there have been those among my kind who have mistrusted yours.”
“That is true.” Gorgol’s fingers made an emphatic sign of agreement. “And once the war arrow is sped, who can recall it to the quiver? But there is also this—outside this place lies the hand of the Dry. Water secrets we have, but not enough to sustain any large parties through the Peaks. And those who so venture cannot so do in straight lines but must go from one hidden spring to another, using much time. Were men to march today, it would be”—he spread out his fingers, curled them back into his palms, and opened them out again three times—“these many suns before they would reach the plains.”
“Would Krotag listen to you?” Hosteen demanded.
“I am a warrior with scars. In the voice of the clan, I have my speech right. He would listen.”
“Then if we can get out of here, get you on the other side of the mountain where you can meet with Krotag and Ukurti—?”
Gorgol stared past Hosteen into the brilliance of the parched land beyond. “Krotag would listen—and beyond Krotag stands Kustig of the Yoris totem, and beyond Kustig, Dankgu of the Xoto standard.”
“And if all those listened, the Shosonna would break their peace poles and have no part of this?”
“It might be so. And if the Shosonna marched, then would follow the Warpt of the north and perhaps the Gouskla of the coasts—”
“Splitting Dean’s army right down the middle!” Hosteen took fire, but Gorgol’s expression was still a sober frown.
“With truce poles broken, there might be another kind of war, for these wild men of the Blue are tied to the medicine here and will fight to uphold it.”
“Unless Dean can be proved a false Drummer—”
“Yes. And here are two trails.” Gorgol turned away from the “window.” “I must find the place of the Zamle totem and you this one who is of your people but a doer of evil.”
“And to do those things, we must have a way back through the mountain,” Hosteen added.
They held a council of war in the green heart of the valley, Najar, Hosteen, and Gorgol sitting together, Baku and Surra nearby. Storm translated between Gorgol and the off-world veteran as they pooled what knowledge they had of the inner ways. And Najar thought he might be able to guide them to the village side of the heights if he could reach a mid-point within that he had located during his own wanderings. They ate of the fruit from bush and tree, and Hosteen slept, his head pillowed against Surra’s furry side, the soft purring of the cat lulling him into a deeper and more restful slumber than any he had known since he left the plains to begin this wild adventure.
It was dark when Gorgol awakened him, and they went to the hole beneath the rock, which was Surra’s private exit from the valley. Baku objected with a scream of anger when Hosteen called her to push through with them, and he had to wheedle her into furling wings and taking a footway. Only his firm statement that he and Surra were leaving not to return and that she would remain alone finally brought the eagle to obey, though fierce clicks of her beak made very plain her opinion of the whole maneuver as they crept back through the crack.
Baku settled on Hosteen’s shoulder once they reached the passage, her eyes like harsh sparks in the light of the torch. Surra took the lead, setting a gliding pace that brought the men to a fast walk.
The cat was retracing the way by which she had brought Hosteen in, but long before they reached the place where Dean had vanished into thin air, Najar uttered an exclamation and caught at the Beast Master’s arm.
“Here!” He was looking alertly about him with the air of a man who had come across some landmark. “This is the way—”
Hosteen recalled Surra, and the party turned into a side tunnel, Najar was now leading. To Hosteen, one of these unmarked passages was much like another, but he knew that just as he had been trained and conditioned to be the leader of a team, so had the Reconnaissance scouts been selected, trained, and psycho-indoctrinated for their service as pathfinders and “first-in” men.
Najar displayed no hesitation as he threaded from one way to another and crossed several small caverns with the certainty of one treading a well-defined trail. Then they stood in a hollow space and saw near its roof a slit of light. Najar pointed to that.
“Opening made by a landslide. This place is a natural cave and opens on the mountainside.”
Hosteen had his hand on the first hold to climb to that door when he heard an odd cry from Najar. He half turned and saw the other’s face illuminated in the torch Gorgol held. The scout was glaring at Hosteen, his eyes pure hate as he flung himself at the Beast Master, the momentum of his body jamming Storm against the cave wall.
The Amerindian strove to roll his head and his shoulders to avoid blows he knew were meant to kill. Then the torchlight snapped off, and they were in the dark.
“You dirty Xik liar!” Najar spat almost in Hosteen’s face. “Liar—!”
He was choked off in mid-breath, his body jerked away from Hosteen’s. Gasping, holding his arm where one of those nerve deadening blows had landed, the Beast Master leaned limply against the rock. A furred body pressed against his leg. He reached down, took the torch from Surra’s mouth, and snapped it on.
Gorgol stood, his arm crooked about Najar’s throat, the Terran castaway hugged back to the native’s chest, his struggles growing weaker as the Norbie exerted pressure on his windpipe.
“Don’t kill him!” Hosteen ordered.
Gorgol’s grip loosened. He let the off-worlder collapse against him. He transferred his hold to the other’s arms, keeping him upright to confront the man he had attacked.
“Why?” Hosteen asked, rubbing feeling back into his arm.
“You said—settler world—no Xik—war
over here—” Najar might be helpless in Gorgol’s prisoning hand, but his spirit—and his hate—were unbeaten. “There’s a recon-broadcaster out there!”
Hosteen stared at him blankly—not that he doubted Najar’s word or now wondered at the other’s reaction. A Recon scout had an induced sensitivity to certain beamed waves, a homing device that was implanted in him through surgery and hypnotic conditioning. If Najar had caught a recon-beam, he would not be mistaken. But to Hosteen’s knowledge the nearest recon-broadcaster was at Galwadi or the Port. Unless—unless Kelson or some other authority was moving into the Blue!
“I told you the truth,” he said. “But—maybe—maybe we’re already too late. The Patrol could have been called in.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
T
o the west—there—” Najar’s right hand was a compass direction, pointing southwest.
Baku—Hosteen thought the command that sent the eagle up and out into the sky. She soared past the point of their sighting, exulting, in the freedom she had not been able to find in the invisibly roofed valley. And from her came the report he wanted.
There was a party of men, encamped in a hollow, doubtless digging in for protection against the heat of the day. Now Hosteen depended upon Gorgol for advice.
“Can we reach them before the sun is too high?”
The Norbie was uncertain. And Hosteen could give him little help as to distance, though Najar insisted from the strength of the recon-beam the camp could not be farther than five miles. Only, five miles in this broken country for men on foot might be equal to half a day’s journey in the plains.
“If these others come into the Blue,” Gorgol warned, “then will all of my people unite against them, and there will be no hope of breaking truce between tribe and tribe.”
“That is so. But if you go to the clans and I and this one who knows much concerning the evil one go to the settlers, then with our talk we may hold them apart until the war arrows can be hidden and wise heads stand up in council.”