by Andre Norton
"My thanks-giving, Serve-Wing—" Her picture had already disappeared from the screen. What flashed on in her place was a diagram composed of figures and symbols making no sense to Farree, restraining his growing impatience. However, both Krip and Maelen now went to look over the Zacanthan's shoulder to watch the procession of data.
Impatience continued to eat at Farree, for it seemed that the streams of formulae would never cease. Twice those lines were halted for a moment or two by a sharp motion from Krip. He had taken from an inner pocket a small hand recorder and was holding that up to face the other broadcasting unit, apparently taking notes on some portions which he must believe to be important. Then the date was gone leaving the screen bare except for the flickering light. Zoror typed out an answer which would carry his thanks for the information and list it as Zacanthan research.
"Two solar systems," Krip said. "A sum of twelve planets. I think even Zacanthans might think several times before an expedition was fitted out for such a prolonged hunt."
"Some of those worlds," Maelen pointed out, "are such as would not sustain any life with the same requirements as ours."
Krip nodded but did not answer otherwise. He was busy with his own small record. "There are three Arth-A, six which are borderline, the rest—" He shrugged.
"So you have three now, not twelve," Maelen pointed out.
"Two in one system, one in the other," the Zacanthan agreed. "If you were a far trader—as you once were, brother– to which would you first chart your way?"
"To a doubtful gamble—that one." His finger indicated a choice. "But there was no reading of life on that report. Should it not have checked for that?"
"Some do, some don't," Zoror answered. "The probe making this report was a long way from its home base, or the ship which launched it. Its data banks were nearly full. They are sensitive enough to anticipate a shut down and allow for one as they clear their complete fill up, and it is time for them to return. This was launched on 7546G and it returned on 7869G."
"The time of the Pan-wen War!" Krip cut in.
"Just so. And during that time the Patrol was fully occupied. The report may have just been added to others, lain unnoted for a hundred planet years or more.
"I wonder." He tapped his display of fangs with a talon on a forefinger. "We may not have been the first to be so interested."
"Who could reach that information without authority?" asked Maelen.
Again Zoror gave that throaty chuckle. "A good many, sister. There are many secrets which the Guild hug to themselves. It is said, and with truth, that new weapons and informational devices are often obtained by bribery, murder, thievery. No matter what arms they may run and sell for planet wars, the most effective ones are kept for their own raids and secret attacks. That they have access to sealed information is well understood. So that if they tap into such storehouses of exploration tapes as that we just witnessed they will have their own method of making it profitable. Who knows, they may hold rights auctions to their own newly discovered worlds with outlaws bidding, and a large cut for the Guild at regular intervals. Just as your people, younger brother"—he nodded toward Krip—"buy traders' rights from Survey."
"So," Krip returned, "then we have a secret which may not be one?"
"Our Farree here says so with his very presence," Maelen answered. "How did he come into the Limits? He is mind blocked, and with such an unknown power that even the Ancient Ones of the Thassa could not search far into his memory. Perhaps one of your stolen Guild devices did that. He is here and we—what do we know?"
"Only the bits of legends which are deemed more tale than fact," the Zacanthan said.
"The wings!" Farree burst out. What if the Guild had as many devices as the stars sprinkled in the night heavens? There were those lengths of beauty which he had held. That dream, or vision, also—the dancers with the wind who were like himself.
"The wings," Zoror repeated. "And a measure of what we overheard this night. So—" His words carried more of a hissing as he spoke faster and with emphasis. "We have a chart, we have the edge of a mystery wherein the Guild may be at odds with all comers. We have a ship." Now he pointed with his taloned forefinger to Krip. "We have a Moonsinger whose talents perhaps even the burrowing, spying Guild do not understand. We have one from an unknown world and his valiant companion." Now he indicated first Farree, and then Togger. "We have an old one who wishes to learn a little for himself and no longer, for a space, pore over the reports of others—" Now the finger pointed to his own chest. "Do we mix the lot of these and what do we do with the sum of it?"
Maelen laughed. "I look to you, High One, and I look to my comrade in adventure, as to our younger brother here. To your questions there is only one answer. Let us go and see!"
Chapter Six
Farree hung suspended in the webbing which protected him during take-off and transition into shift. With his wings he could not lie on one of the bunks. As usual he was giddy, with a sickish taste in his mouth, and was for the moment content to remain within the restraints. Around him the walls of the ship vibrated with the force which was its life. It was Krip's ship, Maelen's ship, the one which they had thought to travel the star lanes with those in fur and feathers who would go, to prove to the other worlds they might visit that there was a brotherhood between life forms which must be recognized. They had begun on the world of the Limits with a bartle and Yazz, both of whom had played a part when the Guild threatened them on Yiktor. Nor had those two chosen to remain behind now although Maelen, mind touching, had explained what must be done.
This time, they need not depend upon an unknown pilot, one who might even be a traitor to them as had been so before, for Zoror was himself a pilot and had carefully studied the tape he and Krip had patched together from the data of the searcher. They had lifted off-world recording a goal which was far enough from what they sought that their actual destination might remain their own secret.
Zoror was sure that no spy set by the Guild could penetrate his own library-cum-laboratory. That building was manned largely by robots carefully constructed to obey his voice alone. Though the Zacanthans spoke trade talk, their own language demanded a voice range no other species could project.
However, Maelen had detected a mind search seeking vainly to enter their stronghold several times during the counts of twenty days while they were making their preparations. There had been no difficulty with the authorities. The sector Patrol Commander had stamped his own private seal on their permission papers. A Zacanthan was never questioned when he or she voyaged.
With Zoror's own equipment tuned to a new use, they had inspected—and Farree had been able to join in handling that—every shipment of supplies before it was sealed into the ship. There would be no stowaway surprises to attack them.
Farree himself had lapsed now and then into meditation. To his continued disappointment there were no more visions. He might have been concentrating upon Zoror's own home. On their last night a-planet he at last ventured to speak of this—for if there was no truth in his vision they might even now be acting at a long range motivation induced by the Guild.
He had stood among them, his own wings folded as tightly as possible, and voiced his fears.
Maelen shook her head. "Not so, little brother! Had your vision been a trick its falseness could be speedily read. We who did not see with you might well have seen instead a lashing of the web in which that was bait."
Zoror agreed with her. "There is this too: an object which carries a message may be set to carry such only once. Having made contact with you the charge was exhausted. That one did indeed leave its mark." He gently touched the brand on Farree's wrist. "But only we know of this."
Though he had a great deal of awe and respect for both the Moonsinger and the Zacanthan, and their similar though different ranges of mind send and thought examination, Farree was not convinced. However, he did not mention his fears again. At least on his wrist he did carry proof that there had been power a-plenty
in those remnants they had found.
To his shock and disappointment his memory of the dancers and the sky chart did fade even though he strove to hold it in detail. Zoror's story of unknown devices which the Guild could control was part of a private distress. He had been helpless prisoner for a time to one such when they had made their foray into the Field edge town. Could he then have also been marked, even by the scar on his wrist, so that he could prove a guide for others without his knowledge?
They made the change into warp drive easily enough. Farree had to move carefully through the ship, with his wings tight folded, as the passages were narrow, His sleep periods were uncomfortable as he must also accommodate those pinions within another cramped space. Some of the time he spent down on the lower deck with Bojor and Yazz. The huge shaggy bartle that had come from the world of the Limits passed easily into slumber, content to spend most of the voyage in a kind of hibernation. However, Yazz sought mind contact and asked questions Farree could not adequately answer.
Yes, there was a world awaiting them which had open spaces where a fisual could run to her pleasure. Though he himself could not remember too much of the world of his vision, the bright green of the land below the mist clad mountains remained with him. He was sure such a world existed elsewhere—he could only hope that the tape Krip had spliced together would lead them there.
Since the ship was running on a locked voyage tape, with all the alarms for any emergency set, Zoror did not occupy the pilot's seat any longer than it took for him to check at certain intervals that all was well. When hunched back again into the long seat at the end of the bridge, he triggered a small scanner and set a procession of pictures, interspersed with more lines of the intricate script of his own species. Maelen shared his seat and his interest in the records of finds which had been made—Forerunners' long lost works. Rightly she might search such, for the body she now wore was that of a Forerunner—some queen, goddess or ruler of a people totally forgotten until their hiding place of treasure and long sleepers was uncovered in a secret mountain hold where the Guild had come to meddle with that which they might not have been any longer able to command had they gone some steps farther in their investigations.
Dying, Maelen had taken on the body of another long sealed into a chamber to await a waking which had not come in the millenniums between the time when the last barrier had closed and that hour when spoilers had broken through. There she had fought a battle with the remnants of an evil will which still clung to the body, banishing that other after a hard fought engagement. Now she asked Zoror if her present like existed in Zacanthan records, only to be told that she who was gone might have been one of half a hundred races who had sought the stars in years now so far in the past that the numbering of them could not even be tallied.
"It is, you see," Zoror said once when they were all together, Vorlund swung about in the co-pilot's seat to face the other three, "for us a matter of putting together many bits of discoveries, like striving to set in position the shards of a Trysua glass picture which has been broken past redemption. There is perhaps the find of a derelict ship, preserved in space where it has hung past our accounting, or one of the wind-beaten ruins of the Uavan Desert on Tav where one can only guess what the original form once was.
"And there is also the shifting of old tales, of stories told by far travelers. There was that of the Numerod—"
"Captain Famble's find!" Vorlund cut in.
"Just so. Famble might well have been one of my own race, so diligently did he search for that which was only known because of a few sentences gasped by a dying spacer taken from a life boat. The richness of his find on Scar nearly matched that which your own ship discovered on Sehkmet. Only of the people who fashioned those works of art, those things of great beauty, we know nothing more. In none of that treasure was there any hint even of their race or species. They used many motifs of flowers, strange birds—or at least winged creatures—and others which ran six-legged, inlaid with gems to remain for all time. But of the representation of any creature which might be deemed one of the makers—of that we had no hint at all. And Scar, as you know, was a burn-off, half of its surface congealed slag, so imbued with radiation that any close search was impossible, even for one well suited up; while over the rest of the world there was a tangle of vegetation gone totally wild. We have deduced by what we saw and found there that those who had left their belongings in the caverns had done so in haste, yet thought they might come again. However, they did not—"
"There was also," Maelen said, "the skull of Orsuis. Not even your people, High One, had seen such as that before."
"That has proved to be a puzzle which many of us seek to penetrate when we are in youth studies." Zoror nodded. "The skull might be that of a modern spacer of the old Terran breed—but it is wrought from a single lump of Cris-crystal which the experts tell us today cannot be worked by any known method. Yet it exists, and plainly it was in some way a manner of communication. There are many puzzles for the finding here and there."
Farree nodded, rubbing the brand on his wrist. During his time in the Zacanthan's headquarters he had seen many strange things. There were also the legends Zoror had stressed about winged people, the Little Folk who were supposedly known to Terrans, not only on their own world but out among the stars.
Flight time was wearying at best—especially when the ship was on destination tape. However, the Zacanthan used this period to keep their minds alert, holding their interest to more than just winning through to the end of the voyage. During the arbitrarily set ship's hours Farree and the others listened to Zoror's fund of stories of finds and mysterious worlds dead from some war or catastrophe, where ancient weapons yet fought on and anyone trying to land was attacked. Farree paid eager interest at first. The world of his childhood—the malodorous Limits—had had nothing to feed his imagination or instruct his mind—and this was heady stuff.
Only when he was back in his own cabin, Togger occupying the bunk Farree could no longer use because of his wings, he would rub his wrist until the skin was chafed– wishing he had the other silky scraps the booth owner had had, trying, until his very mind seemed to ache, trying to evoke an answer alone, but possessing nothing to read it from.
He shivered now and again when he seemed to be answered by a thrust of pain as sharp and fleeting as if he had faced a laser beam. Each time that occurred he was left sick and hurting.
Farree was squatting on the edge of the bunk, his back to the compartment door, when one such a session had been so sharp and debilitating that he swayed back and forth. Togger gave a claw rattle that made plain he had picked up a strong broadcast of Farree's pain. Nor was he the only one for a voice reached him from the compartment door:
"Farree! That—is death!"
His arms were wrapped over his chest as if he must cling to some part of himself against a fear that was near unbearable. Almost, almost he had been able to pierce that fear, to reach who or what was behind it. His cheeks were wet with drops which gathered on his forehead and ran downward.
Fear—yes, fear, but with it anger– Both emotions seemed to lie as a brand upon his thoughts even as that length around his wrist had put its burden on his flesh.
"Farree." Maelen had moved along the wall until she could look directly into his face. "You must not do this—"
He shook his head. Then he half whispered: "I must know!"
"And what will be good for you to know, younger brother, if it puts its mark so deeply on you that you cannot function? See?" She reached out to draw her fingers down his wet cheek. "You labor and that which you would draw near you is—death. We also have the inner sight, we can follow so far—to go farther means the upsetting of the Scales. Molester gave us the gift of such sight; we are vowed not to use it wrongly."
For the first time he looked at her. "I must know," he repeated; but his voice was dull, that painful awareness gone.
"Perhaps—but not that way—never that way, Farree. None can see beyond wh
en they take the White Path, just as none may return." Again her hand stretched forth as she held it palm down and a little above his wrist. "This—even I can feel what this holds, little brother. That which is implanted with sorrow and death cannot be used lightly. For your own sake do not seek to do that."
There spread into his mind something more than the words she spoke—it was a soothing, gentling feeling, like hands bandaging a gaping wound. Dimly he realized that what Maelen was mind casting was that same assurance that she had many times used with those she called her little ones, whom others might term beasts. Sighing, he nursed his wrist, for, under the soothing thought, he realized that there was truth in what she said. He dare not waste he strength on this search– not when there lay more arduous trails ahead. That there was danger coming he had no doubt.
"Good," she spoke aloud rather than thought. "I promise you, younger brother, that there will be a time for you, and when that comes you shall have a great part in what will follow."
He glanced at her, surprised. There were always hints that those with mind speech could also do more—even as he had proven he might read from touch. Only to foresee was not widely known and all he had ever heard of it was rumors.
"Not foreseeing." She picked that up quickly. "It is rather by reasoning, Farree. This is no easy voyage which we make now. If we raise the planet of your people it is well we be prepared for trouble there—"
He nodded. Yes, it did not take any mind skill beyond thought' to understand that. Also she was right, he should not waste what gifts he had trying to compel answers, for that was useless. Any mind skill came and went spasmodically and you could not force it.
So he did not try to summon up again what he had seen so briefly in his one vision. That must have fulfilled its purpose when he had remembered and read the chart which had sent them on this voyage. Instead he set himself to another way of preparing for that which might wait ahead. Not only did he coax more and more reminiscences from Zoror, but he visited Bojor in the cabin which had been specially fashioned to fit the huge furred body of the one-time wild hunter, an animal on its own world so greatly feared that even the stories of its bloody meeting with settlers roused terror.