by Andre Norton
Time and time again that came against the blankness which he knew marked a shielded man. There was no chance at all of contacting any of them. Then he found a spark of thought – not coherent but rather all emotion, and that emotion was mainly hunger underlaid with wary fear.
An animal of some sort, perhaps the same type of vermin as might be drawn to an inhabited building in the Limits. It was a very limited mind, but it was not shielded. He saw so little by its aid – only a dark run which he guessed was within the walls. But he rode with it, beginning by very slow sendings to build up the sensation of hunger which should bring the creature he had netted out into the open.
Hunger – the kind of hunger he himself had known only too often in the past. It was easy to think hunger—impress it on the hurrying creature in the wall. There was thin light in the haze of the run; the hunter must be approaching some exit to the outside. Hunger! With the same pressure he had used with Toggor he fed that need – hunger!
The creature was out of the wall into full light. But the picture was so hazy he could not be sure just where it was – within one of the buildings or clear in the open. Hunger—food—feed! He bore down upon that order which the minute brain of the hunter could hold.
There was a sudden leap which caught Farree by surprise. And now—food—he could pick up every nuance of that feeding, the tearing, the gulping – then —
There was a sudden sense of spinning, of falling, and at the end – Farree withdrew touch in a hurry. That creature he had "ridden" was nearly dead. He filled his lungs deeply, clasped his hands upon his arms with a nail-cutting grip. Almost he had gone into death! He could only believe that the forager had been caught and killed. Yet – insofar as he was successful—there was or had been one mind within these walls which had not been shielded. He had not only found it but made use of it after a fashion. Where there was one there might be more.
Also – and this was something new he had gained – he had not had to focus on a clear mental picture in order to make contact, as he always had or thought he had had to do with Toggor. Now, his eyes closed, his body still in that tense ball, he began another search.
From the single window in the wall so far above his head there was framed the sky. What life, other than Guild men in flitters, rode that sky? Awkwardly at first and with little success he thought of sky, and vaguely of a winged creature which rode the winds there. He knew little or nothing of birds. Their like did not abound in the Limits, save a few lice-covered eaters of carrion haunting some of the darker ways.
There was something about the —
A trace of thought! Farree poured all his strength into touching that, wrapping about it, finding its source. This was an air dweller, a flyer – and again it was hunger and the lust for a hunt that moved the unknown. He strove to see, but the difference in their sight organs was too much or —
It was as if someone had pressed a button. He could see: the earth spread below him like a great floor. The buildings on the knoll were a gray-black stain with flickers of light here and there. He could —
"Who?"
The hunger and the desire to hunt had been cut off as sharply as the change in vision had come to him. There was – another!
"Thassa?" He thought that.
"Thassa." There was no mistaking the sharp assent which came to his single-word question. "Who?"
Farree strove to mind picture himself in all his misshapenness. He could not be sure if the other were to follow him as he had followed the trace of the flying thing.
"Here!" That was no bird thought; rather it spoke in his own mind even as he strove to contact it a second time.
"No!" He had respect for the Guild. Mind shielded they might be, but in dealing with the Thassa they might also have alarms that could betray such an entrance as much as if an enemy of his captors rode into the gate.
"Not so." The answer came so firm and loud that Farree uncoiled and looked sharply at the door, almost sure that had been uttered aloud rather than by mind speech. "You are – "
There came no other word for a long breath or two. Then with the same clear sharpness that mind voice said: "We are on a level not well known – not known." There seemed to be almost an aura of surprise in that. "They have their safeguards, but those are for minds such as theirs. They will not know. What has happened?"
"Thassa you are," Parree thought back slowly. There was no mistaking the kinship of this voice to the one which had come to them earlier in the ship. "Why?"
"Why? Because you are open to us and all else is closed save vermin of the walls and that which flies. Who are these and what is their purpose?"
He was sure now that this was one of the four who had stood in judgment over Maelen at the gathering. Perhaps the one who had sealed his ears to that intolerable dirge that the people had sung back in the audience chamber.
Though he would have wished the Lady Maelen that was his own wish – though the Thassa meant hardly more to him than a name, yet what was threatened touched those he knew. He ordered his thoughts quickly and strove to relive in his mind that meeting with the Commander.
"So." The mind voice had but that comment. "And they think to perhaps use you as bait in some trap?"
"Which will not work," he answered quickly. "What am I that any should venture for me here? But they bring other Machines —"
"Machines!" The other voice made that sound like an oath. "Already they have profaned the Old Place with their flyers, and now they would seek to use other things. But have hope yourself, little one. I say this and it is never a thing lightly promised, though you do not know us well enough to understand that. The Song has been sung in your hearing. Now you are under the wands of the Singers and what comes to you also touches us. You are not forgotten. Think you on that and be steady as you have been!"
Abruptly, as with the flying thing, the voice was gone, and he had a strange sensation as if in some manner it had drawn that which was the inner part of him a short way after it. But no, that was no escape. He was still crouched here – Dung of the Limits. He could not see that there was any hope of escape. Were he on his home world, a number of things would come to mind; here was nothing.
He wondered over that promise, if promise it had been. From Maelen, he might have believed in it and taken heart again. But from one he did not know – the many sorrows of the past made him doubt. They might wish to help him, he allowed that. But that they could do anything he did not believe.
Thus it was his own fight. He thought of that creature that had run in the walls – if there were many of them and if they could all be aroused to attack some food supply. What might he gain from such a skirmish? He had no idea but he filed that possibility away. There was at least one flying thing he had touched – though it might be wholly under the control of the Thassa and might not be within reach again. If only he had Bojor!
Though even if he could summon that giant to him he doubted that he would. A laser would bring the bartle quick and painful death and avail him nothing. Once more he rolled himself into a ball and tried to shut out the thoughts from his mind to sleep.
At first he thought that sleep was impossible. His mind kept repeating that interview with the Commander and his helplessness as a prisoner. But many times before he had carried fears and torments into sleep, and this time it was also in the past. This was as clear as a mind picture and very vivid, so that he saw it all sharply and knew also that this was no dream but a fragment of sleep-unlocked memory of a time which seemed to him utterly far in the past.
He was crouched upon a bundle of dirty carpets watching two men. One of them, wearing a crumpled and much stained spacer's coverall, was —
"Lanti." The other man spoke the name even as it had come to the dreaming Farree's mind and reached across the stained table to catch a fistful of Lanti's shirt at the neck to jerk up the head which rolled loosely on the man's shoulders.
Lanti's mouth was slack with a drool of spittle from one comer, and his eyes turned u
p in his head. He breathed noisily. The one who held him struck a sharp slap on each side of the face.
"You blasted fool—answer me! Where did you planet then?"
But the man who was Lanti only puffed his lips and then snored. With a grunt of obscenities, the other let go of him and allowed Lanti's head to fall forward onto the table. He pounded a fist on that dirty board before him and then reached within his own jerkin and pulled out a piece of cloth. From its wrapping he shook out a scrap of something which glittered and welcomed the light in the place.
Seeing that, the dream Farree made a small movement forward and the man was instantly alert, turning to look at him. Such was the expression of demand upon his hairy face that the very small Farree gave a tiny whimpering cry and waited helplessly for a blow to follow.
However, he dreamed – not one of those broken and distorted series of pictures that had been his uneasy nightmares
Chapter 10.
The man in one lumbering movement came to stand over him, scowling down at the small figure. He still held that glittering scrap between two fingers but Farree did not look at it.
"Dung." The big man slapped his face, even as he had done to Lanti, rocking him over so he lay nearly facedown on the filthy carpets. "What do you know about this? He has dragged you about with him so you must have some value. Is it that you know?"
He could sense the cruelty rising in the other. In one of those huge hands his brittle bones would snap easily; he could be turned into dead rubbish to be flung into the street.
"Far – " Almost he said the name which he must not. Lanti would beat him again if he did. If this bravo did not slay him first. "I – I know nothing, Lord-One." His voice was a harsh croak hardly above a whisper.
The second blow fell, only this bully mistook his strength and sent Farree speedily into unconsciousness. When he awoke once more he was sore, so stiff and sore that the slightest movement was a torment.
There was the gray light of morning around, but Lanti still sprawled across the table, his face turned away. Of the other man there was no sign. For several long moments, while feeling came back to his legs and arms, Farree waited.
Outside this hut he could hear the normal sounds of morning: the groans and oaths of men on their way back to ships, and the rattle of pots and pans in those eating places which sold first meals. But the hut inside was utterly silent.
At last Farree moved, humping himself off the carpets, daring to approach the table. That his first known enemy was unaware was a gift of fortune he would not throw away. He stood as tall as he might to survey Lanti. The bloated face was a grayish color, the pouting lips blue.
Greatly daring, ready to dodge if the man awoke, Farree put forth one hand to touch the other's dangling hand.
Slept? His flesh was cold. With even greater daring Farree tried to sense the other. There was nothing there – none of the faint traces of identity which one carried even into the deepest of sleeps. Lanti was – dead!
If he were now found here! Farree scuttled to his noisome carpet nest and brought out a square of cloth he had earlier garnered. He moved around the table, his small hunched form not unlike that of one of the sus-spiders, gathering up a half-gnawed slab of bread, the tail end of a flat eel, not pausing to eat, though his empty stomach yearned to be filled, but ready to take the food with him. A weapon? No – the two sheaths at Lanti's belt were empty. He had already been plundered of both his force knife and his stunner. Farree's only chance would lie in flight and hiding. He did not know why the other man had abandoned him – but perhaps he had discovered Lanti's death and had prudently put a distance between them. All this end of the Limits knew that Farree was Lanti's captive and the hunt might be up for him now.
Clutching to him with one hand the bundle he had made of the food, he slipped in the dawn light out of the hut and sought the shadows, speeding at his best hobbling pace away from the only place he had known on this world.
Before this world, before Lanti, what had there been? He turned to that over and over again. Always to meet with dark as if a part of his mind slept endlessly – or was reft from him by some form of small death. Almost, once, he had remembered – when he had seen that scrap of glittering stuff in the bully's hand. But even then there had been a barrier.
He had always guessed that he must have come from off-world, and he could not understand why Lanti had thought to bring such a miserable creature with him. Farree must have had some value beyond his own misshapen body. Some value beyond —
Farree awoke. For a moment or two he was disoriented. These chill stone walls about him – they were not of the Limits – then, even as he blinked his eyes, all which had happened came flooding back. The promise which had been made that the Thassa would help. How much dared he count on that?
He tried to school himself to forget it. Those to whom he was now captive could bring to their aid things he was sure the Thassa, with all their might of minds, had never thought of. No, he dared not depend on promises.
By the window so far above him, he thought the sky was that of morning. And he was very hungry and athirst. To ask – to beat on that door hoping someone would hear him – No, better to go without than perhaps make them remember that they had him to hand.
He had just made this woeful decision when the door did open and a man in a spacer's clothing, but one he had not seen before, came in. In his left hand he carried one of those cans of rations made for emergencies and in his right was a stunner. He said nothing but gestured with the weapon. Farree withdrew to the far wall and watched the other set down his burden and go out again. There was an audible thud which he believed signalled a bar on the other side of the door.
The ration was meant to be both food and drink. It was a tasteless semiliquid, but he knew that it would strengthen and revive him, and he devoured it to the last drop. That done, he turned the container over and over in his hands. Now, were this only some wild tale such as men told in their cups he could put the can to good use as a weapon of sorts and break out of his prison. Only this was no tale, it was the truth, and he thought the only time he would see beyond that door was when the Commander had some use for him. At least they intended to keep him alive; the food proved that.
Bait for a trap?
Slowly, as carefully as if life itself depended upon it (which might indeed be so), Farree sent out a mind touch, not aiming it at anything human but keeping to the lowest level he could reach. Within moments he found another of the wall-living vermin. The creature was sleeping, and it was easy enough to take over.
He slipped in and, the thing awoke, felt the hunger Farree carefully suggested, and whipped into one of the runs in the thick wall. What he received was hazy, very limited impressions of, first, those tunnels familiar to his guide, and then a sudden open space in which he could distinguish little, just enough for him to identify furniture, some part of a room.
The craving for food was tempered by the animal's native caution. As it made short rushes from one cover to the next, Farree fought the other's alien field of vision for something he could identify. There came a sensation of heat and he believed that his scout was close to a fire, undoubtedly one intended for cooking. Then the hazy glimpses which he could not identify fully steadied and remained the same and he believed that the creature crouched in some sheltered hiding place.
Fear – a vigorous stab of it, filling all that small alien mind – a smaller mind than Toggor's and of a different pattern. Toggor! If he had only been able to bring the smux with him into this captivity! All the mind touch which they had used in the past would have given him a better chance to work with this other-world creature whose very form was unknown to him so that he could not build up a mind picture that might clarify his probing. He wondered where the smux was now. And somehow that loosed his hold on the vermin from the walls and before he knew it he had sent out a thought tendril which he knew would not be taken. Only —
It was!
Farree was not able to sm
other the sudden ejaculation of astonishment as the familiar pattern of the smux was there. It was very tenuous, to be sure, yet once touched it could not be mistaken.
The Thassa – or the Lady Maelen or the Lord-One Krip – must be very close for him to have picked up Toggor's send, closer than was safe. As he had done with the bird, he reached forth and strove to use Toggor for a connecting link.
If the Thassa or his late companions were there he could not make the connection – there was only the smux. Still, Toggor was growing clearer all the time as if he were approaching the ruins where the enemy had set up headquarters.
That the smux had made such a journey on his own Farree could not believe. How ever long that trip in the flitter had been, surely the Thassa had no comparable form of transportation which would bring Toggor. Still, there was no mistaking the smux's mind and —
It was backed – strengthened – carried – not by any one mental thrust but by a uniting. Farree had not the training nor perhaps even the gift to sort out the will and the power that projected the smux's own small range of thought. Nor could he reach behind Toggor as he had with the skydweller. Yet there was a new warmth rising in him. It was plain that Toggor was approaching, and that he would have a better ally here than the native things which he could not picture and so could not actually possess.
Farree closed down his mental link. He could not help but believe it might just be possible that those who held him could somehow sense such communication. Let Toggor get within the right distance, and he could trace Farree by his own gift without revealing his presence to those who held this ruin as their own.
Now it was a matter of waiting. Farree found that impatience was a hard goad to elude. He wanted so much to use Toggor for eyes, to see what the smux would see, to feel —