Breed to Come (17 page)

Gammage chewed reflectively on a claw tip. "Whatyou found, with the aid of Ku-La, is a treasure ofknowledge. But whether we shall be given time to useit is another matter. If these Demons plan to reclaimthe lairs I am not sure we can defeat their purpose."

"You can withdraw—to the caves—as our forefathers did when the Demons hunted them before,"Furtig suggested.

"That is the last resort. The lairs are very largeand, as you proved, clan son, there are ways we smaller people can travel in secret. The Demons cannotforce their greater bodies into such passages."

"Perhaps we shall be both Demon-hunted and Ratton-attacked in the end." Furtig saw the gloomiest of futures.

"There are also the Barkers—" Gammage chewed again on his claw.

For the moment Furtig was content enough to sitand let his fur dry in the warmth of the chamber, sniffat the odor of his good drink, and now and then sip it.But he longed for sleep; even if t}ie Demons were totramp these corridors soon, a warrior had to sleep.

He fought his eyes' closing by drinking the last ofthe liquid. Gammage spoke again:

"The Barkers are not ones to take kindly to thetrapping of their scout. Unlike our people, they arehappiest in the pack rubbing shoulders to the next.And they will move as a pack to avenge their kind."

What the Ancestor said was no more than all knew.You killed or took a Barker prisoner, and you had toface his fellows in force. It was one of the things thatmade the Barkers so feared.

"They hunt by scent." Still the Ancestor recitedcommon knowledge. "Therefore they will trail in here,and find the trap of the Rattons. The Rattons willtake to inner ways, and in doing so, they may escapethe Barkers. But—if the Barkers invade they can well pick up our scent—

"Ku-La, when he is healed, will go to his people andinvite them to join us. As he has told me, those knowabout the Demons, and the lairs—of how we mustlabor to save what we have learned. If we take to thewilds, it will need many backs and hands to help carrywhat we must. Therefore, as Ku-La goes to his tribe,so must you and Foskatt go to the caves. There youmust tell them of the coming evil and that they mustsend their warriors—or bring hither all the People—"

"Do you think they will listen to me, Ancestor? Iam not an Elder, I am one who failed in the Trials,and went forth from the caves. Will they heed mywords? You know our clans and that they are slow tobelieve in new things."

"You speak as a youngling, clan son. From hereyou will carry certain things to impress the Elders.And you do not go alone—"

"Yes, Foskatt, too." But privately Furtig thoughtFoskatt, for all his longer time in the lairs, would havelittle more weight than he had himself.

Gammage had been a long time away from thecaves; he had forgotten the hold of custom on thoseliving there.

"Besides Foskatt," Gammage said, "Liliha goes,also, by her own choice. And she, as well as you, shalltake weapons such as those of the caves have noknowledge of. These are gifts, and you shall promisemore if your people come to us.

"This," he continued, "will be easily done—"

Furtig did not agree with that statement in theleast, but he had no chance to protest, as the Ancestor swept on—

"The Barker must be found. If he still lives, hemust be freed and returned to his People. That will give us for the first time a small chance of holding atruce talk with them. Otherwise they will storm intothe lairs, perhaps causing a disaster at the time whenwe must unite against Demons, not war among ouselves.

Now we have a common cause with even Barkers."

So they were back to Gammage's wish, that all the peoples, even those hereditary enemies, make a common cause against the greater menace. Listening tohim, sometimes one could almost believe that wouldwork. But perhaps he would even suggest sending a truce flag to the Rattons—!

Apparently Gammage was not prepared to go thatfar. He was nodding a little, his tail tip beating back and forth.

"To the Barkers we shall suggest a truce. The Rattons—no—we cannot deal with them in any way!They are as accursed as the Demons and always havebeen. We must warn whom we can to stand together.Liliha, see to the clan son. I think he sleeps now, eventhough his eyes are open!"

Furtig heard that as a distant murmur. There wasa touch on his arm. Somehow he blundered to his feetand wavered off, that light touch steering him thisway and that, until he had come to his own bed place and stretched out there. Demon—Ratton—Barker—sleep won out over all.

"Animals!" But even as Ayana spoke she knew thatwas not true. Yes, those bodies were furred.

And theyhad tails. But neither could it be denied that theywore belts around their waists, and attached to thebelt of one was a laser! The thing was armed with aweapon much like the most potent in the ship's locker.

She studied the scene on the record reader intowhich she peered. The light was admittedlypoor, but the longer she looked the more detailsshe could see. Animal, no, but neither was it like hernorm for

"man."

However, it had a haunting familiarity. And it carried a lumpy burden—the rear one of the two, thatis—on its back. Animals were used so. What of thegorks on Elhorn—ungainly, half-feathered, half-scaled,of avion descent but lacking their ancestors' wings2For an instant or two she remembered gorks with ahomesick nostalgia.

No, the bundle did not mean that the creatures on the bridge were' servants of men—not as the gorksserved. Not when one of them also wore a laser. Still—she was teased by a wisp of memory.

"Animal—you are sure?" Jacel roused her from that search.

"No, it is armed and wearing the belt—how can we be sure?"

"It is matched with this life-reading." Massa consulted the dial. "And there are similar life-readings here, here, and here." The computer had produced asketch map earlier and Massa's pointer tapped that.

"Now here, and here are two other readings of a different type, one differing from the other—three kinds in all." She made checks now on the map surface withyellow for the first, red for the second, blue for the last.

Yellow marked the building toward which the twoon the bridge headed, red lay behind them.

"Those blue—they are near the outer rim." Tansurveyed the results with satisfaction. He had broughtback enough to keep the computer busy. Catchingthose two in the open had been luck—Tan's luck.

"The creature to the fore,"—Ayana moved closer,"it has been hurt." Her medic-trained eyes were notdeceived by the effects of rain and wet fur. Was shewatching part of a drama such as one had on a storytape—perhaps the rescue of a wounded comrade from the enemy?

"Fighting?" Tan sounded excited. "Two species at war?"

She looked up from the screen, startled by thatnote in his voice. His eyes were shining. It took a certain temperament to produce a scout. Tan had testedhigh in all the attributes the commanders believed necessary. But there had followed rigid training. Andthe Tan who had survived that training, winning over all others to gain his place with this crew, was not exactly the same Tan to whom she had been drawn.

Ayana knew that her own place in the ship depended not only on her ability to do her own job, but alsoon the fact that she was a complement to Tan, supplying what he lacked. It was the same with Jacel andMassa. They had to complement one another or theywould not have been put together to form a crew, necessarily living closely during the voyage; their personalities were so related as to assure the least possiblefriction.

But now there was something in Tan Ayana shrankfrom, refused to face. The Tan who had come out ofthe grueling training had a hardness that she secretly feared. It was as ifhe actually wanted to watch such a battle. And thatTan—no, she would not believe that that Tan was theruler of the mind and body she loved.

"But there is not"—Massa, frowning, paid no attention to Tan's comment "a single life-reading for our own kind! Yet this is a city built by man. We havelanded on a site such as our fathers made on Elhorn,save that they did not ring it about there with acity—a city so vast that Tan's record"—she shook her head—"is more than we expected—"

"Expected?" Tan challenged that. "We can e-.pectanything here! This is the world which sent thE

First Ships into space, where secrets, all the secrets weneed, lie waiting!"

"And from which," Jacel pointed out dryly, "ourown kind seems to have gone. We had better keepthat in mind when we go prying about for secrets, lestsome of those we find are other than we care to own ordiscover. Do not forget that this city has inhabitants—such as these—" He pointed to the reader."And do not forget either. Tan, that those men ofmighty secrets, our parents of the First Ships, fled insuch fear that they tried to keep hidden the veryexistence of this world."

Tan looked impatient. "We have protection thatthose animals do not know of—"

"Animals who carry lasers?" Jacel was not to beshaken. "And if this is indeed a storehouse of waitingsecrets, perhaps some of them are already in thepaws—or hands—of those who intend to keep them.'We walk softly, slowly, and with all care now. Or itmay be, in spite of caution, cease to walk at all.”

He did not put any undue emphasis on those words.Yet they carried the force of an order.

Ayana hopedthat the conditioning they had all accepted—that thewill of Jacel was to hold in any final decision—wouldcontinue to control Tan. Let him work off his restlessness, his energy, in his sky exploration of the city.

It would seem that her hopes held the next day.The storm died before midnight, and sunrise broughta fair day. The light caught the windows in the buildings, some of which did not seem windows at all butclear bands running in levels around the towers. Andthose blazed as the sun struck them fairly.

Tan took off in the flitter, this time to trace .theouter boundaries of the city. Again, he carried equipment to feed back to their computer all the data hegained. The others did not lift ramp at once, but setout sensors to pick up any approach at ground level.Jacel supervised that, being very careful about the linkage. When he had finished he stood up.

"Nothing can pass that. A blade of grass blown bythe wind would cause an alarm," he said with*

conviction.

Ayana had climbed part way up the ramp. Sheshaded her eyes against the steadily warming blaze ofthe sun, tried to view the flitter. But Tan must havestreaked straight away, wasting no time hovering as he had yesterday.

That furred creature, the hurt one—it must havelong since reached the tower. She wished she could remember why it seemed so familiar. The records of theFirst Ships, because of that destruction, often withheld just the details one needed most.

Oddly enough it came to her back in her own cabin,and from the strangest source. She had been led bythat feeling of nostalgia to open her small packet ofallowed personal items. They were, perhaps to astranger, a queer collection. There was a flower preserved between two inch-wide squares of permaplast,its violet-blue as richly vivid as it had been when shehad encased it. And a water-worn pebble that camefrom the stream outside her home at Veeve Station.She had kept it because the crystalline half was sooddly joined to the black stone. And then there wasPutti—

Ayana stared now at Putti wide-eyed. There hadalways been Puttis—round and soft, made for children. They were traditional and common. She hadkept hers because it was the last thing her mother had made before she died of the one illness on Elhornthey had found no remedy for. Puttis were four legged and tailed. Their heads were round, with shining eyes made of buttons or beads, upstanding pointed ears, whiskers above the small mouth. Puttis wereloved, played with, adored in the child world; their origin was those brought by children on the First Ships.

She had seen one of those original Puttis, also preserved in permaplast. And that one had been coveredwith fur.

Putti! She could not be right, to compare the softtoy with that muscular furred creature on the bridge.But Putti could have been made by someone trying torepresent just such a creature in softer materials thanflesh, blood, and bone. She was about to start up, tohunt Jacel and Massa with news of her discovery,when second thoughts argued against that. The resemblance, now that she studied Putti closely, grewless and less. She might make the connection in herown mind, but that was not proof. Putti, a toy—and aweapon-bearing primitive (if not an animal) skulkingthrough buildings long deserted by her kind— No, itwas foolish to expect the others to accept that suspicion.

Furtig held the platter of meat on his knee and triedto show proper manners by not stuffing his mouth orchewing too loudly. He was hungry, but there was Liliha, smoothing her tail as she rested on a thick cushion, now and then fastidiously flicking some smallsuggestion of dust from her fur. He could hear. Just,her very muted throat purr, as if she were lost in somepleasant dream. But he did not doubt she was awareof every move he made. So he curbed his appetite andtried to copy the restraint of the In-born.

"The flyer"—she broke her self-absorption—"is inthe air again. It does not hang above us but has headed toward the west. Dolar and two scouts saw it rise.There was a Demon in it."

"It is not like the servants here then, able to go onits own?" Furtig wanted to keep her talking.

Just tohave Liliha sitting there while he ate, relaxed in thethought that he had won to safety through such adventures as most warriors never dreamed of, and thathe had rested well and was ready to follow the outertrails again, was pleasing.

"So it would seem. They made it of pieces theybrought in the sky-ship."

Furtig marveled at her patience. He should have remembered that; Gammage had spoken of it the nightbefore. But at that time Furtig had not been thinkingtoo clearly. Now he glanced up hastily, but Liliha wasnot eyeing him with scom.

"If they made it," she continued, "then withinthese lairs may lie that which can also be used for the same purpose. Gammage has set those who watchedthe making into search for such."

Privately Furtig did not doubt that, given the timeand the means, the Ancestor and his followers wouldbe able to duplicate the flyer. But then to find someone to fly in it—that was a different matter.