Charon (28 page)

 
She beamed. "I guess maybe I'm cut out for this after all. You know—back there I was scared to death. And yet somehow I really enjoyed it."

 
"That's the way it is," I told her. "I hate to admit it, but
it's
fun to beat them like that. It really is."

 
"You know, you talk like you've done this kind of thing before," she observed. "A lot of times, just talking, you sounded like you did more than you told me about And those two shots with that pistol! Wowl"

 
I sighed. "All right, I guess you should know the facts.
You more than anybody."
Briefly I told her about my real career, and why I had been sent to the Warden Diamond. She listened intently, nodding.

 
When I'd finished, she smiled. "Well, I guess that really explains a lot. And you're still on the job, even after . . ." She let the obvious trail off.

 
"More or less," I told her, "but not in the way you think. I wasn't kidding about reforms on Charon or the potential of the changelings. And I'm here for the rest of my life, just like you. There's very little they can do to me, although they
could,
as I said, destroy Charon. So you see why finding Koril is even more important to me. He's against the aliens—and so am I, at least from what I can see. He's my key to getting Aeolia Matuze, and also to our future here." I suddenly had a thought, checked one of the utility belts and found a communicator there. I picked it up and flipped it on.

 
". . .
out
of the bush, jumped Sormat—tore his throat out like some animal," a tinny voice said.
"God!
Two of 'em.
Had to be.
Only caught sight of one, though.
Kinda looked like a bunhar.
Creepy."

 
"What I want to know is how they managed to elude Sormie's
wa
shield," another voice came back.
"Gives me the creeps.
We should just get rid of these monsters."

 
Then* signals were weakening—they were heading away from us, I could tell. The last comment made me a little mad. I looked at the communicator—a simple device, but not one I was familiar with. "Ever seen one of these before?" I asked Darva.

 
She came over and looked at it. "It's pretty much the same as the ones used to keep the Companies' headquarters in contact with the field workers," she replied.
"A little different, but not much."

 
I nodded. "Military issue." I turned it over. Embossed on the back was a little logo—
Zemco, CB.
Cerberus again.
The manufacturing center of the Warden Diamond.
I predicted that my counterpart there would probably do quite well. "What's its range?"

 
"Huh?"

 
"About how far will it reach?"

 
"Oh. Well, the ones we used—maybe three, four kilometers."

 
I nodded. "This one's probably souped up just a little, but
call
it five at the top. If they're in common use on the planet, there would have to be some limits on them or nobody could talk to one another." I thought a moment "I wonder if they're all using the same frequency?"

 
"You have something in mind?"

 
"Well, let's head for the first alternate—whichever's closest. It's possible we might be able to
hear
if it's occupied before we go in."

 
Some work with both belts and I managed to wrap one big combo belt around my torso, with two pistols, the communicators, and the rest all there. It wasn't very comfortable, but it was handy.

 
Using some vines, we managed to rig a carrier for Darva to wear the other pistol, although without practice it was more a psychological weapon than anything else. They were tricky to use.

 
We had a "window" of only thirty hours to allow for shifts to alternates. Every thirty hours the places would be checked to see if anybody was there or if they were staked out for the next four days, then—forget it.

 
We traveled, therefore, most of the night. During rest and eating breaks, we discussed what both of us had felt about the Warden organism. Our experiences were almost identical—and even the trooper she'd killed had sensed she had the power. We compared notes. She was not totally ignorant of the Warden sense from the start, although her understanding of it was cloaked in the ignorant mysticism of the natives.

 
"My great-grandmother, as you know, has tremendous powers," she reminded me, "and much of her knowledge was passed down. As a kid I used to do the little exercises with her and it was really a lot of fun, but I never got too far with it. It was Eke the torgo"—a Charonese flute— "that my brother was given at the same age. For a while it was a toy, but it soon became boring and he never kept up his studies and practice. It's the same with the Art"

 
I nodded. "That doesn't explain my own sensitivity, though," I told her. 1
don't
think it came from the changeling spell, either. Korman said I had a natural aptitude for it and predicted I would sense the Wardens—the
wa
—
as we did. That's important for a couple of reasons. It means both of us can learn it, and it means that changelings are no more limited than humans, which makes sense. We're built differently, but we're made of the same stuff and out of the same stuff." Since many of the changelings had been at least at the apt stage themselves, it was evident that what was needed was training. You could go only so far without that, after which it either wasn't usable any further or it backfired.

 
It was clear that the basis of the power was the ability to concentrate while sensing the Wardens in your object. Most people just
Wouldn't
have the necessary self-control or self-confidence, but I was pretty sure I did, even now—and perhaps Darva did as well. An artistic bent and a mathematical aptitude would certainly help, of course, in doing elaborate things.

 
The place we were headed Darva called the Pinnacles, because of some odd rock formations. She'd never been near it, but had been shown a picture and assured me that, if she saw the real thing, she couldn't mistake it. Initially, she had rejected the spot because it was almost astride a main road and fairly close to an inland town called Geh-brat, but it was the closest.

 
We approached it in the late afternoon of the next day. I checked with my little communicator and found that there
was
some intermittent traffic on it, but it was mostly road patrols. Nothing was said about the Pinnacles as a staked-out place, and there was every indication that the frequency the things were on was fixed. That didn't mean somebody clever didn't have the place staked out using different frequencies or communicators, but the information we could get was a little reassuring.

 
We were more than a little cautious in approaching this time. She was certainly right—you couldn't miss the place. Four jagged spires of hard rock rose a kilometer or more over the surrounding jungle, like four great arrows pointing to the sky. Near the base of the second spire from the left would be the meeting place—if it were not already "spoiled."

 
We approached slowly and cautiously from opposite directions, ready to take any action required, but there was no sign or sense of any stakeout If the location had been blown, the troopers were certainly far more professional than the ones back at the waterfall had been. It took a good two hours for me to satisfy myself that there were no dangerous troopers about, although when we linked up within sight of the rendezvous, we stayed just inside the woods. Having no timepieces, we could only settle back a little and wait, hoping for a pickup.

 
It grew dark quickly as night overtook us. Every once in a while I'd check the radio, but all signals were either faint or very intermittent; Pinnacles was never mentioned.

 
A bit after dark, we saw some movement in the area and froze. I drew one of the pistols and watched nervously. My night vision was extremely good—our eyes worked best in the murky twilight of the jungle, and were most sensitive to bright light—but it was by no means nocturnal vision. Therefore, I had difficulty seeing just who or what came into view. The Warden sense vaguely tracked the newcomer, but it was impossible to really tell much about its shape.

 
Whoever it was crept cautiously to the center of the clearing, seemed to stop and look around, then whispered nervously, "There is thunder in the south." That
was
_;
the
identifying phrase Darva had been told, but while 'our hopes rose our caution did not let down. If Morah knew of one hideout from captives, he certainly knew many of the passwords.

 
I looked at Darva and gestured at the pistol. She nodded, moved away from me,
then
approached the dark shape. "The Destroyer builds," she whispered, giving the response.

 
I heard a sharp sigh. "Thank the gods!" a female voice said in low but clear tones. "Who's there?"

 
"Darva.
Who are you?" She walked closer to the dark shape.

 
"I am Hemara," the other responded, "from the
Valley
of
Cloud
."

 
"I am from Thunderkor," Darva told her. "Come closer, so we may see each other clearly."

 
The other moved, and now I too could make out the shape. She was indeed a changeling, a large woman with a reddish yet very human face that differed only in that she appeared to have two large compound eyes of bright orange in place of the normal ones. She seemed to be carrying something smooth and round on her back.

 
Darva turned and whispered to me, "All right, you can come out I think
it's
safe."

 
I moved from my hideaway and approached them. Up close, I could see that far more in the woman was changed than I had first noticed. Her body was black, hard, and shiny, like an insect's, and that round thing on her back was a buge black shell of some kind. She was standing on four of her eight legs—no arms—and these were also covered in a hard shell and had small pads at their tips ending in a single hard nail each. Still, she retained short-cropped humanoid black hair on her head.

 
The newcomer turned, looked at me, then back at Darva, then back at me again. "There are two of you?"

 
"Sort of," I responded. "It's a long story. Anyway, I'm Park and I'm the male."

 
Her very human mouth showed delighted surprise. "A pairl
How
wonderful!" There was a wistful note in that
last, that
I couldn't help but catch.

 
"Maybe," I told her. "For now, what's the plan to get out of here? I feel like a sitting duck."

 
She looked suddenly crestfallen. "I'd hoped that
you . .
."

 
Darva sighed.
"Just another refugee.
Well, join the party and we'll wait some more."

 
She wasn't really constructed for the jungle, but down flat, or almost so, she could blend in pretty well with the rocks. Time passed as we talked,' explaining where the pistols came from and telling her a little about ourselves— very little, really. As for Hemara, she'd been caught poaching by her Company—a very serious offense. As punishment, she was given to a Company apt as an experimental being on whom to practice. When not a plaything she was on public exhibition near the Company headquarters as a deterrent, and they had outdone themselves in providing a really nasty example. Without hands or claws she couldn't really manipulate much. Settling an interesting point, she said that the compound eye's multi-images resolved into a single image in her brain, but that she could focus on only one point She could either see very far, but nothing close, or vice versa, and if she fixed on an object she could see only that object and its surroundings. That meant almost constantly changing focus to get a clear picture. She was a sad example of how far the cruel and insane minds that ran Charon could go, and yet she said she had seen and met worse. I probably had too, but the scene in that square after the fight had been so much of an overload that I found it hard to remember the shapes clearly.

 
We were joined later that evening by three more changelings. One was a man whose face was a hideous devil's mask and whose bent, winged body made him permanently bowlegged. His bat wings, however, were not functional. He was a good reminder of how volatile the Warden power could be. He'd been more or less stealing lessons, hiding himself and listening in while his local sore instructed his apts. Then he tried experimenting on his own and had been doing very well, but one night he'd had a horrible
nightmare ...

 
The second creature was part long, gray limbless worm and part human torso topped by a hairless man's head. The
body,
perhaps five meters long, glistened and left a trail of ichor. He wouldn't tell us how he'd gotten that way, but we discovered he ate dirt.