Ice and Shadow (42 page)

There was nothing about him to make her think that he was in any way enemy to the Lairs. Rather, it seemed to her, it was the spite of some priest which lay behind it. Then—why had they not killed him out of hand? Taynad stood very still, a half-folded undergarment in her hands. The basic oath of them all—Brother—Sister—do not delight in the blood of their kind. Perhaps that priest had been afraid to kill Jofre openly lest he be called to account for that—perhaps he had hoped that the harsh season in the mountains would do it for him. As for the reason for such a strong hatred—it lay encoiled in what she had sensed—that in this issha there were surely the seeds of Assha. Yes, the Shagga would never allow a leader of off-world blood among them; they were too fixed in the ancient ways. So they wanted him—but they wanted him returned so that he could die now under their hands and only so would they feel safe.

Now she could understand those orders. She dropped the garment and freed the twigs from their hiding place in her hair, running them once more to be touch read. Betray him to the Guild, see him safely taken.

An order—but not an oath! Her head went up as if she faced the First Sister in her own Lair. She was not oathed by the mere words of Zarn’s sending—there must be the ritual and blood must flow—she would be one who betrayed.

They would say she was not oathed to the Zacathan, but she was indebted to him. And those of the Shadows paid debts, blood signed or not. No, she was not going to make any attempt to contact that woman from the Guild—perhaps time would favor them all and see them aboard this trader before she could be met again with any more demands.

For a moment Taynad stretched the twigs between her fingers. Almost she applied enough pressure to snap them. But she did not follow through—there was enough of custom to hold her from doing that. She tucked them back into hiding and determined to let the future arrange itself into its own patterns.

CHAPTER 24

“PASSAGE,
yes, that you may buy. Once on planet you shall be on your own, and Lochan is not friendly.” The voice was a deep-chested growl, sounding oddly from this undersized man who eyed them upward from beneath heavy bushy brows as if he was highly suspicious. In contrast to those unduly thick brows his skull was bare of even a fringe of hair, the space-browned flesh of it sprinkled over with darker patches of skin here and there. Captain Gosal was far from being attractive personally any more than his rusted and worn, space-battered ship.

Jofre, his shoulders planted against the wall of the small cabin, was not only unimpressed but wary. If it were his choice, he would be off the
Haren Hound
and as far from its battered length as he could get. But it would seem that Zurzal had discovered they had no choice. It was either this ship or perhaps no chance at all, and since the debacle on Tssek the Zacathan was apparently ridden more and more by the need to get to the goal he had tried so long to reach.

“You have a flitter—” His frill was fluttering. Jofre could actually feel the effort Zurzal was making to keep his emotions under strict control.

“That will be in use. You have heard my terms.” This captain was favoring the Zacathan with none of the honorifics which bare courtesy would have suggested he use. Instead he was deliberately trying, Jofre was certain, to make any contract with him as unpleasant as possible.

“It will be necessary for us to strike inland—near the Shattered Land—” Zurzal’s hissing was more apparent but he still spoke on a level note as if he did not really understand the captain’s hostility.

“Go where you will after we planet. I am not an arranger for travelers—I do not offer tours—There are plenty here who are eager for such as you to come to them.”

“For approved planets only.” Zurzal still held tightly to his emotions but the flush of color was rising in his frill. “This is a matter of exploration, or discovery. I understand you yourself have recently made a lucky discovery on this same world. Well, such as you are about to exploit I have no interest in. I seek old places—those of the Forerunners.”

“You are confederation backed—why then do you come to me? Where is your First-In ship? I am a trader, not a searcher—”

“Perhaps not a searcher for the same things,” Zurzal returned. “But, yes, I have cleared this voyage with the authorities—on the
Haren Hound—”

The captain’s head snapped up. Under that brush of brows his eyes showed a reddish glint.

“You cannot make any Free Trader rise to your will unless it is under charter, and I am not—for all your official clearance!”

“There is the matter of time,” Zurzal pointed out. “When is your rumored auction—tonight! You have forced that into a rush, which means you need to get planet free very soon. There will be those ready to sniff along your trail and see what they can pick up for themselves.”

The captain did not answer at once. His full-lipped mouth was closed as a trap might spring upon a victim and there was a dusky flush spreading up from the unlatched collar of his tunic to color even that bare dome of skull.

“So—by the thrice-damned rules you force yourselves on board—knowing that I must be accountable for your arrival on Lochan. Very well, you have set up the stars in this game, but perhaps the comets lie in other hands. You will pay—”

“I fully intend to,” the Zacathan returned. “Full voyage accounts for four.”

“Four?” The captain glanced from Zurzal to Jofre and back again as if trying to separate each of those fronting him into a second.

“A party of four. You will find it listed with the port authorities. It has been so listed for a ten days—”

“You were very sure, lizard lord.”

“I have had news of your voyaging for some two planet years, Captain Gosal. Lochan has long been my destination as it has also attracted you.”

The captain spread his hands palm flat on the small table already untidy with a drift of tapes and a speaker.

“Very well. But you will take us as you find us, without complaint. We are no wallowing passenger liner. Your quarters will be tight and you will give vouchers for your own supplies to our steward. Also—the license runs only while you are on board. On Lochan you make your own way, for there the law favors me. I need not detach from this ship any personnel nor equipment which I need for my own use. And all of what we have is so needed. So think about that, lizard lord, before you move in.”

“What if it is as he says?” Jofre asked as they boarded the port flitter to return to the inner city. “He could dump us in some wilderness and not have any questions asked? Does it work that way?”

“It can. However,” Zurzal did not seem in the least upset by such a dubious glimpse into the future, “there are other factors. I have made a study of Lochan as far as is possible. Unfortunately, as you know, the discoveries of the single expedition whose path we would follow were lost in the fate which overtook them. But the First-In Scout’s report was on record in our own archives and with it similar data gathered by traders such as Gosal, but not having this luck that he has apparently had with the new find of his.

“He may not be willing to provide us with transportation once on planet, but the landing he heads for is known—and there is a port there. It is not manned by off-worlders but there seems to have grown up something of a trading settlement about it. And where there are traders there are those to visit and supply the trade. We have the Jat—”

“Yan? But what has it to do with—?”

“Communication, Jofre. All we must do must be begun by communication. And there have been some hints that certain of the rulers of the rovers in the lands we would visit have been intrigued by the sparse off-world contact which has been. Oh, I believe it truly”—he turned his head to face Jofre squarely and his frill was up, flaring blue-green—“I was meant to do this—and I shall!” There was an aura about him which Jofre recognized. Just so had it been with an issha-trained when he was oathed for a mission. He could only trust blindly for now that the Zacathan could carry this through and follow his lead—but in reality he had no other choice—he was oathed.

Oddly enough when they had picked up Taynad, Yan, and their baggage and returned to the ship they found a different reception waiting them. Gosal, who was apparently hurried, paused to actually welcome them aboard with a thin veneer of courtesy. They were shown to the two cramped cabins far down in the ship, Taynad and the Jat bunking down in one, Jofre and the Zacathan in the other. The stowing of their baggage took some time and some of it had to be given room in the cargo hold. Jofre expected trouble over that but the crewman who aided him in stowing it away so was ready enough, if not talkative.

Jofre was surprised when the captain, with special invitation, made them free of the other small cabin which served as a gathering place for off-duty members of the crew. He felt it necessary to accompany the Zacathan whenever Zurzal took advantage of that hospitality but he found it almost as claustrophobic as their own quarters.

Gosal seemed to have, now he was in space and as it might be master, changed his opinion of the Zacathan.

He not only willingly answered the other’s questions concerning Lochan to the best of his ability, but twice summoned his cargo master and his steward to supply various items which they were the more conversant with, having dealt with the natives for supplies and met with the local traders.

Once free of Wayright the captain was in a good humor, even talking freely about his own good fortune in discovering the new gems which would make his fortune and that of the
Haren Hound.
He had kept back from the port auction a couple which he displayed. Even in the rough, without any cutting or polishing, Jofre, as unused to such wealth as he was, could detect their unusual flash of color.

“Koris stones now,” Gosal had said at that display. “They bring a high price—’course that is mainly because they give off scent when one wears them against the skin. The
Solar Queen—
they made such a killing with them as brought one of the Companies after them—a nasty scrape that was. So far we’re in luck. We’re registered and the auction credit—most of that—goes to the planet bid. We’ve got us nearly two planet years and we’re going to make the most of ’em!”

“Where were these found?” Zurzal asked.

Gosal laughed. “Now that would be tellin’, wouldn’t it? Not that I think the likes of you, lizard lord, would be any threat to this deal. But a trader keeps his secrets—they’re as good as credit units on the register.”

He and the steward both had stories of the trading parties who came in from the outlands to the port. Though they both said frankly that they found the aliens difficult to deal with—that there were rigid customs and certain patterns to be followed in any attempt at communication.

While Jofre and the Zacathan listened to traveler’s advice in the leisure cabin, Taynad kept closely to her own appointed cubby. She felt some of the same claustrophobia as plagued Jofre. The mountain-born of the Lair were not at home in situations which seemed too much either prisons or traps.

She had been so sure that she would have been approached again by some emissary of the Guild acting for Zarn before she had left. But that had not happened. Did such neglect mean that they had taken as a matter of course she had accepted their mission? But if she were to entice Jofre into some type of trap, should that not happen on Wayright, where there were many ships lifting daily and he could be returned to Asborgan with the least difficulty?

Gosal had made very plain that the only exit from Lochan would be this ship she now traveled by. It was a puzzle, and puzzles were never to her liking.

She spent much time with the Jat, trying to tighten the mind ties between them. Once or twice the creature actually sent her a mind picture which held, if mistily, for a fraction of time. Taynad worked carefully, fighting down her own determination and eagerness to perfect what she could do with Yan.

When the Zacathan was busied with his own calculations for the scanner, which seemed to occupy him by fits and starts, Jofre would come visiting and though she distrusted the wisdom of doing so the Jat himself drew the guard into their experiments. They discovered that reception was far clearer when Jofre and Taynad were linked by touch and both concentrating on Yan at once. So this they tried to perfect and hone as they would their selected weapons.

Jofre wondered at these crewmen, most of whom spent the longer parts of their lives encased in these metal wombs. He felt that a man would go out of his mind facing day after artificial day and night of this imprisonment. He had his mental exercises, his work with Taynad and the Jat, even the necessity of making mental notes for anything picked up in the conversation concerning Lochan which could be put to future use. Also there was the knowledge that sooner or later this was going to come to an end.

It did at last: the orders came to strap down for entrance. And the settling of the ship on its fins was as steady as if it had planeted on a recognized landing port.

Jofre longed to see what lay beyond the shell of the ship, to be able to breathe again more than the stale air which seemed to give one always a dull headache. He went through the ritual of checking his weapons, so much a part of his drill that he no longer was truly conscious of it.

They had their cabin luggage to secure. Jofre hoped that they would spend no more time aboard than was necessary though he had not the least idea where they would shelter on Lochan.

As they came out on the runway which stretched beyond the slice of heated ground where they had ridden the tail flames down, he was astounded by what lay about. The port on Asborgan was two planet generations old. There were a number of off-world buildings which had come into existence there for the convenience of travelers.

Wayright was a whole planet of ports, it existed only because it was a travel center, and all its resources were gathered to support and provide for those using the star ways.

What he looked out on, over the Zacathan’s shoulder, was dull rock, fairly smooth in the vicinity of the ship and seared with the burnoffs of other landings. Beyond the edge of that was an undulating stretch of plain which appeared to reach to the horizon without any break except a huddle of what might be very rude shelters a good distance from them. The sun was blazing hot, even though it could not have been more than mid-morning. And heat, which was more than that just born from the rocket-scorched earth, reflected back to them. There seemed to be no vegetation which he could identify as such—unless the uniform dull yellow of the ground was some low-growing herbage. The sky overhead was a palish blue with a hint of green. It was a forbidding place, doubly so to one mountain bred.

“There you have it, lizard lord.” Gosal swept a thick-fingered hand in the direction of that smudge on the desolate prairie land. “That is the one and only city on Lochan that I have ever heard tell of. I think you will find accommodations limited there. There is a welcoming party coming—”

There was indeed movement away from those blots on the yellow land, heading in the direction of the ship. Jofre had expected the captain to have out the flitter and ready that to reach the distant settlement but he seemed perfectly willing to await the arrival of the native party. Though he did unhook a com from his belt and hold it ready for speaking, thumbing the on button in a moment or two.

What he jabbered into the mike was either code or native tongue, totally incomprehensible to his listeners. Jofre had little liking for that action. He did not know what he feared, but he had that alert within that this unknown was not to be trusted.

They had seen all the tapes on Lochan that Zurzal had had to offer, but the material the Zacathan had been able to locate had not dealt with this scrub of a port but rather with the planet at large. Jofre knew that the greater part of the continent on which they had landed was this stretch of plains land, arid for most of the year. It supported some nomadic tribes who traveled to find herbage for flocks of weird creatures upon whose meat and fleece they built their existence.