The Forerunner Factor (11 page)

They lay in a forlorn heap, their mouths open, their antennae limp, their eyes closed, while breaths which were gasps for life itself lifted their furred breasts. Simsa paid no attention to the off-worlder who had now gone ashore to work at whatever had kept him busy. She forced the tight capping from one of the water jars (one of the last two which were entirely full) and held a pannikan with shaking hands as she dribbled into it the precious liquid, near counting the drops. Her body ached for a drink—she wanted to lie and just let some coolness wash over her whole sun cracked skin—

With the pannikan in hand, she crawled to the hamper nest. Zass first. The girl cradled the zorsal between her arm and her breast. With all the care she could use to keep the contents from spilling, she held the pannikan above the creature’s gaping mouth, letting the moisture, which was sickly warm yet still life-giving, drip down. She could not be sure, but that body felt too hot to her, as if not only the punishing sun, but an inner fever ate at it now. At first, a bit of the liquid ran from the side of the beak-like muzzle. Then she saw Zass make a convulsive effort and swallow.

Only a little—but enough that the zorsal found voice to complain plaintively when Simsa replaced her and picked up one of the others to do likewise. Carefully, she shared the contents of the pannikan among them as equally as she could. The younger birds revived sooner, pulled themselves up with their clawed paws to the edge of the hamper and teetered back and forth there, one gathering enough voice to honk the cry with which they greeted dusk and hunting time.

The girl then took back Zass into her hold, supporting the Zorsal’s head with her scraped hand. The creature’s huge eyes were now open and, Simsa believed, knowing. Her plan for losing them—that she could never do here. They could not survive in a country so utterly barren and heat-blasted.

No, she must take them with her when she went—went? For the first time, Simsa looked about with more understanding. What she saw now brought such a rush of fear that, in spite of the baking her body had taken most of the day, set her shivering.

The mad off-worlder! While she had been lazing away the day he had done this!

Not only had he stripped away most of the decking on the main portion of the boat, but he had taken the sail, slit it into strips. To make what? The thing which rested on the shingle was a monstrous mixture of hide-cloth from the sail, pieces of wood ripped and then retied into what looked like a small boat—except that it was flat of bottom. To it, while she had been unconscious, he had also transferred and lashed into place the rest of their food hampers, and now he was coming for the water jars. Simsa’s cracked lips were splitting sore as she snarled up at him. He had left her no way of escape now.

She could either remain where she was, to die and dry like those blackened remnants behind the rocks, or be a part of his madness. Her claws came out of their sheaths and she growled, wanting nothing more than to make a red ruin of his smooth face, his large body. At bay, the water jars behind her, she faced him ready to fight. Better to die quickly than be baked in this furnace of a land.

He halted. At least he feared her a little. A spark of confidence awoke in Simsa at that. He had an off-world knife at his belt—port law allowed him no other weapons here. Let him use that against her claws—against the zorsals, if the creatures were recovered enough to obey her signal. She dropped Zass to the deck and heard the guttural battle cry arising in answer to her own emotion which the creature sensed. The other two lifted their wings, sidled along their perch—ready to fly, to attack—

“It is our only chance, you know,” he said evenly, as if they were discussing some market bargain.

Her fingers crooked and Zass screamed. Simsa tried to throw herself forward in one of her leaps, but her weakened body did not answer. She had to put out a hand to keep herself from slamming face down upon the deck.

“You have made it so—” She raised her head a fraction to snarl at him. “Give me clean death—you have the means—” she nodded to the knife he had made no effort to draw. “I never asked, never planned—”

He did not try to come any closer. She made a weak clucking noise and the zorsals did not take flight. Kill him, she thought miserably, and she would have nothing—no hope left. Did she still hope at all? She supposed that she did. All life which had a mind to think also clung to hope, even when that seemed impossible.

Not trying yet to get to her feet, the girl drew herself away on hands and knees from the water jars and let him take them—waving him towards them when he would have come to her instead. No, she would move on her own as long as she could. When that was no longer possible—well, there must be ways of ending. She would not be beholden to this mad alien for any easement now.

She accepted the food he offered her as the last signs of the sun went, the evening banners faded from the sea. She drank—no more than her share and some of that she gave to Zass. When he returned to the thing he had made, she loosened the front of her short coat and made a place for the zorsal. The other two had already winged their way to the waiting drag thing and were perched on the lashed hampers.

Simsa followed. There was a wind now off the sea, cool. She had never believed that she would feel cool again. The touch of it reached somehow into her, clearing her thoughts—though not smothering her inner rage—giving energy to her body.

Did the alien propose to drag that thing of his? Or would he harness the both of them to it and work her as well until they both yielded to heat and exhaustion?

If that was his plan, he would discover that she was not going to beg off—she would keep with him stride by stride as long as she could—or he would drive them both to the impossible. So when she came to stand beside him she looked for the drag ropes. There was only one—a single strand which she believed could not take the weight of the thing he had built.

He asked no help of her, but faced the drag carrier front on. His hand touched his belt for a moment. Then, to her amazement, the impossible happened before her eyes. There was a trembling of the carrier. It arose from the gravel and hung in the air—actually in the air—at least the height of her own knee. Picking up the lead rope, Thorn set off along the narrow beach and the thing floated after him as if it were some huge wingless zorsal, as obedient to his will as her own birds were to hers.

For a long moment, she simply watched what she still could not believe. Then she took off in a hurry, lest he vanish from sight. What new wonders he might bring into their service she could not guess, but now she would willingly accept all the strange tales which were told of the starmen and what they could do. Even though they never, as far as she knew, had demonstrated any such powers on this world before.

Her anger lost in her need to know how such a thing might be, Simsa slipped and slid, forgetting her drained strength until she came even with Thorn who walked steadily ahead, leading his floating platform.

“What do you do?” she got out between gasps of breath as she caught up. “What makes it hang so in the air?”

She heard him actually give a chuckle and then the look he turned on her was alive with sly humor.

“If you told those at the port what you now see, they would send me back to my home world, sentenced to stay out of space forever,” he told her, though he seemed only amused at being able to explain what must be a crime among his kind. “I have merely applied to this problem something common on other planets—ones more advanced than yours. And
that
is a deadly crime according to the laws by which we abide. There is a small mechanism I planted at the right spot back there—” he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder but did not turn his head, “which nullifies gravity to a small extent—”

“Nullifies gravity,” she repeated, trying to give the strange words the same sound as he had. “I do not know—some people believe in ghosts and demons, but Ferwar said they are mainly what those who believe in them make for themselves by their own fears—that you can believe in any bad dream or thing if you turn your full mind to it. But this is no ghost nor demon.”

“No. It is this.” They were into the cut of the valley now. The sea wind behind them made the passage more bearable now than she could ever have believed it could be when she had seen it by day. Now as he halted for a moment, it was still not too dark for her to make out what he pointed to as he repeated, “It is this.”

“This” was what appeared as a black box no bigger than could be covered by his hand were he to set that palm down over it. The thing rested directly in the middle of his drag carrier and now she could see that the cargo on board had been carefully stacked in such a way that the load must weigh evenly along the full length, leaving open only that one spot in the exact center vacant, the place in which sat the box.

“You toss a stone into the air and it falls,” he said, “it is the attraction of the earth which pulls it down. But if that attraction could be broken sufficiently—then your stone would float. On my world, we wear belts with such attachments which give us individual flying power when they are mated with another force. We can move also much heavier things than this with little trouble. Unfortunately, I could not smuggle through the field guards as large a nullifier as I wanted. This is limited; you see how close to the ground the weight holds it.

“There is this also—the power is limited. However, it is solar powered and here the sun can renew it, at least for the space in which I think we shall have need of it.”

Simsa could understand his words easily enough, but the concept they presented was so far from anything she had known that his speech was akin to a wild travel tale, such as the river traders might use to scare off the gullible from their own private ports of trade, as was well known they were apt to do. She thought of such a thing being attached to a belt so that one could share the sky with such as the zorsal and the uses one could put such skill to.

“The Thieves Guild,” she spoke aloud her own train of thought. “What they would not give for such as that! No,” a shiver which was not from the cooling of the wind shook her, “no, they would kill for that! Is it such as this that Lord Arfellen would hunt you for?”

She could not understand what such a thing would mean also to even a High Guild Lord.

“No,” Thorn returned. “It is just what I have said; what he wanted—what I am sure he still wants—is that which we are going to find, up ahead.”

That this off-world marvel gave them a better chance was what was paramount for Simsa now. Not that their way was too easy. At places the cut through which they made their way was near barricaded by fallen rocks, so that Thorn had to work his towed carrier carefully around stones which it had not power enough to lift above. Heartened by the fact that they did possess such a wonder to make easier their way, Simsa now hurried to lend a hand, steadying, or pushing, or helping to swing the thing back and forth to avoid its being caught.

Thorn did not push the pace. At intervals, he would stop to rest, more, Simsa guessed—though she did not want to admit that even to herself—on her account than from any need of his own. In the dark, the zorsals came to life, the younger two even taking wing now and then. Also, it would seem that this desert place held inhabitants after all, for one of her creatures, cruising high, gave a hunter’s cry and struck down to make a kill among the rocks, his brother doing the same not too long after.

Simsa called them in with a whistle. The off-worlder had snapped another stud on that belt of marvels and a beam of pale light answered, forming a ray ahead. Into that the younger of the zorsals flew after a hunting hoot, a dangling thing, which seemed mostly armored tail, in his forefeet. Simsa set Zass down on the bobbing carrier and her son offered the old zorsal the fresh caught prey which she ate eagerly with a crunching of what could be either scales or bones.

During one of their stops, Thorn showed the girl how the cooling of the stone condensed moisture carried by the sea wind which still was pulled up the cut as if the very force of the desert would draw it in. She laid her torn hand against that damp surface and wondered if there was not some way these precious wet drops could be made to add to their store of water. Drink they did—very sparingly from one of the jars, and ate now of dried meal and fish ground together and made into cakes. The fat which bound the other ingredients together was rancid, but fishermen lived on it at sea for weeks, and this was no country for the fastidious.

Simsa had no idea how far they had gone, though her feet felt numb—where they did not ache—while the cloth she had bound about them was torn to tatters. She had been too aware of the need for watching for any obstacle which could threaten the carrier, though perhaps the off-worlder was planning to use some other amazing thing to lighten their journey tomorrow. The girl only became aware of the paling of the night sky when he paused and said:

“We cannot risk day travel. Look there ahead—see where that slide has carried down the rocks? With this,” he laid hand on the side of the carrier so it swung a little under his touch, “set across the top of those we shall have a roof to give us some protection. But we must get the water jars and the food under it before sun rises.”

Simsa could help with that, using care to prop each water jar stable with small stones so there might not be any chance of a spill. Zass perched first on the lightened sled, which, when all burdens were removed, shot upward until Simsa gave a cry and Thorn hauled it down, bracing it, and then taking off the box and stationing it with the same care as she had used with the water jars, not within the shadow but on a flat rock where the sun would strike it.

He then touched her shoulder, half giving her a shove towards the improvised shelter.

“I am going up—” he pointed to the cliff nearest them. “Before it gets too hot, I want to try my bearings and see how near we are to the Hills.”

She was willing enough to leave that scramble to him, having no wish to expend further energy. Sitting down with her back to one of the rocks which supported the carrier, she busied herself with the windings about her sore feet. How foolish she had been not to bring with her a packet of Ferwar’s healing herbs; she could well do with them now. There was no grease left. However, under the strips of rags which held them on her feet, the sandals were still stout enough so that she was not walking bare of foot—not yet.