The Forerunner Factor (41 page)

“Against your own officer, against such as Greeta?” she interrupted. “Do not speak such foolishness. The cabin—yes, it was safe enough! There were hidden places through which I could be watched, every movement of mine noted. But the Elder One could meet them trick for trick there!” She laughed.

“Not so!” His hand formed a fist which he slammed into the rock, not seeming to notice the pain that gesture must have caused him. “You would be an honored guest. As for leaving Kuxortal, how long would you have lasted had any one of the lordlings of the upper town known the power you could wield? Speak of having your secrets out of you—they are experts at such games and far rougher than any off-worlder can guess.”

“So!” She cut him short. “The Elder One could have handled anyone coming with steel and fire. But suppose your officer, your Greeta, came to let into my ‘safe place’ some air to breathe which would have tied me into sleep. That was but
one
of the things they considered. Though they were not working together. No, off-worlder, I would rather take my chances on this rock than with them. The ploys of the lords I know—the crafts and slyness of your people are something else again!”

He shrugged and slipped down, his back against the rock, his hands dangling between his knees, nor had he again taken up his weapon. It was Simsa who gathered it up and tossed it to thud on the rock before him.

“We are but at the gateway of a place we may be able to defend. And the fog which protects is going.” The cooling of the rod within her hand was a warning, and the drifting of the curtain was indeed showing thin.

He did not answer her, only pulled himself up once again, holding on to the rock. It seemed to Simsa that there was now a grayish shade to his face as though the color of the rock had somehow oozed into him even during the moments that he had been resting.

She did not wait to see if he would follow, but was already in search of that way down which she had found before. Along that she climbed, the rod made fast to her girdle, using hands and toes with all the dexterity she had learned in Kuxortal. When she reached the top of the second and much taller block, the haze that had surrounded them in their journey hither had indeed threaded itself away. The sky was darker than she had ever seen it.

Calling Zass to her, she settled the zorsal on a rock point from which she could view most of the surrounding territory, including a bit of that second sand river which might offer a new threat. Simsa rolled what she had left of the cloak-made rope into a mat and settled her head upon it. The Elder One might have in her time gone without sleep to a great degree—Simsa had come to suspect that when she discovered she needed less and less rest since her body had provided shelter for the ageless one—but a body was only flesh, blood, and bone after all and also had its demands.

She was straightway plunged into a deep dark where no dreams troubled her rest. If Thorn joined her on her perch, she neither knew nor cared. She no longer depended upon anyone or anything but herself and the zorsal, for Zass’s single-minded loyalty had never changed, and as a camp guard the zorsal was the best.

There was the contrasting brightness of the midmorning haze when she opened her eyes again. An arm’s length away lay the spaceman on his back, his eyes closed, the dried blood on his chin cracking and flaking off as he drew in long, slow breaths. Zass’s cry came—faint, but growing stronger as Simsa sat up and shook loose the silver lengths of her hair, combing it clumsily with her fingers. The zorsal made her usual circling descent and landed just in front of the girl. Her forepaws were tight to her body and so sheltered and protected she carried there a branch heavily laden with fruit. There was only one place the zorsal could have found that—she had been within the hidden valley. But it was what was woven around the branch that caught Simsa’s attention a moment later. A tubing of some kind, transparent enough to show that it was filled near to bursting with the blue water of the pool—and that was not Zass’s gift! Someone of the furred ones had wished the girl well enough to send that.

Simsa gave a sigh. For the second time in her life, she felt at one with something larger than herself. The first had been when she had fronted that statue of the Elder One which had contained the essence of she who had waited and watched for so long—and now, when she could believe that those of the valley cared, even in so little!

9

Simsa scrupulously drank and ate only half of the bounty the zorsal had brought. Like it or not, the sleeping spaceman at her side was still her responsibility. Zass squatted down, clapping and folding her wings, to sit licking at her body fur where sticky smears suggested that she had fed well before she returned to the two now stranded on the rock ledge.

Having appeased a measure of her body’s need, the girl went to the edge of the block on which they had taken refuge to survey the narrow ribbon of flowing sand that lay between them and the barriers of the valley. There were no ominous writhings on its surface, nothing to suggest that there lay danger beneath that smooth roll. But she did not in the least believe that if she ventured into that murky stuff (and she had no idea as to how deep it was), she would not be in such danger as her imagination was only too willing to suggest.

Her hook and rope trick could not work again. There was no convenient hole in the rock across the stream to catch her grapple and she had sacrificed so much of the rope length since she had knotted it together she was sure it would not span that space. Through squinted eyes, she viewed the escarpment on the other side. The haze appeared a fraction brighter, nearly as irritating to her sight as the fire in the dark tunnel had been. She dug into the memory of Simsa of the Burrows and tried to pluck forth an answer to her problem.

There was a chance—she looked to where the zorsal squatted. Zass had moved closer to the sleeping or unconscious spaceman, now and then stealthily putting forth a paw as if to touch him but quickly jerking back the limb before the gesture was complete. The zorsal apparently found the man the object of infinite curiosity—even though she had once traveled for days in his company on Kuxortal.

Simsa turned to face the plain over which they had come. Though none of those ominous lumpings of sand were being spit forth from the fissures, and no yellow tentacles had thrust up into sight, she knew that to set foot again on that surface was to offer a challenge to the sand dwellers.

The Elder One—she shook her head violently. No, she would open no doors, would have no part in lending her body to the other’s superior wisdom! No appeal to the Elder One.
She
was the Simsa of the here and now, and as such she would solve—

Her thoughts were broken by a hacking cough. The eyes of the man were open, and he had lifted himself up to lean on one elbow and regard her.

After one measuring glance, his gaze shifted to the rocks about them, the heights beyond the sand stream. The tip of his tongue crossed cracked lips. Simsa moved, bringing to him half of Zass’s bounty, which she had spared in spite of her own thirst and hunger. Thorn sat up, squeezing first a portion of the water into his mouth.

“Where does this come from?” He weighed the still not empty tube in his hand. Perhaps it was the needs of his body that made his voice so harsh.

Simsa could see nothing to be gained now in keeping the valley oasis a secret. Without his flitter, Thorn could not return to any of his own kind who might be encamped where she had brought down the Life Boat. Nor did she undervalue the dwellers within and their powers. They had already brought an end to one invader of their world and could hold them both at their pleasure.

“There.” She pointed to the rock wall that raised such a formidable barrier against them. “There is water, fruit—a place of growing things.”

“There is also more, is there not?” he returned, breaking one of the blue fruit apart, licking the pulp from his grimed and stone-bruised hands. “That whirlwind which struck a little too quickly and accurately. Your people—your home world?” He gestured with sticky fingers at what lay about.

“No!”

“But one you know well enough to be not only able to survive, but to protect yourself against any dangerous surprise.”

She was not aware that she had once more pressed the crescent-crowned rod between her breasts until there was a feeling of small warmth in it. She glanced down and saw the points of light like two gleaming Caperian sapphires, glistening where there was no sun to draw such an answer.

She did not know this world. But—did the Elder One? At least that inward dweller had matched the power of the furred one quickly enough. They might have been old partners in such a defense, or weapon.

“I do not know this world.” She held her voice steady; in at least half she was speaking the truth. “You are a star traveler—I am not. I cannot read the star maps. And Life Boats choose the nearest world which has breathable air for those seeking escape—so your own instructions to voyagers read. If this was the nearest world on which we could breathe . . . then that was it. I did not pilot the Life Boat. Who can?”

“Still, there is other life here besides those monsters of the sand.”

He chewed the last of the fruit skin and swallowed it. Then he picked up the water-bearing tube and swung it slowly back and forth as if intending by this gesture to refute any easy lie that might occur to her. “Your zorsal did not fill this—that I will not believe—no matter how well the creature has been trained.”

“You do not truly train a zorsal!” she snapped, playing for time before she made that other answer which she must truly give. “Yes, that was filled—by others—another. But I know no more of this world than that others
do
abide. And they are not humanoid, though they appeared to me well-intentioned.”

To her, perhaps, but she did not forget the raising of the whirlwind—nor, apparently, did he, for he gave a harsh sound that might have been laughter, except there was no lighting of that in his expression.

“They are well-intentioned?” Thorn made both a question and an accusation out of those four words.

“To me—to Zass—welcome was given.”

“But not to any scouring their skies—is that it?” He had lifted himself as far as his knees. Now with effort, Simsa making no move to aid him, he got to his feet and crossed to her side where he might look down at that sinister, half-solid flood circling there.

“How did you cross before?” he wanted to know, having stood a long moment in silence.

Tell him of the light path of belief—No! But the grapple anyone knowing of the Burrows would well accept as natural. She explained what she had done and that it could not serve them now because of the lack of torn-fabric rope and the fact that there was no anchor on the other bank.

Thorn did not even answer her. Instead, he leaned well out, back once again on his knees, looking along that section of this heap of stone which fronted on the river.

“If I knew how deep . . .” He might have been voicing some thought aloud. Now he slipped from its loop on his belt the ray weapon he had used in their flight. Knocking the small charge from the butt into his hand, he examined it closely.

“To set foot on that—” Simsa did not know what he intended, but she was sure that anything venturing on the sand stream would sink beyond aid, even if he or she was not attacked instantly by the dwellers therein. But Thorn was not peering downward. Rather, he turned his head to the left to inspect the edge of the platform on which they now perched. The new vigor of his movements revealed he must have made up his mind about something as he got to his feet. He spoke with the old authority she remembered well from the days of their first meeting on Kuxortal.

“If that rock—the one with the three lumps along it—is undercut, it will fall forward. Two more cuts there and there”—he used the barrel of his weapon as a pointer—“ought to bring down a rockslide. Let that reach this river and we may well have a dam over the top of which we can pass—if we are fast enough.”

“You can do this with your weapon?”

He nodded, but was frowning. “I believe so, but it will also near exhaust this charge, and if we meet with trouble beyond . . .” He shrugged.

He was not fashioned to show much patience in the face of danger. Simsa had sensed that from the hour of their first meeting. Neither was she. But the path on the other side of that flood was a rough and narrow one, twice forcing her farther away from the proposed crossing to cling like a nix-beetle to the stone and edge along. If the inhabitants of the stream were aroused, a mere crossing of their dwelling place was not going to bring much safety. On the other hand, to remain spinelessly where they now perched would achieve nothing either.

Simsa turned the rod around in her hands, rolling it back and forth between her palms. Might this weapon-tool of the Elder One serve also? Best not try, she decided swiftly. She needed all her native wits about her; she had no idea of turning any part of their escape over to that indweller. It might well be that the Elder One had no wish to get Thorn free of the valley or even continue to allow him life.

Her own attitude toward the off-worlder had made such a number of subtle changes lately that she could not be sure she would be able to rise and combat the Elder One on that point. So she remained silent, offering no assistance.

He was very careful in the aiming of his weapon, several times lying belly down upon the rock and then getting up to move again when the proposed angle of the beam seemed not to his liking. But at length he fired.

The ray that shot from the barrel was wider than before and there was also a puff of acrid smoke which set her eyes to watering and made Zass squawk indignantly and take to flight. Nor did the zorsal return; rather, she winged out and up toward the rim of the hidden valley.

However, the fire sprayed across the lumped rock that was Thorn’s choice for undercutting, the stone disappearing as if it had never had existence. The block fell forward. To Simsa’s astonishment, for she had not really believed in Thorn’s promise, two other huge stones followed, crashing into the first and driving it on into the river.