The Game of Stars and Comets (58 page)

There was no shelter on the plains. One felt naked, I discovered, without the wagon which had always served as the center part of any camp I had known. Still we must select a site before the coming of dark, having no lanterns to give us that small protection our own species find from fire or light as dusk closes in.

At length I settled on place backed by a ridge, one of those small conformations which the height of the grass half hid. That grass itself I hacked away to bare a stretch of ground. The sun had dried it sufficiently that it might be heaped into small mounds on which we could spread our blankets. Only I would set no fire to be a signal in the night.

The gars, loosed of their packs, grazed in a circle, now and then lifting a head with nostrils expanded to catch the rising night wind which carried no sickly taint in warning. We sat side by side, munching each on a single pressed cake of the journey food, discovering that every bite must be chewed a long time before it was soft enough to swallow.

During all the journey we had exchanged very few words. Now I wanted desperately to forget—if only for a short space—the mission which sent us north. Perhaps I should bring out the tapes and their reader, listen to my father's words in preparation for what might face us tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. For I could not calculate as to how long it would be before we would chance on what was left of Mungo's. Only, in that hour, I dared not do that. To listen so might break through the metal-hard resolve which kept me going. So, in a kind of desperation, I asked a question:

"You travel like a loper—have you gone far?"

She retorted with another question:

"This north land is not strange to you, is it?"

"No, if you have heard of my father you must also know what men say—said—of him. That he hunts what he cannot find and pushes into places better left alone."

"I know. That is why I sought him—and you—out. You ask if I have traveled far—yes—both in body and in mind—"

"I do not understand—" If one traveled in body, then certainly one's mind also went the same distance, I thought foggily. I was becoming aware now of my fatigue. Perhaps I still could not think clearly as I had before the storm had struck and changed my life.

"What do you know of healers?" She sat crosslegged on her blanket-spread sleeping mound. The sun was down but we still had twilight so I could see her face. That was smooth of expression; now it seemed to me as if she wore a mask, and what lay behind that mask might be very different from what men thought.

"As much as anyone who lopes Voor. What you have is a talent which cannot be learned, for the seeds of it are in you at birth. Though you must also stay with an elder of your kind from childhood, learning all she may teach, so that your talent is refined, as the miners reduce raw ore into metal."

"Well said," she answered. "All of it true—to a point. Only this we also know—that our healing does not work with an off-worlder, for a man, woman, or child must believe before the cure begins. While the off-worlders who visit us, even some settlers of the first generation, cannot accept what we have to offer. Therefore, a part of our talent grows out of Voor itself, has roots here and perhaps this gift has other purposes of which we are still ignorant."

"So you seek for an answer to such another purpose in the Shadow doomed places?"

"A year ago," she did not answer me directly, nor even look at me, instead turned her head a fraction so that her eyes were on the fast-falling dark and the grazing gars who were near formless bulks moving slowly in their circle about us. "I was at the holding of Bethol s'Theo—I had gone there on a call reaching me while I was beside the sea gathering the kor weed from which we make a soothing drink for the very young. Only another had been close enough to answer the calling first. She—her name was Catha and she also came from the north and from one of the Shadowed places—it was named Uthor's hold."

She paused as if expecting some word of recognition from me but I could not give it. We had visited seven of the Shadow ruins. Two had been old and even my father could not put name to them, though he grasped quickly at any hint of lore concerning such.

"The one for whom the call was made was not born in Bethol's hold, nor was his name even known. He was found on the shore after a great storm, and the belief was that he was thrown or had crawled out of the fury of the sea. Yet no one ventures out upon the sea at that season—and at other times there is no reason for going far beyond the shore with the fishing fleet—"

She was very right. On other worlds there were stretches of sea between masses of land. I had seen such configurations on the tapes my father used to teach me something of the past of our species. But Voor was different—here was one great mass of land which extended completely around the world and the two seas framing it were narrow and dangerous, rent by sudden storms which churned them into death traps. Men only traveled on land—as yet so thinly settled there was not much need for the stretching out—and there was always the Shadow menace to be feared in new places.

"His hurts of body were not so serious," Illo was continuing. "Catha laid the healing on him and those wounds closed cleanly, were beginning to renew fresh, unharmed flesh. But his mind was rent worse than any blow to a skull could have made it. So—just as she reached into the wounds to drive out the infection and bring healing, so did Catha enter his mind—"

I drew a sharp breath. There was something in me which recoiled instinctively from such an action as Illo described. Now the girl turned to me full face, and there was no longer a mask upon her features, rather her mouth was stern set, a spark shone deep in her eyes, a spark which might have been the seed of anger.

"Where there is a need, there the healer serves. Does it matter if it is a shattered body—or a shattered mind?" she demanded.

"Perhaps that is so. Still—would you if you could throw open your mind to another, make
all
your thoughts plain? I cannot believe that many would say 'yes' if you asked them that."

She sat silent for a long moment and then nodded slowly. "So one who is not a healer would answer so, to that I will agree. But minds can be healed, and if we know this to be true, then should we not also use our talent to accomplish that? Think about it, Bart s'Lorn. Would you want to go on living with a broken mind, babbling incoherently, perhaps rising to a fury which would set you to kill the innocent?

"However, Catha did try to apply to this man the healing power of the mind. I was there and I followed where I could, giving also of my strength and will. And she was succeeding," excitement had crept now into Illo's voice, "I tell you she was doing what she willed. Then—it came—a shadow, a darkness—it struck—both at the man—and at Catha—so that she herself had to withdraw swiftly into unconsciousness. The man lay screaming of monstrous things which he saw gathered around him, tormenting him. Catha remained for hours in her own withdrawal sleep. When she came again to knowledge—she was changed.

"In her there was a purpose as strong as any healing power. She knew something she would not share with us—even with me who had tried to sustain her. She went to the man and she—killed!"

I was as startled as if the Shadows came down upon us. For what Illo had said was against all right, all reason, all sanity. No healer could kill. One could use her talent to ward off physical danger—but to kill—no!

"It is true," the girl cried now as if I had denied her story. "For I saw it. She killed, and then she went out of the holding, and she would speak to no one. Also—there was that clinging to her as might a journey cloak which made all whom she met turn aside and give her room. Nor was she seen or heard of again. Until—"

"Until—" I prompted when she had been some time silent.

"Until I dreamed. I think that she learned something in that broken mind, something of so great a horror that when it came alive or awake at her striving to heal, it was a threat to everything which moves a healer. She fled from it at first, and then she knew that it had risen because of what she had tried to do and perhaps she alone could put it to flight. So she turned against her nature and it died. After that she must seek—"

"For what?" I was deep into the spell of her story. No man knows his world wholly, nor does he so know himself. What seemed an act of blasphemy might have been indeed one of courage as upstanding as a feast candle flame.

"For the answer. I tried to find her for I feared that after her act she might choose to die also. Twice I had word of a woman seen by Voorlopers—though never close enough that they could hail her. She was heading north. Then—I was at Styn's Settlement where there was a child with a broken leg and there the dream came. I saw Catha as if she stood beside my bed, clear and bright.

"Her face was anxious as if she faced some great task and she looked to me. It was a calling, a true calling, though it came in a way which I never heard tell before that a calling might. I waited two days until I knew that the child was healing and then I started north—"

"And you think this was all a thing connected with the Shadows?"

Illo shrugged. "How can I tell? Save the calling is still with me and it leads north. I thought first of the only Shadow doomed place I knew—that of Voor's Grove. So it was there I planned to go—but it may not be any place I yet know. And Mungo's Town was also Shadow rent."

"What do you believe this Catha is doing—or trying to do?"

"Again I do not know. Only I cannot deny her—or the calling. Have we not all long hunted some answer to the Shadow doom? Fifty planet years have those of our blood settled here. The first years—they were good—you have heard the stories of those, many times—all children listen. Then—something happened—there are no records of what it was or where the ill began. One by one the northern holds and settlements were Shadowed—died—except for such as you and I—a few children—babies—who were Voor born—who lived—but could not remember. If Catha has found a beginning or even a path which will lead to the answer—"

"Such a search is madness!" I interrupted her sharply. "You know what doom the Shadows bring—" As had my father who had also spent his life in such a search.

"Who or what are the Shadows?" She asked the same question which had lain earlier in my own mind. "Did not your father ever seek answers just as Catha has done? You went willingly with him—"

"Not all the way. He would never let me enter the ruins."

"True. But all he learned there he shared with you, did he not? You see, before I dreamed I went to Portcity and there I asked access to such of his recordings as are known. He left very few there—only answers the authorities demanded from time to time. I listened, I watched. Perhaps he—and now you—know the most of any now living on Voor."

"Which is very little—no more than you could have read in the official tapes."

"Yes, and those tapes which you brought with you," she sat quietly, her hands resting palm upwards on her knees as if she mutely asked for something which could fill them.

Why had I clung to the tapes? I had told myself that they might provide us with a guide—to what? Not Mungo's, for we had never returned there. To my own private questions? I had heard them many times over and never been the wiser.

"I don't know!" My voice was over-loud; in answer I heard Witol grunt heavily out of what was now the true night darkness, as if he too questioned me in some way. "I know nothing more than the tapes."

"You were very close to your father—did he never try to awake your memory?"

"No!" my reply was as quick and hot. "He never asked—he never let the Portcity medics see me when I was little—" That much I could remember, of staying hidden in the wagon whenever we were forced, when my father could not prevent it, to visit that stronghold of the off-worlders. It had been three years or more before he took me with him into the town. In some way I understood he had feared for me. What had he known from his own days off-world that had made him so reluctant to have me questioned?

"Me they tried," she said then and there was a cold note in her voice. "They decided I was memory blocked—"

"But—but that is off-world technique!" I protested. "Do you mean that the Shadow doom is not of Voor—?"

"It is of Voor," her reply was flat. "There is probably more than one way of closing a child's memory—a small child's. Great terror can do it naturally, drugs perhaps—even interference such as one who has the healer's knowledge can use for evil. I think your father knew, or suspected something—that is what he went searching for, always protected in a safe suit. How did he even get such as that? They are not common issue on Voor where it has been generations since the First-In Scouts downed ship here and found—at that time—nothing of a menace."

"I don't know where he got it. He—he just unpacked it one day and used it."

"Used it needlessly—if his reports were correct."

"Yes."

Suddenly then her hands flew upwards, covered her ears. She bent forward as one who has a sharp pain thrust through mid-body.

"The calling!" she cried aloud. There was fear in her voice.

"Now?" I was on my feet, staring out into the dark, turning slowly.

There was no longer any crunching sound from the grazing gars. Instead I heard the thump of a hoof beating hard on the earth in half challenge, such a sound as Witol made should he meet the lead bull of another loper team—a warning as well as a recognition of the other's equal status.

"Never has it come thus before—" her voice trailed away. "We are right—our course lies ahead."

"I go only to do what my father asked of me." My voice sounded sullen in my own ears. I was not going to be drawn into her mysterious quest for a healer who had betrayed her kind by killing. I did not want to know what lay behind the wall in my memory, even if that was what
she
sought.

"Well enough—" the pain and startlement had gone out of her voice. With the moon yet to rise I could not see more of her than a formless lump on the improvised bed place. "Follow your path as I must mine, Voorloper. Still I believe that those trails are one and the same."