The Forerunner Factor (29 page)

She was vaguely conscious of an increasing warmth. Even though her eyes were closed, Simsa sensed that the sun-and-moons of her rod were alight. In a way both fed her strength for this weird voyaging of thought—as well as building in her the imperative need for action. Was it chance, or some virtue of the rod, that led her into a thought leap to the mind of a crewman coming off duty and making his way along one of the narrow corridors to meet one of his fellows?

Duty—a regular duty for this one—checking. Simsa became sharply intent.

Beyond the wall where his hand now rested, she picked up the hazy idea of a cavity, within it another ship—a much smaller one. Yes, the Elder One identified, and the Burrows Simsa understood—an escape of a kind. Let this larger ship be injured, its powers fail—then some of those it bore across the star fields would have a way of seeking safety.

Duty—let him do his duty of inspecting the readiness of that Life Boat. The girl allowed herself to issue a thought order, uncertain as to how she could control this newly discovered power of which her Burrower half was still more than half-afraid.

He placed his hands against the wall. Facing the blankness in which her blurred half-vision could see no break, he applied weight. There was a parting of the corridor’s skin and he went in, scraping his body in the narrow space between small ship and the wall of the lock that held it.

There was this to be checked—and that. Each Simsa listed, knowing that such information would never be lost to her now. Room for perhaps three bodies such as hers to lie in cushioned space. She followed his thoughts as he fingered a lever, a button. About them would rise the other simple controls—a foam of protective sealing to preserve the passengers against the shock of ship launching and of its landing.

That button set the strange brain of the ship itself at work, seeking out the nearest world that would give its passengers a chance for life. This lever would assert the right pattern for an orbital descent—and a landing. There were supplies that could be used for a space of time. Those, too, the crewman checked. Simsa released her tap upon his thoughts, drew back into her own inert body.

So, this ship was not wholly a space-borne prison as she had feared. Escape in that smaller vessel could be possible.

She centered a goodly part of her mind on that, leaving only a sentry of the Burrows Simsa on duty against discovery. There was, she realized, and knew she must busy herself with that, a good reason why the Elder One who had awaited so long the coming of her twin had not become sole ruler in her. The Burrows Simsa had cunning and training which that great one had never had to develop down the years.

Once more, she quested for that officer who desired her, who was tempted, who wanted power. He was not with the others but alone—and he was building thought-by-thought to action, examining one proposal against another. A net! Yes, a net such as a fisherman would draw. A net wherein to catch her—hold her. How? This ship he might indeed command. But she was certain that he proposed not to share with another any part of what he was planning. The Life Boat!

For a second, Simsa was astounded. Then she picked up the most vivid picture as if the eyes of her body saw this thing. Herself, drugged, sleeping and this would-be possessor of power casting off in the Life Boat, bound into space. Now his thoughts hazed, became a whirling circle of small bits of desire which might have been lifted from dreams. He strode through all of these like a conqueror in a world his own will might have laid waste.

Simsa opened her eyes, cut the questing tie. There was the slight sound of metal against metal as that hand-sized hatch through which had come food and water opened.

She reached out for the cup of liquid. It appeared pure water, but she distrusted now everything within this prison of a ship. Simsa offered it to the zorsal. Zass dipped a beak to stir the surface of what was within the cup. She did not suck, instead her head swirled a fraction on her long neck as she looked to Simsa, uttering the smallest of croaks, raising her wings a fraction.

Simsa sat up, setting the cup back on its tray. For all their greedy feeding when food and drink were before them, the zorsals possessed keen senses of both taste and smell, far keener than any humanoid Simsa had ever met.

She took up the rod and held it above the cup. Slowly, a greenish tinge, so faint that it could only be seen by one who, as herself, was searching, polluted the water. No poison. No, they were too intent upon squeezing her dry of all they could learn. Was this of the man’s devising or a trick of that so-called healer who would be called then to minister to the ill and so get time for some of the examinations she wished?

It did not matter. Simsa slipped off the sleeping shelf and visited each of those spy buttons. Though the effort was weakening, she changed the projected images she had set up there—strove to seal new ones in place before she stood in the center of her small prison, Zass on her shoulder, her hands both closed tightly about the stem of the rod, thinking.

Had that drug been given by the man, then it was close to time when he must act. Of the two, she thought him the greater threat. How soon would he be on his way here to see how his plan had worked? If he was the one who spied upon her, and she thought he was, he would see her drink the water, fall back upon her bed, Zass also asleep across her breast. Would that image hold long enough? When she would not be here to reinforce it?

Already she had taken two steps forward to the door. It was undoubtedly locked, though she had not tried it. Now she traced the outline of its length and breadth with the moon crescent tips. The compartment door opened. Zass took off from her shoulder, hovered in the air beating her wings, her beaked head turning from side to side to view either end of the corridor before the curve of the passage made further sight impossible.

Simsa needed no contact with the zorsal. As all her kind, Zass had not only superior sight but also hearing. With the zorsal now on guard, the girl found the lock holding the Life Boat without any worry she would not be warned. Though, as she made her way there, she was surprised to find the passages so empty. It was almost as if they had been cleared to draw her into some type of trap. So strong was this impression that as she paused along the way, her attention ever upon Zass, she also released, in a little, her own questing sense.

Now at her goal, she opened the hatch of the small podlike escape ship—an easy exercise, perhaps made so by the very fact that those who might depend upon it for escape could come here injured or even shocked near to madness by whatever catastrophe made escape necessary.

For a long moment, she merely looked within, studying those same buttons and levers that she had seen the crewman test, drawing out of memory his knowledge of what was necessary for those taking shelter in the pod.

Now . . . the larger ship. Though Simsa of the Burrows had but the most limited knowledge of a space ship, and the Elder One whose awakened self had melded with hers knew ships far more intricate than this, she had some idea of the fact that there were indeed two spaces—one that made each star (to those looking up from planets) but a pinpoint of light far removed, and that other which was far different—a kind of timeless, distantless place or nonplace into which the ship entered for a lengthy voyage and which would be unmeasured by man, only by the highly developed, thinking machines. So might a ship travel between spaces Simsa of Kuxortal could not even measure.

Now—if an escape pod was loosed while the ship was in this no-time, no-space sea, would it indeed transfer those in it into real time, onto a real planet, or would it and its passengers be lost forever, to float in that place without future?

Still, it had been fashioned for escape. And all the accidents that could happen to the parent ship and make its use necessary—were they only to occur in normal space, in the orbiting of a planet, perhaps? If that were so . . . Simsa held the rod between her palms and it gave gentle heat to where the coldness of fear had begun to stiffen her body and send dark fingers of foreboding into her mind.

There was a sharp hiss from behind her—Zass had entered the lock and her message of warning was plain. Unconscious of what she did or why, Simsa slid into the Life Boat, the zorsal once more settling upon her, wide-held wings over her breasts.

Her entrance—what had she done!

Fear arose in a wave of harsh terror, which, once again, overflowed the ancient Simsa, leaving only the girl of the Burrows cowering against the padded resting place. Whether or not the Life Boat was meant to be used now, it was reacting to her entrance as it had not to that of the spaceman—

It was as if she had been felled by a blow struck by one of the slinking lawless males of the Burrows. Into dark Simsa whirled, both her selves cut off from light, thought, perhaps even life.

She awoke almost with the same speed as she had been struck down. How long had she lain there? Time had no meaning. But her thoughts stirred along with her body. There was no mistaking the vibration of this small craft which held her as tightly as a shell enclosed the shapeless form of ant-crab. The Life Boat was clearly set on its own voyage—into the place where space was not—or bound for the nearest planet, to a point where her recklessness had launched it.

There was nothing she could do but wait—and neither Simsa of the Burrows nor the ancient one she was twin to could lie easy under that curtain of the unknown. Zass hissed but she did not move, except to raise her head a fraction so that her large beads of eyes met directly those of the girl. There was no fear in them, and Simsa knew a spark of pain and guilt. To the zorsal she was the protector, the all-powerful, and the creature was content to await the girl’s action.

There was nourishment in containers within reach of Simsa’s hands as she lay. These held no threat of drugs so she shared with the zorsal a bulb to be squeezed so that a slightly sourish-tasting water refreshed them and she divided, amid falling crumbs, a cake of compressed dry rations.

Time did pass under a fashion. She slept and perhaps Zass did, too. There was no break in the vibration of the humming walls. Purposely, Simsa tried to wipe from her mind all but a single fact. The craft that bore her had been fashioned to preserve life. All the efforts of those who had formed it had been bent only to that one cause. Therefore, let her believe that she would emerge unharmed.

Three times the feeding procedure came and went and then there was a difference in the feel of the craft. Simsa was tempted to send out thought, but that needed another mind to link—and here there was none save herself and Zass.

The vibration’s thrum grew louder until the girl curled into a ball, her fingers thrust into her ears to deaden a sound that was as painful as any cut of a Guild Man’s lash back in the stews from which the Burrowers came.

Pain from that rousing whine—then a crash. Simsa’s body was driven back against the far wall of the craft by the force of that. Her head cracked against uncushioned metal above the bed place. But, through the agony of that blow, she saw that same door which had closed to entrap her raising in a series of jerks. Finally, it stuck and, on her knees Simsa now brought up both hands to push, for a moment forgetting the rod. Zass squeezed through the opened slit and a moment later, Simsa heard the zorsal give tongue in sheer fury and pain.

That brought her to her senses and she swung the rod upward, centering all her will on winning free. The door shuddered, began to glow. Heat from it fanned back against her own nearly bare body. Still she held until, with a last clang of protest, whatever had jammed it gave away and she was able to pull herself up and out—upon the refuge world.

That had been three days past. Simsa stirred within the cloak she had made from two stored coverings in the Life Boat. No moon, no sun—the haze would darken and so suggest night for a time, then flame again into this baking fury. The boat had landed close to this flowing stream of sand. Having no other guide, she had started to walk along that, well-aware that the downed craft would be broadcasting an alarm steadily. She had no mind to meet any would-be rescuers until she knew who—or what—such would be.

They had come a long way, she carrying Zass under the shelter of her enveloping cloak, for the zorsal could not stand the heat reflected from the rock. She had traveled by night and in the day, there was nothing in the way of shelter—only this ever-stretching rock and the moving river of sand.

Though she had dug a little into the river, she had found not a hint of moisture and she had no idea what moved it with a visible current. The bag of supplies from the boat were all that now stood between them and a death that would leave dried remains of girl and zorsal on the never-changing rock.

2

Though she had slept, or rather lost consciousness in an unquiet doze, Simsa was well-aware that she had near reached the end of her strength. There had been no change in the land, no sign that these plains of rock had ever supported life as she knew it. Still a feeling was also always with her, growing the stronger when she stopped to rest at the coming of greater heat, that she and Zass were not alone, that her shuffling advance was observed and weighed. She had searched the air uselessly for sight of a sharp-eyed flyer, glared back at rock until her eyes ached and teared. Nothing.

Nothing but the silent slip of the sand river. Not for the first time, Simsa put Zass gently to one side and, pulling the cloak well under her to shield her bare flesh from the heated stone, lay belly flat to stare at that strange ever-flowing current. There was something about the queer eddies that now and then troubled the yellow-gray surface that kept her from investigating by touch. Also, where could she find a branch or such to prod beneath that same scum-thick surface? Her rod she would not so defile.

She had no way of telling the passing of true time here, but she was sure that the haze was darkening and that soon it would be time to move on again. If she could force herself to rise, to set her feet on the still warm rock . . . But to go where? There was nothing ahead, certainly—at least she could see nothing. She did not even turn her head to look again.