The Forerunner Factor (3 page)

Gathar was striding down the wide aisle of his main warehouse as she flitted in, keeping prudently to shadows as she always did. She had no need to call the zorsals. Through the dusk of the large building they came planing down to encircle her and their crippled mother, uttering sharp cries, their voices so high the girl could hardly distinguish them, though she had learned long ago that her hearing was keener than that of most of the Burrow people.

Their dam lifted her undamaged wing and fanned it, the leathery surface whispering through the air. At some signal from her which Simsa, for all her familiarity with the creatures, had never been able to catch, they went silent. The girl did not try her throat talk with them, rather padded on in a noiseless, barefooted tread until she rounded a mountain of crates to confront the waremaster himself.

He was in a good mood, showing teeth in a grin which suggested more a desire to devour than to please, but Simsa knew that of old. Now she made a single slight gesture with one hand—his eyes narrowed, were instantly drawn to the bag she shouldered. He pointed up the ramp which led to the quarters from which he could watch all the activity below. As Simsa ran lightly ahead of him, she heard his voice bellow an order or two before he followed. She was frowning, wondering just how much it would be worth to share a little of the truth with him. Their relationship had never developed any difficulties, but then she had always been the one with a necessary commodity to offer. Truth came very high in Kuxortal, sometimes beyond the power of any to buy.

As the bag thudded from her shoulder to the top of a table littered with sheets of tough grif-reed paper, all scrawled upon with untidy lines of crooked script, Simsa had her story fully in order.

“What’s to do, Shadow?” Gathar asked. She saw, with satisfaction, that he closed the door behind him. So he thought that she might have something to offer worth serious notice.

“The Old One died. Some things she had worth selling to learned ones in the high towers. I have heard there are such who pore over such bits and pieces, just as mad about them as was the Old One. Look!” The girl opened her bag and dragged out several slabs of the inscribed stone.

“I don’t deal in such.” However, he came nearer, leaned over to peer at the markings.

“As we both know. But there is a profit in such, I have heard.”

He was grinning again.

“Go to Lord Arfellen. He has taken a fancy these past two seasons to having men grub for such since that mad starman talked with him so long and then went off hunting a treasure which he never found. At least he never returned here with it.”

Simsa shrugged. “Treasures are never lying easily about for one to pick up. The gateman at the High Place would never look or listen to a Burrower. I know that you shall take a goodly portion.” She grinned in turn, her teeth so white in her black face as to startle one who did not know her. “But the Old One is dead—I have plans—I will give you these for fifty silver bits.”

He exploded as she knew he would, but she also knew the signs—Gathar was caught. Perhaps he might use her bits and pieces to sweeten the temper of this lord he spoke of, gain some favor from him. That was the way Guild’s men worked. They fell to serious bargaining then, and each was a worthy match for the other.

2

Simsa turned this way and that, studying her reflection. The slab of cracked mirror wedged up on one end in the back of the frowzy tent gave one only a crooked view, but she nodded briskly in satisfaction at what she saw. The dealer in old clothes (undoubtedly many of her wares stolen) stood to one side so she could keep an eye on both the girl and the forepart of the tent which lay beyond the half division of a much mended curtain. Simsa strove to catch a glimpse of her back over one shoulder.

She had, she was very certain, chosen well and made the string of trade tokens, plus one of her bits of broken silver go farther than most she knew who dealt in this part of the market. Now, she stooped and gathered up the smock and underpants she had discarded and rolled those into a bundle, which she tied up into a shawl of a drab and dusty grey. The shawl she had insisted on sale-gift. It had a number of holes but it was still serviceable for transport purposes.

However, the girl who turned purposefully away from the cracked mirror was quite different from the ragged Burrower who had entered a short time earlier. Now she wore a pair of quasker-skin trousers, tapered down to her slender ankles, their sturdy outer layer lined withfes-silk. They were a dark, serviceable blue and perhaps had been snapped out of the luggage of some ill-fated land-rider. She was lucky in that they were so narrow of leg—a fact she had pointed out firmly to the seller. There were few potential customers who could have drawn them on with any ease.

Her own undershirt had been the best piece of clothing she had owned and she had kept it reasonably clean even in the Burrows. Simsa had a fastidious dislike of filth and washed both her underclothing and the body beneath it whenever she had a chance, a trait which most of the Burrowers found a matter of huge amusement. So this, she had kept and beneath it, the band about her enlarging breasts; in its folds were hidden Ferwar’s two jeweled treasures, plus the ring.

Over the chemise Simsa now wore the short coat of a courtyard upper servant. That was tightly sashed about her narrow waist, and she felt the weight of the long, wide sleeves which were gathered into wrist bands so that their folds also served as storage pockets. It was of the darkest color of the three Simsa had been offered, a wine, near black. There were roughened threads on one shoulder where some House badge must have been cut away, and it had no trim, except for a piping of silver gray about the high neck and wrist bands. The material was good; there was not a single mend nor fray, and the girl decided that it was enough to pass her into the lowest round of the hill city—perhaps even a round above that. Certainly, she looked respectable enough to be allowed onto the ship-verge market, which was what she wanted now.

Her hair she still kept within its tight wrapping and she had darkened her eye lashes well before she had come into the market. Not for the first time, she wished that nature had not made her so noticeable. Perhaps when she could make more free of the upper town she could discover some dye which would serve to keep her what Gathar had called her—a shadow.

“You are not the only buyer,” snapped the woman by the curtain’s edge. “Should you take all day to view those clothes you have stolen from me? Stolen indeed! I am too kind of heart with the young, too ready to give when I should get!”

Simsa laughed and the zorsal croaked.

“Market woman, when you are kind in any dealing the cie-wind of Kor will bring the vasarch trees into bloom. I should have bargained for a full turn of the sand glass longer, but I am in a good mood today, and you have profited by that.”

The woman pursed her mouth in a gesture of spitting and made an obscene gesture. Simsa laughed again. She no longer had the bag she had left at the warehouse, but she swung the shawl bundle to her shoulder with the same practiced ease, then scooped up Zass who settled on her other shoulder. Slipping by the woman, she was out of the tent in a moment.

This section of the frowzy market was above the lines where the Burrowers were usually to be seen. For all of that the girl still kept a wary eye on what lay about her, the din of market seller cries and shouts being enough to cover the advance of an army.

By now, the starship would have landed and the authorities should have begun dealings with the officers over the main cargo. There would be little or no trading with the crew until perhaps the next day. However, that delay would give the small traders, the lesser thieves, and the scavengers time to gather and stake out their own places, to wait until the crewmen were released for planet leave and a chance to dicker. Most of the crew would, she knew from having watched a number of such landings during past seasons, head for the upper town with its better drinking places where there were rent-women and other things denied during long voyages. Always, though, there were some to come seeking what they could buy—pickings which just might make them a small fortune when offered on another world. Simsa, shuffling sandals (which were a bit too large for her narrow feet, but in her present garb she could not go bare of sole) across the pavement, wondered briefly what it would be like to spend one’s life going from world to world, always greeting the new and strange. She had never been away from Kuxortal and, though she had explored all of the city save those crowning palaces at the very crest of the mound, her world was a small one indeed.

Those born in Kuxortal did not wander. They knew that there was a wide land behind them, a broad sea before. Ships came overseas, barges, smaller sailing, and slave-oared vessels down the river. Still the land immediately beyond the wide cultivated strips that provided the double croppings per year that fed the city was desert, and no man traveled on land when there was water of sea or river to carry him. There were a number of ancient and very strange tales about what might lie beyond the city gardens—tales such that no one was minded to prove the truth of them.

Simsa found a stall selling ripe fruit, some cakes of dark bread of nut-flour, and stacks of hardened packa pods hollowed out and filled with sap-sweetened water. Again, she bargained, sharp-tongued and narrow-eyed, tucking her provisions into the ever-ready sleeve pockets.

As she prowled through the market, she eyed stalls and ground boards, assessing the worth of what she could see. Most here was broken trash but several of the dealers of such called a greeting as she paused, recognizing her for one who dealt in the lesser finds of the Burrowers. She knew that each and every one would note her new clothing, would speculate on how she had raised the price of such. Rumor spread through any market even faster than the first breezes of the wet season. She would be a fool to return to the Burrows now. There would be those who would lie in wait seeking to discover what she had found—what Ferwar must have treasured through the years.

The Old One had had her own ways of handling any upstarts who might question her rights. Only a cursing from Simsa, no matter how dramatically delivered, would mean nothing to the combined forces the Burrowers could assemble at the faintest hint of loot.

She went on down the long ramp which was only one of the many cut into the mound of the city, leading to the plain where the starships planeted, twice backing against the wall to let pass trotting gangs of laborers from one warehouse or another, all of them wearing Guild badges on their grime-stiff sleeved jerkets, each group urged on by pairs of trumpet-throated bosses, one in the lead, one bringing up the rear. These would provide the transport for the off-laden goods.

There were others like herself, moving with purpose to find pitches at the ship field. A number led shaggy, hoofed beasts, horned and ugly of mood, from whose snapping teeth one kept a prudent distance, over the backs of which were hung bulging bags. These were the more important of that motley trading crew, and the majority of them went with a swagger, expecting all others, save of course the Guildsmen, to make way for them.

Simsa saw the ship clearly, looming near as high as the mound of Kuxortal itself, a gleaming arrow, finned down on still smoking earth where its landing rockets had scorched the ground, nose pointing arrogantly skyward. She had inspected a number of such during the past three trading seasons, drawn here by a curiosity she did not even try to understand. Though before she had had no chance to ever bespeak one of the starmen, nor sit in the fast crowding circles of those waiting small trades, where there were already squabbles and, once or twice, a shouting and milling about of those waiting, as if they ringed in some fight.

Then the field guard came with a rush, striking out viciously with the peace staves against any in their general path. Thus all scattered quickly for there was no general law in Kuxortal; all men knew that a guard might lash out and club to death the unwary, and his action never be questioned.

She stood a little to one side of the general mass of waiting tradesmen. There were some who had already erected their four-poled awnings and set up their boards. They were laying out their wares with the expectancy of those well accustomed to this game. Simsa could see that those flanked the way which was kept open for the passage of the cargo handlers—a passage which led directly to the side of the ship, a small section away from where there was already an open port ladder let out to touch the ground. Above was the cargo hatch, larger, also open, but nothing as far as she could see stirred within that. While on the ground at the forepart of the landing ladder gathered a knot of men wearing the uniform of star traders, conferring with several Guild masters—or else their First Men.

There was no way, she decided, that she could wedge into the already formed lines of temporary booths that walled in the alleyway right to the foot of the ramp. That was packed four and five deep with would-be merchants. Now she raised a hand and bit thoughtfully at the top of one finger, extending the claw to nibble at while she thought.

Zass shifted weight on her shoulder and uttered a very low, guttural noise. Zorsals were fond of neither the direct light of the sun nor crowded and noisy places. Simsa put up her hand to stroke her companion’s furred head. The long, feathery-edged antennae, which served the creature for hearing and less understood sensing, were curled tightly against its skull, and the girl knew without glancing around that its big eyes were nearly closed. Yet it was completely alert to all which went on.

Simsa reached the end of the ramp to wedge herself back to the rise of the city mound, her shoulders against its stone shoring of the mound face, watching intently as that group of men at the foot of the ship’s ladder broke apart. Two returned into the ship, three others started along the open aisle toward where she stood, the Guild officers flanking them. None of the waiting small traders raised a voice to hawk any wares. They knew better than to attract the attention of the Guild; a market which was illegal but tolerated must avoid excess.