The Forerunner Factor (43 page)

She was not even sure that the spaceman could “think” a message plainly enough. Her own hold on such powers was shaky and she was only sure of success when the Elder One was in control.

There flashed speedily a series of pictures, aimed surely for the furred doubter or doubters but as easily picked up by the girl.

It was like watching one of the reading tapes run a little too fast to be enjoyed but showing so many changes and hints of knowledge as made her feel breathless. Then she saw the leader of the valley ones squat back on her lower abdomen, balanced by the two long folded legs. She swung up a clawed forelimb, the murderous claws held well apart, perhaps her own type of peace signal.

“A Memory one!” There was an exclamation of wonder in that mind speech. “A Memory one, be it male or not. Tshalft must suck this one for herself.”

“No!” Simsa took a wide sidestep, which put her between the valley dwellers and Thorn. There was a connotation to that word “suck”—or so it had sounded to her—that carried a dark meaning.

“No harm to it,” came the quick promise. “It has too much to give. We try—our Memory ones are few—and there come many hatchings before one is discovered in these days.

“To have new knowledge, that will be treasure for the home. We shall do it no harm, even as we have done none to you. But will it be hunted again? Has it laid some trail for its kind to follow?”

“Will you—” began the girl, when he spoke swiftly, proving that he had read that mind speech.

“The flitter is down. But there are others on the ship which landed here. When they cannot raise any call from us they may write us off—for now.”

“But not forever?” Simsa prodded.

“Zasfern is not easily thrown off the trail of anything which is as great as the discovery of a true Forerunner,” he answered her. “They may not be able to search now, but in time they will come, yes. My immediate superior, Hist-tech Zasfern, has power with the service.”

“It speaks of others,” came the thoughts of the valley leader. “Who are these others?”

Thorn raised his hand and pushed fretfully at the bandage about his head. “Answer for me,” he said to the girl. “Ask them not to mind read me now—I—” He stumbled half-toward her. Unthinkingly, she took his weight, which bore her with him to the stone.

Over his body she looked up at the others. “He is hurt.”

“That is so,” conceded their seated leader. “Now his thoughts go all ways, as the guden fly when it is time for a harvest. What would he have you tell us?”

“I know little more than you. But he has said there is a very ancient race whose mission it is to collect all knowledge and store it. They are very old, but it is true that most they gather is from such a long time in the past that they do not understand much of it themselves. They only hunt and hunt for scraps to be fitted into a whole. They have said that is why I must be brought to them. For they think that I—she—can match some of these scraps for them.”

“So they will be led to seek here. When?”

“Sometime hence, I think.” Simsa shifted Thorn’s head upon her knee. He gave a small moan and rolled his face toward her so that she felt the light flutter of his breath against her skin. “He must have help.” She found herself adding that plea.

“It is well—for now. Yes, we have much to learn—Tshalft would wish us to do this.”

A click of claws summoned one of the others. With no visible sign of any discomfort because of his weight, the speaker plucked Thorn out of Simsa’s half-hold and placed him on the back of the follower squatting before her. One of those claws grasped both of the dangling arms of the spaceman, imprisoning his wrists in a single hold. Then the creature turned and started away three-legged, but seemingly not in the least slowed or disturbed by that. Simsa and the speaker followed.

This time there was no journey into the dark, but the top of the barrier was wide and they were soon near curtained from each other’s sight by a thickening of the haze. Simsa found her own wrist caught in the claws of another, steering and drawing her onward when the haze at last thickened into a roof too dense for the eye to pierce beyond a foot or so.

They came to the top of a stairway and the grasp on Simsa fell away—only the one pointing claw directed her downward. The steps were stone, chiseled out of the rock. For her feet they were narrow and, since so much was hidden from her, she took them one at a time, her right hand braced against the side wall, her fingers ready to cling to any projection they might chance upon.

She had lost all sight of Thorn and his guardian and tried to force out of her mind a suggestion of danger—a fall for the awkwardly laden valley inhabitant and perhaps the end of the unconscious man as a result.

Down and down wove the stairs—there were no landings where one might pause to get one’s breath, summon up courage for further effort, and the fog was as tight as a cloak about them. Then that began to thin and wisps of it moved away as clouds could be driven across the sky by the wind—only here there was no wind.

She could see the way ahead for a much farther space now. But there was nothing but more and more steps. Simsa might well have given out long ago, but that extra energy which the Elder One always brought with her sustained the girl even when the presence of the Elder One herself began to slowly retreat into that part of Simsa which she had established as her own abode for all time.

The last of the haze was tattered strips. Here and there she could sight a tall standing tree of high-growing vegetation, much like those that had formed the avenue at her first coming to this place. The zorsal uttered a small cry and took off, winging ahead, apparently diving into the massed vegetation which Simsa would have thought was far too thick to allow any wing spread. They reached at last the floor of the inner valley. She could smell the heady scent of dropping fruit and she licked her lips, the odor immediately bringing with it hunger.

There was a path here, not as well-marked as those she had found earlier, and it did not stretch straight forward but wound around among bushes that were taller than the girl’s head. Palm-wide flowers clustered thick over these, weighting those toward earth where crawled a number of green winged things which in a minute way were not too unlike her guides. Among the bushes, some of the furred people were moving. These claws which could threaten so menacingly worked here with delicate care, loosing one after another of the busy feeding insects, holding them above jugs until, from the tip of rounded green abdomens, a drop of clear liquid gathered to drip into the waiting container. Its donor was then returned to the grazing ground of the flowers.

At the appearance of the party from the cliffs these harvesters drew together and stared silently, nor did Simsa pick up any thought save once or twice a feeling of dislike or alien aversion radiating from them, something she had not felt before. It would seem that her presence, or Thorn’s, or both, was a matter for resentment.

Yet there were no claws raised even a fraction and their own party plowed ahead through the wandering trails of the flowered-bush land without any communication she could sense. In a few strides, they left the workers behind.

This was a wider way they had now turned into. Ahead, though still some distance away, the girl caught sight of that odd dwelling or fortress she had seen before. However, they were not headed for that. A side way opened in the brush and into it stalked the furred one carrying Thorn, then the leader of the company, raising a claw to beckon Simsa to follow. The others kept on in the open and were quickly lost to sight as this side way made a right-angled turn. It would appear, Simsa thought, that they were heading back toward the cliffs down which they had just come. But when they emerged from the growth that was so thick a screen here, there was again a wide space as there had been about the fountain.

No spray of water spun into the air here; rather, the open place, a triangle, cradled what Simsa first thought was a giant egg. At least it presented a solid-looking ovoid to the newcomers. Their party halted just at the verge of the open space and the leader advanced, not with that measure of authoritative stride-hop, which she had shown earlier, but slowly, using the claws of a right fore appendage to tap out a rhythm on the bare ground.

Though the tapping was so small a sound that Simsa could barely hear it, there was an answering in the ground itself which ran along the surface of the earth, even into her own body so she found herself moving with the same beat, her rod nodding in turn in her hold.

It appeared that whatever or whomever the leader so summoned was not minded to answer. Yet the tapping continued patiently. There came at last a sharp pop. Across the surface of that giant egg appeared a ragged crack. A portion of shell detached, to fall upon the earth. Then a second and a third, until the shell was in fragments. They were fronting now another of the furred ones. In size she was smaller; she had been cramped and fitted into the egg without much room to spare so that when a forelimb moved slowly into the open it did so feebly, as though any effort were nearly too much for the slowly arousing creature within.

There was a sleekness, as though it had been immersed in water that now dripped and runneled to the ground. Then the faceted eyes which Simsa had thought were blind centered upon them.

“Why—come—disturb?”

There was anger bordering on rage in that demand from the egg prisoner.

“A Memory one—from far—sky.” The leader braced both forelimbs on the ground and lowered her own antennae-feathered head so that those lacy sheaths nearly brushed the pounded earth.

The other had managed to pry her body free. With her last jerk what remained of the shell crumbled into powder on the ground. She made a slight gesture with one set of claws and the leader hastened, still on all fours, to approach near, pausing at a small distance which Simsa read as one of respect, to unhook a smaller edition of the harvester jugs from a belt and offer it to the newly hatched. Greedily, the other seized upon it and drank until at last she turned it upside down to prove its emptiness.

She moved alertly now and Simsa was able to note the differences between her and those other of the valley dwellers the girl had seen. The head was certainly out of proportion, larger, and the fur was lighter, banded with a very faint darker striping.

“It—was—not—time,” the egg-born announced. “To disturb is forbidden—only a matter of great importance—”

The leader echoed that last expression. “Great importance!” She must be slightly servile to this other, but she was standing her ground about what she had done.

Simsa was aware of the huge eyes (they looked even larger than the others of this race she had yet seen) turned on her. Movement beside her came as the bearer of Thorn released her burden to sprawl on his side. But it was Simsa that the strange one first surveyed. And it was the Elder One who moved forward to receive that searching, inimical stare, eye to faceted eye, until the egg born said:

“This one—in the time of the lost moon—this one—”

“Not so,” the Elder One answered at once. “My blood kin, perhaps—not me. I am new into the world as the Most Strong Memory herself.”

“Too much—too long—then the egg again,” the other thought. “If not you then—why you now?”

“New come from egg, I seek my people.”

“Did they not guard—wait—know the signal rightly?” There was a note of indignation in that. “There must always be those who know—who can call.”

Simsa the Elder One shook her head. “Too long—too long. Those who might have watched went I know not where.”

“Yet you stand here? What loosed you, then?”

“The coming of one reborn, of my kin reborn—she I summoned—but I had no body. My egg did not hold me, so thus I am in her.”

“Ill done. Seek you a body, eggless one?”

“This one serves me well—it is kin born and so mine. We walk the same path and all is well.”

“What seek you here?” The fur of the other was rapidly drying and the darkened stripes were more sharply defined. It put out one forearm to its head as if to support that still too large cranium.

“Safety—for a space,” Simsa returned promptly.

“This other—” The large eyes for the first time regarded Thorn. “Is he dying? Have you already quickened and used him and now await your own body eggs? If that be so, why bring him hither? Let his body return to the earth since he is of no further use.”

“He is not my seeder of egg life.” The Elder One seemed to know exactly the right answers. “He is a Memory Keeper.”

If a furred, facet-eyed creature could look affronted and disgusted, Simsa believed that this one did.

“He is male—they are good for only one thing. There has never been a Memory one among them—never!” There was angry indignation in that.

“Probe and see, Great Memory Keeper, probe you, and see.”

Simsa found herself moving slightly away from the prone spaceman as if to clear a wider path for the other’s thoughts. On the ground, Thorn stirred and made a querulous sound.

The girl had an impression of a thought stream almost as visible as an outpouring of fluid, and the greedy sucking up of the same. Yet the Elder One did not share what was happening.

Simsa could set no length to the time that exchange continued. Again, Thorn raised a hand to his head as if to protect himself from some blow. He muttered unceasingly. Simsa picked up words of the trade-lingo, but she was sure that he also spoke in several different tongues during that weird communication—if communication might be the term to apply to this one-sided interrogation. Then he was at last still and the big eyes lifted from his face to rivet their full attention on the girl.

“It is true! Memory cannot be kept hidden from a rememberer—or, it is said, in any way altered more than the alteration which occurs from the event’s action appearing thus to one, otherwise to another. These Zacathans—these who seek memories, not to keep them in trained minds but in other ways—he is of importance to them?”

“Judge that for yourself from what you have gained from this man. He served them as the tenders serve you, bringing bits and pieces he has learned for their combined memory.”