The Forerunner Factor (46 page)

Tarnished metal showed as the black ashes fell away. She saw the body swing and it was intact, as were the wings which had been closed, one overlapping the other, following custom when the Yathmen stored their craft.

Deliberately, Simsa edged by that craft to point the rod straight down into the basin from which the thing had so emerged. There was no trickery or hallucination leading her to see what was not. She had already reached forth a hand and flicked more ash from the wing edge, felt the solid metal. So—what else might lie hidden below? Simsa was certain that the rider of the Yathafer could not lie here. Or, if he did, his life had long since fled. But she wanted to make sure—she had to! The excitement was like a lash laid about her shoulders, driving her along to more discoveries.

Fixing her mind firmly on the problem, the girl summoned whatever else might lie before that was or had been made by hands. There was no roiling of the dark in answer, even though the light of the rod grew stronger as she poured into it all the energy she could summon, reaching a peak of power that she had held only during the ceremony with the valley seeress when they had summoned the whirlwind.

She saw the sides of the bore and then there was utter dark which swallowed up her light. Either this was strong enough to hold any other prey, once it had been alerted, or else there was nothing left.

At length, Simsa realized that she was expending power for nothing and she loosed control and concentration, turning instead to the machine so oddly revealed to her. Slipping her rod into the girdle about her waist, she caught with both hands at the edge of the folded wings and gave a slight pull. There was no resistance; rather, the wing moved easily. Nor did it fall apart as she half-expected it might. So she was able to push it before her, shedding more of the ash all the time, heading for the entrance.

Her people—Simsa of the Burrows stirred. No, the people of the Elder One—they must have been here, too, in the forgotten past to leave this artifact of their own design. But why had they come? She was sure that this was not the world that had first shaped them—what might the Great Memory be able to tell her concerning that past?

She had to learn so much. From the star rovers of this day she had plucked some things, but always warily, afraid ever to reveal herself entirely. On Kuxortal, she had been an exile; was here another exile of her race awaiting discovery? Know—she must know!

As the girl drew the long-hidden flyer into the open, she found herself no longer alone. Here squatted the strangely banded one who had been—who was—the Great Memory, renewed within the egg, ready once again to serve her people. On either side of her, two of the larger valley females reared high, their upper limbs free and claws clicking softly.

Behind them was another party. Thorn, on his feet, his arms stretched wide apart, each of his wrists in the claw hold of a valley guard, stood there. Though human or near-human eyes could read no expression on those large-eyed faces, still Simsa was sure that peril was with him. Yet she did not pause—or that one within her would not let her, as she came fully into the open, pulling the machine behind her. The light caught painting on the upper of the folded wings—a spiral of blue flecked with glistening stars which did not appear to need direct sun rays to give forth diamond splendor in flashing points.

“What—drew—you—from Pool of Forgetting—” The mind search of the Great Memory quavered in the girl’s head.

“That which was of my own people,” Simsa replied. “How came it here?” Even as she asked that, her mind was busy trying to storm a door stubbornly shut against her. Blue—and diamond-bright sparks—those had a meaning—what—how—who?

The Great Memory, still on all fours, advanced a single step. Her head turned up at an acute angle so she could center the gaze of her eyes on Simsa, hold the girl so. Simsa was aware of a steady and ever-strengthening thrust against her, as if the Great Memory would encompass her about and squeeze from her what the alien wanted most to know.

“You have troubled the Place of Forgetting.” That was a forceful accusation. “Why?”

“Why do you seek to renew memories yourself, egg born?” countered the girl. “I was led here—” How true that might be she did not really want to know, but she suspected much. “To learn what pertains to me and mine. Now I lay upon you, Great Memory, by your own rules, tell me of this thing—or who flew it, and where, and when—and why.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then: “Since the pool has given it back to you, your power is attuned to it. Back—back too far, egg sister, rides
that
memory. Perhaps there was another like you who came hither in an earlier day—perhaps once this whole world was like the valley until death struck and struck.”

Simsa stiffened. A cold wind might have blown out of the cavern behind, lapped her around.

“What death?” she asked, and feared the answer. Had those who had nurtured her fought these? If so, how could there be any link between them except one of enmity?

“Out of the winds it came, and it shut away the eye of day. It slew all which lived upon the earth, save here where there were the ancient guards and they held, but it was many times the toll of egg years. Marsu was Great Memory and lived out ten egg turns thereafter, for there were none born after the death of the Eye and its closing for long and long who tested for memory. After her there was Kubat, but the memory was less and it was only because Marsu could not take the egg again that Kubat, the most promising, went to the first transferral—five egg times was
she
Great Memory. After her, there were many, many.” Tshalft clicked one set of foreclaws as she counted out those names that perhaps even memory could not string like beads in a line forever.

“And there was never any end to the curse of those from the sky—only here. Thus it was.”

“Those from the sky . . .” Simsa pushed herself to ask the question. “They were kin to me?”

“Not so.” She was so ready to hear otherwise that the girl gave a small gasp of relief. “For there were those like unto you who strove to aid when the Death came. And death claimed them also. One alone won to this place of strength and hiding and in the fullness of time, he fell into the great sleep, nor could he tell us how to rebuild his egg so he could come forth again. Then we took that”—she indicated the flyer with a claw—“to the Pool of Forgetting, which holds all that is not to be brought to memory again. It was a thing we had not learned to use and memories without use had best be forgotten.”

“And from where did he come, this one who could fly, and the others with him?”

The answer she expected came clearly: “From the sky also. But they wrought not in death. They treasured life whether it be in their form or another’s, which was not true of those who brought the death. Long ago that was a very small memory and one which fades even when the egg renews.”

“Of what manner of form were they—these dealers in death?”

The Great Memory swung a little about, her claw stabbing the air in the direction of Thorn, where he stood prisoner.

“I have searched the Great Memory and the lesser, the newer and the elder. And this one bears the look of those who brought the Death.”

“He may look like those,” Simsa countered, “but they vanished with all their kind over the years. This one comes from a new people, a people which are as nestlings late out of the sack. He is not your enemy.”

“There is a memory like unto him,” the other repeated stubbornly. Her thought sending was gathering strength and, with it, Simsa could sense an impeccable will which carried memories through years of hibernation and rebirth in the service of the rest.

“Memory is of two parts,” returned the girl slowly. “There is that which shows itself a picture, there is another of the inner part no one can see—save through experience. He may wear the guise of that ancient enemy—but he is not kin, nor blood, nor bone of theirs.”

It was difficult to judge what impression she was making when she could not read any facial expression. Now she added what she hoped would be further proof of Thorn’s innocence.

“This one found me egg-bound, as I might be said to be, on another world and helped to loose me. Would he have done so had he been as those who strove to destroy your world?”

There came no answer from the Great Memory for a long time, too long. As when they had stood in the valley before, she and that one who had controlled strange forces, there came the sound of a flitter faint in beat but not to be mistaken—seeking—from the northeast.

Thorn might have heard it first. His head was up so his eyes could search the haze.

“Again, they come in search.” It was one of the guards who broke mind silence first. She pointed with her mandible-set lower face toward the cliff. “He calls and they come!”

“You set up a direction call?” For the first time, Simsa spoke directly to Thorn. “One to lead them here?”

He shook his head. “There is one such on the flitter. It was triggered when we crashed. That will be their direction.”

She raised her hand and Zass, who had floated out of the haze to take position on her shoulder, now stepped onto her wrist. Simsa looked deeply into those feral eyes. “Watch—watch—unseen—” she beamed an order.

The zorsal flapped wings and cried out hoarsely, then sprang into the air, soaring deep into the protective curtain of the mist, beyond the power of Simsa’s eyes to follow her. Now the girl looked to the Great Memory.

“If it is the flitter which they seek, perhaps they will find it—but the rocks hold no track prints to bring them here.”

“They will not come.” There was something very final about the Great Memory’s reply. “If they seek, they may find.” She turned her head but a fraction, but Simsa knew as well as if it had been shouted aloud that these would make use of Thorn as a final answer to any such search—that a safely dead body could not betray them.

She moved swiftly, pushing past the Great Memory. The rod’s tip flicked from one to the other of those claws that held Thorn’s wrists and the creatures dropped their holds, their limbs falling as if stricken powerless against their furred bodies.

She need give him no orders. He was already alerted, leaping from between his late captors to Simsa’s side, his hands instinctively on his weapon.

“No!” she uttered aloud with force. “These have good reason to fear your kind. Prove yourself peaceful and you have a chance with them.”

Then her mind spoke to the Great Memory as one to bargain.

“I, too, have a quarrel with those you hear. But this one is not of their kind—”

“He came with them!” was the instant interruption.

“Yes, but in his way, he is also subject to them. Now he is free of them, he wants no more of their company.” She was improvising. She turned her head a fraction to speak directly to Thorn.

“They will destroy those whom they believe seek them out here. In the past, some humanoid race blasted their world into what you have seen. My people, they tell me who were here for another purpose were also brought down. You must be dead—if you want to live.” She smiled grimly.

He rubbed one wrist with the fingers of his other hand.

“If they do not find me . . .” he began slowly in trade lingo, and then continued, “Yes, it might be so. If they locate the flyer and I am not in it, they can believe that I was—” His mouth moved in a twist of disgust and she knew what he thought—of the tentacle things that had taken so eagerly what fortune had brought them. That they were killers and doubtless carnivorous she had no doubt.

“But . . .” He stared at her very directly. “If they believe me dead as Greeta, they will lift ship and—”

“You shall remain.” Simsa beat him to that protest. “How soon will they lift ship?”

He shrugged. “There will be nothing to make them linger here. They will believe you dead, also—once they have seen what preys out of that sand trap.”

She looked about her, needing no thought contact with any of the valley dwellers to realize that these would do nothing, except perhaps, in a grudging way, provide some shelter. To spend a lifetime on this scraped rock world which had a single cup in which life could continue . . . Her own desires protested that. How much harder must it be for this space rover trapped now with her, whose whole life had been given to the stars?

“Perhaps . . .” She was forced into this. It was her fault that he was here and she no longer believed that he had any desire to wish her ill. “Perhaps you might be found—”

“Dead!” That word snapped into her mind and she knew that the Great Memory at least could dip into her thoughts and see what lay behind any speech her lips shaped.

“Not so!”

There were small sparks dancing at the tips of the rod horns. Fight—no. She had no wish, no will to blast any from her path except those mindless things that swelled and crawled from out the sand. The valley inhabitants had every right on their side.

“Not so,” she repeated firmly. “Cannot memory be altered, or is this not the skill of yours, Great One?”

There was a moment in which she could read startlement and near repugnance. To alter memory for this one would be breaking belief in all she had been taught to hold the most sacred.

“You do this?” There was vast distaste in the question she threw at Simsa.

“I can make one see what is not . . .” She held the rod between overlapping hands. “Look you!” she commanded, pointing to a rock, a battered crown showing between two tall growths. The girl concentrated, narrowing both vision and thought to a single thing. On the rock there sprawled one of the yellow horrors from the sand holes.

With a loud mewling sound, one of the guards launched herself at the apparition just as Simsa broke the picture. Claws scraped bare rock. There was nothing left of that obscene intruder.

“It is forbidden to play so,” the Great Memory flung at her.

“I do not play—I merely showed what can be. If people can be so deceived as to sight, they can also be deceived as to what they
have
seen.”

“Forbidden!”

“To you, not to me,” Simsa responded. “Let me take this spaceman to a place near his people. Then I shall set in his mind a crooked memory and this I can do.”