The Forerunner Factor (52 page)

A tentacle caught the edge below her. She doubted if she could send back this threat of her own, for it was real and its hunger was not a set part of any trap. As the wuul had seemed to do, it must have sensed or smelled her, for it was showing a surprising burst of speed, using its tentacles to draw itself up toward her, having reversed or perhaps never started the charge toward the wuul.

Raising the rod, Simsa felt more sure of herself. At least she had met this terror before and won past it. But as she strove to empower the rod, she realized that, once again, there was an end to the force she could summon to activate it. Her course of action since she had entered the ruins might have made the past clearer, but it also showed that the Forerunners—the Elder Ones—had not been invincible.

First, with all the force she could bring to bear, and then with mounting fear, the girl tried to confront the sand creature. There was no crackling lash of fire from the twin crescents—only a small glow. When she attempted to use her will, the thing seemed impervious to any mental contact. Although it had come to her call, it was too alien or perhaps even too far down in the scale of fire—or on another wave of contact—for her to reach it.

The puzzle of that she had no time to solve. She retreated to another ledge up as the thing drew itself along the rock surfaces below. Then, bursting into her mind like a thrust of spacer energy, came her name!

That sudden hailing unnerved her for an instant, almost too long, for a tentacle aimed to the farthest extent the creature could reach scraped just before her toes, and she scrambled back.

“Simsa—up—quick—”

Thorn? No, that had not been the spaceman. There was no clear picture in her mind, and still the communication was sharper, stronger than the young off-worlder had ever used.

This was someone who trained in the same methods she had so painfully learned from the Elder One at the beginning.

So forceful was that order that she turned and took the last two of the ledge steps, returning to the forefront of the ruins, at the swiftest pace she could muster. As she wheeled, for she had no intention of being driven back into the maze of the ruin’s corridors with a sand dweller at her heels, there struck straight down from that reddish spot in the sky, which marked the flitter, a spear of light such as she had seen enough of in the spacers’ records to recognize. It was a weapon much like her rod, yet not powered by will and concentration of personal energy but by units of captive force upon which the people of the star fleets depend.

It struck full upon the sand-thing, which writhed as smoke, black and evil-smelling, rose from it. The thing lost its hold on the ledge to which it had just pulled and fell back, its tentacles waving vainly, striving to bring its fall to an end. It crashed at last into the sand flow which had formed a shallow pool, puddling just at the foot of the ledges. There it lay, still heaving a little, only half within the flood.

Now! Simsa had no desire to stay for Thorn or this other and more forceful personage to land, if landing was what they intended. The ruins offered her a way out. The wuul—

She stopped within the overhang of the doorway. That brain—that stranger—had driven her, as a man drives fleexe does out of the pasture, out of the trees. What was to prevent him or her from driving again? Wuul in the open was one thing, but wuul underground—or in narrow hallways—hallucinatory or not, was something she could not bring herself to face.

16

Simsa placed her back against the stone wall of a square-cut pillar that sided the entrance to the ruins. She forced her breathing to slow, brought under uneasy control fear and anger. There had been too much heaped upon her. The experience in the initiation hall, her flight from the flitter overhead, and the supreme effort she had made to produce the sand dweller had weakened her. She need only look at the barely lit points of her moon rod to tell her how little she had in her to withstand whatever was coming.

Not Thorn—that last message had never come from the off-worlder. Then who? Certainly not that officer who had seen in her talents—or supposed talents—a chance to renew his fortunes. And Greeta was dead. Who?

Not to know the enemy was one of the worst things she faced. For if one knew, at least there was time for some preparation. She had none except her own stubborn wariness and realization that she must not yield to any off-worlder.

The flitter was going to land. That blot in the haze resolved into a definite shape of the exploratory machine as it was descending to the lowest of the ledges. She tried to see who was on board, but the bubble of the cockpit cover had been tinted so that it was like facing a blind thing which depended on other than human sense to attack.

As it touched down, the whir of the antigrav was stilled and the world about her lay in deep silence. There was no sound of bird or insect such as she might have expected from the growth spreading out from the foot of the staircase—and Zass had disappeared!

The bubble split in two and the first of the flitter passengers came out.

Thorn! But who else? That had been no talent of the spaceman which had produced a creature perhaps a thousand years dead to drive once more into the open. He did not even look at her after one quick glance, but rather stood to one side as if he played only servant or guard to his companion.

The body that clambered out and put a scaled and webbed hand with thin fingers on Thorn’s shoulder in a gesture of comradeship was humanoid in shape but manifestly not as human as the young man with him, or even Simsa. The clothing it wore was far more abbreviated than Thorn’s—short breeches that came just a fraction down green-gray scaled thighs, a sleeveless shirt over which were numerous straps supporting a number of things which could be either tools or weapons. Around the head with the goggle eyes was a ruff of frilled flesh which stood erect, over which rippled flashes of vivid coloring as the alien stepped forward. A Zacathan!

This was one of the pacific nonwarriors of the galaxy, whose struggle was not against men or worlds, but rather to unravel and record the past—and whose long lives were dedicated to the belief that one scrap of knowledge added to their store was worth all the discoverer had to give.

But a Zacathan! She had not been aware that there had been one on board the spacer before her escape. Why had Thorn not told her? Why had she not sensed such a brain when she had been able to pick up the dangerous musings of the officer and Greeta?

And what could they do? Build hallucinations—the wuul had been proof of that—and perhaps break such a memory block as she had put on Thorn. What else?

She stared down the ledges, her eyes searching out those of the Zacathan and locking with them swiftly, so swiftly she had no time to deny it, mind to mind.

“What do you fear?” The evenly spaced words formed in her mind.

She answered with the truth before she could think clearly, his very presence had surprised her so. “You.”

The saurian face was perhaps not constructed to easily form a smile, but she felt the gentle humor now in the other’s mind touch.

“Am I then so formidable, gentle fern?”

“I think . . . yes—” Her eyes had narrowed. She had yet to marshal all that had come to her in this place, to truly make herself one with that other and those who had once stood behind her. “I think you are a very formidable person.” She kept her voice low as she replied, not with mind touch (she wanted no more of that) but rather in the trade-lingo, aloud.

“As I think.” Now he spoke and there was a hissing accent to his words. “It seems”—now his eyes released hers as he lifted his head a little to view the mass of ruin behind her—“that we have found something long sought.”

“Chan-Moolan-plu.” Out of the past she could no longer deny came that name, and immediately she knew what it stood for and why it was on this world.

“Chan-Moolan-plu,” the Zacathan repeated. “Your home, gentle fern—once?”

She shook her head. “An outpost—a training place—before the Baalacki came.” More and more the story awoke in her. No . . . home—home was—She shook her head again, not at any gesture or word from him, but because she knew that what she might say would mean nothing now. That planet which birthed the Elder One who was now a part of her was gone, vanished into a fog of time so great there was no reckoning it—in her own system of accounting years and seasons.

“And the Baalacki?” A little to her surprise, it was Thorn who raised the question.

“They made this world as you see it. They”—she shrugged—“are long since gone. Each people who rise, look to the stars, and roam the outer reaches have enemies, or acquire them along the way. And then a day comes where there is a final battle-locking. One may go down to the dust, but it is also true that the victor is left wounded, perhaps to death, and another empire falls apart.” She made a gesture as if shifting some of that sand still bubbling below between her fingers. “What are left . . .”

“What are left,” the Zacathan broke in as she hesitated, “are shards and pieces scattered here and there—which we strive to bring together so that we may understand—”

“Why?” Simsa interrupted him in turn. “To learn this or that trick of knowledge which will give
you
power so that again the wheel will spin and you and your ships and your alliances of planets be reduced in turn?”

“Some seek for that, yes. Others for knowledge which has nothing to do with that sort of power, gentle fern. We are many races, many species—surely it was so then, was it not?”

“The Sorkel, the Vazax, the Omer—” In her mind, she saw each she mentioned, scaled, winged, various-colored of flesh, different of brain patterns. “Yes, there were many of us and some who were always apart.” Now she stared at the Zacathan in sudden enlightenment. “From whom, Lordly One, did you take your first memories?”

“Ah . . .” It was his turn to nod. “So you had your historians, also? As for our memories, those of my race are long and our archives go far back. We have our legends, also, gentle fern. That is why when I was informed of you, I came with what swiftness this time and space afford. I was on Kaltorn when Thorn”—she saw his fingers tighten on the young man’s shoulder as if in affection—“sent a message by the mail launch. My dort-ship strove to match the flight pattern of the Star Climber, and your own actions pulled me thus to you.”

Perhaps it was so, she could sense no evasion in his mind, whatever might be his speech. Yet different species . . . Yes, he could be weaving for her just such a pattern as she had purposefully set upon Thorn. Upon Thorn!

She spoke now to the spaceman. “You were never memory-changed!” Her words came out harshly, as if she accused him.

He shook his head and there was no curve to his mouth—that and his jaw were set grimly. “You succeeded,” he told her in clipped words. “Only—”

“Only,” the Zacathan broke in again, “there were certain signs of such tampering which are familiar to the initiated. It was not difficult to disperse the shadows once they were recognized.”

She could have guessed that much. With all the knowledge that must be at his command, this burrower into the past could well have diagnosed what had happened to this follower and countered it.

Simsa raised the rod, pleased to see that there was a stronger beam at the tips of the two horns. “Then you know also that I am not one who can be caged so that which and what I am may be drained from me to increase another’s power! Thorn . . .” Simsa hesitated, studying his set face, his eyes which held no warmth—he might be carved from some of the stone of this denuded planet. “He”—she spoke not to the man whose whole attitude was a defense against her, but again to the Zacathan—“Thorn was gone, apparently after he had delivered me into the hands of those who spied upon me, who strove to find ways to use what they thought I was. He was with one of those when I found him—they having traced me by some one of your machines upon which you depend so much. I had won free of what they had put or strove to put upon me. Why should he return to come ahunting again? If we wish to be simply truthful, I saved his life. He was going into the maw of one of those.” She pointed the rod to the blob of the dead sand-thing, which still showed a little above the flood that had brought it here.

There was no change in Thorn’s expression, and she told herself she did not expect any understanding from him now. Their partnership had always been an uneasy one even when they had struggled into the lost city on Kuxortal, fighting shoulder to shoulder there against the outlaws who had laired within that spawn of vegetation-devoured buildings. She owed him—Perhaps she did owe him! Had he never led her into the forgotten ways, she would not have met with the Elder One—never have been more than a child playing at useless things—one without kin or friends. Yes, she owed him much for that! And now she made restitution in words:

“I owe you, Thorn Chan-li.” She used his formal name as one who lists debts. “There is no debt between us. I was wrong—the scales are even, or perhaps I owe you more for what I did in the valley. If so, demand your price of me now.”

The Zacathan looked from the young man to Simsa and then back again, as one who stands aside and listens.

Thorn raised a hand in a repudiating gesture. “You owe me nothing,” he said coldly. And Simsa believed that had the Zacathan’s hand not still imprisoned his shoulder, he would have turned back to the flitter and left her.

“Good!” It was the alien who put force into that, as if he were genuinely pleased that something had been resolved between them, even though it was manifest that nothing had been done at all. “Gentle fern, far from a cage—all honor and ease await you. Thorn has told me that you had reason to mistrust certain ones on board the ship. Be sure that this was not our intention, nor could it have been carried out—not with Thorn’s message already on its way to me. And it seems”—now he glanced from her to the pile of the ruins—“that our suggestion that fate often moves on the behalf of believers is also right. For without your flitting from the ship and landing here, we would never perhaps have found this—what did you call it?—Chan-Moolan-plu, a place of your own people, once.”