The Game of Stars and Comets (61 page)

I had to admit that I had no other goal, and surely I could learn little more from Mungo's. Why not agree? Voor's Grove also my father had not visited, there was just a chance—

So I agreed because I had nothing else to offer.

That night
I was not ready for sleep. Instead I unpacked the reader and my father's tapes. Though I had heard them all before—some many times, for when we were on the plains he oftentimes took out one or another and sat listening to his own words replayed, a frown of concentration on his face as if he must always bolster memory, make sure that there was no clue he had perhaps overlooked. Yes, I had heard them before, but now it was my turn to concentrate, to strive to find a loose thread that I might pull on to reduce this tangled web to order.

Illo listened with the same absorption. We heard descriptions of just such plants as I had encountered that afternoon—of the fact that, though the buildings on the perimeter of each deserted site had seemed to be in very bad condition, those farther in did not show the same signs of erosion. I waited eagerly for some mention of a central hall, or any indication that my father had found there evidences of massacre such as was at Mungo's. But there was nothing at all which suggested that he had ever discovered the remains of a single body.

If he had done so, why had he registered all else in minute detail and left what was a most important discovery unvoiced? There was something else—

Though he had spoken of the alien-seeming vegetation in detail, he had never described the nodding flowers. I played each tape to the end as the red moon climbed the night sky. The gars had come closer to the fire. Wobru and Bru were lying down, chewing their cuds rhythmically, but Witol was on his feet and disappeared at intervals. I knew that the bull was on sentry go and that I could trust his senses farther than my own.

"You have learned anything?" Illo asked as the last of the tapes came to an end.

"This much—if there were skeletons in other places my father did not mention them—or the flowers—"

"Flowers?" she pounced upon that. "What kind of flowers?"

I described the blossoms and how they had seemed to move though there was no wind. It was a small thing, but how could I rank the importance of any hint?

"They moved—" she repeated. "Bart, have you been to the Tangle edge?"

"No closer than this place. There was never any reason to head that way."

"But you have seen the picture tapes taken by Survey, by the off-world teams after the Shadow doom began?"

"Thick, grey, just what men name it—a tangle of vegetation too massed to get through except by burning. Even that does not work—the stuff is said to grow overnight and if one ventures in too far the trail closes up behind him. It dampens out coms and range fingers. They will not operate near it. That's why no one can go in—" I summoned up my general knowledge of the Tangle as I had heard and tape-read.

"Also—it moves," she said then. "As your flowers in the town—it quivers and sways even if there is no wind. That is part of the tangling process, for in its ever movement it twines and winds stem and leaf together, sometimes to remain so tied permanently."

That I had
not
known. At my questioning she said she had once been in Portcity and had heard the report of a man who had been sent on a rescue mission. Some off-worlders in a flitter had flown too low over that trap and had vanished into it.

"I wonder," she sat now with forefinger to her lips as if she would chew upon it, as one did upon a sliver of journey food, "can there be an alliance?"

"No one would be fool enough to bring seeds or plants from the Tangle to bed on the plains!"

"Perhaps no one brought them. Remember the storm? What could the force of a wind such as that carry in it? I wish there was some detailed record from one of the doomed villages of what happened just
before
the Shadows. Could there have been some signs of approaching trouble which no one thought to notice—"

"Such as a new flower popping up in a garden plot?" I wanted to scoff, yet still I was caught by her reasoning. Perhaps my father had had a somewhat similar idea; he had spent so much time in the tapes describing the vegetation. Also now I remembered something else—that when he wore the protect suit he had always shed that well away from the camp site and had brushed it over with disfect powder. But that had been for the first two or three times he had gone so exploring; after that he had not even used the suit.

"Such as a flower, a new flower, in a garden place," she agreed.

Illo knew more of growing things than I did, that I was willing enough to allow. A healer must have a wide knowledge of plants, which harm and which can help. I knew that in her pack she had small boxes of dried leaves, of crushed-to-powder seeds—all of which had their uses. While the blisters still on my hand and cheek, though they had lost the sting of pain under Illo's treatment, were warning enough that poison grew and flourished in Mungo's. At this moment I was ready to open my mind to any theory. Though I could not equate any inimical plant with what I had seen. Poison in such might produce a plague, yes. But I was still certain that there was some cruel thought behind the doom. Perhaps not thought as we reckoned it—still intelligence, however alien that might be in form.

I packed away the tapes and we both lay down on our grass and blanket beds. Illo had said very little, but I guessed that she was thinking much. I hoped I would not keep seeing, even in dreams, that which lay so close to us behind the nodding flowers. Did they still nod at night, I wondered? This was so still a night, without even a breath of wind stirring in the grass,. As if something lay behind its defenses in the dead town—waiting—No, I must not allow my imagination to stray so.

It was a restless night for me. I must have slept very lightly for twice I roused to hear the gars changing watch. I realized that night not how much I knew, but how little. I had thought that I was well equipped for a Voorloper—yet now I needed more—so much more.

The gars were brisk in setting out the next day, glad in their own way, I was certain, that we were turning our backs upon a place they shunned. Witol now carried the water cans filled to their cap pieces, while Bru was free of burden. She took to ranging ahead, crisscrossing our chosen direction of march. It was as if she were playing scout. I had never seen a gar behave so before, but then, mainly, they had marched in yoke with the wagon and not gone ranging free on the trail.

There was no trail in the grass to be sure. The sky today was overcast. I kept watch on the scudding clouds. Another bad storm might well mean our deaths when we had not even the shelter of the wagon. However, the animals showed no signs of uneasiness, and I knew that they would betray those well ahead of a drastic natural change.

To the right that distant threat of the Tangle marked the horizon line; we were heading due west in the general direction of Voor's Grove as well as I could place it. By all accounts that would be yet two days journey away.

There were formations of migrating birds across the sky and their cries reached us above the constant rustle of the grass which made up part of the wind's song. Our pace was steady but we did not push, as now and then we rested while the gars grazed. We did not talk even when we so paused. Illo wore her mask face and I had an eerie feeling that I, the gars, perhaps even the plain over which we trod, was not really visible to her, that she was deep somewhere within herself working out some problem. At our third rest I dared to ask her if she had picked up her call again. She shook her head.

"There is nothing. Perhaps I shall never know—" her voice trailed away and I could add the missing words for myself. She would never know what had happened to Catha. I guessed, though I did not say so, that what had come was death.

In mid-afternoon I sighted a small herd of lurts—the first life other than winged we had seen since the storm. The natural inhabitants of the plains must have gone to cover then or else were so scattered and mauled that they had been driven from their regular territories. Witol bellowed and the small graceful creatures fled in great bounds. We do not know why the gars will warn off the wild grazers—perhaps they have a kind of jealous desire to protect food which they might just need.

However the sight of the lurts running free meant that this was truly a deserted land. The most timid of creatures, they would not even share territory with other wildlife larger than themselves.

"This is good country." We had paused at the top of one of the low ridges. Illo shifted her pack a fraction and then went down on one knee and parted the heavy growth of grass. I thought she was looking at the richness of the soil, but instead she dug a moment with her fingers among the grass roots and then held up something which caught glittering life from the daylight as it swung back and forth in her grasp.

"This—have you seen its like before? You have ranged far—" She held her find out to me.

There was a chain of metal links. At first I thought that exposure had given it that bronze-blue color. Only when I took it from her, it was not pitted, and I believed that the smooth surface was not in the least touched by time. If that were its natural color the material was like nothing I had ever seen. Which meant little—it could have been dropped by some off-worlder, perhaps a prospector, the metal forming it an alloy from another world.

The chain was beautifully fashioned, a work of art, the links fastened one to another as the scales of a sku lizard are set on the skin. It was broken, but mid-point along its length, when it had been intact and the clasp locked, there was a plate set in as part of the chain, curved a little to continue the line, it must hold to fit closely about the throat. That plate was about the width and length of my shortest finger, and, as I wiped it clear of the remains of the soil from which Illo had freed it, I could see that it was deeply incised with a bewilderingly ornate scrolling which resembled somehow an unknown script.

"Off-world," I commented. I peered around at the grassy slopes which descended gently from where we stood. Perhaps it was my experience in Mungo's but I found myself hunting for some sign, unpleasant, of whoever had once worn it. I would not have been surprised to see a skull peering open-eyed at me from behind one of the tussocks.

"Perhaps—" She sat back on her heels and set about dividing the grass, pulling at it. Was she also hunting such grim remains? If the same thought which nibbled at me struck her I wondered that she still explored so.

"This is an alloy—I think." I wanted her to stop that search. "We have no art, no skill to produce such a thing on Voor."

"It is older than the coming of Voor—" Her search had proved fruitless. She looked up, not to me, but at what I held.

"You mean it dates back before the coming of Survey—?" Voor had been the First-In Scout who had mapped this planet for the League and because he had been close to retirement, on his last out-range of exploration, it had been given his name. He had chosen to settle here when his service years were ended.

"Yes."

"But that is impossible!" I twirled the chain between my fingers and was surprised that she would make such a statement. Or why—

She wiped the last of the earth traces from her fingers and arose.

"You know little about us—the healers." There was affront in her voice, her lips were thin set and her eyes were as unfriendly as if I had shouted "Liar!" at her openly. "We have gifts. I—and several others of my craft—can hold a wrought object thus," she set her palms together with exaggerated gesture, a little cupped as if the chain did so lie in her grasp, "and know what a thing is in truth—something of its age, of those who made it, used it—perhaps even how it reached where it lay until I saw it."

I would have denied that this could be done, then I hesitated. Who knew what could be done truly with the mind? There were off-world strains who had odd gifts. Terran blood had mutated and changed as those from the home planet reached out to the stars, found rooting on distant worlds, developed from the use of alien soils and atmosphere changes which grew ever stronger, became a more permanent part of each generation under those foreign suns. Though I had never been off-world, I had seen enough of the many types (and those were only a very small number who ever made Voor a landful) at Portcity, visitors, members of the commissions come to investigate the doom, miners, starmen, to understand that we, who had common ancestors long ago, were now sometimes different species altogether. There were also those who had never been human by our small standards at all—the Zacathans, the Trystians—others.

So it was never wise to state absolutely that this or that talent could not exist. Even the settlers of Voor had come from several different worlds and so had bloodlines which might have branched untold planet years back, giving their descendants unusual attributes.

"Let me psyche—" She took the chain deftly out of my hold, did indeed cup it between her hands. Her eyes were closed, I could see her whole body tense in the act of complete concentration.

I had felt nothing save the smooth surface of the chain. Though the idea clung to my mind that the scrolling on that foreplate did have a definite and important meaning—almost as if it were an identity disc such as are worn by starmen in some services.

An identity disc? Not impossible. There could even have been a ship's crash—or the coming of a single LB, escaping from some catastrophe in space before Voor made this world his last official landful. That fitted plausibly. Only that would put back the age at least a century, perhaps more. No metal or alloy I know of could have existed uneroded—unless—

Forerunner!

We are late comers into space, even though we have been for centuries now star voyagers. Still there had been those who had sought the star lanes, mapped and held them, long before our first crude rocket had lifted from Terra and man had eyed the stars with a covetous desire. Galactic empires had risen and fallen and of them we knew so little.