The Space Guardian (11 page)

Without comment, both Stoat and Lahks moved toward it, one on each side. Stoat set his torch upright on the top so that they could both see, although not too well. Almost simultaneously they opened the bottom drawers on each side. A pale dust, possibly the remnants of paper or cloth, coated the bottom. There was nothing else, although Lahks thought she heard a faint rattle when the drawer slid open. The drawer itself, Lahks wondered? She wiggled it. The faint rattle sounded again. She peered closer. A narrow track could be seen in the dust.

As Lahks reached for the torch, her fingers met Stoat’s, bent on the same errand. Both had apparently noticed the same thing. Smiling, he came around the cabinet on his knees. Together they searched carefully. A tiny ball, the size of a young pea, much coated with dust, lay at the side of the drawer. Slowly Stoat took a pair of pincers from his belt.

“Until you are sure, Trader’s daughter, it is best not to touch if we have found what we seek.”

The little ball was lifted. Lahks blew at the dust. A glimmer of light shone through the remaining coating, faded, then pulsed again. Both stared, silent, a little awed by a success they had not really believed in. Without further words they circled the cabinet together. In the other open drawer, another pea-sized ball lay. They did not touch this one. Stoat swallowed, then opened the drawer above slowly and carefully. This time there was no sound of rolling, but in the light of the torch a larger heartstone pulsed red, green, gold. Softly they closed that drawer, exchanged glances, and moved toward the center of the room. There they opened the top drawer of the central tier. Large as a hen’s egg, the fourth stone glittered as it caught the light.

Kneeling as if in prayer, Lahks and Stoat contemplated a treasure literally beyond calculation. If every drawer contained a stone, there were more here than all those presently known. Slowly Lahks raised a hand. Stoat caught her wrist.

“Think, Trader’s daughter. Do you want to touch that? Think of Fanny, exiled from his people, bound to a life he must loathe because of the loss of one of these. Think of the fate of others. . . .”

“Have you ever touched one?”

There was a long silence before Stoat said, “Yes.”

Lahks smiled. “Why?”

Lips tight with disapproval, but unwilling to lie, Stoat said, “Because I had to know.”

Lahks’ laugh trilled through the dimness. “And I, also. But, tell me, what came of your touching?”

“I am not one of those to whom the stone speaks. Their beauty draws me, nothing else. But I have seen others who were worse affected than Fanny.”

“Shom?”

“No. What I said of him was true.” Stoat’s mouth twisted with distaste. “Do you think I would use him like a dog, thinking his longing would sniff out stones?”

“I think no ill of you at all,” Lahks replied gently. She thought for a moment, then shrugged. Ghrey’s caution had not indicated deep danger. “I must,” she replied simply. “If I did not, I would die wondering.”

She took the little ball from the pincers and rubbed the dust from it between her fingers. Quickly its pale pink deepened to rose. It warmed, cooled; a golden glow pricked by green flickered inside. Instinctively, Lahks rolled it between her palms for a moment, then opened her hands to stare at the pulsing gem. She had the strangest sensation that something was crawling through her brain and leaving tracks. The sensation was not unpleasant; it tickled a little and made her want to laugh.

Well, of course, that was how one grew smaller and larger. It was a simple thing. And the wide band that might have been Ghrey’s direction suddenly reappeared in her head, but narrowed just as suddenly to a clear, pointed beam. She could go to Ghrey directly, speak to Ghrey directly, anytime—only now it was no longer necessary. The crawling stopped. The stone pulsed steadily, a small, friendly light. Lahks smiled and handed the little thing back to Stoat.

Before he could sigh with relief or speak, she had taken the next larger one, rubbed it clean, and caressed it. Vaguely she was aware of her companion’s anxious frown, but the crawling through her brain had started again. This was more complex, as if a many-tentacled thing was pushing through soft but slightly resistant material. The sensation was vaguely sensuous. The great world inside her opened still further. She could melt, thaw, resolve herself into a dew—if she wished.

This time she hardly waited for the pulsing of the stone to steady before she replaced it in its drawer and moved hurriedly down the room to reach the largest. A hard knot formed in her head. Lahks felt a welling of panic. She had made a terrible mistake. She tried to let go, but could not. She was out of the range of the torch and Stoat could not see the agony of her expression.

In the burning red heart of the stone, a brilliant silver point gathered. It grew cold, colder. Lahks knew that it was gathering its energies, drawing in upon itself, to release that energy in a burst strong enough to overcome the resistance in her brain. Her lips trembled, struggling to form a plea for help, but her voice was as paralyzed as her mouth. She struggled to shut her eyes, but the pupils remained fixed upon that pinpoint of light, now as brilliant as a star, in the heart of the stone.

The knot in her head grew tighter. The light stabbed through her distended eyes, running needles of pain through her skull. It burst! Showers of light. Silver crawling with blue, gold, green. The knot burst. A thousand red-hot spears tore through her mind, shattering it to fragments. The colors bled into each other, rolled, twined, writhed. Her brain dissolved into mush, reformed in lumps, convulsed, twisted. Lahks screamed.

By the time Stoat reached her, Lahks was sitting cross-legged on the floor, giggling. She heard his agonized oath, struggled with herself, and managed to gasp, “I am all right.”

“What happened?”

“I skipped a few lessons. I do not know when you last went to school, Twice-born, but you may remember that cramming for an exam is far more painful than studying steadily.”

When her voice stopped, there was so intense a silence that she knew Stoat was holding his breath. Then it hissed out.

“Why do you call me Twice-born?”

The snarl of a desperate, cornered animal was in his voice, but Lahks did not flinch. Tenderly she touched his cheek.

“I will not ask for the secret,” she said. “I know it is long lost, even to those who bear the curse—and I do not need it. Look. I, too, have a confession to make.” She turned the torch on herself, insisting, “Look at me.”

And slowly, before his eyes, the short brown hair lengthened, lifted, writhed, hissed. A hundred beady eyes glittered; fifty forked tongues flickered. Lahks’ smiling face was crowned by Medusa’s glory.

“That is a very clever trick,” Stoat said tightly. “You are a hypnotist of no mean order.”

“I am no hypnotist at all. They are quite real. Touch them. You know illusion has no substance. Come outside. I will grow wings and fly to one of the towers.”

There was another breath-held silence, and then Stoat sighed. “No wonder you were so eager, so interested in these ruins, so sure of the Changeling’s ways. Changeling! You are a Changeling!”

“I am now.” Lahks giggled. “If you do not tell about me, I will keep silent about you. We are both among the damned of the universe.”

The snakes coiled and hissed. Stoat said irritably, “For the sake of the six-pointed star, make hair again. I cannot think with those things wriggling about.”

Agreeably, Lahks made hair. “Let us go out,” she said, replacing the heartstone in its drawer. “My knees are sore from kneeling.”

In the open she glanced at the town of her ancestors and broke into peals of laughter. Stoat watched with a touch of anxiety, but Lahks soon had sobered enough for conversation, and she sat down with her back resting against the building. Stoat sat beside her.

“So much mystery, so much research, all over so simple a thing. Those”—she pointed at the heartstone Stoat still held—“are only learning devices. Oh, they’re complicated beyond anything—I think they are a single molecule—but they’re not meant to be a mystery.”

“You mean you know how to create a heartstone now?”

Lahks shook her head in quick negation. “No, no. Like your secret, Twice-born, that is lost, unless some of the makers still survive somewhere. My people never made these, although I suspect they may have inspired them. That”—she touched the stone with a forefinger—“does not teach. It only permits an integration of what one already knows or is being taught—not only an integration, but a drawing to the surface so that the conscious mind can use unconscious, even cellular-level, information.”

Stoat looked suddenly startled and almost dropped the little stone. “That must be right. I said the stone I found did not touch me, but I was wrong. We. . .” —he hesitated, as if unsure of how to identify himself, and continued with wryly twisted lips— “. . . we wandering Jews are not immortal. Our span is long, but not forever. At each division the cells forget a little. When I came here, I was at last growing old. That was why I dared take Shom with me.”

He hesitated again and Lahks touched his hand. “I understand. It tears the heart when the companion grows old. Once, twice, and you dare not love again. 1 said we were both accursed.”

“Yes.” He stared down at the pulsing pea. “But now. . . I noticed my old bones no longer ached, my eyes were clear again—after I touched the stone. I thought it had healing properties. I was wrong. I had relearned the pattern of regeneration. Perhaps”—his voice was very tired “perhaps I am now truly immortal.” His eyes closed. “Yahweh, Yahweh,” he whispered, “what shall I do?”

Lahks laughed. “Live this day in joy, for tomorrow the wind rolling rocks may kill us. But if we do not die here, I have two keys to two separate doors. One is a place of pleasure, the other a workshop. You shall have your choice—or both—Twice-born.”

Again Stoat’s lips twisted. “Once born of woman, once of machine or test tube. I do not know. The secret was well kept. I did not even know I was among the chosen. One night I slept; I awakened a year later—Twice-born.”

“Why?” Lahks asked curiously.

“Because before we—I mean the people of our native planet—sailed the stars and learned that anything that thinks is human and equal, not that all have learned that even now, my people—the Jews—were considered by many to be accursed or unclean or some such. From time to time the other peoples of the world tried to wipe them out and forever obliterate their—my—faith. There was a fear born in our bones—no, deeper, in our cells—that we would die out as a group. They were clever, my people, learned and clever, and many were rich. That was how they had survived the millennia of being hunted. While the secrets of the cell were being unraveled, they set themselves to rebraid those secrets into a cord of immortality. They succeeded. Then they weeded out those they considered unfit. The others were reborn—immortal.”

“So your people did not die out?”

Stoat laughed. “Not at all. On our native planet they are many and prosperous. Indeed, they have spread to many worlds. They were always great travelers, although they set the blame for their wanderings on others and much bewailed the loss of a homeland. But not one of them is a Twice-born. They are the descendants of the dregs—those refused the ‘blessed’ rebirth into damnation.”

“And the Twice-born?”

“I do not know.” Stoat shuddered. “For a little time—a few hundred years—some effort was made to keep contact. After that. . . Does one infected with a plague seek to take on another infection? Doubtless some like myself may still wander the universes, too unlucky to be killed by accident and too cowardly to end their own damnation.”

Lahks’ silver laugh trilled out. “Or too curious, except in moments of self-pity, to stop sticking their noses into the whys and wherefores of life. There are times when it is right and proper to die by one’s own hand—but not because of boredom. I gather that the Twice-born learned their lesson?”

“Oh, yes. Within a few hundred years most of them were dead—by mischance, torture to discover a secret we did not know, or suicide. And the secret had been obliterated so completely—my people were conscious of the population problem [we had not then reached the stars] and did not wish to make a world immortal—that even the lines of research that led to the secret were wiped out so that the process could not be resurrected.”

Lahks shook her head. “But doubtless it has been, from time to time, by others, and will be again.”

Stoat ignored the philosophical remark. “What did you mean before when you said you had skipped a few lessons?”

“Did you realize that the building is a schoolhouse? The lighted panels were for some kind of lesson display, I suppose. The children sat in the chairs, watched the panels, and I guess they used the stones as an aid. The stones are graded in size for a purpose. Each increase . . . well, I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but let’s say it opens new pathways in the brain. My experience with the first two was pleasant. Then I skipped to the largest and it had to do everything at once. Maybe that accounts for the evil effects on some people.” She hesitated. “Are you going to try the larger ones?”

Stoat considered. “I could not resist any more than you. Think of the hell of wondering what I could have learned through all eternity. I guess I was lucky. My find was one of the very small ones. But it will take all of us to get out of here. I won’t try now. Let’s take one of each size, at least. If we escape and come to a safe place, I will try.” He gripped Lahks’ wrist and held her with his eyes. “If I am rendered mindless, you must destroy both Shom and me. That will be best for us and will leave you free of a burden.”

Without hesitation, Lahks nodded agreement. His request was right and rational. When the intelligence was gone, the person was dead—no matter what the husk that remained did in the way of breathing, eating, and excreting.

“What is your true name, Changeling?”

“Lahks Mhoss. And yours, Twice-born?”

Stoat opened his mouth, closed it, and said with a puzzled smile, “I do not remember. I have used so many names over so many ages. No name I remember is more mine than Stoat.”

“It suits you.”

Their smiles met. “Yes.” He was silent, relaxed. “Well, what now? That tale you told of seeking your brother was just a tale. What did you want a heartstone for?”

“For what it has given me—an understanding of myself. But the tale was mostly true; only it is my father that I was seeking, not my brother. Now we can go to him, if nothing more interesting bars our path and if you will come so far.”

Still smiling, Stoat waved at the horizon. “Grow wings and fly us out of here and I will go to the end of the universe—or into new ones.”

“You are quite right. Our next problem is indeed a way out. Will the flyer take us over the rolling rocks?”

Stoat shrugged. “I do not know. I fear not. The power is low and the wind there. . .” He shrugged again. It was not necessary to complete the statement.

Lahks consulted her more esoteric mental and physical equipment. The Guardian training had provided her with personal defense weapons, as various as they were efficient, and with the last word in communications devices, all neatly buried in various parts of her anatomy. The weapons were obviously of no help here, and the communicators connected only with a report center of a Guardian installation. That the Guardians might fish her out of fatal trouble was, of course, possible. However, it was very doubtful, indeed, that they would consider the situation she was in as dangerous, let alone “fatal.” More important, Lahks had gone to considerable effort to shake free of her Guardian associations. Only in the last extremity would she contact them.

The Changeling heritage had made it possible for her to grow wings or turn into a mist. It did not, unfortunately, provide flying lessons or indicate what to do when the molecules of mist that had been Lahks were dissipated all over the area by hurricane winds. Beyond that, it would not help her companions. Since matter could not be created or destroyed—even by Changelings—the growth of wings would reduce the density of the rest of her body. This, although it would permit her to fly, would, on the one hand, make it impossible to lift any real weight, and, on the other, make her even more subject to the force of the wind.