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THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE by
Marion Zimmer Bradley CHAPTER EIGHT
I slept little that night. There is a tale told in Daillon of a _shegri_ where the challenger
was left in a room alone, where he was blindfolded and told to await the beginning of the torment.
Somewhere in those dark hours of waiting, between the unknown and the unexpected, the
hours of telling over to himself the horrors of past _shegri_, the torture of anticipation
alone became the unbearable. A little past noon he collapsed in screams of horror and
died raving, unmarred, untouched. Daybreak came slowly, and with the first streamers
of light came Dallisa and the white _chak_, maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his way through
the shabby poverty of the great hall. They took me to a lower dungeon where the slant
of the sunlight was less visible. Dallisa said, "The sun has risen." I said nothing.
Any word may be interpreted as a confession of defeat. I resolved to give them no excuse.
But my skin crawled and I had that peculiar prickling sensation where the hair on my forearms
was bristling erect with tension and fear. Dallisa said to the _chak_, "His gear was
not searched. See that he has swallowed no anesthetic drugs." Briefly I gave her credit
for thoroughness, even while I wondered in a split second why I had not thought of this.
Drugs could blur consciousness, at least, or suspend reality.
The white nonhuman sprang forward and pinioned my arms with one strong, spring-steel forearm.
With his other hand he forced my jaws open. I felt the furred fingers at the back of my
throat, gagged, struggled briefly and doubled up in uncontrollable retching. Dallisa's poison-berry-eyes
regarded me levelly as I struggled upright, fighting off the dizzy sickness of disgust.
Something about her impassive face stopped me cold.
I had been, momentarily, raging with fury and humiliation. Now I realized that this
had been a calculated, careful gesture to make me lose my temper and thus sap my resistance.
If she could set me to fighting, if she could make me spend my strength in rage, my own
imagination would fight on her side to make me lose control before the end. Swimming in
the glare of her eyes, I realized she had never thought for a moment that I had taken
any drug. Acting on Kyral's hint that I was a Terran,
she was taking advantage of the well-known Terran revulsion for the nonhuman. "Blindfold
him," Dallisa commanded, then instantly countermanded that: "No, strip him first." The _chak_ ripped
off shirtcloak, shirt, shoes, breeches, and I had my first triumph when the wealed claw
marks on my shoulders--worse, if possible, than those which disfigured my face--were
laid bare. The _chak_ screwed up his muzzle in fastidious
horror, and Dallisa looked shaken. I could almost read her thoughts:
_If he endured this, what hope have I to make him cry mercy?_ Briefly I remembered the months
I lay feverish and half dead, waiting for the wounds Rakhal had inflicted to heal, those
months when I had believed that nothing would ever hurt me again, that I had known the worst
of all suffering. But I had been younger then. Dallisa had picked up two small sharp knives.
She weighed them, briefly, gesturing to the _chak_. Without resisting, I let myself be
manhandled backward, spreadeagled against the wall. Dallisa commanded, "Drive the knives
through his palms to the wall!" My hands twitched convulsively, anticipating the slash of steel,
and my throat closed in spasmodic dread. This was breaking the compact, bound as they were
not to inflict physical damage. I opened my lips to protest this breaking
of the bond of honor and met her dark blazing stare, and suddenly the sweat broke out on
my forehead. I had placed myself wholly in their hands, and as Kyral had said, they were
in no way bound by honor to respect a pledge to a Terran! Then, as my hands clenched into
fists, I forced myself to relax. This was a bluff, a mental trick to needle me into
breaking the pact and pleading for mercy. I set my lips, spread my palms wide against
the wall and waited impassively. She said in her lilting voice, "Take care not to sever
the tendons, or his hands would be paralyzed and he may claim we have broken our compact."
The points of the steel, razor-sharp, touched my palms, and I felt blood run down my hand
before the pain. With an effort that turned my face white, I did not pull away from the
point. The knives drove deeper. Dallisa gestured to the _chak_. The knives dropped.
Two pinpricks, a quarter of an inch deep, stung in my palm. I had out bluffed her. Had
I? If I had expected her to betray disappointment--and I had--I was disappointed. Abruptly, as if
the game had wearied her already, she gestured, and I could not hold back a gasp as my arms
were hauled up over my head, twisted violently around one another and trussed with thin cords
that bit deep into the flesh. Then the rough upward pull almost *** my
shoulders from their sockets and I heard the giant _chak_ grunt with effort as I was hauled
upward until my feet barely, on tiptoe, touched the floor. "Blindfold him," said Dallisa languidly,
"so that he cannot watch theascent of the sun or its descent or know what is to come."
A dark softness muffled my eyes. After a little I heard her steps retreating.
My arms, wrenched overhead and numbed with the bite of the cords, were beginning to hurt
badly now. But it wasn't too bad. Surely she did not mean that this should be all.... Sternly
I controlled my imagination, taking a tight rein on my thoughts. There was only one way
to meet this--hanging blind and racked in space, my toes barely scrabbling at the floor--and
that was to take each thing as it came and not look ahead for an instant.
First of all I tried to get my feet under me, and discovered that by arching upwards
to my fullest height I could bear my weight on tiptoe and ease, a little, the dislocating
ache in my armpits by slackening the overhead rope. But after a little, a cramping pain
began to flare through the arches of my feet, and it became impossible to support my weight
on tiptoe. I jarred down with violent strain on my wrists and wrenched shoulders again.
and for a moment the shooting agony was so intense that I nearly screamed. I thought
I heard a soft breath near me. After a little it subsided to a sharp ache, then to a dull
ache, and then to the violent cramping pain again, and once more I struggled to get my
toes under me. I realized that by allowing my toes barely to touch the floor they had
doubled and tripled the pain by the tantalizing hope of, if not momentary relief, at least
the alteration of one pain for another. I haven't the faintest idea, even now, how
long I repeated that agonizing cycle: struggle for a toehold on rough stone, scraping my
bare feet raw; arch upward with all my strength to release for a few moments the strain on
my wrenched shoulders; the momentary illusion of relief as I found my balance and the pressure
lightened on my wrists. Then the slow creeping, first of an ache, then of a pain, then of
a violent agony in the arches of feet and calves.
And, delayed to the last endurable moment, that final terrible anguish when the drop
of my full weight pulled shoulder and wrist and elbow joints with that bone-shattering
jerk. I started once to estimate how much time had passed, how many hours had crawled
by, then checked myself, for that was imminent madness. But once the process had begun my
brain would not abandon and I found myself, with compulsive precision, counting off the
seconds and the minutes in each cycle: stretch upward, release the pressure on the
arms; the beginning of pain in calves and arches and toes; the creeping of pain up ribs
and loins and shoulders; the sudden jarring drop on the arms again. My throat was intolerably
dry. Under other circumstances I might have estimated the time by the growth of hunger
and thirst, but the rough treatment I had received made this impossible. There were
other, unmentionable, humiliating pains. After a time, to bolster my flagging courage,
I found myself thinking of all the ways it might have been worse. I had heard of a _shegrin_
exposed to the bite of poisonous--not fatal, but painfully poisonous--insects, and to the
worrying of the small gnawing rodents which can be trained to bite and tear. Or I might
have been branded.... I banished the memory with the powerful exorcism; the man in Daillon
whose anticipation, alone, of a torture which never came, had broken his mind.
There was only one way to conquer this, and that was to act as if the present moment was
the only one, and never for a moment to forget that the strongest of compacts bound them
not to harm me, that the end of this was fixed by sunset. Gradually, however, all such rational
thoughts blurred in a semidelirium of thirst and pain, narrowing to a red blaze of agony
across my shoulder blades. I eased up on my toes again. White-hot pain blazed through
my feet. The rough stone on which my toes sank had
been covered with metal and I smelled scorching flesh, jerking up my feet with a wordless
snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony by my shoulders alone. And then I lost consciousness,
at least for several moments, for when I became aware again, through the nightmare of pain,
my toes were resting lightly and securely on cold stone. The smell of burned flesh remained,
and the painful stinging in my toes. Mingled with that smell was a drift of perfume
close by. Dallisa murmured, "I do not wish to break our bargain by damaging your feet.
It's only a little touch of fire to keep you from too much security in resting them." I
felt the taste of blood mingle in my mouth with the sour taste of vomit. I felt delirious,
lightheaded. After another eternity I wondered if I had really heard Dallisa's lilting croon
or whether it was a nightmare born of feverish pain:
_Plead with me. A word, only a word and I will release you, strong man, scarred man.
Perhaps I shall demand only a little space in your arms. Would not such doom be light
upon you? Perhaps I shall set you free to seek Rakhal if only to plague Kyral. A word,
only a word from you. A word, only a word from you...._ It died into an endlessly echoing
whisper. Swaying, blinded, I wondered why I endured.
I drew a dry tongue over lips, salty and bloody, and nightmarishly considered yielding, winning
my way somehow around Dallisa. Or knocking her suddenly senseless and escaping--I, who
need not be bound by Wolf's codes either. I fumbled with a stiff shape of words. And
a breath saved me, a soft, released breath of anticipation. It was another trick. I swayed,
limp and racked. I was not Race Cargill now. I was a dead man hanging in chains, swinging,
filthy vultures pecking at my dangling feet. I was.... The sound of boots rang on the stone
and Kyral's voice, low and bitter, demanded somewhere behind me, "What have you done with
him?" She did not answer, but I heard her chains clash lightly and imagined her gesture.
Kyral muttered, "Women have no genius at any torture except...." His voice faded out into
great distances. Their words came to me over a sort of windy
ringing, like the howling of lost men, dying in the snowfast passes of the mountains. "Speak
up, you fool, he can't hear you now." "If you have let him faint, you are clumsy!" "_You_
talk of clumsiness!" Dallisa's voice, even thinned by the nightmare ringing in my head,
held concentrated scorn. "Perhaps I shall release him, to find Rakhal when you failed!
The Terrans have a price on Rakhal's head, too.
And at least this man will not confuse himself with his prey!" "If you think I would let
you bargain with a _Terranan_--" Dallisa cried passionately, "You trade with the Terrans!
How would you stop me, then?" "I trade with them because I must. But for a matter involving
the honor of the Great House--" "The Great House whose steps you would never have climbed,
except for Rakhal!" Dallisa sounded as if she were chewing her words in little pieces
and spitting them at Kyral. "Oh, you were clever to take us both as your
consorts! You did not know it was Rakhal's doing, did you? Hate the Terrans, then!" She
spat an obscenity at him. "Enjoy your hate, wallow in hating, and in the end all Shainsa
will fall prey to the Toymaker, like Miellyn." "If you speak that name again," said Kyral
very low, "I will kill you." "Like Miellyn, Miellyn, Miellyn," Dallisa repeated deliberately.
"You fool, Rakhal knew nothing of Miellyn!" "He was seen--" "With _me_, you fool! With
_me_! You cannot yet tell twin from twin? Rakhal came to _me_ to ask news of her!" Kyral
cried out hoarsely, like a man in anguish, "Why didn't you tell me?" "You don't really
have to ask, do you, Kyral?" "You ***!" said Kyral. "You filthy ***!" I heard the
sound of a blow. The next moment Kyral ripped the blindfold from my eyes and I blinked in
the blaze of light. My arms were wholly numb now, twisted above my head,
but the jar of his touch sent fresh pain racing through me. Kyral's face swam out of the blaze
of hell. "If that is true, then this is a damnable farce, Dallisa. You have lost our
chance of learning what he knows of Miellyn." "What _he_ knows?" Dallisa lowered her hand
from her face, where a bruise was already darkening. "Miellyn has twice appeared when
I was with him. Loose him, Dallisa, and bargain with him. What we know of Rakhal for what
he knows of Miellyn." "If you think I would let you bargain with
_Terranan_," she mocked. "Weakling, this quarrel is _mine_! You fool, the others in the caravan
will give me news, if you will not! _Where is Cuinn?_" From a million miles away Kyral
laughed. "You've slipped the wrong hawk, Dallisa. The catmen killed him." His skean flicked
loose. He climbed to a perch near the rope at my wrists. "Bargain with me, Rascar!" I
coughed, unable to speak, and Kyral insisted, "Will you bargain?
End this damned woman's farce which makes a mock of _shegri_?" The slant of sun told
me there was light left. I found a shred of voice, not knowing what I was going to say
until I had said it, irrevocably. "This is between Dallisa and me." Kyral glared at me
in mounting rage. With four strides he was out of the room, flinging back a harsh, furious
"I hope you kill each other!" and the door slammed.
Dallisa's face swam red, and again as before, I knew the battle which was joined between
us would be fought to a dreadful end. She touched my chest lightly, but the touch jolted
excruciating pain through my shoulders. "Did you kill Cuinn?" I wondered, wearily, what
this presaged. "Did you?" In a passion, she cried, "Answer! Did you kill him?" She struck
me hard, and where the touch had been pain, the blow was a blaze of white agony. I fainted.
"Answer!" She struck me again and the white blaze jolted me back to consciousness. "Answer
me! Answer!" Each cry bought a blow until I gasped finally, "He signaled ... set catmen
on us...." "No!" She stood staring at me and her white face was a death mask in which the
eyes lived. She screamed wildly and the huge _chak_ came running. "Cut him down! Cut him
down! Cut him down!" A knife slashed the rope and I slumped, falling
in a bone-breaking huddle to the floor. My arms were still twisted over my head. The
_chak_ cut the ropes apart, pulled my arms roughly back into place, and I gagged with
the pain as the blood began flowing painfully through the chafed and swollen hands. And
then I lost consciousness. More or less permanently, this time.
End of chapter eight CHAPTER NINE
When I came to again I was lying with my head in Dallisa's lap, and the reddish color of
sunset was in the room. Her thighs were soft under my head, and for an instant I wondered
if, in delirium, I had conceded to her. I muttered, "Sun ... not down...." She bent
her face to mine, whispering, "Hush. Hush." It was heaven, and I drifted off again. After
a moment I felt a cup against my lips. "Can you swallow this?"
I could and did. I couldn't taste it yet, but it was cold and wet and felt heavenly
trickling down my throat. She bent and looked into my eyes, and I felt as if I were falling
into those reddish and stormy depths. She touched my scarred mouth with a light finger.
Suddenly my head cleared and I sat upright. "Is this a trick to force me into calling
my bet?" She recoiled as if I had struck her, then the trace of a smile flitted around her
red mouth. Yes, between us it was battle. "You are right to be suspicious, I suppose.
But if I tell you what I know of Rakhal, will you trust me then?" I looked straight at her
and said, "No." Surprisingly, she threw back her head and laughed. I flexed my freed wrists
cautiously. The skin was torn away and chafed, and my arms ached to the bone. When I moved
harsh lances of pain drove through my chest. "Well, until sunset I have no right to ask
you to trust me," said Dallisa when she had done laughing.
"And since you are bound by my command until the last ray has fallen, I command that you
lay your head upon my knees." I blazed, "You are making a game of me!" "Is that my privilege?
Do you refuse?" "Refuse?" It was not yet sunset. This might be a torture more complex than
any which had yet greeted me. From the scarlet glint in her eyes I felt she was playing with
me, as the cat-things of the forest play with their helpless victims.
My mouth twitched in a grimace of humiliation as I lowered myself obediently until my head
rested on her fur-clad knees. She murmured, smiling, "Is this so unbearable, then?" I
said nothing. Never, never for an instant could I forget that—all human, all woman
as she seemed--Dallisa's race was worn and old when the Terran Empire had not left their
home star. The mind of Wolf, which has mingled with the nonhuman since before the beginnings
of recorded time, is unfathomable to an outsider. I was better equipped than most Earthmen to
keep pace with its surface acts, but I could never pretend to understand its deeper motivations.
It works on complex and irrational logic. Mischief is an integral part of it. Even the
deadly blood-feud with Rakhal had begun with an overelaborate practical joke--which had
lost the Service, incidentally, several thousand credits worth of spaceship. And so I could
not trust Dallisa for an instant. Yet it was wonderful to lie here with my head
resting against the perfumed softness of her body. Then suddenly her arms were gripping
me, frantic and hungry; the subdued thing in her voice, her eyes, flamed out hot and
wild. She was pressing the whole length of her body to mine, *** and thighs and long
legs, and her voice was hoarse. "Is this torture too?" Beneath the fur robe she was soft and
white, and the subtle scent of her hair seemed a deeper entrapment than any.
Frail as she seemed, her arms had the strength of steel, and pain blazed down my wrenched
shoulders, seared through the twisted wrists. Then I forgot the pain. Over her shoulder
the last dropping redness of the sun vanished and plunged the room into orchid twilight.
I caught her wrists in my hands, prizing them backward, twisting them upward over her head.
I said thickly, "The sun's down." And then I stopped her wild mouth with mine. And I
knew that the battle between us had reached climax and victory simultaneously, and any
question about who had won it was purely academic. During the night sometime, while her dark
head lay motionless on my shoulder, I found myself staring into the darkness, wakeful.
The throbbing of my bruises had little to do with my sleeplessness; I was remembering
other chained girls from the old days in the Dry-towns, and the honey and poison of them
distilled into Dallisa's kisses. Her head was very light on my shoulders, and she felt
curiously insubstantial, like a woman of feathers. One of the tiny moons was visible through
the slitted windows. I thought of my rooms in the Terran Trade City, clean and bright
and warm, and all the nights when I had paced the floor, hating, filled to the teeth with
bitterness, longing for the windswept stars of the Dry-towns, the salt smell of the winds
and the musical clashing of the walk of the chained women. With a sting of guilt, I realized
that I had half forgotten Juli and my pledge to her and her misfortune which had freed
me again, for this. Yet I had won, and what they knew had narrowed
my planet-wide search to a pinpoint. Rakhal was in Charin. I wasn't altogether surprised.
Charin is the only city on Wolf, except the Kharsa, where the Terran Empire has put down
deep roots into the planet, built a Trade City, a smaller spaceport. Like the Kharsa,
it lies within the circle of Terran law--and a million miles outside it. A nonhuman town,
inhabited largely by _chaks_, it is the core and center of the resistance movement, a noisy
town in a perpetual ferment. It was the logical place for a renegade. I
settled myself so that the ache in my racked shoulders was less violent, and muttered,
"Why Charin?" Slight as the movement was, it roused Dallisa. She rolled over and propped
herself on her elbows, quoting drowsily, "The prey walks safest at the hunter's door." I
stared at the square of violet moonlight, trying to fit together all the pieces of the
puzzle, and asked half aloud, "What prey and what hunters?"
Dallisa didn't answer. I hadn't expected her to answer. I asked the real question in my
mind: "Why does Kyral hate Rakhal Sensar, when he doesn't even know him by sight?" "There
are reasons," she said somberly. "One of them is Miellyn, my twin sister. Kyral climbed
the steps of the Great House by claiming us both as his consorts. He is our father's son
by another wife." That explained much. Brother-and-sister marriages, not uncommon
in the Dry-towns, are based on expediency and suspicion, and are frequently, though
not always loveless. It explained Dallisa's taunts, and it partly explained, only partly,
why I found her in my arms. It did not explain Rakhal's part in this mysterious intrigue,
nor why Kyral had taken me for Rakhal, (but only after he remembered seeing me in Terran
clothing). I wondered why it had never occurred to me before that I might be mistaken for
Rakhal. There was no close resemblance between us,
but a casual description would apply equally well to me or to Rakhal. My height is unusual
for a Terran--within an inch of Rakhal's own--and we had roughly the same build, the same coloring.
I had copied his walk, imitated his mannerisms, since we were boys together. And, blurring
minor facial characteristics, there were the scars of the _kifirgh_ on my mouth, cheeks,
and shoulders. Anyone who did not know us by sight, anyone
who had known us by reputation from the days when we had worked together in the Dry-towns,
might easily take one of us for the other. Even Juli had blurted, "You're so much like--"
before thinking better of it. Other odd bits of the puzzle floated in my mind, stubbornly
refusing to take on recognizable patterns, the disappearance of a toy-seller; Juli's
hysterical babbling; the way the girl--Miellyn? had vanished into a shrine of Nebran; and
the taunts of Dallisa and the old man about a mysterious "Toymaker." And something, some
random joggling of a memory, in that eerie trading in the city of the Silent Ones. I
knew all these things fitted together somehow, but I had no real hope that Dallisa could
complete their pattern for me. She said, with a vehemence that startled me, "Miellyn is
only the excuse! Kyral hates Rakhal because Rakhal will compromise and because he'll fight!"
She rolled over and pressed herself against me in the darkness. Her voice trembled. "Race,
our world is dying. We can't stand against Terra. And there are other things, worse things."
I sat up, surprised to find myself defending Terra to this girl. After all these years
I was back in my own world. And yet I heard myself say quietly, "The Terrans aren't exploiting
Wolf. We haven't abolished the rule of Shainsa. We've changed nothing." It was true. Terra
held Wolf by compact, not conquest. They paid, and paid generously, for the lease
of the lands where their Trade Cities would rise, and stepped beyond them only when invited
to do so. "We let any city or state that wants to keep its independence govern itself until
it collapses, Dallisa. And they do collapse after a generation or so. Very few primitive
planets can hold out against us. The people themselves get tired of living under feudal
or theocratic systems, and they beg to be taken into the Empire. That's all." "But that's
just it," Dallisa argued. "You give the people all those things we used to give them, and
you do it better. Just by being here, you are killing the Dry-towns. They're turning
to you and leaving us, and you let them do it." I shook my head. "We've kept the Terran
Peace for centuries. What do you expect? Should we give you arms, planes, bombs, weapons to
hold your slaves down?" "Yes!" she flared at me. The Dry-towns have ruled Wolf since--since--you,
you can't even imagine how long! And we made compact with you to trade here--"
"And we have rewarded you by leaving you untouched," I said quietly. "But we have not forbidden
the Dry-towns to come into the Empire and work with Terra." She said bitterly, "Men
like Kyral will die first," and pressed her face helplessly against me. "And I will die
with them. Miellyn broke away, but I cannot! Courage is what I lack. Our world is rotten,
Race, rotten all through, and I'm as rotten as the core of it.
I could have killed you today, and I'm here in your arms. Our world is rotten, but I've
no confidence that the new world will be better!" I put my hand under her chin, and looked down
gravely into her face, only a pale oval in the darkness. There was nothing I could say;
she had said it all, and truthfully. I had hated and yearned and starved for this, and
when I found it, it turned salty and bloody on my lips, like Dallisa's despairing kisses.
She ran her fingers over the scars on my face, then gripped her small thin hands around my
wrists so fiercely that I grunted protest. "You will not forget me," she said in her
strangely lilting voice. "You will not forget me, although you were victorious." She twisted
and lay looking up at me, her eyes glowing faintly luminous in darkness. I knew that
she could see me as clearly as if it were day. "I think it was my victory, not yours,
Race Cargill. Gently, on an impulse I could not explain,
I picked up one delicate wrist, then the other, unclasping the heavy jeweled bracelets. She
let out a stifled cry of dismay. And then I tossed the chains into a corner before I
drew her savagely into my arms again and forced her head back under my mouth.
I said good-bye to her alone, in the reddish, windswept space before the Great House. She
pressed her head against my shoulder and whispered, "Race, take me with you!" For answer I only
picked up her narrow wrists and turned them over on my palm. The jeweled bracelets were
clasped again around the thinly *** joints, and on some self-punishing impulse she had
shortened the chains so that she could not even put her arms around me.
I lifted the punished wrists to my mouth and kissed them gently. "You don't want to leave,
Dallisa." I was desperately sorry for her. She would go down with her dying world, proud
and cold and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and I tasted blood, her thin
fettered body straining wildly against me, shaken with tearing, convulsive sobs. Then
she turned and fled back into the shadow of the great dark house. I never saw her again.
End of chapter nine CHAPTER TEN
A few days later I found myself nearing the end of the trail. It was twilight in Charin,
hot and reeking with the gypsy glare of fires which burned, smoking, at the far end of the
Street of the Six Shepherds. I crouched in the shadow of a wall, waiting. My skin itched
from the dirty shirtcloak I hadn't changed in days. Shabbiness is wise in nonhuman parts,
and Dry-towners think too much of water to waste much of it in superfluous washing anyhow.
I scratched unobtrusively and glanced cautiously down the street. It seemed empty, except for
a few sodden derelicts sprawled in doorways--the Street of the Six Shepherds is a filthy slum--but
I made sure my skean was loose. Charin is not a particularly safe town, even for Dry-towners,
and especially not for Earthmen, at any time. Even with what Dallisa had told me, the search
had been difficult. Charin is not Shainsa. In Charin, where human and nonhuman live closer
together than anywhere else on the planet, information about such men as Rakhal can be
bought, but the policy is to let the buyer beware. That's fair enough, because the life
of the seller has a way of not being worth much afterward, either. A dirty, dust-laden
wind was blowing up along the street, heavy with strange smells. The pungent reek of incense
from a street-shrine was in the smells. The heavy, acrid odor that made my skin crawl.
In the hills behind Charin, the Ghost Wind was rising. Borne on this wind, the Ya-men
would sweep down from the mountains, and everything human or nearly human would scatter in their
path. They would range through the quarter all night, and in the morning they would melt
away, until the Ghost Wind blew again. At any other time, I would already have taken
cover. I fancied that I could hear, borne on the
wind, the faraway yelping, and envision the plumed, taloned figures which would come leaping
down the street. In that moment, the quiet of the street split asunder. From somewhere
a girl's voice screamed in shrill pain or panic. Then I saw her, dodging between two
of the chinked pebble-houses. She was a child, thin and barefoot, a long tangle of black
hair flying loose as she darted and twisted to elude the lumbering fellow at her heels.
His outstretched paw *** cruelly at her slim wrist. The little girl screamed and wrenched
herself free and threw herself straight on me, wrapping herself around my neck with the
violence of a storm wind. Her hair got in my mouth and her small hands gripped at my
back like a cat's flexed claws. "Oh, help me," she gasped between sobs. "Don't let him
get me, don't." And even in that broken plea I took it in that the little ragamuffin did
not speak the jargon of that slum, but the pure speech of Shainsa.
What I did then was as automatic as if it had been Juli. I pulled the kid loose, shoved
her behind me, and scowled at the brute who lurched toward us. "Make yourself scarce,"
I advised. "We don't chase little girls where I come from. Haul off, now." The man reeled.
I smelled the rankness of his rags as he thrust one grimy paw at the girl. I never was the
hero type, but I'd started something which I had to carry through. I thrust myself between
them and put my hand on the skean again. "You--you Dry-towner." The man set up a tipsy
howl, and I sucked in my breath. Now I was in for it. Unless I got out of there damned
fast, I'd lose what I'd come all the way to Charin to find. I felt like handing the girl
over. For all I knew, the bully could be her father and she was properly in line for a
spanking. This wasn't any of my business. My business lay at the end of the street,
where Rakhal was waiting at the fires. He wouldn't be there long.
Already the smell of the Ghost Wind was heavy and harsh, and little flurries of sand went
racing along the street, lifting the flaps of the doorways. But I did nothing so sensible.
The big lunk made a grab at the girl, and I whipped out my skean and pantomimed. "Get
going!" "Dry-towner!" He spat out the word like filth, his pig-eyes narrowing to slits.
"Son of the Ape! _Earthman!_" "_Terranan!_" Someone took up the howl. There was a stir,
a rustle, all along the street that had seemed empty,
and from nowhere, it seemed, the space in front of me was crowded with shadowy forms,
human and otherwise. "Earthman!" I felt the muscles across my belly knotting into a band
of ice. I didn't believe I'd given myself away as an Earthman. The bully was using the
time-dishonored tactic of stirring up a riot in a hurry, but just the same I looked quickly
round, hunting a path of escape. "Put your skean in his guts, Spilkar! Grab him!" "Hai-ai!
Earthman! _Hai-ai!_" It was the last cry that made me panic.
Through the sultry glare at the end of the street, I could see the plumed, taloned figures
of the Ya-men, gliding through the banners of smoke. The crowd melted open. I didn't
stop to reflect on the fact--suddenly very obvious--that Rakhal couldn't have been at
the fires at all, and that my informant had led me into an open trap, a nest of Ya-men
already inside Charin. The crowd edged back and muttered, and suddenly I made my choice.
I whirled, snatched up the girl in my arms and ran straight toward the advancing figures
of the Ya-men. Nobody followed me. I even heard a choked shout that sounded like a warning.
I heard the yelping shrieks of the Ya-men grow to a wild howl, and at the last minute,
when their stiff rustling plumes loomed only a few yards away, I dived sidewise into an
alley, stumbled on some rubbish and spilled the girl down. "Run, kid!" She shook herself
like a puppy climbing out of water. Her small fingers closed like a steel trap
on my wrist. "This way," she urged in a hasty whisper, and I found myself plunging out the
far end of the alley and into the shelter of a street-shrine. The sour stink of incense
smarted in my nostrils, and I could hear the yelping of the Ya-men as they leaped and rustled
down the alley, their cold and poisonous eyes searching out the recess where I crouched
with the girl. "Here," she panted, "stand close to me on the stone--" I drew back, startled.
" "Oh, don't stop to argue," she whimpered.
"Come _here_!""_Hai-ai!_ Earthman! There he is!" The girl's arms flung round me again.
I felt her slight, hard body pressing on mine and she literally hauled me toward the pattern
of stones at the center of the shrine. I wouldn't have been human if I hadn't caught her closer
yet. The world reeled. The street disappeared in a cone of spinning lights, stars danced
crazily, and I plunged down through a widening gulf of empty space, locked in the girl's
arms. I fell, spun, plunged head over heels through
tilting lights and shadows that flung us through eternities of freefall. The yelping of the
Ya-men whirled away in unimaginable distances, and for a second I felt the unmerciful blackout
of a power dive, with blood breaking from my nostrils and filling my mouth.
End of chapter ten CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lights flared in my eyes. I was standing solidly on my feet in the street-shrine, but the street
was gone. Coils of incense still smudged the air. The God squatted toadlike in his recess.
The girl was hanging limp, locked in my clenched arms. As the floor straightened under my feet
I staggered, thrown off balance by the sudden return of the girl's weight, and grabbed blindly
for support. "Give her to me," said a voice, and the girl's sagging body was lifted from
my arms. A strong hand grasped my elbow. I found a
chair beneath my knees and sank gratefully into it. "The transmission isn't smooth yet
between such distant terminals," the voice remarked. "I see Miellyn has fainted again.
A weakling, the girl, but useful." I spat blood, trying to get the room in focus. For
I was inside a room, a room of some translucent substance, windowless, a skylight high above
me, through which pink daylight streamed. Daylight--and it had been midnight in Charin!
I'd come halfway around the planet in a few seconds! From somewhere I heard the sound
of hammering, tiny, bell-like hammering, the chiming of a fairy anvil. I looked up and
saw a man—a man?--watching me. On Wolf you see all kinds of human, half-human and nonhuman
life, and I consider myself something of an expert on all three. But I had never seen
anyone, or anything, who so closely resembled the human and so obviously wasn't.
He, or it, was tall and lean, man-shaped but oddly muscled, a vague suggestion of something
less than human in the lean hunch of his posture. Manlike, he wore green tight-fitting trunks
and a shirt of green fur that revealed bulging biceps where they shouldn't be, and angular
planes where there should have been swelling muscles. The shoulders were high, the neck
unpleasantly sinuous, and the face, a little narrower than human, was handsomely
arrogant, with a kind of wary alert mischief that was the least human thing about him.
He bent, tilted the girl's inert body on to a divan of some sort, and turned his back
on her, lifting his hand in an impatient, and unpleasantly reminiscent, gesture. The
tinkling of the little hammers stopped as if a switch had been disconnected. "Now,"
said the nonhuman, "we can talk." Like the waif, he spoke Shainsan, and spoke
it with a better accent than any nonhuman I had ever known--so well that I looked again
to be certain. I wasn't too dazed to answer in the same tongue, but I couldn't keep back
a spate of questions: "What happened? Who are you? What is this place?" The nonhuman
waited, crossing his hands--quite passable hands, if you didn't look too closely at what
should have been nails--and bent forward in a sketchy gesture.
"Do not blame Miellyn. She acted under orders. It was imperative you be brought here tonight,
and we had reason to believe you might ignore an ordinary summons. You were clever at evading
our surveillance, for a time. But there would not be two Dry-towners in Charin tonight who
would dare the Ghost Wind. Your reputation does you justice, Rakhal Sensar." Rakhal Sensar!_
Once again Rakhal! Shaken, I pulled a rag from my pocket and wiped blood from my mouth.
I'd figured out, in Shainsa, why the mistake was logical. And here in Charin I'd been hanging
around in Rakhal's old haunts, covering his old trails. Once again, mistaken identity
was natural. Natural or not, I wasn't going to deny it. If these were Rakhal's enemies,
my real identity should be kept as an ace in reserve which might--just might--get me
out alive again. If they were his friends ... well, I could only hope that no one who
knew him well by sight would walk in on me. "We knew," the nonhuman continued, "that if
you remained where you were, the _Terranan_ Cargill would have made his arrest. We know
about your quarrel with Cargill, among other things, but we did not consider it necessary
that you should fall into his hands at present." I was puzzled. "I still don't understand.
Exactly where am I?" "This is the master shrine of Nebran." _Nebran!_ The stray pieces of
the puzzle suddenly jolted into place. Kyral had warned me, not knowing he was doing it.
I hastily imitated the gesture Kyral had made, gabbling a few words of an archaic charm.
Like every Earthman who's lived on Wolf more than a tourist season, I'd seen faces go blank
and impassive at mention of the Toad God. Rumor made his spies omnipresent, his priests
omniscient, his anger all-powerful. I had believed about a tenth of what I had heard,
or less. The Terran Empire has little to say to planetary religions, and Nebran's cult
is a remarkably obscure one, despite the street-shrines on every corner.
Now I was in his master shrine, and the device which had brought me here was beyond doubt
a working model of a matter transmitter. A matter transmitter, a working model--the words
triggered memory. Rakhal was after it. "And who," I asked slowly, "are you, Lord?" The
green-clad creature hunched thin shoulders again in a ceremonious gesture. "I am called
Evarin. Humble servant of Nebran and yourself," he
added, but there was no humility in his manner. "I am called the Toymaker." _Evarin._ That
was another name given weight by rumor. A breath of gossip in a thieves market. A scrawled
word on smudged paper. A blank folder in Terran Intelligence. Another puzzle-piece snapped
into place--_Toymaker_! The girl on the divan sat up suddenly passing slim hands over her
disheveled hair. "Did I faint, Evarin? I had to fight to get him into the stone,
and the patterns were not set straight in that terminal. You must send one of the Little
Ones to set them to rights. Toymaker, you are not listening to me." "Stop chattering,
Miellyn," said Evarin indifferently. "You brought him here, and that is all that matters.
You aren't hurt?" Miellyn pouted and looked ruefully at her bare bruised feet, patted
the wrinkles in her ragged frock with fastidious fingers.
"My poor feet," she mourned, "they are black and blue with the cobbles and my hair is filled
with sand and tangles! Toymaker, what way was this to send me to entice a man? Any man
would have come quickly, quickly, if he had seen me looking lovely, but you--you send
me in rags!" She stamped a small bare foot. She was not merely as young as she had looked
in the street. Though immature and underdeveloped by Terran standards, she had a fair figure
for a Dry-town woman. Her rags fell now in graceful folds. Her hair
was spun black glass, and I--I saw what the rags and the confusion in the filthy street
had kept me from seeing before. It was the girl of the spaceport cafe, the girl who had
appeared and vanished in the eerie streets of Canarsa. Evarin was regarding her with
what, in a human, might have been rueful impatience. He said, "You know you enjoyed yourself, as
always, Miellyn. Run along and make yourself beautiful again, little nuisance."
The girl danced out of the room, and I was just as glad to see her go. The Toymaker motioned
to me. "This way," he directed, and led me through a different door. The offstage hammering
I had heard, tiny bell tones like a fairy xylophone, began again as the door opened,
and we passed into a workroom which made me remember nursery tales from a half-forgotten
childhood on Terra. For the workers were tiny, gnarled _trolls_! They were _chaks_. _Chaks_
from the polar mountains, dwarfed and furred and half-human, with witchlike
faces and great golden eyes, and I had the curious feeling that if I looked hard enough
I would see the little toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa. I didn't look. I
figured I was in enough trouble already.Tiny hammers pattered on miniature anvils in a
tinkling, jingling chorus of musical clinks and taps. Golden eyes focused like lenses
over winking jewels and gimcracks. Busy elves. Makers of toys! Evarin *** his shoulders
with an imperative gesture. I followed him through a fairy workroom, but could not refrain
from casting a lingering look at the worktables. A withered leprechaun set eyes into the head
of a minikin hound. Furred fingers worked precious metals into invisible filigree for
the collarpiece of a dancing doll. Metallic feathers were thrust with clockwork precision
into the wings of a skeleton bird no longer than my fingernail.
The nose of the hound wabbled and sniffed, the bird's wings quivered, the eyes of the
little dancer followed my footsteps. Toys? "This way," Evarin rapped, and a door slid
shut behind us. The clinks and taps grew faint, fainter, but never ceased. My face must have
betrayed more than conventional impassivity, for Evarin smiled. "Now you know, Rakhal,
why I am called Toymaker. Is it not strange-- the master priest of Nebran, a maker of Toys,
and the shrine of the Toad God a workshop for children's playthings?" Evarin paused
suggestively. They were obviously not children's playthings and this was my cue to say so,
but I avoided the trap. Evarin opened a sliding panel and took out a doll. She was perhaps
the length of my longest finger, molded to the precise proportions of a woman, and costumed
after the bizarre fashion of the Ardcarran dancing girls.
Evarin touched no button or key that I could see, but when he set the figure on its feet,
it executed a whirling, armtossing dance in a fast, tricky tempo. "I am, in a sense, benevolent,"
Evarin murmured. He snapped his fingers and the doll sank to her knees and poised there,
silent. "Moreover, I have the means and, let us say, the ability to indulge my small fantasies.
"The little daughter of the President of the Federation of Trade Cities on Samarra was
sent such a doll recently. What a pity that Paolo Arimengo was so suddenly
impeached and banished!" The Toymaker clucked his teeth commiseratingly. "Perhaps this small
companion will compensate the little Carmela for her adjustment to her new ... position."
He replaced the dancer and pulled down something like a whirligig. "This might interest you,"
he mused, and set it spinning. I stared at the pattern of lights that flowed and disappeared,
melting in and out of visible shadows. Suddenly I realized what the thing was doing.
I wrested my eyes away with an effort. Had there been a lapse of seconds or minutes?
Had Evarin spoken? Evarin arrested the compelling motion with one finger. "Several of these
pretty playthings are available to the children of important men," he said absently. "An import
of value for our exploited and impoverished world. Unfortunately they are, perhaps, a
little ... ah, obvious. The incidence of nervous breakdowns is, ah,
interfering with their sale. The children, of course, are unaffected, and love them."
Evarin set the hypnotic wheel moving again, glanced sidewise at me, then set it carefully
back. "Now"--Evarin's voice, hard with the silkiness of a cat's snarl, clawed the silence--"we'll
talk business." I turned, composing my face. Evarin had something concealed in one hand,
but I didn't think it was a weapon. And if I'd known, I'd have had to ignore it anyway.
"Perhaps you wonder how we recognized and found you?" A panel cleared in the wall and
became translucent. Confused flickers moved, dropped into focus and I realized that the
panel was an ordinary television screen and I was looking into the well-known interior
of the Cafe of Three Rainbows in the Trade City of Charin. By this time I was running
low on curiosity and didn't wonder till much, much later how televised pictures were transmitted
around the curve of a planet. Evarin sharpened the focus down on the long
Earth-type bar where a tall man in Terran clothes was talking to a pale-haired girl.
Evarin said, "By now, Race Cargill has decided, no doubt, that you fell into his trap and
into the hands of the Ya-men. He is off-guard now." And suddenly the whole thing seemed
so unbearably, illogically funny that my shoulders shook with the effort to keep back dangerous
laughter. Since I'd landed in Charin, I'd taken great
pains to avoid the Trade City, or anyone who might have associated me with it. And Rakhal,
somehow aware of this, had conveniently filled up the gap. By posing as me. It wasn't nearly
as difficult as it sounded. I had found that out in Shainsa. Charin is a long, long way
from the major Trade City near the Kharsa. I hadn't a single intimate friend there, or
within hundreds of miles, to see through the imposture.
At most, there were half a dozen of the staff that I'd once met, or had a drink with, eight
or ten years ago. Rakhal could speak perfect Standard when he chose; if he lapsed into
Dry-town idiom, that too was in my known character. I had no doubt he was making a great success
of it all, probably doing much better with my identity than I could ever have done with
his. Evarin rasped, "Cargill meant to leave the planet. What stopped him? You could be
of use to us, Rakhal. But not with this blood-feud unsettled." That
needed no elucidation. No Wolfan in his right mind will bargain with a Dry-towner carrying
an unresolved blood-feud. By law and custom, declared blood-feud takes precedence over
any other business, public or private, and is sufficient excuse for broken promises,
neglected duties, theft, even ***. "We want it settled once and for all." Evarin's
voice was low and unhurried. "And we aren't above weighting the scales.
This Cargill can, and has, posed as a Dry-towner, undetected. We don't like Earthmen who can
do that. In settling your feud, you will be aiding us, and removing a danger. We would
be ... grateful." He opened his closed hand, displaying something small, curled, inert.
"Every living thing emits a characteristic pattern of electrical nerve impulses. We have
ways of recording those impulses, and we have had you and Cargill under observation for
a long time. We've had plenty of opportunity to key this
Toy to Cargill's pattern." On his palm the curled thing stirred, spread wings. A fledgling
bird lay there, small soft body throbbing slightly. Half-hidden in a ruff of metallic
feathers I glimpsed a grimly elongated beak. The pinions were feathered with delicate down
less than a quarter of an inch long. They beat with delicate insistence against the
Toymaker's prisoning fingers. "This is not dangerous to you.
Press here"--he showed me--"and if Race Cargill is within a certain distance--and it is up
to you to be _within_ that distance--it will find him, and kill him. Unerringly, inescapably,
untraceably. We will not tell you the critical distance. And we will give you three days."
He checked my startled exclamation with a gesture. "Of course this is a test. Within
the hour Cargill will receive a warning. We want no incompetents who must be helped too
much! Nor do we want cowards! If you fail, or release
the bird at a distance too great, or evade the test"--the green inhuman malice in his
eyes made me sweat--"we have made another bird." By now my brain was swimming, but I
thought I understood the complex inhuman logic involved. "The other bird is keyed to me?"
With slow contempt Evarin shook his head. "You? You are used to danger and fond of a
gamble. Nothing so simple! We have given you three days.
If, within that time, the bird you carry has not killed, the other bird will fly. And it
will kill. Rakhal, you have a wife." Yes, Rakhal had a wife. They could threaten Rakhal's
wife. And his wife was my sister Juli. Everything after that was anticlimax. Of course I had
to drink with Evarin, the elaborate formal ritual without which no bargain on Wolf is
concluded. He entertained me with gory and technical descriptions of the way in which
the birds, and other of his hellish Toys, did their killing, and worse tasks.
Miellyn danced into the room and upset the exquisite solemnity of the wine-ritual by
perching on my knee, stealing a sip from my cup, and pouting prettily when I paid her
less attention than she thought she merited. I didn't dare pay much attention, even when
she whispered, with the deliberate and thorough wantonness of a Dry-town woman of high-caste
who has flung aside her fetters, something about a rendezvous at the Three Rainbows.
But eventually it was over and I stepped through a door that twisted with a giddy blankness,
and found myself outside a bare windowless wall in Charin again, the night sky starred
and cold. The acrid smell of the Ghost Wind was thinning in the streets, but I had to
crouch in a cranny of the wall when a final rustling horde of Ya-men, the last of their
receding tide, rustled down the street. I found my way to my lodging in a filthy _chak_
hostel, and threw myself down on the verminous bed. Believe it or not, I slept.
End of chapter eleven CHAPTER TWELVE
An hour before dawn there was a noise in my room. I roused, my hand on my skean. Someone
or something was fumbling under the mattress where I had thrust Evarin's bird. I struck
out, encountered something warm and breathing, and grappled with it in the darkness. A foul-smelling
something gripped over my mouth. I tore it away and struck hard with the
skean. There was a high shrilling. The gripping filth loosened and fell away and something
died on the floor. I struck a light, retching in revulsion. It
hadn't been human. There wouldn't have been that much blood from a human. Not that color,
either. The _chak_ who ran the place came and gibbered at me. _Chaks_ have a horror
of blood and this one gave me to understand that my lease was up then and there, no arguments,
no refunds. He wouldn't even let me go into his stone outbuilding to wash the foul stuff
from my shirt cloak. I gave up and fished under the mattress for Evarin's Toy.
The _chak_ got a glimpse of the embroideries on the silk in which it was wrapped, and stood
back, his loose furry lips hanging open, while I gathered my few belongings together and
strode out of the room. He would not touch the coins I offered; I laid them on a chest
and he let them lie there, and as I went into the reddening
morning they came flying after me into the street. I pulled the silk from the Toy and
tried to make some sense from my predicament. The little thing lay innocent and silent in
my palm. It wouldn't tell me whether it had been keyed to me, the real Cargill, some time
in the past, or to Rakhal, using my name and reputation in the Terran Colony here at Charin.
If I pressed the stud it might play out this comedy of errors by hunting down Rakhal, and
all my troubles would be over. For a while, at least, until Evarin found out what had
happened. I didn't deceive myself that I could carry the impersonation through another meeting.
on the other hand, if I pressed the stud, the bird might turn on me. And then all my
troubles would be over for good. If I delayed past Evarin's deadline, and did nothing, the
other bird in his keeping would hunt down Juli and give her a swift and not too painless
death. I spent most of the day in a _chak_ dive, juggling plans. Toys, innocent and sinister.
Spies, messengers. Toys which killed horribly. Toys which could be controlled, perhaps, by
the pliant mind of a child, and every child hates its parents now and again! Even in the
Terran colony, who was safe? In Mack's very home, one of the Magnusson youngsters had
a shiny thing which might, or might not, be one of Evarin's hellish Toys. Or was I beginning
to think like a superstitious Dry-towner? Damn it, Evarin couldn't be infallible; he
hadn't even recognized me as Race Cargill! Or--suddenly the sweat broke out, again, on
my forehead--_or had he_? Had the whole thing been one of those sinister,
deadly and incomprehensible nonhuman jokes? I kept coming to the same conclusion. Juli
was in danger, but she was half a world away. Rakhal was here in Charin. There was a child
involved--Juli's child. The first step was to get inside the Terran colony and see how
the land lay. Charin is a city shaped like a crescent moon, encircling the small Trade
City: a miniature spaceport, a miniature skyscraper
HQ, the clustered dwellings of the Terrans who worked there, and those who lived with
them and supplied them with necessities, services and luxuries. Entry from one to the other
is through a guarded gateway, since this is hostile territory, and Charin lies far beyond
the impress of ordinary Terran law. But the gate stood wide-open, and the guards looked
lax and bored. They had shockers, but they didn't look as if they'd used them lately.
One raised an eyebrow at his companion as I shambled up. I could pretty well guess the
impression I made, dirty, unkempt and stained with nonhuman blood. I asked permission to
go into the Terran Zone. They asked my name and business, and I toyed with the notion
of giving the name of the man I was inadvertently impersonating. Then I decided that if Rakhal
had passed himself off as Race Cargill, he'd expect exactly that. And he was also capable
of the masterstroke of impudence-- putting out a pickup order, through Space
force, for his own name! So I gave the name we'd used from Shainsa to Charin, and tacked
one of the Secret Service passwords on the end of it. They looked at each other again
and one said, "Rascar, eh? This is the guy, all right." He took me into the little booth
by the gate while the other used an intercom device. Presently they took me along into
the HQ building, and into an office that said "Legate." I tried not to panic, but it wasn't
easy! Evidently I'd walked square into another trap.
One guard asked me, "All right, now, what exactly is your business in the Trade City?"
I'd hoped to locate Rakhal first. Now I knew I'd have no chance and at all costs I must
straighten out this matter of identity before it went any further. "Put me straight through
to Magnusson's office, Level 38 at Central HQ, by visi," I demanded. I was trying to
remember if Mack had ever even heard the name we used in Shainsa. I decided I couldn't risk
it. "Name of Race Cargill."
The guard grinned without moving. He said to his partner, "That's the one, all right."
He put a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around. "Haul off, man. Shake your boots."
There were two of them, and Spaceforce guards aren't picked for their good looks. Just the
same, I gave a pretty good account of myself until the inner door opened and a man came
storming out. "What the devil is all this racket?"
one guard got a hammerlock on me. "This Dry-towner bum tried to talk us into making a priority
call to Magnusson, the Chief at Central. He knew a couple of the S.S. passwords. That's
what got him through the gate. Remember, Cargill passed the word that somebody would turn up
trying to impersonate him." "I remember." The strange man's eyes were wary and cold.
"You damned fools," I snarled. "Magnusson will identify me! Can't you realize you're
dealing with an impostor?" One of the guards said to the legate in an
undertone, "Maybe we ought to hold him as a suspicious character." But the legate shook
his head. "Not worth the trouble. Cargill said it was a private affair. You might search
him, make sure he's not concealing contraband weapons," he added, and talked softly to the
wide-eyed clerk in the background while the guards went through my shirt cloak and pockets.
When they started to unwrap the silk-shrouded Toy I yelled--if the thing got set off accidentally,
there'd be trouble. The legate turned and rebuked, "Can't you see it's embroidered with
the Toad God? It's a religious amulet of some sort, let it alone." They grumbled, but gave
it back to me, and the legate commanded, "Don't mess him up any more. Give him back his knife
and take him to the gates. But make sure he doesn't come back." I found myself seized
and frog-marched to the gate. One guard pushed my skean back into its clasp.
The other shoved me hard, and I stumbled, fell sprawling in the dust of the cobbled
street, to the accompaniment of a profane statement about what I could expect if I came
back. A chorus of jeers from a cluster of _chak_ children and veiled women broke across
me. I picked myself up, glowered so fiercely at the giggling spectators that the laughter
drained away into silence, and clenched my fists, half inclined to turn back and bull
my way through. Then I subsided. First round to Rakhal. He
had sprung the trap on me, very neatly. The street was narrow and crooked, winding between
doubled rows of pebble-houses, and full of dark shadows even in the crimson noon. I walked
aimlessly, favoring the arm the guard had crushed. I was no closer to settling things
with Rakhal, and I had slammed at least one gate behind me. Why hadn't I had sense enough
to walk up and demand to _see_ Race Cargill? Why hadn't I insisted on a fingerprint check?
I could prove my identity, and Rakhal, using my name in my absence, to those who didn't
know me by sight, couldn't. I could at least have made him try. But he had maneuvered it
very cleverly, so I never had a chance to insist on proofs. I turned into a wine shop
and ordered a dram of greenish mountain berry liquor, sipping it slowly and fingering the
few bills and coins in my pockets. I'd better forget about warning Juli. I couldn't 'vise
her from Charin, except in the Terran zone. I had neither the money nor the time to make
the trip in person, even if I could get passage on a Terran-dominated airline after today.
Miellyn. She had flirted with me, and like Dallisa, she might prove vulnerable. It might
be another trap, but I'd take the chance. At least I could get hints about Evarin. And
I needed information. I wasn't used to this kind of intrigue any more. The smell of danger
was foreign to me now, and I found it unpleasant. The small lump of the bird in my pocket tantalized
me. I took it out again. It was a temptation to press the stud and
let it settle things, or at least start them going, then and there. After a while I noticed
the proprietors of the shop staring at the silk of the wrappings. They backed off, apprehensive.
I held out a coin and they shook their heads. "You are welcome to the drink," one of them
said. "All we have is at your service. Only please go. Go quickly." They would not touch
the coins I offered. I thrust the bird in my pocket, swore and went.
It was my second experience with being somehow tabu, and I didn't like it. It was dusk when
I realized I was being followed. At first it was a glimpse out of the corner of my eye,
a head seen too frequently for coincidence. It developed into a too-persistent footstep
in uneven rhythm. Tap-_tap_-tap. Tap-_tap_-tap. I had my skean handy, but I had a hunch this
wasn't anything I could settle with a skean. I ducked into a side street and waited.
Nothing. I went on, laughing at my imagined fears. Then, after a time, the soft, persistent
footfall thudded behind me again. I cut across a thieves market, dodging from stall to stall,
cursed by old women selling hot fried goldfish, women in striped veils railing at me in their
chiming talk when I brushed their rolled rugs with hasty feet. Far behind I heard the familiar
uneven hurry: tap-_tap_-tap, tap-_tap_-tap. I fled down a street where women sat on flower-decked
balconies, Their open lanterns flowing with fountains and rivulets of gold and orange
fire. I raced through quiet streets where furred children crept to doors and watched
me pass with great golden eyes that shone in the dark. I dodged into an alley and lay
there, breathing hard. Someone not two inches away said, "Are you one of us, brother?" I
muttered something surly, in his dialect, and a hand, reassuringly human, closed on
my elbow. "This way." Out of breath with long running, I let him
lead me, meaning to break away after a few steps, apologize for mistaken identity and
vanish, when a sound at the end of the street made me jerk stiff and listen. Tap-_tap_-tap.
Tap-_tap_-tap. I let my arm relax in the hand that guided me, flung a fold of my shirt cloak
over my face, and went along with my unknown guide.
End of chapter twelve CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I stumbled over steps, took a jolting stride downward, and found myself in a dim room jammed
with dark figures, human and nonhuman. The figures swayed in the darkness, chanting in
a dialect not altogether familiar to me, a monotonous wailing chant, with a single recurrent
phrase: "Kamaina! Kama-aina!" It began on a high note, descending in weird chromatics
to the lowest tone the human ear could resolve. The sound made me draw back.
Even the Dry-towners shunned the orgiastic rituals of Kamaina. Earthmen have a reputation
for getting rid of the more objectionable customs--by human standards--on any planet
where they live. But they don't touch religions, and Kamaina, on the surface anyhow, was a
religion. I started to turn round and leave, as if I had inadvertently walked
through the wrong door, but my conductor hauled on my arm, and I was wedged in too tight by
now to risk a rough house. Trying to force my way out would only have
called attention to me, and the first of the Secret Service maxims is; when in doubt, go
along, keep quiet, and watch the other guy. As my eyes adapted to the dim light, I saw
that most of the crowd were Charin plainsmen or _chaks_. One or two wore Dry-town shirtcloaks,
and I even thought I saw an Earthman in the crowd, though I was never sure and I fervently
hope not. They were squatting around small crescent-shaped tables,
and all intently gazing at a flickery spot of light at the front of the cellar. I saw
an empty place at one table and dropped there, finding the floor soft, as if cushioned. On
each table, small smudging pastilles were burning, and from these cones of ash-tipped
fire came the steamy, swimmy smoke that filled the darkness with strange colors. Beside me
an immature _chak_ girl was kneeling, her fettered hands strained tightly back at her
sides, her naked *** pierced for jeweled rings.
Beneath the pallid fur around her pointed ears, the exquisite animal face was quite
mad. She whispered to me, but her dialect was so thick that I could follow only a few
words, and would just as soon not have heard those few. An older _chak_ grunted for silence
and she subsided, swaying and crooning. There were cups and decanters on all the tables,
and a woman tilted pale, phosphorescent fluid into a cup and offered it to me. I took one
sip, then another. It was cold and pleasantly tart, and not until
the second swallow turned sweet on my tongue did I know what I tasted. I pretended to swallow
while the woman's eyes were fixed on me, then somehow contrived to spill the filthy stuff
down my shirt. I was wary even of the fumes, but there was nothing else I could do. The
stuff was _shallavan_, outlawed on every planet in the Terran Empire and every halfway decent
planet outside it. More and more figures, men and creatures,
kept crowding into the cellar, which was not very large. The place looked
like the worst nightmare of a drug-dreamer, ablaze with the colors of the
smoking incense, the swaying crowd, and their monotonous cries. Quite suddenly there was
a blaze of purple light and someone screamed in raving ecstasy: "_Na ki na Nebran n'hai
Kamaina!_" "Kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!" shrilled the tranced mob. An old man jumped up and
started haranguing the crowd. I could just follow his dialect. He was talking
about Terra. He was talking about riots. He was jabbering mystical gibberish which I couldn't
understand and didn't want to understand, and rabble-rousing anti-Terran propaganda
which I understood much too well. Another blaze of lights and another long scream in
chorus: "Kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!" Evarin stood in the blaze of the many-colored light.
The Toymaker, as I had seen him last, cat-smooth, gracefully alien, shrouded in a ripple of
giddy crimsons. Behind him was a blackness. I waited till the painful blaze of lights
abated, then, straining my eyes to see past him, I got my worst shock. A woman stood there,
naked to the waist, her hands ritually fettered with little chains that stirred and clashed
musically as she moved stiff-legged in a frozen dream.
Hair like black grass banded her brow and naked shoulders, and her eyes were crimson.
And the eyes lived in the dead dreaming face. They lived, and they were mad with terror
although the lips curved in a gently tranced smile. Miellyn. Evarin was speaking in that
dialect I barely understood. His arms were flung high and his cloak went spilling away
from them, rippling like something alive. The jammed humans and nonhumans swayed and
chanted and he swayed above them like an iridescent bug, weaving arms rippling back and forth,
back and forth. I strained to catch his words. "Our world ... an old world." "Kamayeeeeena,"
whimpered the shrill chorus. "... humans, humans, all humans would make slaves of us
all, all save the Children of the Ape...."I lost the thread for a moment. True.
The Terran Empire has one small blind spot in otherwise sane policy, ignoring that nonhuman
and human have lived placidly here for millennia: they placidly assumed that humans were everywhere
the dominant race, as on Earth itself. The Toymaker's weaving arms went on spinning,
spinning. I rubbed my eyes to clear them of _shallavan_ and incense. I hoped that what
I saw was an illusion of the drug--something, something huge and dark, was hovering over
the girl. She stood placidly, hands clasped on her chains,
but her eyes writhed in the frozen calm of her face. Then something--I can only call
it a sixth sense--bore it on me that there was _someone_ outside the door. I was perhaps
the only creature there, except for Evarin, not drugged with _shallavan_, and perhaps
that's all it was. But during the days in the Secret Service I'd had to develop some
extra senses. Five just weren't enough for survival.
I _knew_ somebody was fixing to break down that door, and I had a good idea why. I'd
been followed, by the legate's orders, and, tracking me here, they'd gone away and brought
back reinforcements. Someone struck a blow on the door and a stentorian voice bawled,
"Open up there, in the name of the Empire!" The chanting broke in ragged quavers. Evarin
stopped. Somewhere a woman screamed. The lights abruptly went out and a stampede started in
the room. Women struck me with chains, men kicked, there
were shrieks and howls. I thrust my way forward, butting with elbows and knees and shoulders.
A dusky emptiness yawned and I got a glimpse of sunlight and open sky and knew that Evarin
had stepped through into _somewhere_ and was gone. The banging on the door sounded like
a whole regiment of Space force out there. I dived toward the shimmer of little stars
which marked Miellyn's tiara in the darkness, braving the black horror hovering over her,
and touched rigid girl-flesh, cold as death. I grabbed her and ducked sideways. This time
it wasn't intuition—nine times out of ten, anyway, intuition is just a mental shortcut
which adds up all the things which your subconscious has noticed while you were busy thinking about
something else. Every native building on Wolf had concealed entrances and exits and I know
where to look for them. This one was exactly where I expected.
I pushed at it and found myself in a long, dim corridor. The head of a woman peered from
an opening door. She saw Miellyn's limp body hanging on my arm and her mouth widened in
a silent scream. Then the head popped back out of sight and a door slammed. I heard the
bolt slide. I ran for the end of the hall, the girl in my arms, thinking that this was
where I came in, as far as Miellyn was concerned, and wondering why I bothered. The door opened
on a dark, peaceful street. One lonely moon was setting beyond the rooftops.
I set Miellyn on her feet, but she moaned and crumpled against me. I put my shirt cloak
around her bare shoulders. Judging by the noises and yells, we'd gotten out just in
time. No one came out the exit behind us. Either the Spaceforce had plugged it or, more
likely, everyone else in the cellar had been too muddled by drugs to know what was going
on. But it was only a few minutes, I knew, before Spaceforce would check the whole building
for concealed escape holes. Suddenly, and irrelevantly, I found myself
thinking of a day not too long ago, when I'd stood up in front of a unit-in-training of
Spaceforce, introduced to them as an Intelligence expert on native towns, and solemnly warned
them about concealed exits and entrances. I wondered, for half a minute, if it might
not be simpler just to wait here and let them pick me up. Then I hoisted Miellyn across
my shoulders. She was heavier than she looked, and after a minute, half conscious, she began
to struggle and moan. There was a _chak_-run cook shop down the
street, a place I'd once known well, with an evil reputation and worse food, but it
was quiet and stayed open all night. I turned in at the door, bending at the low lintel.
The place was smoke-filled and foul-smelling. I dumped Miellyn on a couch and sent the frowsy
waiter for two bowls of noodles and coffee, handed him a few extra coins, and told him
to leave us alone. He probably drew the worst possible inference--I
saw his muzzle twitch at the smell of _shallavan_--but it was that
kind of place anyhow. He drew down the shutters and went. I stared at the unconscious girl,
then shrugged and started on the noodles. My own head was still swimmy with the fumes,
incense and drug, and I wanted it clear. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do,
but I had Evarin's right-hand girl, and I was going to use her.
The noodles were greasy and had a curious taste, but they were hot, and I ate all of
one bowl before Miellyn stirred and whimpered and put up one hand, with a little clinking
of chains, to her hair. The gesture was indefinably reminiscent of Dallisa, and for the first
time I saw the likeness between them. It made me wary and yet curiously softened. Finding
she could not move freely, she rolled over, sat up and stared around in growing bewilderment
and dismay. "There was a sort of riot," I said. "I got
you out. Evarin ditched you. And you can quit thinking what you're thinking, I put my shirtcloak
on you because you were bare to the waist and it didn't look so good." I stopped to
think that over, and amended: "I mean I couldn't haul you around the streets that way. It looked
good enough." To my surprise, she gave a shaky little giggle, and held out her fettered hands.
"Will you?" I broke her links and freed her. She rubbed her wrists as if they hurt her,
then drew up her draperies, pinned them so that she was decently covered, and tossed
back my shirt cloak. Her eyes were wide and soft in the light of the flickering stub of
candle. "O, Rakhal," she sighed. "When I saw you there--" She sat up, clasping her hands
hard together, and when she continued her voice was curiously cold and controlled for
anyone so childish. It was almost as cold as Dallisa's. "If you've come from Kyral,
I'm not going back. I'll never go back, and you may as well know
it." "I don't come from Kyral, and I don't care where you go. I don't care what you do."
I suddenly realized that the last statement was wholly untrue, and to cover my confusion
I shoved the remaining bowl of noodles at her. "Eat." She wrinkled her nose in fastidious
disgust. "I'm not hungry." "Eat it anyway. You're still half doped, and the food will
clear your head." I picked up one mug of the coffee and drained it at a single swallow.
"What were you doing in that disgusting den?" Without warning she flung herself across the
table at me, throwing her arms round my neck. Startled, I let her cling a moment, then reached
up and firmly unfastened her hands. "None of that now. I fell for it once, and it landed
me in the middle of the mudpie." But her fingers bit my shoulder. "Rakhal, Rakhal, I tried
to get away and find you. Have you still got the bird? You haven't set it off yet?
Oh, don't, don't, don't, Rakhal, you don't know what Evarin is, you don't know what he's
doing." The words spilled out of her like floodwaters. "He's won so many of you, don't
let him have you too, Rakhal. They call you an honest man, you worked once for Terra,
the Terrans would believe you if you went to them and told them what he--Rakhal, take
me to the Terran Zone, take me there, take me there where they'll protect me from Evarin."
At first I tried to stop her, question her, then waited and let the torrent of entreaty
run on and on. At last, exhausted and breathless, she lay quietly against my shoulder, her head
fallen forward. The musty reek of _shallavan_ mingled with the flower scent of her hair.
"Kid," I said heavily at last, "you and your Toymaker have both got me wrong. I'm not Rakhal
Sensar." "You're not?" She drew back, regarding me in dismay. Her eyes searched every inch
of me, from the gray streak across my forehead to the scar running down into my collar. "Then
who--" "Race Cargill. Terran Intelligence." She stared, her mouth
wide like a child's. Then she laughed. She _laughed_! At first I thought she was hysterical.
I stared at her in consternation. Then, as her wide eyes met mine, with all the mischief
of the nonhuman which has mingled into the human here, all the circular complexities
of Wolf illogic behind the woman in them, I started to laugh too. I threw back my head
and roared, until we were clinging together and gasping with mirth like a pair of raving
fools. The _chak_ waiter came to the door and stared
at us, and I roared "Get the hell out," between spasms of crazy laughter. Then she was wiping
her face, tears of mirth still dripping down her cheeks, and I was frowning bleakly into
the empty bowls. "Cargill," she said hesitantly, "you can take me to the Terrans where Rakhal--"
"Hell's bells," I exploded. "I can't take you anywhere, girl. I've got to find Rakhal--"
I stopped in midsentence and looked at her clearly for the first time.
"Child, I'll see that you're protected, if I can. But I'm afraid you've walked from the
trap to the cookpot. There isn't a house in Charin that will hold me. I've been thrown
out twice today." She nodded. "I don't know how the word spreads, but it happens, in nonhuman
parts. I think they can see trouble written in a human face, or smell it on the wind."
She fell silent, her face propped sleepily between her hands, her hair falling in tangles.
I took one of her hands in mine and turned it over.
It was a fine hand, with birdlike bones and soft rose-tinted nails; but the lines and
hardened places around the knuckles reminded me that she, too, came from the cold austerity
of the salt Dry-towns. After a moment she flushed and drew her hand from mine. "What
are you thinking, Cargill?" she asked, and for the first time I heard her voice sobered,
without the coquetry, which must after all have been a very thin veneer. I answered her
simply and literally. "I am thinking of Dallisa. I thought you were very different, and yet,
I see that you are very like her." I thought she would question what I knew of her sister,
but she let it pass in silence. After a time she said, "Yes,
we were twins." Then, after a long silence, she added, "But she was always much the older."
And that was all I ever knew of whatever obscure pressures had shaped Dallisa into an austere
and tragic Clytemnestra, and Miellyn into a pixie runaway. Outside the drawn shutters,
dawn was brightening. Miellyn shivered, drawing her thin draperies
around her bare throat. I glanced at the little rim of jewels that starred her hair and said,
"You'd better take those off and hide them. They alone would be enough to have you hauled
into an alley and strangled, in this part of Charin." I hauled the bird Toy from my
pocket and slapped it on the greasy table, still wrapped in its silk. "I don't suppose
you know which of us this thing is set to kill?" "I know nothing about the Toys.
"You seem to know plenty about the Toymaker." "I thought so. Until last night." I looked
at the rigid, clamped mouth and thought that if she were really as soft and delicate as
she looked, she would have wept. Then she struck her small hand on the tabletop and
burst out, "It's not a religion. It isn't even an honest movement for freedom! Its a--a
front for smuggling, and drugs, and--and every other filthy thing! "Believe it or not, when
I left Shainsa, I thought Nebran was the answer to the way
the Terrans were strangling us! Now I know there are worse things on Wolf than the Terran
Empire! I've heard of Rakhal Sensar, and whatever you may think of Rakhal, he's too decent to
be mixed up in anything like this!" "Suppose you tell me what's really going on," I suggested.
She couldn't add much to what I knew already, but the last fragments of the pattern were
beginning to settle into place. Rakhal, seeking the matter transmitter and
some key to the nonhuman sciences of Wolf--I knew now what the city of Silent Ones had
reminded me of!--had somehow crossed the path of the Toymaker. Evarin's words now made sense:
"_You were clever at evading our surveillance--for a while._" Possibly, though I'd never know,
Cuinn had been keeping one foot in each camp, working for Kyral and for Evarin.
The Toymaker, knowing of Rakhal's anti-Terran activities, had believed he would make a valuable
ally and had taken steps to secure his help. Juli herself had given me the clue: "_He smashed
Rindy's Toys._" Out of the context it sounded like the work of a madman. Now, having encountered
Evarin's workshop, it made plain good sense. And I think I had known all along that Rakhal
could not have been playing Evarin's game. He might have turned against Terra--though
now I was beginning even to doubt that--and certainly he'd have killed me if he found
me. But he would have done it himself, and without malice. _Killed without malice_--that
doesn't make sense in any of the languages of Terra. But it made sense to me. Miellyn
had finished her brief recitation and was drowsing, her head pillowed on the table.
The reddish light was growing, and I realized that I was waiting for dawn as, days ago,
I had waited for sunset in Shainsa, with every nerve stretched to the breaking point. It
was dawn of the third morning, and this bird lying on the table before me must fly or,
far away in the Kharsa, another would fly at Juli. I said, "There's some distance limitation
on this one, I understand, since I have to be fairly near its object. If I lock it in
a steel box and drop it in the desert, I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody.
I don't suppose you'd have a shot at stealing the other one for me?" She raised her head,
eyes flashing. "Why should you worry about Rakhal's wife?" she flared, and for no good
reason it occurred to me that she was jealous. "I might have known Evarin wouldn't shoot
in the dark! Rakhal's wife, that Earthwoman, what do you care for her?" It seemed important
to set her straight. I explained that Juli was my sister, and saw a little of the tension
fade from her face, but not all. Remembering the custom of the Dry-towns, I
was not wholly surprised when she added, jealously, "When I heard of your feud, I guessed it was
over that woman!" "But not in the way you think," I said. Juli had been part of it,
certainly. Even then I had not wanted her to turn her back on her world, but if Rakhal
had remained with Terra, I would have accepted his marriage to Juli. Accepted it. I'd have
rejoiced. God knows we had been closer than brothers, those years in the Dry-towns.
And then, before Miellyn's flashing eyes, I suddenly faced my secret hate, my secret
fear. No, the quarrel had not been all Rakhal's doing. He had not turned his back, unexplained
on Terra. In some unrecognized fashion, I had done my best to drive him away. And when
he had gone, I had banished a part of myself as well, and thought I could end the struggle
by saying it didn't exist. And now, facing what I had done to all of us, I knew that
my revenge--so long sought, so dearly cherished--must be abandoned.
"We still have to deal with the bird," I said. "It's a gamble, with all the cards wild."
I could dismantle it, and trust to luck that Wolf illogic didn't include a tamper mechanism.
But that didn't seem worth the risk. "First I've got to _find_ Rakhal. If I set the bird
free and it killed him, it wouldn't settle anything." For I could not kill Rakhal. Not,
now, because I knew life would be a worse punishment than death. But because--I knew
it, now--if Rakhal died, Juli would die, too. And if I killed him I'd be killing the best
part of myself. Somehow Rakhal and I must strike a balance between our two worlds, and
try to build a new one from them. "And I can't sit here and talk any longer. I haven't time
to take you--" I stopped, remembering the spaceport cafe at the edge of the Kharsa.
There was a street-shrine, or matter transmitter, right there, across the street from the Terran
HQ. _All these years...._ "You know your way in the transmitters.
You can go there in a second or two." She could warn Juli, tell Magnusson. But when
I suggested this, giving her a password that would take her straight to the top, she turned
white. "All jumps have to be made through the Master shrine." I stopped and thought
about that. "Where is Evarin likely to be, right now?" She gave a nervous shudder. "He's
everywhere!" "Rubbish! He's not omniscient! Why, you little fool, he didn't even recognize
me. He thought I was Rakhal!" I wasn't too sure,
myself, but Miellyn needed reassurance. "Or take _me_ to the Mastershrine. I can find
Rakhal in that scanning device of Evarin's." I saw refusal in her face and pushed on, "If
Evarin's there, I'll prove he's fallible enough with a skean in his throat! And here"--I thrust
the Toy into her hand--"hang on to this, will you?" She put it matter-of-factly into her
draperies. "I don't mind that. But to the shrine--" Her voice quivered, and I stood
up and pushed at the table. "Let's get going. Where's the nearest street-shrine?"
"No, no! Oh, I don't dare!" "You've got to." I saw the _chak_ who owned the place edging
round the door again and said, "There's no use arguing, Miellyn." When she had readjusted
her robes a little while ago, she had pinned them so that the flat sprawl of the Nebran
embroideries was over her ***. I put a finger against them, not in a sensuous gesture,
and said, "The minute they see these, they'll throw us out of here, too.
"If you knew what I know of Nebran, you wouldn't _want_ me to go near the Master shrine again!"
There was that faint coquettishness in her sidewise smile. And suddenly I realized that
I didn't want her to. But she was not Dallisa and she could not sit in cold dignity while
her world fell into ruin. Miellyn must fight for the one she wanted. And then some of that
primitive male hostility which lives in every man came to the surface, and I gripped her
arm until she whimpered. Then I said, in the Shainsan which still comes
to my tongue when moved or angry, "Damn it, you're _going_. Have you forgotten that if
it weren't for me you'd have been torn to pieces by that raving mob, or something worse?"
That did it. She pulled away and I saw again, beneath the veneer of petulant coquetry, that
fierce and untamable insolence of the,Dry-towner. The more fierce and arrogant, in this girl,
because she had burst her fettered hands free and shaken off the ruin of the past. I was
seized with a wildly inappropriate desire to seize her, crush her in my arms, taste
the red honey of that teasing mouth. The effort of mastering the impulse made me rough. I
shoved at her and said, "Come on. Let's get there before Evarin does."
End of chapter thirteen CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Outside in the streets it was full day, and the color and life of Charin had subsided
into listlessness again, a dim morning dullness and silence. Only a few men lounged wearily
in the streets, as if the sun had sapped their energy. And always the pale fleecy-haired
children, human and furred nonhuman, played their mysterious games on the curbs and gutters
and staring at us with neither curiosity nor malice. Miellyn was shaking when she set her
feet into the patterned stones of the street-shrine. "Scared, Miellyn?" "I know Evarin. You don't.
But"--her mouth twitched in a pitiful attempt at the old mischief--"when I am with a great
and valorous Earthman...." "Cut it out," I growled, and she giggled. "You'll have to
stand closer to me. The transmitters are meant only for one person." I stooped and put my
arms round her. "Like this?" "Like this," she whispered, pressing herself against me.
A staggering whirl of dizzy darkness swung round my head.
The street vanished. After an instant the floor steadied and we stepped into the terminal
room in the Master shrine, under a skylight dim with the last red slant of sunset. Distant
hammering noises rang in my ears. Miellyn whispered, "Evarin's not here, but he might
jump through at any second." I wasn't listening. "Where is this place, Miellyn? Where on the
planet?" "No one knows but Evarin, I think. There are no doors. Anyone who goes in or
out, jumps through the transmitter." She pointed. "The scanning device is in there, we'll have
to go through the workroom." She was patting her crushed robes into place, smoothing her
hair with fastidious fingers. "I don't suppose you have a comb? I've no time to go to my
own--" I'd known she was a vain and pampered brat, but this passed all reason, and I said
so, exploding at her. She looked at me as if I wasn't quite intelligent. "The Little
Ones, my friend, notice things. You are quite enough of a roughneck, but I,
Nebran's priestess, walk through their workroom all blown about and looking like the tag end
of an *** in Ardcarran...." Abashed, I fished in a pocket and offered her a somewhat battered
pocket comb. She looked at it distastefully but used it to good purpose, smoothing her
hair swiftly, rearranging her loose-pinned robe so that the worst of the tears and stains
were covered, and giving me, meanwhile, an artless and rather tempting view of some delicious
curvature. She replaced the starred tiara on her ringlets
and finally opened the door of the workroom and we walked through. Not for years had I
known that particular sensation--thousands of eyes, boring holes in the center of my
back somewhere. There _were_ eyes; the round inhuman orbs of the dwarf _chaks_, the faceted
stare of the prism eyes of the Toys. The workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it felt longer
than a good many miles I've walked. Here and there the dwarfs murmured an obsequious
greeting to Miellyn, and she made some lighthearted answer. She had warned me to walk as if I
had every right to be there, and I strode after her as if we were simply going to an
agreed-on meeting in the next room. But I was drenched with cold sweat before the farther
door finally closed, safe and blessedly opaque, behind us. Miellyn, too, was shaking with
fright, and I put a hand on her arm. "Steady, kid. Where's the scanner?"
She touched the panel I'd seen. "I'm not sure I can focus it accurately. Evarin never let
me touch it." This was a fine time to tell me that. "How does it work?" "It's an adaptation
of the transmitter principle. It lets you see anywhere, but without jumping. It uses
a tracer mechanism like the one in the Toys. If Rakhal's electrical-impulse pattern were
on file--just a minute." She fished out the bird Toy and unwrapped it. "Here's how we
find out which of you this is keyed to." I looked at the fledgling bird, lying innocently
in her palm, as she pushed aside the feathers, exposing a tiny crystal. "If it's keyed to
you, you'll see yourself in this, as if the screen were a mirror. If it's keyed to Rakhal...."
She touched the crystal to the surface of the screen. Little flickers of snow wavered
and danced. Then, abruptly, we were looking down from a height at the lean back of a man
in a leather jacket. Slowly he turned. I saw the familiar set of his shoulders,
saw the back of his head come into an aquiline profile, and the profile turn slowly into
a scarred, seared mask more hideously claw-marked and disfigured than my own. "Rakhal," I muttered.
"Shift the focus if you can, Miellyn, get a look out the window or something. Charin's
a big city. If we could get a look at a landmark--" Rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving
as he spoke to someone out of sight range of the scanning device.
Abruptly Miellyn said, "There." She had caught a window in the sight field of the pane. I
could see a high pylon and two of three uprights that looked like a bridge, just outside. I
said, "It's the Bridge of Summer Snows. I know where he is now. Turn it off, Miellyn,
we can find him--" I was turning away when Miellyn screamed. "Look!" Rakhal had turned
his back on the scanner and for the first time I could see who he was talking to.
A hunched, catlike shoulder twisted; a sinuous neck, a high-held head that was not quite
human. "Evarin!" I swore. "That does it. He knows now that I'm not Rakhal, if he didn't
know it all along! Come on, girl, we're getting out of here!" This time there was no pretense
of normality as we dashed through the workroom. Fingers dropped from half-completed Toys as
they stared after us. _Toys!_ I wanted to stop and smash them all. But if we hurried,
we might find Rakhal. And, with luck, we would find Evarin with
him. And then I was going to *** their heads together. I'd reached a saturation point on
adventure. I'd had all I wanted. I realized that I'd been up all night, that I was exhausted.
I wanted to *** and smash, and wanted to fall down somewhere and go to sleep, all at
once. We banged the workroom door shut and I took time to shove a heavy divan against
it, blockading it. Miellyn stared. "The Little Ones would not harm me," she began.
"I am sacrosanct." I wasn't sure. I had a notion her status had changed plenty, beginning
when I saw her chained and drugged, and standing under the hovering horror. But I didn't say
so. "Maybe. But there's nothing sacred about _me_!" She was already inside the recess where
the Toad God squatted. "There is a street-shrine just beyond the Bridge of Summer Snows. We
can jump directly there." Abruptly she froze in my arms, with a convulsive shudder.
"Evarin! Hold me, tight--he's jumping in! Quick!" Space reeled round us, and then....
Can you split instantaneousness into fragments? It didn't make sense, but so help me, that's
what happened. And everything that happened, occurred within less than a second. We landed
in the street-shrine. I could see the pylon and the bridge and the rising sun of Charin.
Then there was the giddy internal wrenching, a blast of icy air whistled round us, and
we were gazing out at the Polar mountains, ringed in their eternal snow.
Miellyn clutched at me. "Pray! Pray to the Gods of Terra, if there are any!" She clung
so violently that it felt as if her small body was trying to push through me and come
out the other side. I hung on tight. Miellyn knew what she was doing in the transmitter;
I was just along for the ride and I didn't relish the thought of being dropped off somewhere
in that black limbo we traversed. We jumped again, the sickness of disorientation
forcing a moan from the girl, and darkness shivered round us. I looked on an unfamiliar
street of black night and dust-bleared stars. She whimpered, "Evarin knows what I'm doing.
He's jumping us all over the planet. He can work the controls with his mind. Psychokinetics--I
can do it a little, but I never dared--oh, hang on _tight_!" Then began one of the most
amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would make some tiny movement, and
we would be falling, blind and dizzy, through blackness. Halfway through the giddiness,
a new direction would wrench us and we would be thrust elsewhere, and look out into a new
street. One instant I smelled hot coffee from the spaceport cafe near the Kharsa. An instant
later it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds waving above us and a dazzle of water. We
flicked in and out of the salty air of Shainsa, glimpsed flowers on a Daillon street, moonlight,
noon, red twilight flickered and went, shot through
with the terrible giddiness of hyperspace. Then suddenly I caught a second glimpse of
the bridge and the pylon; a moment's oversight had landed us for an instant in Charin. The
blackness started to reel down, but my reflexes are fast and I made one swift, scrabbling
step forward. We lurched, sprawled, locked together, on the stones of the Bridge of Summer
Snows. Battered, and bruised, and bloody, we were
still alive, and where we wanted to be. I lifted Miellyn to her feet. Her eyes were
dazed with pain. The ground swayed and rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge.
At the far end, I looked up at the pylon. Judging from its angle, we couldn't be more
than a hundred feet from the window through which I'd seen that landmark in the scanner.
In this street there was a wine shop, a silk market, and a small private house.
I walked up and banged on the door. Silence. I knocked again and had time to wonder if
we'd find ourselves explaining things to some uninvolved stranger. Then I heard a child's
high voice, and a deep familiar voice hushing it. The door opened, just a crack, to reveal
part of a scarred face. It drew into a hideous grin, then relaxed. "I thought it might be
you, Cargill. You've taken at least three days longer than I figured, getting here.
Come on in," said Rakhal Sensar. End of chapter fourteen
CHAPTER FIFTEEN He hadn't changed much in six years. His face
_was_ worse than mine; he hadn't had the plastic surgeons of Terran Intelligence doing their
best for him. His mouth, I thought fleetingly, must hurt like hell when he drew it up into
the kind of grin he was grinning now. His eyebrows, thick and fierce with gray in them,
went up as he saw Miellyn; but he backed away to let us enter, and shut the door behind
us. The room was bare and didn't look as if it had been lived in much.
The floor was stone, rough-laid, a single fur rug laid before a brazier. A little girl
was sitting on the rug, drinking from a big double-handled mug, but she scrambled to her
feet as we came in, and backed against the wall, looking at us with wide eyes. She had
pale-red hair like Juli's, cut straight in a fringe across her forehead, and she was
dressed in a smock of dyed red fur that almost matched her hair. A little smear of milk like
a white moustache clung to her upper lip where she had forgotten to wipe her mouth.
She was about five years old, with deep-set dark eyes like Juli's, that watched me gravely
without surprise or fear; she evidently knew who I was. "Rindy," Rakhal said quietly, not
taking his eyes from me. "Go into the other room." Rindy didn't move, still staring at
me. Then she moved toward Miellyn, looking up intently not at the woman, but at the pattern
of embroideries across her dress. It was very quiet, until Rakhal added, in a gentle and
curiously moderate voice, "Do you still carry a skean, Race?"
I shook my head. "There's an ancient proverb on Terra, about blood being thicker than water,
Rakhal. That's Juli's daughter. I'm not going to kill her father right before her eyes."
My rage spilled over then, and I bellowed, "To hell with your damned Dry-town feuds and
your filthy Toad God and all the rest of it!" Rakhal said harshly, "Rindy. I told you to
get out." "She needn't go." I took a step toward the little girl, a wary eye on Rakhal.
"I don't know quite what you're up to, but it's nothing for a child to be mixed up in.
Do what you damn please. I can settle with you any time. "The first thing is to get Rindy
out of here. She belongs with Juli and, damn it, that's where she's going." I held out
my arms to the little girl and said, "It's over, Rindy, whatever he's done to you. Your
mother sent me to find you. Don't you want to go to your mother?" Rakhal made a menacing
gesture and warned, "I wouldn't--" Miellyn darted swiftly between us and caught
up the child in her arms. Rindy began to struggle noiselessly, kicking and whimpering, but Miellyn
took two quick steps, and flung an inner door open. Rakhal took a stride toward her. She
whirled on him, fighting to control the furious little girl, and gasped, "Settle it between
you, without the baby watching!" Through the open door I briefly saw a bed, a child's small
dresses hanging on a hook, before Miellyn kicked the door shut and I heard a latch being
fastened. Behind the closed door Rindy broke into angry
screams, but I put my back against the door. "She's right. We'll settle it between the
two of us. What have you done to that child?" "If you thought--" Rakhal stopped himself
in midsentence and stood watching me without moving for a minute. Then he laughed. "You're
as stupid as ever, Race. Why, you fool, I knew Juli would run straight to you, if she
was scared enough. I knew it would bring you out of hiding.
Why, you damned fool!" He stood mocking me, but there was a strained fury, almost a frenzy
of contempt behind the laughter. "You filthy coward, Race! Six years hiding in the Terran
zone. Six years, and I gave you six months! If you'd had the guts to walk out after me,
after I rigged that final deal to give you the chance, we could have gone after the biggest
thing on Wolf. And we could have brought it off together, instead of spending years spying
and dodging and hunting! And now, when I finally get you out of hiding,
all you want to do is run back where you'll be safe! I thought you had more guts!" "Not
for Evarin's dirty work!" Rakhal swore hideously. "Evarin! Do you really believe--I might have
known he'd get to you too! That girl--and you've managed to wreck all I did there, too!"
Suddenly, so swiftly my eyes could hardly follow, he whipped out his skean and came
at me. "Get away from that door!" I stood my ground. "You'll have to kill me first.
And I won't fight you, Rakhal. We'll settle this, but we'll do it my way for once, like
Earthmen." "_Son of the Ape!_ Get your skean out, you stinking coward!" "I won't do it,
Rakhal." I stood and defied him. I had outmaneuvered Dry-towners in a _shegri_ bet. I knew Rakhal,
and I knew he would not knife an unarmed man. "We fought once with the _kifirgh_ and it
didn't settle anything. This time we'll do it my way. I threw my skean away before I
came here. I won't fight." He thrust at me. Even I could see that the
blow was a feint, and I had a flashing, instantaneous memory of Dallisa's threat to drive the knife
through my palms. But even while I commanded myself to stand steady, sheer reflex threw
me forward, grabbing at his wrist and the knife. Between my grappling hand he twisted
and I felt the skean drive home, rip through my jacket with a tearing sound; felt the thin
fine line of touch, not pain yet, as it sliced flesh.
Then pain burned through my ribs and I felt hot blood, and I wanted to kill Rakhal, wanted
to get my hands around his throat and kill him with them. And at the same time I was
raging because I didn't want to fight the crazy fool, I wasn't even mad at him. Miellyn
flung the door open, shrieking, and suddenly the Toy, released, was darting a small whirring
droning horror, straight at Rakhal's eyes. I yelled. But there was no time even to warn
him. I bent and butted him in the stomach. He grunted,
doubled up in agony and fell out of the path of the diving Toy. It whirred in frustration,
hovered. He writhed in agony, drawing up his knees, clawing at his shirt, while I turned
on Miellyn in immense fury--and stopped. Hers had been a move of desperation, an instinctive
act to restore the balance between a weaponless man and one who had a knife. Rakhal
gasped, in a hoarse voice with all the breath gone from it: "Didn't want to use.
Rather fight clean--" Then he opened his closed fist and suddenly there were _two_ of the
little whirring droning horrors in the room and this one was diving at me, and as I threw
myself headlong to the floor the last puzzle-piece fell into place: Evarin had made the same
bargain with Rakhal as with me! I rolled over, dodging. Behind me in the room there was a
child's shrill scream: "Daddy! Daddy!" And abruptly the birds collapsed in midair and
went limp. They fell to the floor like dropping stones
and lay there quivering. Rindy dashed across the room, her small skirts flying, and grabbed
up one of the terrible vicious things in either hand. "Rindy!" I bellowed. "No!" She stood
shaking, tears pouring down her round cheeks, a Toy squeezed tight in either hand. Dark
veins stood out almost black on her fair temples. "Break them, Daddy," she implored in a little
thread of a voice. "Break them, _quick_. I can't hang on...."
Rakhal staggered to his feet like a drunken man and snatched one of the Toys, grinding
it under his heel. He made a grab at the second, reeled and drew an anguished breath. He crumpled
up, clutching at his belly where I'd butted him. The bird screamed like a living thing.
Breaking my paralysis of horror I leaped up, ran across the room, heedless of the searing
pain along my side. I snatched the bird from Rindy and it screamed and shrilled and died
as my foot crunched the tiny feathers. I stamped the still-moving thing into an amorphous
mess and kept on stamping and smashing until it was only a heap of powder. Rakhal finally
managed to haul himself upright again. His face was so pale that the scars stood out
like fresh burns. "That was a foul blow, Race, but I--I know why you did it." He stopped
and breathed for a minute. Then he muttered, "You ... saved my life, you know. Did you
know you were doing it, when you did it?" Still breathing hard, I nodded. Done knowingly,
it meant an end of blood-feud. However we had wronged each other, whatever the pledges.
I spoke the words that confirmed it and ended it, finally and forever: "There is a life
between us. Let it stand for a death." Miellyn was standing in the doorway, her hands pressed
to her mouth, her eyes wide. She said shakily, "You're walking around with a knife in your
ribs, you fool!" Rakhal whirled and with a quick jerk he pulled the skean loose.
It had simply been caught in my shirtcloak, in a fold of the rough cloth. He pulled it
away, glanced at the red tip, then relaxed. "Not more than an inch deep," he said. Then,
angrily, defending himself: "You did it yourself, you ape. I was trying to get rid of the knife
when you jumped me." But I knew that and he knew I knew it. He turned and scooped up Rindy,
who was sobbing noisily. She dug her head into his shoulder and I made out her strangled
words. "The other Toys hurt you when I was mad at
you...." she sobbed, rubbing her fists against smeared cheeks. "I—I wasn't that mad at
you. I wasn't that mad at anybody, not even ... him." Rakhal pressed his hand against
his daughter's fleecy hair and said, looking at me over her head, "The Toys activate a
child's subconscious resentments against his parents--I found out that much. That also
means a child can control them for a few seconds. No adult can."
A stranger would have seen no change in his expression, but I knew him, and saw. "Juli
said you threatened Rindy." He chuckled and set the child on her feet. "What else could
I say that would have scared Juli enough to send her running to you? Juli's proud, almost
as proud as you are, you stiff-necked Son of the Ape." The insult did not sting me now.
"Come on, sit down and let's decide what to do, now we've finished up the old business."
He looked remotely at Miellyn and said, "You must be Dallisa's sister? I don't suppose
your talents include knowing how to make coffee?" They didn't, but with Rindy's help Miellyn
managed, and while they were out of the room Rakhal explained briefly. "Rindy has rudimentary
ESP. I've never had it myself, but I could teach her something—not much--about how
to use it. I've been on Evarin's track ever since that business of The Lisse.
"I'd have got it sooner, if you were still working with me, but I couldn't do anything
as a Terran agent, and I had to be kicked out so thoroughly that the others wouldn't
be afraid I was still working secretly for Terra. For a long time I was just chasing
rumors, but when Rindy got big enough to look in the crystals of Nebran, I started making
some progress. "I was afraid to tell Juli; her best safety was the fact that she didn't
know anything. She's always been a stranger in the Dry-towns.
He paused, then said with honest self-evaluation, "Since I left the Secret Service I've been
a stranger there myself." I asked, "What about Dallisa?" "Twins have some ESP to each other.
I knew Miellyn had gone to the Toymaker. I tried to get Dallisa to find out where Miellyn
had gone, learn more about it. Dallisa wouldn't risk it, but Kyral saw me with Dallisa and
thought it was Miellyn. That put him on my tail, too, and I had to leave Shainsa. I was
afraid of Kyral," he added soberly. "Afraid of what he'd do. I couldn't do anything
without Rindy and I knew if I told Juli what I was doing, she'd take Rindy away into the
Terran Zone, and I'd be as good as dead." As he talked, I began to realize how vast
a web Evarin and the underground organization of Nebran had spread for us. "Evarin was here
today. What for?" Rakhal laughed mirthlessly. "He's been trying to get us to kill each other
off. That would get rid of us both. He wants to turn over Wolf to the nonhumans entirely,
I think he's sincere enough, but he spread his hands helplessly--"I can't sit
by and see it." I asked point-blank, "Are you working for Terra? Or for the Dry-towns?
Or any of the anti-Terran movements?" "I'm working for _me_", he said with a shrug. "I
don't think much of the Terran Empire, but one planet can't fight a galaxy. Race, I want
just one thing. I want the Dry-towns and the rest of Wolf, to have a voice in their own
government. Any planet which makes a substantial contribution to galactic science, by the laws
of the Terran Empire, is automatically given the status of an independent common wealth.
"If a man from the Dry-towns discovers something like a matter transmitter, Wolf gets dominion
status. But Evarin and his gang want to keep it secret, keep it away from Terra, keep it
locked up in places like Canarsa! Somebody has to get it away from them. And if I do
it, I get a nice fat bonus, and an official position." I believed that, where I would
have suspected too much protestation of altruism. Rakhal tossed it aside. "You've got Miellyn
to take you through the transmitters. Go back to the Mastershrine, and tell Evarin
that Race Cargill is dead. In the Trade City they think I'm Cargill, and I can get in and
out as I choose—sorry if it caused you trouble, but it was the safest thing I could think
of--and I'll 'vise Magnusson and have him send soldiers to guard the
street-shrines. Evarin might try to escape through one of them." I shook my head. "Terra
hasn't enough men on all Wolf to cover the street-shrines in Charin alone. And I can't
go back with Miellyn." I explained. Rakhal pursed his lips and whistled when I
described the fight in the transmitter. "You have all the luck, Cargill! I've never been
near enough even to be sure how they work--and I'll bet you didn't begin to understand! We'll
have to do it the hard way, then. It won't be the first time we've bulled our way through
a tight place! We'll face Evarin in his own hideout! If Rindy's with us, we needn't worry."
I was willing to let him assume command, but I protested, "You'd take a child into that--that--"
"What else can we do? Rindy can control the Toys, and neither you nor I can do that, if
Evarin should decide to throw his whole arsenal at us." He called Rindy and spoke softly to
her. She looked from her father to me, and back again to her father, then smiled and
stretched out her hand to me. Before we ventured into the street, Rakhal scowled at the sprawled
embroideries of Miellyn's robe. He said, "In those things you show up like a snowfall in
Shainsa. If you go out in them, you could be mobbed.
Hadn't you better get rid of them now?" "I can't," she protested. "They're the keys to
the transmitter!" Rakhal looked at the conventionalized idols with curiosity, but said only, "Cover
them up in the street, then. Rindy, find her something to put over her dress." When we
reached the street-shrine, Miellyn admonished: "Stand close together on the stones. I'm not
sure we can all make the jump at once, but we'll have to try."
Rakhal picked up Rindy and hoisted her to his shoulder. Miellyn dropped the cloak she
had draped over the pattern of the Nebran embroideries, and we crowded close together.
The street swayed and vanished and I felt the now-familiar dip and swirl of blackness
before the world straightened out again. Rindy was whimpering, dabbing smeary fists at her
face. "Daddy, my nose is bleeding...." Miellyn hastily bent and wiped the blood from the
snubby nose. Rakhal gestured impatiently. "The workroom. Wreck everything you see. Rindy,
if anything starts to come at us, you stop it. Stop it quick. And"--he bent and took
the little face between his hands--"_chiya_, remember they're not toys, no matter how pretty
they are." Her grave gray eyes blinked, and she nodded. Rakhal flung open the door of
the elves' workshop with a shout. The ringing of the anvils shattered into a thousand dissonances
as I kicked over a workbench and half-finished Toys crashed in confusion on the floor.
The dwarfs scattered like rabbits before our assault of destruction. I smashed tools, filigree,
jewels, stamping everything with my heavy boots. I shattered glass, caught up a hammer
and smashed crystals. There was a wild exhilaration to it. A tiny doll, proportioned like a woman,
dashed toward me, shrilling in a supersonic shriek. I put my foot on her and ground the
life out of her, and she screamed like a living woman as she came apart. Her blue eyes rolled
from her head and lay on the floor watching me.
I crushed the blue jewels under my heel. Rakhal swung a tiny hound by the tail. Its head shattered
into debris of almost-invisible gears and wheels. I caught up a chair and wrecked a
glass cabinet of parts with it, swinging furiously. A berserk madness of smashing and breaking
had laid hold on me. I was drunk with crushing and shattering and ruining, when I heard Miellyn
scream a warning and turned to see Evarin standing in the doorway. His green cat-eyes
blazed with rage. Then he raised both hands in a sudden, sardonic
gesture, and with a loping, inhuman glide, raced for the transmitter. "Rindy," Rakhal
panted, "can you block the transmitter?" Instead Rindy shrieked. "We've got to get out! The
roof is falling down! The house is going to fall down on us! The roof, look at the roof!"
I looked up, transfixed by horror. I saw a wide rift open, saw the skylight shatter and
break, and daylight pouring through the cracking walls, Rakhal snatched Rindy up, protecting
her from the falling debris with his head and shoulders.
I grabbed Miellyn round the waist and we ran for the rift in the buckling wall. We shoved
through just before the roof caved in and the walls collapsed, and we found ourselves
standing on a bare grassy hillside, looking down in shock and horror as below us, section
after section of what had been apparently bare hill and rock caved in and collapsed
into dusty rubble. Miellyn screamed hoarsely. "Run. Run, hurry!" I didn't understand, but
I ran. I ran, my sides aching, blood streaming from
the forgotten flesh-wound in my side. Miellyn raced beside me and Rakhal stumbled along,
carrying Rindy. Then the shock of a great explosion rocked the ground, hurling me down
full length, Miellyn falling on top of me. Rakhal went down on his knees. Rindy was crying
loudly. When I could see straight again, I looked down at the hillside. There was nothing
left of Evarin's hideaway or the Mastershrine of Nebran except a great, gaping hole,
still oozing smoke and thick black dust. Miellyn said aloud, dazed, "So _that's_ what he was
going to do!" It fitted the peculiar nonhuman logic of the Toymaker. He'd covered the traces.
"Destroyed!" Rakhal raged. "All destroyed! The workrooms, the science of the Toys, the
matter transmitter--the minute we find it, it's destroyed!" He beat his fists furiously.
"Our one chance to learn--" "We were lucky to get out alive," said Miellyn quietly. "Where
on the planet are we, I wonder?" I looked down the hillside, and stared in
amazement. Spread out on the hillside below us lay the Kharsa, topped by the white skyscraper
of the HQ. "I'll be damned," I said, "right here. We're home. Rakhal, you can go
down and make your peace with the Terrans, and Juli. And you, Miellyn--" Before the others,
I could not say what I was thinking, but I put my hand on her shoulder and kept it there.
She smiled, shakily, with a hint of her old mischief.
"I can't go into the Terran Zone looking like this, can I? Give me that comb again. Rakhal,
give me your shirtcloak, my robes are torn." "You vain, stupid female, worrying about a
thing like that at a time like this!" Rakhal's look was like ***. I put my comb in her
hand, then suddenly saw something in the symbols across her ***. Before this I had seen
only the conventionalized and intricate glyph of the Toad God. But now--
I reached out and ripped the cloth away. "Cargill!" she protested angrily, crimsoning,
covering her bare *** with both hands. "Is this the place? And before a child, too!"
I hardly heard. "Look!" I exclaimed. "Rakhal, look at the symbols embroidered into the glyph
of the God! You can read the old nonhuman glyphs. You did it in the city of The Lisse.
Miellyn said they were the key to the transmitters! I'll bet the formula is written out there
for anyone to read! "Anyone, that is, who _can_ read it!
I can't, but I'll bet the formula equations for the transmitters are carved on every Toad
God glyph on Wolf. Rakhal, it makes sense. There are two ways of hiding something. Either
keep it locked away, or hide it right out in plain sight. Whoever bothers even to _look_
at a conventionalized Toad God? There are so many _billions_ of them...." He bent his
head over the embroideries, and when he looked up his face was flushed. "I believe--by the
chains of Sharra, I believe you have it, Race! It may take years to work out the glyphs,
but I'll do it, or die trying!" His scarred and hideous face looked almost handsome in
exultation, and I grinned at him. "If Juli leaves enough of you, once she finds out how
you maneuvered her. Look, Rindy's fallen asleep on the grass there. Poor kid, we'd better
get her down to her mother." "Right." Rakhal thrust the precious embroidery into his shirtcloak,
then cradled his sleeping daughter in his arms.
I watched him with a curious emotion I could not identify. It seemed to pinpoint some great
change, either in Rakhal or myself. It's not difficult to visualize one's sister with children,
but there was something, some strange incongruity in the sight of Rakhal carrying the little
girl, carefully tucking her up in a fold of his cloak to keep the sharp breeze off her
face. Miellyn was limping in her thin sandals, and
she shivered. I asked, "Cold?" "No, but--I don't believe Evarin is dead, I'm afraid he
got away." for a minute the thought dimmed the luster
of the morning. Then I shrugged. "He's probably buried in that big hole up there." But I knew
I would never be sure. We walked abreast, my arm around the weary, stumbling woman,
and Rakhal said softly at last, "Like old times." It wasn't old times, I knew. He would
know it too, once his exultation sobered. I had outgrown my love for intrigue, and I
had the feeling this was Rakhal's last adventure. It was going to take him, as he said, years
to work out the equations for the transmitter. And I had a feeling my own solid, ordinary
desk was going to look good to me in the morning. But I knew now that I'd never run away from
Wolf again. It was my own beloved sun that was rising. My sister was waiting for me down
below, and I was bringing back her child. My best friend was walking at my side. What
more could a man want? If the memory of dark, poison-berry eyes was
to haunt me in nightmares, they did not come into the waking world. I looked at Miellyn,
took her slender unmanacled hand in mine, and smiled as we walked through the gates
of the city. Now, after all my years on Wolf, I understood the desire to keep their women
under lock and key that was its ancient custom. I vowed to myself as we went that I should
waste no time finding a fetter shop and having forged therein the perfect steel chains that
should bind my love's wrists to my key forever. End of chapter fifteen
End of THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE
by Marion Zimmer Bradley