Saikmar hurried her onward. At an intersection in the passageway they came upon half a dozen children all aged about five playing with chunks of something tough and rubbery, cut in cubes; the game was to catch them as they bounced at unpredictable angles. Their play forgotten at the sight of a stranger, all the children stared with open mouths while Saikmar led Maddalena past them and turned to the left.
Down here the crash, or subsidence, had buckled the hull-plates more severely still; there were gaps and cracks plugged with rags over which some pitchlike substance had been smeared. She guessed that this must have been crew’s quarters, for there were doors at intervals of five yards on either side of the passage—doorways, rather. The sliding panels had been either cut away or hammered back in their distorted grooves, where they had rusted fast, and now the openings were screened with panels of basketwork or animal-hides draped like curtains.
Behind some of these curtains there were sounds of movement, and she fancied that inquisitive eyes were peering at her through almost invisible gaps.
Saikmar halted at last before a doorway at the very end of the passage, and she saw that this one was more effectively closed than the others. What looked like the seven-foot-long meshmetal base of an ancient bunk had been placed across the opening and there secured by a bronze bar drilled at each end to fit pegs sunk in the wall. A rudimentary padlock weighing two or three pounds held the bar fast in the middle. Saikmar found a key to unlock it on a ring chained to his belt, lifted the barrier aside, and stood back.
“Enter,” he invited her.
She obeyed. She found herself in a four-bunk cabin, one of the bunks having been sawed off its mountings to serve, as she had seen, in place of a door. Presumably the reason Saikmar had gone to such trouble was because he had more possessions than other refugees; the remaining three bunks were loaded with clothing, blankets, the huge handwritten books of which she had seen examples during her briefing, some metallic objects which were probably armor, and other things she did not recognize at all.
The sight reminded her painfully of how completely she was at the mercy of events without the gear she had abandoned in the landing-craft. She had no means of signaling her whereabouts, no medical supplies—which on a backward world like this might well be the deadliest lack of all—and no more clothes than what she stood up in. Also it had been made abundantly clear that her arrival was resented because of a food shortage. And with the polar winter setting in for six months, obviously there could be no provisions brought in from outside.
One stroke of luck she had had, though. Perhaps there would be others. Indeed, come to think of it, there already had been another. She glanced down at her spacesuit as she realized the fact. The orbiting ship that had fired on the Patrol cruiser proved that some power-group from another system had discovered Fourteen and was exploiting its resources, or its people, or both. The implication was that the death of Trader Heron and the slaughter of the king parradile at the hands of a man “wielding the lightning” referred to an off-worlder with an energy gun—not to the discovery of gunpowder, as Slee had ingeniously hypothesized. She had been half-afraid, therefore, that her spacesuit might be recognized for what it was and that she might be regarded as an enemy.
The intruders, however, must have planned to cause as little disturbance as they could—must have kept their alien origin secret, learned the local languages and disguised themselves in native costume. Unless Trader Heron’s death had been coincidence, they would have realized that the loss of a Galactic agent would attract investigators, and wished to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible.
They had been very clever, she thought bitterly. It had taken a long time for even a hint of their interference to get back to a Corps base, longer still for an agent to be sent to check up. By shooting down the cruiser directly it emerged in real space, they had certainly gained a further respite of a year or two, unless she or Langenschmidt reached a subspace communicator. It wasn’t uncommon for a Patrol cruiser to disappear without trace. It happened perhaps three or four times a century, and there was seldom a vessel to spare to look into the disappearance immediately.
That, of course, was why the pay in the Corps was so high.
By the time another ship was sent to Fourteen, the intruders might well have gained a secure enough foothold to thumb their noses at the Corps. For there were two views current concerning the treatment of Zarathustra Refugee Planets: The long view was the one that the Corps accepted and that Langenschmidt had expounded to her: to allow these isolated worlds to develop along their own lines, free from interference by more advanced cultures. The short view was that they should be opened to trade and traffic so that the alleged benefits of Galactic civilization would be made available to them.
If the intruders dug themselves in deeply enough, the hands of the Corps would be tied; it would be impossible to root them out without force, and this in itself would be a breach of the policy of noninterference. They could secure more and still more time by appealing an order to vacate to ever higher authority in the Galactic legal hierarchy, and a final decision might be reached in—what? Ten years? Coping with two hundred and sixty planets in uneasy federation was a slow, slow process.
By that time, naturally, it wouldn’t matter which way the decision went. Irreparable harm would have been done.
She felt partly terrified, partly elated. She had made herself unpopular back at the base because all the time she was telling herself that the routine jobs she was given were too petty for her abilities. She had a superb conceit. But here she was landed with a task that posed so tremendous a challenge it was as though the universe itself had taken her at her word. It was wholly up to her whether it was accomplished.
More to the point: it was wholly up to her whether she survived or not.
There was no furniture at all in the cabin except the bunks. There were sanitary facilities, but they had probably not functioned since the ship crashed. Saikmar cleared a space for her on one of the bunks, padding the metal frame with a blanket, and indicated that she should sit down. What could have become of the mattresses that must race have been fitted here? Oh: doubtless that was how the children had obtained the chunks of rubbery stuff they were playing with.
She lowered herself to the bunk and took off her helmet gratefully, glad of the chance to sort out the tangle into which her hair had muddled itself. Saikmar watched her every move, but there was no hostility or suspicion in his face, only curiosity. She had not realized at the time when he introduced himself as coming from Carrig, that if he had recognized her as coming from space, and knew that the usurpers in his city were from space also, he would not have been so friendly.
She waited for him to speak.
Saikmar found himself at a loss now. Until Nyloo had accepted that the girl’s arrival constituted an omen, he had only half-believed the idea himself. True, he had been willing enough to regard the parradile as a divine emissary on sight, but he had, after all, been depressed enough to be contemplating suicide, and later reflection had suggested that the likeliest explanation was eviction of the parradiles from the Smoking Hills by Belfeor’s blasphemous “clan.”
This was a matter, however, in which the views of a priestess obviously carried a lot of weight. And the more he thought about it the more probable it seemed that he had indeed brushed the fringes of the supernatural. The mystery of her presence here; the way the parradile had brought them both off the cliff-face and to level ground, something unheard of—everything tied together and filled his mind with visions of divine intervention. And the strange clothes the girl wore, especially her hard helmet with its transparent faceplate …
Which she was now taking off, to reveal that her features were of more than human loveliness.
Saikmar took a deep breath and decided to go straight to the point “Are you human?” he demanded. “Or do you come from the gods?”
The girl paused awhile before answering. She said finally, “I’m human. But
very strange things have happened to me.”
That was clear enough. He pursued. “You are from Dayomar, you say. How are you called?”
“Melisma, daughter of Yull and Mazia, but they are dead.” She made a sign he had seen southlanders make at the mention of a death. So far, so good.
“How did you come here from the southland, then?”
Again this pause before her answer. He wondered if she was preparing a lie, or whether she simply disbelieved some marvelous experience she had undergone. Her next words persuaded him that the second was the true reason.
“I don’t remember clearly. Perhaps the parradile brought me. It seems to me that it did.”
Then whether she was human herself or not, it had definitely been a miracle that accounted for her presence. She certainly could not have wandered this far north on her own. No caravans had come to the sanctuary this summer. It had to be the parradile that had carried her hither.
A tremendous thrill passed through his body, and he had to shut his eyes for a moment, steadying himself. He was not forsaken by the gods! Here was an inarguable omen, directed at himself, and if Nyloo tried to make out otherwise, he would take her fuddled old head from her shoulders, priestess or not.
“This place …” the girl was saying thoughtfully, looking about her. “It’s the northern sanctuary?”
“Yes.”
“And you said, I think, that you had claimed asylum here. Why? What drove you from home?”
“I am of a noble family in Carrig,” Saikmar said bitterly. “There, as you may know, the king-hunt annually decides who shall rule. I who should have slain the king for Clan Twywit was cheated of my rights by strangers from the south with evil powers. Had I not fled hither I’d be dead, for the strangers leagued with traitors in the city—among them Ambrus son of Knole, whom may the gods swiftly destroy!—and burned down those who stood against them with magical lightning.”
The girl’s face had lit with astonishment. She said, “But then you’re the Saikmar who—!”
At that instant though, the metal frame he had propped back across the door was rudely flung aside and fell clattering. Into the cabin stepped Graddo, and behind him a score of the other refugees could be seen, menacing—women too, as well as the men who had been working on the snow-wall.
“I’ve come to tell you thieves and wastrels,” Graddo said curtly, “that though talk of omens may impress old women who’ve had their brains addled by years of dabbling in the mysteries, it cuts no ice with us. Food’s short, for your city Carrig must have stopped the summer caravans this year and kept the pickings for themselves. We’re all agreed that that’s the likely explanation. So we’re going to put you out of the sanctuary, to make your way to Carrig, if you can!”
He smiled sardonically, and behind him the others shouted their approval. Some of them, Saikmar saw with sinking heart, held clubs and knives, and all their faces were bright with malevolence.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For a moment there was silence, stretching like rope under too great a weight, tautening until it was sure to snap. Saikmar’s eyes sought the sword he had not dared to cumber himself with when he went to the parradile’s lair. It was as far away across the floor of the cabin as it could possibly be, hanging on the most distant wall, and before he could reach it Graddo could be upon him. Only two or three of them could enter the cabin at a time, but he doubted he could stand off even two. Sword or no sword, though, he was going to have to try.
“Move!” Graddo barked at last, when his patience ran dry.
“Graddo!” a cry came through the doorway. “Push ’em out to us! If they don’t want to go, we’ll just drag ’em!”
“I’ll do that!”
Suiting action to words he took half a pace toward Saikmar, making as though to seize him by the arm. What happened next Saikmar did not quite see; he was still poising himself to duck under Graddo’s arms and try a wrestling throw on him when Graddo abruptly was not there any longer. He was flat on his back with a startled expression and the girl Melisma was standing over him.
“They want to play it rough,” said one of the refugees crowding the doorway, a man with a club whom the lean months had not been able to pare down to thinness. He stepped inside as Graddo started to get to his feet, cursing. Saikmar decided that the extraordinary girl could take care of Graddo for the moment, and as the newcomer reached for him, he summoned all the lightness and precision he had come by through his childhood pastime of dancing.
When the new attacker struck at him, it was his turn not to be where he had been. He jumped back far enough for the man’s ankle to catch against Graddo’s as the latter went sprawling the second time. There was a tremendous clang as they fell against the metal wall; the whole cabin rang.
Before the club-wielder could rise, Saikmar—realizing this was no time for finesse—charged him and crashed his skull back to the wall again. Satisfied he had dizzied the fellow for a while, he spun to face another who had come through the door. Feinting, he pretended to launch himself directly at him. At the last moment he darted aside. The man stumbled, and Saikmar’s fist took him on the back of the neck. He continued forward willy-nilly, snatching at the girl to prevent himself falling.
The girl caught his flailing arm at the wrist with one hand. With the other she pushed at the back of his elbow. The man screamed like a beast! He fell moaning across a bunk; when he tried to move his injured arm, he could not for the pain.
One could imagine, Saikmar reflected approvingly, a woman like this being very much at home in a parradile’s lair.
Graddo had still not had enough, it seemed. Once more he tried to scramble to his feet. Losing patience, Melisma put a booted foot against his solar plexus. It was not a kick she gave him, but a jab; nonetheless he doubled up coughing, clutching his belly.
She possessed herself of the club abandoned by the man with the dislocated elbow, and Saikmar seized the chance to tug his sword free of the peg where it was hanging. Panting, they stood shoulder to shoulder to confront the other refugees in the doorway.
The enthusiasm of the latter seemed to have chilled. None appeared eager to follow up Graddo’s lead. Besides, with three attackers’ legs sprawled across the floor, there was hardly any clear footing left for further intruders.
“My apologies, Melisma,” Saikmar said out of the side of his mouth. “Though we beat them off now, it will surely be a miserable winter, with these walking carrion looking for any chance to revenge themselves.”
“I should rather be the one to apologize,” she answered equally softly. “Had I not come to the sanctuary, things would not have reached this pass.”
“Oh, eventually they would,” Saikmar sighed. “It was only a question of time.”
He braced himself as he saw movement among the refugees, thinking they were nerving themselves for a fresh onslaught, then paused in puzzlement as he saw that their heads were turning to look along the passage. Suddenly a commanding voice rang out, and the crowd fell back. Some of them had the grace to look ashamed as they made way for Nyloo. Others grumbled, sour-faced.
The priestess came to the doorway and gave a comprehending nod as she glanced inside. Beside her, clinging to her arm, was the old-wise child who was her usual companion. It was to her that Nyloo spoke.
“You say it was Graddo who persuaded his companions to do this?”
The child nodded, her big eyes raised to Nyloo’s face.
“Graddo!” the priestess said, and her voice was as terrible as the grinding of a glacier. Still doubled over his sore midriff, the man looked up uncertainly.
“You have blasphemed,” Nyloo said. “The sanctuary rejects you. You are cast into winter darkness, and henceforth your name is accursed.”
Graddo’s face went bleach-pale, and he froze into immobility. From behind Nyloo came a sigh, as all the refugees together heard the terrible sentence of doom.
Saikmar relaxed and wiped his forehead. Well, that was a relief!
> He was surprised and alarmed to hear Melisma say a moment later, “What will become of him?”
Nyloo glanced at her. “What do you think? He will be driven from the sanctuary to live or die as the gods see fit.”
“Not for my sake,” Melisma said. “Do not do it in my name.”
“It will be done because he profaned the sanctuary, not because he attacked you,” Nyloo answered shortly. “No one may set himself up as judge of who may and who may not seek asylum here. We, the priestly staff, alone have that right Graddo! This is the last time your name will ever be spoken within these walls. You are accursed. Go!”
She spat on the floor and ground her foot in the smear of moisture.
Machinelike, Graddo rose to his feet. Stumbling, he crossed the cabin to the exit. The other refugees moved aside as though from the carrier of an infectious disease. With one last survey of the scene, Nyloo and her child companion followed, then the two other attackers, shaking with relief that only Graddo and not they also had been expelled.
Melisma made to start after them, but Saikmar caught her arm. He said, “He would have done that to us! Why do you ray no?”
Her shoulders slumped, but she made no other reply. After a few seconds in which she seemed to recover her self-control, she turned away from the door. He picked up and securely fastened the barrier, and when he looked her way again he saw that she was peeling off the peculiar coverall she wore. He stared at her, feeling a stab of surprise, for she was revealed as dancer-slim and exquisitely clothed.
He had no chance to pay her the compliment that rose to his lips, however, for he was forestalled by the reverberating thrum of the meal-gong, and the squeals and the hammering feet of excited children resounded in the noisy metal corridors. She started, dropping the heavy suit on the nearest bunk.