CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Outside in the streets it was full day, and the color and life of Charinhad subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning dullness andsilence. Only a few men lounged wearily in the streets, as if the sunhad sapped their energy. And always the pale fleecy-haired children,human and furred nonhuman, played their mysterious games on the curbsand gutters and staring at us with neither curiosity nor malice.
Miellyn was shaking when she set her feet into the patterned stones ofthe street-shrine.
"Scared, Miellyn?"
"I know Evarin. You don't. But"--her mouth twitched in a pitiful attemptat 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 closerto 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 staggeringwhirl of dizzy darkness swung round my head. The street vanished. Afteran instant the floor steadied and we stepped into the terminal room inthe Mastershrine, under a skylight dim with the last red slant ofsunset. Distant hammering noises rang in my ears.
Miellyn whispered, "Evarin's not here, but he might jump through at anysecond." 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 goesin or out, jumps through the transmitter." She pointed. "The scanningdevice is in there, we'll have to go through the workroom."
She was patting her crushed robes into place, smoothing her hair withfastidious fingers. "I don't suppose you have a comb? I've no time to goto 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 quiteintelligent. "The Little Ones, my friend, notice things. You are quiteenough of a roughneck, but if I, Nebran's priestess, walk through theirworkroom all blown about and looking like the tag end of an orgy inArdcarran...."
Abashed, I fished in a pocket and offered her a somewhat battered pocketcomb. She looked at it distastefully but used it to good purpose,smoothing her hair swiftly, rearranging her loose-pinned robe so thatthe worst of the tears and stains were covered, and giving me,meanwhile, an artless and rather tempting view of some deliciouscurvature. She replaced the starred tiara on her ringlets and finallyopened 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; theround inhuman orbs of the dwarf _chaks_, the faceted stare of the prismeyes of the Toys. The workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it feltlonger than a good many miles I've walked. Here and there the dwarfsmurmured an obsequious greeting to Miellyn, and she made somelighthearted answer.
She had warned me to walk as if I had every right to be there, and Istrode after her as if we were simply going to an agreed-on meeting inthe next room. But I was drenched with cold sweat before the fartherdoor 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 seeanywhere, but without jumping. It uses a tracer mechanism like the onein the Toys. If Rakhal's electrical-impulse pattern were on file--just aminute." She fished out the bird Toy and unwrapped it. "Here's how wefind out which of you this is keyed to."
I looked at the fledgling bird, lying innocently in her palm, as shepushed aside the feathers, exposing a tiny crystal. "If it's keyed toyou, you'll see yourself in this, as if the screen were a mirror. Ifit's keyed to Rakhal...."
She touched the crystal to the surface of the screen. Little flickers ofsnow wavered and danced. Then, abruptly, we were looking down from aheight 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 comeinto 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 lookout the window or something. Charin's a big city. If we could get a lookat a landmark--"
Rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke to someoneout of sight range of the scanning device. Abruptly Miellyn said,"There." She had caught a window in the sight field of the pane. I couldsee 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 heis now. Turn it off, Miellyn, we can find him--" I was turning away whenMiellyn screamed.
"Look!"
Rakhal had turned his back on the scanner and for the first time I couldsee who he was talking to. A hunched, catlike shoulder twisted; asinuous neck, a high-held head that was not quite human.
"Evarin!" I swore. "That does it. He knows now that I'm not Rakhal, ifhe 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 theworkroom. Fingers dropped from half-completed Toys as they stared afterus. _Toys!_ I wanted to stop and smash them all. But if we hurried, wemight find Rakhal. And, with luck, we would find Evarin with him.
And then I was going to bang their heads together. I'd reached asaturation point on adventure. I'd had all I wanted. I realized that I'dbeen up all night, that I was exhausted. I wanted to murder and smash,and wanted to fall down somewhere and go to sleep, all at once. Webanged the workroom door shut and I took time to shove a heavy divanagainst it, blockading it.
Miellyn stared. "The Little Ones would not harm me," she began. "I amsacrosanct."
I wasn't sure. I had a notion her status had changed plenty, beginningwhen I saw her chained and drugged, and standing under the hoveringhorror. 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 isa street-shrine just beyond the Bridge of Summer Snows. We can jumpdirectly there." Abruptly she froze in my arms, with a convulsiveshudder.
"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. Icould see the pylon and the bridge and the rising sun of Charin. Thenthere was the giddy internal wrenching, a blast of icy air whistledround us, and we were gazing out at the Polar mountains, ringed in theireternal snow.
Miellyn clutched at me. "Pray! Pray to the Gods of Terra, if there areany!"
She clung so violently that it felt as if her small body was trying topush through me and come out the other side. I hung on tight. Miellynknew what she was doing in the transmitter; I was just along for theride and I didn't relish the thought of being dropped off somewhere inthat black limbo we traversed.
We jumped again, the sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from thegirl, and darkness shivered round us. I looked on an unfamiliar streetof black night and dust-bleared stars. She whimpered, "Evarin knows whatI'm doing. He's jumping us all over the planet. He can work the controlswith his mind. Psychokinetics--I can do it a little, but I neverdared--oh, hang on _tight_!"
Then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would makesome tiny movement, and we would be falling, blind and dizzy, throughblackness. Halfway through the giddiness, a new direction would wrenchus and we would be thrust elsewhere, and look out into a new street.
One instant I smelled hot coffee from the spaceport cafe near theKharsa. An instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson frondswaving above
us and a dazzle of water. We flicked in and out of thesalty air of Shainsa, glimpsed flowers on a Daillon street, moonlight,noon, red twilight flickered and went, shot through with the terriblegiddiness of hyperspace.
Then suddenly I caught a second glimpse of the bridge and the pylon; amoment's oversight had landed us for an instant in Charin. The blacknessstarted to reel down, but my reflexes are fast and I made one swift,scrabbling step forward. We lurched, sprawled, locked together, on thestones of the Bridge of Summer Snows. Battered, and bruised, andbloody, we were still alive, and where we wanted to be.
I lifted Miellyn to her feet. Her eyes were dazed with pain. The groundswayed and rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge. At the farend, I looked up at the pylon. Judging from its angle, we couldn't bemore than a hundred feet from the window through which I'd seen thatlandmark in the scanner. In this street there was a wineshop, a silkmarket, 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 ourselvesexplaining things to some uninvolved stranger. Then I heard a child'shigh voice, and a deep familiar voice hushing it. The door opened, justa 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 dayslonger than I figured, getting here. Come on in," said Rakhal Sensar.