She glanced at the Princess. What effect had that sudden disappearance of a very large and heavy rock had on her companion? But she could detect no sign of surprise, only a deepening of that confidence which was going to be so rudely shattered soon.
Fresh air bearing the damp of the rain blew in. Then Sandar, stooping a little, came through. He was alone, and in his hand—Roane gasped but she had no time to move, to warn. He had already pressed the button of the stunner. Beside her the Princess wilted to the rock floor. For the first time in her life Roane faced her cousin with open anger.
“Why did you do that? You did not even know what—”
His mouth had the same twist as Uncle Offlas’s could wear upon occasion. But this time it did not daunt her as it might have in days only shortly past.
“You know the rules. I saw a stranger—” he said harshly. “Now—” He looked down at the detect he carried, as if Ludorica were no more than the rock he had blasted out of existence. Then his face lost a little of its grim cast. “But you are right! There is a find here—”
Roane was on her knees by the Princess, lifting her limp body to lie against her shoulder. Ludorica would sleep it off, of course, but she must not remain here. The dampness of that inflow of air was already reaching her. Roane did not know how disease might develop on Clio, but she was certain that the inhabitants could not endure long exposure without suffering for it.
“Leave her—she’ll keep!” Sandar came to her side. “What’s inside?”
“An installation. You can see it through a plate in the wall down there.” She made no move to guide him.
Nor did he wait for her, but switched on his own beamer and trotted away in the direction she pointed, while she was left with the problem of the unconscious Princess. Uncle Offlas and Sandar would be solidly united against any plan of freeing Ludorica; Roane had known that. But she determined that the Princess would have shelter and care even if she herself had to face such pressure of their wills as had always before frightened her.
She was still holding the girl against her for warmth, interposing her body between that of the Princess and the damp inflow of air, when Sandar returned.
“I don’t know what it is. It may be Forerunner. But at least it is not of present-day Clio,” he reported.
“Maybe something of the Psychocrats, to do with the settlers’ conditioning.”
“How do you—” he began and then shrugged. “Who knows before we take a closer look at what is in there? Now—there are men searching the woods. I had Eight-fingered Dargon’s own luck trying to dodge them. Father has had to extend the distorts to cover this area. Who are they after—her? If so, we give her a brainwash and dump her where they can pick her up. Then our troubles are over.”
“No.”
“No, what?” He stared at her, Roane thought (with wild laughter stirring far within her), as if she had suddenly grown horns or turned blue before his eyes.
“No brainwash, no dumping. This is the Princess Ludorica.”
“I don’t care if she’s the Star Maiden of Raganork! You know the rules as well as I do. You’ve broken them alðready by being with her at all. How much else have you spilled?” He was twirling the setting on his stunner. Roane went cold with more than the wind.
She drew the small cutting tool from her belt. “You try brainwashing, Sandar, and I’ll burn that stunner out of your hand. Drop it—now—or see how you like a seared finger! I mean exactly what I say!”
He eyed her with even greater astonishment. But he must have read the determination in her eyes. There had not been many times in the past when Roane had been faced by some major demand upon her will and courage, but twice that had occurred in Sandar’s company and he must remember now her reaction.
“You know what you are doing?” His voice was very cold. He still held the stunner, but she noted, with a small sense of triumph, that his finger was now carefully away from the firing button.
“I know. Toss that over to me!” Her tool did not waver. She might have used close to its full charge when she cut the Princess’s chain, but there was enough left to give Sandar a burn and at that moment she would not hesitate to do just that. The captivity, her own feeling of inferiority and helplessness, to which the domination of the Keils, father and son, had sentenced her for so long was like the Princess’s metal collar and chain.
That restless desire for freedom which had been born at Cram-brief was coming to a flowering here on Clio. Certainly she might know far less than her uncle and Sandar, be now under their orders, but she was also a person in her own right, not a robot they had programed.
Not that all this flowed coherently through her mind now. But she was determined to stand up to Sandar. His callous solution to the problem of Ludorica had acted on Roane like the cut of a whip—not to lash her into a slave line, but rather to awaken her resistance.
Sandar did not try to reason with her. Not that he ever had. He had given orders, she had meekly obeyed—until he and his father had had her wrapped in a cocoon of acceptance. But larvae develop in cocoons and in time they break free.
He tossed away his stunner. Roane steadied the Princess against her, held the cutter steady until she could reach out and close her fingers about that weapon.
“Are there any searchers near here now?”
“As long as the distorts are on they will keep their distance without knowing why—you ought to know that! But that will hold only for a short time. We shall have to move quickly.”
“Good enough.” Roane tucked the cutter back in the belt loop, kept the stunner in her hand. “Now we’ll go. You carry her.”
“It won’t do any good,” he said. “You know that. Father has discretionary powers. He’ll make the final decision and there will be no appeal. Also, you’re finished with our team. I trust you understand that!”
Roane would consider that future when she had time. The here and now were more important—getting the Princess to shelter and seeing she stayed out of the hands of her enemies.
“You’ll carry her,” she repeated.
Carry her he did. Enough of Roane’s training remained, even as she enjoyed the heady sensation of ordering Sandar around, to prompt her to use the last of the tool’s powers to bring down another fall of earth as a mask for the hole. She hoped that would keep its secret. For what lay within and the fact that she had discovered it were all she had left to bargain with.
Though the distorts were on, Sandar took no chances, setting a fast pace, even thought he had the inert weight of the Princess draped over his shoulder. Roane walked behind, intent on concealing their back trail.
So they reached camp. At least Uncle Offlas was not there, and Roane ordered Sandar to put the Princess in her own private cubby. She set to work then, stripping off the soaked, mud-caked rags Ludorica wore, tugging loose the strips of cloth making her improvised leggings. And she had the Princess rolled into a heated sleeping bag when the chief of their party did tramp in.
He came straight to the cubby and looked at the Princess with no readable expression on his set face.
“Who is she?”
“The Princess Ludorica, heir to the throne of Reveny.”
“And the story?”
He had a recorder ready, Roane noted bleakly. She was going to be condemned out of her own mouth. But there was nothing else she could have done. To her, Sandar’s suggestion was unthinkable.
In the clear, terse manner of making a report which had been drilled into her, Roane began her story—the storm, her refuge in the tower—their flight, the cave—what she had found there—the Princess’s tale of the Ice Crown, and all the rest.
Uncle Offlas listened without comment, though Sandar stirred now and then as if he wished to voice some derisive interruption. Yet he did not. And having conðcluded, Roane waited for the storm to break, knowing that verbal lightning could be as disastrous as the real.
“As for this girl,” he said first, “we can attend to her when it is n
eedful. But this find of yours—you saw it, Sandar?”
“Yes. What I could make out through the panel. It may not be Forerunner, but Psychocrat. It could have something to do with the experiment on Clio.”
“Either way, it is apparently a find of importance. We can report that, along with this.” He looked at the Prinðcess as if she were not a human being at all, but some object which must be disposed of. “However, we have a matter of two days before the com can relay properly to the right orbit pickup, and by that time we should have much more information.”
“What about the Princess?” his son demanded. “They are going to keep hunting her, and we can’t run the distorts on high for long. If we do as I wanted and brainwash her—then leave her where they can find her—”
Roane knew better than to voice another “No” right now. She had no weapon to back it up. That confidence which had supported her began to ebb. She might be able, for some moments of wrath, to stand up to Sandar. She had no defense against Uncle Offlas.
“For the moment they are hunting to the north. And I would like to know more about this crown she believes hidden in there. Once her memory is erased we can learn nothing. We haven’t the equipment for being selective in such matters. We can wait—for a while. Now, I want to look at that installation.
“As for you”—he spoke to Roane—“you must realize what you have done. You are not a blind fool, just a fool. And I would suggest you think upon the future which you have just thrown away.”
This was much milder than the blast expected. Though a moment later, after the men had left the camp shelter, she realized that considering a bleak future was a punishment in itself. The least she could hope for was to be planet-bound on some world the Service selected, forbidden ever again to use any skill she had learned. They might even demand that she be brain-censored also. She shivered and put her face in her hands, though she could not shut the dire pictures out of her mind.
Why had she done all this? Looking back now, she was certain she could have remained hidden in the tower, perhaps even made that climb into safe hiding above, without having dealings with the Princess. Such evasion had been a part of Roane’s training from the start. What flaw in herself had forced her out of the ways of prudence?
Again, she could have left the Princess once they were free of the tower. She might have done this—or that—But in every choice, she had made the one to condemn herself to Uncle Offlas’s justice and she knew what she could expect from that.
She could not use her find as any bargaining point. Uncle Offlas would claim it had been made by chance alone. The only new information she had was that the Princess was conditioned not to see the panel—and any more Ludorica could supply about the Ice Crown.
Since they did not have the techniques here to drag information out of Ludorica against her will, perhaps she could be forewarned to bargain—But for that she must be conscious, and how long—
“What did they say about me?”
Roane was startled. The Princess could not be conscious—she had gone down at Sandar’s stunner blast. But her eyes were open and watching Roane. The off-world girl had no idea how this miracle had come about—unless a difference in planetary inheritance was responsible. She had never known one to recover so quickly from a stun beam. But she must take advantage of it before the others returned, give the Princess warning.
“Listen!” Though there was no one in the shelter and she made sure the recorder was safely off, Roane leaned very close before she spoke. “They want to take away your memory, so you cannot remember us. And then—then they may give you to those hunting you.”
She had expected some expression of disbelief from the Princess. But though the other’s eyes narrowed a little, she showed no surprise. Instead she asked: “And you believe that they can do this thing—take away my memory?”
“I have seen it done to others.”
“I believe you believe it, yes. But whether it can be done to one who has the right to a crown—” Ludorica frowned. “If I could get the Crown—I must get the Crown!”
But Roane had a question of her own. “How long have you been awake? It is important for me to know.”
“A memory which is useful, eh? Very well, this I remember clearly—a young man wearing clothes such as yours. Why is it with you, Roane, that men and women dress alike? Even our peasant girls delight in their bright skirts and would think your wear very ugly and drab. Yes, a young man. Then all is blackness as in a sleep without dreams. Until I lay here—wherever here may be—and you were taking from me those disgraceful rags to make me clean and warm. But I thought it well to learn what I could before those others knew I was awake.
“So they wish to take away my memory and give me to those who would like me best in the far deeper sleep of death. Why would they do this to a stranger who has worked them no harm?”
“They fear your knowing of their presence here.”
“And what act of thievery, or worse, do they plan that they fear any knowledge of their presence may spoil?” There was a new sharpness in the Princess’s voice. “It is the Crown! You seek the Crown! But it is the truth that I told you—for one not of the Blood to take it means a wasting death. Which one of our neighbors sent you to destroy Reveny so? And are you so careless or dedicated that you will kill yourselves to achieve your ends?”
It was no use. Roane could not explain without telling all. But with a conditioned mind—would Ludorica accept her explanation any quicker than she would believe in the installation she had not been able to see?
“We came here to search for a treasure, but I will swear to you by any power you wish to name that that was not your crown! Until you told me of it, I did not know of its existence. Nor would it mean anything to me. What we seek is not of your time. Oh, I do not know if I can make you understand. Before Reveny was a nation, before your people came—at a time so distant we have never been able to reckon it—there were others. They may not even have been like us in form and they were gone before our form of life came to be.
“But in some places they left things behind them, hidden things. And from these our wise men try to learn something of them. They had greater knowledge than we possess. They were able to do things which we can hardly believe are possible. Yet we know that they did them.
“And every such find we can discover adds to our small store of knowledge, makes it more likely that someday we can learn more of their secrets. My uncle and my cousin, the young man you saw, are both trained to hunt down such treasures. And I have been schooled to help them, since I am of their family and supposed so to keep their secrets.” She was trying hard to set this within a framework of planetary custom. “By revealing myself to you I have broken a very strict law, and I shall have to pay for that. But you are not at fault—”
“So you believe this is wrong, the taking of my memory?”
“Yes. And yet—”
“Yet you also have a way of life to uphold, even as we of the Blood,” the Princess interrupted. “Yes, that I can understand. But I tell you, Roane, I do not propose to let them take my memory and give me to Reddick. Nor do I mean to lose the Crown when my hand may be only inches from it. I am treating you as one treats an honorable enemy. If it be war between us, let us say so, and from this moment the rules of war will hold.”
“I do not want war. But my uncle, my cousin—”
“Yes. And what will happen to you, Roane? Will they also take away your memory as a punishment for aiding me?”
“They might, yes. Or they can send me to a place where I shall have to abide for the rest of my days.”
“A prison? And you will let them do this to you?”
“You do not understand. They have powers you cannot conceive of. And there are others behind them more powerful still. They will do with me in the end just as they choose.”
The Princess sat up. “I do not understand you. You are strong of body, quick of mind. This you have proved. Yet you will let them take you—
you sit here and wait for them to take you!”
“You do not understand!” Roane thought of the devices they could use to hunt her down. Uncle Offlas might even call in Service aid. The Princess might be conditioned in one way, but, Roane saw now, she herself was conditioned in another, unable to break free without aid—
“Stay if you will,” Ludorica said. “But I do not remain here to have them play with my mind.”
“Where will you go?”
“To Yatton, if I can escape Reddick’s net. He is a stubborn man and will not lightly let me out of his hands. And you—will you remain here waiting for prison?” There was a faint scorn in that.
But Ludorica could not know. To run was hopeless, ending in defeat. If Roane could persuade the Princess to bargain with Uncle Offlas—Only the time for bargaining might already be passed. Roane shook her head. Slowly she arose.
“If I help you to Yatton—” At least she might protect her from Reddick’s men. If she could keep the Princess safe, there might be a little hope for a later bargain.
“If you help me to Yatton, I think there will be no more talk of memory stealing, nor prison, for either of us!”
CHAPTER 6
“FOOD FIRST.” Roane went to the stores, triggered the heat caps on those containers she thought held the most sustaining nourishment, brought back her selection.
There was clothing, too. Ludorica’s collection of rags was useless. Roane could give her an extra coverall—it would, with its strange make and fabric, be one more thing to explain to any native, but there was no help for that. She had compromised her standing with the Service past repair. But there was no reason why the Princess should be surrendered to an alien “justice” which to her would be the rankest injustice.
As she hunted for clothing and boots she rubbed her forehead with her scratched fingers—not because of any ache there but because she could not wholly understand how she had been drawn into this tangle. Roane had wanted nothing but shelter from a frightening storm, and all this had come from that perfectly natural desire. Somehow it was as if all her training, all she had been drilled in as “right” or “wrong,” had been overturned once she met the Princess.