VIII
The smell caught at Charis's throat, made her cough, even before she knew the source. This was the post clearing—just as she had aimed for—the bubble of the building rising from bare earth. Or the remains of it, for there were splotched holes in its fabric from which the plasta-cover peeled in scorched and stinking strips. Tsstu spat, growled, communication with Charis firm on the need for immediate withdrawal.
But there was a prone figure by the ragged hole which had once been a door. Charis started for that—
"Hoyyy!"
She whirled, her disk ready. There was someone on the trail which led down the cliff face. He moved faster, waving to her. She could escape at any moment she chose and that knowledge led her to stand her ground. Tsstu spat again, caught a clawed grip of Charis's tunic.
From the brush rim of the clearing came a brown animal, trotting purposefully. It walked with its back slightly arched, showing off the bands of lighter color along each side, the fur thick and long. More of the light fur was visible above its eyes. Its ears were small, its face broad, the tail bushy.
Just out of the bushes it stopped to eye Charis composedly. Tsstu made no more audible protests, but the trembling of her body, her fear of mind, was transmitted to Charis. For the second time the girl readied her disk.
The man who had waved disappeared from the trail; he must have jumped down the last few feet. Now a whistle sounded from the foliage. The brown animal squatted down where it was. Charis watched warily as the newcomer burst into the clearing in a rush.
He wore the green-brown of Survey, with the addition of high boots of a dull copper-colored, supple material. On his tunic collar was the glint of metal—the insignia of his corps again modified with a key as it had been on the copter. He was young, though nowadays with the mixture of races and the number of mutants, planet years were hard to guess. Not as tall as the usual Terran breed though, and slender. His skin was an even brown which might be its natural shade or the result of much weathering, and his hair, rather closely cropped to his round skull was almost as tightly curled and just as black, as Tsstu's fur.
His impetuous break into the open halted and he stood staring at Charis in open disbelief. The brown animal rose and went to him, rubbing against his legs.
"Who are you?" he demanded in Basic.
"Charis Nordholm," she replied mechanically. Then she added, "That beast of yours—he frightens Tsstu—"
"Taggi? You need not fear him." The brown animal reared against the man's thigh and he fondled its head, scratched behind the small ears. "But—a curl-cat!" He was gazing now with almost as great surprise at Tsstu. "Where did you get it? And how did you make friends with it?"
"Meeerrreeee." Some of Tsstu's fear had lessened. She wriggled about in Charis's arms as if settling herself in a more comfortable position, watching both man and animal with wary interest.
"She came to me," Charis fitted the past to the present, "when you were hunting her with that animal!"
"But I never—" he began and then stopped "—oh, back in the woods that day Taggi went off on a new scent! But why—who are you?" His tone had a new snap; this was official business now. "And what are you doing here? Why did you hide when I searched here earlier?"
"Who are you?" she countered.
"Cadet Shann Lantee, Survey Corps, Embassy-Liaison," he replied almost in one breath. "You sent that message, the one entered on our pick-up tape, didn't you? You were here with the traders, though where you were just a little while ago—"
"I wasn't here. I have just come."
He moved toward her, the animal Taggi remaining where it was. Now his eyes were intent, with a new kind of measurement.
"You've been with them!"
And Charis had no doubt as to whom that "them" referred.
"Yes." She was not prepared to add to that, but he seemed to need no other answer.
"And you've just come here. Why?"
"What has happened here? That man there—" She turned toward the body once more but the Survey officer in one swift stride was blocking her view of it.
"Don't look! What's happened?—Well, I'd like to know that myself. There's been a raid. But who or why—Taggi and I have been trying to learn what could have happened here. How long have you been with them?"
Charis shook her head. "I don't know." It was the truth, but would this Lantee believe it?
He nodded. "Like that, eh? Some of their dreaming . . ."
It was her turn for surprise. What did this officer know of the Wyverns and their Otherwhere? He was smiling slowly, an expression which modified his usual set of mouth, made him even more youthful.
"I, too, have dreamed," he said softly.
"But I thought—!" She had a small prick of emotion which was not amazement but, oddly, resentment.
His smile remained, warm and somehow eager. "That they do not admit males can dream? Yes, that is what they told us, too, once upon a time."
"Us?"
"Ragnar Thorvald and I. We dreamed to order—and came out under our own command, so they had to give us equal status. Did they do the same to you? Make you visit the Cavern of the Veil?"
Charis shook her head. "I dreamed, yes, but I don't know about your cavern. They taught me how to use this." On impulse she held up the disk.
Lantee's smile vanished. "A guide! They gave you a guide. So that's how you got here!"
"You don't have one?"
"No, they never offered us those. And you don't ask—"
Charis nodded. She knew what he meant. With the Wyverns, you waited for their giving; you did not ask. But apparently Lantee and this Thorvald had better contact with the natives than the traders had been able to establish.
The traders—the raid here. She did not realize that she was speaking aloud her thoughts as she said:
"That man with the blaster!"
"What man?" Again that official voice from Lantee.
Charis told him of that strange last night in the post when she had awakened to find herself in a deserted building, of her use of the com and the answer the sweep had picked up in the north. Lantee shot questions at her, but the answers she had were so limited she could tell him little more than the fact that the stranger in the visa-plate had worn an illegal weapon.
"Jagan had a limited permit," Lantee said when she had done. "He was here on sufferance and against our recommendations, and he had only a specified time in which to prove his trade claim. We heard he had brought in a woman as liaison, but that was when he first set up the post . . ."
"Sheeha!" Charis broke in. Rapidly she added that part of the story to the rest.
"Apparently she couldn't take the dreams," Lantee observed. "They reached for her, just as they did for you. But she wasn't receptive in the right way, so it reacted on her, broke her. Then Jagan made another trip and got you. But this other crowd—the one you picked up that night—that spells trouble. It looks as if they hit here—"
Charis glanced at the body. "Is that Jagan? One of his men?"
"It's a crewman, yes. Why did you come here? You taped a call for help to escape that night."
She showed him the stunner, told him of where and how she had found it. Lantee was far from smiling now.
"The com in the post was smashed along with everything else inside that wasn't blast-burned. But—there was something else. Have you ever seen a mate to this before, or was it part of Jagan's stock—a keepsake?"
Lantee moved back to the body he had warned her not to approach and picked an object from the ground beside it. When he came back, he held an unusual weapon, now horribly stained for a third of its length. It had the general appearance of a spear or dart, but the sawlike projections extended farther down its shaft than was natural in a spearhead.
Charis's fingers were a tight fist about her disk as Lantee held it closer to her. The bone-white substance was very like that used in the guide.
"I never saw it before." She told the truth, but in her a fear was growing.
"But you have an idea?" He was too acute!
"Suppose, just suppose," Lantee continued, no longer holding her eye to eye as if demanding her thoughts, but regarding the strange spear with a brooding expression, "that this is native to Warlock!"
"They don't need such weapons," Charis flashed. "They can control any living thing through these." She waved her balled fist.
"Because they dream," Lantee noted. "But what of those of their race who do not dream?"
"The—the males?" For the first time Charis wondered about that. Now she remembered that, in all the time she had spent with the Wyverns, she had not seen any male of their species. That they existed she knew, but there appeared to be a wall of reticence surrounding any mention of them.
"But—" she could not believe in Lantee's suggestion "—that is the sign of blaster fire." With her chin she pointed to the post.
"Yes. Blaster fire, systematic wrecking of every installation—and then this—used to kill an off-worlder. It's as complicated as a dream, isn't it? But this is real, too real by far!" He dropped the stained spear to lie between them. "We have to have answers and have them quick." He looked up at her. "Can you call them? Thorvald went out to the Citadel for a conference before he knew about this."
"I tried to go back before—they'd walled me out."
"We have to know what happened here. A body with this in it. Up there—" Lantee waved toward the plateau, "—an empty ship just sitting. And out of here, as far as Taggi can trace, not a single trail. Either they lifted in by aircraft or—"
"The sea!" Charis finished for him.
"And the sea is their domain; there is not much happens out there that they are not aware of."
"You mean—they planned this?" Charis demanded coldly. To her mind violence of this kind was not the Wyvern way. The natives had their own powers and those did not consist of blaster fire and serrated spears.
"No," Lantee agreed with her promptly. "This has the stamp of a Jack job, except for that." He toed the spear. "And if a Jack crew planeted here, the sooner we combine forces against them, the better!"
To that Charis could agree. If Jagan's poor outfit had been fringe trading, it had still been on the side of the law. A Jack crew was a thoroughly criminal gang, pirates swooping on out-world trading posts to glut, kill, and be off again before help could be summoned. And on such an open world as Warlock, they might well consider lingering for awhile.
"You have a Patrol squad on world?" she asked.
"No. We're in a peculiar situation here. The Wyverns won't allow any large off-world settlement. They only accepted Thorvald and me because we did, by chance, pass their dream test when we were survivors of a Throg raid. But they wouldn't agree—or haven't yet—to any Patrol station. We have a scout that visits from time to time and that's the limit.
"This post of Jagan's was an experiment, pushed on us by some of the off-world veeps who wanted to see how a non-government penetration would be accepted. And the big Companies didn't want to gamble. That's how a Free Trader got it. There are just Thorvald, Taggi, his mate Togi and their cubs, and me, plus a com-tech generally resident at headquarters."
As if the mention of his name summoned him, the brown animal lumbered forward. He sniffed the spear and growled. Tsstu spat, her claws pricking through to Charis's skin.
"What is he?" she asked.
"Wolverine, a Terran-mutated team animal," Lantee answered a little absently. "Could you try to raise them again? I have a hunch that time is getting rather tight."
Gytha—among the Wyverns Charis had been the closest to that young witch who had shared some of her instruction—maybe she could break through by beaming the power directly at Gytha and not at the Citadel as a whole. She did not answer Lantee's question in words but breathed upon the disk, and closed her eyes the better to visualize Gytha.
At her first meeting with the Wyverns, they had had a physical uniformity which made it difficult for an off-worlder to see them as individuals. But Charis had learned that their jeweled skin-patterns varied, that this adornment had meaning. The younger members of their species, when they came to adulthood and the use of the Power, could take certain simplifications of designs worn by the elders of their family lines and then gradually add the symbols of their own achievements, spelled out in no code Charis could yet understand, although by it she could now recognize one from another.
So it was easy to visualize Gytha, to beam her desire for her friend. She expected mind contact but, at an exclamation from Lantee, she opened her eyes to see Gytha herself, the gold and crimson circles about her snout agleam in the sun, the spine ridges along her back moving a little as if she had actually used them to fly here.
"He-Who-Dreams-True." The mental greeting reached out to Lantee.
"She-Who-Shares-Dreams." Charis was startled when the Survey man answered in the same way. So he did have communication with the Wyverns in spite of the fact he possessed no disk.
"You have called!" That was aimed at Charis with a sharpness which suggested her act had been an error of judgment.
"There is trouble here—"
Gytha's head turned; she surveyed the wreckage of the post, glanced once at the body.
"It does not concern us."
"Nor this either?" Lantee made no move to pick up the spear again, but with boot toe he nudged it a little closer to the Wyvern.
She looked down, and a barrier between her and Charis snapped into place, as a door might slam. But Charis had been long enough among Gytha's kind to read the flash of agitation in the sudden quiver of the Wyvern's forehead crest. Her indifference of moments before was gone.
"Gytha!" Charis tried to break through the barrier of silence. But it was as if the Wyvern was not only deaf but that Charis and Lantee had ceased to exist. Only the bloodstained spear had reality and meaning.
The Wyvern made no gesture of warning. But they were there—two more of her kind. And one—Charis took a quick step back—one of the new arrivals had a head crest which was close to black in shade; the whole surface of her scaled skin was covered with such a multiplicity of gemmed design that she flashed. Gysmay—one of the Readers of Rods!
With her came the impact, first of irritation; then, as the Wyvern looked at Lantee, a cold anger, cold enough to strike as a weapon.
Though the Survey officer swayed, his face greenish under the brown, he stood up to her. Under that momentary burst of anger, Charis caught the suggestion of surprise in the Wyvern.
The second Warlockian who had accompanied Gysmay at Gytha's summons made no move. But from her, too, flowed emotion—if one could name it that—a feeling of warning and restraint. Her head crest was also black, but there was no flashing display of patterned skin bright in the sun. At first glance Charis thought she wore no designs at all, even the "encouragement" ones of her ancestors. Then the girl noted that there was a series of markings, deceptively simple, so close in hue to the natural silver of her skin as to make a brocade effect detectable only after concentrated study.
For Lantee or Charis this newcomer had no attention at all; she was staring unwinkingly at the spear. That rose from the spot where Lantee had dropped it, moving up horizontally on a level with the Wyvern's eyes, coming to her. Then it stopped, balanced in the air for a long moment.
It whirled end for end and dashed groundward. There was a sharp snapping as it shattered into bits. It might have been broken against rock instead of bare earth. Then the splinters whirled about and rose in turn. Charis watched unbelievingly as those needle-small remnants of the spear spun madly about. They fell, stilled, but now they formed what was surely a pattern.
The girl reeled. Tsstu, in her arms, screeched. The wolverine squalled. Charis watched Lantee collapse limply under a mental blow of rage, so raw and hot as to be a fire within one's tormented brain. There was a red cloud about her, but Charis was most aware of the pain in her head.
That pain accompanied her into the dark, nibbled at her will, weakened her
struggle to pull away from it. Was it pain or something behind the pain, compelling her, making her no longer Charis Nordholm but a tool to be used, a key to turn for another, stronger personality?
The pain pushed at her. She crawled through a red haze—on and on. Where? for what purpose? There was only the whip of pain and the need to obey that other will which wielded such a lash. Red, red, all about her. But the red was fading slowly as a fire falls into ash. Red to gray, gray which remained about her, a gray she could see . . .
Charis lay on her back. There was an arch of wall close to her right hand; it sloped inward over her head. She had seen that wall before. Half-light so dim—bare walls—a drop table—a seat by it. The trading post—she was back in the trading post!
IX
It was oddly still. Charis sat up on the cot, pulled her coverall into place. Coverall? Something buried deep inside her questioned, and a seed of doubt plagued her. Yes, the post was very still. She went to the door, set her hands on either side of the sealed slit. Was she locked in? But when she applied pressure, the portal opened and she was able to look out into the corridor.
The doors along it gaped open as she slipped into freedom. Listening brought no trace of sound, no murmur of voices or the heavy breathing of a sleeper. She went on down the hall, the floor chill to her bare feet.
But this—all of this, whispered that rebellious voice deep within her, she had done before. Yet on the surface, this was the here and now. The rooms were empty; she paused at each to make sure of that. Then the fourth room: a com screen against its wall, chairs and piles of record tapes. The com—she could use its sweep, try to pick up the government base. But first she must make sure she was safely alone.
A hurried search of the post, room by room. Time—it was a matter of time. Then she was back in the com room, leaning over the key board, picking out the proper combination to trigger a sweep ray.
A wait, and then a signal to the northeast. The visa-plate clouded and then cleared. Charis dodged from her position before it. A man was standing out of the mist, a man wearing a dingy uniform of a trader. Charis studied him, but he was unknown to her. Only the illegal blaster holstered at his belt made him different from any other fringe crewman. Charis's hand swept out to break contact.