"Flowers?" she pounced upon that. "What kind of flowers?"
I described the blossoms and how they had seemed to move though there was no wind. It was a small thing, but how could I rank the importance of any hint?
"They moved—" she repeated. "Bart, have you been to the Tangle edge?"
"No closer than this place. There was never any reason to head that way."
"But you have seen the picture tapes taken by Survey, by the off-world teams after the Shadow doom began?"
"Thick, grey, just what men name it—a tangle of vegetation too massed to get through except by burning. Even that does not work—the stuff is said to grow overnight and if one ventures in too far the trail closes up behind him. It dampens out coms and range fingers. They will not operate near it. That's why no one can go in—" I summoned up my general knowledge of the Tangle as I had heard and tape-read.
"Also—it moves," she said then. "As your flowers in the town—it quivers and sways even if there is no wind. That is part of the tangling process, for in its ever movement it twines and winds stem and leaf together, sometimes to remain so tied permanently."
That I had not known. At my questioning she said she had once been in Portcity and had heard the report of a man who had been sent on a rescue mission. Some off-worlders in a flitter had flown too low over that trap and had vanished into it.
"I wonder," she sat now with forefinger to her lips as if she would chew upon it, as one did upon a sliver of journey food, "can there be an alliance?"
"No one would be fool enough to bring seeds or plants from the Tangle to bed on the plains!"
"Perhaps no one brought them. Remember the storm? What could the force of a wind such as that carry in it? I wish there was some detailed record from one of the doomed villages of what happened just before the Shadows. Could there have been some signs of approaching trouble which no one thought to notice—"
"Such as a new flower popping up in a garden plot?" I wanted to scoff, yet still I was caught by her reasoning. Perhaps my father had had a somewhat similar idea; he had spent so much time in the tapes describing the vegetation. Also now I remembered something else—that when he wore the protect suit he had always shed that well away from the camp site and had brushed it over with disfect powder. But that had been for the first two or three times he had gone so exploring; after that he had not even used the suit.
"Such as a flower, a new flower, in a garden place," she agreed.
Illo knew more of growing things than I did, that I was willing enough to allow. A healer must have a wide knowledge of plants, which harm and which can help. I knew that in her pack she had small boxes of dried leaves, of crushed-to-powder seeds—all of which had their uses. While the blisters still on my hand and cheek, though they had lost the sting of pain under Illo's treatment, were warning enough that poison grew and flourished in Mungo's. At this moment I was ready to open my mind to any theory. Though I could not equate any inimical plant with what I had seen. Poison in such might produce a plague, yes. But I was still certain that there was some cruel thought behind the doom. Perhaps not thought as we reckoned it—still intelligence, however alien that might be in form.
I packed away the tapes and we both lay down on our grass and blanket beds. Illo had said very little, but I guessed that she was thinking much. I hoped I would not keep seeing, even in dreams, that which lay so close to us behind the nodding flowers. Did they still nod at night, I wondered? This was so still a night, without even a breath of wind stirring in the grass,. As if something lay behind its defenses in the dead town—waiting—No, I must not allow my imagination to stray so.
It was a restless night for me. I must have slept very lightly for twice I roused to hear the gars changing watch. I realized that night not how much I knew, but how little. I had thought that I was well equipped for a Voorloper—yet now I needed more—so much more.
The gars were brisk in setting out the next day, glad in their own way, I was certain, that we were turning our backs upon a place they shunned. Witol now carried the water cans filled to their cap pieces, while Bru was free of burden. She took to ranging ahead, crisscrossing our chosen direction of march. It was as if she were playing scout. I had never seen a gar behave so before, but then, mainly, they had marched in yoke with the wagon and not gone ranging free on the trail.
There was no trail in the grass to be sure. The sky today was overcast. I kept watch on the scudding clouds. Another bad storm might well mean our deaths when we had not even the shelter of the wagon. However, the animals showed no signs of uneasiness, and I knew that they would betray those well ahead of a drastic natural change.
To the right that distant threat of the Tangle marked the horizon line; we were heading due west in the general direction of Voor's Grove as well as I could place it. By all accounts that would be yet two days journey away.
There were formations of migrating birds across the sky and their cries reached us above the constant rustle of the grass which made up part of the wind's song. Our pace was steady but we did not push, as now and then we rested while the gars grazed. We did not talk even when we so paused. Illo wore her mask face and I had an eerie feeling that I, the gars, perhaps even the plain over which we trod, was not really visible to her, that she was deep somewhere within herself working out some problem. At our third rest I dared to ask her if she had picked up her call again. She shook her head.
"There is nothing. Perhaps I shall never know—" her voice trailed away and I could add the missing words for myself. She would never know what had happened to Catha. I guessed, though I did not say so, that what had come was death.
In mid-afternoon I sighted a small herd of lurts—the first life other than winged we had seen since the storm. The natural inhabitants of the plains must have gone to cover then or else were so scattered and mauled that they had been driven from their regular territories. Witol bellowed and the small graceful creatures fled in great bounds. We do not know why the gars will warn off the wild grazers—perhaps they have a kind of jealous desire to protect food which they might just need.
However the sight of the lurts running free meant that this was truly a deserted land. The most timid of creatures, they would not even share territory with other wildlife larger than themselves.
"This is good country." We had paused at the top of one of the low ridges. Illo shifted her pack a fraction and then went down on one knee and parted the heavy growth of grass. I thought she was looking at the richness of the soil, but instead she dug a moment with her fingers among the grass roots and then held up something which caught glittering life from the daylight as it swung back and forth in her grasp.
"This—have you seen its like before? You have ranged far—" She held her find out to me.
There was a chain of metal links. At first I thought that exposure had given it that bronze-blue color. Only when I took it from her, it was not pitted, and I believed that the smooth surface was not in the least touched by time. If that were its natural color the material was like nothing I had ever seen. Which meant little—it could have been dropped by some off-worlder, perhaps a prospector, the metal forming it an alloy from another world.
The chain was beautifully fashioned, a work of art, the links fastened one to another as the scales of a sku lizard are set on the skin. It was broken, but mid-point along its length, when it had been intact and the clasp locked, there was a plate set in as part of the chain, curved a little to continue the line, it must hold to fit closely about the throat. That plate was about the width and length of my shortest finger, and, as I wiped it clear of the remains of the soil from which Illo had freed it, I could see that it was deeply incised with a bewilderingly ornate scrolling which resembled somehow an unknown script.
"Off-world," I commented. I peered around at the grassy slopes which descended gently from where we stood. Perhaps it was my experience in Mungo's but I found myself hunting for some sign, unpleasant, of whoever had once worn it. I would not have been surprised to see
a skull peering open-eyed at me from behind one of the tussocks.
"Perhaps—" She sat back on her heels and set about dividing the grass, pulling at it. Was she also hunting such grim remains? If the same thought which nibbled at me struck her I wondered that she still explored so.
"This is an alloy—I think." I wanted her to stop that search. "We have no art, no skill to produce such a thing on Voor."
"It is older than the coming of Voor—" Her search had proved fruitless. She looked up, not to me, but at what I held.
"You mean it dates back before the coming of Survey—?" Voor had been the First-In Scout who had mapped this planet for the League and because he had been close to retirement, on his last out-range of exploration, it had been given his name. He had chosen to settle here when his service years were ended.
"Yes."
"But that is impossible!" I twirled the chain between my fingers and was surprised that she would make such a statement. Or why—
She wiped the last of the earth traces from her fingers and arose.
"You know little about us—the healers." There was affront in her voice, her lips were thin set and her eyes were as unfriendly as if I had shouted "Liar!" at her openly. "We have gifts. I—and several others of my craft—can hold a wrought object thus," she set her palms together with exaggerated gesture, a little cupped as if the chain did so lie in her grasp, "and know what a thing is in truth—something of its age, of those who made it, used it—perhaps even how it reached where it lay until I saw it."
I would have denied that this could be done, then I hesitated. Who knew what could be done truly with the mind? There were off-world strains who had odd gifts. Terran blood had mutated and changed as those from the home planet reached out to the stars, found rooting on distant worlds, developed from the use of alien soils and atmosphere changes which grew ever stronger, became a more permanent part of each generation under those foreign suns. Though I had never been off-world, I had seen enough of the many types (and those were only a very small number who ever made Voor a landful) at Portcity, visitors, members of the commissions come to investigate the doom, miners, starmen, to understand that we, who had common ancestors long ago, were now sometimes different species altogether. There were also those who had never been human by our small standards at all—the Zacathans, the Trystians—others.
So it was never wise to state absolutely that this or that talent could not exist. Even the settlers of Voor had come from several different worlds and so had bloodlines which might have branched untold planet years back, giving their descendants unusual attributes.
"Let me psyche—" She took the chain deftly out of my hold, did indeed cup it between her hands. Her eyes were closed, I could see her whole body tense in the act of complete concentration.
I had felt nothing save the smooth surface of the chain. Though the idea clung to my mind that the scrolling on that foreplate did have a definite and important meaning—almost as if it were an identity disc such as are worn by starmen in some services.
An identity disc? Not impossible. There could even have been a ship's crash—or the coming of a single LB, escaping from some catastrophe in space before Voor made this world his last official landful. That fitted plausibly. Only that would put back the age at least a century, perhaps more. No metal or alloy I know of could have existed uneroded—unless—
Forerunner!
We are late comers into space, even though we have been for centuries now star voyagers. Still there had been those who had sought the star lanes, mapped and held them, long before our first crude rocket had lifted from Terra and man had eyed the stars with a covetous desire. Galactic empires had risen and fallen and of them we knew so little.
The Zacathans had their records. In their long lives (so much longer than the years any of us might aspire to) they had made it their purpose to search out, to catalogue all of the alien remains which could be found. There had been many such finds—the Caves of Astra, the half-melted and blasted cities on Limbo—even greater discoveries. Machines so intricate and obtuse that our best trained techs could not begin to understand them. Some had kept on running, even on deserted worlds—for how long—a million years—a billion?
I remembered my father's other abiding interest, the gathering of such material on Forerunner finds as trickled through to the records of Portcity, his stories at our lonely campfires of what had been found—and how we had only barely touched the edge of that knowledge which the forerunners had lived with for eons. However, there were no known Forerunner ruins here—or at least none which had been discovered.
It was easy to build and speculate on such a hint. We had our First-In Scouts—perhaps the Forerunners had had such explorers also. One had landed on Voor—or whatever name he had given this world in his turn—come to trouble in some fashion and—
Illo's face broke the mask which fell on her when she withdrew into her healer's trance. It twisted as if she were in some actual pain and with a sudden movement she hurled the chain from her. I gave a cry of half protest and fell on my knees, scrabbling through the grass with my hands until my fingers found that smooth length.
The girl had not yet opened her eyes, but her tormented expression appeared to intensify. She shivered so violently that she near over-balanced and did waver from one side to the other, until, having reclaimed her find, I reached her side and threw my arm about her shoulders, drawing her close until I could steady her against my own body. I could feel still that shivering of—fear—revulsion—?
She raised her hands and covered her face. Now she was sobbing, harsh, hurting cries like those of an animal in pain. I heard an answering deep lowering from Witol, bellows from Bru and Wobru. The gars gathered beyond the slight rise on which we stood, their horned heads raised as they stared at us with their large eyes.
"Illo—what is it?" Perhaps some of the warmth of my body, the quiet soothing I strove very hard to put into my voice, reached her.
She lowered one hand, caught fiercely at my arm with a grip so hard that her nails bit through the leather of my sleeve so that I could actually feel pain in the flesh beneath. There were no tears on her cheek; though her breath came in those ragged, breast-tearing sobs, her eyes were now open—and dry. She stared straight before her and there was a look about her as if she were in truth being drawn away in some terrifying fashion, that though I held her and had not and would not let go, still she was leaving me.
Dropping the chain once more to the ground I seized her by both upper arms. I shook her with what was close to a brutal assault. Her head wobbled back and forth on her shoulders. She gasped, cried out. Only that sobbing dwindled, now she did not move to shake off my hold. Instead she took a stumbling step closer, her arms came up about my body and she held to me as tightly as if I were the only safeguard against being swept away by some peril I could neither see nor understand.
For a very long moment we stood thus. Her shivering lessened, her head had fallen forward against my shoulder, and I heard her ragged, forced breathing growing less urgent, more normal.
For the second time now I dared ask:
"What is it?"
For a second or two I was afraid that my question was going to arouse once more whatever inner storm had gripped her. She did shiver, and her hold on me tightened. Then she raised her head. Her mouth trembled but somehow she mastered whatever force had so rent her.
"I was—I was—" she shook her head in a small helpless movement as if she could summon no words to explain what had happened in that space of time which she had held the necklet and tried to understand any secret it might know.
"They—" she began again, "they did not think—think as we do. My head—it was as if someone ran through my head opening doors—letting out all kinds of things—things I could not understand—that I never knew that I could contain. It all came at once! Bart—whoever wore that—there was some terrible danger and he—she—it—" She shook her head from side to side. "I don't even know what it
was!" Her voice was near a wail. "But there was fear—terrible fear which ate—ate right into me. And—how one who was like us—even like—If I could only have understood, had time—it moved so fast—"
She loosed her hold on me with one hand and put it to her forehead. "So fast—and I could not follow its thoughts—they were like the flash of blaster flame—hurting—eating—in my head. But something happened here or near here—when that was dropped. And it was bad—worse than we, any of us being as we are, can understand."
Though she did not seem able to make better sense than that, the words she did find to attempt to explain steadied her. She loosed her hold on me utterly and I saw her self possession return as she spoke. She looked down to where the necklet lay.
"Bart—I dare not touch that again. But it has a message—we—someone with more training or talent than I—could understand—unravel. It is important, that much I know. Can you carry it?"
I stooped and picked it up for the second time. In my hands it was nothing but a loop of strange metal bearing, part way down its broken length, that curved bar. I felt nothing but the smooth surface. And I said so. Illo nodded.