The Game of Stars and Comets
"Put it away—safely. When—if—we get back to Portcity that must be sent off-world—to one of the League centers for sensitive learning where they have the trained handlers who deal with Forerunner things. It may be one of the keys such as men have always longed to find—if it is given to the right person who has a mind trained and safeguarded well enough to be able to put it to use."
I coiled the chain into a small ball and stowed it in my belt pouch. She watched me fasten the loop of that closely as if wishing to make very sure that her discovery would be safe. How much of what she believed was the truth I could not tell. But that she thought it was correct I had no doubts at all.
We left that ridge and tramped on, the gars scattered back into their usual line of march, no longer watching us as intently as they had when Illo had tried to learn the secret of the thing. Neither of us spoke of it, yet I was oddly aware with every stride I took of the rub of the purse back and forth against my thigh, and of what lay within it.
I had to keep a tight curb upon my tongue for I wanted very much to question her. Perhaps, I told myself, such questions might even be good, helping her to sort out whatever stream of wild impressions had overcome her. Yet it was not right, I thought, to put her to such a task now—not unless she opened the subject. Which she did not do.
Once more we camped on the plains. This time with no fire, since we were out of the range of the ruins which had a certain "safe" area about them—no animals venturing any nearer than our gars would go. It was the gars who again played sentry for us. Illo was not silent this night. Instead she talked almost feverishly, as if she must hear the sound of voices—using that sound as a barrier against something else.
She spoke of her wanderings as a healer—she seemed to have ranged distances by choice rather than settled long at any hold or settlement—going up along the coast, striking inland—visiting Portcity to renew certain supplies and talk with ships' medics. For off-worlders though those were, they were more keenly interested in any planet form of medicine and healing than the mine medics. She said that many of them compiled records of unusual healing processes from world to world—and she had found them most willing to tell her what they could of worlds where there were also healers not unlike herself in training—people who could diagnose illness often by touch alone and subdue pain and conquer disease by drawing it out of the body by their wills.
That she had an inquiring mind I already knew, but now I saw that she had a deep thirst for knowledge, save that as all healers it was not a knowledge which depended upon machines and technology, but rather upon what lay within a man or woman—dormant sometimes—to be tapped by those lucky or learned enough to be able to open the right door.
The right door—what she had said about that feeling in her brain when she had tried to psyche the chain returned to me. Opened doors with that behind them spilling out in no pattern which she could understand. Such a thing—it could lead to madness. I resolved in that moment that if it were possible I would never let her touch the chain again. She had been strong enough this time to throw it from her before the chaos it bred in her mind had conquered. There might come another time when her thirst for the unknown would lead her to a second try and she could not again be as strong-willed or fortunate.
Chapter 8
Voor's Grove indeed lay in the shadow of the Tangle. It surprised me that knowing, as they must have done, the sinister qualities of that menacing wilderness, the settlers here had drawn so close to such impenetrable mystery. Or perhaps in the days when the settlement had been first decided upon the Tangle was not considered such a menace, that men believed they might fire or dig it out of their way, altering the land as they had done successfully on other worlds.
Also, since the abandonment of the settlement, the Tangle may have grown unchecked, but then that result would differ from what had happened elsewhere. For in past years a careful check upon it had shown the growth to be static, that it neither expanded in summer seasons or retracted when the plains droughts and frosts hit hard, as they did in a regular cycle of planet weather.
Plainly Voor's Grove had been well situated as far as its founders, unaware of the Shadow doom, had decided. It lay at the uniting of two rivers—those which came together to form the greater flood of the Halb as it flowed east and south. One of these streams reached westward and north—the other came directly from the northern mounts, breaking from under the curtain of the Tangle as no other that I knew of did.
River trade in the plains lands might have built up well—had the dream of settlements here not been broken. Unfailing water in the dry years was a thing to be prized. The settlement had been placed on the vee of land where the two rivers boiled on to their uniting.
That water which flowed from the west came with a swifter current and was fairly clear. But that of the second stream moved far more slowly and was turgid, brownish and opaque. I remembered the armored thing which had been storm washed to the wagon and I would not have ventured to ford that stream no matter how shallow it measured.
Luckily there was no need to venture into what might be a water trap. There had been a bridge once, built of the same stone, brought in from the mountain quarries to the west, which formed the walls of the ruins. Enough of that span remained to give us footing.
Voor's Grove itself, even though thickly cloaked by the same poisonous-appearing vegetation as Mungo's had been, was, I could see, much the larger settlement. It was older, too, by about ten years, and had been meant by its ambitious founders to be the capital of the plains lands—hence its name.
Once more the gars would not come near, halting well away as Illo and I approached the tumbled, water-washed stones of what had once been the bridge. For all its greater size it presented the same picture of ruins and growth gone wild as had the settlement in which I had been born. I studied my companion carefully as she surveyed what we could see.
"No memories?" I could not help asking, for she was frowning as one might who was attempting to recall something which remained as only a trace at the very edge which thought could reach.
She shook her head instead of answering me, but now she moved with some purpose. Shucking her back pack she opened it and searched among the contents to bring out a skin bag which I had already seen—from which she had taken the salve which had brought me relief from the poisonous sap. She opened that and, dipping in two finger tips, brought out a gob which she proceeded to rub over her face and then both of her hands. When she had done she looked at me.
"This will save us from another accident such as you faced in Mungo's Town—"
Save—us? Then she expected me to accompany her into Voor's Grove. Perhaps for a second or two I thought of refusing, but I could not. My curiosity was far too aroused. Would we find the same signs of a massacre here?
I rubbed away until those portions of my skin which would be exposed were well covered with a film of grease carrying an odd but not unpleasant scent. It had drawn the pain from my blisters which were fast healing so they showed now only as reddish marks.
I dropped my pack beside hers and checked my belt equipment. There were tangler and stunner, both of which were fresh charged, my long knife, the pouch in which rode that enigma we had discovered in the grass, my torch—though it was still early afternoon and we should not be so long in there that I would use that. Yes, all the defenses any loper could carry were close to my hand.
Relieving the gars of their burdens, we stacked that packed gear at a point directly opposite the remains of the bridge and then set out to see what might lie within Voor's. Illo took the lead, moving out while I steadied the water carriers against the other gear, before I could call to her to wait.
She balanced lightly and skillfully from one stone to the next, twice having to jump to cross gaps in the masonry. The brown water swirling below had an oily look to it, as if it were not really water but the exudation of some unpleasant growth. I watched it carefully before I began the crossing. There was no movement t
o be sighted on the surface or under it. However the tumble of stones could well give good footing to any such monster as we had seen pull itself up on the wagon. So I stood there on sentry duty, my hand on the butt of my stunner, alert to any movement, until Illo was across. As a healer she wore no weapons—had refused the other stunner, and had only the long-bladed belt knife which was a working tool for any traveler. That would be useless against the scaled and armored thing.
Once she was across she turned a little and I was quick not to let her believe that I held back where she had led, setting foot on the first pile of stone to follow. Some of those stones, as I made the same jumps over the gaps, appeared unsteady and I wished I had had the foresight to bring with me the rope which had lashed the burdens on the gars. Linked so together, if one of us tumbled into the noisome appearing water the other could lend a hand.
As is mainly true when one fills the immediate future with imagined forebodings, we had no difficulty after all in winning into Voor's Grove. Directly ahead of where the bridge had once given access to what must have been the main street of the town that spotted unwholesome vegetation was thin. We slashed a path with our knives, to find that it had formed only a slight wall and we were now without a barrier.
"The flowers—!" I pointed to where those did indeed stand in place of the once familiar gardens which must have divided dwelling from dwelling.
As in Mungo's the brilliant blooms had looked almost like flames shooting from eternal but hidden fires. But—They were quiet. Quiet until we moved forward. I caught Illo's arm, held her so for an instant.
"Watch them!" I ordered.
They were still no longer. Instead they swayed, dipped, turned their wide expanse of gaudy petals this way and that. I had an unpleasant thought that somehow they were alive with a life we did not understand, and that their present movements were struggles to loosen the earth's grip upon their roots so that they could advance upon us.
"They sense us—" her voice was quiet, she did not attempt to move out of my hold. "That must be the truth—that they sense our presence."
At least none of them grew near the open passage which was the main road of the settlement. My thought that they could in any way move to attack us was childish folly. One cannot reasonably give such motive and desires to a plant—or at least I could not.
"What are they?" the girl was continuing. "Sentries—guards—?"
She made as if to move from the middle of the road, closer to the nearest bed of those bowing, straining splotches of color. I held her back.
"I do not know what they are—but I feel we are better to remain at a distance."
"Perhaps you are right," she conceded.
Once again, as we approached the heart of the town, we could see that the ruin was not complete here. Houses stood sturdy enough though their once grey-white walls were stained green in places as if some mould or algae of sorts sought to defile them. For this vegetation was evil. I was as sure of that as I was of my own person. It was rotten, though that rot was not visible to the eye—it was the flowering of foul decay.
Suddenly Illo stopped short, her head swung about and she looked to a house on her right. It was no different from any of the rest we had passed—the same stained walls, the same mass of nodding, weaving flowers.
"What is it?"
"That—no—" she put her hand to her forehead. "For a moment, just a moment, I thought—Only I could not hold that thought. No, I can't remember!" Her voice arose a note or two, was a little desperate.
I suppose I should have suggested that we enter that dwelling, explore it. Perhaps it had been her home—But I could not possibly have forced myself, or allowed her, to cross into the territory of the flowers in order to reach the gap of the door.
We went on. Our pace was slow and I was sure that, even as I, she was listening, trying to make herself receptive to sound, sight, feeling—
The road brought us out, as in Mungo's Town, in the heart where stood the meeting hall. This one was different from that of the smaller town, for it had a series of booths erected to one side. I saw there piles of pottery, rotted streamers of cloth, the wares of merchants, now far gone in disintegration but making it clear that when the doom had come it had fallen on a market day, or perhaps a fair when traders from down river had gathered here to bargain.
That expanse of gravel about the hall was empty—there was no line of skeletons. I drew a breath of relief. Perhaps, judging by the fact that my father had never reported such a find in his explorations and since the signs of certain death were missing here, Mungo's had been an exception to the general state of the deserted villages.
Illo left my side, walked purposefully toward the hall. "The place of records," she said as I hurried to join her.
For the first time I realized the important omission of my exploration of Mungo's. Of course—there was a small record room in each hall! Why had I not remembered that? I might only plead that the sight of the dead had driven it out of my mind. Also that I had been absorbed in the task which had sent me into the doomed village, the answer to the promise I had made. To leave my father's body with the other dead—that of his friends, his family—had been the purpose which had obsessed me.
The hall was the same as that I had seen, there was more ornamentation here as became the meeting place of a village which aspired to become a city. I saw painted on the walls the star symbols of four planets—those from which Grove people must have originally come. There was also a plaque which caught the eye because it was stark black and on it inserted in a glowing silver color, untarnished, was an inscription.
"To the memory of Horris Voor, opener of worlds, all honor.
May this, the last of his discoveries, prove his quiet resting place.
Earthed the rover, furled the star wings—
Peace comes at the end."
"Peace comes at the end," I repeated and a sound, which was not laughter but a cry to challenge all which must have happened here, followed my words.
Illo had gone to stand closer to the plaque, now she put a finger to trace some of those shining letters.
"He wanted life for his people; what did they gain here?" She shivered.
"Death," I concluded for her sourly. "He must have died before the doom came."
"I hope that he did," she returned. "I hope he died still believing that he had given a gift to the homeless. See those symbols," she gestured towards the inlays about the edge of the plaque. "You know those worlds, you must have heard of them. Would you care to live on any one of them?"
"No!" I did not know them of my own knowledge, I had never been crowded, imprisoned, hopeless, on a world where breeding had gone unchecked, or one which lived under iron dictatorship, or one where the need for the very bare necessities of life was so great that each day was a slavery of unending toil. Yes, the people from those worlds must have looked upon Voor as a kind of paradise. What kind of a hell had it really proved then to be?
"I wish—" she said very softly and I believed I knew her wish though she did not speak it aloud. From which of those worlds had her own kin come? Had she had a family—how big—brothers, sisters—?
At least they had known who I was when I had been found; I had had my father. But Illo had no one, and by her own account she had been at the mercy of those who had tried to stimulate her child's mind, to perhaps even shock her in order to answer questions. That she had survived and become the person she was, was perhaps as great an achievement as any of Horris Voor's when he had discovered a new world to open to the homeless, the restless, the oppressed.
"The records," her tone was decisive now as she turned her back firmly upon the wall.
As was true of every building I had seen from the outside, even the record room here had no door. I looked carefully at the wall. There was a series of small holes which had perhaps once held hinges. Doors and windows, gone—though the rest of the building or buildings about were intact, seemingly in good order. There were even those remna
nts of trade goods in the booths. Why—doors and windows?
Illo stood in the middle of the small side chamber. The walls held the racks for tapes, a number of them. Not only the records of the village would be here, but information tapes for learning. Or such should have been there. But every rack was empty. The reason occurred easily enough.
"Whoever came here, found you and the rest—they must have taken the tapes—"
"But then they would have been kept at Portcity. And those other doomed villages and holdings—there were no tapes from them on file either."
She had a point. If such tapes existed my father would certainly have used them. He had made his own records of the places he explored. However, though he went every time we visited Portcity to the record office, now I never remembered his asking for anything to do with the other sites prior to their abandonment. Missing tapes—who would want them and why?
In Mungo's the villagers had died. Had it been different in other places? That woman who had been found here in Voor with a broken mind—the one they had traced after her escape to the Tangle. Had she known something after all, something which the experts had not been able to get out of her with their probing in the short time before she had managed her flight?