ORDEAL IN OTHERWHERE

  “So you can dream to a purpose after all.” No amazement, only recognition as a greeting.

  The room was dusky. Although two lamps stood on either side of a table, their radiance made only a small pool, and Charis sensed larger space stretching far beyond where she stood. That other—the Wyvern—sat in a chair with a high back, its white substance glowing with runnels of color, which in themselves appeared to crawl with life.

  She leaned back at her ease, the alien witch, her hands resting on the arms of her chair as she surveyed Charis appraisingly. Now the off-worlder found words to answer.

  “I had dreamed to this much purpose, Wise One, that I stand here now.”

  “Agreed. And to what future purpose do you stand here, Dreamer?”

  “That a warning may be delivered.”

  The vertical pupils in those large yellow eyes narrowed, the snouted head raised a fraction of an inch, and the sense of affront reached Charis clearly.

  “You have that which will arm you against us, Dreamer? Then you have made a gain since last we were thus, face to face. What great new power have you discovered to be able to say ‘I warn you’ to us?”

  “You mistake my words, Wise One. I do not warn you against myself, but against others.”

  “And again you take upon yourself more than you have the right to do, Dreamer. Have you then read your answer from Those Gone Before?”

  Charis shook her head. “Not so. But still you mistake me, Reader of Patterns. In what is to come, we dream one dream, not dream against dream.”

  Those eyes searched into her, seemed to pick at her mind.

  “It is true that you have done more than we believed you could, Dreamer. Yet you are not one with us in any power save that which we have granted you. Why do you presume to say that we are now to dream the same dream?”

  “Because if we do not, then may all dreams be broken.”

  “And that you truly believe.” Not a question but a statement. However, Charis made a quick answer.

  “That I truly believe.”

  “Then you have learned more than how to break a restraint dream since last we have stood together. What have you learned?”

  “That those from off-world are more powerful than we thought, that they have with them that which renders all dreams as nothing and protects them, that their desire here may be to gather to them the Power that they may use it for their own purposes in other places.”

  Again that faint pick, pick to uncover the truth behind her words. Then, “But of these facts you are not wholly sure.”

  “Not wholly,” Charis agreed. “Every pattern is made of lines. So, when you have long known a design and see only a portion of it, you can still envision the whole.”

  “And this is a pattern you have known before?”

  “It is one I have heard of, one Lantee has heard of.”

  Had she made a mistake in mentioning the Survey man’s name? That chill which reached from mind to mind suggested that she had.

  “What has any man-thing to do with this?” A hissing question hot with rising ire.

  Charis’s anger woke in turn. “This much, Wise One. He may be dead now, striving to carry war to the enemy—your enemy!”

  “How can that be when he is—“ The thought chain between them broke in mid-sentence. Lids dropped above the yellow eyes. The feeling of withdrawal was so sharp that Charis almost expected the Wyvern to vanish from her chair. Yet her body was still there although her mind was elsewhere.

  The minutes were endless, then Charis knew the Wyvern had returned. Fingers had clenched about the chair arms, the yellow eyes were open, fixed upon the girl, though there was no touch of mind.

  Charis took a chance. “You did not find him, Wise One, where you had sent him?”

  No answer, but Charis was sure the Wyvern understood.

  “He is not there,” the girl continued, “nor has he been for some time. As I told you in truth, he has been about your business elsewhere. And perhaps to his hurt.”

  “He did not free himself.” The frantic grip of the Wyvern’s hands relaxed. Charis thought that the witch was annoyed because she had betrayed her agitation so much. “He could not. He is a man-thing—“

  “But also a dreamer after his own fashion,” Charis struck in. “And though you strove to remove him from this struggle, yet he returned—not to war against you but against those who threaten all dreaming.”

  “What dream have you that you can do this thing?”

  “Not my dream alone,” Charis retorted. “But his dream also, and other dreams together, as a key to unlock this prison.”

  “I must believe that this is so. Yet such an act is beyond all reason.”

  “All reason known to you and your sharers of dreams. Look, you.” Charis moved to the table, stretched out hand and arm into the full path of the light. “Am I like unto you in the sight of all? Do I wear any dream patterns set upon my skin? Yet I dream. However, need my dreams be any more like unto yours than my body covering resembles that you wear? Perhaps even the Power when I bend it to my will is not the same.”

  “Words—“

  “Words with proving action behind them. You sent me hence and bade me dream myself out of your net if I could, and so I did. Then with Shann Lantee I dreamed a way free from a deeper prison. Did you believe I could do these things?”

  “Believe? No,” the Wyvern replied. “But there is always a chance of difference, a variable within the Power. And the Talking Rods had an answer for you when we called upon Those Who Once Were. Very well, these are truths accepted. Now say again what you believe to be a truth that had no full proving.”

  Charis retold her discoveries at the base, Lantee’s deductions.

  “A machine which nullifies the Power.” The Wyvern led her back to that. “Such you believe can exist?”

  “Yes. Also—what if such a thing be brought to use against you even in this very stronghold? With your dreams broken, how may you fight against slaying weapons in the hands of those who come?”

  “We knew—“ the Wyvern was musing “—that we could not send dreams to trouble these strangers. Or bring back—“ she spoke in anger “—to their proper places those who have broken the law. But that all this is being done so that they may take the Power from us—that we had not thought upon.”

  Charis knew a small spark of relief. That last admission had changed her own status. It was as if she were now admitted in a small way into the Wyvern ranks.

  “However, they must be ignorant to believe that man-things can use the Power.”

  “Lantee does,” Charis reminded her. “And what of the other you have known as a friend here—Thorvald?”

  Hesitation, then an unwilling answer. “He, too, in a small way. An ability, you believe, that these others may share because they are not blood, bone, and skin with us?”

  “Is that so hard to understand?”

  “And what have you to suggest, Dreamer? You speak of battles and warfare. Our only weapons have been our dreams, and now you say they will avail nothing. So—what is your answer?” Hostility again.

  And Charis had little with which to meet that. “What these invaders do here is against the law of our kind as much as it is a threat against your people. There are those who will speedily come to our aid.”

  “From where? Winging down from other stars? And how will you call them? How long will it take them to arrive?”

  “I do not know. But you have the man Thorvald, and he would have answers to these questions.”

  “It would seem, Dreamer, that you believe I, Gidaya, can give all orders here, do as I wish. But that is not so. We sit in council. And there are those among us who would not listen to any truth if you spoke it. We have been divided upon this matter from the first, and to talk against attacking now will require much persuasion. Should you stand openly with me, that persuasion would fail.”

  “I understand. But also, as you have said to me, Wise One, there is such a thing as a threat
by time. Let me speak to Thorvald if you have him here, and learn from him what may be done to gain help from off-world.” Had she gone too far with that plea?

  Gidaya did not answer at once. “Thorvald is in safe keeping—“ she paused and then added “—though I wonder now about the safety of any keeping. Very well, you may go to him. It may be that I shall say to those who will object that you are joining him in custody.”

  “If you wish.” Charis suspected that Gidaya would offer that as a sop to the anti-off-world party. But she greatly doubted that the Wyvern believed any longer Charis herself could be controlled by the Power.

  “Go!”

  At least Thorvald had not been consigned to that place of nothingness which had been Lantee’s prison. Charis stood in a very ordinary sleeping room of the Citadel, its only difference from the one she had called her own being that it had no window. On the pile of sleep-mats lay a man, breathing heavily. His head turned and he muttered, but she could not make out his words.

  “Thorvald! Ragnar Thorvald!”

  The bronze-yellow head did not lift from the mats nor his eyes open. Charis crossed to kneel beside him.

  “Thorvald!”

  He was muttering again. And his hand balled into a fist and shot out to thud home painfully on her forearm. Dreaming! Naturally? Or in some fantasy induced by the Wyverns? But she must wake him now.

  “Thorvald!” Charis called louder and took hold of his shoulder, shaking him vigorously.

  He struck out again, sending her rolling back against the wall, then sat up, his eyes open at last, looking about wildly. But as he sighted her he tensed.

  “You’re real—I think!” His emphatic assertion slid into a less confident conclusion.

  “I’m Charis Nordholm.” She crouched against the wall, rubbing her arm. “And I’m real all right. This is no dream.”

  No, no dream but the worst of trouble. And did Thorvald have any of the answers after all? She only hoped that he did.

  XV

  He was very tall, this officer of Survey, towering over Charis where she sat cross-legged on his mat bed as he strode impatiently back and forth across the chamber, now and then shooting a question at her or making her retell some part of the story again.

  “It does look very much like a Company grab.” He gave judgment at last. “Which means they must be very sure of themselves, that they think they have all angles covered.” Now he might be talking to himself rather than to her. “A deal—somehow they’ve made a deal!”

  Charis guessed at the meaning of that. “You think they’ve arranged for closed eyes somewhere?”

  Thorvald glanced at her sharply, almost in dislike, Charis decided. But he nodded curtly. “Not in our service!” he rapped out.

  “But they wouldn’t be able to square the Patrol, would they? Not if you were able to get a message through.”

  He smiled grimly. “Hardly. But the only off-world com is at the base, and from your account they hold that now.”

  “There’s the Patrol ship down on the field. That should have its own com,” she pointed out.

  Thorvald rubbed one hand along the angle of his jaw, his eyes now fixed unseeingly on the blank wall of the chamber.

  “Yes, that Patrol ship—“

  “They didn’t have any guard on the copter.”

  “They weren’t expecting trouble then. They probably thought they had all the base staff accounted for. That wouldn’t be true now.”

  She could see the reason in that argument. Yes, when they had taken Lantee, as she was now sure they had, and she had flown the copter out, they had been put on the alert. If the Patrol ship had not been guarded before, Charis did not doubt now that it was under strict surveillance.

  “What can we do?”

  “We’ll have to count on it that they do have Lantee.”

  Or, Charis made herself add silently to Thorvald’s statement, he is dead.

  “And they know that he had at least one other with him, since the copter was taken. They may scan him, and he’s not been brain-locked.”

  Charis found her hands shaking. There was a cold sickness in her middle, seeping into the rest of her body. Thorvald was only being objective, but she found she could not be the same on this point, not when the man he was discussing was more than a name—a living person who, in a way Charis could hardly describe, had been closer to her than any other being she had known. She was unaware that the Survey officer had paused until he dropped down beside her, his hands covering both of hers.

  “We must face the truth,” he said quietly.

  Charis nodded, her spine stiffened, and her head came up. “I know. But I went off—off and left him—“

  “Which was the only thing you could have done. He knew that. Also, there is this. Those male Wyverns—they were attacked by something in the bush—you think it was Togi?”

  “I smelled wolverine just before. And one of the Wyverns was killed, or badly injured.”

  “Which may lead them to believe that there were more than two of you out there. And that could force caution on them. The animals work with trainers—that is universally known. And it’s also general knowledge that they are fanatically loyal to their trainers. Lantee has been in charge of the wolverines for two planet years. Those at the base may keep him on ice in order to have control over the animals.”

  Did he really believe that? Charis wondered. Or was it a very thin attempt to placate her feelings of guilt?

  “This nullifier,” Thorvald was on his feet again, back to that restless pacing. “As long as they have that they might as well be in a land fortress! And how long will they wait before moving out with it? If they had a trace-beam on that copter, they know—“

  “Just where to attack!” Charis finished for him, realizing for the first time what might be the folly of her own move.

  “You had no choice.” Thorvald caught her up on that quickly. “A warning was important. And with the Wyvern barrier up you had no other way of reaching them.”

  “No, but I have a way of getting back there.” Charis had been thinking. It was a crazy, wild plan, but it might work. She had his full attention.

  Sheeha! Charis had gone back to her first night on Warlock, to the trader woman who had been shocked into mental unbalance by contact with the witches.

  “These invaders know that Jagan brought me here,” Charis began. “Also that I wandered out of the post while under Wyvern control; they can check all that. They might even have the tape recording I made to your base when I appealed for help. But it may be that they do not know that I took the copter. Or, if they do—well, how much do they know of the Power? They know the Wyverns used it to dominate and control their males. So, perhaps they will think I was under Wyvern control while taking the copter.

  “Now, suppose I let them think I have escaped and that I have headed back to the base because I think there is safety there. I can act as Sheeha did.”

  “And if they put you under a scanner?” Thorvald demanded harshly, “or if they have already learned from Lantee what you can do with the Power?”

  “If they have, they won’t want me under a scanner, not right away. They’ll want demonstrations,” Charis countered. “They can’t know too much about it, can they? What have you reported? Those reports must have brought them here.”

  “Reports? What have we had to say in those except generalities? We had our instructions to go slow with the witches. After they helped us wipe out a Throg base here—it was entirely their efforts that broke that—they were in no hurry to fraternize. The willingness to communicate had to come from their side, contact was on a delicate basis. I don’t understand about this nullifier. No off-world Company could have learned enough from our reports to build it because we didn’t know enough ourselves. Unless this machine is a modification of something they already had and they brought it with them, simply as an experiment which did pay off—too well!”

  “Then,” said Charis, bringing him back to her own suggestio
n, “they could not know about the Power and how it works?”

  “I don’t see how they could. They may have subverted some of the male Wyverns. But those have never been able to dream or use the Power. Company scouts could have some idea of what it does, but they’d only be guessing at how it works.”

  “So as an off-worlder who has had some experience with it, I could make statements they would have no way of testing?”

  “Unless they use a scanner,” he reminded her.

  “But when you’re dealing with a mental problem, you don’t destroy its roots,” Charis countered. “I tell you, if I went to them as a fugitive who had escaped the Wyverns and was willing to cooperate, anyone with any intelligence would not put me under force. He would want me to give freely.”

  Thorvald studied her. “There’s more than one kind of force,” he said slowly. “And if they suspected that you were playing a double game, they wouldn’t hesitate to use all and every means to crack you for what they wanted. A Company on a grab is moving against time, and their agents here would be ruthless.”

  “All right. Then what’s your answer? It seems that I have the best chance of getting into the base on my own terms. Do you or the witches have any at all? If you’re taken trying to get in—the way Shann was—then you’re expendable too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I represent something they want—an off-worlder who has had experience with the use of the Power. There is a good chance to get close to the nullifier under those circumstances. And if I could put that out of action, then the witches could do the rest. As it is now, the Wyverns suspect us too, just because we are off-worlders.”

  “And how can you convince the Wyverns that you will work against our own species?”

  “They read my mind under the Power. There’s no hiding the truth from them. Short of leading in an armed force, which we don’t have, you aren’t going to take back your base. And someone has to make a move before the invaders do.”