“You have troubled the Place of Forgetting.” That was a forceful accusation. “Why?”
“Why do you seek to renew memories yourself, egg born?” countered the girl. “I was led here—” How true that might be she did not really want to know, but she suspected much. “To learn what pertains to me and mine. Now I lay upon you, Great Memory, by your own rules, tell me of this thing—or who flew it, and where, and when—and why.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then: “Since the pool has given it back to you, your power is attuned to it. Back—back too far, egg sister, rides that memory. Perhaps there was another like you who came hither in an earlier day—perhaps once this whole world was like the valley until death struck and struck.”
Simsa stiffened. A cold wind might have blown out of the cavern behind, lapped her around.
“What death?” she asked, and feared the answer. Had those who had nurtured her fought these? If so, how could there be any link between them except one of enmity?
“Out of the winds it came, and it shut away the eye of day. It slew all which lived upon the earth, save here where there were the ancient guards and they held, but it was many times the toll of egg years. Marsu was Great Memory and lived out ten egg turns thereafter, for there were none born after the death of the Eye and its closing for long and long who tested for memory. After her there was Kubat, but the memory was less and it was only because Marsu could not take the egg again that Kubat, the most promising, went to the first transferral—five egg times was she Great Memory. After her, there were many, many.” Tshalft clicked one set of foreclaws as she counted out those names that perhaps even memory could not string like beads in a line forever.
“And there was never any end to the curse of those from the sky—only here. Thus it was.”
“Those from the sky . . .” Simsa pushed herself to ask the question. “They were kin to me?”
“Not so.” She was so ready to hear otherwise that the girl gave a small gasp of relief. “For there were those like unto you who strove to aid when the Death came. And death claimed them also. One alone won to this place of strength and hiding and in the fullness of time, he fell into the great sleep, nor could he tell us how to rebuild his egg so he could come forth again. Then we took that”—she indicated the flyer with a claw—“to the Pool of Forgetting, which holds all that is not to be brought to memory again. It was a thing we had not learned to use and memories without use had best be forgotten.”
“And from where did he come, this one who could fly, and the others with him?”
The answer she expected came clearly: “From the sky also. But they wrought not in death. They treasured life whether it be in their form or another’s, which was not true of those who brought the death. Long ago that was a very small memory and one which fades even when the egg renews.”
“Of what manner of form were they—these dealers in death?”
The Great Memory swung a little about, her claw stabbing the air in the direction of Thorn, where he stood prisoner.
“I have searched the Great Memory and the lesser, the newer and the elder. And this one bears the look of those who brought the Death.”
“He may look like those,” Simsa countered, “but they vanished with all their kind over the years. This one comes from a new people, a people which are as nestlings late out of the sack. He is not your enemy.”
“There is a memory like unto him,” the other repeated stubbornly. Her thought sending was gathering strength and, with it, Simsa could sense an impeccable will which carried memories through years of hibernation and rebirth in the service of the rest.
“Memory is of two parts,” returned the girl slowly. “There is that which shows itself a picture, there is another of the inner part no one can see—save through experience. He may wear the guise of that ancient enemy—but he is not kin, nor blood, nor bone of theirs.”
It was difficult to judge what impression she was making when she could not read any facial expression. Now she added what she hoped would be further proof of Thorn’s innocence.
“This one found me egg-bound, as I might be said to be, on another world and helped to loose me. Would he have done so had he been as those who strove to destroy your world?”
There came no answer from the Great Memory for a long time, too long. As when they had stood in the valley before, she and that one who had controlled strange forces, there came the sound of a flitter faint in beat but not to be mistaken—seeking—from the northeast.
Thorn might have heard it first. His head was up so his eyes could search the haze.
“Again, they come in search.” It was one of the guards who broke mind silence first. She pointed with her mandible-set lower face toward the cliff. “He calls and they come!”
“You set up a direction call?” For the first time, Simsa spoke directly to Thorn. “One to lead them here?”
He shook his head. “There is one such on the flitter. It was triggered when we crashed. That will be their direction.”
She raised her hand and Zass, who had floated out of the haze to take position on her shoulder, now stepped onto her wrist. Simsa looked deeply into those feral eyes. “Watch—watch—unseen—” she beamed an order.
The zorsal flapped wings and cried out hoarsely, then sprang into the air, soaring deep into the protective curtain of the mist, beyond the power of Simsa’s eyes to follow her. Now the girl looked to the Great Memory.
“If it is the flitter which they seek, perhaps they will find it—but the rocks hold no track prints to bring them here.”
“They will not come.” There was something very final about the Great Memory’s reply. “If they seek, they may find.” She turned her head but a fraction, but Simsa knew as well as if it had been shouted aloud that these would make use of Thorn as a final answer to any such search—that a safely dead body could not betray them.
She moved swiftly, pushing past the Great Memory. The rod’s tip flicked from one to the other of those claws that held Thorn’s wrists and the creatures dropped their holds, their limbs falling as if stricken powerless against their furred bodies.
She need give him no orders. He was already alerted, leaping from between his late captors to Simsa’s side, his hands instinctively on his weapon.
“No!” she uttered aloud with force. “These have good reason to fear your kind. Prove yourself peaceful and you have a chance with them.”
Then her mind spoke to the Great Memory as one to bargain.
“I, too, have a quarrel with those you hear. But this one is not of their kind—”
“He came with them!” was the instant interruption.
“Yes, but in his way, he is also subject to them. Now he is free of them, he wants no more of their company.” She was improvising. She turned her head a fraction to speak directly to Thorn.
“They will destroy those whom they believe seek them out here. In the past, some humanoid race blasted their world into what you have seen. My people, they tell me who were here for another purpose were also brought down. You must be dead—if you want to live.” She smiled grimly.
He rubbed one wrist with the fingers of his other hand.
“If they do not find me . . .” he began slowly in trade lingo, and then continued, “Yes, it might be so. If they locate the flyer and I am not in it, they can believe that I was—” His mouth moved in a twist of disgust and she knew what he thought—of the tentacle things that had taken so eagerly what fortune had brought them. That they were killers and doubtless carnivorous she had no doubt.
“But . . .” He stared at her very directly. “If they believe me dead as Greeta, they will lift ship and—”
“You shall remain.” Simsa beat him to that protest. “How soon will they lift ship?”
He shrugged. “There will be nothing to make them linger here. They will believe you dead, also—once they have seen what preys out of that sand trap.”
She looked about her, needing no thought contact
with any of the valley dwellers to realize that these would do nothing, except perhaps, in a grudging way, provide some shelter. To spend a lifetime on this scraped rock world which had a single cup in which life could continue . . . Her own desires protested that. How much harder must it be for this space rover trapped now with her, whose whole life had been given to the stars?
“Perhaps . . .” She was forced into this. It was her fault that he was here and she no longer believed that he had any desire to wish her ill. “Perhaps you might be found—”
“Dead!” That word snapped into her mind and she knew that the Great Memory at least could dip into her thoughts and see what lay behind any speech her lips shaped.
“Not so!”
There were small sparks dancing at the tips of the rod horns. Fight—no. She had no wish, no will to blast any from her path except those mindless things that swelled and crawled from out the sand. The valley inhabitants had every right on their side.
“Not so,” she repeated firmly. “Cannot memory be altered, or is this not the skill of yours, Great One?”
There was a moment in which she could read startlement and near repugnance. To alter memory for this one would be breaking belief in all she had been taught to hold the most sacred.
“You do this?” There was vast distaste in the question she threw at Simsa.
“I can make one see what is not . . .” She held the rod between overlapping hands. “Look you!” she commanded, pointing to a rock, a battered crown showing between two tall growths. The girl concentrated, narrowing both vision and thought to a single thing. On the rock there sprawled one of the yellow horrors from the sand holes.
With a loud mewling sound, one of the guards launched herself at the apparition just as Simsa broke the picture. Claws scraped bare rock. There was nothing left of that obscene intruder.
“It is forbidden to play so,” the Great Memory flung at her.
“I do not play—I merely showed what can be. If people can be so deceived as to sight, they can also be deceived as to what they have seen.”
“Forbidden!”
“To you, not to me,” Simsa responded. “Let me take this spaceman to a place near his people. Then I shall set in his mind a crooked memory and this I can do.”
“But you shall have still the real memory and what if that is read?”
The Elder One drew up Simsa’s body proudly. “These are but children when it comes to forces of the mind—and memory—Great One. Do you believe that such as they stand any chance of winning of any thought I am not ready to supply fully?”
“And what do we know of you?” The Great Memory was far from being convinced.
“That I have helped. Ask your singer of storms what I did with her. Those who so labor cannot close evil thoughts and show only the good. So do I swear upon this—” She held the rod higher. Now from the tips of the horns there shot larger sparks of blue light which flew as might some insects into the air about them. “I swear that I mean you and your people all that is well—I swear that my memory shall be locked while I am with this one from the skies—and that when he is set among his people once again he shall forget all except what I shall allow him to recall. And—”
Once more the sound of flitter, this time nearer, beating steadily, not circling as the first one had done. Zass came out of the haze and sought a landing place on Simsa’s shoulder.
“Flying thing—bad sand—goes—” She lifted the words from the zorsal’s mind.
“They are centering in upon the place where the other flitter crashed,” she told the Great Memory. “We may have but little time. Shall I do this thing or will you tie here one so different that he will leave an ill memory behind him—of death when it should have been life?”
The Great Memory hunched herself together and the claws on her forelimbs clicked. She had closed the passage of communication between them and Simsa stood ready with the rod. That she must defend Thorn now was a duty she wished had not been laid upon her. Though she did believe that he had not been party to the exploitation that the others of his kind had wished for her.
“Your flitter,” she told him, “is centering in on where the other was sand-trapped. I trust that they are armed—”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“Return you to them,” she said promptly.
“And you?”
“That choice remains mine. I have not found such a welcome among your kind that I care to repeat a trip with them.”
“But you cannot stay here!” He looked around him. “There may not be another chance for you to go off planet.”
She glanced at the winged machine which had come to her call. There had been no escape for the one who had once used that to soar above the barren rocks of this trap. Yes, it was a trap, but it was a trap she could master after a fashion. The trap that was offered by his kind she doubly feared.
“You know nothing of this world,” she evaded him. “What have you seen of it? A small portion only.” She held the rod between them; those awakened tips sent their spill of sparks in his direction, forming a wheel about his head, spinning faster and faster until they made a ring of fire. She felt his instant response of fear, of danger signaling his body into action. But he only had time to jerk his head a little.
Then, he stood statue still and Simsa began her task. There was again the flitter sliding into the morass of the bubbling sand. This time, no compulsion of hers brought him out of the wrecked ship; rather, it was his own effort that led him to leap to the ground from that unsteady and perilous perch.
He wandered, he fought the blobs, but Simsa was not a part of the action which was all his. He had that implanted with a skill that haste did not destroy. He did not come into the valley—he had seen nothing of those who dwelt there. Instead, he had sheltered on that rock perch reaching out from the ramparts of the cliffs and there he had been successful in fighting off two attacks of the sand creatures.
Skillfully, the Elder One wrought and Simsa herself knew a chill of fear at that skillful weaving. She was sure that this was not the first time the other in her body had worked such a transformation of what had been into what she wanted it to be. Would she someday turn on Simsa and blot out all memory of the Burrows—of the real girl she had been? That was what she had feared from the first, after her exultation at finding the Elder One. She might resemble that other to the last fine silver hair springing from her black scalp, but she was not the Elder One—not yet.
Thorn stood quietly, staring straight before him. What he was seeing, she knew, was not the valley but that plateau of rock, and he would keep that in mind only until they were back at that point.
“You have changed his memory.” The Great Memory drew farther away from her.
“I have saved his life,” the girl answered. “But there is one thing more.”
She brought to mind another vivid picture—across the barren rock just below the height on which he perched was a broken body and though he tried fiercely to reach it, to beat off the two creatures who dragged it away under the sand, it was gone, all that black skin and silver hair swallowed up forever. To satisfy the valley dwellers, to end any more questing, Simsa gave him her death.
13
While Thorn was still bemusedly reliving the false memory, Simsa and two of the guards took him back up the valley stairs, sent him down cliff and across the rude dam of the fallen rocks by the uniting of their will. Simsa watched him stagger up and out upon the tongue of rock. Between him and her, now there swirled a thickening tongue of the haze. Those who found him would not seek farther, not after he had told his story. He was only a darker shadow in the haze this far away and yet she stood watching him.
By the beliefs of the valley folk she had done wrong. She refused to let herself think ahead to what the future might hold for her, another exile on the seared world as had been the one who had soared and flown in earlier, brighter days. Could those wings still bear one aloft—and, if they could, would she attem
pt such a flight once the skies were free of the flitter whose beat overhead sounded louder and louder? Zass descended to settle on the girl’s shoulder, but she did not need any message from the zorsal to realize that off-world aid was at hand for Thorn.
The mist distorted but it could not entirely hide the figure of the man on that rocky rise beyond the cliffs. Out of the haze, a flitter settled in a straight line from the sky. There was another aboard who swiftly lifted the overhead cabin cover and leapt from the machine to front the waiting spaceman. They were too far away for voices to carry, to know what Thorn reported. Would her conditioning hold the false memory? Simsa’s body was tense as she waited, half-expecting them to turn in her direction. But they did not. A moment or two later, Thorn, the pilot’s hand on his arm to guide him, returned to the flitter. With a rumble it rose from the rock.
As it was swallowed up by the haze, still Simsa waited, listening, telling herself that what she had done was the best for all concerned. Whether she had lost the favor of the valley ones or not did not matter. They had shown no desire yet to exile her from their refuge and thus she still had access to life-sustaining supplies.
She stroked Zass, taking comfort in the rubbing of the soft antennae-crowned head against her cheek. In so much she had this one to cling to. And—for a moment she hesitated, wondering if such a thing could be so, could she also by will alter her own memories—wipe from the past all that would make her restless and discontented with this cup in which she might well spend the rest of her life?
There was something within her—and it was not the Elder One—that suggested she had chosen wrongly, that her place was out there, no matter how suspicious she was of the motives of Thorn’s people, seeking new things ever. The Elder One? No, she could not now contact that one. Her fear of being bound in this prison was that of the real Simsa—and to it she could not yield.
Once more in the valley, she sought out that cave in which Thorn had been sheltered for a space. She curled on the mat bed place where he had rested, willing sleep. It came. The last thing of which she was truly aware was the nestling of Zass beside her, the small warm body against her own breast and the low, contented crooning of the zorsal lulling . . .