Android at Arms

  There had been wars in plenty on Inyanga—he could not deny that—though for the most part those had occupied only the claimants to the throne and their liegemen and had very seldom spread to the country at large. In fact, one of the pacts made by Akmedu had been that when disputes were to be settled in blood, the fighters must withdraw to the Red Waste. It had worked out very well. But the last “war” to be fought there in any force was now generations back. He himself had gone into the Red Waste from Pav—there had been nothing there like the scene he had witnessed.

  “Prince!”

  Roused out of his thoughts, Andas got up. He was stiff from the hardness of his bed and gave a little catch of breath at the complaint of a leg muscle.

  “Yes—?” he did not need to ask who came. There was so strong an odor of loquat blossom accompanying the new arrival that the Salariki must have been rolling in a blanket of the moon-white flowers.

  11

  “There are doom dealings here!”

  To Andas the words made no sense, but he could read the emotion in the other’s voice, that growl he had come to identify with anger as far as the Salariki was concerned.

  In spite of the shutters they had forced into place across the windows, Andas could see the dark form, and he turned on the torch to catch the other in its rays. Yolyos had his back turned. He was facing the one window that overlooked the fatal Place of No Return.

  As the light centered on the alien, the prince could see the fur ridge along the other’s upper arms and backbone. The hair did not lie sleek and smooth but was erect, while Yolyos’s ears appeared flattened, folded in against his skull. Now the Salariki turned his head and looked at Andas over his hunched shoulder.

  “It stinks of the doom here!” he growled again.

  “Doom?”

  “Doom—that which those who dabble in drum talk and fang work bring upon them in the Hidden Moon time.” He still made no sense. “Give it what name you will then—but this is what the Death Drummer raises-death from no weapon but by stealing men’s lives, sucking their breath unseen.” Now he swung around to face Andas squarely, his lips flat, drawn back from his fangs, his eyes glowing as no human eyes could. “What do you here, Prince?”

  In spite of himself, as if the very force of the other’s suspicion drew it from him, Andas answered with the truth.

  “Nothing but dream.”

  “Dream? But do not say that is nothing! There are true dreams and false ones. Some are sent as warnings or enticements. You have said this is a place of ill omen avoided by your kind. Now you dream. And this room has the stink of doom dealings—and you call it nothing!”

  The longer the Salariki spoke, the more Andas realized that the alien was genuinely aroused, that the easy relationship between them was threatened. In turn, his own unease grew. He had not chosen Yolyos as a comrade in this wild venture. That had been thrust upon him by chance. Yet now he discovered he did not want to lose what he had in common with this warrior of another species and world.

  “None of my doing,” he said with, he hoped, enough force to impress. “I went to sleep and I dreamed—”

  “And what manner of dream?” Yolyos relaxed none of his defensive stance. It was plain Andas had to prove himself.

  Andas told him, though whether he made clear to the other what had happened, he did not know. He waited for a long moment until the Salariki spoke.

  “This man wore your face?”

  “With the addition of a scar,” Andas amended.

  “And the place, that you did not know?”

  “It was too dark to see much, but I am certain I never saw it before.”

  “And the woman?”

  “I swear to my knowledge I have never seen her, though she was of my race—a desert nomad perhaps.”

  There was a subtle change in Yolyos, and inwardly Andas relaxed, sure he was no longer a figure of suspicion. Now he ventured to ask a question in return.

  “What is this doom of which you spoke?”

  “Each race or species has its own beliefs in intangible powers—in ‘magic.’ We have our adepts, too. I have seen a Death Drummer—” Yolyos broke off as if that touched upon some memory he would not resummon. “As do all emotions, this dealing has a smell. My people scent things others feel. And this is a foul smell. When I came in, it was rank. I think your dream was no dream but a sending. As you tell me—this net of sound drew you toward him who made it. Whatever touched you then—” He frowned. “No, I will not set name to it here and now. Such naming can draw influences when one least wants them.” Andas saw his wide nostrils expand and his head swing from side to side, as if testing the stale, dust-laden air of the room.

  “Now it is gone. Whatever spear it launched at you failed. But I would not slumber here long.”

  “The only door to our escape is in the wall here. As far as I know, there is no other entrance to the runs.” Andas was half persuaded, yet to leave the way to such safety—poor as it was—that the wall passages promised, he could not bring himself to do.

  “Then let me set such safeguards as my people know—I shall set them!” What had begun as a request was now a definite decision.

  Before Andas could protest, Yolyos turned and used his unsheathed claws on the shutter they had pounded into place, levering it loose. The prince tried to stop him.

  “No—we could be sighted!”

  “By whom? You said this is a shunned place. We have no lights—if you will turn off the torch—even if your guards decided to fly over. I tell you this room must have protection or we do not stay in it!”

  So strong was his conviction, Andas stood aside. But he did not help any as all the windows in the wall facing that ill-omened court were not only freed of the shutters but also were opened to the night. Then in the moonlight the Salariki padded back to the doorway where lay a vast mass of stuff, a mixture of vine, flower, and leaf, as if he had plundered the garden.

  He picked that over, bringing forth a number of flowers, still waxy-white, though darkening bruises showed here and there on their wide petals. The best of these he proceeded to lay out on the windowsills in a pattern. When he had finished each, he held his hands in the full moonlight, cupping and flexing his fingers, as if he were actually gathering some of that wan radiance.

  Then he turned palms down, opened his fingers, and murmured in the purring speech of his own people, as if he recited some charm or ritual. On each windowsill he did so. Then he stepped back, his face hidden in the dark. When he spoke, his voice had lost that threatening roughness.

  “This is a potent charm of my people. If you have any you can add to it—”

  Andas shook his head and then realized that the other probably could not see that gesture. “We do not believe in charms.” But he made that denial conciliatory. To each species its own safeguards. And what had Yolyos said of the talisman? He had the key—though that was only a symbol.

  Thinking of the key brought the ring to mind. Suppose that could be a focus for evil? Should he try to rid himself of it, if only temporarily? Yet he was determined to destroy it, and if he hid it, how did he know that he could recover it?

  Yolyos spread the mass of foliage on the floor. Making a bed, Andas judged. Once more the heavy perfume of the now wilting flowers was thick, far too heavy in this room, making him dizzy. He was sleepy, too—very sleep again, with the same eye-burning fatigue that had sent him to dreaming on the hard floor earlier. He must not sleep! In sleep, dreams could return, could reach for him, but—

  It was as if he were two people. One was a prisoner watching the other surrender, ready to curl up beside the Salariki on the fragrant nest of leaves and flowers. He struggled to withstand and failed.

  The moonlight through the windows made white bars of light on the floor. Half revealed in one was the huddled form of Yolyos curled about, his head pillowed on his crooked arm, his breath coming evenly. The moon was so bright that it had a glitter like ice. It was cold—

  Andas stood up
in the moonlight. He walked to the window, looked out and down. There was no longer any fear in him, rather a growing excitement, a tension such as filled men on the eve of a fight or some contest of skill or trial by force.

  On the sill lay the pattern of blossoms Yolyos had set with such ceremony. Andas laughed silently. Did this furred barbarian think that such a stupid trick would defeat what waited out there? He swept the flowers away with his hand. Then putting both palms on the sill, he leaned out to look down.

  The broken wall had spilled its upper layers well over the court. But the rubble did not cover the whole; it did not even touch upon the important section. Still, the time had not yet come, only its warning to awaken him.

  He watched and waited, without any fear or surprise, save that his excitement was hard to contain. He found it very difficult to stand still and mute, not to run down there shouting aloud—very hard, but the time was not yet.

  It was beginning (not visibly before his eyes, but somewhere deep within him), a beat like the beat of his heart, save that it began slow and sluggish, and then grew faster, stronger. He could hear the rasp of his own breathing as that, too, grew heavier and faster, like the gasping of a man who runs a race. But the time was not yet.

  Andas stood, waiting. Then came the moment with a signal his spirit recognized, but his ears did not hear, nor his eyes see. He left the window, passed the bed of vines, went into the hall, and threaded corridors and stairs as if they were not dark but brilliantly lighted and this was a well-known way.

  Thus he came to a door that was not only closed but also fused shut. And by then the force that drew him was so strong that he hammered at the barrier, unable to think clearly. After he had battered the door for a space, the compulsion lessened. He leaned against the firmly sealed door, his bruised fists hanging by his sides.

  No way through—his mind moved sluggishly. It was hard to think. No way through here, but there must be a way! Like a programed robot he turned back and retraced his path until he stood once more at the window looking down into the court, to that spot where he must be and soon.

  Quickly he turned and made a dart at the vegetation that had formed their bed, on which Yolyos still slept. Andas’s hands closed upon a length of vine, and he jerked it free with no thought for the sleeper. He had blanked the Salariki out. All that mattered was a way to get below. But this vine was too short! From this window, yes, but a floor below—

  He heard a cry from the Salariki whom his action must have aroused, but he paid no attention. With the loop of vine about his shoulder, he ran, once more surefooted and fearless, through the dark to another room where there was another window.

  That was closed, and the moonlight through it was dim and dulled by the dust. Andas looked about him wildly. There was a jumble on the floor here, as if the debris of the barracks had been pushed together to molder into dust. He scrabbled in that and came up with a bar of rust-flaking metal. But its core seemed stout enough, and with that he broke out the panes.

  The bar was longer than the window was wide. It must serve as his anchor. He had no time to hunt a better one. He looped the vine about it, jammed the bar across the base of the window, and climbed out, the vine ends in his hands. At the same time there was a shout from the door of the room. He did not wait.

  It was more a fall than a descent, but the vine kept him from crashing to the pavement. He no longer cared really. He must reach that spot—now!

  Andas ran, vaguely hearing the thud of someone landing on the pavement behind him. Two steps more—a hand clawed at his shoulder raking his flesh painfully. Andas did not try to strike it away. There was no time. Reach the spot—that was all that was meaningful in the world now!

  But there was no pavement, no bright moon, no crumbling walls. There was a time of transition through a place he could never afterwards describe, from which his memory flinched. Then he was falling, coming up against a solid object with force enough to painfully drive all the breath from his lungs in a single gasp. And propelling him forward in that dive was another struggling body.

  Andas was occupied at first merely fighting to get a full breath again. But once that happened, he looked around. No moon showed. Rather a thick mist hung like a cloak, leaving cold beads of moisture on his skin.

  “Fool!”

  Beside him another body moved. He felt the softness of fur against his arm, wiping away some of that moisture. But the voice was a warning growl of anger.

  “Yolyos?”

  “What is left of him, yes. And into which of the Drummer’s hells have you now plunged us?”

  Andas had no time to answer. The compulsion that had drawn him to the courtyard closed about him again. It was as if his transition to this place had jarred loose some tie, now once more firmly noosed about him. He scrambled to his feet, not looking for the Salariki. But as he started off, he said, “This way.”

  Whether Yolyos followed or not did not matter. All that did was that he, Andas Kastor, must reach that place toward which he was going. And there was a need for haste, great haste. His path led in and out among tumbled blocks of stone, many taller than his head. The mist continued—became a soaking rain. He could not tell how far he had traveled or how long. His sense of time had been disrupted by that passage through the other place. But at last he saw ahead a wink of light.

  Memory stirred. Once before he had seen just that same small wink of red and yellow through the dark. Surely he had done this all before.

  Fire—among ruins. The blocks around which he made his painful way were not stones, but the remains of buildings, or of a building. And those he sought were the people of his dream—the skeleton woman who fed the fire, the man who played the strange harp. He was caught again in the dream! Yet this time it carried even more the stamp of reality.

  But the woman did not feed the fire now. She crouched a little behind the half-seated, half-lying man, her too-thin arm an additional prop for his shoulders, as if he needed all the support she could give him. And he held no ancient book, but instead both his hands rested on the harp and were in motion there, though Andas heard no sound, only felt that vibration, which shook and churned him and would not let him go.

  He did not drift effortlessly to the fire this time—he walked on his own feet. And as he came to a halt on the other side of the now dying flames, the harper’s face was filled with exultation. He spoke, and Andas heard and understood.

  “The records were right. It is done well—”

  The woman interrupted him. “Done, yes, but done well? Ah, dear lord, only time can answer that!”

  “And I have so little time—is that what you think?” he asked half impatiently, raising his hands from the harp to press them against his chest over that encrusted bandage, as if he held there something precious and threatened. “There will be time, Shara. I have not accomplished all I have so far, not to have time to finish!”

  The compulsion faded as he talked. Andas was free. Yet when he turned his head to look for some manner of escape, he was still sluggish, wrapped in the effects of that bondage.

  “Yes, you are here! And you are Andas—a young Andas. Shara, show him to me clearly!”

  The woman left her place at his back, moved out, took up a piece of wood, and thrust it deep into the fire’s heart. When it blazed, she lifted it again and held it near enough to Andas so that he jerked his head back, the heat too strong for comfort.

  “Strong, young—the rightful Andas, just as the records foretold.” The stranger with Andas’s face almost crooned the words, as if he sang a victory song. “An Andas for an Andas! I die—you live to fulfill all the promises—”

  “Who are you? This place—where is it?”

  “Andas!” But the woman did not look to him as she cried that name aloud, rather to the man on the ground. She whirled the branch around, stirring it to greater burning, and held it before her as she might a spear or sword.

  There was a clatter of stone against stone.

  “Prince
! Give me a lead to find you!” Yolyos’s voice came out of the rain and the dark.

  He answered, “Here—there is a fire for a guide—”

  “There is a fire to kill!” The woman menaced him with her brand so he leaped back and away. But the harper made what was plainly a painful effort, seized the edge of her shapeless outer garment, and put his waning strength into a swift backward jerk, so she staggered, almost losing her balance.

  “He is not alone!” she cried. “It is a trick!”

  “Not so,” the harper told her. He spoke in a quiet voice, almost as one would soothe a child. “We drew him. There was another who followed, who was with him at that moment when the gate opened. He knows this one, speaks to him as to a friend. Be not so swift to judge, Shara.”

  The brand had burned close to her hold. She tossed it into the fire and stood empty-handed. There was an empty look on her face, too. She said nothing more, but dropped in her old place, her hands on the man’s shoulders, as if she needed that contact as much as he might need her support.

  She no longer even looked at Andas, but kept her head bowed, her eyes ever upon the face of the man whom she now sat beside. Nor did she even glance around as Yolyos came out of the shadows.

  But there was surprise on the harper’s scarred face as he saw the Salariki. He surveyed the alien with a searching stare, as if he sought to read Yolyos’s thoughts and weigh them to see if he were friend or enemy.

  “You are not one of us.” He did not speak Basic, and Andas was sure the Salariki did not understand.

  “He does not speak our tongue,” he cut in swiftly. “Yes, he is an off-worlder, a Salariki—the Lord Yolyos.”

  “Salariki.” The harper rolled the word about in his mouth as if he tasted something strange, beyond his experience. “Off-world—oh!” Once more triumph flamed fitfully in his gaze. “In your world, brother, men still seek the stars?”

  “My world? What world is this—if it is not a dream?”

  The man sighed, his hands slipping from his breast and the bandage there as if he could no longer find the strength to hold it so.