Charis found the tastes were as difficult to
identify as the odors—sweet, sour, bitter. But on the whole,
the food was pleasant. She devoured it avidly and then ate with
more control. It was not until she had emptied the bowl by the aid
of her improvised pancake spoon that she began to wonder once more
about the source of that feast.
Hallucination? Surely not that. The bowl about which she cupped
a hand was very real to the touch, just as the food had been real
in her mouth and now was warm and filling in her stomach. She
turned the basin about, studying it. The color was a pure, almost
radiant white; and, while the shape was utilitarian and without any
ornamentation, it was highly pleasing to the eye and suggested,
Charis thought, a sophistication of art which marked a high degree
of civilization.
And she did not need to give the cloth a closer inspection to
know that it matched the strip Jagan had shown her. So this must
have all come from the natives of Warlock. But why left
here—on this barren rock as if awaiting her arrival?
On her knees, the bowl still in her hands, Charis slowly
surveyed the plateau. By the sun’s position she guessed that
the hour was well past midday, but there were no shadows here, no
hiding place. She was totally alone in the midst of nowhere, with
no sign of how this largesse had arrived or why.
Why? That puzzled her almost more than how. She could only
believe that it had been left here for her. But that meant that
“they” knew she was coming, could gauge the moment of
her arrival so well that the yellow stew had been hot when she
first tasted it. There was no mark that any aircraft had
landed.
Charis moistened her lips.
“Please—” her own voice sounded thin and reedy
and, she had to admit, a little frightened as she listened to it
“—please, where are you?” She raised that plea to
a call. There was no answer.
“Where are you?” Again she made herself call,
louder, more beseechingly.
The echoing silence made her shrink a little. It was as if she
were exposed here to the view of unseen presences—a specimen
of her kind under examination. And she wanted away from
here—now.
Carefully she placed the now empty bowl on the rock. There were
several of the fruit and two pancakes left. Charis rolled these up
in the cloth. She got to her feet, and for some reason she could
not quite understand, she faced seaward.
“Thank you.” Again she dared raise her voice.
“Thank you.” Perhaps this had not been meant for her,
but she believed that it had.
With the bundle of food in her hand, Charis went on across the
plateau. At its southern tip she looked back. The shining white of
the bowl was easy to see. It sat just where she had left it,
exposed on the rock. Yet she had half expected to find it gone, had
kept her back turned and her eyes straight ahead for that very
reason.
To the south, the terrain was like a flight of steps, devised
for and by giants, descending in a series of ledges. Some of these
bedded growths of purple and lavender vegetation, but all of it
spindly short bushes and the tough knife-bladed grass. Charis made
her way carefully from one drop to the next, watching for another
eruption of clakers or others signs of hostile life.
She had to favor her sore feet and that journey took a long
time, though she had no way of measuring the passing of planet
hours save by the sun’s movements. It was necessary that she
look forward for shelter against the night. The sense of well-being
which had warmed her along with the food was fading as she
considered what the coming of Warlockian darkness might mean if she
did not discover an adequate hiding place.
At last she determined to stay where she was on the ledge she
had just reached. The stubby growth could not mask any large
intruder, and she had a wide view against any sudden attack. Though
how she might defend herself without weapons, Charis did not know.
Carefully she unwrapped the remains of the food and put it aside on
some leaves she pulled from a sprawling plant. She began to twist
the alien fabric into a cord, finding that its soft length did
crush well in the process, so that she ended with a rope of
sorts.
With a withered branch she was able to pry a stone about as big
as her fist from the earth, and she worked hurriedly to knot it
into one end of her improvised rope. Against any real weapon this
would be a laughable defense, but it gave her some small protection
against native beasts. Charis felt safer when she had it under her
hand and ready for use.
The sunlight had already faded from the lower land where she now
was. With the going of that brighter light, splotches of a diffused
gleam were beginning to show here and there. Bushes and shrubs
glowed with phosphorescence as the twilight grew deeper, and from
some of them, as the heat of the day chilled away, a fragrance was
carried by a rising sea breeze.
Charis settled her back against the wall of the drop down which
she had come, facing the open. Her weapon lay under her right hand,
but she knew that sooner or later she would sleep, that she could
not keep long at bay the fatigue which weighted not only her
drooping eyelids but her whole body. And when she
slept . . . Things happened while one slept on
Warlock! Would she awake once more to find herself in a new and
strange part of the wilderness? To be on the safe side, she put the
food in its leaf-wrapping into the front of her coverall and tied
the loose end of the scarf weapon about her wrist. When she went
this time, she would take what small supplies she had with her.
Tired as she was, Charis tried to fight that perhaps betraying
sleep. There was no use speculating about what force was in power
here. To keep going she must concentrate on the mechanics of
living. Something had turned the clakers and the sea beast from
attack. Could she ascribe that to the will of the same presence
which had left the food? If so, what was “their”
game?
Study of an alien under certain conditions? Was she being used
as an experimental animal? It was one answer and a logical one to
what had happened to her so far. But at least “they”
had kept her from real harm—her left hand folded over the
lump of food inside her coverall; as yet any active move on
“their” part had been to her advantage.
So sleepy . . . Why fight this leaden cloud?
But—where would she wake again?
On the ledge, chilled and stiff, and in a dark which was not a
true dark because of those splotches of light-diffusing plants and
shrubs. Charis blinked. Had she dreamed again? If so, she could not
remember doing so this time. But there was some reason why she must
move here and now, get down from the ledge, then get over
there.
She got up stiffly, looping the scarf about her wrist. Was it
night or early morning? Time did not matter, but the urgency to
move did. Down—and over there. She did not try to fight that
pressure but went.
The light plants were signposts for her, and she saw that either
their light or scent had attracted small flying things that
flickered with sparkles of their own as they winged in and out of
those patches of eerie radiance. The somberness of Warlock in the
day became a weird ethereality by night.
Darkness which was true shadow beyond—that was her goal.
As had happened on the beach when she had struggled to turn north
to try and retrace her path to the post, so now she could not fight
against the influence which aimed her at that dark blot, which
exerted more and more pressure on her will, bringing with it a
heightening of that sense of urgency which had been hers at her
abrupt awakening.
Unwillingly she came out of the half-light of the vegetation
into darkness—a cave or cleft in the rock. Drifts of leaves
were under her feet, the sense of enclosing walls about her.
Charis’s outflung hands brushed rock on either side. She
could still see, however, above her the wink of a star in the
velvet black of the night sky. This must be a passage then and not
a true cave. But again why? Why?
A second light moved across the slit of sky, a light with a
purpose, direction. The flying light of some aircraft? The traders
searching for her? That other she had seen on the com screen? But
she thought this had come from the south. A government man alerted
to her message? There was no chance of being seen in the darkness
and this slit. She had been moved here to hide—from danger or
from aid?
And she was being held here. No effort of her struggling will
could move her another step or allow her to retreat. It was like
being fixed in some stiff and unyielding ground, her feet roots
instead of means of locomotion. A day earlier she would have
panicked, but she had changed. Now her curiosity was fully aroused
and she was willing, for a space, to be governed so. She had always
been curious. “Why?” had been her demanding bid for
attention when she was so small she remembered having to be carried
for most of the exploration journeys Ander Nordholm had made a part
of her growing years. “Why were those colors here and not
there?” “Why did this animal build a home underground
and that one in a tree?” Why?—why?—why?
He had been very wise, her father, using always her thirst for
knowledge to suggest paths which had led her to make her own
discoveries, each a new triumph and wonder. In fact, he had made
her world of learning too perfect and absorbing, so that she was
impatient with those who did not find such seeking the main
occupation of life. On Demeter she had felt trapped, her
“whys” there battered against an unyielding wall of
prejudice and things which were and must always be. When she had
fought to awaken the desire to reach out for the new among her
pupils, she had clashed with a definite will-not-to-know and
fear-of-learning which had first rendered her incredulous and then
hotly angry and, lastly, stubbornly intent upon battle.
While her father had been alive, he had soothed her, turned her
frustrated energy to other pursuits in which she had freedom of
action and study. She had been encouraged to explore with the
ranger, to record the discoveries of the government party, received
as an equal among them. But with the settlers, she had come to an
uneasy truce. That had burst into open war at her father’s
death, her repulsion for their closed minds fanned into hatred by
what had happened when Tolskegg took over and turned back the clock
of knowledge a thousand years.
Now Charis, free from the frustrations of Demeter, had been
presented with a new collection of whys which seemed to have
restrictions she could not understand, to be sure, but which she
could chew on, fasten her mind to, use as a curtain between past
and present.
“I’ll find out!” Charis did not realize she
had spoken aloud until some trick of the dark cleft in which she
stood made a hollow echo of those words. But they were no boast, a
promise rather, a promise she had made herself before and always
kept.
The star twinkling above was alone in the sky. Charis listened
for the sound of a copter engine beat and thought that she caught
such a throb, very faint and far in the distance.
“So.” Again she spoke aloud, as if who or what she
addressed stood within touching distance. “You didn’t
want them to see me. Why? Danger for me or escape for me? What do
you want of me?” There was no reason to expect any reply.
Suddenly the pressure of imprisonment was gone. Charis could
move again. She edged back to settle down in the mouth of the
cleft, facing the valley with its weird light. A breeze
shush-shushed through the foliage, sometimes setting light plants
to a shimmer of dance. There was a chirruping, a hum of night
creatures, lulling in its monotone. If something larger than the
things flying about the light vegetation was present, it made no
sound. Once again, since the urgency had left her, Charis was
drowsy, unable to fight the sleep which crept up her as a wave
might sweep over her body on the shore.
When Charis opened her eyes once again, sunlight fingered down
to pattern the earth within reach of her hand. She rose from the
dried leaf-drift which had been her bed, pulled by the sound of
running water: another cliff-side spring to let her wash and give
her drink. Her two attempts to make leaf containers to carry some
of the liquid with her were failures and she had to give up that
hope.
Prudence dictated a conservation of supplies. She allowed
herself only one of the pancakes, now dry and tough, and two of the
fruit she had brought from the feast on the plateau. Because such
abundance had appeared once, there was no reason to expect it
again.
The way was still south but Charis’s aching muscles argued
against more climbing unless she was forced to it. She returned to
the cleft and found that it was indeed a passage to more level
territory. The heights continued on the western side, forming a
wall between the sea and a stretch of level fertile country. There
was a wood to the east with the tallest trees Charis had yet seen
on Warlock, their dark foliage a blackened blot which was
forbidding. On the edge of that forest was a section of brush,
shrub, and smaller growth which thinned in turn to grass—not
the tough, sharp-bladed species she had suffered from in the valley
of the fork-tail, but a mosslike carpet, broken here and there by
clumps of smaller stands bearing flowers, all remarkably pale in
contrast to the dark hue of leaf and stem. It was as if they were
the ghosts of the more brightly colored blossoms she had known on
other worlds.
The mossy sward was tempting, but to cross it would take her
into the open in full sight of any hunters. On the other hand, she
herself would have unrestricted sight. While in the forest or brush
belt, her vision would be limited. Swinging her stone-and-scarf
weapon, Charis walked into the open. If she kept by the cliff, it
would guide her south.
It was warmer here than it had been by the sea. And the footing
proved as soft as she had hoped. Keeping to the moss, she walked on
a velvety surface which spared her bruised feet, did not tear the
tattered rags of covering she had fashioned for them. Away from the
dark of the wood, this stretch of Warlockian earth was the most
welcoming she had found.
A flash of wings overhead made her start until she saw that this
was not a claker but a truly feathered bird, with plumage as pale
as the flowers and a naked head of brilliant coral red. It did not
notice Charis but skimmed on, disappearing over the cliff toward
the sea.
Charis did not force the pace. Now and again she paused to
examine a flower or insect. She might be coming to the end of a
journey a little before her appointed time and could now spare
attention for the things about her. During one rest she watched,
fascinated, as a scaled creature no larger than her middle finger,
walking erect on a pair of sturdy hind legs, dug with taloned front
“hands” in a patch of earth with the concentration of
one employed in a regular business. Its efforts unearthed two round
gray globes which it brushed to one side impatiently after it had
systematically flattened both. Between those spheres had been
packed a curled, many-legged body of what Charis believed was a
large insect. The lizard-thing straightened his find out and
inspected it with care. Having apparently decided in favor of its
usability, it proceeded to dine with obvious relish, then stalked
on among the grass clumps, now and again stooping to search the
earth with a piercing eye, apparently in search of another such
find.
Midday passed while Charis was still in the open. She wondered
if food would again appear in her path, and consciously watched for
the gleam of a second white bowl and the fruit piled on a green
cloth. However, none such was to be seen. But she did come upon a
tree growing much to itself, bearing the same blue fruit which had
been left for her, and she helped herself liberally.
She had just started on when a sound shattered the almost drowsy
content of the countryside. It was a cry—frantic, breathless,
carrying with it such an appeal for aid against overwhelming danger
that Charis was startled into dropping her load of fruit and
running toward the sound, her stone weapon ready. Was it really
that small cry which awakened such a response in her or some
emotion which she shared in some abnormal way? She only knew that
there was danger and she must give aid.
Something small, black, coming in great leaps, broke from the
brush wall beyond the rim of the forest. It did not head for Charis
but ran for the cliff, and a wave of fear hit the girl as it
flashed past. Then the compulsion which had willed against her
turning north, which had held her in the cleft last night, struck
Charis. But this time it brought the need to run, to keep on
running, from some peril. She whirled and followed the bounds of
the small black thing, and like it, headed for the sea cliff.
The black creature ran mute now. Charis thought that perhaps
those first cries had been of surprise at sudden danger. She
believed she could hear something behind—a snarling or a
muffled howl.
Her fellow fugitive had reached the cliff face, was making
frantic leaps, pawing at a too-smooth surface, unable to climb. It
whimpered a little as its most agonizing efforts kept it
earthbound. Then, as Charis came up, it turned, crouched, and
looked at her.
She had a hurried impression of great eyes, of softness, and the
shock of the fear and pleading it broadcast. Hardly aware of her
act but conscious she had to do something, she snatched up the
warm, furred body which half-leaped to meet her grasp and plastered
itself to her, clinging with four clawed feet to the stuff of her
coverall, its shivering a vibration against her.
There was a way up that she, with her superior size, could
climb. She took it, trying not to scrape her living burden against
the rock as she went. Then she was in a fissure, breathless with
her effort, and a warm tongue tip made a soft, wet touch against
her throat. Charis wriggled back farther into hiding, the rescued
creature cradled in her arms. She could see nothing coming out of
the wood as yet.
A faint mewing from her companion alerted her as a brown shadow
padded out on the lavender-green of the moss—an animal she
was sure. But from this distance and height, Charis could not make
it out clearly as it slunk on, using bushes for cover. So far it
had not headed in their direction.
But the animal was not alone. Charis gasped. For the figure now
coming from between two trees was not only humanoid—it wore
the green-brown uniform of Survey. She was about to call out, to
hail the stranger, when the freezing she had known in the cleft
caught and held her as soundless, as motionless, as if she had been
plunged into the freeze of a labor ship. Helpless, she had to watch
the man walk back and forth as if searching for some trail, and at
last disappear back into the wood with his four-footed
companion.
They had never approached the cliff, yet the freeze which held
Charis did not break until long moments after they had gone.
Charis found the tastes were as difficult to
identify as the odors—sweet, sour, bitter. But on the whole,
the food was pleasant. She devoured it avidly and then ate with
more control. It was not until she had emptied the bowl by the aid
of her improvised pancake spoon that she began to wonder once more
about the source of that feast.
Hallucination? Surely not that. The bowl about which she cupped
a hand was very real to the touch, just as the food had been real
in her mouth and now was warm and filling in her stomach. She
turned the basin about, studying it. The color was a pure, almost
radiant white; and, while the shape was utilitarian and without any
ornamentation, it was highly pleasing to the eye and suggested,
Charis thought, a sophistication of art which marked a high degree
of civilization.
And she did not need to give the cloth a closer inspection to
know that it matched the strip Jagan had shown her. So this must
have all come from the natives of Warlock. But why left
here—on this barren rock as if awaiting her arrival?
On her knees, the bowl still in her hands, Charis slowly
surveyed the plateau. By the sun’s position she guessed that
the hour was well past midday, but there were no shadows here, no
hiding place. She was totally alone in the midst of nowhere, with
no sign of how this largesse had arrived or why.
Why? That puzzled her almost more than how. She could only
believe that it had been left here for her. But that meant that
“they” knew she was coming, could gauge the moment of
her arrival so well that the yellow stew had been hot when she
first tasted it. There was no mark that any aircraft had
landed.
Charis moistened her lips.
“Please—” her own voice sounded thin and reedy
and, she had to admit, a little frightened as she listened to it
“—please, where are you?” She raised that plea to
a call. There was no answer.
“Where are you?” Again she made herself call,
louder, more beseechingly.
The echoing silence made her shrink a little. It was as if she
were exposed here to the view of unseen presences—a specimen
of her kind under examination. And she wanted away from
here—now.
Carefully she placed the now empty bowl on the rock. There were
several of the fruit and two pancakes left. Charis rolled these up
in the cloth. She got to her feet, and for some reason she could
not quite understand, she faced seaward.
“Thank you.” Again she dared raise her voice.
“Thank you.” Perhaps this had not been meant for her,
but she believed that it had.
With the bundle of food in her hand, Charis went on across the
plateau. At its southern tip she looked back. The shining white of
the bowl was easy to see. It sat just where she had left it,
exposed on the rock. Yet she had half expected to find it gone, had
kept her back turned and her eyes straight ahead for that very
reason.
To the south, the terrain was like a flight of steps, devised
for and by giants, descending in a series of ledges. Some of these
bedded growths of purple and lavender vegetation, but all of it
spindly short bushes and the tough knife-bladed grass. Charis made
her way carefully from one drop to the next, watching for another
eruption of clakers or others signs of hostile life.
She had to favor her sore feet and that journey took a long
time, though she had no way of measuring the passing of planet
hours save by the sun’s movements. It was necessary that she
look forward for shelter against the night. The sense of well-being
which had warmed her along with the food was fading as she
considered what the coming of Warlockian darkness might mean if she
did not discover an adequate hiding place.
At last she determined to stay where she was on the ledge she
had just reached. The stubby growth could not mask any large
intruder, and she had a wide view against any sudden attack. Though
how she might defend herself without weapons, Charis did not know.
Carefully she unwrapped the remains of the food and put it aside on
some leaves she pulled from a sprawling plant. She began to twist
the alien fabric into a cord, finding that its soft length did
crush well in the process, so that she ended with a rope of
sorts.
With a withered branch she was able to pry a stone about as big
as her fist from the earth, and she worked hurriedly to knot it
into one end of her improvised rope. Against any real weapon this
would be a laughable defense, but it gave her some small protection
against native beasts. Charis felt safer when she had it under her
hand and ready for use.
The sunlight had already faded from the lower land where she now
was. With the going of that brighter light, splotches of a diffused
gleam were beginning to show here and there. Bushes and shrubs
glowed with phosphorescence as the twilight grew deeper, and from
some of them, as the heat of the day chilled away, a fragrance was
carried by a rising sea breeze.
Charis settled her back against the wall of the drop down which
she had come, facing the open. Her weapon lay under her right hand,
but she knew that sooner or later she would sleep, that she could
not keep long at bay the fatigue which weighted not only her
drooping eyelids but her whole body. And when she
slept . . . Things happened while one slept on
Warlock! Would she awake once more to find herself in a new and
strange part of the wilderness? To be on the safe side, she put the
food in its leaf-wrapping into the front of her coverall and tied
the loose end of the scarf weapon about her wrist. When she went
this time, she would take what small supplies she had with her.
Tired as she was, Charis tried to fight that perhaps betraying
sleep. There was no use speculating about what force was in power
here. To keep going she must concentrate on the mechanics of
living. Something had turned the clakers and the sea beast from
attack. Could she ascribe that to the will of the same presence
which had left the food? If so, what was “their”
game?
Study of an alien under certain conditions? Was she being used
as an experimental animal? It was one answer and a logical one to
what had happened to her so far. But at least “they”
had kept her from real harm—her left hand folded over the
lump of food inside her coverall; as yet any active move on
“their” part had been to her advantage.
So sleepy . . . Why fight this leaden cloud?
But—where would she wake again?
On the ledge, chilled and stiff, and in a dark which was not a
true dark because of those splotches of light-diffusing plants and
shrubs. Charis blinked. Had she dreamed again? If so, she could not
remember doing so this time. But there was some reason why she must
move here and now, get down from the ledge, then get over
there.
She got up stiffly, looping the scarf about her wrist. Was it
night or early morning? Time did not matter, but the urgency to
move did. Down—and over there. She did not try to fight that
pressure but went.
The light plants were signposts for her, and she saw that either
their light or scent had attracted small flying things that
flickered with sparkles of their own as they winged in and out of
those patches of eerie radiance. The somberness of Warlock in the
day became a weird ethereality by night.
Darkness which was true shadow beyond—that was her goal.
As had happened on the beach when she had struggled to turn north
to try and retrace her path to the post, so now she could not fight
against the influence which aimed her at that dark blot, which
exerted more and more pressure on her will, bringing with it a
heightening of that sense of urgency which had been hers at her
abrupt awakening.
Unwillingly she came out of the half-light of the vegetation
into darkness—a cave or cleft in the rock. Drifts of leaves
were under her feet, the sense of enclosing walls about her.
Charis’s outflung hands brushed rock on either side. She
could still see, however, above her the wink of a star in the
velvet black of the night sky. This must be a passage then and not
a true cave. But again why? Why?
A second light moved across the slit of sky, a light with a
purpose, direction. The flying light of some aircraft? The traders
searching for her? That other she had seen on the com screen? But
she thought this had come from the south. A government man alerted
to her message? There was no chance of being seen in the darkness
and this slit. She had been moved here to hide—from danger or
from aid?
And she was being held here. No effort of her struggling will
could move her another step or allow her to retreat. It was like
being fixed in some stiff and unyielding ground, her feet roots
instead of means of locomotion. A day earlier she would have
panicked, but she had changed. Now her curiosity was fully aroused
and she was willing, for a space, to be governed so. She had always
been curious. “Why?” had been her demanding bid for
attention when she was so small she remembered having to be carried
for most of the exploration journeys Ander Nordholm had made a part
of her growing years. “Why were those colors here and not
there?” “Why did this animal build a home underground
and that one in a tree?” Why?—why?—why?
He had been very wise, her father, using always her thirst for
knowledge to suggest paths which had led her to make her own
discoveries, each a new triumph and wonder. In fact, he had made
her world of learning too perfect and absorbing, so that she was
impatient with those who did not find such seeking the main
occupation of life. On Demeter she had felt trapped, her
“whys” there battered against an unyielding wall of
prejudice and things which were and must always be. When she had
fought to awaken the desire to reach out for the new among her
pupils, she had clashed with a definite will-not-to-know and
fear-of-learning which had first rendered her incredulous and then
hotly angry and, lastly, stubbornly intent upon battle.
While her father had been alive, he had soothed her, turned her
frustrated energy to other pursuits in which she had freedom of
action and study. She had been encouraged to explore with the
ranger, to record the discoveries of the government party, received
as an equal among them. But with the settlers, she had come to an
uneasy truce. That had burst into open war at her father’s
death, her repulsion for their closed minds fanned into hatred by
what had happened when Tolskegg took over and turned back the clock
of knowledge a thousand years.
Now Charis, free from the frustrations of Demeter, had been
presented with a new collection of whys which seemed to have
restrictions she could not understand, to be sure, but which she
could chew on, fasten her mind to, use as a curtain between past
and present.
“I’ll find out!” Charis did not realize she
had spoken aloud until some trick of the dark cleft in which she
stood made a hollow echo of those words. But they were no boast, a
promise rather, a promise she had made herself before and always
kept.
The star twinkling above was alone in the sky. Charis listened
for the sound of a copter engine beat and thought that she caught
such a throb, very faint and far in the distance.
“So.” Again she spoke aloud, as if who or what she
addressed stood within touching distance. “You didn’t
want them to see me. Why? Danger for me or escape for me? What do
you want of me?” There was no reason to expect any reply.
Suddenly the pressure of imprisonment was gone. Charis could
move again. She edged back to settle down in the mouth of the
cleft, facing the valley with its weird light. A breeze
shush-shushed through the foliage, sometimes setting light plants
to a shimmer of dance. There was a chirruping, a hum of night
creatures, lulling in its monotone. If something larger than the
things flying about the light vegetation was present, it made no
sound. Once again, since the urgency had left her, Charis was
drowsy, unable to fight the sleep which crept up her as a wave
might sweep over her body on the shore.
When Charis opened her eyes once again, sunlight fingered down
to pattern the earth within reach of her hand. She rose from the
dried leaf-drift which had been her bed, pulled by the sound of
running water: another cliff-side spring to let her wash and give
her drink. Her two attempts to make leaf containers to carry some
of the liquid with her were failures and she had to give up that
hope.
Prudence dictated a conservation of supplies. She allowed
herself only one of the pancakes, now dry and tough, and two of the
fruit she had brought from the feast on the plateau. Because such
abundance had appeared once, there was no reason to expect it
again.
The way was still south but Charis’s aching muscles argued
against more climbing unless she was forced to it. She returned to
the cleft and found that it was indeed a passage to more level
territory. The heights continued on the western side, forming a
wall between the sea and a stretch of level fertile country. There
was a wood to the east with the tallest trees Charis had yet seen
on Warlock, their dark foliage a blackened blot which was
forbidding. On the edge of that forest was a section of brush,
shrub, and smaller growth which thinned in turn to grass—not
the tough, sharp-bladed species she had suffered from in the valley
of the fork-tail, but a mosslike carpet, broken here and there by
clumps of smaller stands bearing flowers, all remarkably pale in
contrast to the dark hue of leaf and stem. It was as if they were
the ghosts of the more brightly colored blossoms she had known on
other worlds.
The mossy sward was tempting, but to cross it would take her
into the open in full sight of any hunters. On the other hand, she
herself would have unrestricted sight. While in the forest or brush
belt, her vision would be limited. Swinging her stone-and-scarf
weapon, Charis walked into the open. If she kept by the cliff, it
would guide her south.
It was warmer here than it had been by the sea. And the footing
proved as soft as she had hoped. Keeping to the moss, she walked on
a velvety surface which spared her bruised feet, did not tear the
tattered rags of covering she had fashioned for them. Away from the
dark of the wood, this stretch of Warlockian earth was the most
welcoming she had found.
A flash of wings overhead made her start until she saw that this
was not a claker but a truly feathered bird, with plumage as pale
as the flowers and a naked head of brilliant coral red. It did not
notice Charis but skimmed on, disappearing over the cliff toward
the sea.
Charis did not force the pace. Now and again she paused to
examine a flower or insect. She might be coming to the end of a
journey a little before her appointed time and could now spare
attention for the things about her. During one rest she watched,
fascinated, as a scaled creature no larger than her middle finger,
walking erect on a pair of sturdy hind legs, dug with taloned front
“hands” in a patch of earth with the concentration of
one employed in a regular business. Its efforts unearthed two round
gray globes which it brushed to one side impatiently after it had
systematically flattened both. Between those spheres had been
packed a curled, many-legged body of what Charis believed was a
large insect. The lizard-thing straightened his find out and
inspected it with care. Having apparently decided in favor of its
usability, it proceeded to dine with obvious relish, then stalked
on among the grass clumps, now and again stooping to search the
earth with a piercing eye, apparently in search of another such
find.
Midday passed while Charis was still in the open. She wondered
if food would again appear in her path, and consciously watched for
the gleam of a second white bowl and the fruit piled on a green
cloth. However, none such was to be seen. But she did come upon a
tree growing much to itself, bearing the same blue fruit which had
been left for her, and she helped herself liberally.
She had just started on when a sound shattered the almost drowsy
content of the countryside. It was a cry—frantic, breathless,
carrying with it such an appeal for aid against overwhelming danger
that Charis was startled into dropping her load of fruit and
running toward the sound, her stone weapon ready. Was it really
that small cry which awakened such a response in her or some
emotion which she shared in some abnormal way? She only knew that
there was danger and she must give aid.
Something small, black, coming in great leaps, broke from the
brush wall beyond the rim of the forest. It did not head for Charis
but ran for the cliff, and a wave of fear hit the girl as it
flashed past. Then the compulsion which had willed against her
turning north, which had held her in the cleft last night, struck
Charis. But this time it brought the need to run, to keep on
running, from some peril. She whirled and followed the bounds of
the small black thing, and like it, headed for the sea cliff.
The black creature ran mute now. Charis thought that perhaps
those first cries had been of surprise at sudden danger. She
believed she could hear something behind—a snarling or a
muffled howl.
Her fellow fugitive had reached the cliff face, was making
frantic leaps, pawing at a too-smooth surface, unable to climb. It
whimpered a little as its most agonizing efforts kept it
earthbound. Then, as Charis came up, it turned, crouched, and
looked at her.
She had a hurried impression of great eyes, of softness, and the
shock of the fear and pleading it broadcast. Hardly aware of her
act but conscious she had to do something, she snatched up the
warm, furred body which half-leaped to meet her grasp and plastered
itself to her, clinging with four clawed feet to the stuff of her
coverall, its shivering a vibration against her.
There was a way up that she, with her superior size, could
climb. She took it, trying not to scrape her living burden against
the rock as she went. Then she was in a fissure, breathless with
her effort, and a warm tongue tip made a soft, wet touch against
her throat. Charis wriggled back farther into hiding, the rescued
creature cradled in her arms. She could see nothing coming out of
the wood as yet.
A faint mewing from her companion alerted her as a brown shadow
padded out on the lavender-green of the moss—an animal she
was sure. But from this distance and height, Charis could not make
it out clearly as it slunk on, using bushes for cover. So far it
had not headed in their direction.
But the animal was not alone. Charis gasped. For the figure now
coming from between two trees was not only humanoid—it wore
the green-brown uniform of Survey. She was about to call out, to
hail the stranger, when the freezing she had known in the cleft
caught and held her as soundless, as motionless, as if she had been
plunged into the freeze of a labor ship. Helpless, she had to watch
the man walk back and forth as if searching for some trail, and at
last disappear back into the wood with his four-footed
companion.
They had never approached the cliff, yet the freeze which held
Charis did not break until long moments after they had gone.