“The dream is yours. Dream
true.”
Rock, an islet of bare rock, high above the sea with no path
down its steep walls against which waves thundered. Overhead the
cries of birds disturbed from their nesting holes by her coming. In
the half-light of early morning Charis surveyed her perch. The
first bewilderment of her arrival was gone, but her uneasiness now
had a base of fear.
There was a series of sharp, shallow ledges leading down from
the point of rock where she crouched to a wider open space
sheltered on one side by a ridge. Some vegetation, pallid and
sickly looking, straggled in that pocket of earth. She rose to look
out over the sea, having no idea where she was now in relation to
the Citadel or the main continent.
Some distance away there was another blot which must mark a
second rock island, but it was too far to make out clearly. The
finality which had been in her dismissal from the Wyvern assemblage
clung. They had sent her here, and she could only believe that they
would do nothing to get her back. Her escape must be of her own
devising.
“Meeerrreee?” Tsstu squatted on the rock, her whole
stance expressing her dislike of these surroundings.
“Where do we go?” Charis asked. “You know as
much as I.”
The curl-cat looked at her through eyes slitted against the
force of the rising wind. Charis shivered. There was a promise of
rain in the feel of that breeze, she thought. To be caught on this
barren rock in a
storm . . .
Only that half-pocket below offered any shelter at all; best get
into it now. Tsstu was prudently already on the way, though with
caution as she clawed along the ledges.
Rain sure enough, great drops slapping down. But rain meant
water to drink. Charis welcomed those runnels which spattered into
the pockets of rock. With the gift of rain water, this storm could
be a blessing for them both.
The birds which had cried overhead were now gone. Tsstu,
prowling their scrap of ground, went to work at a matted tangle
against the ridge wall. She looked up with a trickle of white
coursing over her chin, which she swept away with a swift swipe of
tongue.
“—ree—” She pushed her head back into
the tangle and then backed out, coming to Charis carrying something
in her mouth with delicate care. When the girl put out her hand,
Tsstu dropped into it a ball which could only be an egg.
Hunger fought with distaste and won. Charis broke a small hole
in the top of that sphere and sucked its contents, trying not to
notice the taste. Eggs and rain water— How long would they
last? How long would the two of them last perched up here,
especially if the wind grew strong enough to lick them off?
“The dream is yours. Dream true.” Could this be only
one of those very real dreams which the Wyverns were able to evoke?
Charis could not remember that in any of those visions she had felt
the need to eat or drink. Dream or real? Charis had no evidence
either way.
But there had to be some way of escape!
The ridge at her back kept a measure of the rain from them, but
the water gathering on the higher level drained down into this
slight basin, pooling up about the roots of the few small plants.
The earth about them grew slick.
If she only had the disk! But she had not had that back in that
passage where the patterns had glowed on the walls. Yet her
concentration upon those designs had taken her into the Wyvern
assembly.
Suppose she had the same means of leaving here—where would
she go? Not back to the Citadel; that was enemy territory now. To
the raided post? No, unless she was only seeking a hiding place.
But that was not what she wanted.
Wyvern witches against off-worlders. If the natives moved only
against the Jacks and their own renegade males, that was none of
her battle. But they were seeing all off-worlders as
enemies now. If this rock exile was merely a device to keep her out
of battle, it was a well-planned one. But she was of one stock; the
Wyverns, no matter how much they had been in accord, were alien.
And when it came to drawing battle lines, she was on the other
side, whether her original sympathies lay there or not.
No, Charis did not care what happened to the scum which had
turned Jack here; the quicker they were dealt with the better. But
they should be disciplined by their own kind.
Lantee and this Ragnar Thorvald who represented off-world law on
Warlock and who now were apparently lumped with those to be
finished off, Wyvern-fashion—they must have a say. If they
could be warned, then there might still be time to summon the
Patrol to handle the Jacks and prove to the Wyverns that all
off-worlders were not alike.
A warning. But even with the disk Charis could not reach the
government base. You had to have a previous memory of any point, be
able to picture it in your mind, in order to use the Power to reach
it. And Lantee—what had happened to him at the post? Was he
even still alive after that mind blast from the Wyverns?
Could—just possibly—could you use a person
as a journey goal? Not to summon him to you as she had so
disastrously done with Gytha at the post, but to go to him? It was
action she had never tried. But it was a thought.
Only first—the means. With a disk, one focused on the
pattern until one’s eyes were set, and one’s
concentration reached the necessary pitch to use one’s will
as a springboard into Otherwhere, or through it into another
place.
Back in the passage, she had involuntarily used the glowing
design on the wall to project her into the Wyvern council, though
then she had not controlled her place of arrival.
What was important then was not the disk itself but the design
it bore. Suppose she could reproduce that pattern here, concentrate
upon it. Escape? It might be her one chance. Manifestly she had no
means of leaving here otherwise. So why not try the illogical?
Then—go where? The post? The moss meadow? Any point on
which she could fix an entrance would bring her no closer to the
base of the Survey men. But if she could join Lantee—him she
could visualize strongly enough to use. The only other possibility
was Jagan and she could not obtain any aid from the trader, even if
he were still alive.
To join Lantee who, by his own account, had some experience with
Wyvern dreaming and Power—might that not make him more
receptive as a focal point? There was so much she had to guess
about this, but it was the best chance she could see now.
If she could set up the liberating pattern at all.
What were her means? The rock was too rough to serve as a
surface on which to scratch lines. The slick clay at the edge of
the growing pool caught Charis’s attention. It was a
relatively flat stretch and one could make an impression on it with
a sharp stone or a branch from one of the bushes. But she had to do
it right.
Charis closed her eyes and tried to build within her mind the
all-important memory. There was a wavy line which curled back upon
its length—so. Then the break which came—thus.
Something else—something missing. Her agitation grew as she
strove to fit in the part she could not remember. Maybe if she drew
it out she would . . .
But the expanse of the clay was now too well covered by the pool
water. And the wind was rising. With Tsstu curled close against
her, Charis hugged the protecting ridge rock. There was nothing to
do until the storm died.
Within a very short time Charis began to fear that they would
not survive the fury of the wind, the choking drive of the rain.
Only the fact that the ridge wall was there and they were tight
against it gave them anchorage. The downpour continued to raise the
pool until the water lapped Charis’s cold feet and legs, but
then it reached new runnels to feed it to the sea below.
Tsstu was a source of warmth in her arms and the
curl-cat’s vague communication was a reassurance, too. A
confidence flowed from the animal to the girl, not steadily, but
when she needed it most. Charis wondered just how much of what had
happened to them Tsstu understood. Their band of mind-touch was so
narrow the girl could not judge the intelligence of the Warlockian
animal by the forms of comparison she knew. Tsstu might be far more
than she seemed or be assessed as less because of the lack of full
communication.
There came a time when the wind no longer lashed at their refuge
or poked in finger-gusts to try to loosen their hold. The sky
lightened and the rain, from a blustering wall of driven water,
slackened into a drizzle. Still Charis was not sure of the design.
But she watched the shore of the pool avidly, wondering whether she
could bare the clay by cupping out water with her hands.
The sky was streaked with gold when she edged forward and
twisted a length of water-soaked frond from one of the bushes. To
strip away leaves and give herself a writing point was no problem.
Impatience possessed her now—she must try this
slender hope.
She cupped out some of the pool water by hand, clearing a
stretch of smooth blue clay. Now! Charis found her fingers shaking
a little; she set her will and muscle power to control that
trembling as she put the point of her writing tool in the sticky
surface.
Thus—the wavy line which was the base of the design to her
thinking. Yes! Now for the sharp counterstroke to bisect it at just
the proper angle. There—correct. But the missing
part . . .
Charis shut her eyes tightly. Wave, line— What
was the other? Useless. She could not remember.
Bleakly she looked down at the almost complete pattern. But
“almost” would not serve; it had to be perfect. Tsstu
sat beside her, staring with feline intensity at the marks in the
clay. Suddenly she shot out a paw, planted it flat before Charis
could interfere. At the girl’s cry, the curl-cat’s ears
folded and she growled softly, but she withdrew her forefoot,
leaving the impress of three pads set boldly in the mud.
Three indentations! No—two! Charis laughed. Tsstu’s
memory was the better. She rubbed the mud clear, began to draw
again—this time far more swiftly—with self-confidence.
Wavy line, cut, two ovals—not quite where Tsstu had placed
them, but here and here.
“Meeerrreee!”
“Yes!” Charis echoed that cry of triumph.
“Will it work, little one? Will it work? And where do we
go?”
But she knew she had already made up her mind as to that. Not a
place but a man was her goal—at least at first try.
If she could not join Lantee, they would try for the moss meadow
and the chance of working their way south to the base from there.
But that meant a waste of time they might not have to spend.
No—for what might be the safety of all their kind on this
world, Lantee was her first goal.
First she began to build her mental picture of the Survey
officer, fitting in every small detail that memory supplied, and
she found there were more of those to summon than she had believed.
His hair, black, crisply curling like Tsstu’s; his brown face
sober and masked until he smiled but then softening about his mouth
and eyes; his spare, wiry body in the green-brown uniform, his
companion Taggi. Erase the wolverine, a second living thing might
confuse the Power.
Charis found that she could not divide the two in her
mind-picture. Man and animal, they clung together despite her
efforts to forget Taggi and see only Lantee. Once more she built up
the picture of Shann Lantee as she had seen him at the post before
she had summoned Gytha. Just so he had stood, looked, been.
Now!
Tsstu had come back into her arms, her claws caught in
Charis’s already slitted tunic. Charis regarded the curl-cat
with a smile.
“We had better finish this flitting about soon or you will
have me reduced to rags. Shall we try it?”
“—reee—” Agreement by mind-touch, eager
anticipation. Tsstu appeared to have no doubts that they would go
somewhere.
Charis stared down at the pattern.
Cold—no light at all—a terrible emptiness. Life was
not. She wanted to scream under a torture which was not of body but
of mind. Lantee—where was Lantee? Dead? Was this
death into which she had followed him?
Cold again—but another kind of cold. Light—light
which carried the promise of life she knew and understood. Charis
fought down the churning sickness which had come from that terror
of the place where life did not exist.
A rank smell, a growling answered by Tsstu’s
“rrruuugh” or warning. Charis saw the rocky waste about
them and—the brown Taggi. The wolverine lumbered back and
forth, pausing now and then to snarl. And Charis caught the feeling
of fear and bewilderment which moved him. Always his pacing brought
him back to the figure which squatted in a small fissure, huddling
there, facing outward.
“Lantee!” Charis’s cry of recognition was
almost a paean of thanksgiving. Her gamble had paid off; they had
reached the Survey man.
But if he heard her, saw her, he made no response. Only Taggi
turned and came to her at an awkward run, his round head up, his
harsh cry sounding not in warning-off anger but as a petition for
aid. Lantee must be hurt. Charis ran.
“Lantee?” she called again as she went to her knees
before the crevice into which he had crawled. Then she saw his face
clearly.
At their first meeting his expression had been guarded, remote,
but it had been—alive. This man breathed; she could see the
rise and fall of his chest. His skin—she reached out her
hand, rested finger tips briefly on his wrist, then raised them to
his cheek—his skin was neither burning with fever nor unduly
chill. Only what had made him truly a man and not a living husk was
gone, sucked or driven out of him. By that bolt of the
Wyvern’s wrath?
Charis sat back on her heels and looked about. This was not the
clearing before the post, so he had not remained where she had seen
him fall. She could hear the sea. They were somewhere in the wilds
along the coast. How and why he had come here did not matter
now.
“Lantee—Shann—” She made a coaxing sound
of his name as one might to attract the attention of a child. There
was no flicker of response in his dead eyes, on the husk of a
face.
The wolverine pushed against her, his rank odor strong.
Taggi’s head moved, his jaws opened and closed on her hand,
not in anger but as a bid for attention. Seeing that he had that,
Taggi released his hold, swung around facing inland, his growl a
plain warning of danger in that direction.
Tsstu’s ears, which had flattened at first sight of the
Terran animal, spread again. She clawed at Charis. Something was
coming; her own warning was piercingly sharp—they
must go.
Charis reached again for Lantee’s wrist, her fingers
closed firmly as she pulled him forward. Whether she could get him
moving she did not know.
“Come—come, we must go.” Perhaps her words had
no meaning, but he was responding to her tug, crawling out
of the crevice, rising to his feet as she stood up and drew him
with her. He would keep moving as long as she kept hold of his arm,
Charis discovered, but if she broke contact, he stopped.
So propelling him, the girl turned south, Tsstu prowling ahead,
Taggi forming a rear guard. Who or what could be behind them she
did not know; her worst suspicions said Jack. Lantee wore no
weapon, not even a stunner. And thrown stones were no protection
against blasters. To find a refuge in which to hole up was perhaps
their only hope if they were trailed.
Luckily, the terrain before them was not too rough. She could
not have hauled Lantee, even docile as he was, up or down climbs.
Not too far ahead were signs of broken country, an uneven line of
outcrops sharp against the sky. And somewhere among those they
might find a temporary sanctuary. Taggi had disappeared. Twice
Charis had turned to watch for the wolverine, not daring to call.
She remembered the whistle she had heard back in the moss meadow
when she had first sighted the Survey officer and his four-footed
companion. That summons she could not duplicate.
Now she hurried on. Under her urging, Lantee lengthened his
stride, but there was no sign that he was responding to anything
but her pull on his arm. He might have been a robot. Any warning
she had would mean nothing to him in his present condition, and
whether that had been caused only by temporary shock from the
encounter with the blast of Wyvern power or something more lasting,
she could not tell.
It would not be long until sunset, Charis knew. To reach the
broken land before the failing of the light was her purpose. And
she made it. Tsstu scouted out what they needed, a ledge forming a
good overhang which was half cave. Charis pushed Lantee ahead of
her into the growing pool of shadow and pulled him down. He sat
there, staring unseeingly out into the twilight.
Emergency rations? His uniform belt had a series of pockets in
its broad length and Charis set about searching them. A message or
record tape in the first, then a packet of small tools for which
she could not imagine any use apart from complicated installation
repairs, three credit tokens, a case for identity and permit cards
containing four she did not pause to read, another packet of simple
first-aid materials—perhaps more to the purpose now than the
rest. She worked from right to left, emptying each pocket and then
restoring its contents, while Lantee paid no heed to her search.
Now—this was what she had hoped for. She had seen just such
tubes carried by the ranger on Demeter. Sustain tablets. Not only
would they allay hunger, but they added a booster which restored
and nourished nervous energy.
Four of them. Two Charis dropped back into the tube which she
placed in her own belt pouch. One she mouthed and chewed with
vigor. There was no taste at all, but she got it down. The other
she held uncertainly. How could she get it into Lantee? She doubted
if he would eat in his present condition. She would have to see if
a certain amount of absorption would come by the only way left. She
gathered two pebbles from the ground and brushed them back and
forth on her ragged tunic to clean them from dust as well as she
could, next, that identity card case, also dusted for surface dirt.
With the rubbing of the tablet between the two pebbles, Charis
obtained a powder, caught on the slick surface of the case.
Then, forcing his mouth open, the girl was able to brush that
powder into Lantee’s mouth. It was the best she could do. And
just maybe the reviving powers of the highly concentrated Sustain
might cut down the effects of the shock—or whatever affected
him now.
“The dream is yours. Dream
true.”
Rock, an islet of bare rock, high above the sea with no path
down its steep walls against which waves thundered. Overhead the
cries of birds disturbed from their nesting holes by her coming. In
the half-light of early morning Charis surveyed her perch. The
first bewilderment of her arrival was gone, but her uneasiness now
had a base of fear.
There was a series of sharp, shallow ledges leading down from
the point of rock where she crouched to a wider open space
sheltered on one side by a ridge. Some vegetation, pallid and
sickly looking, straggled in that pocket of earth. She rose to look
out over the sea, having no idea where she was now in relation to
the Citadel or the main continent.
Some distance away there was another blot which must mark a
second rock island, but it was too far to make out clearly. The
finality which had been in her dismissal from the Wyvern assemblage
clung. They had sent her here, and she could only believe that they
would do nothing to get her back. Her escape must be of her own
devising.
“Meeerrreee?” Tsstu squatted on the rock, her whole
stance expressing her dislike of these surroundings.
“Where do we go?” Charis asked. “You know as
much as I.”
The curl-cat looked at her through eyes slitted against the
force of the rising wind. Charis shivered. There was a promise of
rain in the feel of that breeze, she thought. To be caught on this
barren rock in a
storm . . .
Only that half-pocket below offered any shelter at all; best get
into it now. Tsstu was prudently already on the way, though with
caution as she clawed along the ledges.
Rain sure enough, great drops slapping down. But rain meant
water to drink. Charis welcomed those runnels which spattered into
the pockets of rock. With the gift of rain water, this storm could
be a blessing for them both.
The birds which had cried overhead were now gone. Tsstu,
prowling their scrap of ground, went to work at a matted tangle
against the ridge wall. She looked up with a trickle of white
coursing over her chin, which she swept away with a swift swipe of
tongue.
“—ree—” She pushed her head back into
the tangle and then backed out, coming to Charis carrying something
in her mouth with delicate care. When the girl put out her hand,
Tsstu dropped into it a ball which could only be an egg.
Hunger fought with distaste and won. Charis broke a small hole
in the top of that sphere and sucked its contents, trying not to
notice the taste. Eggs and rain water— How long would they
last? How long would the two of them last perched up here,
especially if the wind grew strong enough to lick them off?
“The dream is yours. Dream true.” Could this be only
one of those very real dreams which the Wyverns were able to evoke?
Charis could not remember that in any of those visions she had felt
the need to eat or drink. Dream or real? Charis had no evidence
either way.
But there had to be some way of escape!
The ridge at her back kept a measure of the rain from them, but
the water gathering on the higher level drained down into this
slight basin, pooling up about the roots of the few small plants.
The earth about them grew slick.
If she only had the disk! But she had not had that back in that
passage where the patterns had glowed on the walls. Yet her
concentration upon those designs had taken her into the Wyvern
assembly.
Suppose she had the same means of leaving here—where would
she go? Not back to the Citadel; that was enemy territory now. To
the raided post? No, unless she was only seeking a hiding place.
But that was not what she wanted.
Wyvern witches against off-worlders. If the natives moved only
against the Jacks and their own renegade males, that was none of
her battle. But they were seeing all off-worlders as
enemies now. If this rock exile was merely a device to keep her out
of battle, it was a well-planned one. But she was of one stock; the
Wyverns, no matter how much they had been in accord, were alien.
And when it came to drawing battle lines, she was on the other
side, whether her original sympathies lay there or not.
No, Charis did not care what happened to the scum which had
turned Jack here; the quicker they were dealt with the better. But
they should be disciplined by their own kind.
Lantee and this Ragnar Thorvald who represented off-world law on
Warlock and who now were apparently lumped with those to be
finished off, Wyvern-fashion—they must have a say. If they
could be warned, then there might still be time to summon the
Patrol to handle the Jacks and prove to the Wyverns that all
off-worlders were not alike.
A warning. But even with the disk Charis could not reach the
government base. You had to have a previous memory of any point, be
able to picture it in your mind, in order to use the Power to reach
it. And Lantee—what had happened to him at the post? Was he
even still alive after that mind blast from the Wyverns?
Could—just possibly—could you use a person
as a journey goal? Not to summon him to you as she had so
disastrously done with Gytha at the post, but to go to him? It was
action she had never tried. But it was a thought.
Only first—the means. With a disk, one focused on the
pattern until one’s eyes were set, and one’s
concentration reached the necessary pitch to use one’s will
as a springboard into Otherwhere, or through it into another
place.
Back in the passage, she had involuntarily used the glowing
design on the wall to project her into the Wyvern council, though
then she had not controlled her place of arrival.
What was important then was not the disk itself but the design
it bore. Suppose she could reproduce that pattern here, concentrate
upon it. Escape? It might be her one chance. Manifestly she had no
means of leaving here otherwise. So why not try the illogical?
Then—go where? The post? The moss meadow? Any point on
which she could fix an entrance would bring her no closer to the
base of the Survey men. But if she could join Lantee—him she
could visualize strongly enough to use. The only other possibility
was Jagan and she could not obtain any aid from the trader, even if
he were still alive.
To join Lantee who, by his own account, had some experience with
Wyvern dreaming and Power—might that not make him more
receptive as a focal point? There was so much she had to guess
about this, but it was the best chance she could see now.
If she could set up the liberating pattern at all.
What were her means? The rock was too rough to serve as a
surface on which to scratch lines. The slick clay at the edge of
the growing pool caught Charis’s attention. It was a
relatively flat stretch and one could make an impression on it with
a sharp stone or a branch from one of the bushes. But she had to do
it right.
Charis closed her eyes and tried to build within her mind the
all-important memory. There was a wavy line which curled back upon
its length—so. Then the break which came—thus.
Something else—something missing. Her agitation grew as she
strove to fit in the part she could not remember. Maybe if she drew
it out she would . . .
But the expanse of the clay was now too well covered by the pool
water. And the wind was rising. With Tsstu curled close against
her, Charis hugged the protecting ridge rock. There was nothing to
do until the storm died.
Within a very short time Charis began to fear that they would
not survive the fury of the wind, the choking drive of the rain.
Only the fact that the ridge wall was there and they were tight
against it gave them anchorage. The downpour continued to raise the
pool until the water lapped Charis’s cold feet and legs, but
then it reached new runnels to feed it to the sea below.
Tsstu was a source of warmth in her arms and the
curl-cat’s vague communication was a reassurance, too. A
confidence flowed from the animal to the girl, not steadily, but
when she needed it most. Charis wondered just how much of what had
happened to them Tsstu understood. Their band of mind-touch was so
narrow the girl could not judge the intelligence of the Warlockian
animal by the forms of comparison she knew. Tsstu might be far more
than she seemed or be assessed as less because of the lack of full
communication.
There came a time when the wind no longer lashed at their refuge
or poked in finger-gusts to try to loosen their hold. The sky
lightened and the rain, from a blustering wall of driven water,
slackened into a drizzle. Still Charis was not sure of the design.
But she watched the shore of the pool avidly, wondering whether she
could bare the clay by cupping out water with her hands.
The sky was streaked with gold when she edged forward and
twisted a length of water-soaked frond from one of the bushes. To
strip away leaves and give herself a writing point was no problem.
Impatience possessed her now—she must try this
slender hope.
She cupped out some of the pool water by hand, clearing a
stretch of smooth blue clay. Now! Charis found her fingers shaking
a little; she set her will and muscle power to control that
trembling as she put the point of her writing tool in the sticky
surface.
Thus—the wavy line which was the base of the design to her
thinking. Yes! Now for the sharp counterstroke to bisect it at just
the proper angle. There—correct. But the missing
part . . .
Charis shut her eyes tightly. Wave, line— What
was the other? Useless. She could not remember.
Bleakly she looked down at the almost complete pattern. But
“almost” would not serve; it had to be perfect. Tsstu
sat beside her, staring with feline intensity at the marks in the
clay. Suddenly she shot out a paw, planted it flat before Charis
could interfere. At the girl’s cry, the curl-cat’s ears
folded and she growled softly, but she withdrew her forefoot,
leaving the impress of three pads set boldly in the mud.
Three indentations! No—two! Charis laughed. Tsstu’s
memory was the better. She rubbed the mud clear, began to draw
again—this time far more swiftly—with self-confidence.
Wavy line, cut, two ovals—not quite where Tsstu had placed
them, but here and here.
“Meeerrreee!”
“Yes!” Charis echoed that cry of triumph.
“Will it work, little one? Will it work? And where do we
go?”
But she knew she had already made up her mind as to that. Not a
place but a man was her goal—at least at first try.
If she could not join Lantee, they would try for the moss meadow
and the chance of working their way south to the base from there.
But that meant a waste of time they might not have to spend.
No—for what might be the safety of all their kind on this
world, Lantee was her first goal.
First she began to build her mental picture of the Survey
officer, fitting in every small detail that memory supplied, and
she found there were more of those to summon than she had believed.
His hair, black, crisply curling like Tsstu’s; his brown face
sober and masked until he smiled but then softening about his mouth
and eyes; his spare, wiry body in the green-brown uniform, his
companion Taggi. Erase the wolverine, a second living thing might
confuse the Power.
Charis found that she could not divide the two in her
mind-picture. Man and animal, they clung together despite her
efforts to forget Taggi and see only Lantee. Once more she built up
the picture of Shann Lantee as she had seen him at the post before
she had summoned Gytha. Just so he had stood, looked, been.
Now!
Tsstu had come back into her arms, her claws caught in
Charis’s already slitted tunic. Charis regarded the curl-cat
with a smile.
“We had better finish this flitting about soon or you will
have me reduced to rags. Shall we try it?”
“—reee—” Agreement by mind-touch, eager
anticipation. Tsstu appeared to have no doubts that they would go
somewhere.
Charis stared down at the pattern.
Cold—no light at all—a terrible emptiness. Life was
not. She wanted to scream under a torture which was not of body but
of mind. Lantee—where was Lantee? Dead? Was this
death into which she had followed him?
Cold again—but another kind of cold. Light—light
which carried the promise of life she knew and understood. Charis
fought down the churning sickness which had come from that terror
of the place where life did not exist.
A rank smell, a growling answered by Tsstu’s
“rrruuugh” or warning. Charis saw the rocky waste about
them and—the brown Taggi. The wolverine lumbered back and
forth, pausing now and then to snarl. And Charis caught the feeling
of fear and bewilderment which moved him. Always his pacing brought
him back to the figure which squatted in a small fissure, huddling
there, facing outward.
“Lantee!” Charis’s cry of recognition was
almost a paean of thanksgiving. Her gamble had paid off; they had
reached the Survey man.
But if he heard her, saw her, he made no response. Only Taggi
turned and came to her at an awkward run, his round head up, his
harsh cry sounding not in warning-off anger but as a petition for
aid. Lantee must be hurt. Charis ran.
“Lantee?” she called again as she went to her knees
before the crevice into which he had crawled. Then she saw his face
clearly.
At their first meeting his expression had been guarded, remote,
but it had been—alive. This man breathed; she could see the
rise and fall of his chest. His skin—she reached out her
hand, rested finger tips briefly on his wrist, then raised them to
his cheek—his skin was neither burning with fever nor unduly
chill. Only what had made him truly a man and not a living husk was
gone, sucked or driven out of him. By that bolt of the
Wyvern’s wrath?
Charis sat back on her heels and looked about. This was not the
clearing before the post, so he had not remained where she had seen
him fall. She could hear the sea. They were somewhere in the wilds
along the coast. How and why he had come here did not matter
now.
“Lantee—Shann—” She made a coaxing sound
of his name as one might to attract the attention of a child. There
was no flicker of response in his dead eyes, on the husk of a
face.
The wolverine pushed against her, his rank odor strong.
Taggi’s head moved, his jaws opened and closed on her hand,
not in anger but as a bid for attention. Seeing that he had that,
Taggi released his hold, swung around facing inland, his growl a
plain warning of danger in that direction.
Tsstu’s ears, which had flattened at first sight of the
Terran animal, spread again. She clawed at Charis. Something was
coming; her own warning was piercingly sharp—they
must go.
Charis reached again for Lantee’s wrist, her fingers
closed firmly as she pulled him forward. Whether she could get him
moving she did not know.
“Come—come, we must go.” Perhaps her words had
no meaning, but he was responding to her tug, crawling out
of the crevice, rising to his feet as she stood up and drew him
with her. He would keep moving as long as she kept hold of his arm,
Charis discovered, but if she broke contact, he stopped.
So propelling him, the girl turned south, Tsstu prowling ahead,
Taggi forming a rear guard. Who or what could be behind them she
did not know; her worst suspicions said Jack. Lantee wore no
weapon, not even a stunner. And thrown stones were no protection
against blasters. To find a refuge in which to hole up was perhaps
their only hope if they were trailed.
Luckily, the terrain before them was not too rough. She could
not have hauled Lantee, even docile as he was, up or down climbs.
Not too far ahead were signs of broken country, an uneven line of
outcrops sharp against the sky. And somewhere among those they
might find a temporary sanctuary. Taggi had disappeared. Twice
Charis had turned to watch for the wolverine, not daring to call.
She remembered the whistle she had heard back in the moss meadow
when she had first sighted the Survey officer and his four-footed
companion. That summons she could not duplicate.
Now she hurried on. Under her urging, Lantee lengthened his
stride, but there was no sign that he was responding to anything
but her pull on his arm. He might have been a robot. Any warning
she had would mean nothing to him in his present condition, and
whether that had been caused only by temporary shock from the
encounter with the blast of Wyvern power or something more lasting,
she could not tell.
It would not be long until sunset, Charis knew. To reach the
broken land before the failing of the light was her purpose. And
she made it. Tsstu scouted out what they needed, a ledge forming a
good overhang which was half cave. Charis pushed Lantee ahead of
her into the growing pool of shadow and pulled him down. He sat
there, staring unseeingly out into the twilight.
Emergency rations? His uniform belt had a series of pockets in
its broad length and Charis set about searching them. A message or
record tape in the first, then a packet of small tools for which
she could not imagine any use apart from complicated installation
repairs, three credit tokens, a case for identity and permit cards
containing four she did not pause to read, another packet of simple
first-aid materials—perhaps more to the purpose now than the
rest. She worked from right to left, emptying each pocket and then
restoring its contents, while Lantee paid no heed to her search.
Now—this was what she had hoped for. She had seen just such
tubes carried by the ranger on Demeter. Sustain tablets. Not only
would they allay hunger, but they added a booster which restored
and nourished nervous energy.
Four of them. Two Charis dropped back into the tube which she
placed in her own belt pouch. One she mouthed and chewed with
vigor. There was no taste at all, but she got it down. The other
she held uncertainly. How could she get it into Lantee? She doubted
if he would eat in his present condition. She would have to see if
a certain amount of absorption would come by the only way left. She
gathered two pebbles from the ground and brushed them back and
forth on her ragged tunic to clean them from dust as well as she
could, next, that identity card case, also dusted for surface dirt.
With the rubbing of the tablet between the two pebbles, Charis
obtained a powder, caught on the slick surface of the case.
Then, forcing his mouth open, the girl was able to brush that
powder into Lantee’s mouth. It was the best she could do. And
just maybe the reviving powers of the highly concentrated Sustain
might cut down the effects of the shock—or whatever affected
him now.