Hunt the Space-Witch! (21 page)

“I hear you. You can get off me now; I'm all right.”

La Floquet gestured to Thornhill and Vellers. “Stand near him. Be ready to grab him if he runs wild again.” He eyed McKay suspiciously for a moment, then rolled to one side and jumped to his feet.

McKay remained on the ground a moment longer. Finally he hoisted himself to a kneeling position, and shaking his head as if to clear it, stood erect. He took a few hesitant, uncertain steps. Then he turned, staring squarely at the three men, and in a quiet voice said, “Tell me what happened to me.”

“You and Vellers quarreled,” La Floquet said. “He—knocked you unconscious. When you came to, something must have snapped inside you—you went after Vellers like a madman. He knocked you out a second time. You just regained consciousness.”

“No!
” Thornhill half-shouted in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. “Tell him the truth, La Floquet! We can't gain anything by pretending it didn't happen.”

“What truth?” McKay asked curiously.

Thornhill paused an instant. “McKay, you were dead. At least once. Probably twice, unless La Floquet was mistaken the first time. I examined you the second time—after Vellers bashed you against that rock. I'd swear you were dead. Feel the side of your head … where it was split open when Vellers threw you down.”

McKay put a quivering hand to his head, drew it away bloody, and stared down at the rock near his foot. The rock was bloodstained, also.

“I see blood, but I don't feel any pain.”

“Of course not,” Thornhill said. “The wound healed almost instantaneously. And you were revived.
You came back to life, McKay!
”

McKay turned to La Floquet. “Is this thing true, what Thornhill's telling me? You were trying to hide it?”

La Floquet nodded.

A slow, strange smile appeared on McKay's pale, angular face. “It's the Valley, then! I was dead—and I rose from the dead! Vellers—La Floquet—you fools! Don't you see that we live forever here in this Valley that you're so anxious to leave? I died twice … and it was like being asleep. Dark, and I remember nothing. You're sure I was dead, Thornhill?”

“I'd swear to it.”

“But of course you, La Floquet—you'd try to hide this from me, wouldn't you? Well, do you still want to leave here? We can live forever in the Valley, La Floquet!”

The small man spat angrily. “Why bother? Why live here like vegetables, eternally, never to move beyond those mountains, never to see what's on the other side of the stream? I'd rather have a dozen unfettered years than ten thousand in this prison, McKay!” He scowled.

“You had to tell him,” La Floquet said accusingly to Thornhill.

“What difference does it make?” Thornhill asked. “We'd have had a repetition sooner or later. We couldn't hide it from anyone.” He glanced up at the arching mountains. “So the Watcher has ways of keeping us alive? No suicide, no murder … and no way out.”

“There
is
a way out,” La Floquet said stubbornly. “Over the mountain pass. I'm sure of it. Vellers and I may go to take a look at it tomorrow. Won't we, Vellers?”

The big man shrugged. “It's fine with me.”

“You don't want to stay here forever, do you, Vellers?” La Floquet went on. “What good is immortality if it's the immortality of prisoners for life? We'll look at the mountain tomorrow, Vellers.”

Thornhill detected a strange note in La Floquet's voice, a curiously strained facial expression, as if he were pleading with Vellers to support him, as if he were somehow afraid to approach the mountain alone. The idea of La Floquet's being afraid of anything or anyone seemed hard to accept, but Thornhill had that definite impression.

He looked at Vellers, then at La Floquet. “We ought to discuss this a little further, I think. There are nine of us, La Floquet. McKay and Miss Hardin definitely want to remain in the Valley; Miss Fallis and I are uncertain, but in any event we'd like to stay here a while longer. That's four against two among the humans. As for the aliens—”

“I'll vote with La Floquet,” said the Aldebaranian quietly. “Important business waits for me outside.”

Troublemaker
, Thornhill thought. “Four against three, then, with the Spican and the Regulan unheard from. And I guess they'll stay unheard from since we can't speak their languages.”

“I can speak Regulan,” volunteered the Aldebaranian. Without waiting for further discussion, he wheeled to face the grave dewlapped being and exchanged four or five short, crisp sentences with him. Turning again, he said, “Our friend votes to leave. This ties the score, I believe.”

“Just a second,” Thornhill said hotly. “How do we know that's what he said? Suppose—”

The mask of affability slipped from the alien's face. “Suppose
what?
” he asked coldly. “If you intend to put a shadow on my honor, Thornhill—” He left the sentence unfinished.

“It would be pretty pointless dueling here,” Thornhill said, “unless your honor satisfies easily. You couldn't very well kill me for long. Perhaps a temporary death might soothe you, but let's let it drop. I'll take your interpreting job in good faith. We're four apiece for staying or trying to break out.”

La Floquet said, “It was good of you to take this little vote, Thornhill. But it's not a voting matter. We're individuals, not a corporate entity, and I choose not to remain here so long as I can make the attempt to escape.” The little man spun on his heel and stalked away from the group.

“There ought to be some way of stopping him,” said McKay thickly. “If he escapes—”

Thornhill shook his head. “It's not as easy as all that. How's he going to get off the planet, even if he does pass the mountains?”

“You don't understand,” McKay said. “The Watcher simply said if one of us
leaves the Valley
, all must go. And if La Floquet succeeds, it's death for me.”

“Perhaps we're dead already,” Marga suggested, breaking her long silence. “Suppose each of us—you in your spaceliner, me in my observatory—died at the same moment and came here. What if—”

The sky darkened in the now-familiar manner that signaled the approach of the Watcher.

“Ask him,” Thornhill said. “He'll tell you all about it.”

The black cloud descended.

You are not dead
, came the voiceless answer to the unspoken question.
Though some of you will die if the barrier be passed
.

Again Thornhill felt chilled by the presence of the formless being. “Who are you?” he shouted. “What do you want with us?”

I
am the Watcher
.

“And what do you want with us?” Thornhill repeated.

I
am the Watcher
, came the inflexible answer. Fibrils of the cloud began to trickle away in many directions; within moments the sky was clear. Thornhill slumped back against a rock and looked at Marga.

“He comes and he goes, feeds us, keeps us from killing ourselves or each other. It's like a zoo, Marga! And we're the chief exhibits!”

La Floquet and Vellers came stumping toward them. “Are you satisfied with the answers to your questions?” La Floquet demanded. “Do you still want to spend the rest of your days here?”

Thornhill smiled. “Go ahead, La Floquet. Go climb the mountain. I'm changing my vote. It's five-three in favor of leaving.”

“I thought you were with me,” said McKay.

Thornhill ignored him. “Go on, La Floquet. You and Vellers climb that mountain. Get out of the Valley—if you can.”

“Come with us,” La Floquet said.

“Ah, no—I'd rather stay here. But I won't object if you go.”

Fleetingly, La Floquet cast a glance at the giant tooth that blocked the Valley's exit, and it seemed to Thornhill that a shadow of fear passed over the little man's face. But La Floquet clamped his jaws tight and through locked lips said, “Vellers, are you with me?”

The big man shrugged amiably. “It can't hurt to take a look, I figure.”

“Let's go, then,” La Floquet said firmly. He threw one black, infuriated glance at Thornhill and struck out for the path leading to the mountain approach.

When he was out of earshot, Marga said, “Sam, why'd you do that?”

“I wanted to see how he'd react. I saw it.”

McKay tugged at his arm fretfully. “I'll die if we leave the Valley! Don't you see that, Mr. Thornhill?”

Sighing, Thornhill said, “I see it. But don't worry too much about La Floquet. He'll be back before long.”

Slowly the hours passed, and the red sun slipped below the horizon, leaving only the distant blue sun to provide warmth. Thornhill's wristwatch told him it was past ten in the evening—nearly twelve hours since the time he had boarded the spaceliner on Jurinalle, more than four hours since his anticipated arrival time in the main city of Vengamon. They would have searched in vain for him by now and would be wondering how a man could vanish so thoroughly from a spaceship in hyperdrive.

The little group sat together at the river's edge. The Spican had shifted fully into his brownish-red phase and sat silently like some owl heralding the death of the universe. The other two aliens kept mainly to themselves as well. There was little to be said.

McKay huddled himself into a knob-kneed pile of limbs and stared up at the mountain as if hoping to see some sign of La Floquet and Vellers. Thornhill understood the expression on his face; McKay knew clearly that if La Floquet succeeded in leaving the Valley's confines, he would pay the price of his double resurrection in the same instant. McKay looked like a man seated below a thread-hung sword.

Thornhill himself stared silently at the mountain, wondering where the two men were now, how far they would get before La Floquet's cowardice forced them to turn back. He had no doubt now that La Floquet dreaded the mountain—otherwise he would have made the attempt long before instead of merely threatening it. Now he had been goaded into it by Thornhill, but would he be successful? Probably not; a brave man with one deep-lying fear often never conquered that fear. In a way Thornhill pitied little La Floquet; the gamecock would be forced to come back in humiliation, though he might delay that moment as long as he possibly could.

“You seem troubled,” Marga said.

“Troubled? No, just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About Vengamon, and my mine there … and how the vultures have probably already started to go after my estate.”

“You don't miss Vengamon, do you?” she said.

He smiled and shook his head. “Not yet. That mine was my whole life, you know. I took little vacations now and then, but I thought only of the mine and my supervisors and how lazy they were, and the price of ore in the interstellar markets. Until now. It must be some strange property of this Valley, but for the first time the mine seems terribly remote, as if it had always belonged to someone else. Or as if
it
had owned
me
and I'm free at last.”

“I know something of how you feel,” Marga said. “I lived in the observatory day and night. There were always so many pictures to be taken, so many books to read, so much to do—I couldn't bear the thought of missing a day or even of stopping my work to answer the phone. But there are no stars here, and I hardly miss them.”

He took her hand lightly in his. “I wonder, though—If La Floquet succeeds, if we ever do get out of this Valley and back into our ordinary lives, will we be any different? Or will I go back to double-entry bookkeeping and you to stellar luminosities?”

“We won't know until we get back,” she said.
“If
we get back. But look over there.”

Thornhill looked. McKay and Miss Hardin were deep in a serious conversation, and McKay had shyly taken her hand. “Love comes at last to Professor of Medieval History McKay.” Thornhill grinned. “And to Miss Something-or-Other Hardin, whoever she is.”

The Regulan was asleep; the Aldebaranian stared broodingly at his feet, drawing pictures in the sand. The bloated sphere that was the Spican was absorbed in its own alien thoughts. The Valley was very quiet.

“I used to pity creatures in the zoos,” Thornhill said. “But it's not such a bad life after all.”

“So far. We don't know what the Watcher has in store for us.”

A mist rolled down from the mountain peak, drifting in over the Valley. At first Thornhill thought the Watcher had returned for another visit with his captives; he saw, though, that it was merely a thin mountain mist dropping over them. It was faintly cold, and he drew Marga tighter against him.

He thought back over thirty-seven years as the mist rolled in. He had come through those thirty-seven years well enough, trim, athletic, with quick reflexes and a quicker mind. But not until this day—it was hard to believe this was still his first day in the Valley—had he fully realized life held other things besides mining and earning money.

It had taken the Valley to teach him that; would he remember the lesson if he ever returned to civilization? Might it not be better to stay here, with Marga, in eternal youth?

He frowned. Eternal youth, yes … but at the cost of his free will. He was nothing but a prisoner here, if a pampered one.

Suddenly he did not know what to think.

Marga's hand tightened against his. “Did you hear something? Footsteps, I think. It must be La Floquet and Vellers coming back from the mountain.”

“They couldn't make it,” Thornhill said, not knowing whether to feel relief or acute disappointment. He heard the sound of voices—and two figures, one small and wiry, one tall and broad, advanced toward them through the thickening mist. He turned to face them.

Chapter Four

Despite the dim illumination of twilight and the effects of the fog Thornhill had no difficulty reading the expression on La Floquet's face. It was not pleasant. The little man was angry both with himself and with Thornhill, and naked hatred was visible in his sharp features.