The Forerunner Factor (34 page)

Two more steps—

Zass gave tongue at last, a screech that meant defiant warning. The black in the hole appeared to possess more density, but the girl could not be sure whether she saw with her eyes or in a picture raised by fear to unnerve her just as she was so close to steady footing. Certainly there was movement from below, and she could see a kind of circling in the dark which was not unlike the whirling of the sand stream when those horrors that dwelt within it were minded to seek the world beyond.

She clamped her teeth hard, refusing to be panicked into a misstep now to carry her down into—that!

One step. She brought up her eyes, refusing now to watch. The movement of dark within dark reached her as a sick giddiness. Instead, she forced her head around again and eyed the goal toward which she edged.

Out of the hole arose what looked like the spray of a fountain. Was it liquid or a reddish light formed of so many brilliant sparks that it could well seem a liquid? Against all her determined will, Simsa’s attention was drawn to it. Like the whirling of the dark that appeared to give it birth, it caught and held the eyes—drew—

Pain, so sharp, so intense that Simsa could not suppress a choking cry following upon its first throb. On her bare right arm was a wink of light, a drop, a spark, of that which was playing higher and higher, spreading out farther and farther to encompass the whole of the dark well.

She caught her breath in a second sob and, with one of the greatest efforts she had ever made, tore her gaze from the enchantment of that fountain and took the final step which brought her to the safety of the tunnel floor. But she slipped and began to topple back into the column of silver-red flame.

Once more, those claws locked on her flesh, this time on one shoulder, sliding her along the floor, her flesh scraped raw by the harsh stone. On her arm that spark still lived and ate into her flesh viciously.

Beside her on one side squatted Zass, her wings fanning, uttering small mewling cries of distress. On her left settled the ponderous green body. The claw passed from her shoulder to the wrist of her painful arm. That was drawn upward even as the alien crouched yet lower. Then the girl felt the scraping of those mandibles across her skin and she shuddered in spite of the pain that already bit into her. That touch repelled her as much as if one of the tentacles of a river dweller had grasped her. A liquid flooded the place where the spark clung and drops of a strong-smelling gel ran sluggishly down her forearm from the point of claw contact.

The angry fire in the spark was quenched, though Simsa felt still an ache such as a bad bruise might well leave. The claw grasp loosened and Simsa swiftly withdrew her arm. Although this touch had been for her benefit, and she had no doubt of that, still the contact had brought distaste, even nausea.

She had no trouble seeing that the alien had left a gob of gel over the wound and that it was hardening, for she could feel the pull of it on her skin. Again the long, furless, doubled-jointed arm swung out, but not this time to grasp any part of her; rather, it struck her almost with the force of a blow, pushing her farther from the spouting fountain, on down this new portion of the corridor.

For a moment, she sprawled from the vigor of that shove and then she raised from all fours to her feet and came halfway around. Zass, with a second croaking call, took to the air while the inhabitant of these ways, again on all fours, butted the side of its head against Simsa, sending the girl on. She received a fleeting message, far less clear than the others, yet warning enough.

What wrought now within the well could not yet be through with them, not if they lingered near that fiery fountain. Simsa began to run. Her large companion, for all the awkwardness of its person, moved with a swift glide that took it to the fore until, with an appearance of exasperation it snapped out, its mandibles catching the untidy ends of Simsa’s cloak. There they held with the fierce might of a metal trap so that the girl was drawn along at a speed to set her gasping.

They rounded a twisting turn in the tunnel and Simsa near lost her footing at that sharp pull which started her in another direction. Having left the light that the well fountain had given them when it streamed, Simsa could see only dark walls a little away as they passed, and those because of the emanation of the huge body beside her. There were more openings which they passed at racing speed, a second turn, and then ahead was light bright enough so that, even at this distance, it made Simsa blink. For the first time since she had begun her journey past the well, she became aware of the warmth of the rod against her body.

That this thing of power had faded completely out of her mind during her escape from the fountain-thing broke in her thoughts as an unanswerable puzzle. Simsa of the Burrows had begun to believe the rod had no limits. Even the Elder One had not roused in her when the pain in her body had come as a warning. The intrusion of the Elder One into her mind, which she generally half-resented, now completely surprised and frightened her by its absence. Simsa of the Burrows, the girl knew then, had been uppermost during that encounter. She had, from the first moment of finding her likeness and opening herself to that inanimate material which had held for so long, come to depend more and more upon the Elder One—to believe that she was invincible, to resent the knowledge held by her. Now this. Where was the Elder One and why?

The alien bore her steadily along toward the distant light and they emerged from the tunnel into a place so utterly different from the barren rock of this world that Simsa was astounded and could only stare and wonder.

This was not a desert land. If the great basin or hollow was indeed floored with rock, there was no sign of it. Growths certainly large enough to be termed trees were set in ordered rows, an opening—a path—between their ranks directly before the three from the tunnel. The boles were not too large; Simsa could probably have clasped arms about the nearest and interlocked fingers on the far side. In color they were a smooth bluish green, lacking the roughness of bark. But at a height to clear the round head of the alien, who now rose to sit as it had when it first confronted the girl, they branched thickly with fine stems which bore long ribbon leaves of blue, rippling continually, though Simsa could feel no hint of any breeze.

Behind these guardians of the path were masses of shorter foliage changing in color from a deep true blue, through green, to yellow. And those, too, rustled and trembled as if they provided hiding places for all manner of would-be ambushers. Zass gave a cry of triumph, soaring up and out to fly above the trees in the manner of her kind, and when Simsa’s eyes followed her, she saw an oddity about the sky. That haze that had prevailed over the rock land looked much thicker here, though more luminous, and the stifling heat of the outer world was tempered by many degrees.

The tree-guarded path ran straight and even on it, there was no hint of rock or sand, but rather a thick growth of what appeared to be very short-stemmed, thickly packed vegetation in patches of color, some yellow, some green, some blue, and here and there a showing of silver white. The farther the path ran, the taller grew the guardian trees. But those were not high enough to hide what was at the end of the way.

Like unto the rocky upcrops that walled in this oasis of vegetation, there stood a structure: a square cube of blue which shaded to green at its crest. And its green crest was patterned with evenly spaced windows or entrances open to the air with no suggestion of any barriers in the form of doors. Appearing at some of these were creatures that so well-matched the one accompanying the girl that they could have been cloned. These took off from the openings in easy leaps, propelled by their heavy back legs. They might have been diving down into the mass of growth below them like swimmers entering a sea. Once they were swallowed up by the reach of tree and bush, they vanished completely from sight. None of them had appeared to notice the three who had come out of the dark rock ways.

Zass wheeled and turned, coming back to settle on Simsa’s shoulder, rubbing her furred head against the girl’s cheek.

“It is the place.” The alien accented the explanation beamed through the zorsal by a jerky movement of a clawed forelimb.

“The place? What place?” Since that compelling hold had been lifted from her, Simsa had made no attempt to go farther into the open, to step upon the plant carpet of the road.

“The place of the nest.” Zass’s thought had, the girl decided, an impatient twinge, some emotion of the alien carried through. Perhaps to their guide this was like Kuxortal, so well-known a landmark that the whole world should recognize it.

Having so answered her, the big green creature dropped once more to four feet and scuttled on. Nor did it look back when Simsa made no attempt to follow. She was curious, yes, but her caution had been triggered by the inhabitant of the sand stream, by the well, and certainly by the alien itself. That wariness which had served her so well as a nameless, kinless one in the Burrows came to the fore. Thus she deliberately squatted down on her heels, narrowly surveying all that lay before her. The one who had brought her here appeared to have forgotten her entirely, and suddenly pushed with force between two of the tree trunks into the deep curtain of the foliage and was gone.

Simsa absently rubbed the fountain wound, where soreness still made itself felt. Under the touch of her fingers the jellied stuff stripped away and she looked down to see there was not even the thin line of any hurt. On impulse, she took up the rod in her two hands clasped together and let its head sway forward so that the horn of the moon pointed toward that building. There was no more coming or going at the high windows. It might have been deserted long since.

Without any willing or conscious movement on her part, the rod began to move. She stiffened her grasp, fighting to keep it still, and discovered that all her strength was not enough to bring it into the same position. The horns were above, they were below—they were this side and that—but Simsa, for all her trying, could not hold them in a line with the green-crested block.

She let the rod drop to her knees to think this out. The rod could draw upon power—it could transmit also the power within her. It was a weapon as well as a warning shield. Therefore—she attempted to reason carefully and coolly (as she would have done having found some mysterious thing buried back in the Burrows, something that would be worth much if she could only solve its purpose)—therefore, perhaps there was a defense here. But why? Was it—Simsa sat up straighter and her lips parted a little, her heart beat faster—was it that such as the Elder One had been known here in long-ago times and that, thus, there had been good reason for the indwellers to learn how to withstand the power that Simsa could call upon?

Elder One—her thought was as sharp as a call—Elder One! Though she strove to throw down every defense, there came no answer this time. She was still the lesser—the Simsa of the Burrows, for all her rod and her jeweled trappings. She was—alone!

5

It was the needs of that third part of her, her body, that broke through Simsa’s absorption. Hunger and thirst at last overcame such reviving effects as the rod had provided. She surveyed the vegetation now with more than just an interest in the fact that it existed at all. Searching the pocket within her cloak, she found a half-packet of survival wafers—thin and tasteless stuff, meant to contain in the smallest possible portions enough nourishment to keep a humanoid alive and moving. There was no more of the precious water, only a soaked area about the flask in the cloak to betray its loss.

Though Simsa in this lifetime had never before been off her home world, she well knew from warnings aboard the ship and from the stories of the space crew that, fair as a new planet might be, any of its liquids or natural food might also act as swift poison for the off-worlder.

She held a half-wafer in her hand and it crumbled yet more in this aridity. To attempt to eat that was to choke on dry crumbs. All this growth below argued that it must draw upon real water—and surely not some stream of moving sand.

She was aware that Zass had dropped out of sight, gone questing lower in the brush behind the trees. Hunger and thirst—answers to those were more important now for her continued existence, than thought-searching for a second self. Surely, the Elder One had never been bound to one world in her own time—Simsa had too often caught hints of a wide-roving life before that one had chosen to wait in her own way for deliverance by a far descended female of her blood.

Simsa’s lips quirked in a half-smile. Let the Elder One sulk or haughtily withdraw. But somehow, she was sure that were she to make some wrong choice, to endanger her body, there would be a speedy warning. This was a part of their unwilling partnership that she had never put to the test before.

Under her feet, the splotches of mosslike vegetation that carpeted the roadway gave forth a sharp scent, but not an unpleasing one. The odor certainly had none of the rankness of the Burrows’ ways, nor any warning stench such as the sand river had given. She walked forward with an outward air of confidence which she held to as she would have held the cloak had it been cooler here. As she turned her head from side to side, striving to pierce the wall of thick growth that twined and matted behind the tree columns, she could see no possible opening, no hint of any fruit or berry ripening there, certainly no sound or scent of water.

Into her mind thrust the raw triumph of Zass. Somewhere in that maze, the zorsal must have made a kill, for only freshly slain prey could bring that particular involuntary instant of communication. Zass had killed, but what and where there was no answer. And, if the zorsal feasted on some form of life subject to the aliens—perhaps so much the worse for both of them.

Firmly, she pushed the new stab of fear to one side. She had come close enough to the cube building to see that the only openings at all, on this side at least, were those at the edge of the roof. Between the ground and those was only a smooth wall. Perhaps the aliens, with their own sticky body fluids, could make such a climb with ease, but there was no such opportunity for her.