The Forerunner Factor (38 page)

This could be welcome sleep and a good dream. Yes, she was in no rock hollow, but underground, sheltered as always, where she had learned to be quick and clever and had few equals. There was Ferwar true enough; she need only put out her hand and she could clasp the edge of the old woman’s outer cloak fashioned of patches upon patches.

“Ferwar?”

At her call, the other swung around. Her face was very wrinkled and there was a difference in her eyes. She answered, with a zorsal’s loudest scream.

7

“Zass!” Her own cry of recognition roused Simsa out of the deep exhaustion that had held her.

The zorsal perched on a point of broken wall well above the girl’s head, nodding so that the stiffly held antennae were a misty pattern against the haze-shrouded sky. Zass was licking her paws with smug satisfaction, cleaning sticky patches from her claws and then her coat. The smell of overripe fruit reached Simsa, and she knew that her companion had been raiding those supplies she had brought out of the valley. Or had she? A quick glance at the bundle showed no change of wrapping. But Zass had the gift of wings—what did that lengthy journey through dark back to the valley mean to her?

Simsa whistled weakly. The zorsal paused in her leisurely toilet to look down. Her muzzle wrinkled, and her tongue shaped one of the low cries that the girl knew of old. Zass was very satisfied with herself. Now the small furred body rose as the leathern wings unfurled and she flapped down to squat once again, this time beside the girl’s body as Simsa fought bruises and stiff muscles to sit up.

Zass’s self-satisfaction was familiar to Simsa. Just so did a zorsal signify a successful finish to any hunt. Then it was true—that last small doubt was gone. Thorn was here, somewhere in this wilderness of barren rock, and Zass had found him.

The girl ate a little of the fruit, too, soft now, not far from spoilage under the glaring heat of this outer country, allowed herself sips of water. She offered some to Zass, but the zorsal refused it.

It was hard to reckon time, but the sky haze was darker close to the eastern horizon and brightest behind the tumbled rocks, the upstanding cubes. She had best be on her way. Simsa grimaced sourly as she got to her feet. Those burns from the tunnel’s sparks, all the scrapes and bruises of her journey made themselves into small torments when she strove to stretch, to rub muscles in the calves of her legs which knotted painfully. As she shouldered the bag of supplies she spoke once more to Zass, trying at the same time to empty the fore of her mind of all but that face she had seen on the haze of the valley.

“Thorn!”

Zass clapped her wings, producing a smacking sound which echoed among these rocks or ruins, whichever they might be, then took lazily to the air. She flapped about in a circle as Simsa worked her way out of that foreguardian of the valley world and trod once again the rock plain between cracked fissures. Having seen the girl so prepared to follow, Zass’s flight straightened into a line pointing east yet, to Simsa’s surprise, south. The girl had expected a northern pathway.

Nor did Zass keep to the air, but returned now and then to perch on the girl’s shoulder and chitter what Simsa understood as complaints. Always the zorsal disliked any long march since, winged, she could outfly those moving on the ground, and this was difficult ground to cover because of the constant breakage of the fissures. Sometimes it was necessary to detour for a space to get around one, and Simsa remained alert to any movement within, expecting at any moment to witness an upward surge of sand heralding the emergence of a monster. She swung the rod back and forth at waist level, always careful to point the horn tips toward any fissure she had to pass.

She was suddenly aware that the wind was coming in faster puffs than usual. Then her head came up with a jerk, and she faced directly into the lightest of breezes, still near furnace hot from the day.

Burning. Something burnt, and a stench of other odors that she had not breathed since she had left the foul agelessness of the Burrows. She moved the rod up and out. It was warmer in her hand. Another of the beasts about to attack?

Zass took off, her claw tips scouring Simsa’s shoulder where there was no longer any protecting cloak. The zorsal angled even more to the right, heading over two large fissures and giving a loud squawking cry. Simsa began to run, though her way was a zigzag and not a straight path, to where the zorsal was again circling in a wheeling pattern of flight, continuing to give voice.

The other river! Simsa made herself slow lest she suddenly skid over some lip of rock into that flood. What had Thorn to do with rivers—such rivers as befouled this world?

She came upon disaster so warned, but still astounded. Zass had settled down—not on the rocky shore of the stream, but on a mass of broken metal which protruded out of the ripples of sand that must be tugging at it, though so far not able to swallow up the wreckage.

A flitter right enough, but one that looked as if a giant had caught the machine out of the sky and twisted it between his hands even as one might twist reeds to fashion a basket—only this had then been idly thrown aside. Marks on the rock showed where the flyer had skidded after a forceful landing, heading straight for the river which now held a good third of it in its thick grasp.

There were no signs of life about the cabin of the downed flitter. The rough, transparent, glasslike substance the off-worlders used to give vision but also withstand any attack of enemy or nature was so crackled that she could not see inside. The worst was that the skid that had taken it into the river had landed it against, and well up on, the far bank. Between Simsa and the wreck was a broad band of flowing sand.

The girl dropped her bundle and grimaced at being faced again by the problem of sand rivers and their hidden inhabitants. There was a chance that she could leap from the solid base of this shore to the top of the wreckage, but she did not know how well-based the latter might be. She might land on a mass which would then simply tip her off into that muck which she had no intention of entering.

The zorsal was walking across the clouded upper portion, pausing now and then to lower her head and peer into a portion fairly clear of such veiling. Then she fanned her wings and sank her claws, extended as Simsa could see to their fullest reach, into one of the cracks, rising in a small jump with the aid of her wings while all four limbs were anchored in the shattered material.

A crackling answered her and Zass bounced higher into the air, bearing with her a three-cornered fragment. With a series of splitting sounds, the rest of the badly broken window dome fell out and slipped down the tail of the flitter to cascade into the sand, where it speedily disappeared.

Simsa had no difficulty now in seeing bodies trapped in the wreckage; two of them, wearing the shining, one-piece uniforms of spacers, were wedged within. One had fallen forward, his or her head resting on unmoving knees. But it was the other Simsa saw and knew.

Her haze-borne vision in the valley was true. Thorn, his head up and back, sat pinned there. His eyes were closed and there was that thin runnel of blood coming from the corner of his mouth. Dead?

On her hands and knees, lest she somehow lose balance and fall into the sand trap, the girl crept to the very edge of the cut in the rock that held the river, and tried to distinguish any signs of life. But he was too far away.

“Does—he—live?” She aimed her most urgent thought, adding to it all she had learned, at the zorsal, uncertain whether Zass could even pick up that question. Surely she knew the difference between life and death. Any hunter would. Simsa watched the zorsal alight again and move forward, with a strange caution. Zass might be approaching some trap which she must spring. With her hind claws caught in a pinch grip on the frame of the one-time viewplate, she folded her wings and swung head down, her front hand-feet widely spread apart.

A moment later, those closed one on either side of Thorn’s lolling head, and shifted it around a fraction while the zorsal studied the bleeding mouth, the closed eyes, with the experience of predator.

The sensation that was her answer reached Simsa just as the zorsal let go and moved over to test in the same way the other body.

Alive! But how badly hurt? And was that flitter equipped with the same help-summoner as the Life Boat carried? Would it summon assistance in time from wherever this party had planeted? It might well be that all her solicitude was not needed, that already help was on the way, help Simsa had no intention of meeting.

The second one was dead—again an assured report from the zorsal. Zass had tugged the other’s head up, and Simsa saw that this was that woman whose mind she had touched only to be revolted and frightened. This was that one who would seek out secrets with a knife, or by machines that would maim and kill! Knowledge so sought was debased and vile. Before she thought, Simsa followed the customs of the Burrows and spat as she would have into the footprints of one upon whom she called ill fortune. But there was no need for that. The ill fortune of her own kind—the fortune they believed the worst—had already struck.

Her own kind? Simsa straightened and clutched the rod as if to turn it on herself. No! Not now—but there were no barriers that she could hold for long against that moving inside her. Out of hiding, or the resting place into which she had retreated after she had worked her power, the Elder One was again emerging.

There was already that slight shift in Simsa’s sight. Some things sharpened, others faded as if there dwelt in her now another range of vision. Yet when she looked at Thorn, she knew that this was a task from which she would not be allowed to turn, even if she wanted to—that that broken body set just out of her reach had importance not only to Simsa of the Burrows, but also to her who co-dwelt within.

Zass loosened her hold on the woman, allowing the dead to crumple back. The zorsal did not have the strength or means to free the spaceman—that would lie with Simsa. And the Elder One—by all means the Elder One!

It seemed to Simsa, even as she yielded once more to the other, that each time she did so, the Elder One grew stronger, more ready to take command. Only, having once begun the withdrawal of herself, she had always known she could no longer withstand the other.

What could the Elder One do here that Simsa could not? Build a bridge? Of what? The cloak was shredded. And Simsa would not go down into that flood of sand and what it must conceal to reach the broken flyer.

The zorsal had returned to Thorn, settling on the edge of the frame that had enclosed the broken transparent bubble, and once more set her foreclaws again expertly to cradle the unconscious spaceman’s head. This time she turned it cautiously so that his closed eyes were directly facing Simsa. Having adjusted the hold to her satisfaction, Zass raised her own head and gave a chirrup which was a bid for attention.

In Simsa’s hand the rod moved, or rather the Elder One moved it. There came a beam of light, green-blue—rippling as if it spouted from a fountain, narrowing until the ray appeared solid in its intensity. It struck directly above and between those closed eyes.

So it was held steady, not by Simsa’s will, but by that other’s. The knowledge of what was happening was not shared. Simsa could only guess that this was meant to benefit. Then that beam flashed off as speedily as it had first shown.

Now it returned to alter target, striking upon the wreckage itself. No narrow beam now, rather a new kind of haze, puffing forth to envelop the whole of the broken flitter, encasing it, growing ever more dense. Simsa, who must stand by and watch while the Elder One was in command, uttered a cry.

The wreck, which was now but a black shadow within the haze the rod had engendered, slid away from the other bank, dropping its crumpled nose into the sand river. Yet the girl was certain that the Elder One had no mind to lose Thorn. Why then let him fall into the hidden territory of the slime blobs?

The haze thickened below, thinned above. The broken observation bubble was nearly clear, while the underpinning was hidden. Yet still it moved.

It moved and, within her, there came in answer such a draining of energy and life as she had never known, even when the Elder One had ruthlessly used her to some purpose such as the releasing of the valley whirlwind. There was no way to fight, to protect herself—she could only give and give.

Having woven its web of haze, the rod flipped back against her breasts and again Simsa cried out—this time in pain, for it might have been a glowing brand held forcibly to her skin. Nothing drifted or spun from the horns now. And there was nothing left within her to give. What the Elder One had wrought exhausted her. She fell upon her knees, the rod dropping from her grasp as she braced herself with both hands and straightened arms to keep from crashing headlong on the rock.

There was an impatience rising in her now—not borne from her own thoughts or desires, but out of the wishes of the Elder One. It would seem that she found this Simsa too frail, too feeble—

While the haze-enclosed wreck was down across the river now, it had not dipped into it as she had expected it to do, rather seemed supported by the haze upon the surface of the flowing sand. However, as she watched, the even flow of the sand was troubled by a dimpling of its surface; small hillocks broke out of the flow. And from these grew, like upside-down roots of hideous and poisonous plants, the weaving yellow tentacles of the blobs, small at first but spreading ever larger, longer.

It would seem, however, that the rod’s haze bore within it some ingredient that held them back. For, though they strove to penetrate it with tentacle point, those strings of unwholesome flesh were powerless to fasten on the wreckage.

The flitter’s movement toward where Simsa crouched was very slow. She could see that the whole of its bulk had cleared the opposite shore and was pointed toward the rock rim immediately below her. She had to brace her head upon her folded arm, lying near flat on the rock now, her strength seemingly continuing to drain without visible threading through the rod.