The Forerunner Factor (42 page)

There was a dam almost before she could draw a deep breath again. The first rock had disappeared, eaten up by the swirling grit, but the second, which had followed, kept its upper surface above the rising sand.

Thorn returned his weapon to its loop with one hand, the other one caught tight about her wrist.

“Jump! Jump!”

She could do no else than follow his command, for he had already moved to leap and would not release his hold. Thus, they threw themselves forward together, he loosing his hand only as they left their rock of refuge. Simsa fell as she had been trained, adding new bruises to her score.

Thorn was already up, once more reaching for her. The sand was banking higher, rivulets forced their way across the lower edge of the topmost block. There was no time to hesitate. She sprang first, reaching a higher landing on the other side, swinging around to narrowly watch the sand.

That pocking and lumping which had been the signal for the monsters’ attack before was beginning again. Simsa brought out the rod. It might well be all that was between them and death now—if, as he feared, his weapon was exhausted.

Just beyond was a narrow strip of small stone-marked beach. Where they had landed were rocks and already Thorn had his back to those, was glancing from the weapon he had drawn again to those movements of the sand about the improvised dam.

Simsa looked up hopefully. There were no promising hollows here. The cliff wall was sheer above a level with her head. Zass, who had returned to circle over them on that wild venture across the fallen rocks, gave a series of guttural cries and rose higher in ever-widening circles, one of which finally reached beyond the edge of the cliff. She did not return. The girl felt the warmth of the rod and knew that if they must make a stand, this fight was again hers as well as his. Could the haze that had been before summoned once more give them cover?

Deep in her there was a stir. The Elder One was rousing and, seeing a tentacle stretch from the river toward her, Simsa knew that this time perhaps a surrender on her part to that other personality might be their only chance at safety.

“Can you cover me?” Her companion’s demand was sharp, and Simsa, concerned with her own apprehension at the stirring of the Elder One, looked at him in confusion.

He was wrestling with his weapon, turning its butt around in his hand, tapping it against his palm.

“With that thing of yours”—he was even more impatient now—“can you hold them back for a space?” He nodded at the rod.

“What do you plan?” she asked, then swung the rod around so that the ray shot from the tip of the nearest moon crescent to transfix a yellow sucker-marked pointed ribbon, as thick as Thorn’s wrist, which flailed at the spaceman’s scuffed and battered boots.

“We need stairs. Hold them and I shall see what can be done!”

Almost mechanically, and without aim, she swept the glow of the rod across the now fiercely troubled sand surface. Thorn wheeled about to face that expanse of sheer rock. Did he think to bring down another rockslide? But what would that profit him if they were buried in it?

What shot from the barrel of his weapon was not the wide beam that had eaten out the rocks and reduced the monster company to odorous ash as they crossed the plain. Instead, a ray no thicker than her smallest finger was aimed steadily while a blackened hole appeared. Another and another, each some distance apart. Yes—a ladder which would not give under their strength but instead afford them a way out!

Reassured that Thorn knew what he was doing, Simsa kept to her own task, that of driving the sand creatures off. Perhaps they had learned the threat of the rod from her earlier attacks upon their kind, for they were in no hurry to crawl out of their holes. Tentacles waved and were reduced to oily smears. Then, though the sand heaved and whirled in an even more frenzied manner, there came no more signs of creatures emerging.

A muffled exclamation brought her head around for an instant or two. Simsa could see that the ray from his weapon, thin and light as it was, had begun to ripple along its length, and she guessed that the source of its energy was failing.

Thorn flitted it more quickly now from the carving of one space to the gouging out of the next, racing against both time and his dwindling resource. The last dark splotch before the ray utterly disappeared was hardly more than a very shallow groove. Tucking the now useless weapon-tool back in his belt, Thorn knelt to jerk at the latches on his space boots, freeing his feet and locking the footgear by their fastening to his belt.

He gave a last glance to the boiling surface of the stream and then jerked a thumb at the cliff fast.

“Climb!”

Simsa resolutely shook her head. “Go yourself. I will stay and buy us what time fortune will favor.”

Thorn stared sharply at her and then centered his gaze on the rod, almost as if he would will that into his own hand as he had made the rocks earlier do his bidding. But it was plain, without any more words between them, that this game must be played by her rules and not his.

He turned and caught at the first of the holes he had cut in the barrier while Simsa, drawing upon all the depths of will within her, allowed the Elder One to venture forth.

Ah, this space-going intelligence was apt in a point of peril. Yes, one must well keep one’s eyes upon such species, for they learned so quickly that they often neglected the proper controls in their search for raw power. However, this was no time to argue the points of any such case. Simsa, the Elder One, flourished the rod as she would a whip to send some shadow lurker squalling. The bluish ray became a cloud to thicken and slide across the sand.

Thorn made good time up the rock ladder and Simsa, tucking the rod to safety, followed. But as she climbed, she discovered that the failure of the weapon he had used was marked by the shallow indentation of the high holes. She did not look down or try to squint upward at the other climber. Instead, she slowed until a voice from above brought her to a stop.

“Not so fast—these are the hardest—” Thorn called hoarsely, as if the effort he had forced his body to was sapping once more his small measure of strength.

How long did he believe she could continue to hang there by her fingers and toes? This was proving a far harder journey, even with no darkness and no pit of flames, than the first she had taken into the lost valley.

She could hear a scrambling sound, the hard breathing of one putting his body to an ultimate task. So much did Simsa of the Burrows hear, but the interpretation came from the Elder One.

This new race of space-faring species had determination, even if their unopened minds hampered them so much. Tools were things outside themselves, dead things of wood and metal, until they were roused to limited life. It seemed clearer and clearer that they were unaware, totally unaware, of other potentialities. What could they not accomplish if they learned—

And how would lives across the star lanes be changed if they did? For good or ill? Those two on the ship who had thought to use her—
her
—for their own knowledge, were there an overnumber of such among these new people?

The Elder One speculated and her thoughts passed through Simsa’s mind, hinting that perhaps, when there was time and space for privacy, she might be set a number of difficult questions by this other self of hers. For the moment, that strength which filled the Elder One kept her as tight and safe against the stark wall as if she stood on a well-balanced ledge. She did not fear that her grip with fingers and toes might be lost.

More scrambling sounds from above and then something dangled down the cliff face to nearly strike her in the face. The belt of the spaceman, its loops stripped of all the tools and weapons that he might carry, swung close to her left hand, and she dared to loosen her hold to seize upon it.

But she did not rest her full weight upon that tie; rather, she still climbed, with the belt wreathed tightly around her arm as a support. Then a hand reached down, laced fingers into the jeweled belt that held her kilt, and heaved her up and over the lip of stone, grazing her flesh in the process in a rough end to that journey. Once more they had found refuge on a flat level of rock—one so wide she had begun to think that they had lost the valley descent that lay to the north and that this was merely more of the plain raised to a greater height.

The sky haze was thick, seeming to curdle about the two of them as though it were a serpent winding its length back and forth across the sky, now nearly touching the rock at their feet, now capriciously raising to give them great range of sight.

Simsa saw Thorn sitting only a little away from the cliff edge, his belt in a coil about his feet, his bandaged head and arms limply forward as though he had spent the last of that burst of strength which had brought him this far.

She scrambled up to stand gazing north and west. Somewhere there cut the valley with all its promise of food, drink, and shelter—or perhaps its threat from the furred ones who had already brought down the invading flitter. They had welcomed her after a fashion, but how would they greet Thorn or treat her for bringing him hither? Simsa of the Burrows arose in her to demand that from the Elder One. But the latter was still in command of her slender dark body and was turning her a fraction to face what seemed a deepening of the haze.

The penetrating cry of Zass broke the silence of the cliff top as the zorsal planed down to Simsa’s shoulder, nuzzling against her cheek with soft chirrups. Then, through that heavier gathering of the haze, came moving shapes. The girl braced herself. Perhaps none of the blob-things could climb this high, but it was plain that someone—or something—had come seeking them.

10

The first of the half-seen shapes emerged from the mist, one of the green furred people of the valley. Simsa half-expected to sight a weapon in those claws of the upper appendages. Or was this creature only war-armed with such mysteries as the Elder One had helped them to call up? There was no way of reading either anger or suspicion on a face that was mainly huge eyes and a mandible-equipped mouth.

Thorn fought to his feet, wavering there as he stood to confront the newcomers. On impulse, the girl moved closer to him, not to help but because she intended to knock from his hold any weapon he might produce for attack. But both hands dangled at his sides. He seemed to be expending the full amount of any energy left him just to hold up his head in order to face these newcomers squarely.

For more than one of the valley dwellers followed in the wake of the first, moving out to form a half-circle, all the two humans and Zass. Simsa had seen enough tapes, enough strangers from off-world in flesh, fur, or scales, not to be surprised at the strange forms into which nature had fitted intelligence on other worlds. Somehow she was sure that Thorn would realize that now they dealt with “people” and not with monsters intent only on the hunt.

But it was the Elder One who was still in charge and Simsa found herself mouthing strange syllables which she could not translate but which she knew were a mingled greeting and plea for understanding. Judging by the only standards she understood—those of the Burrows—she was content to let this other carry the argument.

Having uttered that strange hum-hiss of speech, she remained where she was, the rod now held up before her, as a runner on her home world, sent to clear the road, might carry the House-crest of a lordling as he sped ahead of that lord’s entourage. She felt the combined sight of those others. How she could sense such impact she could not explain. It was almost as if the dead Greeta had, in a manner, achieved her desire, and all the parts that went to make up Simsa’s black, silver-haired body had been laid open to be observed, weighed, disputed over—or accepted.

The leader of the valley force went to all fours to approach closer, the clack-clack of those long claws sounding louder. Simsa looked to Thorn. The man had somehow conquered the weakness he had before shown and stood with straight shoulders and upheld head. His hands moved in a very ancient gesture of peace, which was common enough to the species she did have knowledge of. Both his hands were held on a level with his shoulders, his bare palms exposed to the strangers’ sight. He wanted no struggle.

“This—one—from—overhead?”

The question was awkwardly phrased, but Simsa understood.

“Yes.”

“From—this—you—ran?”

“Not this one.” Simsa was willing to give Thorn the benefit of the doubt. After all, he had never held such thoughts concerning her future as those other two revealed.

“Why—here?”

“For me”—she could not evade that—“but he is not an enemy.”

Was she right in declaring that? Even now she could not be sure.

“What does he, then?”

“He is a hunter of old knowledge. He believes I have such knowledge—he would take me to those who gather it.”

“He is—not—of—the—home. He is of the short-lived kind.”

If thoughts could hold contempt, that fairly dripped from the speech she caught with the Elder One’s aid.

“He—not as those you know.” A flash of knowledge came to her then, such as so often broke through the barriers set by Simsa of the Burrows’ wary mind. These creatures were female—or at least of a sex approaching what her own kind thought female. They equated Thorn with a state of being to which they had long ago reduced their own male counterparts—a small but necessary evil. Certainly very short-lived, if they had their own way in the matter.

“He is a hunter of knowledge,” she continued sharply. The shadow thought of what was expedient to do with mere males had come too fast upon the uttering of the judgment of his usefulness.

“Paugh!” An exclamation of disgust was not easily translated to words, but came from the spokeswoman of that other party. “What has such as he to store knowledge in?”

On impulse, Simsa spoke aloud to her companion. “They—I do not know how much you may have picked up from thought reading—but these hold males in contempt. Will you open your mind to them—and quickly.”