The Game of Stars and Comets (51 page)

My father talked sometimes about natural gifts. He made sure that I understood men were not all alike. Of course, I don't mean just aliens and Terrans (
that
any one with a tenth of a brain in his head already knew) but men—Terrans themselves—had different talents they used—when they knew how. Once he started to talk about Psi, then shut up quick and got that locked look on his face. It had been healing he had been explaining to me then. I wished he'd go on—but he never mentioned that again.

There were the healers. Mostly they were girls or young women. I had seen them do some things in the out-back which were not explained on any tape. My father appeared to dislike them, or else there was something about their talents he distrusted. He was always uneasy when one of them was anywhere near him. Once I saw him deliberately turn and walk away when a healer at Jonas Holding was going to speak to him.

She was a nice looking young woman radiating a kind of peaceful feeling. Even being near a healer could make a person feel warm and comfortable inside. I saw her stand and look after my father and there was a sad look on her face. She even half raised her hand as if to lay a healer's touch on something which was not there at all.

However there were other gifts my father did discuss—such as psychometry, where you could hold something in your two hands and tell through your own feelings about it who had made it—where it came from. Then there was foreseeing—though my father said that was rare and not always to be trusted. There were some people, too, who could read thoughts—tell what a person was thinking—though he had never met anyone like that—just knew about them from tapes, and things he had seen once or twice.

Aliens had a lot of such powers, but they did not always work between Terran-human and them. Our brains were too different for that. Though sometimes those aliens who were the farthest from us in body structure seemed closest in mind.

My father would never use any weapon stronger than a stunner, and he never had a blazer in the wagon. He was strong about that—but he made me a good marksman with both stunner and tangler. We did have times when we needed those. I had a sand cat charge me once and its foreclaws dug gouges out of the earth about a finger's length from my boot toes when I brought it down. We just left it sleeping there. My father never killed for pelts the way some lopers did. He was very firm about that even when the Portsiders wanted him to bring in jaz fur and he knew right well where a colony of jaz nested. It was not because jaz were too easy to kill—a jaz at nesting time was something a wise loper kept away from. They hunted men with a cunning which made them a nasty kind of danger if you got up among the Spurs.

Yes, my father gave me an odd education—both by tape and by example. He had a different rep among the other lopers, too. About every two years or so, he deliberately crossed the Halb, he said to visit the mines. We did trade with one or two. But I got to know early that was not the main reason we took a chance most lopers did not care for—in spite of the mine transport paying off so well.

Because we never headed straight for the mine territory. Instead we'd circle around, always stretching on each trip a little farther north. Then we'd visit dead holdings. Though my father told me early we were never to mention that. At first he would go in among the deserted buildings alone; he'd even suit up—he had a full Survey suit such as they wore on the first-in trips on other planets. He always ordered me to stay back at the trek wagon with the com. It was also his order that if he did not report every so many time units I was to inspan and get the hell out as fast as I could make it, making me swear on the Faith of Fortune I wouldn't try to come in after him.

My father was a true-believer and he raised me so. At least I was believer enough to know that you did not break that oath—ever—that a man's own faith in himself would rot and fade away if he ever did.

After a while he did not suit up if the holding was one he had visited before, but he still did if it was a new one. When he came back he would dictate into a tape just what he had noticed—even the smallest things—such as what kind of weeds were growing now in the old gardens, and whether anything had been looted out of the houses—nothing ever was. The strangest thing was that there were never any animals or birds to be found anywhere near a holding which had been cleared out by the Shadows. But vegetation always grew very rankly there. Not the imported food stuffs which had been specially conditioned for planting on Voor, but weird things which were not even of the native Voor growth we knew. My father did drawings of that—only he wasn't too skilled at the job; but he described it carefully, though he never brought back any specimens.

After every such visit he did something else which would have made any Portside official think he was ready for reconditioning. He would make me tie him up, wrists and feet, and put him into a sealed sleep bag. I was to keep him so for a day and a night. Again he made me swear that if he started to talk funny or fought to get loose I was to inspan and get out—leave him there there all fastened down and not come back for maybe two, three days. I had to swear I would because he was so demanding about it. Though I think I would have risked breaking
that
oath if I had ever had to. Luckily it never happened like he feared.

I knew what he searched for—though we never discussed it—some answer to the riddle of the Shadow doom. It was not for the benefit of Voor at large, but because he had within him a burning desire to bring to justice, if such a thing were possible, that which had ended his stable life.

Voorlopers are solitary men. A number, like my father, were refugees from blasted northern holdings who had survived because they were away when the doom struck. Others were misfits, loners, men who could not root themselves in any place, but were ever wandering in search of something which perhaps even they could never understand. They talked very little, their long stretches of lonely travel taking from them much of the power to communicate with their fellows, except over such elemental things as trade.

If one chanced upon a holding at the harvest festival he might linger, watching the festivities with a detached wonder, as one might view the rites of an alien people.

There were several who traveled in pairs but my father and I were the only two of close kinship I had knowledge of. They had no women. If they assuaged a natural hunger of the body it might be in one of the Portcity pleasure houses (even on such an undeveloped world as Voor a few of these existed, mainly for the patronage of the ship's crews). However, no woman ever rode in a trek wagon.

Women are jealousy guarded on Voor as they are on most frontier planets. The ratio is perhaps one female to three males, for pioneer life did not generally appeal to unwed women. Those who came were already hand-fasted to some man. Remarriage came quickly to widows, and daughters were prized, even more than sons, since a man might tie to his holding some highly desirable male help could he provide a wife for one of the unattached.

Only the healers came and went freely. Their very natures were their safeguards and they were valued so highly that, had any man raised his eyes to one covetously, he would have signed his own warrant for outlawry and quick death thereafter. Healers did wed when their powers began to wane, for those powers were at their strongest from the beginning of adolescence until they were in their third decade. Then they had their pick of husbands, for there was every hope that any daughter of such a union might inherit the gift.

We were at trade in the northmost of the holdings—Ratterslea—and I had then grown to match my father in inches, though I was still not his match in strength, when I first heard directly of my mother. I had taken a packet of thread and needles (a favored betrothal gift on Voor) to the Headhouse where Ratter's wife received me in guest style, the tankard of fall ale and the bread-of-traveler set out on a tray she held herself, rather to my surprise, for I was no son of any holder, nor an off-worlder.

She was tall, and in her hip-length smock of bright cloth with its many bands of embroidery to show off her skill, her breeches and boots of well-tanned gar hide, smooth as the thread I had to offer, she made a fine figure of a woman. Her hair was the color of darth leaves when the first breath of frost wind touches them—ruddy and yet gold—and it was bound about her head like those bands of ceremony worn on other worlds by great rulers—those they term "crowns."

In her sun-browned face her eyes were a strange, vivid green and they were eyes which searched and probed, so that I, who seldom said even a word to any woman, felt very ill at ease and wondered if I had in truth washed all the road dust from me before I had dared to come.

"Greeting, Bart s'Lorn." Her voice was rich and deep as the shade of her hair.

I was a little startled at her words for though I was very used to being called "Bart," yet this was the first time in my memory that I had been also greeted by my full clan-family name. "s'Lorn" was strange to me—it was the first time I had heard the reference to my long dead mother.

"Lady of the Holding," I produced my best guest courtesy, "may fortune smile upon this rooftree and your daughters be as handmaidens to that fortune. I have that which you have ordered and it is our wish that it find favor with you—"

I held out the packet but she did not look to it. Rather still she studied me and I grew yet more uneasy and even wary, though I was sure that in no way could I have offended her or any under her roof.

"Bart s'Lorn," she repeated the name and there was something in the tone of her voice which I was stranger to. "You are very like—male though you are. Eat, drink, bless so this house—"

I was yet further amazed, for such a greeting is given only to a close kinsman, one who is esteemed and very welcome in either good times or bad. Since she did not take the packet from me, I placed it on a nearby table and did as she bade, even as if I had been a youngling of her own household and not near a man grown. Carefully I broke the bread-of-the-traveler into two portions. One I dipped within the tankard, end down. Though at that moment my mouth seemed dry and I was indeed far from hunger, I put the moistened portion between my lips. Steadying the tray with one capable hand, my hostess did the same with the other piece of the thin round, thus sharing food in ceremony with me.

"Yes," she said slowly when she had swallowed that traditional mouthful, "you have very much the look of her, Voor born though you are."

That bite of moistened bread which I had taken seemed to stick within my throat. I gulped it down hastily.

"Lady of the Holding, you speak of s'Lorn—that name my mother bore." There were questions in plenty pushing into my mind and as yet I could not sort out which were of the greatest importance. At that moment it rushed upon me how much I had always longed to know of the past and yet had never dared to ask of my father.

"Sister's sister she was to me." The relationship my hostess claimed was one by marriage. In some clan holdings it was as close as that of shared bloodkin. "My sister was Hagar Lorn s'Brim, and her sister—she pledged to Mac Turley s'Ban."

I bowed. "Lady, forgive my ignorance—"

"Which is none of your fault," she countered briskly. "All men and women know of that which came to Mac Turley s'Ban and what a wound it gave him, which has not healed even to this day. Did he not send you here, not coming himself, for he will have no speech or meeting with those who once knew him in happiness and full strength of clan." She shook her head slightly.

"He has made of you a holdless, kinless one. Does this ride hard on you?" Again I met her eyes and felt that measure of being weighed and searched, as if she would have each thought and feeling out of me, plain before her as a reading tape is spread.

It was my turn to stand straight and proud. Holdless and kinless I might be in her eyes, but in my own I had a place I knew at that moment I would not trade for all the land and gear which made up the wealth this prosperous holding displayed with pride.

"I am a voorloper, lady. My father has, I think, no reason to find me less than he wishes—"

"And
you
wish?"

"Lady, I think that I could never be other than I am."

"Well, it is true that a gar trained to the hunt cannot be harnessed to the plow—else the spirit be broke. Also perhaps the Shadow has touched also on you—"

"The Shadow!" Even here below the Halb that word had an evil ring.

"There are shadows and Shadows," she returned. "Enter, Bart s'Lorn, now that we have met at last, let me know more of you."

She ushered me through the great hall where there were many about their tasks: a girl at the loom, another carding the fleecy hair of those small gars which are bred for their coats, older women busy at oven and open stove. They all looked at me with frank curiosity and appraisal and I put on an outward show of what I hoped equaled my father's habitual aloofness. Though I marked one girl who sat on a chair, not a stool, before the fire and who did not look at me at all, rather gazed as one who could see beyond wall and room, dreaming with open eyes. Her hands were idle and lay limp, palm up upon her knees, and her upper smock was of dull green, shorter than those generally worn, more akin to the riding dress of a traveler.

She we passed and came into the far end of the room where there were two cushioned chairs. On one of those my hostess seated herself, waving me to the other. Straightway she began questioning me and such was the authority in her voice I found myself answering, not through polite courtesy, resenting inwardly that any so attempt to enter my life, but rather as if indeed she
were
bloodkin and had such a concern for me that she had a right to know such things.

Though the holding was far from Portcity, she was plainly one well learned in many things and with a taste for some of the same ways of life my father honored. She had questions concerning him also, where we went and what we did.

At first I tried to evade her directness, thinking that our concerns were none of hers in truth. Then she spoke to me emphatically: