The Game of Stars and Comets (62 page)

The Zacathans had their records. In their long lives (so much longer than the years any of us might aspire to) they had made it their purpose to search out, to catalogue all of the alien remains which could be found. There had been many such finds—the Caves of Astra, the half-melted and blasted cities on Limbo—even greater discoveries. Machines so intricate and obtuse that our best trained techs could not begin to understand them. Some had kept on running, even on deserted worlds—for how long—a million years—a billion?

I remembered my father's other abiding interest, the gathering of such material on Forerunner finds as trickled through to the records of Portcity, his stories at our lonely campfires of what had been found—and how we had only barely touched the edge of that knowledge which the forerunners had lived with for eons. However, there were no known Forerunner ruins here—or at least none which had been discovered.

It was easy to build and speculate on such a hint. We had our First-In Scouts—perhaps the Forerunners had had such explorers also. One had landed on Voor—or whatever name he had given this world in his turn—come to trouble in some fashion and—

Illo's face broke the mask which fell on her when she withdrew into her healer's trance. It twisted as if she were in some actual pain and with a sudden movement she hurled the chain from her. I gave a cry of half protest and fell on my knees, scrabbling through the grass with my hands until my fingers found that smooth length.

The girl had not yet opened her eyes, but her tormented expression appeared to intensify. She shivered so violently that she near over-balanced and did waver from one side to the other, until, having reclaimed her find, I reached her side and threw my arm about her shoulders, drawing her close until I could steady her against my own body. I could feel still that shivering of—fear—revulsion—?

She raised her hands and covered her face. Now she was sobbing, harsh, hurting cries like those of an animal in pain. I heard an answering deep lowering from Witol, bellows from Bru and Wobru. The gars gathered beyond the slight rise on which we stood, their horned heads raised as they stared at us with their large eyes.

"Illo—what is it?" Perhaps some of the warmth of my body, the quiet soothing I strove very hard to put into my voice, reached her.

She lowered one hand, caught fiercely at my arm with a grip so hard that her nails bit through the leather of my sleeve so that I could actually feel pain in the flesh beneath. There were no tears on her cheek; though her breath came in those ragged, breast-tearing sobs, her eyes were now open—and dry. She stared straight before her and there was a look about her as if she were in truth being drawn away in some terrifying fashion, that though I held her and had not and would not let go, still she was leaving me.

Dropping the chain once more to the ground I seized her by both upper arms. I shook her with what was close to a brutal assault. Her head wobbled back and forth on her shoulders. She gasped, cried out. Only that sobbing dwindled, now she did not move to shake off my hold. Instead she took a stumbling step closer, her arms came up about my body and she held to me as tightly as if I were the only safeguard against being swept away by some peril I could neither see nor understand.

For a very long moment we stood thus. Her shivering lessened, her head had fallen forward against my shoulder, and I heard her ragged, forced breathing growing less urgent, more normal.

For the second time now I dared ask:

"What is it?"

For a second or two I was afraid that my question was going to arouse once more whatever inner storm had gripped her. She did shiver, and her hold on me tightened. Then she raised her head. Her mouth trembled but somehow she mastered whatever force had so rent her.

"I was—I was—" she shook her head in a small helpless movement as if she could summon no words to explain what had happened in that space of time which she had held the necklet and tried to understand any secret it might know.

"They—" she began again, "they did not think—think as we do. My head—it was as if someone ran through my head opening doors—letting out all kinds of things—things I could not understand—that I never knew that I could contain. It all came at once! Bart—whoever wore that—there was some terrible danger and he—she—it—" She shook her head from side to side. "I don't even know what it was!" Her voice was near a wail. "But there was fear—terrible fear which ate—ate right into me. And—how one who was like us—even like—If I could only have understood, had time—it moved so fast—"

She loosed her hold on me with one hand and put it to her forehead. "So fast—and I could not follow its thoughts—they were like the flash of blaster flame—hurting—eating—in my head. But something happened here or near here—when that was dropped. And it was bad—worse than we, any of us being as we are, can understand."

Though she did not seem able to make better sense than that, the words she did find to attempt to explain steadied her. She loosed her hold on me utterly and I saw her self possession return as she spoke. She looked down to where the necklet lay.

"Bart—I dare not touch that again. But it has a message—we—someone with more training or talent than I—could understand—unravel. It is important, that much I know. Can you carry it?"

I stooped and picked it up for the second time. In my hands it was nothing but a loop of strange metal bearing, part way down its broken length, that curved bar. I felt nothing but the smooth surface. And I said so. Illo nodded.

"Put it away—safely. When—if—we get back to Portcity that must be sent off-world—to one of the League centers for sensitive learning where they have the trained handlers who deal with Forerunner things. It may be one of the keys such as men have always longed to find—if it is given to the right person who has a mind trained and safeguarded well enough to be able to put it to use."

I coiled the chain into a small ball and stowed it in my belt pouch. She watched me fasten the loop of that closely as if wishing to make very sure that her discovery would be safe. How much of what she believed was the truth I could not tell. But that she thought it was correct I had no doubts at all.

We left that ridge and tramped on, the gars scattered back into their usual line of march, no longer watching us as intently as they had when Illo had tried to learn the secret of the thing. Neither of us spoke of it, yet I was oddly aware with every stride I took of the rub of the purse back and forth against my thigh, and of what lay within it.

I had to keep a tight curb upon my tongue for I wanted very much to question her. Perhaps, I told myself, such questions might even be good, helping her to sort out whatever stream of wild impressions had overcome her. Yet it was not right, I thought, to put her to such a task now—not unless she opened the subject. Which she did not do.

Once more we camped on the plains. This time with no fire, since we were out of the range of the ruins which had a certain "safe" area about them—no animals venturing any nearer than our gars would go. It was the gars who again played sentry for us. Illo was not silent this night. Instead she talked almost feverishly, as if she must hear the sound of voices—using that sound as a barrier against something else.

She spoke of her wanderings as a healer—she seemed to have ranged distances by choice rather than settled long at any hold or settlement—going up along the coast, striking inland—visiting Portcity to renew certain supplies and talk with ships' medics. For off-worlders though those were, they were more keenly interested in any planet form of medicine and healing than the mine medics. She said that many of them compiled records of unusual healing processes from world to world—and she had found them most willing to tell her what they could of worlds where there were also healers not unlike herself in training—people who could diagnose illness often by touch alone and subdue pain and conquer disease by drawing it out of the body by their wills.

That she had an inquiring mind I already knew, but now I saw that she had a deep thirst for knowledge, save that as all healers it was not a knowledge which depended upon machines and technology, but rather upon what lay within a man or woman—dormant sometimes—to be tapped by those lucky or learned enough to be able to open the right door.

The right door—what she had said about that feeling in her brain when she had tried to psyche the chain returned to me. Opened doors with that behind them spilling out in no pattern which she could understand. Such a thing—it could lead to madness. I resolved in that moment that if it were possible I would never let her touch the chain again. She had been strong enough this time to throw it from her before the chaos it bred in her mind had conquered. There might come another time when her thirst for the unknown would lead her to a second try and she could not again be as strong-willed or fortunate.

Voor's Grove
indeed lay in the shadow of the Tangle. It surprised me that knowing, as they must have done, the sinister qualities of that menacing wilderness, the settlers here had drawn so close to such impenetrable mystery. Or perhaps in the days when the settlement had been first decided upon the Tangle was not considered such a menace, that men believed they might fire or dig it out of their way, altering the land as they had done successfully on other worlds.

Also, since the abandonment of the settlement, the Tangle may have grown unchecked, but then that result would differ from what had happened elsewhere. For in past years a careful check upon it had shown the growth to be static, that it neither expanded in summer seasons or retracted when the plains droughts and frosts hit hard, as they did in a regular cycle of planet weather.

Plainly Voor's Grove had been well situated as far as its founders, unaware of the Shadow doom, had decided. It lay at the uniting of two rivers—those which came together to form the greater flood of the Halb as it flowed east and south. One of these streams reached westward and north—the other came directly from the northern mounts, breaking from under the curtain of the Tangle as no other that I knew of did.

River trade in the plains lands might have built up well—had the dream of settlements here not been broken. Unfailing water in the dry years was a thing to be prized. The settlement had been placed on the vee of land where the two rivers boiled on to their uniting.

That water which flowed from the west came with a swifter current and was fairly clear. But that of the second stream moved far more slowly and was turgid, brownish and opaque. I remembered the armored thing which had been storm washed to the wagon and I would not have ventured to ford that stream no matter how shallow it measured.

Luckily there was no need to venture into what might be a water trap. There had been a bridge once, built of the same stone, brought in from the mountain quarries to the west, which formed the walls of the ruins. Enough of that span remained to give us footing.

Voor's Grove itself, even though thickly cloaked by the same poisonous-appearing vegetation as Mungo's had been, was, I could see, much the larger settlement. It was older, too, by about ten years, and had been meant by its ambitious founders to be the capital of the plains lands—hence its name.

Once more the gars would not come near, halting well away as Illo and I approached the tumbled, water-washed stones of what had once been the bridge. For all its greater size it presented the same picture of ruins and growth gone wild as had the settlement in which I had been born. I studied my companion carefully as she surveyed what we could see.

"No memories?" I could not help asking, for she was frowning as one might who was attempting to recall something which remained as only a trace at the very edge which thought could reach.

She shook her head instead of answering me, but now she moved with some purpose. Shucking her back pack she opened it and searched among the contents to bring out a skin bag which I had already seen—from which she had taken the salve which had brought me relief from the poisonous sap. She opened that and, dipping in two finger tips, brought out a gob which she proceeded to rub over her face and then both of her hands. When she had done she looked at me.

"This will save us from another accident such as you faced in Mungo's Town—"

Save—
us?
Then she expected me to accompany her into Voor's Grove. Perhaps for a second or two I thought of refusing, but I could not. My curiosity was far too aroused. Would we find the same signs of a massacre here?

I rubbed away until those portions of my skin which would be exposed were well covered with a film of grease carrying an odd but not unpleasant scent. It had drawn the pain from my blisters which were fast healing so they showed now only as reddish marks.

I dropped my pack beside hers and checked my belt equipment. There were tangler and stunner, both of which were fresh charged, my long knife, the pouch in which rode that enigma we had discovered in the grass, my torch—though it was still early afternoon and we should not be so long in there that I would use that. Yes, all the defenses any loper could carry were close to my hand.

Relieving the gars of their burdens, we stacked that packed gear at a point directly opposite the remains of the bridge and then set out to see what might lie within Voor's. Illo took the lead, moving out while I steadied the water carriers against the other gear, before I could call to her to wait.

She balanced lightly and skillfully from one stone to the next, twice having to jump to cross gaps in the masonry. The brown water swirling below had an oily look to it, as if it were not really water but the exudation of some unpleasant growth. I watched it carefully before I began the crossing. There was no movement to be sighted on the surface or under it. However the tumble of stones could well give good footing to any such monster as we had seen pull itself up on the wagon. So I stood there on sentry duty, my hand on the butt of my stunner, alert to any movement, until Illo was across. As a healer she wore no weapons—had refused the other stunner, and had only the long-bladed belt knife which was a working tool for any traveler. That would be useless against the scaled and armored thing.