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The Door Through Space · The Door Through Space

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  Author's note, I've always wanted to write, but not until I discovered the
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  old pulp's science fantasy magazines at the age of sixteen did this general desire become
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  a specific urge to write science fantasy adventures. I took a lot of detours
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  on the way. I discovered s F in its golden age, the age
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  of Kutner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett at Hamilton, and
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  Jack Vance. But while I was still collecting rejection slips for my early efforts,
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  the fashion changed. Adventures on faraway worlds and strange dimensions went out of
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  fashion, and the new look in science fiction, emphasis on the science,
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  came in. So my first stories were straight science fiction, and I'm not
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  trying to put down that kind of story. It has its place. By
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  and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as
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  this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science
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  we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at ease with
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  a rapidly changing world. But Fashion's change, old Love's return, and now
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  that Sputnik's clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons. The readers of
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  science fiction are willing to wait for tomorrow to read tomorrow's headlines once again.
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  I think there is a place, a wish, a need, and hunger
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  for the wonder and color of the world, way out, the world beyond
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  the stars, the world we won't live to see. That is why I
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  wrote The Door through Space Marian Zimmer Bradley, end of author's note, Chapter
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  one. Beyond the Spaceport gates, the men of the CARSA were hunting down
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  a thief. I heard the shrill cries, the pad padding of feet and
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  strides just a little too long and loping to be human, raising echoes all
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  down the dark, dusty streets leading up to the main square, But the
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  square itself lay empty in the crimson noon of Wolf. Overhead the dim red
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  amber of thigh coronas Wolf's old and dying sun gave out a pale and heatless
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  light. The pair of Space Force guards at the gates, wearing the black
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  leathers of the Terran Empire, shockers holstered at their belts, were drowsing under
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  the arched gateway, where the star and rocket emblem proclaimed the domain of Terra.
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  One of them, a snubnosed youngster only a few weeks out from Earth,
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  cocked an inquisitive ear at the cries and scuffling feet, then jerked his
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  head at me, Hi, cargol, you can talk there, LINGO,
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  what's going on out there? I stepped out past the gateway to listen.
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  There was still no one to be seen in the square. It lay white
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  and wind swept, a barricade of emptiness. To one side the space sport
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  and the sky scraper of the Terran headquarters, and at the other side the
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  clutter of low buildings, the street shine, the little spaceport cafe smelling of
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  coffee and jocko, and the dark opening mouths of streets that rambled down into
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  the Karsa, the old town, the Native quarter. But I was alone
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  in the square, with the shrill cries closer now, raising echoes from the
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  enclosing walls, and the loping of many feet down one of the dirty streets.
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  Then I saw him running, dodging a hail of stones flying around his
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  head. Someone or something small and cloaked and agile behind him. The still
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  faceless mob howled and threw stones. I could not yet understand the cries,
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  but they were out for blood, and I knew it, I said,
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  briefly, trouble coming. Just before the mobs built out into the square.
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  The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, his head jerking from side
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  to side so rapidly that it was impossible to get even a fleeting impression of
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  his face, human or non human, familiar or bizarre. Then, like
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  a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight for the gateway and safety.
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  And behind him the loping mob yelled and howled, and came, pouring
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  over half the square, just half. Then, by that sudden intuition which
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  permeates even the most crazed mob with some semblance of reason, they came to
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  a ragged halt, heads turning from side to side. I stepped up on
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  the lower step of the headquarters building and looked over them. Most of them
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  were chalks, the furred man tall non humans of the Carsa, and not
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  the better class. Their fur was unkempt, their tails naked with filth and
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  disease. Their leather aprons hung in tatters. One or two in the crowd
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  were humans, the dregs of the Karsa. But the star and rocket emblem
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  blazoned across the Spaceport gates sobered even the wildest bloodlust somewhat. They milled and
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  shifted uneasily in their half of the square. For a moment, I did
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  not see where their quarry had gone. Then I saw him crouched not four
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  feet from me, in a patch of shadow. Simultaneously the mob saw him
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  huddled just beyond the gateway, and a howl of frustration and rage went ringing
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  round the square. Someone threw a stone. It zipped over my head,
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  narrowly missing me, and landed at the feet of the black leathered guard.
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  He jerked his head up and gestured with the shakra, which had suddenly come
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  unholstered. The gesture should have been enough. On Wolf, Taran law has
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  been written in blood and fire and exploding atoms, and the line is drawn
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  firm and clear. The men of the Space Force do not interfere in the
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  old town or in any of the native cities. But when violent steps over
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  the threshold, passing the blazon of the Star and Rocket, punishment is swift
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  and terrible. The threat should have been enough. Instead, a howl of
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  abuse went up from the crowd. Taranin son of the Ape. The Space
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  Force guards were shouldered to shoulder behind me. Now, the snubnosed kid,
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  looking slightly pale, called out, get inside the gates, cargol if I
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  have to shoot. The older man motioned him to silence. Wait, Cargole,
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  he called. I nodded to show that I heard you talk there,
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  LINGO, tell them to haul off. Damned if I want to shoot.
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  I stepped down and walked into the open square, across the crumbled white stones
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  toward the ragged mob. Even with two armed Space Force men at my back.
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  It made my skin crawl, but I flung up my empty hand in
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  token of peace. Take your mob out of the square, I shouted,
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  in the jargon of the Karsa, this territory is held in compact of peace.
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  Settle your quarrels Elsewhere. There was a little stirring in the crowd.
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  The shock of being addressed in their own tongue instead of the Terran standard which
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  the Empire had forced on Wolf held them silent for a minute. I had
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  learned that long ago that speaking an any of the languages of Wolf would give
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  me a minute's advantage, but only a minute. Then one of the mob
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  yelled, we'll go if you give him to us. He's no right to
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  tearan sanctuary. I walked over to the huddled dwarf, miserably trying to make
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  himself smaller against the wall. I nudged him with my foot. Get up,
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  Who are you? The hood fell away from his face as he twitched
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  to his feet. He was trembling violently. In the shadow of the hood.
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  I saw a furred face, a quivering, velvety muzzle, and great,
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  soft golden eyes which held intelligence and terror. What have you done?
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  Can't you talk? He held out the tray, which he had shielded under
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  his cloak, an ordinary peddler's tray. Toys sell toys, children, You
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  got em. I shook my head and pushed the creature away, with only
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  a glance at the array of delicately crafted mannikins, tiny animals, prisms,
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  and crystal whirligigs. You'd better get out of here, scram down that street.
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  I pointed. A voice from the crowd shouted again, and it had
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  a very ugly sound. He's a spy of never Nebron. The dwarfish non
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  human gabbled something, then doubled behind me. I saw him dodge faint in
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  the direction of the gates. Then as the crowd surged that way, run
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  for the street shrine across the square, slipping from recess to recess of the
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  wall. A hail of stones went flying in that direction. The little toy
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  sellar dodged into the street shrine. Then there was a horse ah of terror,
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  and the crowd edged away, surged backward. The next minute it had
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  begun to melt away, its entity, dissolving into separate creatures, slipping into
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  the side alleys and the dark streets that disgorged into the square. Within three
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  minutes, the square lay empty again. In the pale crimson noon, the
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  kid in black leather let his breath go and swore, Slipping his shocker into
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  his holster. He stared and demanded profanely, where'd the little fellow go?
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  Who knows? The other shrugged, probably sneaked into one of the alleys.
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  Did you see where he went? Cargo? I came slowly back to the
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  gateway. To me, it had seemed that he ducked into the street shrine
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  and vanished into thin air. But I've lived on Wolf long enough to know
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  you can't trust your eyes here, I said so, and the kid swore
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  again, gulping, more upset than he wanted to admit. Does this kind
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  of thing happen often all the time? His companion assured him soberly with a
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  sidewise wink at me. I didn't return the wink. The kid wouldn't let
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  it drop. Where did you learn their lingo, mister Cargle. I've been
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  on Wolf a long time, I said, spun on my heel and walked
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  toward headquarters. I tried not to hear, but their voices followed me anyhow,
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  discreetly lowered, but not lowered enough. Kid, don't you know who
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  he is? That's Cargole of the Secret Service six years ago. He was
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  the best man in intelligence. Before the voice lowered another decibel, and then
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  there was the kid's voice, asking, shaken, but what the hell happened
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  to his face? I should have been used to it by now. I'd
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  been hearing it more or less behind my back for six years. Well,
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  if my luck held, I'd never hear it again. I strode up the
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  white steps of the skyscraper to finish the arrangements that would take me away from
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  Wolf forever, to the other end of the Empire, to the other end
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  of the galaxy anywhere, so long as I need not wear my past like
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  a medallion round my neck, or blazoned and branded on what was left of
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  my ruined face. End of chapter one, Chapter two, the Terran Empire
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  has set its blazon on four hundred planets circling more than three hundred suns.
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  But no matter what the color of the sun, the number of the moons
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  overhead, or the geography of the planet, once you step inside a headquarters
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  building, you are on Earth, and Earth would be alien to many who
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  call themselves earthmen. Judging by the strangeness I always felt when I stepped into
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  that marble and glass world inside the sky scraper, I heard the sound of
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  my steps ringing into thin resonance along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes,
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  readjusting them painfully to the cold, yellowness of the lights. The traffic
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  division was efficiency made insolent in glass and chrome and polished steel mirrors and windows,
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  and looming electronic clerical machines. Most of one wall was taken up by
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  a TV monitor, which gave a view of the spaceport, a vast open
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  space lighted with blue, white mercury vapor lamps and a chained down skyscraper of
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  a starship littered over with swarming ants. The process crew was getting the big
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  ship ready for skylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a
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  third look eyed be on it when it lifted. Turning away from the monitored
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  spaceport, I watched myself stride forward in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere.
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  A tall man, a lean man, bleached out by years under a red
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  sun, and deeply scarred on both cheeks and around the mouth, even after
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  six years behind a desk. My neat business clothes suitable for an earth man
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  with a desk job didn't fit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on
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  the balls of my feet, approximating the lean, stooping walk of a dry
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  towner from the coronas plains. The clerk behind the sign marked transportation was a
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  little rabbit of a man with a sun lamped hand, barricaded by a small
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  sized spaceport of desk, and looking as if he liked being shut up there.
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  He looked up in civil inquiry, Can I do something for you?
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  My name's Cargle. Have you a pass for me? He stared. A
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  free pass aboard a starship is rare, except for professional spacement, which I
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  obviously wasn't. Let me check my records. He hedged and punched scanning buttons
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  on the glassy surface. Shadows came and went, and I saw myself half
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  reflected a tipsy shadow in a flurry of racing colors. The patterns finally stabilized,
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  and the clerk read off names. Brill Cameron, ah Yes, Cargle,
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  Race Andrew, Department thirty eight Transfer Transportation. Is that you? I
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  admitted it, and he started punching more buttons. When the sound of the
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  name made connection in whatever desk clerks use for a brain. He stopped with
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  his hand half way to the button. Are you Race Cargle of the Secret
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  Service? Sir? The race? It's right there, I said, gesturing
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  wearily at the projected pattern under the glassy surface. Why I thought, I
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  mean, everybody took it for granted. That is, I heard you thought
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  Cargo had been killed a long time ago, because his name never turned up
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  in news dispatches any more. I grinned sourly, seeing my image dissolve in
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  blurring shadows, and feeling the long heeled scar and my mouth draw up to
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  make the grin hideous. I'm cargole all right. I've been up on floor
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  thirty eight for six years, holding down a desk. Any clerk could handle
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  you. For instance, he gaped, he was a rabbit of a man
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  who had never stepped out of the safe, familiar boundaries of the Tarran trade
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  city. You mean you're the man who went to Charin in disguise and routed
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  out the lists, the man who scouted the Black Ridge and Shane Saw and
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  you've been working at a desk upstairs all these years. It's hard to believe,
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  sir. My mouth twitched. It had been hard for me to believe
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  while I was doing it. The pass right away, sir. He punched
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  buttons, and a printed chip of plastic extruded from the slot on the desktop.
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  Your finger print, please. He pressed my finger to the still soft
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  surface of the plastic, indelibly recording the print, waited for a moment for
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  it to harden, then laid the chip in the slot of a pneumatic tube.
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  I heard it woosh away. They'll check your finger print against that when
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  you board the ship. Skylift isn't till dawn, but you can go aboard
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  as soon as the process crew finishes with her. He glanced at the monitor
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  screen, where the swarming crew were still doing inexplicable things to the immobile spacecraft.
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  It will be another hour or two. Where are you going, mister
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  Cargle? Some planet in the hideas cluster, vain Wall, I think something
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  like that. What's it like there? How should I know? I'd never
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  been there either. I only knew that vain Wall had a red sun,
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  and the Terran leggate could use a trained intelligence officer and not pin him down
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  to a desk. There was respect and even envy in the little man's voice.
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  Could I buy you a drink before you go aboard, mister Cargle?
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  Thanks, but I've a few loose ends to tie up. I didn't,
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  but I was damned if I'd spend my last hour on Wolf under the eyes
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  of a desk bound rabbit who preferred his adventure safely second hand. But after
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  I had left the office in the building, I almost wished I had taken
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  him up on it. It would be at least an hour before I could
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  board the starship. With nothing to do but hash over old memories better forgotten.
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  The sun was lower now THI coronas is a dim star, a dying
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  star, and once past the crimson zenith of noon, its light slance into
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  a long, pale, reddish twilight. Four of Wolf's five moons were clustered
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  in a pale bouquet overhead, mingling thin violet moonlight into the crimson dusk.
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  The shadows were blue and purple in the empty square. As I walked across
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  the stones and stood looking down one of the side streets, a few steps
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  and I was in an untidy slum which might have been on another world from
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  the neat bright trade city which lay west of the spaceport. The carsa was
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  alive and reeking, with the sounds and smells of human and half human life.
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  A naked child, diminutive and golden fird, darted between two of the
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  chinked pebble houses and disappeared, spilling fragile laughter like breaking glass. A little
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  beast, half snake and half cat, crawled across a roof, spread leathery
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  wings and flapped to the ground. The sour, pungent reek of incense from
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  the open street shrine made my nostrils twitch, and a hulked form inside not
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  human cast me a surly green glare. As I passed, I turned,
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  retracing my steps. There was no danger, of course, so close to
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  the trade city. Even on such planets as wolf Terra's laws are respected within
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  earshot of their gates. But there had been rioting here and in Charin during
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  the last month. After the display of mob violence this afternoon, a lone
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  Terran, unarmed, might turn up as a solitary corpse flung on the steps
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  of the HQ building. There had been a time when I had walked alone
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  from chin Saw to the polar colony. I had known how to melt into
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  this kind of night, shabby and inconspicuous. A worn shirt cloak hunched around
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  my shoulders, weaponless except for the razor sharp skin in the clasp of the
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  cloak, walking on the balls on my feet like a dry towner, not
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  looking or sounding or smelling like an earth man. That rabbit in the traffic
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  office had stirred up things I'd be wiser to forget. It had been six
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  years, six years of slow death behind a desk, since the day when
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  Rakhael's censar had left me a marked man, death warrant written on my scarred
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  face anywhere outside the narrow confines of the Terran law on Wolf Recall Censar,
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  my fists clenched with the old impotent hate if I could get my hands on
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  him. It had been Recall who first led me through the byways of the
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  Kharsa, teaching me the jargon of a dozen tribes, the chirping call of
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  the Yamen, the way of the catman, of the rain forests, the
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  argate of the thieves market, the walk and step of the dry Tanners,
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  from Shansaw and d'elon and ard Karan, the patched cities of dusty salt stone
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  which spread out on the bottoms of Wolf's vanished oceans. Recall was from shansa
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  human tall as an earth man, weathered by salt and sun, and he
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  had worked for Terran intelligence since we were boys. We had traveled all over
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  our world together and found it good. And then, for some reason I
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  had never known, it had come to an end. Even now I was
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  not wholly sure why. He had erupted that day into violence and a final
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  explosion. Then he had disappeared, leaving me a marked man and a lonely
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  one. Julie had gone with him. I strode the streets of the slum,
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  unseeing my thoughts running a familiar channel. Julie, my kid's sister,
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  clinging around Rocall's neck, her gray eyes hating me. I had never seen
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  her again. That had been six years ago. One more adventure had shown
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  me that my usefulness to the Secret Service was over. Recall had vanished,
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  but he had left me a legacy, my name written in the sure scrolls
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  of death anywhere outside the safe boundaries of Terran law. A marked man.
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  I had gone back to slow stagnation behind a desk. I stood it as
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  long as I could. When it finally got too bad, Magnuson had been
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  sympathetic. He was the chief of Terran intelligence on Wolf, and I was
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  next in line for his job. But he understood when I quit. He'd
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  arranged the transfer and the pass, and I was leaving tonight. I was
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  nearly back to the spaceport by now across from the street shrine at the edge
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  of the square. It was here that little toy sellar had vanished, But
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  it was exactly like a thousand, a hundred thousand other street shrines on Wolf,
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  A smudge of incense reeking and stinking before the squatting image of Nebron,
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  the toad god, whose face and symbol were everywhere on Wolf. I stared
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  for a moment at the ugly idol, then slowly moved away. The lighted
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  curtains of the Spaceport cafe attracted my attention, and I went inside. A
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  few spaceport personnel and storm gear were drinking coffee at the counter, a pair
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  of furred chocks lounging beneath the mirrors at the far end, and a trio
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  of dry towner rangy weathered men in crimson and blue shirt cloaks were standing at
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  a wall shelf, eating Terran food with aloof dignity. In my business clothes,
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  I felt more conspicuous than the chalks. What place had a civilian here?
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  Between the uniforms of the spacemen and the colorful brilliance of the dry towners,
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  A snubnosed girl with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked
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  for jacko and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near the
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  dry towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One of
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  them without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone of his voice,
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  began to make elaborate comments on my entrance, my appearance, my ancestry,
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  and probably personal habits, all defied in the colorfully obscene dialect of shainsa
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  that had happened before. The wolf and sense of humor is only half human.
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  The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger, preferably an earth
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  man, to his very face, in an unknown language, perfectly deadpan.
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  In my civilian clothes, I was obviously fair game. A look or a
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  just sure of resentment would have lost face and dignity what the dry towners called
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  their kihar Permanently, I leaned over and remarked in their own dialect that I
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  would, at some future, an unspecified time, appreciate the opportunity to return
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  their compliments. By rights, they should have laughed, made some barbed remark
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  about my command of language, and crossed their hands in a symbol of jest.
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  Decently reversed on themselves. Then we would have bought each other a drink,
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  and that would be that. But it didn't happen that way, not
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  this time. The tallest of the three whirled, upsetting his drink. In
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  the process. I heard its thin shatter through the squeal of the alabaster haired
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  girl. As the chair crashed over. They faced me three abreast, and
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  one of them fumbled in the clasp of his shirt cloak. I edged backward,
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  my own hand, racing up for a skein I hadn't carried in six
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  years, and fronted them squarely, hoping I could face down the prospect of
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  a rough house. They wouldn't kill me this close to the h Q,
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  but at least I was in for an unpleasant mauling. I couldn't handle three
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  men, and if nerves were this taunt in the Karsa, I might get
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  knifed. Quite by accident, of course, the chocks moaned and gibbered.
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  The dry towners glared at me, and I tensed for the moment when their
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  steady stare would explode into violence. Then I became aware that they were gazing
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  not at me, but at something or some one behind me. The skeins
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  snipped back into the clasps of their cloaks. Then they broke rank, turned
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  and ran. They ran, blundering into stools, leaving havoc of upset benches
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  and broken crockery in their wake. One man barged into the counter, swore
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  and ran on, limping, and let my breath go. Something had put
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  the fear of God into those brutes, and it was at my own,
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  ugly mug. I turned and saw the girl. She was slight, with
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  waving hair like spun black glass circled with faint tracery of stars. A black
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  glass belt bound her narrow waist like clasped hands, and her robe stark white
• 21:49
  bore an ugly embroidery across the breast, the flat sprawl of a conventionalized toad
• 21:53
  god nebron. Her features were delicate, chiseled, pale, a dry top
• 22:00
  face, all human, all woman, but set in an alien and unearthly
• 22:03
  repose. The great eyes gleamed red. They were fixed, almost unseeing,
• 22:10
  but the crimson lips were curved with inhuman malice. She stood motionless, looking
• 22:15
  at me as if wondering why I had not run with the others. In
• 22:18
  half a second, the smile flickered off and was replaced by the startled look
• 22:22
  of recognition. Whoever and whatever she was, she had saved me a mauling.
• 22:27
  I started to phrase formal thanks, then broke off in astonishment. The
• 22:32
  cafe had emptied, and we were entirely alone. Even the chalks had leaped
• 22:36
  through an open window. I saw the whisk of a disappearing tail. We
• 22:41
  stood frozen, looking at one another, while the toad gods sprawled across her
• 22:44
  breasts rose and fell for half a dozen breaths. Then I took one step
• 22:48
  forward, and she took one step backward at the same instant. In one
• 22:52
  swift movement, she was outside in the dark street. It took me only
• 22:56
  an instant to get into the street after her. But as I stepped across
• 22:59
  the door, there was a little stirring in the air, like the rising
• 23:00
  of heat waves across the salt flats at noon. Then the street shrine was
• 23:06
  empty, and nowhere was there any sign of the girl. She had vanished.
• 23:11
  She simply was not there. I gaped at the empty shrine. She
• 23:15
  had stepped inside and vanished like a wraith of smoke, like like the little
• 23:19
  toy cellar they had hunted out of the carsa there were eyes in the street
• 23:23
  again, and becoming aware of where I was, I moved away. The
• 23:26
  shrines of Nebron are on every corner of Wolf. But this is one instance
• 23:32
  when familiarity does not breed contempt. The street was dark and seemed empty,
• 23:36
  but it was packed with all the little noises of living. I was not
• 23:41
  unobserved, and meddling with a street shrine would be just as dangerous as the
• 23:45
  skeins of my three loudmouthed, dry town roughnecks. I turned and crossed the
• 23:48
  square for the last time, turning toward the loom of the spaceship, filing
• 23:52
  the girl away as just another riddle of Wolf. I'd never solve. How
• 23:57
  wrong I was. End of chapter two, Chapter three, from the spaceport
• 24:07
  gates, exchanging brief greetings with the guards, I took a last look at
• 24:11
  the carsa for a minute, I toyed with the notion of just disappearing down
• 24:15
  one of those streets. It's not hard to disappear on Wolf, if you
• 24:18
  know how. And I knew, or had known once loyalty to Tara.
• 24:25
  What a Terra given me except a taste of color and adventure out there in
• 24:27
  the dry towns, and then taken it away again. If an earth man
• 24:33
  is very lucky and very careful, he lasts about ten years in intelligence.
• 24:37
  I had had two years more than my share, and I still knew enough
• 24:41
  to leave my Terran identity behind like a worn out jacket. I could seek
• 24:45
  out, recall, settle our blood feud, see Julie again. How could
• 24:49
  I see Julie again as her husband's murderer? No other way? Blood feud
• 24:55
  on wolf is a terrible and elaborate ritual of the code Duello. And once
• 24:59
  I stepped outside the borders of Aran law, sooner or later Rakhal and I
• 25:03
  would meet, and one of us would die. I looked back, just
• 25:07
  once at the dark rambling streets away from the square. Then I turned toward
• 25:12
  the blue white lights that hurt my eyes, and the starship that loomed huge
• 25:15
  and hateful before me. A steward in white took my fingerprint and led me
• 25:21
  to a coffin sized chamber. He brought me coffee and sandwiches I hadn't,
• 25:25
  after all, eaten in the spaceport cafe. Then got me into the skyhook
• 25:29
  and strapped me deftly and firmly into the acceleration cushions tugged at the Garranson belts
• 25:33
  until I ached all over. A long needle went into my arm, the
• 25:37
  narcotic that would keep me safely drowsy all through the terrible tug of interstellar acceleration.
• 25:45
  Doors clanged, buzzers vibrated lower down in the ship, men tramped the
• 25:48
  corridors, calling to one another in the language of the spaceports. I understood
• 25:53
  one word in four. I shut my eyes, not caring. At the
• 25:59
  end of the trip, it would be another star, another world, another
• 26:02
  language, another life. I had spent all my adult life on wolf.
• 26:07
  Julie had been a child under the red Star. But it was a pair
• 26:11
  of wide crimson eyes and black hair combed into ringlets, like spun black glass
• 26:15
  that went down with me, into the bottomless pit of sleep. Someone was
• 26:21
  shaking me, Ah, come on, cargle, wake up, man,
• 26:22
  shake your boots. My mouth foul tasting and stiff, fumbled at the shapes
• 26:26
  of words. Wahaven't woy what? My eyes throbbed. When I got them
• 26:33
  open, I saw two men in black leathers bending over me. We were
• 26:37
  still inside gravity. Get out of the skyhook you're comin with us. Wha,
• 26:44
  even through the layers of the sedative that got to me. Only a
• 26:47
  criminal under interstellar law can be removed from a passage paid starship once he has
• 26:51
  formally checked in on board I was legally at this moment on my planet of
• 26:56
  destination. I haven't been charged, arged. Did I say you had snapped?
• 27:03
  One man shut up, he's doped, the other said, hurriedly.
• 27:07
  Look, he continued, pronouncing every word loudly and distinctly. Get up,
• 27:11
  now, come with us. The coordinator will hold up blast off if we
• 27:15
  don't get off in three minutes, and operations will scream come on please.
• 27:21
  Then I was stumbling along the lighted, empty corridor, swaying between the two
• 27:23
  men, foggily realizing the crew must think me a fugitive caught trying to leave
• 27:27
  the planet. The locks dilated. A uniformed spaceman watched us, fussily regarding
• 27:33
  a chronometer. He fretted the dispatcher's office. We're doing the best we can.
• 27:37
  The Space Force man said, can you walk cargo? I could,
• 27:41
  though my feet were a little shaky on the ladders. The violet moonlight had
• 27:45
  deepened to mauve, and gusty winds spun tendrils of grit across my face.
• 27:51
  The Space Force men shepherded me, one on either side, to the gateway.
• 27:53
  What the hell is all? This is something wrong with my pass?
• 27:57
  The guard shook his head. How would I know? Magnuson put out the
• 28:02
  order take it up with him. Believe me, I muttered, I will.
• 28:07
  They looked at each other, hell said one. He's not under arrest.
• 28:10
  We don't have to haul him around like a convict. Can you walk
• 28:12
  all right now, cargle. You know where the Secret Service office is,
• 28:15
  don't you floor thirty eight? The chief wants you and make it fast.
• 28:19
  I knew it made no sense to ask questions. They obviously knew no more
• 28:23
  than I did. I asked, anyhow are they holding the ship for me?
• 28:27
  I'm supposed to be leaving on it, not that one, the guard
• 28:30
  answered, jerking his head toward the spaceport. I looked back just in time
• 28:34
  to see the dust dimmed ship leap upward, briefly whitening in the field of
• 28:37
  searchlights, and vanish into the surging clouds above. My head was clearing fast,
• 28:42
  and anger speeded up the process. The HQ building was empty and the
• 28:47
  chill silence of just before dawn. I had to rout out a dozing elevator
• 28:52
  operator, and as the lift swooped upward, my anger rose with it.
• 28:56
  I wasn't working for Magnuson any more, What right had he or anybody to
• 28:59
  gram off an outbound starship like a criminal. By the time I barged into
• 29:03
  his office, I was spoiling for a fight. The Secret Service office was
• 29:07
  full of grayish pink morning and yellow lights left on from the night before.
• 29:11
  Magduson at his desk looked as if he'd slept in his rumpled uniform. He
• 29:15
  was a big bull of a man, and his littered desk looked as always
• 29:19
  like the track of a typhoon. In the salt flats, the clutter was
• 29:22
  weighed down here and there with solidopic cubes of the five Magnuson youngsters, and
• 29:26
  as usual, Magduson was fiddling with one of the cubes. He said,
• 29:30
  not looking up, Sorry to pull this at the last minute. Race.
• 29:34
  There was just time to put out a pull order and get you off the
• 29:37
  ship, but no time to explain. I glared at him. Seems I
• 29:41
  can't even get off the planet without trouble. You raised hell all the time
• 29:45
  I was here, But when I try to leave, what is this anyhow?
• 29:48
  I'm sick of being shoved around. Magduson made a conciliating gesture. Wait,
• 29:52
  until you hear. He began and broke off, looking at someone who
• 29:56
  was sitting in the chair in front of his desk, somebody whose back was
• 29:59
  turned to me. Then the person twisted, and I stopped cold, blinking
• 30:03
  and wondering if this were a hallucination and I'd wake up in the starship's skyhook,
• 30:07
  far out in space. Then the woman cried, Race, Race,
• 30:11
  don't you know me? I took one dazed step and another. Then she
• 30:18
  flew across the space between us, her thin arms tangling around my neck,
• 30:21
  and I caught her up, still disbelieving. Julie, Oh, Race.
• 30:26
  I thought I'd die when Mac told me you were leaving tonight. It's been
• 30:29
  the only thing that's kept me alive, knowing, knowing I'd see you.
• 30:33
  She sobbed and laughed, her face buried in my shoulder. I let her
• 30:37
  cry for a minute, then held my sister at arm's length for a moment.
• 30:40
  I had forgotten the six years that lay between us. Now I saw
• 30:42
  them, all of them printed plain on her face. Julie had been a
• 30:47
  pretty girl. Six years, had fined her face into beauty, but there
• 30:51
  was tension in the set of her shoulders and her gray eyes had looked on
• 30:53
  horrors. She looked tiny and thin and unbearably frail under the scanty folds of
• 31:00
  her fur robe, a dry town woman's robe. Her wrists were manacled the
• 31:04
  jeweled, tight bracelets fastened together by the links of a long, fine chain
• 31:08
  of silvered gilt, that clashed a little thinly as her hands fell to her
• 31:12
  sides. What's wrong, Julie, where's Rakhal? She shivered, And now
• 31:18
  I could see that she was in a state of shock. Gone. He's
• 31:22
  gone, That's all I know. And oh, Race, Race. He
• 31:26
  took Rindy with him. From the tone of her voice, I had thought
• 31:30
  she was sobbing. Now I realized that her eyes were dry. She was
• 31:33
  long past tears. Gently I unclasped her clenched fingers and put her back in
• 31:38
  the chair. She sat like a doll, her hands falling to her sides
• 31:41
  with a thin clash of chains. When I picked them up and laid them
• 31:45
  in her lap, she let them lie there motionless. I stood over her
• 31:48
  and demanded, who's Rindy? She didn't move Our daughter, Race, our
• 31:52
  little girl. Magnuson broke in his voice, harsh, well, cargle,
• 31:57
  Should I have let you leave. Don't be a damn fool. I was
• 32:01
  afraid you'd tell the poor kid she had to live with her own mistakes,
• 32:05
  growled Magnuson you're capable of it. For the first time, Julie showed a
• 32:08
  sign of animation. I was afraid to come to you, Mac. You
• 32:12
  never wanted me to marry. Recall either, water under the bridge, Magison
• 32:16
  grunted, And I've got lads of my own, Miss Cargle, Missus He
• 32:21
  stopped in distress, vaguely remembering that in the dry towns, an improper form
• 32:23
  of address can be a deadly insult. But she guessed his predicament. You
• 32:28
  used to call me Julie Mac. It will do now you've changed, he
• 32:31
  said quietly. Julie, then tell Race what you told me, all of
• 32:36
  it. She turned to me. I shouldn't have come for myself. I
• 32:39
  knew that Julie was proud, and she had always had the courage to live
• 32:44
  with her own mistakes. When I first saw her, I knew this wouldn't
• 32:46
  be anything so simple as the complaint of an abused wife or even an abandoned
• 32:51
  or deserted mother. I took a chair, watching her and listening she began,
• 32:57
  you made a mistake when you turn recall out of the service. Mac,
• 33:00
  in his way, he was the most loyal man you had on Wolf
• 33:04
  Magnuson had evidently not expected her to take this tack. He scowled and looked
• 33:07
  disconcerted, shifting uneasily in his big chair. But when Julie did not continue,
• 33:13
  obviously awaiting his answer, he said, Julie, he left me no
• 33:15
  choice. I never knew how his mind worked, that final deal he engineered.
• 33:21
  Have you any idea how much that costs the service? And have you
• 33:23
  taken a good look at your brother's face, Julie, girl. Julie raised
• 33:27
  her eyes slowly, and I saw her flinch. I knew how she felt.
• 33:30
  For three years, I had kept my mirror covered, growing an untidy
• 33:34
  straggle of beard, because it hid the scars and saved me the ordeal of
• 33:37
  facing myself to shave. Julie whispered, Pracaus is just as bad worse.
• 33:45
  That's some satisfaction, I said, and Mac stared at us, baffled.
• 33:49
  Even now I don't know what it was all about, and you never will,
• 33:52
  I said, for the hundredth time, we've been over this before,
• 33:55
  nobody could understand it unless he'd lived in the Dry Towns. Let's not talk
• 34:00
  about it. You talk, Julie, what brought you here like this?
• 34:02
  What about the kid? There's no way I can tell you the end without
• 34:06
  telling you the beginning, she said reasonably. At first, Recall worked as
• 34:09
  a trader in shan Saw. I wasn't surprised. The Dry Towns were the
• 34:15
  core of Terran trade on Wolf, and it was through their co operation that
• 34:17
  Terra existed here peaceably on a world only half human or less. The men
• 34:22
  of the Dry Towns existed strangely poised between two worlds. They had made dealings
• 34:28
  with the first Terran ships, and thus gave entrance to the wedge of the
• 34:30
  Terran Empire. And yet they stood proud and apart. They alone had never
• 34:36
  yielded to the terranizing, which overtakes all Empire planets. Sooner or later,
• 34:40
  there were no trade cities in the Dry Towns, and earthmen who went there
• 34:44
  unprotected faced a thousand deaths, each one worse than the last. There were
• 34:49
  those who said that the men of Shanesaw and Da'elon and ed Karin had sold
• 34:52
  the rest of Wolf to the Terrans to keep the Terrans from their own door.
• 34:57
  Even Racall, who had worked with Terra since boy hood, had finally
• 35:00
  come to a point of decision and gone his own way, And it was
• 35:04
  not Terra's way. That was what Julie was saying now he didn't like what
• 35:08
  Terra was doing on Wolf. I'm not so sure I like it myself.
• 35:13
  Mangueson interrupted her again. Do you know what Wolf was like when we came
• 35:16
  here? Have you seen the slave colony, the idiot's village? Your own
• 35:20
  brother went to Shansaw and routed out the lists, and Recall helped him,
• 35:24
  Julie reminded him. Even after he left you, he tried to keep out
• 35:28
  of things. He could have told them a good deal that would hurt you.
• 35:30
  After ten years in intelligence, you know I knew it was, although
• 35:35
  I wasn't going to tell Julie this one reason why. At the end,
• 35:37
  during that terrible explosion of violence which no normal Terran mind could comprehend, I
• 35:42
  had done my best to kill him. We had both known that after this
• 35:46
  the planet would not hold the two of us. We could both go on
• 35:50
  living only by dividing it Unevenly. I had been given the slow death of
• 35:53
  the Terran zone, and he had all the rest. But he never told
• 35:59
  them anything. I tell you he was one of the most loyal Maca grunted,
• 36:02
  Yeah, he's an angel. Go ahead. She didn't not immediately.
• 36:07
  Instead, she asked what sounded like an irrelevant question, Is it true what
• 36:12
  he told me that the Empire has a standing offer of a reward for a
• 36:15
  working model of a matter transmitter. That offer's been standing for three hundred years.
• 36:20
  Tarann reckoning one million credits cash. Don't tell me he was figuring to
• 36:24
  invent one. I don't think so, but I think he heard rumors about
• 36:29
  one. He said, with that kind of money, he could bargain the
• 36:30
  Terrans right out of Shansaw. That was where it started. He began coming
• 36:35
  and going at odd times, but he never said any more about it.
• 36:38
  He wouldn't talk to me at all. When was all this about four months
• 36:43
  ago? In other words, just about the time of the riots in Charin.
• 36:46
  She nodded. Yes, he was away in Charin when the ghost wind
• 36:51
  blew and he came back with knife cuts in his thigh. I asked if
• 36:53
  he had been mixed up in the anti Terran rioting, but he wouldn't tell
• 36:57
  me Race. I don't know anything about politics. I don't really care.
• 37:00
  But just about that time, the Great House in Shansaw changed hands. I'm
• 37:05
  sure Recall had something to do with that. And then Julie twisted her chained
• 37:09
  hands together in her lap. He tried to mix Rindy up in it.
• 37:13
  It was crazy awful. He brought her some sort of non human toy from
• 37:17
  one of the lowland towns Charin. I think it was a weird thing.
• 37:22
  Scared me. But he'd sit Rindy down in the sunlight and have her look
• 37:24
  into it, and Rindy would gabble all sorts of nonsense about little men and
• 37:29
  birds and a toy maker. The chains about Julie's wrists clashed as she twisted
• 37:32
  her hands together. I stared somberly at the fetters. The chain, which
• 37:37
  was long, did not really hamper her movements much. Such chains were symbolic
• 37:42
  ornaments, and most dry town women went all their lives with fettered hands.
• 37:45
  But even after the years I'd spent in the dry towns, the sight still
• 37:49
  brought an uneasiness to my throat, a vague discomfort. We had a terrible
• 37:52
  fight over that Julie went on, I was afraid, afraid of what it
• 37:57
  was doing to Rindy. I threw it out, and Rindy woke up and
• 38:00
  screamed. Julie checked herself and caught it vanishing self control. But you don't
• 38:04
  want to hear about that. It was then I threatened to leave him and
• 38:07
  take Rindy the next day. Suddenly, the hysteria Julie had been forcing back
• 38:10
  broke free, and she rocked back and forth in her chair, shaken and
• 38:14
  strangled with sobs. He took Randy. Oh Race, he's crazy, crazy.
• 38:19
  I think he hates Rindy. He he race. He smashed her toys.
• 38:22
  He took every toy the child had and broke them one by one,
• 38:24
  smashed them into powder, every toy the child had. Julie, please please,
• 38:30
  Magnuson pleaded, shaken. If we're dealing with a maniac, I don't
• 38:34
  dare think he'd harm her. He warned me not to come here, I'd
• 38:37
  never see her again. But if it meant war against Terra, I had
• 38:39
  to come. But mac please don't do anything against him. Please please,
• 38:43
  he's got my baby, he's got my little girl. Her voice failed,
• 38:46
  and she buried her face in her hands. Mac picked up the solidopic cube
• 38:51
  of his five year old son and turned it between his pudgy fingers, saying,
• 38:53
  unhappily, Julie, We'll take every precaution, but can't you see we've
• 38:58
  got to get him. If there's there's a question of a matter transmitter or
• 39:00
  anything like that in the hands of Terra's enemies. I could see that too,
• 39:05
  but Julie's agonized face came between me and the picture of disaster. I
• 39:08
  clenched my fist around the chair arm, not surprised to see the fragile plastic
• 39:13
  buckle crack and split under my grip if it had been Recall's neck. Mac,
• 39:19
  let me handle this, Julie. Shall I find Rindy for you?
• 39:22
  A hope was born in her ravaged face and died while I looked Race.
• 39:28
  He'd kill you, or have you killed? He'd try, I admitted the
• 39:31
  moment Recall knew I was outside the Terran zone, I'd walk with death.
• 39:36
  I had accepted the code during my years in Chainsaw, but now I was
• 39:38
  an earth man and felt only contempt. Can't you see once he knows I'm
• 39:44
  at large, that very code of his will force him to abandon any intrigue,
• 39:46
  whatever you call it, conspiracy, and come after me first. That
• 39:51
  way we do two things. We get him out of hiding and we get
• 39:53
  him out of the conspiracy, if there is one. I looked at the
• 39:58
  shaking Julie and something snapped. I stooped and lifted her, not gently,
• 40:01
  my hands biting her shoulders. And I won't kill him, do you hear?
• 40:06
  He may wish I had. By the time I get through with him,
• 40:07
  I'll beat the living hell out of him. I'll cram my fists down
• 40:10
  his throat, but I'll settle it with him like an earth man. I
• 40:14
  won't kill him, hear me, Julie, because that's the worst thing I
• 40:16
  could do to him. Catch him and let him live. Afterward, Maguson
• 40:21
  stepped toward me and pried my crushing hands off her arms. Julie rubbed the
• 40:23
  ruses mechanically, not knowing what she was doing. Max said, you can't
• 40:28
  do it, Cargle. You wouldn't get as far as Delawn. You haven't
• 40:30
  been out of the zone in six years. Besides, his eyes rested full
• 40:34
  on my face. I hate to say this, race, but damn it,
• 40:37
  man, go and take a good, look at yourself in a mirror.
• 40:38
  Do you think I'd have ever pulled you off the Secret Service? Otherwise?
• 40:42
  How in hell can you disguise yourself now? There are plenty of scarred
• 40:45
  men in the dry towns, I said, Rakau will remember my scars,
• 40:49
  but I don't think any one else will look Twice, Magnuson walked to the
• 40:52
  window. His huge form bulked against the light, perceptibly darkening the office.
• 40:58
  He looked over the far away panorama, the neat, bright trade city below,
• 41:01
  and the vast wilderness lying outside. I could almost hear the wheels grinding
• 41:06
  in his head. Finally, he swung around Race. I've heard these rumors
• 41:10
  before, but you're the only man I could have sent to track them down.
• 41:14
  And I wouldn't send you out in cold blood to be killed. I
• 41:15
  won't now. Space Force will pick him up. I heard the harsh,
• 41:20
  inward gasp of Julie's breath and said, damn it, No, the first
• 41:22
  move you make I couldn't finish. Rindy was in his hands, and I
• 41:27
  knew Recall he hadn't been given to making idle threats. We all three knew
• 41:30
  what Recall might do. At the first hint of the long arm of Aran
• 41:34
  law reaching out for him. I said, for God's sake, let's keep
• 41:37
  space force out of it. Let it look like a personal matter between we're
• 41:40
  callin' me, and let us settle it on those terms. Remember he's got
• 41:44
  the kid. Magnuson sighed again. He picked up one of the cubes and
• 41:47
  stared into the clear plastic where the three dimensional image of a nine year old
• 41:52
  girl looked out at him, smiling and innocent. His face was transparent as
• 41:54
  the plastic cube. Mac acts tough, but he has five kids, and
• 42:00
  he is as soft as a dish of pudding where a kid is concerned.
• 42:04
  I know another thing too, If we send out space force after all the
• 42:07
  riots, how many Terrans are on this planet a few thousand, no more?
• 42:12
  What chance would we have if it turned into a full scale rebellion,
• 42:15
  None at all, unless we wanted to order a massacre. Sure we have
• 42:19
  bombs and disc guns and all that, but would you dare use them?
• 42:22
  And where would we be after that? We're here to keep the pot for
• 42:25
  boiling over, to keep out of planetary incidents, not push them along to
• 42:29
  a point where a bluff won't work. That's why we've got to pick up
• 42:31
  Recall before he gets out of hand. I said, give me a month,
• 42:37
  then you can move in if you have to. Recall can't do much
• 42:38
  against Terra in that time, and I might be able to keep Rindy out
• 42:42
  of it. Manguson stared at me hard eyed. If you do this against
• 42:46
  my advice, I won't be able to step in and pull you out of
• 42:50
  a jam later on, you know, and God help you if you start
• 42:52
  up the machines and can't stop them. I knew that a month was it
• 42:57
  much. Wolf is forty thousand miles of diday diameter, at least half unexplored
• 43:01
  mountain and forests, swarming with non human and semi human cities where the Terrence
• 43:06
  had never been. Finding Recall or any one man would be like picking out
• 43:09
  one star in the Andromeda nebula. Not impossible, Not quite impossible. Mac's
• 43:16
  eyes wandered again to his child's face deep in the transparent cube. He turned
• 43:21
  it in his hands. Okay, cargle, he said, slowly, So
• 43:24
  we're all crazy. I'll be crazy too, Try it your way. End
• 43:30
  of chapter three, Chapter four, My sunset. I was ready to leave.
• 43:37
  I hadn't had any loose ends to tie up in the trade city.
• 43:39
  Since I had already disposed of most of my gear before boarding the ship,
• 43:44
  I'd never been in better circumstances to take off for parts. Unknown. Mac,
• 43:47
  still disapproving, had opened the files to me, and I'd spent most
• 43:51
  of the day in the back rooms of floor thirty eight searching intelligence files to
• 43:53
  refresh my memory, scanning the pages of my own old reports sent years ago
• 43:58
  from Shane Saw and Dayelah. He had sent out one of the non humans
• 44:01
  who worked for us to buy or acquire somewhere in the Old Town a dry
• 44:06
  towner's outfit and the other things I would wear and carry. I would have
• 44:10
  liked to go myself. I felt that I needed the practice. I was
• 44:14
  only now beginning to realize how much I might have forgotten in the years behind
• 44:16
  a desk. But until I was ready to make my presence known, no
• 44:21
  one must know that Race Cargill had not left Wolf on the starship. Above
• 44:25
  all, I must not be seen in the Carsa until I went there,
• 44:29
  in the dry Town disguise, which had become years ago a deep second nature,
• 44:32
  almost an alternate personality. About Sunset, I walked through the clean little
• 44:37
  streets of the Tarran trade city toward the Magnuson home, where Julie was waiting
• 44:40
  for me. Most of the men who go into civil service of the Empire
• 44:45
  come from Earth or from the close in planets of Proxima and Alpha Centaurus.
• 44:50
  They go out unmarried, and they stay that way, or merry women native
• 44:52
  to the planets where they are sent. But Joanna Magnuson was one of the
• 44:57
  rare earth women who had come out with her husband twenty fe years ago.
• 45:00
  There are two kinds of earth women like that. They make their quarterings a
• 45:04
  little bit of home or a little bit of hell. Joanna had made their
• 45:07
  house look like a transported corner of Earth. I never knew quite what to
• 45:12
  think of the Magnuson household. It seemed to me almost from madness, to
• 45:15
  live under a red sun, yet come inside to yellow light, to live
• 45:19
  on a world with the wild beauty of wolf, and yet live as they
• 45:22
  might have lived on their home planet. Or maybe I was the one who
• 45:24
  was out of step. I had done the reprehensible thing they called going native.
• 45:30
  Possibly I had done just that, and in absorbing myself into the new
• 45:32
  world, had lost the ability to fit into the old Joanna, a chubby,
• 45:37
  comfortable woman in her forties, opened the door and gave me her hand.
• 45:42
  Come in, Race, Julie's expecting you. It's good of you.
• 45:45
  I broke off, unable to express my gratitude. Julie and I had come
• 45:50
  from Earth. Our father had been an officer on the old starship Landfall when
• 45:52
  Julie was only a child. He had died in a wreck off Procyon,
• 45:57
  and mac Magnuson had found me a place in intelligence because I spoke four of
• 46:00
  the wolf languages and haunted the carsa with Recall whenever I could get away.
• 46:05
  They had also taken Julie into their own home like a younger sister. They
• 46:08
  hadn't said much because they had liked Recall when the break up came. But
• 46:13
  that terrible night when Recall and I nearly killed each other, and Recall came
• 46:15
  with his face bleeding and took Julie away with him had hurt them hard.
• 46:20
  Yet it had made them all the kinder to me. Joanna said, forthrightly,
• 46:24
  nonsense, Race, what else could we do? She drew me along
• 46:29
  the hall. You can talk and hear I delayed a minute before going through
• 46:31
  the door, she indicated, how is Julie better? I think I put
• 46:37
  her to bed in Meta's room and she slept most of the day. She'll
• 46:39
  be all right. I'll leave you to talk. Joanna opened the door and
• 46:43
  went away. Julie was awake and dressed, and already some of the terrible,
• 46:47
  frozen horror was gone from her face. She was still tense and double
• 46:52
  ridden, but not hysterical now. The room, one of the children's bedrooms,
• 46:55
  wasn't a big one, even at the top of the Secret Service.
• 46:59
  A cop doesn't live too well, not on Terra's civil service pace Gale,
• 47:02
  not with five youngsters. It looked as if all five of the kids had
• 47:06
  taken it to pieces, one at a time. I sat down on a
• 47:09
  too low chair and said, Julie, we haven't much time. I've got
• 47:13
  to be out of the city before dark. I want to know about Recall,
• 47:15
  what he does, what he's like now. Remember I haven't seen him
• 47:20
  for years. Tell me everything, his friends, his amusements, everything,
• 47:22
  you know. I always thought you knew him better than I did. Julie
• 47:27
  had a fidgety little way of coiling the links of the chain around her wrists
• 47:30
  and it made me nervous. It's routine, Julie, police work. Mostly
• 47:35
  I play by ear, but I try to start out by being methodical.
• 47:38
  She answered everything I asked her, but the sum total wasn't much and it
• 47:42
  wouldn't help much. As I said, it's easy to disappear on Wolf.
• 47:45
  Julie knew he had been friendly with the new holders of the Great House on
• 47:49
  Shansaw, but she didn't even know their name. I heard one of the
• 47:52
  Magnuson children fly to the street door and return shouting for her mother. Joanna
• 47:55
  knocked at the door of the room and came in. There's a chalk outside.
• 47:59
  Her wants to see you race. I nodded, probably my fancy dress.
• 48:04
  Can I change in the back room? Joanna? Will you keep my
• 48:06
  clothes here till I get back. I went to the door and spoke to
• 48:09
  the furred non human in the sibilant jargon of the Haarsa, and he handed
• 48:13
  me what looked like a bundle of rags. There were hard lumps inside the
• 48:17
  chalk. Said softly, I hear a rumor in the carsarrees, perhaps it
• 48:22
  will help you. Three men from shane Shah are in the city. They
• 48:24
  came here to seek a woman who has vanished and a toymaker. They are
• 48:29
  returning at sunrise. Perhaps you can arrange to travel in their caravan. I
• 48:34
  thanked him and carried the bundle inside. In the empty back room, I
• 48:37
  stripped to the skin and unrolled the bundle. There was a pair of baggy
• 48:40
  striped breeches, a worn and shabby shirtcloak with capacious pockets, a looped belt
• 48:45
  with half the gilt rubbed away in the bass, metal showing through, and
• 48:47
  a scuffed pair of ankle boots tied with frayed thongs of different colors. There
• 48:52
  was a little cluster of amulets and seals. I chose two or three of
• 48:54
  the commonest kind and strung them around my neck. One of the lumps in
• 48:59
  the bundle was a small jar holding nothing but the ordinary spices sold in the
• 49:02
  market with which the average dry towner flavors food. I rubbed some of the
• 49:07
  powder on my body, put a pinch in the pocket of my shirt cloak,
• 49:08
  and chewed a few of the buds, wrinkling my nose at the long,
• 49:12
  unfamiliar pungency. The second lump was a skeen and unlike the worn and
• 49:16
  shabby garments. This was brand new and sharp and bright, and its edge
• 49:21
  held a razor glint. I tucked it into the clasp of my shirt cloak
• 49:24
  a reassuring weight. It was the only weapon I could dare to carry the
• 49:30
  last of the solid objects in the bundle was a flat wooden case about nine
• 49:34
  by ten inches. I slid it open. It was divided carefully into sections,
• 49:37
  cushioned with sponge absorbent plastic, and in them lay tiny slips of glass
• 49:43
  on wolf as precious as jewels. They were lenses, camera lenses, microscope
• 49:47
  lenses, even eyeglass lenses. Packed close. There were nearly a hundred of
• 49:52
  them, nested by the shock absorbent stuff. They were my excuse for travel
• 49:55
  to Shane saw. Over and above the necessities of trade, a few items
• 49:59
  of Terran manufacture. Vacuum tubes, transistors, lenses for cameras and binoculars,
• 50:04
  liquors, and finely forged small tools are literally worth their weight in platinum.
• 50:09
  Even in cities where Terrans have never gone. These things bring exorbitant prices,
• 50:13
  and trading in them is a dry town privilege. Recall had been a trader,
• 50:16
  so Julie told me, in fine wire and surgical instruments. Wolfe is
• 50:22
  not a mechanized planet and has never developed any indigenous industrial system. The psychology
• 50:27
  of the non human seldom runs to technological advances. I went down the hallway
• 50:31
  again to the room where Julie was waiting. Catching a glimpse in a full
• 50:35
  length mirror, I was startled. All traces of the Terran civil servant,
• 50:37
  clumsy and uncomfortable in his ill fitting clothes, had dropped away. A dry
• 50:43
  towner, rangy and scarred, looked out at me, and it seemed that
• 50:45
  the expression on his face was one of amazement. Joanna whirled as I came
• 50:50
  into the room, invisibly paled. Before recovering her self control, she gave
• 50:53
  me a nervous little giggle. Goodness, Race, I didn't know you,
• 50:58
  Julie whispered, yes, I I remember you better like that. You're you
• 51:02
  look so much like The door flew open and Mickey Magnuson scampered into the room,
• 51:07
  a chubby little boy, browned by a Terra type sun lamp and glowing
• 51:09
  with health. In his hand he held some sparkling thing that gave off tiny
• 51:14
  flashes and glints of color. I gave the kid a grin before I realized
• 51:16
  that I was disguised anyhow, and probably a hideous sight. The little boy
• 51:21
  backed off, but Joanna put her plump hand on his shoulder, murmuring soothing
• 51:24
  things. Micky toddled toward Julie, holding up the shining thing in his hands,
• 51:29
  as if to display something very precious and beloved. Julie bent and held
• 51:32
  out her arms. Then her face contracted and she snatched at the plaything.
• 51:36
  Micky, what's that? He thrust it protectively behind his back. Mine.
• 51:40
  Micky, don't be naughty, Joanna chided, Please let me see. Julie
• 51:45
  coaxed, and he brought it out slowly, still suspicious. It was an
• 51:50
  ankled prism of crystal, star shaped set in a frame which could get the
• 51:52
  stars spinning like a solid a pick, but it displayed a new and comical
• 51:57
  face every time it was turned. Micky turned it round and round, charmed
• 52:00
  at being the center of attention. There seemed to be dozens of faces shifting
• 52:04
  with each spin of the prism, human and non human, all dim and
• 52:07
  slightly distorted. My own face, Julie's, Joanna's came out of the crystal
• 52:12
  surface, not a reflection, but a caricature. A choked sound from Julie
• 52:15
  made me turn in dismay. She had let herself drop to the floor and
• 52:19
  was sitting there, white as death, supporting herself with her two hands.
• 52:22
  Race, find it where he got that that thing? I bent and shook
• 52:27
  her. What's the matter with you? I demanded. She had lapsed into
• 52:30
  the dazed, sleepwalking horror of this morning. She whispered, It's not a
• 52:34
  toy. Rindy had one, Joanna, Where did he get it? She
• 52:37
  pointed at the shining thing with an expression of horror, which would have been
• 52:39
  laughable had it been less real, less filled with terror. Joanna cocked her
• 52:45
  head to one side and wrinkled her forehead reflectively. Why I don't know,
• 52:47
  now you come to ask me. I thought maybe one of the chalks had
• 52:51
  given it to Mickey, bought it in the bazaar. Maybe he loves it.
• 52:54
  Do get up off the floor, Julie. Julie scrambled to her feet.
• 52:58
  She said, Rindy, it it terrified me. She would sit and
• 53:01
  look at it by the hour, and I told you about it. Race.
• 53:05
  I threw it out once and she woke up and screamed. She shrieked
• 53:07
  for hours and hours, and she ran out in the dark and dug for
• 53:10
  it in the trash pile where I'd buried it. She went out in the
• 53:13
  dark, broke all her finger nails, but she dug it out again.
• 53:16
  She checked herself, staring at Joanna, her eyes wide in appeal. Well,
• 53:21
  dear, said Joanna, with mild, rebuking kindness, you needn't be
• 53:24
  so upset. I don't think Micky's so attached to it as all that.
• 53:28
  And anyhow, I'm not going to throw it away. She patted Julie reassuringly
• 53:31
  on the shoulder, then gave Micky a little shove toward the door and turned
• 53:35
  to follow him. You'll want to talk alone before Race leaves. Good luck
• 53:38
  wherever you're going, Race, she held out her hand forthrightly. And don't
• 53:43
  worry about Julie, she added, in an undertone. We'll take good care
• 53:46
  of her. When I came back to Julie, she was standing by the
• 53:50
  window, looking through the oddly filtered glass that dimmed the red sun to orange.
• 53:54
  Johanna thinks I'm crazy, Race. She thinks you're upset. Rindy's He's
• 54:00
  an odd child, a real dry towner. But it's not my imagination,
• 54:02
  race, it's not there's something suddenly, she sobbed aloud again. Homesick,
• 54:07
  Julie. I was a little the first years, but I was happy,
• 54:12
  believe me. She turned her face to me, shining with tears. You've
• 54:15
  got to believe I never regretted it for a minute. I'm glad, I
• 54:19
  said, Dully, that made it just fine. Only that toy. Who
• 54:23
  knows it might be a clue to something. The toy had reminded me of
• 54:28
  something, too, and I tried to remember what it was. I'd seen
• 54:30
  non human toys in the Harsa, even bought them for max kids. When
• 54:35
  a single man is invited frequently to a home with five youngsters, it's about
• 54:37
  the only way he can repay that hospitality by bringing the children odd trifles and
• 54:42
  nick knacks. But I had never seen anything quite like this one until until
• 54:46
  yesterday. The toy cellar they had hunted out of the Harsa, the one
• 54:51
  who had fled into the shrine of Nebron and vanished, he had had half
• 54:54
  a dozen of those prism and star sparklers. I tried to call up a
• 54:59
  mental picture of the little toy Cellar. I didn't have much luck. I'd
• 55:01
  seen him only in that one swift glance from beneath his hood. Julie,
• 55:07
  have you ever seen a little man like a chock, only smaller, twisted,
• 55:09
  hunchbacked? He sells toys? She looked blank. I don't think so.
• 55:15
  Although there are dwarf chalks in the polar cities, but I'm sure I've
• 55:17
  never seen one. It was just an idea, but it was something to
• 55:22
  think about. A toy. Cellar had vanished. Recall, before disappearing,
• 55:25
  had smashed all Rindy's toys, and the sight of a plaything of cunningly cut
• 55:30
  crystal had sent Julie into hysterics. I'd better go before it's too dark,
• 55:34
  I said. I buckled the final clasp of my shirt cloak, fitted my
• 55:37
  skin another notch into it, and counted the money mac had advanced me for
• 55:40
  expenses. I want to get into the Karsa and hunt up a caravan to
• 55:44
  Shane. Saw. You're going there first? Where else? Julie turned,
• 55:50
  leaning one hand against the wall. She looked frail and ill, years older
• 55:53
  than she was. Suddenly she flung her thin arms around me, and a
• 55:57
  link of the chain on her fettered hands struck me hard. She cried out,
• 56:00
  Race, Race, He'll kill you. How can I live with that
• 56:02
  on my conscience too? You can live with a hell of a lot on
• 56:06
  your conscience. I disengaged her arms firmly for my neck. A link of
• 56:10
  the chain caught on the clasp with my shirt cloak, and again something snapped
• 56:14
  inside me. I grasped the chain in my two hands and gave a mighty
• 56:16
  heave, bracing my foot against the wall. The lynx snapped asunder. The
• 56:21
  flying end struck Julie under the eye. I ripped at the seals of the
• 56:23
  jeweled cuffs, tore them from her arms, and threw the whole assembly into
• 56:27
  a corner, where it fell with a clash. Damn it, I roared,
• 56:30
  that's over. You're never going to wear those things again. Maybe after
• 56:35
  six years in the dry towns, Julie was beginning to guess what those six
• 56:37
  years behind a desk had meant to me. Julie, I'll find your Rindy
• 56:40
  for you, and I'll bring recall in alive. But don't ask more than
• 56:45
  that. Just alive, and don't ask me how he'd be alive. When
• 56:49
  I got through with him, sure he'd be alive. Just end of chapter
• 56:57
  four, Chapter five, it was getting dark when I slipped through the side
• 57:02
  gate, shabby and inconspicuous, into the Spaceport Square beyond the other lamps.
• 57:07
  I knew that the old city was beginning to take on life with the falling
• 57:10
  night. Out of the chinked pebble houses, men and women, human and
• 57:15
  non human, came forth into the moonlit streets. If anyone noticed me cross
• 57:19
  the square, which I doubted, they took me for just another dry town
• 57:22
  vagabond, curious about the world of the strangers from beyond the stars, and
• 57:25
  who curiosity satisfied, was drifting back where he belonged. I turned down one
• 57:31
  of the dark alleys that led away, and soon was walking in the dark.
• 57:36
  The Carsa was not unfamiliar to me as a Terran, but for the
• 57:38
  last six years I had seen only its daytime face. I doubted if there
• 57:44
  were a dozen earth Men in the old town tonight, though I saw one
• 57:46
  in the bazaar, dirty and lurching, drunk, one of those who run
• 57:51
  renegade and homeless between worlds, belonging to neither. This was what I had
• 57:54
  nearly become. I went further up the hill with the rising streets. Once
• 58:00
  I turned and saw below me the bright lighted spaceport, the black, many
• 58:04
  windowed loom of the sky scraper, like a patch of alien shadow in the
• 58:07
  red violet moonlight. I turned my back on them and walked on. At
• 58:13
  the fringe of the thieves Market, I paused outside a wine shop where dry
• 58:15
  towners were made welcome. A golden non human child murmured something as she pattered
• 58:21
  by me in the street, and I stopped, gripped by a spasm of
• 58:23
  stage fright. Had the dialect of shainsaw grown rusty on my tongue. Spies
• 58:28
  were given short shrift on wolf and a mile from the spaceport, I might
• 58:31
  as well have been on one of those moons. There were no spaceport shockers
• 58:36
  at my back now, and some one might remember the tail of an earth
• 58:38
  man with a scarred face who had gone to shain Saw in disguise. I
• 58:43
  shrugged the shirt cloak around my shoulders, pushing the door, and went in.
• 58:46
  I had remembered that Racal was waiting for me, not beyond this door,
• 58:51
  but at the end of the trail, behind some other door somewhere.
• 58:53
  And we have a byword in Chainsaw, a trail without beginning has no end.
• 58:59
  Right there, I stopped thinking about Julie Rindy, the Terran Empire,
• 59:02
  or what Recall, who knew too many of Terra's secrets, might do if
• 59:06
  he had turned renegade. My fingers went up and stroked musingly the ridge of
• 59:09
  the scar tissue along my mouth. At that moment, I was thinking only
• 59:15
  of Recall, of an unsettled blood feud, and of my revenge. Red
• 59:20
  lamps were burning inside the wine shop, where men reclined on frowsy couches.
• 59:24
  I stumbled over to one of them, found an empty place, and let
• 59:27
  myself sink down on it, arranging myself automatically. In the sprawl of drytowners
• 59:31
  indoors in public, they stood rigid and formal, even to eat and drink
• 59:37
  among themselves. Anything less than a loose limbed sprawl betrayed insulting watchfulness. Only
• 59:44
  a man who fears secret murder keeps himself on guard. A girl with a
• 59:47
  tangled rope of hair down her back came toward me. Her hands were unchained,
• 59:52
  meaning she was a woman of the lowest class, not worth safeguarding her
• 59:57
  first smock was shabby and matted with filth. I sent her for wine.
• 1:00:00
  When it came, it was surprisingly good, the sweet and treacherous wine of
• 1:00:05
  ard Koran. I sipped it slowly, looking round. If a caravan of
• 1:00:09
  shan Saw were leaving tomorrow, it would be known here. A word dropped
• 1:00:13
  that I was returning. There would bring me by iron bound custom and invitation
• 1:00:17
  to travel in their company. When I sent the woman for wine a second
• 1:00:21
  time, a man on a nearby couch got up and walked over to me.
• 1:00:24
  He was tall, even for a dry towner, and there was something
• 1:00:28
  vaguely familiar about him. He was no riff raff of the Karsa either,
• 1:00:31
  for his shirt cloak was of rich silk, interwoven with metallic threads and crusted
• 1:00:37
  with heavy embroideries. The hilt of his skin was carved from a single green
• 1:00:40
  gem. He stood looking down at me for some time before he spoke,
• 1:00:45
  I never forget a voice. Although I cannot bring your face to mind,
• 1:00:49
  have I a duty toward you? I had spoken a jargon to the girl,
• 1:00:52
  but he addressed me in the lilting sing song speech of Shainsa. I
• 1:00:55
  made no answer, gesturing him to be seated on wolf. For courtesy requires
• 1:01:00
  a series of polite non sequiturs, and while a direct question merely borders un
• 1:01:05
  rudeness, a direct answer is the mark of a simpleton. A drink.
• 1:01:09
  I joined you, unasked, he retorted, and summoned the tangle headed girl,
• 1:01:15
  bring us better wine than this swill. With that word and gesture,
• 1:01:17
  I recognized him, and my teeth clamped hard on my lip. This was
• 1:01:22
  the loud mouth who had sworn fight in the Spaceport cafe and run away before
• 1:01:25
  the dark girl with a sign of Nebrin scrawled on her breast. But in
• 1:01:30
  this poor light he had not recognized me. I moved deliberately into the full
• 1:01:34
  red glow. If he did not know me, For the terran he had
• 1:01:37
  challenged last night in the Spaceport cafe, it was unlikely that any one else
• 1:01:40
  would. He stared at me for some minutes, but in the end he
• 1:01:45
  only shrugged and poured wine from the bottle he had ordered. Three drinks later,
• 1:01:49
  I knew that his name was Keral, and that he was a trader
• 1:01:51
  in wire and fine steel tools through the non human towns, and I had
• 1:01:54
  given him the name I had chosen Rascar, He asked, are you thinking
• 1:02:00
  of returning to Shane? Saw worry of a trap. I hesitated, but
• 1:02:04
  the question seemed harmless, so I only countered, have you been long in
• 1:02:07
  the carsa several weeks trading? No? He applied himself to the wine again.
• 1:02:15
  I was searching for a member of my family. Did you find him?
• 1:02:19
  Her? Said Carral in ceremoniously spat no, I didn't find her.
• 1:02:23
  What is your business in shainsas I chuckled briefly, as a matter of fact,
• 1:02:29
  I am searching for a member of my family. He narrowed his eyelids,
• 1:02:32
  as if he suspected me of mocking him. But personal privacy is the
• 1:02:36
  most rigid convention of the dry towns, and such mockery showed a sensible disregard
• 1:02:39
  for prying questions if I did not choose to answer them, he questioned,
• 1:02:45
  No, further, I can use an extra man to handle the loads.
• 1:02:47
  Are you good with pack animals? If so, you are welcome to travel
• 1:02:52
  under the protection of my caravan. I agreed, then, reflecting that Julian
• 1:02:57
  recall must after all be known in shainsas I asked, do you know a
• 1:03:00
  traitor who calls himself censar. He stared slightly. I saw his eyes move
• 1:03:06
  along my scars, then reserve like a lowered curtain, shut itself over his
• 1:03:09
  face, concealing a brief satisfied glimmer. No, he lied and stood up.
• 1:03:15
  We leave at first daylight. Have your gear ready. He flipped something
• 1:03:19
  at me, and I caught it in mid air. It was a stone
• 1:03:22
  insized with Karral's name and the idiographs of Shane Saw. You can sleep with
• 1:03:25
  the caravan if you care to show that token to kuin Kiirral's caravan was encamped
• 1:03:30
  in a barred field past the furthest gates of the Karsa. About a dozen
• 1:03:35
  men were busy loading the pack animals horses shipped in from dark Over mostly.
• 1:03:39
  I asked the first man I met for Quinn. He pointed out a burly
• 1:03:43
  fellow in a shiny red shirtcloak who was busy chewing out one of the young
• 1:03:45
  men for the way he'd put a pack saddle on his beast. Shane Saw
• 1:03:50
  is a good language for cursing, but Quinn had a special talent at it.
• 1:03:53
  I blinked in admiration while I waited for him to get his breast.
• 1:03:55
  So I could hand him Krral's token. In the light of the fire,
• 1:04:00
  I saw what I'd half expected. He was the second of the dry towners
• 1:04:02
  who tried to rough me up in the spaceport cafe. Quinn barely glanced at
• 1:04:06
  the cut stone and tossed it back, pointing out one of the pack horses.
• 1:04:11
  Load your personal gear on that one. Then get busy and show this
• 1:04:13
  mush headed wearer of sandals an insult carrying particularly filthy implications in chainsaw how to
• 1:04:18
  fasten a pack strap. He drew a breath and began to swear at the
• 1:04:21
  luckless youngster again, and I relaxed. He evidently hadn't recognized me either.
• 1:04:27
  I took the strap in my hand, guiding it through the saddle loop like
• 1:04:30
  that, I told the kid, and Quinn stopped swearing long enough to give
• 1:04:33
  me a curt nod of acknowledgment and point out a heap of boxed and crated
• 1:04:36
  objects. Help him load up. We want to get clear of the city
• 1:04:40
  by daybreak, he ordered, and went off to swear at someone else.
• 1:04:44
  Kiral turned up at dawn, and a few minutes later the camp had vanished
• 1:04:46
  into a small scattering of litter and we were on our way. Kiral's caravan,
• 1:04:51
  in spite of Quinn's cursing, was well managed and well handled. The
• 1:04:55
  men were dried houners, eleven of them silent and capable, and most of
• 1:04:59
  them very young. They were cheerful on the trail, handling pack animals competently
• 1:05:03
  during the day, and spent most of the nights grouped around the fire,
• 1:05:06
  gambling silently and the fall of the cut crystal prisms they used for dice.
• 1:05:12
  Three days at Ofharsa, I began to worry about Quinn. It was,
• 1:05:15
  of course, a spectacular piece of bad luck to find all three of the
• 1:05:19
  men from the Spaceport Cafe in Karral's caravan. Karl had obviously not known me,
• 1:05:25
  and even by daylight he paid no attention to me, except to give
• 1:05:28
  an occasional order. The second of the three was a gangling kid who probably
• 1:05:31
  never gave me a second look, let alone a third. But Quinn was
• 1:05:34
  another matter. He was a man my own age, and his fierce eyes
• 1:05:39
  had a shrewdness in them that I did not trust. More than once I
• 1:05:42
  caught him watching me, and on the two or three occasions when he drew
• 1:05:45
  me into conversation. I found his questions more direct than dry town good manners.
• 1:05:48
  Aloud, I weighed the possibility that I might have to kill him before
• 1:05:53
  we reached shan Saw. We crossed the foothills and began to climb upward toward
• 1:05:58
  the mountains. The first few days I found myself short of breath as we
• 1:06:00
  worked upward into thinner air. Then my acclimatization returned and I began to fall
• 1:06:05
  into the pattern of the days and nights on the trail. The trade city
• 1:06:10
  was still a beacon in the night, but its glow on the horizon grew
• 1:06:13
  dimmer with each day's march. We climbed higher along dangerous trails, where men
• 1:06:17
  had to dismount and let the pack animals pick their way foot by foot.
• 1:06:20
  Here in these altitudes, the sun at noonday blazed redder and brighter, and
• 1:06:25
  the dry towners who came from the parched lands and the sea bottoms were burned
• 1:06:29
  and blistered by the fierce light. I had grown up under the blazing sun
• 1:06:32
  of Terra, and a red sun like wolf, even at its hottest,
• 1:06:35
  caused me no discomfort. This alone would have made me suspect. Once again,
• 1:06:40
  I found Quinn's fierce eyes watching me as we crossed the passes and began
• 1:06:45
  to descend the long trail through the thick forests, we got into non human
• 1:06:48
  country. Racing against the ghost wind, we skirted the country around Charin and
• 1:06:53
  the woods inhabited by the terrible yamen bird like creatures who turned cannibal when the
• 1:06:57
  ghost wind blows. Later, the trail wound through thicker forests of indigo trees
• 1:07:01
  and grayish purple brushwood, and at night we heard the howls of the catmen
• 1:07:05
  of these latitudes. At night we set guards about the caravan, and the
• 1:07:10
  dark spaces and shadows were filled with noises and queer smells and rustlings. Nevertheless,
• 1:07:16
  the days marches and the night watches passed without event until the night I
• 1:07:20
  shared guard with Quinn. I had posted myself at the edge of the camp,
• 1:07:25
  the fire behind me. The men were sleeping. Rolls of snores huddled
• 1:07:29
  close around the fire. The animals hobbled with double ropes front feet to hind
• 1:07:32
  feet, shifted uneasily and let out uncanny wines. I heard Quinn pacing behind
• 1:07:39
  me. I heard a rustle at the edge of the forest astir and whisper
• 1:07:43
  beyond the trees, and turned to speak to him, then saw him slipping
• 1:07:45
  away toward the outskirts of the clearing. For a moment I thought nothing of
• 1:07:49
  it, thinking that he was taking a few steps toward the gap in the
• 1:07:53
  trees where he had disappeared. I suppose I had the idea that he had
• 1:07:57
  slipped away to investigate some noise or shadow, and that I should be at
• 1:08:00
  hand. Then I saw the flicker of lights beyond the trees, light from
• 1:08:03
  the lantern Quinn had been carrying in his hand. He was signaling. I
• 1:08:09
  slipped the safety class from the hilt to my skin and went after him.
• 1:08:12
  In the dimming glow of the fire, I fancied, I saw luminous eyes
• 1:08:15
  watching me, and the skin on my back crawled. I crept up behind
• 1:08:17
  him and leaped. We went down in a tangle of flailing legs and arms,
• 1:08:20
  and in less than a second he had his skeen out and I was
• 1:08:24
  gripping his wrist, trying desperately to force the blade away from my throat.
• 1:08:27
  I gasped, don't be a fool one yell in. The whole camp will
• 1:08:30
  be awake. Who are you signaling? In the light of the fallen lantern.
• 1:08:33
  Lips drawn back in a snarl, he looked almost inhuman. He strained
• 1:08:38
  at the knife for a moment, then dropped it. Let me up,
• 1:08:41
  he said. I got up and kicked the fallen skein toward him. Put
• 1:08:44
  that away. What the hell were you doing trying to bring the catmen down
• 1:08:46
  on us? For a moment he looked taken aback. Then his fierce face
• 1:08:50
  closed down again, and he said, wrathfully, can't a man walk away
• 1:08:54
  from the camp without being half strangled? I glared at him, but realized
• 1:08:59
  I really had no to go by. He might have been answering a call
• 1:09:01
  of nature and the movement of the lantern accidental, and if someone had jumped
• 1:09:04
  me from behind, I might have pulled a knife on him myself. So
• 1:09:09
  I only said, don't do it again. We're all too jumpy. There
• 1:09:13
  were no other incidents that night or the next. The night after, while
• 1:09:16
  I lay huddled in my shirt, cloak and blanket by the fire, I
• 1:09:19
  saw Quinn slip out of his bed roll and steal away. A moment later
• 1:09:23
  there was a gleam in the darkness, but before I could summon the resolve
• 1:09:26
  to get up and face it out with him. He turned, looking cautiously
• 1:09:30
  at the snoring men, and crawled back into his blankets. While we were
• 1:09:34
  unpacking at the next camp, Carroll halted beside me. Heard anything queer lately.
• 1:09:39
  I've got the notion we're being trailed. We'll be out of these forests
• 1:09:42
  tomorrow, and after that it's clear road all the way to Shane's Saw.
• 1:09:45
  If anything's going to happen, it will happen tonight, I debated, speaking
• 1:09:48
  to him about Quinn's signals. No, I had my own business waiting for
• 1:09:53
  me in shane Saw. Why mix myself up with some other private intrigue,
• 1:09:57
  He said, I am putting you and Quinn one again. The old men
• 1:10:00
  doze off and the young fellows get to daydreaming or fooling around. That's all
• 1:10:03
  right most of the time, but I want someone who'll keep his eyes open
• 1:10:06
  tonight. Did you ever know Quinn before this? Never set eyes on him?
• 1:10:12
  Funny, I had the notion. He shrugged, turned away, then
• 1:10:15
  stopped. Don't think twice about rousing the camp. If there's any disturbance,
• 1:10:19
  Better a false alarm than an ambush that catches us all in our blankets.
• 1:10:23
  If it came to a fight, we might be in a bad way.
• 1:10:26
  We all carry skeins, but I don't think there's a shocker in the whole
• 1:10:28
  group, let alone a gun. You don't have one by any chance.
• 1:10:32
  After the men had turned in, Quinn, patrolling the camp, halted a
• 1:10:35
  minute beside me and cocked his head toward the rustling forest. What's going on
• 1:10:40
  in there? Who knows? Catman on the prowl, probably thinking the horses
• 1:10:44
  would make a good meal, or maybe that we would think it will come
• 1:10:47
  to a fight. I wouldn't know. He surveyed me for a moment,
• 1:10:51
  without speaking, And if it did, we'd fight. Then I sucked in
• 1:10:56
  my breath, for Quinn had spoken Taran standard, and I, without the
• 1:10:59
  thinks thinking, had answered in the same language. He grinned, showing white
• 1:11:02
  teeth filed to a point, I thought, so. I seized his shoulder
• 1:11:06
  and demanded, roughly, and what are you going to do about it?
• 1:11:10
  That depends on you? He answered, And what you want in chainsaw?
• 1:11:14
  Tell me the truth? What were you doing in the terran zone? He
• 1:11:16
  gave me no chance to answer. You know who Kerral is, don't you
• 1:11:20
  a trader? I said? Who? Pays my wages and minds his own
• 1:11:24
  affairs. I moved backward, hand on my skein, braced for a sudden
• 1:11:28
  rush. He made no aggressive motion. However, Kirol told me you'd been
• 1:11:31
  asking questions about Recall cince our, He said, clever. Now, I,
• 1:11:36
  for one, could have told you that he'd never set eyes on recall.
• 1:11:40
  I he broke off, hearing a noise in the forest, a long
• 1:11:43
  eerie howl. I muttered, if you've brought them down on us. He
• 1:11:46
  shook his head urgently. I had to take that chance to get word to
• 1:11:49
  the others. It won't work. Where's the girl? I hardly heard him.
• 1:11:54
  I was hearing twig snap and silently sneaking feet. I turned for a
• 1:11:58
  yell that would rouse the camp, and Quinn grabbed my hand hard, saying,
• 1:12:00
  insistently, quick, where's the girl? Go back and tell her it
• 1:12:03
  won't work. If Corral suspected, he never finished the sentence. Just behind
• 1:12:08
  us came another of the long eerie howls. I knocked Quinn away, and
• 1:12:12
  suddenly the night was filled with crouching forms that came down on us like a
• 1:12:15
  whirlwind. I shouted madly as the camp came alive, with men struggling out
• 1:12:18
  of blankets, fighting for life itself. I ran hard, still shouting for
• 1:12:23
  the enclosure where we had tied the horses. A catman, slim and black
• 1:12:26
  furred, was crouched and cutting the hobble strings of the nearest animal. I
• 1:12:29
  hurled myself on him. He exploded, clawing, raking my shoulder with talons
• 1:12:32
  that ripped through rough cloth like paper. I whipped out my skin and slashed
• 1:12:36
  upward. The talons contracted on my shoulder, and I gasped with pain.
• 1:12:41
  Then the thing howled and fell away, clawing at the air. It twitched
• 1:12:45
  and lay still. Fore shots and rapid succession cracked in the clearing care all.
• 1:12:48
  To the contrary, someone must have had a pistol. I heard one
• 1:12:51
  of the cat things wail a hoarse, drying rattle. Something dark clawed my
• 1:12:56
  arm, and I slashed with the knife, going down as another set of
• 1:12:59
  talents fastened on my back. Rolling and clutching, I managed to get the
• 1:13:02
  thing's forelimbs wedged under my elbow, my knee, and its spine. I
• 1:13:05
  heaved bent it backward backward till it screamed a high wail. Then I felt
• 1:13:10
  the spine snap, and the dead thing muled once just air escaping from collapsing
• 1:13:14
  lungs, and slid limp from my thigh erect. It had not been over
• 1:13:17
  four feet tall, and in the light of the dying fire, it might
• 1:13:20
  have been a dead lynx rascar hem. I heard a gasp, a groan.
• 1:13:26
  I whirled and saw Kiral go down, struggling, drowning in half a
• 1:13:30
  dozen or more of the fierce half humans. I leaped at the smother of
• 1:13:32
  bodies, ripped one away with a stranglehold, slashed at its throat. They
• 1:13:35
  were easy to kill. I heard a high, urgent scream in their mewing
• 1:13:40
  tongue. Then the furred black things seemed to melt into the forest as silently
• 1:13:44
  as they had come. Kirral, dazed, his forehead running blood, his
• 1:13:46
  arms slashed to the bone, was sitting on the ground, still stunned.
• 1:13:50
  Somebody had to take charge. I bellowed, lights, get lights. They
• 1:13:55
  won't come back if we have enough light. They can only see well in
• 1:13:58
  the dark. Someone stood the fire. It blazed up as they piled on
• 1:14:01
  dead branches, and I roughly commanded one of the kids to fill every lantern
• 1:14:04
  he could find. And get them burning. Four of the dead things were
• 1:14:08
  lying in the clearing. The youngster I had helped loading horses the first day,
• 1:14:11
  gazed down at one of the catmen, half disemboweled by somebody's skin,
• 1:14:15
  and suddenly bolted for the bushes, where I heard him wretching. I set
• 1:14:17
  the others with stronger stomachs to dragging the bodies away from the clearing, and
• 1:14:21
  went back to see how badly Karral was hurt. He had the rip in
• 1:14:25
  his arm and his face was covered with blood from a shallow scalp wound,
• 1:14:28
  but he insisted on getting up to inspect the hurts of the others. There
• 1:14:31
  was no one without a claw wound in leg or back or shoulder, but
• 1:14:34
  none were serious, and we were all feeling fairly cheerful when someone demanded where's
• 1:14:40
  Quinn. He didn't seem to be anywhere. Kirall staggered slightly, insisting on
• 1:14:44
  searching, but I felt we wouldn't find him. He probably went off with
• 1:14:47
  his friends. I snorted and told about the signaling. Kirall looked grave.
• 1:14:53
  You should have told me, he began, but shouts from the far end
• 1:14:56
  of the clearing sent us racing there. We nearly stumbled over a single sol
• 1:15:00
  military, motionless form outstretched and lifeless, blind eyes staring upward at the moon's
• 1:15:04
  It was Quinn, and his throat had been torn completely out end of Chapter
• 1:15:12
  five, Chapter six. Once we were free of the forest, the road
• 1:15:16
  to the dry towns lay straight before us, with no hidden dangers. Some
• 1:15:20
  of us limped for a day or two, or favored an arm or leg
• 1:15:24
  clawed by the catmen, But I knew that what Karol said was true.
• 1:15:27
  It was a lucky caravan which had to fight off only one attack. Quinn
• 1:15:31
  haunted me a night or two of turning over his cryptic words in my mind
• 1:15:35
  had convinced me that whoever or whatever he'd been signaling it wasn't the Catman,
• 1:15:41
  and his urgent question where's the girl swam endlessly in my brain, making no
• 1:15:45
  more sense than when I had first heard it. Who had he mistaken me
• 1:15:48
  for? What did he think I was mixed up in? And who?
• 1:15:51
  Above all were the others who had to be signaled at the risk of an
• 1:15:55
  attack by Catman, which had meant his own death. With Quinn dead and
• 1:15:59
  Carrol thinking I had saved his life, a large part of the responsibility for
• 1:16:01
  the caravan now fell on me, and strangely I enjoyed it, making the
• 1:16:05
  most of this interval when I was separated from the thought of blood, feud
• 1:16:09
  or revenge, the need of spying, or the threat of exposure. During
• 1:16:13
  those days and nights on the trail, I grew back slowly into the dry
• 1:16:15
  towner I once had been. I knew I would be sorry when the walls
• 1:16:18
  of shane Saw rose on the horizon, bringing me back inescapably to my own
• 1:16:23
  quest. We swung wide, leaving the straight trail to shane Saw, and
• 1:16:27
  Karral announced his intention of stopping for half a day at Canarsa, one of
• 1:16:30
  the walled non human cities which lay well off the traveled road. To my
• 1:16:34
  inadvertent show of surprise, he returned that he had trading connections there. We
• 1:16:40
  all need a day's rest, and the silent ones will buy from me,
• 1:16:43
  though they have few dealings with men. Look here, I owe you something.
• 1:16:45
  You have lenses. You can get a better price in Canarsa than you'd
• 1:16:48
  get an Ard Koran or shane Saw. Come along with me and I'll vouch
• 1:16:51
  for you. Kil had been most friendly since the night I had dug him
• 1:16:55
  out from under the catmen, and I knew no way to refuse without exposing
• 1:16:59
  myself for the ship sham trader I was. But I was deathly apprehensive.
• 1:17:02
  Even with Recall, I had never entered any of the non human towns on
• 1:17:06
  wolf Human and non human have lived side by side for centuries, and the
• 1:17:11
  human is not always the superior being. I might pass among the dry towners
• 1:17:15
  and the relatively stupid humanoid shocks for another dry towner, but Recall had cautioned
• 1:17:19
  me I could not pass among non humans for native Wolfen, and warned me
• 1:17:25
  against trying. Nevertheless, I accompanied Karl, carrying the box, which had
• 1:17:29
  cost about a week's pay in the terran Zone and was worth a small fortune
• 1:17:31
  in the dry towns, Canarsa seemed inside the gates like any other town.
• 1:17:36
  The houses were round bee hive fashion, and the streets totally empty. Just
• 1:17:41
  inside the gates, a hooded figure greeted us and gestured us by signs to
• 1:17:45
  follow him. He was covered from head to foot with some coarse and shiny
• 1:17:47
  fiber woven into stuff that looked like sacking, But under the thick hooding was
• 1:17:54
  horror. It slithered, and it had nothing like a recognizable human shape or
• 1:17:58
  walk, and I felt the press my evil ape and meek howering and gibbering
• 1:18:01
  in the corner of my mind. Kiral muttered close to my ear. No
• 1:18:04
  outsider is ever allowed to look on the silent Ones in their real form.
• 1:18:09
  I think they're deaf and dumb. But be damned careful, you bet,
• 1:18:13
  I whispered, and was glad the streets were empty. I walked along,
• 1:18:15
  trying not to look at the gliding motion of the shrouded thing up ahead.
• 1:18:19
  The trading was done in an open hut of reeds, which looked as if
• 1:18:23
  it had been built in a hurry, and was not square, round,
• 1:18:26
  hexagonal, or any other recognizable geometrical shape. It formed a pattern of its
• 1:18:30
  own, presumably, but my human eyes couldn't see it. Kiral said,
• 1:18:34
  in a breath of a whisper. They'll tear it down and burn it after
• 1:18:36
  we leave. We're supposed to have contaminated it too greatly for any of the
• 1:18:41
  silent Ones ever to enter again. My family has traded with them for centuries
• 1:18:45
  and were almost the only ones who have ever entered the city. Then two
• 1:18:48
  of the silent Ones of Canarsa also covered with that coarse, shiny stuff.
• 1:18:53
  Slithered into the hut, and Kiral choked off his words as if he had
• 1:18:56
  swallowed them. It was the strangest trading I had ever done. Kiral laid
• 1:19:00
  out the small forged steel tools and the coils of thin, fine wire,
• 1:19:03
  and I unpacked my lenses and laid them out in neat rows. The silent
• 1:19:08
  Ones neither spoke nor moved, but through a thin piece in the gray veiling,
• 1:19:12
  I saw a speck which might have been a phosphorescent eye, moving back
• 1:19:15
  and forth, as if scanning the things laid out for their inspection. I
• 1:19:18
  smothered a gasp, for suddenly, blank spaces appeared in the rows of merchandise.
• 1:19:23
  Certain small tools, wire cutters, calipers, surgical scissors had vanished,
• 1:19:28
  and all the coils of wire had disappeared. Blanks equally had appeared in the
• 1:19:31
  rows of lenses. All of my tiny, powerful microscope lenses had vanished.
• 1:19:35
  I cast a quick glance at Kiral, but he seemed unsurprised. I recalled
• 1:19:40
  vague rumors of the silent Ones and concluded that eerie, though it seemed this
• 1:19:45
  was merely their way of doing business. Kiral pointed at one of the tools,
• 1:19:48
  at an exceptionally fine pair of binocular lenses, and at the last coils
• 1:19:53
  of wire. The shrouded ones did not move, but the lenses and the
• 1:19:56
  wire vanished. The small tool remained, and after a moment ki All dropped
• 1:20:00
  his hand. I took my cue from Kiral and remained motionless, awaiting whatever
• 1:20:03
  surprise was coming. I had halfway expected what happened next. In the blank
• 1:20:08
  spaces, little points of light began to glimmer, and after a moment,
• 1:20:12
  blue and red and green gemstones appeared there. To me, the substitution appeared
• 1:20:15
  roughly equitable and fair, though I am no judge of the fine points of
• 1:20:18
  gems. Kiral scowled slightly and pointed to one of the green gems, and
• 1:20:23
  after a moment it whisked away, and a blue one took its place in
• 1:20:27
  another spot, where a fine set of surgical instruments had lain. Kiral pointed
• 1:20:30
  at the blue gem which now lay there, shook his head and held out
• 1:20:32
  three fingers. After a moment, a second blue stone lay winking beside the
• 1:20:36
  first. Kiral did not move, but inexorably held out the three fingers.
• 1:20:42
  There was a little swirling in the air, and then both gems vanished,
• 1:20:45
  and the case of surgical instruments lay in their place. Still. Kial did
• 1:20:48
  not move, but held the three fingers out for a full minute. Finally
• 1:20:53
  he dropped them and bent to pick up the case instruments again. The little
• 1:20:56
  swirl in the air, and the instruments vanished. In their place lay three
• 1:21:00
  of the blue gems. My mouth twitched in the first amusement I had felt
• 1:21:03
  since we entered this uncanny place. Evidently, bargaining with the silent Ones was
• 1:21:08
  not a great deal different than bargaining with anyone anywhere. Nevertheless, under the
• 1:21:13
  eyes of those shrouded but horrible forms, if they had eyes, which I
• 1:21:15
  doubted, I had no impulse to protest their offered prices. I gathered up
• 1:21:20
  the rejected lenses, repacked them neatly, and helped Kiral recrate the tools and
• 1:21:25
  instruments the silent Ones had not wanted. I noticed that, in addition to
• 1:21:29
  the microscope lenses and surgical instruments, they had taken all the fine wire.
• 1:21:32
  I couldn't imagine, and didn't particularly want to imagine, what they intended to
• 1:21:36
  do with it. On our way back through the streets, unshepherded. This
• 1:21:40
  time, Krral's tongue was loosened, as if with a great release from tension
• 1:21:44
  their psychokinetics. He told me, quite a few of the non human races
• 1:21:47
  are I guess they have to be, having no eyes and no hands.
• 1:21:51
  But sometimes I wonder if we of the dry towns ought to deal with them
• 1:21:55
  at all. What do you mean? I asked, not really listening.
• 1:21:59
  I was thinking mostly about the way the small objects had melted away and reappeared.
• 1:22:02
  The sight had stirred some uncomfortable memory, a vague sense of danger.
• 1:22:06
  It was not tangible enough for me to know why I feared it, but
• 1:22:10
  just a subliminal uneasiness that kept prodding at me, like a tooth that isn't
• 1:22:15
  quite aching yet. Kiral said, we of Shane saw live between fire and
• 1:22:19
  flood terra on the one hand, and on the other may be something worse.
• 1:22:24
  Who knows. We know so little about the silent ones and those like
• 1:22:27
  them. Who knows? Maybe we're giving them the weapons to destroy us.
• 1:22:30
  He broke off with a gasp and stood staring down one of the streets.
• 1:22:33
  It lay open and bare between two rows of round houses, and Kiral was
• 1:22:38
  staring fixedly at a doorway which had opened there. I followed his paralyzed gaze
• 1:22:43
  and saw the girl, hair like spun black glass fell in hard waves around
• 1:22:46
  her shoulders, and the red eyes smiled with alien malice, alien mischief beneath
• 1:22:51
  the dark crown of little stars, and the toad god sprawled in hideous embroideries
• 1:22:56
  across the white folds of her breast. Kirol gulped horse his hand flew up
• 1:23:00
  as he clutched the charms strung about his neck. I imitated the gesture mechanically,
• 1:23:04
  watching Karol, wondering if he would turn and run again. But he
• 1:23:08
  stood frozen for a minute. Then the spell broke and he took one step
• 1:23:12
  toward the girl, arms outstretched, Miellyn. He cried, and there was
• 1:23:15
  heart break in his voice, and again the cry making ringing echoes in the
• 1:23:19
  strange street, Miellyn, Miellyn. This time it was the girl who whirled
• 1:23:24
  and fled. Her white robes fluttered, and I saw the twinkle of her
• 1:23:27
  flying feet as she vanished into the space between the houses and was gone.
• 1:23:30
  Kil took one blind step down the street, then another, but before he
• 1:23:34
  could burst into a run, I had him by the arm, dragging him
• 1:23:38
  back to sanity. Man, you've gone mad chase in a non human town.
• 1:23:42
  He struggled for a minute, then with a harsh sigh, he said,
• 1:23:45
  it's all right, I won't and shook loose from my arm. He
• 1:23:48
  did not speak again until we reached the gates of Canarsa, and they closed
• 1:23:53
  silently and untouched behind us. I had forgotten the place already. I had
• 1:23:57
  space only to think of the girl, whose face I had not forgotten since
• 1:24:00
  the moment when she saved me and disappeared. Now she had appeared again to
• 1:24:03
  Karral. What did it all mean? I asked, as we walked toward
• 1:24:08
  the camp. Do you know that girl? But I knew the question was
• 1:24:11
  futile. Kil's face was closed, conceding nothing, and his friendliness had vanished
• 1:24:15
  completely. He said, now you know you saved me from the catmen and
• 1:24:19
  again in Canarsa, so my hands are bound from harming you. But it
• 1:24:24
  is evil to have dealings with those who have been touched by the toad God.
• 1:24:27
  He spat noisily on the ground, looking at me with loathing, and
• 1:24:30
  said we will reach Shane Saw in three days. Stay away from me.
• 1:24:35
  End of chapter six chapter seven, Shane Saw first in the chain of dry
• 1:24:44
  towns that lie in the bed of a long dried ocean, is set at
• 1:24:46
  the center of a great alkali plain, a dusty, parched city bleached by
• 1:24:50
  a million years of sun. The houses are high, spreading buildings, with
• 1:24:55
  many rooms and wide windows. The poorer sort were made of sun dried the
• 1:25:00
  more imposing, being cut from the bleached salt stone of the cliffs that rise
• 1:25:03
  behind the city. News travels fast in the dry towns. If Recall were
• 1:25:08
  in the city, he'd soon know that I was here and guess who I
• 1:25:12
  was or why I'd come. I might disguise myself so that my own sister
• 1:25:16
  or the mother who bore me would not know me. But I had no
• 1:25:19
  illusions about my ability to disguise myself from Acall. He had created the disguise
• 1:25:25
  that was me. When the second sun sat red and burning behind the salt
• 1:25:29
  cliffs, I knew he was not in Shaine Saw, but I stayed on,
• 1:25:32
  waiting for something to happen. At night, I slept in a cubby
• 1:25:36
  hole behind a wine shop, paying an inordinate price for that very dubious privilege.
• 1:25:42
  And every day in the sleepy silence of the blood red noon, I
• 1:25:45
  paced the public square of shane Saw. This went on for four days.
• 1:25:49
  No one took the slightest notice of another nameless man in a shabby shirt cloak,
• 1:25:54
  without name or identity or known business. No one appeared to see me,
• 1:25:58
  except the dusty children with pale, fleecy hair, who played their patient
• 1:26:01
  games on the wind swept curving of the square. They surveyed my scarred face
• 1:26:06
  with neither curiosity or fear, and it occurred to me that Rindy might be
• 1:26:11
  such another as these. If I had still been thinking like an earthman,
• 1:26:15
  I might have tried to question one of the children or win their confidence.
• 1:26:18
  But I had a deeper game in hand. On the fifth day, I
• 1:26:23
  was so much a fixture that my pacing went unnoticed even by the children.
• 1:26:27
  On the gray moss of the square, a few dried looking old men,
• 1:26:30
  their faces as faded as their shirtcloaks, and bearing the knife scars of a
• 1:26:33
  hundred forgotten flights, drowsed on the stone benches and along the flagged walk at
• 1:26:40
  the edge of the square. As suddenly as an autumn storm in the salt
• 1:26:42
  flats, a woman came walking. She was tall, with a proud,
• 1:26:47
  swinging walk, and a metallic clashing kept rhythm to her swift steps. Her
• 1:26:51
  arms were fettered, each wrist bound with a jeweled bracelet, and the bracelets
• 1:26:56
  linked together by a long silver gilt chain, passed through a silk and loop
• 1:27:00
  at her waist. From the loop swung a tiny golden padlock, but in
• 1:27:03
  the lock stood an even tinier key, signifying that she was a higher caste
• 1:27:09
  than her husband or consort, and that her fettering was by choice and not
• 1:27:14
  command. She stopped directly before me and raised her arm in formal greeting like
• 1:27:17
  a man. The chain made a tinkling sound in the hushed square as her
• 1:27:21
  other hand was pulled up tight against the silken loop at her waist. She
• 1:27:26
  stood surveying me for a few moments, and finally I raised my head and
• 1:27:29
  returned her gaze. I don't know why I had expected her to have hair
• 1:27:32
  like spun black glass, and eyes that burned with the red reflection of the
• 1:27:36
  burning star. This woman's eyes were darker than the poison berries of the salt
• 1:27:41
  cliffs, and her mouth was a cut berry that looked just as dangerous.
• 1:27:45
  She was young, the slimness of her shoulders, and the narrow, steel
• 1:27:47
  chained wrists told me how very young she was, But her face had seen
• 1:27:53
  weather and storms, and her dark eyes had weathered worse psychic storms than that.
• 1:27:58
  She did not flinch at the sight of my scars, and met my
• 1:28:00
  gaze without dropping her eyes. You are a stranger. What is your business
• 1:28:06
  in Chainsaw? I met the direct question with the insolence it demanded, hardly
• 1:28:12
  moving my lips. I have come to buy women for the brothels of Ardkoran.
• 1:28:16
  Perhaps when washed, you might be suitable. Who could arrange for your
• 1:28:19
  sail? She took the rebuke impassively, though the bitter crimson of her mouth
• 1:28:25
  twitched a little in mischief or rage, but she made no sign. The
• 1:28:29
  battle was joined between us, and I knew already that it would be fought
• 1:28:32
  to the end. From somewhere in her draperies, something fell to the ground
• 1:28:36
  with a little tinkle, But I knew that trick too, and I did
• 1:28:41
  not move. Finally, she went away without bending to retrieve it, And
• 1:28:44
  when I looked around, I saw that all the fleecehaired children had stolen away,
• 1:28:47
  leaving their playthings lying on the curb. But one or two of the
• 1:28:51
  gaffers on the stone benches, who were old enough to show curiosity without losing
• 1:28:56
  face, were watching me with impassive eyes. I could have asked the woman's
• 1:29:00
  name then, but I held back, knowing it could only lessen the prestige
• 1:29:03
  I had gained from the encounter. I glanced down, without seeming to do
• 1:29:08
  so, at the tiny mirror which had fallen from the recesses of the fur
• 1:29:11
  robe. Her name might have been inscribed on the reverse, but I left
• 1:29:15
  it lying there to be picked up by the children when they returned and went
• 1:29:17
  back to the wine shop. I had accomplished my first objective. If you
• 1:29:21
  can't be inconspicuous, be so damned conspicuous that nobody can miss you. And
• 1:29:28
  that in itself is a fair concealment. How many people can accurately describe a
• 1:29:31
  street riot. I was finishing off a bad meal with a stone bottle of
• 1:29:36
  worse wine when the chalk came in, disregarding the proprietor, and made straight
• 1:29:41
  for me. He was furred immaculately white. His velvet muzzle was contracted as
• 1:29:45
  if the very smells might soil it, and he kept a dainty paw outstretched
• 1:29:49
  to ward off accidental contact with greasy counters or tables or tapestries. His fur
• 1:29:56
  was scented and his throat circled with a collar of embroidered silk. This pampered
• 1:30:00
  minion surveyed me with the innocent malice of an uninvolved non human for merely human
• 1:30:05
  intrigues. You are wanted in the great house of Shanithath's guard man. He
• 1:30:10
  spoke the Shainsaw dialect with an affected lisp. Will it please you to come
• 1:30:14
  with me? I came with no more than polite protest, but was startled.
• 1:30:19
  I had not expected the encounter to reach the great house so soon.
• 1:30:24
  Shainsa's Great House had changed hands four times since I had last been in Shainsaws.
• 1:30:29
  I wasn't overly anxious to appear there. The white chalk as out of
• 1:30:32
  place in the rough, dry town as a jewel in the streets or a
• 1:30:35
  rain drop in the desert. Led me along a winding boulevard to an outlying
• 1:30:40
  district. He made no attempt to engage me in conversation, and indeed I
• 1:30:45
  got the distinct impression that this coxcomb of a non human considered me well Beneath
• 1:30:48
  his notice he seemed much more aware of the blowing dust in the street,
• 1:30:54
  which ruffled and smudged his carefully combed fur. The great house was carved from
• 1:30:59
  blocks of rock pink basalt, the entry guarded by two great Caryadids, and
• 1:31:02
  wrapped in chains of carved metal set somehow into the surface of the basalt.
• 1:31:08
  The guilt had long ago worn away from the chains, so that it alternately
• 1:31:12
  gleamed gold or smudged base metal. The Carryadids were patient and blind, their
• 1:31:16
  jewel eyes long vanished under a hotter sun than to day's. The entrance hall
• 1:31:23
  was enormous. A Terran starship could have stood upright inside. It was my
• 1:31:27
  first impression, but I dismissed that thought quickly. Any Terran thought was apt
• 1:31:30
  to betray me. But the main hall was built on a scale even more
• 1:31:34
  huge, and it was even colder than the legendary hell of the Chalks.
• 1:31:39
  It was far too big for the people in it. There was a little
• 1:31:42
  solar heater in the ceiling, but it didn't help much. A dim glow
• 1:31:45
  came from a metal brazier, but that didn't help much either. The chalk
• 1:31:49
  melted into the shadows, and I went down the steps into the hall by
• 1:31:53
  myself, feeling carefully for each step with my feet, and trying not to
• 1:31:58
  seem to be doing so. My comparaton to night blindness is the only significant
• 1:32:01
  way in which I really differ from a native wolfin There were three men,
• 1:32:06
  two women, and a child in the room. They were all dry towners
• 1:32:10
  and had an obscure family likeness, and they all wore rich garments of fur
• 1:32:14
  dyed in many colors. One of the men, old and stooped and withered,
• 1:32:17
  was doing something to the brazier. A slim boy of fourteen was sitting
• 1:32:21
  cross legged on a pile of cushions in the corner. There was something wrong
• 1:32:26
  with his legs. A girl of ten, in a too short smock that
• 1:32:30
  showed long, spider thin legs above her low leather boots, was playing with
• 1:32:32
  some sort of shimmery crystals, spilling them out into patterns and scooping them up
• 1:32:36
  again from the uneven stones of the floor. One of the women was a
• 1:32:40
  fat, creased slattern whose jewels and dyed furs did not disguise her greasy slovenliness.
• 1:32:46
  Her hands were unchained, and she was biting into a fruit which dripped
• 1:32:50
  red juice down the rich blue fur of her robe. The old man gave
• 1:32:54
  her a look like murder as I came in, and she straightened slightly,
• 1:32:57
  but did not discard the fruit. The whole room had a curious look of
• 1:33:01
  austere, dignified poverty, to which the fat woman was the only discordant note.
• 1:33:06
  But it was the remaining man and woman who drew my attention, so
• 1:33:10
  that I noticed the others only peripherally in their outermost orbit. One was Kirral,
• 1:33:15
  standing at the foot of the dais and glowering at me. The other
• 1:33:17
  was the dark eyed woman I had rebuked to day in the public square.
• 1:33:21
  Kirral said, so it's you, and his voice held nothing, not rebuke,
• 1:33:27
  not friendliness or lack of it, not even hatred. Nothing. There
• 1:33:31
  was only one way to meet it. I faced the girl. She was
• 1:33:34
  sitting on a throne like chair next to the fat woman and looked like a
• 1:33:38
  doe next to a pig, and said boldly, I assume this summons to
• 1:33:43
  mean that you informed your kinsmen of my offer. She flushed, and that
• 1:33:46
  was triumph enough. I held back the triumph, however, warry of overconfidence,
• 1:33:51
  the gaffer laughed the high cackle of age, and Kirral broke in with
• 1:33:56
  a sharp, angry monosyllable, by which I knew that my remark had indeed
• 1:34:00
  been repeated, and had lost nothing in the telling. But only the line
• 1:34:03
  of his jaw betrayed the anger, as he said, calmly, be quiet,
• 1:34:06
  Delissa, Where did you pick this up? I said, boldly?
• 1:34:12
  The great House has changed rulers since last I smelled the salt cliffs. Newcomers
• 1:34:15
  do not know my name, and theirs is unknown to me, the old
• 1:34:19
  gaffer said thinly to Karl, our name has lost Kihar. One daughter is
• 1:34:25
  lured away by the toy maker, and another babbles with strangers in the square,
• 1:34:29
  and a homeless no good of the streets does not know our name.
• 1:34:32
  My eyes, growing accustomed to the dark blaze of the brazier, saw that
• 1:34:35
  Kiral was biting his lip and scowling. Then he gestured to a table where
• 1:34:40
  an array of glassware was set, and at the gesture, the white chalk
• 1:34:44
  came on noiseless feet and poured wine. If you have no blood feud with
• 1:34:47
  my family, will you drink with me? I will, I said,
• 1:34:50
  relaxing, even if he had associated the trader with the scarred earthmen of the
• 1:34:55
  spaceport. He seemed to have decided to drop the matter. He seemed startled,
• 1:35:00
  but he waited until I had lifted the glass and taken a sip.
• 1:35:02
  Then, with a movement like lightning, he leaped from the dais and struck
• 1:35:05
  the glass from my lips. I staggered back, wiping my cut mouth in
• 1:35:10
  a split second, juggling possibilities. The insult was terrible and deadly. I
• 1:35:15
  could do nothing now, but fight men had been murdered in Shainsaw for far
• 1:35:18
  less. I had come to settle one feud, not involve myself in another.
• 1:35:24
  But even while these lightning thoughts flickered in my mind, I had whipped
• 1:35:27
  out my skin, and I was surprised at the shrillness of my own voice.
• 1:35:30
  You contrive a fence beneath your own roof, spy and renegade, kir
• 1:35:34
  All thundered. He did not touch his skein. From the table, he
• 1:35:38
  caught a long, fore thonged whip, making it whistle through the air.
• 1:35:42
  The long legged child scuttled backward. I stepped back one pace, trying to
• 1:35:45
  conceal my desperate puzzlement. I could not guess what had prompted Kiral's attack,
• 1:35:49
  but whatever it was, I must have made some bad mistake and could count
• 1:35:53
  myself lucky to get out of there alive. Kirrall's voice perceptibly trembled with rage.
• 1:35:59
  You dare to come in to my own home after I have tracked you
• 1:36:00
  to the cars and back, blind fool that I was, but now you
• 1:36:04
  shall pay. The whip sank through the air, hissing past my shoulders.
• 1:36:08
  I dodged to one side, retreating step by step as Kiral swung the powerful
• 1:36:12
  thongs. It cracked again, and a pain like the burning of red hot
• 1:36:15
  iron seared my upper arm. My skein rattled down from numb fingers. The
• 1:36:19
  whip whacked the floor. Pick up your skin, said Karol, pick it
• 1:36:25
  up if your dare. He poised the lash again. The fat woman screamed.
• 1:36:29
  I stood rigid, gaging my chances of disarming him with a sudden leap.
• 1:36:32
  Suddenly, the girl Dollissa leaped from her seat with a harsh, musical
• 1:36:36
  chiming of chains. Kiral, no, no carral. He moved slightly,
• 1:36:41
  but did not take his eyes from me. Get back Dollissa. No wait.
• 1:36:45
  She ran to him and caught his whip arm, dragging it down and
• 1:36:48
  spoke to him hurriedly and urgently. Kiral's face changed as she spoke. He
• 1:36:53
  drew a long breath and threw the whip down beside my skin on the floor.
• 1:36:57
  Answer straight on your life, what are you doing? In Shane's sah,
• 1:37:00
  I could hardly take it in that for the moment I was reprieved from
• 1:37:02
  sudden death, from being beaten into bloody death here at Karol's feet. The
• 1:37:06
  girl went back to her throne like chair. Now I must either tell the
• 1:37:11
  truth or a convincing lie, and I was lost in a game where I
• 1:37:14
  didn't know the rules. The explanation I thought might get me out alive might
• 1:37:18
  be the very one which would bring down instant and painful death. Suddenly,
• 1:37:23
  with a poignancy that was almost pain, I wished Rakhal were standing here at
• 1:37:27
  my side, but I had to bluff it out alone. If they had
• 1:37:30
  recognized me for Race Cargill, the Terran spy who had often been in Chainsaw,
• 1:37:34
  they might release me. It was possible. I supposed that they were
• 1:37:39
  Terran sympathizers. On the other hand, Karl's shouts of spy renegade seemed to
• 1:37:45
  suggest the opposite. I stood trying to ignore the searing pain in my lashed
• 1:37:48
  arm, but I knew that blood was running hot down my shoulder. Finally,
• 1:37:53
  I said, I came to settle blood feud. Kiirral's lips thinned in
• 1:37:57
  what might have been meant for a smile. You shall, assuredly, but
• 1:38:00
  with whom remains to be seen. Knowing I had nothing more to lose,
• 1:38:04
  I said, with a renegade, called recall Censar. Only the old man
• 1:38:10
  echoed my words, dully, recall Censar. I felt heartened, seeing I
• 1:38:15
  wasn't dead yet I have sworn to kill him. Kirraal suddenly clapped his hands
• 1:38:19
  and shouted to the white chuck to clean up the broken glass on the floor.
• 1:38:23
  He said, huskily, you are not yourself. Recall Censar. I
• 1:38:28
  told you he wasn't, said Dallisa, high and hysterical. I told you
• 1:38:31
  he wasn't a scarred man tall. What was I to think? Kirral sounded
• 1:38:38
  and looked badly shaken. He filled a glass himself and handed it to me,
• 1:38:41
  saying, hoarsely, I did not believe even the renegade. Recall would
• 1:38:45
  break the codes so far as to drink with me. He would not.
• 1:38:48
  I could be positive about this. The codes of Tera had made some superficial
• 1:38:53
  impress on Recall, but down deep his own world held sway. If these
• 1:38:57
  men were at blood feud with Recall, and he stood here where I stood,
• 1:39:00
  he would have let himself be beaten into bloody rags before tasting their wine.
• 1:39:04
  I took the glass, raised it, and drained it. Then holding
• 1:39:08
  it out for more, I said, Rikaal's life is mine. But I
• 1:39:11
  swear by the red star, and by the unmoving mountains, by the black
• 1:39:14
  snow, and by the ghost wind, I have no quarrel with any beneath
• 1:39:17
  this roof. I cast the glass to the floor, where it shattered on
• 1:39:20
  the stones. Kiroll hesitated, but under the blazing eyes of the girl,
• 1:39:25
  he quickly poured himself a glass of wine and drank a few SIPs, then
• 1:39:29
  flung down the glass. He stepped forward and laid his hands on my shoulders.
• 1:39:32
  I winced as he touched the welt of the lash, and could not
• 1:39:34
  raise my own arm to complete the ceremonial toast. Kill stepped away and shrugged.
• 1:39:40
  Shall I have one of the women. See to your hurt. He
• 1:39:43
  looked at Dalisa, but she twisted her mouth. Do it yourself. It
• 1:39:46
  is nothing, I said, not truthfully. But I demand in requital that,
• 1:39:50
  since we are bound by spilt blood under your roof, that you give
• 1:39:54
  me what news you have of Recall this spy and renegade, Kirall said fiercely.
• 1:40:00
  If I knew, would I be under my own roof. The old
• 1:40:02
  gaffer on the dais broke into shrill, whining laughter. You have drunk with
• 1:40:05
  him, Kirraal. Now he's bound you not to do him harm. I
• 1:40:09
  know the story of Rakhal. He was a spy for Terra twelve years twelve
• 1:40:14
  years, and then he fought and flung their filthy money in their faces and
• 1:40:16
  left them. But his partner was some dry town half breed or Terran spy,
• 1:40:21
  and they fought with clawed gloves and near killed one another, except the
• 1:40:25
  Terrans, who have no honor, stopped em. See the marks of the
• 1:40:28
  Kafirra on his face by Shara, the golden chained, said Kiral, gazing
• 1:40:32
  at me with something like a grin. You are, if nothing else,
• 1:40:34
  a very clever man. What are you spy? Or half caste of some
• 1:40:40
  ard koran slut. What I am doesn't matter to you, I said.
• 1:40:44
  You have blood feud with Recall, but mine is older than yours, and
• 1:40:46
  his life is mine. As you are bound in honor to kill. The
• 1:40:50
  formal phrases came easily now to my tongue. The earth man had slipped away.
• 1:40:55
  So you are bound in honor to help me kill If any one beneath
• 1:40:58
  your roof knows anything of Kirraal's smile bared his teeth. Recaw works against the
• 1:41:03
  son of the Ape, he said, using the insulting wolf term for the
• 1:41:06
  Terrans. If we help you to kill him, we remove a goad from
• 1:41:11
  our flanks. I prefer to let the filthy Tehranins spend their strength trying to
• 1:41:15
  remove it themselves. Moreover, I believe you are yourself an earth man.
• 1:41:19
  You have no right to the courtesy I extend to we the people of the
• 1:41:23
  sky. Yet you have drunk wine with me, and I have no quarrel
• 1:41:26
  with you. He raised his hand in dismissal, out fencing me. Leave
• 1:41:30
  my roof in safety and my city with honor. I could not protest or
• 1:41:34
  plead a man's kihar his personal dignity is a precious thing in Shainsa, and
• 1:41:39
  he had placed me so I could not compromise mine further in words. Yet
• 1:41:44
  I lost Krhal equally if I left at his bidding like an inferior dismissed one
• 1:41:48
  desperate gambol remained a word, I said, raising my hand, and while
• 1:41:54
  he half turned startled, believing I was indeed about to compromise my dignity by
• 1:41:58
  a further plea, I lung it at him. I will bet Schegri with
• 1:42:01
  you. His iron composure looked shaken. I had delivered a blow to his
• 1:42:05
  belief that I was an earth Man. For it is doubtful if there are
• 1:42:09
  six earthmen on Wolf who know about Schegri, the dangerous game of the dry
• 1:42:13
  towns. It is no ordinary gamble, for what the better stakes is his
• 1:42:17
  life, possibly his reason. Rarely indeed will a man beg Schegri unless he
• 1:42:21
  has nothing further to lose. It is a cruel, possibly decadent game,
• 1:42:27
  which has no parallel anywhere in the known universe. But I had no choice.
• 1:42:30
  I had struck a cold trail in Shainsaw. Recal might be anywhere on
• 1:42:34
  the planet, and half of Magnuson's month was already up. Unless I could
• 1:42:38
  force Kirol to tell what he knew, I might as well quit, So
• 1:42:42
  I repeated, I will bet Schegri with you and Kirall stood unmoving. For
• 1:42:46
  what the Chagrin wagers is his courage and endurance in the face of torture and
• 1:42:50
  an unknown fate on his side. The stakes are clearly determined beforehand. But
• 1:42:56
  if he loses, his punishment or penalty is at the whim of the one
• 1:42:59
  who has accepted him, and he may be put to whatever doom the winner
• 1:43:02
  determines. And this is the contest. The Chagrin permits himself to be tortured
• 1:43:08
  from sunrise to sunset. If he endures, he wins. It is as
• 1:43:12
  simple as that he can stop the torture at any moment by a word,
• 1:43:15
  but to do so is a concession of defeat. This is not as dangerous
• 1:43:19
  as it might at first seem. The other party to the bet is bound
• 1:43:24
  by the ironclad codes of Wolf to inflict no permanent physical jamage, no injury
• 1:43:29
  that will not heal with three sun courses, but from sunrise to sunset,
• 1:43:32
  any torment or painful ingenuity which the half human mentality of wolf can devise must
• 1:43:38
  be endured. The man who can outthink the torture of the moment, the
• 1:43:42
  man who can hold in his mind the single thought of his goal. That
• 1:43:45
  man can claim the stakes he has set, as well as other concessions made
• 1:43:48
  traditional. The silence grew in the hall. Dalisa had straightened and was watching
• 1:43:55
  me intently, her lips parted and the tip of a little red tongue visible
• 1:43:58
  between her teeth. The only sound was the tiny crunching as the fat woman
• 1:44:01
  nibbled at nuts and cast their shells into the brazier. Even the child on
• 1:44:05
  the steps had abandoned her game with the crystal dice and sat looking up at
• 1:44:09
  me with her mouth open. Finally, Kirall demanded, your stakes, tell
• 1:44:14
  me all you know of Recall, censar and keep silence about me and shainsa
• 1:44:17
  by the red shadow. Kirall burst out, You have courage, Rascar,
• 1:44:23
  say only yes or no, I retorted, rebuked. He fell silent.
• 1:44:27
  Dalisa leaned forward and again, for some unknown reason, I thought of a
• 1:44:30
  girl with hair like spun black glass. Kirall raised his hand. I say
• 1:44:35
  no, I have blood feud with Recall, and I will not sell his
• 1:44:39
  death to another. Further, I believe you are Terran and I will not
• 1:44:42
  deal with you. And finally, you have twice saved my life, and
• 1:44:45
  I would find small pleasure in torturing you. I say no, drink again
• 1:44:49
  with me, and we part without a quarrel. Beaten, I turned to
• 1:44:53
  go, wait, said Dallisa. She stood up and came down the dais
• 1:44:58
  slowly, this time walking with dick nity to the rhythm of her musically clashing
• 1:45:01
  chains. I have a quarrel with this man. I started to say that
• 1:45:05
  I did not quarrel with women, and stopped myself. The Terran concept of
• 1:45:10
  chivalry has no equivalent on wolf. She looked at me with her dark poison
• 1:45:14
  berry eyes, icy and level, and amused, and said, I will
• 1:45:17
  bet Schegri with you unless you fear me Rascar, and I knew suddenly that
• 1:45:23
  if I lost, I might better have trusted myself to Kirale and his whip
• 1:45:28
  or to the wild beast things of the mountains. End of chapter seven,
• 1:45:34
  Chapter eight. I slept little that night. There is a tale told in
• 1:45:40
  Delaon of the Chagri where a challenger was left in a room alone where he
• 1:45:43
  was blindfolded and told to await the beginning of the torment. Somewhere in those
• 1:45:47
  dark hours of waiting between the unknown and the unexpected, the hours of telling
• 1:45:51
  over to himself the horrors of past chagri, the torture of anticipation alone became
• 1:45:57
  unbearable. A little past noon, he collapson screams of horror, and died,
• 1:46:00
  raving, unmarred, untouched. Daybreak came slowly, and with the first
• 1:46:06
  streamers of light came Dalisa with the white chalk, maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his
• 1:46:12
  way through the shabby poverty of the Great Hall. They took me to a
• 1:46:15
  lower dungeon, where the slant of the sunlight was less visible. Daliesa said,
• 1:46:19
  the sun has risen. I said nothing. Any word may be interpreted
• 1:46:24
  as a confession of defeat. I resolved to give them no excuse. But
• 1:46:28
  my skin crawled, and I had that peculiar prickling sensation where the hair on
• 1:46:31
  my forearms was bristling, erect with tension and fear. Dalisa said to the
• 1:46:36
  chalk, his gear was not searched. See that he has swallowed no anesthetic
• 1:46:41
  drugs. Briefly, I gave her credit for thoroughness, even while I wondered
• 1:46:45
  in a split second why I had not thought of this. Drugs could blur
• 1:46:48
  consciousness at least or suspend reality. The white non human sprang forward and pinioned
• 1:46:54
  my arms with one strong, spring steel forearm. With his other hand,
• 1:46:58
  he forced my jaws open. I felt the furred fingers at the back of
• 1:47:00
  my throat, gagged, struggled briefly, and doubled up in uncontrollable wretching.
• 1:47:05
  Dalsa's poison berry eyes regarded me levily. As I struggled upright, fighting off
• 1:47:11
  the dizzy sickness of disgust. Something about her impassive face stopped me cold.
• 1:47:15
  I had been momentarily raging with fury and humiliation. Now I realized that this
• 1:47:20
  had been a calculated, careful gesture to make me lose my temper and thus
• 1:47:25
  sap my resistance. If she could set me to fighting, if she could
• 1:47:29
  make me spend my strength and rage, my own imagination would fight on her
• 1:47:32
  side to make me lose control. Before the end. Swimming in the glare
• 1:47:35
  of her eyes, I realized she had never thought for a moment that I
• 1:47:40
  had taken any drug. Acting on Karrel's hint, that I was a Terran.
• 1:47:43
  She was taking advantage of the well known Terran revulsion for the non human
• 1:47:46
  blindfold him. Dalisa commanded, then instantly countermanded that no strip him first.
• 1:47:54
  The chalk ripped off shirt, cloak, shirt, shoes, breeches, and
• 1:47:58
  I had my first triumph when the wheeled claw marks on my shoulders, worse,
• 1:48:00
  if possible, than those which disfigured my face, were laid bare.
• 1:48:04
  The chalk screwed up his muzzle in fastidious horror, and Alisa looked shaken.
• 1:48:10
  I could almost read her thoughts, if he endured this, what hope have
• 1:48:13
  I to make him cry mercy? Briefly I remembered the months I lay feverish
• 1:48:17
  and half dead, waiting for the wounds Recal had inflicted to heal, those
• 1:48:20
  months when I had believed that nothing would ever hurt me again, that I
• 1:48:25
  had known the worst of all suffering. But I had been younger then.
• 1:48:29
  Dalisa had picked up two small, sharp knives. She weighed them briefly,
• 1:48:33
  gesturing to the chalk. Without resisting, I let myself be man handled backward,
• 1:48:38
  spread eaglet against the wall. Dalisa commanded drive the knives through his palms.
• 1:48:42
  To the wall. My hands twitched convulsively anticipating the slash of steel,
• 1:48:45
  and my throat closed in spasmodic dread. This was breaking the compact, bound
• 1:48:49
  as they were not to inflict physical damage. I opened my lips to protest
• 1:48:54
  this breaking of the bond of honor and met her dark, blazing stare,
• 1:48:57
  and suddenly the sweat broke out on my foot. I had placed myself wholly
• 1:49:01
  in her hands, and as Karl had said, they were in no way
• 1:49:04
  bound by honor to respect a pledge to a terran. Then, as my
• 1:49:09
  hands clenched into fists, I forced myself to relax. This was a bluff,
• 1:49:14
  a mental trick to needle me into breaking the pact and pleading for mercy.
• 1:49:16
  I set my lips, spread my palms wide against the wall, and
• 1:49:19
  waited impassively. She said, in her lilting voice, take care not to
• 1:49:25
  sever the tendons, or his hands would be paralyzed, and he may claim
• 1:49:28
  we have broken our compact. The points of the steel razor sharp touched my
• 1:49:31
  palms, and I felt blood run down my hand. Before the pain,
• 1:49:35
  with an effort that turned my face white, I did not pull away from
• 1:49:39
  the point the knives drove deeper, dully suggesture to the chalk. The knives
• 1:49:44
  dropped two pinpricks, a quarter of an inch deep, stung in my palm.
• 1:49:47
  I had out bluffed her, had I if I had expected her to
• 1:49:53
  betray disappointment, And I had. I was disappointed abruptly, as if the
• 1:49:58
  game had wearied her already. She just and I could not hold back a
• 1:50:00
  gasp as my arms were hauled up over my head, twisted violently around one
• 1:50:04
  another, and trussed with thin cords that bit deep into the flesh. Then
• 1:50:08
  the rough upward pull almost jerked my shoulders from their sockets, and I heard
• 1:50:12
  the giant chalk grunt with effort as I was hauled upward until my feet,
• 1:50:15
  barely on tiptoe, touched the floor. Blindfold him said, do Lisa languidly
• 1:50:20
  so that he cannot watch the ascent of the sun or its descent, or
• 1:50:24
  know what is to come. A dark softness muffled my eyes. After a
• 1:50:28
  little I heard her steps retreating. My arms, wrenched overhead and numbed with
• 1:50:31
  the bite of the cords, were beginning to hurt badly now, but it
• 1:50:34
  wasn't too bad. Surely she did not mean that this should be all Sternly,
• 1:50:40
  I controlled my imagination, taking a tight rein on my thoughts. There
• 1:50:44
  was only one way to meet this hanging blind and racked in space, my
• 1:50:46
  toes barely scrambling at the floor, and that was to take each thing as
• 1:50:50
  it came, and not look ahead for an instant. First of all,
• 1:50:54
  I tried to get my feet under me, and discovered that by arching upwards
• 1:50:57
  to my fullest height, I could bear my weight on tiptoe and ease a
• 1:51:00
  little the dislocating ache in my armpits by slackening the overhead rope. But after
• 1:51:04
  a little a cramping pain began to flare through the arches of my feet,
• 1:51:08
  and it became impossible to support my weight on tiptoe. I jarred down with
• 1:51:11
  violent strain on my wrists and wrenched shoulders again, and for a moment the
• 1:51:15
  shooting agony was so intense that I nearly screamed. I thought I heard a
• 1:51:18
  soft breath near me. After a little it subsided to a sharp ache,
• 1:51:23
  then to a dull ache, and then to the violent cramping again, and
• 1:51:27
  once more I struggled to get my toes under me. I realized that by
• 1:51:30
  allowing my toes barely to touch the floor. They had doubled and tripled the
• 1:51:33
  pain by the tantalizing hope of, if not momentary relief, at least the
• 1:51:38
  alteration of one pain for another. I haven't the faintest idea even now,
• 1:51:42
  how long I repeated that agonizing cycle, struggle for a toe hold on rough
• 1:51:45
  stone, scraping my bare feet raw arch upward with all my strength, to
• 1:51:48
  release for a few moments, the strain on my wrenched shoulders, the momentary
• 1:51:53
  illusion of relief as I found my balance and the pressure lightened on my wrists,
• 1:51:57
  Then the slow creeping first of an then of a pain, then of
• 1:52:00
  a violent agony in the arches of my feet and calves, and delayed to
• 1:52:04
  the last endurable moment, that final terrible anguish, when the drop of my
• 1:52:09
  full weight pulled shoulder and wrist and elbow joints with that bone shattering jerk.
• 1:52:14
  I started at once to estimate how much time had passed, how many hours
• 1:52:16
  had crawled by, then checked myself, for that was imminent madness. But
• 1:52:21
  once the process had begun, my brain would not abandon, and I found
• 1:52:25
  myself with compulsive precision, counting off the seconds and the minutes in each cycle,
• 1:52:30
  stretch upward, release the pressure on the arms, the beginning of pain
• 1:52:33
  in the calves and arches and toes, the creeping of pain up the ribs
• 1:52:36
  and loins and shoulders, the sudden jarring drop on the arms. Again,
• 1:52:41
  my throat was intolerably dry. Under other circumstances, I might have estimated the
• 1:52:45
  time by the growing hunger and thirst, but the rough treatment I had received
• 1:52:48
  made this impossible. There were other unmentionable, humiliating pains. After a time
• 1:52:55
  to bolster my flagging courage, I found myself thinking of all the ways it
• 1:52:59
  might have been worse. I have heard of a chagrin exposed to the bite
• 1:53:01
  of poisonous not fatal, but painfully poisonous insects, and to the worrying of
• 1:53:06
  the small gnawing rodents which can be trained to bite and tear. Or I
• 1:53:11
  might have been branded. I banished the memory with a powerful exorcism. The
• 1:53:15
  man in Delonn whose anticipation a loan of a torture which never came had broken
• 1:53:18
  his mind. There was only one way to conquer this, and that was
• 1:53:21
  to act as if the present moment was the only one, and never for
• 1:53:26
  a moment to forget that the strongest of compacts bound them not to harm me,
• 1:53:30
  that the end of this was fixed by sunset. Gradually, however,
• 1:53:33
  all such rational thoughts blurred in the semi delirium of thirst and pain, narrowing
• 1:53:39
  to a red blaze of agony across my shoulder blades. I eased up on
• 1:53:43
  my toes again. White hot pain blazed through my feet. The rough stone
• 1:53:45
  on which my toes sank had been covered with metal, and I smelled scorching
• 1:53:48
  flesh, jerking up my feet with a wordless snarl of rage and fury,
• 1:53:51
  hanging in agony by my shoulders alone. And then I lost consciousness, at
• 1:53:57
  least for several moments. For when I became aware again, through the nightmare
• 1:54:00
  of pain, my toes were resting lightly and securely on cold stone. The
• 1:54:03
  smell of burned flesh remained, and the painful stinging in my toes. Mingled
• 1:54:09
  with that smell was a drift of perfume. Close by. Dallisa murmured,
• 1:54:13
  I do not wish to break our bargain by damaging your feet. It's only
• 1:54:15
  a little touch of fire to keep you from too much security. In resting
• 1:54:19
  them, I felt the taste of blood mingle in my mouth, with a
• 1:54:23
  sour taste of vomit. I felt delirious, light headed, after another eternity,
• 1:54:27
  I wondered if I had really heard De Lisa's lilting croon, or whether
• 1:54:30
  it was a nightmare born of feverish pain. Plead with me, a word,
• 1:54:34
  only a word, and I will release you, strong man, scarred
• 1:54:38
  man. Perhaps I shall demand only a little space in your arms. Would
• 1:54:41
  not such doom be light upon you? Perhaps I shall set you free to
• 1:54:45
  seek racal, if only to plague cararal. A word only a word from
• 1:54:48
  you, A word, only a word from you. It died into an
• 1:54:53
  endlessly echoing whisper. Swaying blindly, I wondered why I endured. I drew
• 1:54:58
  a dry tongue over lips, salty and bloody, and nightmarishly considered yielding,
• 1:55:02
  winning my way somehow around Alisa, or knocking her suddenly senseless and escaping I,
• 1:55:08
  who need not be bound by Wolf's codes either. I fumbled with a
• 1:55:12
  stiff shape of words, and a breath saved me, a soft, released
• 1:55:15
  breath of anticipation. It was another trick. I swayed limp and racked.
• 1:55:20
  I was not race cargole. Now I was a dead man, hanging in
• 1:55:25
  chains, swinging filthy vultures pecking at my dangling feet. The sounds of boots
• 1:55:29
  rang on the stone. In Carral's voice, low and bitter, demanded,
• 1:55:30
  somewhere behind me, what have you done with him? She did not answer,
• 1:55:34
  but I heard her chains clash lightly, and imagined her gesture. Kiraal
• 1:55:39
  muttered, women have no genius at any torture. Except his voice faded out
• 1:55:43
  into great distances. Their words came to me over a sort of windy ringing,
• 1:55:46
  like the howling of lost men dying in the snowfast passes of the mountains.
• 1:55:51
  Speak up, you fool. He can't hear you now. If you
• 1:55:55
  have let him faint, you are clumsy. You talk of clumsiness. Dalisa's
• 1:55:59
  voice, even thinned by the nightmare, ringing in my head, held concentrated
• 1:56:02
  scorn. Perhaps I shall release him to find Recall when you failed. The
• 1:56:06
  Terrans have a price on Recall's head too, And at least this man will
• 1:56:10
  not confuse himself with his prey. If you think I would let you bargain
• 1:56:13
  with a taranin Dallisa cried passionately. You trade with the Terrans, How would
• 1:56:16
  you stop me? Then? I trade with him because I must, but
• 1:56:19
  for a matter involving the honor of the Great House, the great house whose
• 1:56:23
  steps you would never have climbed except for Recall. Dalsa sounded as if she
• 1:56:27
  were chewing her words in little pieces and spitting them at Karol. Oh,
• 1:56:30
  you were clever to take us both as your consorts. You did not know
• 1:56:32
  what was Recall's doing. Did you hate the Terrans? Then she spaed an
• 1:56:36
  obscenity at him. Enjoy your hate, wallow in hating, and in the
• 1:56:40
  end all shan Thau will fall prey to the toy maker like mee Lyn.
• 1:56:44
  If you speak that name again, said Kerral, very low, I will
• 1:56:46
  kill you like Miellyn, mae Lyn, mae Lyyn. Dallisa repeated deliberately,
• 1:56:51
  You fool, Recall knew nothing of Miellyn. He was seen with me,
• 1:56:56
  You fool with me. You cannot tell twin from twin. Recall me to
• 1:57:00
  ask news of her, Kiral cried out hoarsely, like a man in anguish.
• 1:57:04
  Why didn't you tell me? You don't really have to ask, do
• 1:57:06
  you, Kral? You bitch said Karral, you filthy bitch. I heard
• 1:57:12
  the sound of a blow. The next moment, Krral ripped the blindfold from
• 1:57:15
  my eyes, and I blinked in the blaze of light. My arms were
• 1:57:16
  wholly numb, now twisted above my head, but the jar of his touch
• 1:57:20
  sent fresh pain racing through me. Carral's face swam out of the blaze of
• 1:57:24
  hell. If that is true, then this is a damnable farce. Elsa,
• 1:57:28
  you have lost our chance of learning what he knows of Mielyn. What
• 1:57:30
  he knows, De Lisa lowered her hand from her face, where a bruise
• 1:57:33
  was already darkening. Milyn has twice appeared when I was with him. Loose
• 1:57:38
  him, De Lisa, and bargain with him what we know of Recall for
• 1:57:40
  what he knows of Milyn. If you think I would let you bargain with
• 1:57:43
  Tarannin, she mocked, weakling, this quarrel is mine, you fool.
• 1:57:46
  The others in the caravan will give me news if you will not. Where
• 1:57:49
  is Quinn? From a million miles away, Carrol laughed, you've slipped the
• 1:57:55
  wrong hawk, De Lisa. The CapMan killed him. His skin flicked loose.
• 1:57:59
  He climbed Apperach near the rope at my wrists, bargain with me,
• 1:58:01
  Rascar, I coughed, unable to speak, and Kiral insisted, will you
• 1:58:06
  bargain? End this damned woman's farce, which makes a mock of schagri.
• 1:58:11
  The slant of sun told me there was light left. I found a shred
• 1:58:14
  of voice, not knowing what I was going to say until I had said
• 1:58:16
  it irrevocably. This is between Dalisa and me. Kirall glared at me in
• 1:58:21
  mounting rage. With four strides. He was out of the room, flinging
• 1:58:24
  back a harsh furious I hope you kill each other, and the door slammed.
• 1:58:29
  Dalisa's face swam red and again, as before, I knew the battle
• 1:58:31
  which was joined between us would be fought to a dreadful end. She touched
• 1:58:34
  my chest lightly, but the touch jolted excruciating pain through my shoulders. Did
• 1:58:40
  you kill Quinn? I wondered wearily what this presaged? Did you? In
• 1:58:45
  a passion? She cried answer, did you kill him? She struck me
• 1:58:47
  hard, and where the touch had been pained, the blow was a blaze
• 1:58:50
  of white agony. I fainted answer. She struck me again, and the
• 1:58:55
  white blaze jolted me back to consciousness. Answer me, Answer each I brought
• 1:59:00
  a blow until I gasped. Finally he signaled, set catman on us.
• 1:59:04
  No. She stood staring at me, and her white face was a death
• 1:59:09
  mask in which the eyes lived. She screamed wildly, and the huge chalk
• 1:59:13
  came running. Cut him down, Cut him down, cut him down.
• 1:59:16
  A knife slashed the rope, and I slumped, falling in a bone breaking
• 1:59:19
  huddle to the floor. My arms were still twisted over my head. The
• 1:59:23
  chalk cut the ropes apart, pulled my arms roughly back into place, and
• 1:59:26
  I gagged with the pain as the blood began flowing painfully through the chafed and
• 1:59:30
  swollen hands. And then I lost consciousness, more or less permanently, this
• 1:59:33
  time end of chapter eight. Chapter nine. When I came to again,
• 1:59:42
  I was lying with my head in Delica's lap, and the reddish color of
• 1:59:45
  the sunset was in the room. Her thighs were soft under my head,
• 1:59:48
  and for an instant I wondered if, in delirium I had conceded to her.
• 1:59:54
  I muttered, son, not down. She bent her face to mine,
• 1:59:58
  whispering, hush, hush. It was heaven, and I drifted off
• 2:00:02
  again. After a moment, I felt a cup against my lips. Can
• 2:00:06
  you swallow this? I could, and did. I couldn't taste it yet,
• 2:00:11
  but it was cold and wet and felt heavenly trickling down my throat.
• 2:00:15
  She bent and looked into my eyes, and I felt as if I were
• 2:00:17
  falling into those reddish and stormy depths. She touched my scarred mouth with a
• 2:00:21
  light finger. Suddenly my head cleared and I sat upright. Is this a
• 2:00:26
  trick to force me into calling my bed? She recoiled as if I had
• 2:00:29
  struck her. Then the trace of a smile flitted around her red mouth.
• 2:00:33
  Yes, Between us it was battle. You are right to be suspicious,
• 2:00:38
  I suppose. But if I tell you what I know of Recall, will
• 2:00:41
  you trust me? Then I looked straight at her and said no. Surprisingly,
• 2:00:45
  she threw back her head and laughed. I flexed my freed wrists cautiously.
• 2:00:49
  The skin was torn away and chafed, and my arms ached to the
• 2:00:53
  bone. When I moved, harsh lances of pain drove through my chest well
• 2:00:59
  until some one said, I have no right to ask you to trust me,
• 2:01:01
  said Delisa, when she was done laughing and since you are bound by
• 2:01:04
  my command until the last ray has fallen, I command that you lay your
• 2:01:09
  head upon my knees. I blazed. You are making a game of me?
• 2:01:14
  Is that my privilege? Do you refuse? Refuse? It was not
• 2:01:17
  yet sunset. This might be a torture more complex than any which had yet
• 2:01:23
  greeted me. From the scarlet glint in her eyes, I felt she was
• 2:01:26
  playing with me as the cat things of the forest play with their helpless victims.
• 2:01:30
  My mouth twitched in a grimace of humiliation as I lowered myself obediently until
• 2:01:34
  my head rested on her fur clad knees. She murmured, smiling, Is
• 2:01:41
  this so unbearable? Then? I said nothing. Never, Never, for
• 2:01:45
  an instant could I forget that all human, all woman, as she seemed.
• 2:01:48
  Dallis's race was worn and old when the Terran Empire had not left their
• 2:01:53
  home star. The mind of Wolf, which has mingled with the non human
• 2:01:57
  since before the beginnings of recorded time, is un fathomable to an outsider.
• 2:02:01
  I was better equipped than most Earthmen to keep pace with its surface axe,
• 2:02:05
  but I could never pretend to understand its deeper motivations. It works on complex
• 2:02:11
  and irrational logic. Mischief is an integral part of it. Even the deadly
• 2:02:15
  blood feud with Recall had begun with an over elaborate, practical joke, which
• 2:02:19
  had lost the service, incidentally several thousand credits worth of spaceship. And so
• 2:02:25
  I could not trust Dallisa for an instant. Yet it was wonderful to lie
• 2:02:29
  here with my head resting against the perfumed softness of her body. Then suddenly
• 2:02:33
  her arms were gripping me, frantic and hungry, the subdued thing in her
• 2:02:36
  voice, her eyes flamed out, hot and wild. She was pressing the
• 2:02:41
  whole length of her body to mine, breasts and thighs and long legs,
• 2:02:45
  and her voice was hoarse. Is this torture too? Beneath the fur robe,
• 2:02:49
  she was soft and white, and the subtle scent of her hair seemed
• 2:02:53
  deeper entrapment than any frail as she seemed. Her arms had the strength of
• 2:02:57
  steel, and pain blazed down my ring shoulders, seared through the twined wrists.
• 2:03:01
  Then I forgot the pain over her shoulder. The last dropping redness of
• 2:03:06
  the sun vanished and plunged the room into orchid twilight. I caught her wrists
• 2:03:11
  in my hands, prising them backward, twisting them upward over her head.
• 2:03:14
  I said thickly, the sun's down. And then I stopped her wild mouth
• 2:03:18
  with mine, and I knew that the battle between us had reached climax and
• 2:03:21
  victory simultaneously, and any question about who had won was purely academic. During
• 2:03:29
  the night, some time, while her dark head lay motionless on my shoulder,
• 2:03:31
  I found myself staring into the darkness, wakeful. The throbbing of my
• 2:03:35
  bruises had little to do with my sleeplessness. I was remembering other chained girls
• 2:03:40
  from the old days in the dry towns, and the honey and poison of
• 2:03:44
  them distilled into Dallis's kisses. Her head was very light on my shoulder,
• 2:03:48
  and she felt curiously insubstantial, like a woman of feathers. One of the
• 2:03:54
  tiny moons was visible through the slitted windows. I thought of my rooms in
• 2:03:58
  the Terran trade city, clean and in bright and warm, and all the
• 2:04:00
  nights when I had paced the floor hating, filled to the teeth with bitterness,
• 2:04:04
  longing for the wind swept stars of the dry towns, the salt smell
• 2:04:09
  of the winds, and the musical clashing of the walk of the chained women.
• 2:04:13
  With a sting of guilt, I realized that I had half forgotten Julie
• 2:04:15
  and my pledge to her at her misfortune, which had freed me again for
• 2:04:19
  this Yet I had won, and what they knew had narrowed my planet wide
• 2:04:25
  search to a pin point. Recal was in Charin. I wasn't altogether surprised.
• 2:04:30
  Charin is the only city on Wolf except the Karsa, where the Terran
• 2:04:33
  Empire has put down deep roots into the planet, built a trade city,
• 2:04:38
  a smaller spaceport like the Carsa. It lies within the circle of Terran law
• 2:04:43
  and a million miles outside it. A non human town inhabited largely by chalks,
• 2:04:47
  it is the core and center of the resistance movement. A noisy town
• 2:04:51
  in perpetual ferment, it was the logical place for a renegade. I settled
• 2:04:57
  myself so that the ache in my racked shoulders was less violent, and muttered
• 2:05:00
  Why Charon slight as the movement was? It roused Dallisa. She rolled over
• 2:05:05
  and propped herself on her elbows, quoting drowsily. The prey walks safest at
• 2:05:11
  the hunter's door. I stared at the square of violet moonlight, trying to
• 2:05:15
  fit together all the pieces of the puzzle, and asked half aloud, what
• 2:05:18
  prey and what hunters? Dallisa didn't answer. I hadn't expected her to answer.
• 2:05:26
  I asked the real question in my mind, why does Karral hate to
• 2:05:30
  recall Censar when he doesn't even know him by sight? There are reasons,
• 2:05:34
  she said somberly. One of them is Miellyn, my twin sister. Karral
• 2:05:39
  climbed the steps of the Great House by claiming us both as his consorts.
• 2:05:43
  He is our father's son by another wife. That explained much. Brother and
• 2:05:47
  sister marriages, not uncommon in the dry towns, are based on expediency and
• 2:05:51
  suspicion, and are frequently, though not always, loveless. It explained Dalyis's
• 2:05:58
  taunts, and it partly explained, only partly, why I found her in
• 2:06:00
  my arms. It did not explain Recall's part in this mysterious intrigue, nor
• 2:06:05
  why Kiral had taken me for recall. But only after he remembered seeing me
• 2:06:09
  in terran clothing. I wondered why it had never occurred to me before that
• 2:06:13
  I might be mistaken for Recall. There was no close resemblance between us,
• 2:06:16
  but a casual description would apply equally well to me, or to recall my
• 2:06:20
  height as unusual for a Terran within an inch of recall zone. And we
• 2:06:25
  had roughly the same build, the same coloring. I had copied his walk,
• 2:06:29
  imitated his mannerisms since we were boys together, and blurring minor facial characteristics.
• 2:06:35
  There were the scars of the kefich on my mouth, cheeks and shoulders.
• 2:06:40
  Anyone who did not know us by sight, any one who had known
• 2:06:43
  us by reputation from the days when we had worked together in the dry towns,
• 2:06:45
  might easily take one of us for the other. Even Julie had blurted,
• 2:06:49
  you're so much alike before thinking better of it. Other odd bits of
• 2:06:55
  the puzzle floated in my mind, stubbornly refusing to take on recognizable patterns.
• 2:07:00
  The disappearance of a toy seller, Julie's hysterical babbling, the way the girl
• 2:07:03
  Miellyn had vanished into a shrine of Nebron, and the taunts of Dallisa and
• 2:07:09
  the old man about a mysterious toy maker, and something some random joggling of
• 2:07:14
  a memory in that eerie trading in the city of the silent ones. I
• 2:07:17
  knew all these things fitted together somehow, but I had no real hope that
• 2:07:21
  Dallisa could complete their pattern for me. She said, with a vehemence that
• 2:07:27
  startled me. Miellyn is only the excuse Carral hates Recall because Recal will compromise,
• 2:07:31
  and because he'll fight. She rolled over and pressed herself against me in
• 2:07:35
  the darkness. Her voice trembled, race. Our world is dying. We
• 2:07:41
  can't stand against Tera. And there are other things, worse things. I
• 2:07:45
  sat up, surprised to find myself defending Tara to this girl. After all
• 2:07:48
  these years, I was back in my own world. And yet, and
• 2:07:51
  yet, I heard myself say quietly, the Terrans aren't exploiting Wolf. We
• 2:07:56
  haven't abolished the rule of Chainsaw. We've changed nothing. It was true.
• 2:08:01
  Terra held Wolf by compact, not conquest. They paid and paid generously for
• 2:08:05
  the lease of the lands where their trade cities would rise, and stepped beyond
• 2:08:09
  them only when invited to do so. We let any city or state that
• 2:08:13
  wants to keep its independence govern itself until it collapses, Dallisa, and they
• 2:08:16
  do collapse. After a generation or so. Very few primitive planets can hold
• 2:08:20
  out against us. The people themselves get tired of living under feudal or theocratic
• 2:08:26
  systems, and they beg to be taken into the empire. That's all.
• 2:08:30
  But that's just it, Dalisa argued. You give the people all those things
• 2:08:33
  we used to give them, and you do it better just by being here.
• 2:08:37
  You're killing the dry Tounds. They're turning to you and leaving us,
• 2:08:41
  and you'll let them do it. I shook my head. We've kept the
• 2:08:45
  Terran peace for centuries. What do you expect? Should we give you arms,
• 2:08:48
  planes, bombs, weapons to hold your slaves down? Yes, she
• 2:08:52
  flared at me. The dry Tounds have ruled Wolf since since you you can't
• 2:08:56
  even imagine how long. And we made compact with you to trade here,
• 2:09:00
  and we have rewarded you by leaving you untouched, I said quietly. But
• 2:09:03
  we have not forbidden the dry towns to come into the empire and work with
• 2:09:07
  Terra. She said bitterly. Men like Karral will die first, and pressed
• 2:09:11
  her face helplessly against me, and I will die with them. Mie Llyn
• 2:09:16
  broke away. But I cannot courage is what I lack. Our world is
• 2:09:20
  rotten, race, rotten all through and I'm as rotten as the core of
• 2:09:22
  it. I could have killed you to day, and I'm here in your
• 2:09:26
  arms. Our world is rotten, but I've no confidence that the new world
• 2:09:30
  will be better. I put my hand under her chin and looked down gravely
• 2:09:33
  into her face, only a pale oval in the darkness. There was nothing
• 2:09:37
  I could say. She had said it all, and truthfully. I had
• 2:09:41
  hated and yearned and starved for this, and when I found it, it
• 2:09:43
  turned salty and bloody on my lips, like Dollis's despairing kisses. She ran
• 2:09:48
  her fingers over the scars on my face, then gripped her small thin hands
• 2:09:52
  round my wrists so fiercely that I grunted protest. You will not forget me,
• 2:09:56
  she said, in her strangely lilting voice. You will not forget me,
• 2:10:01
  although you were victorious. She twisted and lay looking up at me,
• 2:10:05
  her eyes glowing faintly luminous in darkness. I knew that she could see me
• 2:10:09
  as clearly as if it were day. I think it was my victory,
• 2:10:11
  not yours. Race cargle gently, on an impulse I could not explain.
• 2:10:16
  I picked up one delicate wrist, then the other unclasping the heavy jeweled bracelets.
• 2:10:22
  She let out a stifled cry of dismay, and then I tossed the
• 2:10:26
  chains into a corner before I drew her savagely into my arms again and forced
• 2:10:30
  her head back under my mouth. I said good bye to her alone in
• 2:10:33
  the reddish, wind swept space before the great House. She pressed her head
• 2:10:37
  against my shoulder and whispered race, take me with you. For answer,
• 2:10:43
  I only picked up her narrow wrists and turned them over on my palm.
• 2:10:46
  The jeweled bracelets were clasped again around the thinly boned joints, and on some
• 2:10:50
  self punishing impulse, she had shortened the chains so that she could not even
• 2:10:54
  put her arms around me. I lifted the punished wrists to my mouth and
• 2:10:58
  kissed them gently. You want to leave, Dollisa. I was desperately sorry
• 2:11:03
  for her. She would go down with her dying world, proud and cold
• 2:11:05
  and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and I tasted
• 2:11:09
  blood, her thin, fettered body straining wildly against me, shaken with tearing,
• 2:11:13
  convulsive sobs. Then she turned and fled back into the shadow of the
• 2:11:18
  great dark house. I never saw her again. End of chapter nine,
• 2:11:26
  Chapter ten. A few days later, I found myself nearing the end of
• 2:11:30
  the trail. It was twilight in Charin, hot and reeking, with a
• 2:11:33
  gipsy glare of fires which burned smoking at the far end of the street of
• 2:11:37
  the Sick Shepherds. I crouched in the shadow of a wall, waiting,
• 2:11:41
  my skin itched from the dirty shirt cloak I hadn't changed in days. Shabbiness
• 2:11:46
  is wise in non human parts, and dry towners think too much of water
• 2:11:50
  to waste much of it in superfluous washing. Anyhow, I scratched unobtrusively and
• 2:11:54
  glanced cautiously down the street. It seemed empty except for a few saws and
• 2:12:00
  derelic sprawled in doorways. The street of the Six Shepherds is a filthy slum,
• 2:12:05
  but I made sure my skin was loose. Charin is not a particularly
• 2:12:09
  safe town, even for dry towners, and especially not for earthmen at any
• 2:12:13
  time. Even with what Dallis had told me, the search had been difficult.
• 2:12:18
  Charin is not shan saw in Charin, where human and non human live
• 2:12:22
  closer together than anywhere else on the planet. Information about such men, as
• 2:12:26
  recall can be bought, but the policy is to let the buyer beware.
• 2:12:31
  That's fair enough, because the life of the cellar has a way of not
• 2:12:33
  being worth much afterward. Either. A dirty, dust laden wind was blowing
• 2:12:39
  up along the street, heavy with strange smells. The pungent reek of incense
• 2:12:43
  from a street shrine was in the smells, the heavy acrid odor that made
• 2:12:46
  my skin crawl. In the hills behind Charin, the ghost wind was rising.
• 2:12:52
  Born on this wind, the yamen would sweep down from the mountains,
• 2:12:54
  and everything human or nearly human, would scatter in their path. They would
• 2:12:58
  range through the quarter all night, and in the morning they would melt away
• 2:13:01
  until the ghost wind blew again. At any other time I would already have
• 2:13:07
  taken cover. I fancied that I could hear borne on the wind, the
• 2:13:09
  far away yelping, and envision the plumed, taloned figures which would come leaping
• 2:13:15
  down the street. In that moment, the quiet of the street split asunder.
• 2:13:20
  From somewhere, a girl's voice screamed in shrill, pain or panic.
• 2:13:22
  Then I saw her, dodging between two of the chinked pebble houses. She
• 2:13:26
  was a child, thin and barefoot, a long tangle of black hair flying
• 2:13:30
  loose as she darted and twisted to elude the lumbering fellow at her heels,
• 2:13:33
  his outstretched paw jerked cruelly at her slim wrist. The little girl screamed and
• 2:13:37
  wrenched herself free, and threw herself straight on me, wrapping herself around my
• 2:13:41
  neck with the violence of a storm wind. Her hair got in my mouth,
• 2:13:43
  and her small hands gripped at my neck like a cat's flexed claws.
• 2:13:48
  Oh help me, she gasped between sobs. Don't let him get me,
• 2:13:52
  don't. And even in the broken plea, I took it in that the
• 2:13:54
  little ragamuffin did not speak the jargon of that slum, but the pure speech
• 2:13:58
  of Shane saw. What I did then was as automatic as if it had
• 2:14:01
  been Julie. I pulled the kid loose, shoved her behind me, and
• 2:14:05
  scowled at the brute, who lurched towards us. Make yourself scarce, I
• 2:14:09
  advised, we don't chase little girls where I come from. Haul off now.
• 2:14:13
  The man reeled. I smelled the rankness of his rags as he thrust
• 2:14:16
  one grimy paw at the girl. I never was the hero type, but
• 2:14:20
  I'd started something which I had to carry through. I thrust myself between them
• 2:14:22
  and put my hand on the skein again. Hugh, you dry towner.
• 2:14:28
  The man set up a tipsy howl, and I sucked in my breath.
• 2:14:31
  Now I was in for it. Unless I got out of there damned fast,
• 2:14:33
  I'd lose what I'd come all the way to Charon to find. I
• 2:14:37
  felt like handing the girl over. For all I knew the bully could be
• 2:14:39
  her father, and she was properly in line for a spanking. This wasn't
• 2:14:43
  any of my business. My business lay at the end of the street,
• 2:14:46
  where Rakhal was waiting at the fires. He wouldn't be there long already.
• 2:14:50
  The smell of the ghost wind was heavy and harsh, and little flurries of
• 2:14:54
  sand went racing along the street, lifting the flaps of the doorways. But
• 2:14:58
  I did nothing so sensible. The big lunk made a grab at the girl,
• 2:15:01
  and I whipped out my skin and pantomimed, get going, dry towner.
• 2:15:05
  He spat out the word like philth, his pig eyes narrowing to slits.
• 2:15:09
  Sudden the ape earthman to run in. Some one took up the howl.
• 2:15:13
  There was a stir, a rustle all along the street that had seemed
• 2:15:16
  empty, and from nowhere it seemed the space in front of me was crowded
• 2:15:20
  with shadowy forms, human and otherwise Earthman. I felt the muscles across my
• 2:15:28
  belly nodding into a band of ice. I didn't believe I'd given myself away
• 2:15:31
  as an earth Man. The bully was using this time dishonored tactic of stirring
• 2:15:35
  up a riot in a hurry, but just the same, I looked quickly
• 2:15:37
  round, hunting a path of escape. Put your skin in his gut,
• 2:15:41
  Spilker, grab him Hi, Earthman Hi. It was the last cry that
• 2:15:46
  made me panic. Through the sultry glare at the end of the street,
• 2:15:48
  I could see the plumed, taloned figures of the Yawman gliding through the banters
• 2:15:52
  of smoke. The crowd melted open. I didn't stop to reflect on the
• 2:15:56
  fact, suddenly very obvious, that Recall couldn't have been at the fires at
• 2:16:00
  all, and that my informant had led me into an open trap, a
• 2:16:03
  nest of yeamen already inside charin. The crowd edged back and muttered, and
• 2:16:07
  suddenly I made my choice. I whirled, snatched up the girl in my
• 2:16:11
  arms, and ran straight toward the advancing figures of the Yamen. Nobody followed
• 2:16:13
  me. I even heard a choked shout that sounded like a warning. I
• 2:16:16
  heard the yelping shrieks of the Yeomen grow to a wild howl, and at
• 2:16:20
  the last minute, when their stiff, rustling plumes loomed only a few yards
• 2:16:24
  away, I dived sideways into an alley, stumbled on some rubbish, and
• 2:16:28
  spilled the girl down. Run kid. She shook herself like a puppy climbing
• 2:16:31
  out of the water. Her small fingers closed like a steel trap on my
• 2:16:35
  wrist. This way, she urged in a hasty whisper, and I found
• 2:16:37
  myself plunging out the far end of the alley and into the shelter of a
• 2:16:41
  street shrine. The sour stink of incense smarted in my nostrils, and I
• 2:16:45
  could hear the yelping of the Yeomen as they leaped and rustled down the alley,
• 2:16:48
  their cold and poisonous eyes searching out the recesses where I crouched with the
• 2:16:52
  girl. Here, she panted, stand close to me on the stone.
• 2:16:56
  I drew back, startled. Oh, don't stop to argue, she whimpered,
• 2:17:00
  come here, hi, earth Man warious. The girl's arms flung round
• 2:17:05
  me again. I felt her slight, hard body pressing on mine, and
• 2:17:09
  she literally hauled me toward the pattern of stones in the center of the shrine.
• 2:17:13
  I wouldn't have been human if I hadn't caught her closer. Yet the
• 2:17:16
  world reeled, The street disappeared in a cone of spinning lights, stars danced
• 2:17:20
  crazily, and I plunged down through a widening gulf of empty space. Locked
• 2:17:24
  in the girl's arms, I fell spun plunged head over heels through tilting lights
• 2:17:28
  and shadows that flung us through the eternities of free fall. The yelping of
• 2:17:33
  the Yeomen whirled away in unimaginable distances, and for a second I felt the
• 2:17:37
  unmerciful blackout of a power dive, with blood breaking from my nostrils and filling
• 2:17:41
  my mouth. End of chapter ten, Chapter eleven, lights flared in my
• 2:17:48
  eyes. I was standing solidly on my feet in the street shrine, but
• 2:17:52
  the street was gone. Coils of incense still smudged the air. The god
• 2:17:56
  squatted toadlike in his recess. The girl was hanging limp in my clenched arms
• 2:18:01
  as the floor straightened under my feet. I staggered, thrown off balance by
• 2:18:03
  the sudden return of the girl's weight, and grabbed blindly for support. Give
• 2:18:07
  her to me, said a voice, and the girl's sagging body was lifted
• 2:18:11
  from my arms. A strong hand grasped my elbow. I found a chair
• 2:18:15
  beneath my knees and sank gratefully into it. The transmission isn't smooth yet between
• 2:18:20
  such distant terminals, the voice remarked, I see Milen has fainted again.
• 2:18:24
  A weakling the girl, but useful. I spat blood, trying to get
• 2:18:28
  the room in focus. For I was inside a room, a room of
• 2:18:31
  some translucent substance, windowless, a skylight high above me, through which pink
• 2:18:35
  daylight streamed daylight. And it had been midnight in Charin. I had come
• 2:18:41
  half way round the planet. In a few seconds. From somewhere, I
• 2:18:43
  heard the sound of hammering, tiny bell like hammering, the chiming of a
• 2:18:48
  fairy anvil. I looked up and saw a man, a man watching me
• 2:18:54
  on wolf. You see all kinds of human, half human, and non
• 2:18:56
  human life, And I considered myself something of an expert on all three.
• 2:19:01
  But I had never seen anyone or anything who so closely resembled the human,
• 2:19:05
  and so obviously wasn't he or it. Was tall and lean, man shaped,
• 2:19:09
  but oddly muscled, a vague suggestion of something less than human in the
• 2:19:15
  lean hunch of his posture. Manlike. He wore green, tight fitting trunks
• 2:19:18
  and a shirt of green fur that revealed bulging biceps where they shouldn't be,
• 2:19:22
  and angular planes where there should have been swelling muscles. The shoulders were high,
• 2:19:26
  the neck unpleasantly sinuous, and the face a little narrower than human.
• 2:19:31
  Was handsomely arrogant, with a kind of wary, alert mischief that was the
• 2:19:35
  least human thing about him. He bent, tilted the girl's inert body on
• 2:19:39
  a divan of some sort, and turned his back on her, lifting his
• 2:19:43
  hand in an impatient and unpleasantly reminiscent gesture. The tinkling of the little hammers
• 2:19:48
  stopped, as if a switch had been disconnected. Now, said the non
• 2:19:52
  human, we can talk like the waif he spoke, Shane saw, and
• 2:19:56
  spoke it with a better accent than any non human. I'd ever so well
• 2:20:01
  that I looked again to be certain I wasn't two days to answer in the
• 2:20:03
  same tongue, but I couldn't keep back a spate of questions. What happened?
• 2:20:07
  Who are you? What is this place? The non human waited,
• 2:20:11
  crossing his hands, quite passable hands if he didn't look too closely at what
• 2:20:16
  should have been nails, and bent forward in a sketchy gesture. Do not
• 2:20:20
  blame Mielyyn. She acted under orders. It was imperative you'd be brought here
• 2:20:24
  tonight, and we had reason to believe you might ignore an ordinary summons.
• 2:20:28
  You were clever at evading our surveillance for a time, but there would not
• 2:20:33
  be too dry towners in Charin tonight. Who would dare the ghost wind your
• 2:20:37
  reputation? Does you justice? Recall Censar, Recall Censar once again, Recall
• 2:20:43
  shaken. I pulled a rag from my pocket and wiped blood from my mouth.
• 2:20:46
  I'd figured out in Shain, saw why the mistake was logical, and
• 2:20:50
  here in Charin, I'd been hanging around in recalls old haunts, covering his
• 2:20:52
  old trails. Once again, mistaken identity was natural, natural or not,
• 2:20:58
  I wasn't going to deny it. If these were Recall's enemies, my real
• 2:21:01
  identity should be kept as an ace in reserve, which might just might get
• 2:21:05
  me out alive again. If they were his friends, well, I could
• 2:21:09
  only hope that no one who knew him well by sight would walk in on
• 2:21:13
  me. We knew the non human continued that if you remained where you were,
• 2:21:18
  the Tehran and Cargyl would have made his arrest. We know about your
• 2:21:22
  quarrel with Cargol, among other things, but we did not consider it necessary
• 2:21:26
  that you should fall into his hands. At present, I was puzzled.
• 2:21:31
  I still don't understand exactly where am I. This is the master shrine of
• 2:21:37
  Nebron Nebron. The stray pieces of the puzzle suddenly jolted into place. Kirral
• 2:21:41
  had warned me, not knowing he was doing it. I hastily imitated the
• 2:21:46
  gesture Kiral had made, gabbling a few words of an archaic charm. Like
• 2:21:50
  every earth man who's lived on Wolf more than a tourist season, I'd seen
• 2:21:52
  faces go blank and impassive at the mention of the toad. God Rumor made
• 2:21:56
  his spies omnipresent, his priests omnis, his anger all powerful. I had
• 2:22:01
  believed about a tenth of what I had heard, or less. The Terran
• 2:22:05
  Empire has little to say to planetary religions, and Nebrin's cult is a remarkably
• 2:22:11
  obscure one, despite the street shrines on every corner. Now I was in
• 2:22:15
  his master's shrine, and the device which had brought me here was, beyond
• 2:22:18
  doubt, a working model of a matter transmitter, A matter transmitter, a
• 2:22:22
  working model. The words triggered memory recall was after it? And who?
• 2:22:30
  I asked? Slowly? Are you? Lord? The green clad creature hunched
• 2:22:33
  thin shoulders again in a ceremonious gesture. I am called Evarin, humble servant
• 2:22:39
  of Nebron and yourself, he added, but there was no humility in his
• 2:22:45
  manner. I am called the toy maker Evarin. That was another name given
• 2:22:50
  weight by rumor. A breath of gossip in a thieves market, a scrawled
• 2:22:54
  word on smudged paper, a blank folder in terran intelligence. Another puzzle piece
• 2:22:58
  snapped into place, toy maker. The girl on the divan sat up,
• 2:23:03
  suddenly, passing slim hands over her disheveled hair. Did I thank Devarn?
• 2:23:07
  I had to fight to get him into the stone, and the patterns were
• 2:23:09
  not set straight in that terminal. You must send one of the little ones
• 2:23:13
  to set them to rights, toy maker, are you listening to me?
• 2:23:18
  Stop chattering? Miellyn said, everin indifferently. You brought him here, and
• 2:23:22
  that is all that matters. You aren't hurt. Miellyn pouted and looked ruefully
• 2:23:26
  at her bare, bruised feet, patted the wrinkles of her ragged frock with
• 2:23:31
  fastidious fingers. My poor feet, she mourned, They are black and blue
• 2:23:35
  with the cobbles, and my hair is filled with sand and tangles. Toy
• 2:23:39
  maker, what way was this to send me to entice a man? Any
• 2:23:41
  man would have come quickly, quickly if he had seen me looking lovely.
• 2:23:46
  But you you send me in rags? She stamped, a small bare foot.
• 2:23:50
  She was not nearly as young as she looked in the street. Though
• 2:23:52
  immature and underdeveloped by Terrance standards, she had a fair figure for a dry
• 2:23:56
  town woman. Her rags fell now in graceful forlk. Her hair was spun
• 2:24:01
  black glass. And I saw with the rags and the confusion in the filthy
• 2:24:05
  street had kept me from seeing before it was the girl of the Spaceport Cafe,
• 2:24:09
  the girl who had appeared and vanished in the eerie streets of canarsa Evarin
• 2:24:13
  was regarding her with what in a human might have been rueful impatience. He
• 2:24:18
  said, you know you enjoyed yourself as always, Miellyn, run along and
• 2:24:22
  make yourself beautiful again, little nuisance. The girl danced out of the room,
• 2:24:28
  and I was just as glad to see her go. The toy maker
• 2:24:31
  motioned to me this way, he directed, and led me through a different
• 2:24:35
  door. The off stage hammering I had heard tiny bell tones like a fairy
• 2:24:39
  xylophone began again as the door opened, and we passed into a work room,
• 2:24:43
  which made me remember nursery tales from a half forgotten childhood on Tera.
• 2:24:46
  For the workers were tiny gnarled trolls. They were chalks, chalks from the
• 2:24:52
  polar mountains, dwarfed and furred and half human, with witch like faces and
• 2:24:56
  great golden eyes. And I had the curious feeling that if I looked hard
• 2:25:01
  enough, I would see the little toy cellar that had hunted out of the
• 2:25:03
  CARSA. I didn't look. I figured I was in enough trouble already.
• 2:25:07
  Tiny hammers pattered on miniature anvils in a tinkling, jingling chorus of musical clinks
• 2:25:13
  and taps, Golden eyes focused like lenses over winking jewels, and gimcracks,
• 2:25:18
  busy elves makers of toys. Evren jerked his shoulders with an imperative gesture.
• 2:25:24
  I followed him through a fairy workroom, but could not refrain from casting a
• 2:25:28
  lingering look at the work tables. A withered leprechaun set eyes into the head
• 2:25:31
  of a mannequin hound. Furred fingers worked precious metals into invisible filigree for the
• 2:25:35
  collarpiece of a dancing doll. Metallic feathers were thrust with clockwork precision, into
• 2:25:41
  the wings of a skeleton bird no longer than my fingernail. The nose of
• 2:25:45
  the hound wabbled and sniffed. The bird's wings quivered. The eyes of the
• 2:25:48
  little dancer followed my footsteps. Toys this way, Evarin rapped, and a
• 2:25:54
  door slid shut behind us. The clinks and taps grew faint, fainter,
• 2:25:58
  but never ceased. My face must have betrayed more than conventional impassivity for ever
• 2:26:03
  and smiled. Now you know. Recall why I am called the toy maker?
• 2:26:09
  Is it not strange? The Master Priest of Nebron, a maker of
• 2:26:11
  toys and the shrine of the Toad God a workshop for children's playthings. Evern
• 2:26:18
  paused suggestively. They were obviously not children's playthings, and this was my cue
• 2:26:22
  to say so. But I avoided the trap Everin opened a sliding panel and
• 2:26:26
  took out a doll. She was perhaps the length of my longest finger,
• 2:26:31
  molded to the precise proportions of a woman, and costumed after the bizarre fashion
• 2:26:35
  of the art kron dancing girls. Evarin touched no button or key that I
• 2:26:39
  could see, but when he set the figure on its feet, it executed
• 2:26:41
  a whirling, arm tossing dance in a fast, tricky tempo. I am,
• 2:26:46
  in a sense benevolent, Evarin murmured. He snapped his fingers, and
• 2:26:50
  the doll sank to her knees and poised there silent. Moreover, I have
• 2:26:56
  the means, and let us say, the ability, to indulge my small
• 2:26:58
  face. The little daughter of the President of the Federation of Trade Cities on
• 2:27:03
  Samora was sent such a doll recently. What a pity that Paolo Eremanngo was
• 2:27:09
  so suddenly impeached and banished. The twymaker clucked his teeth commiseratingly. Perhaps this
• 2:27:16
  small companion will compensate the little Carmela for her adjustment to her new position.
• 2:27:22
  He replaced the dancer and pulled down something like a whirligig. This might interest
• 2:27:26
  you, he mused, and said it spinning. I stared at the pattern
• 2:27:31
  of lights that flowed and disappeared, melting in and out of visible shadows.
• 2:27:37
  Suddenly I realized what the thing was doing. I rested my eyes away with
• 2:27:41
  an effort. Had there been a lapse of seconds or minutes? Had ever
• 2:27:43
  un spoken? Evarin arrested the compelling motion with one finger. Several of these
• 2:27:48
  pretty playthings are available to the children of important men, he said, absently,
• 2:27:54
  an import of value for our exploited and impoverished world on Fortunately, they
• 2:28:00
  are perhaps a little uh obvious. The incident of nervous breakdowns is interfering with
• 2:28:07
  their sale. The children, of course, are unaffected and loved them.
• 2:28:13
  Everen set the hypnotic wheel moving again, glanced sideways at me, and set
• 2:28:16
  it carefully back. Now. Everan's voice, hard with the silkiness of a
• 2:28:22
  cat's snarl, clawed the silence. We'll talk business. I turned, composing
• 2:28:30
  my face. Everin had something concealed in one hand, but I didn't think
• 2:28:33
  it was a weapon, and if I'd known, I'd have had to ignore
• 2:28:37
  it. Anyway. Perhaps you wonder how we recognized and found you. A
• 2:28:41
  panel cleared in the wall and became translucent. Confused flickers moved dropped into focus,
• 2:28:46
  and I realized that the panel was an ordinary television screen, and I
• 2:28:50
  was looking into the well known interior of the Cafe of Three Rainbows in the
• 2:28:54
  trade city of Charin. By this time, I was running low on curiosity
• 2:28:58
  and didn't wonder till much much late how televised pictures were transmitted around the curve
• 2:29:01
  of a planet. Everin sharpened the focus down on the long earth tight bar
• 2:29:05
  where a tall man in karen clothes was talking to a pale haired girl.
• 2:29:09
  Avarin said, by now, Rays Cargill has decided no doubt that you fell
• 2:29:15
  into his trap and into the hands of the Yamen. He is off guard
• 2:29:18
  now, And suddenly the whole thing seemed so unbearably illogically funny that my shoulders
• 2:29:24
  shook with the effort to keep back dangerous laughter. Since I'd landed in Charin,
• 2:29:28
  I'd taken great pains to avoid the trade city or anyone who might have
• 2:29:31
  associated me with it, and recall, somehow aware of this, had conveniently
• 2:29:35
  filled in the gap by posing as me. It wasn't nearly as difficult as
• 2:29:41
  it sounded. I had found that out in Shainsaw Charin is a long long
• 2:29:46
  way from the major trade city near the Haarsa. I hadn't a single intimate
• 2:29:48
  friend there or within hundreds of miles to see through the imposture. At most,
• 2:29:54
  there were half a dozen of the staff that I'd once met or had
• 2:29:56
  a drink with, eight or ten years ago. Rakhal could speak perfect standard
• 2:30:01
  when he chose if he lapsed into drytown idiom, that too was in my
• 2:30:05
  known character. I had no doubt he was making a great success of it
• 2:30:07
  all, probably doing much better with my identity than I could ever have done
• 2:30:11
  with his. Evarin rasped, Cargol meant to leave the planet. What stopped
• 2:30:16
  him? You could be of use to us, recall, But not with
• 2:30:20
  this blood feud unsettled, that needed no elucidation. No wolf in in his
• 2:30:26
  right mind will bargain with a dry towner carrying an unresolved blood feud. By
• 2:30:30
  law and custom, declared blood feud takes precedent over any other business public or
• 2:30:35
  private, and is sufficient excuse for broken promises, neglected duties, theft,
• 2:30:41
  even murder. We want it settled once and for all. Everan's voice was
• 2:30:46
  low and unhurried, and we aren't above waiting the scales. This Cargol can
• 2:30:52
  and has posed as a dry towner undetected. We don't like earth men who
• 2:30:56
  can do that. In settling your feud, you will be aiding and removing
• 2:31:01
  a danger. We would be grateful. He opened his closed hand, displaying
• 2:31:07
  something small, curled inert. Every living thing emits a characteristic pattern of electrical
• 2:31:13
  nerve impulses. We have ways of recording those impulses, and we have had
• 2:31:18
  you and Cargol under observation for a long time. We've had plenty of opportunity
• 2:31:22
  to key this toy to Cargo's pattern. On his palm, the curled thing
• 2:31:28
  stirred, spread wings. A fledgling bird lay there, small soft body,
• 2:31:31
  throbbing, slightly, half hidden in a ruff of metallic feathers. I glimpsed
• 2:31:35
  a grimly elongated beak. The pinions were feathered with delicate down, less than
• 2:31:39
  a quarter of an inch long. They beat with delicate insistence against the toymaker's
• 2:31:45
  prisoning fingers. This is not dangerous to you. Press here, he showed
• 2:31:50
  me. And if race cargole is within a certain distance, and it is
• 2:31:54
  up to you to be within that distance, it will find him and kill
• 2:31:58
  him. Unerring me inescapably, untraceably. We will not tell you the critical
• 2:32:05
  distance, and we will give you three days. He checked my startled exclamation
• 2:32:11
  with a gesture. Of course, this is a test. Within the hour
• 2:32:15
  cargo will receive a warning. We want no incompetence who must be helped too
• 2:32:18
  much, Nor do we want cowards if you fail or release the bird at
• 2:32:24
  a distance too great, or evade the test. The green inhuman malice in
• 2:32:28
  his eyes made me sweat. We have made another bird. By now my
• 2:32:33
  brain was swimming, But I thought I understood the complex inhuman logic involved.
• 2:32:39
  The other bird is keyed to me with slow contempt. Evarin shook his head.
• 2:32:46
  You you are used to danger and fond of a gambol. Nothing so
• 2:32:50
  simple. We have given you three days. If within that time the bird
• 2:32:54
  you carried has not killed, the other bird will fly and it will kill
• 2:33:01
  Rakhal. You have a wife, yes, Racall had a wife. They
• 2:33:07
  could threaten Racall's wife, and his wife was my sister Julie. Everything after
• 2:33:13
  that was anticlimax. Of course, I had to drink with Avrin, the
• 2:33:16
  elaborate formal ritual without which no bargain on wolf is concluded. He entertained me
• 2:33:20
  with gory and technical descriptions of the ways in which the birds and other of
• 2:33:26
  his hellish toys did their killing and worse tasks. Maeland danced into the room
• 2:33:31
  and upset the exquisite solemnity of the wine ritual by perching on my knee,
• 2:33:35
  stealing a sip from my cup, and pouting prettily when I paid her less
• 2:33:37
  attention than she thought she merited. I didn't dare pay much attention, even
• 2:33:41
  when she whispered with the deliberate and thorough wantonness of a dry town woman of
• 2:33:46
  high cast who has flung aside her fetters, something about a rendezvous at the
• 2:33:50
  three Rainbows. But eventually it was over, and I stepped through a door
• 2:33:54
  that twisted with a giddy blankness, and found myself outside a bare windowless wall
• 2:33:58
  and chair, wherein again the night sky starred and cold. The acrid smell
• 2:34:03
  of the ghost wind was thinning in the streets, but I had to crouch
• 2:34:05
  in a cranny of the wall. When a final rustling horde of Yamen,
• 2:34:09
  the last of their receding tide, rustled down the street. I found my
• 2:34:13
  way to my lodging in a filthy chalk hostel, and threw myself down on
• 2:34:16
  the verminous bed. Believe it or not, I slept. End of chapter
• 2:34:22
  eleven, Chapter twelve. An hour before dawn, there was a noise in
• 2:34:28
  my room. I roused my hand on my skin. Someone or something was
• 2:34:33
  fumbling under the mattress where I had thrust Evarin's bird. I struck out,
• 2:34:37
  encountered something warm and breathing, and grappled with it in the darkness. A
• 2:34:41
  foul smelling something gripped over my mouth. I tore it away and struck hard
• 2:34:46
  with the skein. There was a high shrilling. The gripping filth loosened and
• 2:34:50
  fell away, and something died on the floor. I struck a light,
• 2:34:54
  wretching in revulsion. It hadn't been human. There wouldn't have been that much
• 2:35:00
  blood from a human, not that color either. The chalk who ran the
• 2:35:05
  place came and gibbered at me. Chocks have a horror of blood, and
• 2:35:07
  this one gave me to understand that my lease was up then and there no
• 2:35:11
  arguments, no refunds. He wouldn't even let me go into his stone outbuilding
• 2:35:16
  to wash the foul stuff from my shirt cloak. I gave up and fished
• 2:35:20
  under the mattress for Evan's toy. The chalk got a glimpse of the embroideries
• 2:35:24
  on the silk in which it was wrapped, and stood back, his loose,
• 2:35:28
  furry lips hanging open, while I gathered my few belongings together and strode
• 2:35:31
  out of the room. He would not touch the coins I offered. I
• 2:35:35
  laid them on a chest, and he let them lie there, And as
• 2:35:39
  I went into the reddening morning, they came flying after me into the street.
• 2:35:43
  I pulled the silk from the toy and tried to make some sense for
• 2:35:46
  my predicament. The little thing lay innocent and silent in my palm. It
• 2:35:52
  wouldn't tell me whether it had been keyed to me the real cargo some time
• 2:35:56
  in the past, or to recall using my name and reputation in the Terear
• 2:36:00
  and colony here at Charin. If I pressed the stud it might play out
• 2:36:03
  this comedy of errors by hunting down Recall, and all my troubles would be
• 2:36:07
  over for a while, at least until Evarin found out what had happened.
• 2:36:11
  I didn't deceive myself that I could carry the impersonation through another meeting. On
• 2:36:16
  the other hand, if I pressed the stud, the bird might turn on
• 2:36:20
  me, and then all my troubles would be over for good. If I
• 2:36:22
  delayed past Evan's deadline and did nothing, the other bird in his keeping would
• 2:36:26
  hunt down Julie and give her a swift and not too painless death. I
• 2:36:31
  spent most of the day in a chalk dive, juggling plans, toys,
• 2:36:35
  innocent and sinister spies, messengers, toys which killed horribly, toys which could
• 2:36:41
  be controlled, perhaps by the pliant mind of a child. And every child
• 2:36:46
  hates its parents now and again. Even in the Terran colony, who was
• 2:36:50
  safe in Max's very home, one of the Magnuson youngsters had a shiny thing
• 2:36:54
  which might or might not be one of Evren's hellish toys. Or was I
• 2:37:00
  beginning to think like a superstitious dry towner. Damn it, Evarin couldn't be
• 2:37:03
  infallible. He hadn't even recognized me as race cargle, or suddenly the sweat
• 2:37:09
  broke out again on my forehead, or had he had the whole thing been
• 2:37:13
  one of those sinister, deadly and incomprehensible non human jokes. I kept coming
• 2:37:18
  to the same conclusion. Julie was in danger, but she was half a
• 2:37:20
  world away. Recall, was here in Charin. There was a child involved,
• 2:37:26
  Julie's child. The first step was to get inside the Terran colony and
• 2:37:28
  see how the land lay. Charin is a city shaped like a crescent moon,
• 2:37:33
  encircling the small trade city, a miniature spaceport, a miniature skyscraper h
• 2:37:37
  Q, and clustered dwellings of the Terrans who worked there and those who lived
• 2:37:41
  with them and supplied them with necessities, services, and luxuries. Entry from
• 2:37:46
  one to the other is through a guarded gateway, since this is hostile territory
• 2:37:50
  and Charin lies far beyond the impress of ordinary Terran law. But the gate
• 2:37:54
  stood open wide, and the guards looked lax and bored. They had shockers,
• 2:37:58
  but they didn't look as if they'd used them lately. One raised an
• 2:38:03
  eyebrow to his companion. As I shambled up, I could pretty well guess
• 2:38:05
  the impression I made, dirty, unkempt, and stained with non human blood.
• 2:38:09
  I asked permission to go into the terran zone. They asked me my
• 2:38:13
  name and business, and I toyed with the notion of giving them the name
• 2:38:16
  of the man I was inadvertently impersonating. Then I decided that if Rakhal had
• 2:38:20
  passed himself off as race Cargole, he'd expect exactly that, and he was
• 2:38:24
  also capable of the master stroke of impudence putting out a pick up order through
• 2:38:28
  Space Force for his own name. So I gave them the name we'd used
• 2:38:31
  from shan Saw to Charin and tacked one of the secret service passwords on the
• 2:38:35
  end of it. They each looked at each other again, and one said,
• 2:38:37
  Rascara, this is the guy, all right. He took me into
• 2:38:41
  the little booth by the gate, while the other used an intercom device.
• 2:38:45
  Presently, they took me along to the h Q building and into an office
• 2:38:48
  that said Leggett. I tried not to panic, but it wasn't easy.
• 2:38:52
  Evidently I had walked square into another trap. One guard asked me, all
• 2:38:56
  right, now, what exactly is your business in the trade city. I'd
• 2:38:58
  hoped to o's kate recall first. Now I knew I'd have no chance,
• 2:39:01
  and at all costs, I must straighten out this matter of identity before it
• 2:39:05
  went any further. Put me straight through to Magnuson's office, Level thirty eight
• 2:39:09
  at Central h Q, by VISI, I demanded. I was trying to
• 2:39:13
  remember if Mack had ever even heard the name we used in SHAINSA. I
• 2:39:16
  decided I couldn't risk it, name of Race cargl. The guard grinned without
• 2:39:22
  moving. He said to his partner, that's the one, all right.
• 2:39:26
  He put his hand on my shoulder, spinning me around. Haul off,
• 2:39:28
  man, shake your boots. There were two of them, and Space Force
• 2:39:31
  guards aren't picked for their good looks. Just the same. I gave a
• 2:39:35
  pretty good account of myself until the inner door opened and a man came storming
• 2:39:39
  out, What the devil is all this racket? One guard got a hammer
• 2:39:43
  lock on me. This dry towner Baum tried to talk us into making a
• 2:39:46
  priority call to Magnuson, the chief at Central. He knew a couple of
• 2:39:50
  the S S passwords. That's what's got him through the gate. Remember,
• 2:39:52
  Cargo passed the word that somebody would turn up trying to impersonate him. I
• 2:39:56
  remember the strange man's eyes were worrying. You damned fools, I snarled,
• 2:40:03
  magnuson will identify me. Can't you realize you're dealing with an impostor. One
• 2:40:07
  of the guards said to the Legate in an undertone, maybe we alto hold
• 2:40:11
  him as a suspicious character, but the Legate shook his head. Not worth
• 2:40:16
  the trouble, Cargo said, it was a private affair. You might search
• 2:40:18
  him, make sure he's not concealing contraband weapons, he added, and talked
• 2:40:22
  softly to the wide eyed clerk in the background while the guards went through my
• 2:40:26
  shirt, cloak and pockets. When they started to unwrap the silk shrouded toy,
• 2:40:30
  I yelled, if the thing got set off accidentally, there'd be trouble.
• 2:40:33
  The Legate turned and rebuked, can't you see it's embroidered with the toad
• 2:40:37
  god. It's a religious ambulance of some sort. Let it alone, they
• 2:40:39
  grumbled, but gave it back to me, and the Legate commanded, don't
• 2:40:43
  mess him up any more. Give him back his knife and take him to
• 2:40:46
  the gates, but make sure he doesn't come back. I found myself seized
• 2:40:50
  and frog marched to the gate. One guard pushed my skin back into its
• 2:40:52
  clasp. The other shoved me hard, and I stumbled fell sprawling in the
• 2:40:56
  dust of the cobbled street, to the accompaniment of a profane statement about what
• 2:41:00
  I could expect if I came back. A chorus of jeers from a cluster
• 2:41:03
  of chalk children and veiled women broke across me. I picked myself up,
• 2:41:09
  glowered so fiercely at the giggling spectators that the laughter drained away into silence,
• 2:41:13
  and clenched my fists, half inclined to turn back and bowl my way through.
• 2:41:16
  Then I subsided first round to recall. He had sprung the trap on
• 2:41:22
  me very neatly. The street was narrow and crooked, winding between doubled rows
• 2:41:28
  of pebble houses, and full of dark shadows. Even in the crimson noon,
• 2:41:31
  I walked aimlessly, favoring the arm the guard had crushed. I was
• 2:41:35
  no closer to settling things with recall, and I had slammed at least one
• 2:41:39
  gait behind me. Why hadn't I had sense enough to walk up and demand
• 2:41:43
  to see race carkele. Why hadn't I insisted on a fingerprint check? I
• 2:41:48
  could prove my identity and recall using my name in my absence to those who
• 2:41:50
  didn't know me by sight. Couldn't. I could at least have made him
• 2:41:54
  try, but he had maneuvered it very cleverly, so I never had a
• 2:41:58
  chance to insist. Done proofs. I turned into a wine shop and ordered
• 2:42:03
  a dram of greenish mountain berry liquor, sipping it slowly and fingering the few
• 2:42:07
  bills and coins in my pockets. I'd better forget about warning Julie. I
• 2:42:11
  couldn't vise her from Charin except in the Terran zone. I had neither the
• 2:42:15
  money nor the time to make the trip in person, even if I could
• 2:42:18
  get passage on a Terran dominated airline. After today, mae Lynn, she
• 2:42:24
  had flirted with me, and like Dallisa, she might prove vulnerable. It
• 2:42:28
  might be another trap, but I'd take the chance. At least I could
• 2:42:31
  get hints about Evarin, and I needed information. I wasn't used to this
• 2:42:35
  kind of intrigue anymore. The smell of danger was foreign to me now,
• 2:42:37
  and I found it unpleasant. The small lump of the bird in my pocket
• 2:42:41
  tantalized me. I took it out again. It was a temptation to press
• 2:42:46
  the stud and let it settle things, or at least start them going.
• 2:42:48
  Then and there after a while I noticed the proprietors of the shop staring at
• 2:42:54
  the silk of the wrappings. They backed off, apprehensive. I held out
• 2:42:58
  a coin and they shook their heads. You are welcome to the drink,
• 2:43:01
  one of them said. All we have is at your service, only please
• 2:43:05
  go, go quickly. They would not touch the coins I offered. I
• 2:43:11
  thrust the bird in my pocket, swore, and went. It was my
• 2:43:13
  second experience with being somehow taboo, and I didn't like it. It was
• 2:43:18
  dusk when I realized I was being followed. At first, it was a
• 2:43:22
  glimpse out of the corner of my eye, a head seen too frequently for
• 2:43:26
  coincidence. It developed into a too persistent footstep in uneven rhythm, tap tap,
• 2:43:31
  tap, tap tap tap. I had my skin handy, but I
• 2:43:35
  had a hunch this wasn't anything I could settle with a skin. I ducked
• 2:43:39
  into a side street and waited nothing. I went on laughing at my imagined
• 2:43:46
  fears, and then after a time, the soft, persistent footfall thudded behind
• 2:43:52
  me again. I cut across a thieves market, dodging from stall to stall,
• 2:43:56
  cursed by old women selling hot fried goldfish, women in striped railing at
• 2:44:00
  me in their chiming talk. When I brushed their rolled rugs with hasty feet.
• 2:44:03
  Far behind, I heard the familiar uneven hurry, tap tap tap,
• 2:44:09
  tap tap tap. I fled down a street where women sat on flower decked
• 2:44:13
  balconies, their open lanterns flowing with fountains and rivulets of gold and orange fire.
• 2:44:18
  I raced through quiet streets where furred children crept to doors and watched me
• 2:44:22
  pass with great golden eyes that shone in the dark. I dodged into an
• 2:44:26
  alley and lay there, breathing hard. Someone not two inches away said,
• 2:44:30
  are you one of us? Brother? I muttered something surly in his dialect,
• 2:44:35
  and a hand reassuringly human closed on my elbow this way. Out of
• 2:44:39
  breath with long running I let him lead me, meaning to break away after
• 2:44:43
  a few steps, apologize for mistaken identity, and vanish. When a sound
• 2:44:46
  at the end of the street made me jerk stiff and listen. Tap tap
• 2:44:50
  tap, tap tap tap. I let my arm relax. In the hand
• 2:44:54
  that guided me flung a fold of my shirt cloak over my face and went
• 2:44:58
  along with my unknown guide. End of chapter twelve. Chapter thirteen. I
• 2:45:09
  stumbled over steps, took a jolting stride downward, and found myself in a
• 2:45:13
  dim room jammed with dark figures, human and non human. The figures swayed
• 2:45:20
  in the darkness, chanting in a dialect not altogether familiar to me, a
• 2:45:24
  monotonous wailing chant with a single recurrent phrase, Camaina kamas ena. He began
• 2:45:33
  on a high note, descending in weird chromatics to the lowest tone the human
• 2:45:37
  ear could resolve. The sound made me draw back. Even the dry towners
• 2:45:43
  shunned the augiastic rituals of Camayina. Earth Men have a reputation for getting rid
• 2:45:50
  of the more objectionable customs by human standards on any planet where they live,
• 2:45:56
  but they don't touch religions, and Camaina on the surface, anyhow, was
• 2:46:01
  a religion. I started to turn round and leave, as if I had
• 2:46:05
  inadvertently walked through the wrong door, but my conduct a hold on my arm,
• 2:46:11
  and I was wedged in too tight by now to risk a rough house.
• 2:46:13
  Trying to force my way out would only have called attention to me,
• 2:46:18
  and the first of the secret surface maxims is, when in doubt, go
• 2:46:22
  along, keep quiet, and watch the other guy. As my eyes adapted
• 2:46:28
  to the dim light, I saw that most of the crowd were Charon,
• 2:46:31
  plainsmen, or checks. One or two wore dry town shirt cloaks, and
• 2:46:37
  I even thought I saw an earth Man in the crowd, though I was
• 2:46:41
  never sure, and I fervently hoped not. They were squatting around small crescent
• 2:46:46
  shaped tables, and all intently gazing at a flickery spot of light at the
• 2:46:50
  front of the cellar. I saw an empty place at one table, and
• 2:46:54
  dropped there, finding the floor soft, as if cushioned. On each table,
• 2:47:01
  small smudging pastilles were burning, and from these cones of ash tipped fire
• 2:47:07
  came the steamy, swimmy smoke that filled the darkness with strange colors. Beside
• 2:47:13
  me, an immature chat girl was kneeling, her fetied hands strained tightly back
• 2:47:18
  at her sides, her naked breasts pierced for jeweled rings beneath the pallid fur
• 2:47:24
  around her pointed ears. The exquisite animal face was quite mad, she whispered
• 2:47:31
  to me, but her dialect was so thick that I could follow only a
• 2:47:35
  few words, and would just as soon not have heard those few. An
• 2:47:39
  older chack grunted for silence, and she subsided, swaying and crooning. There
• 2:47:48
  were cups and decanters on all the tables, and a woman tilted pale phosphorescent
• 2:47:52
  fluid into a cup and offered it to me. I took one sip,
• 2:47:56
  then another. It was cold and pleasantly tart, and not until the second
• 2:48:03
  swallow turned sweet on my tongue did I know what I tasted. I pretended
• 2:48:07
  to swallow while the woman's eyes were fixed on me, then somehow contrived to
• 2:48:11
  spill the filthy stuff down my shirt. I was weary, even of the
• 2:48:16
  fumes, but there was nothing else I could do. The stuff was Chalavan,
• 2:48:20
  outlawed on every planet in the Terran Empire and every half way decent planet
• 2:48:26
  outside it. More and more figures, men and creatures kept crowding into the
• 2:48:31
  cellar, which was not very large. The place looked like the worst nightmare
• 2:48:37
  of a drug dreamer, ablaze, with the colors of the smoking incense,
• 2:48:41
  the swaying crowd, and their monotonous cries. Quite suddenly there was a blaze
• 2:48:46
  of purple light, and some one screamed in a raving ecstasy. Nakina ni'ebran
• 2:48:50
  Nahai Camaina, Camaina shrilled the tranced mob. An old man jumped up and
• 2:48:58
  stopped haranguing the crowd. I could just follow his dialect. He was talking
• 2:49:03
  about terror, he was talking about riots. He was jabbering mystical gibberish which
• 2:49:09
  I couldn't understand and didn't want to understand, and rabble rousing anti Terran propaganda,
• 2:49:15
  which I understood much too well. Another blaze of lights and a long
• 2:49:20
  scream in chorus. Canaena Evarin stood in the blaze of many colored light.
• 2:49:28
  The toy maker, as I had seen him last, cat's smooth, gracefully
• 2:49:31
  alien, shrouded in a ripple of giddy Crimsons. Behind him was a blackness.
• 2:49:39
  I waited till the painful blaze of lights abated, then, straining my
• 2:49:43
  eyes to see past him, I got my worst shock. A woman stood
• 2:49:48
  there, naked to the waist, her hands ritually fettered with little chains that
• 2:49:52
  stirred and clashed musically as she moved, stiff legged in a frozen dream like.
• 2:50:00
  Black grass banded her brow and naked shoulders, and her eyes were crimson
• 2:50:05
  and the eyes lived in the dread dreaming face. They lived, and they
• 2:50:11
  were mad with terror, although the lips curved in a gently tranced smile.
• 2:50:16
  Miellyn Evarin was speaking in that dialect. I barely understood. His arms were
• 2:50:22
  flung high, and his cloak went spilling away from them, rippling like something
• 2:50:26
  alive. The jammed humans and non humans swayed and chanted, and he swayed
• 2:50:33
  above them like an iridescent bug, weaving arms rippling back and forth, back
• 2:50:39
  and forth. I strained to catch his words. Our world, an old
• 2:50:45
  world, Camayena, whimpered, the shrill chorus. Humans, humans, all
• 2:50:52
  humans would make slaves of us, all all save the children of the Ape.
• 2:50:56
  I lost thread for a moment. True, the Terran Empire has one
• 2:51:01
  small blind spot in otherwise sane policy, ignoring that non human and human have
• 2:51:07
  lived placidly here for millennia. They placidly assume that humans were everywhere the dominant
• 2:51:13
  race, as on Earth itself. The toy maker's weaving arms went on spinning,
• 2:51:20
  spinning. I rubbed my eyes to clear them of chalavan and incense.
• 2:51:26
  I hoped that what I saw was an illusion of the drug, something,
• 2:51:31
  something huge and dark was hovering over the girl. She stood placidly, hands
• 2:51:37
  clasped on her chains, but her eyes writhed in the frozen calm of her
• 2:51:41
  face. Then something I can only call it a sixth sense, bore it
• 2:51:46
  on me that there was some one outside the door. I was perhaps the
• 2:51:50
  only creature there except for Evarin, not drugged with Chalavan. And perhaps that's
• 2:51:56
  all it was. But during the days in the secret, Sir, I
• 2:52:00
  had had to develop some extra senses. Five just weren't enough for survival.
• 2:52:05
  I knew somebody was fixing the break down that door, and I had a
• 2:52:07
  good idea why. I had been followed by the legate's orders and tracking me
• 2:52:13
  here, had gone away and brought back reinforcements. Someone struck a blow on
• 2:52:16
  the door, and a stentorian voice bawled, open up there in the name
• 2:52:20
  of the Empire. The chanting broke in ragged quavers. Evarin stopped somewhere,
• 2:52:26
  a woman screamed. The lights abruptly went out, and a stampede started in
• 2:52:31
  the room. Women struck me with chains, men kicked. There were shrieks
• 2:52:35
  and howls. I thrust my way forward, butting with elbows and knees and
• 2:52:39
  shoulders. A dusky emptiness yawned, and I got a glimpse of sunlight and
• 2:52:43
  open sky, and knew that Evarin had stepped through into somewhere and was gone.
• 2:52:50
  The banging on the door sounded like a whole regiment of space force out
• 2:52:54
  there. I dived toward the shimmer of little stars which marked Miellyn's tiara in
• 2:52:58
  the darkness, braving the black horror hovering above her, and touched rigid girl
• 2:53:03
  flesh cold as death. I grabbed her and ducked sideways. This time it
• 2:53:09
  wasn't intuition nine times out of ten, anyway. Intuition is just a mental
• 2:53:13
  short cut which adds up all the things which your sub conscious has noticed while
• 2:53:18
  you were busy thinking about something else. Every native building on Wolf had concealed
• 2:53:24
  entrances and exits, and I knew where to look for them. This one
• 2:53:28
  was exactly where I expected. I pushed at it and found myself in a
• 2:53:31
  long, dim corridor. The head of a woman peered from an opening door.
• 2:53:37
  She saw Miellyn's limp body hanging on my arm, and her mouth widened
• 2:53:41
  in a silent scream. Then the head popped back out of sight, and
• 2:53:45
  a door slammed. I heard the bolt slide. I ran for the end
• 2:53:48
  of the hall, the girl in my arms, thinking that this was where
• 2:53:52
  I came in. As far as Miellyn was concerned and wondering why I bothered.
• 2:53:56
  The door opened on a dark, peaceful street. One lonely moon was
• 2:54:01
  setting beyond the roof tops. I set Miellyn on her feet, but she
• 2:54:05
  moaned and crumbled against me. I put my shirt cloak round her bare shoulders.
• 2:54:09
  Judging by the noises and yells, we'd gotten out just in time.
• 2:54:13
  No one came out the exit behind us. Either the Space Force had plugged
• 2:54:18
  it, or more likely every one else in the cellar had been too muddled
• 2:54:22
  by drugs to know what was going on. But it was only a few
• 2:54:26
  minutes I knew before Space Force would check the whole building for concealed escape holes.
• 2:54:31
  Suddenly, and irrelevantly, I found myself thinking of a day not too
• 2:54:35
  long ago, when had stood up in front of a unit in training of
• 2:54:39
  Space Force, introduced to them as an intelligence expert on Native towns, and
• 2:54:43
  solemnly warned them about concealed exits and entrances. I wondered for half a minute
• 2:54:50
  if it might not be simpler just to wait here and let them pick me
• 2:54:52
  up. Then I hoisted Miellyn across my shoulders. She was heavier than she
• 2:54:58
  looked, and I for a minute half conscious. She began to struggle and
• 2:55:03
  moan. There was a check run cook shop down the street, a place
• 2:55:07
  I'd once known well, with an evil reputation and worse food. But it
• 2:55:11
  was quiet and stayed open all night. I turned in at the door,
• 2:55:15
  bending at the low lintel. The place was smoke filled and foul smelling.
• 2:55:20
  I dumped me in on a couch and sent the frowsy waiter for two bowls
• 2:55:22
  of noodles and coffee, handed him a few extra coins, and told him
• 2:55:26
  to leave us alone. He probably drew the worst possible inference. I saw
• 2:55:31
  his muzzled twitch at the smell of schalivan, but it was that kind of
• 2:55:35
  place anyhow. He drew down the shutters and went I stared at the unconscious
• 2:55:43
  girl, then shrugged and started on the noodles. My own head was still
• 2:55:48
  swimmy with the fumes, incense and drug, and I wanted it clear.
• 2:55:54
  I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I had Evarin's right
• 2:55:56
  hand girl, and I was going to use her. The noodles were greasy
• 2:56:01
  and had a curious taste, but they were hot, and he ate all
• 2:56:05
  of one bowl before Miellyn stirred and whimpered and put up one hand with a
• 2:56:09
  little clinking of chains to her hair. The gesture was indefinably reminiscent of Dallisa,
• 2:56:16
  and for the first time I saw the likeness between them. It made
• 2:56:20
  me weary and yet curiously softened. Finding she could not move freely, she
• 2:56:26
  rolled over, sat up, and stared around in growing bewilderment and dismay.
• 2:56:33
  There was a sort of riot. I said, I got you out,
• 2:56:35
  ever inditched you, and you can quit thinking what you're thinking. I put
• 2:56:39
  my shirt clerk on you because you were bare to the waist, and it
• 2:56:43
  didn't look so good. I stopped to think that over and amended. I
• 2:56:48
  mean, I couldn't hauld you round the streets that way. It looked good
• 2:56:50
  enough. To my surprise, she gave a shaky little giggle and held out
• 2:56:56
  her fettered hands. Will you. I broke her lynx and freed her.
• 2:57:01
  She rubbed her wrists as if they hurt her, then drew up her draperies,
• 2:57:07
  pinned them so that she was decently covered, and tossed back my shirt
• 2:57:09
  cloak. Her eyes were wide and soft in the light of a flickering stub
• 2:57:15
  of candle. Oh Rakhal, she sighed. When I saw you there,
• 2:57:20
  She sat up, clasping her hands together, and when she continued, her
• 2:57:24
  voice was curiously cold and controlled. For any one so childish, it was
• 2:57:31
  almost as cold as Dulsus. If you've come from Kiral, I'm not going
• 2:57:35
  back. I'll never go back, and you may as well know it.
• 2:57:39
  I don't come from Kyral, and I don't care where you go. I
• 2:57:43
  don't care what you do. I suddenly realized that the last statement was wholly
• 2:57:48
  untrue, and to cover my confusion, I shoved the remaining bowl of noodles
• 2:57:52
  at her eat. She wrinkled her nose in fastidious disgust. I'm not hungry
• 2:58:00
  eat it anyway. You're still half doped, and the food will lay your
• 2:58:05
  head. I picked up one mug of the coffee and drained it at a
• 2:58:09
  single swallow. What were you doing in that disgusting den? Without warning,
• 2:58:15
  she flung herself across the table at me, throwing her arms round my neck.
• 2:58:18
  Startled. I let her cling a moment, then reached up and firmly
• 2:58:22
  unfastened her hands. None of that now, I fell for at once,
• 2:58:26
  and it landed me in the middle of the mud pie. But her fingers
• 2:58:31
  bit my shoulder. Rakhal, Rakhal. I tried to get away and find
• 2:58:35
  you. Have you still got the bird? You haven't set it off yet.
• 2:58:39
  Oh don't, don't, don't, Rakhal. You don't know whatever it
• 2:58:43
  is. You don't know what he's doing. The words spilled out of her
• 2:58:48
  like floodwaters. He's won so many of you. Don't let him. Have
• 2:58:52
  you too, Rakhal. They call you an honest man. You worked once
• 2:58:56
  for terror. The Terrans would believe you if you went to them and told
• 2:58:58
  them what he Rakhal. Take me to the Terran zone. Take me there,
• 2:59:03
  Take me where they'll protect me from Evarin. At first I tried to
• 2:59:07
  stop her, question her, then waited and let the torrent of entreaty run
• 2:59:11
  on and on. At last, exhausted and breathless, she lay quietly against
• 2:59:18
  my shoulder, her head fallen forward. The musty reek of Chalivan mingled with
• 2:59:22
  the flower scent of her hair. Kid I said heavily. At last,
• 2:59:28
  you and your toy maker have both got me wrong. I'm not rakhal sensar,
• 2:59:33
  y're not. She drew back, regarding me in dismay. Her eyes
• 2:59:39
  searched every inch of me, from the gray streak across my forehead to the
• 2:59:43
  scar running down into my collar. Then hoot raced Cargill tarran intelligence. She
• 2:59:50
  stared her mouth wide like a child's. Then she laughed. She laughed.
• 2:59:56
  At first I thought she was hysterical. I stared at her in consternation.
• 3:00:01
  Then as her wide eyes met mine with all the mischief of the non human
• 3:00:05
  which was mingled into the human here, all the circular complexities of wolf logic
• 3:00:11
  behind the woman in them, I started to laugh too. I threw back
• 3:00:15
  my head and roared, until we were clinging together and gasping with mirth,
• 3:00:18
  like a pair of raving fools. The check waiter came to the door and
• 3:00:24
  stared at us, and I roared, get the hell out between spasms of
• 3:00:26
  crazy laughter. Then she was wiping her face, tears of mirth still dripping
• 3:00:33
  down her cheeks, and I was frowning bleakly into the empty bowls. Cargill
• 3:00:39
  she said, hesitantly, you can take me to the terreens where Rakhal Hell's
• 3:00:43
  bells, I exploded. I can't take you anywhere, girl, I've got
• 3:00:48
  to find Rakhal. I stopped in mid sentence and looked at her clearly for
• 3:00:54
  the first time. Child. I'll see that you're protected if I can.
• 3:00:58
  But I'm afraid you've walked from the trap to the cook pot. There isn't
• 3:01:03
  a house in Charin that will hold me. Been thrown out twice a day.
• 3:01:07
  She nodded. I don't know how the word spreads, but it happens
• 3:01:11
  in nonhuman parts. I think they can see trouble written in a human face,
• 3:01:15
  or smell it in the wind. She fell silent, her face propped
• 3:01:20
  sleepily between her hands, her hair falling in tangles. I took one of
• 3:01:24
  her hands in mine and turned it over. It was a fine hand,
• 3:01:30
  with bird like bones and soft rose tinted nails, but the lines and hardened
• 3:01:35
  places around the knuckles reminded me that she too came from the cold austerity of
• 3:01:39
  the salt dry towns. After a moment, she flushed and drew her hand
• 3:01:43
  from mine. What are you thinking, Cargill, she asked, and for
• 3:01:48
  the first time I heard her voice sobered without the cockettery, which must,
• 3:01:54
  after all, have been a very thin veneer. I answered her simply and
• 3:01:58
  literally, I am thinking of Dallisa. I thought you were very different,
• 3:02:03
  and yet I see that you are very like her. I thought she would
• 3:02:09
  question what I knew of her sister, but she let it pass in silence.
• 3:02:13
  After a time, she said, yes, we were twins. Then,
• 3:02:18
  after a long silence, she added, but she was always much the
• 3:02:22
  older, and that was all I ever knew of whatever obscure pressures had shaped
• 3:02:28
  Dalliser into an asture and tragic Clytemnestra and Miellyn into a pixie runaway. Outside
• 3:02:35
  the drawn shutters, dawn was brightening. Miellyn shivered, drawing her thin draperies
• 3:02:41
  round her bare throat. I glanced at the little rim of jewels that starred
• 3:02:46
  her hair and said, you'd better take those off and hide them. They
• 3:02:50
  alone would be enough to have you hauled into an alley and strangled. In
• 3:02:52
  this part of Charon, I hauled the bird toy from my pocket and slapped
• 3:02:56
  it on the greasy table, still wrapped in its I don't suppose you know
• 3:03:01
  which of us this thing is set to kill. I know nothing about the
• 3:03:05
  toys. You seem to know plenty about the toy maker. I thought so
• 3:03:11
  until last night. I looked at the rigid, clamped mouth and thought that
• 3:03:16
  if she were really as soft and as delicate as she looked, she would
• 3:03:18
  have wept. Then she struck her small hand on the tabletop and burst out.
• 3:03:24
  It's not a religion. Tisn't even an honest movement for freedom. It's
• 3:03:28
  a a front for smuggling and drugs and every other filthy thing, believe it
• 3:03:33
  or not. When I left Shansar, I thought Nebron was the answer to
• 3:03:37
  the way the Terrans were strangling us. Now I know there are worse things
• 3:03:41
  on Wolf than the Terran Empire. I've heard of Rakhal, Sensar, and
• 3:03:46
  whatever you may think of Rakhal, he's too decent to be mixed up in
• 3:03:48
  anything like this. Suppose you tell me what's really going on, I suggested.
• 3:03:54
  She couldn't add much to what I knew already, but the last fragments
• 3:03:58
  of the pattern beginning to settle into place. Rakhal seeking the matter transmitter and
• 3:04:05
  some key to the non human sciences of Wolf. I knew now what the
• 3:04:09
  city of the Silent Ones had reminded me of had somehow crossed the path of
• 3:04:13
  the toy maker. Everin's words now made sense. You were clever at evading
• 3:04:18
  our surveillance for a while, possibly though I'd never know. Quinn had been
• 3:04:24
  keeping one foot in each camp, working for Kyral and for Everin. The
• 3:04:28
  toy Maker, knowing of Rakhal's anti Terran activities, had believed he would make
• 3:04:33
  a valuable ally and had taken steps to secure his help. Julie herself had
• 3:04:39
  given me the clue he smashed Rindy's toys. Out of the context, it
• 3:04:43
  sounded like the work of a madman. Now having encountered Evarin's workshop, it
• 3:04:48
  made plain good sense. And I think I had known all along that Rakhal
• 3:04:54
  could not have been playing Everind's game. He might have turned against terror,
• 3:05:00
  though now I was beginning to even doubt that, And certainly he'd have killed
• 3:05:03
  me if he found me, But he would have done it himself, and
• 3:05:07
  without malice. Killed without malice. That doesn't make sense in any of the
• 3:05:13
  languages of terror, but it made sense to me. Miellyn had finished her
• 3:05:18
  brief recitation and was drowsing, her head pillowed on the table. The reddish
• 3:05:24
  light was growing, and I realized that I was waiting for dawn. As
• 3:05:28
  days ago I had waited for sunset in Shinsa, with every nerve stretched to
• 3:05:33
  the breaking point. It was dawn of the third morning, and this bird
• 3:05:39
  lying on the table before me must fly, or far away in the Khasa
• 3:05:43
  another would fly at Julie. I said, there's some distance limitation on this
• 3:05:48
  one. I understand, since I have to be fairly near its object.
• 3:05:52
  If I lock it in a steel box and drop it in the desert,
• 3:05:54
  I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody. I don't suppose you'd have a shot at
• 3:05:58
  stealing the other one for me. She raised her head, eyes flashing.
• 3:06:03
  Why should you worry about Rakhal's wife? She fled, and for no good
• 3:06:07
  reason. It occurred to me that she was jealous. I might have known
• 3:06:11
  Evarin wouldn't shoot in the dark. Rakhal's wife, that earth woman, What
• 3:06:16
  do you care for her? It seemed important to set her straight. I
• 3:06:20
  explained that Julie was my sister, and saw a little of the tension fade
• 3:06:26
  from her face, but not all. Remembering the custom of the dry towns,
• 3:06:31
  I was not wholly surprised when she added jealously. When I heard of
• 3:06:35
  your feud, I guessed it was over that woman, but not in the
• 3:06:39
  way you think. I said. Julie had been part of it. Certainly,
• 3:06:45
  even then I had not wanted her to turn her back on her world.
• 3:06:48
  But if Rakhal had remained with Terror, I would have accepted his marriage
• 3:06:52
  to Julie, accepted it, I'd have rejoiced. God knows we'd been closer
• 3:06:58
  than brothers though years in the dry towns, and then before Miellyn's flashing eyes,
• 3:07:05
  I suddenly faced my secret hate, my secret fear. No, the
• 3:07:11
  quarrel had not been all Rakhal's doing. He had not turned his back unexplained
• 3:07:16
  on Terror in some unrecognized fashion. I had done my best to drive him
• 3:07:22
  away, and when he had gone, I had banished a part of myself
• 3:07:26
  as well, and thought I could end the struggle by saying it didn't exist.
• 3:07:31
  And now, facing what I had done to all of us, I
• 3:07:35
  knew that my revenge, so long sought, so dearly cherished, must be
• 3:07:41
  abandoned. We still have to deal with a bird. I said, it's
• 3:07:46
  a gambol with all the cards wild, I could dismantle it and trust to
• 3:07:50
  Luck that wolf. I logic didn't include a tamper mechanism, but that didn't
• 3:07:54
  seem worth a risk. First, I've got to find Rakhal. If I
• 3:08:00
  set the bird free and it killed him, it wouldn't settle anything. For
• 3:08:05
  I could not kill Rakhal. Not now because I knew life would be your
• 3:08:09
  worse punishment than death, but because if I knew it now, if Rakhal
• 3:08:16
  died, Julie would die too. And if I killed him, I'd be
• 3:08:22
  killing the best part of myself. Somehow, Rakhal and I must strike a
• 3:08:28
  balance between our two worlds and try to build a new one from them.
• 3:08:33
  And I can't sit here and talk any longer. I haven't time to take
• 3:08:35
  you. I stopped, remembering the Spaceport cafe at the edge of the Khasa.
• 3:08:41
  There was a street shrine or matter transmitter right there, across the street
• 3:08:45
  from the terran h Q. All these years, you know your way in
• 3:08:48
  the transmitters. You can go there in a second or two. She could
• 3:08:52
  warn Julie, tell Magneson. But when I suggested this, giving her a
• 3:08:58
  password that would take us straight to the top, she turned white. All
• 3:09:01
  jumps have to be made through the master shrine. I stopped and thought about
• 3:09:07
  that. Where is Evarin likely to be? Right now? She gave a
• 3:09:13
  nervous shudder. He's everywhere, rubbish, he's not omniscient. Quite a little
• 3:09:18
  fool. He didn't even recognize me. He thought I was Rakhal. I
• 3:09:22
  wasn't too sure myself, but Miellyn needed reassurance. Or take me to the
• 3:09:28
  master shrine. I can find Rakhal in that scanning device of Evarin's. I
• 3:09:33
  saw refusal in her face and pushed on. If Evarin's there, I'll prove
• 3:09:37
  he is fallible enough with the skein in his throat. And here I thrust
• 3:09:41
  the toy into her hand. Hang on to this, will you? She
• 3:09:46
  put it matter of factly into her draperies. I don't mind that, but
• 3:09:50
  to the shrine. Her voice quivered, and I stood up and pushed at
• 3:09:54
  the table. Let's get going. Where's the nearest street shrine? No?
• 3:10:00
  No, oh, I don't dare. You've got to. I saw the
• 3:10:03
  chack who owned the place edging round the door again and said, there's no
• 3:10:07
  use arguing Miellyn. When she had readjusted her robes a little while ago,
• 3:10:11
  she had pinned them so that the flat sprawl of the Neborn embroideries were over
• 3:10:16
  her breasts. I put a finger against them, not in a sensuous gesture,
• 3:10:20
  and said, the minute they see these, they'll throw us out of
• 3:10:24
  here too. If you knew what I know of Nebron, you wouldn't want
• 3:10:28
  me to go near the master shrine. Again. There was that faint coquettishness
• 3:10:33
  in her sideways smile, and suddenly I realized that I didn't want her to.
• 3:10:39
  But she was not Dallisa, and she could not sit in cold dignity
• 3:10:43
  while her world fell into ruin. Miellyn must fight for the one she wanted.
• 3:10:48
  And then some of that primitive male hostility which lives in every man came
• 3:10:52
  to the surface, and I gripped her arm until she whimpered. Then I
• 3:10:56
  said, in the shane sand which still comes to my tongue when moved or
• 3:11:00
  angry, damn it you're going. Have you forgotten that if it weren't for
• 3:11:03
  me, you'd have been torn to pieces by that raving mob or something worse
• 3:11:07
  that did it. She pulled away, and I saw again, beneath the
• 3:11:11
  veneer of petulant coquetry, that fierce and untamable insolence of the dry tonner,
• 3:11:16
  the more fierce and arrogant in this girl. Because she had burst her fettered
• 3:11:20
  hands free and shaken off the ruin of the past, I was seized with
• 3:11:26
  a wildly inappropriate desire to seize her, crushed her in my arms. Taste
• 3:11:30
  the red honey of that teasing mouth. The effort of mastering the impulse made
• 3:11:33
  me rough. I shoved at her and said, come on, let's get
• 3:11:37
  there before ever d us end of chapter thirteen, Chapter fourteen. Outside in
• 3:11:48
  the streets, it was full day, and the color and life of Charon
• 3:11:52
  had subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning, dullness and silence. Only
• 3:11:58
  a few you men lounge wearily in the streets, as if the sun had
• 3:12:03
  sapped their energy. And always the pale, fleecy haired children, human and
• 3:12:07
  furred non human, played their mysterious games on the curbs and gutters and staring
• 3:12:13
  at us with neither curiosity nor malice. Miellyn was shaking when she set her
• 3:12:18
  feet into the patterned stones of the street shrine. Scared Miellyn, I know,
• 3:12:24
  Evarin, you don't, but her mouth twitched in a painful attempt at
• 3:12:28
  the old mischief. When I'm with a great and valorous earthman. Cut it
• 3:12:33
  out, I growled, and she giggled. You'll have to stand closer to
• 3:12:37
  me. The transmitters are meant only for one person. I stooped and put
• 3:12:41
  my arms round her like this, Like this, she whispered, pressing herself
• 3:12:48
  against me. A staggering whirl of dizzy darkness swung around my head. The
• 3:12:52
  street vanished. After an instant, the floor steadied, and we stepped into
• 3:12:58
  the terminal room, in the mastershrine, under a skylight dim with the last
• 3:13:01
  red slant of sunset. Distant hammering noises rang in my ears. Miellyn whispered.
• 3:13:09
  Evarin's not here, but he might jump through at any second. I
• 3:13:13
  wasn't listening. Where is this place, Miellyn? Where on the planet No
• 3:13:18
  one knows, but Evarn. I think there are no doors. Any One
• 3:13:22
  who goes in or out jumps through the transmitter. She pointed. The scanning
• 3:13:28
  device is in there. We'll have to go through the workroom. She was
• 3:13:33
  patting her cushioned robes into place, smoothing her hair with fastidious fingers. I
• 3:13:37
  don't suppose you have a comb. I've no time to go to my own
• 3:13:41
  I'd known, she was a vain and pampered brat. But this passed all
• 3:13:45
  reason, and I said so, exploding at her. She looked at me
• 3:13:50
  as if I wasn't quite intelligent. Little ones, my friend, notice things.
• 3:13:54
  You are quite enough of a redneck. But I Nebran's priestess walk through
• 3:13:58
  the workroom, all blown out and looking like the tag end of an orgy,
• 3:14:03
  and ad Karen abashed. I fished in my pocket and offered her a
• 3:14:07
  somewhat battered pocket comb. She looked at it distastefully, but used it to
• 3:14:11
  good purpose, smoothing her hair swiftly rearranging her loose pinned robe so that the
• 3:14:18
  worst of the tears and stains were covered, giving me meanwhile an artless and
• 3:14:22
  rather tempting view of some delicious curvature. She replaced the starred tiara on her
• 3:14:28
  ringlets, and finally opened the door of the workroom, and we walked through.
• 3:14:35
  Not for years had I known that particular sensation. Thousands of eyes boring
• 3:14:39
  holes in the center of my back. Somewhere there were eyes, the round
• 3:14:45
  in human orbs of the dwarf chacks, the faceted stare of the prism,
• 3:14:48
  eyes of the toys, the workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it
• 3:14:52
  felt longer than a good many miles. I'd walked here and there The dwarfs
• 3:14:58
  murmured and obsequious greeting Miellyn, and she made some lighthearted answer. She had
• 3:15:03
  warned me to walk as if I had every right to be there, and
• 3:15:05
  I strode after her as if we were simply going to an agreed on meeting
• 3:15:09
  in the next room. But I was drenched with cold sweat before the further
• 3:15:13
  door finally closed, safe and blessedly opaque behind us. Miellyn too was shaking
• 3:15:20
  with fright and put a hand on her arm. Steady, kid, where's
• 3:15:24
  the scanner? She touched the panel i'd seen. I'm not sure if I
• 3:15:30
  can focus it accurately. Evarin never let me touch it. It was a
• 3:15:33
  fine time to tell me that. How does it work. It's an adaptation
• 3:15:39
  of the transmitter principle. It lets you see anywhere, but without jumping.
• 3:15:43
  It uses a tracer mechanism like the one in the toys. If Rakhal's electrical
• 3:15:48
  impulse pattern were on file. Just a minute, she fished out the bird
• 3:15:52
  toy and unwrapped it. Here's how we find out which of you this is
• 3:15:56
  keyed to? I looked at the fledgling bird lying innocently in her palm as
• 3:16:01
  she pushed aside the feathers, exposing a tiny crystal. If it's keyed to
• 3:16:05
  you, you'll see yourself in this, as if the screen were a mirror.
• 3:16:09
  If it's keyed to Rakhal, she touched the crystal to the surface of
• 3:16:13
  the screen. Little flickers of snow wavered and danced. Then abruptly, we
• 3:16:18
  were looking down from a height at the lean back of a man in a
• 3:16:22
  leather jacket. Slowly he turned. I saw the familiar set of his shoulders,
• 3:16:28
  saw the back of his head come into an aquiline profile, and the
• 3:16:31
  profile turned slowly into a scarred, seared mask, more hideously clawmuked and disfigured
• 3:16:37
  than my own. Rakhal, I muttered, shift the focus. If you
• 3:16:43
  can, Miellyn, get a look out of the window or something. Charon's
• 3:16:46
  a big city. If we could get a good look at a landmark.
• 3:16:50
  Rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke to some one out
• 3:16:54
  of sight range of the scanning device. Abruptly, Miellyn said, there she
• 3:17:00
  had caught a window in the sight field of the pane, I could see
• 3:17:03
  a high pylon and two or three uprights that looked like a bridge just outside.
• 3:17:09
  I said, it's the bridge of Summer snows. I know where he
• 3:17:13
  is. Now turn it off, Miellyn, we can find him. I
• 3:17:16
  was turning away when Miellyn screamed, Look. Rakhal had turned his back on
• 3:17:20
  the scanner, and for the first time I could see who he was talking
• 3:17:24
  to. A hunched, catlike shoulder, twisted, a sinuous neck, high
• 3:17:31
  held head that was not quite human Evarin. I swore, that does it.
• 3:17:37
  He knows now that I'm not Rakhal if he didn't know it all along,
• 3:17:39
  Come on, girl, we're getting out of here. This time.
• 3:17:43
  There was no pretense of normality as we dashed through the workroom. Fingers dropped
• 3:17:48
  from half completed toys as they stared after us toys. I wanted to stop
• 3:17:54
  and smash them all, but if we hurried, we might find Rakhal,
• 3:17:58
  and with luck, we would find Evarin with him, and then I was
• 3:18:01
  going to bang their heads together. I'd reached a saturation point on adventure.
• 3:18:05
  I'd had all I wanted. I realized that I'd been up all night,
• 3:18:09
  that I was exhausted, I wanted to murder and smash and wanted to fall
• 3:18:15
  down somewhere and go to sleep, all at once. We banged the workroom
• 3:18:18
  door shut, and I took time to shove a heavy divan against it,
• 3:18:22
  blockading it. Miellyn stared, the little ones wouldn't harm me. She began,
• 3:18:26
  I'm sacrosanct. I wasn't sure. I had a notion her status had
• 3:18:33
  changed plenty, beginning when I saw her chained and drugged and standing under the
• 3:18:37
  hovering horror. But I didn't say so. Maybe, but there's nothing sacred
• 3:18:43
  about me. She was already inside the recess where the toad god swatted.
• 3:18:46
  There is a street shrine just beyond the bridge of summer snows. We can
• 3:18:50
  jump directly there. Abruptly, she froze in my arms with a convulsive shudder.
• 3:18:56
  Evarin, I'll be tight. He's jumping in quick space, reeled around
• 3:19:01
  us. And then can you split instantaneousness into fragments? It didn't make sense,
• 3:19:07
  but so help me, that's what happened. And everything that happened occurred
• 3:19:11
  within less than a second. We landed in the street shrine. I could
• 3:19:16
  see the pylon and the bridge and the rising sun of Charin. Then there
• 3:19:20
  was a giddy internal wrenching. A blast of icy air whistled round us,
• 3:19:24
  and we were gazing out at the polar mountains ringed in their eternal snow.
• 3:19:30
  Miellyn clutched at me. Pray, pray to the gods of terror, if
• 3:19:33
  there are any. She clung so violently that it felt as if her small
• 3:19:37
  body were trying to push through me and come out the other side. I
• 3:19:41
  hung on tight. Miellyn knew what she was doing in the transmitter. I
• 3:19:45
  was just along for the ride, and I didn't relish the thought of being
• 3:19:48
  dropped off somewhere in that black limbo which traversed. We jumped again, the
• 3:19:52
  sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from the girl, and darkness shivered round us.
• 3:19:58
  I looked on an unfamiliar street of black night and dust bleared stars.
• 3:20:03
  She whimpered, Evarin knows what I'm doing. He's jumping us all over the
• 3:20:07
  planet. He can work the controls with his mind psychokinetics. I can do
• 3:20:13
  it a little, but I never dared. Oh, hang on tight.
• 3:20:16
  Then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would make some
• 3:20:20
  tiny movement, and we would be falling, blind and dizzy through blackness.
• 3:20:26
  Half Way through the giddiness, a new direction would wrench us, and we
• 3:20:30
  would be thrust elsewhere and look out into a new street. One instant I
• 3:20:35
  smelled hot coffee from the Spaceport cafe near the Kharsa. An instant later,
• 3:20:39
  it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds waving above us and a dazzle of
• 3:20:43
  water. We flicked in and out of the salty air of Shainsar, glimpsed
• 3:20:48
  flowers and a dailon street. Moonlight noon red twilight flickered and went shot through
• 3:20:54
  with the terrible giddiness of hyperspace. Then suddenly I caught a second glimpse of
• 3:21:00
  the bridge and the pylon. A moment's oversight had landed us for an instant
• 3:21:03
  in Sharin. The blackness started to reel down, But my reflexes are fast,
• 3:21:07
  and I made one swift, scrabbling step forward. We lurched, sprawled,
• 3:21:13
  locked together on the stones of the bridge of summer snows, battered and
• 3:21:16
  bruised and bloody. We were still alive and where we wanted to be.
• 3:21:22
  I lifted Miellyn to her feet, her eyes were dazed with pain. The
• 3:21:28
  ground swayed and rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge. At
• 3:21:33
  the far end, I looked up at the pylon. Judging from its angle,
• 3:21:37
  we couldn't be more than a hundred feet from the window through which I'd
• 3:21:39
  seen that landmark in the scanner. In this street there was a wine shop,
• 3:21:45
  a silk market, and a small private house. I walked up and
• 3:21:48
  banged on the door. Silence. I knocked again, and had time to
• 3:21:54
  wonder if we'd find ourselves explaining things to some uninvolved stranger. Then I heard
• 3:21:58
  a child's high voice and a deep, familiar voice hushing it. The door
• 3:22:03
  opened just a crack to reveal part of a scarred face. It drew into
• 3:22:11
  a hideous grin, then relaxed. I thought it might be you, Cargill.
• 3:22:16
  You've taken at least three days longer than I figured getting here. Come
• 3:22:20
  on in, said Rakhal Sensar, end of Chapter fourteen, Chapter fifteen.
• 3:22:31
  He hadn't changed much in six years. His face was worse than mine.
• 3:22:37
  He hadn't had the plastic surgeons of Terran Intelligence doing their best for him.
• 3:22:41
  His mouth, I thought, fleetingly, must hurt like hell when he drew
• 3:22:46
  it up into the kind of grin he was grinning now. His eyebrows,
• 3:22:50
  thick and fierce with gray in them, went up as he saw Miellyn,
• 3:22:54
  but he backed away to let us enter and shut The door behind us.
• 3:23:00
  Room was bare, and I didn't look as if it had been lived in
• 3:23:01
  much. The floor was stone rough laid, a single fur rug lay before
• 3:23:07
  a brazier. A little girl was sitting on the rug, drinking from a
• 3:23:11
  big, double handled mug, but she scrambled to her feet as we came
• 3:23:16
  in and backed against the wall, looking at us with wide eyes. She
• 3:23:20
  had pale red hair like Julie's, cut straight in a fringe across her forehead,
• 3:23:26
  and she was dressed in a smock of dyed red fur that almost matched
• 3:23:28
  her hair. A little smear of milk like a white mustache clung to her
• 3:23:33
  upper lip, where she had forgotten to wipe her mouth. She was about
• 3:23:37
  five years old, with deep set, dark eyes like Julie's that watched me
• 3:23:43
  gravely without surprise or fear. She evidently knew who I was. Rindy Rakhal
• 3:23:50
  said, quietly, not taking his eyes from me. Go into the other
• 3:23:54
  room. Rindy didn't move, still staring at me. Then she moved towards
• 3:24:00
  Miellyn, looking up intently, not at the woman, but at the pattern
• 3:24:05
  of embroideries across her dress. It was very quiet until Rakhal added, in
• 3:24:11
  a gentle and curiously moderate voice, do you still carry a skeen race?
• 3:24:18
  And I shook my head as an ancient proverb on terror about blood being thicker
• 3:24:24
  than water. Rakhal, that's Julie's daughter. I'm not going to kill her
• 3:24:28
  father right before her eyes. My rage spilled over then, and I bellowed,
• 3:24:33
  to hell with your damn dry town feuds and your filthy toad god and
• 3:24:37
  all the rest of it, Rakhal said harshly. Rindy, I told you
• 3:24:41
  to get out. She needn't go. I took a step towards the little
• 3:24:46
  girl, a wary eye on Rakhal. I don't know quite what you're up
• 3:24:50
  to, but it's nothing for a child to be mixed up in. Do
• 3:24:54
  what you damn please. I can settle with you any time. The first
• 3:24:58
  thing to get Rindy out of here. She belongs with Julie, and damn
• 3:25:03
  it, that's where she's going. I held up my arms to the little
• 3:25:05
  girl and said it's over, Rindy. Whatever he's done to you, your
• 3:25:09
  mother sent me to find you. Don't you want to go to your mother?
• 3:25:13
  Rakhal made a menacing gesture and warned I wouldn't. Miellyn darted swiftly between
• 3:25:18
  us and caught up the child in her arms. Rindy began to struggle noiselessly,
• 3:25:24
  kicking and whimpering, but Miellyn took two quick steps and flung an inner
• 3:25:28
  door open. Rakhal took a stride towards her. She whirled on him,
• 3:25:33
  fighting to control the furious little girl, and gasped, settle it between you
• 3:25:35
  without the baby. Watching through the open door, I briefly saw a bed
• 3:25:41
  a child's small dresses hanging on a hook, before Miellyn kicked the door shut,
• 3:25:45
  and I heard a latch being fastened behind the closed door. Rindy broke
• 3:25:50
  into angry screams, but I put my back against the door. She's right,
• 3:25:54
  we'll settle it between the two of us. What have you done to
• 3:25:58
  the child? If you thought, Rakhal stopped himself in mid sentence and stood
• 3:26:03
  watching me without moving for a minute. Then he laughed, you're as stupid
• 3:26:07
  as ever. Race Are you fool? I knew Julie would run straight to
• 3:26:11
  you if she was scared enough. I knew it would bring you out of
• 3:26:15
  hiding. Why you damn fool? He stood mocking me, but there was
• 3:26:18
  a strained fury, almost a frenzy of contempt behind the laughter. You filthy
• 3:26:24
  coward, race six years hiding in the terran zone. Six years, and
• 3:26:30
  I gave you six months if you'd had the guts to walk out after me.
• 3:26:33
  After I rigged that final deal to give you the chance, we could
• 3:26:37
  have gone after the biggest thing on wolf, and we could have brought it
• 3:26:39
  off together inspeed of spending years spying and dodging and hunting. And now,
• 3:26:45
  when I finally get you out of hiding, all you want to do is
• 3:26:48
  run back where you'll be safe. I thought you had more guts, not
• 3:26:52
  for Everin's dirty work. Grakhal swore hideously, Evarin. Do you really believe
• 3:27:00
  I might have known he'd get to you too, that girl? And you
• 3:27:03
  managed to recall? I did there too. Suddenly, so swiftly my eyes
• 3:27:07
  could hardly follow. He whipped out his skein and came at me. Get
• 3:27:11
  away from that door. I stood my ground you'll have to kill me first,
• 3:27:16
  and I won't fight you, Rakhal. We'll settle this, but we'll
• 3:27:18
  do it my way. For once, like Earthmin, son of the Ape,
• 3:27:22
  get your skein out, your stinking coward, I won't do it,
• 3:27:26
  Rakhal. I stood and defied him. I had outmaneuvered dright howners in a
• 3:27:31
  shaggery bed. I knew Rakhal, and I knew he would not knife an
• 3:27:35
  unarmed man. We fought once with the kiffer, and it didn't settle anything.
• 3:27:39
  This time, we'll do it my way. I threw my skin away
• 3:27:43
  before I came here. I won't fight. He thrust at me. Even
• 3:27:46
  I could see that the blow was a faint, and I had a flashing
• 3:27:50
  instantaneous memory of Dalis's threat to drive the knife through my palms. But even
• 3:27:56
  while I commanded myself to stand steady, sheer reflex threw me for grabbing at
• 3:28:01
  his wrist and the knife between my grappling hand. He twisted, and I
• 3:28:05
  felt the skein drive home, ripped through my jacket with a tearing sound,
• 3:28:09
  felt the thin fine line of touch, not pain yet as it sliced flesh.
• 3:28:16
  The pain burned through my ribs, and I felt hot blood, and
• 3:28:18
  I wanted to kill Rakhal, wanted to get my hands round his throat and
• 3:28:22
  kill him with them. At the same time, I was raging because I
• 3:28:26
  didn't want to fight the crazy fool. I wasn't even mad at him.
• 3:28:31
  Miellyn flung the door open, shrieking, and suddenly the toy released was darting
• 3:28:35
  a small, whirring, droning horror, straight at Rakhal's eyes. I yelled,
• 3:28:41
  but there was no time to warn him. I bent and butted him
• 3:28:43
  in the stomach. He grunted, doubled up in agony, and fell out
• 3:28:48
  of the path of the diving toy. It whirred in frustration, hovered,
• 3:28:52
  he writhed in agony, drawing up his knees, clawing at his shirt,
• 3:28:56
  while I turned on Miellen in immense fury and stopped hers. Had been a
• 3:29:01
  move of desperation, an instinctive act to restore the balance between a weaponless man
• 3:29:05
  and one who had a knife. Rakhal gasped in a hoarse voice, with
• 3:29:09
  all the breath gone from it. Did what to use rather fight? Clean?
• 3:29:15
  Then he opened his closed fist, and suddenly there were two of the
• 3:29:18
  little whirring droning horror in the room, and this one was diving at me,
• 3:29:22
  And as I threw myself headlong to the floor, the last puzzle piece
• 3:29:26
  fell into place. Evarin had made the same bargain with Rakhal as with me.
• 3:29:31
  I rolled over, dodging behind me. In the room, there was
• 3:29:35
  a child's shrill scream, Daddy, Daddy, And abruptly the birds collapsed in
• 3:29:39
  mid air and went limp. They fell to the floor like dropping stones,
• 3:29:43
  and lay there quivering. Brindy dashed across the room, her small skirts flying,
• 3:29:50
  and grabbed up one of the terrible vicious things in either hand. Brindy
• 3:29:54
  apillowed no. She stood, shaking, tears pouring down her round cheeks.
• 3:29:58
  A toy squeezed height in either hand. Dark veins stood out almost black on
• 3:30:03
  her fair temples. Break them, daddy, she implored, in a little
• 3:30:07
  thread of a voice, break them quick. I can't hang on. Rakhal
• 3:30:11
  staggered to his feet like a drunken man, and snatched one of the toys,
• 3:30:16
  grinding it under his heel. He made a grab at the second,
• 3:30:20
  reeled and drew in an anguished breath. He crumpled up, clutching at his
• 3:30:24
  belly where I butted him. The bird screamed like a living thing. Breaking
• 3:30:28
  the paralysis of horror, I leapt up ran across the room, heedless of
• 3:30:31
  the searing pain along my side. I snatched the bird from rindy as it
• 3:30:35
  screamed and shrilled and died as my foot crunched the tiny feathers. I stamped
• 3:30:41
  the still moving thing into an amorphous mess, and kept on stamping and smashing
• 3:30:45
  until it was only a heap of powder. Rakhal I finally managed to haul
• 3:30:52
  himself upright again. His face was so pale that the scars stood out like
• 3:30:56
  fresh burns. That was a foul blow. Race, But I I know
• 3:31:03
  why you did it. He stopped and breathed for a minute. Then he
• 3:31:07
  muttered, you saved my life, you know? Did you know you were
• 3:31:11
  doing it when you did it? Still breathing hard, I nodded, done
• 3:31:18
  knowingly in to bent an end of blood feud, however we had wronged each
• 3:31:22
  other. Whatever the pledge is, I spoke the words that confirmed it and
• 3:31:26
  ended it. Finally and forever, there is a life between us. Let
• 3:31:31
  it stand for a death. Miellyn was standing in the doorway, her hands
• 3:31:37
  pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide, She said shakily, you're walking
• 3:31:43
  round with a knife in your ribs, you full Rakhal whirled with a quick
• 3:31:46
  jerk, he pulled the skin loose. It had simply been caught in my
• 3:31:50
  shirt cloak in a fold of the rough cloth. He pulled it away,
• 3:31:54
  glanced at the red tip, then relaxed, not more than an inch deep,
• 3:31:58
  he said, then angrily defending himself, You did yourself, you ape.
• 3:32:03
  I was trying to get rid of the knife when you jumped me.
• 3:32:07
  But I knew that, and he knew I knew it. He turned and
• 3:32:13
  scooped up Rindy, who was sobbing noisily. She dug her head into his
• 3:32:16
  shoulder, and I made out her strangled words, The other toys hurt you
• 3:32:20
  when I was mad at you, She sobbed, rubbing her fists against smeared
• 3:32:26
  cheeks. I I wasn't that mad at you. I wasn't that mad at
• 3:32:30
  anybody, not even him. Grakhal pressed his hand against his daughter's fleecy hair
• 3:32:37
  and said, looking at me over her head, the toys activate a child's
• 3:32:41
  subconscious resentments against his parents. I have found out that much. That also
• 3:32:46
  means a child can control them. For a few seconds. No adult can.
• 3:32:52
  A stranger would have seen no change in his expression, but I knew
• 3:32:56
  him and saw Juley said you threatened Rindy. He chuckled and set the child
• 3:33:03
  on her feet. What else could I say? They would have scared Dulyie
• 3:33:07
  enough to send her running to you. Julie's proud, almost as proud as
• 3:33:11
  you are, Yer Stiff, next son of the ape. The insult did
• 3:33:16
  not sting me. Now, come on, sit down and let's decide what
• 3:33:20
  to do now we've finished up the old business. He looked remotely at Miellyn
• 3:33:26
  and said, you must be Dallasa's sister. I don't suppose your talents include
• 3:33:31
  knowing how to make coffee. They didn't, but with Rindy's help, Miellyn
• 3:33:35
  managed, and while they were out of the room, Rakhal explained briefly,
• 3:33:41
  Rindy has rudimentary e s P. I've never had it myself, but I
• 3:33:46
  could teach her something, nor much about how to use it. I've been
• 3:33:50
  on Evarin's track ever since that business of the lists. I'd have got it
• 3:33:56
  sooner if you were still working with me, But I couldn't do anything as
• 3:34:00
  a Terran agent, and I had to be kicked out so thoroughly that the
• 3:34:03
  others wouldn't be afraid. I was still working secretly for Terror for a long
• 3:34:09
  time. I was just chasing rumors. But when Rindy got big enough to
• 3:34:13
  look in the crystals of Nebrun and I started making some progress. I was
• 3:34:18
  afraid to tell Julie. Her best safety was the fact that she didn't know
• 3:34:22
  anything. She's always been a stranger in the dry towns. He paused,
• 3:34:28
  and then said, with honest self evaluation, since I left the Secret Service,
• 3:34:33
  I've been a stranger there myself. I asked, what about Dallisa.
• 3:34:37
  Twins have some e s p to each other. I knew Miellyn had gone
• 3:34:41
  to the toy maker. I tried to get Dallisa to find out where Miellyn
• 3:34:46
  had gone learn more about it. Dallisa wouldn't risk it, but Kiraal saw
• 3:34:52
  me with Dallisa and thought it was Miellyn that put him on my tale too,
• 3:34:56
  and I had to leave Shinsar. I was afraid of Kiral, he
• 3:35:01
  added, soberly, afraid of what he'd do. I couldn't do anything without
• 3:35:05
  Rindy, and I knew if I told Julie what I was doing. She'd
• 3:35:09
  take Rindy away into the Terran zone and I be as good as dead.
• 3:35:15
  As he talked, I began to realize how vast a web Evarin and the
• 3:35:18
  underground organization of Nebrun had spread for us. Evarin was here to day.
• 3:35:24
  What for, Rakhal laughed mirthlessly. He's been trying to get us to kill
• 3:35:30
  each other off. That would get rid of us both. He wants to
• 3:35:35
  turn over Wolf to the non humans entirely. I think he's sincere enough,
• 3:35:39
  but he spread his hands helplessly. I can't sit by and see it,
• 3:35:45
  I asked, point blank. Are you working for Terror or for the Dry
• 3:35:48
  Towns or any of the anti Terran movements. I'm working for me, he
• 3:35:54
  said with a shrug. I don't think much of the Terran Empire. But
• 3:35:58
  while planet can't fight a galaxy race, I want just one thing. I
• 3:36:05
  want the Dry Towns and the rest of Wolf to have a voice in their
• 3:36:09
  own government. Any planet which makes a substantial contribution to galactic science, by
• 3:36:16
  the laws of the Terran Empire, is automatically given the status of an independent
• 3:36:20
  commonwealth. If a man from the Dry Towns discovers something like a matter transmitter.
• 3:36:28
  Wolf gets dominion status, but Evarin and his gang want to keep it
• 3:36:33
  secret, keep it away from Terror, keep it locked up in places like
• 3:36:37
  Canasa. Somebody has to get it away from them, and if I do
• 3:36:41
  it, I get a nice fat bonus and an official position. I believe
• 3:36:48
  that where I would have suspected too much protestation of altruism, Grakhal tossed it
• 3:36:54
  aside. You've got Miellyn to take you through the transmitters. Go back to
• 3:36:58
  the mastershrine and tell Evarin that raced Cargill is dead in the trade city.
• 3:37:03
  They think I'm Cargill and I can get in and out as I choose.
• 3:37:07
  Sorry if it costs you trouble, but it was the safest thing I could
• 3:37:09
  think of. And our v eyes Magnuson and have him send soldiers to guard
• 3:37:13
  the street shrines. Evarin might try to escape through one of them. I
• 3:37:18
  shook my head. Terror hasn't enough men on all Wolf to cover the street
• 3:37:22
  shrines in Charin alone. But I can't go back with Miellyn, I explained.
• 3:37:28
  Rakhal pursed his lips and whistled when I described the fight in the transmitter.
• 3:37:33
  You have all the luck Cargill. I've never been near enough even to
• 3:37:37
  be sure how they work, and I'll bet you didn't begin to understand.
• 3:37:41
  We'll have to do it the hard way. Then it won't be the first
• 3:37:43
  time we've bulled our way through a tight place. We'll face Evarin in his
• 3:37:46
  own hideout. If Rindy's with us, we needn't worry. I was willing
• 3:37:52
  to let him assume command, but I protested, you take a child into
• 3:37:56
  that that what else can we do? Rindy can control the toy, and
• 3:38:00
  neither you nor I can do that. If Evarin should decide to throw his
• 3:38:03
  whole arsenal at us, he called Rndy and spoke softly to her. She
• 3:38:09
  looked from her father to me, and back again to her father, then
• 3:38:11
  smiled and stretched out her hand to me. Before we ventured into the street,
• 3:38:18
  Rakhal scowled at the sprawled embroideries on Miellyn's robe. He said, in
• 3:38:24
  those things you show up like a snowfall in Chinsaire. If you go out
• 3:38:26
  in them, you could be mobbed. Hadn't you better get rid of them?
• 3:38:30
  Now? I can't, She protested, they're the keys to the transmitter.
• 3:38:35
  Rakhal looked at the conventionalized idols with curiosity, but said, only calf
• 3:38:41
  them up in the street. Then, Rindy find us something to put over
• 3:38:45
  her dress. When we reached the street, shine, Miellyn admonished, stand
• 3:38:50
  close together on the stones. I'm not sure we can all make the jump
• 3:38:52
  at once, but we'll have to try. Rakhal picked up Ryndy and hoisted
• 3:38:58
  her to his shoulder. Miellyn dropped the cloak she had draped over the pattern
• 3:39:01
  of the neighboring embroideries, and we crowded close together. The street swayed and
• 3:39:07
  vanished, and I felt the now familiar dip and swirl of blackness before the
• 3:39:11
  world straightened out again. Grindy was whimpering, dabbing smeary fists at her face.
• 3:39:18
  Daddy, my nose is bleeding. Miellyn hastily bent and wipes the blood
• 3:39:22
  from the snubby nose. Rakhal gestured impatiently, the workroom wreck everything you see,
• 3:39:30
  Rindy. If anything starts to come at us, you stop it,
• 3:39:33
  Stop it quick, and he bent and took the little face between his hands.
• 3:39:37
  Gee A, remember they're not toys, no matter how pretty they are.
• 3:39:41
  Her grave gray eyes blinked, and she nodded. Rakhal flung open the
• 3:39:48
  door of the elves workshop with a shout. The ringing of the anvils shattered
• 3:39:52
  into a thousand dissonances. As I kicked over a work bench and had half
• 3:39:56
  finished toys crashed in confusion on the floor, the dwarfs scattered like rabbits before
• 3:40:01
  our assault of destruction. I smashed tools, filigreed jewels, stamping everything with
• 3:40:07
  my heavy boots. I shattered glass, caught up a hammer and smashed crystals.
• 3:40:11
  There was a wild exhilaration to it. A tiny doll, proportioned like
• 3:40:16
  a woman, dashed towards me, shrilling in her supersonic shriek. I put
• 3:40:20
  my foot on her and ground the life out of her, and she screamed
• 3:40:22
  like a living woman. As she came apart, her blue eyes rolled from
• 3:40:26
  her head and lay on the floor watching me. I crushed the blue jewels
• 3:40:30
  under my heel. Rakhal swung a tiny hound by the tail. Its head
• 3:40:35
  shattered into debris of almost invisible gears and wheels. I caught up a chair
• 3:40:39
  and wrecked glass, cabinet of parts with it, swinging furiously a berserk madness
• 3:40:46
  of smashing and breaking had laid hold of me. I was drunk with crushing
• 3:40:50
  and shattering and ruining when I heard Miellyn's scream a warning and turned to see
• 3:40:54
  Evarin standing in the doorway. His green cat eyes blazed with rage. Then
• 3:40:58
  he raised both hands in a sudden sardonic gesture, and with a loping inhuman
• 3:41:03
  glide, raced for the transmitter. Prindy Rakhal panted, can you block the
• 3:41:07
  transmitter instead? Rindy shrieked, We've got to get out. The roof is
• 3:41:13
  falling down. The house is going to fall down on us the roof.
• 3:41:16
  Look at the roof. I looked up, transfixed by horror. I saw
• 3:41:22
  a wide rift open, saw the skylight shatter and break, and daylight pouring
• 3:41:26
  through the cracking walls. Rakhal snatched Rindy up, protecting her from the falling
• 3:41:31
  dabris with his head and shoulders. I grabbed Miellin round the waist and we
• 3:41:35
  ran for the rift in the buckling wall. We shoved through just before the
• 3:41:39
  roof caved in and the walls collapsed, and we found ourselves standing on a
• 3:41:43
  bare grassy hillside, looking down in shock and horror as below us. Section
• 3:41:48
  after section of what had been apparently bare hill and rock caved in and collapsed
• 3:41:52
  into dusty rubble. Miellyn screamed hoarsely, Run, run, hurry. I
• 3:42:00
  didn't understand, but I ran. I ran my sides, aching blood streaming
• 3:42:05
  from the forgotten flesh wound in my side. Miellyn raced beside me, and
• 3:42:09
  Rakhal stumbled along, carrying Rindy. Then the shock of a great explosion rocked
• 3:42:13
  to the ground, hurling me down full length, Miellyn falling on top of
• 3:42:18
  me. Rakhal went down on his knees. Rindy was crying loudly. When
• 3:42:22
  I could see straight again, I looked down at the hillside. There was
• 3:42:28
  nothing left of Evarin's hideaway or the master Shrine of Nebrun, except a great
• 3:42:33
  gaping hole, still oozing smoke and thick black dust. Miellyn said aloud,
• 3:42:39
  dazed. So that's what he was going to do. It fitted the peculiar
• 3:42:45
  non human logic of the toy maker. He covered the traces, destroyed.
• 3:42:50
  Rakhal raged all destroyed, the work crumbs, the science of the toys,
• 3:42:56
  the matter transmitter. The minute we find it, it's destroyed. He beat
• 3:43:01
  his fists furiously. Our one chance to learn. We were lucky to get
• 3:43:05
  out alive, said Miellyn quietly. Where on the planet are we? I
• 3:43:09
  wonder? I looked down the hillside and stared in amazement. Spread Out on
• 3:43:16
  the hillside below us lay the Hassa, topped by the white sky scraper of
• 3:43:20
  the HQ. I'll be damned, I said, right here, we're home,
• 3:43:26
  Rakhal. You can go down and make your peace with the Terrans,
• 3:43:28
  and Julie and you Miellyn before the others. I could not say what I
• 3:43:33
  was thinking, but I put my hand on her shoulder and kept it there.
• 3:43:39
  She smiled shakily, with a hint of her old mischief. I can't
• 3:43:43
  go into the Terran zone looking like this. Can I give me that comb
• 3:43:46
  again, Rakhal? Give me your shirt cloak? My robes are torn.
• 3:43:52
  You vaint stupid female worrying about a thing like that at a time like this.
• 3:43:56
  Rakhal's look was like murder. I put my comb in her hand,
• 3:44:00
  then suddenly saw something in the symbols across her breasts. Before this I had
• 3:44:05
  seen only the conventionalized and intricate glyph of the toad god. But now I
• 3:44:09
  reached out and ripped the cloth away cargill, she protested angrily, crimsoning,
• 3:44:16
  covering her bare breasts with both hands. Is this the place before a child
• 3:44:20
  too? I hardly heard, look, I exclaimed, Racount. Look at
• 3:44:26
  the symbols embroidered into the gliph of the god. You can read the old
• 3:44:28
  non human glyphs. You did it in the City of the Lists. Mae
• 3:44:33
  Lynn said they were the key to the transmitters. I'll bet the formula is
• 3:44:39
  written out there for any one to read. Any one that is, who
• 3:44:43
  can read it. I can't, but I'll bet the formula equations for the
• 3:44:46
  transmitters are carved on every toad god glyph on wolf racal. It makes sense.
• 3:44:54
  There are two ways of hiding something. Either keep it locked away or
• 3:44:58
  hide it right out in play in sight. Whoever bothers even to look at
• 3:45:03
  a conventionalized toad god. There are so many billions of them. He bent
• 3:45:07
  his head over the embroideries, and when he looked up, his face was
• 3:45:11
  flushed. I believe by the chains of Sharer, I believe you have it.
• 3:45:16
  Race. He may take years to work out the cliffs, but I'll
• 3:45:20
  do it or die trying. His scarred and hideous face looked almost handsome in
• 3:45:26
  exultation, and I grinned at him. If Julie leaves enough of you once
• 3:45:31
  she finds out how you were new, fored her look? Grindy's fallen asleep
• 3:45:35
  on the grass there, poor kid. We'd better get it down to our
• 3:45:39
  mother, right. Rakhaal thrust the precious embroidery into his shirt cloak, then
• 3:45:46
  cradled his sleeping daughter in his arms. I watched him with a curious emotion.
• 3:45:50
  I could not identify. It seemed to pinpoint some great change, either
• 3:45:56
  in Rakhal or myself. It's not difficult to visualize one's sister with children,
• 3:46:01
  but there was something, some strange incongruity in the sight of Rakhal carrying the
• 3:46:05
  little girl, carefully tucking her up in a fold of his cloak to keep
• 3:46:09
  the sharp breeze off her face. Miellyn was limping in her thin sandals,
• 3:46:15
  and she shivered. I asked, cold, no, but I don't believe
• 3:46:22
  Evarin is dead. I'm afraid he got away. For a minute, the
• 3:46:26
  thought dimmed the luster of the morning. Then I shrugged. He is probably
• 3:46:31
  buried in that big hole up there, but I knew I would never be
• 3:46:35
  sure. We walked abreast my arm round the weary stumbling woman, and Rakhal
• 3:46:41
  said softly, at last, like old times, It wasn't old times.
• 3:46:46
  I knew he would know it too, once his exultation sobered. I had
• 3:46:52
  outgrown my love for intrigue, and I had the feeling this was Rakhle's last
• 3:46:56
  adventure. It was going to take him, as he said, years to
• 3:47:01
  work out the equations for the transmitter. And I had a feeling my own
• 3:47:05
  solid, ordinary desk was going to look good to me in the morning.
• 3:47:11
  But I knew now that I'd never run away from Wolf again. It was
• 3:47:16
  my own beloved sun that was rising. My sister was waiting for me down
• 3:47:20
  below, and I was bringing back her child. My best friend was walking
• 3:47:24
  at my side. What more could a man want? If the memory of
• 3:47:31
  dark poisonerry eyes was to haunt me in nightmares, they did not come into
• 3:47:35
  the waking world. I looked at Miellyn, took her slender unmanacled hand in
• 3:47:41
  mine, and smiled as we walked through the gates of the city. Now,
• 3:47:48
  after all my years on Wolf, I understood the desire to keep their
• 3:47:52
  women under lock and key. That was its ancient custom. I vowed to
• 3:47:56
  myself as we went, that I would waste no time finding a fetter shop,
• 3:48:01
  and having forged therein the perfect steel chains that should bind my love's wrists
• 3:48:05
  to my key for ever. End of Chapter fifteen.