Reports came in now from questing scouts. The Demon who had been injured had crawled out of the tunnels, gone back to the grounded ship, which was always under observation. The ship itself was sealed, no hatch open. It was as if the two within it held it as a fort against attack. On the other hand the fourth Demon, he who had joined the Rattons, had also been sighted.
A young warrior of Ku-La’s people, very small and slim and so able to take ways closed to those of larger frame, had managed to squirm through a side duct and look into a very busy place in the Ratton burrows.
There were machines there like the rumblers, and these the Rattons were swarming over, working on, under the leadership of the Demon. It was apparent that the machines were being readied and that could only be to attack.
Armed with this report Dolar, with Furtig in tow, went to the chamber where the Demon female was with Liliha. She had shared food with them, and at her request they had given her back those looser skins she wore. As the warriors entered she was sitting with Liliha exchanging talk, the translating machine on a divan between them.
“Ask her,” Dolar said abruptly, “what the Demon does with the machines and the Rations. We believe that they prepare an attack, and we must know how these machines will work.”
Liliha relayed the question. But when the Demon answered, she spoke directly to Dolar.
“There are many kinds of machines. Can you tell me, or show me, the form of these?”
He clanged his fighting claws together. A machine was a machine. How could you find words to describe it? Then he rounded on the Inborn who was his at-tail messenger.
“Bring the seeing box.”
The warrior had not gone empty-handed into the narrow ways, but had taken with him one of the discoveries of his own people, a box which made a permanent record of what he saw.
When this case was set before the Demon she appeared to know it for what it was, instantly pressing the right button. Across the room, on the wall, appeared a picture, small enough fox Furtig’s two hands to cover, yet clear in details.
For a long moment the Demon studied the picture and then she spoke:
“I do not know what all these machines may be. See, there are at least three different kinds. But there —that one upon which the Ratton stands—that shoots forth fire. It is like the weapon your people took from me but much more powerful, for the fire spreads wider. I believe that these are machines of war.” Her voice died away, and yet she continued to look at the picture as if there was something there to hold her full attention.
“Machines of war, fearsome ones,” Dolar repeated as if to himself. “Let those come seeking us and perhaps the Rations will win.”
The Demon female spoke again. “You have showed me much. Also—there is something—if I can only make it plain to you—“ She twined her hands together, finger punishing finger in that tight grip, as if she might wring the words she wanted to say out of her own flesh. “I am one who heals. I have been taught to do so since I was very young. We did not know why our ancestors—our long-ago Elders—left these lairs. And we have a trouble on our home world which is bad—therefore we were sent to seek out our old homeland, and aid.
“But when our ship landed here—we—we changed. No more were we as we had always been. We became strangers one to the other—“ She looked at none of them as she spoke thus, but ever at the wall pictures. “We seemed to become—no, perhaps I cannot say it. But you have showed me that there was once a madness here, an evil thing which possessed my kind. I think that the shadow of that lingers still, so that we are becoming enemies, one to the other. If this is true, that illness must be healed, and we must go. And it may be too late.” She covered her face with her hands, sat shivering so that Furtig could see the shudders of her body. Liliha put out her hands, laid them upon the Demon’s shaking shoulders. Then, as he never thought to see, she drew the Demon to her as she might in comforting a sister Chooser, and held her so.
Ayana pulled away, though the comfort of that soft warmth the cat-woman offered was such that she longed to cling to it. She wiped her wet cheeks with the backs of her hands. All that she had learned was a weight on her spirit. But it was, as these people made much of saying, the truth. No wonder her kind had fled this place. This sickness of spirit was as strong as once had been the sickness of body which had either produced it -or been the end product of it. She need only look at that picture of Tan, at his intense, absorbed face as he readied machines to wipe out life, and know how deeply they had been stricken.
These lairs, as they called them, lairs of darkness in spite of all the light within, lairs of knowledge which could kill as well as cure. Knowledge, could one pick and choose among knowledge? A thing which might cure in one form could be used to kill in another. As a medic, who should know better than she? Had she not even sought out death dealers herself on board ship, gathered them together?
But what Tan intended—that must not be! And there was something else, a warning she must give of another kind. She had seen this Gammage only briefly when they had first brought her in. His urging for union among intelligent species—yes, that was a step forward. But his thirst for alien knowledge—his tinkering with the scraps and remnants they played with here—no! That was tampering with that which might end him and his people as surely as the Rations and Tan, equipped with war machines, could do.
However, the immediate threat—resolutely Ayana pushed aside what might happen tomorrow, concentrated on today. Suppose Tan and his nightmare army of allies did activate those machines of crawling death? Weapons used by men who had built and inhabited this complex would be very sophisticated. And Tan would release what he could not control.
These cat-people looked to her for an answer. And she did not have one. Jacel—Massa—could help, but would either of them do so? She had no idea of what had happened between Jacel and Tan before she had reached them. But that comment of Tan’s about Jacel’s discovery that the Rations could be dangerous if crossed lingered now in her mind. There must have been ill will between the two men, some argument. Could she build on that?
It seemed to Ayana a very thin hope, but it was all she had now.
“There are many machines, and I have no knowledge of them.” She made her explanation as simple as possible. “But those in the ship still can help. I see no other way—“
She had been long enough with the cat-people now to be able to read expressions a little, and she saw that suggestion was not welcome, especially to the large male with the scarred ears. But she could not help them. Only Jacel and Massa knew the machines. And how much time did they have?
The growling, spitting speech of the People among themselves was prolonged. Finally the males went out together, leaving her once more with the females she had learned to call Liliha and Eu-La.
“You are a Chooser?” Liliha asked, and Ayana saw both the cat-women watching her closely, as if her answer was important.
“What is a Chooser?”
They appeared startled. Then Liliha explained. “There is a time when one wishes younglings. One’s body is ready to hold such. As mine—“ She slid her hand over her slim belly. “But not yet is Eu-La so.” She pointed to her companion’s slighter figure. “When this time comes the warriors display their strength so that we Choosers may look upon them, judge their skills, select one to father a youngling. You have so chosen?”
Ayana looked down at her own hands. Not to get a child had she chosen (or rather had had the choosing done for her) but rather that a certain needed series of traits could complement and perhaps fill out another’s character. Had she been subtly conditioned to accept Tan so readily? Now she suspected that. He had become a stranger so fast, as if the sickness which clung here had broken through that shell of acceptance.
“I did not choose, he was chosen for me.” She felt an odd shame at making that confession.
“This then is the custom of the Demons, that a Chooser may not choose for herself?” Liliha asked after a long moment of silence.