“Because there were but four of us in the ship, and we must each know certain things, yes, we were chosen by others.”
“Ill doing.” Liliha’s voice was a hiss. “For when a Chooser chooses in truth, she knows the worth of a warrior and he does not later become an enemy. I sorrow for you that this was so, that now you must eat bitterness and ashes.” Her hand rested over Ayana’s. “It is well you do not have a youngling within you.’
“That is true,” replied Ayana.
She was not left alone, nor was she still outwardly a prisoner. Oddly enough, she had no desire to leave. Liliha, Eu-La, the other cat-women who drifted in their soundless way in and out, brought food, or simply came to sit and look at her (though she never found their curiosity rude or disturbing) were some-how comforting, though she could not have told why. Several brought babies, purred them to sleep or played with them. But after a space Ayana began to worry.
The memory of Tan and the Rations, busy with the war machines, was never erased from her mind, though she did sleep at last. And she drifted off to a purring song Liliha seemingly sang to herself as the cat-woman brushed the shining length of her tail.
There was only the gray light of early dawn coming through the windows when they roused her. Liliha was there, and, by the door, the cat-man she had seen with the scarred older warrior, the young one who had been present before when they had questioned her. He was making the small, almost yowling sounds of their excited speech, and Liliha used the translator.
“The Ancestor would speak with you—it is very urgent.”
The male crossed the room with lithe strides, holding the translator. Ayana noted that his strange claw weapons hung from his belt, that belt which was his only clothing. For, though the cat people appeared to vary in the amount of natural fur on their bodies, nearly hairless like Liliha in some cases, or as deeply furred as this male, they wore no coverings.
They went along the corridors, down two ramps, and then climbed another for some distance, until they reached a room where there was a gathering of warriors, a sprinkling of females.
All were grouped about one male. He was a little stooped, his muzzle fur frosted, his arms and legs thin and shrunken. About his bowed shoulders was a cloak of shimmering stuff, which set him apart from the others, though his very air was enough to do that. She recollected having seen him much earlier, in that time she had been a bound prisoner.
This was Gammage who was their leader, or ruler, whose dream it was to reclaim the Demon knowledge for his people.
He stared straight at Ayana as she entered. In one hand he held a translator disk, the box resting before him on the floor.
“They tell me,” he began abruptly, “that you believe those in the ship have more knowledge of these war machines.”
“That is so.” Cat—man—mixture—there was some-thing very impressive about this Elder. Ayana could understand how he had managed to gather together seekers after knowledge and inspire them through the years.
“Will they support the Rations, or will they aid us?” He came directly to the point.
“I do not know, I can only ask,” she said simply, as directly as he had asked.
Gammage made his decision. “Then that you shall do.”
Furtig crouched in the shadow of the doorway, one of the party that had escorted the female Demon out of the lairs. She stood out there alone now, in full sight of those in her ship. And the People had given her back the device to signal her companions. Furtig held one of the lightning throwers. He could send the crackling lash to cut down the Demon at the first suspicion of betrayal.
Liliha, though she was armed—so close to him now that when she moved the thin run of fur on the out-side of her rounded arm brushed his—made no move to draw her weapon. She had insisted that the Demon was to be trusted, that she wanted indeed to halt the Rattons and her own male. Though it was hard for the warriors to accept such a turning against one’s own kind.
It would seem that this was a Chooser thing, allied in a way to whatever moved them when they made mate choice. Liliha had sworn before the Elders, and it was very plain she believed what she said, that this Demon, though she had chosen the male now preparing to send fiery death against them, had not done that by her own willing and that she wanted no young-ling of his.
Strange were the ways of Demons, strange even were the People’s ways now. For their party had not only been augmented by Ku-La’s warriors, but, in addition, by those from the caves, who had finally arrived. And—in an opposite doorway—were Barkers!
Never had Furtig believed he would be allied in any way with those. Yet Gammage and the two scouts rescued from the Rattons had convinced the Barkers to send in a small pack, perhaps as observers only. Still they were warriors, and no real fight would leave them lurking in the shadows.
A strange sound from the field—the bridge into the sky-ship was now dropping from the open hatch in its side. The Demon need only to run up that to be safe. Furtig was not sure any of them could use the strange weapons quickly enough to cut her down.
Liliha held to her ear one of the corns—as the Demon called them. Through that she could hear what the Demon said to her own kind. And she was not running, not moving at all. For some very long moments nothing happened. No one appeared in the hatch. All through those dragging minutes Furtig fully expected some awesome weapon to come into action, to their finish.
However, it would seem Liliha was right about the female Demon keeping to her word. At length a figure appeared on the ship’s bridge, advancing slowly. It was muffled in clumsy wrappings so it hardly looked like a living thing, more like one of the unreliable lair servants.
It tramped down the ramp, strode ponderously toward the waiting Demon. While it was still some paces away, its thick-fingered hands, almost as clumsy as Furtig’s own when he tried to use some delicate lair tool, thumbed something at throat level. The head covering rose and flopped back on its shoulders.
“That is the other female,” Liliha reported. “The one Ayana calls Massa—“
Furtig supposed that among themselves the Demons had names as did the People, the Barkers, even the Rations. But he had never thought of the enemy as living normal, peaceful lives—only as the evil creatures of the old tales.
Dolar was beyond Liliha. “What do they say?” he rasped.
“The one from the ship asks questions— Where has Ayana been, what happens here. Now Ayana tells her there is much danger, they must talk. She asks about the other Demon—Jacel. Massa is angry. She says that he is ill, that Ayana must come and see to his illness. She asks where is Tan—there is anger in that.
Now she says that Tan is the one who allowed the Rattons to wound her mate. That he must be wrong in his head—“
“Twist-minded like the Demons of old,” cut in Dolar. “Mad—then dead. We must see to it that this time we are not also caught in that death! What say they now?”
“Ayana tells Massa that there is great danger, that Tan will bring death unless he is stopped. Massa says let Tan do as he will here, let them get on the ship and raise it into the sky, return to their own world—“
How easy that would be! Furtig growled, heard a similar sound from Dolar. Easy enough for these Demons to lift, leaving the evil one to finish here. And how could any of the People stop him? Oh, they might be able to blast these two females now. Then the one left in the ship—if he were sick perhaps he was also twist-minded—might join the one in the lairs in loosing the weapons the ship carried—
“Ayana says ‘no’ “ Liliha’s voice quickened with excitement. “She says that the one called Tan must be stopped. That they can never learn what they came for—“
“And what is that?” demanded one of the warriors crouched behind them.
“They came here—Ayana spoke with Gammage of it this morning,” Furtig answered, as Liliha was plainly intent on the corn to her ear, “hunting two things—the reason their Ancestors quit this world, and an answer to an evil now destroying their new home among the stars. Gammage has promised that when we have beaten the Rations she may seek such knowledge.”