My last hours I spent with Lazk Volk, accepting from him the recorder he was empowered to give me under a reportship. I was not a badge-wearing representative. The authorities would not agree to that. But whatever I returned to Volk’s storehouse that was countersigned by him as useful would add to my rating and, perhaps, might lead to more employment.
Yet he warned me not to squander the supplies he was giving me on anything but the most important. And I realized that I must make a little cover much. The baggage of a space traveler was very strictly limited, and I could expect no further supply of tapes should I misuse those I carried with me – at least not unless I had returned one with such useful notage on it as to warrant sending me another.
He asked me what I thought of my charges, and I hedged somewhat. That Bartare was a promising student, I was almost sure. Oomark would be less troublesome. But “troublesome” was the term I applied to his sister. I know that Lazk Volk noted my reserve, though he did not comment.
I did not join the Zobak family until we met in the entry place for the ship. The Gentlefem was wrapped in the thick folds of a journey cape, but Bartare had pushed back the hood of her outer garment to stare up at the starship as if that presented some problem. Oomark turned excitedly from side to side, his interest all for the coming and going of the crewmen.
As I came up, Gentlefem Guska turned to me, though I could not see her face under her veil. Her voice was even more fretful than I had remembered it.
“You are late. We are about to go on board – ”
“I am sorry,” I answered. I had schooled myself, having taken her measure at our first meeting, to supply no excuses or explanations. She was of those, I decided, who accepted only one answer – that being their own. And to combat such was like trying to erect a firm tower out of dry sand. Better not to attempt it in the first place.
“I expect promptness,” she was beginning when a load cage swung down a few paces from us and the ship’s steward, standing within it to direct traffic, beckoned us forward.
“I hate this whirling about!” She clasped my arm so tightly that I supported her into the cage, the children moving with us. And she kept that painful grip as we were swung up, to slide into the hatch. I must admit that the swaying trip gave me little pleasure either.
Once inside, they ticked us off on their entry records, and Guska went away, still leaning heavily, but now on a stewardess, to be put into deep voyage sleep. The children and I were escorted to a small transport cabin and only part suspension.
I earned whatever funds Gentlefem Zobak was depositing to my account, and I earned them well during that voyage, for in the wake periods both children were my sole responsibility. I tried to establish a good relationship with them, and I thought that with Oomark I succeeded. He was plainly not as brilliant as his sister and far more biddable. Bartare did not disobey me. In fact, she was politely cooperative, all that one might ask for in a child. It was only that the impression was now firmly rooted in my mind that she moved behind a mask and played a part, so that I waited continually for some revelation of what lay behind her words and actions. This feeling fretted me, so that I had to subdue inner impatience and irritation.
I went into the final suspension period before breakthrough and the landing on Dylan with the problem of Bartare remaining as baffling as ever. But now I had accepted it as a challenge, though I knew that I must go very slowly and not try to push the girl into any disclosure.
Though my knowledge of other planets through Lazk Volk’s library was extensive, probably beyond that of most general travelers, Dylan was the first new world I had ever visited myself. And I was excited as we were swung down to the landing strip.
The familiar skies of Chalox had carried a green tinge, so that one believed that was the only natural color for any sky to be. But here the arch over us was blue, cut by masses of white clouds. Together with the children, I had pored over the information tapes supplied by the ship’s library.
Dylan had been located some one hundred years earlier, oddly enough, because of a distress call set on automatic, though the ship that had sent it had never been found. It was Arth type. And there were some very unexplainable remains that suggested it might once have either had native inhabitants or been a colony of one of the Forerunner races. In fact, it was to gather information about one of these that Guska Zobak’s husband had been sent here. He was not an archaeologist but a government man empowered to declare the diggings protected if experts thought it necessary.
There were two cities on Dylan. Tamlin, was the port where we disembarked; the other was Toward, on the other side of the planet providing an alternate landing site. Neither was large. Dylan was mainly an agricultural world. The western continent was one of open plains. And since the native wildlife was very sparse, these plains provided grazing for imported herds and flocks. The eastern continent, of which Tamlin was the center, was planted heavily with vor vines and husard fruit – both of which were luxury items off-world.
But such planting was spotty since both products required special types of soil and drainage, so that the settlements had stretches of wilderness between them. Such distances meant nothing, though, with all plantations and villages linked by air flitter travel.
The buildings of Tamlin did not resemble those of the long-settled worlds. They were all very like, having been constructed to plans worked out off-world, their blocks placed by robo workers. Any difference between them came from the planting about their walls. Here were not only native growths pleasing to the eye, but also exotic aliens imported and flourishing.
As we disembarked from the landing stage, a number of people moved forward to greet the new arrivals. But the man who came to Gentlefem Guska certainly bore no resemblance to the tridee the children had of their father. He was a much older man, wearing the uniform of a port official.
“Where is Konroy? “Guska demanded of him. “Surely his duty does not demand that he not be here to greet us!”
“My dear Guska!” The officer caught both her hands in his. “You know Konroy would be here if he could. It is that-”
“He is dead!” Bartare’s words might have been a war alert the way they froze us all for a second that seemed-to stretch far longer than that.
She took a step forward and stood looking up at the officer.
“That is the truth,” she continued. “Why not say that he is dead?”
I saw one kind of astonishment replace another in his expression, and I knew that Bartare was speaking the truth.
“But how – ” he began with a bewildered protest in his voice.
“Dead!” Guska gave a shriek that was echoed by a lesser cry from Oomark. She sagged forward into the arms of the officer, and I moved, one hand going to Oomark, who turned and threw his arms about me, burrowing his face into my traveling cloak. But Bartare shrugged off my touch on her shoulder and stood quietly, no expression at all now on her small pale face.
There was a flurry about us. Guska, unconscious, was taken in the officer’s arms to a waiting ground car, while we were ushered by two young spaceport police into another. Oomark continued to hold on to me with a desperate grip, but Bartare was as aloof as if she were only a spectator and a faintly contemptuous one. I felt alienated from her at that moment, as baffled as if I were confronting an unknown life-form that must be handled with supreme caution. We were given quarters in one of the government rest houses, and I persuaded Oomark to loose me long enough to try to find someone to tell me what had happened. But when I returned to the children, Oomark was fronting his sister, his tear-streaked face twisted with anger.
“You – you knew about it! You don’t care!” He accused her shrilly.
I halted where I was, just outside the door. Perhaps he would get an answer she would not give in my presence.
“She told me. His time was finished. And – he is not necessary to us – not any more.”
“She’s bad!” Oomark’s red face was thrust close to his sister’s pale one. “You listen to her tell you bad – things! Bad-bad-“