“You are well schooled.”
“Ogan gathered information on every variation of the power known—and some only the Guild know,” she answered. “I was given every warning.”
“That, too, is to be expected.”
“If you are not Patrol”—she pushed aside everything now but what was most important to her—“what do you intend to do with me? Turn me over for erasure when their ship planets in? You know the law.”
“It all depends—“
“Upon what—or whom?” Ziantha continued to press.
“Mainly upon you. Give me your word you will not try to escape. Let us go back to my scout.”
Ziantha tried to weigh her chances without emotion. Ogan was free; she had no reason to doubt Harath’s report. He had said he had hidden a detect-safe L-B connected by a timer to a ship. Therefore he had a way of escape. The Jack ship had lifted, she could not depend on any assistance from Yasa. In fact she was sure she had already been discarded as far as the Salarika veep was concerned. Yasa was never one to hesitate cutting losses.
And somehow, between Ogan and this Ris Lantee, she inclined to trust the latter, even though he admitted connection with the Patrol. At least with freedom she might have a better chance for the future.
“As you have said,” she spoke sullenly, trying to let him believe she surrendered because there was no other choice, “where could I escape to? For now, I promise.”
“Fair enough.” He touched the tangler cords in two places with the point of his belt knife, and they withered away.
Ziantha sat up, rubbing her wrists. Hands fell on her shoulders, drawing her to her feet, steadying her as she moved on stiff limbs.
“Do the Zacathans know about Singakok?” she asked as they went.
Harath had climbed up Lantee, was settled on his shoulder. But the man’s hand was under her arm, ready with support when she needed, and they made their way down a steep slope.
“About Singakok—no. But there are ruins on X One that are in a fair state of preservation. Perhaps those who peopled this world—the survivors—fled there after whatever catastrophe turned Singakok into this. As Turan, I recognized a kinship between the buildings of the past and those ruins. And with the aid of the Eyes what will we not be able to discover!” There was excitement in his voice.
“You—you would be willing to evoke the past again—after what happened?” Ziantha was surprised at this. Had she been the one lost in that awful limbo that he entered when he could no longer fight off Turan’s “death,” she would have fled full speed from such a trip again.
“This time one could go prepared.” His confidence was firmly assured. “There would be safeguards, as there are for deep trances. Yes, I would be willing to evoke the past again. Would you?”
To admit her fear was difficult. Yet he would learn it at once if she ever relaxed the barrier between them.
“I do not know.”
“I think that you could not deny your own desire to learn if you were given free choice—“
He was interrupted by a wild clicking of Harath’s beak. Lantee’s arm swung up, formed a barrier against her advance.
“Ogan is near.”
“You said you have what can safeguard us.”
“Against mental invasion, yes. Just as you hold a barrier for me now. But if Ogan has some means of stepping up power it may be that we must unite against him, the three of us. I do not underestimate this man; he cannot be taken lightly even when he is on the run.”
This was her chance. But, no, the word she had given was as tangible a bond as the tangler cords had been. Nor was she sure, even if that promise did not exist, that she would have left these two, sought out Ogan.
“What can he bring against us?” Lantee continued.
“I do not know,” she was forced to confess. What equipment was small enough to be packed personally Ziantha could not tell. The Guild was notorious for its gathering of unusual devices. Ogan might even have the equivalent of the Eyes.
“I—“ she was beginning when the world around her blurred. The rocks, the withered-looking vegetation, rippled as if all were painted on a curtain stirred by the wind. The change was such to frighten, passing from desolation to land alive.
She stood on a street between two lines of buildings. Before her stretched the length of a city, towering against the brilliances of sunlit sky. People moved, afoot, in vehicles—yet about them was something unreal.
Ziantha gasped, tried to leap aside as a landcar bore straight for her. But she was not allowed to escape; a grasp held her firmly in spite of her cries, her struggles. Then, the car was upon her but there was no impact, nothing! Another came the other way, scraped by her. She shut her eyes against those terrors and went on fighting what held her helpless in the Singakok returned—for this was Singakok.
The Eyes—they had done this! Yet she had not focused upon them. And if they were able to do this without her willing — ! She raised her free hand to her breast. Unsealing her pocket slit, she snatched forth the Eyes, hurled them from her.
But she was still in Singakok! Locked in Singakok! Ziantha screamed. With a last surge of strength, backed by panic, she beat with her free hand against that thing which held her, fighting with fist, both feet, in any way she could, to break the hold. While around her—through her—the people and cars of the long-dead city went their way.
“Ziantha!”
She had closed her eyes to Singakok. Now she realized that, for all the seeming reality of the city, there had been no sound. Her name called in that demand for attention was real. But she dared not open her eyes.
“Ziantha!” Hands held her in spite of her fierce struggles. And the hands were as real as the voice.
“What do you see?” The demand came clearly, to compel her answer.
“I—I stand in Singakok—“ And because her fear was so great she released the barrier against mind-probe.
Instantly touch flowed in, that same strong sense of comradeship she had known with Turan. She no longer fought, but rather stood trembling, allowing the confidence he radiated to still her panic, bring stability. And—she had been a fool not to allow this before—he did not mean her ill! As they had fought together in Singakok, as he had given of his last strength to aid her out of Nornoch, so was he prepared to stand with her now.
Ziantha opened her eyes. The city was still there; it made her giddy to see the cars, the pedestrians, and know that this was hallucination. But who induced it? Not the Wyvern-trained Lantee—he could not have done so and responded to her mental contact as he was now doing. Harath? The Eyes? But those she had thrown away.
“The Eyes! I threw them away, but still I see Singakok!” She quavered.
“You see a memory someone is replaying for you. Ogan—“ Lantee’s voice from close beside her, even as she could hold on to him. But she could not see him—only Singakok.
“Do not look, use your mind sense,” Lantee ordered. “Do you pick up any thoughts?”
She tested. There was Lantee—Harath—nothing of those alien patterns she had known before. Just as the city had no sounds to make it real to one sense, so it had no mind-pattern to make it real to another.
“It is sight—my sight—“
“Well enough.” Lantee’s voice was as even as if he fully understood what was happening. “The hallucination is only for one sense. It worked in that it made you throw away the Eyes.”
Sent to force her to discard the Eyes? Then it had succeeded.
“I did. I threw them—“
“Not very far. Harath has retrieved them. Now listen, this was meant to engulf us all. But because I am Wyvern trained, and because Harath is alien, we were not caught. But if we stay here to fight for your freedom we may be courting another and stronger attack. Therefore we must push on. You must discount what you see, depend upon mind-send and your other senses, so we can reach my scout. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Ziantha kept her eyes tightly closed. Could she walk so blind, even with them leading her?
“We can do it.” Lantee was confident. “Keep your eyes closed if you must, but follow our directions. Harath will work directly with you. I am now putting him on your shoulder.”
She felt the weight, the painfully strong clutch of Harath’s claws.
“Keep your eyes closed. Harath wishes to try something.”
She felt the touch of the alien’s tentacles about her head; then their tips were lightly touched to her eyelids. It—it was like seeing and yet unlike—the sensation was strange. But through Harath she could visualize the scene as it had been before the illusion entrapped her. And, with her hand in Lantee’s, as he drew her on, with Harath’s shared sight, Ziantha started ahead. She went with only a shaky belief that this could be done, but her confidence grew.