She glanced at the Princess. What effect had that sudden disappearance of a very large and heavy rock had on her companion?
But she could detect no sign of surprise, only a deepening of that confidence which was going to be so rudely shattered soon.
Fresh air bearing the damp of the rain blew in. Then Sandar, stooping a little, came through. He was alone, and in his hand—
Roane gasped but she had no time to move, to warn. He had already pressed the button of the stunner. Beside her the Princess wilted to the rock floor. For the first time in her life Roane faced her cousin with open anger.
“Why did you do that? You did not even know what—”
His mouth had the same twist as Uncle OfHas’s could wear upon occasion. But this time it did not daunt her as it might have in days only shortly past.
“You know the rules. I saw a stranger—” he said harshly. “Now—” He looked down at the detect he carried, as if Ludorica were no more than the rock he had blasted out of existence. Then his face lost a little of its grim cast. “But you are right! There is a find here—”
Roane was on her knees by the Princess, lifting her limp body to lie against her shoulder. Ludorica would sleep it off, of course, but she must not remain here. The dampness of that inflow of air was already reaching her. Roane did not know how disease might develop on Clio, but she was certain that the inhabitants could not endure long exposure without suffering for it.
“Leave her—she’ll keep!” Sandar came to her side. “What’s inside?”
“An installation. You can see it through a plate in the wall down there.” She made no move to guide him.
Nor did he wait for her, but switched on his own beamer and trotted away in the direction she pointed, while she was left With the problem of the unconscious Princess. Uncle Offlas and Sandar would be solidly united against any plan of freeing Ludorica; Roane had known that. But she determined that the Prin- cess would have shelter and care even if she herself had to face such pressure of their wills as had always before frightened her.
She was still holding the girl against her for warmth, interposing her body between that of the Princess and the damp inflow of air, when Sandar returned.
“I don’t know what it is. It may be Forerunner. But at least it is not of present-day Clio,” he reported.
“Maybe something of the Psychocrats, to do with the settlers’ conditioning.”
“How do you—” he began and then shrugged. “Who knows before we take a closer look at what is in there? Now—there are men searching the woods. I had Eight-fingered Dargon’s own luck trying to dodge them. Father has had to extend the distorts to cover this area. Who are they after—her? If so, we give her a brain wash and dump her where they can pick her up. Then our troubles are over.”
“No.”
“No, what?” He stared at her, Roane thought (with wild laughter stirring far within her), as if she had suddenly grown horns or turned blue before his eyes.
“No brain wash, no dumping. This is the Princess Ludorica.” “I don’t care if she’s the Star Maiden of Baganork! You know the rules as well as I do. You’ve broken them already by being with her at all. How much else have you spilled?” He was twirling the setting on his stunner. Boane went cold with more than the wind.
She drew the small cutting tool from her belt. “You try brainwashing, Sandar, and I’ll burn that stunner out of your hand. Drop it—now—or see how you like a seared finger! I mean exactly what I say!”
He eyed her with even greater astonishment. But he must have read the determination in her eyes. There had not been many times in the past when Roane had been faced by some major demand upon her will and courage, but twice that had occurred in Sandar’s company and he must remember now her reaction.
“You know what you are doing?” His voice was very cold. He still held the stunner, but she noted, with a small sense of triumph, that his finger was now carefully away from the firing button.
“I know. Toss that over to me!” Her tool did not waver. She might have used close to its full charge when she cut the Princess’s chain, but there was enough left to give Sandar a burn and at that moment she would not hesitate to do just that. The captivity, her own feeling of inferiority and helplessness, to which the domination of the Keils, father and son, had sentenced her for so long was like the Princess’s metal collar and chain.
That restless desire for freedom which had been born at Cram-brief was coming to a flowering here on Clio. Certainly she might know far less than her uncle and Sandar, be now under their orders, but she was also a person in her own right, not a robot they had programed.
Not that all this flowed coherently through her mind now. But she was determined to stand up to Sandar. His callous solution to the problem of Ludorica had acted on Roane like the cut of a whip—not to lash her into a slave line, but rather to awaken her resistance.
Sandar did not try to reason with her. Not that he ever had. He had given orders, she had meekly obeyed—until he and his father had had her wrapped in a cocoon of acceptance. But larvae develop in cocoons and in time they break free.
He tossed away his stunner. Roane steadied the Princess against her, held the cutter steady until she could reach out and close her fingers about that weapon.
“Are there any searchers near here now?”
“As long as the distorts are on they will keep their distance without knowing why—you ought to know that! But that will hold only for a short time. We shall have to move quickly.”
“Good enough.” Roane tucked the cutter back in the belt loop, kept the stunner in her hand. “Now we’ll go. You carry her.”
“It won’t do any good,” he said. “You know that. Father has discretionary powers. He’ll make the final decision and there will
54 be no repeal. Also, you’re finished with our team. I trust you understand that!”
Roane would consider that future when she had time. The here and now were more important—getting the Princess to shelter and seeing she stayed out of the hands of her enemies. “You’ll carry her,” she repeated.
Carry her he did. Enough of Roane’s training remained, even as she enjoyed the heady sensation of ordering Sandar around, to prompt her to use the last of the tool’s powers to bring down another fall of earth as a mask for the hole. She hoped that would keep its secret. For what lay within and the fact that she had discovered it were all she had left to bargain with.
Though the distorts were on, Sandar took no chances, setting a fast pace, even though he had the inert weight of the Princess draped over his shoulder. Roane walked behind, intent on concealing their back trail.
So they reached camp. At least Uncle Offlas was not there, and Roane ordered Sandar to put the Princess in her own private cubby. She set to work then, stripping off the soaked, mud-caked rags Ludorica wore, tugging loose the strips of cloth making her improvised leggings. And she had the Princess rolled into a heated sleeping bag when the chief of their party did tramp in.
He came straight to the cubby and looked at the Princess with no readable expression on his set face. “Who is she?”
“The Princess Ludorica, heir to the throne of Reveny.” “And the story?”
He had a recorder ready, Roane noted bleakly. She was going to be condemned out of her own mouth. But there was nothing else she could have done. To her, Sandar’s suggestion was unthinkable.
In the clear, terse manner of making a report which had been drilled into her, Roane began her story—the storm, her refuge in the tower—their flight, the cave—what she had found there—the Princess’s tale of the Ice Crown, and all the rest.
Uncle Offlas listened without comment, though Sandar stirred now and then as if he wished to voice some derisive interruption. Yet he did not. And having concluded, Roane waited for the storm to break, knowing that verbal lightning could be as disastrous as the real.
“As for this girl,” he said first, “we can attend to her when it is needful. But this find of yours—you saw it, Sandar?”
“Yes. What I could make out through the panel. It may not be Forerunner, but Psychocrat. It could have something to do with the experiment on Clio.”