“Perhaps.”
“And perhaps not. Nor without the knowledge you have gained from us would you have known what they were. No—there is a meaning to be read in all you have done, if we can see it.”
“I do not understand.”
“Neither do I.I can only sense it is there, a reason to move you to aid the Princess, and later to do all else. You say that those we know as the Guardians are long dead, have been judged evil by those beyond the stars. They used men as tools and it did not last. Now your people fear to upset what they have done. But—why have you told this story to the one man in Reveny who could believe it, because his far-off ancestor escaped the full blight sent on Clio?”
“Chance—fortune— I do not know—”
“Neither do I. Save that it is making me think. Roane, can you find this cave again?”
“Do you mean you wish to free the Crown?”
“I do not know. I think that I shall not be sure until I stand there and know what such slavery means. But that I must do; I know it now. Can you take me there?”
“If we dare go back. It lies near Hitherhow.”
“Dare we not now?” he countered.
“The LB may have come. If not, they—Uncle Offlas, Sandar— they will try to keep us away and they have weapons—”
“Did you not use one such on me? Yes, I have tasted the power of those strange arms of yours. But that we must chance also. And I think time is fast running out.”
“You mean we go now? Before the Sergeant and Mattine return?”
“I think for what we may have to do we should have as little company as possible. But let us wait for dawn before we take the trail. Sleep if you can, Roane.”
He did not release her, so that Roane’s head slipped down to rest against him as indeed she found now she could sleep.
16
Roane awoke as if summoned by some imperative call, though there was silence as she roused. The light of dawn lay outside their small corner of refuge. Imfry’s arm was still about her. They had huddled together in the night. Turning her head with care, she saw he still slept, or at least his eyes were closed.
There was a stubble of dark beard on his jaw, yet in sleep he looked much younger, unguarded, that rigidity of feature which usually masked him gone. There were lines perhaps born of pain, or the burden of decisions, but now they were faint. Studying him so, Roane thought of the one part of her dream she had not told him—the face she had seen at its ending.
For that had not been Ludorica’s, nor Reddick’s, and yet it had stung her into action.
Had Nelis been right in his theory that some force had moved her to play the part she had since she had landed on Clio? Superstition, common on a backward world, Uncle Offlas would term that, note it as a native trait on his tapes put aside for the anthropologists to study.
Many worlds had their strong faiths in powers greater than human, clung to beliefs in purposes beyond the comprehension of man. She had watched worshipers in temples, been moved once or twice by ceremonies which seemed to give those who took part an inner security and peace. But there were many gods, goddesses, nameless spirits and powers—unless each and every one was a small splinter of something greater toward which her species yearned and groped blindly. A something they must have to believe in, or be vanquished.
All her training balanced against the thought that she was moved now by any such influence! But if she could so think— Roane envied those with the faith, even those who looked upon Guardians here as beings to whom they could appeal in times of stress.
If they destroyed the installation would they in a way also be destroying the spirit which was Clio? What might enter in thereafter to fill the void?
Roane shook her head—fancies. She had been too often in the past ordered to restrain such imaginings. And if she had ever betrayed such irresponsible speculation before the Service she might even have been considered a suitable candidate for mental reschooling.
She shuddered at that thought, gazed out over the tumbled walls of the fort. There was already a tinge of red-gold in the sky—sunrise.
“Nelis—” She spoke his name softly, moved out of the hold he had kept on her during the dark hours, though his arm tightened even as she put it aside. Then his eyes opened, squinted in the light.
“Dawn,” Roane told him, thinking he might still be in the lingering backwash of a dream.
“Dawn—” he repeated as if the word had little meaning. Then the lines of his face tightened once more, alert intelligence and awareness flooded back. He straightened up with a grunt, as if stiff and sore, and stretched.
“Your medicines do well by one.” He flexed his arms again and then gently touched the plasta-skin covering over his wound before he picked up the jacket the Sergeant had left behind. “Have you any more of that strange food?”
“Enough.” She knelt to open her bag. The night lenses-how had she come to forget that she had those? They could have started last night with their aid. And there was the tool—she could put the last charge in that now.
“Another of your strange weapons?”
“Not quite so. But it was what freed you from that cage. It can be used as a cutter or a digger—breaking stone, melting metal. But I have not the proper energy charges for it, only one of these left, and they are meant to power a beamer.” She screwed the butt back on and laid it to one side. He picked it up.
“This is not what you used on me in the forest—”
“No. That was taken from me.”
“But that is your best weapon?”
“It merely stuns. There are others more forceful, but we are forbidden to carry them on sealed worlds. There is a blaster which slays with fire, other devices. But those are employed only in the last resort.”
He held the projectile thrower he termed a “gun” in one hand, the tool in the other, comparing them. “Your people work in metal in a way we cannot begin to equal. Just as we ride duo-corns, you visit stars. What is it like to stride from world to world, m’lady?”
“It is like being always before a constantly changing picture. Sometimes it is good, sometimes”—she remembered and shivered —”it can be very bad.”
“As this world has been for you?”
“No! That is not so! Here—” She had found the ration tubes, twisted the cap of the first and handed it to him, taking up another for herself, using all, as they needed the strength. The warm semiliquid did not seem to taste as it always had, but even flatter, less appetizing.
She finished it quickly, squeezed the tube flat, put it under a stone before she reclosed her pack. The sky was now afire with sunrise. Had Imfry changed his mind during the night, or did he still want to go to the installation? She glanced up to where he stood, his head half turned from her, looking toward the blue-shadowed roll of the heights beyond.
“We head west.” He pointed. “There are Thunderbolt and Lhang’s Beard—”
So he was picking out landmarks. But once they were down in the forest cover, how could those guide them? She asked as much.
“We are not so helpless as you would believe, m’lady.” He pressed the wide buckle on his belt, showed her a small dial within. “This is a device which works as effectively for path finding for us as your off-world trappings do for you. Now—” He surveyed the ground closely, knelt at a smooth stretch of earth, and there began to set up a tight circle of bits of rock, the center left bare while he flattened and smoothed it. With his finger tip he gouged a series of lines and dashes there, digging them in as deeply as he could.
“For Wuldon and the others,” he told her. “This will let them know the direction in which we have gone and that we appoint a meeting place for later.”
The warmth of the sun was on the rocks as they started on the down trail. Roane, looking about her, and then hastily averting her eyes from anything but the path, thought it had been well she had come up in the dark. It would have been difficult for her to make that climb otherwise. The zigzag of the trail brought them to the bottom, where Imfry consulted his belt disk and struck out briskly.
There was no straight trail, of course. They detoured, lost time, came back. But if any hunt for them was in progress, it had not spread so far. There were birds and once or twice short glimpses of animals, but no sign men had ever walked this way.