“How do you feel?”
“Who are you?” Naill countered.
“I am Pate Sissions—First-In Scout of Survey. And”—his hand gestured to the company by the fire—”that is Haf Monro, astropilot of the Thorstone.”
Distant memory stirred in Naill. Thorstone—a long-lost cruiser by that name . . . what was the story?
“Derek Versters of Versters’ Garth, and Ladim Torry, medico of the Karbon Combine.”
Karbon Combine? But the Karbon people had been off Janus for almost a full generation! Yet the outwardly green-skinned Ift whom Sissions had so introduced appeared to be a man still in his first youth. First-In Scout, astropilot, garthman, Karbon medico—a wide range of occupations on Janus, covering perhaps the full length of time the planet had been known to Survey.
“You are all”—Naill broke out the word he had first heard back at Kosburg’s—”changelings!”
Sissions’ big-eared head swung slowly from left to right in a gesture of negation made more impressive by the very length of that movement.
“We are off-worlders—from different times and worlds—who came to Janus for different reasons. That is what we are—and will be—here. And you are?”
“Naill Renfro—bought laborer.”
“Good enough. Continue to remember that, Naill Renfro, and we shall deal easily together. Sorry we had to knock you out—there was not time to reason with you.”
“Where is this place? And how did you get here?” Naill pulled himself up to rest on the elbow of his right arm. His head was thick and ached dully, but he was not so dimwitted now as not to realize that there was a method in Sissions’ speech, that he had been warned against some very real danger.
“As to this place—well, it is a prison of sorts.” Sissions sat down cross-legged. “We are not sure ourselves as to the reason for our detention here. Except that it means trouble. How did we get here? Well, we came in various ways at different times. Monro and I were hunting a friend who had come in this direction and vanished. We were picked up—”
“By an animated space suit?” Naill cut in.
“By a walking space suit,” Sissions agreed. “We found Torry here already—he was first in residence. They caught him near the river where he tried to take a shortcut west. And Derek—Derek came later with a companion who chose to leave.”
“You can leave?” Naill demanded in surprise.
“You can leave, provided you are intent upon committing suicide. An agile man with a great amount of determination and no sense can climb to the White Forest. Whether he can get through there . . .” Sissions shrugged.
“So you just sit around and wait for what is going to happen?” Naill’s amazement grew. His whole reading of this man suggested that such a spineless course was so alien to his nature that Naill could not believe Sissions was in earnest.
“So we wait,” Sissions assured him. “We wait, and we remember who and what we are.”
Again that inflection of warning. Naill sat all the way up. They were watching him with a kind of detached inspection, as if waiting for him to make some move by which they would then be influenced into an important judgment and appraisal.
“How long do we wait?”
“We do not know. Perhaps until the opposition moves so we can learn who—or what—It really is. Or until we find our own solution. Now—” Sissions picked up a small bowl, handed it to Naill. Through the substance of the container he felt the warmth of the contents. Eagerly he savored and then gulped the stew.
“Light coming.” Torry stood up, the crystal-pointed spear in his hand. “Best back to the burrow.” He came to Naill and together with Sissions assisted him to his feet.
“Where are we going?”
“Out of the sun,” the former medico told him shortly. “In the day period here we’re as good as blind. To be caught in the open is bad.”
“To be caught in the White Forest in the sun,” Sissions added, “that’s the end. And we’ve not been able to work out any way of crossing that in one night’s time. That is the lock on our prison cell, Renfro.”
Naill could see the right in that reasoning. The crystal forest in the moonlight had been hard enough to face. Its brilliance under direct sunshine would burn out their night-oriented sight.
“There was one of our kind up there when we came in—we saw his reflection on a tree,” he reported.
“Halsfad!” Derek pushed closer. “Where? How near the edge of the forest was he? Pate—maybe he was able to make it after all!”
“We could not tell,” Naill replied. “The reflections must be deceiving.”
Sissions agreed. “Could have been from any direction. And even if he reached the edge of the forest before sunup—what then?”
What then indeed? The miles of baked and empty rockland ahead with no shelter—Naill though of that. Yes, it made an effective prison for all of them. And desperate flight was not the answer; he understood Sissions the better now.
“Home.” Monro had been in advance. Now he stood before a dark hole, folding back a curtain woven of plaited leaves. Ashla crept after him, and they followed one by one until they were all within the shelter.
Its skeleton was a tree with huge exposed roots, roots that extended out of the bole well above their heads as might branches, but running down to the earth, rather than horizontally, so that the center trunk appeared to be supported by a fringe of props. In and out through that grid of exposed roots leaves had been woven, lengths of dried vine, and pieces of bark, to form a structure with the living tree as its center.
Ashla went directly to that trunk and set both of her palms flat against its bark.
“Iftin wall, Iftin roof,
Wood lives, wood—”
Even as he had jumped her in the clearing, so was Sissions upon her again, his hand across her lips with the force of a slap.
She raised hers from the tree to twist and tear at his fingers until she had freed her mouth.
“You have forgotten too much!” That was Illylle speaking now with all the force of command she had shown at those times when the Iftin took precedence over the Terran in her. “This is Iftscar—from the true seed. It will not betray us. Though why it should grow in the White Land . . . ah!” She nodded, not at them, but at some thought or memory. “When Kymon journeyed forth, with him went a pouch blessed by the Counters of the Seed, and they gave him of their powers. So—here fell a nut of Iftscar, and through the long time of the True Leaves it has grown. Look into your memory, Jarvas, Mirrormaster that was—you have been too timid by half!”
She turned in his hold, her hands now rising to cup over his eyes. At first Sissions moved under her touch as if to push her away. Then he stiffened, straightened, and slowly—very slowly—his own hands went out to rest against the tree trunk as hers had done before him. Ashla stepped aside and left him so.
“Iftscar!” She flung up her arms in a gesture of welcome. “We shelter here. In the Leaf of the Gray we claim what you have to give us.”
“Pate—Pate!” Monro would have dropped hand on Sissions’ shoulder, but the girl fended him off.
“Let be! He takes the strength he should have drunk long ago. He forgot when he should have remembered! Let be—you have not the Seeing!”
Sissions’ hands fell from the tree trunk. He turned, his eyes wide. Then he blinked and came back from some immeasurable distance.
It was to Ashla he spoke: “I am indeed a fool. There may yet be a key we have not tried, already set in our hands.”
“If you had not the right memory then you were wise not to hunt lost keys. Is it not with all of you as it is with Naill and with me—that you possess only parts of memories, but not the full recall of your Iftin selves?”
“Yes.”
“And so you fear—and wisely—what you do not control nor know. I believe, Mirrormaster, that such caution is not folly but wisdom.”
“Perhaps two memories knitted well together may supply us with the key to this prison!” Sissions held out both hands to her, and hers fell palm down on his.
Naill watched them with a strange lost feeling. Ayyar—who had been Ayyar after all? A fighting man who at the last testing had gone down to defeat. A warrior who dared not use the Mirror of Thanth, but had fled from its challenge. And Naill Renfro—a slave laborer from the Dipple. Neither part of him had been a man of victory or strength—perhaps the whole was less . . .
“Many memories”—Ashla’s eyes went from man to man—”but maybe too different. To weave a power there must be unity. We can but try, you who were Jarvas.”