It would seem that Rizak’s thoughts marched with his for now the other asked Illylle:
“These garthmen, they mount coms to keep in touch with the port, do they not?”
“No, that is worldly.” The former garth girl made swift answer. “Only at the port will you find such things.”
“Or perhaps in that camp,” Ayyar amended.
Again Rizak picked up his thought. “Any camp would be well-guarded. They would expect attack in retaliation for the Forest spoilage.”
Ayyar’s memory of the port was such a small one. He had landed there but had still been groggy from the deep frozen sleep of a labor transport. All he could recall was standing in the line of human wares while that bearded giant Kosberg looked them over critically to make his choice. Then he had helped to transfer bundles of bark from the carts of his new master to a loading platform. He had never seen Janus port again.
“You know the port?” he asked Rizak.
“The port? No, I did not planet there. I crawled out of a lifeboat that downed in the Forest, sent from the space ship Thorstone as she passed through this solar system. The plague had hit us, but we kept going, hunting help. When we reached here I was barely living. They threw us in lifeboats to get rid of us. I landed with a party of dead, but I lived. Then I found one of the treasures—and became Ift. So I do not know Janus port at all.”
“Lokatath was a garthman.” Ayyar ran down the list. “But Kelemark, he was a medico there.”
“But back in the days of the Karbon Combine,” Rizak reminded him. “A lot can change in more than fifty years. And Jarvas was a First-in Scout before the port was established at all.”
“But I was there for four hands of days,” Illylle said. “And that was only a small tale of seasons ago. I know the port. Is it in your mind, Ayyar, to go there?”
“To go there for a com. If we can get even a travel-talker we are that much closer to communication.”
“The port,” Rizak repeated, “I do not know. But your thought of a com to talk to them is good. Only we must first get out of this burrow. Let us put our minds to that.”
And he was right, for there was a time during which Ayyar feared they had chosen their grave rather than a refuge. They found breathing hard as the flames outside fed on oxygen, and they lapsed into a comatose condition near to what they had known during hibernation. But when they stirred again there was more air, though it carried the reek of smoke.
Illylle was coughing, and Ayyar felt the choking fumes biting his nose and throat. They had better move, unless it meant going into the fire. He rasped out as much and pushed into the passage.
“Listen!”
But he did not need Rizak’s cry. It was raining beyond. He had not expected such a heavy downpour. Perhaps the season was later than they had thought. The floor of the burrow was wet with a seepage of water. It must be pooling in the old trap pit. Ayyar crawled on, the others following.
A smoking mass of half-consumed vegetation had fallen across the outlet. He thrust at it with his sword and made them an exit. Although it was now day, the clouds were so massed that they emerged into twilight and around them the storm beat icily. The beam mounted on the flitter had accounted for the underbrush and the crowns of the trees, but the great trunks, charred and blistered, yet stood. Among these they made their way to the river bank..
It was between two rocks at the improvised log and rock bridge that they came upon a body. A white arm outflung, the flaccid hand turned up as if to cup some of the flooding rain, was what Ayyar saw first. He turned quickly.
“No!” With one hand he tried to fend off Illylle, but she had already seen it and pushed past him to look down at what lay beyond.
Horror faded, she leaned closer as Ayyar and Rizak joined her. There was a human face, with no expression now, but rather a queer blankness that Ayyar did not associate with the peace of death. There could have been no peace, however, for the throat and upper breast had been shredded away by the hounds, and that attack had uncovered metal, wires, and broken bits of cogs.
“Robot!” Naill memory supplied the proper word.
Rizak hunkered down, ran exploring fingers along the arm. “More—feel this!”
With distaste Ayyar followed his example. The “flesh” was cold, rain wet. But its texture, to his inexpert touch, felt the same as if it had been part of a real body. Yet the rips in it were not bloody, and there was no denying that metal lay beneath.
“A made thing!” Illylle gave verdict. “But unless one knew—”
“Their key.” Rizak nodded. “Send her in screaming and garth gates would open. Only this time, something went wrong. Those hounds knew, poor brutes, and died proving it. The false Iftin must have dragged her this far because she was important to their plans. Then, for some reason they had to abandon her. Which may be the worst mistake they have ever made!”
“How?” Illylle wanted to know.
“We needed some proof. Well, we may not have a false Ift, but we do have something here to make any off-worlder think. This is unlike any robot I ever saw, but it is a robot. Now, suppose we put her out in plain sight. In time they will send a snoop scouter over here, perhaps more than one. Let them find her and begin to wonder!”
He was right, Ayyar knew. Give the port authorities a mystery such as this, and they would be more amenable to belief in a difference between Ift and false Ift.
“Those false Iftin—are they as this?” Illylle wondered.
“Perhaps. But—who made this and where?”
Illylle leaned still farther over the battered robot, drawing deep breaths. “There is no need to ask, brother. The stench of evil has not been washed away by the rain. This, too, is of the White Forest.”
“I do not see how it can be,” Ayyar protested. What did he know of the Enemy? He had been once taken prisoner by a walking space suit of antique design which had herded him and Illylle through the Crystal Forest to imprisonment at the depths of a chasm. But—this robot, it could only be the work of a high technology of a type of civilization he could not equate with Janus at all.
“Do you not see,” Illylle demanded of him now, “we know so little of That. Remember the space ship that sat on the desert sands— Perhaps there are other ships lost in the Waste, things from which That may use at will!”
Possible of course. But there was no use wasting time in speculation now. Ayyar helped Rizak free the robot woman from between the rocks, stretch out the body face up in the open to be clearly seen. If Rizak was right concerning the coming of a scout snooper, this ought to be in port hands soon. Meanwhile, they must get back across the river and find the rest of their own party.
“Let us trust that they made it across.” Rizak glanced back in the direction they had taken when they had reached the other bank of the river. “With this weather that dam-bridge will not last long.”
“Where do we look for them? At the Mirror?”
“No.” It was only a feeling, but the belief that it was right made Ayyar put force into his answer. “To the south.”
The narrow sea lay south, and somehow its dune-hilled shore promised safety. To the port men the Forest would be the proper place to hunt their demon fugitives. Perhaps the others agreed with him, for they did not dispute.
Here where there were no trees, the brush and rocky outcrops must provide them with cover, and they kept to what was offered, listening always for any sound of a flitter. They had worked their way well downstream from the crossing when they heard a hum and lay flat among the stones. “Hovering,” Rizak murmured. “I think they have sighted our lady.”
“Ahh—”
To their night-oriented eyes that flash of flame was almost blinding. Those in the flitter were laying about with a beam, making sure that the body was not bait in a trap, or, if so, that the would-be trappers were taken care of before they landed.
“Move!”
With the flitter so occupied, they must put more space between themselves and it. Ayyar trotted around a shelf of rock to halt and look down. This gravel held no tracks, but just as the stink of the false Iftin was to be easily scented, so did his nostrils now inform him that those of the true blood had passed this way, and a very short time ago. Some of their party, if not all, had also won to this side of the river and were heading seaward.