When they were well away from the vicinity of the flitter, Ayyar whistled. To ears not trained in Iftin calls, the notes were a song of a river bird. And he continued to whistle so at intervals until he was answered. The replying trill took them into a maze of shrub, winter-thinned but still walled into thickets. And here, in a wide nest of marsh grasses and cut reeds, which had once been the lair of a finkang, they found Jarvas and Kelemark.
“There—someone is hurt!”
The third form in Ift clothing lay to one side, and Ayyar started forward. That could only be Lokatath. But why should he be tossed so—and there was something strange about his body— It took Ayyar a minute of sharp study to see that that strangeness was due to the fact that the supine form lacked half a skull!
Rizak strode forward to gaze down. “So we have another machine!” His mouth puckered wryly as if he wished to spit upon the body.
“Another one? Then you have also found one of these things?” Jarvas demanded.
“A woman—fashioned to resemble a garth dweller. She must have been used to open the gates, but the hounds finished her. Or did you not see?”
“We saw. What did you do with her?”
Rizak smiled. “We left her where she has already been found. To give the off-worlders something to think about.” He went down on one knee to inspect the Iftin robot the closer. “Clever! Meeting this one face to face, I would say he was Ift. Until I saw this—” He jerked a thumb at the broken head and the mass of melted wires and other material it contained.
“No, you would not!” Illylle corrected him sharply. “This is evil! Your nose would tell you that.”
“But off-worlders do not have such noses,” Jarvas reminded her. “And the false Ift could seem true to those not of our kind. Clever indeed, with a devil’s cleverness. In this fashion That has set a barrier between us and any garthman or off-worlder.”
Rizak agreed. “But Ayyar suggests we try contact by com—”
“Com!” Kelemark swung around to look at the younger Ift. “And where will we find one of those?”
“At the port,” Ayyar returned. “All we need is a hand-talker—get one of those and—” He spoke to Jarvas. “You were a First-in Scout, you know the official codes. Suppose you broadcast, would they not hear you out? Really listen?”
“They might. If we had a com. But to pick one up at the port—” Jarvas stopped. His expression changed from one of irritation at stupidity to thoughtfulness.
“Where is Lokatath?” Illylle asked. “Did he—was he lost?”
Kelemark shook his head. “No. He has gone to the signal rocks on the coast. There must be a beacon set there to warn the brothren.”
She smiled. “Wise, very wise. But we cannot look forward now to an early planting—and perhaps they will not come soon.”
“That is it. We do not know how early we have been awakened. So we dare take no chance.”
Jarvas seated himself cross-legged in the deserted nest and brushed aside the fabric of its stuff at one edge, clearing a small space of ground. On it he laid out small pebbles.
“This is the port—am I right, Kelemark?”
The former medico looked over his shoulder. “I have not seen it for many years—”
“But Illylle has,” interrupted Ayyar. “She went there not many seasons ago for medical aid when her mother was dying. Illylle?”
“Yes.” She sat down in turn to face Jarvas across the cleared space. “Here is where the ships land and of those there are never many. Once each tenth of a year a government cruiser comes in. Between times, at the harvest season—the traders.”
“Do not forget,” Rizak warned, “that by now they may have beamed a call for off-planet help.”
“Concerning that we shall have to take our chances,” returned Jarvas. “So—the ships land to the west. What else?”
“Here”—she put down a larger stone—”is the building that houses the customs and the other government offices. Next is the hospital, then the barracks of the police, beyond—the quarters of those others who work there. Here are the sheds for the storing of the lattamus bark waiting to be shipped—that is all. Oh, yes, another building here to house and store the working machines.”
“That is farther north, and now it must be empty,” commented Ayyar.
“North,” Jarvas studied the plan. “They are blasting into Iftcan from this direction.” A sweep of his hand indicated east. “And they patrol along the river. To the northwest is the untouched Waste and That’s stronghold. Also we are haunted by time.”
“The garths must all be alerted.” Illylle rested her chin upon an upheld fist, her elbow based on her knee. “Perhaps they have offered the safety of the port to any of the garthmen who care to come there.”
“And would any?” asked Ayyar.
“I do not know. All their beliefs are against it, but perhaps in great extremity some would. Himmer’s lies here—” she gestured to the north and east of their present camp.
They waited for her to continue, aware some purpose moved in her mind.
“Himmer’s I know. Also, I know the animals there. Himmer has two phas broken to ride. They will come to the call—so mounted . . .”
“Too wild a chance.” Jarvas denied her plan. “Every garth will be standing alert for attack—they would have hounds out.”
“How did the garth that was attacked call the flitter?” Ayyar asked suddenly. “The flyer came in ready to blast—they must have been ready for trouble.”
“Maybe the garths have coms now, because of this,” mused Rizak.
“And if they have—” began Ayyar.
“No—trying to get to one of those, undetected, would be like walking bare-handed into a kalcrok web, expecting to talk that double mouth out of fanging one!” Kelemark protested.
“There is the scout flitter—and that—” Rizak nodded to the robot Ift. “Plant that out in the open as we did the other. Let them see it.”
“They will take good care to flame lash all around before they ground, and everyone in the crew will be wearing a blaster,” Kelemark pointed out.
But Illylle looked thoughtful. “Suppose we have a way to defeat such caution?”
“How?” Ayyar wanted to know.
“Sal bark—”
Old lore was what she called upon now, the Forest learning. Bark stripped from a small, red-brown tree with leaves so tiny that even in the full life of summer it never looked to be more than autumn-bare, pounded and fed into a fire, made a smoke which stupefied and bewildered. It had been used to finish off kalcroks, when those monsters could be kept from retreating into the deep corridors of their dens.
“They will expect one trap, give them a different one—” she began when Ayyar picked up her idea and elaborated upon it.
“Pick a place that is open but that has brush around it at a little distance. They will fire that before they land. The sal bark will be in that brush. If we have any luck, we can then use the com of the flitter or the personal travel-talk of one of its crew.”
“And the sal fumes, the fire, how do we ourselves walk through those?” Rizak asked dryly.
“We find a place close to the river,” Kelemark chimed in. “One of us takes to the water and waits. The sal smoke will not last long—we shall not be able to find too much of the bark—if we are lucky enough to discover any.”
Jarvas laughed shortly. “As bizarre a scheme as I have ever heard—but—”
“You are forgetting something. Are you now more men than Iftin?” Illylle frowned at them. “Men must depend upon what their two hands hold, their eyes see, their ears hear. There are other powers that can root in those senses and by belief grow beyond the visible and the touchable. I have lost much, but once I was a Chooser of Seed and a Sower, and from such planting there was growth beyond the normal. It was our gift and we used it well then, as we must do now!”
A little of the awe that had touched Ayyar at the Mirror of Thanth when this slim girl had called upon powers truly beyond mortal sight and sound again shadowed his mind. Illylle seemed so sure of what she said that her confidence carried over to the others.
The search for sal bark sent them out among the rocks, though not into the fringes of the Waste. For a thing of such virtue could not be found in that garden of all ill. Kelemark was right; any harvest would be a scanty one. Ayyar had perhaps two handfuls, taken from one small seedling, when he returned. Illylle herself had done best, for she had made a bag of part of her cloak, and it was a quarter filled with the aromatic twigs.