“No!”
She came slowly, one hand against the gully wall to support her. Now she added:
“You bear within you one power. Dare you deny that after this? You cannot take to yourself the weapon of another!”
There was something in what she said. He picked up a stone and brought it down on the weapon, smashing it to bits. It broke brittly which he had not foreseen. He then looked to the false Ift, bringing a larger rock to batter the head of that inert creature. The substance of which the skull was formed split. Inside were fused wires, slagged metal. Ayyar squatted on his heels to study the wreckage. Energy, some type of energy, had dripped from the sword in his hand to accomplish this! Yet with that stored within him he had felt no ill, suffered nothing.
“Do you not yet understand?” Illylle demanded. “You are the vessel to carry a force. But it must not be wasted. Now where do we go from here?”
“The same road—with care.”
“It would seem we are going to be favored—unless they can sniff us out in turn. Look you above.”
Those clouds that had kept the sun from troubling them were massing ever darker. Whether the turbulence coming was born from some machinations of the Mirror or not, they did not know, but that it promised them a concealing cloak was plain.
For a space they traveled the upper ridges of the gullies, crawling serpentwise when they would have been plain against the sky. If other false Iftin or their master had any knowledge of the finish of the one they had accounted for, they did not show it. But Ayyar was willing to proceed upon the assumption that that might be true.
Above the third valley they so avoided, they came upon the first sign that other protection against Iftin had been set up in the Waste. Only the dimming of the storm clouds saved them. Once they had been led captive through the White Forest—where trees of crystal mimicked the rich growth of true life—a dazzling reflection of the true world. Here was raised a pillar of that same crystal, mounted on a headland—to blind Iftin eyes with sun-reflected brilliance. Ayyar warily circled around it, being thus forced to lower levels. The chill of the storm was changing scents. He was not sure they could depend any longer upon their noses for warning.
Then the fury of the breaking storm drove them to any cover they could quickly find. Darkness Ift could face, but not such tearing winds, such buffeting of hail, such numbing sleet.
Together they crouched in a crevice, their cloaks drawn up so they might pull the corners over their heads, hiding their eyes as lightning leaped across a wild and riven sky. And to the wrath of the storm there seemed no end. Whether it was loosed by one power or the other, it had about it that which Ayyar deemed unnatural.
Illylle stirred. Her lips were very close to his ear, but he could hardly hear her words as she said:
“This will hide all trails—”
She was right. Perhaps when they could go on they must simply head west and—
She started; her arm dug into his side. But Ayyar had seen it also, illumined by a flash of lightning.
It had not been there when they had taken refuge, that he could swear to. Yet now it stood on the western wall as if as fixed as the crystal pillar.
Man—no. Nor Ift. But it had four limbs and it stood erect upon two of them. Memory stirred within him. Once he had known or seen its like. Where—and when?
VIII
It continued to stand there, facing east, if such a thing had a face to turn east, west, any direction. Danger might lie in awaking Naill memory consciously, but Ayyar was forced to that in order to learn the nature of the Enemy. He told Illylle his plan and what might come of it.
“But that—I have Ashla’s memory, and nothing such as that walks through it!”
“Garth memories do not know off-world well,” he pointed out. “For years I was in the Dipple on Korwar. Prison though that was, still we had contact with half the galaxy. Korwar is a pleasure planet, save for those condemned to be planetless and so to live within the waste heap of the Dipple. Now and then I had a day’s labor at the port and we saw there many strange things. And this—this moves deep in my memory. What we can learn now, anything we may learn, must be to our advantage. But if awaking Naill brings me into a trap set for off-worlders, then do you be ready for it—”
She smiled. “I do not truly believe that one who has been washed in the substance of Thanth can be so taken. But, I shall be ready—for what, Ayyar? To thrust a sword through you?”
He gazed at her with full soberness. “If I were to become such as those who marched through here—then, yes, I would welcome such death at the hands of a friend.”
Illylle’s smile vanished. “You do not jest. Do you wish to have me swear?”
“There is no need. Only, if I strive to move from here, then do what you must to stop me, at any cost.”
He fixed his gaze upon that thing. There appeared no division between head and body, if head and body were terms which could be applied to a rectangular box supported on two stilt legs, two arms or like appendages dangling by its side. It was difficult for even his night-oriented eyes to see it clearly for the storm distorted it. A box on legs. Now that he studied it, he could also make out a series of small sparks of light set in a row across the section comparable to the breast. Also, he was very sure, it was metal, or metal encased. And he had seen its like. Where, when?
Naill Renfro—deliberately he set about recalling Naill Renfro— What were Naill’s first memories, so deeply buried that they must be mined with effort bit by bit?
His father’s ship—he made himself visualize it, cabin and corridor, his own small cubicle which was the only true home he had ever known. Captain Duan Renfro, Free Trader, and Malani, the wife he had brought from a warm, smiling planet of shallow seas, many islands, endless, gentle summer. The worlds they had visited—then the end with their spacer caught in a battle that was none of their war—Malani and Naill in the escape boat—picked up and brought to Korwar—and the endless gray life-in-death of the Dipple, the dumping place for those displaced by the war with no worlds to return to.
The ship—resolutely Naill-Ayyar turned memory back to the ship, combing it by recall. Nothing like that thing above had been in the ship. Then, on some world where they had gone trading. But that was hopeless. His faded mental pictures of those were past disentangling now. So—the Dipple was all that was left.
Not in the collection of barracks itself—then in the city—or the port. He settled for the port. There had been wide landing aprons on which set down fleets of very differing spacers—traders bringing luxuries from a thousand worlds, passenger liners, private yachts of rulers and the wealthy. They reeled through his mind until— He caught upon one of these fragmentary memories, strove to pin it down. Yes!
A long bank of computers—he had seen that in the heart of a liner. The ship had been put in quarantine because of a new illness detected aboard. But laborers from the Dipple, hungry for the work, had been sent through a blocked-off passage to bring out some highly important sealed cargo. He had looked into the computer room as he passed, and just such a robot had stood there. It was a service type, meant to deal with computer repair—more than that he did not know.
What was it doing here? The best thing to do would be to follow it—for it must return soon. He was needed—it was most necessary to join the others. What was he doing here in the storm and rain when he was needed, greatly needed? He must be going—
“Ayyar!” A hold on him kept him from rising, from going as he should go. Angrily he strove to break that grip. He was Naill Renfro and he had that which he must do—now!
Look, the robot was turning—leaving— Unless he followed he would be lost! He would never find the others, be one with them as he should be!
“Ayyar!”
Desperately he pulled against the hold. Then something flashed before his eyes, its brightness blinding, searing. Now he was in the dark where there was no Naill—nothing—
“Ayyar!” Very faint and far away that calling. Why should he answer it? To make any effort was too much to demand of him.