“Ayyar, you spoke of the women and the children drawn out of the garths—”
Ayyar nodded absently. That was all far, very far back in time, separated from the here and now by the dragging hours since he had found that niche empty, the trail down the valley.
“Did you know—from which garth?”
Ayyar shrugged impatiently. What did it matter? The Settlers were less than nothing to him. Once he had been a labor slave, then a changeling Ift, and neither looked upon garthmen, with their cruel, harsh religion, their morose ways, with any liking. “I do not know—”
“I suppose not.” Lokatath was studying the broken bushes beyond. “It has been many seasons now; I have not tried to keep count. But sometimes I remember that I was once Derek Vessters, and I see old, known faces dimly, hear voices I once knew. It was a harsh, hard life, so narrow that no sun or moon ever lit to the bottom of it, so that no man sang as we Iftin do who know the joys of the Forest, or would know them if we were left alone. Still—one remembers—and then one wonders how matters have chanced with those one knew—”
“You left close kin?” Some note in the other’s voice reached Ayyar. He had his own meaningful memories from off-world.
“A father who sent me to the Forest when the Green Sick struck, and a mother who wept. I remember her tears. Perchance both are long since dead. Garth toil does not make for long lives. I do not know if I would recognize their faces if I were to look upon them now. By their standards I was no fit and proper son. Such strangeness to my kin was what brought me to the treasure and set the Ift seal upon me, for it is true that only those who can be so influenced have any desire to take up the bait and change.”
“Listen!” Ayyar swung around, facing the rise that led to the glitter of the shards. He had been right; that was no wind through the splinters. Something moved—along the crushed roadway.
He climbed, crept out into the ruins, aware that Lokatath came with him. Together they took cover in a tangle of fallen prisms, broken trunks and branches.
Men, true men, walked with a steady tramp back up from the valley. They were not garthmen but wore uniforms, work clothes of the port. There were ten of them, and they strode as if with no fear of what lay either behind or ahead of them, rather as if they were moved by a purpose demanding their full attention.
“Are they robots?” whispered Lokatath.
Ayyar could not be sure, but it was very probable. They were armed with stunners and blasters, but those weapons were holstered—That’s servants went on some unknown errand.
XVI
“It may be that That mans the port with Its servants in order to welcome in a ship,” Jarvas speculated when he was summoned to watch that squad march northeast.
“Has it occurred to you,” Rizak asked, “that the Enemy may not be native to Janus at all? Suppose It came here from space, has been in exile, and now would return. That It has reached for ships before, to find such efforts fruitless, and now makes another attempt—?”
“Why then the garthmen?” questioned Lokatath.
“Servants to use on this planet. Or, merely, It would immobilize a possible opposition to Its desires for now. I cannot forget those racked image mirrors. Perhaps those were brought with It—”
“But the Larsh,” cut in Drangar, “the Larsh were Its servants before. Why not use those on the mirrors if they were available?”
“It might have had several kinds of servants,” Jarvas cut in. “But this is a thought to hold in mind, Rizak. Iftin memories are only of Janus, and of the nature of That we have no idea, nor did those whose personalities we now wear. If It came out of space ages ago, then the burrows, like unto space-ship corridors, all the rest—fit! Do you not see how it is so? And being alien to Ift, It could well have no common meeting from the beginning, no common thoughts, for the Iftin were always planet bound, they were rooted deep in this earth, even as the Great Crowns, and they did not wish it otherwise. We can understand such thoughts, for we were once men who knew the stars beyond the sky.”
“Are we then better fitted to deal with such an alien should we uncover him?” asked Myrik, the other Ift from overseas, a quiet, steady-eyed companion.
“That also we should think upon. Utterly alien has That always been to the Iftin. A planet-bound race could well be subject to xenophobia. Perhaps our present revulsion to close company with off-worlders and their possessions is not altogether a device set in the Green Sick to keep us apart from our one-time kindred. Perhaps it is just a stronger strain of what the Iftin always felt toward that which was not of Janus. To them—to us now—That embodies all evil, but by other standards that judgment might be different.”
“But That has always been. The survivor of any ancient crash would not live so long. Kymon was of the Blue Leaf, and he knew It. Ages have passed since then.”
“How long have you been Ift?” Jarvas counter-questioned.
Myrik’s lips moved. Ayyar thought he was counting.
“I was Rahuld Urswin, stat-comp reader for the Combine. I came here in the year 4570 ASF. It was the next season that I took the Green Sick while on a hunting party in the sea islands to the south.”
“And you”—Jarvas spoke now to Ayyar—”you are the latest come into Iftdom. What year was it when you landed on Janus?”
“The year 4635 ASF.”
“And I landed here in 4450 ASF, or thereabouts,” Jarvas continued. “Now, have I aged or have you, Myrik?”
Slowly the other shook his head.
“Therefore, we can assume that the Iftin have a life span far longer than the two hundred years granted those of our particular species. And the Zacathans live close to a thousand years. Among those of the galaxy that we know, they are the longest-lived race. But how much of the galaxy do we know even yet, with all our wanderings and exploring just begun as the stars measure time? There may be other species to whom the Zacathans’ span would be a quickly passing day.”
“What if such a being could have no common meeting ground with another species?” Rizak hazarded. “What if to It the first Iftin, and now these off-worlders, were as animals?”
“That could well follow. We shall not know until we meet It. But the fact that we are each two and not one may give us greater power against whatever lies behind that sealed door, for we have memories reaching into the dim past here, and also memories fed with lore from beyond the moon and sky of Janus. And if That is not native to this world, we can accept that knowledge to build upon.”
All this could be true, but it brought them no closer to Illylle. Ayyar watched the squad of off-worlders march out of sight. There might be others sent out by That. And what stand could the Iftin make against the weapons they carried? He said as much.
Rizak nodded. “I guess four hours more of sun. If we try to move during that, we are handicapped. We must wait—”
Ayyar wanted to hack the earth before him with his sword— Wait, and continue to wait! But for Illylle there might be no waiting. He put little faith in Jarvas’ suggestion that she might be safe because of the sleep in which he had left her. How did they know anything about it? That might have merely plunged her more quickly into the fate of the mirror reflections. Ift hatred and fear of That and all Its powers haunted him. But side by side marched old terrors from his other life. Science, too, had its demons and dark powers. Almost it was easier to accept That as Ift saw It, a vast, threatening force of evil without concrete form, than to reduce It and make It more tangible by fitting it with an alien “body.”
Jarvas’ hand on Ayyar’s shoulder drew him back into the green shade of the valley while Rizak took his place on guard.
“Once more,” the older Ift said, “tell us of the passages.”
He had gone over this not once, but many times. Why again? Surely they knew it all well. But if it must be— Wearily, step by step, once more he marched through the burrows, retelling in detail all he could recall. Twice Jarvas stopped him, once during his description of the chamber wherein he had seen the port officer’s body placed in the container, and the second time the area of the space below the false tree where the lines of Ift and Larsh faced each other.