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speckled skin, and the peaches were too long and covered by soft red fur. I recollected then that I spoke through the intermediary of the wrist-band. All these things were equivalents, and it was perhaps dangerous to make any further demands, not knowing what I might receive.
I left the couch and the scatter of tables and dubious refreshment, and now a sudden claustrophobia took hold of me. It was more than fear, a kind of panicky excitement, as if something vast, terrible, insupportable were about to happen to me, not necessarily damaging or evil, but not for a moment to be borne. And it would happen-must-if I remained here in this room.
I hurried to the place of the hidden doors and, as I had thought, they opened at once. And, as I had also thought, two men turned and blocked my way.
“Please wait a little longer,” one said impassively.
“We have our orders,” the other said. “We’re not to let you pass.”
He moved a little so that I could see clearly the weapon thrust through his belt. It was like no other weapon I had ever seen, and this, more than anything, convinced me it could be dangerous.
“For what must I wait?” I asked them.
But in that moment the two guards lost interest in me. They turned abruptly to face the corridor. Doors farther along and to the left had opened, and a man had stepped through. I caught a glimpse of his clothing-black, not white, though a white belt rested on his thin hips. Yomis Langort and another man came through behind him.
I backed into my room, and the doors shut, but it was no safeguard, they would open as soon as the stranger approached them.
The stranger.
I backed farther across the room, between the pillars, until I had reached the far side. My spine rested against the wall. I pressed my hands flat to it, while my blood and brain curdled, and a horse leaped under my breast. I could not think. I could think of nothing.
The doors opened. I tried to shut my eyes but the lids would not stay together. He was alone.
Across the black shirt slashed four violet bars, and, where the material ended and the tanned line of his neck began, some silver insignia was clipped. The thick black hair, grown only to the nape and then lopped short, reminded me of so
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many things which no longer mattered. He stopped still, facing me.
“I am Rarm Zavid, the captain of this ship,” he said.
Fury and terror flooded into my eyes like tears, into my mouth like blood.
“No,” I screamed at him. “You are Darak. You are Darak, or you are Vazkor-you are the nightmare, the undead-the haunting Karrakaz sends to destroy my will and my life.” I was quite mad by now. Pressed at the wall, I railed against him, and cried, and cursed him, and begged him to leave me. It was the culmination of all the passion and despair I had ever known. “I will not ride with you in the chariot,” I shrieked out at him. “Or fight for you, or bear your children, or watch you die! In the name of all the dead gods of the world, what have I done to conjure you up again!”
I suppose he stood and watched me all this time. He did not come to me, or touch me, or speak to me until the outburst ended. And what ended it was nothing of his will or mine. It was the feel of the wall beneath my hands, trembling and throbbing like a great tortured heart.
Silence closed my mouth. And in the silence I heard the roar of some vast machinery subsiding thrust by thrust. I pulled my hands from the wall. Bewildered, I could only look to him for an explanation, and so it was to him I looked.
“I came here to ask you questions,” he said. “There’s no longer any need. You’ve given me my answer.” The narrow dark eyes gave away nothing at all, yet his face had none of the arrogance of Darak’s, nor the cold blankness of Vazkor’s. “I think,” he said, “that you’ve also convinced me that I greatly resemble someone who has been close to you, and died, out there-” He made a vague gesture with one arm, indicating a world which was mine, not his.
“Two men,” I said. “Two men. Now three men. Darak the bandit, Vazkor the sorcerer, Rarm Zavid the captain of a sky-ship which has no sail.”
The madness was spent. Wearily I watched him come closer to me.
“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” he said. “Do you?”
“What have I done.”
“If you truly have no idea, then I don’t think that you’re ready to be told.”
“All my life,” I said, “knowledge has come to me for which I was not ready.”
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“My ship,” he said, “this vast space-wanderer. You plucked it out of the sky like a grape from a vine; pulled it down so fast, two shields were damaged. And when we were near enough, you activated our defense beams and killed the dragon-lizard on the beach with them. This impudence not being enough for you, you followed us. and when you found the place we had berthed to repair the shields, you kept open our main hatchway for reasons best known to yourself. This activity gave away your presence. Yomis and three others caught you and brought you back. Since then you’ve played with circuits of the ship designed to respond only to members of the crew.” He indicated the couch and tables. “And finally you have communicated your emotional distress to the ship, with the results you yourself have just heard and felt.” I said nothing, no longer caring greatly that I did not understand. “Until now,” Rarm Zavid said softly, “the men who watched your planet considered themselves further advanced in development. Now I begin to wonder. I see you are a woman, but beyond that, what are you?”
“I am nothing,” I said. “Let me go.”
“Nothing. And the ship. How do you explain that?”
“I cannot explain. I do not understand. I did not even know of your presence until the sound, and the Shadow on the beach. How can I have done all these things you say I have done? How?”
“I think I could tell you,” he said.
He stood in front of me, but I could no longer look at him. His voice, the voice of Darak and Vazkor, came to me distantly across great hills of exhausted misery.
“The ship,” he said, “is more than a ship. It is built around a core of Power is a word I think you will understand. This Power is like a great brain, linked into every part of the ship. We have our own words for this brain, but your world, as yet, has none. In the brain of each ship is endless information about every man who travels in her. These memories can be changed or wiped clean at any time, but they make life easier for us. Because of them the brain knows from our commands, actions, even our thoughts, what we need. A meal, a book, a chair, come when we want them. If a man is hurt in some inaccessible part of the ship, there’s no fear that he’ll go unattended, because the brain will send equipment to his aid. The brain also guides the ship, defends her, and takes her from world to world. All systems, in fact, are connected intimately with the brain, and the brain responds to the particular mind-patterns of her crew. Do you understand?”
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“Yes,” I said dully.
“Normally,” he said, “no mind-patterns outside those of her crew can interfere with the brain of the ship; the minds of our worlds are not powerful enough for that, nor have we found such power beyond our worlds-until now. It was an unforeseen circumstance that a mind, to which the brain had never before been given access, should suddenly reach out, make contact with it, and dominate. The brain was powerless. It obeyed you. It brought the ship down to the beach and killed the lizard.”
“Obeyed me?” I said. “I did not call to your ship.” “You did,” he said. “The proof of that is our presence in this valley.”
“I did not know I did it. When the Shadow came I was afraid.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I believe you didn’t know. It was clear you didn’t understand when the ship responded to you a few minutes ago.”
“Then let me free,” I said.
He stood looking at me, and his eyes penetrated my tiredness. I looked up at him also. His face was absorbed, serious.
“No,” he said. “It’s plain to me you have nothing to go to. It’s plain to me you are in distress and danger. In all the time that we’ve watched this world, our rule has been never to interfere with the frequently mistaken and bloody development of its human life. You have forced us to interfere. So let’s forget that rule as regards to you.” “I am unimportant.”