“No. I am a Singer. While I sing, I have no life companion. What of you, Krip Vorlund? I had heard that the Traders have families. Is it with you as it is with the Singers, that you can be but one thing at a time?”
“In a manner.” He told me of the life of his people, wedded to many stars and not one alone. They had life companions, but only when they had reached a certain rank within their companies. Some times a planet woman might accept Trader life for the sake of a man; but that a Trader abandon his ship for any world because of a woman was unthinkable.
“You are like unto the Thassa,” I said. “For you, to be firmly rooted in one place is to die. We sweep across the earth of Yiktor and her seas at our will. We have certain places such as your space cities where we gather when there is need. But for the rest—”
“Gypsies.”
“What?” I asked.
“A very ancient word. It means a people who live ever traveling. I think there was a nation of such once, very long ago, and worlds away.”
“So the Thassa have their like across the void. I spoke once of a ship and my little people, and the visiting of other worlds.”
“Such might still be done. But it would cost more tokens than lie even within the temple treasury of Yrjar. And such a ship must be built on another world after much study and experimentation. A dream indeed, Maelen, for no one would have such treasure as to bring it to life.”
“What is treasure, Krip Vorlund? Does it not take different forms from world to world?”
“It is what is rare and valuable on each particular planet. Rarity plus beauty in some cases, rarity plus usefulness in others. On Zacon it is knowledge, for the Zacathans look upon learning as their treasure. Bring to them an unknown artifact, a legend, something which hints at a new sentence in the history of the galaxy, and you have brought them treasure.
“On Sargol it is a small green herb, once common on forgotten Terra, utterly irresistible to the Salarki, who would willingly exchange gems for it. And those same stones on another planet—one no longer than the nail of your smallest finger, Maelen—will allow a man to live as a lord of Yiktor for five years or more. On Hasku it is feathers, sprokjan feathers. I can recite you the list of treasures for a quarter of the galaxy, as they pass through our warehouses.”
“So, to each world a treasure, and it varies so that what seems a fortune on one planet will on another be worth nothing—or perhaps more?”
He laughed inside his mind and even the barsk jaws fell apart in a faint likeness to a smile.
“Usually less rather than more. Gems—those are best, for gems and things of beauty speak to more than one people and species as worth taking and keeping safe.”
“This world wherein such a ship as would carry my little people might be built, what manner of treasure do they there prize?”
“All that is high wealth. They are an inner planet and the men there are satiated with the best of a hundred worlds. What they have to sell, their ships, draw all the treasures they will accept. It would have to be something very rare, perhaps never seen before, or so large an amount of trade credits as would wipe out the contents of half our warehouses.”
I laid down the sleeping child, making her comfortable, but setting a barrier between her and the barsk again, so that if she woke she would not see that animal. Then I brought the kasi back to their duty. Once more we traveled the road. But I thought now and then of the nature of treasure and how different worlds rated it. I knew what the off-worlders took off Yiktor and I guessed such cargo passed as ordinary things. We had gems, but they were not such rare objects that off-world traders struggled to buy them. I decided that Yiktor might be termed, in the eyes of such experts, a relatively poor planet.
The Thassa did not, as the plainsman, try to gather portable wealth. When we had more of any one thing than we needed, we left the surplus at one of the ingatherings for those who lacked. Our beast shows brought us many tokens, but we did not build up reserves from them. For we considered them a form of training for both animal and Singer. They also gave us more reason for a roving life.
But to lay up any treasure and guard it-that is foreign to us. And if we had done it in the past, before we left our cities, we had forgotten it.
As we began once more our slow journey to the Valley, I asked of Krip Vorlund, “What is your greatest treasure? Gems? Or some other rare thing?”
“Do you mean mine personally, or what is so regarded by my people?”
“Both.”
“Then I shall answer you with one word, for with both me and my people it is the same—a ship!”
“And you gather naught else besides?”
“What we gather, and it is as much as we can of the treasures others want, it is only that we may finally spend all we have so garnered for a ship of our own.”
“And how many of you ever achieve such?”
“Perhaps as many as find lordships on Yiktor. The struggle is as hard, though in another way.”
“You—do you believe you will ever have this treasure?”
“No one willingly loses any dream, even when the point of being able to realize it is past. A man, I think, continues to hope for good fortune until he dies.”
We camped that night, but not for the whole space of darkness, only for a few hours. I watched the moon rise, but I made no move to draw its power—not then. One cannot store it too long, and to tap it and be forced to loose it before using it to any advantage is a stupid waste. So I did not raise my rod, nor did I sing outwardly or inwardly. All that I did was to aid the kasi with thought power when and where I could.
The moon hung low when we came to the lip of the descent into the Valley. And, as was always true at nighttime, the mist covered thickly, hiding whatever might lie below. From where I sat I could see no change, no sign that any danger had passed this way. But my sight was very limited.
I heard the barsk stir, looked back to see he struggled to get to his feet. I restrained him with an outflung hand.
“We are above the Valley. Lie you still, rest while you may.”
“You are going down?”
“I shall take precautions.” I brought out my rod. The moon was not at its height, but it was there. I began a deep song, an inward chant, and the kasi started down into the Valley.
KRIP VORLUND
XVII
WHEN I FIRST AWOKE and knew that I was still alive, tended by Maelen and once more in the Thassa van, it seemed that the dream in which I had been caught had come full circle. There was an acceptance in me, the kind with which one faces incongruities met in a nightmare, wherein nothing surprises. But I came to learn during the following hours that this Maelen was one I had not met before. I now saw Maelen not unsure, but rather as one to whom duty had become the lead star of life. And, in spite of my own need to know what must be faced, I could never press past certain boundaries she held.
As we descended into the mist-cloaked Valley, she kept the van to the exact center of the road. I read in her mind that those precautions or defenses which she had spoken of could well be our undoing even though we came in peace. That they had been the bane of those we trailed was a hope we shared.
Another worry nagged at me. Though my mind was alert, yet the body housing it was weak and would not obey my commands. Were we to be attacked I could offer nothing, not even in my own defense. I could lift my head, stretch my legs as I lay upon the mat. But if I drew a deep breath pain followed and there was a languor, which came and went, to disturb me. Maelen had healing powers, that I knew, but would they succeed with the wound in my breast-? There was good reason to believe that Osokun’s blade had bitten too deep, and that survival in my present body did not mean recovery.
I had gone to seek death when I had trailed Osokun and his sword-sworn, the shock of the ne-vvs Maelen brought from Yrjar sending me into that temporary madness. But there is planted, at least in my o\vn species a stubborn resistance to the end of existence. And now a small measure of hope bulwarked what spirit I had. The alternative Maelen suggested had possibilities. Equipped with a Thassa body, I could indeed return to Yrjar. The Traders shared a consular representative on the planet; I had met him when the Lydis landed. I could go to Prydo Alcey, state my case, let him send a message to Captain Foss. It ought to be easy to frame some message such as only Krip Vorlund could send to certify my identity. Then, with my own body returned, another switch and I would be truly myself.