I allowed my mouth to hang open a little, and wavered as if I kept my feet only through an exhausting effort.
“Do- do not kill me! The fever- it is gone – I am whole now-“
“Fever?”
“Look at him, Captain,” my captor urged. “He is two colors – best take care-“
“You, Jern, hold your head up! Let us see-“
I swayed back and forth. They were still afraid of coming too close. The terror of plague deflated the toughest starman when he faced it.
“I am- am clean-“ I repeated. “They put me off in an LB – but now I am well – I swear it.”
The Captain palmed his com and spoke into it with a snap in that tongue that was not Basic. We waited in silence until a second man came running lightly out on the ramp. He held before him a small box, from which extended a length of slender cable, ending in a disc not unlike a hand com. I knew it for a portable diagnostic. The ship was apparently very well equipped.
Advancing within touching distance of me, the medico swung his search disc in careful examination, his eyes ever on the indicators of the box.
“Well?” It was plain the Captain found this interruption irritating.
“He is clean, by what we can judge. There is always the possibility though-“
“To what point?” pressed his commander.
“The hundreth perhaps. Who can say definitely?” The medico expressed the caution normal to his calling.
“We shall settle for that.” The Captain waved him back. “So,” he said to me, “it seems you are right. Your fever or whatever it was is, gone and you are no plague risk. But you were on board ship when it struck?”
“On a Free Trader- out of Tanth-“ I raised my hands to my head, rubbed them across my forehead as if I were dazed or in pain. “I-it is hard to remember. I was on Tanth – I had to escape. There was trouble. So I paid gems and Ostrend gave me passage. There was another world – the natives were all gone. And after that I was sick. They said it was plague – put me out in the LB. It made landing here – but there were natives – they hunted me-“
“To this place?” The Captain was smiling. “But how fortunate for you. The hunt ended in the one spot you might meet an off-world ship.”
“There was a wall- I followed it- and the wood people – they seemed afraid. I got in a wrecked ship, they did not come after me-“
“What fortune favored you, Jern, and us too! We might have met you elsewhere, but time is saved because we meet here. You see, you have been a focus of interest to others. We have long wanted to meet you “
“I-I do not understand-“
“What is the matter with him?” The Captain. rounded on the medico. “He is not rated as stupid in our reports.”
The medico shrugged “Who knows what happens to a man when a plague strikes? He is clean of infection as far as I can tell, but I cannot vouch for any changes a strange virus may have caused in mind or body.”
“We shall turn him over to you.” The Captain had lost his smile. “Suppose you make all the tests you need, and then let us know whether we have an imbecile or a source of reliable information.”
“Take him on board?” The medico hesitated.
“Where else? I thought you said he was clean-“
“There is always the chance it is something new.”
I felt rather than saw the Captain’s indecision. But that did not last long.
“What equipment will you need? Can it be brought out of the ship?” he asked.
“Most of it – yes. Where will you put him?”
“In the workings, where else? Segal, Onund, get what the medico needs. And you, Tusratti, take him over to the west tunnel.”
It was as if I had ceased to exist as a person, but had become an object to be moved around at their desire. In my role of dazed plague survivor I was willing to have it so. The X-Tee crewman urged me down to the riverbank, I moving as slowly and with as much of a limp as I could manage. There were others already at work there. Across the rocks and foaming water a section bridge had been anchored into place. It would appear they knew this place very well and had visited it before, making their preparations for setting up a base, if even a temporary one.
At the urging of my guard I wavered across the bridge, and through the ruins beyond. Our goal was one of those holes in the cliff face. But not the one to which the other crewmen were heading. What they carried were mining tools of the kind such as were used to pick riches from dead moons and asteroids.
“In-“ commanded the X-Tee. The hole to which he pointed was the farthest to the left. Then was debris from recent digging dumped on either side of the opening. But whatever they had been hunting they had not found here. They must be taking the holes in turn and were now working that two away from the one into which I was being ushered.
“I am – am hungry -“ I halted as if to get my breath, being careful to steady myself against a rock. “I am hungry – I need food-“
There was no readable expression on the X-Tee’s face. The hands of his upper pair of arms rested warningly on the butts of his double supply of lasers. For a long moment he stared at me and then he turned and called to one of the men on his way to the other tunnel.
In answer the other detached a packet from his belt and tossed it in our general direction. He had trusted to the unusual talents of my guard, and it did not fall short. Instead one of the X-Tee’s upper limbs snapped out to twice the length I would have believed possible, caught the flying object, and pulled back to hand it to me.
My fingers closed about a tube of E-ration and I did not have to fake the avidity with which I gripped its tip between my teeth, bit through the stopper, and spit it out, before sucking the semiliquid contents. No meal of my imagination could have topped the flavor of what now filled my mouth, or the satisfaction afforded me as it flowed in gulps down into me. The mixture was meant to sustain a man under working conditions; and it would renew my strength even more than usual food.
“On!” My guard thumped me on the shoulder with a stick which one of the extraordinarily agile limbs had picked up from the ground. He was careful, I noted, not to touch me. Apparently X-Tees also shared the fear of plague.
Sucking at the tube, I lurched on. And it seemed that the promised strength of the food was already working in me.
The tunnel was a dark mouth opening to engulf us. But the X-Tee produced a beamer. That this was an artificial way was most apparent. And for some distance inside, the stone showed only the marks of its first working. Then recent scars were displayed in great slashes, both horizontal and vertical, until in places they formed a grid.
I saw the glisten of crystals still embedded in the slashes or lying in broken lumps on the ground. And my interest almost made me betray myself. But I remembered just in time that I was playing stupid. Apparently these were not what the crewmen had been searching for. Though they now caught and reflected the light as if a wealth of gems were spilled, yet they had been discarded. This struck me as odd, since ordinarily no Guild ship would pass up anything remotely suggesting profit.
We came to a hollowed-out space where the tunnel ended. Here the walls had been quarried in great rough arches and niches, as if those who had worked here had been so sure they were about to find what they sought that they had used their tools in a frenzy. The X-Tee motioned to a pile of rock. “Sit!”
I lowered myself stiffly to obey his order, still sucking at the tube of E-ration. He planted the beamer on another pile across the open space and turned it to high-diffuse, to light all but the innermost portions of the hollows in the walls. Then he took his place between me and the tunnel entrance.
During the silence which followed I could hear the drip-drip of water somewhere, though there was no evidence of moisture in the tunnel. And a little later I could both hear and feel through the rock the activities of those working farther along in the cliff.