“And what if another ship comes—one of yours?” Menlik asked shrewdly.
Travis stared beyond the Tatar shaman to the men about the fire. His nightmare dragged into the open . . . What if a ship did come in, one with Ashe, Murdock, men he knew and liked, friends on board? What then of his guardianship of the towers and their knowledge? Could he be as sure of what to do then? He rubbed his hand across his forehead and said slowly:
“We shall take steps when—or if—that happens—”
But could they, would they? He began to hope fiercely that it would not happen, at least in his lifetime, and then felt the cold bleakness of the exile they must will themselves into.
“Whether we like it or not,” (was he talking to the others or trying to argue down his own rebellion?) “we cannot let what lies under the towers be known . . . found . . . used . . . unless by men who are wiser and more controlled than we are in our time.”
Menlik drew his shaman’s wand, twiddled it between his fingers, and beneath his drooping lids watched the three Apaches with a new kind of measurement.
“Then I say to you this: Such a guardianship must be a double charge, shared by my people as well. For if they suspect that you alone control these powers and their secret, there will be envy, hatred, fear, a division between us from the first—war . . . raids . . . This is a large land and neither of our groups numbers many. Shall we split apart fatally from this day when there is room for all? If these ancient things are evil, then let us both guard them with a common taboo.”
He was right, of course. And they would have to face the truth squarely. To both Apache and Mongol any off-world ship, no matter from which side, would be a menace. Here was where they would remain and set roots. The sooner they began thinking of themselves as people with a common bond, the better it would be. And Menlik’s suggestion provided a tie.
“You speak well,” Buck was saying. “This shall be a thing we share. We are three who know. Do you be three also, but choose well, Menlik!”
“Be assured that I will!” the Tatar returned. “We start a new life here; there is no going back. But as I have said: The land is wide. We have no quarrel with one another, and perhaps our two peoples shall become one; after all, we do not differ too greatly. . . .” He smiled and gestured to the fire and the dancers.
Among the Mongols another man had gone into action, his head thrown back as he leaped and twirled, voicing a deep war cry. Travis recognized Deklay. Apache, Mongol—both raiders, horsemen, hunters, fighters when the need arose. No, there was no great difference. Both had been tricked into coming here, and they had no allegiance now for those who had sent them.
Perhaps clan and Horde would combine or perhaps they would drift apart—time would tell. But there would be the bond of the guardianship, the determination that what slept in the towers would not be roused—in their lifetime or many lifetimes!
Travis smiled a bit crookedly. A new religion of sorts, a priesthood with sacred and forbidden knowledge . . . in time a whole new life and civilization stemming from this night. The bleak cold of his early thought cut less deep. There was a different kind of adventure here.
He reached out and gathered up the bundle of the burners, glancing from Buck to Jil-Lee to Menlik. Then he stood up, the weight of the burden in his arms, the feeling of a greater weight inside him.
“Shall we go?”
To get the weapons back—that was of first importance. Maybe then he could sleep soundly, to dream of riding across the Arizona range at dawn under a blue sky with a wind in his face, a wind carrying the scent of piñon pine and sage, a wind which would never caress or hearten him again, a wind his sons and sons’ sons would never know. To dream troubled dreams, and hope in time those dreams would fade and thin—that a new world would blanket out the old. Better so, Travis told himself with defiance and determination—better so!
Key Out of Time
1: Lotus World
There was a shading of rose in the pearl arch of sky, deepening to a rainbow tint of cloud. The lazy swells of the ocean held the same soft color, darkened with crimson veins where spirals of weed drifted. A rose world bathed in soft sunlight, knowing only gentle winds, peace, and—sloth.
Ross Murdock leaned forward over the edge of the rock ledge to peer down at a beach of fine sand, pale pink sand. Here and there sparkled the glitter of crystalline shells—or were those fluted ovals shells? Even the waves came in languidly. And the breeze which ruffled his hair and caressed his sun-browned, half-bare body, lightly stirred the growths which the Terran settlers called “trees” but which possessed long lacy fronds instead of true branches.
Hawaika—named for the old Polynesian paradise—a world seemingly without flaw except the subtle one of being too perfect, too welcoming, too wooing. Its long, uneventful, unchanging days enticed forgetfulness, offered a life without effort. Except for the mystery . . .
Because this world was not the one pictured on the tape which had brought the human settlement team here. A map, a directing guide, a description all in one, that was the ancient voyage tape. Ross himself had helped to loot a storehouse on an unknown planet for a cargo of such tapes. Once they had been the space-navigation guides for a race or races who had ruled the star lanes ten thousand years ago in his own world’s past, a civilization which had long since sunk back into dust.
Those tapes returned to Earth after their chance discovery, were studied, probed, deciphered by the best brains of his time, shared out by lot between already suspicious global powers, bringing into the exploration of space bitter rivalries and old hatreds.
Such a tape had landed their ship on Hawaika, a world of shallow seas and archipelagoes instead of true continents. The settlement team had had all the knowledge contained on that tape crowded into them, only to discover that much they had learned from it was false!
Of course, none of them had expected to discover the cities or the civilization the tape had projected as existing in that long-ago period. But no present island string that they had visited approximated those on the maps they had seen, and so far they had not found any trace that any intelligent beings had walked, built, or lived on these beautiful, slumberous atolls. So, what had happened to the Hawaika of the tape?
Ross’s right hand rubbed across the ridged scars which disfigured his left one, to be carried for the rest of his life as a mark of his meeting with the star voyagers in the past of his own world. He had deliberately seared his own flesh to break their mental control over him. Then the battle had gone his way. But from it he had brought another scar—the unease of that old terror when Ross Murdock, outlaw by the conventions of his own era, Ross Murdock who considered himself exceedingly tough and made tougher yet by training for Time Agent sorties, had come up against a power he did not understand.
Now he breathed deeply of the wind—the smell of the sea, the scents of the land growths, strange but pleasant. So easy to relax, to drop into the soft, lulling swing of this world in which they had found no fault, no danger, no irritant. Yet, once those others had been here—the blue-suited, hairless ones he called “Baldies.” And what had happened then . . . or afterward?
A black head, brown shoulders, slender body, broke the sleepy slip of the waves. A shimmering mask covered the face, flashing in the sun. Two hands freed a chin curved yet firmly set, a mouth made more for laughter than sternness, wide dark eyes. Karara Trehern of the Alii, once a lineage of divine chieftains in Hawaii, was an exceedingly pretty girl.
But Ross regarded her aloofly, with coldness which bordered on hostility, as she flipped her mask into its pocket on top of the gill-pack. Below his rocky perch she came to a halt, her feet slightly apart in the sand. There was an impish twist to her lips as she called:
“Why not come in? The water’s fine.”
“Perfect, like all the rest of this.” Some of his impatience came out in the sour tone. “No luck, as usual?”
“As usual,” Karara conceded. “If there ever was a civilization here, it’s been gone so long we’ll probably never find any traces. Why don’t you just pick out a good place to set up that time-probe and try it blind?”