“What of it?” Ross demanded sharply. This was no time for an appeal to the sympathies.
But Karara did not urge any modification of the bonds as he half feared she would. Instead, she sat back cross-legged, an odd, withdrawn expression making her seem remote though he could have put out his hand to touch her.
“His lameness—it could be a bridge,” she observed, to Ross’s mystification.
“A bridge—what do you mean?”
The girl shook her head. “This is only a feeling, not a true thought. But also it is important. Look, I think he is waking.”
The lids above those large eyes were fluttering. Then with a shake of the head, the Hawaikan blinked up at them. Blank bewilderment was all Ross could read in the stranger’s expression until the alien saw Karara. Then a flood of clicking speech poured from his lips.
He seemed utterly astounded when they made no answer. And the fluency of his first outburst took on a pleading note, while the expectancy of his first greeting faded away.
Karara spoke to Ross. “He is becoming afraid, very much afraid. At first, I think, he was pleased . . . happy.”
“But why?”
The girl shook her head. “I do not know; I can only feel. Wait!” Her hand rose in imperious command. She did not rise to her feet, but crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the ledge. Both dolphins were there, raising their heads well out of the water, their actions expressing unusual excitement.
“Ross!” Karara’s voice rang loudly. “Ross, they can understand him! Tino-rau and Taua can understand him!”
“You mean, they understand this language?” Ross found that fantastic, awesome as the abilities of the dolphins were.
“No, his mind. It’s his mind, Ross. Somehow he thinks in patterns they can pick up and read! They do that, you know, with a few of us, but not in the same way. This is more direct, clearer! They’re so excited!”
Ross glanced at the prisoner. The alien had wriggled about, striving to raise his head against the wall as a support. His captor pulled the Hawaikan into a sitting position, but the native accepted that aid almost as if he were not even aware of Ross’s hands on his body. He stared with a kind of horrified disbelief at the bobbing dolphin heads.
“He is afraid,” Karara reported. “He has never known such communication before.”
“Can they ask him questions?” demanded Ross. If this odd mental tie between Terran dolphin and Hawaikan did exist, then there was a chance to learn about this world.
“They can try. Now he only knows fear, and they must break through that.”
What followed was the oddest four-sided conversation Ross could have ever imagined. He put a question to Karara, who relayed it to the dolphins. In turn, they asked it mentally of the Hawaikan and conveyed his answer back via the same route.
It took some time to allay the fears of the stranger. But at last the Hawaikan entered wholeheartedly into the exchange.
“He is the son of the lord ruling the castle above.” Karara produced the first rational and complete answer. “But for some reason he is not accepted by his own kind. Perhaps,” she added on her own, “it is because he is crippled. The sea is his home, as he expresses it, and he believes me to be some mythical being out of it. He saw me swimming, masked, and with the dolphins, and he is sure I change shape at will.”
She hesitated. “Ross, I get something odd here. He does know, or thinks he knows, creatures who can appear and disappear at will. And he is afraid of their powers.”
“Gods and goddesses—perfectly natural.”
Karara shook her head. “No, this is more concrete than a religious belief.”
Ross had a sudden inspiration. Hurriedly he described the cloaked figure who had driven the castle people from the piles of salvage. “Ask him about that one.”
She relayed the question. Ross saw the prisoner’s head jerk around. The Hawaikan looked from Karara to her companion, a shade of speculation in his expression.
“He wants to know why you ask about the Foanna? Surely you must well know what manner of beings they are.”
“Listen—” Ross was sure now that he had made a real discovery, though its importance he could not guess, “tell him we come from where there are no Foanna. That we have powers and must know of their powers.”
If he could only carry on this interrogation straight and not have to depend upon a double translation! And could he even be sure his questions reached the alien undistorted?
Wearily Ross sat back on his heels. Then he glanced at Karara with a twinge of concern. If he was tired by their roundabout communication, she must be doubly so. There was a droop to her shoulders, and her last reply had come in a voice hoarse with fatigue. Abruptly he started up.
“That’s enough—for now.”
Which was true. He had to have time for evaluation, to adjust to what they had learned during the steady stream of questions passed back and forth. And in that moment he was conscious of his hunger, just as his voice was paper dry from lack of drink. The canister of supplies he had left by the cave entrance . . .
“We need food and drink.” He fumbled with his mask, but Karara motioned him back from the water.
“Taua brings . . . Wait!”
The dolphin trailed the net of containers to them. Ross unscrewed one, pulled out a bulb of fresh water. A second box yielded the dry wafers of emergency rations.
Then, after a moment’s hesitation, Ross crossed to the prisoner, cut his wrist bonds, and pressed both a bulb and a wafer into his hold. The Hawaikan watched the humans eat before he bit into the wafer, chewing it with vigor, turning the bulb around in his fingers with alert interest before he sucked at its contents.
As Ross chewed and swallowed, mechanically and certainly with no relish, he fitted one fact to another to make a picture of this Hawaikan time period in which they were now marooned. Of course, his picture was based on facts they had learned from their captive. Perhaps he had purposely misled them or fogged some essentials. But could he have done that in a mental contact? Ross would simply have to accept everything with a certain amount of cautious skepticism.
Anyway, there were the Wreckers of the castle—petty lordlings setting up their holds along the coasts, preying upon the shipping which was the lifeblood of this island-water world. The humans had seen them in action last night and today. And if the captive’s information was correct, it was not only the storm’s fury which brought the waves’ harvest. The Wreckers had some method of attracting ships to crack up on their reefs.
Some method of attraction . . . And that force which had pulled them through the time gate; could there be a connection? However, there remained the Wreckers on the cliff. And their prey, the seafarers of the ocean, with an understandably deep enmity between them.
Those two parties Ross could understand and be prepared to deal with, he thought. But there remained the Foanna. And, from their prisoner’s explanation, the Foanna were a very different matter.
They possessed a power which did not depend upon swords or ships or the natural tools and weapons of men. No, they had strengths which were unearthly, to give them superiority in all but one way—numbers. Though the Foanna had their warriors and servants, as Ross had seen on the beach, they, themselves, were of another race—a very old and dying race of which few remained. How many, their enemies could not say, for the Foanna had no separate identities known to the outer world. They appeared, gave their orders, levied their demands, opposed or aided as they wished—always just one or two at a time—always so muffled in their cloaks that even their physical appearances remained a mystery. But there was no mystery about their powers. Ross gathered that no Wrecker lord, no matter how much a leader among his own kind, how ambitious, had yet dared to opposed actively one of the Foanna, though he might make a token protest against some demand from them.
And certainly the captive’s description of those powers in action suggested a supernatural origin of Foanna knowledge, or at least its application. But Ross thought that the answer might be that they possessed the remnants of some almost forgotten technical know-how, the heritage of a very old race. He had tried to learn something of the origin of the Foanna themselves, wondering if the robed ones could be from the galactic empire. But the answer had come that the Foanna were older than recorded time, that they lived in the great citadel before the race of the humans’ prisoner had risen from very primitive savagery.