Warlock by Andre Norton

Now she explored with her hands. He wore the bulk of a planet suit, the heavy boots of an explorer. But his head was uncovered and he lay face up. His skin was very cold, but when she held her hand palm down over his lips she could feel a breath puff against her skin. Entranced? It might well be. If so, to bring him out would be a matter requiring more skill than she possessed. Ogan should be here.

“No—Ogan kill!”

Harath’s thought was like a blow, sharp enough to make her start back.

“You—Harath—reach—reach—” The alien’s communication was in her mind. The emotion of fear which her suggestion of Ogan had raised in him had upset him to the point where he could not mind-send coherently. What lay behind that fear, Ziantha could not guess, but its reality she did not doubt in the least. If Harath said Ogan was a danger, she was willing to accept his verdict.

“Harath—” she sent the thought in as calm a fashion as she could summon. “How do we reach—?”

He appeared able now to control himself.

“Send—with Harath—send—”

Did he mean reverse the process that one generally used with Harath—lend her energy to the alien, rather than draw upon his as she had in the past?

“Yes, yes!” He was eager in affirmation of that.

“I will send,” she agreed without further question.

With one hand she unsealed her suit, brought out the focus-stones. Whether those might lend any force to this quest she could not tell, but that they needed all the energy they could call upon now she firmly believed.

Then she leaned forward again over the limp body, touched her fingers to the cold forehead. Around her wrist closed, in a grip as tight as a punishing bond, one of Harath’s tentacles. They were now linked physically as they must be linked mentally if this was to succeed.

There was a dizzy sensation of great speed, as if she—or that part of Ziantha that was her innermost self—was being swung out and out and out into a place where all was chaos and there was no stability except that tie with Harath. Farther and farther they quested. The focus-stones grew warm in her hand; she was aware of those and that from them was flowing now a steady push of energy. It passed through her body, down her arms, to those fingers, to the tentacle, where their three bodies met in touch.

Swing, swing, out and out and out—until Ziantha wanted to cry Enough! That if they ventured farther their tie with reality would snap and they would be as lost as he whom they sought and could not find.

16

The flaw in the pattern was that she could not build up any mind picture on which to focus the energy. Turan could have been such a goal, but this man she crouched over now she had never seen, could not picture as his head lay in the shadows and she had only touch to guide her. One must have such a focus—

Did Harath see humans as they were? Could he build such a mind picture as it should be built in order to search? Ziantha doubted it. For their swing was failing now, falling back in waning sweeps.

“Hunt!” Harath’s urging was sharp.

“We must have a picture.” She forced upon him in return her own conclusion for the reason of their failure. “Build a picture, Harath!”

Only what wavered then into her mind was so distorted that she nearly broke contact, so shocked was she by that weird figure Harath projected, a mixture, unbelievable, of his own species and Ziantha’s, something which manifestly did not exist.

“We must have a true picture.” They were back in the hollow, still united by touch, but warring in mind.

The alien’s frustration was fast turning to rage, perhaps aimed at her because of his own inadequacies. Ziantha summoned patience.

“This is a man of my kind,” she told Harath. “But if it is he who followed me into that other time, I do not know him as himself. I cannot build the picture that we need. I must see him as he really is—”

Because Harath was so aroused by their failure, which he appeared to blame on her, she feared he would withdraw altogether. Their mind-touch was snapped by his will, and his tentacle dropped from her wrist.

The moon’s greenish light was on the lip of the hollow in which they crouched. If she could somehow pull the inert man at her feet up into that—

It seemed to her that there was no other way to learn what she must. Putting the Eyes into safekeeping once more, she caught the man’s body, labored to pull it up to the light. But it was a struggle even though he was smaller, lighter than Ogan or one of the crewmen. Finally she brought him to where the moon touched his face.

It was hard to judge in the weird green glow, but she thought his skin as dark as that of a veteran crewman. His hair was cropped close, also, as if to make the wearing of a helmet comfortable, and it was very tightly curled against his skull.

His features were regular; he might be termed pleasantly endowed according to the standards of her kind. But what she was to do now was to learn that face, learn every portion of it as well as if she had seen it each and every day of her existence, fix it so straight in her mind that she could never forget or lose it.

Ziantha stretched out her hand, drawing fingers, with the lightest touch, across his forehead, down the bridge of his nose, tracing the generous curve of his full lips, the firm angle of his chin and jaw. So was he made and she must remember.

Harath crowded in beside her.

“Hurry—he is lost. If he is too long lost—”

She knew that ancient, eating horror of all sensitives when they evoked the trance state—to be lost out of body. But she had to make sure that she would know now whom they sought in those ways which were unlike any world her kind walked.

“I know—” Ziantha only trusted that it was now true that she did indeed know.

Once more she took the Eyes from concealment, gripped them tightly in her left hand, set the fingers of the right to the forehead of the stranger, felt Harath loop tentacle touch to her wrist.

“Now—” This time she gave the signal. But she was not aware of that swing out into the void as she had been when the alien had guided their searching. Rather she fastened in her mind, behind her closed eyes, only one thing: the stranger’s face.

They were not going in search now; they were calling with all the power they possessed, all that could be summoned through the Eyes. Though she did not have a name to call upon, which would have given her efforts greater accuracy, she must use this picture to the full.

He who has this seeming—wherever he now wanders—let him—COME!

Her body, her mind became one summoning cry. That she could long hold it to this pitch she doubted. But as long as she might, that she would.

“Come!”

A stirring—faint—far away—as if something crawled painfully.

“Come!”

There was indeed an answer, weak, but aiming for her with dogged determination. She dared feel no elation, allow any thought of success to trouble the resolute pull of her call.

“Come!”

So painfully slow. And she was weakening even with the energy that flowed into her from the stones, from Harath—

“Come!”

One last effort to put into that drawing all that she had. Then Ziantha broke, unable any longer to sustain the contact.

The girl fell face down, one arm across the body of the stranger. She was conscious, but strength was so drained out of her, she felt so weak and sick, that she could neither move nor utter a sound, even when she felt the other stir.

He pulled free of her, struggling to sit up. Harath was hopping about them both, uttering those clicks of beak that in him signaled unusual emotion. Faintly Ziantha heard the stranger mutter in some tongue that was not Basic. But there was a roaring in her own ears, a need to just lie there, unable to so much as raise a hand as the great weakness that followed her effort held her fast.

She thought the stranger was dazed, that he did not realize at first where he was or what had happened. But if that were so he made a quick recovery. For he suddenly stooped to look at her, exclaiming in his own language.

Then he lifted her up, straightening her body so she could lie in a more comfortable position, as if he well understood the malaise that gripped her. But he did not try mind-touch, for which she was grateful. Perhaps his long ordeal had exhausted his psychic energy for the time as much as the search had hers.