Warlock by Andre Norton

“Several ifs in that.”

Lantee smiled his humorless, lip-stretching smile. “Life is full of ifs, Gentle Fem. I’ve carried a pack of them for years.”

“Where are you from, Shann?”

“Tyr.” The answer was short, bitten off as if meant to be final.

“Tyr,” Charis repeated. The name meant nothing to her, but who could ever catalogue the thousands of worlds where Terran blood had rooted, flowered, branched, and broken free to roam inward.

“Mining world. Right—right about there!” He had lifted his head and now he pointed northward into the sky which was displaying the more brilliant shades of sunset.

“I was born on Minos. But that doesn’t mean much since my father was an Education officer. I’ve lived on—five—six—Demeter was the seventh world.”

“Education officer?” Lantee echoed. “Then how did you get with Jagan? You beamed in a tape asking for aid. What was that all about anyway?”

She cut the story of Demeter and the labor contract to its bare bones as she told it.

“I don’t know whether Jagan could have held you to that contract here on Warlock. On some worlds it’d be legal, but anyway you could have fought him with Thorvald’s backing,” he observed when she was done.

“Doesn’t matter much now. You know—I didn’t like Warlock at first. It—it was almost frightening. But now, even with all this, I want to stay here.” Charis was surprised at her own words. She had said them impulsively but she knew they were true.

“By ordinary standards, this will never be a settlement world under the code.”

“I know—intelligent native life over the fifth degree—so we stay out. How many Wyverns are there anyway?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? They must have more than one settlement among the off-shore islands, but we do not go except to their prime base and then only on permission. You perhaps know more about them than we do.”

“This dreaming,” Charis mused. “Who can be sure of anything with them? But can the Power really be used by males? They are so certain that it can’t. And if they’re right about that, what can the Company do?”

“Follow Jagan’s lead and bring in women,” he retorted. “But we’re not sure that they are right. Maybe their males can’t ‘dream true,’ as they express it, but I dreamed, and Thorvald did, when they put us through their test at first contact. Whether I could use a disk or pattern as you have I don’t know. Their whole setup is so one-sided that contact with another way of life could push it entirely off base. Maybe if they were willing to try—”

“Listen!” Charis caught at his sleeve. Speculation about the future was interesting, but action was needed now. “What if you can use a pattern? You know the whole base; you could get down there and out again if you have to. It would be the perfect way to scout!”

Lantee stared at her. “If it did work—!” She watched him catch some of her enthusiasm. “If it just would work!”

He studied the base. The shadows cast by the domes were far more pronounced, though the sky was still bright over their heads. “I could try for my own quarters. But how would I get out again? There’s no disk—”

“We’ll have to make one or its equivalent. Let’s see.” Charis wriggled about under their brush cover. The initial pattern to get in by—she could draw that on the ground as she had before. But the other one—to bring Lantee out again—he’d have to carry that with him. How?

“Could you use this?” The Survey man pulled free a wide, dark leaf. Its purple surface was smooth save for a center rib and it was as big as her two hands.

“Try this to mark with.” He had out his case of small tools and handed her a sharply pointed rod.

Carefully Charis traced the design which had unlocked so many strange places since she had first used it. Luckily the marks showed up well. When she had done, she handed the leaf to Lantee.

“It works so. First, you picture in your mind as clearly as you can the place you want to go. Then you concentrate on following this design with your eyes, from right to left—”

He glanced from the leaf to the base. “They can’t be everywhere,” he muttered.

Charis bit back a warning. Lantee knew the terrain better than she. Perhaps he, too, was chafing at inactivity. And, if the leaf pattern worked, he could be in and out of any danger before those who discovered him could move. It would be, or should be, sufficiently disconcerting to have a man materialize out of thin air before one, to give the materializer some seconds of advantage in any surprise confrontation.

Lantee’s expression changed. He had made up his mind. “Now!”

Charis could not bring herself to agree in this final moment. As he had said earlier, there were so many ifs. But neither had she the right to persuade him not to make the try.

He slid down the slope behind them, putting the hill between him and the base before getting to his feet, the leaf in his hands. His jaw set, his whole face became a mask of concentration. Nothing happened. When he looked up at her, his expression was bleak and pinched.

“The witches are right. It won’t work for me!”

“Perhaps—” Charis had another thought.

“They must be right! It didn’t work.”

“Maybe for another reason. That’s my pattern, the one they gave me in the beginning.”

“You mean the patterns are individual—separate codes?”

“It’s reasonable to believe that. You know how they wear those decorative skin patterns, made up partially of their ancestors’ private designs, in order to increase their own Power. But each of them has her disk with her own design on it. It could be that only that works really.”

“Then I do it the hard way,” he replied. “Go in after dark.”

“Or I could go, if you’d give me a reference point as you did when we came here.”

“No!” There was no arguing against that; she read an adamant refusal in his whole stance.

“Together—as we came here?”

He balanced the leaf in his hand. Charis knew that he longed to be as decisive with another “no,” but there were advantages in her second suggestion which he had to recognize. She pushed that indecision quickly; not that she had any desire to penetrate into the enemy’s camp, but neither did she want to remain here alone and perhaps witness Lantee’s capture. To her mind, with the Power the two of them would have a better chance working together than the Survey man had as a lone scout.

“We can get in—and out—in a hurry. You’ve already agreed that’s true.”

“I don’t like it.”

She laughed. “What can one like about this? It is something we have agreed must be done. Or shall we just take to the countryside and wait out whatever they are planning to do?” Such prodding was not fair of her, but her impatience was rising to a point where it threatened her control.

“All right!” He was angry. “The room is like this.” Down on one knee, he sketched out a plan, explaining curtly. Then, before she could move, those same brown fingers were against her forehead, giving her once more that fuzzy picture. Charis jerked away from that contact.

“I told you—not that! Not again!” The girl had no desire to recall any of the earlier dizzy, frightening time when they joined minds after a fashion, when the strange thoughts strove to storm her own mental passages.

Lantee flushed and drew his hand back. Her uneasiness and faint disgust were at once overlaid by a feeling of guilt. After all, he was doing the best he could to insure the success of their action.

“I have the picture now as clearly as I had this place, and we came here safely,” she said hurriedly. “Let’s go!” For a moment his hand resisted her grasp as she caught it, then his hold tightened on hers.

First the room—then the pattern. It was becoming a familiar exercise, one she had full confidence in. But now—nothing happened.

It was as if she had thrown herself against some immovable and impenetrable wall! The barrier the Wyverns had reared to control her movements earlier? It was not that. She would have known it for what it was. This was different—a new sensation altogether.

She opened her eyes. “Did you feel it?” Lantee might not be able to work the transference on his own; but, linked, they had done it successfully once, so perhaps some part of the present failure had reached him.

“Yes. You know what it means? They do have a nullifier to protect them!”

“And it works!” Charis shivered, her hand creasing the leaf into a pulp.

“We were already sure that it did,” he reminded her. “Now—I shall go by myself.”