Warlock by Andre Norton

Charis only looked at him.

“You’ll have to,” he repeated doggedly. “If they pick you up in any way, you haven’t a chance of going in as you’ve planned. Can’t you see? You are the only chance Lantee has now. But you’ll have to reach him in person in order to help; not this way!”

Thorvald was right. Charis had enough sense left to acknowledge that rightness, though that did not make it any easier when she thought of the small fire flickering close to extinction in a deep and all-abiding darkness.

“Hurry!” She moistened her dry lips with her tongue.

He was resetting their course. “Yes.”

The copter spiraled away to the right, heading toward the shore they could not see and the task she had set herself.

XVI

The stars were no longer sharp points above as the copter set down under Thorvald’s practiced control. An hour close to dawn— Dawn of what day? Time had either stretched slowly or fled swiftly since Charis had walked out onto the soil of Warlock. She could no longer be sure that it followed any ordered marking of minutes or hours. She stood now on the rock, shivering a little in the chill predawn wind.

“Meeerrrreee!” At the cry of welcome, Charis went down on her knees, holding out her arms to the shadow which sped toward her. The warmth of that small body pressing tight to hers, the loving dabs of tongue-tip against her throat, her chin, brought a measure of comforting confidence. Tsstu was again in the circle of Charis’s arms, avid for contact, excited in her welcome.

Then the rasp of harsher, coarser fur against the girl’s legs signaled Taggi’s arrival. A small grunting growl was his vocal hail as she put one hand to his upthrust head, scratching behind his small ears.

“Taggi?” Thorvald walked from the copter.

The wolverine slipped from under Charis’s hand, went to the Survey officer. He sniffed inquiringly at the other’s field boots, and then reared up against the man, his forepaws scraping Thorvald’s thigh as he gave voice to a sound between a whine and a growl. There was no mistaking the questioning note, nor the demand for enlightenment which came to Charis mentally. Taggi wanted the one he knew better than Thorvald.

Charis sat where she was, cradling the nuzzling Tsstu close to her, but reaching out mentally to capture Taggi’s thought stream, to try and tap that boiling and, to her, alien flow of brain energy. She touched and savored again, forcing herself not to shrink from the raw savagery, the strange stream. Taggi dropped on all fours. He was swaying from foot to foot, his blunt head swinging about so that he could eye her.

Thoughts—impressions like small sparks—whirled through the air above a stirred fire. Charis built up a picture of Shann Lantee within those sparks—Shann as she had seen him last on the hillside above the base.

Taggi came to her. His teeth closed upon the hand she held out in greeting, not with force enough to even pinch the skin but with the same caress of this kind that she had seen him give to Shann. And, too, inquiry—stronger and much more demanding.

Charis thought of the base as she had viewed it from the hill, knew that Taggi caught that. He dropped his hold upon her, turned halfway around to face in a new direction, and with his head up began sniffing the wind audibly.

Charis approached with some trepidation the real message she must pass along to the wolverine. Tsstu was much more in tune with her. How was she to project into that hunter’s brain the sense of danger and an understanding of from whence danger came? By pictures of Shann as a prisoner?

First she thought of Lantee as he stood free by the pool. Then she added imagined bonds, cords about his wrists and ankles, to restrain his freedom. There was a loud snarl of rage from Taggi. She had succeeded so far. But caution! The wolverine must not race recklessly in under that prodding.

“—reeeeuuu—” Tsstu gave a cry Charis knew meant warning. The wolverine looked back at them.

Inquiry flashed not at her but at the curl-cat. The animals had their own band of communication. Perhaps that was her best answer.

Charis changed the direction of her warning, no longer striving to hold contact with the wild, rich stream of Taggi’s thought, but to meet Tsstu’s. Strike back against the enemy, yes; free Shann, yes. But for now, caution.

The rumbling growl from Taggi grew fainter. He was still shuffling impatiently from foot to foot, his eagerness to be gone plain to read, but Tsstu had impressed him with the need for caution and the old craftiness of his breed was now in command. Wolverines have great curiosity, but they also have a strong instinct for self-preservation; they do not walk easily into what might be a trap, no matter how attractive the bait. And Taggi knew that he faced a trap.

Again Charis centered on Tsstu, thinking out as simply as she could her own plan for entering the base. Suddenly she looked to Thorvald.

“The nullifier—could it stop communication of mind with mind?”

He gave her the truth. “It could well be so.”

The animals must remain outside. Tsstu—the curl-cat was small—she could act as liaison between the wolverine and the base.

“Meeerrreee!” Agreement in that and another swift tongue-tip touch on Charis’s cheek.

The girl rose to her feet. “There’s no sense in delaying any longer. Time to go.” Putting down the curl-cat, she pulled the tie from her hair, shaking the loosened strands about her neck and shoulders. By the time she reached the base, her hair would be sufficiently wild-looking, filled with bits of leaf and twig. She could not tear the Wyvern material of her clothing, but earth stains would adhere to it and the crawling she had already done provided dirty blotches. There were raw and healing scratches on her arms and legs. She would well present the appearance of someone who had been lost in a wilderness for a time. Moreover, the nourishment given by the Sustain tablets had worn off so that she did not have to feign hunger or thirst; she felt them both.

“Take care—” Thorvald’s hand went out, almost as if he would hold her back on the very edge of action.

The contrast between that simple warning and what might lie ahead of her suddenly seemed to Charis so funny that a small, strangled sound of choked laughter was her first answer. Then she added, “Remember those words yourself. If you’re spotted by some air scout—”

“They might spot the copter, they won’t sight me. I’ll be ready to move in to you when I can.”

That “when I can” rang in Charis’s ears as she walked away. Better make that “if I can.” Now that she was committed to the venture, every possible fear—the product of a vivid imagination—swirled about her. She concentrated instead on her memory picture of Sheeha. She had to be Sheeha now as far as the invaders at the base were concerned—Sheeha, a woman brought in by the traders to contact the Wyverns, one who had broken at that meeting with the alien power. She had to be Sheeha.

Taggi played guide and advance scout, leading her down from the heights where the copter had landed. Here on the lowlands the predawn was still dark and Charis found the going more difficult. Her hair caught in branches; she tore free, adding more scratches to those she already bore. But that was all to the good.

For a while she carried Tsstu, but as they drew near the base, both animals took to cover and Charis kept touch by mind instead of sight or hearing.

Sun made silver droplets of the bubble shelters as Charis lurched into the open ground around the base. There was no need for her to fake her fatigue, for now she moved in a half-fog of exhaustion, her mouth dry, her ribs heaving with every gasping breath she drew. She must indeed look what she claimed to be—a fugitive, half-crazed, struggling out of the wilderness of a hostile world to seek the shelter and comfort of her own kind.

There was an unsealed door in the second of the bubbles. Charis headed for that. Movement there—a man in yellow coming into the open, staring at her. Charis forced a cry which was really a dry croak and slumped forward.

Calls—voices. She did not try to sort them out just yet but concentrated on lying limply where she had fallen, making no answer when she was rolled over, raised, and carried into the dome.

“What’s a woman doing here?” That was one voice.

“She’s been bush-runnin’. Lookit how she’s all scratched up and dirty. And that ain’t no service uniform. She ain’t from here. You tell the captain what just blew in?”