“There is a reason for everything,” the voice continued. “As yet Yurth blood have not found the final path they must walk. It is laid upon them never to stop the seeking. It may be given to you, who have made the Pilgrimage now, to find that path, to bring into light all those who struggled in the darkness. Search-for some time there will be such a discovery.”
The voice was still. Elossa knew without being told that it would not speak to her again. There flowed in upon her such a sense of loss and loneliness that she cried out, bowed her head to cover her face with her hands. Tears flowed to wet the palms of those hands. It was such a loss which even the death of someone she was kin to could not equal. For among the Yurth there were no close ties, each was alone within himself, locked, she saw now, in a prison she had never understood before. Until this moment she had accepted this loneliness without being aware of it. That, too, the machine which had awakened the Upper Sense had left with them as dour punishment.
She could feel now, deep in the innermost part of her a glimmering of need. What need? Why must the punishment be laid upon them over and over, generation after generation? What was it that they must seek in order to be entirely free? If not to reach the stars from which they had been exiled, then here, that they need not always walk apart-even separate always from their own kind?
“What must we do?” Elossa dropped her hands, and stared at the dark and lifeless screen. She had not used mind-speech, her demand had been aloud, delivered to the dead silence of the room.
8.
Elossa did not expect any answer. She was certain she would never hear that voice again. Whatever result might come from this widening of her knowledge would be born from her thoughts and actions alone. Slowly she arose from the chair. Just as the Upper Sense had been drained by her exertions to reach this end of her quest, so now was hope and belief in the future ebbing from her.
What was left for the Yurth? They, whose blood had once dared the star ways, were planted forever on a world which hated them-outcasts and wanderers. Of what purpose were they? Better that they take steps now to erase their existence. . . .
Bleak and bitter thoughts, yet they clung to her mind, made the world look gray and cold.
“Sky-devil!”
Elossa turned to meet the eyes of the Raski. She had forgotten him. Had he seen what she had been forced to witness, the destruction of the world which had been that of his blood and kin?
She held up her hands, empty and palm out. “Did you see?”
Had the pictures on the screen been for her alone, cast there by a mental force denied his kind?
Now he tramped forward. The madness did not haunt his eyes, he was all man, not possessed by any emanation from the dead. His face was sternly set-and she could no longer use a mind probe to read his thoughts! It was as if he, too, had one of the barriers the Yurth could set about them.
“I saw.” He broke the small moment of silence which had fallen. “This-” He slapped the back of the chair in which she had sat with force enough to make it quiver a little as if it were not firmly fastened to any base. “This-ship-of yours gave death to the city. But not only to the city.” He paused as if searching for words to make his meaning very clear to her.
“We were a great people-did you not see? We were not then dwellers in ill-made huts! What were we, what might we have been had this not come to us?”
The girl moistened her lips with the point of her tongue. For that she had no answer. It was true that the city she had seen both in her dream and on the screen was something greater than any existing now on this world. Just as, and now she would admit it, in her eyes this Stans was different from the Raski she knew. In him must linger something of the ability which built Kal-Nath-Tan.
“You were a great people,” she acknowledged. “A city died, a people were left in shock and despair. But-” She moistened her lips again. “What happened after?” Her own mind began to throw aside the heavy load of sorrow and despair which had clouded her thoughts.
“What happened here was long and long ago. Not in a few years does nature so overlay ruins- or this ship be buried so deeply. Why have your people not found again their stairway upward? They live in their mud huts, they fear all which is different from them, they do not try to be other than they are.”
His frown was black, his lips parted as if he would shout her down, she felt his rage building. Then. . . . The hand which had been deep clenched upon the back of the chair loosened its hold a trifle. “Why?” he repeated. She thought he did not ask that of her in return, but rather of himself. The moment of silence between them stretched even longer this time. His intent stare had shifted from her to the now dead screen behind her shoulders.
“I never thought-” His voice was lower, the anger in him was yielding. “Why?” Now he demanded that of the screen. “Why did we sink into the mud and remain there? Why do our people bow knee to a King-Head such as Galdor who cares nothing save to fill his belly and reach for a woman? Why?”
Now his eyes came once more to her. There was a fierceness rising in him as if he would have the answers out of her by the force of his will.
“Ask that of the Raski,” Elossa answered him, “not the Yurth.”
“Yes, the Yurth!” She had made a mistake, focusing on her once again his attention. Still, though there was still anger in him, it was not so great.
“What have you of the Yurth?” He watched her warily as if he expected her at any moment to produce some weapon. “What have you that we hold not? You live in caves and branch huts, no better housed than the rog or the sargon. You wear rough cloth such as cover our laborers in the fields. You have nothing of outward show-nothing! Yet you can walk among us and each and every one, even full of hate, will not raise hand to you. You weave spells. Do you then live among those spells, Yurth?”
“We might. We do not choose to do so. If one deceives himself then he loses everything.” Elossa had never really talked to a Raski except on small matters, such as chaffering for food in some market place. What he said, yes, it was a puzzle. She glanced around her at the chamber in which they stood.
This had been made by Yurth, the same Yurth who now lived, as Stans had pointed out, in caves and huts far more primitive than the dwellings of the Raski. Cloth of her own weaving was on her body, and it was coarse and near colorless. She had never really looked upon herself, her people. She had accepted all as part of life. Now, drawing even a little apart, she wondered for the first time. Their life was deliberately austere and grim. Part of the punishment laid upon them?
The same years had passed for Yurth as for Raski. Even as the Raski had not regained what they had lost, so did the Yurth make no move to better the punishment laid upon them. Were both races to live ever so?
“Deceive himself?” Stans broke into her thoughts. “What is deceit, Yurth? Do we inwardly say, we of the Raski, great things were taken from us, so we dare not try to rise to such heights again? Is this our deceit? If so it is time that we face the truth and do not flee from it And you, Yurth-you who had the stars, because one of your blood made a mistake long ago-are you to walk in penance forever?”
Elossa drew a deep breath. He had challenged her. Perhaps Yurth had gained much with the awakening of the Upper Sense. But, also, perhaps they had accepted that as much of life as they could expect. Now she had a question of her own.
“Have you never asked such questions before, Stans of the House of Philbur?”
He still frowned, but not at her, she guessed. Rather he was seeking some thought he had not tried to capture before.
“I have not, Yurth.”
“My name-” Oddly irritated at his form of address, the girl interrupted him, “-is Elossa-we count no Houses in our reckoning.”