The Zero Stone Read online

  “Fishing-“

  “What-?” I began.

  “Silence!” Eet was at his most arrogant. “Fishing-yes. Now take care. I cannot read much of this creature’s mind. It is on a very low band - very low. It thinks mainly of food, and its thought processes are very slow and primitive. But it is traveling toward a body of water where it hopes to fish.”

  “The one with the club?”

  “Unless there are two native species of primitive forms,” conceded Eet, “this one is like that. As to its being the same, who knows? I think this is a route often used by its kind. It walks the trail with the confidence of a thing going a familiar road on which it has nothing to fear.”

  I did not share his confidence. For there was a thunderous crash not too far away. I threw myself, and incidentally Eet, toward the nearest tree, planted my back to it, and stood with that sap-stained knife ready. My field of vision was too limited. I could see nothing beyond the vines and boles. But I tried to put my ears to service.

  Nothing stirred. It had sounded as if one of those trees, which must have roots reaching to the very core of this world, had crashed. Crashed-? But the trees must eventually die. And having died and begun to rot, with the weight of the vines and parasites with which they were covered, would they not fall? As had the one which had made the second clearing? But what if the very one I had chosen as my backing would be the next? I moved away almost as fast as I had sought it.

  I do not know how a thought can suggest laughter, but such a thought flowed from Eet. He was fast becoming, I decided, a less than perfect companion.

  As if I were being punished for that, I caught one of my boots in a loop of root or vines and crashed as helplessly as the dead tree must have done. A thrust of irritation, sharp as any physical blow, struck me. Eet had leaped free in one of his flash reactions, and now sat a short distance away, his fangs bared, his whole stance expressing disgust.

  “If you must clump about,” he spat, “then at least lift your feet when you move them. But why do you continue to wear that burden of a useless overskin?”

  Why indeed? I struggled to sit up. Inside the confines of the suit, my coverall was plastered to my body with sweat. I itched where I could not scratch, and I felt as if soaking in a bath for several days would not be enough to free me from the smelly burden of myself. Yet I clung to the suit as a shell animal might cling to its shell as a protection against the unknown.

  I could never wear it into space again. When I examined if I could see tears which must have been inflicted during my descent of the tree. And the boots weighed my feet into a shuffle which could be dangerous in the muck. The harness which carried our very limited supplies could be adapted, but the suit itself- Eet was right. It had no further use. Yet when my fingers went to the various seals and buckles, they moved reluctantly, and I had to fight down the strong need to hold to my shell.

  However, as I discarded that husk and felt the cool wreath about my damp body, I had a sense of relief. When we moved on, I had a small pack on my back, my hands were free to swing the cutting knife, and I found I was no longer slipping and sliding. For the tough web packs worn inside space boots not only protected my feet from close contact with the muck, but gave me purchase. Now I longed for a pool or stream in which I could dunk my steaming body and get really clean - though any such exercise on a strange world would be utter folly, unless I could be very sure that the water in question had no inhabitants who might resent intrusion.

  “Water-“ Eet announced. His head swung from right to left and back again. “Water- much of it- also alien life-“

  Scents crowded my nose. I could put name to no one of them. But I accepted Eet’s reading. I slowed my pace. Underfoot the game trail was no longer so hard of surface, and the slots of the tracks in it were deeper sunk, more sharply marked. I made out one, superimposed on earlier prints, which was a little larger than those I myself left. It was wedge-shaped, with indentations sharply printed in a fringe of points extending beyond the actual track.

  I am certainly no tracker, nor have I hunted as a reader of trails. Though I had gone to frontier and primitive planets, it had been to visit villages, port trading posts. My acquaintance with any wilderness arts was close to zero.

  But my guess was that whatever creature had so left his mark was large and heavy, as those indentations were deep and cleanly marked. And perhaps it was advancing at a deliberate pace.

  “Water-“ Eet repeated.

  He need not have given that caution. The trail was mud now, holding no recognizable prints. There were here and there humps formed by harder portions of earth, and I jumped from one to the next where I could. In no time at all the mud was covered with a glaze of liquid out of which the trees and growth projected. And there were bits of refuse caught in tangles of vine roots, held there as high as my shoulder. It had the appearance of a land which had been flooded in the not too distant past, and which was now slowly drying off.

  Puddles smelling of decay and bordered by patches of yellow slime showed between the trees, in hollows in the ground. And there were noisome odors in plenty. We passed a huddle of bones caught between exposed vine roots, and a narrow skull bared its teeth at us.

  The puddles became pools and the pools linked into stagnant expanses of water. Here trees had been undermined, so that they leaned threateningly. And smaller ones that had been overthrown showed masses of upturned roots.

  “Caution!”

  Again I did not need Eet’s warning. Perhaps his sense of smell was so assaulted by the stenches about that he had not sniffed that worker ahead until I had sighted him, her, or it.

  On a tree trunk which was not yet horizontal, but leaned at an angle out over the largest pond we had yet seen, lurked a creature. In this light it was easy to see. It was humanoid, save that a bristly hair grew in a stiff upright thatch on its head, in two heavy brows, down the outer sides of its arms and legs to wrists and ankles, and in round, shaggy patches, three of them, down its chest and middle.

  Around its loins was a skirt or kilt of fringe, and encircling its thick neck was a thong on which were strung lumps of dull green alternating with red cylinders. A heavy-headed club had been wedged for safekeeping beside a stub of branch, as its owner was busy with an occupation demanding full attention.

  A withe, which I recognized as one of the slender canes cut from the patch we had passed, had been bent into a hoop, one end extending for a handle. This was held firmly between the back feet of the worker, gripped tightly in huge claws. In its hands the native held a forked stick in which was imprisoned a wriggling black thing that fought so furiously and was in such constant motion I could not be certain of its nature.

  Its struggles did it no good as the worker passed it back and forth across the hoop, from one side to the other, then from top to bottom and back again. A thread trailed from the end of that whipping body, to be caught on the frame of the hoop and joined to its fellows, forming a mesh. With a last pass of the captive, the workman appeared satisfied with the result. Then, with a sharp flip of his wrist, he sent the forked stick and its prisoner out into the pond. As soon as the stick hit water there was a turmoil into which stick and captive vanished, not to appear again.

  The hoop holder now got to his feet, the net in one hand. He was taller than I by a head. While his arms and legs were thin, his barrel body suggested strength. His face was far from human, resembling more one of the demon masks of Tanth.

  The eyes were deep-set under extravagantly bushy brows, so that while one believed them there, one did not see them. The nose was a fleshy tube, unattached save at its root, moving up and down and from side to side in perpetual quest. Below that appendage was a mouth, showing two protruding fangs and no real chin, the flesh, wattled in loose flaps, sweeping straight back from the lower set of teeth to join the throat.

  Any traveler of the space lanes becomes inured to strange native races. There are the lizard-like Zacathans, the Trystians, who have avian ancestors, and
others- batrachian, canine, and the like. But this weird face was repellent - at least to me - and I felt aversion.

  When he reached the far end of the tree, which swayed under his weight, he moved with caution, trying each step before he put his full weight on it. Then he settled down, to lie full length, staring intently into the scummed water, the webbed hoop clasped in his left hand.

  I did not dare yet to move. To skirt the edge of this lake meant coming into the sight of the fisherman, and I shrank from that. As I hesitated, Eet saying nothing though he watched the creature intently, the arm of the fisherman swept down and up again, scooping in his hoop a scaled thing about as long as my forearm.

  He grabbed it out of the net, knocked it sharply against the tree trunk, and then knotted its limp length to a tie of his kilt.

  “Go right-“ Eet’s thought came.

  The fisherman was left-handed, his attention on that side. Right it was. I moved slowly, trying to put a screen of brush between us. But even when I was able to do so I felt no safer. It would be easy to become mired in a bog patch, and thus helpless prey for the club. My cutting knife was sharp but the native had the longer reach and knew this swamp. Also, to work any deeper into this flooded land and perhaps become lost in it was folly. And I said as much to Eet.

  “I do not think this is a true swamp,” he observed. “There are many signs of a great past flood. And a flood can be born of a river-“

  “What is the advantage of a river- here?”

  “Rivers are easier to follow than game trails. And there is this - civilizations are born on rivers. Do you presume to call yourself a trader and not know that? If this planet can boast any civilization, or if it is visited by traders from off world, you would find evidence of that along a major river. Especially where it meets a sea.”

  “Your knowledge is considerable,” I observed. “And you certainly did not learn it all from Valcyr-“

  Again I felt his irritation. “When it is necessary to learn, one learns. Knowledge is a never-emptied storehouse. And where else can one learn better of trade, traders, and their ways, then on such a ship as the Vestris? Her crew were born to that way of life and have a vast background of lore-“

  “You must have spent some time reading their minds,” I interrupted. “By the way, if you know so much - why did they take me off Tanth?” I did not really expect him to answer that, but he replied promptly.

  “They were paid to do so. There was some plan there -I do not know its details, for they did not. But that went wrong and then they were approached and well paid to get you off planet and deliver you at Waystar-“

  “Waystar! But- that’s only a legend!”

  If Eet could have snorted perhaps he would have produced such a sound.

  “It must be a legend of substance. They were taking you there. Only they insisted upon following their regular schedule first. And when you took ril fever they decided prudence was in order. They would get rid of you lest you contaminate the rest. They would just not turn up at Waystar, but send a message to those who had arranged it all.”

  “You are a mine of information, Eet. And what was behind it - who wanted me so badly?”

  “They knew only an agent. His name was Urdik and he was not of Tanth. Why you were wanted they did not know.”

  “I wonder why-“

  “The stone in the ring-“

  “That!” My hand went to the pouch where I carried it. “They knew about that?”

  “I do not think so. They wanted something you or Vondar Ustle carried. It is of great importance and they have been searching for it for some time. But can you not say now that the ring is your most important possession?”

  I clutched the bag closer. “Yes!”

  Then, startled, I looked down at the pouch. It was moving in my hand, and there was heat. We had come into the open and there was daylight around, but I thought I could also detect a glow.

  “It is coming alive again!”

  “Use it then for a guide!” urged Eet.

  I fumbled with the seal on the pouch, slipped the ring on my finger. But the band was so large it would have fallen off if I had not closed my fist. My hand, through no volition of mine, moved out, away from my body, to the right and ahead. It would seem that once more the stone used my flesh and bone as an indicator. And I turned to follow its guidance.

  NINE

  “We are followed,” Eet informed me.

  “The fisherman?”

  “Or one of his kind.” My companion did nothing to relieve my mind with that report. “But he is cautious- he fears-“

  “What?” I demanded bitterly. “This knife is no adequate defense, except at close quarters. And I have no desire to stand up to him as might a Korkosan gladiator. I am no fighter, only a peaceful gem trader.”

  Eet disregarded most of my sour protest. “He fears death-from-a-distance. He has witnessed such- or knows of it.”

  Death from a distance? That could mean anything from a thrown spear or slingshot propelled rock, to a laser beam, and all the grades of possible “civilization” in between.

  “Just so.” Eet had picked up my thought. “But “ I caught a suggestion of puzzlement. “I can read no more, only that he fears and so sniffs us prudently.”

  We holed up in a mass of drift thrust into a corner between two downed trees, eating from our supply of seeds, drinking from the ship’s flask. The seeds might be nutritious, but they did not allay my need for something less monotonous. And I had seen none of them growing since we had come into the dripping country, so that I rationed carefully what we had. As I chewed my handful, I watched our back trail for any sign of a tracker.

  I sighted him at last. He had gone down on one knee, his head almost touching the ground as that trunk-like, mobile nose of his quivered and twisted above my tracks. If it was not the fisherman, it was one enough like him to be his twin.

  After a long sniffing, he squatted back on his heels, his head raised, that trunk standing almost straight out from its roots as he turned his head slowly. I fully expected him to point directly at us, and I readied my knife desperately.

  But there was no halt in that swing. If he did know where we were, he was cunning enough to guess we might be alert, and did not betray his discovery. I waited tensely for him to arise and charge, or to disappear into the brush in an attempt to circle around for an ambush.

  “He does not know, he still seeks-“ Eet said.

  “But- if he sniffed out our trail, how could he miss scenting us now?”

  “I do not know. Only that he still seeks. Also he is afraid. He does not like-“

  “What?” I demanded when Eet paused.

  “It is too hard, I cannot read. This one feels more than he thinks. One can read thoughts, and the cruder emotions. But his breed is new to me; I cannot gain more than surface impressions.”

  At any rate, though my trail led directly from where the sniffer now squatted, he made no attempt to advance. Whether I could leave the cover we had taken refuge in without attracting attention, I did not know.

  Two trees, not the huge giants of the forest, but ones of respectable girth, had fallen so that their branched crowns met, their trunks lying at right angles. We were in the corner formed by the branched part, a screen of drift piled not too thickly between us and the native.

  I saw that the branches were bleached, leafless, but matted together. Yet the stone pulled me toward them, as if it would have me go through that mass. I hunched down and began to saw away at the obstructions. Eet was there, his forepaws at work, snapping off smaller pieces, while I dug with the point of the knife in the soft earth under the heavier branches. We moved very slowly, pausing many times to survey the open ground between us and the sniffer. To my surprise, for I knew we were far from noiseless (in spite of our best efforts), he did not appear and Eet reported he had not moved.

  It suddenly occurred to me, with a chill, what his purpose might be- that he was not alone, and that when his reinforcements mo
ved into place there would be a charge after all.

  “You are right.” Eet was no comforter. “There is one, perhaps two more, coming-“

  “Why did you not tell me?”

  “Had it been necessary I would have. But why add to apprehension when a clear mind is needful? They are yet some distance away. It is a pity, but the day is almost gone. To them, I believe, night is no problem.”

  I did not put my thoughts into words; Eet could read them well enough anyway. “Are there any in front of us?” I bit back and curbed my anger.

  “None within my sensing range. They do not like that direction. This one waits for the others’ coming, not because he fears us, but because he fears where we head. His fear grows stronger as he waits.”

  “Then- let us get farther ahead-“ I no longer tried to be so careful, but slashed at branches, cutting our way through the springy wall in quick blows.

  “Well spoken,” Eet agreed. “Always supposing we do not run from one danger into a greater one.”

  I made no reply to that, but hoped that Eet was reading my emotions and that they would scorch him. Beyond the trees were more of the scum-rimmed pools, fallen trunks. But the latter provided us with a road of sorts. The fisherman had been armed with nothing more lethal than a club, which he could not use at a distance. He knew we fled, and it seemed to me that speed was now in order.

  With Eet back on my shoulders, his paw-hands gripping the ties of my pack, I sprang onto the nearest trunk and ran, leaping from one to the next, not in a straight line, but always in the direction the stone pointed me. For I could not help but hope that it would guide me to some installation, or ship, perhaps even a settlement of those who had owned the ring, even as it had brought us across space to the derelict. The great age of that ship, however, suggested I would find no living community.

  We were out of the gloom. Not only had the flood cut a swath among the trees, but the secondary growth had been undermined and was scanty. Now I could see the sky overhead.