The Forerunner Factor Read online

  The small head was proud-high. There was that about this other Simsa—in the block—so great a pride. The living girl drew a deep breath. Through the hair on that high-held head was threaded another chain of gems, so that on the forehead rested a circle of them, pale and green, centered by another stone, opaque, the twin to the ring’s jewel.

  One of the image’s hands held a small rod, appearing to have been wrought from some huge single white-grey gem. It was topped by a symbol Simsa had seen—one repeated several times over in some fragments the Old One had pored over, two curved horns turned upward, supporting between them a ball.

  This was she. Yet never had she worn such gems, stood so tall, so unafraid, triumphantly proud. Was this that other her which some said dwelt within the body and went forth—no one could guess where—when life was spilled out forever? How could that be? She was alive here—Simsa as she had always been, had known herself, and yet—there was this other who was also her!

  Though she did not realize it, she had knelt, was leaning forward now, one hand planted palm flat on either side of that amazing thing, staring at it, still in shock.

  The girl was not even aware the off-worlder had come until his shadow fell across the other Simsa, half veiling her. She had raised her hand to brush that away. Then she looked up, met his eyes. For a moment, they rested on her—then on the other one.

  He stared so long at the prisoner in the block that she began to feel cold. He knew—without her asking. Without answering, she also understood that he knew the truth of this thing, of what it might mean—and what it might do. She wanted so much to catch up that block, hide it away from his eyes, hiding this other self from his knowing—But it was too late for that.

  Now he knelt, too, but he made no effort to take it from her. Could it be that there was a chance that he would let her keep it—make sure that she alone held safe this other self?

  “It is—me—me!” She could no longer hold back the words. “Why is it me?”

  She raised her eyes, hardly daring to look away from her find, lest he did take it. He had the strength to make it his, past all her defenses, even if she called upon the zorsals. Also, he knew what it was and how. . .

  Simsa could not read his expression. She had seen him surprised, she had seen him angry, she had seen him push himself to the edge of endurance. This was another Thorn—one she must now fear?

  “This—” he spoke very slowly and softly, almost as if he did not want to frighten her. “This is a visa-picture. It was made by my brother.”

  “Picture.” she repeated. His brother—where? She looked around wildly.

  “Like the bits on the walls, the heads,” he continued just as slowly and carefully. “Somewhere my brother saw this—and copied it so.”

  “Me!” she insisted.

  Thorn shook his head. “Not you, no. But plainly someone of your race, your own people, someone whose blood line might still have had a part in your own making. See—I would say she is a little older . . . and look there, do you have such on your body?” He did not touch the block which held the other Simsa, simply pointed with fingertip to the smooth skin just a little above that fringe of gems which fell between the slim, long legs.

  Simsa stared. Yes, there was something there—a scar, hardly showing, except that it must stand out in a ridge above the rest of the skin. It was the same symbol as crowned the rod this strange Simsa carried—two horns guarding a ball.

  “That—” he told her now, “is X-Arth indeed. Though this woman who wears it—wore it—is of no Arth race I have seen accounts of. Perhaps she was Forerunner—one of those who vanished from all worlds and space before our own kind came into being. That is a very old sign even on Arth, for it combines two forces, the sun and the moon.”

  “You say she is gone!” Simsa caught him up quickly. “But I am here. If she is not me, then she is kin, as you have admitted. Your brother—he can tell me—we can find—!”

  The words poured out, she had not realized that she had reached forward and caught him by both shoulders, was even trying to shake him as if so she could better batter into him her need.

  Now the expression on his face was changed indeed. It was not one of that strange softness which he had shown before, rather his features again set, his eyes narrowed and shut against her.

  “My brother is—” for a long moment his lips did not move. Then he twisted free from her hold and stood up. “I can only believe that he is dead.”

  She stared up at him gape-mouthed. Then the full force of what he meant made her snatch at what he called a visa-picture, which she knew she must have. Almost in the same instant, she scrambled back against one of the rocks which made up that pocket of the camp. With that stone at her back firm, so comforting, she looked around again.

  “How do you know?”

  He nodded to the container he had been unpacking. “He would not have left that here, as he did the pilot—” Now he gestured to the lamp which still gave a day’s light to them. “Those are intended as guides. They are—it is difficult to explain to one who does not understand our ways—but they are used in times of trouble to bring help. In them is an element which is set to answer to another whom those who may help always carry.” Once more, he fingered one of those things on his belt of so many wonders. “When I came within the right distance—that blazed—to draw me. Just as it would have drawn any one of our service who came here. Had it not been for the fury of the storm, we might even have heard a call, for they are set also to broadcast sound as well as light.

  “My brother would have had no reason to set this pilot light unless he believed he was in grave danger. Nor would he have left what he did in that,” he pointed to the container, “unless he hoped that it would be found by someone searching for him.”

  “A message—” she had assimilated what he meant, “did he tell you somehow then what that danger was?”

  “He may have.” Now he went back and picked up one of the smaller boxes which he had taken from the container. “If he did, the message is taped here.”

  “But this—” she still had the block, holding it with great care. “Would he tell you where this came from? You talk of Arth, X-Arth—of Forerunners—of wild things no one has heard of—you know so much, you of the stars—tell me what you can of this one who looks like me! Tell me!” Her voice arose, she cried out with all the longing of those years in which she had been so much a stranger that she must hide her strangeness from her world. In a mixture of races, she had been the most notable that she knew. She remembered only too well again how Ferwar had cautioned her from her earliest childhood to conceal what she could of her strangeness. How many times had the Old One warned of the Guild Lords who might have taken her just for her difference? She accepted the danger and had always done as the Old One said. She had been so long childish of body, she was near twice as many seasons as the rest of the Burrower girls when they were sought to pleasure some man. Partly, she had been safe because she so long remained a scrawny child. It was only when she had come out of that pool really that she had known pride in her body as well as in her wits.

  “If I can find where that—where he saw it—” Thorn said, slowly, “then I shall take you there. If we come forth from this venture still alive.”

  She looked down at the Simsa in the block. He was right—she might want passionately to find this, but perhaps death stood in their way. Still, this much she had and it gave her a fierce joy of possession as she looked upon it.

  12

  Though the storm still rolled overhead, and there had been at least one more crashing fall of stone in the outer part of this great chamber, Simsa sat at ease. In one hand, she held a small container which Thorn had given her after showing her how to twist the upper part a little and then wait for a short time so that when it was fully opened, what it held was hot as if just poured from some inn kettle. She savored the rich contents, picking out bits which she handed down to the eagerly reaching paws of the zorsals, the th
ree gathered before her and watching each bite she transferred to her mouth. Off-world food, with a savor she had never dreamed that any food could have.

  Thorn had another such can by this knee where he, too, sat cross-legged. Only his attention was not for the food, but rather for the sounds made by the small box he had told her might contain any message his brother might have left. The sounds were not speech as Simsa recognized as such, rather a series of clicks as one might rap out with a bit of metal against stone. At her comment, before he had waved her impatiently to be still, Thorn said that this was a secret way of message sending and only one trained could make sense of those clicks.

  The girl yawned as she scooped out the last large piece of food, then put the can down so that the zorsals squabbled over the chance to lick out its interior with their long tongues. She would have liked to have explored, poked into the remaining boxes and containers. On the other hand, she also felt drowsy and, for the first time since she had left the pool, at ease and content. That the camp had not been looted, Thorn had said, meant that his brother had not been either killed or taken captive here. Thus, he appeared to believe that they were safe also—at least for now.

  Simsa stretched out, turned her head a little so she could watch those lines of patterns across the wall. Among them she searched for that symbol connected with the other Simsa. Only it appeared nowhere here, at least not within the range of her sight. Then the clicking came to a sudden stop and she looked toward the off-worlder.

  He had picked up the box with the message, was sitting with that closed-face look which she knew meant he was thinking.

  “What did it tell you?” This silence had stretched too long—she wanted to know. Perhaps within those clicks was even the secret of what meant the most to her.

  “He discovered that he had been followed. He had made a find—Arth—Forerunner—Then he saw the ship. There was enough about it—though he did not give details—to make him afraid that it might be the wreck of a war spacer. It was hot—radioactive—but he thought not too high for one of our blood to explore. He scouted and found indications that there had been others before him. Some of them, at least, were desert people; he discovered at least two bodies of those.”

  “Only,” the off-worlder sat back on his heels, interlacing his fingers and turning them in and out, his eyes upon their movement as if so he worked some kind of fortune producing ritual, “he also came across signs that there had been another landing by several smaller ships—and not long ago. There had been a camp near there. A meeting place for those of this world . . . and others. Jacks!” The last word came as an explosion.

  “Who or what are Jacks?” she pulled herself up. To learn all that from a series of clicks! But this was another starman’s thing and so it could be true.

  “Outlaws,” he returned. “Just as you have pirates on your seas, so do we have their like along the star lanes. Such could provide the means for looting that war spacer. They would do so if the price was high enough. They have been and gone, but they had also left a beacon, something such as that—” he gestured to the lamp, “but of a different kind, in that it can be heard off-world by the ship for which it is set. When they left the beacon it meant they planned to return. It could be that they did not have equipment enough to start scavenging, or it might be that they needed more help, or—” He waved his hand as if there could be ten-ten reasons for such a visit and a promised return.

  “They might want what they found for themselves; then the Guilds have nothing to do with this.”

  Thorn shook his head. “That camp my brother found remains of was laid out first by men of this world—the others were visitors. Also, it was set up several seasons ago and, therefore, whoever dealt with the Jacks knew well enough what lay here. Only that they themselves could not yet make use of it.”

  “If they knew, say, Lord Arfellen . . .” Simsa began once more to fit piece to piece in her mind. “Then why did they let your brother come here? He was off-world, he would know at once that this wreck of a ship was a bad thing. They could have easily killed him before he reached the Hills at all—”

  “Unless they dared not report a death near their own territory—even by accident—of an off-worlder. My brother was no common man and the League and the Patrol keep their watch on all of us, especially when we come to hunt out Forerunner remains—or things X-Arth. Can you understand, Simsa? It is not the actual worth of bits of broken stone, or this,” he tapped the cuff he still wore, “which matter. We seek out all we can learn because we must!

  “My people spread out from Arth itself so many seasons ago that you would have difficulty in counting time. We found worlds with others living there—some were strange of body, stranger yet of mind. Some were enough like ourselves that we could interbreed. Other worlds were empty of life, yet held broken cities, strange machines, mysteries left by intelligent beings.

  “All we can learn we must, for there were many, many powers which rose among the stars—and then fell. Some fell by war—we have discovered worlds which have been burnt black, holding only ashes—the result of the use of such weapons as we have come to fear and have outlawed. But also there were other worlds where all that remained appeared as if those who dwelt there had simply walked away and left great wonders to be toppled by the fingers of time.

  “Why did they rise to power and fall? If we can learn only a little of their past, then we can foresee the way of our own future, at least in part. Perhaps some of the acts which brought them down we can then avoid.”

  “There is one world in our League where all such finds are gathered to be studied. The race who live there—who are so long-lived a species that to them our oldest known are but infants—study these finds, try to learn. Sometimes they themselves are the searchers, more often it is we of other species and races who collect the knowledge for them. Such a searcher was my brother—and he had much experience in these matters. When the first starships landing here brought back fragments of a much older time, and our traders brought ever more, he was chosen to come and see—to make records—report whether the remains here were such as would warrant sending in a whole ship of trained people to deal with them.”

  “My Simsa”—she still thought of the picture as that—“was she of your Forerunners? These people who rose and then fell, who knew once the stars and then lost them?”

  “Perhaps—those symbols make it seem likely. Or she could be one born of this world who learned of such from other star rovers—those who were star rovers before my people lifted from their own world at all. I know now where T’seng found her.”

  “Where? Let us go there!”

  “If you wish—” he sounded almost indifferent. He was more intent, she must accept, on his own search, the plans he must make. “In the morning,” he added.

  Simsa knew she must be content with that. Though she longed to set out at once, he had risen, gone to the lamp. Now he passed across it a disc he had taken from his belt. The light winked out. As its going, the zorsals stirred and the girl gave the signal which would post them as sentries.

  She was sure that she could not sleep—that the need to see that other Simsa was so aching, tearing a feeling that she could not rest. But sleep lay in wait for her after all.

  She awoke to the sound of water. Grey light from beyond the rock walls of the campsite shined through the broken dome so far overhead with the brightness of at least an hour past dawn. Across the camp’s space Thorn lay, the arm with the cuff covering his eyes as if he had gone to sleep trying to shut out some sight he must rid himself of—at least for a while.

  Simsa heard a soft chitter. The three zorsals were roosting on the top of one of the rocks, their softer, sleepy voices signifying they were settling for sleep. She got to her knees and looked out into the center of this space which was larger than any building in all of Kuxortal.

  Now, in the better light, she could see that it was oval in form and that ranked above this covered, arched way which appeared to r
im completely around the oval, were tiers of ledges, as if those had once furnished seats or resting places. People must have gathered here for some purpose. Probably to view action in the center where those lumps of broken masonry had crashed to crumble. She had never seen such a place and she wondered what could possibly bring so many people together—if all those ledges had once been filled.

  The water she had heard running—that was funneled off from the ledges and the broken dome, gathering in a channel not too far from the camp. Simsa crawled over the rock barrier and went to it. It seemed clear and drinkable. She palmed up some, went back to offer it to Zass, who obligingly lapped her tongue twice across the girl’s palm, thus declaring it all right. All that talk of plague from Thorn’s “radiation” warning made Simsa doubly cautious, but now she drank and found it good.

  “Fair morning to you, Lady Simsa—”

  She had been trying to comb her tangled hair with her fingers, now she looked over her shoulder and smiled. Her waking here had seemed so lacking in care, as if they were safe in spite of all Thorn’s tales. She found herself light of heart again, as she had been when she had left the pool.

  There was something else she noted with a small inner surprise. When he had called her “Lady” before, she had believed he had jeered at her, making it plain she was of the Burrowers, but—now—that title seemed right.

  “It is a fair morning, Lord Thorn—” she agreed. “If you will toss me that water container, I can fill it before last night’s bounty runs dry.”