The Forerunner Factor Read online

  Part of her answered the click and hum, but another bit of her, Simsa of the Burrows loosed for this duty alone, listened for another sound—the buzz of the off-world flyer. Surely it was louder again!

  The clicking claws moved faster and faster, advanced out over the pattern. In her own grasp the horned rod dropped forward, once more pointing at that stretch of earth on which that design had been set.

  And—the earth began to move. Even as the sand had fountained up to emit the many legged horror of the stream, so did an ever-lengthening rope of the gravel arise, thicken, take on solid form. It spiraled up and up, although Simsa could not raise her head to watch it. That other held her solidly prisoner, eyes upon the rooting of that column in the pattern.

  All the lines of the pattern had now disappeared, disturbed, pulled into the being that was growing. Toward the pillar flashed water from the basin, combining with the earth and gravel, licking quickly up and around, binding the other into a truly solid shape—not unlike the tentacle of a sand beast, yet already far beyond such in length of reach.

  The alien had shoved back from the column, which drew more and more of the earth’s substance into it. Simsa followed, rising to her feet. That spinning length was thicker than any of the trees about them and still it grew, faster to reach above, but always adding to its girth as it went.

  The color was changing now. Having pulled the gray-brown gravel into it, it was adding to its substance earth from below that covering, and to that dull brown were streaming torn leaves from the brush, longer ones from the trees. Still it spun as now there came from its core a growl which deepened as the reaching spout became thicker and taller.

  Zass was on Simsa’s shoulder, her talons clamped tight as if she feared that she also would go flying to make a part of that force-born column. The roar reached into Simsa even as the hum, the clatter of the claws had done earlier. She could no longer see the alien or the others who had been there. The solid stem of the growth cut them off.

  There was a last high note of protest, perhaps the earth of the valley crying against the loss of its covering. Then the column whirled loose from its rooting, spiraled up as straight as a well-cast spear into the air.

  Simsa discovered now that she could watch it going, her head well back. The tip of it had already vanished into the haze, the rest and thicker part of it fast following. And the sound it still made was the roar of a storm-born tempest. Out and out—

  The Elder One was too exhausted by whatever had been wrought here to hold her other self longer in check. Though the girl had no idea what had been done, yet she found herself listening with some eagerness for the sound of the flitter, if such could ever break through the whoop of the storm wind.

  What had they wrought? A thickening of the natural roofing over the valley rendering it even more opaque? Or something else?

  She could see no difference in the haze. Instead, there grew in her a certainty that what had been born here was no defense, but a weapon aimed at those who searched. Sturdy as a flitter was, there could be danger from wind, sand, a whirlpool in the air.

  Simsa’s teeth closed upon her lower lip. Had she not wanted escape? Could she, with her so small influence over what—or who—dwelt in her, dictate what kind of escape? Yet she shuddered now, and not from the demands of the power. She could see, impressed against the veiling of haze, a picture that might be all too true: a small craft caught in the fury of earth and air, crushed, downed, buried even as it fell, and with it humanoids, perhaps not kin, yet—

  Thorn—his face flashed over the scene of the struggling, doomed ship. They had stood shoulder to shoulder once. If he had not delivered her into the hands of those others with their ever-demanding quest for knowledge, if he had foreseen . . . She was not certain, she had never been, in truth, that he had betrayed her knowingly—only without thought, because to him she was a treasure. Thorn—

  The smooth-faced off-worlder about whom she had built up so much resentment, had dismissed as useless in her own struggle for freedom from the system he had been so eager to serve—she could see him now.

  She could see him now!

  There was only that face on the underside of the haze through which the swirling pillar had completely disappeared. But she could see Thorn. His eyes, set obliquely in a face where the flesh was so much lighter than her own, were closed. The mouth which had been always so firmly held was gaping a little, and from the gape ran a dark trickle. There was no life in that face.

  Thorn dead? To the Elder One, his vanishing had meant little, but this Simsa had always clung to the hope that if she could reach Thorn, in some manner he could point a way to her freedom—even though he might have thoughtlessly betrayed her in the beginning.

  She stared as one confronted by such a horror as moved in the sand rivers. Then she broke—through the tight control of the Elder One, through whatever bonds that other and the alien had woven to do what they had done. If it had been Thorn in that flitter, and that other part of her had killed him . . .

  She did not care if the whole of an off-world ship had been blasted into nothingness—but Thorn was a different matter.

  “Zass!” The zorsal might not understand her words, though she had always answered to her name. “Thorn! Seek!” And to the words she added the imperative mental command that could arouse the creature to action.

  With a spring into the air, Zass took off, her skin-covered wings beating as she followed the whirling weapon of gravel up toward the haze—though she did not take the same path but rather headed out toward the north in a way that would lead her across the valley to the guarding cliffs. If Thorn was out there—Zass was a hunter with talents no humanoid could equal.

  As the zorsal flew, Simsa thrust the rod back into her girdle. It was no longer warm against her flesh—the power was gone, perhaps exhausted by the work it had done. Just as the Elder One was once more lapsing into the quiet that covered her when Simsa of now was free. She spoke to the green aliens directly and with the vigor that anger gave her. Someday she would learn the key—how to use the Elder One’s knowledge without losing also that other person. Now she must make the most of the time in which she was free to be herself.

  “What—happens—to—the—flyer?” She spaced her words, speaking them slowly and emphatically as if so she might project their meaning without Zass’s translation.

  There was no movement, no change in the two who were still with her. She could have ceased to exist for them. Both of them stood erect, their bodies at an awkward angle so that their heads were turned up toward the haze. There was still the whining of the whirlwind, but it was dying. And no buzz of flitter broke through it.

  Simsa caught up her cloak and stalked around the pool where the spray that had fed the pillar was once more but a small play of water. In spite of her distaste, she put out her hand and caught at the arm of the nearest of those watching. She gave a hard jerk and the tower of green fur near toppled on her, the faceted eyes dropped to meet hers.

  “What has happened?” demanded the girl, determined that the other would neither shake her off nor longer ignore her.

  6

  Above opened one of those squared apertures of the blue bulk of the building. Once back at home—“nest”—her companion shook off Simsa’s clutch as easily as though the horn-smooth covering of the slender upper appendage had been greased, twitching even the spikes easily through the girl’s fingers. Paying no attention at all now to Simsa, the other began to climb the wall—up to that gaping mouth or entrance. Though from the outer rim of the valley, she had seen much going and coming from these apertures, now they appeared blank, deserted.

  Simsa sought holds for her own hands, but, to her groping fingers, the surface was smooth. The claws of the valley’s inhabitants were more useful here than fingers could be. Zass? She could recall the zorsal—but to what purpose?

  She started to walk around the base of the huge cube. The vegetation wreathed it for a space until bushes and trees made
up a walling. But no entrance on this level appeared.

  Taking a deep breath of resolve, the girl called—not aloud with the whistle that was Zass’s own summons, but more awkwardly with her mind, sending out a need for help. As she did so, she watched keenly the openings above. In none of those dark hollows did anything stir.

  All right! So be it! She was left with only one chance—to return by the same underground way that had brought her here. Nor did she stop to wonder why this need drove her. There was safety here, of a sort, so why venture forth into the waterless rock world? Why?

  Her hand smoothed the rod. This was what she had sought—freedom. The aliens had offered her no threat. They had indeed called upon the Elder One’s skill to serve their own purpose. So well had they succeeded in that, that they might well look upon her as she looked upon Zass, a lesser life-form but a useful one.

  If what they had summoned up had dealt with the flitter, as she guessed it must have, what should that matter to her? It only assured what she wanted—freedom from the off-worlders’ avid curiosity, their desire to make of her a tool, one that she had no mind to be. Let well-enough alone—that had always been Ferwar’s own saying, drilled into her fosterling from childhood.

  There remained Thorn. They had fought as battle comrades, yes, but any debts between them had been canceled in full long ago. And it was Thorn, was it not, who had drawn the attention of those beyond space to her own existence? She owed him nothing at all.

  At the same time, Simsa assured herself vigorously that this was so, she swung around to face the clear road leading under the arch of the trees back to the tunnel mouth. Nor could she battle into surrender that in her which led her from one hesitating stride to a fuller one in that direction.

  She had filled her water carrier at the fountain after she had bathed her scratched face. Now she noted that there dropped from the walling trees fruit, deep blue in color. Saliva filled her mouth at the thought of food as she picked up one that had fallen close enough to brush against her shoulder. To eat of this might mean death. However, the water had not poisoned her, but rather revived her, and she must have food.

  Simsa broke the ovoid apart as she would a survival wafer. A golden pulp burst forth to sticky her fingers. She licked, first cautiously and then greedily, before she spit out a reddish pit. Now she avidly harvested a goodly store of windfalls, tying them into a corner of her cloak, as she headed toward the tunnel.

  Even as the rich flesh of the fruit slid down her throat, she was thinking of that back trail. There would be no luminous guide this time—she must take the road completely in the dark. What of the pit where the fire-thing leaped? Without any light she could well tumble into that unwarned. To edge along the narrow path to safety a second time . . . Simsa swallowed and swallowed again, the soft fruit all of a sudden too much to easily get down.

  This was folly—the worst of folly! For a Burrows-bred fosterling to risk all for a stranger! Twice her steps slowed, the second time at the very edge of the tunnel. She paused there to look back over her shoulder, for she had half-hoped. But there was no stir at any of those openings. She was on her own. Was it because she wished to succor one of their enemies? Or could it be that they were very willing to have her no longer their concern—to see her dead in the barren land, perhaps, offering no threat to them at all?

  Rubbing the fruit juice from her hands down the front of her cloak, Simsa took hold on the rod, facing into the dark of the tunnel way. She was using that thing of power as one blinded might use a cane tapping the way ahead.

  She rounded the turn in the passage, half-expecting to see before her the glow of that flame which had awakened at their coming here. It remained thickly dark. The Burrows had often been without any lights, nor did those who laired within them depend upon torches or lamps too freely—most of their errands had been solitary hunts which they had no intention of sharing with others.

  Now Simsa drew upon memory—not that of the Elder One (she wanted no loosing of barrier there), but on what she had learned in this time if not on this nameless world. Unconsciously, because the habit had long been engrained in her by training, she was counting off steps. So many to that trap, then so many along the toehold at its side.

  One hand for the tapping of the rod against the tunnel floor, one to the side so her fingertips slid along the wall. She gasped when those suddenly met with nothing, then remembered those many dark niches or doors that had been spaced along the corridor. Her head up, she also used what gift of scent she had. There was a musty odor which she associated with the passage itself, interwoven with the faintest trace of a metallic effusion such as she had always connected with the various machines of the off-worlders.

  She slowed, stopped to wrap the cloak the tighter about her, and then went to her hands and knees, creeping at hand-by-hand’s length until her fingers met nothingness and she knew she had reached the pit.

  Refusing to look down into the blackness lest she see that whirling which heralded the flame fountain, Simsa felt along the lip of the gap until she discovered that narrow ledge she had struggled across before. There was a stickiness which she stirred with thumb and forefinger, certainly the remains of that liquid emitted by the alien.

  Simsa sat back on her heels. If she got across without arousing the danger below, if she found her way out onto the barren rocks, if . . . Her lips twisted and she spat several words well-known to Burrowers, blistering in their meaning. Why? Who told her that this must be done? It was not the Elder One, she was too well-aware of how that one could flash into command upon occasion. What set her to risk this? A vision on the haze of a man who was doubtless already dead? She was more than a fool—she was mind-twisted—and for the sake of her own kind, she should have been eliminated long ago, as was done to any lacking in sense and reasoning power.

  Still, even as she lashed herself so, she was certain that she could not retreat. From Thorn, before those others had arrived at his call to take control, she had learned a great deal, not learning as the Elder One would measure it—though oddly enough in some things there were likenesses in acceptance of aid. Upon a strange world, when there was danger, off-worlders drew together—unless they were utterly mind-warped as had been those who had come to plunder on Kuxortal. She was no space-goer. And she had more to fear perhaps from off-worlders now than she had from the alien life. But it had been she, or a part of her, who had raised the thing she was sure had engulfed the flitter. And if Thorn had been aboard . . .

  Simsa thumped her forehead with the palm of her hand. Thoughts, why must she deal with thoughts? If she could not justify what she did, not to herself—so be it. She only knew that it was as if she once more hung from the compelling claws of the alien. She had no choice against these invisible claws that had come into being when she had seen Thorn’s face, perhaps his dead face, backed by the haze in the valley.

  Hating what led her, but no longer fighting it for there was no use in such a struggle, the girl got to her feet to begin edging along that narrow strip of walkway, the pit at her back, teeth set hard against lip as she strove to move without a sound to betray her.

  What if the thing could not hear, rather sensed? She did not look over her shoulder, but scraped along the rock so that its surface abraded the cheek she kept to it as she moved. Without even viewing it, Simsa was aware that once again, there was movement in the dark. Sweat ran down her face, smarted in the raw places on her skin. One step, another, this part of her memory was stubbornly blank. She had been too fearful before to reckon; now that same fear was rising in her like a smothering of her lungs, a choking in her throat.

  On and on. In her own ears the beating of her heart was a drum for votive dancers, deep and calling, while breath came in shallow puffs. She would not linger. To stop moving was perhaps to anchor her immovably to await the torture of the spark fire to whip her down.

  So far no light—she clung to the darkness, which now meant safety. Step, hold, bring the other foot along. Again. Agai
n! Then she became aware of heat against her body. Even as the alien had a glow to light the way arising from her own frame, so did there arise radiance from the rod. Simsa could not spare the hand to tuck it farther out of sight. It was responding to power—to energy she could neither understand nor control.

  She was certain, if she were able to look down, that that which lay in wait would respond. Step. Hold. Step. Sound now—a spitting such as might come from fat meat placed too close to a flame. Yes—there was brightness growing, not only between her body and the wall, but behind and below.

  Light, enough to see!

  Simsa hurled herself sidewise as well as forward, landing with bruising force on the tunnel floor. Behind her the infernal sparkling fire fountained upward a first questing tongue.

  She turned her back on that growing brilliance and ran, half-expecting it to launch an attack upon her, as had the thing from the sand river. Only speed was in the fore of her mind as she scuttled ahead.

  It was light, far too light in the tunnel. Simsa gave a gasping cry as a spark swooped into her line of sight, seemed to strike straight at her, as might a well-aimed weapon loosed in fury. More sparks in the air, they touched and bit, leaving smarting if tiny hurts behind them.

  Simsa fled on. There was other light ahead, faint but there. Still refusing to look behind, she panted into the room within the shell of the outer cliff into which the alien had first drawn her. Only then did she face about to see that, though they had not followed her into this rough-hewn chamber, there danced in the air of the tunnel she had just quitted a cloud of flame sparks, multiplying constantly. She had the frightening feeling that they were merely building up to collapse into a more solid flame—a creature that not even the Elder One could handle.

  She threw herself at the window opening that had been her doorway. Scrambling up on the ledge, she swung over and dropped to the shelf where she had taken refuge before, then leaned against the rock, her breath coming in racking sobs. This was sheer panic such as had not gripped her since childhood. As she got her breath, Simsa could see that there were no sparks flying now from above. Since the heavier haze which was night on this world was tight drawn, those would have been instantly revealed.