The Forerunner Factor Read online

  She moved alertly now and Simsa was able to note the differences between her and those other of the valley dwellers the girl had seen. The head was certainly out of proportion, larger, and the fur was lighter, banded with a very faint darker striping.

  “It—was—not—time,” the egg-born announced. “To disturb is forbidden—only a matter of great importance—”

  The leader echoed that last expression. “Great importance!” She must be slightly servile to this other, but she was standing her ground about what she had done.

  Simsa was aware of the huge eyes (they looked even larger than the others of this race she had yet seen) turned on her. Movement beside her came as the bearer of Thorn released her burden to sprawl on his side. But it was Simsa that the strange one first surveyed. And it was the Elder One who moved forward to receive that searching, inimical stare, eye to faceted eye, until the egg born said:

  “This one—in the time of the lost moon—this one—”

  “Not so,” the Elder One answered at once. “My blood kin, perhaps—not me. I am new into the world as the Most Strong Memory herself.”

  “Too much—too long—then the egg again,” the other thought. “If not you then—why you now?”

  “New come from egg, I seek my people.”

  “Did they not guard—wait—know the signal rightly?” There was a note of indignation in that. “There must always be those who know—who can call.”

  Simsa the Elder One shook her head. “Too long—too long. Those who might have watched went I know not where.”

  “Yet you stand here? What loosed you, then?”

  “The coming of one reborn, of my kin reborn—she I summoned—but I had no body. My egg did not hold me, so thus I am in her.”

  “Ill done. Seek you a body, eggless one?”

  “This one serves me well—it is kin born and so mine. We walk the same path and all is well.”

  “What seek you here?” The fur of the other was rapidly drying and the darkened stripes were more sharply defined. It put out one forearm to its head as if to support that still too large cranium.

  “Safety—for a space,” Simsa returned promptly.

  “This other—” The large eyes for the first time regarded Thorn. “Is he dying? Have you already quickened and used him and now await your own body eggs? If that be so, why bring him hither? Let his body return to the earth since he is of no further use.”

  “He is not my seeder of egg life.” The Elder One seemed to know exactly the right answers. “He is a Memory Keeper.”

  If a furred, facet-eyed creature could look affronted and disgusted, Simsa believed that this one did.

  “He is male—they are good for only one thing. There has never been a Memory one among them—never!” There was angry indignation in that.

  “Probe and see, Great Memory Keeper, probe you, and see.”

  Simsa found herself moving slightly away from the prone spaceman as if to clear a wider path for the other’s thoughts. On the ground, Thorn stirred and made a querulous sound.

  The girl had an impression of a thought stream almost as visible as an outpouring of fluid, and the greedy sucking up of the same. Yet the Elder One did not share what was happening.

  Simsa could set no length to the time that exchange continued. Again, Thorn raised a hand to his head as if to protect himself from some blow. He muttered unceasingly. Simsa picked up words of the trade-lingo, but she was sure that he also spoke in several different tongues during that weird communication—if communication might be the term to apply to this one-sided interrogation. Then he was at last still and the big eyes lifted from his face to rivet their full attention on the girl.

  “It is true! Memory cannot be kept hidden from a rememberer—or, it is said, in any way altered more than the alteration which occurs from the event’s action appearing thus to one, otherwise to another. These Zacathans—these who seek memories, not to keep them in trained minds but in other ways—he is of importance to them?”

  “Judge that for yourself from what you have gained from this man. He served them as the tenders serve you, bringing bits and pieces he has learned for their combined memory.”

  “But they have no true memory—no true rememberer.” Again that feeling of hostility.

  “Each to their own, Memory One. If knowledge be kept, what matters the exact way of its keeping?”

  The other raised both claws to her oversized head. “I have a this-way, that-way in my head, egg-born. Too much, too fast, and I not yet ready to break shell when it was loosed upon me! Let this one be kept—and tended—and you—be welcome among us. But we are the apart ones and if any more strangers come seeking, let them hunt out on the plain. For we shall set up the barriers. Much—much to think on—to sort out. Much!”

  She seemed to crumple, to draw in upon herself, squatting down among the remnants of the egg. Now the one who had borne Thorn here picked him up with the leader’s aid and turned abruptly, even as two of her kind came bursting into the clearing. They pushed aside Simsa and the leader to close upon the Great Memory, stroking her fur, holding forth another jug, a much larger one, for her to drink from, while those with Simsa and Thorn urged retreat.

  They were not to be quartered in the tower that served as a residence for most of the valley, Simsa discovered; rather, they were taken along the cliff side to where there was a cave that gave a measure of shelter. Long plant leaves were brought in bundles by the furred ones and then were speedily teased into two beds. Food appeared in the form of fruits spread out on another large stiff leaf, and Zass found her way to them just as Thorn roused. The furred ones were gone so that they were alone.

  He levered himself up on one elbow with a groan and looked around him, plainly puzzled. “Where is this?” he asked in trade-lingo. “And where is Zasfern—he was waiting for my report. I do not understand. I was in the foreroom of the ministry and Zasfern was asking questions. It seemed as if he asked hundreds of them—all about our past surveys. Why—”

  The spaceman might have been talking to himself. Now he saw her. At that same moment, the Elder One also loosed her grip and it was the Simsa he had first known who faced him.

  “Where is this place?” There was more force and spirit in his demand. “I take it I was not with Zasfern, so who turned my mind inside out?” He rubbed the palms of both hands across his forehead as if seeking to erase pain.

  “It was the Great Memory,” Simsa began her answer, not sure he would believe her, and related all that had happened from the moment they had met the furred ones on the cliff top to the present.

  “A memory trained to hold all knowledge—” Thorn repeated when she had done. “I would have sworn that was impossible. But perhaps on this forsaken world, there have been so few happenings of importance that it could be done. If you saw the great banks of computers in Zath City . . .” He shook his head and winced. “That is now the memory for most of the known worlds, and it would take a thousand Zacathans a good thousand of their life years to begin to shift it all. No one could hold that. But this Great Memory does believe I came here to gather knowledge rather than harm her people?”

  “You came here for me,” Simsa responded tightly. “That I have not forgotten even if you suddenly choose to do so.”

  11

  Here in the valley, the thickening of haze marking the nighttime was stronger. Simsa, sitting at the mouth of the cave, gazed out over the expanse of brush and trees where shadows appeared to gather and wrap around each living thing. From behind her came the low, even rhythmic breathing of Thorn’s sleep. His ordeal of mind search at the hands—or thoughts—of the Great Memory had undermined his strength more than he would admit, and he had slept away most of the rest of the day since they had been left at this refuge.

  There had been no guards set to see that they stayed where they were. Still, Simsa did not doubt that, if she descended that slope into the cover of vegetation, she would not move without eyes upon her. There might be a very th
in line between captive and guest.

  Zass, wings furled, was curled next to the girl, the greater heat of the zorsal’s body warm against her flesh. For the moment, she was alone again—the Elder One was gone from the forepart of her mind. She was thinking fiercely, making one plan and discarding it as quickly while she sat there motionless.

  Food and water, all her body might need for existence, were here. But she had begun to understand that it was entirely possible she was as firmly a prisoner here as she had been in the ship. Only—Simsa smiled crookedly—then she had had her own plans. The difficulty that now lay before her was that her plan had succeeded. She was free of the ship, from the designs the officer and Greeta had nursed in their minds. But if her future freedom was to be encased in this valley, of what benefit was it to her? No, she had been too quick to move when she had stolen the Life Boat and come here. She should have waited until she was closer to the well-traveled star lanes where planets able to support life would have been more abundant.

  Between her idle hands the rod twirled. It was without light now, just an unusual artifact of a race long since disappeared. It would seem that in her way she, too, was such an artifact. Perhaps even a possession to be fought for. Where did she go now—what must she do?

  That she would meekly go to ground here . . . no, that was not for her. Though Simsa sat statue still, restlessness fired within her. Surely there was a way out! She refused to believe that this early in her wanderings she had been brought to a firm stop.

  “No moon—”

  Those words out of the dusk of the cave at her back startled her. It was easy to forget Thorn’s presence for long moments at a time.

  “Why did you come?” she demanded abruptly, not mind to mind but in trader tongue.

  “You were—are—here.”

  “And what is that to you, spaceman?” She was glad she could get such a hard note into her voice. “How well were you paid to bring me to those? Or had they not yet paid and you would not lose your prize?”

  “I cannot believe—”

  Simsa did not turn to look at him, rather dug the point of the rod into the grayish earth. “Do not, then. I know what that officer, that woman of your breed, would have of me. And who knows what else their superiors might plan. If I could tear out of me now that other one, I would give her to you—or sell her.” Again Simsa grimaced. “I am of the Burrowers and one sells, one does not give. Yes, I would sell her to you readily enough. When she first came to me . . .” She returned in thought to that moment in the strange temple where she had found her double frozen in time, undoubtedly worshipped by the forgotten race who had succeeded her own. “Yes.” She spoke more swiftly. “When she came to me, I felt—whole—greater—alive. Until I knew that for her I was only a body, by some chance of strange fate, a body born later in time and yet of her people, by resemblance. Then . . .” She bowed her head a little, trying in her own mind to sort out what she had felt then, that the Simsa she knew was a nothing, a spark that could be easily extinguished by this great fire. Yet, stubbornly, she had risen to the challenge, to fight, to remain at least in part what she had always been.

  “Was it not better”—his voice had the old calm she had known during their first journey together—“to become the greater—rather than the lesser?”

  Simsa’s mouth worked, she spat defiantly, even though he might not see the whole of that gesture of repudiation since her back was to him.

  “Speak not of alms until you wear the beggar’s sores,” she repeated an old saying. “I know only that, at times, I am one thing and at some instances I am another.” She turned her upper body a little to one side so she could see him where he lay stretched on one of the bed bundles, his arms folded under his head to raise it a little.

  “She—I—brought down that flitter of yours! She—I—joined in with these of the valley and caused one death of your people and meant no less for you. Do you still speak for her?”

  “Yet you came to find me, and else that had not passed, I would have died. Why save me?”

  “Perhaps she had a reason.”

  “Not you, then, but this other?”

  Somehow, he was forcing the truth out of her. “Have it your way, star rover. Yes, I came for you. There was too much in the past that I would see you dead without a chance of defense. We walked strange trails together once.”

  “Just so. And now we would walk others, it would seem. They will be searching for the flitter, you know. I do not know how good the sand river is at burying what it takes, but the flitter recorder will continue to send messages for a space—a beacon.”

  She pounded one knee with her fist. “Your lieutenant must be very sure of what he wants.”

  “What did you discover which made you do this thing?” He hoisted himself slowly to a sitting position. “You said that that officer wanted you for what profit he might make, that Greeta wanted you to—”

  “To cut flesh from bone and see why I am what I am, yes! I told you they set me apart in a cabin with hidden peepholes that they might watch me, perhaps test me in some way. She—the Elder One—found those with no trouble at all and made for them covers—hallucinations. Tell me the truth, spaceman—if you had gotten me to these Zacathans of yours, would they have done any better?”

  “They do not work in that way.”

  “Ha!” She seized on that instantly. “But they would have studied me in some other way, would they not?”

  “They would have asked you to share memories—”

  “Memories for their storehouse. Now let us see . . .” Simsa dropped the rod across her knees and leaned back a little. “What can such memories consist of? My own of the Burrows would have no meaning for them. Thus, they would have summoned that other and strengthened her, fed and nourished her, until she was and I was not. Is that not so?”

  “What do you want?” he queried in turn. “Do you want to be of the Burrowers once again, to shut from you all the wonder and freedom and—”

  “No!” Again she rolled her hand into a fist, thumped it painfully into the ground beside her knee. “But you—you cannot guess how it is—”

  How was it, then? For a long moment, she was caught up once again in that outflow-inflow of identity change which had been hers in the ruined temple. A warm richness spread through her. “Come . . .” It was a whisper. “Come—be—whole!”

  So easy—a surrender that would be so easy. But beyond that lay what? All the fears of the Burrows were cold in her, rising to blank out that gentle warmth. She would no longer be what she had always been, and even more then would she also be a prize to be fought over.

  “Zasfern understands.” Thorn’s voice reached her only dimly. “Talk with him, with any of his people. While you fight so, you are denying half the protection you say that you need. Was it you or the other who escaped the ship? No matter what you do now, they will believe only in her existence, not in yours.”

  She knew that he spoke the truth. One of her enemies had been killed—but what was one among a number? She knew only Kuxortal, unless she unleashed the Elder One, or awoke her. But men were alike across the stars. They hungered and they knew greed on other worlds just as the lords of the upper city in Kuxortal maneuvered and fought openly and in secret for advantage over their fellows. She did not know whether the Elder One had powers enough to keep her freed from such demands and she wanted—To learn the height of power, she would have to surrender herself, and to that she was not agreeing.

  “So there will be other officers and other Greetas, and these among the Zacathans, too?”

  “I think not. They are old, they live much longer than any other race or species we have found among the stars. To them, knowledge is great, for they are the guardians of history, the stories of many empires which have carried conquest from world to world, of races who knew the stars before my own developed. Yet the Forerunners—of them they have only bits and pieces, mainly guesses. To Zasfern, you would be a treasure to be guarded with his life—
but only if you are willing.”

  “Think on this Zacathan lord of yours, picture him . . .”

  For the sake of knowing a little of the future, she would dare so much. She saw Thorn’s eyes close, felt for herself the inward turn of thought. He was concentrating with the skill that made him what he was—one in search of the always new.

  Between them was a stirring of the air, a stirring she could see more than she felt. At the center of that stir there was something materializing—Thorn’s thought? No, the power of the Elder One was at work again. Perhaps as much as Simsa, that other was curious, was near desperate to discover who had inspired Thorn and meant so much to this space rover that he risked death in service.

  That fog-thing might well have been fed by the haze which was ever-present here, but it gathered substance enough for her to see.

  Humanoid in that it had a manlike body, legs and arms clearly defined one from the other. But there were webs between the fingers, and on the scaly round head there was an upstanding crest of ribbed skin which wavered a little in the air as if it acted as antennae to reinforce sight or thought. The features were saurian in outline, with teeth surely meant to rend and tear flesh. There were no eyes in those dark pits—or else Thorn’s thought did not supply them.

  Only for two breaths, no more, did she see that; then it was gone and Thorn opened his eyes and let out a deep sigh of relief. There were beads of moisture on his face, shining on his ivory-colored skin as if he had been weeping.

  “That was Zasfern.”

  How could he be so sure that she had seen anything? Apparently, he believed she had.

  “You have showed me his outer shell only.” Simsa rose abruptly. “I must think.” In spite of the eyes she was sure watched them from the underbrush, she strode away from the cave, along the roots of the cliff, battling one thought against another as she went.