The Forerunner Factor Read online

  She must have dreamed, but none of that dream aroused her into the wakefulness. Her arms were about Zass so tightly that the zorsal protested and nipped at her hand. There was the dampness of sweat along her body and she was breathing in short gasps as if she had been running for her life before a hunt of vastly superior power.

  Her mouth was parched—she might have been shouting for help for hours. Help against whom and why? Simsa did not believe that the valley dwellers had sent such a thing upon her. No, it was the old, old law which Ferwar had so often quoted to a heedless girl child. Use any power for the bemusement or ill of another and it recoils upon the sender a hundredfold. Only she had not meddled to Thorn’s hurt, but for his own safety!

  She licked dry lips. Outside the narrow niche of cave the haze was that of day. Here, it was easy to lose all sense of time with no real night or sunlight to measure it for one. She might have slept for hours; the painful stiffness that hit her as she tried to move suggested that indeed a lengthy time had passed.

  Zass was gone, doubtless to hunt. She herself was well-aware of a hunger pang like a knife thrust through her middle. Crawling out of her rough shelter, she rose to look about.

  A short distance away, purple globes hung from the boughs of a tree scarcely more than her own height. She headed toward that, uncaring at the moment whether the fruit would be safe eating for an off-world digestion or not. It was full ripe, giving forth a good smell as she twisted a globe from the branch and mouthed it.

  Sweet, but with an undertaste of tartness, its juice trickled down her dry throat. Nor did she hesitate or wait after the first mouthful to test safety. Having eaten a half-dozen of the fruit, she sought the water basin.

  There were three of the valley dwellers there, drawing water into jars. At her coming, they each glanced once at her and then pointedly away, making it very plain that they intended no contact. Simsa waited until they were gone and then fell on her knees to draw her sticky hands back and forth in the water before drinking. Once more that liquid invigorated her.

  When she had done, she started in the direction of the structure that was the heart of the valley. Twice more, she met the furred ones along the paths, both times having to take a hurried step out of the way when it became apparent they had no intention of giving any room to her. It was as if she had really become one of those illusions she had spun in the ship’s cabin to deceive those who would spy upon her.

  So plain was this nonrecognition that Simsa found herself rubbing her left hand along her body in reassurance that she was indeed there and that this was not a very realistic dream. She never remembered eating or drinking in a dream before—but that was no promise that one did not indulge in such satisfactions for an ailing body. Perhaps, as Thorn, she was afevered and walked only in spirit. No, such a thought was foolishness—she was alive and awake. But that she was so overlooked meant trouble—trouble that could only come from what she had done to Thorn.

  Memory meant much to those of the valley—so much that it would seem they bred or carefully trained their holders of recall. To force wrong memories on someone who could not withstand her power to do so . . . yes, to them that might be worse than the outright slaying of the prisoner. Yet she had done just that as much for them as for him. Surely, they did not want to have descend upon them those such as the officer and Greeta, greedy to learn the secrets of others. Now after Thorn’s false report, the ship would take off, and there would be no future exploration—they were safe.

  “Not so!”

  Simsa wheeled to face a wall of the thorn-bearing bush that walled the pathways before she realized that the words had not come to her ears but into her mind. And the thought, from the force and vigor, that was the Great Memory, or else she who had raised the whirlwind with the Elder One’s help.

  Simsa hunted the first opening in the thorn bush and pushed through it into another of the clearings. No water basin here, no glittering shards of broken egg—only four of the people. There sat the Great Memory, the claws on her forelimbs turned into fists to better support her more upright stance, and beside her the priestess or chieftainess who had summoned the whirlwind. It was she who made an abrupt gesture with her right claw which brought Simsa to sit cross-legged facing them all.

  “They are gone—back to their ship—back to the sky which gave them forth,” the younger leader thought with vigor. “Yet you remain and, from the memory of the one you favored, you took much. Why is this so?”

  “That he and those with him would do as you have said—leave this world and seek no more. He now believes me dead.”

  “As you showed to him—” the Great Memory came in. “Why?”

  “Have I not said—some of those are my enemies.” Simsa was puzzled at that question. “Believing me dead, they seek no more, leave your world. Is this not what you have wanted, Great Memory?”

  Leaning her weight heavily on her left arm and fist, the older one uncurled her claws and, on a patch of hardened clay before her, drew with claw tip a series of what looked like a mixture of coils, one slipping into another. Between these she then inserted deep holes, boring claw tip well into the ground. When she had done, she looked to Simsa almost triumphantly, the girl thought, if such faces could reveal any clear expression.

  All four of them were still, waiting. Undoubtedly, she was expected now to answer and she did not even know the question. Was that muddle of lines and pits on the ground a message? If so, she had no chance of reading it and there was no value in suggesting that she did.

  She pointed with the tip of her rod to the lines. “I do not know the meaning,” she thought slowly and, she hoped, with emphasis enough so that they would believe her.

  But even as she tried such communication, the rod shifted in her hands, turning, with forces she could not fight, to interact with a portion of the pattern. And there uncoiled in her head—“Hav bu, san gorl—” The words were not only fiery pictures in her mind, she was speaking them aloud. The Elder One knew. This was a challenge, a contest of wits and of memories, something that had happened long and long ago and had never been forgotten. The rod trembled in a game of sorts, one in which the stakes were very high—even life or death. And it was a game that was not native here to this forgotten valley. Who had he been—what had he been—that lost, air-soaring one who had sheltered here until his years ran out?

  She had a flash of picture, of ebony skin and a mane of silver hair, of brilliant jewels aflash as bodies crowded about two who sat and played for stakes that would condemn one, exalt the other. This was deadly contest and she came to it with a riven mind.

  Again, she was not one but two. One of those twins was impotent, a prisoner who could only watch a game not of chance but skill. There had been the flyer and another—another whose face she could not see clearly, blurred as if the years between them had worn it away, even as wind wears away in time the hardest of stone. Yes, the player and the flyer—it was his fears and longings that she touched upon for a moment of keen despair.

  Exile. That was the price for the loser. And what the gain? Change—a change he could not allow. This was all a whirl of shadows Simsa could not pin down to understand. Mind power against mind power, desperation against rising triumph. Even as Thorn had been molded and sent forth to play her game, so was this one being mastered to act for another. Knowledge was power—and power was the ultimate goal for any living creature.

  Wrong! Deadly wrong; something struggled within the prisoner Simsa. She had known the power of the half-barbaric nobles of Kuxortal and had taken her chances with it. There had been the infinitely greater power of the space people and here—here of the valley dwellers, the power she had dared to draw to her to turn Thorn’s life from one path to another. Power—always power! Within Simsa a bitter struggle began, a lost one, for the Elder One was clearly awake and lying in wait. Her game had been successfully played out. She was not going to withdraw now.

  There was a tearing within the girl, a supreme effort which the wat
ching Simsa thought she could never have made. But she was no longer the one who triumphed, but rather the winged one. And the fire that filled her was the flame of his despair and need. Only a glimpse of that ancient battle was she allowed, and then—

  Darkness—though she knew that she did not sleep or wander in any land of illusion. There was a spark of light. She somehow felt the pain of that which held her stretched upon rock, bruising her body. There was the ship—not the one that she had voyaged upon and fled from. The faint outlines she could see rising from that core of light were different. A ship lost in time—an ascension from this world even as Thorn and those who had rescued him would go—if they had not already gone. She was left alone as it climbed skyward, then she was alone again. What had she won? Doom for herself and perhaps no victory for those for whom she had fought her battle. She willed the dark to close utterly, that she might know that all changes were past, that she must live and die as that sky rider had chosen.

  She must have passed out of the far time into the now in sleep. For when she again battled with the dark, it was to awaken in that same shallow cave where Thorn had sheltered. For a long moment, she did not move but lay there staring up at the ragged rock about her, wondering at what she had seen and its meaning. Time, she had all the time in the world now to think about what she had done, perhaps not once but twice, as the wheel of the great years made its slow turning. Had she indeed savored the last confrontation of the flyer and one of his people? One who successfully built false memories could never again trust his or her own.

  She pulled herself up to look over that valley of life in the midst of so much desolation. Simsa had always prided herself on her self-sufficiency, that after she had been able to walk, talk, and feed herself, she had progressed steadily toward full independence. Yes, she had shared with Ferwar, but somehow the old woman’s attitude toward her had been one of very casual interest after she had dinned, beaten, bullied the fiercely independent girl-child into abiding by the only rules that meant safety on Kuxortal. Simsa had come these last dozen years or so to think of herself as one free, in no way forced to another’s ways.

  Certainly, she was now freer yet, for there was not one left on this unnamed world who could lay any task upon her. The valley people were apart—she could expect nothing from them, save perhaps food, water, and this rock over her head. She had the zorsal, but as long-lived as Zass might be, she would not spend too many more weary years here.

  Nor—Simsa sat the straighter and her mouth became a determined line—nor need she stay here, either, to dry away into nothingness because she was forced idle. What had she seen of this world after all? The fissured plain in which the sand rivers flowed and this valley! But that was not a world, only a very small part of it! There was nothing to prevent her going forth again, with supplies she could cull here, to advance her wanderings. What had brought that first ship, the one of the flyer, to this world? The impression lingered strongly with her, not at any nudging of the Elder One, that there had been a reason—no casual or unplanned voyage as her own coming had been. There was no suggestion either that that exile had fled and been followed as she had been. Therefore, let her see what had drawn those others, even though time might have nearly erased all signs or traces!

  The need for action had always been a part of Simsa of the Burrows. Perhaps it had also tinted the musing of the Elder One, for the girl was aware now of a flow of strength, as if that other part of her agreed, was impatiently pushing her toward faring forth.

  It was dawn. Her “sleep” must have lasted hours. And she felt the refreshment of her body. Simsa swung out of the cave, went down to the fringe of the green stuff.

  How many memories did she ride now? She tried to control the shaking of her hands. How was it she knew that if she broke from the parent branch two of those paddle-shaped leaves and pressed their edges closely together, she could fashion a bag, one strong enough to carry water? Her hands were already busy at the task and, cautiously, she sought the Elder One. There was a blotting out there, so—No, she had had a hard enough time as two people. She would not welcome a third—the hovering identity of the flyer—too!

  Yet, when she was fully equipped with two water bags filled and sealed and fruit she had examined critically that it be not too ripe, she felt free enough. East lay the river of sand, the plain over which she had come. Nowhere in that journeying had she seen more than dead rock and a blasted world. Not east, then—west? And that direction also had the advantage of being away from the landing place of the Life Boat and presumably where Thorn’s ship had also set down.

  She whistled as she headed toward that stairway up the cliff. Zass came winging, circling about Simsa’s head, complaining with a hoarse croaking at what lay in her mind. Yet the zorsal made no move to remain behind, but went with the girl as she climbed steadily to the top of the cliff wall again. That flyer, he had not even had such as Zass to bear him company—she was not as bereft as he. Now she set him firmly out of her mind as she tramped along the lip of the cliffs working her way to the opposite side of the valley.

  The haze was always thicker in the morning, and as she looked down into the cut before leaving she could hardly see the highest crowns of the trees. They had their own protection from discovery. When she tried to stare ahead, she could see only a little. But it was enough to locate where a fall of rock gave her a place over which to scramble down.

  That river of sand flowed here, too, but in the place below the land slip it was narrow. Rocks tumbled to leave only a space over which she dared to leap. When she crossed, she stood staring keenly about her. To find such an aid to return to the valley was almost as though her mind had moved the cliffs to achieve it. But she must be aware of the ease which the haze might spin her around into losing it. She reached among the debris of the slide that had fallen on the other side of the stream and picked out any pebbles she could find that held a glint of pure yellow. Several such had been fractured in the crush of the fall and gave off bright sparkles from their scraped surfaces. These she chose first.

  Setting, as she hoped, straight out from the valley toward the unknown west, Simsa left a train of such pebbles, one dropped every twenty strides. The haze was thinning and seeming to rise into the usual ceiling across the plains, so she could see and easily avoid any of those threatening fissures. Though the air was warm and the rock actually hot under her feet, there was still no sign of the haze thinning enough to let in the sunlight.

  Zass now and then raised in flight, which carried her out of sight into the dimness before she returned again to settle with complaining grunts on Simsa’s already talon-scratched shoulder. There was no way of marking any hour, just as there appeared to be no end to the monotony of the other plain. She had chanced upon no more rivers of sand, and even the fissures were smaller and farther apart.

  A seam of reddish yellow drew her to one side. Simsa hoped she had chanced upon a vein of more of the colored pebbles she could use for markers, as her supply fast diminished. But as she came closer, she saw that it was not a mineral that had raised that streak of color but seemingly a plant—the stems thrusting upward from rosettes formed by flat leaves against the stone, some tipped with bright red blossoms. At least, she thought, they might be termed that, though they were not open, but rather appeared as tightly rolled cylinders.

  There was not only plant life, but insects that hovered over those blossoms, unrolling tongues almost as long as the rest of their small bodies to thrust those deep into the flowers. Zass croaked with interest and then appeared to decide that the feeders were too small game for her to exert herself to catch.

  More and more patches of the vegetation spread in streaks along the rocks and those were rising in a ridge—a slow upward slant which did not require too much exertion to follow. The insects whirled away on almost invisibly thin wings and then resettled as she passed. Now there was a second type of growth, this anchored on the level surfaces of the stones over which she climbed. Like the thing
s that lived in the sand streams, this was deadly to the smaller life-forms, for it threw out long limbs patterned with thorns. Simsa strove to avoid their seeking claws. Not all travelers were so lucky. Simsa caught sight of a white blob on the ground. One of her jumps to avoid a thorned lash rocked the blob and sent it spinning over so she could see the eye holes of a skull, though she had found no other land animal hereabouts. These remains of a victim made her look more carefully for any trace of such life.

  At one or two places, the moving tentacles of the plants raised such a barrier that Simsa leaped the obstructions, fearing to feel the rake of entrapping thorns on foot or ankle as she crossed there. The larger they were, the more she could foresee trouble if she kept on a direct course. Then both plants ceased growth abruptly as a last jump landed her on an expanse of what appeared to be ebony-hued glass, so that she slipped in spite of desperate efforts to keep to her feet, sprawling forward, luckily out of reach of those flailing vegetable arms.

  Zass had leaped to wing and now screamed with rage at what she considered hard usage, drawing Simsa’s attention aloft. She sat very stiff, her eyes trying to take it all in, even as she had studied the ruins of faraway Kuxortal.

  No vegetation masked this place, but there had been far worse things that had happened to what had manifestly been a building or collection of such which in size far rivaled Kuxortal itself. These buildings had—melted!

  Before her, walls were half-buried in a hardened ooze of their own substance. Simsa could see that beyond the pools of glasslike puddles were other walls rising three, four, and even more stories high the farther her eyes peered through the haze.

  Nor had those higher and less damaged walls been fashioned of stone. Even in the hiding of the haze they gave forth a metallic sheen, bearing no resemblance to the rocks on which they stood.