Flight in Yiktor ft-3 Read online

  He waited for the rise of fear within him. There was that and a shiver of excitement, for he knew well that, had he been given the same chance again, he would make the same choice. To Lord-One Krip and the Lady he was not the scum of the Limits, but one, Farree, to be trusted.

  Turnover! He was pushed against the bunk, the padding within it seeming suddenly leaden, far from the soft surface on which he had rested a breath or two earlier. There was a sharp pain in his head, and then the giddiness and nausea hit together.

  Later, the spasm past, he dared to loose the protecting belts and ties and climb up to the pilot cabin, wedging his small body into the seat of the corn officer they lacked. Both the Lord-One Krip and the Lady Maelen were absorbed in watching a screen, where pinpoints of light were growing larger and larger as their ship bored on through normal space.

  The Lady Maelen broke silence first. "We shall earth at night, I think. The code – " She reached forward and the fingers of her right hand sped across a board of buttons. "That will see us past any orbital guard. We must hope that that has not been changed."

  Time passed, and then they were centering in on one of those balls of light. Farree wriggled forward in his seat to watch their goal come rushing toward them. They would orbit twice, he had understood from the plans earlier made, and then set down under mech-pilot on the spot to which their tape had pointed them across the star lanes.

  It all seemed like a dream to him. The outer star-spangled space was cold and lonely, he thought. And how could a twist of ribbonlike metal bring them in without any action on their part? To trust in such was a little more than he could accept as the time grew short before they must set down.

  At last he deliberately closed his eyes and turned his head into the bargain. He did not want to see a world come rushing up toward him. It seemed that he would spatter against it as a fos-beetle spatted against a screen, unable to waver in its flight to avoid the barrier.

  A giant hand perhaps as large as the bartle's whole body pressed him down. There was a pain which shot through his hump as if he had been slashed by a knife, and he tasted the salt-sweet of blood in his mouth. Then darkness and nothingness fell like the space between the star worlds.

  "Farree," a voice called. Reluctantly he crawled back up out of the darkness in answer. He looked up into the face of the Lady Maelen. She passed a damp cloth over his nose and mouth, and it showed the dark red of blood. He felt an ache through his whole body, but he caught at the webbing of the seat, which had been loosened, and drew himself up.

  "I am all right," he made quick answer, refusing to let them believe that he was merely a charge upon them, as if he were indeed one of the "little ones" – those to whom cages came as prisons.

  He felt her probe and met it quickly. No, he wanted no care, only to be treated as she would treat one of her own straight-backed kind.

  She drew back. "You are of our kind, Farree." She did not speak that mind to mind but with her lips, as if she acknowledged relationship by word instead of thought.

  He did not try to answer her. One needed only to look at him to know that she spoke in pity only, and the notion of her pity brought a fierce surge of anger which he could not voice.

  Lord-One Krip was still seated in the captain's swinging chair, and now his fingers played across the board which the Lady Maelen had earlier used. Farree became aware of something else: the vibration that had been a part of him while they were en route was gone. The ship was motionless and silent. On the looking screen there were tall rises of bare rock. They had indeed landed and, from the look of it, not at any port.

  There was a greenish light upon those rocks. Lady Maelen took a step forward and touched the man's shoulder lightly. Though no word or mind speech Farree could catch passed between them, the scene outside the ship changed.

  Gone were the light-touched rocks with their deep indentations of shadow. Instead they saw a moon in a sky which was not dark. For around the globe of that gold-bright coin were two rings of light, stark and clear. Beyond them, a hazy surround of a third was yet but a palid shadow of the others.

  The Lady Maelen flung her arms up as if she stood in the open reaching to touch that wonder.

  "Three rings – not yet but soon!" Her voice held a triumphant sound as if she had won through some hard battle to reach this time and place.

  "And where" – Lord-One Krip leaned back in his seat, his still hands resting upon the edge of that board of many buttons – "are we?"

  "Sotrath will lend us light. If I only had long sight I would – "

  But the three in the cabin of the ship were not to hear her words, for ringing into the mind of each of them came a challenge, so clear and sharp that Farree reeled and saw that even the Lord-One Krip had caught at the edge of the board, holding so tensely that his grazed knuckles stood out as white knobs.

  "Who comes thus into the Quiet Places?"

  For a long moment Farree thought that there would be no answer. Then the reply came from the Lady Maelen.

  "I am she who was judged, she whose rod of power was taken from her. She who wore fur and fangs and – "

  "And comes again in a new body! Whence got you that, Singer who was and now is not?"

  "Thus." There was a tingle in Farree's mind; that was the only way he could describe it. No passage of thought, rather a high sweet sound as if someone sang without words. How long it continued he could not have afterwards said. It trailed up and up into notes he could not hear but which still fed that tingle in his mind.

  Once more that other voice spoke. It came from nowhere but arrived with all the authority of a guard: "This is a thing which must be thought upon. Not lightly are the People answered by a flouting of their Law."

  Lady Maelen bowed her head as if she stood before a speaker and surrendered her will to that other.

  "Let it lie upon the Scale of Molester. For such a judgment I am ready. Those with me are guilty of naught save striving to help – "

  "All those with you?" resounded the voice. "What of the two who lie prisoner in body within that ship?"

  "They shall be delivered to the judgment of their own kind."

  "They are trespassers by your aid into a place which is forbidden to all save the People and those they summon."

  "Sotrath has summoned us. Three rings will shine and then that which is crooked can be made straight – "

  That which is crooked – straight!

  Farree took a single step forward. Surely she did not mean that! She and the Lord-One had picked him out of the Limits, cast off his casing of Dung, but there was no magic in the world – this or any other – that could straighten him, three rings around an unknown moon or not!

  There was a bitter taste in his mouth as he swallowed, not born of his blood this time but from his thoughts. Yet he was given no time to sift those, for again the voice rang clear.

  "Unto Molester shall it be, even as you have said, you who are not – "

  There was a kind of echo in his mind, but the words were sharply cut off and Farree knew that the speaker had withdrawn. Once more the picture screen in the control cabin showed, not the sky, but towering cliffs about them. The bright light of the moon brought those sharply into focus, and the picture began slowly to move from right to left as if the ship itself was turning on some giant spindle. The cliffs ended. Before them now stretched a wide plain unbroken by any growth higher than a few thick patches of dead-seeming grass.

  This was an empty land appearing only as a wasteland. Then once more cliffs arose to wall them in. Lord-One Krip leaned a little closer to the screen.

  "This I have seen."

  "He did well, that Hnold. We are within short distance to the meeting place," Lady Maelen returned. There was warm satisfaction in her voice. "Let me but go and all shall be readied."

  "Wait!" His hand went up as if to back his command. "Look to the – "

  He pressed thumb hard upon a button and the screen ceased its turn. Before them were still tall cliffs un
der the clear moonlight, but in the sky above the ragged edge of those cliffs something moved, striking fire now and then from the same moonlight.

  "A flitter!"

  The Lady Maelen's lips flattened against her teeth in a grimace. She, too, leaned closer to the screen. "But this is the Land of Beyond where only the Thassa move. And the lordlings of the inner lands have no sky flight!"

  "Others do," he returned grimly. "Such as those we have on board."

  "Wait and watch!" Her hand on his shoulder pushed him fully down into his seat again.

  The airborne transport came on, fully into the moonlight, where the rocks seemed to reflect back the glory of the rings to show the clearer what passed either on earth or through the air. The craft had no riding lights, and yet it appeared to hold a course that would bring it to their own landing place. Guild? But how could the two prisoners have summoned such support?

  "They were waiting," said Lord-One Krip in a low voice.

  "That they could not have been!" she protested. "The tape was unchanged and brought us – "

  "Perhaps they expected their men might fail," he returned. "They had ready then a secondary plan."

  "Which will not serve them either." Her fingers dug into his shoulder as she watched the oncoming flitter closely but with no expression of alarm. "See!"

  The small craft boring through the moonlight had nearly reached the lip of the cliffs. Then it seemed to waver – almost as if the same wind which rippled the grass patches was strong enough to seize the flitter from the control of those on board. The craft sideslipped to the right, drew level with what Farree could believe was an effort, slipped again. It near-skimmed the top of the cliff, and then it made an abrupt turn and half circled to put itself back on the same course it had followed toward them.

  Only no longer was its flight swift and sure; it slipped from one side to the other in jerky motion. The craft could have been a bird netted by a sure fling of a hunter, struggling for its freedom to no purpose.

  So jerking and fighting the craft passed out of sight behind a taller pinnacle of the cliff rise and was gone.

  "The Thassa have their own defenses," the Lady Maelen said. "None approach here unless they are of the blood or are summoned. This is the Old Place and here lies the heart – " She stopped suddenly and looked curiously abashed, as one who talks of hidden things and then realizes her words can be heard by those who have no right to listen.

  "Will they crash?" Lord-One Krip asked in a level voice.

  Now she frowned. "Not so. Our defenses are not to destroy – not even any evil which may come. They will be but diverted and also they will forget – "

  "Not if they, too, are mind shielded."

  She frowned. "I do not know. A shield is made to keep out thought thrusts. It is not intended to stand up to the force of the Elders acting together. We shall see how well any man-made thing may last against the full force of the Thassa."

  "Let us hope," he said in the same level tone, "that the force is fully effective then. Do we go?"

  "Not yet. With the dawn perhaps. Maybe then the summons will come. We cannot enter without that."

  Farree lay once more curled on his own bunk with Toggor squatting beside him. This was a long way from the Limits yet. He rubbed his forehead. There was something – a pale shadow of a shadow of a memory that once he had lain within a ship before. Still, how could that be? His only clear memory came from the noisome sink of the Limits and that was all he thought he had ever known. He wondered – pushing away that shadow which made him uneasy and aching – what the dawn would bring. That Lord-One Krip was also uneasy this night, he sensed. However, if there was any crack in the confidence of the Lady Maelen he could not detect it. She was restless, yes, but not as one who awaited trouble, rather as one who would be out and doing – one who stood before a door, impatient that it be opened to her.

  He wondered about the Thassa and that voice out of nowhere. Had it perhaps rung out also in the minds of those in the flitter, warning them off in a way they could not protest? Or had it taken charge of their bodies as he had heard tales of among the spacers, forcing them against their wills?

  He thought and later he slept while, in his broken and fleeting dreams, he looked upon a three-ringed moon and felt power drawing him to – to – but to what he could not remember when he awakened.

  It was Toggor tugging with a claw at one of the locks of his unruly hair that brought him out of that drowse. The smux radiated hunger, and Farree felt an answering emptiness in his own bent body. He slipped into the narrow slit of the fresher and allowed the mist there to wash him, coming out to a fresh robe and sandals. Then he went to the galley, smelling, even before he opened the door, the fine odors of food.

  Lord-One Krip was at the table, an opened ration tin at hand, but he was not eating. When Toggor gave a squeal and leaped onto the table, he shoved the tin at the smux, who clacked claws over it and immediately began to eat.

  Farree was a little daunted that the other had made no sign of seeing him nor given any greeting. But he got his own tin and crawled up on the empty seat opposite the man, waiting for him to break the silence between them.

  "She is waiting still." Lord-One Krip might have been talking to himself, for he did not look in Farree's direction at all. "But what if . . ." He did not finish the question, and Farree dared now to do it for him. After all, he was a part of this company, too, and if trouble lay before them it was his right to know.

  "What if the – the voice – says we must leave?"

  For the first time the man looked at him. There was the crease of a frown between those upward-slanting brows.

  "Then we go."

  Greatly daring, Farree asked, "Where are we?"

  "At the meeting place of the Thassa. You do not understand, little brother." He clasped his hands before him on the table. "I am not Thassa" – with the fingers on one hand he pinched the skin on the back of the other – "though I now wear a Thassa body."

  "One does not wear bodies," Farree cut in sharply. "One is a body." For a wild moment the thought of another body – a straight, tall, humpless one – filled his mind. What if what he had just denied was the truth and he could change? There were many wonders on other worlds, but never had he heard such as that!

  "The Thassa wear bodies." He could see that Lord-One Krip meant in truth what he said. "To become a Moon Singer, a one of power among them – they change bodies with animals, running wild on the land and learning from them other scents and desires. I was a crewman on a free trader, and here on Yiktor I was taken by a lordling who would have of me the secrets from off-world – or else use me to wring such from my captain. He gave my body to pain."

  Farree hunched under the burden on his shoulders as if rolling himself into a ball. He knew what Lord-One Krip meant. Such had been his own portion.

  "I was – damaged. Maelen was a Moon Singer and also the leader of a troop of little ones – animals who gave shows she devised. She saved me by singing me into a barsk."

  Farree swallowed. "An animal?"

  "An animal"—nodded the other—"one which was notably fierce and supposedly untameable. It was not one of hers but one which had been captured and badly treated, and which she was curing and trying to mind free. So did I live on Yiktor for a space. But then there was a Thassa body – a Kinsman to Maelen – a Thassa who had taken on animal form but been killed in that form. His body was empty of mind, for the animal transformed with him had gone mad. So – I became Thassa – for my own body was judged dead by my shipmates and spaced after they had taken off.

  "For this act Maelen was condemned by the Thassa and her wand of power taken from her. When she left this world she, too, was an animal—and as such she traveled with me. Until Sehkmet. There – well, there were bodies, very ancient bodies, who could change at will. And one of them was a woman. She would have ruled, but Maelen invaded her, freed her captives and the inner core of evil which dominated her, so her body became Maelen as you se
e her now. We have returned to Yiktor with this ship – for it has long been Maelen's dream, as you know in a little – to become once more a Moon Singer and then to go out among the stars with her furred folk, proving to all that life is sacred and those considered the lesser may, in their own way, surprise those who see them as that.

  "When Sotrath bears its three rings is a time of great power, and we have waited for that to return. But now, just as that flitter was guided from the inner land, so may we also be sent on our way."

  "She does not believe that." Farree did not know how he knew that truth, but he was certain he did.

  "She is – Maelen. Once a Singer under the moon, one cannot be stripped of such powers easily. And on Sehkmet she found a battle such as few even of her people must ever have faced. Thus she believes what she wishes to believe – "

  "Belief is a comfort and a weapon, a wand of power, and a pointed laser." Maelen stood in the doorway of the cabin, her eyes alight. The long cascade of hair, which she usually kept tightly braided, flowed free around her shoulders, though locks of it wavered a little, as if stirred to rise by some magnet. Her drab ship's uniform was gone. Instead, she wore breeches and boots of a russet color close to that of her hair. Her shirt had a wide stiffened collar forming a tall fan behind her head, and she had a sleeveless jacket of some yellow wooly stuff which was not unlike fur.

  Farree heard Lord-One Krip's breath come forth in a low sound of wonder. The Lady Maelen turned slowly around as if to allow them to view her. In the drabness of the ship she was almost like a flame glowing with warmth, for that eagerness Farree had earlier sensed in her was now a consuming fire.

  "Come!" She beckoned to both of them. "The Thassa gather. Soon we shall be summoned also."

  She swung up to the control cabin, Lord-One Krip on her heels, Farree moving more slowly behind. The screen was on and they looked out into or onto a sun-drenched world. There was life – no flitter in the skies, but rather there came at a steady pace wagons with covered tops and huge earth-crushing wheels pulled by teams of shaggy-coated four-legged animals that plodded steadily onward at a ground-eating pace. Nor could Farree see that any held the reins, any walk beside them with a goad in hand. Rather the animals had the air of being about a necessary business of their own.