The X Factor Page 9

  The birds and the animals had been in the city yesterday, but now he began to see disturbing traces of other possible inhabitants. A second slime trail, wider, thicker, and more disgusting than the first crossed the street. And this time Diskan had to take a running leap to clear it. Perhaps the creatures who made these were night crawlers. If so, the sooner he won out of the city, the better. It had lost for him all the appeal of his dream; its sinister aspect was growing, so that even when the sun shone brightly into its streets, the buildings seemed to exhale gloom from their open doorways, setting up a fog of fear.

  Diskan broke into a trot, glancing from side to side, and now and then over his shoulder. There was no movement, no sight of anything. But that very stillness was part of his discomfort, for it hinted at things lying in wait behind a window, within the shadow of a doorway. Allowing him to come, to pass, then following— Twice he stopped short, faced about, stunner ready, certain that he had heard some betraying noise, that danger prowled at his heels.

  He consulted the device he had taken from the dead man. The clicking was very faint, barely audible when he held it to his ear. And the needle pointed back to the center of the city. He was sure the peril he sensed had nothing to do with his own kind. This was of the city, yet not of Xcothal. An empty shell had been left, and into that emptiness had crawled other things that had no kinship with those who had built the shell, who were, in fact, the opposite of those first intelligences. This was no city of promised light, color, and joy, as he had seen it yesterday, but a graveyard, given over to all that opposed his dream.

  More slime tracks, and one so wide that he feared he could not leap it. The noisome odor was stronger; the tracks could perhaps be fresher. Then Diskan knew that he had chosen the wrong road, for the street widened into a great pool with a center of blue mud. And that mud blew a bubble as he watched, the dull skin swelling out and out—to break, spewing bits of yellow stuff over the surface of the lake.

  The yellow substance was light enough to be air-borne, floating in motes. Some of these sped together as steel attracted to a magnet. And when they met, there was a spark of fire, a small flaming coal, which fell to melt a bit of ice or set flame to a tuft of dried reed. And there was a stench worse than that from the slime tracks.

  No safe way of crossing that lake. The ice crust was thin, and Diskan did not trust the footing along its shore, which lapped against the walls of the buildings. Back—back to the hub circle and choose again, and Diskan had the feeling that something was satisfied, amused by his retreat.

  At the circle, he sat down on one of the steps of the center building. Here the sun shown warmer, more brightly. When he looked down any one of those streets, it was to meet obscurity, akin to that which had bewildered him when he had surveyed the city from the arched walk at the top of the tower structure. Yet this was different, for then he had a sense of expectant enchantment, whereas this warned, repelled, set up a barrier. Diskan weighed the bag of supplies. He could ration what was left. All these supplies carried various sustaining ingredients that allowed one to stretch them thin and still have an adequate level of nourishment. But he wanted out—away from those now-sinister streets, back to the natural rock and marsh he could understand.

  Deliberately, he studied the four streets to his left. Down the first he had just returned. But he had retained enough memory of yesterday to limit the possible exit to one of those four—or the three he had not tried. Now he selected the center one of the trio and set out for the second time.

  Slime trails again, but these had hardened in the frosty air. For the rest, this way was exactly like the first.

  He held to a brisk walk. It was past midday, and he wanted to be out of this maze before sundown. To be caught at night in one of these dark ways was a risk he did not want to take, and he must make good time now.

  A lake, with blue mud for its center— Diskan did not believe what he saw. He rammed the spear point against the ice surface at his feet, and it pierced the pane over dark fluid, releasing an evil smell, proving its reality. He was back again! But he had not taken the same street—he could not have made that mistake!

  Holding fiercely to that belief, Diskan retreated for the second time. The street that had brought him here before— that had been the first of those probable ones, and this had been the third! He knew that was true. Yet as far as he could see, he stood now just where he had before—

  Back to the hub. Panting and sweating, he squatted once again on the steps and counted those streets with a finger. He had been right! Here was the ration tube he had sucked dry and left lying to mark where he had rested. That was the first street, that the third! And since they radiated out spokewise, why, one could not run into the other without some curve he would have noticed. Yet he had found the lake the second time.

  Diskan put his head in his hands and tried to consider the problem carefully, logically, only there was no normal logic in this. So, he must have counted wrong some way. Only he had not, one part of his brain shrieked—he had not! This was the old frustration, the old deafeating knowledge that somehow he had not performed some function with the right responses. Thoroughly shaken, Diskan was almost afraid now to lift his head and look at those streets so much alike,, so much a trap for him.

  When he did raise his eyes to survey them with a control he fought to hold, the obscurity had deepened. Why, he was hardly able to see down any length farther than the first three or four buildings. Diskan gave a gasping cry, caught up supply bag and club, and began to climb the steps of the core building. For all his determination, he could not face the murk of those streets. And to come a third time to that lake would be more than his sanity could stand.

  He pushed in the first open door and looked about the deep gloom of the hall into which the animals had brought him. Full circle! It must have been near this same hour yesterday that he had stood here. Then he had been keyed to desires, pressures from without. Now he was alone—very much alone.

  Diskan gazed at the blank walls, his eyes always returning to the point of the wedge where the dusk was thickest. Yet he had no uneasiness of spirit such as had frightened him in the somberness of the streets. What had been the purpose of this chamber? It was so large, companies of worshipers could have gathered here. Was it a fane? Or hundreds of councilors could have debated together if this was a place of government. A court might have held vast formal ceremonials down its length. Now all was silence, dust, shadows. No trace of carving, no matter how worn, none of the vague impressions of what might be runes ran along the smooth surfaces of the narrowing walls, no altar, no dais, no throne raised from the floor.

  He began to walk toward the narrowed point. At his belt, the device ticked more and more loudly. His glance told him that the needle pointed ahead when he held it on his palm. But here was no rubble or battle sign.

  Suddenly, Diskan spoke. "What do you want of me?"

  In a measure he had begun to feel as he had the day before—that a demand was building, becoming more imperative, that he was being given a second chance at some test, the importance of which was past his assessing.

  He was midway down the chamber now. Did the shadows gathered at the point have substance? Were the animals returning? No, he could not see them, turning, pacing, moving in to meet him. Nothing so concrete awaited him. Still some sense tricked him, or his eyes, into that belief in movement, in the appearance of a pattern forming there, woven to a purpose he could not guess. If he could only follow the lines of that pattern, he might understand! But though he concentrated, tried to force such understanding, it did not come— only that movement he could not trace. And at last it dwindled into nothingness and was gone.

  "Tell me!" His voice arose in a despairing cry, echoing through the hall. But when those echoes died away, there was only a dusty silence and a loss that hurt.

  Diskan waited, hoping to see again that weaving which was only half on the borderline of his sight, to catch from the air about him some helpful hint of p
urpose, to learn the step to be taken, the unseen door that must be opened. Nothing— Whatever had brought a small measure of life for a portion of time to this age-old hall had died, as a fire might fall to ashes, its flames unfed.

  He turned at last, his shoulders hunched and bowed, his pace a tired shuffle. This last and perhaps greatest of his failures left him drained of all purpose and feeling. He went out to the hall, and because he had no place else to go, he found again the inner stair and climbed to his perch of the night before. Below was Xcothal, but this time he had no desire to look out upon its ruins. He feared what he might see in those streets as the night closed in.

  As one who nurses a pain that cannot be soothed, he rocked slowly back and forth on his haunches, his arms folded over his middle.

  "What do you want of me?" That was no shout, only a ragged whisper, but he repeated it over and over, until his mouth was dry, his voice husky. And there was never any answer, not even the cry of a bird.

  He did not sleep; he could not. The sense of danger arose about his post as the fumes of the mud lake had billowed up with their choking stench. No test of courage could be harder to face. In the darkness, Diskan fought back, and he had so little to fight with! But the hour came when, because he could not live with his own fear any longer, Diskan crawled on hands and knees across the cold stone to look down on the city, the pit from which that terror arose.

  Dark such as he had not imagined—yet the longer he watched, the more he saw that there were degrees of darkness in a way he could find no words to describe. There was a flowing, an ebbing there also—not to be defined— a life that was not his life, nor the life of that other weaving in the chamber. This was a thing that had entered unbidden, that strove to knit itself into the ruined walls, to remain, unless that which had once been came again.

  That which had once been! Xcothal—

  "It is past—" He did not know why he spoke that protest in a frozen whisper.

  Past! Past! Perhaps his word had been taken up by an echo; perhaps it was only the sigh of a breeze below his lookout. The coiling of the dark upon the dark grew swifter, reached higher about the hub building. Diskan made himself watch it. His body shivered and his nails cut deeper into his own flesh, although he was not aware of that small pain through the larger that filled him.

  Xcothal—he clung to his dream, strove to batter aside the tide of darkness with the color, the life, the beauty it smothered and buried. Xcothal should not be taken! That which had dwelt here could not be so lightly overcome, banished— Xcothal— Diskan stared into the night and fought—throwing away all logic, all reason.

  He only knew that, in summoning his dream and holding it, he was waging a small engagement in the midst of a battle, and he held to his post grimly. What had been dark waves beating on shadows began to change. He did not know when he saw that first spark of light flash into being, a pinpoint in the streets. But there came another and another— minute sparks of light whose origin he could not guess. They followed no pattern, a cluster here, a line of individual points there, a solitary beam in the midst of heavy dark.

  They did not move as did the whirling lashings of the dark but endured as outposts. And at length, no more appeared. Diskan unclenched his fists. Again on his hands and knees, he went back to the wall. He did not want to sleep; he did not need it. There was a tingling awareness of the night, such as he had never experienced before, running through his veins, warming him so that with impatient fingers he pulled at the throat of the parka, opening it farther.

  Something—he did not know just what—had happened, as if a machine long idle had been triggered into action once again, and ripples spreading from that action were lapping on, out and out. Was this what they had wanted of him, the brothers-in-fur? No, swift on the heels of that came the denial, and he knew it was the truth. He had failed then, but now—

  Diskan did not notice the device hung at his belt. On the dial the needle quivered, fluttered; the clicking was a solid purr that did not reach his deaf ears. All that was real for him now was what lay out there in the night, stirring, moving. And this time—surely this time—he was going to learn what it was!

  X

  Not a sound but a vibration in the air, through his body, was transmitted by the stone on which he crouched. A summons? After it, a quiver, as if each and every heavy stone in these walls strove to answer, only had no way of giving voice. Diskan waited tense, yearning—

  Again!

  His body obeyed without any command from his brain as he stood up. In his veins, the blood flowed more quickly; he felt alert, ready for anything that might come. The deadening fog of fear had been rent into tatters, was shriveling from him.

  In the dark, needing no physical sight as a guide, Diskan found the stairs, began to descend. Beat—once again! A heart awakening into life—

  Xcothal's heart? In his eagerness, he stumbled, almost fell, and that mishap taught him caution. Round and around, down, always waiting for that beat of life within the core of ancient death.

  He was on the threshold of the wedge-shaped chamber when it vibrated for the fourth time. And he saw the furred ones moving up the steps, slipping around and about him, as if he had no existence in their eyes. There was no reckoning the number of their dark shapes in this pale light. Diskan only knew that they were many and that they came from all directions, pressing with purpose up the outer steps, toward the wedge chamber. The brothers-in-fur! But they could not be alone—there must be the others!

  Bewildered, Diskan drew to one side just within the doorway, his eyes searching for what he felt must be there, though what he sought, he could not explain. The interior of the huge hall, which had been so dusky, was now growing lighter. Sparks hung in the air here and there, always above the mass of furred bodies, reared up on their broad haunches, their heads all turned to the narrow far end, as if fixed in a hypnotic stare on some point or thing he could not see. There were so many of them!

  Now their heads moved, a rhythmic ripple that ran back like a breaking wave to Diskan's place by the door. And following that ripple came the vibration, stronger now, a beat that shook the building, the living things in it, as if the very earth heaved.

  Ripple, ripple. With a start, Diskan became conscious his own head had joined in the slow bend forward and back. The sparks in the air grew brighter. They were of different colors, gems tossed aloft to hang in brilliant array—green, blue, orange, scarlet, violet, shades in between, dazzling to watch.

  From over the heads of the animals, the lights moved out and away, drifting to the bare walls. But where they touched the stone they melted, spread in glistening runnels and shooting trails of jeweled fire. And they were not still, those runnels and trails, but moved, interweaving, loosing, weaving again another design, as had the dusky shadows. Only this was the splendor of which that had been the dying ashes.

  Diskan shaded his eyes with his hand from what was close to searing brilliance. He longed to watch, and yet he could no longer do so. He was on his knees, his head moving in time with those of the animals about him. And from them, a vast wave of ecstasy, which was also expectancy of some greater wonder to come, rose about him.

  Boom! Boom! Xcothal awakening—the past returning to flower again.

  Yes! Yes! Diskan's lips shaped the words he could not voice aloud. To know—to be in Xcothal in this hour! This was what he had sought without understanding. He stood on a threshold; take only one step and wonder beyond reckoning was his!

  A scream—

  The fabric of lights, of rapport with the animals, was rent as if a knife had slashed it. Dazed, Diskan shook and shivered. He fell forward, and that saved his life, for over him a blaster volt blazed, to strike the wall and scar it with a core of crimson destruction.

  Diskan twisted, still too much under the spell to know more than that it had been broken. He stared up, bemused, at the smoking evidence of that shot. Then he was knocked down and rolled over by furred bodies launched at him. And by the time
he fought his way free of those, his wits were back.

  Had he really been attacked by the animals? Diskan thought not as he sat up, back against the wall, well out of line of the doorway from which that blast must have come. His companions in that ritual had merely removed him speedily from the line of fire.

  Fire from an off-world weapon! Now a piercing buzzing from his belt! Had that device guided the enemy here? Diskan unhooked it and almost threw it from him, his grief and anger at the interruption turning into a smoldering rage. No, he would hunt that other down! He had been close to dying in that ray, yes. But what was worse, he had lost that which had been almost within his grasp here. And for that there was no pardon! This thing he held in his hand, it could perhaps guide him to his attacker.

  However, as he scrambled up, the animals pressed about him, imposed their bodies as a barrier between him and the doorway.

  "No!" Diskan strove to elude their guard. "Let me through!" He thrust against them. Then he remembered the stunner, dragged it out, and sprayed widely with it.

  That cleared a path as the animals went down, temporarily paralyzed. Diskan ran into the night, the com device in one hand, the stunner in the other. Free of the chamber, he paused. To charge ahead into a blaster was stupid. Logic took over, forced control that his rage had broken. Do not run into death—hunt, trail, use what cunning he had.

  He studied the dial on his palm. The needle swung to his left, in the general direction of the ruined chamber—in which he had found the dead man. Here it was dark; his sight was still dazzled by the lights that had snapped into nothingness at the firing of the blaster. But the dark could be a cloak as well as a disadvantage. Also he remembered the way well enough. With his shoulder against the wall, Diskan crept along the curve.