Dread Companion

Copyright ©, 1970, by Andre Norton

An Ace Book, by arrangement with The Viking Press, Inc.

1

But A few days ago (I shall never trust the divisions of time again and say with any certainty, "This is a day; that is a week; we face a year!") I was shown some very ancient tapes, copied, I was assured, from ones that had been made originally on fabled Terra. And some aspects of the information they stored were so like my own experiences that I could only believe that those who had first recorded them, back in a mist of time so great that I could not count the planet years - any more than one can truly give sum to the number of stars - had followed a trail like that which chance and my own stubbornness set me.

Had I not invincible proof of what had happened to me and several others, I might be judged now to be spinning some comet-hair tale for the astonishment of the credulous. But this much is true, and records prove it. I was born on Chalox in the planet and space-time year of 2405 After Flight. I was between sixteen and seventeen years old, planet age, when I left Chalox to land on Dylan. I am still no more than a year older - yet the year is now 2483!

Time! Sometimes, when I look squarely at those dates and think how those years fled for me, it brings back such fears that I must busy myself feverishly about some task, putting all my strength and thoughts into it, until the surge of panic that chokes me lessens. Were it not for Jorth, whom I can reach out and touch, who shares my burden, I might- But of that I shall not think at all - now or ever!

- As I say, I was born on Chalox. My father was Rhyn Halcrow, a Survey scout. He was of Talgrinnian stock, which means Second Wave, Terran outspread. My mother was a Forsmanian, of a trading family. They were human, too, but of the First Wave outspread, and had mutated from what is believed to be the original Terran.

Their marriage was a planet one as is usual for a man in the services, and it lasted three Chalox years. After the ceremonial break-bond, my father was assigned to a new outwave exploratory pattern. He left my mother with the excellent life pension of a planet wife and her freedom to contact another tie if she wished - or if her father wished, for the Forsmanians are strictly family oriented, with the eldest male making the major decisions for the clan.

Within a matter of months, my mother did take another husband, one of her cousins, thus keeping her first grant-for-marriage dowry strictly within the clan, in what her people considered a very practical and equitable arrangement.

As for me, I was already established in the creche for Service children at Lattmah. The break was complete. I never saw either of my parents again. That I was a girl presented a minor problem, since the majority of such cross-births are male and the offspring trained from childhood for government service.

Unfortunately, I inherited my mother's sex but my father's spirit and interests. I would have been supremely happy as a scout, a seeker-out of far places and strange sights. My favored reading among the tapes were the accounts of exploration, trading on primitive planets, and the like. Perhaps I might have fitted in with the free traders. But among them women are so few and those so guarded and cherished that I might have been even more straitly prisoned on one of their spaceports, seeing my mate only at long intervals, bound by their law to remarry again if his ship was reported missing for more than a stated time.

As it was, I did what I could to prepare myself for a possible escape from Chalox. I became a keeper of records, adept in several techniques, including that of implanted recall. And I had my name down - Kilda c' Rhyn - on every possible off-planet listing as soon as the authorities allowed me to register.

That no opportunity presented itself began to worry me. I was less than a year from the time when I could no longer stay at the creche but would arbitrarily be fitted into any niche those in charge might select. They might even return me to my mother's clan, and such was not for me. So, in desperation, I appealed, at last, to the one among my teachers whom I thought the most sympathetic.

Lazk Volk was a mutant crossbreed. The mixing of races in his case had resulted in certain deformities of body that even the most advanced plasta-surgery could not correct. But his mind showed such a potential for learning and teaching that he had never left the creche. Through his vast tape library and the visits of scouts and other far travelers to his quarters, he had gained knowledge far outstripping any local memory bank except the government one.

Because in some small ways we were alike, each yearning for what was denied us, Lazk Volk and I became friends. I had served for four years as recorder and librarian for him when I voiced my fear of being without a future, save one not of my choosing. I was hoping that he might answer with an offer of steady employment. Though that would be no true solution to my desire to travel, I would have, in his wealth of knowledge, the second best.

He stretched out his thin double arms in a gesture habitual to him, wiggling his boneless fingers above the keyboard that produced anything he might wish - from the complete history of the planet Firedrake to a dinner-of-first-ceremony. With most of his misshapen figure muffled in a robe of Bora rainbow cloth, rippling rich color at his slightest movement, he was like a thick bolster perched on one end. Only his four arms and his conical head showed he was a living being.

For the second time he flicked his wiggling fingers back and forth. Then his slit of a mouth opened.

"No."

"No? Why?" I was startled enough to use a demanding tone that I would never have tried with him ordinarily.

"No - I do not take you into my service. That is the easy way, Kilda. And you are not meant to walk easy roads." He pressed one of those many buttons now, and my chair spun about so that I no longer faced him, but rather the wall on which was a projection screen, now like a huge mirror.

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Myself."

"Describe!" His tone was such that we might be in one of the training booths where he had begun to shape my mind for the retention and collection of knowledge.

"I am a woman. My hair - it is - " I hesitated. Those living in the creche were so varied from crossbreeding that we had no norm of either good looks or downright ugliness. I knew that certain kinds of faces, coloring, forms gave me pleasure to look upon. But I had no vanity, nor any idea as to whether I could be deemed even passable in appearance. "My hair," I began again resolutely, "is of the color dark brown. I have two eyes - which are blue-green - one nose, a mouth. My skin is also brown, but lighter in shade than my hair. For the rest - my body is humanoid, and it is healthy. What is it that you wish me to see - other than this?"

"You have youth. And though you list your attributes so baldly, Kilda, you will discover, once you walk beyond these walls, that you will be considered above the ordinary in the sight of most. And, as you note, you have an adequate and healthy body. Therefore, you shall not waste this by crawling into shadows and turning your back upon the world."

"It is better," I protested, "to stay where I am happy than to be returned to a Forsmanian clan house or to be a clerk in some government hive until I become as dull-witted as the walls about me."

"Perhaps so." He nodded. I was surprised at winning my point so easily. Then he went on. "But you cite only two of the possibilities now before you. There are others - "

"Trade marriage?" I ventured the third I had considered.

"As a means of escape? I think not. The traders are too careful of their women, having so few of them. You might find such an alliance even more stultifying than your first two suggestions. There is this - "

He must have pressed another of his buttons, for there flashed on the screen, obliterating my own image, a government announcement. It was one of those general offers to emigrants, a fulsome and probably much overstated listing of all the glowing opportunities awaiting the properly qualified on a frontier planet.

"You forget"-though I did not see how he could-"that I am not hand-promised, nor am I medically trained, nor - "

"You are in a very negative mood." But he did not sound impatient. "This is the official listing. There are other possible ways of joining such a company, namely as a house aide for someone with children of a teachable age. You have given assistance in the classes here. And certainly your training is above that of such aides. The position would be temporary, of course, but it gives you a chance for emigration. And on a new world there will be more opportunities. There is a tendency - unless the emigration group is that of some close-knit religious sect-to be less rule-bound on a frontier world. You might well have such a position there as is barred to your sex on these inner planets."

What he said made good sense. There was only one flaw.

"They may think me too young."

"Your recommendations will be of the highest." He said that with such confidence that I had to believe he had thought the whole matter over and only my consent was needed.

"Then-then-I'll do it!" I had always imagined that if I were offered any chance to leave Chalox and lift into the unknown of the far stars, I would do it without a moment's hesitation. Yet now that I said I would go, I found an uneasy stirring within me. It was as if, now that the door stood open, I was far more conscious of the safety of the room it guarded.

"Well done!" He brought my chair around to face him again. "But remember, Kilda, I only provide the means for your first steps; the march beyond is up to you. This much will I do for you. I shall appoint you one of my off-world reporters. You shall keep your skill sharp by taping for me anything that you think may add to this library."

I felt some easing of that tension within me. Now a spark of excitement lit in my mind. There was probably little enough I could add to the great wealth of material from a thousand - a hundred thousand - worlds that Lazk Volk stored. But were even a few sentences of mine thought fit to be included, I would be honored indeed.

"So it is decided." He spoke briskly. "The rest you will leave to me. Now - 1 want a run-through of the Ruh-karv report in comparison with the tridees from Xcothal."

I busied myself in producing the two tapes of archaeological mysteries for his viewing. With one thing and another, three days went by filled with work. In fact, I was so busy tracing down buried facts - which had not been called for for years - that on the third night, as I returned to my room to kick off my toe slippers with a sigh, I had the suspicion that Lazk Volk was keeping me running from one end of the archives to the other for some purpose of his own.

On the fourth morning when I reported for work, I found him not barricaded by rows of tape containers, but sipping a cup of caff and staring at his projection screen as if it bore lines of formulae. He looked at me sharply as I came in and "then used his lower right hand to indicate a box of, some size and on the comer of his desk.

"Take that and put on its contents. You have an interview at the tenth hour with Gentlefem Guska Zobak. She is staying at the Double Star."

"Put what on-"

"Clothing - proper clothing, girl! You go out in the city in that" - he nodded to my creche dress, a one-piece garment planned for service and for neither fit nor show - "and you will be the center of attention, which, I assume, you would not care for."

To that I agreed and took the box into the storeroom beyond. But I was a little surprised at the contents. I did have one utilitarian robe, which I wore into the city on the few errands that took me there. It was as plain as the uniform and, like it, shouted that it was institutional wear. But these brilliant lengths of silky material were very different. I had seen such worn - but only by the daughters of landed families.

There was a pair of loose trousers of a darkly rich plum shade. Over those went a tunic of the same color, but a different material, for it was thick and had a texture like fur. This had long sleeves coming to the knuckles, and it was latched from belt to throat with a series of silver buckles. A belt of the same metal drew in the waist tightly.

My hair was much shorter than that of any woman outside the creche. But there was a long veil of silvery net, with the eyeholes ringed with glitter, to cover my head, dropping to my hips in the back, to the waist in front. In such clothing I was disguised, and certainly none of my fellow students would know me.

When I went back to Lazk Volk and caught sight of my reflection on the mirror screen, I was so astounded as to let out a small gasp. He nodded, and at the same time he pushed a transportation plaque to me.

Very good." He approved my masquerade, for such I felt this clothing to be. "Gentlefem Zobak is bound for the planet of Dylan. She has two children, a son and a daughter, both quite young. Not being in robust health, she has applied for a house aide. Her husband is only temporarily stationed on Dylan - for about two years planet-time, I believe. I do not think the Zobaks will stay longer. But they have the power to ask for extra service, and if you please them, they might open other doors for you. Now, you had better go. It would never do to keep the Gentlefem waiting."

It might not do for me to keep my prospective employer waiting, but it was plain when I reached the Double Star that the situation was not the same for her. I was shown into an outer reception room, where I found others before me. There were two women seated there, with the look of those having waited perhaps already too long. Since we all followed the custom of keeping our veils down with strangers, all I saw of them was their clothes, much like those I wore, but differing in color and material. I spent some of the tedious time in trying to place my fellow employment seekers.

One wore rusty brown. I noted two mended slits in her veil. And the hands that showed (her sleeves were significantly shorter than mine) were red and roughened as if she had done hard work with them. I gained an impression of harassed middle age. The other, sitting across from me, wore blue, but there was something cheap about the too extreme cut of the tunic (with sleeves that touched the fingertips in an arrogant boast of the gentility of a wearer who did not have to worry, about using her hands). And not only were the eyeholes in her veil edged in glitter (those of her neighbor being bound in plain material), but they were also of a width to bedazzle the viewer.

The work-worn woman was summoned first and did not reappear; then my companion of the over-glitter, who did not return either. I guessed there must be another door for leaving. Finally, the servo robot jerked a beckoning prong in my direction.

The room I entered was a standard luxury one of a caravansary. But its present occupant had introduced other elements. She lay in the bed, its back elevated to give her support, the surface before her strewn with a variety of objects either dedicated to amusement or to the care of her person.

I politely threw back my veil to meet her eyes. She was small and very delicate in appearance. Her hair had been fashionably bleached and retinted to a very brilliant green, striking against the pallor of her skin. She represented the height of fashion as I had seen it on telcasts.

Though there were two easirests waiting to comfort occupants, she waved me to a backless stool-cushion near the bed and stared at me without speaking for a long moment. She had a fretful look about her mouth, and her hands were seldom still, rummaging among the things that lay on the bed before her, though she never looked down at what she picked up, nor, indeed, held it long.

"You are Kilda c' Rhyn." She did not make a question of that, rather a statement, such as one would use in naming an object - as if, were I not Kilda, she would make me so. I wondered if such was meant to unsettle one, a tone she always applied to prospective employees.

"It is so, Gentlefem." I treated her statement as a question and gave answer.

"At least you're young." She continued to stare at me. "The data said you are well grounded in teaching. You're from the creche - " There was a note of curiosity now, as if my background gave her a measure of interest. "You understand this employment is only temporary. We have to go to this awful frontier world for a year, maybe two, because my husband is stationed there. Are you a good spacer?"

As to that, how could I tell, never having lifted on any ship. But I do not think that she was really interested in me, for she swept on.

"I am not, not in the least. I go into voyage sleep at once, just as soon as we take off. But Bartare and Oomark cannot do that for the entire trip - they are too young. You'll have to take care of them during wake periods. I don't know - you're young - " What appeared to have faintly pleased her earlier now seemed to provide a question. "Bar-tare is quite difficult, very difficult. She has to have guidance.

Her learning level is near eight and will increase, they tell us. You must provide mental stimulation that will induce that increase. But then, you're crech-trained, so you ought to know all about that. And I haven't time or strength to interview a lot more dreary females - or unsuitable ones. You'll have to do."

That she considered her choice the final settlement of the matter was plain. And though I had read into her outpouring some hints of a demanding and exasperating future, I knew that Lazk Volk had been right. This was probably the only door that would open for me, and in this way I could have a different future.

She hardly listened to my assent. Instead, she issued a series of instructions as to where I must meet them. And I learned then that I could have only two days before leaving. This I did not like, but before I could protest, she gave a last order.

"The servo will show you to. the children's room. You should meet them, and they must see you. That way, and remember - at the eleventh hour on Seven Night Day."

I did not get a chance to finish the farewell-of-ceremony before the servo ushered me out of the room and into a hallway. There it paused before another door and sent in an announce-call, though it did not wait for permission to enter. It would seem that Gentlefem Zobak treated her children with no more ceremony than she did her employees. I was sent to view and be viewed, and that was that.

It was true that I had taught children at the creche. But the situation there had always been one of restraint and discipline. Creche children were most carefully screened. Those with problems of personality or temperament were early given professional treatment elsewhere. The children I had taught had been good and willing scholars, already set in the patterns of applied study. I was used to bright children who wanted to use their brains to a purpose. So my employer's comments about urging her daughter to best efforts made sense and were familiar to me. But some instinct warned me, even as I entered the room, that this was not going to be like my almost casual schoolroom supervision in the creche.

The room was as luxurious as the one their mother occupied, but it was purely a sitting room. Strewn over a table under a lamp was a muddle of odds and ends such as had littered their mother's bed. But one item seemed of such interest now that neither child looked up.

Bartare was small, fine-boned, and delicate-looking, like her mother. But she had no languor. Instead, there was such a tension of concentration about her small, thin body as reminded me disturbingly of that I had seen Lazk Volk display on occasion. Her hair was twisted back from her face, which came to a point with a small, sharp chin, with silver cords that gleamed the more because the hair they confined was dead black. She had very well-marked brows, which met over her nose, so they formed a solid bar across her face. And her eyelashes were unusually thick about eyes, almost as deeply sable as her hair. In contrast, her skin was pale, having no trace of color in the cheeks and only a faint tinting of lips.

Her dress was dark green, an odd color for a child, yet one I would always thereafter associate with Bartare. With a strip of material of the same color, she was now wrapping one of the small carven images the country folk set up in their kitchens for protection against the powers of darkness, only this one, crude in its beginning, had several refinements. Metallic wires had been twisted around the head to form a crown - for one.

Watching his sister robe the image was Oomark. Though he was the younger in years, he was perhaps a finger's breadth the taller, big-framed and solid-looking. His face had still a babyish roundness, and now it wore an odd expression, almost as if he were both fascinated and alarmed by what his sister was doing, too unusual a look to accompany the dressing of a doll.

He glanced up at me. Then he leaned over and touched his sister on the arm, almost diffidently, suggesting he was in awe of her and yet knew he must attract her attention.

"Look, Bartare - " He pointed one finger at me.

Bartare raised her head. Her stare was deep, measuring, and somehow very disturbing. I felt almost as shaken as if I had encountered, behind the outer shell of a small girl-child, something old, authoritative, and faintly malicious. But that was gone in a flash. Bartare laid down her doll with the care of one putting aside an important piece of handiwork and came away from the table to sketch one of those curtsies used by children of her class as a polite greeting.

"I'm Bartare, and this is Oomark." Her voice was clear and pleasant. It was only when she shot a sudden glance at me from beneath that eyebrow bar that I was a little chilled.

"I'm Kilda c' Rhyn," I answered. "Your mother asked me-"

"To see us and let us see you. I know." She nodded. "That means you're the one going to go to Dylan with us. I think - " She hesitated a moment and then used an expression that was rather odd. "I think we may suit." But was there or was there not a stress on the word "may" that hinted at reservations and could be a warning?

I cannot remember now much of what we spoke about at that first meeting. After his recognition of my being in the room, Oomark never spoke at all. However, his sister displayed not only excellent manners but also the fact that she was a child of superior intelligence and poise. She- well, I could have said nothing but good of her. Yet I had reservations, an uneasiness all the time we were together, as if we were both acting parts.

Once I saw a tape from Lazk Volk's files portraying a theatrical production on another world. The actors and actresses carried elaborate ceremonial masks mounted on sticks. Each had several of these, fastened by fine chains to their girdles. In time for their speeches, they chose one or another of these masks and held them before, but not directly against their faces, as they recited their lines. This came to my mind now, for it seemed to me that both Bar-tare and I were holding masks and that what was behind our masks and our stilted, polite conversation was very different.

Yet I was not so disturbed that I would refuse to take the position. In fact, once I had subdued that initial sense of unease, I was intrigued by Bartare, and I thought that I might find the next year or so interesting for both of us. I also judged that Oomark was too much in his sister's shadow, and he might well benefit by special attention. In any event, I returned to the creche well enough pleased with the bargain Lazk Volk had aided me to, prepared to cut ties with my old life and lift off-world to a new.

2

I was not long in saying good-bys at the creche. Save for Lazk Volk, my close ties there now were few. By his influence I had stayed a year longer than others of my age group, being, as I had said, perilously near to the time when I would have been forced to leave whether or no. My leaving fees were paid to me, half in clothing suitable for my future on Dylan, the rest in a small number of credits that I clung to, knowing them to be my barrier against misfortune.

My last hours I spent with Lazk Volk, accepting from him the recorder he was empowered to give me under a reportship. I was not a badge-wearing representative. The authorities would not agree to that. But whatever I returned to Volk's storehouse that was countersigned by him as useful would add to my rating and, perhaps, might lead to more employment.

Yet he warned me not to squander the supplies he was giving me on anything but the most important. And I realized that I must make a little cover much. The baggage of a space traveler was very strictly limited, and I could expect no further supply of tapes should I misuse those I carried with me - at least not unless I had returned one with such useful notage on it as to warrant sending me another.

He asked me what I thought of my charges, and I hedged somewhat. That Bartare was a promising student, I was almost sure. Oomark would be less troublesome. But "troublesome" was the term I applied to his sister. I know that Lazk Volk noted my reserve, though he did not comment.

I did not join the Zobak family until we met in the entry place for the ship. The Gentlefem was wrapped in the thick folds of a journey cape, but Bartare had pushed back the hood of her outer garment to stare up at the starship as if that presented some problem. Oomark turned excitedly from side to side, his interest all for the coming and going of the crewmen.

As I came up, Gentlefem Guska turned to me, though I could not see her face under her veil. Her voice was even more fretful than I had remembered it.

"You are late. We are about to go on board - "

"I am sorry," I answered. I had schooled myself, having taken her measure at our first meeting, to supply no excuses or explanations. She was of those, I decided, who accepted only one answer - that being their own. And to combat such was like trying to erect a firm tower out of dry sand. Better not to attempt it in the first place.

"I expect promptness," she was beginning when a load cage swung down a few paces from us and the ship's steward, standing within it to direct traffic, beckoned us forward.

"I hate this whirling about!" She clasped my arm so tightly that I supported her into the cage, the children moving with us. And she kept that painful grip as we were swung up, to slide into the hatch. I must admit that the swaying trip gave me little pleasure either.

Once inside, they ticked us off on their entry records, and Guska went away, still leaning heavily, but now on a stewardess, to be put into deep voyage sleep. The children and I were escorted to a small transport cabin and only part suspension.

I earned whatever funds Gentlefem Zobak was depositing to my account, and I earned them well during that voyage, for in the wake periods both children were my sole responsibility. I tried to establish a good relationship with them, and I thought that with Oomark I succeeded. He was plainly not as brilliant as his sister and far more biddable. Bartare did not disobey me. In fact, she was politely cooperative, all that one might ask for in a child. It was only that the impression was now firmly rooted in my mind that she moved behind a mask and played a part, so that I waited continually for some revelation of what lay behind her words and actions. This feeling fretted me, so that I had to subdue inner impatience and irritation.

I went into the final suspension period before breakthrough and the landing on Dylan with the problem of Bartare remaining as baffling as ever. But now I had accepted it as a challenge, though I knew that I must go very slowly and not try to push the girl into any disclosure.

Though my knowledge of other planets through Lazk Volk's library was extensive, probably beyond that of most general travelers, Dylan was the first new world I had ever visited myself. And I was excited as we were swung down to the landing strip.

The familiar skies of Chalox had carried a green tinge, so that one believed that was the only natural color for any sky to be. But here the arch over us was blue, cut by masses of white clouds. Together with the children, I had pored over the information tapes supplied by the ship's library.

Dylan had been located some one hundred years earlier, oddly enough, because of a distress call set on automatic, though the ship that had sent it had never been found. It was Arth type. And there were some very unexplainable remains that suggested it might once have either had native inhabitants or been a colony of one of the Forerunner races. In fact, it was to gather information about one of these that Guska Zobak's husband had been sent here. He was not an archaeologist but a government man empowered to declare the diggings protected if experts thought it necessary.

There were two cities on Dylan. Tamlin, was the port where we disembarked; the other was Toward, on the other side of the planet providing an alternate landing site. Neither was large. Dylan was mainly an agricultural world. The western continent was one of open plains. And since the native wildlife was very sparse, these plains provided grazing for imported herds and flocks. The eastern continent, of which Tamlin was the center, was planted heavily with vor vines and husard fruit - both of which were luxury items off-world.

But such planting was spotty since both products required special types of soil and drainage, so that the settlements had stretches of wilderness between them. Such distances meant nothing, though, with all plantations and villages linked by air flitter travel.

The buildings of Tamlin did not resemble those of the long-settled worlds. They were all very like, having been constructed to plans worked out off-world, their blocks placed by robo workers. Any difference between them came from the planting about their walls. Here were not only native growths pleasing to the eye, but also exotic aliens imported and flourishing.

As we disembarked from the landing stage, a number of people moved forward to greet the new arrivals. But the man who came to Gentlefem Guska certainly bore no resemblance to the tridee the children had of their father. He was a much older man, wearing the uniform of a port official.

"Where is Konroy? "Guska demanded of him. "Surely his duty does not demand that he not be here to greet us!"

"My dear Guska!" The officer caught both her hands in his. "You know Konroy would be here if he could. It is that-"

"He is dead!" Bartare's words might have been a war alert the way they froze us all for a second that seemed-to stretch far longer than that.

She took a step forward and stood looking up at the officer.

"That is the truth," she continued. "Why not say that he is dead?"

I saw one kind of astonishment replace another in his expression, and I knew that Bartare was speaking the truth.

"But how - " he began with a bewildered protest in his voice.

"Dead!" Guska gave a shriek that was echoed by a lesser cry from Oomark. She sagged forward into the arms of the officer, and I moved, one hand going to Oomark, who turned and threw his arms about me, burrowing his face into my traveling cloak. But Bartare shrugged off my touch on her shoulder and stood quietly, no expression at all now on her small pale face.

There was a flurry about us. Guska, unconscious, was taken in the officer's arms to a waiting ground car, while we were ushered by two young spaceport police into another. Oomark continued to hold on to me with a desperate grip, but Bartare was as aloof as if she were only a spectator and a faintly contemptuous one. I felt alienated from her at that moment, as baffled as if I were confronting an unknown life-form that must be handled with supreme caution. We were given quarters in one of the government rest houses, and I persuaded Oomark to loose me long enough to try to find someone to tell me what had happened. But when I returned to the children, Oomark was fronting his sister, his tear-streaked face twisted with anger.

"You - you knew about it! You don't care!" He accused her shrilly.

I halted where I was, just outside the door. Perhaps he would get an answer she would not give in my presence.

"She told me. His time was finished. And - he is not necessary to us - not any more."

"She's bad!" Oomark's red face was thrust close to his sister's pale one. "You listen to her tell you bad - things! Bad-bad-"

For the first time, then, I saw Bartare's composure break. She slapped her brother hard enough to rock his head, leaving a hand print on his cheek.

"Be quiet!" Her voice was not controlled and even now. "You don't know what you are saying. You can make things worse than even you think just by saying things like that. Be quiet, you fool!"

She turned away from him, and he stood where he was, cowed and shaking, big tears streaking down his face, making no move to wipe them away. When I went in, he came to me in a rush, again burying his face against me, demanding comfort by action rather than words. But Bar-tare stood at a window, her back to us. And there was something about her stance that gave me the queer feeling she was listening intently, but not to any sound audible to me.

I thought it best to let her be by herself for a time. That scrap of conversation I had overheard gnawed within my mind. Who was the She to whom they had both referred? To my very certain knowledge, the children had been with me continually on board the ship and during the very short time on landing before the officer had come to us. I had not given such news to Bartare, and most certainly her mother had not. Therefore, how had she learned it - and from whom?

And the phrasing of that comment about her father. "His time was finished. And he is not necessary to us any more."

I longed to be able to discuss what I had heard with someone, to ask advice. I had thought myself so well armed and self-sufficient as a result of the creche training. Yet here I was suddenly as helpless as an infant entering the first class, the more so because there was no instructor for me to turn to with questions.

We were not left along long, for the same official who had taken Guska away came to see us. He brought with him his wife, a pleasant-faced woman, who swooped upon the children while he drew me to one side with information.

I learned that Konroy Zobak had been killed in an accident when his flitter had been caught in a freak storm a day earlier. There could not be an immediate return to Chalox for his family, though that was what Guska had demanded upon regaining consciousness, for the liner that had brought us was outward bound on a system-wide swing that would not bring them back to our home world for several years. As a result, we must remain on Dylan until other transportation might be arranged - and when that might occur, my informant, Commandant Piscov, had no way of telling.

He offered us quarters in his own home, but told me that Guska had insisted upon going to the one prepared by her husband. He did not like the situation, but had to agree to it. He wished me to keep in touch and call on him for any needful service.

I could not understand why Guska wanted to be alone since she was the type of person I would have believed would lean both physically and emotionally on the nearest support in any time of trouble. But the commandant said he was sending a nurse to be with her for a time. And I was relieved to know that I need not be responsible for her as well as the children.

After he had told me this, the commandant turned such a measuring look on me that I felt uncomfortable, even though I knew I had done nothing to merit such regard.

"Did you tell the little girl about her father's death?" he demanded.

"How could I? I did not know it myself. Did you send a message to the ship before landing?"

He shook his head, his frown deeper. "No, it is true- how could you have known? The matter was only reported to me this morning after the flitter was found. Only a few knew it. But how did she know? Is she esper?"

His suggestion was logical, though I had never known so young an esper to be able to hide such power.

"I was not told so, nor does it appear on her chart."

"There are cases of sudden breakthrough," he said thoughtfully. "Shocks have activated dormant gifts. I shall speak to the parapsychologist. He will get in touch with you."

I nodded with relief. What better aide could I have than that of a well-qualified parapsychologist? And, of course, the commandant had hit upon the reason for the strange knowledge, perhaps even the unease Bartare had awakened in me. If she was a latent esper, then one might in periods of heightened tension sense this, just as her power could be released by a shock.

Only, as I followed the children and the commandant's wife out to the ground car, I began to perceive holes in that theory. First, Bartare had hot been on this world when her father had died, nor had she ever given any indication of mind-linkage that would end in shock at his death. And what of the She both children had discussed? Their conversation had given me the firm impression that it was a third person to whom they referred, one whom Bartare accepted as a friend and Oomark met with a mixture of fear and dread. Who was She? All I could swear to was that she had not been one of our visible company that morning.

Visible company? Why had my thoughts supplied that particular word - as if we could have invisible company among us! I gave myself a kind of mental shake. As Lazk Volk had often commented, I was too prone to allow my imagination play. One must hold to the evidence. Only in this case the evidence went beyond sense.

The house Konroy Zobak had prepared for his family lay on the outskirts of town. It was set in a district mostly used by administrative officers and visitors of rank. Still, the houses were very much of a pattern, one story, built around an open inner court into which all the rooms opened.

That court was centered by a pool and had, in addition, well-kept beds of flowers or decorative shrubs, each guarded by a low wall. The pavement was patterned in colored stones and blocks of crystal formation. I suddenly noted, as we walked behind a servo balancing our luggage on its flat top, that Bartare was crossing that pattern in an odd skip-hop, managing each time to touch her foot, as it came to the ground, on a crystal piece. She stared down at the pattern with such absorption that one could believe she was engaged in an operation on which much depended.

Then she jerked up her head and looked about quickly as if to assure herself that she had not been seen. Our eyes met and held for less than an instant. She turned her head and walked normally, paying no attention to what lay under her feet. But I knew she had seen me watching. Again I felt uneasy, wanting very much to discuss this with someone who knew more than I.

The three rooms made ready for the children and me were at the rear of the courtyard. Those intended for Guska, when she would arrive with the nurse, lay to the right. The four at the left as we entered comprised the library and office of Konroy Zobak, a dining room with hall servos for cooking, and a storeroom.

Each bedroom had a small fresher opening off it. To someone used to inner-planet luxury, it might seem a bare and rather starkly planned house, but I thought it pleasant. And the open courtyard provided an attractive place to sit. I thought it far better than the crowded quarters I had been used to all my life.

I had enough soon to keep me busy, settling the children in their new quarters and then lending assistance to the nurse who accompanied Guska. They had given her a sedative so that she moved in a dreamy haze and obeyed the nurse's suggestions languidly. But the nurse confided to me that she had become so distraught when they had suggested she stay with the commandant's family that the doctor thought it better to allow her her own way and to hope that the quiet of this house would help her.

She passed into a deep sleep once we got her in bed. And since nothing then seemed to disturb her, the nurse and I moved about unpacking and putting her things in place.

We dialed the servo for a meal and found the food good. Oomark ate heartily, and I noticed that today Bartare, who was inclined to pick at her food and dawdle over her plate, showed an appetite almost as good as his. It had been midafternoon when we had landed. Now it was growing dark, and I suggested bed for the children.

Again I was agreeably surprised when neither of them rebelled but seemed willing. And I was even more astonished when, as I tucked Oomark in, he caught my hand and held it tightly, looking up into my face as if he needed reassurance.

"You won't go? You will be here?"

"In this room, Oomark? Do you want me to stay with you until you go to sleep?"

Neither child had before shown any such feeling. And I was heartened to think that Oomark had so turned to me, though I regretted the reason for it.

For a moment I thought that he would accept my offer. But then he released my hand and shook his head. "Just here - in the house." He raised himself on one elbow. "Bartare says - She doesn't like you."

"Bartare doesn't like me?" I countered, though I had a suspicion that the She of his speech was not his sister.

"Bartare won't like you if She doesn't," he said. "Bar-tare - "

"You want me, brother?"

Bartare stood in the doorway. She had her nightrobe pulled about her. And her hair, freed from its daytime cords, was loose on her shoulders.

"No." He turned his head away sharply as if the last thing he wanted was to see his sister. "I'm sleepy. Go away! I want to sleep."

I knew better than to try to press him then, so I pulled the covers smooth and wished him good night. As I went to the door, his sister retreated before me. But I found her waiting outside.

"Oomark's just a little boy, you know," she said, as if a long range of years separated her from her brother. "A frightened little boy."

"He has nothing to be afraid of here." A simple sentence, but the intonation of the word "he," the look she sent in my direction from under her bar of eyebrows, was revealing. She was delivering a warning. And there was such vast effrontery in it that I was astounded because in that moment, if only for a second or two, our roles appeared reversed. I was subject to her control, not she to my responsibility. I think she was quick to sense she had made a mistake, gone a little too far, for the other something that she wrapped around her as a cloak vanished, and she was a little girl again.

"It is strange - " She glanced away from me, around the courtyard, as if she were trying to suggest that she, too, was a little tearful of this alien world. Only her change of mood was too late and too false - though I kept myself under control and did not reveal any knowledge of her mistake.

"But a pleasant planet from what we have seen of it."

"It killed my father, you know."

"An accident." I could not understand her, and perhaps I was no match for her either.

"Yes, an accident," she agreed. And again, though perhaps I was overly suspicious, I read a warning in her words.

"Do you want to go to bed now? I- thought you said you were tired - "

"I am," she agreed, and there was almost a note of relief in her voice, as if she were thankful for my suggestion.

And she was all little girl again as I settled her in bed as I had Oomark.

"You are going to bed now, too?" she asked as I was about to leave her.

"In a little while - "

"But you are not going far away?"

"I'll be in the courtyard." But I did not believe that she needed any reassurance of mine. It was rather a desire to know where I would be to satisfy some purpose of her own.

I sat down where I could see the doors to both of the children's chambers. Before I had so settled, I set the servo-alarm at the courtyard gate. Nothing could come in or out now without alerting a guard robo and sounding an alarm. Why I had taken that step I did not really know, but I felt safer when it was done.

In the light of the very large and yellow moon that served Dylan by night, those crystal patches in the pavement fluoresced and glowed, almost as if each had a small lamp beneath the block. I could see the night light burning in Guska's room and knew that the nurse planned to sit up with her for part of the night.

But though I tried to think coherently and purposefully of all that had happened since we had landed, I found myself growing more and more drowsy, until I stumbled out of my chair toward my own bedroom.

I had come into the room with my head slightly turned, so that I saw a flicker of movement from the comers of my eyes. But when, aroused a little, I jerked around to face that straightly, I saw nothing there save a mirror. And I imagined it had been my own reflection that had momentarily startled me.

That alarm had shaken me more awake, and I set about preparing for bed more briskly. It was not until I sat down before the mirror, combing my hair, that it happened.

My brown skin, the hair above it, my green eyes - they showed very large and more green in this mirror than I had ever seen them. I examined what I saw closely, remembering Lazk Volk's words concerning my looks and wondering if he had spoken the truth, that I had some small claim to a pleasing appearance - a thought that will intrigue any woman.

Then, my reflection vanished, as if a flick of the comb through a tight curl had winked it out of existence. And I saw -

The bare bones of it, maybe, were like unto mine, but what leered and postured there was not me. Horror held me dumb and still, though in me grew a need to scream. The smooth brown skin I had seen was sere, wrinkled, freckled with dark patches. The teeth were gone, so my mouth was shrunken into a wrinkled opening, and my chin and nose drew together. My hair was white and thin, hanging in limp, sparse strands over a seamed and corrugated forehead. The eyes were only dark and empty pits - yet I could seel

I heard a choked cry and saw that horror in the mirror shake and reel, even as I swayed back and forth before it. The comb fell from my hand and clattered on the dressing table. And that slight noise broke the illusion. It was gone, and I stared wild-eyed, with a heart beating so fast and heavily that it frightened me, at what I had always seen in any glass. The vision, nightmare, whatever it was, was gone. But as I sat there limp, shivering with a cold inside me, I knew I had seen it. It? What had I seen? And why?

3

Badly shaken, I crept into bed and lay there shivering, trying to make some sense of that illusion, for illusion I was sure it must be. Only no possible combination of light and shade in this room could have accounted for the hideous thing on the mirror's surface. And I had certainly not taken dream smoke or any of the hallucinatory drugs. As I drew the covers tighter around my body, feeling that I could never be warm again, I searched my memory for some hint of what must have really happened during those few moments.

There were numerous accounts of odd experiences on many worlds to be found in Volk's library. I had read enough to know well that what seemed "magic," totally unexplainable to one species or race, might be commonplace to another perhaps a quarter of the galaxy away. Even espers could achieve strange results to baffle their own race -

Espers! Had the commandant's guess concerning Bartare been correct, and was my experience some projection of her thoughts concerning me - forcing me to see myself as she wished me to be?

That idea was terrifying enough, but it was less weird than some of the other explanations that I resolutely thrust away. On impulse I got out of bed again and caught up a robe to wind about me. That thick drowsiness into which I had sunk earlier was dispelled. I was as far from the need of sleep now as I would have been at morning rising.

I thrust my feet into loose flap-slippers and went to look out into the courtyard, for the second time catching a flicker of movement. But this time as I faced it squarely, it did not disappear. There was a figure slipping along the inner wall from the shadow of one doorway to the next - a small figure.

My first impulse was to call out. But then I remembered the guard I had set at the outer door, and I wanted very much to see all that I could before I revealed myself. I moved as silently as I could along the same way, trying not to allow my slippers to flap against the pavement.

The one I followed had reached the final inner door, that of the library. And there it or she lingered so long that I wondered if that was the goal. Then, as if reassured that she was not being watched, the figure came out into the bright moonlight.

Bartare! Somehow I was not in the least surprised. She no longer wore her nightrobe, but had on her favorite green dress, though her hair swung tree as I had seen it last. She was carrying something in both hands as if, though the object seemed small and light, it was so precious that she must take good care of it. Holding it out, a little away from her body, she stood intently studying the pattern of the pavement.

Then, as if she had made some important choice, she set that which she carried on one of the crystal pieces, taking some care in that placing, as if she must be very sure of what she did.

Having so centered it to her liking, she withdrew a little, and her small hands moved in a series of gestures that wove for me a disturbing pattern. They must have a meaning, but to me the feeling was that of searching for some important word eluding the conscious mind.

I heard a murmur of sound, too far away, too low-pitched for me to distinguish any words, yet speech it was. And so speaking, perhaps to what she had put in place, perhaps only to the empty air, Bartare began a dance that led her feet from one crystal block to another, while she took great care not to tread on anything else.

Since the pattern was wide and those blocks well scattered, her round brought her slowly to where I stood in the shadow of the door of her father's study. Now I could distinguish separate word sounds, still without meaning. It was plain she chanted, the words strung together in a cadence of a ritual salutation or invocation.

Invocation! I fastened upon that. It could explain much, and while danger lay there for any imaginative child, yet it was normal enough. I could have quoted hundreds of cases where the young, especially girls entering into adolescence, had created for themselves imagined forces and played with the belief in powers unknown to others. If Bartare was esper without realizing the fact, this might well be the fashion in which her slowly expanding power would lead her.

She halted her dance not too far away and turned to face the thing set up in the full moonlight. Once more she gestured, as if she were grasping and pulling to her some emanation. Having so gathered the invisible, she rolled it between her palms as one takes wet clay and balls it to make a sphere. Then she threw what she did not really hold, aiming it at the door of her mother's bedroom.

Again she drew from the object, rolled and threw. This time that toss of nothing was for Oomark's doorway. When she began for the third time to collect invisibility, I had no doubt that it was meant for the room I did not occupy, and so it was.

After she made that last throw, she visibly relaxed. I read into her stance a feeling of security such as had been mine when I closed the courtyard entrance, as if she had now bolted some doors leaving her free to do as she would.

She went back to the object, still careful to step only on the crystal blocks, picked it up, and hugged it tightly to her. Then, still treading on crystal only, she went to the outer gate of the courtyard.

However much she believed in what she had done, she had not triumphed over the robo protector. The crackles of a force shield flashed warning before her, and the alert of an audible warning brought a small answering cry from her. She stopped, her right arm raised as if again hurling something at that which barred her leaving, but this time with no results. The shield held, the alarm purred, and I judged it time to show myself.

"Bartare!" I stepped out of the shadow.

She whirled, sliding her feet from the crystal block on which she had stood. Her eyes glistened as might those of a cornered and startled animal, just as her Ups drew back against her teeth, showing small white tips bared to bite. She might have been expecting some physical attack.

Her move brought her away from the warning zone of the gate protection. Both the alert and the force field stopped. She did not move toward me, but waited for me to join her. Her arms tightened about what she held, as if that, above all, must be protected. And I saw it was the doll-image she had dressed in green.

"Bartare - " I was rather at a loss for words. And I was sure she would answer no questions I might ask now. Perhaps I would be on better terms with her, more able to win her confidence, if I did not push the matter. That this was a secret thing of her own, I did not doubt. "Bartare - it is time for sleeping - "

That sounded feeble as no one knew better than myself.

"Then sleep!" she returned. "They do-" That slight nod indicated the rooms of her mother and Oomark. "Why do you not?" It seemed to me that the fact I stood there was disconcerting for her, marked a failure.

"I don't know. Perhaps because this is my first night on a strange world. Who can say that one does not change a little when stepping on alien soil?" I spoke to her as I would to Lazk Volk.

"All worlds are strange - if you look."

I guessed that she was referring obliquely to what had occurred here, so I nodded.

"That is true, for no one can look through another's eyes and see exactly as she sees. What I call a flower - such as this" - and I reached down to touch a cup-shaped bloom in a nearby bed - "you may also call a flower and yet not see it as I do - " I halted, for the blossom I had touched was going through a frightening transformation.

It had been pale ivory. Now from the point where my ringers had so lightly touched it, a dark, unwholesome stain spread. The flower was withering, decaying, dead and dying, as if my touch polluted and killed.

Bartare laughed.

"I see a dead flower. What do you see, Kilda? Is it the same? Do you see death coming from your fingers?"

This might be hallucination, but how it had been produced I could not tell. It was certainly unnerving. My hold on logic was the hope that it might indeed be so fragile a bloom that any touch would harm it. There were sensitive plants, though I had never seen one so much so as this.

"Do you see death often, Kilda? As in mirrors?" She came closer to me, her glistening eyes on mine, trying to see into me, see the fear that had filled me when I had looked into the mirror. At that moment I could believe - I was sure that Bartare not only knew what had happened, but also why and how. And I could not hold back questions.

"Why, Bartare-and how?"

Again she laughed, shrilly, a little cruelly, as sometimes a child may when she is single-hearted and set on gaining her own desires.

"Why? Because you look, Kilda, and you listen, and you want to know too much. Do you want to look in other mirrors, Kilda, and see always what you would not like to? There are other things that can happen - worse than just a reflection."

Deliberately she turned a little from me to gaze out over the moonlit court. Then she spoke once more, but it was not to me. She addressed those words to the empty air.

"You see?" she demanded. "Kilda is no more than any of the others. There is no need to think twice of her."

She waited as if for an answer. Then she retreated a step or two, and the look of triumph vanished from her face. My own imagination supplied a rebuke that I could not hear but which had Chastened the girl's self-esteem. If that was what had happened, she might be ready to vent her disappointment and anger on me, the more so because I was a witness.

But her discomfiture was that of a child. She lost the Strange, disturbing maturity that had masked her. Instead, her features screwed up into a familiar pattern of frustrated - anger as she shrilled at me, "I hate you! Spy on me again, and I'll make you sorry! I will! I will! You'll see!"

She turned and ran, paying no attention now to the blocks over which she fled, intent only upon reaching the door of her room. And an instant later that clicked firmly shut behind her.

I stood for a long moment looking across the courtyard, then stooped to examine more closely the flower I had touched. The courtyard was certainly empty. And the flower was a black ball of quick decay. Almost I had expected to find it intact But that much was real, or looked real. I broke the stem of the flower and took it with me. But before I went again to my own room, I looked in upon Oomark.

He was sleeping heavily. Having seen him so, on impulse I visited Guska Zobak's room in turn. In the dim night light, the nurse huddled in an easirest, sleeping, too, while Guska lay inert but breathing in the bed. It was almost as if they bad all taken a sedative.

I had a dead flower in my hand, I had a detailed memory of what I had seen in the courtyard, and I had above all now a pressing need to confer with someone. I decided then that if the commandant did not go forward with his suggestion to bring in a parapsychologist, I must instigate such a meeting myself.

With that thought in mind, I went back to bed. I thought that I was too wrought up to sleep, but that was not so, for my last memory was of stretching out and pulling up my covers.

Even now I have no way of explaining what happened in the morning. I awoke with a feeling that I had dreamed significantly - that was all. The memory of the night before and the help I needed had been lost. I had only a teasing half-recall, which bothered me during the day, the necessity to do something, see someone - yet I could not clarify it.

Gentlefem Piscov called on us before the morning was over, and I found hers a soothing presence. It was apparent she liked and understood children. And Oomark and Bartare both acted like ordinary children that day. She took us on a tour of the city. We had landed on the eve of a week of national celebration marking the landing of the colony's First Ship. And soon we were drawn into the festivities of the government circle.

I saw Oomark develop friendships with two boys near his own age, though Bartare, always polite and with manners that impressed adults if not her contemporaries, did not have such a social success.

Little by little, as one collects fragments of a dream to fit them together hazily, I did remember that scene in the courtyard. But oddly enough, it had no power now to alarm me or make me think it serious. I had come upon Bartare playing some highly imaginative game and allowed her actions to overcome my good sense. I would have more control over her in the future if I refused to consider such a performance more than a childish game. So can one be influenced without realizing the fact.

Bartare, showing no more desire for midnight wanderings or talking to the air, made it seem less and less important. Her present slightly antisocial attitude with other children did not alarm me, for she was much like what I had been myself at her age. And I do not think it right to force children into ways adults deem "normal" but which will irk and alienate the child.

Instead, I did find a common meeting ground with Bar-tare. She watched me unpack the recorder Lazk Volk had given me and seemed interested. I told her of Volk's galactic library and the fact that I had worked there, saying that now I hoped to be able to add something to it - providing I could find material here unusual enough to be worthy. But I explained that I must be highly selective as I was limited in the amount I could send.

I suppose her interest, as it was meant to do, disarmed me - one of the oldest ploys in the world - so that when she made her suggestion, I was pleased that I had found something through which to reach her and was really intrigued by the value of her comment, for it was her proposal that we visit the ruins her father had been inspecting before his fatal crash.

But that this could be done was dubious. In the first place, the site of the ruin was deep in the wilderness, quite a distance from Tamlin - meaning an overnight stay - and the accommodations there were limited to the staff at work. I explained this to Bartare, and while she seemed disappointed, she then suggested there might be other points of interest nearer to the city.

So well, far too well for any child, did she conceal her own wishes in the matter that I was quite convinced she merely wanted to see me in action as a recording expert. And I drifted along in a fog of complacency.

Guska Zobak also continued in a fog. But this was, or so it seemed at that time, a far more serious one. She was content to lie and drowse. Any attempt to rouse her brought on a return of hysteria. After two such battles, the medico reported complete bafflement. As long as she was left to her half-sleep (and this was no longer drug-induced), she was manageable. To attempt to shake her awake brought her to such a state that he actually feared for her sanity.

- He finally admitted that her case was beyond his solving and that she needed expert off-world treatment. So, the fact that the first ship planeting here that could provide room for us would carry us back to Chalox was accepted. The trouble was that such a ship did not come into port, though more than one freighter or outward-bound transport finned down as the days passed.

Oomark was happy with the boys. And he now went to the port school, where he fitted in well. It seemed to me that he was more at ease than I had ever seen him. He spent more time out of the house than in it, but I thought that very natural, that with masculine company of his own age he was secure and leading a more normal life than he ever had under Bartare's domination. Also a house in which quiet must be maintained for Guska's sake was not for a small and active boy.

Bartare objected so strongly to the port school that I took on her tutoring, knowing that Guska had intended this to be so. She had a quick and vigorous mind, one that was best served not by an imposed code of learning such as formal schooling demanded, but rather by guidance and sharing of discovery.

I could not grow fond of her as a person. There was always that feeling that she tolerated sometimes impatiently, those about her. But I respected her abilities. And when she showed no more signs of imaginative play or action, I grew far more easy with her.

She did not forget her desire to find something for me to record for Volk's files and returned to the subject often, making many suggestions. At last, perhaps because I was weary and even a little ashamed of my constantly saying "no" to her eagerly advanced ideas, I agreed that we would spend a small portion of my tape on a visit to the Lugraans.

Dylan had been found oddly lacking in larger native life, and one Survey account tentatively suggested it had been deliberately denuded of such life at a remote time. Thus, there were a few things visitors were always escorted to. And one of those was a favorite picnic place for children - the Lugraan Valley.

The Lugraans themselves baffled the scientists who had studied them. In the first place, any attempt to transport one of the creatures from the valley resulted in its death, the body being left without any sign of what caused that death even under the minutest of autopsy examination. So now it was forbidden to approach them closely, though one could watch from rock ledges above their living place.

They had already been taped, of course, and I did not doubt that Volk had such tapes in his collection. -But they were the only native things of any note, and I could try my hand at a few lengths of such recording, giving Bartare pleasure and, I did admit to myself, so continuing to hold her interest.

It seemed that luck favored us as Oomark's group of level mates at school were about to visit the Lugraans. And this outing included parents and other members of the family if so desired. Thus, Bartare had an excellent reason for pushing the expedition.

To Oomark, however, this was not pleasant at all. When I spoke of it, he looked, for the first time in days, like his old self. Much of the eager animation vanished from his face, his lower lip pushed forward in a pout, and he scowled at his sister.

"You want to go," he said to her rather than to me. And his tone made the words an accusation.

"Of course. Kilda is going to make a recording - "

"It isn't your kind of place!" He was openly hostile. "Don't let her come - " He turned to me. And the strain on his small face was out of all proportion to the situation. He might have been despairingly watching all he had won of friendship and freedom being threatened by a power he could not hope to combat.

I could not stand against that plea. If it meant so much to Oomark, I would not insist. We could go to the Lugraan Valley by ourselves. I said as much, and he showed a flash of relief, which vanished when he glanced at his sister.

My eyes followed his. The shadow I saw in her expression awoke a twinge of the old uneasiness. Somehow Oomark braced himself, as if with my support he was going to defeat Bartare this time.

"Do you want to go alone, not with us?" Bartare asked. She spaced those words a little, giving them more weight than such a simple question needed.

Oomark flushed and then paled. But he stood his ground.

"Yes-yes-"

Bartare smiIed. "Let it be your choice then."

Oomark gasped, turned, and ran out of the courtyard as if he were already late for school and must get there - or away from us - as quickly as possible. Bartare looked to me, still smiling.

"He'll change his mind - you'll see. And you ought to tell Gentlehomo Largrace that we'll go."

"No, not this time. If Oomark wants to be alone with the other boys, it's better to let him."

She shook her head. "He'll want us - you'll see. Just wait and see."

Something about her certainty brought the first crack in the shell of comfortable acceptance that had encased me during the past few days. Memory stirred deep in me. There had been a mirror, and I had seen something in it -

Bartare's smile vanished. She looked concerned as her eyes met mine.

"It is of no matter, none at all," she said hurriedly. "Please, we were going to the Vorright to see the wind pictures - "

And she did what she seldom did, slipped her hand into mine. Bartare had a dislike for being touched that I learned early in our association and that I carefully respected. For her to deliberately seek physical contact was very rare indeed.

We went to the Vorright display hall, and apparently Bartare was absorbed in what we saw. She was playing her little girl role. But my awakening was proceeding, and I was on guard as I had been before that night in the courtyard. Whatever Bartare might be - and I was beginning to wonder if we could discover that - she was not a normal child. And now, remembering her performance in the courtyard, I found it so disturbing that I longed to be able to pour out all my doubts, surmises, and suspicions to someone such as Lazk Volk, who knew much of the universe and would be open-minded.

The parapsychologist - how or rather why had I forgotten my desire to call him? Why had the commandant never moved on his suggestion to do so? Did Bartare have some unknown, heretofore undiscovered esper power to lull thinking in those she wanted to influence?

I reached one answer for myself. But I did not know how she could do it. And until I was able to find out, it would be far better to play her own game of masks, to be the uncaring companion she wanted.

Nor did I doubt now that if she wanted badly to go to the Lugraan Valley, Oomark could not stand against her. But I very much sympathized with his desire to keep as far from his sister as he could. Perhaps, until the circumstances here on Dylan had made it possible, he had never had freedom from her control.

Once freed from whatever restraint had been placed upon me, my own imagination went to work. I had to exercise control over it, tell myself firmly that I would remain alert but that I must not believe Bartare could do much - not until I had concrete proof.

The proof came in such a way as to arouse all my foreboding, to alert all my personal warning signals.

We had returned from town, discussing what we had seen. But Oomark had reached the house before us. His usually round small boy's face appeared gaunt, just as his skin, lightly tanned by Dylan's sun, had now a sickly pallor.

I hurried to where he leaned against the wall, both of his hands pressed to his middle, beads of perspiration distinct on his forehead and upper lip. His mouth worked as if to control nausea.

Before I could reach him, he stood away from the support of the wall to face his sister.

"Take it back-take back what She did to Griffy!" His voice held the shrill of approaching hysteria, that same wild note I had heard in his mother's the two times the medico had tried to rouse her.

"I haven't done anything," Bartare returned.

"You don't have to - She did! You make her stop! Griffy - Griffy's good. He's - " Oomark's eyelids squeezed together, and tears came from between them. "All right, all right! You can come - you can go - anywhere you please. I'm - I'm going to be sick!"

He moaned then, and I caught him up, carrying him as fast as I could to the fresher. Nor did it matter at that moment what Bartare might say or do in answer to his outburst.

4

I washed Oomark's sweating face. He had been thoroughly I and miserably ill. Now he sat on the edge of his bed, hunched together, staring down at the floor. He allowed me to tend him, and when I would have gone to return the washcloth to the fresher, he caught at my overtunic. So I sat down beside him, put my arm around those small shoulders, and drew him close. He turned his face against me.

"Can you tell me about it?" I asked. It was plain he had had a shock. And if Bartare was responsible tor this - At that moment I was willing to be primitive enough to apply punishment with my own hands.

"She said I'd be sorry - " His words were muffled. "And I am. But not Griffy! They didn't have to do that to Griffy!" Again that hysterical note.

I was at a loss. Which would be better - to urge him to tell me just what had happened or to try to get him to forget it and ask the nurse for some sedation?

He decided for me, moving about so that he showed again his tear-streaked, pale face.

"Griffy - he lives with Randulf. He's a poohka - a real, live poohka, not just a stuffed one like I had when I was little. He goes everywhere with Randulf, even to school. Only he wouldn't ever come here 'cause he knew, you see - he knew!"

"Knew what?" A poohka was an alien life-form from off-world and created with its small, furry body the instant desire to cuddle - a perfect pet. But since they were fabulously expensive, I was surprised that any child this far from their planet of origin would have a poohka.

"He knew - " Oomark was emphatic. "He knew about her."

"Your sister?"

The boy shook his head. "Oh, maybe he knew about Bartare - 'cause She and Bartare - they are always together. But She's the bad one! And She made Griffy be hurt! I know she did. He was hurt bad. And maybe even the medico can't help him. She wanted to make me sorry 'cause I didn't. I want to have Bartare go with us. But She didn't have to hurt Griffy - he never did anybody any harm, and he's the nicest fur person I ever, ever knew!" His small body began to shake, and I was frightened at the severity of this upset. I freed one arm and pressed the call for the servo. When that machine came trundling in, I taped a message for the nurse.

Together we got him soothed and to bed. Then I went in search of Bartare. I found her in the library, a tape reader going, listening with dutiful concentration to a history lesson. But I pushed the cutoff button and faced her.

"Oomark believes you have in some manner harmed his friend's poohka." I had come with the firm intention of asking searching questions, of demanding illuminating answers.

She looked at me blankly, as if completely surprised or startled. "How could I, Kilda? I have never even seen any poohka. And I have been with you all day."

"Oomark keeps talking about a She who is responsible through you - " I persisted, determined that this time I would not allow her to put me off.

"Oomark's just a baby," she answered. "I used to scare him when he was bad. I told him that a Green Lady was coming to get him and that she would do all I told her to. Now he thinks there really is a Green Lady and - "

"And you still play upon his fears to get your way?"

"Well - sometimes - "

Plausible enough given coincidences, which do happen. If I had not seen and overheard enough to make me suspicious, I might have believed her. What to do now - should I accept her explanation and wait for her to irretrievably betray herself? Or should I at once call the parapsychologist and arrange an interview?

"I wouldn't, you know." She held my eyes with a straight stare as she said that. There was a faint shadow of an unpleasant smile about her lips.

"But you see, Bartare, I am not a little boy you have managed to frighten by your tales. I do not believe in your Green Lady, nor shall Oomark any longer. It is apparent you both need more help than I can give you."

Her smile was broader. "Try it and seel" There was an exultation in that, far from any child's emotion. "Just try and see!"

To my horror, I found she was right. Try as I might, I could not reach the corn when I went to call Commandant Piscov and ask for the help I was sure we needed. And, truly frightened by this check, I returned to Bartare, who was again listening to the tape, very much the schoolgirl absorbed in her lesson.

"You see" -she glanced up as I came in - "I told you that She won't let you do that."

I sat down on the chair facing this enigmatic charge of mine. "Suppose you tell me who She really is - your mother?" I made as wild a guess as possible, hoping to surprise some answer. The results were past my hopes.

Bartare was out of her seat, leaning over me, her whole face convulsed with some emotion I could not read.

"How did you - " Then that emotion was gone. She turned her head a trifle. Her attitude was so much that of one listening that I also looked in that direction. There was nothing - no one - there.

"Who is She?" I asked again.

Then she gave a pert answer. "That's for me to know, and it would be better for you not to find out, Kilda. Really it would. I like you-a little. But if you make trouble, then you'll find trouble. Don't worry about Oomark. And you can tell him Griffy's going to be all right - as long as he does what he's supposed to. You'll be the same, for the same reason. We are going to the valley. It is important."

With that she left me sitting there.

My first reaction was a flare of anger. Luckily my creche training helped me to face facts. I was badly hit in both my self-confidence and my self-esteem. It would appear that Bartare had some power, undoubtedly esper, which could keep me from summoning aid. I had very little left to me in the way of a weapon. And when I faced that bald fact, I was almost as frightened as I had been by that vision in the mirror. Now I did not, in the least, doubt that that had been some product of Bartare's arranging also, that she had done it either as a warning or a threat. Was Guska Zobak aware of what she had produced in a daughter?

And was her present withdrawal based on a desire not to face the fact of Bartare without the support of her husband? Or was it also engineered by Bartare? She apparently was able to keep me from summoning help to deal with her.

My knowledge of espers and esper powers was only that of the average well-read layman, garnered from Volk's tapes. And it is difficult for one without such abilities to judge, or even believe, in the extent of what one so endowed can accomplish.

Esper or not, my nature rebelled against becoming, as Oomark had, one Bartare could dominate. Perhaps she did not believe, in her child's confidence, that forewarned is forearmed, and there were measures that could be taken to forestall take-over - I was startled to find my thoughts had ranged so far. To be controlled by a child only little more than half my age! It was impossible - or was it? That chill question hung over me as a constant mind-shadow.

I did-not have the knowledge I needed, only scraps and bits of information. And from those bits I must build an inner armor and strengthen it until I could stand up to Bar-tare. How I longed for only an hour's access to Volk's library.

Outward compliance was my best cover for the present. I agreed to that bitter fact reluctantly. There were exercises against hallucination, and I would begin those. In the meantime - what better material could I supply to Volk than my own entanglement in this weird web? I had come a long distance in search of some wonder to add to his store of knowledge, and I had found what I sought - not on Dylan, but within myself.

I went back to my room and brought out Volk's recorder. Yes, there was a thought transcriber attachment. I had used one but only briefly, and I was not sure I had the training to completely record a report thus. But I believed now it was the only sure method, for I had no idea how far Bartare's esper powers penetrated or whether she could overhear an audible recording.

With the lock beam set on my door, I lay down on my bed and began to compose within my mind the clearest record I could of all that had happened to me since I had met Guska Zobak and her children. Twice I outlined events in my thoughts, edited and strove to make them as free as possible of my own reactions and guesses. It might be pos-sible to add those at the end, but what I had to deliver first were facts, not my interpretations of them - though, as with any report, no matter how hard the compiler strives to make it impersonal, there would continue to exist traces of the maker.

Having done my best to assemble a coherent and meaningful sequence, I strapped on the forehead disk and began, giving my twice-edited account. I used the high speed so that much could be embodied on the smallest possible portion of the tape. And I found the whole process much more exhausting than any two regularly dictated accounts.

Then I spun the tape back so the spool looked unused. That I was taking the precautions of one being spied upon, I realized. But I would not make the mistake of underestimating Bartare.

Oomark spent the rest of the day in bed. Also, it was apparent that just as he had turned to me earlier for help, so now he shrank away. As far as I knew, Bartare had not visited him. But I could be sure of nothing now, and it was plain that he feared either me or what he had told me in his confusion. He did receive a call via visa-com from Griffy's owner and was reassured that the poohka seemed to be responding to treatment.

The next morning he went off eagerly when the school transport picked him up, though I noted he glanced several times with apprehension at his sister's door, she having made no appearance. Within the hour she did appear, wearing sturdy outdoor clothing ready for the valley expedition.

I had changed into breeches, land boots, and a warm innerlined tunic - for which foresight I was to be very glad. And I packed a shoulder bag with trail rations, making sure that though we might go to the valley with the group escorting Oomark's class, we would not intrude upon their picnic lunch. The farther I was able to isolate Bartare at present, the better. To my relief she appeared to accept the idea of staying to ourselves quite as if that was the best thing to do, though perhaps she was as eager to keep me from contact with those outside our private field of struggle as I was to restrain her.

We reached the flitter park in good time and found ourselves assigned to a craft with two mothers and one aunt. At best, I found casual contacts difficult because of my own background. And now, with my inner tension, it was an added burden. I seemed to preserve my outer shell so well, though, that they accepted my account of Guska, in an- swer to their inquiries and other small talk, as if I were acting my part well.

Bartare played the small girl correctly, responding politely to the suggestion of one of the mothers that she meet the other's daughter. She carried, as she insisted upon doing, the recorder, holding to it with purpose.

The trip was longer than I had supposed, for we swung out over the countryside, which was at first divided into sections and fields rich with nearly ripened crops, and then into unsettled land. It was here the fact that Dylan was a sparsely occupied frontier planet hit one squarely.

I had lived all my life on a congested planet where one's only sight of growing things was carefully tended, long-tamed, well-trained gardens. Though the art of making little seem much greater was assiduously practiced by their designers, they were only specks compared to this.

Here was the open as I had seen it only on visa-tapes. And it hit one with a hard impact. There was something frightening about those long stretches of open country over which we sped. The land here was not as rich as it was nearer Tamlin. There were few trees, and those more like bushes. Under us the level was rising. More and more rocky outcrops appeared, breaking through the soil. We winged over a basin in which steam arose from heated mineral-impregnanted springs. It was a strange place, fascinating to look down upon. But I do not think I would have cared to cross it on foot.

Beyond this were jagged ridges. The sun shone bright on crystalline seams. The land must have once been torn by fierce volcanic action. And it was into the heart of this very inhospitable country that we were flying.

Bartare stared down so intently that her face was pressed against the plasta-shield of the window. Her attitude was that of one searching for a landmark that was very necessary to find. But I did not trust my reactions to Bartare. I was so much on the defensive with her that I knew it was very easy for me to read more into any action than might be there.

We landed at a much used parking strip, a plateau leveled to make an excellent flitter perch. There we were organized into parties by the rangers in charge and escorted to the upper ledges from which one could watch, the activities of the Lugraans.

I admit I was taken off guard there - fatally as it proved. Bartare was beside me and Oomark wedged in some distance away, standing between his instructor and his good friend - Griffy's master. He had not so much as looked at us since the party had been counted out and marched up to this stand. I was acutely aware of his avoidance, though perhaps others had not noticed it.

Bartare made no move to join her brother. When we reached the ledge, she handed me the recorder. And because I could not let her guess the service to which I had put it earlier, I went through the motions of training its visa-lens on the scene below us.

The Lugraans showed no interest in us. We might have been totally invisible as far as they were concerned. They were nonhumanoid, though they did walk erect. Their plump bodies contrasted with long and thin upper limbs, short and thick lower ones, and a broad, fleshy tail, which, when they paused to face one another at intervals as if they were carrying on conversations, they thrust stiffly against the ground, forming with their legs a supporting tripod.

In color they were a dull red, a growth of stiff quill-like hair covering all over their bodies. Connected to those bodies, by necks so supple and long as to remind one of reptilian creatures, were heads provided with a heavy brightly yellow beak and with a crest of longer quills on top.

Their forepaws were equipped with handlike appendages, which they used well - judging by the huts made of stones piled together, all so well selected and fitted that they stood sturdily. They also carried on a type of agriculture represented by the cultivation of fungi and the keeping of some monstrous insects that were their equivalent of human food herds.

They were certainly unusual enough to rivet the attention - far too much so, as I realized suddenly when I looked around and saw that Bartare was missing. Nor was she anywhere in our party. And, in searching for her, I discovered that Oomark, too, was gone.

I edged toward the back, my first faint alarm becoming a certainty that the children must be found and quickly. But when I wanted to speak to the ranger, the instructor, or even to one of the other children, I discovered - to my mounting fear - that the same inhibition that had kept me from calling for aid in handling Bartare back in the city had returned. I could think what I must do; but it was impossible to do it. However, there seemed to be nothing preventing me from leaving the ledge. I went back along the path. None of the others turned their heads to see me go or ask questions, though I tried to will it to happen.

My discovery of Bartare's and Oomark's withdrawal must have come sooner than the girl expected, for I caught sight of them ahead, not on the path returning to the flitter park, but scrambling over the rocks to the right, climbing up the height beyond. Unable because of the inhibition forced on me to attract any attention, it was left to me to follow them.

It was plain I must have both hands free for the climb, and I must choose between the recorder and the bag of supplies. The latter had a strong carrying strap, so I set down the recorder at the turnoff where I must follow the children. I hoped it would be a marker to the way we had gone.

Almost I feared that leaving that small signpost might be forbidden to me also by whatever had clamped down on my ability to alarm or warn. But no, I could leave it so. I could even follow the children without hindrance.

They had already vanished out of sight, and if I were not to lose them somewhere in that mass of broken rock, I must hurry. Though I had kept in good physical condition, thanks to the regime of the creche, I might never have climbed the first pull, for it was harder than. it looked from below, save for my grim need. The slope was treacherous, with sliding stones, which gathered others in cascades unless one was very careful. And I concentrated entirely on what was immediately before me.

I reached the top of the rise and surveyed the way ahead, to see that I had not utterly lost the children. They were already part way up the next ridge beyond. Oomark was lagging, however, and now and then Bartare paused to wait for him. What she said I could not hear, but it was enough each time to bring him along in a short spurt of renewed effort. I remained where I was until I saw them reach the crown of that other rise, for I had a strong suspicion that were Bartare to see me in such close pursuit, she would take steps to stop me. I could only follow some distance behind until we reached a countryside formed for easier travel.

Once they were over the crest, I made the best time I could down and up. Then I could look down on a long stretch of fairly level territory, save that here the rocky outcrops were numerous and the ground so uneven, with ruts scored in the rock and piles of windswept and worn large boulders, that it was the sort of place where one went slowly and carefully.

Oomark was definitely lagging. Even when Bartare turned and waited with whatever encouragement or lash she had, he trudged at a slow pace. His head hung, and he seemed never to raise his eyes from the ground immediately before him. But he did not stop, and probably Bartare had to be content with so much.

They crossed the open space and were gone. It took me longer to follow. When I reached the far side, I found a sharp and even longer drop. Almost immediately below me Bartare stood with her back to that wall of rock. Her hands rested on her hips, and her head turned rapidly from right to left and back again.

Oomark was still descending the wall. Then he supped and fell. I fave a gasp when he did not rise again but lay at Bartare's feet. Her impatience was plain to see as she reached down and caught with both hands the material of his tunic where it crossed his shoulders, pulling him up, first to his knees, and then to his feet. Even though he stood again, she kept her hold on him, as if, were she to let go, he would fall.

The cliff was the wall of a wide open space that might once have held a river, long since dried up. Though there had been small shrubs of a prickly kind standing here and there among the boulders behind, here not the faintest trace of lichen or moss showed.

Most of the large stones were dull gray-brown. But set here and there among them were others whose hue was so different that they were instantly noticeable. They were a dark red - rounded into crude balls. Some stood as high as the children's shoulders. Others might be picked up and held in both hands. And they were widely scattered, as if some giant had idly flung a handful of colorful pebbles down so they fell and rolled as they would.

Having once been sighted, they drew the eye. In some places they lay close together; in others they were widely apart. There was a medium-sized one, about waist tall to Bartare, not too far away.

Dragging Oomark with her, the girl came to that rock and picked up a small piece of stone. With that she struck the red boulder. The answer was a musical note, like the ring of a bell. Bartare listened until the faint echo died away.

She took hold of Oomark's shoulders once more and gave him a sharp, hard shake. I could see her lips move, though I could not catch the murmur of her voice.

Whatever she said was effective enough. He stooped to pick up a fragment of rock and stationed himself by the boulder she had already struck, while his sister moved on to a larger red stone.

She waved. Oomark struck his boulder, she hitting at the same time the one she had selected. Two notes rang out- but they were markedly different.

Bartare shook her head and beckoned to Oomark, They went on to try a second pair. Nothing daunted by what she seemed to consider ill success, Bartare appeared ready to work their way so across the plain. When they were far enough away, I descended the cliff in turn.

It was my hope that Bartare was so deeply absorbed in what she was doing that she would not see me, though what I would do when I did catch up, I had not the slightest idea. I was sure only that my responsibility was to remain with the children.

I reached the floor of the valley, drummed along by the continued striking of musical rocks. Sometimes they approached the same note closely. And once Bartare signaled Oomark to try a certain one again. But whatever she sought continued to elude her.

They were well out across the middle section of that valley when I followed, weaving a course among the rocks. I slipped once and put out a hand to steady myself. My bare palm met one of the red balls, and I snatched it away. It was as if my skin and flesh had rested for an instant against a heated grill, perhaps not quite hot enough to bum, but warm enough to startle me.

Testingly I touched one of the ordinary gray boulders and found it no warmer than any sun-heated stone might be, far less than the red one. And I carefully avoided any contact with those again. Then I looked up to see Bartare staring back at me. She raised her right hand and made the motion of one hurling some object, and a spear of light seemed to strike me full in the face and eyes.

5

How long that bedazzlement blinded me, I cannot say, for blinding it was. When sight returned to me again, the children were a long distance away, not at the opposite wall of the valley to which they had been heading, but. moving to my left.

Blinking to clear the last of the fog from my sight, I saw that they were still pounding on the ball-boulders. I tried to go after them, but my feet might have been caught in some treacherous engulfing trap. I swayed but could not raise either foot from the ground.

I was afraid. Yet I struggled to go after the two pulling farther and farther away. There the rocks stood taller, masking the children's movements, and finally I could not see them at all.

Their disappearance was the key to unlock my bonds. I stumbled and began to walk, though the footing was so bad that I dared not hurry. There were too many small loose stones that rolled and slid under my feet with almost diabolical purpose. I had to creep where I wanted to run, to clutch at rocks to draw myself forward.

Somehow I reached that place of taller outcrops and pulled my way among them until, at last, a rolling stone was too much, and I fell, twisting my ankle sorely. I rubbed it cautiously, fearing a sprain. But when I got to my feet, I discovered I could still stumble along.

As if their purpose had been accomplished, the loose gravel and stones were less, the footing firmer. At length I stood between two rocks taller than my head, steadying my-self with a hand against one, as I gazed into an open space where there were many of the red rocks, much larger than those at the fore of the valley. And there were the children.

Oomark dragged along as if he were exhausted. I could hear a distant murmur I took to be Bartare's voice, urging or exhorting him to greater efforts. Once he hurled away the piece of stone he carried and turned as if to retreat. But Bartare moved so quickly that she disappeared at one place and appeared at another, to bar his way. I saw Oomark's face. His cheeks were red and bore smeared tear tracks. It was plain he obeyed his sister against his will.

She pointed and he picked up another stone. Something in the slump of his shoulders made me want to run to him and stand before him protectingly. He turned slowly and went to the nearest of those red spheres as if he did not really see the rock but sensed it was there.

Bartare made another lightning move, and I thought she was so engrossed in what she was doing that I could catch up.

There came a low singing note from the ball Bartare struck, and I heard her give a cry of triumph. She did not move on, but waved Oomark on to tap another.

He hit its surface, and she tapped hers again. The notes were close together but did not meet. It was when her brother went to the third ball that she had what she wanted. The two sounds blended to make a single note.

Bartare listened, her head a little to one side, her eyes fixed ahead as if she expected now to see something there. When, after a long pause, nothing happened, she signaled her brother to strike again.

Once more that long, throbbing sound rang through the air, and yet it was through my body, too. I have heard that sound can be vibration, but this sensation of being impaled on a singing note was daunting - so daunting that I knew I must stop what the children were doing. Knowingly or unknowingly, Bartare was evoking forces beyond the control of the world we knew.

I started forward, my ankle paining me. Oomark had thrown aside his banging stone for the second time and stood with his right arm up, crooked before his face, as if to shelter from a blow. And though I could hear Bartare railing at him, he did not move to obey her.

"Do it!" Bartare's cries reached me. "Do it, Oomark! Do you want me to point the power at you? Do it now!"

For a long moment I thought he was going to refuse. But either her threat or the fact she had dominated him so long won. He stooped and felt about for the stone, not looking. Bather he kept his eyes screwed shut as if the last thing he wanted to see was his sister.

"Strike!" she shrieked at him.

Again that double note sounded in a vibration I could feel as a physical assault. Once more whatever she expected in answer did not come. But her absorption was so great that I was sure I could get near enough to seize her. My attack would have to be from behind, or she might apply the very efficient counter she had used before.

It was Oomark who betrayed me. He faced the direction from which I limped, and some change in his expression must have warned Bartare. She swung her head a little, as if to view me from eye comer, and she shouted again:

"Strike!"

As if that order moved me also, I stumbled and tell against another of the red boulders. The supply bag I carried bumped against it, and three notes, not two, sounded together.

If I had felt the vibration as a physical sensation before, that was nothing to what engulfed me now. I have no words to describe what I felt. The best is to say that I swung out as if I were on a rope over some immeasurable abyss, that I so hung for a space beyond the reckoning of any time I knew, and then that all ended in total darkness and non-knowing.

But the period of unconsciousness came to an end, and a opened my eyes, to shut them quickly as violent nausea racked me. What I had seen bore no point of reference to anything I had known, was so alien to all I did know as to make me doubt my sanity.

Yet though I lay on some smooth, bard surface, I knew also that I could not remain so forever. I must make an effort, no matter how limited. Trying to keep control and master the raging fear inside me, I looked again.

I stared straight up at first, dreading to see what lay to right or left. There was no sun, no moon, only an existing grayness like that of an early summer twilight. Only it did not soothe as might that hour on a world normal to my kind.

Slowly, very slowly, I turned my head to the right. What I saw were not rocks such as had ringed me before. Rather there were geometric figures, some stationary, some moving. Of those that moved, a few drifted, apparently without purpose, slowly. Others jerked along zigzag paths. Their erratic

pace, together with their unearthly shapes, brought a return of nausea, so I had to close my eyes and struggle for control.

Though the air about me was gray, these forms were in clashing colors, some of them such as to sear the vision if one gazed at them too long or strove to inspect them closely. Now I turned my head without opening my eyes until I could see what lay left. Then I looked.

There were more of the stationary triangles, oblongs, and a few circles, with only one or two of the floating things, none moving fast. I braced my hands against the surface on which I lay and raised my body a little.

Though that action made my head whirl, I persisted, un-til the vertigo passed and I dared make another move. I seemed to be lying on a rock surface, cushioned here and there by drifts of shining motes, which, when my fingers dug into them, felt like the grit of very fine sand. Some of the glitter clung to my skin, outlining fingertips and palms when I raised my hands.

I had been aware mainly of what I saw. Now I was alerted by what I heard. Somewhere a child was crying, not in loud bursts born of rage or disappointment, but with a pitiful whimpering, as one who had been reduced past hope. And in the midst of this weird world I could not be sure of the direction from which that plaint came. But I guessed which one of my charges made it.

"Oomark - " I called, aware that perhaps sounds in this place might also be dangerous. But I must answer that sobbing.

When I called his name the second time, there was a halt in his gasps, and he answered questioningly, as if he could not believe anyone was here, "Kilda? Please, are you Kilda?"

"Yes. Where are you?" I thought he must be to the left. And I hoped I need not face shooting things to find him.

Somehow I got to my feet, and after an instant or two of vertigo, I discovered I was able to shuffle on, my ankle still paining, worse than before.

"Where are you?" I repeated when he did not answer.

Then his voice came, very low and fearful. "I - I don't know."

"Is Bartare with you?" At that moment I hoped not. I was in no shape to face a struggle of wills. I needed time to pull myself together.

"No-"

"Can you tell me where you are? What is it like around you?" I tried to get some bearing on those figures apparently rooted enough to serve as landmarks.

There was a dark crimson cone that had not moved since I first sighted it and, a little beyond, a vivid green triangle, and to the left of those a cylinder of burnt orange. It seemed to me that Oomark's voice came from that direction, and if he saw the same figures, I would have a guide.

"There's a big tree - and a bush with yellow berries - and some rocks - " His words were separated by sniffles.

But what he said was impossible.

"Are - are you sure, Oomark?"

"Yes! Yes! Oh, please, Kilda, come and get me! I don't like this place! I want to go home - Please, Kilda - come!"

Certainly his voice did come from just beyond the crimson cone. But I shuddered to a stop as a blue rod with two hexagonal fins swooped past my head and skimmed the surface of the orange cylinder. What it was gone, I set out doggedly in its wake.

"I see you now, I do, Kilda!" Oomark called. A small figure came running. To my relief it was Oomark in his own proper human body, who caught and held to me tightly. I had half suspected that perhaps both of us might have been altered as much as the land about us. But apparently he, too, saw me as normal.

He clung so to me that I could not move. And I must confess that my return hold on him was a kind of anchorage. At last his sobs died away and his grasp was not so tight. I dared then to say more than the soothing sounds meant to comfort him.

"Oomark-"

He looked up. His face was dirty with dust and tears, but he was attending to what I said.

"Tell me - what is that?" I pointed to the orange cylinder.

"A bush - with berries - so many that the branches are bent way over," he answered promptly.

"And that?" The green triangle was my next choice.

"A tree."

"That?" The dark red cone came now.

"A big rough rock. But, Kilda, why do you want to know all that? You can see it - "

Slipping to my knees, I put my arm about him, to draw him close. I must be careful of what I said now, but I would have to tell him the truth.

"Oomark, now listen closely. I do not see them so at all - "

I paused, hardly knowing how to continue. That very admission might be enough to increase his fear. I knew he had turned to me as a safe anchor, and if I proved unstable, he might be lost.

"Fern seed - " was his amazing comment.

It was so unexpected that I thought he had taken leave of his senses. But he nodded almost briskly, as if my words were proof of something important.

"What is fern seed?" I asked, with cautious gentleness.

"She gave some to Bartare once. If you get it in your eyes or eat it - you see things different. Bartare must have put some on me. What do you see, Kilda?" He asked that as if genuinely interested.

"Fern seed," "She," all more bits of a puzzle. I felt as if I might never solve.

"Your bush - to me it is an orange cylinder. The tree is a green triangle, and the rock a dark red cone."

His eyes followed my pointing finger. "Then you don't see right here, do you, Kilda?"

"Not as you do, Oomark. Now listen - you say that Bartare is gone, or at least she is not here. Where is she? Did you see her go?"

"I didn't see her, not after I got here," he said. "But I feel her - here!" He loosed his hold on me and raised his, right hand to tap the middle of his forehead.

"Do you think you can find her?"

He shivered. "I don't want to, Kilda. She is - she is with her - the Lady."

And who is the Lady, Oomark?"

He pulled away, turning away his head as if he did not want to meet my eyes.

"She-She is Bartare's friend. I don't like her."

"Where did Bartare meet her?"

"First in a dream, I think. One day Bartare said we must do some things - sing some queer words. She poured layre juice on the ground and crumbled sweetie cakes and tore up some of Mother's pretty feathers and mixed them all together. Then we sat down in the grass, and she told me to close my eyes and count to nine, then open them, and I would see something wonderful. Bartare did - but I never. The Lady, She told Bartare I didn't have the right kind of eyes or something. But She came often after that and taught Bartare things. Then Bartare didn't like me much any more, but she made me help her. But she didn't want to play with Mayra or Janta or any of the girls. She used to pretend to go to see them, but instead she would hide and talk to the Lady. And she said the Lady promised her that if she learned the right things and tried hard, she'd be able to go into the Lady's own world someday. And - " He looked about, his mouth quivered, and his eyes began to fill again. "I guess that's what's happened. Only we had to come along, too. And I don't want to stay here - Kilda, please, let's go home!"

There was nothing I wanted more myself, but how to achieve it I did not have the least idea. I was hesitating over my answer when, with a flash of shrewdness, Oomark guessed what I did not want to say.

"I guess we can't go back, not until Bartare and the Lady let us. But, Kilda, can - can they keep us here forever?"

"No." Perhaps I was too firm, but seeing him so shaken, I dared give no other reply. "But if we find Bartare and the Lady now, maybe we can ask them to let us go."

"I don't want to - I don't like the Lady. I don't like Bar-tare either, not any more. But 111 go to see them if you think they'll send us home."

There was one other question I must ask. "Oomark, you said Bartare has known the Lady for some time. Did she know her on Chalox?"

"Yes."

"But now we are on another planet a long way from Chalox - " If this wild maze was a part of Dylan - 1 had no way of being sure of that. "Did the Lady come with you on the ship? And was her home here all the time?" I was feeling my way. Certainly - unless this was a hallucination of such power only a long-trained adept could force it on us - this was no result of esper work. But if I set aside that explanation, what was left save a nightmare founded on nothing known in my time and space?

"She - " He frowned, as if I had presented him with a problem he had not considered before. "She was there, and She was here. And this is her World. She doesn't like our world. She's been. trying for a long time to get Bartare to come to her because it is so hard for her to visit Bartare. But I don't know where this world is!" Once more tears were dose.

"Never mind. Perhaps it doesn't really matter, Oomark." I gave him a quick hug. "What does matter is finding Bar-tare and the Lady and telling them that we must go home."

"Oh, yes!" As I got to my feet, he caught hold of my hand and drew me along.

To me, the alien landscape provided no road. However, ft seemed that Oomark was confident he knew where we should go. Now and then he pointed to one of the brilliant shapes and said it was a tree, a bush, some natural feature of landscape. But to me there was no change in the alien country. The pain in my ankle increased until the best I could do was hobble. Also, I was both hungry and thirsty, and finally, as I sat down under a dull blue octagon Oomark informed me was a bush, he said wistfully, "I'm awfully hungry, Kilda. Those berries were good, but I didn't eat a lot of them-"

"Berries?" I pulled the supply bag across my knee to open it. "Which ones?"

"The yellow ones back there on the big bush. I landed in the bush when I came here, and they got smeared on my hands. I licked off the juice, and it tasted good, so I ate them. Oh, look here." He scrambled to his feet before I could put out a hand to stop him, to lunge at a triple-peaked blue cone a short distance away. Both of his hands disappeared to the wrist in it, and he pulled out a red circle into which he bit. I could hear a crisp crunch and spoke my warning too late.

"No, Oomark! You can't be sure of any strange fruit - "

But he had swallowed the last bite and was reaching into the cone, withdrawing another fruit. This he offered to me.

"Eat it, Kilda. It's good,"

"No! Please throw it away, Oomark. You know space rules. Things growing on other worlds can be deadly dangerous. Please throw it away. See here - I have some choc squares." I dug hastily into my bag and chose what I thought would attract him most, one of the sweets.

He set the circle on the ground and reached out for the square. But he did so with visible reluctance. Oomark loved sweets. It was not like him to be so slow.

As he unwrapped and raised it to his mouth, an odd look of distaste came over his face. He acted as if the smell of the confection of which he had always been so fond was now disgusting. Slowly he rewrapped it and held it out to me.

"It smells funny. Maybe it's spoiled or something. I don't want it, truly, Kilda."

I took it and opened the covering to sniff for myself. There was no odor save the familiar one of choc, so I suspected something in the native food he had eaten had affected him. I decided better not to urge the sweet on him now. When he was hungry enough, he would be willing to eat the rations I carried. Only there were so very few of those. I could not help but suspect that we were indeed on another planet, though the how and why of our transportation I could not explain. And the first rule of any explorer so situated is to use normal supplies and not to live off the country. However, I did not argue now with Oomark as I allayed my own hunger with a concentrate wafer. And I put as tight a strapping as I could about my ankle before we started on.

The passing of time did not register. The twilight had in no way deepened into night or lightened into day. Only my fatigue argued that a good many minutes, or even hours, had passed since Bartare and I had dismounted from the flitter back at the Lugraan Valley.

"Is it far - to where Bartare and the Lady are?" I asked as I stopped to rest again, far too soon after we had left the place where we had eaten.

"I don't know. It's - it's funny here - " Oomark was assuredly trying to explain. "Things can be close sometimes. And then they - they kind of stretch so they are far again. If - if I think about any place, then it seems far off. But if I just walk along and think of Bartare - why, it is closer again. Please, Kilda, I don't know why that's so - really, I don't."

He was plainly distressed, and I did not press him, though his answer did not make sense. And my whole body now ached with the effort I must make to keep moving. On the other hand, since our pause and since he had eaten the fruit - if fruit it had been - Oomark was as brisk as if he were starting out in the morning after a good night's rest. When I had to stop a third time, he came back to me.

"Kilda, does your foot hurt a lot?"

"Some," I was forced to admit.

"Let's stay here for a while." He looked about. "I know you can't see it as I do, but this is a nice place. Over here" - he tugged gently to turn me to the left - "there's some tall grass, and it looks soft and nice to sit on. Please, Kilda. I can find Bartare any time. She can't hide from me. But if we get to her and the Lady when you're so tired, Kilda - Bartare and the Lady together - I'm afraid of them! And you should be, too, you really should!"

My aching body supported his argument. My will Struggled against a vast cloud of fatigue, and my will lost. I stumbled and fell to my knees in the very spot to which he had guided me. Finding softer ground under me, I could not summon the resolution to rise. With a sigh I surrendered.

6

I rewound my ankle wrapping. My eyes smarted and burned, as they might after exposure to a bright glare. This was a world never meant for our species. Yet Oomark saw it differently, as a normal one. Had Bartare in some manner prepared him?

As I squinted my eyes against that discomfort, I was far from sleep. Here I felt walked danger.

"Oomark, how long has Bartare known the Lady?"

When he did not answer, I opened my eyes wider. His head was turned. All I could see of hunched shoulder and averted head spelled a desire not to reply. Then he said in a harsh whisper, "I don't want to talk about her. She - She knows when I do!"

"Bartare?"

"No - the Lady! It's not good to talk about her - it makes her think of me." He was obviously disturbed. Much as I wanted and needed to learn more, I realized I must not push him too far.

"Have - have you ever been here before, Oomark?" Was that question also infringing on forbidden territory or would he answer it?

"No. Back home - back on Chalox - there was no way to come. Bartare, she found out only a little while ago that there was a way here. She wanted to run off - just me and her - but it was too far to come. So she had to wait until there was a chance to get a ride."

"Was that why you didn't want her to come?"

He nodded. "She was always saying she had to go someplace. But - 1 didn't want to come 'cause I don't want to be here! I don't!"

"None of us do." I tried to suggest that it would only be a matter of time before we could return to safe Dylan.

"Bartare does. She wanted to come badly. She won't go away again. You'll see."

The trouble was that I might not see, but I could feel he was right. And I had no idea what I might be able to do once I did confront Bartare. It was up to me to think seriously about a confrontation.

I rubbed my smarting eyes. The burning sensation was a real source of pain.

"Oomark, tell me how it looks, right here, I mean."

"Well, there's a big bush, tall as a tree," he began, and then he paused so long that I opened my eyes. The boy was staring at a triangle of pink-yellow to our right. I averted my sight hurriedly, for its glowing color increased the burning.

"What is it?"

"I-I don't like it, Kilda. Please could we walk-just a little way, maybe. I don't want to stay here any more."

"Of course."

I got to my feet and we started on. It was not ankle nor my general fatigue that slowed us so much now, but rather my sight. I kept blinking tears out of my eyes.

We came to an open "space where there were few of the rooted colorful shapes. The absence of glaring color aided my sight a little.

Oomark halted. Before us ran a wide zigzag. On its golden surface one could detect a shimmer of movement.

"A stream." Oomark gazed into the shimmer. "It looks deep, Kilda. And the water - it's thick. You can't see any bottom."

"Do we have to cross it?"

"Bartare's over there somewhere." He waved his hand across the zigzag.

"Maybe we can find a place where it narrows or grows more shallow," I suggested. "Shall we go up or down?"

"She's more that way." He waved his hand to the left.

"Then that way it is."

However, as we shambled along, the zigzag did not vary in width. Oomark continued to report that it was as forbidding as ever. Suddenly he paused again.

"We're going wrong now."

One of the turns had made a sharper than usual angle. If we continued along, we would be heading away. But before I could consider that difficulty, Oomark faced me.

"I don't want to go on, I don't!"

His vehemence was marked. He turned his head from right to left and back again, as if he were backed into a corner and must find a way out.

"Oomark, what is it?"

"I don't - I won't go! You can't make me - you can't!" Hysteria was shrill in his voice. "No - no!"

The boy lunged at me, and I gave a step or two, taken so off guard that I could not reach out a hand in time to catch at him. He brushed by and was gone, running into the grayness that curdled about and swallowed him from sight.

"Oomark! Oomark!" I was afraid I had already lost him. What had forced him into flight, I could not tell, unless those we followed were so discouraging pursuit.

I listened. He had not answered, and my only hope now was to pick up sounds in the haze. I did hear such and hobbled along, putting my ankle to painful strain.

Then there was utter silence, and I called, "Oomark! Oomark!"

I heard a whimpering such as that which had first guided me to him. And I tried to steer for its source. The space here was once more filled with blazing shapes. In fact, their strident coloring was worse and kept me rubbing at my tormented eyes.

At last I ran into a parallelogram of pulsating yellow. But though I saw thus, what scratched and tore at me were thorned branches. I staggered back, crying out, my hands streaming small trickles of blood. Falling to my knees, I looked down. All I saw was velvety gray. However, when I ran my hands across that surface, what I felt was the grit of earth and sand, the softness of moss or very short-stemmed grass.

The fact that touch and sight were no longer allied did not at the moment mean so much as that Oomark was gone and now I could not even hear the whimpering. I crouched and called, listening.

"Oomark! Oomark!"

My voice roused only a faint, distressing echo like a moan. Should I blunder on? But I could not be sure of direction.

"Oomark?"

This time there was an answer - a muffled cry, from the other side of the growth into which I had run. But how far on the other side? If he would just keep on answering -

"Oomark!"

Answer he did, though I could not make out any words, only sound. I floundered on, taking care to avoid contact with any other shape, though they blazed about me until they reminded me of leaping flames.

"Oomark!"

I had been so sure my last answer bad come from a distance that I was startled when he replied from close before me.

"I'm here."

He sat on the ground, and somehow he seemed to have taken on some of that gray hue, so that only when he moved was I able to see him. And as I dropped down, spent, not too far away, I blinked and blinked against the pain, against the tears, trying to see him better. Because there was something -

I was not mistaken about his blending so well with the gray. He must have taken several tumbles to cover himself with soil, for he was gray, all gray - Or was it my sight? Fearfully I rubbed at my eyes. No, I could still see the orange and yellow, crimson and scarlet. But Oomark was gray - and his drab hue was darkening!

"I'm not going back - you can't make me! Bartare and the Lady, they don't want me to! If I go, they'll do something - something bad! I won't go!"

"All right." I was too tired to try to talk reason into him now. "You don't have to."

"You'll try and make me. I know you will!" He was aggressively hostile, and I thought that at any moment he might take off again. If he did, I had a strong feeling I would never find him again.

"No." I tried to be as emphatic as I could. "I won't. I'm too tired now to go any farther."

"That's 'cause you wouldn't eat the fruit." There was a malicious note in his voice. "You don't want to change - "

"Want to change?" I repeated dully.

"Yes. You have to change, you know. This place doesn't like you if you don't. If you change - why, then everything will be all right. Truly it will, Kilda!" His voice softened. He stretched out a gray hand as if to touch mine, though he did not quite set fingertip to my flesh.

Change - perhaps it was not my eyes, then, that saw Oomark growing more and more the color of the ground on which he sat.

"Are you changed, Oomark?"

"I guess so. But, Kilda, if you don't change, then I can't stay with you. And if I'm not with you - I don't want to be alone! Please, Kilda, don't make me be alone! Please!" He reached out both hands as if he would clutch at me. Yet I noted, he seemed unable to complete that gesture. He either could not or would not touch me.

When I put out my hand in return, he shrank back. Then he arose and moved slowly backward, his face turned to me, as if he were wary of some attempt on my part to seize him.

"You've got to change, Kilda, you've got to!"

He turned and ran to one of those flames. And so much was the color like a blazing torch that I cried out. But when he retreated from the haze of light, he had in his two hands a blob of quivering stuff. This he thrust at me.

"Eat it, Kilda. You've just got to eat it!"

What might have led to a struggle, for he was determined, I saw, to force it on me, never happened, for from between two fiery columns sounded a strange noise.

It was choked, husky. It might have been a mumble of words in an unknown language. Oomark dropped the jelly blob. He looked over his shoulder to give a shriek of terror.

Then he ran, passing out of my reach. After him, touching first one point to the ground and then another, was a dark purple thing, which might have been two triangles welded together in the middle. From it emitted the gobbling noise, as if it struggled to call out in recognizable speech.

Awkward as it looked, it was swiftly following Oomark with purpose. I could not guess what it was, but Oomark's reaction suggested something terrible.

It bumped past me and was gone, crashing in the boy's wake. I tried to hit it with the supply bag as it passed. But either my aim was poor, or else no touch affected it. And it showed no interest in me.

Somehow I arose and started in the wake of hunted and hunter. It had all happened so quickly that at first I was moved perhaps by instinct alone. Then the full horror of that chase urged me on. That Oomark still ran and the purple thing trundled after him, I was assured by sounds.

I was not to be a part of that chase very long, tor suddenly a long ripple of crimson writhed out just ahead of me. I couldn't avoid what twined between my feet and brought me crashing to earth in a fall hard enough to drive both breath and sense out of me.

Dark - it was very dark. There was some reason why I must move. That need prodded at me savagely. Now I crawled, dragging forward inches at a time. Still that need would not let me rest.

My hands, outstretched to pull me on, suddenly plunged into wetness. Liquid rippled about my wrists. Water! I craved that water more than anything I ever had in my life. I dragged on farther, to fall again, my face in the water. Then I drank and drank, as if I could never get my fill. It was so sweet and good. I must still have been drinking when I lapsed once more into darkness.

I awoke from a sleep so profound that I did not even know a stir of memory until I sat up and looked around in childish wonder.

There was no sunlight. A thought stirred - what was sun? Bright warmth should be overhead. I turned up my face to a sky that was silver-gray, through which mist arose in curls. There was no direct source of the light that I could detect.

I stirred uneasily as memory awoke. My eyes no longer hurt. Why - this was a normal, natural world in which there were no blazing shapes. I was beside a pool into which fed a miniature fall of water, from which trickled a small rill over which hung plants with tall fresh green leaves shaped like the blades of ancient swords. In the midst of each cluster of those blades, as if it were some treasure they were bared to defend, stood a stalk of darker green crowned with large white flowers, each petal tipped with a spot of silver glitter.

Farther away were bushes, each heavy with flowers, cream white or silver pale. Nowhere, as I turned my head slowly to view the hollow where I was, were there any colors save the shades of white and cream of the flowers, the silver gray of the rocks, the green of the foliage.

I cupped my hands and drank again. And I remembered everything.

Oomark? But that other word - I must somehow have returned to Dylan. Then what of the children? Were they back, too? Or were they still entrapped, over there - in there - however you might deem it. I must find them - or get help to find them.

"Oomark!"

As I got to my feet, my body was curiously light, restored. I felt no pain, no ache, no fatigue now. I was not hungry. I was only impatient.

"Oomark?"

Studying the disturbed moss and soil, I could see the track I had made crawling to the pool. Perhaps if I back-tracked -

I had, indeed, left a well-marked trail, first through a break in the wall of flowering shrubs and then between trees. There was a strong fragrance from the flowers, and among them gently fluttered gauzy-winged creatures that were never still enough for me to be sure whether they were birds or very large insects. The trees had dark green leaves. And here and there among them were large, plate-flat flowers such as a small child might draw, a round center, each petal distinct. These were green also, but much lighter and brighter. And some had touches of blue at petal tip, while others showed a faint silvery dusting. Yet both kinds grew on the same tree.

Though I had an urgent need to hunt the children, yet I looked about me as I went, for it seemed I could see details more clearly than I ever had in my life before.

The marks I followed ended at last in a place where there were footprints instead. Seeing those, my belief that I had won free from the other world was shattered, for I read my own boot marks. And those followed and in some places overlaid earlier spoors, consisting of smaller prints overrun again by larger. The large ones were oddly shapeless, so I could not be sure what manner of creature had left them, save that they must be those of Oomark's pursuer.

So I followed that new trail. It led on, dodging among the trunks of the trees, as if Oomark had fled, intent only on outdistancing whatever followed him. My fear grew as I ran as fast as I could in the same direction.

Here the trees grew farther apart. I came out of the woods into open land, though mist limited my range of vision. When I glanced back, I could see fog closed in behind me.

Trees gave way to bushes, many of them hung with the perfumed flowers. Something swooped over my head and was gone. Some bird or flying thing must be coursing prey.

I had a growing sensation that I was under observation. Twice I stopped short and turned to look along my back trail. Though I sighted nothing moving there, yet the feeling that something had just scuttled into hiding was strong.

The trail I followed, which had been so clear to read in the muck of the woodland, was harder to discern here. I caught only a few faint impressions, and sometimes in an open patch the marks of Oomark's boots or the imprint of the shapeless foot of his hunter. Once I lost them altogether and had to circle back and forth until I found some smudged and beaten-down grass, which, I thought at first with a leap of fear, must mark Oomark's capture. Yet, to reassure me, there was beyond a boot mark.

He had made a sharp turn to the right. And I wondered if he had been trying to head back to the woods, away from the open, for there was no more cover here save grass. That was very thick and lush, brushing above my ankles as I moved.

The peculiar misty atmosphere hid the trees from which I had come. It enclosed me in a small bit of open, which moved with me, as if I were under some perambulating cover designed never to permit me to see very far. Now there pushed up through the grass, rocks, until I was among some towering as tall as trees. When I reached that point, I heard sobbing, alerting me to danger by its very hopelessness.

So warned, I crept on as softly as I could, taking care in the setting of my feet among the gravel and small stones thickly strewn among the rocks, until I came to a place where I could look down a slope.

Just within the wall of mist were those I sought. Oomark was wedged between two stones, as if he had fought his way into a very cramped pocket of safety. He was crying, though it was more a kind of bleating, a sound that might come from a human being who had been driven by fear into the escape of near-mindlessness. And he kept moving his hands feebly in a pushing motion, as if so to defend himself against some attacker.

Yet that which had hunted him was not close but rather kept a goodly distance away, pacing back and forth, as if some invisible wall stood between him and the boy. Him - it - that - I drew a breath of disbelief, but I was also sure that my eyes reported truly the form of what prowled there. Man-sized, humanoid in general shape, it was like no man nor alien I had ever seen. Its shoulders were thick and bowed, which made its too large head bob forward when it moved, rather than be held erect. Its arms were long, its legs thick, and it was covered with a mat of black hair, curly as an animal pelt. Yet it was no animal - for on and over that furry body were ragged remnants of clothing, twisted and tied together, as if, though the creature might have been far more comfortable to discard them, it clung to those as one might cling to a charm.

Now and again it stopped and turned toward Oomark, and I could hear the same unintelligible mumble it had voiced when on the chase. But Oomark did not answer, nor did he move, except to continue those pushing motions.

I wondered why the creature had not gone in and plucked the boy out of that poor refuge. Certainly its strength was infinitely more than that of the frightened child. Yet it was obvious that for some reason it could not carry through whatever purpose had led to the hunt.

And its indecision or inability gave me a chance at rescue. I shrugged the storage bag off my shoulder. Its present contents I stuffed into the front of my tunic. Then I began to search about me for stones of suitable size and weight.

7

With the weighted bag in my hand, I slipped along using the rocks as a screen. That monstrous figure had gone back to pacing. The pacing was so ponderous and deliberate that I thought that its reactions might not be too quick. Yet one could not be sure. To undervalue your opponent may be disastrous.

I watched that prowl, judging the right moment for attack. Then I leaped, swinging the bag and bringing it down full force, aiming at the monster's head. But my improvised weapon was awkward, and the blow landed glancing along the shoulder below.

However, it had hit hard enough to make the beast thing cry out. It reeled away and went to its knees. I passed it and reached the rocks where Oomark was. Once there, I whirled to meet any attack the thing might launch.

It was still on its knees, one paw at the shoulder I had struck. And it made a mewling sound, shaking its head. How long it would be so incapacitated I could not tell. I reached for Oomark, though he tried feebly to beat me off. Somehow I clawed him out of his crevice.

He struggled, plainly too overwrought to know who I was, fighting for his freedom. I was bitten, scratched, but I held grimly, trying in the meantime to soothe him with my voiced assurances that he was no longer alone.

I do not know which form of reassurance finally reached him, or whether it was just that he was too tired to struggle longer. At last he collapsed in my hold, a limp weight. I groped for the bag with one hand, while I steadied him against me with the other.

The beast thing was still occupied with its hurt. Only, even as I dared to believe we might escape, that hairy head swung around to face us. There was little sign of nose, and the eyes were so deep-set in twin pits they could not be seen. The mouth was a slit, now well open as if the creature struggled for breath. And the fangs so revealed were such threatening armament as made my poor bag of stones a straw opposed to a laser.

"Oomark!" I tried to put command in my tone, to reach through the fear that made him captive. It was plain that I could not carry him and defend us, too. "Oomark! We must get away. Do you understand?"

I could feel the painful shuddering of the small body pressed to mine. He gasped, but he did answer me. "Kilda?" It was as if he suddenly was aware I now stood between him and the source of his fear.

"Yes, I am Kilda!" There was no longer any time for lengthy soothing. We must be on the move before that thing fronted us again. I controlled my impatience as I added, "I have come, Oomark. But you must help me now. Can you walk if I hold your hand? I cannot carry you."

"Kilda-that thing!" His hold kept me from moving. "It'll get us!"

"Not if we go away." I kept my voice low. "I hit it, Oomark. It is hurt. But we must go before it can stop us."

The boy turned his head to look. And as Oomark did so, my own hand brushed the top of his head. I must have uttered a cry of surprise, for he tightened hold on me again.

However, it was no action of the beast that had startled me. It was what my hand had found on my charge's head, what I could see when I looked for them. Evenly spaced, one above each temple, Oomark had small protuberances. The lumps were too regular to be bumps gained during his flight. Nor did they seem sore, for he had not flinched when my touch crossed them.

I gave him closer study. It was true his skin was a curious gray. And along his small arms and legs, where his tunic and breeches were torn and showed skin, there was a soft fluff of fine hair growing. He was changed, changed into something far different from a small human boy!

For a moment I even forgot the hairy thing, our common enemy. But a sound louder than its heretofore mewling made me face it. The creature was on its feet, but it moved unsteadily. And I began to hope that, glancing as my blow had been, I had injured it somewhat.

It tottered a step or two in our direction. I had the cord of the bag tight in my hand, ready, and I swung it. I meant , that to ready it for a blow. But the creature must have taken it as a warning. It stopped.

I saw its slit lips work and spittle in the comers of its mouth, as if it were engaged in some struggle. Then it lifted one paw and held it out, palm up and empty, in a gesture of appeal, while those writhing lips shaped two words, garbled and far from clear human speech, yet understandable.

"No-friend-"

That reaching hand went to its throat, grasping and tearing at the hairy skin there, as if it were so frustrated at its inability to make me understand that it would tear the words from its vocal cords.

After a long moment I began to move. Now it made plain, by the best way it knew, that it was opening a passage for us. How much this change in attitude could be trusted, I had no idea. However, it was true that it might have pulled Oomark from the rocks with very little effort, and it had not. I would have to take the chance -

While I so hesitated, it turned its back on us. Still holding hand to shoulder, it shuffled away. Nor did it turn to gaze in our direction again, but continued out of sight. Was mis all a sham, and would it stalk us, lay some ambush among the rocks?

Staying here was no solution. I thought that, in spite of the mist, I might be able to get back to the woods, perhaps to the pool where I had awakened. Only - what would that avail me? The important thing was, I was convinced, to find Bartare and this mysterious Lady. A door opens two ways, and if one had brought us here, it should let us go again. It need only be that we find it. And the best way to do that was to discover who held the key.

"That thing is gone." Gently I took Oomark's head and turned it so that he could see for himself. "Now, while it is gone, we must go, too."

"Now - quick before it comes again!" His grip on my belt pulled me toward the open. But I had had my fill of wandering. We must go only with a goal in sight.

"Oomark, you want to get away from this place, this whole world, don't you?"

He did not raise his head to face me squarely, but shot a look at me in an odd, sidewise fashion. With a second shock I saw that his eyes were no longer a warm brown but hard and glinting gold, such as I had never seen in a human face before.

"Away from here - " he echoed. "Yes, please, Kilda! Before the thing comes back!"

"Oomark, do you still know where Bartare is?"

Another glance from those golden eyes. "I always know. She doesn't care - not any more."

"Why?"

"Because - because - " His small face screwed up in perplexity. "I guess because it doesn't matter now."

I wanted to know why it did not matter. But somehow I could not bring myself to ask. Instead, I inquired, "Can you find her now?"

He looked at me directly, with a long, searching, unchildlike stare. There was something cold, aloof, not of the Oomark that I knew in it.

Then he nodded. "Now I can. Come on!"

He grasped my hand and pulled me to the left and away from the rocks. At least, unless the creature had circled back once he was out of sight, we were heading away from where it had disappeared into the mist.

"I'm hungry," he announced a moment or so later.

His recovery from the abject terror and mindless state of a short time earlier seemed very rapid. I marveled at it a little, wondering whether it were natural or another manifestation of the change in him.

"Good enough. I have rations." I put my hand to the bulge of things I had stored in the front of my tunic.

He made a face. "Not that rubbish - real food."

"It's real enough," I assured him, "even if it is a little banged about. Let's find a place away from these stones, and we'll eat." Now that he mentioned food, I found I was also hungry.

The area of stones became stretches only of sand and gravel. But this was the most colorful thing I had yet seen among the greens and whites, for many of the smaller pebbles were of deep, warm colors, reminding me a little of the brilliance through which we had earlier come.

Oomark released my hand and darted away, then stooped to root something out of the ground. He returned holding a fan-shaped growth that was dark purple - its fleshy leaves veined with green.

"Good!" He waved it before me, and a torn strip of his sleeve fluttered to show his arm where the growth of fine gray hair looked to be even thicker and longer than before. He carefully broke the plant in two and offered me one section, nibbling at the other with every evidence of enjoyment,

I shook my head. I was sure I could not force his half from him. But to mouth that strange thing myself I could not.

He chewed and swallowed. "But it is good!" he urged, plainly surprised at my refusal.

"You can have it. But save some room for real food." Again my hand went to my tunic front to reassure myself I carried what he needed there, though how long that small store could last, I did not know. It was probably only a matter of time before I would be driven to consume just such a thing as that Oomark now relished.

We found a resting place. I thought it safe, for we were in the open, with no cover more than a boulder waist high to me - and I could see on all sides. Oomark was willing enough to halt there.

As he sat down on the ground, he pulled at the seals of his boots. "My feet hurt. They feel as if my boots don't fit any more. I'm going to see why - "

His buoyant return to normalcy after his fright still amazed me a little. I would not have believed his recuperative powers so great, but I was thankful this was so.

As he unsealed his boots, I took out the various containers I had crammed into my tunic. And though I could really have eaten all in sight, I opened only one package, breaking the thick slab it contained into two portions. It was one of the fruit-protein cakes, giving high energy level. The taste was very good.

Yet when I picked up my portion and held it to my lips, I found its faint odor offensive. It was necessary to force myself to chew and swallow, and I took no pleasure in its taste. I remembered Oomark's earlier aversion to the choc. And I wondered if, having sampled the food or drink of this world, one was left with a strong dislike for one's natural food. Stubbornly I ate the chunk. And the longer I worked at it, the less obnoxious it became, so that the last bite or two was normal tasting.

"This is yours." I held the other half out to Oomark.

He shook his head. "Don't want it. It's spoiled or something. I can smell it's bad clear over here. You oughtn't eat a mess like that, Kilda. It might make you sick."

And he absolutely refused to sample any of the supplies I had. Since I could not feed him by force, I had to accept that he had been sufficiently satisfied by the plant he had eaten.

Perhaps later, if he found no more such and was really hungry - I slipped off my outer tunic and made a bag of it that I could attach to my belt. The storage bag must remain a weapon. The air was warm and caressing against the skin of my arms. Though I had on only an under tunic, sleeveless and low-necked, above the waist, I was not cold.

The gray light seemed to give my bared skin a new color. I was not gray as Oomark; rather my naturally brown skin was even darker and more ruddy brown. It had a gloss as if polished with oil. Yet to the touch it felt normal. I wished for a mirror, and ran my hands over my head and face in its lack, trying to guess by touch what I looked like.

The result was not instantly horrifying as it had been when I had faced that terrifying reflection in my bedroom, but it was startling enough. In the first place, my hair, which had always curled so tightly that I had trouble dressing it and so kept it cropped closer than fashion dictated, was now in straight strands. I pulled one loose - not dark brown any more, but green. Unmistakably so!

Under my touch, my eyes, nose, mouth were, as far as I could guess, as always. For so much I was thankful.

"That's better!" Oomark had pulled off his boots, tossed them to one side, as if he never wanted to see them again, and stretched his legs out before him.

His feet-no! At that moment I could have screamed denial of what I saw, except that I was too frightened to utter any sound at all. They were no longer human feet. Rather the toes had grown together, so that what I looked upon was something midway between a deformed foot and a cloven hoof, while the furry hair above it was much longer and thicker.

"Oomark - " Though I shrank from doing so, I made myself reach out and touch the homy section of hoof and slide up to the fur above it. I had hoped, wildly, that this was an optical illusion, that I would feel a normal foot.

But it was not so. Oomark's hoofs, his haired legs, could be felt as well as seen - just as my green lank hair had been real when I plucked it from my scalp.

"I can walk a lot better now," he announced. Apparently the sight of hoofs did not in the least bother him. He might have expected to see such when he pulled off his boots. He kicked out his feet, as one might do when released from punishing restraint.

As I surveyed him closely from those hoofs to the top of his head, I saw something else. Those bumps on his temples were appreciably larger. They were no longer round or covered with skin. Instead, they were curved, tipped, a cream-white - they were horns.

There comes a time when one has been faced by too many shocks, and thereafter the not-to-be-believed can be accepted passively. I had somehow progressed to that point. Or else I was in such a state of shock that I found nothing abnormal. Strange, yes, but it did not add to my fear.

When we started on, I again had that feeling that we were followed. But the veil of mist was so thick that I could only make sure, by frequent glances behind, that whoever or whatever skulked there was not in close range.

Oomark did not pick up his discarded boots, but left them lying where he had thrown them. Twice more he jerked the purple plants free of the soil and munched on them, each time offering me some. I wanted none of them. The one time I took a bit to examine it more closely, I found the smell as offensive as he seemed to find the supplies. Even the touch of its leaves against my fingers made me brush them back and forth across my breeches after I had thrown it away.

"How far are we from Bartare?" I demanded when it seemed there would come no end to our journey. This country was open meadowland with thick, lush grass, not even a bush to break the open lines of it. The grass had odd peculiarities, for there were circles, seemingly exact in their marking. Their rims were indicated by a taller and noticeably darker green growth. I saw that Oomark avoided stepping on any of those darker bands when he crossed them. And I followed his example, partly because inborn wariness suggested all precautions were good.

We were in the middle of one such when I asked my question. He had taken the lead. Now he glanced back over his shoulder, his horns even more evident. Also I saw his once small ears were elongated, rising to a very noticeable point at the top.

"I don't know. She is there-" He pointed ahead into the mist with confidence.

But where was "there"? He seemed to have no idea and finally became sulky when I pressed, saying that he could not tell - that he only knew she was ahead and, if we went far enough, we would find her. I eyed the mist uncertainly. Though I had no way of measuring its advance, I was quite sure that I had had a far greater range of visibility at the beginning of this journey and that the outer veil was moving in restrictingly, which was not pleasant to consider, the more so when I firmly believed we were being trailed. Suppose that drifting stuff circled about us as thickly as some fogs I had seen, so we were lost in it? Then we would be easy prey for anything.

It would be better to find some shelter and hole up until the fog lifted or cleared to the point it had held when I had come out of the woods. But before I could suggest that, Oomark moved closer. His nose, appearing larger than natural, with wide, flaring nostrils, was turned to the left, and he seemed to be testing for scent.

"Best we stay here, in a ring of the Folk," he said. "There be others abroad." Not only his appearance had changed; his speech was also odd, the choice of words different. Now his actions surprised me, for he went to his hands and knees and crept about the inner perimeter of the circle, his head close to the ground, plainly sniffing gustily as he went. When he had completed that circle, he squatted back on his hoofs.

"This is a fair place." He patted the ground on either side with his hands. "The others cannot break a ring, you know. We bide here now till outdraw comes again - "

I sat down so I could closer study his altered face, hoping that the expression there might help me. "What others are there, Oomark?"

"The others-the Dark Ones. They and the Folk are never one. But here one of the Folk is safe, unless it is lot time and he is the sad-chosen." He shivered as might one thinking of some well-known terror.

"And who are the Folk?" I continued gently. The Oomark I had known was almost gone, lost in this alien child. I longed to somehow catch and hold fast a last poor remnant, but how I might do that, I did not know.

"The Folk? Be you mist-witted, Kilda. All know the Folk - you - me - "

"Bartare-the Lady?"

"All, yes, all." He nodded.

"And the others? Was it one such who chased you?"

I thought he looked a little puzzled. "He was not - not of the Dark Ones, nor of the Folk. He is One Between." He made of the word "between" a species name. "As you will be, Kilda, if you don't watch out!" He shot that last at me like a threat.

In fact, I glanced at my own arms and hands to be sure there was no harsh growth of hair showing on them, that I was not changing into a monster like the one I had wounded with my bag of stones. But my skin, though dark and shining, was still smooth.

"How will I become that?"

"If you do not accept, you will not be accepted." He said that solemnly. He might have been uttering a rule of law.

"Halfway you have come. But more than halfway must the journey take you. Take off your boots, put your feet to the earth-feel!"

I hesitated. Oomark had shucked his foot covering to display hoofs. If I pulled mine off, would I be fronted by a similar distortion? I tried to wriggle my toes - was sure I felt them move. But I must know! I drew off my boots.

My feet! No, I did not have hoofs, but they were not as I had always seen them either. The toes were longer, thinner. They appeared to uncoil, to show an extra joint on each as I released them. And they were far more prehensile than any human toes should be. These new, flexible ends curved down without my willing it and dug into the soil.

And throughout my body I felt a shock, as if those toes, in so sinking into the ground, had encountered therein a source of energy that flowed back through them up my legs, into my body. I jerked them free, trying to force on my boots again.

But that could not be done. The longer toes might not be accommodated therein without such crippling as would mean I could not walk. And they wriggled independently as I tried to crowd them together and fit them into those coverings, as if they had a life of their own and were determined to return to the soil.

Finally I ripped loose the inner lining of my boots, and these strips I bound around and around my feet with a vindictive tightness. I might not be dealing with my own flesh and bone, but with rebellious entities that fought me.

Once they were thus bandaged so that none of their bare surface could touch the ground, they became quiet. And I could almost believe those wrappings hid a normal human foot. I would have to go on without my boots, but the wrappings were a safeguard I dared not relinquish.

"That was not a clever thing to do, Kilda," Oomark commented. "It is better you come into the paths of the Folk, lest you be lost, for you are not of the Dark Ones - "

"I am Kilda c' Rhyn," I said defiantly. "I am not of this world! Nor are you, Oomark Zobak!"

He laughed then, and something in that laughter was not in the least childlike.

"Oh, but you are, Kilda, as am I. And there will be no denial left in you soon. None at all."

8

At that moment I wanted no argument, for there was something about Oomark now. Though he was still a small boy, in some ways he was secretive, older. I did not like those sly glances he sent in my direction now and then-gloating - satisfaction at my difficulties, a searching for a change in me?

Once more I took out food. But he would have nothing of what I offered. I ate, a much smaller portion than I wanted. But I must ration myself. These supplies could not be renewed.

It began to rain, or else the mist, which had grown thicker and thicker, condensed on our bodies. I could see no farther than the outside of the ring in which we sat. Oddly enough, the heavy moisture did not make me uncomfortable.

There was a strange sensation in my scalp, and I raised my hands to discover my hair was not plastered to my skull by the damp but stood erect, and it could not be forced flat save by keeping a hand pressed upon it. The wet on my skin and in my hair took away my thirst.

When I glanced at Oomark, I saw him licking the down on the backs of his hands (for it grew there now), even up his arms, just as a cat might perform its toilet fastidiously when wet, though he did not appear uncomfortable.

Then, with a jerk, his head snapped up, and he stared over my shoulder. I pushed around to gaze in the same direction. At first I could see only the billowing mist. Then I was aware of a darker shape that did not drift with that mist but pushed against it. Though I could not hear the slightest sound, it was padding about the circumference of the ring. Was it what had followed us?

I reached for the weighted bag. How I longed for a stunner, though a laser beamer would have been best. However, the thing, whatever it was, was never more than a dark shape.

Oomark slewed around, following it with his eyes as it moved. I wondered if he could see more of it than I did.

"What is it?"

"A Dark One."

His nostrils expanded as if to test the air, and then he added, "It cannot come within the ring. Also" - his head lifted a little higher - "there is something else out there."

At that moment I smelled enough to make me turn my head in disgust, a nauseating odor. Long decay and filth blew a puff of stench across our refuge. I must have uttered an exclamation, for I heard Oomark say, "That is the Dark One. Always do they smell so. But the other thing - "

He stood up. The dark shadow passed before him on its round. But Oomark continued to look into the mist ahead of him. A moment later he shook his head.

"It is there. I think it watches, but I do not know what it may be, save it does not stink like a Dark One."

What more he might have said was drowned out in a high, carrying sound, which made me shiver. And that clarion call or trumpet summons was answered - from so close by that I thought it might be that shadow beyond the ring wall. The answer came as a low, snarling growl.

Once more the call, surely a summons, a demand, so imperative was it. The growling followed, a protest, a sullen whine. But on the third sounding of that horn, there was no growl, rather a deep, carrying bellow, perhaps the answer demanded.

Oomark squatted down again, his arms about his knees, balling himself as if to make as small a target as possible to escape notice. I saw his shoulders shake in a series of shudders. His head rested now on his knees, so I could not see his face.

Though I searched the wall of the mist, I could no longer sight that dim shadow, nor did the stench of it linger. Off in the gray billows the horn gave another blast. Now there was no questing note in it, rather a gloating, a promise of worse to come. Before its echoes died away, there was a yapping, a noise that sent my hands in an involuntary gesture to cover my ears. I wanted to sink into the earth and pull protecting sods over me.

"What is it?" I asked Oomark, in a half-whisper. He seemed to know so much of this place, and his fear was now so apparent that I thought he could set name to the nameless.

"The hunt! Ahhhh - " His words lapsed into a moan of pure fear. "He hunts - "

"Who?" I grasped at Oomark's shoulder. He aimed a blow at me in return, as if in his present state he did not know friend from enemy. "Who? Tell me!" I shook him.

"The driver of Dark Ones." Those strange yellow eyes through which Oomark surveyed this alien world were fixed on the mist wall. His tongue licked his Ups. "He calls his pack to a hunting - "

There was nothing to reassure one. Still holding to Oomark, I listened, straining to pick up any sound in the dank mist. But when the horn pealed again, it was fainter, farther off, and the hideous yapping that answered it was barely audible.

I felt Oomark relax a little. Once more he licked his lips. He sniffed the air.

"The dark hound is gone," he reported.

I knew that I must have out of Oomark all he knew or suspected about this world. To travel on blindly, not knowing from which side and at what moment danger might leap, was too great a risk. Knowledge was my hope.

"Oomark, you must tell me what you do know of this world - of things such as the Dark Ones and the hunter - "

Again he looked at me cornerwise, slyly.

"Please, Oomark. If we are to go on, I must know what dangers lurk here."

He shrugged. "It is of your choosing that you do not understand for yourself. You would be of that other place, not wholly of this."

I rebelled. "I am not in the least of this place! I would return to my own place."

"See?" He spread out his hands in a gesture of bafflement. "You choose to be one in the middle. And the hunter of Dark Ones - and such as he - can therefore hunt you. You ask to know - The means are before you, but you will not take them."

"Oomark!" I drew on all my store of patience. Tell me what you can."

The boy hesitated. I thought, "If he does refuse, what means have I of forcing him to it?"

Then he said slowly, "I do not know everything, save that when something such as the hunter's horn sounds, then here's - he touched his forehead - "there come knowledge. I know what can be eaten and drunk, what we may meet on this road, and whether it be friend or foe. But before it happens, I do not know, truly. It is only when I see or hear-"

The he spoke the truth, I did not doubt. Now before I could urge any more out of him, he raised his head a little and pointed with his chin.

"The One Between, who was by the rocks, he is here."

"What does he want?" Oomark seemed so certain, as if he could actually see the hairy creature.

"He hungers - "

My mind made a horrifying guess. Were we the prey the thing trailed? I tightened my hold on the bag and prepared to do my best in our defense.

Oomark touched my arm and shook his head. "Not us. His -is not the way of the hunter. No, he hungers for what you carry - the food from the other place."

"Why?"

"I do not know, only that it draws him. He wants it so badly that it means the whole world to him. He can think of nothing else, only that. So I can in turn feel his great hunger in me." Oomark put his hands to his middle, rubbing himself.

But why? Why would a creature of this world want my few supplies? Not that he would get them, I told myself fiercely. I had that bundle safely under my hand, and the bag was also ready for any attack.

"Yes, that is what he wants. He will follow as long as there is strength in him. He is hurt, you know. When you struck him, he was hurt. Here." Oomark fingered his own shoulder, lightly, as if dreading to put pressure on some wound.

"Still he is very strong - " I remembered only too well the bulk of the creature, and I had no desire to face new attack.

"He is tired, and he hurts. Now he has found another ring and rests in it. But when we go on, he will follow." Oomark reported confidently, and I believed him. So it would be up to us to lose or discourage that follower.

Oddly enough, though I had been tired when settling in this ring. I had no desire to sleep. Nor, it seemed, did Oomark. Though we talked but little thereafter, we spent the passing of time (and how much time, I could not calculate) as if we were waiting for some signal. However, it was not a waiting that made me uneasy or impatient. Rather it was a languid, quiet period between two bouts of action.

We heard no more sounds. Nor did any shadows move now in the mist. Finally I became aware that the curtain was lifting, that I was able to see more. Oomark got to his feet, or rather his hoofs.

"It is the period of outgo. Let us be on our way. I am hungry."

I made as if to open the supply bag. He shook his head. "I want real food - not that which makes one sick to smell! Come on!"

With that he gave a bound that cleared the darker green of the ring rim, his small hoofs clattering on a stretch of rock beyond. I looked at my boots. It was plain I could not put those on again. The bandaging must serve me for foot covering. And there was no reason to burden myself with useless things. So I left them lying as I moved after the boy.

The lifting of the mist came more swiftly. The ground where we had halted was level and had many rings of various sizes across it. Not too far away one of those rings was occupied. The hunched figure now getting awkwardly to its feet was that of the creature who had hunted Oomark. The tatters it wore for clothing fluttered in a breeze. It had turned its head in our direction. One arm hung by its side. But the other moved, and it extended its empty hand, palm up. I could see the mouth working as it had before when the creature tried to speak.

Again that effort was mighty, convulsive, until my fear was touched with a trace of sympathy. Even I could see it meant no harm, at least for now; it was pleading with us for that which I carried. Why would it so want the food Oomark disdained? The slit mouth worked, spatters of spittle showing in the comers. And the hand, trembling as if it were an effort to hold it so, stretched beseechingly to me.

"Come on!" Oomark had drawn ahead. He looked back impatiently. "I want food."

"Foooood - " The word was a distorted mockery of the boy's, but the creature had uttered it.

I held the supplies tight to me in the crook of my arm while I swung the weighted bag with my other hand. Yet still I hesitated. And in that moment I knew that I could not do what all good sense told me was safe. I took the thong of the stone bag between my teeth, holding it ready. Then I thrust my hand in among the supplies. Without looking, I grabbed what I first touched. It was a choc piece.

Without watching, lest I grow more generous than I dared to be, I threw that in the general direction of the creature and ran on after Oomark. But the boy had halted, and when I caught up with him, he was scowling.

"Why did you do that?"

"Because - I was sorry for - "

"For that?" He laughed in a way I did not like as he pointed.

I turned to see the creature crouched low to the ground, pulled in upon itself as Oomark had been at the sound of that dread horn. It was making no move to follow us.

"What-what is the matter?"

"You were sorry." He mocked me, his lips grinning in a smile that was not pleasant, which reminded me of - Bar-tare! "You were sorry. But he is sorrier now!" The boy stabbed a finger at the quiet figure.

"Why?"

"You gave him food - now look at him! It hurts and hurts and hurts. And he deserves that hurting! He is neither one thing nor the other. Maybe he'll be nothing at all shortly."

"Oomark - " I tried to catch his arm, but he eluded me, laughing hatefully. "That food - did it poison him?"

"If it did not, he'll wish that it had. You will, too, Kilda, you will, too. Look at yourself - just look!"

It was his turn to grab my arm and swing it up before my eyes in a hold tight enough to bruise.

That brown shine on my skin had increased. There was a kind of hard shell developing from my flesh. I jerked away, refusing to look.

"You cannot stop it, you know." Oomark had lost some of his mockery. "Look at me!" He danced from one small hoof to the other, turning so that I could see him from every angle. His hands pulled at his tunic, loosening it. Now he threw that and his under tunic from him so he was bare to the waist. Bare - no! His small body was completely covered with a soft gray down. It was thinner on his arms and shoulders - I could see through it to his skin - but at his waist it grew longer and thicker.

"Put on your clothes!" I tried to give that order my old authority.

"No!" he kicked at one of the tunics. "No!" He stretched wide his arms and capered in a grotesque dance. "Those are hot. They scratch. I do not need them any more - ever!"

He went skittering away, as if he feared I would catch and try to clothe him by force. Unlike the discarded boots, I did not leave them lying. Rather I rolled them tightly and stuffed them into the top of the stone bag.

"Come on!" He beckoned to me. But I glanced back once more at the hairy thing.

Was Oomark right? Had the food the alien begged for so piteously indeed proven poison? But if our natural food had been fatal to it, why had it - or he - wanted it so badly - dogged us, begged? And if our food was poison to a creature of this world, would it not follow that native food would be so to us? I had eaten nothing save from what I carried. But Oomark -

I put all thoughts of the stricken creature out of my mind to run after the boy, determined that this time I would not allow him to take such a risk.

But it was too late, for he stood beside a large bush or small tree planted at one end of a mound. It was heavy with golden berries, and Oomark was not the only feaster. From some of the branches hung those gauzy-winged things I had seen in the woods. And in the grass were small animals.

Neither winged things nor animals took any notice of Oomark, nor did they when I approached. They were too intent upon feeding. The berries were large, perhaps the size of my thumb, and so full of juice that they spattered widely when their skin broke. Oomark pushed them into his mouth three and four together, so the juice trickled down his chin, dripping into the hair on his chest.

"Here." He held out a sticky hand, three of the globes on it. When I shook my head (and it took determination to do that, for they made me long to taste), he grinned. Then he shrugged and popped the refused berries into his own mouth.

I drew away, realizing I had no chance to stop him, afraid I might yield to temptation. I made special note of the mound by which that bush grew. It was odd to find it in that level land, and it gave the impression of being purposefully humped there for some forgotten reason. Also, it was only the first of a series of such that were erected in a straight line. I counted nine within the visibility limits of the mist.

Each of these had a bush or tree planted at one end. But not all of those were alike. Three were of the yellow fruit. Three bore larger spheres, which would fit into the palm of my hand, and these were a dark purple-red. At them no feasters crowded. In fact, there was something repellent about them. The leaves of the trees there were also not uniformly shaped, but irregular and of a green so dark as to be near black.

The other three trees had a much lighter foliage - a silver edge to long ribbony leaves of a very pale green. Their slender trunks and branches were not covered with rough bark, but smooth and of a silver shade also. They had no fruit, only clusters of white flowers, which swayed gently, even though there seemed to be no wind. Now and then I caught a whiff of a fragrance so sweet that I longed to run and bury my face in one of those clusters. But, like the purple fruit, they seemed to ward off touch, though I did not have the same distaste for them as I did for the dark fruit.

These trees were all planted in a pattern: first the golden berries, then the purple spheres, last the silver flowers. Then they began all over again, through the same series twice more. So I was very sure this was of a purpose. What were these mounds? Graves of rulers or priests now long forgotten? There hung about them an aura of age, of settling into the earth, which did not come only from passing years, but also from the weight of centuries. Or were these the remains of buildings, soil-encased, perhaps the last of some ancient fortress?

It would seem Oomark had had his fill, for he came away from the bush to kneel and rub his hands in the grass, pulling up a tuft to smear the juice from his face, though his efforts at cleanliness were not too successful.

Then he turned about to face the mound and lifted both hands. Holding them palm out, he spoke, certainly not to me, nor to the hopping and flying things still feeding.

"My thanks, Sleeper, for the bounty of the table, the richness of the feast."

The words had the ring of ritual, a form of invoking the invisible. Once said, he did not linger, but came to me as one prepared for brisk action.

"Who is the Sleeper?"

Oomark looked puzzled and glanced back to the mound. "I don't know."

"But you said-"

"I said that because it is right and fitting. Don't be asking, asking, asking all the time, Kilda! If you would eat, you would know - you wouldn't have to ask!"

"I would know if I ate. Is that how you know, Oomark?"

"I guess so. Anyway, I know you thank the Sleeper after you eat here. The Folk always have."

He started away on a course that paralleled the first of the mounds, passing the purple fruit, coming to the silver flowers.

"What about these?" I still tried to add to my store of knowledge. "There are more fruit - "

"No!" He averted his gaze from the purple spheres. "You eat those - you die. Not all the Sleepers have kind thoughts for the Folk. You don't eat these, and you don't touch those!" He pointed to the flowers.

"Are they so deadly then?"

Again he seemed puzzled. "No - not in the same way. It is - they might serve the Folk if they could, but it is not in them to do so." His frown of puzzlement grew deeper. "I really don't know, Kilda. The fruit is bad because the Sleeper there hates us. But the flowers - they are not enough like the Folk to be touched."

Three grades of Sleepers, I deduced - those offering the berries for refreshment, those dangerous and evil, and those too unlike the inhabitants to make contact. Or was I being fanciful now and reading too much into what I had seen and Oomark's words?

As we passed the mound with the silver tree, its clusters of flowers and the long banner-like leaves began to ripple. A wind of high force might have been tearing at them. Yet the trees at the flanking mounds showed no such troubling. Finally that tearing snapped a small branch heavily weighted with a ball of flowers. It did not fall to the ground, but rather whirled over and over through the air until it was thrust as one might thrust the pointed head of a spear, the splintered end down, into the ground at my feet.

Oomark cried out and backed away. On impulse I stooped and caught at the branch under the nodding flower cluster. It was like grasping a rod of ice, so cold was the sting from it that ran up my arm. Yet I could not let it go. Instead I pulled it from the grip of the soil.

The gale that had broken it free from its parent tree and brought it to me had ceased as if it had never blown. And - my fingers - !

The brown, hard crust over them was cracking, flaking away like a dusty powder. The flesh so uncovered was still brown, but it was the skin I had always known. Though my hand was still cold, I had no desire to throw the branch from me. Instead, I made it fast to my belt.

Oomark retreated again. "Throw it away - back to where it came from!" He gestured to the now quiet tree. "It will hurt you!"

I flexed my fingers and saw with awe and gratitude the normal flesh. "Such hurt I will take gladly. See, Oomark, my hand is now as it always was!"

He cried out and ran from me as he had fled from the hairy creature. I might now have been a horror, hunting him.