It was a tight fit as they wedged into that runway in the deep earth. Somewhere along was a side chamber wherein the once owner had had its nest. This should house them from the fury of the flames. When they lay together in that evil-smelling hole, Ayyar's heart still pounded heavily.
"Jarvas, Kelemark, Lokatath—" he heard Illylle whisper.
Yes, what of the others? Had they found the small measure of safety offered by the river lands? But Rizak was thinking ahead.
"Burnt-over, this land will be bare for any searching. If they loose hounds . . . "
"These burrows have more than one door." Ayyar could speak from his fearsome earlier experience. "And they run straight. The other door will open nearer the river."
"Rizak, when will the brethren now over the South Sea return?" Illylle asked.
"We roused early. They should come with the true spring."
"To find the country arrayed against them."
"They do not come openly ever," he defended their fellow changelings, the ones who were moved by implanted instinct to invade the Forest, set the treasure traps and wait thereafter to find and aid the new Iftin who emerged from the Green Sick as their kindred.
"But neither have they yet faced such danger as this," Ayyar pointed out. "They may return to find no Forest and all off-worlders hunting them down. That plans well, striking in winter when we do not move."
"I cannot believe," Illylle's head lay on her arm, her mouth in these close quarters so near to his cheek that Ayyar felt the warmth of her breath with every word she spoke, "that the Mirror failed us! We saw the flooding and the storm and what struck the Waste. That could not have escaped—"
"But we do not know the nature of That," Ayyar interrupted. "It may be that danger arouses It to greater strength and efforts, to the summoning of more servants and warriors. With the Larsh It brought down Iftcan. Now with these off-worlders It will hammer the remains of that city into black ash. There is only one way to face It—"
"Yes—deal with those at the port, see that they know the truth!"
Ayyar could feel the shiver run through Illylle. His own body reacted thus as well. To go among the unchanged, to speak to them face to face, to be so close—that was an ordeal that perhaps none of them could stand up to, physically or emotionally. If there were some other way, one that did not include a meeting—a communication, until that could be used at long distance.
It would seem that Rizak's thoughts marched with his for now the other asked Illylle:
"These garthmen, they mount coms to keep in touch with the port, do they not?"
"No, that is worldly." The former garth girl made swift answer. "Only at the port will you find such things."
"Or perhaps in that camp," Ayyar amended.
Again Rizak picked up his thought. "Any camp would be well-guarded. They would expect attack in retaliation for the Forest spoilage."
Ayyar's memory of the port was such a small one. He had landed there but had still been groggy from the deep frozen sleep of a labor transport. All he could recall was standing in the line of human wares while that bearded giant Kosberg looked them over critically to make his choice. Then he had helped to transfer bundles of bark from the carts of his new master to a loading platform. He had never seen Janus port again.
"You know the port?" he asked Rizak.
"The port? No, I did not planet there. I crawled out of a lifeboat that downed in the Forest, sent from the space ship Thorstone as she passed through this solar system. The plague had hit us, but we kept going, hunting help. When we reached here I was barely living. They threw us in lifeboats to get rid of us. I landed with a party of dead, but I lived. Then I found one of the treasures—and became Ift. So I do not know Janus port at all."
"Lokatath was a garthman." Ayyar ran down the list. "But Kelemark, he was a medico there."
"But back in the days of the Karbon Combine," Rizak reminded him. "A lot can change in more than fifty years. And Jarvas was a First-in Scout before the port was established at all."
"But I was there for four hands of days," Illylle said. "And that was only a small tale of seasons ago. I know the port. Is it in your mind, Ayyar, to go there?"
"To go there for a com. If we can get even a travel-talker we are that much closer to communication."
"The port," Rizak repeated, "I do not know. But your thought of a com to talk to them is good. Only we must first get out of this burrow. Let us put our minds to that."
And he was right, for there was a time during which Ayyar feared they had chosen their grave rather than a refuge. They found breathing hard as the flames outside fed on oxygen, and they lapsed into a comatose condition near to what they had known during hibernation. But when they stirred again there was more air, though it carried the reek of smoke.
Illylle was coughing, and Ayyar felt the choking fumes biting his nose and throat. They had better move, unless it meant going into the fire. He rasped out as much and pushed into the passage.
"Listen!"
But he did not need Rizak's cry. It was raining beyond. He had not expected such a heavy downpour. Perhaps the season was later than they had thought. The floor of the burrow was wet with a seepage of water. It must be pooling in the old trap pit. Ayyar crawled on, the others following.
A smoking mass of half-consumed vegetation had fallen across the outlet. He thrust at it with his sword and made them an exit. Although it was now day, the clouds were so massed that they emerged into twilight and around them the storm beat icily. The beam mounted on the flitter had accounted for the underbrush and the crowns of the trees, but the great trunks, charred and blistered, yet stood. Among these they made their way to the river bank..
It was between two rocks at the improvised log and rock bridge that they came upon a body. A white arm outflung, the flaccid hand turned up as if to cup some of the flooding rain, was what Ayyar saw first. He turned quickly.
"No!" With one hand he tried to fend off Illylle, but she had already seen it and pushed past him to look down at what lay beyond.
Horror faded, she leaned closer as Ayyar and Rizak joined her. There was a human face, with no expression now, but rather a queer blankness that Ayyar did not associate with the peace of death. There could have been no peace, however, for the throat and upper breast had been shredded away by the hounds, and that attack had uncovered metal, wires, and broken bits of cogs.
"Robot!" Naill memory supplied the proper word.
Rizak hunkered down, ran exploring fingers along the arm. "More—feel this!"
With distaste Ayyar followed his example. The "flesh" was cold, rain wet. But its texture, to his inexpert touch, felt the same as if it had been part of a real body. Yet the rips in it were not bloody, and there was no denying that metal lay beneath.
"A made thing!" Illylle gave verdict. "But unless one knew—"
"Their key." Rizak nodded. "Send her in screaming and garth gates would open. Only this time, something went wrong. Those hounds knew, poor brutes, and died proving it. The false Iftin must have dragged her this far because she was important to their plans. Then, for some reason they had to abandon her. Which may be the worst mistake they have ever made!"
"How?" Illylle wanted to know.
"We needed some proof. Well, we may not have a false Ift, but we do have something here to make any off-worlder think. This is unlike any robot I ever saw, but it is a robot. Now, suppose we put her out in plain sight. In time they will send a snoop scouter over here, perhaps more than one. Let them find her and begin to wonder!"
He was right, Ayyar knew. Give the port authorities a mystery such as this, and they would be more amenable to belief in a difference between Ift and false Ift.
"Those false Iftin—are they as this?" Illylle wondered.
"Perhaps. But—who made this and where?"
Illylle leaned still farther over the battered robot, drawing deep breaths. "There is no need to ask, brother. The stench of evil has not been washed away by the rain. This, too, is of the White Forest."
"I do not see how it can be," Ayyar protested. What did he know of the Enemy? He had been once taken prisoner by a walking space suit of antique design which had herded him and Illylle through the Crystal Forest to imprisonment at the depths of a chasm. But—this robot, it could only be the work of a high technology of a type of civilization he could not equate with Janus at all.
"Do you not see," Illylle demanded of him now, "we know so little of That. Remember the space ship that sat on the desert sands— Perhaps there are other ships lost in the Waste, things from which That may use at will!"
Possible of course. But there was no use wasting time in speculation now. Ayyar helped Rizak free the robot woman from between the rocks, stretch out the body face up in the open to be clearly seen. If Rizak was right concerning the coming of a scout snooper, this ought to be in port hands soon. Meanwhile, they must get back across the river and find the rest of their own party.
"Let us trust that they made it across." Rizak glanced back in the direction they had taken when they had reached the other bank of the river. "With this weather that dam-bridge will not last long."
"Where do we look for them? At the Mirror?"
"No." It was only a feeling, but the belief that it was right made Ayyar put force into his answer. "To the south."
The narrow sea lay south, and somehow its dune-hilled shore promised safety. To the port men the Forest would be the proper place to hunt their demon fugitives. Perhaps the others agreed with him, for they did not dispute.
Here where there were no trees, the brush and rocky outcrops must provide them with cover, and they kept to what was offered, listening always for any sound of a flitter. They had worked their way well downstream from the crossing when they heard a hum and lay flat among the stones. "Hovering," Rizak murmured. "I think they have sighted our lady."
"Ahh—"
To their night-oriented eyes that flash of flame was almost blinding. Those in the flitter were laying about with a beam, making sure that the body was not bait in a trap, or, if so, that the would-be trappers were taken care of before they landed.
"Move!"
With the flitter so occupied, they must put more space between themselves and it. Ayyar trotted around a shelf of rock to halt and look down. This gravel held no tracks, but just as the stink of the false Iftin was to be easily scented, so did his nostrils now inform him that those of the true blood had passed this way, and a very short time ago. Some of their party, if not all, had also won to this side of the river and were heading seaward.
When they were well away from the vicinity of the flitter, Ayyar whistled. To ears not trained in Iftin calls, the notes were a song of a river bird. And he continued to whistle so at intervals until he was answered. The replying trill took them into a maze of shrub, winter-thinned but still walled into thickets. And here, in a wide nest of marsh grasses and cut reeds, which had once been the lair of a finkang, they found Jarvas and Kelemark.
"There—someone is hurt!"
The third form in Ift clothing lay to one side, and Ayyar started forward. That could only be Lokatath. But why should he be tossed so—and there was something strange about his body— It took Ayyar a minute of sharp study to see that that strangeness was due to the fact that the supine form lacked half a skull!
Rizak strode forward to gaze down. "So we have another machine!" His mouth puckered wryly as if he wished to spit upon the body.
"Another one? Then you have also found one of these things?" Jarvas demanded.
"A woman—fashioned to resemble a garth dweller. She must have been used to open the gates, but the hounds finished her. Or did you not see?"
"We saw. What did you do with her?"
Rizak smiled. "We left her where she has already been found. To give the off-worlders something to think about." He went down on one knee to inspect the Iftin robot the closer. "Clever! Meeting this one face to face, I would say he was Ift. Until I saw this—" He jerked a thumb at the broken head and the mass of melted wires and other material it contained.
"No, you would not!" Illylle corrected him sharply. "This is evil! Your nose would tell you that."
"But off-worlders do not have such noses," Jarvas reminded her. "And the false Ift could seem true to those not of our kind. Clever indeed, with a devil's cleverness. In this fashion That has set a barrier between us and any garthman or off-worlder."
Rizak agreed. "But Ayyar suggests we try contact by com—"
"Com!" Kelemark swung around to look at the younger Ift. "And where will we find one of those?"
"At the port," Ayyar returned. "All we need is a hand-talker—get one of those and—" He spoke to Jarvas. "You were a First-in Scout, you know the official codes. Suppose you broadcast, would they not hear you out? Really listen?"
"They might. If we had a com. But to pick one up at the port—" Jarvas stopped. His expression changed from one of irritation at stupidity to thoughtfulness.
"Where is Lokatath?" Illylle asked. "Did he—was he lost?"
Kelemark shook his head. "No. He has gone to the signal rocks on the coast. There must be a beacon set there to warn the brothren."
She smiled. "Wise, very wise. But we cannot look forward now to an early planting—and perhaps they will not come soon."
"That is it. We do not know how early we have been awakened. So we dare take no chance."
Jarvas seated himself cross-legged in the deserted nest and brushed aside the fabric of its stuff at one edge, clearing a small space of ground. On it he laid out small pebbles.
"This is the port—am I right, Kelemark?"
The former medico looked over his shoulder. "I have not seen it for many years—"
"But Illylle has," interrupted Ayyar. "She went there not many seasons ago for medical aid when her mother was dying. Illylle?"
"Yes." She sat down in turn to face Jarvas across the cleared space. "Here is where the ships land and of those there are never many. Once each tenth of a year a government cruiser comes in. Between times, at the harvest season—the traders."
"Do not forget," Rizak warned, "that by now they may have beamed a call for off-planet help."
"Concerning that we shall have to take our chances," returned Jarvas. "So—the ships land to the west. What else?"
"Here"—she put down a larger stone—"is the building that houses the customs and the other government offices. Next is the hospital, then the barracks of the police, beyond—the quarters of those others who work there. Here are the sheds for the storing of the lattamus bark waiting to be shipped—that is all. Oh, yes, another building here to house and store the working machines."
"That is farther north, and now it must be empty," commented Ayyar.
"North," Jarvas studied the plan. "They are blasting into Iftcan from this direction." A sweep of his hand indicated east. "And they patrol along the river. To the northwest is the untouched Waste and That's stronghold. Also we are haunted by time."
"The garths must all be alerted." Illylle rested her chin upon an upheld fist, her elbow based on her knee. "Perhaps they have offered the safety of the port to any of the garthmen who care to come there."
"And would any?" asked Ayyar.
"I do not know. All their beliefs are against it, but perhaps in great extremity some would. Himmer's lies here—" she gestured to the north and east of their present camp.
They waited for her to continue, aware some purpose moved in her mind.
"Himmer's I know. Also, I know the animals there. Himmer has two phas broken to ride. They will come to the call—so mounted . . ."
"Too wild a chance." Jarvas denied her plan. "Every garth will be standing alert for attack—they would have hounds out."
"How did the garth that was attacked call the flitter?" Ayyar asked suddenly. "The flyer came in ready to blast—they must have been ready for trouble."
"Maybe the garths have coms now, because of this," mused Rizak.
"And if they have—" began Ayyar.
"No—trying to get to one of those, undetected, would be like walking bare-handed into a kalcrok web, expecting to talk that double mouth out of fanging one!" Kelemark protested.
"There is the scout flitter—and that—" Rizak nodded to the robot Ift. "Plant that out in the open as we did the other. Let them see it."
"They will take good care to flame lash all around before they ground, and everyone in the crew will be wearing a blaster," Kelemark pointed out.
But Illylle looked thoughtful. "Suppose we have a way to defeat such caution?"
"How?" Ayyar wanted to know.
"Sal bark—"
Old lore was what she called upon now, the Forest learning. Bark stripped from a small, red-brown tree with leaves so tiny that even in the full life of summer it never looked to be more than autumn-bare, pounded and fed into a fire, made a smoke which stupefied and bewildered. It had been used to finish off kalcroks, when those monsters could be kept from retreating into the deep corridors of their dens.
"They will expect one trap, give them a different one—" she began when Ayyar picked up her idea and elaborated upon it.
"Pick a place that is open but that has brush around it at a little distance. They will fire that before they land. The sal bark will be in that brush. If we have any luck, we can then use the com of the flitter or the personal travel-talk of one of its crew."
"And the sal fumes, the fire, how do we ourselves walk through those?" Rizak asked dryly.
"We find a place close to the river," Kelemark chimed in. "One of us takes to the water and waits. The sal smoke will not last long—we shall not be able to find too much of the bark—if we are lucky enough to discover any."
Jarvas laughed shortly. "As bizarre a scheme as I have ever heard—but—"
"You are forgetting something. Are you now more men than Iftin?" Illylle frowned at them. "Men must depend upon what their two hands hold, their eyes see, their ears hear. There are other powers that can root in those senses and by belief grow beyond the visible and the touchable. I have lost much, but once I was a Chooser of Seed and a Sower, and from such planting there was growth beyond the normal. It was our gift and we used it well then, as we must do now!"
A little of the awe that had touched Ayyar at the Mirror of Thanth when this slim girl had called upon powers truly beyond mortal sight and sound again shadowed his mind. Illylle seemed so sure of what she said that her confidence carried over to the others.
The search for sal bark sent them out among the rocks, though not into the fringes of the Waste. For a thing of such virtue could not be found in that garden of all ill. Kelemark was right; any harvest would be a scanty one. Ayyar had perhaps two handfuls, taken from one small seedling, when he returned. Illylle herself had done best, for she had made a bag of part of her cloak, and it was a quarter filled with the aromatic twigs.
Jarvas vanished up river in search of a proper place to set out the bait and the rest worked with care, using one of their cloaks to keep off the rain which was now a drizzle, as they shredded each tiny piece of precious bark into one pile. When they had done, Illylle ran her hands back and forth through it, crooning in a whisper. Ayyar did not strive to distinguish her words, for this he knew was a growing chant. Not the chant, of course; that was too sacred for any such use, but still one to send virtue into their small pile of sal.
Rizak shared out supplies, mainly the flat nut-meat bread from the Iftsiga stores. The refreshing sap which had awakened them had sustained them for long, but now they must turn to real food.
"With the night our chance passes for now." Kelemark leaned back against a rock.
"There is always another sunset." Illylle shook bits of bark from her fingers.
Yes, thought Ayyar, there was always another sunset. Yet time did not linger for the good of any man—or for Ift—or for That which moved back there in the Waste, the thing they had gone into winter sleep believing muzzled, defeated— Defeated? It would seem that they had witnessed only a small opening skirmish in that spectacular meeting of powers when the Mirror had overflowed its basin, not a final battle. And That had resources beyond any they had dreamed.
The knowledge that had gone into the making of the false Ift—that was not born of the half mystical, other-worldly influence Ayyar thought pertained to the realm of That Which Abides. It was far closer akin to off-world technology.
What had Illylle said—other ships planeting mayhap, out in the Waste, their cargoes open for That's use? The woman robot, yes, that could have come from such a ship. Not the Iftin, however. Those were of Janus. Someone or something had fashioned those to be used for this purpose—to set all Iftin apart as outlaws and the hunted. Was this off-world—not part of That at all? No—they knew the stench of old, and it clung to the false ones.
They must learn what their half memories continued to deny them—the nature of That Which Abides. If It was not a power beyond description, like unto that which arose from the Mirror, then It must be force of another kind. But they must know!
Ayyar turned his head, looking westward to the Waste. They had seen, other than the false Iftin attack, no sign of any movement out of there. The flying thing which had once spied upon him and Illylle, the walking space suit—none of those had appeared. This strip along the river was normal healthy ground. But—there was the White Forest, and the chasm, and somewhere the true lurking place of That.
Jarvas slid between two rocks, joining them after a whistle announced his coming.
"There is a good place not too far away. Also, the flitter continues to patrol. But we must wait until mid-morn—"
"Morning!" Rizak grunted. "Very well, we wait."
It was difficult to reverse the natural order of things, to sleep through the cool of early morn until dawn and wait for the deadening sun and the light of full day. But they had to adapt to man's time again if they would accomplish their purpose.
Ayyar took the last turn at guard, watching westward. Nothing stirred there. In the Forest there would have been life which he could understand, with which he felt kinship, which would bolster the spirit. There, there was nothing—save the feeling that storm gathered. Not a gale of wind and rain and massed cloud, but another kind. And they must be prepared to face it as best they could. From it there would be no shelter, no hiding place.