Gullies of sand, hardened by winter frost, ran between rocks as might rivers of water. And the water—Ayyar looked at it with little favor. There was ice in it. At least the rain had stopped and the clearing sky gave promise of a bright day—far too bright for Iftin tastes. In the dawn, still comforting to their eyes, they were setting their trap.
The robot body was placed to sprawl convincingly half across a rock. Its protective camouflage cloak was ripped away, the form could be plainly seen. Around it were winter-dried brush and reeds, and into this they wove their sal, putting the larger amount to the north from which the wind blew.
Jarvas made a last adjustment to the bait and stepped back. They had drawn lots for the one who must lie in the water to spring the trap, and Ayyar did not know whether to be glad or sorry that the banded stone had been his portion.
Now, stripped of cloak, pack, everything save his clothing and his sword, he lay at the water's edge, ready to take to the stream when and if they heard the coming of a scout flitter. So loosely woven a trap, yet it was the best they could devise.
Ayyar put out a hand the let the chill of the river flow across it as he cupped his palm and brought it up, spilling drops. Illylle was not the only one to remember old invocations. Once Ayyar of Ky-Kyc had held a curiously marked cup and poured its contents thus upon the earth and spoken such words as Naill-Ayyar whispered now:
"As thus I pour this water by my strength and will, so may my enemy be poured, to lie helpless and spent upon the earth!"
That prayer had not influenced the Larsh, nor would it probably be any more effective against off-worlder, garthman, or That. But man—or Ift—needs must cling to some belief or hope in something greater than himself at such an hour.
He clipped the leaf goggles down over his eyes. They had been right in their fears; the day would be bright. And there was some taste of spring in the air, as if the heavy beat of rain had unlatched the prison door for another season.
Spring in Iftcan! Ayyar caught at scraps of memory dim and faded, yet his blood ran quicker, like the sap rising joyfully through the Great Crowns and all that grew in the Forest, as he remembered this small picture and that. Spring was for seeding, not for death. Yet death had been forced upon Ayyar once before and now faced him again. He had his hand and a sword in it—that was the way for Ift to ever front the Enemy!
There was a buzz—davez, his mind identified—very early for that insect to seek the river. He lay very still. If one did not move, the stinging blood-sucker would not attack.
Then came a sound greater than any insect buzz—the flitter! He did not need Jarvas' warning whistle to send him into the water between a storm-battered tree and rocks. The hum grew louder. Now—surely they would sight the robot! And if the woman thing found earlier had aroused interest—
Yes! Ayyar sank beneath the water as the hiss of a flame beam lashed across the water-logged tree, swept the rocks, onto the brush screen now between him and the robot. The wind and the height of the riverbank should keep the sal fumes away from him, but it was a chancy thing.
With a whisper of displaced air, they were landing. Now he must angle around a rock and crouch again. Ayyar jerked and almost cried out—he had forgotten the davez, and the pain of the sting was sharp. He struck at his shoulder, flattening the insect feeding greedily, and then was ashamed at his lack of control. What if that movement had betrayed him to those in the flitter?
"Over there—cover me!"
The words in Basic sounded odd, as if in a foreign tongue once well known but just slightly remembered. Ayyar pulled himself between two rocks. Above, the smoke swirled. Would enough of it reach the men—one climbing out, the other still in the small cabin? Ayyar watched the off-worlder stride confidently to the robot and put out a hand to settle on its hunched shoulder. Then he coughed, shook his head vigorously, and fanned smoke away from his face. He tugged one-handedly at the false Ift before, with a mutter of exasperation, he holstered his blaster and used a double grip to work loose the leg Jarvas and Kelemark had spent so much time wedging tight.
"Another robot," he called back over his shoulder. "It seems to be caught fast—" He staggered against the rock. Then he turned and took a step or two toward the flyer before he slumped to the ground.
"Rashon!" The hail from the flitter brought his head up, but he could only crawl, and before he reached the cabin door, he lay face down and still.
"Rashon!"
A hand holding a blaster swung into Ayyar's line of vision. Sal smoke had knocked out one of them, but his fellow had been in the cabin. Had enough of the fumes entered there? The off-worlder emerged crouching, his eyes darting from side to side, surveying the smoking brush wall. Hooking one hand in the fabric of his fellow's tunic, he tried to drag Rashon back to the cabin. But the fact that his comrade was a larger and heavier man made that difficult. However, he made a valiant try, refusing to put up his weapon.
Wind drove smoke about him. Ayyar heard a desperate burst of coughing. Then the would-be rescuer half fell, half flung himself at the cabin door, to fall across the entrance.
Ayyar whistled. They had no idea how long the narcotic effects of the smoke would last. Thus he must search at once for what was needed, and the others were prepared to pull him out if he too succumbed. With a wet-sleeved arm held across nostrils and mouth, Ayyar approached the flitter. It would seem that that last burst of smoke was the end product of the burning sal, for Ayyar could smell nothing now but the brush afire.
He forced himself to the flitter, revulsion for the off-world machine weakening him. There was a com unit in there, right enough, but it was built in. Perhaps Jarvas could command his antipathy long enough to use the broadcaster for a single message. But on the other hand, either man might wear a travel-talk.
The shrinking in him was worse pain than any davez sting, but Ayyar dared not surrender to it. Putting out his quivering hands, he turned over the man lying in the cabin doorway. What he wanted was fastened to one outflung wrist. Shuddering, Ayyar fumbled with the seal-catch, jerked free the strap, and brought away the call disk. It was as though he held unmentionable foulness against his Ift flesh. So greatly had the change conditioned him against those who had once been his own kind that he could hardly continue to grasp that small round of metal, the strap still warm from the arm against which it had been locked.
But grimly holding on, he plunged down the riverbank to the place beyond the smoldering fire, where the others waited. He dropped the com on a rock, unable any longer to stand its touch, and then tramped away some paces to retch and retch again.
When, sweating and shivering, he returned, only Jarvas and the girl were there. Jarvas, beads of moisture gathering on his hairless head, was examining the com.
"Where are—?" Ayyar began hoarsely.
Illylle nodded to the now almost dead fire. "They send the off-worlders back to port. Rizak sets the automatic return. They will carry with them the false Ift."
"But why—?"
"He says"—she nodded to Jarvas who was still rapt in concentration over the com—"their safe return there shall prove our good will. They will now believe more in his message if they receive it."
They saw the flitter rise, swing about, head in the direction of the port. Then the other two Iftin came unsteadily to join them. Rizak sank down, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, his mouth hanging open a little, his chest heaving. To have entered the cabin and set the controls must have taken a strength of will such as Ayyar was sure he did not possess. Why had the change set in all of them such a terrible aversion to those who had once been blood, flesh, and bone kin to them? Jarvas had said it must be a safety measure provided by those master Iftin biologists—to keep the new race apart until they were in such numbers they could not be reabsorbed by their own kind. But the master biologists had not foreseen this present difficulty. How could Iftin deal with those who made them physically ill to approach, mentally disturbed? Perhaps all their communication could come only through such a device as Jarvas struggled now to make operative.
"Can it be used?" Illylle dared to ask.
Jarvas' face was drawn, wasted. He kept his place near the rock by manifest effort.
"We can only try," he mumbled. The cover of the com had been raised. Instead of speaking into its tiny mike, Jarvas held two twigs together just above its surface. Now he clicked those together in a pattern of sound that meant nothing to Ayyar.
Twice he looked up, his twigs silent, a lost, wondering expression momentarily crossing his face, as if some supposedly well-rooted memory had failed him. Then he went on, less confidently, but with dogged purpose. It was in mid-click that he was interrupted by the com itself. The voice was thin, metallic:
"Vorcors! Vorcors! What are you doing?" There was a peremptory sharpness, a demand for the truth and that speedily.
Once more, and more slowly, Jarvas clicked.
"Vorcors! What in the name of the Seventh Serpent?" Then there was complete quiet, save for Jarvas' clicking out of a code once almost better known to him than the name of Pate Sissions, how long ago, how far away? And Pate Sissions was no Ift.
"They ought to be taping it," Kelemark remarked. "Once let them decode it—"
"If they can." Rizak's answer was a half whisper. He pointed to Jarvas. The clicking grew ever slower, the moments of puzzlement longer, closer together. It was as if the longer he strove to use his off-world memory, the more difficult it became.
At last he turned to them with a wry grimace. "That is my best, I am afraid. One more run through. And let us trust I did not do as poorly as I fear!"
He readied his twigs, but that metallic voice came from the com:
"You—whoever you are—we have a fix on you!"
Rizak glanced up and over his shoulder as if he feared to see a scout already hovering to descend.
"Why should they warn us?" Ayyar wondered.
"Perhaps," Illylle answered him, "because Jarvas is not as inept as he fears. Perhaps already they have read or found someone who knows his code. Shall we wait to meet them?"
Jarvas shook his head. "Not now, not until we know more. However—" The twigs he had used for message sending he now put to another use. Wet and dipped in the ash of the burned bushes, they provided him with clumsy writing materials. And around the com on the rock he put some symbols, not in any off-world writing Ayyar knew but in one that must have potent meaning, or at least Jarvas believed so enough to take pains over the inscription.
They headed south, their cloaks and packs weighing on them. Ayyar had lost all the strength he had gained from drinking Iftsiga's sap. His head whirled giddily at intervals, and he wondered how long he could keep the pace Kelemark set. Somewhere before them was the sea, but still the Waste brooded on their right hand. And in it things stirred; he was as sure of that as if he could see them.
A small copse provided them with a breathing space. Even so limited a stretch of woodland was refreshing. Ayyar rested on the dried leaves of other seasons, but he dared not close his eyes. Sleep was too close, weighting his eyelids, slowing his body.
"What will they do? Will they come?" Illylle questioned.
"I do not know." Jarvas twisted a scrap of moss he had picked up absently. "I do not doubt they had the fix. And they must believe in the code, or they would have attacked without warning. In a short time the flitter will come home with the crew safe, plus the robot. That should prove our good will. When they come, they will read what I wrote about the com. Even in a century, the scout recognition symbols cannot have altered too much. They may then send a message off-world, to trace one Pate Sissions."
"But all that will take much time!" protested Illylle.
"Yes. And time we may not have. But just now I see no better way. Do any of you?"
Even Illylle was forced to concede he was right. But Ayyar noted that she turned her head now and then, to stare out over the Waste. He wondered if she also had that sensation of a watcher there, biding time for a purpose that in the end would do them no good.
Though they listened, there was no sound on the com of any flitter homing. Ayyar could not deny his disappointment, though he knew that it was foolish to hope for such a quick reply. As Jarvas had pointed out—the port authorities must be checking and rechecking.
The Iftin did not go any farther than the edge of the dune land. And it was there that Lokatath came to them. A raw and bleeding scratch crossed one cheek, as if some branch had laid whip to him, and he breathed with the heavy gasps of one who had gone a distance at a speed he had to drive himself to hold.
"They muster!" He pulled himself to a sliding stop by holding to a bush.
"The off-worlders?"
Lokatath shook his head in answer to Jarvas' question. "Those—from there—" He pointed with his chin to the west.
"The wytes are out coursing the Waste. And they hunt with the false Iftin—who move toward the river!"
"How many?"
Lokatath shrugged. "Who can tell? They weave in and out, and it would seem that the ground itself sometimes moves to hide them or to confuse—"
"As it can," agreed Illylle. "That has many strange powers. But why do they move in the day—?"
"Because time is our enemy; can you think of a better reason?" Rizak wanted to know. "That is aware that we are here somewhere, that we were unable to follow the brothren overseas last fall. So It has launched this attack. Thus when our kin do return, they must land in the thick of it, perhaps to be burned down before they know the why or even that they have any enemies!"
"And what of our com messages?" It was Ayyar following the old pattern of marshaling his thoughts aloud. "If those from the port find the false Iftin waiting there when they come, they will deem it a trap."
"Yes," Jarvas acknowledged. "Therefore—we must discover wherefore this horde moves and if they plan to leave the Waste." He balled his right hand into a fist and ground it into the palm of the left. "If only our memories were sharper! I had thought Its servants did not venture beyond the Waste—yet the false Iftin crossed the river."
"Never forget the Larsh. They moved at That's will beyond the barriers of the Oath. What seems to bind the master does not prevent the servant from carrying out orders," Illylle replied.
"One of my last clear Ayyar memories is that of slitting a wyte at the very foot of a Great Crown. Yet in an earlier day such would not even bay at the distant shadow of Iftcan," added Ayyar. "I say again, what of any who are drawn to the com? Trap of our setting it will not be, unless unwittingly, but trap it may well prove!"
"Therefore"—Jarvas got to his feet—"trap it must not be! If we lose this chance to tell them the truth, we might as well flee before the wind like leaves, with no hope of a seeding. So—now we must spread ourselves. Illylle, you most of all have need to fear attention from That. What would It not give to have even a memory-crippled Sower within Its hold. Therefore—back to the seashore for you."
"And for the same reason"—she rose to front the standing Jarvas—"must you be careful, Jarvas. Oh, yes, you remember less of the Words and the Gift even than do I, but once you had them. And who knows whether That might not have Its own ways to awaken more memory than you wish. Therefore, run not into a net."
He smiled, but grimly. "Perhaps I alone have other memories to convince those from the port of who and what we are. Therefore, I have no choice but to return to our ordained meeting and there do the best I can. Now—" He faced the rest of them. "Rizak will come with me. And Kelemark, do you go seaward with Illylle. For you twain"—he looked now to Ayyar and Lokatath—"scouting—one north, one along the river. Decide which between you."
"And west?" Lokatath asked.
"West we shall leave, for now. To track the enemy on his own ground is a risk we are not yet driven to taking. It is more necessary to see what garthmen and port force are about."
They stripped off their packs but kept their cloaks for cover. Illylle and Kelemark, loaded with the supplies, started south, the rest, north.
"Smell it, brothers?" Lokatath's nostrils were wide, his head up, as he tested the air from the west.
"Yes, false Ift—and others—" Ayyar made identification.
"I will take cross river if you agree," Lokatath said. "That land is known to me." Out of the garths as he was, the choice was sensible.
So once more Ayyar trotted north. At first he would share the trail with Jarvas and Rizak. Then he would be on his own with perhaps the remains of Iftcan as his final goal.
The sun was high and bright. Even wearing the leaf goggles, they suffered. But they saw nothing move, save now and then a bird in the air, an animal or stream dweller going about its business. Burnt lengths of wood drifted down the current, bringing the rank death stench with them. Ayyar did not doubt that those destroying the Forest were still about that murderous business. And could the Iftin hope to prevail in any argument against the hatred and hysteria of the garthmen? Or the determination of those from the port?
"Flitter! Northeast—"
As one they took to such cover as the ground afforded at Rizak's warning. The hum they could hear, but it was a second or two before they saw the machine against the too-bright sky.
"Too late! We cannot get there before they ground—" Jarvas muttered.
"In more ways than one, too late!" Ayyar added. From the Waste came a shrill yapping that roughed his skin, brought hand to sword hilt, and blade half out of its sheath before he was conscious of that move. "The wytes are coursing."
Garthmen had their hounds, so did That. But the wytes were not any hound such as honest flesh would own. Once before in this time he had faced them as they bayed at Illylle and him in the Enemy's seared land. They could be killed or sent to what they knew as death, but only one by one, whereas they hunted and slew as a pack.
"They close in—" he cried.
"Seeking— Ah, look you!" Rizak's cry was even louder. The flitter was larger than the scout they had grounded to gain a com. It was coming fast. But from somewhere deep in the heart of the Waste, there flashed a searing beam to meet it, envelop it with incandescence.
All three of the Iftin fell upon their knees, their hands to their eyes, blinded for a moment. Ayyar knew a stab of fear. Were they to be blinded in truth? Painful tears trickled from beneath the lids he kept tightly closed. All he could see was red, blood red, filling the world.
"Is it—is it gone?" Out of the red world he heard Rizak ask that. Against his will he opened his eyes. Red, more red. But through it dimly he could distinguish rock and brush. He was not blind!
The hum of the flitter he no longer heard. The machine must have flamed into nothingness in that beam. But now he was dragged to one side as a hand fell heavily on his shoulder and gripped him tightly.
"It—it is still flying—landing—!"
Blurred as his sight now was, Ayyar could see that Jarvas was right. There was the flitter, no longer concealed by a dazzle of light, descending as if normally piloted. Yet the hum of motor was gone. And now the shrilling of the wytes arose to a scream that hurt his ears, to add to the pain of his outraged eyes. That pain acted as a spur. He got to his feet and started to run, though he staggered from side to side, toward the place where the flitter would ground. Behind him he heard the others coming, at intervals during that awful baying.
Why he was so bound and what he would do there, Ayyar had no idea. But that he must do this, he knew. And he swayed out into the open as the flitter touched down, without thinking for the moment that he might well be running into the fire of blasters. Only, as some measure of sense came back to him, he stopped. There was no opening of the cabin door.
"Dead?" Rizak asked from his right.
"Perhaps." Jarvas advanced to the flyer, walking in an odd, stiff-legged fashion, his body rebelling against the orders of his mind.
But before he could set hand to the flitter, the cabin door slid back and a man crawled into the open on hands and knees, falling the few feet to the ground. Scrabbling for leverage, he then advanced, still on hands and knees and crept back to the side of the flyer where he pulled himself up. He wore the tunic of the port security police, and officer's star on the shoulder, and he stared straight before him as if he were as blind as Ayyar had been moments earlier.
A second man emerged in the same helpless fashion. This one was older, and he had a civilian's tunic. He sprawled forward, lying face down, moaning a little, providing a stumbling block for the third man, this young one in a pilot's uniform.
"In shock, I think." Rizak supplied one explanation. "Listen!"
A wyte bay, very loud and clear. To the hunters from the Waste these off-worlders would prove easy prey. Jarvas clutched the arm of the pilot.
"Get them—we must take them away before—" he ordered in gasps.
To touch—to hold and support one of those men—he could not! Every atom in Ayyar screamed that. But he must! He had to! They could not be left for the wytes.
He stooped and caught at the outflung hand of the elder man, pulling at him. To his surprise the off-worlder arose, as if he needed only Ayyar's tug to bring him to obedience. He got to his feet and allowed the Ift to lead him back among the rocks where they had a small, a very small chance at defense. And as easily, the other two came with Jarvas and Rizak. But they continued to stare straight ahead, no change in their blank faces, as if they were now the robots.
Once among the rocks the Iftin set the off-worlders at the back of that small space and faced outward, their swords drawn and ready.