“Now I see what you mean.” Valleroy thought a moment, lining up the factors in his head. Each one served to increase the number of Gens killed per year. “What will Simes do when all the Gens are gone?”
“Die.” The channel whispered the word quietly into the night. Valleroy could feel the shivering fear in that single word. The crickets’ chattering rose to a crescendo and then fell into a momentary silence like the guests at a party embarrassed by some too-frank remark.
It made Valleroy hold his breath as if afraid the crickets were reacting to that sentence of doom...as if mere insects knew and understood. Then they picked up their chirping song, and Valleroy sighed the bizarre impression away. “Then the Tecton ought to be recruiting...high-powered professional campaign...mass psychology...the works.”
Stretching his long legs out and half reclining on the steps, Klyd inspected the stars. “Not only is that illegal in-Territory, but it’s also unheard of. Gen society has retained a high level of accomplishment in areas that are total blanks here. We have photography, fertility drugs, some rudimentary electronics, and a certain expertise in chemistry. You have industries based on mass production, mathematical sociology, and assorted fundamental attitudes totally lacking with us.”
“A perfect situation for an alliance?”
“A situation demanding an alliance. There’s no choice. It’s only a question of whether the race will survive long enough for it to begin.”
Valleroy pitched his apple core in a soaring arc toward the moon. “With the channels to stand between the ordinary Sime and the Gen, we just might have a chance.”
“But only the barest beginning of a chance,” Klyd gathered his legs and turned toward the Gen, an earnest excitement written in every line of his taut body. “The Sime-Gen Union will be based, at first, on trust in the channels. But eventually, all Gens will be trained as Companions. There will be no need for any Gens to fear any Sime. Channels will become just people then...not slaves to a talent we never asked to inherit.” He gestured. “Look at the stars and tell me what you see.”
“Thousands of dots.”
“In the old books, it says they are suns...many of them just like ours and probably with planets very much like ours. Maybe even people like us, who knows? The Ancients had only just begun to explore when the mutations began.”
“Explore the sky?” Valleroy couldn’t quite believe it, but the powerful vision that Klyd held seemed terribly important in that quiet evening.
“Hugh, they actually walked on the moon and on Mars! They sent probes farther than that.” Klyd took Valleroy’s hand, gripping his large-boned wrist to show the contrast between the bare simplicity of the Gen arm and the complex harmony of the Sime contours. “Look at our hands and tell me they don’t belong together! Reunited, mankind will go to the stars...and beyond.... There’s no limit to what we can do when we stop killing each other and learn to use each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”
Beside the Sime hand, Valleroy’s own fingers seemed more like Gen fingers than they ever had before. With an effort, he pulled his eyes away from the Sime tentacles and looked at the moon. His mother had told him stories about walking on the moon. He’d always thought they were only fairy tales. Now, suddenly, the grandeur of the vision brought tears to his eyes. His voice was a husky whisper as he said, “Yesss...together we could do it.” He felt as if he’d pledged his life to a cause far greater than his own existence...and it was a wondrously good feeling.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FLIGHT
But in the harsh reality of morning, the idealistic vision faded into a childish fantasy ranking next to secret blood brotherhoods and code messages left in hollow tree trunks...and secret temples built among Ancient ruins.
The pragmatic fact was that, for Valleroy, there’d be no future at all unless he found Aisha. He no longer wanted to live if he couldn’t paint—and he couldn’t paint if he had to work for a living. Aisha was the key to both land of his own and a decent retirement income. His stay at Zeor had changed his outlook. He was no longer certain he wanted her to be a part of that life...unless she could come to see the Simes as he did, to understand Zelerod’s Doom....
Gradually, he became aware of awakening. He felt himself lying on the cot across from a dim window. The thoughts faded back into dreams as he opened his eyes. Dawn was seeping through the cracks in the shutters...a gloomy, gray dawn with the sharp bite of winter once more in the air. Beside him, Klyd suddenly erupted into motion, rolling to his feet.
In three quick strides, the channel dashed to the window, throwing it open as if expecting to see hordes of attacking raiders surrounding the tiny shelter.
Worried Valleroy joined him. They peered out at the lowering black clouds and a deserted landscape. Far out across the valley, there was a barely discernible movement. Valleroy said, “What’s that...?”
“We’re cut off,” snapped Klyd. “Let’s get out of here...quickly!”
Without waiting for agreement, the Sime snatched up their few belongings and fled as if escaping a deadly trap. Valleroy took a moment to gulp some icy water from a pitcher. Then he pounded after Klyd, rounding the building and skidding to a stop at the tackle bar.
They saddled up with grim speed, Klyd finishing first and turning to help Valleroy. Moments later, they were racing east, away from Zeor and into the mountains.
Flattening himself behind the sorrel’s long neck, Valleroy tried to protect his face from the icy wind. Between silted eyelids, he managed to keep the channel in view despite the other’s faster mount.
They flashed eastward through the early dawn as if pursued by nightmare monsters. Their horses blew frosty steam clouds into the sudden winter’s promise of snow. It wasn’t long before the horses were lathered into gray-white ghosts nearly lost among wisps of ground fog.
When the animals could go no farther, Klyd reined in. He leaped down and stripped canteen and bedroll from the saddle. “Hurry. We might make it yet.”
“Wait a minute!” said Valleroy, loosening his saddlebags. “Whatever we’re running from, we’re running in the wrong direction! Zeor’s back....”
“I know that! But so’s an entire Runzi contingent.”
“Between us and Zeor?”
“Right. Hurry! I’ll help you make a backpack out of that, here....” The channel took the lashings of the bedroll and secured the bundle across Valleroy’s shoulders. “You’ll need both hands to climb. We’ll send the horses back to Imil. If they make it, this ought to tell the story.” Using the crest of his ring, he scratched a pattern of lines into the saddle of each mount. Then, pointing them toward the north, he gave each weary animal a slap on the rump, starting them off in the general direction of Imil. “Let’s go.”
Valleroy’s will to argue was paralyzed by a growing horror at being chased afoot through the Sime Territory mountains during a blizzard. The prospect was overshadowed only by the terror of being a helpless captive of killer Simes. He followed Klyd up the hillside.
They had dismounted onto rocky ground. Now they climbed almost straight up a jumbled pile of boulders at the bottom of one of the numberless ridges that stretched out from the range of foothills ahead of them.
Valleroy held his own for the first few hundred yards, but then the superior endurance of the Sime became apparent. Gradually, he lost ground. However, one glance out across the valley lent new strength to trembling knees.
There was indeed a line of dust motes forming a cordon between them and Zeor...riding straight across the checkerboard fields and seemingly aimed right at them!
Together, they scrambled over weather-beaten boulders, slipping in loose gravel, yet striving to leave no sign of their passage. Minute by minute, the clouds banked lower into a black, ominous mass relieved by an occasional glimpse of white. It was going to be quite a storm!
Raising his collar, Valleroy fixed his eyes on Klyd’s boots and concentrated on climbing. The quilted jacket of the Zeor livery that had seemed too
light to be worth wearing now provided a surprising amount of protection. He was too tired to question this new miracle, though. His legs were still weak from his long stay in bed. It was all he could do to keep moving.
By noon it was snowing so hard they could no longer see the top of the ridge they were climbing. The large wet flakes swirled downward, melting on contact. Exhausted, Valleroy let the channel haul him up one more precipitous rock face, and then collapsed against a boulder. “I’ve got to rest.”
Klyd placed one foot on a rock and peered upward along their path. “We must find shelter before it becomes too slippery to climb.”
But Valleroy had other things on his benumbed mind. “How did you know they were coming?”
“The Runzi?”
“Yes. And how did you know they were Runzi?”
“Selyn-field potential. A raider team has a distinctive pattern. Who other than Runzi would be beating across the fields in a frigid, prestorm dawn, blocking our way to Zeor?”
“Good question,” said Valleroy. “But they were miles away! How come you...?”
“I would have noticed them sooner, but I’ve gotten into a bad habit of sleeping too soundly. My sensitivity is high, even for a channel. They’ll be surprised we’re not in the trap.” He paused, thoughtful.
“Klyd, isn’t it illegal to attack a couple of peaceful citizens about their lawful business?”
“Who would file charges against Runzi if no Householder were around to witness? And if a Householder did file against Runzi, whose word would be relied upon?”
“That’s the way it is?”
“That’s the way it is.” Klyd made no effort to mask his sullen bitterness. “If charges were brought, Runzi might lose their license. But we’d still be dead.”
“And Andle would simply put together another band to work for him?”
“Using mostly the same bunch, too. Licenses aren’t cheap, but Andle isn’t poor.”
Valleroy rose onto his aching legs before stiffness could set in. “I can see Simes aren’t so different from Gens after all.”
Klyd held his hand out to catch a snowflake. “Simes don’t particularly like being buried alive in snowdrifts. Do you?”
“Not at all.”
“Then let’s find a nice warm cave to sit this one out in.”
“I’ll go for that. There must be plenty around here.”
“Also plenty of grizzly and wildcat too.”
“I know. They raid the ranchers in Gen Territory, and then they come up here where we can’t get at them.”
With a grunt, Klyd led the way across the face of the slope they’d been climbing, but heading east into the mountains, away from Zeor. Twice, Valleroy’s fatigue caused him to misjudge a step, but each time Klyd’s strong hand was there to steady him. The first flurries had abated by the time they found their shelter, high up the side of a jagged cliff that had been partially crumbled by some long-gone glacier.
It wasn’t much of a cave, only about twenty feet deep and barely high enough to stand. But with a fire going and a stock of wood laid in along with some edible roots and berries, it seemed like home.
Outside, the wind began to howl in earnest by the time they’d dragged in some pine boughs to serve as bedding. Shortly after that, a pelting hailstorm broke across the mouth of the cave forming a dark curtain.
“Nobody could be following us now,” said Valleroy.
“No, but they’ll be waiting. It’s not really winter yet. The storm won’t last long.”
“The melting snow will erase our trail.”
“They’ll find us if we don’t keep moving.”
“Where can we go?”
“Back to Zeor, of course. We’ll circle east, cross this ridge at Treadlow Pass, and then move southwest across the next valley, over the next ridge, and from there...straight home.”
Picturing the countryside in his mind, Valleroy said, “You make it sound so easy....”
“We can make it. Because we have to.”
“Aren’t there any alternatives?”
“Surrender to the Runzi. Or head in-Territory...back toward Imil. We could make that in a few weeks of hard traveling. We’d have to circle high into the mountains, though. I wouldn’t care to try it with winter closing down so soon.”
“How long to Zeor?”
“By myself, I could probably do it in less than two weeks...if nothing went wrong.”
Absorbing this, Valleroy sat down near the fire. He wasn’t accustomed to being the weaker and slower traveler in any group. It rankled.
Outside, the wind whistled over the roar of driving hail. It was black as midnight though it was scarcely sunset. The smoke stung his eyes as he fed another small stick into the fire.
Snapping one of the longer branches, Valleroy scratched a crude map in the dust. We’re here.” He bored a hole on the spot. “Hanrahan Pass is over here. You say there’s a passage through here?”
“Treadlow. About here.” Klyd took the stick and marked a point farther east than Valleroy had indicated.
“And,” said Valleroy, “from there you want to cross the next valley and this ridge of hills?”
“Right. That will put us in the river valley not far from the Gen Territory border. Then we’ll circle west around the end of the Runzi cordon.”
“Suppose they block us all the way to the river?”
“We’ll slip through somehow. They won’t expect us there.”
“I could find Hanrahan by myself,” Valleroy speculated. “With luck, I’d be on the Gen side before they realized we’d parted company...and you could be home-free.”
That earned Valleroy the strangest look he’d ever gotten from the channel. “Klyd, they’d never guess you’d be traveling at your own speed, not mine. I’ll report to Stacy and meet you at the rendezvous again....” He trailed off uncertainly. “What’s wrong?”
Wordlessly, Klyd stood up and went to the night-veiled cave entrance, leaning one hand against the stone wall. He seemed to be searching the roaring storm for something unguessable.
Valleroy followed to stand beside him and peer into the storm. “Klyd, don’t you see? They’ll never suspect because it would be so far outside the Householding pattern of....”
“They might suspect, if they’ve found out who you are.”
“But they haven’t...there’s no way.”
“They’ve suspected me of conspiracy to commit treason so many times, they’re convinced it must be true.”
“But they don’t have a shred of proof.”
“You are living, breathing proof. We don’t know what Hrel reported, but you can be sure that if Andle actually has Aisha, and if he knows who she is...he knows who and what you are.”
“But Enam failed to kill me, so there is no proof.”
“If Andle gets you, Aisha, and one of those sketches you made of her plus a sample of your work from Imil...a Sime court can add just as expertly as a Gen court.”
Suddenly shivering, Valleroy said, “Feleho had one of my sketches?”
“He did.”
“You don’t think I could make it by myself?”
“To Gen Territory? You probably could, though it would be risky. The main Runzi camp is rumored to be between here and Hanrahan.”
“But most of them will be combing the lowlands for us. If you and I just show up at Zeor and don’t say anything about all this...they won’t be able to say anything either. Then we can start over....”
“Is that what you want to try for?”
Something in the Sime’s flat tone stopped Valleroy in mid-thought. He considered carefully. “Well, I don’t see what else we can do.”
Abruptly, Klyd turned and caught Valleroy’s hand and held it up to the firelight. The Zeor crest on Valleroy’s finger scattered light patterns onto the walls of the cave. Abruptly, Klyd released the Gen hand and moved back into the warmth of the cave. He settled down near the fire, stirring it with intense, jerky movements.
Vallero
y examined the delicately boned Farris countenance...so typical of that particularly skilled family of channels...lit from below by the orange flame. The dark eyes were hidden in deep shadow while the cheeks seemed bruises pinched tight about the sensitive Farris lips. It was the face of a disappointed man furious at himself for having expected something unreasonable.
Suddenly, it dawned on Valleroy what he’d forgotten. Need! Klyd didn’t have more than...he counted swiftly...five days, maybe a week at the most before he’d be in need!
Gingerly, Valleroy moved to sit across the fire from the Sime. His thoughtlessness had hurt the man deeply. For some reason, that mattered to Valleroy. It mattered very much. He whispered, “Unto Zeor, forever. I guess I meant that.”
Klyd looked up enigmatically. “You guess?”
“No. I know I did. I won’t leave you if you think I can do any good by staying. But I’m not a trained Companion. I think I could manage to donate to Zeor through you...but I couldn’t serve your need. In the last few days, I’ve come to respect the Companions very much. But I’m not one of them.”
“No. You’re not. Not yet. Given a little time and a little luck...maybe you won’t have to be until you’re ready.”
“I doubt if I could ever be ready!”
“You will. You have the talent.”
“It seems I have many talents, not the least of which is causing trouble.”
Klyd digested that for several minutes.
The tongues of yellow-orange flame licked persistently at the log that formed the heart of the fire. If, thought Valleroy, he had to stay with Klyd, slowing him down, neither of them would ever see Zeor again. All because he’d insisted on bulling his way into the search for Aisha!
“You need not feel responsible,” said Klyd. “I agreed to bring you in-Territory, knowing the risks better than you did.”
“The channels aren’t the only people who accept responsibility for their own actions, you know.” That earned him another of those sharp looks followed by a disapproving frown.
“Klyd, I wish you’d stop reading my emotions!”
“I wish you’d stop creating uncomfortable ones!”
House of Zeor Page 15
