by Andre Norton
Fire marks—sears of blast. This chaos, Diskan realized, was not the result of time, but the work of man, energetically tearing into fabric of the building—searching for what? He began a cautious circuit of the chamber, detouring about the rubble, longing for a lamp with which to explore the darkness beyond.
A chattering. Diskan swung the stunner, thumbed the button, and saw a mass collapse limply. He turned over with the toe of his boot the body of one of the scavengers such as he had seen at the burned ground.
He stopped near some claw-marked stone, from under which came a dark oozing, now dried. Diskan dropped his supply bag to examine the fall of stone more carefully. Gingerly, he began to lever the top of the mass apart, then leaped away as it cascaded from him into the gap of the broken wall.
Sound reached him from the shaking mound, a clicking. Diskan readied the stunner, watching for another of the scavengers, but the limited light revealed instead a head, shoulders, an outflung arm. The man was dead, had been so for some time. What Diskan could see of his clothing suggested a spacer uniform, and there was the glint of an officer's insignia on his upstanding collar.
On the wrist of the outflung arm was a wide bracelet inset with a dial. The face of that glowed, and from it came a steady ticking—a com device of some sort. And it was recording or broadcasting—or whatever—even now. On impulse, Diskan pulled the thing over the cold hand and brought it into better light.
A dial, without any symbols or figures he could read, only a single needle that swayed as he moved the bracelet, swinging so that its delicately arrowed head always pointed in the same direction, to his right now, but ever to one wall as he tested it by turning. A direction finder of sorts. Intrigued, Diskan tried to slip it over his own wrist, discovered the supporting ring too small, and finally attached it to his belt.
He returned to the dead man. Two blocks Diskan could not move imprisoned the body, but he cleared away enough of the rubble to see what had brought the man down. Not the fall of the wall, which had partly entombed him, but a blaster burn across his body breast high. The condition of the chamber was now clear; it had been a battlefield. Slowly, Diskan piled the largest stones he could find back over what he had uncovered for the only burial he could give the stranger.
Now he wanted to get out into the light of day. He struck at the limp scavenger with the club before he left, thus making sure it would not return to its digging. As he went, Diskan watched the device he had taken from the body.
The needle still pointed in one direction, and it seemed to Diskan that the clicking accelerated. What could it be attuned to? Others roaming this pile, carrying on some desperate struggle of their own? Diskan had no wish to be involved. But still the swing of the needle intrigued him, and he followed its lead along the outer corridor.
Then that hair-thin guide pointed left. Diskan searched the wall for an entrance, and the stone gave under his hand. Before him was a hole blasted in the surface of the far wall. The clicking was a steady purr, but that purr warned him. He had no wish to walk into blaster fire. Slowly, Diskan backed away and let the outer door slide into place behind him. This was another mystery of Xcothal and one he did not want to solve.
Walking firmly, he went out of the building into which the animals had brought him. When he was on the stairs in the outer air, he breathed deeply. He must get away, free himself from the dead city, from his failure here. The quarrel of off-world strangers was none of his. He felt a curious detachment, as if he had no tie with his own species any more.
He had drawn heavily on his supplies. Could he work his way back to the cache? Diskan closed his eyes for the moment, trying mentally to picture the route he had come. It was simple. He might not be trained to track, but there was nothing difficult about this. He strode confidently down the stairs and looked for the opening into the street that had brought him here.
Then his confidence ebbed a little. All those wheel spokes of open ways looked exactly alike. He had come in there—no, there—or had he? He could not tell by the buildings; they were all the same.
The morning's sun had melted the snow patches that might have held tracks; he had no guide save chance. But that was the way to the ridge. Diskan turned to face it. And surely, once pointed in the right general direction, he could find his way. Let him see the ridge as a landmark and he was safe.
He entered the street he had chosen. Too bad he had not been more observant yesterday. But during the last part of that journey, after the animal had joined him, he had been aware only of his companions, the one beside him and those he could not see. And of those, there had been no trace since they had left him in the wedge chambers.
If this was not the street he had traversed yesterday, it was very like it. The sun glistened on what Diskan thought was a runnel of ice and then saw was a track, a shining mark running straight from one building to another. He poked at it with the spear point, and the wood skidded on a slick, slimy surface, rising with a ball of noxious material on its tip. Diskan thrust it again and again into a hummock of grass to clean it. He hurried on, not liking the looks of that trail, if trail it was, and certainly not wishing to investigate its source.
The birds and the animals had been in the city yesterday, but now he began to see disturbing traces of other possible inhabitants. A second slime trail, wider, thicker, and more disgusting than the first crossed the street. And this time Diskan had to take a running leap to clear it. Perhaps the creatures who made these were night crawlers. If so, the sooner he won out of the city, the better. It had lost for him all the appeal of his dream; its sinister aspect was growing, so that even when the sun shone brightly into its streets, the buildings seemed to exhale gloom from their open doorways, setting up a fog of fear.
Diskan broke into a trot, glancing from side to side, and now and then over his shoulder. There was no movement, no sight of anything. But that very stillness was part of his discomfort, for it hinted at things lying in wait behind a window, within the shadow of a doorway. Allowing him to come, to pass, then following—Twice he stopped short, faced about, stunner ready, certain that he had heard some betraying noise, that danger prowled at his heels.
He consulted the device he had taken from the dead man. The clicking was very faint, barely audible when he held it to his ear. And the needle pointed back to the center of the city. He was sure the peril he sensed had nothing to do with his own kind. This was of the city, yet not of Xcothal. An empty shell had been left, and into that emptiness had crawled other things that had no kinship with those who had built the shell, who were, in fact, the opposite of those first intelligences. This was no city of promised light, color, and joy, as he had seen it yesterday, but a graveyard, given over to all that opposed his dream.
More slime tracks, and one so wide that he feared he could not leap it. The noisome odor was stronger; the tracks could perhaps be fresher. Then Diskan knew that he had chosen the wrong road, for the street widened into a great pool with a center of blue mud. And that mud blew a bubble as he watched, the dull skin swelling out and out—to break, spewing bits of yellow stuff over the surface of the lake.
The yellow substance was light enough to be airborne, floating in motes. Some of these sped together as steel attracted to a magnet. And when they met, there was a spark of fire, a small flaming coal, which fell to melt a bit of ice or set flame to a tuft of dried reed. And there was a stench worse than that from the slime tracks.
No safe way of crossing that lake. The ice crust was thin, and Diskan did not trust the footing along its shore, which lapped against the walls of the buildings. Back—back to the hub circle and choose again, and Diskan had the feeling that something was satisfied, amused by his retreat.
At the circle, he sat down on one of the steps of the center building. Here the sun shown warmer, more brightly. When he looked down any one of those streets, it was to meet obscurity, akin to that which had bewildered him when he had surveyed the city from the arched walk at the top of the tower structur
e. Yet this was different, for then he had a sense of expectant enchantment, whereas this warned, repelled, set up a barrier. Diskan weighed the bag of supplies. He could ration what was left. All these supplies carried various sustaining ingredients that allowed one to stretch them thin and still have an adequate level of nourishment. But he wanted out—away from those now-sinister streets, back to the natural rock and marsh he could understand.
Deliberately, he studied the four streets to his left. Down the first he had just returned. But he had retained enough memory of yesterday to limit the possible exit to one of those four—or the three he had not tried. Now he selected the center one of the trio and set out for the second time.
Slime trails again, but these had hardened in the frosty air. For the rest, this way was exactly like the first.
He held to a brisk walk. It was past midday, and he wanted to be out of this maze before sundown. To be caught at night in one of these dark ways was a risk he did not want to take, and he must make good time now.
A lake, with blue mud for its center—Diskan did not believe what he saw. He rammed the spear point against the ice surface at his feet, and it pierced the pane over dark fluid, releasing an evil smell, proving its reality. He was back again! But he had not taken the same street—he could not have made that mistake!
Holding fiercely to that belief, Diskan retreated for the second time. The street that had brought him here before—that had been the first of those probable ones, and this had been the third! He knew that was true. Yet as far as he could see, he stood now just where he had before—
Back to the hub. Panting and sweating, he squatted once again on the steps and counted those streets with a finger. He had been right! Here was the ration tube he had sucked dry and left lying to mark where he had rested. That was the first street, that the third! And since they radiated out spokewise, why, one could not run into the other without some curve he would have noticed. Yet he had found the lake the second time.
Diskan put his head in his hands and tried to consider the problem carefully, logically, only there was no normal logic in this. So, he must have counted wrong some way. Only he had not, one part of his brain shrieked—he had not! This was the old frustration, the old defeating knowledge that somehow he had not performed some function with the right responses. Thoroughly shaken, Diskan was almost afraid now to lift his head and look at those streets so much alike, so much a trap for him.
When he did raise his eyes to survey them with a control he fought to hold, the obscurity had deepened. Why, he was hardly able to see down any length farther than the first three or four buildings. Diskan gave a gasping cry, caught up supply bag and club, and began to climb the steps of the core building. For all his determination, he could not face the murk of those streets. And to come a third time to that lake would be more than his sanity could stand.
He pushed in the first open door and looked about the deep gloom of the hall into which the animals had brought him. Full circle! It must have been near this same hour yesterday that he had stood here. Then he had been keyed to desires, pressures from without. Now he was alone—very much alone.
Diskan gazed at the blank walls, his eyes always returning to the point of the wedge where the dusk was thickest. Yet he had no uneasiness of spirit such as had frightened him in the somberness of the streets. What had been the purpose of this chamber? It was so large, companies of worshipers could have gathered here. Was it a fane? Or hundreds of councilors could have debated together if this was a place of government. A court might have held vast formal ceremonials down its length. Now all was silence, dust, shadows. No trace of carving, no matter how worn, none of the vague impressions of what might be runes ran along the smooth surfaces of the narrowing walls, no altar, no dais, no throne raised from the floor.
He began to walk toward the narrowed point. At his belt, the device ticked more and more loudly. His glance told him that the needle pointed ahead when he held it on his palm. But here was no rubble or battle sign.
Suddenly, Diskan spoke. "What do you want of me?"
In a measure he had begun to feel as he had the day before—that a demand was building, becoming more imperative, that he was being given a second chance at some test, the importance of which was past his assessing.
He was midway down the chamber now. Did the shadows gathered at the point have substance? Were the animals returning? No, he could not see them, turning, pacing, moving in to meet him. Nothing so concrete awaited him. Still some sense tricked him, or his eyes, into that belief in movement, in the appearance of a pattern forming there, woven to a purpose he could not guess. If he could only follow the lines of that pattern, he might understand! But though he concentrated, tried to force such understanding, it did not come—only that movement he could not trace. And at last it dwindled into nothingness and was gone.
"Tell me!" His voice arose in a despairing cry, echoing through the hall. But when those echoes died away, there was only a dusty silence and a loss that hurt.
Diskan waited, hoping to see again that weaving which was only half on the borderline of his sight, to catch from the air about him some helpful hint of purpose, to learn the step to be taken, the unseen door that must be opened. Nothing—Whatever had brought a small measure of life for a portion of time to this age-old hall had died, as a fire might fall to ashes, its flames unfed.
He turned at last, his shoulders hunched and bowed, his pace a tired shuffle. This last and perhaps greatest of his failures left him drained of all purpose and feeling. He went out to the hall, and because he had no place else to go, he found again the inner stair and climbed to his perch of the night before. Below was Xcothal, but this time he had no desire to look out upon its ruins. He feared what he might see in those streets as the night closed in.
As one who nurses a pain that cannot be soothed, he rocked slowly back and forth on his haunches, his arms folded over his middle.
"What do you want of me?" That was no shout, only a ragged whisper, but he repeated it over and over, until his mouth was dry, his voice husky. And there was never any answer, not even the cry of a bird.
He did not sleep; he could not. The sense of danger arose about his post as the fumes of the mud lake had billowed up with their choking stench. No test of courage could be harder to face. In the darkness, Diskan fought back, and he had so little to fight with! But the hour came when, because he could not live with his own fear any longer, Diskan crawled on hands and knees across the cold stone to look down on the city, the pit from which that terror arose.
Dark such as he had not imagined—yet the longer he watched, the more he saw that there were degrees of darkness in a way he could find no words to describe. There was a flowing, an ebbing there also—not to be defined—a life that was not his life, nor the life of that other weaving in the chamber. This was a thing that had entered unbidden, that strove to knit itself into the ruined walls, to remain, unless that which had once been came again.
That which had once been! Xcothal—
"It is past—" He did not know why he spoke that protest in a frozen whisper.
Past! Past! Perhaps his word had been taken up by an echo; perhaps it was only the sigh of a breeze below his lookout. The coiling of the dark upon the dark grew swifter, reached higher about the hub building. Diskan made himself watch it. His body shivered and his nails cut deeper into his own flesh, although he was not aware of that small pain through the larger that filled him.
Xcothal—he clung to his dream, strove to batter aside the tide of darkness with the color, the life, the beauty it smothered and buried. Xcothal should not be taken! That which had dwelt here could not be so lightly overcome, banished—Xcothal—Diskan stared into the night and fought—throwing away all logic, all reason.
He only knew that, in summoning his dream and holding it, he was waging a small engagement in the midst of a battle, and he held to his post grimly. What had been dark waves beating on shadows began to change. He did not know when h
e saw that first spark of light flash into being, a pinpoint in the streets. But there came another and another—minute sparks of light whose origin he could not guess. They followed no pattern, a cluster here, a line of individual points there, a solitary beam in the midst of heavy dusk.
They did not move as did the whirling lashings of the dark but endured as outposts. And at length, no more appeared. Diskan unclenched his fists. Again on his hands and knees, he went back to the wall. He did not want to sleep; he did not need it. There was a tingling awareness of the night, such as he had never experienced before, running through his veins, warming him so that with impatient fingers he pulled at the throat of the parka, opening it farther.
Something—he did not know just what—had happened, as if a machine long idle had been triggered into action once again, and ripples spreading from that action were lapping on, out and out. Was this what they had wanted of him, the brothers-in-fur? No, swift on the heels of that came the denial, and he knew it was the truth. He had failed then, but now—
