The X Factor

by Andre Norton

  Sight, sound, and now scent—a scent about which there was a faint familiarity. There, in one of the patches of clear visibility, was a pillar—or was it a tree, a tree with bright red leaves? Diskan made a mighty effort. If he could throw his arms about its bole, he could free himself from the current.

  Did his reaching fingers feel the texture of bark? The sound beat in his ears now like the pulsing of his own heart as the city became a wild swirl of red and silver, silver and red, until the colors made one.

  But still his fingers held something— Gasping, Diskan came to himself. He was standing calf deep in the snow, his roughly mittened hands clasping the trunk of one of the trees, while the frozen leaves overhead chimed in the wind. Under the racing moons, the ground was light in its snow blanket. He could see the sharp division between shadow and open.

  His fire burned as a single red eye. Yet from it curled a plume of smoke that was not the yellow-white of normal burning. It was visible against the snow bank because of the tiny dancing red motes caught up in it. They sparkled in small flashings of light as they ascended.

  Diskan pulled out of the snowdrift and staggered back to the fire. There was a scent to that smoke, cloyingly sweet, and it lapped out a tongue to meet him. Coughing, waving a hand before his face to clear the motes from him, he circled to the other side. There was evidence of what had been fed to the fire, skeleton now, but still to be seen— leaves from the grove.

  He picked up a branch and stirred those skeleton leaves into broken ash. The glowing bits gave forth one last burst of spark motes. Diskan gulped frosty air into his lungs. Everyone dreamed, of course, but the fantasy from which he had just awakened was unlike any other dream he had ever had. It had been so real, in spite of its vagueness of detail. Had the leaf smoke been responsible for it?

  Warily, he searched through the pile of firewood, putting aside any which might have originated in the nearby trees. Then he coaxed the flames to full life again, sure of danger in such dreaming. He had been quite far away from his fire when he had awakened. What if he had wandered farther yet and succumbed to the numbing cold before he roused?

  Yet as he squatted by the fire, Diskan could not erase memories he had carried out of the dream. Unlike those from ordinary dreams, they did not fade but grew sharper as he dwelt upon them. Those momentary clear glimpses he had had of the city, of a carven block set in a wall— The markings on that block, he had seen them only in the dream— A doorway that he knew gave upon stairs, he had not sighted—

  Diskan shook his head. Beyond those bits, nothing. Yet there was a vast importance to them. He would never forget them, purposeless as they might be.

  The day broke clear with the coming of sun instead of another fall of snow. Diskan ate the last of the meat. Though it would have been prudent to save some scraps for the future, once he had begun to gnaw the hard flesh, he finished it.

  By the time the sun was well up, he had discovered that the valley about the falls and the lake was a prison. To climb up the ice-coated surface of the cliff by the falls was a feat he dared not attempt. Beyond the wood was another sharp rise, so he was in a cup with only one entrance and exit, the stream gorge he had followed the night before. Yet every time he turned to that, he was stopped as effectively as if he ran into a barrier. What or why that was, he did not know, just that that trail was closed to him.

  That left only the valley walls to explore. By midday, he settled on what he deemed the best ascent, a place behind the grove. There was more of a slope there than elsewhere. His old dread of his clumsiness was in full force, and he was sweating in spite of the cold as he dragged himself up to a ledge about three times his own height above the valley floor. Remembering the most elementary precaution about not looking down, he scraped along the ledge, hugging the cliff, studying each step ahead before he planted boot on it.

  Not too far away, that scanty footing widened under a broken patch of rock, offering the possibilities of a rough ladder. He gained that point and surveyed the way ahead. The roughened surface did not rise straight up but diagonally. Only when he pushed a little away from the cliff surface to look up, Diskan could see a snow hang there. To have that start a slide—

  Diskan caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth and tried to breathe more evenly. His imagination had been only too quick to produce a picture of instant catastrophe. And it was in a spirit of defiance against his own body that he reached up for the first hold.

  He had never doubted his own strength, only his use of it, but the climb was an ordeal that tried every bit of stubborn endurance he possessed—not by its difficulty, for the hand and foot holds were there and he found them, but by his abiding fear of not using them properly, or making some awkward slip through his own clumsiness.

  Now his field of vision was rigidly limited to a few feet, but he was always aware of the overhang of snow that could sweep him in an instant from the path he so painfully traveled. The pads of cocoon material bound about his palms absorbed the perspiration on his hands, but his face was dripping with sweat, his fair hair plastered to his skull. And now and then he had to rub his head against his arm to clear his eyes of the stinging salt moisture.

  A study of the way ahead showed that he must edge along an almost horizontal crack that sloped to the right. But it was here that the menace of the snow hang was the greatest. Diskan's arms trembled with effort, and it seemed to him that his body was more and more sluggish. But there was no retreat now.

  He grunted and pulled to the right, into the crack. A four-inch surface, surely not wide enough to be deemed a ledge, was under the toes of his boots. And above, at shoulder level, there were hand, or at least finger, holds. With his body pressed tight to the frigid stone, so that his cheek was scrapped by the surface of the rock, he could move, inches at a time.

  Inch out, pull over, inch out, pull over—the nightmare journey went on and on. He was shaken out of his terrible absorption in winning those inches, one at a time, when he felt a wider surface under his boot soles. The crack ledge was broadening! With a gasp of relief, he moved faster and then slowed under sharp control. This was no time to take a chance!

  The poor bit of hope he had carried with him from the valley floor was swept away in an instant as he rounded a spur of the wall. The ledge widened—to a good-sized shelf —then ended! Nor was there any hope he could see of another way up that last pull to the top of the cliff. Diskan collapsed, his lips trembling a little as he faced defeat.

  What was worse, he was sure that he had no retreat either. He could not control the shaking of his hands, a shaking that spread up his arms and into his body, while he tried to control convulsive shudders born of fatigue and tension. He pulled up his legs and drew in upon himself in a ball of fear and despair.

  A fine sifting of snow filtered down to powder him. That overhang—would the wind bring it down? Diskan roused from his fog of misery. If he could not go forward, he would have to go back, and he had better try that before inaction and cold froze his nerves and muscles and he could not do it at all.

  He pulled up to his feet, turned to face left, and was feeling for the first step back when he saw a dark blot flattened against the cliff as he was. Fur fluffed under the exploring fingers of the wind, but clawed feet clung tightly, and those eyes—not reddened now by fire gleam but in their way still gem-bright—were on him. The creature of the wild was coming along the ledge path.

  Diskan could not raise his club now, and even as he watched, the dark blot moved and gained a good length in his direction. It paused again, still eying him. That stare robbed Diskan of what small confidence he had managed to dredge up. He pushed back onto the wide portion of the ledge and shouted, in what was part defiance but more surrender to unavoidable fate.

  He fell, scrabbling wildly for a hold to keep from going over the edge. Then the animal landed beside him, half on him, and he heard the roar of the snow giving way. Diskan always wondered how that rush from the heights missed sweeping them along, bu
t the center of its force was farther to the left, over the section where he had traveled one inch at a time. Snow buried him, but he was still on the ledge when the fury of the slip was past, its final crash in the valley loud in his ears.

  He felt hot breath on his cheek and smelled a scent like that of the smears on the rock where he had found the body of the first kill. Diskan looked up into those eyes only inches away from his own as he lay on his back. Breathing hard, he kept still. That fanged mouth was too close to his throat, and he remembered the wounds that had torn the life out of its prey.

  Then that furred head snapped back, and the creature pulled away from him. But Diskan did not move until it had withdrawn to the other end of their small perch. With all the caution he could summon, he sat up, his back against the cliff, his feet out over space.

  The animal did not move. It had risen on its haunches, erect as it had sat across the fire. And its attention was divided between the man and the situation in which they found themselves. Diskan shivered. The snow slide had carried away the threatening overhang, but he knew that he could never turn his back on the animal to shuffle along the narrow crack.

  When his companion in misfortune made no other move, Diskan relaxed a fraction. He eyed it measuringly. In the firelight and during his first glimpses of it here, it had seemed dark. But now the wind ruffled the long fur on its back and shoulders, and there were frosty streaks revealed, as if, close to the skin, the silky hairs of the pelt were far lighter in shade. The color was a slate gray with a blue cast, a shade or so darker than the rocks behind it, lighter on the belly and the inner sides of the legs. All in all, it was a handsome animal, even if its movements suggested a power approaching viciousness.

  "Where do we go from here?" Diskan asked at last, his voice breaking the silence sharply.

  The narrow head snapped about. Then it turned again with what seemed calculated deliberation—so that the animal looked at the cliff face that kept them both marooned.

  For the second time, it looked to Diskan, then back to the cliff. The man frowned. To read any meaning into those gestures was sheer imagination, but it would appear the animal was striving to force his attention in that direction.

  "No road there," Diskan returned. "I've already looked—"

  Once more the head swung back, eyes on him, drawing his gaze to them. Diskan broke that contact with a little cry. He did not know what had happened then, only that he feared it and that he wanted no repetition of that strange sensation.

  For the first time, the animal uttered a sound, a hiss that held overtones of anger as far as Diskan could guess. Then, with the same deliberation of its head turns, it crossed to the edge of the ledge, turned, lowered its hindquarters, and hung so, wriggling its body, for several seconds. It might have been searching for claw holds it knew were there— than it vanished from sight.

  "What—?" Diskan crawled to the place where it had disappeared, fighting a dizzy feeling as he looked over.

  The animal was climbing along the rock face, working its way with assured purpose and a better rate of speed than Diskan dared try. Having reached a point some distance from the ledge and below it, it began to climb again. When it was on a level with that outcrop, it hissed at Diskan, and he could no longer deny his belief that it strove to show by example the road out.

  "I don't have any claws," Diskan protested. "You're better equipped for this than I am." But there was a way along there— Only, with the animal now gone, he could retrace the other way.

  The animal was climbing again. A burst of speed brought it to another ledge, and it reared up there, watching the man. There was something so superior in its attitude that Diskan was stung.

  "All right—here goes!" Why he was making this insane effort, he did not know, but to turn tail and edge back under the watchful eyes of the animal—he could not do it! Where the furred one had gone, a man was going to follow.

  Part of it was bad. As he pointed out, he had no claws, and his fingers and booted toes were far less effective than the natural equipment of his new companion. Once he slipped and thought that his finish, until his fingers caught another hold. After an eternity of struggle, he crawled up to the second ledge—to find it empty. Only in the snow along its steadily widening surface was the firm print of clawed feet leading to the right. Diskan humbly followed. He might have passed the exit from the valley—another rock crevice—had it not been marked for him. The scent was stronger this time than it had been by the kill, for the glistening streaks on the rock were still wet.

  Diskan squeezed into that crack. It was a very tight fit, and his cocoon cloak caught on projections and tore yet more, as he took some painful scrapes. Then a last jerk brought him out in the open at what must be the top of the valley wall.

  Wind had swept the snow from the more exposed positions, and the animal prints held only in the hollows. The surface of this upland was broken, all spires and points. Diskan could look down into the lowlands, where there was a wide sweep of bog, the blue of mud lakes startlingly visible against the gray and white of the rest of the country.

  Food—Diskan thought of his stomach for the first time since beginning the climb. There might have been something worth hunting in the valley. Up here there was nothing at all. To go down now into the bog country would be a wise move. He started to pick a path along the heights.

  A flash drew his attention to the left, away from his goal. It was something not natural to this rocky land. He could not have told why he was sure of that. Not fire—what would fire be doing here unless he was not alone in his occupancy of this planet? In spite of his hunger, he turned away from the slope that ended in the bog country, to hunt down the source of that flash.

  Pattern—those blinks were coming in a pattern! Diskan broke into a trot as he came to a relatively level space. Pattern meant a signal!

  He skidded out onto a small open square and stood looking up at the thing that had drawn him. Sometime—very long ago, he thought, as he noted the weatherworn edges of the stone—someone, or something, had chiseled and cut one of the natural rock pinnacles into a squared column. At a little below its crest, an oval of white opaque substance gave forth, at intervals he could time by counting, flashes of clear light.

  Five counts, then a flash, three counts, flash, ten counts, flash, eight—then the whole pattern over again. This was a signal. The why Diskan could not tell—for some long vanished aircraft, for communication between distant points of land? But it was very old, and it was the work of intelligence.

  So, it could be that he was not alone, that more than his animal visitor had once moved with purpose along this rocky spine.

  Diskan walked around the column. In a patch of snow on the other side was a single clawed footprint, a signature and a signpost. And beyond, as timeworn as the columns, were the traces of a way, cut here and there through the rock, leading along the crest of the heights.

  It was stupid to turn away from the bogs with their promise of food, as stupid as anything he had ever done, Diskan told himself. But his boots had already trod on that pawmark, and he knew that he was going to follow that very ancient road.

  VI

  At times in the growing twilight, Diskan could not be sure that he was still following any path at all. But then he would sight a marker, a side of rock smoothed to make the passage easier, a flattened length under foot. And the road was descending, not along the bog side of the ridge but on the left where lay higher ground. He sighted other valleys like that which held the lake, level bottoms covered with banks of snow, a few with groves of the red-leaved trees.

  It was into the widest of these valleys that the ancient road curled. And the end of that path was marked by two pillars, squared as the one that had borne the signal light. On their crests were lumps, the meaning long since battered away by time. And beyond lay nothing but unbroken reaches of snow. To the left and right, running along the base of the ridge, was a tangle of vegetation, a promise of shelter.

  Diskan s
aw tracks there, not those of the clawed feet, but smaller and rounded as if what made them walked on a foot close to a hoof. Only he was not to follow that, for out of the still air a voice spoke.

  The words were unintelligible, but they were words, and that they were meant to catch his attention, Diskan did not doubt. Almost on reflex, he threw himself into the cover of the brush, hugging the earth, staring out into the dusk. He was sure that the call had come from before him, somewhere out of the valley, and not echoing down from the rocks at his back.

  There was silence, twice as deep. Diskan lay, watched, and waited. Half unconsciously, he began to count under his breath, as he had with the light flashes on the heights. He had reached thirty when again that spoken sound rolled across the open. On the third repetition, he was sure of one thing—that each time the sound had been the same, that the strange words had been repeated and the tone was mechanically level, as if some machine rather than any living thing had voiced that warning or greeting or summons.

  Which of the three it might be had vast importance. To disregard a warning might be high disaster. To answer a summons could be going into peril. But a greeting was something else. And was that broadcast as old as the beacon above? The words were spoken with a crisp, sharp authority. Diskan could not connect it in his mind with the evidences of age at the signal pillar and along the road.

  Here was a screen of brush. He could move behind it along the valley wall. If he had been sighted and that voice directed at him, sooner or later that which spoke would come hunting. Diskan moved, his club-spear to hand, his attention fixed on the open.

  The broadcast continued to sound at the same intervals as he worked his way from one piece of cover to the next, and it did not vary. But Diskan's uneasiness was not lulled by that fact. The words might be mechanically produced, but that did not mean that he could be sure he was not under observation.