Bird of Prey

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  At first it was a glance out of the corner of my eye, a head seen a little too frequently behind me for coincidence. It developed into a too-persistent footstep in an uneven rhythm; tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.

  I had my skean handy, but I had a hunch this wasn't anything I could settle with a skean. I ducked into a side street, and waited for my follower.

  Nothing.

  After a time, I went on, laughing at my imagined fears.

  Then, after a time, the soft and persistent footfall thudded behind me again.

  I fled down a strange street, where women sat on flower-decked balconies, their open lanterns flowing with fountains and rivulets of gold and orange fire; I raced down quiet streets where furred children crept to doors and watched me pass, with great golden eyes that shone in the dusk.

  I dodged into an alley and lay there. Someone not two inches away said softly, “Are you one of us, brother?” I muttered something surly in his dialect, and a hand seized my elbow. “This way, then."

  Taptaptap. TapTAPtap.

  I let my arm relax in the hand that guided me. Wherever I was being taken, it might shake off my follower. I flung a fold of my shirtcloak over my face, and went along.

  I stumbled over steps, then took a jolting stride downward and found myself in a dim room, jammed with dark figures, human and nonhuman. The figures swayed in the dimness, chanting in a dialect not altogether familiar to me; a monotonous wailing chant, with a single recurrent phrase: “Kamaina! Kamaina!” beginning on a high note, descending in a series of weird chromatics to the lowest tone the human ear could resolve. The sound made me draw back; even Dry-towners shunned the orgiastic rituals of Kamaina.

  My eyes were adapting to the dim light and I saw that most of the crowd were Charin plainsmen and chaks; one or two wore Dry-towner shirtcloaks, and I even thought I saw an Earthman. They were all squatting around small crescent shaped tables, and all intently gazing at a flickery spot of light near the front. I saw an empty place at one table, and let myself drop there, finding the floor soft, as if cushioned. On each table, small, smudging pastilles were burning, and from these cones of ash-tipped fire came the steamy, swimmy smoke that filled the darkness with strange colors. Beside me, an immature chak girl was kneeling, her fettered hands strained tightly back at her sides, her naked breasts pierced with jeweled rings; beneath the pallid fur, cream-colored, flowing around her pointed ears, the exquisite animal face was quite mad.

  There were cups and decanters on the table, and another woman tilted a stream of pale phosphorescent fluid into one cup, and proffered it to me.

  I took a sip, then another; it was cold and pleasant, and not till the second swallow turned bitter on my tongue did I know what I tasted. I pretended to swallow while the woman's phosphorescent eyes were fixed on me, then somehow contrived to spill the foul stuff down my shirt. I was wary even of the fumes, but there was nothing else I could do. It was shallavan, the reeking drug outlawed on every half-way decent planet in the Galaxy.

  The scene itself looked like the worst nightmare of a drug-dreamer, ablaze with the colors of the smoking incense, the swaying crowd and their monotonous cries. Quite suddenly there was a blaze of orchid light and someone screamed in raving ecstasy, “No ki na Nebran n'hai Kamaina!"

  “Kamaieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!” shrilled the entranced mob.

  Evarin stood in the blaze of the lights. The Toymaker was as I had seen him last, cat-smooth, gracefully alien, shrouded in a ripple of giddy crimsons. Behind him there was a blackness. I waited until the painful blaze of the lights abated, then, straining to see past him, I got my worst shock.

  A woman stood there, naked to the waist, her hands ritually fettered with little chains that stirred and clashed musically as she walked, stiff-legged, in a frozen dream. Hair like black glass combed into metallic waves banded her brow, and naked shoulders, and her eyes were crimson...

  ...and her eyes lived, in the dead face. They lived and they were mad with terror although the lips curved in a placid, dreaming smile.

  Miellyn.

  I realized that Evarin had been speaking for some time in that dialect I could barely understand. His arms were flung high, and his cloak went spilling away from them, rippling like something alive.

  “Our world—an old world—"

  “Kamaieeeena!” whimpered the shrill chorus.

  “...humans, all humans, nothing but humans. They would make slaves of us all, slaves to the Children of the Ape..."

  I blinked and rubbed my eyes to clear them of the incense fumes. I hoped what I saw was an optical illusion, drug-born. Something huge, something dark, was hovering over the girl. She stood placid, hands clasped on her chains, the wreathing smoke glimmering around her jewels, but her eyes writhed and implored in the stiff, frozen face.

  Then something, I can only call it a sixth sense, warned me that there was someone outside that door. I'd been followed, probably by the Legate's orders; my follower, tracing me here, had gone away and returned, with reinforcements.

  Someone struck a blow on the door, and a stentorian voice bawled. “Open up, there! In the name of the Terran Empire!"

  The chanting broke off in ragged quavers. Evarin glanced around, startled and wary. Somewhere a woman screamed; the lights abruptly went out, and a stampede started in the room. I thrust my way forward, with elbows and knees and shoulders, butting through the crowd. A dusky emptiness opened, and yawned, and I got a glimpse of sunlight and open sky, and knew that Evarin had stepped into somewhere and was gone. The banging on the door sounded like a whole regiment of spaceforce. I dived toward the shimmer of little stars which marked Miellyn's tiara in the darkness, braving that black horror which hovered above her, and encountered rigid girl-flesh, cold as death.

  I grabbed her, and ducked to the side—Every native building on Wolf has half-a-dozen concealed entrances and exits, and I know where to look for them. I pushed one, and found myself standing in a dark, peaceful street. One lonely moon was setting, low over the rooftops. I put Miellyn on her feet, but she moaned and leaned limply against me. I took off my shirtcloak and put it around her naked shoulders, then hoisted her in my arms. There was a chak-run cookshop down the street, a place I had once known, with an evil reputation and worse food, but it was quiet, and stayed open all night. I turned in at the door, bending under the low lintel.

  The inside room was smoky and foul-smelling; I dumped Miellyn on one of the circular couches, sent the frowsy waiter for two bowls of noodles and coffee, handed him a few more coins than the food would warrant, and told him to leave us alone. He drew down the shutters and went.

  I stared at the inert girl for a few seconds, then shrugged and started to eat one bowl of the noodles; my own head was still swimming with the fumes of incense and drug, and I wanted it clear. I wasn't quite sure what I would do, but I had Evarin's right-hand girl, and I meant to use her.

  The noodles were greasy, but they were hot, and I ate all of one bowl before Miellyn stirred and whimpered and put up one hand, with a little musical clashing of chains, to her hair. Finding that the folds of my shirtcloak interfered, she made a convulsive movement and stared around her with growing bewilderment and dismay.

  “You! What am I—"

  “There was a riot,” I said briefly, “and Evarin ditched you. And you can stop thinking what you're thinking. I put my cloak on you because you were bare to the waist and it didn't look so good.” I stopped to think that over, then grinned and amended, “I mean, I couldn't haul you around the street that way, it looked good enough."

  To my amazement she gave a shaky giggle. “If you'll—"and held out her fettered hands. I chuckled and snapped the links. It didn't take much strength—they were symbolic ornaments, not real chains, and many Wolf women wear them all the time.

  Miellyn drew up her draperies and fastened them so that she was decently covered, then tossed me back my shirtcloak. “Rakhal, when I saw you there—"

  “Later.” I shoved the bowl of noodles tow
ard her.

  “Eat it,” I ordered, “you're still doped; the food will clear your head.” I packed up one of the mugs of coffee, and emptied it at a single swallow. “What were you doing in that place?"

  Without warning she flung herself across the table, throwing her arms around my neck. For a minute, startled, I let her cling, then reached up and firmly unfastened her hands. “None of that, now. I fell for it once, and it landed me in the middle of the mudpie."

  Her fingers clutched at me with a feverish, tense grip. “Please, please listen to me! Have you still got the bird, the Toy? You haven't set it off, yet? Don't, don't, don't, don't, Rakhal, you don't know what Evarin is, what he's doing—” the words poured out of her in a flood, uncontrollable and desperate. “He's won so many men like you—don't let him have you too, they say you're an honest man, you worked once for Terra, the Terrans would believe you if you went to them and told them—Rakhal, take me to the Terran zone, take me there, take me there where they'll protect me from Evarin—"

  At first I had leaned forward to protest, then waited and let the torrent of entreaty run on and on. At last she lay quiet, exhausted, her head fallen forward against my shoulder, her hands still clutching at me. The musky shallavan mingled with the flower-scents of her hair. At last, heavily, I said, “Kid, you and your Toymaker have both got me all wrong. I'm not Rakhal Sensar."

  “You're not—” she drew back, regarding me in dismay and disbelief. “Then who—?"

  “Race Cargill. Terran Intelligence."

  She stared at me, her mouth wide like a child's.

  Then she laughed. She laughed—I thought she was hysterical, and stared at her in consternation. Then, as her wide red eyes met mine, with all the mischief of Wolf illogic—I started to laugh.

  “Cargill—you can take me to the Terrans where Evarin—"

  “Damn!” I exploded, “I can't take you anywhere, girl, I've got to find Rakhal!” I hauled out the Toy and slapped it down on the greasy table. “I don't suppose you know which of us this is supposed to kill?"

  “I know nothing about the Toys."

  “You know plenty about the Toymaker,” I said sourly.

  “I thought so. Until last night.” She burst out, in an explosion of passionate anger, “It's not a religion! It's a front! For drugs and politics and—and every other filthy thing! I've heard a lot about Rakhal Sensar! Whatever you think of him, he's too decent to be mixed up in that!"

  The pattern was beginning to take shape in my mind. Rakhal had been on the trail of the matter-transmitter, and had fallen afoul of the Toymaker. Evarin's words, you were very clever at escaping our surveillance for a while, made sense to me now; Juli had given me the clue. He smashed Rindy's Toys. It had sounded like the act of a madman, but it made plain, good sense.

  I said, “There's some distance limitation on this thing, I understand. If I lock it inside a steel box and drop it in the desert, I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody. Miellyn, I don't suppose you'd care to have a try at stealing the other one for me?"

  “Why should you worry about Sensar's wife?” she flashed.

  For some reason it seemed important to set her straight. “My sister,” I explained. “The thing to do, I suppose, is to find Rakhal first—” I stopped, remembering something. “I can find Rakhal with that scanning device in the workshops. Take me to the Master-shrine, will you? Where's the nearest street-shrine?"

  “No! Oh, no, I don't dare!"

  I had to argue and plead, and finally threaten her, reminding her that except for me she would have been torn to pieces or worse, by a crowd of drugged and raving fanatics, before she finally consented to take me to a transmitter. She was shaking when she set her foot into the patterned stones. “I know what Evarin can do!” Then her red mouth twitched, in tremulous mischief. “You'll have to stand closer than that, the transmitters are meant for only one person!"

  I stooped and put my arm round her. “Like this?"

  “Like this,” she whispered, pressing herself against me. A swirl of dizzy darkness swung around my head; the street vanished, and we stepped out into the terminal room in the Master-shrine, under a skylight darkened with the last splinters of the setting sun. Distant little hammering noises made a ringing in my ears.

  Miellyn whispered, “Evarin's not here, but he might jump through at any minute!” I paid no attention.

  “Exactly where on the planet are we?"

  Miellyn shook her head. “No one knows that except Evarin himself. There are no doors, just the transmitters—when we want to go outside, we jump through them. The scanning device is through there—we'll have to go through the Little Ones’ workroom.” She opened the door of the workroom, and we walked through.

  Not for years had I known that special feeling—thousands of eyes, all boring holes in the center of my back. I was sweating by the time we reached the farther door and it closed, safe and blessedly opaque behind us. Miellyn was shivering with reaction.

  “Steady,” I warned. “We've still got to get out. Where's that scanner?"

  She touched the panel. “I'm not sure I can focus it accurately, though. Evarin's never let me touch it."

  “How does it work?"

  “The principle is just the same as the matter-transmitter; that is, it lets you look through to anywhere, but without jumping. It uses a tracer mechanism, just as the Toys do,” she added. “If Rakhal's electrical-impulse pattern were on file anywhere, I could—wait! I know how we can do it! Give me the Toy.” I drew, it out; she took it quickly and unwrapped it. “Here's a good, quick way to find out which of you this bird is intended to kill!"

  I looked at the fledgling thing, soft and innocent in her palm. “Suppose it's turned on me?"

  “I wasn't going to set it off.” Miellyn pushed aside the feathers, revealing a tiny crystal set into the bird's skull. “The memory-crystal. If it's tuned to your nerve-patterns, you'll see yourself in the scanner, as if it were a mirror. If you see Rakhal—"

  She touched the crystal against the surface of the screen. Little flickers of “snow” danced across the clearing panel; then, abruptly, a picture dropped into focus, the turned-away back of a man in a leather jacket. The man turned, slowly, and I saw first, a familiar profile, then saw the profile become a scarred mask, more hideous than my own. His lips were moving; he was talking to someone beyond the range of the lens.

  Miellyn asked, “Is that—"

  “It's Rakhal, yes. Move the focus, if you can, try to get a look out of a window, or something. Charin's a big city. If we could get a look at a landmark—"

  Rakhal went on talking, soundlessly, like television without sound. Abruptly Miellyn said “There!” She had brought the scanning device within range of a window; Rakhal was inside a room that looked out on a high pylon and two or three uprights that looked like a bridge. I recognized the place at once, and so did Miellyn.

  “The Bridge of Summer Snows, in Charin. I can find him now. Come on, turn if off, and let's get out of here.” I was turning away from the screen when Miellyn gave a smothered scream.

  “Look!"

  Rakhal had turned his back on our scanning device, and for the first time we could see the person he was talking to. A hunched and catlike shoulder, twisted, revealing a sinuous neck, a handsome and arrogant face—

  “Evarin!” I swore. “He knows, then, that I'm not Rakhal. He's probably known all along. Come on, girl, we're getting out of here.” She shoved the silk-wrapped bird into her skirt pocket and we ran through the workroom. We banged the workroom door shut behind us, and I shoved a heavy divan against it, barricading it shut.

  Miellyn was already inside the recess where the Toad-god squatted. “There is a street-shrine just beyond The Bridge of Summer Snow. Hold me, hold me tight, it's a long jump—” suddenly she froze in my arms, with a convulsive shudder. “Evarin—he's jumping in! Quick!"

  Space reeled around us.

  We landed inside a street-shrine; I glimpsed the pylon, and the bridge, and the r
ising sun; then there was the giddy, internal wrench, a blast of icy air whistled around us; and we found ourselves gazing out at the Polar mountains, ringed in their eternal sunlight.

  We jumped again, the wrenching sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from the girl, and dark clouds shivered around us; I looked out on an unfamiliar expanse of sand and wasteland and dust-bleared stars. Miellyn whimpered. “Evarin knows what I'm doing, he's jumping us all around the planet, he can work the controls with his mind ... Psychokinetics ... I can do it, a little, only I've never ... oh, hang on to me, tight, tight, I've never dared do this—"

  Then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would make some tiny movement; we would fall, blind and dizzy, through the blackness, half-way through the giddy spin, a new direction would wrench at us, and we would be thrust elsewhere—and look out on a different street. One instant we were in the Kharsa—I actually saw the door of the spaceport cafe, and smelled hot coffee—and an instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds waving over-head, over the roofs of gilt temples. We froze and burned, moonlight, noon, dim twilight, in the terrible giddiness of hyperspace.

  Then, suddenly, I caught a glimpse of the pylon, the bridge; luck or an oversight had landed us again for half a second in Charin. The blackness started to reel down again, but my reflexes are fast, and I made one swift, scrabbling step forward. We lurched, then sprawled, locked together, on the sharp stones of the bridge outside the street-shrine; bruised and bloody, but alive—and at our destination!

  I lifted Miellyn to her feet; her eyes were dizzy with pain. Clinging together, the ground swaying madly under our feet, we fled along the Bridge of Summer Snows. At the far side, I looked up at the pylon. Judging by the angle, the place where we'd seen Rakhal couldn't be far away. In this street there was a wineshop, a silk market, and one small private house. I walked up, and banged on the door.

  Silence. I knocked again. From within there came a child's shrill question, a deeper voice hushing it, and the door opened, to reveal a scarred face that drew back into a hideous facsimile of a grin.