Key Out of Time

by Norton, Andre

  It was loud, almost directly above his head, but since the cotton mist held he was not afraid of being sighted. The chanter must be on the jetty. And to Ross’s right was a dark bulk which he thought was one of the cutters. Was a sortie by the besieged being planned?

  Then, out of the night, came a dazzling beam, well above the level of Ross’s head where he clung to the piling. It centered on the cutter, slicing into the substance of the vessel with the ease of steel piercing clay. The chanting stopped on mid-note, broken by cries of surprise and alarm. Ross, pressing against the pile, received a jolt from his belt sonic.

  There must be a Baldy sub in the basin inside the gate. Perhaps the flame beam now destroying the cutter was to be turned on the walls of the keep in turn.

  Foanna chant again, low and clear. Splashes from the water as those on the jetty cast into the sea objects Ross could not define. The Terran’s body jerked, his mask smothered a cry of pain. About his legs and middle, immersed in the waves, there was cold so intense that it seared. Fear goaded him to pull up on one of the under beams of the pier. He reached that refuge and rubbed his icy legs with what vigor he could summon.

  Moments later he crept along toward the shore. The energy ray had found another target. Ross paused to watch a second cutter sliced. If the counter stroke of the Foanna would rout the invaders, it had not yet begun to work.

  The net holding the extra gear brought along in hopes of Ashe’s escape weighed the Terran down, but he would not abandon it as he felt his way from one foot- and hand-hold to the next. The waves below gave off an icy exudation which made him shiver uncontrollably. And he knew that as long as that effect lasted he dared not venture into the sea again.

  Light…along with the cold, there was a phosphorescence on the water—white patches floating, dipping, riding the waves. Some of them gathered under the pier, clustering about the pilings. And the fog thinned with their coming, as if those irregular blotches absorbed and fed upon the mist. The Terran could see now he had reached the land end of the jetty. He wedged his flippers into his belt, pulled on over his feet the covers of salkar-hide Torgul had provided.

  Save for his belt, his trunks, and the gill-pack, Ross’s body was bare and the cold caught at him. But, slinging the carry net over his shoulder, he dropped to the damp sand and stood listening.

  The clamor of the attack which had carried all the way offshore to the Rover cruisers had died away. And there were no more claps of thunder. Instead, there was now a thick wash of rain.

  No more fire rays as he faced seaward. And the fog was lifting, so Ross could distinguish the settling cutters, their bows still moored to the jetty. There was no movement there. Had those on the pier fled?

  Dot…dash…dot…

  Ross did not drop the net. But he crouched back in the half protection of the piling. For a moment which stretched beyond Terran time measure he froze so, waiting.

  Dot…dash…dot…

  Not the prickle induced by the enemy installations, it was a real coded call picked up by his sonic, and one he knew.

  Don’t rush, he told himself sharply—play it safe. By rights only two people in this time and place would know that call. And one would have no reason to use it. But—a trap? This could be a trap. Awe of the Foanna powers had touched him a little in spite of his off-world skepticism. He could be lured now by someone using Ashe’s call.

  Ross stripped for action after a fashion, bundling the net and its contents into a hollow he scooped behind a pile well above water level. The alien hand weapon he had left with Karara, not trusting it to the sea. But he had his diver’s knife and his two hands which, by training, could be, and had been, deadly weapons.

  With the sonic against the bare skin of his middle where it would register strongest, knife in hand, Ross moved into the open. The floating patches did not supply much light, but he was certain the call had come from the jetty.

  There was movement there—a flash or two. And the sonic? Ross had to be sure, very sure. The broadcast was certainly stronger when he faced in that direction. Dared he come into the open? Perhaps in the dark he could cut Ashe away from his captors so they could swim for it together.

  Ross clicked a code reply. Dot…dot…dot…

  The answer was quick, imperative: “Where?”

  Surely no one but Ashe could have sent that! Ross did not hesitate.

  “Be ready—escape.”

  “No!” Even more imperative. “Friends here….”

  Had he guessed rightly? Had Ashe established friendly relations with the Foanna? But Ross kept to the caution which had been his defense and armor so long. There was one question he thought only Ashe could answer, something out of the past they had shared when they had made their first journey into time disguised as Beaker traders of the Bronze Age. Deliberately he tapped that question.

  “What did we kill in Britain?”

  Tensely he waited. But when the reply came it did not pulse from the sonic under his fingers; instead, a well-remembered voice called out of the night.

  “A white wolf.” And the words were Terran English.

  “Ashe!” Ross leaped forward, climbed toward the figure he could only dimly see.

  14

  The Foanna

  “Ross!” Ashe’s hands gripped his shoulders as if never intending to free him again. “Then you did come through—”

  Ross understood. Gordon Ashe must have feared that he was the only one swept through the time door by that freak chance.

  “And Karara and the dolphins!”

  “Here—now?” In this black bowl of the citadel bay Ashe was only a shadow with voice and hands.

  “No, out with the Rover cruisers. Ashe, do you know the Baldies are on Hawaika? They’ve organized this whole thing—the attack here—trouble all over. Right now they have one of their subs out there. That’s what cut those cutters to pieces. Five days ago five of them wiped out a whole Rover fairing, just five of them!”

  “Gordoon.” Unlike the hissing speech of the Hawaikans, this new voice made a singing, lilting call of Ashe’s name. “This is your swordsman in truth?” Another shadow drew near them, and Ross saw the flutter of cloak edge.

  “This is my friend.” There was a tone of correction in Ashe’s reply. “Ross, this is the Guardian of the sea gate.”

  “And you come,” the Foanna continued, “with those who gather to feast at the Shadow’s table. But your Rovers will find little loot to their liking—”

  “No.” Ross hesitated. How did one address the Foanna? He had claimed equality with Torgul. But that approach was not the proper one here; instinct told him that. He fell back on the complete truth uttered simply. “We took three of the Baldy killers. From them we learned they move to wipe out the Foanna first. For you,” he addressed himself to the cloaked shape, “they believe to be a threat. We heard that they urged the Wreckers to this attack and so—”

  “And so the Rovers come, but not to loot? Then they are something new among their kind.” The Foanna’s reply was as chill as the sea bay’s water.

  “Loot does not summon men who want a blood price for their dead kin!” Ross retorted.

  “No, and the Rovers are believers in the balance of hurt against hurt,” the Foanna conceded. “Do they also believe in the balance of aid against aid? Now that is a thought upon which depends much. Gordoon, it would seem that we may not take to our ships. So let us return to council.”

  Ashe’s hand was on Ross’s arm guiding him through the murk. Though the fog which had choked the bay had vanished, thick darkness remained and Ross noted that even the fires and flares were dimmed and fewer. Then they were in a passage where a very faint light clung to the walls.

  Robed Foanna, three of them, moved ahead with that particular gliding progress. Then Ashe and Ross, and bringing up the rear, a dozen of the mailed guards. The passageway became a ramp.
Ross glanced at Ashe. Like the Foanna, the Terran Agent wore a cloak of gray, but his did not shift color from time to time as did those of the Hawaikan enigmas. And now Gordon shoved back its folds, revealing supple body armor.

  Questions gathered in Ross. He wanted to know—needed desperately to know—Ashe’s standing with the Foanna. What had happened to raise Gordon from the status of captive in Zahur’s hold to familiar companionship with the most dreaded race on this planet?

  The ramp’s head faced blank wall with a sharp-angled turn to the right of a narrower passage. One of the Foanna made a slight sign to the guards, who turned with drilled precision to march off along the passage. Now the other Foanna held out their wands.

  What a moment earlier had been unbroken surface showed an opening. The change had been so instantaneous that Ross had not seen any movement at all.

  Beyond that door they passed from one world to another. Ross’s senses, already acutely alert to his surroundings, could not supply him with any reason by sight, sound, or smell for his firm conviction that this hold was alien as neither the Wrecker castle nor the Rover ships had been. Surely the Foanna were not the same race, perhaps not even the same species as the other native Hawaikans.

  Those robes which he had seen both silver gray and dark blue, now faded, pearled, thinned, until each of the three still gliding before him were opalescent columns without definite form.

  Ashe’s grasp fell on Ross’s arm once more, and his whisper reached the younger man thinly. “They are mistresses of illusion. Be prepared not to believe all that you see.”

  Mistresses—Ross caught that first. Women, or at least female then. Illusion, yes, already he was convinced that here his eyes could play tricks on him. He could hardly determine what was robe, what was wall, or if more than shades of shades swept before him.

  Another blank wall, then an opening, and flowing through it to touch him such a wave of alienness that Ross felt he was buffeted by a storm wind. Yet as he hesitated before it, reluctant in spite of Ashe’s hold to go ahead, he also knew that this did not carry with it the cold hostility he had known while facing the Baldies. Alien—yes. Inimical to his kind—no.

  “You are right, younger brother.”

  Spoken those words—or forming in his mind?

  Ross was in a place which was sheer wonder. Under his feet dark blue—the blue of a Terran sky at dusk—caught up in it twinkling points of light as if he strode, not equal with stars, but above them! Walls—were there any walls here? Or shifting, swaying blue curtains on which silvery lines ran to form symbols and words which some bemused part of his brain almost understood, but not quite.

  Constant motion, no quiet, until he came to a place where those swaying curtains were stilled, where he no longer strode above the sky but on soft surface, a mat of gray living sod where his steps released a spicy fragrance. And there he really saw the Foanna for the first time.

  Where had their cloaks gone? Had they tossed them away during that walk or drift across this amazing room, or had the substance which had formed those coverings flowed away by itself? As Ross looked at the three in wonder he knew that he was seeing them as not even their servants and guards ever viewed them. And yet was he seeing them as they really were or as they wished him to see them?

  “As we are, younger brother, as we are!” Again an answer which Ross was not sure was thought or speech.

  In form they were humanoid, and they were undoubtedly women. The muffling cloaks gone, they wore sleeveless garments of silver which were girded at the waist with belts of blue gems. Only in their hair and their eyes did they betray alien blood. For the hair which flowed and wove about them, cascading down shoulders, rippling about their arms, was silver, too, and it swirled, moved as if it had a separate life of its own. While their eyes….Ross looked into those golden eyes and was lost for seconds until panic awoke in him, forcing him after sharp struggle to look away.

  Laughter? No, he had not heard laughter. But a sense of amusement tinged with respect came to him.

  “You are very right, Gordoon. This one is also of your kind. He is not witches’ meat.” Ross caught the distaste, the kind of haunting unhappiness which colored those words, remnants of an old hurt.

  “These are the Foanna,” Ashe’s voice broke more of the spell. “The Lady Ynlan, The Lady Yngram, the Lady Ynvalda.”

  The Foanna—these three only?

  She whom Ashe had named Ynlan, whose eyes had entrapped and almost held what was Ross Murdock, made a small gesture with her ivory hand. And in that gesture as well as in the words witches’ meat the Terran read the unhappiness which was as much a part of this room as the rest of its mystery.

  “The Foanna are now but three. They have been only three for many weary years, oh man from another world and time. And soon, if these enemies have their way, they will not be three—but none!”

  “But—” Ross was still startled. He knew from Loketh that the Wreckers had deemed the Foanna few in number, an old and dying race. But that there were only three women left was hard to believe.

  The response to his unspoken wonder came clear and determined. “We may be but three; however, our power remains. And sometimes power distilled by time becomes the stronger. Now it would seem that time is no longer our servant but perhaps among our enemies. So tell us this tale of yours as to why the Rovers would make one with the Foanna—tell us all, younger brother!”

  Ross reported what he had seen, what Tino-rau and Taua had learned from the prisoners taken at Kyn Add. And when he had finished, the three Foanna stood very still, their hands clasped one to the other. Though they were only an arm’s distance from him, Ross had the feeling they had withdrawn from his time and world.

  So complete was their withdrawal that he dared to ask Ashe one of the many questions which had been boiling inside him.

  “Who are they?” But Ross knew he really meant: What are they?

  Gordon Ashe shook his head. “I don’t really know—the last of a very old race which possesses powers and knowledge different from any we have believed in for centuries. We have heard of witches. In the modern day we discount the legends about them. The Foanna bring those legends alive. And I promise you this—if they turn those powers loose”—he paused—“it will be such a war as this world, perhaps any world has never seen!”

  “That is so.” The Foanna had returned from the place to which they had withdrawn. “And this is also the truth or one face of the truth. The Rovers are right in their belief that we have kept some measure of balance between one form of change and another on this world. If we were as many as we once were, then against us these invaders could not move at all. But we are three only and also—do we have the right to evoke disaster which will strike not only the enemy but perhaps recoil upon the innocent? There has been enough death here already. And those who are our servants shall no longer be asked to face battle to keep an empty shell inviolate. We would see with our own eyes these invaders, probe what they would do. There is ever change in life, and if a pattern grows too set, then the race caught in it may wither and die. Maybe our pattern has been too long in its old design. We shall make no decision until we see in whose hands the future may rest.”

  Against such finality of argument there was no appeal. These could not be influenced by words.

  “Gordoon, there is much to be done. Do you take with you this younger brother and see to his needs. When all is in readiness we shall come.”

  One minute Ross had been standing on the carpet of living moss. Then…he was in a more normal room with four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and light which came from rods set in the corners. He gasped.

  “Stunned me, too, the first time they put me through it,” he heard Ashe say. “Here, get some of this inside you, it’ll steady your head.”

  There was a cup in his hand, a beautifully carved, rose-red container shaped in the form of a flower. Somehow Ros
s brought it to his lips with shaking hands, gulped down a good third of its contents. The liquid was a mixture of tart and sweet, cooling his mouth and throat, but warming as it went down, and that glow spread through him.

  “What—how did they do that?” he demanded.

  Ashe shrugged. “How do they do the hundred and one things I have seen happen here? We’ve been teleported. How it’s done I don’t know any more than I did the first time it happened. Simply a part of Foanna ‘magic’ as far as spectators are concerned.” He sat down on a stool, his long legs stretched out before him. “Other worlds, other ways—even if they are confounded queer ones. As far as I know, there’s no reason for their power to work, but it does. Now, have you seen the time gate? Is it in working order?”

  Ross put down the now empty cup and sat down opposite Ashe. As concisely as he could, he outlined the situation with a quick résumé of all that had happened to him, Karara, and the dolphins since they had been sucked through the gate. Ashe asked no questions, but his expression was that of the Agent Ross had known, evaluating and listing all the younger man had to report. When the other was through he said only two words:

  “No return.”

  So much had happened in so short a time that Ross’s initial shock at the destruction of the gate had faded, been well overlaid by all the demands made upon his resources, skill, and strength. Even now, the fact Ashe voiced seemed of little consequence balanced against the struggle in progress.

  “Ashe—” Ross rubbed his hands up and down his arms, brushing away grains of sand, “remember those pylons with the empty seacoast behind them? Does that mean the Baldies are going to win?”

  “I don’t know. No one has ever tried to change the course of history. Maybe it is impossible even if we dared to try.” Ashe was on his feet again, pacing back and forth.

  “Try what, Gordoon?”

  Ross jerked around, Ashe halted. One of the Foanna stood there, her hair playing about her shoulders as if some breeze felt only by her stirred those long strands.