A hail of pellets answered.
“But we are here to help you!” Spacebread shouted from the alcove.
A pellet glanced off the wall above her head. The firer laughed. Spacebread hunched closer to the wall and glared at Klimmit. “Well, you’re the one who wanted to save everybody. Do something.”
The figlet turned his cryo-pistol down to its lowest power and edged forward. “It’s true!” he called. “We came in another spaceship.”
The pellet firer bellowed an eloquent curse at them and shot again.
Something clicked into place in Klimmit’s mind at that moment. In the excitement, he had not been listening to the voice or its language. But now he knew who was emptying the ship of slavers, and from what far planet the warrior hailed. Before Spacebread could stop him, Klimmit dashed into the doorway.
“Uncle Gorsook!” he squealed. “It’s me! Klimmit BarKloof!”
A pause, then came a roar of recognition, and a figure hauled itself painfully from behind a pipe. Spacebread stood in stunned silence as the two figlets embraced. The older one, gnarled and brown and with one arm a twisted ruin, thumped Klimmit on the back with his pellet gun. But his glittering eye never left Spacebread.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” Klimmit chattered, overflowing with joy. “I’ve been thinking of you—we were just on our way to Kesterole when we found this ship. It must have been coming from there. I should have known it was a figlet warrior who had ended so many Scarvian careers.” Then he noticed his uncle’s gaze and added hastily, “Oh, Uncle Gorsook, this is my dear friend Spacebread. She bought me a long time ago and set me free.”
Spacebread nodded in acknowledgement; but before she could speak, Klimmit was off again, telling his uncle the history of the last five years in ragged spurts. He paused only to stare in disbelief every minute or so at his old relative.
Then the slave ship rocked suddenly, with a little shiver, and they remembered where they were. The lifeboat had blasted away from the hull. The crew had not waited for their commander.
Gorsook sagged against the bulkhead as though his strength had left with his enemies. “Hargh!” he exclaimed. “Good riddance to the beasts! Captured me near two days ago, Klimmi. Caught us between villages. Surprised me and blasted my side this way when I fought. Nasty creatures! But I was the only figlet they got this trip, and they lost nearly half their damned party in the bargain—I saw the other Warriors chasing ‘em into the bush as I was taken.”
“No wonder they seldom attack Kesterole,” Spacebread said.
Gorsook snorted. “They haven’t plagued us since they got you, Klimmit. But, by the Green, I paid ‘em back! There were few guards on us since they had only half a crew. I shorted the lock on my cell and found a way to block a coolant line. Pressure backed up, and she blew just as we popped into this wilderness between worlds. Sure threw a scare into the birdies, ha!” He winced in pain, though it was well hidden.
Klimmit laughed. Spacebread had not seen him so happy and youthful in a long time. She hated to remind him of their ship and Niral waiting, frozen on the anchor beam.
Wounded as he was, Gorsook insisted on traveling without their help as they passed through the ship releasing slaves. Many tried to kiss the gruff old figlet, or hail him as their savior, but he snorted and shook them away.
Like a vast and evil smelling cavern, the main hold stretched around them. There, rank after rank of cages held the results of many Scarvian raids on hundreds of worlds. Spacebread snarled at the evil of it all. Klimmit moaned, reliving the dark days of his own captivity. Spacebread turned to comfort him, but found his uncle already there supporting the figlet’s courage.
The slaves in the main hold knew of Gorsook, too. They clustered about him in a dismal mass, seeking protection. And it was only his stern commands that prevented a riot when Spacebread opened the ship’s food supplies to them. Dozens of species, though bent and groaning with hunger, obeyed his gritty voice without understanding his words. The old figlet had much power in their eyes, for it was his name they had whispered in the long hours the ship lay crippled in the betweeness. And when the rattling gunfire came, his was the name that gave hope.
When they were fed and somewhat recovered from the shock of sudden freedom, Spacebread asked if any knew how to pilot a space ship. A hedgehog creature from Betelgeuse stepped forward unsurely. He had been an apprentice pilot once. After Spacebread set all the instruments on the bridge correctly and told him what to do, she and the two figlets climbed back into the control pod and detached.
“Look out for a lifeboat full of harpies,” Spacebread called to Votal as soon as they were aboard.
“Already dispatched, milady,” the computer answered.
She revolved the pod to show them that the Scarvian lifeboat was now a cinder orbiting her ship. Little chunks of it formed a ring.
“They tried to burn an entrance into the pod bay,” Votal commented. “I had to let them have it.”
“Good machine!” Gorsook chortled as he let Klimmit bind up his mauled right side.
Spacebread chuckled, feeling somewhat unnecessary. She congratulated Votal, not even warning the computer about independent decisions. Then, looking at Klimmit, she understood why she had been sad since leaving Kiloo, why even the promised adventure in the betweeness had failed to cheer her. In a short time the figlet would be back with his people. Indeed, now that they had found Gorsook, he seemed not to notice that Spacebread existed. The two chattered and laughed about familiar events and folk. She knew then what she was afraid of: that when her ship finally left Kesterole, Klimmit would not be on it.
The control pod clicked into its sockets. The metal seal slid away to reveal Niral kneeling on the floor chanting madly.
Gorsook grunted. “A strange pair you travel with, Klimmi.”
The harpies trying to burn into the ship must have frightened the priest witless, Spacebread realized. The Korliss slowly opened his thick eyelids, a sigh escaping him when he saw it was them.
“It appears we have all survived,” he said.
He looked so grim and frightened that Spacebread just had to laugh. “Yes,” she said. “Every one of us.”
She withdrew the ship’s weapons nodes while Klimmit introduced the Korliss to his uncle and found a nest to strap Gorsook into. Spacebread busily rigged the ship for the jump through the other side of the star-well.
They waited patiently to see if the Scarvian ship could make the jump without assistance. The great antique bulk fired many-colored emergency flares in salute to its rescuers. Then the crippled ship wobbled as it locked in on its anchor probe and disappeared in a white flash. A moment later Spacebread’s ship continued its journey in the opposite direction.
Then there was only the dazzling betweeness, shimmering and shifting outside time, a spaceless doorway between worlds.
In the physical universe, hours passed, but it was only seconds in the gray void before a new anchor beam swept through from the direction of Marghool. It twisted, hunting for traces of a ship. At last it located the direction Spacebread had taken, the exit pointing to Kesterole. The new beam followed, reaching through and locking itself into the space beyond, ready to guide its own ship in pursuit.
[5]
Homecoming
THE DAWN was green on Kesterole. Its sun, named Droom, was a greenish star, and as it rose above a far tumble of silhouetted trees, it sliced bright bands of pale green through the air. Spacebread stirred the campfire with a stick and leaned back into her blankets. A nip was in the air, and it made her feel warmer to smell the curling smoke, even through the nose filters aliens had to wear. She remembered how strange Klimmit had looked with only his utility collar on when they had first landed and he had removed the helmet to breathe his native air. The whole planet was aromatic, the winds carrying a pungent flavor of spices, pleasant even though prolonged exposure for alien lungs might do damage. She smiled. It was a good world. Perhaps she would linger here for a while and watc
h the figlet children play in the grass.
She silently watched the bundles that were her companions stir in sleep. Klimmit slept the sleep of delight, home at last. Gorsook, whom Spacebread had learned to think of as a thunderous, abrasive, and kindhearted relative, slept fitfully on his side. She knew that he was in constant pain, despite the salves that Klimmit had plied him with. Niral lay away from the rest, curled in a tight leggy ball. He stirred occasionally as fearful dreams tortured his sleep.
Spacebread had had to leave her ship in Outaire, Kesterole’s single spaceport, under the watchful eye of the authorities, but she carried her Foldover bag with her. And her Thorian sword hung from the saddle of the ion-horse she had rented in Outaire for the trip, though she seldom thought of it. This world seemed too beautiful and too innocent for alien plots. She was almost glad law prevented rocket travel on the surface.
They had seen the topmost turrets of one of the figlet cities at the beginning of their journey, gleaming smoothly above a distant forest. It was in the permanent cities that the government and priesthood were housed, deep in the boles of great hive-like trees. And here too the young figlets were sent for their education in the ways of the galaxy, technology, and law. But the people of the planet, the tribal figlets, still clung to the old forms of living. They had adapted to modern changes, but had also adapted the changes to their nomad life, traveling the wide and grassy plains. They paid little attention to the cities and never visited them.
The cities were hidden in the huge forests of Kesterole and were a part of them, as if they had grown out of the ground. Crisscrossing the broad plains were hidden highways connecting various cities, rifts and ridges of narrow jungle that followed underground veins of nutrients in lacework patterns. Visitors could travel through the growth without detection.
Soon Droom was above the horizon clouds, and the plain around Spacebread began acquiring detail. Birds were awakening noisily from their grass nests, darting after insects. She stood and stretched to her limit, curling her tail tightly, then dressed in a flowing blue cape with the Foldover bag strapped beneath it, soft leather boots, and her belt.
She turned at a noise to find Klimmit hovering by her side. His eyes were on the far horizon where his native star burned as it had always burned for him. She smiled at him, but he did not see.
“Home,” he said, as though the word was unfamiliar. “I return to find that I have forgotten a hundred different details of its beauty. I wonder what new things I will remember when we reach the village? Ah, Spacebread, I feel as if I have lost my youth.”
“I too was captured by the stars early,” she reminded him. “I know the feeling. It seems you will never again experience the security of a home, once you have lost it. But you are different, Klimmit. You have returned to your nest as I never did. I quite envy you. You are to have your hopes realized. You will be made a Warrior.”
Klimmit looked troubled. “If they believe our story. There must be proof of my worthiness, testimony from two witnesses.”
“Then there is no worry,” she comforted. “For I have seen you grow from a quivering child, much like poor Niral there, to a brave and daring adolescent. I am quite convinced of your worth.”
A moan sounded behind them. Niral held out two hands as though to prevent some threat, then curled again, the dreaming danger past.
“I wish he had not begged to come,” she commented.
“Oh, but he can be a witness,” Klimmit said quickly. “He saw me fight with the drones. Besides, I pity him, and he draws so much comfort from your protection.”
Spacebread frowned. “Too much, I fear. He has far more strength than he himself realizes. Still, I could not leave him to wait at Outaire for an entire week for a passenger vessel. He would have died from fear alone. If Kesterole were not so discouraging of tourists, there would be a daily flight.”
Klimmit chuckled. “Figlets don’t care much for strangers, it’s true. Nor for space travel. I am an exception, it seems.”
“You are exceptional,” she added.
Klimmit smiled dreamily. “The veldt seems no different from the last time I saw it. Beautiful, familiar, I can imagine I never left. But somehow … I don’t know, it seems not the same.”
“It is you that has changed,” Spacebread said softly. But Klimmit appeared not to hear her. Uncle Gorsook had awakened.
“Hargh!” Gorsook yawned. He rolled over and stretched his good arm, wincing, then blinked at the horizon. “Droomrise on the veldt! You can take all the other suns in the galaxy and dump them in a dust-lane. Burn the rockets too. I’ll stay here.”
After Spacebread and Niral had breakfasted on the remnants of a small burrowing animal she had killed the day before, the four set off once more. Gorsook and Klimmit sailed ahead, humming faintly, while Spacebread rode the slower ion-horse. It was little more than a particle projector with handlebars, traveling by the same means the figlets did naturally. Niral came behind, eyes shut, suspended just above the grass by his Ability.
It was the same sort of day the first had been, sunny and lazy. Occasionally they spotted a purple rain cloud on the horizon, and once the distant flashes of a storm; but the weather of Kesterole was quick in its moods, and they were never threatened. Klimmit and Gorsook passed the time singing the chants of their tribe and yelling stories, few of which Spacebread understood.
In the afternoon they reached a village of hundreds of broad huts. The houses seemed to grow out of the ground, and when Spacebread asked, she found this was indeed the case. They were sheltering trees, whose branches grew downward in a dome and back into the ground, forming a living dwelling. The trees lived only one Droomyear and depleted the soil in that year so that the tribe must move on at the end. New seeds were fired high into the air, where currents blew them across the wide steppes. By secret tracking methods the figlets would then trek to where their new homes had already sprouted and were waiting.
Curious figlets clustered at windows and doorways to stare at their strange visitors.
“Gorsook!” a sturdy figlet called from a doorway and buzzed over to slap the maimed figlet on the back. “We heard you were taken in the Barmootha raid! How came you here, and with aliens?”
Soon there was a crowd of floating figlets listening to Gorsook’s vivid account of his adventures and eyeing Spacebread and Niral warily. When he finished by describing the charred Scarvian lifeboat, the whole village gave a rousing figlet cheer for the two survivors.
“Those bloody birds can’t stand up to a Warrior!” the sturdy figlet hooted.
“But tell me,” Gorsook asked, “what of the rest of the harpies, the ones cut off when the others escaped with me? Have they been captured yet?”
“Nay. They fled into the Sartissa wilderness and disappeared. We offered to drive them toward Barmootha clan and so trap them, but the Barmootha captain, Kordik, has sworn an oath to trap them without outside help. They are hunting still.
“But surely,” Spacebread interrupted, “the police from Dacquar will round them up for you. They have the equipment.”
The sturdy figlet snorted indignantly. “Kordik and his troops can handle a few harpies! We are obligated to inform the police, no more. They come only if we ask.”
The figlets begged them to stay for a while and exchange more stories, but Gorsook refused, slapping a priest away from his bandages. “We should be getting back home. I’d love to be in on the harpy hunt, and Klimmit is anxious to see everyone.”
The rest of the day passed uneventfully though pleasantly. Spacebread was hardly weary when the green sun hid itself behind thick horizon clouds. Gorsook commented that they could probably reach the village by midnight if they continued, but his side was aching badly and he needed rest. They camped in a narrow vale between two wild ridges of vegetation.
After a brief supper Spacebread brought out a lyrtyl from her Foldover bag and played some ballads she knew. Then talk took over.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said t
o Gorsook idly. “The Sanguakkoid figlets are renowned all over the galaxy for their fierceness, as you showed the harpies at the star-well. Yet I have seen no Warriors or sign of war, only farmers tending spice gardens. Why is this?”
Gorsook tapped his nose and winked at Klimmit. “We are sworn not to tell such secrets to offworlders. Half the fun of being a Warrior is the foe’s fear of the unexpected.”
Spacebread nodded, bemused. “But what is there to fight on this peaceful planet?”
Gorsook leaned over the fire. “Many things: Quoths, evil predatory birds, and Gangji worms, who can burrow beneath villages in the night and eat entire households. And there used to be wars among the clans, in the good old days before the government. But now the only intelligent foe we have are the bloody harpies. If you can call them intelligent.”
Klimmit smiled. “I wish that you could see my people in action, mistress. You would know why I value being a Warrior. But the sight of a figlet battle is forbidden to aliens …”
Niral made a grating sound and raised two hands. “Listen!”
Spacebread was ashamed she had not heard it first. Before she could remind herself that she was getting soft, Gorsook had dowsed the fire and she had instinctively drawn her sword.
Drums. So soft they were like the heartbeat of the grass. It was impossible to tell how distant they were. She jumped into a bank of moss where the figlets had taken cover and listened for a direction. The air itself seemed to throb, but she could focus on nothing. The beat quickened. For an instant Spacebread felt a racing twinge of fear. Even Klimmit’s eyes were wide in the dim starlight.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Gorsook snorted. “War party, my lady. Looks like you get to see Warriors in action after all.”
“Figlets? Then it’s safe. They’re on our side.”
Gorsook chuckled. “That depends on who’s stalking whom tonight. Come. Let’s crest that ridge and take a peek. Drums sound that way.”
Born of Flame Page 5
