Flight in Yiktor ft-3

by Andre Norton

  He sat as upright as he could, his back awakening into the same ache as had kept him company for the past few days, as he strove to get to his feet under that window which was too high for him to see from. Toggor – Toggor was suddenly afraid.

  He was – he was above ground, with no strong hold on anything – being whirled through the air in a manner over which he had no control – and he was crying out to Farree for help and comfort – to be released.

  Had he been picked up by someone of the Guild guard? No, this severe fear came not from being handled but rather from being not handled, swung along in an open space where there were no good clawholds for safety's sake.

  In the air? Had he been tossed? No, Farree could not feel that he was so helpless as he would have been had he been flung, say, over one of the ruinous walls. In the air, yet not thrown.

  There was a whirling of hazy sight and then —

  Above in that single window there was a shadowing. A bird – or at least a flying thing with feathers – had lighted on the stone sill. It carried a squirming object fastened to a cord about its neck and now it dipped its head and that cord slipped off. Farree was beneath the window, his hands upraised, and with a desperate snatch he caught the smux as it fell toward him.

  There was a net about Toggor which Farree swiftly peeled away. Once free, the smux caught his shirt front and swiftly made his way to his favorite perch, inside the collar, his stalk eyes extended to their farthest level for sight.

  Farree tried to reach the smux with thought send but all he received was a breathless, sickening sensation of being swung through the air. Toggor had not yet recovered from his journey. But there must have been some overwhelming reason for the smux to have been sent to this prison, and Farree knew that it might hinge upon a space of time, something to be done as soon as possible.

  There was no way out of here except the window, and the flying creature, having delivered its burden, was gone.

  The hunchback squatted down again in the corner of the room from which he had best seen the door, and carefully detached Toggor's hold, lifting the smux on his two palms so that the eyes swung and arose on level with his own. Once more he attempted to establish mind contact.

  And this time he achieved a hazy impression of the Lady Maelen. Also something else – that Toggor was rebelling against some task which had been laid upon him. Exploration of this place? Perhaps the rough stone outside the window would provide clawholds either up or down. Farree thought carefully and then pictured the vermin of the walls which he had contacted earlier.

  Immediately Toggor's attention was caught and riveted upon that suggestion. As he had routed out his prey back at the inn in the Limits, so was he ready to try the same here. But Farree was loath to let the smux go. Though he had touched minds – or rather scratched minds – with that runner in the wallways, he had no idea of its size or natural armament. It might prove too much for the smux.

  It was plain at once that the smux did not agree with him.

  A hunter's lust for the game welled up to possess most of Toggor's mind.

  Once more Farree crawled over to stand beneath the window, but the smux did, not loose his hold on the shirt. It was plain that he had no thought of taking that way again. Then how? There were no cracks in the walls of this tower wide enough to take the smux, and the door fitted tightly to the floor so that every time it was opened it rasped harshly in protest.

  Just as Farree thought of that, the portal to his cell did open and once more the guard appeared, but did not venture any farther than the threshold. Toggor moved with the flashing speed he could show upon occasion and was into the shirt, well hidden, before the door was wide open.

  Though the man held a stunner he had brought no food, only beckoned to Farree to come to him, and the hunchback obeyed. He foresaw another interview with the Commander and perhaps worse to come. Somewhere along their path to that questioning he must loose the smux. Thus he shambled slowly, his head bent forward as one who had been broken in spirit and planned nothing.

  The guard waved him on to descend the crumbling stair, and down this he went. He was only too aware of the scrambling Toggor was doing in the shirt and hoped with all his might that his guard would not see the movement.

  Luckily the inside of this place was dusky enough to be full of shadows, which just now were comforting and promising. He felt the smux thrusting its way into his sleeve and allowed his arm to dangle, refusing to wince as the clawed feet dug into his flesh for the other's descent.

  They had reached the ground floor, and the guard said in trader tongue, "Wait, you!"

  As if he were weak and tired, Farree leaned back against the wall, holding the smux-supporting arm straight down. The claws moved from one hold to another. Farree could only hope that there was no trace of venom leakage from any of those sharp tips. Then he felt Toggor loose all contact and felt a soft plop against his leg in the shadows – the smux was on the move.

  Farree dare not watch that quick scuttle into the greater dark. His guard was raising his free wrist to his lips and reporting in code into a disc banded there. A moment later he waved the hunchback on again and Farree had to go, leaving Toggor to follow his own desires, not even having any chance to impress on the smux what was necessary. But perhaps those who had sent him had already done that.

  Out of the door they went. The sunlight was so great a burst of glare in this parched land that Farree had to shade his eyes after the murk of the tower room.

  "On with you, Dung." The barrel of the stunner struck the hump hard and Farree had to bite his lips to keep from screaming. The tenderness of the lump which burdened him had been growing more with each day. He wondered if that meant some ill he did not understand. Now he staggered a step or two before he could control the wave of pain and walk as best he might in the direction the guard pointed him.

  The tower stood alone, not connected with the other ruins about it. Most of the buildings were roofless, had even lost half a story to time and wind and storm. Only the one he had visited before was intact. There were some men lounging by its door. Five he counted. But there was no way for him to assess the full number of the enemy sheltering here.

  "Here comes the luck piece, Jat!" Two of the lounging men were playing pitch and toss with black and white counters. He who spoke leaned forward as Farree approached, holding out a stiff finger.

  The hunchback longed to dodge that touch now but knew deep within him that it would be best to keep hidden the fact that his back burden was so tender. They might well make a torturous use of such knowledge. So he suffered the slap of those fingers stoically and tried not to show any pain.

  "Luck for all of us if we need it," one of the onlookers commented. "And need it we might." j

  "Your lips are too loose, Deit," commented Farree's guard. "Better not let the Veep hear you."

  "I signed on for service, not sitting around in rock piles – we all did."

  "We all did," agreed the guard, "and you don't go back on a sign-up. Not with him in there – " He gestured with an outstretched thumb at the door just behind him.

  "Get on with you!" Once more that punishing jab, but this time high on his arm, and that was as nothing. Farree went inside the building. Again he was surprised at the carpeting, the hangings on the wall, the various bits of a less austere life which the Veep of this company had carried for his own comfort.

  For the second time there were the two at the table: the man in uniform and he who was so fat he bulged in sections out of his chair. He was intent upon a small picture corn; the Commander was more at ease, smoking a spice stick, the scented air of which fought with the mustiness of the ancient room.

  Neither of the men paid any attention to the entrance of Farree. He and his guard stood together back by the wall until the fat man gave an impatient push to the viewer before him.

  "There is no silencer according to the reading, but this will not reach into that valley."

  "Nor will it ever," commente
d his companion. "These Thassa have their own protections – "

  The fat man pouted petulantly. "What kind of learning can defeat a far viewer?" He put thumb and forefinger together and clicked them against the silent screen.

  "An efficient one it would seem." The Commander drew deeply on the spice stick and then expelled a puff of bluish smoke. "Is that not so, DUNG!" His voice lost all its calm laziness and snapped as a leader might snap an order and expect to be instantly obeyed.

  Farree fought to remain steady. He had feared and hated Russtif but that was nothing to the emotion this man raised in him. He could feel the threat behind those words as if a whip had been snapped in his direction and flaked a scrap of skin from his cheek.

  "I do not know what the Thassa can do." He offered the truth but was afraid that it would not be accepted.

  "Yet you have traveled with them, you have gone into their forbidden valley. And they do not allow that to any they do not believe is one with them. Or are you so weak and poor a specimen of living thing that they treat you as they would one of their 'little ones' – those beasts they gather about them, changing places with them? Which are you, Dung, man or beast? Perhaps they have already worked their will upon you and in truth you might have claws and fangs. Yet I do not believe that – not yet."

  The fat man pushed aside the viewer with one hand and looked also at Farree.

  "Get to the truth," he said sulkily. "Verify him!"

  Farree knew what he meant, and he had the greatest need of holding on to himself, not to shiver and cry out. They meant to use upon him one of the enforcing machines which spacers told so many tales about. Within the influence of that he could hold back nothing that these two wanted. They need only ask their questions, and the machine would at once betray and subvert any desire of his to keep information hidden.

  "Very well. It will be illuminating at least. Why do the Thassa want you, Dung? You are a sorry specimen. But perhaps for those who deal intimately with animals your ugliness does not matter. We shall see."

  The Veep made a gesture with one hand, and before Farree could move the guard beside him grabbed a handhold on his shirt where it hunched across his tender hump, bringing, in spite of all effort, a murmur at the pain. He was so swung to the right and pushed down on the seat of a chair which another of the spacer guards had jerked forward.

  One of them held his head cruelly at a backward angle while another one forced a silvery band well down on his forehead and into his tangle of black hair. Wires ran from this up into the space overhead. He could not tilt his head far enough back to see where they ended. But now he was a prisoner to a power he feared more and more as his helplessness became so clear.

  "What is your name?"

  The fat man was the questioner.

  "Farree."

  "Farree?" There was a slight frown on the Commander's face as if he were trying to capture a small thread of memory.

  "What are you?"

  "A hunchback." He made a true answer, trying to see if he could so limit their knowledge gained from him.

  "And what else?" The Commander leaned a little forward on the table. He pointed his smoke stick straight at Farree as if he could use it at his wish as a laser to send the other into smoking refuse.

  "Farree." That was also true. He held to the thought that if he limited any answer to the exact question he might not be so great a traitor after all.

  "You were born in the Limits?"

  "I do not know." Again the truth, and they could nor reach behind that for something he did not know himself.

  "A man knows where he is born, unless he is an idiot," puffed the fat man. "We do not believe you are an idiot."

  "Why do you say you do not know?" The Commander showed none of the irritation of the other, but he was the more dangerous of the two and Farree had known that from the beginning.

  "I cannot remember."

  "You were wiped?" The Commander no longer stared at him so intently, but was looking over his head at whatever there betrayed his speech as true or false.

  Wiped – a memory erased for some reason. Was that the truth which he had not faced during all the seasons in the Limits?

  "I do not know."

  "What do you first remember?" The Commander had back his gentle, ruthless voice.

  Because he dared not try any tricks with the truth this time, Farree spoke of that which had been in his dream – the death of Lanti and his own escape into the jungle of the Limits.

  Chapter 11.

  Lanti." Again the questioner repeated the name. He looked to the fat man who was still running his fingers around the edge of the visa-screen. That other shrugged.

  "Who knows of the actions of one man among millions?"

  "He had a purpose – "

  "Do not we all unless we are being wiped into nothings? A kidnapping?"

  "How could this" – the Commander indicated Farree – "be supposed to be anything worth the worry or a copper nick in any market, Sulve? Unless he knows something. This bit of something which was taken from Lanti – or which at least he knew about – what was it?"

  "I do not know."

  "You do not know!" parroted Sulve in his high voice. "There seems to be very little that you do know, doesn't there? Why did Vorlund and the woman take you with them?"

  Why had they? Because he had touched minds with the smux? But he must keep Toggor out of this if it were possible.

  "Russtif dealt in wild creatures, they were hunting such, and they discovered I could mind touch with some of them."

  "Thassa reason right enough – perhaps." The Commander scratched a thumbnail across his chin. "It is known that the woman once showed trained beasts – and doubtless changed bodies with them from time to time as she did on Sehkmet."

  Sulve's fat hands were suddenly still. "This one?" he jerked his fat-rolled chin toward Farree.

  "No, the inquirer would have recorded that. Did they promise you a new body, a furred one. Dung?"

  "No."

  "But you dealt with the animals, that is so? And still you are human to the eighth – " The Commander's eyes had traveled from Farree's face to a point hanging above him – perhaps the indicator of this truth machine.

  Human to the eighth point, Farree heard that clearly enough. Not human to the tenth and full! He looked down at his claw-thin hands and the greenish skin which covered them. Was he then no freak of human kind, but something else – something which was perhaps to all of these as Yazz and Toggor were to him? He considered that and shivered. Perhaps he was not so different from Yazz and Bojor as far as the Thassa were concerned after all.

  He tried to straighten a little and the burden on his shoulders flashed a thrill of pain through him. Now the very question they had asked him became all important: Who WAS he?

  "Why did they return to Yiktor? Was not the woman in exile?" Sulve took up the questioning.

  "I do not know." The truth, always the truth. The Lord-One Krip had told him, but he had not yet heard it from the Lady herself.

  Both of the men were staring at the point above his head now and a slight frown had returned to the Commander's face.

  "What said they of Sehkmet then?" he asked abruptly.

  "That they had helped to find a place of the Forerunners – a great treasure – and there were Guild men there who were defeated."

  "Nothing more?"

  "Nothing." Farree made quick reply.

  "Ah." The Commander picked up a tube lying on the table before him, setting aside the smoke stick. He pointed it at Farree and the hunchback gave a cry he could not smother as a pain like a flow of skin-burning acid struck him full on.

  "What said they of Sehkmet and this time the truth – "

  "Only that the Lady Maelen is now wearing a body found there – that she defeated something strange and not of flesh and blood to claim it." Farree could not see that that was of any importance, but it was the rest of the truth about the past – something which these two might well know and so b
e able to check his word.

  "You see, you can remember when you are prodded," the Commander commented. "Play no more games with me. Did this Maelen and Vorlund return here to gather a force to search elsewhere, hoping or knowing that such luck would continue?''

  "I do not know. There were three rings and power – "

  "We all know of the blathering about the three rings, Dung. And the Thassa have their own power. But this Maelen possesses something else, does she not?"

  He was turning that rod of torment around in his fingers, playing with it as he divided his glances between Farree and what was overhead.

  "I do not know." Farree tried to brace himself for another blast of that body-shaking pain. The frown was plainer on the Commander's face.

  "What you know, it seems, is very little if at all what is needed. Let us take up the matter of Lanti."

  For a moment it looked as if Sulve was going to protest, but if he was not in accord with his partner he did not voice any objection.

  "Who was Lanti?"

  Once more Farree told the story of his first memory – of the spacer who had died over a spilled drink and given him freedom of a sort.

  The Commander stubbed out his smoke stick. "In other words. Dung, you know little or nothing which is of service to us. Why should we keep you alive?"

  Farree made no attempt to answer that. He had in him still that core of belief which had not let him whine in the Limits and which, even in spite of the pain, kept him from crying out here. Human to the eighth point only was he? Then he would prove that his stock, whatever it might be, had some rags of courage.

  Sulve tapped those rolls of fat which were his fingers on the edge of the viewer. "He is not worth two copper units – not even one of inguaw wood."

  "Perhaps not in himself. But as bait – yes, as bait. They have been sending over those flying eyes of theirs. There may be some merit in keeping him a while longer."

  He clicked his fingers, and the same guard who had forced the head circlet on Farree came to yank it off, his hair pulled painfully in the process.