Perilous Dreams

by Andre Norton

  Her steady reply seemed to have some effect on him. Though he gave her one more punishing shake and uttered an obscenity, he looked ahead to the torches and the half-seen bulk of the ship with calculation in his eyes.

  They made a lengthy detour away from most of the torches, coming up across the open land to the south of the ship. There was a graying in the sky and a hint that dawn might perhaps be not far away. Now that they could see better, it was apparent that the ship was sealed. No hatch opened on its surface, no ramp ran out. The laser in Kas’s hand could not burn their way in, by the method he had opened the gate of the High Castle.

  Apparently the same difficulty presented itself to Kas, for he halted her with a jerk while they were still in the shadows, well away from the line of torches forming a square around the ship. Surveying the scene, they sheltered in a small dip in the ground.

  The torches were no longer held by men, but had been planted in the ground at regular intervals, and they were as large as outsize candles. The colorful mass which had marked the Over-queen and her courtiers on Tamisan’s first visit to the landing field were gone, leaving only a line of guardsmen in a wide encirclement of the sealed ship.

  Why did the spacemen not lift and planet elsewhere, Tamisan wondered. Perhaps the confusion in the last moments she had been on board meant that they could not do so. They had spoken then of a sister ship in orbit above. It would seem that had made no move to aid them, though she had no idea how much time had elapsed since last she had been here.

  Kas turned on her again. “Can you get a message to Starrex?” he demanded.

  “I can try. For what reason?”

  “Have him ask for us to come to him.” Kas had been silent for a moment before replying. Is he so stupid as to believe that I would not give a warning with whatever message I could deliver, or has he precautions against that?

  But can I reach Starrex? She had gone into the secondary dream to make contact with Kas. There was no time for such a move now. She could only use the mental technique for inducing a dream and see what happened thereby. She said as much to Kas now, promising no success.

  “Be about what you can do now!” he told her roughly.

  Tamisan closed her eyes to think of Hawarel as she had seen him last, standing beside her on this very field. She heard a gasp from Kas. Opening her eyes she saw Hawarel, even as he had been then, or rather a pallid copy of him, wavering and indistinct, already beginning to fade, so she spoke in a swift gabble.

  “Say we come from the Queen with a message, that we must see the Captain.”

  The shimmering outline of Hawarel faded into the night. She heard Kas mutter angrily. “What good will that ghost do?”

  “I cannot tell. If he returns to that of which he is a part, he can carry the message. For the rest…” Tamisan shrugged. “I have told you this is no dream I can control. Do you think if it were, we two would stand here in this fashion?”

  His thin lips parted in one of his mirthless grins.

  “You would not, I know, dreamer!”

  His head went from left to right as he slowly surveyed the line of planted torches and the men standing on guard between them. “Do we move closer to this ship, expect them to open to us?”

  “They used a stunner to take us before,” Tamisan warned him. “They might do so again.”

  “Stunner.” He gestured with the laser. Tamisan hoped his answer would not be a headlong attack on the ship with that.

  He used it as a pointer to motion her on toward the torch line. “If they do open up,” he commented, “I shall be warned.”

  Tamisan gathered up the long skirt of her robe. It was torn by rough handling, frayed in strips at the hem where she could trip if she caught those rags between her feet. The rough brush growing knee high about them caught at it so that she stumbled now and again, urged on continually by Kas’s pulling, when he dug his fingers painfully into her already bruised shoulder.

  They reached the torch line. The guards there faced inward to the ship and in this crease of light Tamisan could see that they were all armed with crossbows, not with those of bone which the black-dressed men had earlier worn. Bolts against the might of the ship. The answer seemed laughable, a jesting to delight the simple. Yet the ship lay there and Tamisan could well remember the consternation of those men who had been questioning her within it.

  There was a dark spot on the hull of the ship and a hatch suddenly swung open. She recognized it as a battle hatch, though she had only seen those via tapes.

  “Kas, they are going to fire.” With a laser beam from there they could crisp everything on this field, perhaps clear back to the walls of the High Castle!

  She tried to turn in his grasp, to race back and away, knowing already that such a race was lost before she took the first lunging stride. He held her fast.

  “No muzzle,” he said.

  Tamisan strained to see through the flickering light. Perhaps it was a lightening of the sky which made it clear that there was no muzzle projecting to spew a fiery death across them all. But that was a gunport.

  As quickly as it had appeared, the opening was closed. The ship was again sealed tightly.

  “What?”

  Kas answered her half question, “Either they cannot use it, or else they have thought better of doing so, which means, by either count, we have a chance. Now, stay you here! Or else I shall come looking for you in a manner you shall not relish; never fear that I can find you!” Nothing in Tamisan disputed that.

  She stood; for after all, apart from Kas’s threats, where did she have to go? If she were sighted by any of the guards she might either be returned to prison or dealt with summarily in another fashion. She had to reach Starrex if she were to escape.

  She watched Kas make good use of the interest which riveted the eyes of the guards on the ship. He crept, with more ease than she thought possible for one used to the luxury of the sky towers, behind the nearest man.

  What weapon he used she could not see; it was not the laser. Instead he straightened to his full height behind the unsuspecting guard, reached out an arm and seemed only to touch the stranger on the neck. Immediately the fellow collapsed without a sound, though Kas caught him before he had fallen to the ground and dragged him backward to the slight depression in the field where Tamisan waited.

  “Quick,” Kas ordered, “give me his cloak and helmet.”

  He ripped off his own tunic with its extravagantly padded shoulders, while Tamisan knelt to fumble with a great brooch and free the cloak from the guard. Kas snatched it out of her hands, dragged the rest of it loose from under the limp body, and pulled it around him, taking up the helmet and settling it on his head with a tap. Then he picked up the crossbow.

  “Walk before me,” he told Tamisan. “If they have a field scanner on in the ship I want them to see a prisoner under guard. That may bring them to a parley. It is a thin chance, but our best.”

  He could not guess that it might be a better chance than he hoped, Tamisan knew, since he did not know that she had been once within the ship and the crew might be expecting some such return with a message from the Over-queen. But to walk out boldly past the line of torches, surely Kas’s luck would not hold so well; they would be seen by the other guards before they were a quarter of the way to the ship. But she had no other proposal to offer in exchange.

  This was no adventure such as she had lived through in dreams. She believed that if she died now she died indeed and would not wake unharmed in her own world. Her flesh crawled with a fear which made her mouth go dry and her hands quiver as they held wet upon the folds of her robe. Any second now I will feel the impact of a bolt, hear a shout of discovery, be…

  But still Tamisan tottered forward and heard, with alerted ears, the faint crunch of boots which was Kas behind her. His contempt for a danger which was only too real for her, made her wonder, fleetingly, if he did indeed still believe this a dream she could control, and need not then watch for anyone but her. She could not
summon words to tell him of his woeful mistake.

  So intent was she upon some attack from behind that she was not really conscious of the ship toward which they went, until suddenly she saw another of the ports open and steeled herself to feel the numbing charge of a stunner.

  However, again the attack she feared did not come. The sky was growing lighter, although there was no sign of sunrise. Instead, the first drops of a storm began to fall. Under the onslaught of moisture from lowering clouds, the torches hissed and sputtered, finally flickering out. The gloom was hardly better than twilight.

  They came close enough to the ship to board, when one of the ramps lowered to them, they stood waiting. Tamisan felt the rise of hysterical laughter inside her. What an anticlimax if the ship refuses to acknowledge us! They could not stand here forever and there was no way they could battle a way inside. Kas’s faith in her communication with the ghost of Hawarel seemed too high.

  But even as she was sure that they faced failure, there was a sigh of sound from above them. The port hatch wheeled back into the envelope of the ship’s wall, and a small ramp, hardly more than a steep ladder, swung creaking out, dropped to hit the charred ground not far from them.

  “Go!” Kas prodded her forward.

  With a shrug, Tamisan went. She found it hard to climb with the heavy, frayed skirts dragging her back. But by using her hands to pull along the single rail of the ramp, she made progress. Why had not the rest of the guards along that watching line of torches moved? Had it been that Kas’s disguise had indeed deceived them, and they thought that Tamisan had been sent under orders to parley a second time with the ship’s people?

  She was nearly at the hatch now, could see the suited men waiting in the shadows above. They had tanglers ready to fire, prepared to spin the webs to enmesh them both as easily handled prisoners. But before those slimy strands writhed forth to touch (patterned as they were to seek flesh to anchor) both the waiting spacemen jerked right and left, clutched with already dead hands at the breasts of charred tunics from which arose small, deadly spirals of smoke.

  They had expected a guard armed with a bow; they had met Kas’s laser, to the same undoing as the guardsmen at the castle. Kas’s shoulder in the middle of her, back sent her sprawling, to land half over the bodies of the two who had awaited them.

  She heard a scuffle, was kicked and rolled aside, fighting the folds of her own long skirt, trying to get out of the confines of the hatch pocket. Somehow, on her hands and knees, she made it forward, since she could not retreat. Now she fetched up against the wall of a corridor and managed to pull around to face the end of the fight.

  The two guards lay dead. But Kas held the laser on a third man. Now, without glancing around, he gave an order which she mechanically obeyed.

  “The tangler, here!”

  Still on her hands and knees, Tamisan crawled far enough back into the hatch compartment to grip one of those weapons. The second she eyed with awakening need for some protection herself, but Kas did not give her time to reach it.

  “Give it to me.”

  Still holding the laser pointed steadily at the middle of the third spaceman, he groped back with his other hand. I have no choice, no choice, but I do!

  If Kas thinks he has me thoroughly cowed… Swinging the tangler around without taking time to aim, Tamisan pressed the firing button.

  The lash of the sticky weaving spun through the air, striking the wall, from which it dropped away. Then it struck one arm of the motionless captive, who was still under Kas’s threat, and there it clung, across his middle, and on through the air until it caught Kas’s gun hand, his middle, his other arm and adhered instantly, tightening with its usual efficiency and tying captor to captive.

  Kas struggled against those ever-tightening bands to bring the laser round to bear on Tamisan. Whether he would have used it even in his white-hot rage, she did not know. It was enough that the tangler made sure she could keep from his line of fire. Having ensnared them enough to render them both harmless for a time, Tamisan drew a deep breath and relaxed somewhat.

  She had to be sure of Kas. She had loosed the firing button of the tangler as soon as she saw that he could not use his arms. Now she raised the weapon, and with more of a plan, tied his legs firmly together. He kept on his feet, but he was as helpless as if they had used a stunner on him.

  Warily she approached him. Guessing her intent, he went into wild wrigglings, trying to bring the adhesive tangler strands in contact with her flesh also. But she stooped and tore at the frayed hem of her robe, ripping up a strip as high as her waist and winding it about her arm and wrist to make sure she could not be entrapped.

  In spite of his struggles she managed to get the laser out of his hold, and for the second time knew a surge of great relief. He made no sound, but his eyes were wild and his lips so tightly drawn against his teeth, that a small trickle of spittle oozed from one corner to wet his chin. Looking at him dispassionately, Tamisan thought him nearly insane at that moment.

  The crewman was moving. He hitched along as she swung around with the laser as a warning, his shoulders against the wall keeping him firmly on his feet, his unbound legs giving him more mobility, though the cord of the tangler anchored him to Kas. Tamisan glanced around searching for what he appeared desperate to reach. There was a com box.

  “Stand where you are!” she ordered.

  The threat of the laser kept him frozen. With that still trained on him she darted small glances over her shoulder to the hatch. Sliding along the wall in turn, she managed, the tangler thrust loosely into the front of her belt, to slam the hatch door and give a turn to its locking wheel.

  Using the laser as a pointer she motioned him to the com, but the immobile Kas was too much of an anchor. Dared she face the crewman? There was no other way. She motioned with one hand.

  “Stand well away.”

  He had said nothing during their encounter; but he obeyed with an agility which suggested he liked the sight of that weapon in her hand even less than he had liked it when Kas had held it. He stretched to the limit the cord would allow so she was able to burn it through.

  Kas spit out a series of obscenities which were only a meaningless noise as far as Tamisan was concerned. Until he was released he was no more now than a well-anchored bundle. But the crewman had importance.

  Reaching the com before him, she gestured him on to it. She played the best piece she had in this desperate game.

  “Where is Hawarel, the native who was brought on board?”

  He could lie, of course, and she would not know it. But it seemed he was willing to answer, probably because he thought that the truth would strike her worse than any lie.

  “They have him in the lab, conditioning him.” He grinned at her with some of the malignancy she had seen in Kas.

  She remembered the Captain’s earlier threat to make of Hawarel a tool to use against the Over-queen and her forces. Was she too late? There was only one road to take and that was the one she had chosen in those few moments when she had taken up the tangler and used it.

  She spoke as she might to one finding it difficult to understand her. “You will call, and you will say that Hawarel will be released and brought here.”

  “Why?” the crewman returned with visible insolence. “What will you do? Kill me? Perhaps, but that will not defeat the Captain’s plans; he will be willing to see half the crew burned.”

  “That may be true,” she nodded. Not knowing the Captain she could not tell whether or not that was a bluff. “But will his sacrifice save his ship?”

  “What can you do?” began the crewman, and then he paused. His grin was gone, now he looked at her speculatively. In her present guise she perhaps did not look formidable enough to threaten the ship, but he could not be sure. One thing she knew from her own time and place: a spaceman learned early to take nothing for granted on a new planet. It might be that she did have command over some unknown force.

  “What can I do? There is much
.” She took quick advantage of that hesitation. “Have you been able to raise the ship?” She plunged on, hoping very desperately that her guess was right. “Have you been able to communicate with your other ship or ships in orbit?”

  His expression was her answer, one which fanned her hope into a bright blaze of excitement. The ship was grounded, and there was some sort of a hold on it which they had not been able to break.

  “The Captain won’t listen.” He was sullen.

  “I think he will. Tell him that we get Hawarel here, and himself, or else we shall truly show you what happened to that derelict across the field.”

  Kas had fallen silent. He was watching her, not with quite the same wariness of the crewman, but with an emotion she was not able to read. Surprise? Did it mask some sly thought of taking over her bluff, captive though he was?

  “Talk!” The need for hurry rode Tamisan now. By this time those above would wonder why their captives had not been brought before them. Also, outside, the Over-queen’s men would certainly have reported that Tamisan and a guard had entered the ship; from both sides enemies might be closing in.

  “I cannot set the com,” her prisoner answered.

  “Tell me then.”

  “The red button.”

  But she thought she had seen a slight shift in his eyes. Tamisan raised her hand, to press the green button instead. Without accusing him of the treachery she was sure he had tried, she said again more fiercely, “Talk!”

  “Sannard here.” He put his lips close to the com. “They, they have me; Rooso and Cambre are dead. They want the native…”

  “In good condition,” hissed Tamisan, “and now!”

  “They want him now, in good condition,” Sannard repeated. “They threaten the ship.”

  There came no acknowledgment from the com in return. Had she indeed pressed the wrong button because she was overly suspicious? What was going to happen? She could not wait.

  “Sannard.” The voice from the com was metallic, without human inflection or tone.

  “Sir?”

  But Tamisan give the crewman a push which sent him sliding back along the wall until he bumped into Kas and the bonds of both men immediately united to make them one struggling package. Tamisan spoke into the com.