The Zero Stone Part 6

"Go right-" Eet's thought came.

The fisherman was left-handed, his attention on that side. Right it was. I moved slowly, trying to put a screen of brush between us. But even when I was able to do so I felt no safer. It would be easy to become mired in a bog patch, and thus helpless prey for the club. My cutting knife was sharp but the native had the longer reach and knew this swamp. Also, to work any deeper into this flooded land and perhaps become lost in it was folly. And I said as much to Eet.

"I do not think this is a true swamp," he observed. "There are many signs of a great past flood. And a flood can be born of a river-"

"What is the advantage of a river- here?"

"Rivers are easier to follow than game trails. And there is this - civilizations are born on rivers. Do you presume to call yourself a trader and not know that? If this planet can boast any civilization, or if it is visited by traders from off world, you would find evidence of that along a major river. Especially where it meets a sea."

"Your knowledge is considerable," I observed. "And you certainly did not learn it all from Valcyr-"

Again I felt his irritation. "When it is necessary to learn, one learns. Knowledge is a never-emptied storehouse. And where else can one learn better of trade, traders, and their ways, then on such a ship as the Vestris? Her crew were born to that way of life and have a vast background of lore-"

"You must have spent some time reading their minds," I interrupted. "By the way, if you know so much - why did they take me off Tanth?" I did not really expect him to answer that, but he replied promptly.

"They were paid to do so. There was some plan there -I do not know its details, for they did not. But that went wrong and then they were approached and well paid to get you off planet and deliver you at Waystar-"

"Waystar! But- that's only a legend!"

If Eet could have snorted perhaps he would have produced such a sound.

"It must be a legend of substance. They were taking you there. Only they insisted upon following their regular schedule first. And when you took ril fever they decided prudence was in order. They would get rid of you lest you contaminate the rest. They would just not turn up at Waystar, but send a message to those who had arranged it all."

"You are a mine of information, Eet. And what was behind it - who wanted me so badly?"

"They knew only an agent. His name was Urdik and he was not of Tanth. Why you were wanted they did not know."

"I wonder why-"

"The stone in the ring-"

"That!" My hand went to the pouch where I carried it. "They knew about that?"

"I do not think so. They wanted something you or Vondar Ustle carried. It is of great importance and they have been searching for it for some time. But can you not say now that the ring is your most important possession?"

I clutched the bag closer. "Yes!"

Then, startled, I looked down at the pouch. It was moving in my hand, and there was heat. We had come into the open and there was daylight around, but I thought I could also detect a glow.

"It is coming alive again!"

"Use it then for a guide!" urged Eet.

I fumbled with the seal on the pouch, slipped the ring on my finger. But the band was so large it would have fallen off if I had not closed my fist. My hand, through no volition of mine, moved out, away from my body, to the right and ahead. It would seem that once more the stone used my flesh and bone as an indicator. And I turned to follow its guidance.

NINE.

"We are followed," Eet informed me.

"The fisherman?"

"Or one of his kind." My companion did nothing to relieve my mind with that report. "But he is cautious- he fears-"

"What?" I demanded bitterly. "This knife is no adequate defense, except at close quarters. And I have no desire to stand up to him as might a Korkosan gladiator. I am no fighter, only a peaceful gem trader."

Eet disregarded most of my sour protest. "He fears death-from-a-distance. He has witnessed such- or knows of it."

Death from a distance? That could mean anything from a thrown spear or slingshot propelled rock, to a laser beam, and all the grades of possible "civilization" in between.

"Just so." Eet had picked up my thought. "But " I caught a suggestion of puzzlement. "I can read no more, only that he fears and so sniffs us prudently."

We holed up in a ma.s.s of drift thrust into a corner between two downed trees, eating from our supply of seeds, drinking from the ship's flask. The seeds might be nutritious, but they did not allay my need for something less monotonous. And I had seen none of them growing since we had come into the dripping country, so that I rationed carefully what we had. As I chewed my handful, I watched our back trail for any sign of a tracker.

I sighted him at last. He had gone down on one knee, his head almost touching the ground as that trunk-like, mobile nose of his quivered and twisted above my tracks. If it was not the fisherman, it was one enough like him to be his twin.

After a long sniffing, he squatted back on his heels, his head raised, that trunk standing almost straight out from its roots as he turned his head slowly. I fully expected him to point directly at us, and I readied my knife desperately.

But there was no halt in that swing. If he did know where we were, he was cunning enough to guess we might be alert, and did not betray his discovery. I waited tensely for him to arise and charge, or to disappear into the brush in an attempt to circle around for an ambush.

"He does not know, he still seeks-" Eet said.

"But- if he sniffed out our trail, how could he miss scenting us now?"

"I do not know. Only that he still seeks. Also he is afraid. He does not like-"

"What?" I demanded when Eet paused.

"It is too hard, I cannot read. This one feels more than he thinks. One can read thoughts, and the cruder emotions. But his breed is new to me; I cannot gain more than surface impressions."

At any rate, though my trail led directly from where the sniffer now squatted, he made no attempt to advance. Whether I could leave the cover we had taken refuge in without attracting attention, I did not know.

Two trees, not the huge giants of the forest, but ones of respectable girth, had fallen so that their branched crowns met, their trunks lying at right angles. We were in the corner formed by the branched part, a screen of drift piled not too thickly between us and the native.

I saw that the branches were bleached, leafless, but matted together. Yet the stone pulled me toward them, as if it would have me go through that ma.s.s. I hunched down and began to saw away at the obstructions. Eet was there, his forepaws at work, snapping off smaller pieces, while I dug with the point of the knife in the soft earth under the heavier branches. We moved very slowly, pausing many times to survey the open ground between us and the sniffer. To my surprise, for I knew we were far from noiseless (in spite of our best efforts), he did not appear and Eet reported he had not moved.

It suddenly occurred to me, with a chill, what his purpose might be- that he was not alone, and that when his reinforcements moved into place there would be a charge after all.

"You are right." Eet was no comforter. "There is one, perhaps two more, coming-"

"Why did you not tell me?"

"Had it been necessary I would have. But why add to apprehension when a clear mind is needful? They are yet some distance away. It is a pity, but the day is almost gone. To them, I believe, night is no problem."

I did not put my thoughts into words; Eet could read them well enough anyway. "Are there any in front of us?" I bit back and curbed my anger.

"None within my sensing range. They do not like that direction. This one waits for the others' coming, not because he fears us, but because he fears where we head. His fear grows stronger as he waits."

"Then- let us get farther ahead-" I no longer tried to be so careful, but slashed at branches, cutting our way through the springy wall in quick blows.

"Well spoken," Eet agreed. "Always supposing we do not run from one danger into a greater one."

I made no reply to that, but hoped that Eet was reading my emotions and that they would scorch him. Beyond the trees were more of the sc.u.m-rimmed pools, fallen trunks. But the latter provided us with a road of sorts. The fisherman had been armed with nothing more lethal than a club, which he could not use at a distance. He knew we fled, and it seemed to me that speed was now in order.

With Eet back on my shoulders, his paw-hands gripping the ties of my pack, I sprang onto the nearest trunk and ran, leaping from one to the next, not in a straight line, but always in the direction the stone pointed me. For I could not help but hope that it would guide me to some installation, or ship, perhaps even a settlement of those who had owned the ring, even as it had brought us across s.p.a.ce to the derelict. The great age of that ship, however, suggested I would find no living community.

We were out of the gloom. Not only had the flood cut a swath among the trees, but the secondary growth had been undermined and was scanty. Now I could see the sky overhead.

But that was full of clouds, and while it was still warm enough to make one pant when exercising, there was no sun. Insects buzzed about, so that at times I had to swing my hand before my face to clear my vision. But none bit my flesh. Perhaps I was so alien to their usual source of nourishment that they could not.

There was no sign of any pursuit, and Eet, though he had ceased to communicate when we began this dash, would, I believed, raise the warning if it were needed. I appeared to possess some importance to him, though his evasiveness concerning that bothered me.

Again pools began to link together, forcing me to make more and more detours from the direct path the stone indicated. I had no wish to splash through even the shallows of those evil-looking, besc.u.mmed floods. Who knew what might hide below their foul surfaces? Perhaps the insects did not find me tasty, but that did not mean other native life would be so fastidious.

I had no idea of the length of the planetary day, but it seemed to me now that the cloud blanket overhead did not account for all the lack of light and that this might be late afternoon. Before night we must find some safe place in which to hole up. If the natives were nocturnal, the advantage of any encounter would rest with them.

The water pushed me back, farther and farther to the right, while the tug of the stone was now left, straight into the watery region. Its pull became so acute and constant that I finally had to slip the loop from my hand and put it back in the pouch, lest it overbalance me into one of the very sinks I fought to skirt.

There was much evidence that not only had this lake been far larger in the not too far-distant past but it was still draining away in the very direction the ring pointed. It was hard going and from time to time I demanded of Eet rea.s.surance that we were not being followed. But each time he reported all clear.

It was decidedly darker and I had yet found no possible place to lie up for the night. Too many tracks in the mud suggested that life, large life, crawled from pond to lake, came from the water and returned to it. And the size of some of those tracks was enough to make a man think twice, three, a dozen times, before settling down near their roadways.

I had pa.s.sed the first of the outcrops before I really noticed them, so covered were they with dried mud which afforded anchorage to growing things. It was when I scrambled up on one to try for a better look at what might lie ahead that it dawned on me that they were not scattered without pattern but were set in a line which could not be that of nature alone.

My foot slipped on the surface and I slid forward, trying to stop my fall by digging the point of the knife well in. But the stone resisted my blade, which came away with an almost metallic sound, sc.r.a.ping off a huge patch of mud.

What I had uncovered was not rough stone, but a smooth surface which had been artificially finished. When I touched it I could not be sure it was stone at all. It had a sleekness, almost as if the rock had been fused into a gla.s.sy overcoat - though in places this was scaled and pitted.

In color it was dull green, veined with ocher strata. Yet it was not part of a wall, for the stones did not abut, but had several paces distance between them. Perhaps there had once been some link of another material now vanished.

The outcrops ran in the direction the stone urged upon me, marching down to the lake, partially submerged near the sh.o.r.e, water lapping their crowns farther out, then entirely covered.

As I continued along the lake, now alert to any other evidence, I came across a second line of blocks, paralleling those swallowed by the water. These I took for a guide. They were certainly the remains of some large erection, ancient though they appeared. And as such they could well lead to a building, or even a ruin which would shelter us.

"Just so," Eet agreed. "But it would be well to hurry faster. Night will come soon under these clouds and I think a storm also. If more water feeds this lake-"

There was no need for him to underline his thought. I jumped from one of those blocks half buried in the muck to the next, listening for warning thunder (if storms on this planet were accompanied by such warnings) and fearing to feel the first drops of rain. The wind was growing stronger and it brought with it a low wailing which stopped me short until Eet's rea.s.surance came: "That is not the voice of a living thing- only sound-" He sniffed as thoroughly as the trunk-nosed native.

The blocks for the first time now were joined together, rising into a wall, and I dropped down to walk beside it. It soon topped my head. There were too many shadows in its overhang, so I edged into the open.

I would have climbed again after a while for a better look at the country ahead, but the tops of these blocks were not level. Instead they were crowned with projections, the original form of which could not be guessed, for they were eroded and worn to stubs which p.r.i.c.ked from them at meaningless angles.

On this side of the wall the signs of flood ceased, except in some places where apparently waves had spilled over the top, in a few instances actually turning and twisting the mighty blocks of the coping over which they had beaten.

There were no trees here. We moved across an open s.p.a.ce which gave footing only to brush that did not grow high. Where one of the waves had topped the wall, I saw that I walked on a coating of soil overlying pavement, some of which had the same fused look as the surface of the wall.

If I walked some road or courtyard, there was no other wall. The clouds were very thick and dark now, and the first pattering rain began. The wall was no protection, nor was there any other shelter in this spa.r.s.ely grown land. I ran on, my tiring body having to be forced to that pace, both my pack and Eet weighing cruelly on me.

Then the wall beside which I jogged made a sharp turn left and ended in a three-sided enclosure. It had no roof, but those three sides were the best protection I had seen. We could stretch the shelter from the wreck over us to afford some cover. Also, I was not going to blunder on in the dark. So I darted into that enclosure, squatting down in the corner I judged easiest to defend. There we huddled, the covering draped over my head and shoulders, Eet in my lap, as the night and the storm closed down upon us.

But we were not quite in the dark. As I changed position I saw the faintest of glows from the pouch which held the stone, and when I pried open the top a fraction, there was a thin ray of light. Just as it had come alive before, so it was registering energy now. Was this ruin its goal? If so, had the LB led us directly to the home planet from which the derelict had lifted eons ago? Such a supposition could not be ruled out as fantastic. The LB could have been set on a homing device and the drifting ship might have met its fate soon after take-off. Unwittingly we might have made a full circle, returning the ring to the world on which it was fashioned. But the age of the stones at my back certainly argued that those who had dwelt here were long gone, that I had stumbled on traces of one of the Forerunner races, about whom we know so little and even the Zacathans can only speculate.

To spend a stormy night amid alien ruins of incalculable age was not my idea of a well-chosen pastime. My search for gems had taken me into many strange places, but then I had only been second to Vondar, leaning on his knowledge and experience. And earlier I had looked to my father, not only for physical protection, but for that teaching which would aid in survival.

As I crouched there with the rain drumming on the thin sheet which was my only roof, I was only partially aware of the night, the alien walls, the need for alertness. One part of my mind sought back down the years, to my father's first showing of the ring with the zero stone- for that was what he had once termed it, a challenge to his knowledge and curiosity.

It had been found on a suited body floating in s.p.a.ce. Had that body been one of the crew of the derelict? And my father had died at the hands of someone who had then searched his office, the zero stone the prize the murderer sought.

Then Vondar Ustle and I had been entrapped at the inn on Tanth. And I could accept that that had not happened by a chance pointing of the selective arrow. It had been planned. Perhaps they had believed that, being off-worlders, we would resist the priests just as we had, and both be slain, as Vondar was. They could not have foreseen that I would break away and reach the sanctuary.

For the first time I resented my bargain with Ostrend. And the trader in me regretted the gems I had paid for a pa.s.sage which had already been arranged by another. So- I was to have been transported to Wayside and turned over there to those paying for my rescue. For what purpose? Because I was my father's son, or his reputed son, and so might have possession of, or knowledge of, that very thing which now glowed faintly against my chest?

Again by chance I had escaped- the fever- a contagion picked up on Tanth, or on that unnamed world where the people had so mysteriously disappeared? That sickness which had so oddly struck just at the proper time- Oddly struck!

"Just so," Eet answered with his favorite words of agreement. "Just so. You alone of the crew sickening so- why did it take you so long to wonder about that?"

"But why? I know Valcyr picked my cabin to give birth- that must have been chance-"

"Was it?"

"But you could not have-" What if he could? As helpless as Eet's body had looked when I found Valcyr with him on the bunk, did that necessarily mean that his mind-?

"You are beginning to think," Eet replied approvingly. "There was a natural affinity operating between us even then. The crew of the ship were a close-knit clan. It was necessary for me to find one detached from that organization, one who could furnish me with what I needed most at that time, protection and transportation away from danger while I was in a weak state. Had I encountered them at a later period I would not have been so endangered. But I needed a partner-"

"So you made me ill!"

"A slight alteration of certain body fluids. No danger, though it appeared so." There was a complacency in his answer which for a moment made me want to hurl Eet out into the dark and whatever danger might lurk there.

"But you will not," he answered my not completely formulated thought. "It was not only a matter of expediency which made me choose to reveal myself to you. I spoke of natural affinities. There is a tie between us based on far more than temporary needs. As I have said, this body I now wear is not, perhaps, what I might have chosen for this particular phase of my existence. I have modified it as much as I can for now. Perhaps there will be other possible alterations in the future, given time and means. But I do have senses which aid you. Just as your bulk and strength do me. I believe you have already discovered some of the advantages of such a partnership.

"We are still far from any situation you may term safe. And our alliance is very necessary to both of us. Afterward we can choose whether to extend it."

That made sense - though I disliked admitting that this small furred body I could crush in my two hands contained a personality forceful enough to bring me easily to terms. I had had few close contacts with anyone in the past. My relationship with Hywel Jern had been that of pupil to teacher, junior officer to commander. And while Vondar Ustle was a man of easier temperament, far more outgoing than my father, the relationship had remained practically the same for me when I entered his service. Beyond that I had had no deep ties with any man or creature. But now I had been summarily adopted by Eet, and it appeared that my will did not enter into the agreement any more than it had with Hywel or Vondar - for it had been of their desire in both cases. But - my anger arose- I was not going to stand in the same relationship to Eet!

"They come!" Eet's warning shocked me out of my thoughts.

We had been so long without any contact with the natives that I had believed they had given up. If they moved in now, we might find our shelter a trap.

"How many and where?" Eet was right; in such a situation I must depend upon his senses.

"Three-" Eet took his time to answer. "And they are very hesitant. I think that this place represents danger to them. On the other hand - they are hungry."

For a second or so, that had no meaning for me. Then I stiffened. "You mean-?"