The Forerunner Factor (15 page)

“Why so deep?” Again she squeezed around on the wide step. That opening so far behind them now was made so small by distance that she could raise her hand and cover it with her thumb. Still the stairway went on down and down, for Thorn had gone to his knees and, having deliberately taken the light from his belt, swept the ray back and forth over what was only an endless stair without a break.

Her legs ached. They had traveled all through the night and she could not tell how far they were into the next day now. Surely they must have a time to rest, and soon.

The off-worlder might have picked up that thought from out of her head for now he said: “Let us go five tens farther. Then if there is no end as yet, we shall rest.”

With a sigh, Simsa pulled herself up. The wrappings about her feet had worn very thin. Sooner or later, she would have to use her belt knife to cut strips from her coat to replace those. The only good thing was that they were no longer blasted by that heavy punishment from the sun. In fact . . .

Simsa’s head came up. Once more she drew into her lungs as deep a breath as she could.

“Damp!” She had cried that so loud that, as had the early calls of the zorsals, the word was echoed hollowly back to her from down in the darkness, as if a line of Simsas stationed along the steps passed such a discovery from one to the next.

Thorn, his face only a blur in the reflection of the lamp, looked toward her.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Water?” Her fatigue pushed aside now, she got to her feet eagerly. Zass’s antennae had curled slightly, while they rested and she had crunched with grunts of protest part of Simsa’s food. Now she sidled towards the front of the carrier, both her sense organs extended to their farthest limit. From deep in her furred throat came chirps of impatience.

Still they descended. When they came to the fifty-step level Thorn had set for them, he flashed the beam along the walls. There were patches of damp, giving nourishment to queer growths of pallid white which formed as not quite regular balls, extending thread-like filaments outward to attach to each of the slimy looking sections of damp.

Simsa disliked the look of these and made certain that if she put out a hand to steady herself she would not touch one.

“Let us go on!” Though her whole body was one ache, she could not stay surrounded by this place which worked upon her inborne sense of danger to such an extent.

Thorn needed no urging. They had gone down perhaps five more of the wide and shallow steps when he uttered an exclamation.

The light hit upon, lanced along a level way. They had reached the end of the stairway at long last! Here the damp was heavy but the air itself was not noisome nor dead. Simsa whistled, and from not too far away came an answer. Then one of the zorsals winged into the path of the light, circled about her head.

“Look!” There was no mistaking the water sleeked fur on his forelimbs. The creature had very lately found a source of that great enough to soak as the zorsals were apt to do during the heat of the dry season—spending hours supine in the bowls of water that those who valued them always provided.

Tired as they were the sight of the zorsal, who uttered small cries of what Simsa well recognized as contentment, urged them on, and at this level they fell into a stumbling trot. Zass’s demands set up an echoing of squawking which near covered the thud of their own footfalls.

Though moisture and the unpleasant growths still studded the walls, there was no wet underfoot. The girl noted that at the base of each wall was a shallow trench which perhaps was meant to carry off any runnels the plants had not sucked away.

Their beam of light suddenly was snapped off. Simsa let out a small cry of which she was ashamed a moment later. To allow the off-worlder to know that she feared the dark in any way was a humiliation. Then she could see his reason. Not far ahead, there was a haze of light, not as strong as that of his lamp, but sufficient to provide a guide.

As they approached, the girl noted that the source of the light seemed to lie to their left, being much stronger there. Then they came to an abrupt end to the passage, with a doorway on one side through which the haze came.

For haze it was, not the clean-cut beam of any torch or lamp. The effect was more as if they were advancing into a fog made of small particles of dim light which swam, gathered, and then split apart again. That zorsal who had circled overhead now gave an alert squawk and flew straight into the curtain which closed about him so that only muffled cries resounded.

“Slow—watch the footing—”

Simsa did not need such a warning from her companion. She had already cut her trot to a walk. The fog-stuff was wet, like sea spume, save that it did not carry the sting of salt in it. As it closed about her so closely that she was aware of Thorn as only a bulk moving through the mist, she felt thick moisture gather on her skin. This was like stepping down into one of those baths which she had experienced only twice in her life, when she had had a chance to gather enough extra silver bits to visit the one open to the most humble of Kuxortal.

The damp mist, though, had none of the strong perfumes which were a part of the city baths and which Simsa had never cared for. But she felt as if her skin, so dried and lacking in water’s touch for many days, was growing softer, that her body, more than her mouth, was absorbing what she had lacked for so long.

As she had done in the heat of the day, she pulled at the belting of her jacket, opening that wide so that the touch of this fog, so soft, so healing (for it seemed thus to her) could reach all the areas of skin she was able to bare.

Where this mist arose from she could not tell, for there was no longer any sight of walls, only pavement underfoot, the outline of Thorn, and behind him the carrier which she no longer had to push this way and that to keep on the level and moving. Zass had flopped over, belly up, her head stretched to the full extent of her long neck, that she might so expose all of her body that she could. After the burning of the desert, this was like standing under the sky in the first of the wet-season rains while those drops still fell slowly and gently, and one was not yet battered by any wind.

Then the haze began to clear. Patches thickened, appeared to swirl this way and that out of their path, as if the fog itself held a sense of being, and would not impede their passage. Thus they came out of one last pocket into the full open.

Simsa gave a small sigh. Her feet folded under her and she dropped, her hands plunging into powdery sand or earth so soft that it deadened instantly all the jar of her fall. She slipped into it, her hands unable to find any firm floor to support her, and lay, her cheek pillowed on one crooked arm, surveying what small bit of this place she could see.

That it was totally unlike any site she had ever heard described by the most far roving trader, bore no mention in even legends, was very clear. They had come into a space large enough to be as wide as one of the market squares of the upper city. In shape, it was as circular as if they were caught up in the cup some giant, grown beyond human reckoning, had carelessly set down.

The outer walls were formed by the fog-mist which constantly moved, thickened, lightened, but never allowed one a clear view of what lay beyond. While sand in which she rested, feeling as if all energy had seeped out of her forever, was not white-grey like the fog, rather it held the glint of true silver—as if that most precious of metals (as far as the Burrowers were concerned) had been ground and reground until it was as fine as the flour from which the upper city baked its festival bread. Simsa sifted the powder through her fingers and was sure, that, though there was no sun to awaken any answering glitter, this was truly some precious stuff.

It spilled in an even rim about a regularly shaped pool. The water of that (if it were water) was a clouded pale silver-white—such a color as she had seen before. Her hand fell back into the sand, and she saw the ring again. Slowly, because her mind seemed so bemused by the waves of weariness which swept over her now, Simsa made the comparison. This pool was the very shade of the gem in the circlet she wore.

Simsa lay still. Zass hopped from the carrier. Using her one good wing as she was used to doing when there was need, she thrust the leather tip of that deep into the sand, leaned on it as she purposefully made for the water which lay so silent, nothing disturbing its gem-smooth surface.

Could she depend upon the zorsal’s instinct, so much stronger than those of any of her own species, to judge that the opaque liquid was harmless? The girl tried to sit up, uttered a call which was only a soft murmur in her throat. Zass paid no heed, her dogged purpose was plain, as she scuffed through the silver sand and at last reached the water’s edge.

With a small croak, she gave a last hop which launched her out into the pool. She did not sink, rather she floated as if that water might have substance enough to support her small body. The good wing was spread wide, the other as far as she could bend it. She had lifted her head to turn her long neck and rest her jaw on the edge of the good wing. Her large eyes closed, and it was apparent that she was at peace, experiencing now one of the highest pleasures of her own kind.

There was a stir at Simsa’s other side. She was too drained to turn her head. Then into the line of her vision the off-worlder came. He had unsealed his garment, was stripping it down from his body with a purpose which Simsa could guess. Again a faint stirring of protest tried to raise her and failed.

Whiter than the mist walling them was his body. He looked somehow larger, more impressive than he had when clothed. Now he stepped across the narrow bridge of sand, turning aside to allow Zass full room to float in comfort. Rather than diving, he seemed to fall forward, as if his action had been the last surge of what energy he still possessed. Slowly, his body turned, sinking no further for his bulk than Zass had. He floated, face upward, his eyes slowly closing, his breast rising and falling as one who lay in the best slumber of the night.

Simsa watched and a longing grew in her. Whatever her two companions found there—that she must have also. She discovered herself crying weakly because she could not join them. From her tears and despair, she sank into a dark which closed deeply about her.

9

She was lying on such a bed as she had never dreamed might exist, one which accepted her slight body with a cool adjustment for every bone and muscle so that she was a part of the bed and its comfort wooed her to sleep. Still, somewhere deep within her, there was a nagging need for movement, for awareness of more than that lazy, insidious comfort, something which urged her back into the world.

Simsa opened her eyes. She was looking up at a rolling, ever-changing, slow-billowing of what might be cloud. Never in her life had she felt so content, so unaware of her body—as if that had been lulled into a peaceful slumber in which all pain and fatigue had been lost. She raised one arm slowly. For it seemed that, while caught in this delicious languor, she could not, nor did she need, to make any swift gesture. Her body moved also, even as her arm came into view. Whatever she lay on was not solid—

The slow languor vanished. Simsa slapped with both arms, rolled over, and her head and face went under. Startled, fear pulling her body taut, she strove to climb out, to fight back against what held her.

“Wait—lie still.”

Simsa, thoroughly frightened now, splashed the harder.

Then her head was pulled back by an ungentle hold upon her hair. She rolled once more so that her face was uppermost and she could breathe. The hold on her did not loosen; instead, she was being towed through this stuff which was far thicker than any true water. She opened her mouth and screamed, all the sweet contentment of moments earlier gone.

Then her head was dropped to lie on a support which was firm, leaving her face well out of the water. She reached out, half expecting only water, but her hands discovered that she now lay only part way in the pool, her legs still trailing outward. By using her arms and hands, she was able to work her body up into a place where the powder-sand was near as soft a cushion as the pool’s contents had been.

Simsa sat up. Against the silver of the sand, the opaque glory of the pool, her dark body was in vivid contrast. She was not wet. Her skin where she had won out into the air was damp, but it seemed either that moisture drained at once from her, or else was drawn as quickly off by the air. Even the mass of her hair, as she raised her hands to push it away from her brow and throw it back over her shoulders, was far less damp than it had been when she had come in from an early morning foraging in the dew which lay on the scrub growth of the river banks around Kuxortal.

If the water was not wet—it had performed something else which was to her comfort—that comfort which she had almost lost as her first bemused awakening. Her skin was firm and
clean
as she could never remember it being before. Now she wriggled her feet. Freed of the clumsy wrappings, the worn-out sandals, there were no bruises, no small pains of scrapes and abrasions. She had a body renewed, made whole, free and well.

She drew her hands slowly down that body, over her small, high breasts, over her narrow waist, her thin, scarcely rounded thighs. Her own fingers moving thus made her feel as if she were being stroked lovingly, given a pleasure so full that she answered with a crooning murmur deep in her throat, even as Zass answered when she was scratched along jaw line, and slowly, carefully, at the base of her antennae.

All the hunger and thirst which Simsa had brought here were dim memories. The desert journey was something that had happened to someone else. The girl surveyed her hand dreamily, and on her thumb the ring had moved about, the plain band facing the palm, the tower standing tall and proud. She was right—the rich, opaque shade of the unknown jewel was the same color as the liquid from which she had just come. She laughed aloud. Her feeling of well-being was as if she had drunk a full draft of rich wine. Once, one of the Burrowers, seeking to curry favor with Ferwar when the Old One was ill with pain that racked her limbs, had brought a bottle over which the woman had chuckled.