The Iron Breed (13 page)

Jony remembered now, with a fierce desire to hold to every fraction of the pictures in his mind, the seasons they had wandered with the clan. From helpless babies Maba and Geogee had grown to bigger, more thinking creatures. Rutee had talked always with Jony about his own kind. She hoped someday that chance might bring one of their scout ships here. So she taught him the speech of her people, even how to trace marks in the sand or on pieces of bark, signs which carried and held the meaning of those words after one had forgotten them.

Then Rutee had died. He missed her very much. Still there were the twins, the clan. He had not been alone. Jony sat up suddenly, his eyes open, fighting fear and loneliness. His hands clenched on his wonder staff. He was fed, he had fought such a battle as few of the People had faced, all by himself. He had a safe camp. But—he wore the collar.

If he only knew more! Could he, dared he, return to the place of stones to learn?

Perhaps those other people, if they were of his kind, even so far divided, had made signs for their words. The dead cannot speak, but signs could speak for them. Would Voak, the clan, know if he attempted such a mission?

Voak's warning was still clear in his memory. However, if he were exiled, what would it mean to Voak that he went back? Jony would never turn against the clan, he could not.

Maba—Geogee? What if Voak used them to punish Jony for breaking the command he had laid upon the boy? No return then—at least not yet. Jony must do nothing which the clanleader could use as an excuse to make trouble for the twins.

Then—where would he go now? He could trail behind the clan on its wanderings. But he did not want to, not on their terms. Either he would return wholly, one of them as he had been before, or he would keep away.

Jony nodded his head vigorously, though there was no one there to witness this affirmation of his decision. So—in the morning he would follow this stream as a guide. It led on up into the higher hills beyond these beginning ridges, toward those mountains where the earth seemed to challenge the sky and the night stars. Perhaps he would find another stone place, one which Voak's people did not watch. There . . . Jony did not know what he could do there, what he honestly wanted to do. But to move on was better by far than to sit here waiting, or to trail behind the clan as if they had a leash fastened to his shame collar, and so led him along at their will.

How he wished now that he had paid more attention to the pictures on the wall of the storage place. He scowled over that loss of opportunity. Odd—though there had been power there—the sensation had not been as strong as it had when they had gone to the place of the cage.

Was that feeling really the power of hate held within the cage itself: hate of the People, hate of those who had died there? Jony had always been able to sense emotions, even physical pain that had troubled Rutee or the twins. To a much less extent he could also sense pain and trouble with the clan. But could such feelings continue to exist after death?

The stone woman—had the shock from her hand been a remembered emotion passing from that cold, impassive palm into his live one—or something else? He knew so little. Impatience burned high in Jony, just as momentary anger had flared after Voak's sentencing. There was so much he did not understand, and he needed to! The desire for knowledge was now like real pain in him.

How had those captives in the cage died? Quickly, or slowly? Had they been left to perish from hunger and thirst? Or fed and prisoned until their spirits died first, and they had no will left in them to live on?

His collar—Jony put both hands to the band at his throat. Did that loose hoop of metal hold the power of past emotion? He could sense nothing directly from it. Any more than he could from the shaft with the mounted fang of death.

Slowly he turned the collar around, taking care lest some touch of his release those tormenting fangs Voak had demonstrated. Under his fingers the surface was smooth. Unlike the shaft, here was no pitting. The thing could be fresh made, though he believed it was of an age he could not begin to reckon.

No power in it. Then where had the power lain in the cage place? Had it been summoned by the sounds the clansmen had made with their thumping and their cries?

Jony tried an experiment of his own. With the butt end of the shaft he began tapping gently on one of the rocks which guarded his nest, trying to keep to the same speed Voak and the others had used. Vibration did run up the shaft into his arm. But he experienced none of that tingling sensation.

Perhaps the sensation came then from the red light. Could one draw upon such power, feed it into one's own concentrated energy? What was the use of thinking that? Jony had no intention of trying to find the place of the cage again. Contrarily, he preferred to travel as far away from its site as he could.

Within the past few days his mind had become crowded with questions, enough to make his head ache. During all the seasons he had roamed with the People Jony had never speculated so much about matters which were not concerned with the daily round of existence. He felt, oddly enough, as if he had just now wakened from a kind of lulling sleep. After Rutee died, he had not tried to share any of his thoughts with the twins. To him they were responsibilities, not real persons. He was to watch over them, not communicate to them his own doubts and uncertainties. His limited contact with the People themselves had been confined to the level of what was only necessary for the continued well-being of life.

So Jony had ceased much to question where there could be no answering. His discovery of the river of stone had first shaken him out of the dull shell that lack of real companionship had built about him. Jony had always been different, but he had ruthlessly tried to suppress that difference, to be as like the People as he could. Now he was exiled into difference. So his imagination awoke, pricked at him with new questions upon questions.

Nor could he sleep as this new wakefulness possessed him and made him restless. He would have liked to have strode back and forth out in the moonlight, under those stars Rutee did not know, attempting to dull his thoughts again.

For Jony was no longer complacent. He was uneasy, on edge. Somewhere he must find answers—somewhere . . .

He had been facing downstream. But also he had been looking skyward. The vor did not attack by night, his sense found no menace there.

Then—

Across the sky a burst of vivid fire.

Wha—?

Jony's hands gripped the staff so tightly his knuckles stood out in hard knobs. He trembled as if reeling under some strong blow.

Perhaps because his awareness had been so aroused that he knew—somehow he
knew!

Had Rutee ever told him? Now he was not sure. But he was as certain as if he had witnessed the planeting. That had been a sky ship! And it was going to land!

The Big Ones!

Hate drew Jony's mouth tight, brought him to his feet, his wonder staff up and ready. No!

The flashing sweep was gone. He strained to hear any sound. And thought he caught a hint of a far-off roar. Yes, the ship was down. Now the Big Ones would come hunting. The People—the twins—they had no idea of what hellish things the Big Ones could and would do. He must return to the clan, make them listen! Collar or no collar, he had to make them listen.

Jony was already running lightly along the sand on his back trail. All that lay in his mind now was how much time he might have before the Big Ones came hunting for their prey.

NINE

A bad fall brought Jony back to his senses. To go charging along without caution at night through this unknown country was stupid. He sat on the sandy ground nursing a skinned shin, eyeing the dark as the enemy it now was.

There was no way of judging how far away that landing of the sky ship had been. Perhaps it had planeted so distantly from the clan campsite that all his fears were unfounded. But, from Rutee's tales, he knew that the Big Ones possessed other means of travel besides the sky ships themselves. They carried within the larger vessels small craft made to grind steadily ahead over any kind of ground, or take into the air for a distance, if there was need.

How soon would those craft be out searching?

Jony beat one balled fist against the ground in frustration. He must get to the campsite, make Voak and the others listen!

Would the stone place draw the Big Ones? He knew from his life among them that they had explored such sites on other worlds, bringing back objects they had stored with care.

Jony got to his feet and, leaning on the sturdy support of his new staff, limped stubbornly on. He would follow this stream which ran in the general direction southward. If it
was
the same as the one that ran near the camp, he had now a sure guide. And, if he took more care, he could travel even in the darkness.

But even the stream side was none too easy a trail. Twice he came upon piled rock barriers through which he had to find a way, prodding ahead with the butt of his staff to make sure each stone was secure before he put his full weight on it. Once he had to make a detour around a pile of drift embedded in the sand, a menace he dared not cross in the dark.

His leg ached and there was more pain if he put too much weight on that foot. However, slowly as he must go, he would certainly reach camp by morning. He could not have traveled too far north after Voak and the others had left him.

The graying of pre-dawn filled the sky as Jony reached the lip of the falls. There was no sign of the People below. The boy half-fell on an outcrop of stone, the throbbing of his leg matched by a weariness throughout his body. Yet he had still to descend the drop beside that veil of water.

Maba? Geogee? For a long moment he played with the thought of using the mind touch to draw the children to him, to relay the message he had come to deliver, the warning. Then he knew he dared not. Neither of the twins was receptive enough to pick up his clear thoughts, though they might be moved to come hunting him. And, if they did that, their own safety with the clan could be endangered. He dared not work through the twins, but must meet Voak face to face.

However, when he concentrated on the camp, he met only a blank nothingness. Not even the flickering in and out of his usual touch with the People answered his probe.

Jony knew panic then, which, if he had not instantly controlled it might have sent him ahead with a recklessness leading to disaster. Nothing—there was nothing there!

The Big Ones! A raid on the campsite already?

Jony crawled to the drop and began to scramble from rock to rock. He had earlier tied his staff to his back with a twist of fibre so that he would have both hands free. Twice his weapon clattered against stones with a sound loud enough to rise above even the rumble of the falls.

Down, down. Now he was near that very place where Maba had been dragged unwillingly ashore, her hair fast in Uga's grip. Jony limped on, leaving his hands free. To enter the campsite with his shaft on his back would surely be a gesture of peaceful intent. As he breathed heavily his mind-sense ranged ahead, intent on picking up the least hint of where the People might be camped.

There was nothing. Just as he found nothing in sight when he came into the glade within the brush screen where there should have been the night nests, the stir of awakening People.

Nests were there, but they were empty. Jony went to that one to which Yaa had taken Maba the last time he had seen her. Under his fingers the withered grass and leaves were cold. By the appearance no fresh foliage had been added, as was usual, the night before.

Therefore the clan had not slept here. They must have moved on! Taking Maba and Geogee where?

Jony slowly circled the edge of the site. He was not really surprised to find the traces of that withdrawal as he reached the south side. The People must have decided they were too near to the stone place, that they were going to change their direction of slow drift.

But it was also to the south that the sky ship had planeted. Was the clan now walking straight into a danger they could not understand?

He made a careful search of the campsite. His gleanings were a food net with a hole in the side, a castoff, and some of the rubbing stones Otik had been putting to use. There was nothing else.

Nor could he throw off the knowledge that he must now do what he swore only yesterday that he would never do, trail behind the clan until he found them. He could only hope that their pace would continue to be normally leisurely, that they followed their usual occupations of food gathering to slow them as they went.

A day—or at least a part of a day ahead. That should not delay too much his catching up. Heartened by that belief, Jony ate the last of the bruised fruit he carried from last night's meal and returned to that southward direction.

This was a trail easy enough to follow. He could readily pick up the broad paw prints of the People here and there where there was a bare stretch of soil, and twice smaller tracks left by the twins. However, their going was different this time, not spread out in a loose numbering of one, two or three, but rather remaining in a close group, all together.

Jony climbed the next ridge, favoring his leg. From here he could look down once more to where the river of stone cut across the open country. He was too far west to see the place where it ended, ridges to the east masking the walls. But any Big One exploring would be able to detect such a site immediately.

The trail of the clan led straight, still compact, down ridge, on to the river of stone. Had they gone up to the heaps? Jony could hardly believe they would. Yet their tracks ended at the edge of that pavement.

He ventured out again on the smooth surface, only to strike directly across. His guess was right, the People had dared make contact with the evidence of all they hated only because there was no other way to reach the ground beyond. There once more he could sight their tracks, still close together.

This very unusual method of travel was a warning in itself that all was not well. He had never known the People to bunch as they traveled, unless they were skirting some ground in which a smaa had hunting trails of its own. There had been no move either, Jony noted, to harvest the heavy seed heads of a growth of vegetation only a short distance away.