The Iron Breed (53 page)

A young warrior of Ku-La's people, very small and slim and so able to take ways closed to those of larger frame, had managed to squirm through a side duct and look into a very busy place in the Ratton burrows. There were machines there like the rumblers, and these the Rattons were swarming over, working on, under the leadership of the Demon. It was apparent that the machines were being readied and that could only be to attack.

Armed with this report Dolar, with Furtig in tow, went to the chamber where the Demon female was with Liliha. She had shared food with them, and at her request they had given her back those looser skins she wore. As the warriors entered she was sitting with Liliha exchanging talk, the translating machine on a divan between them.

“Ask her,” Dolar said abruptly, “what the Demon does with the machines and the Rattons. We believe that they prepare an attack, and we must know how these machines will work.”

Liliha relayed the question. But when the Demon answered, she spoke directly to Dolar.

“There are many kinds of machines. Can you tell me, or show me, the form of these?”

He clanged his fighting claws together. A machine was a machine. How could you find words to describe it? Then he rounded on the In-born who was his at-tail messenger.

“Bring the seeing box.”

The warrior had not gone empty-handed into the narrow ways, but had taken with him one of the discoveries of his own people, a box which made a permanent record of what he saw. When this case was set before the Demon she appeared to know it for what it was, instantly pressing the right button. Across the room, on the wall, appeared a picture, small enough for Furtig's two hands to cover, yet clear in details.

For a long moment the Demon studied the picture and then she spoke:

“I do not know what all these machines may be. See, there are at least three different kinds. But there—that one upon which the Ratton stands—that shoots forth fire. It is like the weapon your people took from me but much more powerful, for the fire spreads wider. I believe that these are machines of war.” Her voice died away, and yet she continued to look at the picture as if there was something there to hold her full attention.

“Machines of war, fearsome ones,” Dolar repeated as if to himself. “Let those come seeking us and perhaps the Rattons will win.”

The Demon female spoke again. “You have showed me much. Also—there is something—if I can only make it plain to you—” She twined her hands together, finger punishing finger in that tight grip, as if she might wring the words she wanted to say out of her own flesh. “I am one who heals. I have been taught to do so since I was very young. We did not know why our ancestors—our long-ago Elders—left these lairs. And we have a trouble on our home world which is bad—therefore we were sent to seek out our old homeland, and aid.

“But when our ship landed here—we—we changed. No more were we as we had always been. We became strangers one to the other—” She looked at none of them as she spoke thus, but ever at the wall pictures. “We seemed to become—no, perhaps I cannot say it. But you have showed me that there was once a madness here, an evil thing which possessed my kind. I think that the shadow of that lingers still, so that we are becoming enemies, one to the other. If this is true, that illness must be healed, and we must go. And it may be too late.” She covered her face with her hands, sat shivering so that Furtig could see the shudders of her body. Liliha put out her hands, laid them upon the Demon's shaking shoulders. Then, as he never thought to see, she drew the Demon to her as she might in comforting a sister Chooser, and held her so.

* * *

Ayana pulled away, though the comfort of that soft warmth the cat-woman offered was such that she longed to cling to it. She wiped her wet cheeks with the backs of her hands. All that she had learned was a weight on her spirit. But it was, as these people made much of saying, the truth. No wonder her kind had fled this place. This sickness of spirit was as strong as once had been the sickness of body which had either produced it or been the end-product of it. She need only look at that picture of Tan, at his intense, absorbed face as he readied machines to wipe out life, and know how deeply they had been stricken.

These lairs, as they called them, lairs of darkness in spite of all the light within, lairs of knowledge which could kill as well as cure. Knowledge, could one pick and choose among knowledge? A thing which might cure in one form could be used to kill in another. As a medic, who should know better than she? Had she not even sought out death dealers herself on board ship, gathered them together?

But what Tan intended—that must not be! And there was something else, a warning she must give of another kind. She had seen this Gammage only briefly when they had first brought her in. His urging for union among intelligent species—yes, that was a step forward. But his thirst for alien knowledge—his tinkering with the scraps and remnants they played with here—no! That was tampering with that which might end him and his people as surely as the Rattons and Tan, equipped with war machines, could do.

However, the immediate threat—resolutely Ayana pushed aside what might happen tomorrow, concentrated on today. Suppose Tan and his nightmare army of allies did activate those machines of crawling death? Weapons used by men who had built and inhabited this complex would be very sophisticated. And Tan would release what he could not control.

These cat-people looked to her for an answer. And she did not have one. Jacel—Massa—could help, but would either of them do so? She had no idea of what had happened between Jacel and Tan before she had reached them. But that comment of Tan's about Jacel's discovery that the Rattons could be dangerous if crossed lingered now in her mind. There must have been ill-will between the two men, some argument. Could she build on that? It seemed to Ayana a very thin hope, but it was all she had now.

“There are many machines, and I have no knowledge of them.” She made her explanation as simple as possible. “But those in the ship still can help. I see no other way—”

She had been long enough with the cat-people now to be able to read expressions a little, and she saw that suggestion was not welcome, especially to the large male with the scarred ears. But she could not help them. Only Jacel and Massa knew the machines. And how much time did they have?

The growling, spitting speech of the People among themselves was prolonged. Finally the males went out together, leaving her once more with the females she had learned to call Liliha and Eu-La.

“You are a Chooser?” Liliha asked, and Ayana saw both the cat-women watching her closely, as if her answer was important.

“What is a Chooser?”

They appeared startled. Then Liliha explained. “There is a time when one wishes younglings. One's body is ready to hold such. As mine—” She slid her hand over her slim belly. “But not yet is Eu-La so.” She pointed to her companion's slighter figure. “When this time comes the warriors display their strength so that we Choosers may look upon them, judge their skills, select one to father a youngling. You have so chosen?”

Ayana looked down at her own hands. Not to get a child had she chosen (or rather had had the choosing done for her) but rather that a certain needed series of traits could complement and perhaps fill out another's character. Had she been subtly conditioned to accept Tan so readily? Now she suspected that. He had become a stranger so fast, as if the sickness which clung here had broken through that shell of acceptance.

“I did not choose, he was chosen for me.” She felt an odd shame at making that confession.

“This then is the custom of the Demons, that a Chooser may not choose for herself?” Liliha asked after a long moment of silence.

“Because there were but four of us in the ship, and we must each know certain things, yes, we were chosen by others.”

“Ill doing.” Liliha's voice was a hiss. “For when a Chooser chooses in truth, she knows the worth of a warrior and he does not later become an enemy. I sorrow for you that this was so, that now you must eat bitterness and ashes.” Her hand rested over Ayana's. “It is well you do not have a youngling within you.”

“That is true,” replied Ayana.

She was not left alone, nor was she still outwardly a prisoner. Oddly enough, she had no desire to leave. Liliha, Eu-La, the other cat-women who drifted in their soundless way in and out, brought food, or simply came to sit and look at her (though she never found their curiosity rude or disturbing) were somehow comforting, though she could not have told why. Several brought babies, purred them to sleep or played with them. But after a space Ayana began to worry.

The memory of Tan and the Rattons, busy with the war machines, was never erased from her mind, though she did sleep at last. And she drifted off to a purring song Liliha seemingly sang to herself as the cat-woman brushed the shining length of her tail. There was only the gray light of early dawn coming through the windows when they roused her. Liliha was there, and, by the door, the cat-man she had seen with the scarred older warrior, the young one who had been present before when they had questioned her. He was making the small, almost yowling sounds of their excited speech, and Liliha used the translator.

“The Ancestor would speak with you—it is very urgent.”

The male crossed the room with lithe strides, holding the translator. Ayana noted that his strange claw weapons hung from his belt, that belt which was his only clothing. For, though the cat-people appeared to vary in the amount of natural fur on their bodies, nearly hairless like Liliha in some cases, or as deeply furred as this male, they wore no coverings.

They went along the corridors, down two ramps, and then climbed another for some distance, until they reached a room where there was a gathering of warriors, a sprinkling of females. All were grouped about one male. He was a little stooped, his muzzle fur frosted, his arms and legs thin and shrunken. About his bowed shoulders was a cloak of shimmering stuff, which set him apart from the others, though his very air was enough to do that. She recollected having seen him much earlier, in that time she had been a bound prisoner.

This was Gammage who was their leader, or ruler, whose dream it was to reclaim the Demon knowledge for his people. He stared straight at Ayana as she entered. In one hand he held a translator disk, the box resting before him on the floor.

“They tell me,” he began abruptly, “that you believe those in the ship have more knowledge of these war machines.”

“That is so.” Cat—man—mixture—there was something very impressive about this Elder. Ayana could understand how he had managed to gather together seekers after knowledge and inspire them through the years.

“Will they support the Rattons, or will they aid us?” He came directly to the point.

“I do not know, I can only ask,” she said simply, as directly as he had asked.

Gammage made his decision. “Then that you shall do.”

18

Furtig crouched in the shadow of the doorway, one of the party that had escorted the female Demon out of the lairs. She stood out there alone now, in full sight of those in her ship. And the People had given her back the device to signal her companions. Furtig held one of the lightning throwers. He could send the crackling lash to cut down the Demon at the first suspicion of betrayal.

Liliha, though she was armed—so close to him now that when she moved the thin ruff of fur on the outside of her rounded arm brushed his—made no move to draw her weapon. She had insisted that the Demon was to be trusted, that she wanted indeed to halt the Rattons and her own male. Though it was hard for the warriors to accept such a turning against one's own kind.

It would seem that this was a Chooser thing, allied in a way to whatever moved them when they made mate choice. Liliha had sworn before the Elders, and it was very plain she believed what she said, that this Demon, though she had chosen the male now preparing to send fiery death against them, had not done that by her own willing and that she wanted no youngling of his.

Strange were the ways of Demons, strange even were the People's ways now. For their party had not only been augmented by Ku-La's warriors, but, in addition, by those from the caves, who had finally arrived. And—in an opposite doorway—were Barkers!

Never had Furtig believed he would be allied in any way with those. Yet Gammage and the two scouts rescued from the Rattons had convinced the Barkers to send in a small pack, perhaps as observers only. Still they were warriors, and no real fight would leave them lurking in the shadows.

A strange sound from the field—the bridge into the sky-ship was now dropping from the open hatch in its side. The Demon need only to run up that to be safe. Furtig was not sure any of them could use the strange weapons quickly enough to cut her down.

Liliha held to her ear one of the coms—as the Demon called them. Through that she could hear what the Demon said to her own kind. And she was not running, not moving at all. For some very long moments nothing happened. No one appeared in the hatch. All through those dragging minutes Furtig fully expected some awesome weapon to come into action, to their finish.

However, it would seem Liliha was right about the female Demon keeping to her word. At length a figure appeared on the ship's bridge, advancing slowly. It was muffled in clumsy wrappings so it hardly looked like a living thing, more like one of the unreliable lair servants.

It tramped down the ramp, strode ponderously toward the waiting Demon. While it was still some paces away, its thick-fingered hands, almost as clumsy as Furtig's own when he tried to use some delicate lair tool, thumbed something at throat level. The head covering rose and flopped back on its shoulders.

“That is the other female,” Liliha reported. “The one Ayana calls Massa—”

Furtig supposed that among themselves the Demons had names as did the People, the Barkers, even the Rattons. But he had never thought of the enemy as living normal, peaceful lives—only as the evil creatures of the old tales.