Android TV juggling frogs

the door through spaceby marion zimmer bradleychapter eight i slept little that night. there is a taletold in daillon of a _shegri_ where the challenger was left in a room alone, where he was blindfoldedand told to await the beginning of the torment. somewhere in those dark hours of waiting,between the unknown and the unexpected, the

Android TV juggling frogs, hours of telling over to himself the horrorsof past _shegri_, the torture of anticipation alone became the unbearable. a little pastnoon he collapsed in screams of horror and died raving, unmarred, untouched.daybreak came slowly, and with the first streamers of light came dallisa and the white _chak_,maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his way through

the shabby poverty of the great hall. theytook me to a lower dungeon where the slant of the sunlight was less visible. dallisasaid, "the sun has risen." i said nothing. any word may be interpreted as a confessionof defeat. i resolved to give them no excuse. but my skin crawled and i had that peculiarprickling sensation where the hair on my forearms was bristling erect with tension and fear.dallisa said to the _chak_, "his gear was not searched. see that he has swallowed noanesthetic drugs." briefly i gave her credit for thoroughness, even while i wondered ina split second why i had not thought of this. drugs could blur consciousness, at least,or suspend reality. the white nonhuman sprang forward and pinionedmy arms with one strong, spring-steel forearm.

with his other hand he forced my jaws open.i felt the furred fingers at the back of my throat, gagged, struggled briefly and doubledup in uncontrollable retching. dallisa's poison-berry-eyes regarded me levelly as i struggled upright,fighting off the dizzy sickness of disgust. something about her impassive face stoppedme cold. i had been, momentarily, raging with furyand humiliation. now i realized that this had been a calculated, careful gesture tomake me lose my temper and thus sap my resistance. if she could set me to fighting, if she couldmake me spend my strength in rage, my own imagination would fight on her side to makeme lose control before the end. swimming in the glare of her eyes, i realized she hadnever thought for a moment that i had taken

any drug.acting on kyral's hint that i was a terran, she was taking advantage of the well-knownterran revulsion for the nonhuman. "blindfold him," dallisa commanded, then instantly countermandedthat: "no, strip him first." the _chak_ ripped off shirtcloak, shirt, shoes, breeches, andi had my first triumph when the wealed claw marks on my shoulders--worse, if possible,than those which disfigured my face--were laid bare.the _chak_ screwed up his muzzle in fastidious horror, and dallisa lookedshaken. i could almost read her thoughts: _if he endured this, what hope have i to makehim cry mercy?_ briefly i remembered the months i lay feverish and half dead, waiting forthe wounds rakhal had inflicted to heal, those

months when i had believed that nothing wouldever hurt me again, that i had known the worst of all suffering. but i had been younger then.dallisa had picked up two small sharp knives. she weighed them, briefly, gesturing to the_chak_. without resisting, i let myself be manhandled backward, spreadeagled againstthe wall. dallisa commanded, "drive the knives through his palms to the wall!" my hands twitchedconvulsively, anticipating the slash of steel, and my throat closed in spasmodic dread. thiswas breaking the compact, bound as they were not to inflict physical damage.i opened my lips to protest this breaking of the bond of honor and met her dark blazingstare, and suddenly the sweat broke out on my forehead. i had placed myself wholly intheir hands, and as kyral had said, they were

in no way bound by honor to respect a pledgeto a terran! then, as my hands clenched into fists, i forced myself to relax. this wasa bluff, a mental trick to needle me into breaking the pact and pleading for mercy.i set my lips, spread my palms wide against the wall and waited impassively. she saidin her lilting voice, "take care not to sever the tendons, or his hands would be paralyzedand he may claim we have broken our compact." the points of the steel, razor-sharp, touchedmy palms, and i felt blood run down my hand before the pain. with an effort that turnedmy face white, i did not pull away from the point. the knives drove deeper. dallisa gesturedto the _chak_. the knives dropped. two pinpricks, a quarter of an inch deep,stung in my palm. i had out bluffed her. had

i? if i had expected her to betray disappointment--andi had--i was disappointed. abruptly, as if the game had wearied her already, she gestured,and i could not hold back a gasp as my arms were hauled up over my head, twisted violentlyaround one another and trussed with thin cords that bit deep into the flesh.then the rough upward pull almost jerked my shoulders from their sockets and i heard thegiant _chak_ grunt with effort as i was hauled upward until my feet barely, on tiptoe, touchedthe floor. "blindfold him," said dallisa languidly, "so that he cannot watch theascent of thesun or its descent or know what is to come." a dark softness muffled my eyes. after a littlei heard her steps retreating. my arms, wrenched overhead and numbed withthe bite of the cords, were beginning to hurt

badly now. but it wasn't too bad. surely shedid not mean that this should be all.... sternly i controlled my imagination, taking a tightrein on my thoughts. there was only one way to meet this--hanging blind and racked inspace, my toes barely scrabbling at the floor--and that was to take each thing as it came andnot look ahead for an instant. first of all i tried to get my feet underme, and discovered that by arching upwards to my fullest height i could bear my weighton tiptoe and ease, a little, the dislocating ache in my armpits by slackening the overheadrope. but after a little, a cramping pain began to flare through the arches of my feet,and it became impossible to support my weight on tiptoe. i jarred down with violent strainon my wrists and wrenched shoulders again.

and for a moment the shooting agony was sointense that i nearly screamed. i thought i heard a soft breath near me. after a littleit subsided to a sharp ache, then to a dull ache, and then to the violent cramping painagain, and once more i struggled to get my toes under me. i realized that by allowingmy toes barely to touch the floor they had doubled and tripled the pain by the tantalizinghope of, if not momentary relief, at least the alteration of one pain for another.i haven't the faintest idea, even now, how long i repeated that agonizing cycle: strugglefor a toehold on rough stone, scraping my bare feet raw; arch upward with all my strengthto release for a few moments the strain on my wrenched shoulders; the momentary illusionof relief as i found my balance and the pressure

lightened on my wrists. then the slow creeping,first of an ache, then of a pain, then of a violent agony in the arches of feet andcalves. and, delayed to the last endurable moment,that final terrible anguish when the drop of my full weight pulled shoulder and wristand elbow joints with that bone-shattering jerk. i started once to estimate how muchtime had passed, how many hours had crawled by, then checked myself, for that was imminentmadness. but once the process had begun my brain would not abandon and i found myself,with compulsive precision, counting off the seconds and the minutes in each cycle:stretch upward, release the pressure on the arms; the beginning of pain in calves andarches and toes; the creeping of pain up ribs

and loins and shoulders; the sudden jarringdrop on the arms again. my throat was intolerably dry. under other circumstances i might haveestimated the time by the growth of hunger and thirst, but the rough treatment i hadreceived made this impossible. there were other, unmentionable, humiliating pains.after a time, to bolster my flagging courage, i found myself thinking of all the ways itmight have been worse. i had heard of a _shegrin_ exposed to the bite of poisonous--not fatal,but painfully poisonous--insects, and to the worrying of the small gnawing rodents whichcan be trained to bite and tear. or i might have been branded.... i banished the memorywith the powerful exorcism; the man in daillon whose anticipation, alone, of a torture whichnever came, had broken his mind.

there was only one way to conquer this, andthat was to act as if the present moment was the only one, and never for a moment to forgetthat the strongest of compacts bound them not to harm me, that the end of this was fixedby sunset. gradually, however, all such rational thoughts blurred in a semidelirium of thirstand pain, narrowing to a red blaze of agony across my shoulder blades. i eased up on mytoes again. white-hot pain blazed through my feet.the rough stone on which my toes sank had been covered with metal and i smelled scorchingflesh, jerking up my feet with a wordless snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony bymy shoulders alone. and then i lost consciousness, at least for several moments, for when i becameaware again, through the nightmare of pain,

my toes were resting lightly and securelyon cold stone. the smell of burned flesh remained, and the painful stinging in my toes.mingled with that smell was a drift of perfume close by. dallisa murmured, "i do not wishto break our bargain by damaging your feet. it's only a little touch of fire to keep youfrom too much security in resting them." i felt the taste of blood mingle in my mouthwith the sour taste of vomit. i felt delirious, lightheaded. after another eternity i wonderedif i had really heard dallisa's lilting croon or whether it was a nightmare born of feverishpain: _plead with me. a word, only a word and iwill release you, strong man, scarred man. perhaps i shall demand only a little spacein your arms. would not such doom be light

upon you? perhaps i shall set you free toseek rakhal if only to plague kyral. a word, only a word from you. a word, only a wordfrom you...._ it died into an endlessly echoing whisper. swaying, blinded, i wondered whyi endured. i drew a dry tongue over lips, salty and bloody,and nightmarishly considered yielding, winning my way somehow around dallisa. or knockingher suddenly senseless and escaping--i, who need not be bound by wolf's codes either.i fumbled with a stiff shape of words. and a breath saved me, a soft, released breathof anticipation. it was another trick. i swayed, limp and racked. i was not race cargill now.i was a dead man hanging in chains, swinging, filthy vultures pecking at my dangling feet.i was.... the sound of boots rang on the stone

and kyral's voice, low and bitter, demandedsomewhere behind me, "what have you done with him?" she did not answer, but i heard herchains clash lightly and imagined her gesture. kyral muttered, "women have no genius at anytorture except...." his voice faded out into great distances.their words came to me over a sort of windy ringing, like the howling of lost men, dyingin the snowfast passes of the mountains. "speak up, you fool, he can't hear you now." "ifyou have let him faint, you are clumsy!" "_you_ talk of clumsiness!" dallisa's voice, eventhinned by the nightmare ringing in my head, held concentrated scorn. "perhaps i shallrelease him, to find rakhal when you failed! the terrans have a price on rakhal's head,too.

and at least this man will not confuse himselfwith his prey!" "if you think i would let you bargain with a _terranan_--" dallisa criedpassionately, "you trade with the terrans! how would you stop me, then?" "i trade withthem because i must. but for a matter involving the honor of the great house--" "the greathouse whose steps you would never have climbed, except for rakhal!" dallisa sounded as ifshe were chewing her words in little pieces and spitting them at kyral."oh, you were clever to take us both as your consorts! you did not know it was rakhal'sdoing, did you? hate the terrans, then!" she spat an obscenity at him. "enjoy your hate,wallow in hating, and in the end all shainsa will fall prey to the toymaker, like miellyn.""if you speak that name again," said kyral

very low, "i will kill you." "like miellyn,miellyn, miellyn," dallisa repeated deliberately. "you fool, rakhal knew nothing of miellyn!""he was seen--" "with _me_, you fool! with _me_! you cannot yet tell twin from twin?rakhal came to _me_ to ask news of her!" kyral cried out hoarsely, like a man in anguish,"why didn't you tell me?" "you don't really have to ask, do you, kyral?" "you bitch!"said kyral. "you filthy bitch!" i heard the sound of a blow. the next moment kyral rippedthe blindfold from my eyes and i blinked in the blaze of light. my arms were wholly numbnow, twisted above my head, but the jar of his touch sent fresh pain racingthrough me. kyral's face swam out of the blaze of hell. "if that is true, then this is adamnable farce, dallisa. you have lost our

chance of learning what he knows of miellyn.""what _he_ knows?" dallisa lowered her hand from her face, where a bruise was alreadydarkening. "miellyn has twice appeared when i was with him. loose him, dallisa, and bargainwith him. what we know of rakhal for what he knows of miellyn.""if you think i would let you bargain with _terranan_," she mocked. "weakling, this quarrelis _mine_! you fool, the others in the caravan will give me news, if you will not! _whereis cuinn?_" from a million miles away kyral laughed. "you've slipped the wrong hawk, dallisa.the catmen killed him." his skean flicked loose. he climbed to a perch near the ropeat my wrists. "bargain with me, rascar!" i coughed, unable to speak, and kyral insisted,"will you bargain?

end this damned woman's farce which makesa mock of _shegri_?" the slant of sun told me there was light left. i found a shred ofvoice, not knowing what i was going to say until i had said it, irrevocably. "this isbetween dallisa and me." kyral glared at me in mounting rage. with four strides he wasout of the room, flinging back a harsh, furious "i hope you kill each other!" and the doorslammed. dallisa's face swam red, and again as before,i knew the battle which was joined between us would be fought to a dreadful end. shetouched my chest lightly, but the touch jolted excruciating pain through my shoulders. "didyou kill cuinn?" i wondered, wearily, what this presaged. "did you?" in a passion, shecried, "answer! did you kill him?" she struck

me hard, and where the touch had been pain,the blow was a blaze of white agony. i fainted. "answer!" she struck me again and the whiteblaze jolted me back to consciousness. "answer me! answer!" each cry bought a blow untili gasped finally, "he signaled ... set catmen on us...." "no!" she stood staring at me andher white face was a death mask in which the eyes lived. she screamed wildly and the huge_chak_ came running. "cut him down! cut him down! cut him down!"a knife slashed the rope and i slumped, falling in a bone-breaking huddle to the floor. myarms were still twisted over my head. the _chak_ cut the ropes apart, pulled my armsroughly back into place, and i gagged with the pain as the blood began flowing painfullythrough the chafed and swollen hands. and

then i lost consciousness. more or less permanently,this time. end of chapter eightchapter nine when i came to again i was lying with my headin dallisa's lap, and the reddish color of sunset was in the room. her thighs were softunder my head, and for an instant i wondered if, in delirium, i had conceded to her. imuttered, "sun ... not down...." she bent her face to mine, whispering, "hush. hush."it was heaven, and i drifted off again. after a moment i felt a cup against my lips. "canyou swallow this?" i could and did. i couldn't taste it yet,but it was cold and wet and felt heavenly trickling down my throat. she bent and lookedinto my eyes, and i felt as if i were falling

into those reddish and stormy depths. shetouched my scarred mouth with a light finger. suddenly my head cleared and i sat upright."is this a trick to force me into calling my bet?" she recoiled as if i had struck her,then the trace of a smile flitted around her red mouth. yes, between us it was battle."you are right to be suspicious, i suppose. but if i tell you what i know of rakhal, willyou trust me then?" i looked straight at her and said, "no." surprisingly, she threw backher head and laughed. i flexed my freed wrists cautiously. the skin was torn away and chafed,and my arms ached to the bone. when i moved harsh lances of pain drove through my chest."well, until sunset i have no right to ask you to trust me," said dallisa when she haddone laughing.

"and since you are bound by my command untilthe last ray has fallen, i command that you lay your head upon my knees." i blazed, "youare making a game of me!" "is that my privilege? do you refuse?" "refuse?" it was not yet sunset.this might be a torture more complex than any which had yet greeted me. from the scarletglint in her eyes i felt she was playing with me, as the cat-things of the forest play withtheir helpless victims. my mouth twitched in a grimace of humiliationas i lowered myself obediently until my head rested on her fur-clad knees. she murmured,smiling, "is this so unbearable, then?" i said nothing. never, never for an instantcould i forget that—all human, all woman as she seemed--dallisa's race was worn andold when the terran empire had not left their

home star. the mind of wolf, which has mingledwith the nonhuman since before the beginnings of recorded time, is unfathomable to an outsider.i was better equipped than most earthmen to keep pace with its surface acts, but i couldnever pretend to understand its deeper motivations. it works on complex and irrational logic.mischief is an integral part of it. even the deadly blood-feud with rakhal had begun withan overelaborate practical joke--which had lost the service, incidentally, several thousandcredits worth of spaceship. and so i could not trust dallisa for an instant.yet it was wonderful to lie here with my head resting against the perfumed softness of herbody. then suddenly her arms were gripping me, frantic and hungry; the subdued thingin her voice, her eyes, flamed out hot and

wild. she was pressing the whole length ofher body to mine, breasts and thighs and long legs, and her voice was hoarse. "is this torturetoo?" beneath the fur robe she was soft and white, and the subtle scent of her hair seemeda deeper entrapment than any. frail as she seemed, her arms had the strengthof steel, and pain blazed down my wrenched shoulders, seared through the twisted wrists.then i forgot the pain. over her shoulder the last dropping redness of the sun vanishedand plunged the room into orchid twilight. i caught her wrists in my hands, prizing thembackward, twisting them upward over her head. i said thickly, "the sun's down." and theni stopped her wild mouth with mine. and i knew that the battle between us had reachedclimax and victory simultaneously, and any

question about who had won it was purely academic.during the night sometime, while her dark head lay motionless on my shoulder, i foundmyself staring into the darkness, wakeful. the throbbing of my bruises had little todo with my sleeplessness; i was remembering other chained girls from the old days in thedry-towns, and the honey and poison of them distilled into dallisa's kisses. her headwas very light on my shoulders, and she felt curiously insubstantial, like a woman of feathers.one of the tiny moons was visible through the slitted windows. i thought of my roomsin the terran trade city, clean and bright and warm, and all the nights when i had pacedthe floor, hating, filled to the teeth with bitterness, longing for the windswept starsof the dry-towns, the salt smell of the winds

and the musical clashing of the walk of thechained women. with a sting of guilt, i realized that i had half forgotten juli and my pledgeto her and her misfortune which had freed me again, for this.yet i had won, and what they knew had narrowed my planet-wide search to a pinpoint. rakhalwas in charin. i wasn't altogether surprised. charin is the only city on wolf, except thekharsa, where the terran empire has put down deep roots into the planet, built a tradecity, a smaller spaceport. like the kharsa, it lies within the circle of terran law--anda million miles outside it. a nonhuman town, inhabited largely by _chaks_, it is the coreand center of the resistance movement, a noisy town in a perpetual ferment.it was the logical place for a renegade. i

settled myself so that the ache in my rackedshoulders was less violent, and muttered, "why charin?" slight as the movement was,it roused dallisa. she rolled over and propped herself on her elbows, quoting drowsily, "theprey walks safest at the hunter's door." i stared at the square of violet moonlight,trying to fit together all the pieces of the puzzle, and asked half aloud, "what prey andwhat hunters?" dallisa didn't answer. i hadn't expected herto answer. i asked the real question in my mind: "why does kyral hate rakhal sensar,when he doesn't even know him by sight?" "there are reasons," she said somberly. "one of themis miellyn, my twin sister. kyral climbed the steps of the great house by claiming usboth as his consorts. he is our father's son

by another wife." that explained much.brother-and-sister marriages, not uncommon in the dry-towns, are based on expediencyand suspicion, and are frequently, though not always loveless. it explained dallisa'staunts, and it partly explained, only partly, why i found her in my arms. it did not explainrakhal's part in this mysterious intrigue, nor why kyral had taken me for rakhal, (butonly after he remembered seeing me in terran clothing). i wondered why it had never occurredto me before that i might be mistaken for rakhal.there was no close resemblance between us, but a casual description would apply equallywell to me or to rakhal. my height is unusual for a terran--within an inch of rakhal's own--andwe had roughly the same build, the same coloring.

i had copied his walk, imitated his mannerisms,since we were boys together. and, blurring minor facial characteristics, there were thescars of the _kifirgh_ on my mouth, cheeks, and shoulders.anyone who did not know us by sight, anyone who had known us by reputation from the dayswhen we had worked together in the dry-towns, might easily take one of us for the other.even juli had blurted, "you're so much like--" before thinking better of it. other odd bitsof the puzzle floated in my mind, stubbornly refusing to take on recognizable patterns,the disappearance of a toy-seller; juli's hysterical babbling; the way the girl--miellyn?had vanished into a shrine of nebran; and the taunts of dallisa and the old man abouta mysterious "toymaker." and something, some

random joggling of a memory, in that eerietrading in the city of the silent ones. i knew all these things fitted together somehow,but i had no real hope that dallisa could complete their pattern for me. she said, witha vehemence that startled me, "miellyn is only the excuse! kyral hates rakhal becauserakhal will compromise and because he'll fight!" she rolled over and pressed herself againstme in the darkness. her voice trembled. "race, our world is dying. we can't stand againstterra. and there are other things, worse things." i sat up, surprised to find myself defendingterra to this girl. after all these years i was back in my own world. and yet i heardmyself say quietly, "the terrans aren't exploiting wolf. we haven't abolished the rule of shainsa.we've changed nothing." it was true. terra

held wolf by compact, not conquest.they paid, and paid generously, for the lease of the lands where their trade cities wouldrise, and stepped beyond them only when invited to do so. "we let any city or state that wantsto keep its independence govern itself until it collapses, dallisa. and they do collapseafter a generation or so. very few primitive planets can hold out against us. the peoplethemselves get tired of living under feudal or theocratic systems, and they beg to betaken into the empire. that's all." "but that's just it," dallisa argued. "you give the peopleall those things we used to give them, and you do it better. just by being here, youare killing the dry-towns. they're turning to you and leaving us, and you let them doit." i shook my head. "we've kept the terran

peace for centuries. what do you expect? shouldwe give you arms, planes, bombs, weapons to hold your slaves down?" "yes!" she flaredat me. the dry-towns have ruled wolf since--since--you, you can't even imagine how long!and we made compact with you to trade here--" "and we have rewarded you by leaving you untouched,"i said quietly. "but we have not forbidden the dry-towns to come into the empire andwork with terra." she said bitterly, "men like kyral will die first," and pressed herface helplessly against me. "and i will die with them. miellyn broke away, but i cannot!courage is what i lack. our world is rotten, race, rotten all through, and i'm as rottenas the core of it. i could have killed you today, and i'm herein your arms. our world is rotten, but i've

no confidence that the new world will be better!"i put my hand under her chin, and looked down gravely into her face, only a pale oval inthe darkness. there was nothing i could say; she had said it all, and truthfully. i hadhated and yearned and starved for this, and when i found it, it turned salty and bloodyon my lips, like dallisa's despairing kisses. she ran her fingers over the scars on my face,then gripped her small thin hands around my wrists so fiercely that i grunted protest."you will not forget me," she said in her strangely lilting voice. "you will not forgetme, although you were victorious." she twisted and lay looking up at me, her eyes glowingfaintly luminous in darkness. i knew that she could see me as clearly as if it wereday. "i think it was my victory, not yours,

race cargill.gently, on an impulse i could not explain, i picked up one delicate wrist, then the other,unclasping the heavy jeweled bracelets. she let out a stifled cry of dismay. and theni tossed the chains into a corner before i drew her savagely into my arms again and forcedher head back under my mouth. i said good-bye to her alone, in the reddish,windswept space before the great house. she pressed her head against my shoulder and whispered,"race, take me with you!" for answer i only picked up her narrow wrists and turned themover on my palm. the jeweled bracelets were clasped again around the thinly boned joints,and on some self-punishing impulse she had shortened the chains so that she could noteven put her arms around me.

i lifted the punished wrists to my mouth andkissed them gently. "you don't want to leave, dallisa." i was desperately sorry for her.she would go down with her dying world, proud and cold and with no place in the new one.she kissed me and i tasted blood, her thin fettered body straining wildly against me,shaken with tearing, convulsive sobs. then she turned and fled back into the shadow ofthe great dark house. i never saw her again. end of chapter ninechapter ten a few days later i found myself nearing theend of the trail. it was twilight in charin, hot and reeking with the gypsy glare of fireswhich burned, smoking, at the far end of the street of the six shepherds. i crouched inthe shadow of a wall, waiting. my skin itched

from the dirty shirtcloak i hadn't changedin days. shabbiness is wise in nonhuman parts, and dry-towners think too much of water towaste much of it in superfluous washing anyhow. i scratched unobtrusively and glanced cautiouslydown the street. it seemed empty, except for a few sodden derelicts sprawled in doorways--thestreet of the six shepherds is a filthy slum--but i made sure my skean was loose. charin isnot a particularly safe town, even for dry-towners, and especially not for earthmen, at any time.even with what dallisa had told me, the search had been difficult. charin is not shainsa.in charin, where human and nonhuman live closer together than anywhere else on the planet,information about such men as rakhal can be bought, but the policy is to let the buyerbeware. that's fair enough, because the life

of the seller has a way of not being worthmuch afterward, either. a dirty, dust-laden wind was blowing up along the street, heavywith strange smells. the pungent reek of incense from a street-shrine was in the smells.the heavy, acrid odor that made my skin crawl. in the hills behind charin, the ghost windwas rising. borne on this wind, the ya-men would sweep down from the mountains, and everythinghuman or nearly human would scatter in their path. they would range through the quarterall night, and in the morning they would melt away, until the ghost wind blew again. atany other time, i would already have taken cover.i fancied that i could hear, borne on the wind, the faraway yelping, and envision theplumed, taloned figures which would come leaping

down the street. in that moment, the quietof the street split asunder. from somewhere a girl's voice screamed in shrill pain orpanic. then i saw her, dodging between two of the chinked pebble-houses. she was a child,thin and barefoot, a long tangle of black hair flying loose as she darted and twistedto elude the lumbering fellow at her heels. his outstretched paw jerked cruelly at herslim wrist. the little girl screamed and wrenched herself free and threw herself straight onme, wrapping herself around my neck with the violence of a storm wind. her hair got inmy mouth and her small hands gripped at my back like a cat's flexed claws. "oh, helpme," she gasped between sobs. "don't let him get me, don't." and even in that broken pleai took it in that the little ragamuffin did

not speak the jargon of that slum, but thepure speech of shainsa. what i did then was as automatic as if ithad been juli. i pulled the kid loose, shoved her behind me, and scowled at the brute wholurched toward us. "make yourself scarce," i advised. "we don't chase little girls wherei come from. haul off, now." the man reeled. i smelled the rankness of his rags as he thrustone grimy paw at the girl. i never was the hero type, but i'd started something whichi had to carry through. i thrust myself between them and put my hand on the skean again."you--you dry-towner." the man set up a tipsy howl, and i sucked in my breath. now i wasin for it. unless i got out of there damned fast, i'd lose what i'd come all the way tocharin to find. i felt like handing the girl

over. for all i knew, the bully could be herfather and she was properly in line for a spanking. this wasn't any of my business.my business lay at the end of the street, where rakhal was waiting at the fires. hewouldn't be there long. already the smell of the ghost wind was heavyand harsh, and little flurries of sand went racing along the street, lifting the flapsof the doorways. but i did nothing so sensible. the big lunk made a grab at the girl, andi whipped out my skean and pantomimed. "get going!" "dry-towner!" he spat out the wordlike filth, his pig-eyes narrowing to slits. "son of the ape! _earthman!_" "_terranan!_"someone took up the howl. there was a stir, a rustle, all along the street that had seemedempty,

and from nowhere, it seemed, the space infront of me was crowded with shadowy forms, human and otherwise. "earthman!" i felt themuscles across my belly knotting into a band of ice. i didn't believe i'd given myselfaway as an earthman. the bully was using the time-dishonored tactic of stirring up a riotin a hurry, but just the same i looked quickly round, hunting a path of escape. "put yourskean in his guts, spilkar! grab him!" "hai-ai! earthman! _hai-ai!_" it was the last cry thatmade me panic. through the sultry glare at the end of thestreet, i could see the plumed, taloned figures of the ya-men, gliding through the bannersof smoke. the crowd melted open. i didn't stop to reflect on the fact--suddenly veryobvious--that rakhal couldn't have been at

the fires at all, and that my informant hadled me into an open trap, a nest of ya-men already inside charin. the crowd edged backand muttered, and suddenly i made my choice. i whirled, snatched up the girl in my armsand ran straight toward the advancing figures of the ya-men. nobody followed me. i evenheard a choked shout that sounded like a warning. i heard the yelping shrieks of the ya-mengrow to a wild howl, and at the last minute, when their stiff rustling plumes loomed onlya few yards away, i dived sidewise into an alley, stumbled on some rubbish and spilledthe girl down. "run, kid!" she shook herself like a puppy climbing out of water.her small fingers closed like a steel trap on my wrist. "this way," she urged in a hastywhisper, and i found myself plunging out the

far end of the alley and into the shelterof a street-shrine. the sour stink of incense smarted in my nostrils, and i could hear theyelping of the ya-men as they leaped and rustled down the alley, their cold and poisonous eyessearching out the recess where i crouched with the girl. "here," she panted, "standclose to me on the stone--" i drew back, startled. ""oh, don't stop to argue," she whimpered. "come _here_!""_hai-ai!_ earthman! there heis!" the girl's arms flung round me again. i felt her slight, hard body pressing on mineand she literally hauled me toward the pattern of stones at the center of the shrine. i wouldn'thave been human if i hadn't caught her closer yet. the world reeled. the street disappearedin a cone of spinning lights, stars danced

crazily, and i plunged down through a wideninggulf of empty space, locked in the girl's arms.i fell, spun, plunged head over heels through tilting lights and shadows that flung us througheternities of freefall. the yelping of the ya-men whirled away in unimaginable distances,and for a second i felt the unmerciful blackout of a power dive, with blood breaking frommy nostrils and filling my mouth. end of chapter tenchapter eleven lights flared in my eyes. i was standing solidlyon my feet in the street-shrine, but the street was gone. coils of incense still smudged theair. the god squatted toadlike in his recess. the girl was hanging limp, locked in my clenchedarms. as the floor straightened under my feet

i staggered, thrown off balance by the suddenreturn of the girl's weight, and grabbed blindly for support. "give her to me," said a voice,and the girl's sagging body was lifted from my arms.a strong hand grasped my elbow. i found a chair beneath my knees and sank gratefullyinto it. "the transmission isn't smooth yet between such distant terminals," the voiceremarked. "i see miellyn has fainted again. a weakling, the girl, but useful." i spatblood, trying to get the room in focus. for i was inside a room, a room of some translucentsubstance, windowless, a skylight high above me, through which pink daylight streamed.daylight--and it had been midnight in charin! i'd come halfway around the planet in a fewseconds! from somewhere i heard the sound

of hammering, tiny, bell-like hammering, thechiming of a fairy anvil. i looked up and saw a man—a man?--watching me. on wolf yousee all kinds of human, half-human and nonhuman life, and i consider myself something of anexpert on all three. but i had never seen anyone, or anything, who so closely resembledthe human and so obviously wasn't. he, or it, was tall and lean, man-shaped butoddly muscled, a vague suggestion of something less than human in the lean hunch of his posture.manlike, he wore green tight-fitting trunks and a shirt of green fur that revealed bulgingbiceps where they shouldn't be, and angular planes where there should have been swellingmuscles. the shoulders were high, the neck unpleasantly sinuous, and the face,a little narrower than human, was handsomely

arrogant, with a kind of wary alert mischiefthat was the least human thing about him. he bent, tilted the girl's inert body on toa divan of some sort, and turned his back on her, lifting his hand in an impatient,and unpleasantly reminiscent, gesture. the tinkling of the little hammers stopped asif a switch had been disconnected. "now," said the nonhuman, "we can talk."like the waif, he spoke shainsan, and spoke it with a better accent than any nonhumani had ever known--so well that i looked again to be certain. i wasn't too dazed to answerin the same tongue, but i couldn't keep back a spate of questions: "what happened? whoare you? what is this place?" the nonhuman waited, crossing his hands--quite passablehands, if you didn't look too closely at what

should have been nails--and bent forward ina sketchy gesture. "do not blame miellyn. she acted under orders.it was imperative you be brought here tonight, and we had reason to believe you might ignorean ordinary summons. you were clever at evading our surveillance, for a time. but there wouldnot be two dry-towners in charin tonight who would dare the ghost wind. your reputationdoes you justice, rakhal sensar." rakhal sensar!_ once again rakhal! shaken, i pulled a ragfrom my pocket and wiped blood from my mouth. i'd figured out, in shainsa, why the mistakewas logical. and here in charin i'd been hanging around in rakhal's old haunts, covering hisold trails. once again, mistaken identity was natural. natural or not, i wasn't goingto deny it. if these were rakhal's enemies,

my real identity should be kept as an acein reserve which might--just might--get me out alive again. if they were his friends... well, i could only hope that no one who knew him well by sight would walk in on me."we knew," the nonhuman continued, "that if you remained where you were, the _terranan_cargill would have made his arrest. we know about your quarrel with cargill, among otherthings, but we did not consider it necessary that you should fall into his hands at present."i was puzzled. "i still don't understand. exactly where am i?" "this is the master shrineof nebran." _nebran!_ the stray pieces of the puzzle suddenly jolted into place. kyralhad warned me, not knowing he was doing it. i hastily imitated the gesture kyral had made,gabbling a few words of an archaic charm.

like every earthman who's lived on wolf morethan a tourist season, i'd seen faces go blank and impassive at mention of the toad god.rumor made his spies omnipresent, his priests omniscient, his anger all-powerful. i hadbelieved about a tenth of what i had heard, or less. the terran empire has little to sayto planetary religions, and nebran's cult is a remarkably obscure one,despite the street-shrines on every corner. now i was in his master shrine, and the devicewhich had brought me here was beyond doubt a working model of a matter transmitter. amatter transmitter, a working model--the words triggered memory. rakhal was after it. "andwho," i asked slowly, "are you, lord?" the green-clad creature hunched thin shouldersagain in a ceremonious gesture. "i am called

evarin.humble servant of nebran and yourself," he added, but there was no humility in his manner."i am called the toymaker." _evarin._ that was another name given weight by rumor. abreath of gossip in a thieves market. a scrawled word on smudged paper. a blank folder in terranintelligence. another puzzle-piece snapped into place--_toymaker_! the girl on the divansat up suddenly passing slim hands over her disheveled hair. "did i faint, evarin?i had to fight to get him into the stone, and the patterns were not set straight inthat terminal. you must send one of the little ones to set them to rights. toymaker, youare not listening to me." "stop chattering, miellyn," said evarin indifferently. "youbrought him here, and that is all that matters.

you aren't hurt?" miellyn pouted and lookedruefully at her bare bruised feet, patted the wrinkles in her ragged frock with fastidiousfingers. "my poor feet," she mourned, "they are blackand blue with the cobbles and my hair is filled with sand and tangles! toymaker, what waywas this to send me to entice a man? any man would have come quickly, quickly, if he hadseen me looking lovely, but you--you send me in rags!" she stamped a small bare foot.she was not merely as young as she had looked in the street. though immature and underdevelopedby terran standards, she had a fair figure for a dry-town woman.her rags fell now in graceful folds. her hair was spun black glass, and i--i saw what therags and the confusion in the filthy street

had kept me from seeing before. it was thegirl of the spaceport cafe, the girl who had appeared and vanished in the eerie streetsof canarsa. evarin was regarding her with what, in a human, might have been rueful impatience.he said, "you know you enjoyed yourself, as always, miellyn. run along and make yourselfbeautiful again, little nuisance." the girl danced out of the room, and i wasjust as glad to see her go. the toymaker motioned to me. "this way," he directed, and led methrough a different door. the offstage hammering i had heard, tiny bell tones like a fairyxylophone, began again as the door opened, and we passed into a workroom which made meremember nursery tales from a half-forgotten childhood on terra. for the workers were tiny,gnarled _trolls_! they were _chaks_. _chaks_

from the polar mountains,dwarfed and furred and half-human, with witchlike faces and great golden eyes, and i had thecurious feeling that if i looked hard enough i would see the little toy-seller they hadhunted out of the kharsa. i didn't look. i figured i was in enough trouble already.tinyhammers pattered on miniature anvils in a tinkling, jingling chorus of musical clinksand taps. golden eyes focused like lenses over winking jewels and gimcracks. busy elves.makers of toys! evarin jerked his shoulders with an imperative gesture. i followed himthrough a fairy workroom, but could not refrain from casting a lingering look at the worktables.a withered leprechaun set eyes into the head of a minikin hound. furred fingers workedprecious metals into invisible filigree for

the collarpiece of a dancing doll. metallicfeathers were thrust with clockwork precision into the wings of a skeleton bird nolonger than my fingernail. the nose of the hound wabbled and sniffed,the bird's wings quivered, the eyes of the little dancer followed my footsteps. toys?"this way," evarin rapped, and a door slid shut behind us. the clinks and taps grew faint,fainter, but never ceased. my face must have betrayed more than conventional impassivity,for evarin smiled. "now you know, rakhal, why i am called toymaker. is it not strange--the master priest of nebran, a maker of toys, and the shrine of the toad god a workshopfor children's playthings?" evarin paused suggestively. they were obviously not children'splaythings and this was my cue to say so,

but i avoided the trap. evarin opened a slidingpanel and took out a doll. she was perhaps the length of my longest finger, molded tothe precise proportions of a woman, and costumed after the bizarre fashion of the ardcarrandancing girls. evarin touched no button or key that i couldsee, but when he set the figure on its feet, it executed a whirling, armtossing dance ina fast, tricky tempo. "i am, in a sense, benevolent," evarin murmured. he snapped his fingers andthe doll sank to her knees and poised there, silent. "moreover, i have the means and, letus say, the ability to indulge my small fantasies. "the little daughter of the president of thefederation of trade cities on samarra was sent such a doll recently.what a pity that paolo arimengo was so suddenly

impeached and banished!" the toymaker cluckedhis teeth commiseratingly. "perhaps this small companion will compensate the little carmelafor her adjustment to her new ... position." he replaced the dancer and pulled down somethinglike a whirligig. "this might interest you," he mused, and set it spinning. i stared atthe pattern of lights that flowed and disappeared, melting in and out of visible shadows.suddenly i realized what the thing was doing. i wrested my eyes away with an effort. hadthere been a lapse of seconds or minutes? had evarin spoken? evarin arrested the compellingmotion with one finger. "several of these pretty playthings are available to the childrenof important men," he said absently. "an import of value for our exploited and impoverishedworld. unfortunately they are, perhaps, a

little ... ah, obvious.the incidence of nervous breakdowns is, ah, interfering with their sale. the children,of course, are unaffected, and love them." evarin set the hypnotic wheel moving again,glanced sidewise at me, then set it carefully back. "now"--evarin's voice, hard with thesilkiness of a cat's snarl, clawed the silence--"we'll talk business." i turned, composing my face.evarin had something concealed in one hand, but i didn't think it was a weapon. and ifi'd known, i'd have had to ignore it anyway. "perhaps you wonder how we recognized andfound you?" a panel cleared in the wall and became translucent. confused flickers moved,dropped into focus and i realized that the panel was an ordinary television screen andi was looking into the well-known interior

of the cafe of three rainbows in the tradecity of charin. by this time i was running low on curiosity and didn't wonder till much,much later how televised pictures were transmitted around the curve of a planet.evarin sharpened the focus down on the long earth-type bar where a tall man in terranclothes was talking to a pale-haired girl. evarin said, "by now, race cargill has decided,no doubt, that you fell into his trap and into the hands of the ya-men. he is off-guardnow." and suddenly the whole thing seemed so unbearably, illogically funny that my shouldersshook with the effort to keep back dangerous laughter.since i'd landed in charin, i'd taken great pains to avoid the trade city, or anyone whomight have associated me with it. and rakhal,

somehow aware of this, had conveniently filledup the gap. by posing as me. it wasn't nearly as difficult as it sounded. i had found thatout in shainsa. charin is a long, long way from the major trade city near the kharsa.i hadn't a single intimate friend there, or within hundreds of miles, to see through theimposture. at most, there were half a dozen of the staffthat i'd once met, or had a drink with, eight or ten years ago. rakhal could speak perfectstandard when he chose; if he lapsed into dry-town idiom, that too was in my known character.i had no doubt he was making a great success of it all, probably doing much better withmy identity than i could ever have done with his. evarin rasped, "cargill meant to leavethe planet. what stopped him? you could be

of use to us, rakhal.but not with this blood-feud unsettled." that needed no elucidation. no wolfan in his rightmind will bargain with a dry-towner carrying an unresolved blood-feud. by law and custom,declared blood-feud takes precedence over any other business, public or private, andis sufficient excuse for broken promises, neglected duties, theft, even murder. "wewant it settled once and for all." evarin's voice was low and unhurried. "and we aren'tabove weighting the scales. this cargill can, and has, posed as a dry-towner,undetected. we don't like earthmen who can do that. in settling your feud, you will beaiding us, and removing a danger. we would be ... grateful." he opened his closed hand,displaying something small, curled, inert.

"every living thing emits a characteristicpattern of electrical nerve impulses. we have ways of recording those impulses, and we havehad you and cargill under observation for a long time.we've had plenty of opportunity to key this toy to cargill's pattern." on his palm thecurled thing stirred, spread wings. a fledgling bird lay there, small soft body throbbingslightly. half-hidden in a ruff of metallic feathers i glimpsed a grimly elongated beak.the pinions were feathered with delicate down less than a quarter of an inch long. theybeat with delicate insistence against the toymaker's prisoning fingers. "this is notdangerous to you. press here"--he showed me--"and if race cargillis within a certain distance--and it is up

to you to be _within_ that distance--it willfind him, and kill him. unerringly, inescapably, untraceably. we will not tell you the criticaldistance. and we will give you three days." he checked my startled exclamation with agesture. "of course this is a test. within the hour cargill will receive a warning. wewant no incompetents who must be helped too much!nor do we want cowards! if you fail, or release the bird at a distance too great, or evadethe test"--the green inhuman malice in his eyes made me sweat--"we have made anotherbird." by now my brain was swimming, but i thought i understood the complex inhuman logicinvolved. "the other bird is keyed to me?" with slow contempt evarin shook his head."you? you are used to danger and fond of a

gamble. nothing so simple! we have given youthree days. if, within that time, the bird you carry hasnot killed, the other bird will fly. and it will kill. rakhal, you have a wife." yes,rakhal had a wife. they could threaten rakhal's wife. and his wife was my sister juli. everythingafter that was anticlimax. of course i had to drink with evarin, the elaborate formalritual without which no bargain on wolf is concluded. he entertained me with gory andtechnical descriptions of the way in which the birds, and other of his hellish toys,did their killing, and worse tasks. miellyn danced into the room and upset theexquisite solemnity of the wine-ritual by perching on my knee, stealing a sip from mycup, and pouting prettily when i paid her

less attention than she thought she merited.i didn't dare pay much attention, even when she whispered, with the deliberate and thoroughwantonness of a dry-town woman of high-caste who has flung aside her fetters, somethingabout a rendezvous at the three rainbows. but eventually it was over and i stepped througha door that twisted with a giddy blankness, and found myself outside a bare windowlesswall in charin again, the night sky starred and cold. the acrid smell of the ghost windwas thinning in the streets, but i had to crouch in a cranny of the wall when a finalrustling horde of ya-men, the last of their receding tide, rustled down the street. ifound my way to my lodging in a filthy _chak_ hostel, and threw myself down on the verminousbed. believe it or not, i slept.

end of chapter elevenchapter twelve an hour before dawn there was a noise in myroom. i roused, my hand on my skean. someone or something was fumbling under the mattresswhere i had thrust evarin's bird. i struck out, encountered something warm and breathing,and grappled with it in the darkness. a foul-smelling something gripped over my mouth. i tore itaway and struck hard with the skean. there was a high shrilling. the grippingfilth loosened and fell away and something died on the floor.i struck a light, retching in revulsion. it hadn't been human. there wouldn't have beenthat much blood from a human. not that color, either. the _chak_ who ran the place cameand gibbered at me. _chaks_ have a horror

of blood and this one gave me to understandthat my lease was up then and there, no arguments, no refunds. he wouldn't even let me go intohis stone outbuilding to wash the foul stuff from my shirt cloak. i gave up and fishedunder the mattress for evarin's toy. the _chak_ got a glimpse of the embroiderieson the silk in which it was wrapped, and stood back, his loose furry lips hanging open, whilei gathered my few belongings together and strode out of the room. he would not touchthe coins i offered; i laid them on a chest and he let themlie there, and as i went into the reddening morning they came flying after me into thestreet. i pulled the silk from the toy and tried to make some sense from my predicament.the little thing lay innocent and silent in

my palm. it wouldn't tell me whether it hadbeen keyed to me, the real cargill, some time in the past, or to rakhal, using my name andreputation in the terran colony here at charin. if i pressed the stud it might play out thiscomedy of errors by hunting down rakhal, and all my troubles would be over. for a while,at least, until evarin found out what had happened. i didn't deceive myself that i couldcarry the impersonation through another meeting. on the other hand, if i pressed the stud,the bird might turn on me. and then all my troubles would be over for good. if i delayedpast evarin's deadline, and did nothing, the other bird in his keeping would hunt downjuli and give her a swift and not too painless death. i spent most of the day in a _chak_dive, juggling plans. toys, innocent and sinister.

spies, messengers. toys which killed horribly.toys which could be controlled, perhaps, by the pliant mind of a child, and every childhates its parents now and again! even in the terran colony, who was safe? in mack's veryhome, one of the magnusson youngsters had a shiny thing which might, or might not, beone of evarin's hellish toys. or was i beginning to think like a superstitious dry-towner?damn it, evarin couldn't be infallible; he hadn't even recognized me as race cargill!or--suddenly the sweat broke out, again, on my forehead--_or had he_?had the whole thing been one of those sinister, deadly and incomprehensible nonhuman jokes?i kept coming to the same conclusion. juli was in danger, but she was half a world away.rakhal was here in charin. there was a child

involved--juli's child. the first step wasto get inside the terran colony and see how the land lay. charin is a city shaped likea crescent moon, encircling the small trade city:a miniature spaceport, a miniature skyscraper hq, the clustered dwellings of the terranswho worked there, and those who lived with them and supplied them with necessities, servicesand luxuries. entry from one to the other is through a guarded gateway, since this ishostile territory, and charin lies far beyond the impress of ordinary terran law. but thegate stood wide-open, and the guards looked lax and bored. they had shockers, but theydidn't look as if they'd used them lately. one raised an eyebrow at his companion asi shambled up. i could pretty well guess the

impression i made, dirty, unkempt and stainedwith nonhuman blood. i asked permission to go into the terran zone. they asked my nameand business, and i toyed with the notion of giving the name of the man i was inadvertentlyimpersonating. then i decided that if rakhal had passed himself off as race cargill, he'dexpect exactly that. and he was also capable of the masterstroke of impudence--putting out a pickup order, through space force, for his own name! so i gave the namewe'd used from shainsa to charin, and tacked one of the secret service passwords on theend of it. they looked at each other again and one said, "rascar, eh? this is the guy,all right." he took me into the little booth by the gate while the other used an intercomdevice. presently they took me along into

the hq building, and into an office that said"legate." i tried not to panic, but it wasn't easy! evidently i'd walked square into anothertrap. one guard asked me, "all right, now, whatexactly is your business in the trade city?" i'd hoped to locate rakhal first. now i knewi'd have no chance and at all costs i must straighten out this matter of identity beforeit went any further. "put me straight through to magnusson's office, level 38 at centralhq, by visi," i demanded. i was trying to remember if mack had ever even heard the namewe used in shainsa. i decided i couldn't risk it. "nameof race cargill." the guard grinned without moving. he saidto his partner, "that's the one, all right."

he put a hand on my shoulder, spinning mearound. "haul off, man. shake your boots." there were two of them, and spaceforce guardsaren't picked for their good looks. just the same, i gave a pretty good account of myselfuntil the inner door opened and a man came storming out. "what the devil is all thisracket?" one guard got a hammerlock on me. "this dry-townerbum tried to talk us into making a priority call to magnusson, the chief at central. heknew a couple of the s.s. passwords. that's what got him through the gate. remember, cargillpassed the word that somebody would turn up trying to impersonate him." "i remember."the strange man's eyes were wary and cold. "you damned fools," i snarled. "magnussonwill identify me! can't you realize you're

dealing with an impostor?"one of the guards said to the legate in an undertone, "maybe we ought to hold him asa suspicious character." but the legate shook his head. "not worth the trouble. cargillsaid it was a private affair. you might search him, make sure he's not concealing contrabandweapons," he added, and talked softly to the wide-eyed clerk in the background while theguards went through my shirt cloak and pockets. when they started to unwrap the silk-shroudedtoy i yelled--if the thing got set off accidentally, there'd be trouble. the legate turned andrebuked, "can't you see it's embroidered with the toad god? it's a religious amulet of somesort, let it alone." they grumbled, but gave it back to me, and the legate commanded, "don'tmess him up any more. give him back his knife

and take him to the gates. but make sure hedoesn't come back." i found myself seized and frog-marched to the gate.one guard pushed my skean back into its clasp. the other shoved me hard, and i stumbled,fell sprawling in the dust of the cobbled street, to the accompaniment of a profanestatement about what i could expect if i came back. a chorus of jeers from a cluster of_chak_ children and veiled women broke across me. i picked myself up, glowered so fiercelyat the giggling spectators that the laughter drained away into silence, and clenched myfists, half inclined to turn back and bull my way through.then i subsided. first round to rakhal. he had sprung the trap on me, very neatly. thestreet was narrow and crooked, winding between

doubled rows of pebble-houses, and full ofdark shadows even in the crimson noon. i walked aimlessly, favoring the arm the guard hadcrushed. i was no closer to settling things with rakhal, and i had slammed at least onegate behind me. why hadn't i had sense enough to walk up and demand to _see_ race cargill?why hadn't i insisted on a fingerprint check? i could prove my identity, and rakhal, usingmy name in my absence, to those who didn't know me by sight, couldn't. i could at leasthave made him try. but he had maneuvered it very cleverly, so i never had a chance toinsist on proofs. i turned into a wine shop and ordered a dram of greenish mountain berryliquor, sipping it slowly and fingering the few bills and coins in my pockets. i'd betterforget about warning juli. i couldn't 'vise

her from charin, except in the terran zone.i had neither the money nor the time to make the trip in person, even if i could get passageon a terran-dominated airline after today. miellyn. she had flirted with me, and likedallisa, she might prove vulnerable. it might be another trap, but i'd take the chance.at least i could get hints about evarin. and i needed information. i wasn't used to thiskind of intrigue any more. the smell of danger was foreign to me now, and i found it unpleasant.the small lump of the bird in my pocket tantalized me. i took it out again.it was a temptation to press the stud and let it settle things, or at least start themgoing, then and there. after a while i noticed the proprietors of the shop staring at thesilk of the wrappings. they backed off, apprehensive.

i held out a coin and they shook their heads."you are welcome to the drink," one of them said. "all we have is at your service. onlyplease go. go quickly." they would not touch the coins i offered. i thrust the bird inmy pocket, swore and went. it was my second experience with being somehowtabu, and i didn't like it. it was dusk when i realized i was being followed. at firstit was a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, a head seen too frequently for coincidence.it developed into a too-persistent footstep in uneven rhythm. tap-_tap_-tap. tap-_tap_-tap.i had my skean handy, but i had a hunch this wasn't anything i could settle with a skean.i ducked into a side street and waited. nothing. i went on, laughing at my imaginedfears. then, after a time, the soft, persistent

footfall thudded behind me again. i cut acrossa thieves market, dodging from stall to stall, cursed by old women selling hot fried goldfish,women in striped veils railing at me in their chiming talk when i brushed their rolled rugswith hasty feet. far behind i heard the familiar uneven hurry: tap-_tap_-tap, tap-_tap_-tap.i fled down a street where women sat on flower-decked balconies, their open lanterns flowing withfountains and rivulets of gold and orange fire. i raced through quiet streets wherefurred children crept to doors and watched me pass with great golden eyes that shonein the dark. i dodged into an alley and lay there, breathing hard. someone not two inchesaway said, "are you one of us, brother?" i muttered something surly, in his dialect,and a hand, reassuringly human, closed on

my elbow. "this way."out of breath with long running, i let him lead me, meaning to break away after a fewsteps, apologize for mistaken identity and vanish, when a sound at the end of the streetmade me jerk stiff and listen. tap-_tap_-tap. tap-_tap_-tap. i let my arm relax in the handthat guided me, flung a fold of my shirt cloak over my face, and went along with my unknownguide. end of chapter twelvechapter thirteen i stumbled over steps, took a jolting stridedownward, and found myself in a dim room jammed with dark figures, human and nonhuman. thefigures swayed in the darkness, chanting in a dialect not altogether familiar to me, amonotonous wailing chant, with a single recurrent

phrase: "kamaina! kama-aina!" it began ona high note, descending in weird chromatics to the lowest tone the human ear could resolve.the sound made me draw back. even the dry-towners shunned the orgiasticrituals of kamaina. earthmen have a reputation for getting rid of the more objectionablecustoms--by human standards--on any planet where they live. but they don't touch religions,and kamaina, on the surface anyhow, was a religion. i started to turn round and leave,as if i had inadvertently walked through the wrong door, but my conductor hauledon my arm, and i was wedged in too tight by now to risk a rough house.trying to force my way out would only have called attention to me, and the first of thesecret service maxims is; when in doubt, go

along, keep quiet, and watch the other guy.as my eyes adapted to the dim light, i saw that most of the crowd were charin plainsmenor _chaks_. one or two wore dry-town shirtcloaks, and i even thought i saw an earthman in thecrowd, though i was never sure and i fervently hope not. they were squatting around smallcrescent-shaped tables, and all intently gazing at a flickery spotof light at the front of the cellar. i saw an empty place at one table and dropped there,finding the floor soft, as if cushioned. on each table, small smudging pastilles wereburning, and from these cones of ash-tipped fire came the steamy, swimmy smoke that filledthe darkness with strange colors. beside me an immature _chak_ girl was kneeling, herfettered hands strained tightly back at her

sides, her naked breasts pierced for jeweledrings. beneath the pallid fur around her pointedears, the exquisite animal face was quite mad. she whispered to me, but her dialectwas so thick that i could follow only a few words, and would just as soon not have heardthose few. an older _chak_ grunted for silence and she subsided, swaying and crooning. therewere cups and decanters on all the tables, and a woman tilted pale, phosphorescent fluidinto a cup and offered it to me. i took one sip, then another.it was cold and pleasantly tart, and not until the second swallow turned sweet on my tonguedid i know what i tasted. i pretended to swallow while the woman's eyes were fixed on me, thensomehow contrived to spill the filthy stuff

down my shirt. i was wary even of the fumes,but there was nothing else i could do. the stuff was _shallavan_, outlawed on every planetin the terran empire and every halfway decent planet outside it.more and more figures, men and creatures, kept crowding into the cellar,which was not very large. the place looked like the worst nightmare of adrug-dreamer, ablaze with the colors of the smoking incense, the swaying crowd, and theirmonotonous cries. quite suddenly there was a blaze of purple light and someone screamedin raving ecstasy: "_na ki na nebran n'hai kamaina!_" "kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!" shrilledthe tranced mob. an old man jumped up and started haranguing the crowd.i could just follow his dialect. he was talking

about terra. he was talking about riots. hewas jabbering mystical gibberish which i couldn't understand and didn't want to understand,and rabble-rousing anti-terran propaganda which i understood much too well. anotherblaze of lights and another long scream in chorus: "kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!" evarinstood in the blaze of the many-colored light. the toymaker, as i had seen him last, cat-smooth,gracefully alien, shrouded in a ripple of giddy crimsons. behind him was a blackness.i waited till the painful blaze of lights abated, then, straining my eyes to see pasthim, i got my worst shock. a woman stood there, naked to the waist, her hands ritually fetteredwith little chains that stirred and clashed musically as she moved stiff-legged in a frozendream.

hair like black grass banded her brow andnaked shoulders, and her eyes were crimson. and the eyes lived in the dead dreaming face.they lived, and they were mad with terror although the lips curved in a gently trancedsmile. miellyn. evarin was speaking in that dialect i barely understood. his arms wereflung high and his cloak went spilling away from them, rippling like something alive.the jammed humans and nonhumans swayed and chanted and he swayed above them like an iridescentbug, weaving arms rippling back and forth, back and forth. i strained to catch his words."our world ... an old world." "kamayeeeeena," whimpered the shrill chorus. "... humans,humans, all humans would make slaves of us all, all save the children of the ape...."ilost the thread for a moment. true.

the terran empire has one small blind spotin otherwise sane policy, ignoring that nonhuman and human have lived placidly here for millennia:they placidly assumed that humans were everywhere the dominant race, as on earth itself. thetoymaker's weaving arms went on spinning, spinning. i rubbed my eyes to clear them of_shallavan_ and incense. i hoped that what i saw was an illusion of the drug--something,something huge and dark, was hovering over the girl.she stood placidly, hands clasped on her chains, but her eyes writhed in the frozen calm ofher face. then something--i can only call it a sixth sense--bore it on me that therewas _someone_ outside the door. i was perhaps the only creature there, except for evarin,not drugged with _shallavan_, and perhaps

that's all it was. but during the days inthe secret service i'd had to develop some extra senses. five just weren't enough forsurvival. i _knew_ somebody was fixing to break downthat door, and i had a good idea why. i'd been followed, by the legate's orders, and,tracking me here, they'd gone away and brought back reinforcements. someone struck a blowon the door and a stentorian voice bawled, "open up there, in the name of the empire!"the chanting broke in ragged quavers. evarin stopped. somewhere a woman screamed. the lightsabruptly went out and a stampede started in the room.women struck me with chains, men kicked, there were shrieks and howls. i thrust my way forward,butting with elbows and knees and shoulders.

a dusky emptiness yawned and i got a glimpseof sunlight and open sky and knew that evarin had stepped through into _somewhere_ and wasgone. the banging on the door sounded like a whole regiment of space force out there.i dived toward the shimmer of little stars which marked miellyn's tiara in the darkness,braving the black horror hovering over her, and touched rigid girl-flesh, cold as death.i grabbed her and ducked sideways. this time it wasn't intuition—nine times out of ten,anyway, intuition is just a mental shortcut which adds up all the things which your subconscioushas noticed while you were busy thinking about something else. every native building on wolfhad concealed entrances and exits and i know where to look for them. this one was exactlywhere i expected.

i pushed at it and found myself in a long,dim corridor. the head of a woman peered from an opening door. she saw miellyn's limp bodyhanging on my arm and her mouth widened in a silent scream. then the head popped backout of sight and a door slammed. i heard the bolt slide. i ran for the end of the hall,the girl in my arms, thinking that this was where i came in, as far as miellyn was concerned,and wondering why i bothered. the door opened on a dark, peaceful street.one lonely moon was setting beyond the rooftops. i set miellyn on her feet, but she moanedand crumpled against me. i put my shirt cloak around her bare shoulders. judging by thenoises and yells, we'd gotten out just in time. no one came out the exit behind us.either the spaceforce had plugged it or, more

likely, everyone else in the cellar had beentoo muddled by drugs to know what was going on. but it was only a few minutes, i knew,before spaceforce would check the whole building for concealed escape holes.suddenly, and irrelevantly, i found myself thinking of a day not too long ago, when i'dstood up in front of a unit-in-training of spaceforce, introduced to them as an intelligenceexpert on native towns, and solemnly warned them about concealed exits and entrances.i wondered, for half a minute, if it might not be simpler just to wait here and let thempick me up. then i hoisted miellyn across my shoulders. she was heavier than she looked,and after a minute, half conscious, she began to struggle and moan.there was a _chak_-run cook shop down the

street, a place i'd once known well, withan evil reputation and worse food, but it was quiet and stayed open all night. i turnedin at the door, bending at the low lintel. the place was smoke-filled and foul-smelling.i dumped miellyn on a couch and sent the frowsy waiter for two bowls of noodles and coffee,handed him a few extra coins, and told him to leave us alone.he probably drew the worst possible inference--i saw his muzzle twitch atthe smell of _shallavan_--but it was that kind of place anyhow. he drew down the shuttersand went. i stared at the unconscious girl, then shrugged and started on the noodles.my own head was still swimmy with the fumes, incense and drug, and i wanted it clear. iwasn't quite sure what i was going to do,

but i had evarin's right-hand girl, and iwas going to use her. the noodles were greasy and had a curioustaste, but they were hot, and i ate all of one bowl before miellyn stirred and whimperedand put up one hand, with a little clinking of chains, to her hair. the gesture was indefinablyreminiscent of dallisa, and for the first time i saw the likeness between them. it mademe wary and yet curiously softened. finding she could not move freely, she rolled over,sat up and stared around in growing bewilderment and dismay."there was a sort of riot," i said. "i got you out. evarin ditched you. and you can quitthinking what you're thinking, i put my shirtcloak on you because you were bare to the waistand it didn't look so good." i stopped to

think that over, and amended: "i mean i couldn'thaul you around the streets that way. it looked good enough." to my surprise, she gave a shakylittle giggle, and held out her fettered hands. "will you?" i broke her links and freed her.she rubbed her wrists as if they hurt her, then drew up her draperies, pinned them sothat she was decently covered, and tossed back my shirt cloak. her eyes were wide andsoft in the light of the flickering stub of candle. "o, rakhal," she sighed. "when i sawyou there--" she sat up, clasping her hands hard together, and when she continued hervoice was curiously cold and controlled for anyone so childish. it was almost as coldas dallisa's. "if you've come from kyral, i'm not going back.i'll never go back, and you may as well know

it." "i don't come from kyral, and i don'tcare where you go. i don't care what you do." i suddenly realized that the last statementwas wholly untrue, and to cover my confusion i shoved the remaining bowl of noodles ather. "eat." she wrinkled her nose in fastidious disgust. "i'm not hungry." "eat it anyway.you're still half doped, and the food will clear your head." i picked up one mug of thecoffee and drained it at a single swallow. "what were you doing in that disgusting den?"without warning she flung herself across the table at me, throwing her arms round my neck.startled, i let her cling a moment, then reached up and firmly unfastened her hands. "noneof that now. i fell for it once, and it landed me in the middle of the mudpie." but her fingersbit my shoulder. "rakhal, rakhal, i tried

to get away and find you. have you still gotthe bird? you haven't set it off yet? oh, don't, don't, don't, rakhal, you don'tknow what evarin is, you don't know what he's doing." the words spilled out of her likefloodwaters. "he's won so many of you, don't let him have you too, rakhal. they call youan honest man, you worked once for terra, the terrans would believe you if you wentto them and told them what he--rakhal, take me to the terran zone, take me there, takeme there where they'll protect me from evarin." at first i tried to stop her, question her,then waited and let the torrent of entreaty run on and on. at last, exhausted and breathless,she lay quietly against my shoulder, her head fallen forward. the musty reek of _shallavan_mingled with the flower scent of her hair.

"kid," i said heavily at last, "you and yourtoymaker have both got me wrong. i'm not rakhal sensar." "you're not?" she drew back, regardingme in dismay. her eyes searched every inch of me, from the gray streak across my foreheadto the scar running down into my collar. "then who--" "race cargill.terran intelligence." she stared, her mouth wide like a child's. then she laughed. she_laughed_! at first i thought she was hysterical. i stared at her in consternation. then, asher wide eyes met mine, with all the mischief of the nonhuman which has mingled into thehuman here, all the circular complexities of wolf illogic behind the woman in them,i started to laugh too. i threw back my head and roared, until we were clinging togetherand gasping with mirth like a pair of raving

fools.the _chak_ waiter came to the door and stared at us, and i roared "get the hell out," betweenspasms of crazy laughter. then she was wiping her face, tears of mirth still dripping downher cheeks, and i was frowning bleakly into the empty bowls. "cargill," she said hesitantly,"you can take me to the terrans where rakhal--" "hell's bells," i exploded. "i can't takeyou anywhere, girl. i've got to find rakhal--" i stopped in midsentence and looked at herclearly for the first time. "child, i'll see that you're protected, ifi can. but i'm afraid you've walked from the trap to the cookpot. there isn't a house incharin that will hold me. i've been thrown out twice today." she nodded. "i don't knowhow the word spreads, but it happens, in nonhuman

parts. i think they can see trouble writtenin a human face, or smell it on the wind." she fell silent, her face propped sleepilybetween her hands, her hair falling in tangles. i took one of her hands in mine and turnedit over. it was a fine hand, with birdlike bones andsoft rose-tinted nails; but the lines and hardened places around the knuckles remindedme that she, too, came from the cold austerity of the salt dry-towns. after a moment sheflushed and drew her hand from mine. "what are you thinking, cargill?" she asked, andfor the first time i heard her voice sobered, without the coquetry, which must after allhave been a very thin veneer. i answered her simply and literally. "i am thinking of dallisa.i thought you were very different, and yet,

i see that you are very like her." i thoughtshe would question what i knew of her sister, but she let itpass in silence. after a time she said, "yes, we were twins." then, after a long silence,she added, "but she was always much the older." and that was all i ever knew of whatever obscurepressures had shaped dallisa into an austere and tragic clytemnestra, and miellyn intoa pixie runaway. outside the drawn shutters, dawn was brightening.miellyn shivered, drawing her thin draperies around her bare throat. i glanced at the littlerim of jewels that starred her hair and said, "you'd better take those off and hide them.they alone would be enough to have you hauled into an alley and strangled, in this partof charin." i hauled the bird toy from my

pocket and slapped it on the greasy table,still wrapped in its silk. "i don't suppose you know which of us this thing is set tokill?" "i know nothing about the toys. "you seem to know plenty about the toymaker.""i thought so. until last night." i looked at the rigid, clamped mouth and thought thatif she were really as soft and delicate as she looked, she would have wept. then shestruck her small hand on the tabletop and burst out, "it's not a religion. it isn'teven an honest movement for freedom! its a--a front for smuggling, and drugs, and--and everyother filthy thing! "believe it or not, when i left shainsa,i thought nebran was the answer to the way the terrans were strangling us! now i knowthere are worse things on wolf than the terran

empire! i've heard of rakhal sensar, and whateveryou may think of rakhal, he's too decent to be mixed up in anything like this!" "supposeyou tell me what's really going on," i suggested. she couldn't add much to what i knew already,but the last fragments of the pattern were beginning to settle into place.rakhal, seeking the matter transmitter and some key to the nonhuman sciences of wolf--iknew now what the city of silent ones had reminded me of!--had somehow crossed the pathof the toymaker. evarin's words now made sense: "_you were clever at evading our surveillance--fora while._" possibly, though i'd never know, cuinn had been keeping one foot in each camp,working for kyral and for evarin. the toymaker, knowing of rakhal's anti-terranactivities, had believed he would make a valuable

ally and had taken steps to secure his help.juli herself had given me the clue: "_he smashed rindy's toys._" out of the context it soundedlike the work of a madman. now, having encountered evarin's workshop, it made plain good sense.and i think i had known all along that rakhal could not have been playing evarin's game.he might have turned against terra--though now i was beginning even to doubt that--andcertainly he'd have killed me if he found me. but he would have done it himself, andwithout malice. _killed without malice_--that doesn't make sense in any of the languagesof terra. but it made sense to me. miellyn had finished her brief recitation and wasdrowsing, her head pillowed on the table. the reddish light was growing, and i realizedthat i was waiting for dawn as, days ago,

i had waited for sunset in shainsa, with everynerve stretched to the breaking point. it was dawn of the third morning, and this birdlying on the table before me must fly or, far away in the kharsa, another would flyat juli. i said, "there's some distance limitation on this one, i understand, since i have tobe fairly near its object. if i lock it in a steel box and drop it in the desert, i'llguarantee it won't bother anybody. i don't suppose you'd have a shot at stealingthe other one for me?" she raised her head, eyes flashing. "why should you worry aboutrakhal's wife?" she flared, and for no good reason it occurred to me that she was jealous."i might have known evarin wouldn't shoot in the dark! rakhal's wife, that earthwoman,what do you care for her?" it seemed important

to set her straight. i explained that juliwas my sister, and saw a little of the tension fade from her face, but not all.remembering the custom of the dry-towns, i was not wholly surprised when she added, jealously,"when i heard of your feud, i guessed it was over that woman!" "but not in the way youthink," i said. juli had been part of it, certainly. even then i had not wanted herto turn her back on her world, but if rakhal had remained with terra, i would have acceptedhis marriage to juli. accepted it. i'd have rejoiced. god knows we had been closer thanbrothers, those years in the dry-towns. and then, before miellyn's flashing eyes,i suddenly faced my secret hate, my secret fear. no, the quarrel had not been all rakhal'sdoing. he had not turned his back, unexplained

on terra. in some unrecognized fashion, ihad done my best to drive him away. and when he had gone, i had banished a part of myselfas well, and thought i could end the struggle by saying it didn't exist. and now, facingwhat i had done to all of us, i knew that my revenge--so long sought, so dearly cherished--mustbe abandoned. "we still have to deal with the bird," i said."it's a gamble, with all the cards wild." i could dismantle it, and trust to luck thatwolf illogic didn't include a tamper mechanism. but that didn't seem worth the risk. "firsti've got to _find_ rakhal. if i set the bird free and it killed him, it wouldn't settleanything." for i could not kill rakhal. not, now, because i knew life would be a worsepunishment than death. but because--i knew

it, now--if rakhal died, juli would die, too.and if i killed him i'd be killing the best part of myself. somehow rakhal and i muststrike a balance between our two worlds, and try to build a new one from them. "and i can'tsit here and talk any longer. i haven't time to take you--" i stopped, remembering thespaceport cafe at the edge of the kharsa. there was a street-shrine, or matter transmitter,right there, across the street from the terran hq. _all these years...._ "you know your wayin the transmitters. you can go there in a second or two." shecould warn juli, tell magnusson. but when i suggested this, giving her a password thatwould take her straight to the top, she turned white. "all jumps have to be made throughthe master shrine." i stopped and thought

about that. "where is evarin likely to be,right now?" she gave a nervous shudder. "he's everywhere!" "rubbish! he's not omniscient!why, you little fool, he didn't even recognize me.he thought i was rakhal!" i wasn't too sure, myself, but miellyn needed reassurance. "ortake _me_ to the mastershrine. i can find rakhal in that scanning device of evarin's."i saw refusal in her face and pushed on, "if evarin's there, i'll prove he's fallible enoughwith a skean in his throat! and here"--i thrust the toy into her hand--"hang on to this, willyou?" she put it matter-of-factly into her draperies. "i don't mind that. but to theshrine--" her voice quivered, and i stood up and pushed at the table."let's get going. where's the nearest street-shrine?"

"no, no! oh, i don't dare!" "you've got to."i saw the _chak_ who owned the place edging round the door again and said, "there's nouse arguing, miellyn." when she had readjusted her robes a little while ago, she had pinnedthem so that the flat sprawl of the nebran embroideries was over her breasts. i put afinger against them, not in a sensuous gesture, and said, "the minute they see these, they'llthrow us out of here, too. "if you knew what i know of nebran, you wouldn't_want_ me to go near the master shrine again!" there was that faint coquettishness in hersidewise smile. and suddenly i realized that i didn't want her to. but she was not dallisaand she could not sit in cold dignity while her world fell into ruin. miellyn must fightfor the one she wanted. and then some of that

primitive male hostility which lives in everyman came to the surface, and i gripped her arm until she whimpered.then i said, in the shainsan which still comes to my tongue when moved or angry, "damn it,you're _going_. have you forgotten that if it weren't for me you'd have been torn topieces by that raving mob, or something worse?" that did it. she pulled away and i saw again,beneath the veneer of petulant coquetry, that fierce and untamable insolence of the,dry-towner.the more fierce and arrogant, in this girl, because she had burst her fettered hands freeand shaken off the ruin of the past. i was seized with a wildly inappropriate desireto seize her, crush her in my arms, taste the red honey of that teasing mouth. the effortof mastering the impulse made me rough. i

shoved at her and said, "come on. let's getthere before evarin does." end of chapter thirteenchapter fourteen outside in the streets it was full day, andthe color and life of charin had subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning dullnessand silence. only a few men lounged wearily in the streets, as if the sun had sapped theirenergy. and always the pale fleecy-haired children, human and furred nonhuman, playedtheir mysterious games on the curbs and gutters and staring at us with neither curiosity normalice. miellyn was shaking when she set her feet into the patterned stones of the street-shrine."scared, miellyn?" "i know evarin. you don't. but"--her mouth twitched in a pitiful attemptat the old mischief--"when i am with a great

and valorous earthman...." "cut it out," igrowled, and she giggled. "you'll have to stand closer to me. the transmitters are meantonly for one person." i stooped and put my arms round her. "like this?" "like this,"she whispered, pressing herself against me. a staggering whirl of dizzy darkness swunground my head. the street vanished. after an instant thefloor steadied and we stepped into the terminal room in the master shrine, under a skylightdim with the last red slant of sunset. distant hammering noises rang in my ears. miellynwhispered, "evarin's not here, but he might jump through at any second." i wasn't listening."where is this place, miellyn? where on the planet?" "no one knows but evarin, i think.there are no doors. anyone who goes in or

out, jumps through the transmitter." she pointed."the scanning device is in there, we'll have to go through the workroom." she was pattingher crushed robes into place, smoothing her hair with fastidious fingers. "i don't supposeyou have a comb? i've no time to go to my own--" i'd known she was a vain and pamperedbrat, but this passed all reason, and i said so, exploding at her. she looked at me asif i wasn't quite intelligent. "the little ones, my friend, notice things. you are quiteenough of a roughneck, but i, nebran's priestess, walk through their workroomall blown about and looking like the tag end of an orgy in ardcarran...." abashed, i fishedin a pocket and offered her a somewhat battered pocket comb. she looked at it distastefullybut used it to good purpose, smoothing her

hair swiftly, rearranging her loose-pinnedrobe so that the worst of the tears and stains were covered, and giving me, meanwhile, anartless and rather tempting view of some delicious curvature.she replaced the starred tiara on her ringlets and finally opened the door of the workroomand we walked through. not for years had i known that particular sensation--thousandsof eyes, boring holes in the center of my back somewhere. there _were_ eyes; the roundinhuman orbs of the dwarf _chaks_, the faceted stare of the prism eyes of the toys. the workroomwasn't a hundred feet long, but it felt longer than a good many miles i've walked.here and there the dwarfs murmured an obsequious greeting to miellyn, and she made some lightheartedanswer. she had warned me to walk as if i

had every right to be there, and i strodeafter her as if we were simply going to an agreed-on meeting in the next room. but iwas drenched with cold sweat before the farther door finally closed, safe and blessedly opaque,behind us. miellyn, too, was shaking with fright, and i put a hand on her arm. "steady,kid. where's the scanner?" she touched the panel i'd seen. "i'm not surei can focus it accurately. evarin never let me touch it." this was a fine time to tellme that. "how does it work?" "it's an adaptation of the transmitter principle. it lets yousee anywhere, but without jumping. it uses a tracer mechanism like the one in the toys.if rakhal's electrical-impulse pattern were on file--just a minute." she fished out thebird toy and unwrapped it. "here's how we

find out which of you this is keyed to."i looked at the fledgling bird, lying innocently in her palm, as she pushed aside the feathers,exposing a tiny crystal. "if it's keyed to you, you'll see yourself in this, as if thescreen were a mirror. if it's keyed to rakhal...." she touched the crystal to the surface ofthe screen. little flickers of snow wavered and danced. then, abruptly, we were lookingdown from a height at the lean back of a man in a leather jacket. slowly he turned. i sawthe familiar set of his shoulders, saw the back of his head come into an aquilineprofile, and the profile turn slowly into a scarred, seared mask more hideously claw-markedand disfigured than my own. "rakhal," i muttered. "shift the focus if you can, miellyn, geta look out the window or something. charin's

a big city. if we could get a look at a landmark--"rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke to someone out of sight rangeof the scanning device. abruptly miellyn said, "there." she had caughta window in the sight field of the pane. i could see a high pylon and two of three uprightsthat looked like a bridge, just outside. i said, "it's the bridge of summer snows. iknow where he is now. turn it off, miellyn, we can find him--" i was turning away whenmiellyn screamed. "look!" rakhal had turned his back on the scanner and for the firsttime i could see who he was talking to. a hunched, catlike shoulder twisted; a sinuousneck, a high-held head that was not quite human. "evarin!" i swore. "that does it. heknows now that i'm not rakhal, if he didn't

know it all along! come on, girl, we're gettingout of here!" this time there was no pretense of normality as we dashed through the workroom.fingers dropped from half-completed toys as they stared after us. _toys!_ i wanted tostop and smash them all. but if we hurried, we might find rakhal.and, with luck, we would find evarin with him. and then i was going to bang their headstogether. i'd reached a saturation point on adventure. i'd had all i wanted. i realizedthat i'd been up all night, that i was exhausted. i wanted to murder and smash, and wanted tofall down somewhere and go to sleep, all at once. we banged the workroom door shut andi took time to shove a heavy divan against it, blockading it. miellyn stared. "the littleones would not harm me," she began.

"i am sacrosanct." i wasn't sure. i had anotion her status had changed plenty, beginning when i saw her chained and drugged, and standingunder the hovering horror. but i didn't say so. "maybe. but there's nothing sacred about_me_!" she was already inside the recess where the toad god squatted. "there is a street-shrinejust beyond the bridge of summer snows. we can jump directly there." abruptly she frozein my arms, with a convulsive shudder. "evarin! hold me, tight--he's jumping in!quick!" space reeled round us, and then.... can you split instantaneousness into fragments?it didn't make sense, but so help me, that's what happened. and everything that happened,occurred within less than a second. we landed in the street-shrine. i could see the pylonand the bridge and the rising sun of charin.

then there was the giddy internal wrenching,a blast of icy air whistled round us, and we were gazing out at the polar mountains,ringed in their eternal snow. miellyn clutched at me. "pray! pray to thegods of terra, if there are any!" she clung so violently that it felt as if her smallbody was trying to push through me and come out the other side. i hung on tight. miellynknew what she was doing in the transmitter; i was just along for the ride and i didn'trelish the thought of being dropped off somewhere in that black limbo we traversed.we jumped again, the sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from the girl, and darknessshivered round us. i looked on an unfamiliar street of black night and dust-bleared stars.she whimpered, "evarin knows what i'm doing.

he's jumping us all over the planet. he canwork the controls with his mind. psychokinetics--i can do it a little, but i never dared--oh,hang on _tight_!" then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought.miellyn would make some tiny movement, and we would be falling, blind and dizzy, throughblackness. halfway through the giddiness, a new direction would wrench us and we wouldbe thrust elsewhere, and look out into a new street. one instant i smelled hot coffee fromthe spaceport cafe near the kharsa. an instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson frondswaving above us and a dazzle of water. we flicked in and out of the salty air of shainsa,glimpsed flowers on a daillon street, moonlight, noon,red twilight flickered and went, shot through

with the terrible giddiness of hyperspace.then suddenly i caught a second glimpse of the bridge and the pylon; a moment's oversighthad landed us for an instant in charin. the blackness started to reel down, but my reflexesare fast and i made one swift, scrabbling step forward. we lurched, sprawled, lockedtogether, on the stones of the bridge of summer snows.battered, and bruised, and bloody, we were still alive, and where we wanted to be. ilifted miellyn to her feet. her eyes were dazed with pain. the ground swayed and rockedunder our feet as we fled along the bridge. at the far end, i looked up at the pylon.judging from its angle, we couldn't be more than a hundred feet from the window throughwhich i'd seen that landmark in the scanner.

in this street there was a wine shop, a silkmarket, and a small private house. i walked up and banged on the door. silence.i knocked again and had time to wonder if we'd find ourselves explaining things to someuninvolved stranger. then i heard a child's high voice, and a deep familiar voice hushingit. the door opened, just a crack, to reveal part of a scarred face. it drew into a hideousgrin, then relaxed. "i thought it might be you, cargill. you've taken at least threedays longer than i figured, getting here. come on in," said rakhal sensar.end of chapter fourteen chapter fifteenhe hadn't changed much in six years. his face _was_ worse than mine; he hadn't had the plasticsurgeons of terran intelligence doing their

best for him. his mouth, i thought fleetingly,must hurt like hell when he drew it up into the kind of grin he was grinning now. hiseyebrows, thick and fierce with gray in them, went up as he saw miellyn; but he backed awayto let us enter, and shut the door behind us. the room was bare and didn't look as ifit had been lived in much. the floor was stone, rough-laid, a singlefur rug laid before a brazier. a little girl was sitting on the rug, drinking from a bigdouble-handled mug, but she scrambled to her feet as we came in, and backed against thewall, looking at us with wide eyes. she had pale-red hair like juli's, cut straight ina fringe across her forehead, and she was dressed in a smock of dyed red fur that almostmatched her hair. a little smear of milk like

a white moustache clung to her upper lip whereshe had forgotten to wipe her mouth. she was about five years old, with deep-setdark eyes like juli's, that watched me gravely without surprise or fear; she evidently knewwho i was. "rindy," rakhal said quietly, not taking his eyes from me. "go into the otherroom." rindy didn't move, still staring at me. then she moved toward miellyn, lookingup intently not at the woman, but at the pattern of embroideries across her dress. it was veryquiet, until rakhal added, in a gentle and curiously moderate voice, "do you still carrya skean, race?" i shook my head. "there's an ancient proverbon terra, about blood being thicker than water, rakhal. that's juli's daughter. i'm not goingto kill her father right before her eyes."

my rage spilled over then, and i bellowed,"to hell with your damned dry-town feuds and your filthy toad god and all the rest of it!"rakhal said harshly, "rindy. i told you to get out." "she needn't go." i took a steptoward the little girl, a wary eye on rakhal. "i don't know quite what you're up to, butit's nothing for a child to be mixed up in. do what you damn please. i can settle withyou any time. "the first thing is to get rindy out of here. she belongs with juli and, damnit, that's where she's going." i held out my arms to the little girl and said, "it'sover, rindy, whatever he's done to you. your mother sent me to find you. don't you wantto go to your mother?" rakhal made a menacing gesture and warned, "i wouldn't--"miellyn darted swiftly between us and caught

up the child in her arms. rindy began to strugglenoiselessly, kicking and whimpering, but miellyn took two quick steps, and flung an inner dooropen. rakhal took a stride toward her. she whirled on him, fighting to control the furiouslittle girl, and gasped, "settle it between you, without the baby watching!" through theopen door i briefly saw a bed, a child's small dresses hanging on a hook, before miellynkicked the door shut and i heard a latch being fastened.behind the closed door rindy broke into angry screams, but i put my back against the door."she's right. we'll settle it between the two of us. what have you done to that child?""if you thought--" rakhal stopped himself in midsentence and stood watching me withoutmoving for a minute. then he laughed. "you're

as stupid as ever, race. why, you fool, iknew juli would run straight to you, if she was scared enough. i knew it would bring youout of hiding. why, you damned fool!" he stood mocking me,but there was a strained fury, almost a frenzy of contempt behind the laughter. "you filthycoward, race! six years hiding in the terran zone. six years, and i gave you six months!if you'd had the guts to walk out after me, after i rigged that final deal to give youthe chance, we could have gone after the biggest thing on wolf. and we could have brought itoff together, instead of spending years spying and dodging and hunting!and now, when i finally get you out of hiding, all you want to do is run back where you'llbe safe! i thought you had more guts!" "not

for evarin's dirty work!" rakhal swore hideously."evarin! do you really believe--i might have known he'd get to you too! that girl--andyou've managed to wreck all i did there, too!" suddenly, so swiftly my eyes could hardlyfollow, he whipped out his skean and came at me. "get away from that door!" i stoodmy ground. "you'll have to kill me first. and i won't fight you, rakhal. we'll settlethis, but we'll do it my way for once, like earthmen." "_son of the ape!_ get your skeanout, you stinking coward!" "i won't do it, rakhal." i stood and defied him. i had outmaneuvereddry-towners in a _shegri_ bet. i knew rakhal, and i knew he would not knife an unarmed man."we fought once with the _kifirgh_ and it didn't settle anything. this time we'll doit my way. i threw my skean away before i

came here. i won't fight."he thrust at me. even i could see that the blow was a feint, and i had a flashing, instantaneousmemory of dallisa's threat to drive the knife through my palms. but even while i commandedmyself to stand steady, sheer reflex threw me forward, grabbing at his wrist and theknife. between my grappling hand he twisted and i felt the skean drive home, rip throughmy jacket with a tearing sound; felt the thin fine line of touch, not pain yet, as it slicedflesh. then pain burned through my ribs and i felthot blood, and i wanted to kill rakhal, wanted to get my hands around his throat and killhim with them. and at the same time i was raging because i didn't want to fight thecrazy fool, i wasn't even mad at him. miellyn

flung the door open, shrieking, and suddenlythe toy, released, was darting a small whirring droning horror, straight at rakhal's eyes.i yelled. but there was no time even to warn him.i bent and butted him in the stomach. he grunted, doubled up in agony and fell out of the pathof the diving toy. it whirred in frustration, hovered. he writhed in agony, drawing up hisknees, clawing at his shirt, while i turned on miellyn in immense fury--and stopped. hershad been a move of desperation, an instinctive act to restore the balance between aweaponless man and one who had a knife. rakhal gasped, in a hoarse voice with all the breathgone from it: "didn't want to use. rather fight clean--" then he opened his closedfist and suddenly there were _two_ of the

little whirring droning horrors in the roomand this one was diving at me, and as i threw myself headlong to the floor the last puzzle-piecefell into place: evarin had made the same bargain with rakhal as with me! i rolled over,dodging. behind me in the room there was a child's shrill scream: "daddy! daddy!" andabruptly the birds collapsed in midair and went limp.they fell to the floor like dropping stones and lay there quivering. rindy dashed acrossthe room, her small skirts flying, and grabbed up one of the terrible vicious things in eitherhand. "rindy!" i bellowed. "no!" she stood shaking, tears pouring down her round cheeks,a toy squeezed tight in either hand. dark veins stood out almost black on her fair temples."break them, daddy," she implored in a little

thread of a voice. "break them, _quick_. ican't hang on...." rakhal staggered to his feet like a drunkenman and snatched one of the toys, grinding it under his heel. he made a grab at the second,reeled and drew an anguished breath. he crumpled up, clutching at his belly where i'd buttedhim. the bird screamed like a living thing. breaking my paralysis of horror i leaped up,ran across the room, heedless of the searing pain along my side. i snatched the bird fromrindy and it screamed and shrilled and died as my foot crunched the tiny feathers.i stamped the still-moving thing into an amorphous mess and kept on stamping and smashing untilit was only a heap of powder. rakhal finally managed to haul himself upright again. hisface was so pale that the scars stood out

like fresh burns. "that was a foul blow, race,but i--i know why you did it." he stopped and breathed for a minute. then he muttered,"you ... saved my life, you know. did you know you were doing it, when you did it?"still breathing hard, i nodded. done knowingly, it meant an end of blood-feud. however wehad wronged each other, whatever the pledges. i spoke the words that confirmed it and endedit, finally and forever: "there is a life between us. let it stand for a death." miellynwas standing in the doorway, her hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide. she said shakily,"you're walking around with a knife in your ribs, you fool!" rakhal whirled and with aquick jerk he pulled the skean loose. it had simply been caught in my shirtcloak,in a fold of the rough cloth. he pulled it

away, glanced at the red tip, then relaxed."not more than an inch deep," he said. then, angrily, defending himself: "you did it yourself,you ape. i was trying to get rid of the knife when you jumped me." but i knew that and heknew i knew it. he turned and scooped up rindy, who was sobbing noisily. she dug her headinto his shoulder and i made out her strangled words."the other toys hurt you when i was mad at you...." she sobbed, rubbing her fists againstsmeared cheeks. "i—i wasn't that mad at you. i wasn't that mad at anybody, not even... him." rakhal pressed his hand against his daughter's fleecy hair and said, lookingat me over her head, "the toys activate a child's subconscious resentments against hisparents--i found out that much. that also

means a child can control them for a few seconds.no adult can." a stranger would have seen no change in hisexpression, but i knew him, and saw. "juli said you threatened rindy." he chuckled andset the child on her feet. "what else could i say that would have scared juli enough tosend her running to you? juli's proud, almost as proud as you are, you stiff-necked sonof the ape." the insult did not sting me now. "come on, sit down and let's decide what todo, now we've finished up the old business." he looked remotely at miellyn and said, "youmust be dallisa's sister? i don't suppose your talents include knowing how to make coffee?"they didn't, but with rindy's help miellyn managed, and while they were out of the roomrakhal explained briefly. "rindy has rudimentary

esp. i've never had it myself, but i couldteach her something—not much--about how to use it. i've been on evarin's track eversince that business of the lisse. "i'd have got it sooner, if you were stillworking with me, but i couldn't do anything as a terran agent, and i had to be kickedout so thoroughly that the others wouldn't be afraid i was still working secretly forterra. for a long time i was just chasing rumors, but when rindy got big enough to lookin the crystals of nebran, i started making some progress. "i was afraid to tell juli;her best safety was the fact that she didn't know anything. she's always been a strangerin the dry-towns. he paused, then said with honest self-evaluation,"since i left the secret service i've been

a stranger there myself." i asked, "what aboutdallisa?" "twins have some esp to each other. i knew miellyn had gone to the toymaker. itried to get dallisa to find out where miellyn had gone, learn more about it. dallisa wouldn'trisk it, but kyral saw me with dallisa and thought it was miellyn. that put him on mytail, too, and i had to leave shainsa. i was afraid of kyral," he added soberly."afraid of what he'd do. i couldn't do anything without rindy and i knew if i told juli whati was doing, she'd take rindy away into the terran zone, and i'd be as good as dead."as he talked, i began to realize how vast a web evarin and the underground organizationof nebran had spread for us. "evarin was here today. what for?" rakhal laughed mirthlessly."he's been trying to get us to kill each other

off. that would get rid of us both. he wantsto turn over wolf to the nonhumans entirely, i think he's sincere enough, buthe spread his hands helplessly--"i can't sit by and see it." i asked point-blank, "areyou working for terra? or for the dry-towns? or any of the anti-terran movements?" "i'mworking for _me_", he said with a shrug. "i don't think much of the terran empire, butone planet can't fight a galaxy. race, i want just one thing. i want the dry-towns and therest of wolf, to have a voice in their own government. any planet which makes a substantialcontribution to galactic science, by the laws of the terran empire, is automatically giventhe status of an independent common wealth. "if a man from the dry-towns discovers somethinglike a matter transmitter, wolf gets dominion

status. but evarin and his gang want to keepit secret, keep it away from terra, keep it locked up in places like canarsa! somebodyhas to get it away from them. and if i do it, i get a nice fat bonus, and an officialposition." i believed that, where i would have suspected too much protestation of altruism.rakhal tossed it aside. "you've got miellyn to take you through the transmitters.go back to the mastershrine, and tell evarin that race cargill is dead. in the trade citythey think i'm cargill, and i can get in and out as i choose—sorry if it caused you trouble,but it was the safest thing i could think of--and i'll 'vise magnusson and have himsend soldiers to guard the street-shrines. evarin might try to escapethrough one of them." i shook my head. "terra

hasn't enough men on all wolf to cover thestreet-shrines in charin alone. and i can't go back with miellyn." i explained.rakhal pursed his lips and whistled when i described the fight in the transmitter. "youhave all the luck, cargill! i've never been near enough even to be sure how they work--andi'll bet you didn't begin to understand! we'll have to do it the hard way, then. it won'tbe the first time we've bulled our way through a tight place! we'll face evarin in his ownhideout! if rindy's with us, we needn't worry." i was willing to let him assume command, buti protested, "you'd take a child into that--that--" "what else can we do? rindy can control thetoys, and neither you nor i can do that, if evarin should decide to throw his whole arsenalat us." he called rindy and spoke softly to

her. she looked from her father to me, andback again to her father, then smiled and stretched out her hand to me. before we venturedinto the street, rakhal scowled at the sprawled embroideries of miellyn's robe. he said, "inthose things you show up like a snowfall in shainsa.if you go out in them, you could be mobbed. hadn't you better get rid of them now?" "ican't," she protested. "they're the keys to the transmitter!" rakhal looked at the conventionalizedidols with curiosity, but said only, "cover them up in the street, then. rindy, find hersomething to put over her dress." when we reached the street-shrine, miellyn admonished:"stand close together on the stones. i'm not sure we can all make the jump at once, butwe'll have to try."

rakhal picked up rindy and hoisted her tohis shoulder. miellyn dropped the cloak she had draped over the pattern of the nebranembroideries, and we crowded close together. the street swayed and vanished and i feltthe now-familiar dip and swirl of blackness before the world straightened out again. rindywas whimpering, dabbing smeary fists at her face. "daddy, my nose is bleeding...." miellynhastily bent and wiped the blood from the snubby nose. rakhal gestured impatiently."the workroom. wreck everything you see. rindy, if anything starts to come at us, you stopit. stop it quick. and"--he bent and took the little face between his hands--"_chiya_,remember they're not toys, no matter how pretty they are." her grave gray eyes blinked, andshe nodded. rakhal flung open the door of

the elves' workshop with a shout. the ringingof the anvils shattered into a thousand dissonances as i kicked over a workbench and half-finishedtoys crashed in confusion on the floor. the dwarfs scattered like rabbits before ourassault of destruction. i smashed tools, filigree, jewels, stamping everything with my heavyboots. i shattered glass, caught up a hammer and smashed crystals. there was a wild exhilarationto it. a tiny doll, proportioned like a woman, dashed toward me, shrilling in a supersonicshriek. i put my foot on her and ground the life out of her, and she screamed like a livingwoman as she came apart. her blue eyes rolled from her head and lay on the floor watchingme. i crushed the blue jewels under my heel. rakhalswung a tiny hound by the tail. its head shattered

into debris of almost-invisible gears andwheels. i caught up a chair and wrecked a glass cabinet of parts with it, swinging furiously.a berserk madness of smashing and breaking had laid hold on me. i was drunk with crushingand shattering and ruining, when i heard miellyn scream a warning and turned to see evarinstanding in the doorway. his green cat-eyes blazed with rage.then he raised both hands in a sudden, sardonic gesture, and with a loping, inhuman glide,raced for the transmitter. "rindy," rakhal panted, "can you block the transmitter?" insteadrindy shrieked. "we've got to get out! the roof is falling down! the house is going tofall down on us! the roof, look at the roof!" i looked up, transfixed by horror. i saw awide rift open, saw the skylight shatter and

break, and daylight pouring through the crackingwalls, rakhal snatched rindy up, protecting her from the falling debris with his headand shoulders. i grabbed miellyn round the waist and we ranfor the rift in the buckling wall. we shoved through just before the roof caved in andthe walls collapsed, and we found ourselves standing on a bare grassy hillside, lookingdown in shock and horror as below us, section after section of what had been apparentlybare hill and rock caved in and collapsed into dusty rubble. miellyn screamed hoarsely."run. run, hurry!" i didn't understand, but i ran.i ran, my sides aching, blood streaming from the forgotten flesh-wound in my side. miellynraced beside me and rakhal stumbled along,

carrying rindy. then the shock of a greatexplosion rocked the ground, hurling me down full length, miellyn falling on top of me.rakhal went down on his knees. rindy was crying loudly. when i could see straight again, ilooked down at the hillside. there was nothing left of evarin's hideaway or the mastershrineof nebran except a great, gaping hole, still oozing smoke and thick black dust. miellynsaid aloud, dazed, "so _that's_ what he was going to do!" it fitted the peculiar nonhumanlogic of the toymaker. he'd covered the traces. "destroyed!" rakhal raged. "all destroyed!the workrooms, the science of the toys, the matter transmitter--the minute we find it,it's destroyed!" he beat his fists furiously. "our one chance to learn--" "we were luckyto get out alive," said miellyn quietly. "where

on the planet are we, i wonder?"i looked down the hillside, and stared in amazement. spread out on the hillside belowus lay the kharsa, topped by the white skyscraper of the hq. "i'll be damned," i said, "righthere. we're home. rakhal, you can go down and make your peace with the terrans,and juli. and you, miellyn--" before the others, i could not say what i was thinking, but iput my hand on her shoulder and kept it there. she smiled, shakily, with a hint of her oldmischief. "i can't go into the terran zone looking likethis, can i? give me that comb again. rakhal, give me your shirtcloak, my robes are torn.""you vain, stupid female, worrying about a thing like that at a time like this!" rakhal'slook was like murder. i put my comb in her

hand, then suddenly saw something in the symbolsacross her breasts. before this i had seen only the conventionalized and intricate glyphof the toad god. but now-- i reached out and ripped the cloth away."cargill!" she protested angrily, crimsoning, covering her bare breasts with both hands."is this the place? and before a child, too!" i hardly heard. "look!" i exclaimed. "rakhal,look at the symbols embroidered into the glyph of the god! you can read the old nonhumanglyphs. you did it in the city of the lisse. miellyn said they were the key to the transmitters!i'll bet the formula is written out there for anyone to read! "anyone, that is, who_can_ read it! i can't, but i'll bet the formula equationsfor the transmitters are carved on every toad

god glyph on wolf. rakhal, it makes sense.there are two ways of hiding something. either keep it locked away, or hide it right outin plain sight. whoever bothers even to _look_ at a conventionalized toad god? there areso many _billions_ of them...." he bent his head over the embroideries, and when he lookedup his face was flushed. "i believe--by the chains of sharra, i believe you have it, race!it may take years to work out the glyphs, but i'll do it, or die trying!" his scarredand hideous face looked almost handsome in exultation, and i grinned at him. "if julileaves enough of you, once she finds out how you maneuvered her. look, rindy's fallen asleepon the grass there. poor kid, we'd better get her down to her mother." "right." rakhalthrust the precious embroidery into his shirtcloak,

then cradled his sleeping daughter in hisarms. i watched him with a curious emotion i couldnot identify. it seemed to pinpoint some great change, either in rakhal or myself. it's notdifficult to visualize one's sister with children, but there was something, some strange incongruityin the sight of rakhal carrying the little girl, carefully tucking her up in a fold ofhis cloak to keep the sharp breeze off her face.miellyn was limping in her thin sandals, and she shivered. i asked, "cold?" "no, but--idon't believe evarin is dead, i'm afraid he got away."for a minute the thought dimmed the luster of the morning. then i shrugged. "he's probablyburied in that big hole up there." but i knew

i would never be sure. we walked abreast,my arm around the weary, stumbling woman, and rakhal said softly at last, "like oldtimes." it wasn't old times, i knew. he would know it too, once his exultation sobered.i had outgrown my love for intrigue, and i had the feeling this was rakhal's last adventure.it was going to take him, as he said, years to work out the equations for the transmitter.and i had a feeling my own solid, ordinary desk was going to look good to me in the morning.but i knew now that i'd never run away from wolf again. it was my own beloved sun thatwas rising. my sister was waiting for me down below, and i was bringing back her child.my best friend was walking at my side. what more could a man want?if the memory of dark, poison-berry eyes was

to haunt me in nightmares, they did not comeinto the waking world. i looked at miellyn, took her slender unmanacled hand in mine,and smiled as we walked through the gates of the city. now, after all my years on wolf,i understood the desire to keep their women under lock and key that was its ancient custom.i vowed to myself as we went that i should

waste no time finding a fetter shop and havingforged therein the perfect steel chains that should bind my love's wrists to my key forever.end of chapter fifteen end ofthe door through space bymarion zimmer bradley

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