The Door Through Space Part 19

Outside the drawn shutters, dawn was brightening. Miellyn s.h.i.+vered, drawing her thin draperies around her bare throat. I glanced at the little rim 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 part of 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 to kill?"

"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 that if she were really as soft and delicate as she looked, she would have wept. Then she struck her small hand on the tabletop and burst out, "It's not a religion. It isn't even an honest movement for freedom! Its a--a front for smuggling, and drugs, and--and every other 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 know there are worse things on Wolf than the Terran Empire! I've heard of Rakhal Sensar, and whatever you may think of Rakhal, he's too decent to be mixed up in anything like this!"

"Suppose you 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--I knew now what the city of Silent Ones had reminded me of!--had somehow crossed the path of the Toymaker.

Evarin's words now made sense: "_You were clever at evading our surveillance--for a 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-Terran activities, 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 sounded like 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--and certainly he'd have killed me if he found me. But he would have done it himself, and without malice.

_Killed without malice_--that doesn't make sense in any of the languages of Terra. But it made sense to me.

Miellyn had finished her brief recitation and was drowsing, her head pillowed on the table. The reddish light was growing, and I realized that I was waiting for dawn as, days ago, I had waited for sunset in Shainsa, with every nerve stretched to the breaking point. It was dawn of the third morning, and this bird lying on the table before me must fly or, far away in the Kharsa, another would fly at Juli.

I said, "There's some distance limitation on this one, I understand, since I have to be fairly near its object. If I lock it in a steel box and drop it in the desert, I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody. I don't suppose you'd have a shot at stealing the other one for me?"

She raised her head, eyes flas.h.i.+ng. "Why should you worry about Rakhal'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 Juli was 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 you think," I said. Juli had been part of it, certainly. Even then I had not wanted her to turn her back on her world, but if Rakhal had remained with Terra, I would have accepted his marriage to Juli. Accepted it. I'd have rejoiced. G.o.d knows we had been closer than brothers, those years in the Dry-towns. And then, before Miellyn's flas.h.i.+ng eyes, I suddenly faced my secret hate, my secret fear. No, the quarrel had not been all Rakhal's doing.

He had not turned his back, unexplained on Terra. In some unrecognized fas.h.i.+on, I had done my best to drive him away. And when he had gone, I had banished a part of myself as well, and thought I could end the struggle by saying it didn't exist. And now, facing what I had done to all of us, I knew that my revenge--so long sought, so dearly cherished--must be 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 that Wolf illogic didn't include a tamper mechanism. But that didn't seem worth the risk.

"First I've got to _find_ Rakhal. If I set the bird free and it killed him, it wouldn't settle anything." For I could not kill Rakhal. Not, now, because I knew life would be a worse punishment 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 must strike a balance between our two worlds, and try to build a new one from them.

"And I can't sit here and talk any longer. I haven't time to take you--"

I stopped, remembering the s.p.a.ceport 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 way in the transmitters. You can go there in a second or two." She could warn Juli, tell Magnusson. But when I suggested this, giving her a pa.s.sword that would take her straight to the top, she turned white. "All jumps have to be made through the Mastershrine."

I stopped and thought about that.

"Where is Evarin likely to be, right now?"

She gave a nervous shudder. "He's everywhere!"

"Rubbis.h.!.+ 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 rea.s.surance. "Or take _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 enough with a skean in his throat! And here"--I thrust the Toy into her hand--"hang on to this, will you?"

She put it matter-of-factly into her draperies. "I don't mind that. But to the shrine--" 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 no use arguing, Miellyn." When she had readjusted her robes a little while ago, she had pinned them so that the flat sprawl of the Nebran embroideries was over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I put a finger against them, not in a sensuous gesture, and said, "The minute they see these, they'll throw us out of here, too."

"If you knew what I know of Nebran, you wouldn't _want_ me to go near the Mastershrine again!" There was that faint coquettishness in her sidewise smile.

And suddenly I realized that I didn't want her to. But she was not Dallisa and she could not sit in cold dignity while her world fell into ruin. Miellyn must fight for the one she wanted.

And then some of that primitive male hostility which lives in every man 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, "d.a.m.n it, you're _going_. Have you forgotten that if it weren't for me you'd have been torn to pieces 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 free and shaken off the ruin of the past.

I was seized with a wildly inappropriate desire to seize her, crush her in my arms, taste the red honey of that teasing mouth. The effort of mastering the impulse made me rough.

I shoved at her and said, "Come on. Let's get there before Evarin does."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Outside in the streets it was full day, and the color and life of Charin had subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning dullness and silence. Only a few men lounged wearily in the streets, as if the sun had sapped their energy. And always the pale fleecy-haired children, human and furred nonhuman, played their mysterious games on the curbs and gutters and staring at us with neither curiosity nor malice.

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 attempt at the old mischief--"when I am with a great and valorous Earthman...."

"Cut it out," I growled, and she giggled. "You'll have to stand closer to me. The transmitters are meant only 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 swung round my head. The street vanished. After an instant the floor steadied and we stepped into the terminal room in the Mastershrine, under a skylight dim with the last red slant of sunset. Distant hammering noises rang in my ears.

Miellyn whispered, "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 patting her crushed robes into place, smoothing her hair with fastidious fingers. "I don't suppose you have a comb? I've no time to go to my own--"

I'd known she was a vain and pampered brat, but this pa.s.sed all reason, and I said so, exploding at her. She looked at me as if I wasn't quite intelligent. "The Little Ones, my friend, notice things. You are quite enough of a roughneck, but if I, Nebran's priestess, walk through their workroom all blown about and looking like the tag end of an orgy in Ardcarran...."