The Chantry Guild

CHAPTER 13

They found such a spot, shortly. A small, fern-carpeted open area where a tiny stream of cold, drinkable water crossed the trail, from among the bushes and trees on the route's upper side. Seated there, they looked down a clear space of hillside to a heavily treed valley a hundred or so meters below. Amanda unpacked dried fruit and pieces of cornbread. The other food consisted mainly of sandwiches, the taste of which carried the flavor of the pith Hal had eaten before. They went well with the icy water of the stream, which must have its source in the mountains above.

They spent no more than twenty minutes at the most, eating. Procyon was already only an hour or less from the tops of the mountains that could be seen towering above the treetops ahead of them. The mountains looked only a few hundred meters ahead in the clear air, when they must be much more distant than that, Hal thought. He and Amanda went on their way. "We haven't seen anyone else, except the man by the pond. for hours," said Hal. "Aren't there any people at all up this way?" "Not as far as I know. That's why the Chantry Guild is back in here. There's nothing much to support a population," answered Amanda. "Oh, there're mountain meadows that could be used for grazing animals, but the Exotics were never herdsmen, even in their early years here, and of course the living's so easy, particularly here at the edge of the tropics, that they've never had any need to. Even before the Occupation, you'd have found it empty up here, except for an occasional traveler. But now the Occupation doesn't let natives make trips without special reason - and special permits. So from here on until we hit the Chantry Guild we shouldn't run into anyone."

Hal was ready to believe her. The road had long since become a foot-track, which had in turn become a trail, and now was nothing at all. It was as if Amanda was setting her course across open country, by memory or some other unseen means. Hal watched the ground carefully as they covered it. Tracking had been one of the many skills drilled into him by his tutors, so his eye was skilled enough to pick up even small signs of others having passed this way. In fact, he did so, from time to time - things as small as a scuff mark in the dirt or a broken twig - though those were few and inconspicuous.

He ceased to look, therefore, for sign and let himself simply enjoy the walk through the open country.

Enjoyment was there, to anyone raised in the mountains - and Hal was doubly so. As Donal he had grown up in the mountains holding his home, Foralie, on Dorsai, and as Hal he had been raised until he was sixteen among the Rocky Mountains of North America, on Earth. Being among them now brought an exhilaration to him that no other kind of country could evoke. Unthinkingly, his head lifted, his eyes read the lands and heights around him, his nostrils sniffed the clean, clear air... and his stride lengthened. "You can slow down now," Amanda said. "We'll be following along a stream course for a little distance, and it's almost level." "Oh. Was I pushing the pace?" said Hal. He was embarrassed. "Not for me. But we've got a way to go yet and the last part's a literal climb. Better take it easy."

Even as she said this, they were already among the unbroken strip of trees and bush, interspersed with leafy stalks of bright green fern, a meter or more in height, that filled the nearly even floor of earth between two steeply upward-sloping and wooded hillsides.

Here, for the first time in some while, the trail they were following became once more visible as it wound between the trees. Obviously it was in regular use, to have had enough traffic to keep it from being overgrown. What was it doing here, in a region that did not usually host ordinary travelers-

A faint touch on his left arm brought him back to his surroundings. He looked at Amanda, and she briefly brushed the outside corner of her left eyebrow with a forefinger, as if some small insect had landed there.

This was one of the "signals" from the "short- language and signals", she had asked him if he remembered, back when they were about to leave the courier ship. She had just signed that something was watching them and paralleling their course on the side indicated. Whatever it was, was doing so deliberately, for it was at once keeping up with them, and keeping out of sight among the trees and brush off to their left.

Without looking directly to his left, Hal set himself to seeing what he could pick up out of the corner of his eyes. It took a little time, but eventually he became aware of whatever it was, more by the faint noises and small movements of the ferns and branches it pushed aside in its passage - though it was apparently trying to move as quietly as it could - than by actual sight of it.

He glanced at Amanda and questioned her with a raised eyebrow.

Amanda shook her head in puzzlement, and her hands moved in small movements, quick but unobtrusive signals. "It's human - a child, or child-sized, I think," she said in this silent fashion. "It's interested in us for some reason. There's an open spot of nothing much more than bush and fern just ahead. Let's sit down there as if we're taking a break and try to tempt it out into the open."

Hal blinked a signal of agreement at her, and a few moments later when they had emerged into the open area she had referred to and reached close to the center of it, she yawned, stretched and stopped. Hal stopped with her. "Let's sit down a bit," she said clearly. Whoever was shadowing them could not have failed to overhear. "There's no hurry. "

She had stopped by a small bank overgrown with fern-a tiny variety rather than the larger growth that had been interspersed with the trees earlier. This was, in fact, a natural stopping place. It occurred to Hal that these would make an excellent bed for Amanda and himself to stretch out on, together. They sat down on the bank now, cross-legged and facing each other. "Chit!" said Amanda. "Reelin."

She had switched now to the audible "short-language." On the Dorsai a number of code words were generally known by everyone, since these could come in useful if two Dorsai on a foreign planet wanted to exchange information within the hearing of others when they did not wish to be understood. In addition, each family tended to have its own private code of made up words, and the members of the Morgan and the Graeme families, growing up and playing together as children, knew most of each others' private codes. As youngsters, there had also been a particular pleasure in being able to exchange secret information under the noses of nonunderstanding adults. So the codes were always improved upon by each new generation.

In effect, what Amanda had just said was, "Let's talk in a way our shadower can't understand. Maybe we can trick whoever it is into coming closer to try and hear better, and figure out what we're up to." "Right," said Hal. There was no particular reason not to use a plainly understandable word in answer, and a few understandable words might increase the temptation of the listener to come in close and hear enough of them to make out what the tenor of conversation was. "Muckle minny cat," he added.

He was pointing out that there were two of them, and since whatever or whoever it was that had been shadowing them was not large, one of them ought to be able to catch it while the other blocked its escape in this direction. Implied was the question of who should chase and who should block.

Amanda smiled, slightly but firmly. "One! (I'll be the one to chase), '' she said. "Home snapback (you stay here and get ready in case whoever we're chasing doubles back this way.)" "R," he said, agreeing. She would be faster and more agile at broken-country running than he. "Mark!"

The last word was to remind her that their listener had crept close enough so that now an effort might be made to catch him or it. "R," said Amanda. "One-C."

The last code word reasserted the fact that she was in Command, and, as the chaser, she would pick her own moment to begin pursuit. Meanwhile, with their gazes apparently only upon each other, they were both using their peripheral vision to try and observe something about their watcher, who had indeed slipped closer to them to try to understand their strange conversation. "Whisper stonewall (I've heard some talk about this person, but I could never get a definite information),'' said Amanda. They both had their shadower plainly in view out of the corners of their eyes now. "Y'un."

That she was a "young-one, " a half-grown girl, was inarguable, since - except for a length of what looked like dark green, dried vine, with half of a split open pod in the middle of it, knotted around her waist - she was completely unclothed, naked was not a word that suited, since she wore her lack of clothes as unselfconsciously and naturally as an animal wears its pelt of fur. The vine seemed more an ornament than any attempt at a piece of clothing, although at the moment she was apparently using the split-open half of the pod as a sort of pocket for carrying what looked like small rocks, about half the size of her own fist. She was certainly under the age of twelve or thirteen, unless she was a case of arrested physical development. "Carry!" said Amanda - which broadly translated into 'we've got to get her out of here and to some place where she can be cared for!" "R," said Hal.

His agreement was automatic, while waiting for her to start the pursuit - and in fact he had hardly got the last codeword out before she had sprung to her feet and dashed off in pursuit of the little girl.

Amanda was fast - very fast. But the child was almost literally like the wind. Also, plainly, she knew every foot of the ground. She zig-zagged like a hare in flight, leading the way through openings in the forest growth large enough for someone her size to slip through, but too small for one of adult size. In seconds they were both out of Hal's sight among the farther trees.

The sound of their passage, however, turned once more in his direction, and he suddenly caught sight of the little girl backtracking at full speed. She looked likely to cross the trail some twenty meters ahead of Hal. He jumped to his feet and ran to intercept her.

She zigged and gained on him, zagged and made it back and across the trail after all. He followed her out of sheer stubbornness for perhaps fifty meters, and then accepted the fact that she had been gaining on him with almost every step and was plainly now lost beyond question. He walked slowly back to the trail and Amanda, catching his breath as he went.

Amanda was standing waiting for him on the bank where they had been sitting. "It'd take a hunting party of a dozen, with nets, to surround that one and get her," Amanda said as Hal came close. She had already gotten her wind back, which was more than he had. "The climate's mild year 'round at this altitude. But still, how she's survived by herself, God knows. She couldn't have gotten this wild and skillful in just one summer. She's like an animal - maybe more animal than human, by this time. One way or another, it's the Occupation that's responsible for this, too. In Exotic times, she'd have been found and brought in long before this." "R," said Hal, trying not to pant. He was once more annoyingly conscious of how unfit he was, in spite of his daily exercise sessions at the Final Encyclopedia, and being lashed in the face by branches that were just at the right height to be run under by the child, but not by him, had not made him any happier. "I suppose we might as well be getting along." "Might as well," agreed Amanda.

They took up their way in somber silence. The streambed they had been following had been inclining more and more steeply with every step they took these last few minutes. Suddenly, they came through a small, thick cluster of trees and there was the face of the mountain itself, a near-vertical brown limestone wall of rock looking as if it had grown up suddenly through the ground before them, to tower on up and back, until it was out of sight.

The forest came almost to that wall. Amanda led Hal forward and he saw that the lower part of the near-vertical rock was pitted and indented with concavities. "This way," said Amanda, leading him to one dark opening, which they had to bend double to enter. Hal followed her in, thinking that they were moving into a cave, which made no sense - but suddenly their way turned under the rock and he saw light before him. They came out, into sunlight once more, somewhat higher up, into a sort of gouge in the steep rock face itself.

Hal noticed as they emerged that a large, semi-round boulder was perched to one side of their exit. It looked as if it were balanced so that it could be rolled to fall with its bulging side into the place where they had just come out, like a stopper into a bottle. Amanda led him into the gouge, and they continued upward, now climbing as much as walking, working their way around bosses of the naked brown limestone. They stopped to rest for a while on a small level area. "How much farther?" asked Hal, shading his eyes to look up the rock face they were climbing. "I can't see any sign of anything built up there, and" He switched his gaze to Procyon in the west. "The sun is going to be behind those peaks in a hurry - I'd guess no more than another fifteen minutes. " "You don't see anything because nothing's supposed to be seen," said Amanda. "But you're right about the fifteen minutes. We'll make it."

Hal looked up and for the first time saw, only a dozen meters or so higher up, that what he had assumed to be an unbroken, steep slope above them, actually ended in the lip of a ledge. The ledge ran off out of sight on either hand around the bulge of the mountainside. Its rock had blended in appearance very well with a slope behind it that he now realized must be at some distance from the edge he saw.

He had not noticed it before because the light of the descending sun had added to the illusion of a single, unbroken, upward face of rock. Now the sun was down enough that shadow lay on the rock face under an overhang of the upper slope beyond, as it lay on the two of them, here. The ledge itself must still be in sunlight, for what had caught his eye at last had been that its lip was now rimmed with light.

Seeing it, and aware of the waiting level just above them, the reality of the place that was their destination became suddenly solid and undeniable in his mind. His thoughts moved together into an undeniable conclusion, and he knew that finally he must have the answers he had wanted from Amanda earlier. "Wait!" he said.

He had stopped, and now, ahead of him, Amanda stopped and turned to face him. "What is it?" she asked. "This may be my last chance to talk to you alone for a while." The words seemed to sound stiff and awkward even as he said them - but they had to be said. "When Tam Olyn told you to have faith back at the Final Encyclopedia, what was he talking about? And what was it you turned back to say to Rukh and Ajela, just before we left?"

She gazed down at him for a long moment with an unusual intentness, as if she was trying to search for something deep within him. "Tell me," she said at last, "are you going on up? Or are you turning back, even at this point?" "Why should I turn back?" "Would you - now?"

He thought about it for a moment. "No," he said then, "I wanted to come here. I still do." "Good," she said, "because you had to come here of your own decision, your own free will. Because you wanted to come. " "I did. You know that." "I had to make sure," she said. She hesitated for a second. "You see," she said, "when I stopped to talk to Rukh and Ajela, it was to tell them it would be all right now, that there was hope you'd find the Creative Universe after all."

He stared at her. "How could you promise them something like that?" he said. "I've no guarantee there's hope - you knew that. And even if I did, no one can know certainly, one way or another!" "Oh, Hal!" She threw her arms around him suddenly, pressing her head against his chest. "Don't you understand? You've worn yourself thin trying to get through a wall at a point where there was no way in. Back at the Final Encyclopedia, you could see how everybody else had been worn thin, but you wouldn't face it in yourself! You've got to step back from the problem and wait for another way to come to you. That's why you had to come here! And as for the other question: I only know what Tam saw. He was seeing more than I ever had, because, just as he said, he was halfway through the door to death. But when he told me what he'd seen, I could see it, too - a time in which I'd need to believe in you, and why. Because you'd have won after all - but at a greater price than any of us had ever imagined. And the way to that's here, I can feel it! " "What price?" He was almost glaring at her, he knew, but he could not help himself. "I don't know!" she said, still holding him. "I said it was beyond imagination, for me - and I think even for Tam. He only knew the fact of it. But when he told me, I could feel it the way he did, and I understood something else - that I couldn't tell you, until you'd committed yourself by actually coming here."

She stopped, as if she had suddenly run out of breath. "What else?" he demanded. "Your next step on the road to what Tam made me see. You've committed yourself now by coming to the Chantry Guild here, of your own free will and choice. If I'd told you before this, it might have affected what you keep calling the Forces of History. "

She let go of him then, but kept a hand on his arm as if a living connection was necessary for the message she still had to reach him with. "Hal," she said, "listen to me! Tam has to die completed if you're ever to do what you first set out to do. You have to find the Creative Universe before he dies. Only that'll justify his life in his own eyes, and he must die justified. If he doesn't, you'll never find it!"

He stared at her. "Don't ask me why!" she said. "I don't know why! I only know what Tam believes, and - I know he's right."

Hal's mind clicked and slid, from premise, to odds, to conclusion. Now that his intuitive logic was given what it needed to work with, it was offering up answers where it could offer none before. What Amanda said made sense.

Until the Final Encyclopedia should be put to its final, practical use, the shape of that use would be undefined. It had been passed on, undefined, as no more than a dream, from Mark Torre to Tam and from Tam to him. The chain of cause and effect of this unreal and as-yet - unshaped, but powerful, cause could break at Tam's death, if he believed he had died without it reaching at last to its goal. It would mean to him that all his life, and everything effected by it, had been a wrong working of the developing historical fabric, a working to a dead end, that now would be abandoned.

Hal felt suddenly weak, with the weakness of shock. It had just been shown to him that he alone, of the three of them, had been in a position of choice. Neither Torre nor Tam could have turned from their work once they had taken it up. He could have - had to have been able to, before being given the chance to find the answer they all had sought - or else there was no free will. Otherwise, the fabric of future history was pre-determined.

And it was not. Not fixed. Only the past was that. So he alone had had the power of choice - and he had almost chosen wrongly.

No, never that. Succeed or fail, but to give up as he had thought himself ready to do was unthinkable after the torch had been carried this far. Fail, if he must, but the only decision he could live with was to stick with it to the end. Otherwise, all he had ever believed was false and useless.

He turned his face again to the ledge above them and felt Amanda's hand slip down his arm to take his hand. Together, they went up into sunlight.