ORDEAL IN OTHERWHERE
By Andre Norton
Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
I
Charis crouched behind the stump, her thin hands pressed tight to the pain in her side. Her breath came in tearing gasps which jerked her whole body, and her hearing was dimmed by the pounding blood in her ears. It was still too early in the morning to distinguish more than light and dark, shadow and open. Even the blood-red of the spargo stump was gray-black in this predawn. But it was not too dark for her to pick out the markers on the mountain trail.
Though her will and mind were already straining ahead for that climb, her weak body remained here on the edge of the settlement clearing, well within reach—within reach. Charis fought back the panic which she still had wit enough to realize was an enemy. She forced her trembling body to remain in the shadow of the stump, to be governed by her mind and not by the fear which was a fire eating her. Now she could not quite remember when that fear had been born. It had ridden her for days, coming to its full blaze yesterday.
Yesterday! Charis strove to throw off the memory of yesterday, but that, too, she forced herself to face now. Blind panic and running; she dared not give in to either or she was lost. She knew the enemy and she had to fight, but since a trial of physical strength was out of the question, this meant a test of wits.
As she crouched there, striving to rest, she drew upon memory for any scraps of information which might mean weapons. The trouble had begun far back; Charis knew a certain dull wonder at why she had not realized before how far back it had begun. Of course, she and her father had expected to be greeted by some suspicion—or at least some wariness when they had joined the colonists just before takeoff on Varn.
Ander Nordholm had been a government man. He and his daughter were classed as outsiders and strangers by the colony group, much as were the other representatives of law from off-world—the Ranger Franklyn, Post Officer Kaus and his two guards, the medical officer and his wife. But every colony had to have an education officer. In the past too many frontier-world settlements had split away from the Confederation, following sometimes weird and dangerous paths of development when fanatics took control, warped education, and cut off communications with other worlds.
Yes, the Nordholms had expected a period of adjustment, of even semi-ostracization since this was a Believer colony. But her father had been winning them over—he had! Charis could not have deceived herself about that. Why, she had been invited to one of the women’s “mend” parties. Or had it been a blind even then?
But this—this would never have happened if it had not been for the white death! Charis’s breath came now in a real sob. There were so many shadows of fear on a newly opened planet. No safeguard could keep them all from striking at the fragile life of a newly planted colony. And here had been waiting a death no one could see, could meet with blaster or hunting knife or even the medical knowledge her species had been able to amass during centuries of space travel, experimentation, and information acquired across the galaxy.
And in its striking, the disease had favored the fanatical prejudices of the colonists. For it struck first the resented government men. The ranger, the port captain and his men, her father—Charis’s fist was at her mouth, and she bit hard upon her knuckles. Then it struck the medic—always the men. Later the colonists—oddly enough, those who had been most friendly with the government party—and only the men and boys in those families.
The ugly things the survivors had said—that the government was behind the plague. They had yelled that when they burned the small hospital. Charis leaned her forehead against the rough stump and tried not to remember that. She had been with Aldith Lasser, the two of them trying to find some meaning in a world which in two weeks had taken husband and father from them and turned their kind into mad people. She would not think of Aldith now; she would not! nor of Visma Unskar screaming horrors when Aldith had saved her baby for her—
Charis’s whole body was shaking with spasms she could not control. Demeter had been such a fair world. In the early days after their landing, Charis had gone on two expeditions with the ranger, taking the notes for his reports. That was what they had held against her in the colony—her education, her equality with the government men. So—Charis put her hands against the stump and pulled herself up—so now she had three choices left.
She could return; or she could remain here until the hunt found her—to take her as a slave down to the foul nest they were fast making of the first human settlement on Demeter; or somehow she could reach the mountains and hide out like a wild thing until sooner or later some native peril would finish her. That seemed much the cleaner way to end. Still steadying herself with one hand on the stump, Charis stooped to pick up the small bundle of pitiful remnants she had grubbed out of the ruins of the government domes.
A hunting knife, blackened by fire, was her only weapon. And there were formidable beasts in the mountains. Her tongue moved across dry lips, and there was a dull ache in her middle. She had eaten last when? Last night? A portion of bread, hard and with the mustiness of mold on it, was in the bag. There would be berries in the heights. She could actually see them—yellow, burstingly plump—hanging so heavy on willowy branches that they pulled the boughs groundward. Charis swallowed again, pushed away from the stump, and stumbled on.
Her safety depended upon what the settlers would decide. She had no means of concealing her back trail. In the morning it would be found. But whether their temper would be to follow her, or if they would shruggingly write her off to be finished by the wild, Charis could not guess. She was the one remaining symbol of all Tolskegg preached against—the liberal off-world mind, the “un-female,” as he called it. The wild, with every beast Ranger Franklyn had catalogued lined up ready to tear her, was far better than facing again the collection of cabins where Tolskegg now spouted his particular brand of poison, that poison, bred of closed minds, which her father had taught her early to fear. And Visma and her ilk had lapped that poison to grow fat and vigorous on it. Charis weaved on along the trail.
There was no sign of a rising sun, she realized some time later. Instead, clouds were thicker overhead. Charis watched them in dull resignation, awaiting a day of chill, soaking rain. The thickets higher up might give her some protection from the full force of a steady pour, but they would not keep out the cold. Some cave or hole into which she could crawl before full exposure weakened her to the point that she could go no farther—
She tried to remember all the features of this trail. Twice she had been along it—the first time when they had cut the trace, the second time when she had taken the little ones to the spring to show them the wonderful sheaths of red flowers and the small, jeweled, flying lizards that lived among those loops of blossoming vines.
The little ones . . . Charis’s cracked lips shaped a grimace. Jonan had thrown the stone which had made the black bruise on her arm. Yet, on that other day, Jonan had stood drinking in the beauty of the flowers.
Little ones and not so little ones. Charis began to reckon how many boys had survived the white death. All the little ones, she realized with some wonder, were still alive—that is, all under twelve years. Of those in their teens, five remained, all representing families who had had least contact with the government group, been the most fanatical in their severance. And of adult men . . . Charis forced herself to recall every distorted
face in the mob bent on destruction, every group she had spied upon while hiding out.
Twenty adult men out of a hundred! The women would go into the fields, but they could not carry on the heavy work of clearing. How long would it take Leader Tolskegg to realize that, in deliberately leading the mob to destroy the off-world equipment, he might also have sentenced all of the remaining colonists to slow death?
Of course, sooner or later, Central Control would investigate. But not for months was any government ship scheduled to set down on Demeter. And by that time the whole colony could be finished. The excuse of an epidemic would cover the activities of any survivors. Tolskegg, if he were still alive then, could tell a plausible tale. Charis was sure that the colony leader now believed he and his people were free from the government and that no ship would come, that the Power of their particular belief had planned this so for them.
Charis pushed between branches. The rain began, plastering her hair to her head, streaming in chill trickles down her face, soaking into the torn coat on her shoulders. She stooped under its force, still shivering. If she could only reach the spring. Above that was broken rock where she might find a hole.
But it was harder and harder for her to pull herself up the rising slope. Several times she went down to hands and knees, crawling until she could use a bush or a boulder to pull upright once more. All the world was gray and wet, a sea to swallow one. Charis shook her head with a jerk. It would be so easy to drift into the depths of that sea, to let herself go.
This was real—here and now. She could clutch the bushes, pull herself along. Above was safety; at least, freedom of a sort still undefiled by the settlers. And here was the spring. The curtain of blossoms was gone, seed pods hung in their place. No lizards, but something squat and hairy drank at the pool, a thing with a long muzzle that looked at her from a double set of eyes, coldly, without fear. Charis paused to stare back.
A purple tongue flicked from the snout, lapped at the water in a farewell lick. The creature reared on stumpy hind feet, standing about three feet tall; and Charis recognized it, in this normal pose, as one of the tree-dwelling fruit eaters that depended upon overdeveloped arms and shoulders for a method of progress overhead. She had never seen one on the ground before, but she thought it harmless.
It turned with more speed than its clumsy build suggested and used the vines for a ladder to take it up out of her sight. There was a shrill cry from where it vanished and the sound of more than one body moving away.
Charis squatted by the pool side and drank from her cupped hands. The water was cold enough to numb her palms, and she rubbed them back and forth across the front of her jacket when she was finished, not in any hopes of drying them but to restore circulation. Then Charis struck off to the left where the vegetation gave way to bare rock.
How long it was, that struggle to gain the broken country, Charis could not have told. The effort stripped her of her few remaining rags of energy, and sheer, stubborn will alone kept her crawling to the foot of an outcrop, where a second pillar of stone leaned to touch the larger and so formed a small cup of shelter. She drew her aching body into that and huddled, sobbing with weakness.
The pain which had started under her ribs spread now through her whole body. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms about them, resting her chin on one kneecap. For a long moment she was as still as her shaking body would allow her to rest. And it was some time later that she realized chance had provided her with a better hideout than her conscious mind had directed.
From this niche and out of the full drive of the rain, Charis had a relatively unobstructed view of the down-slope straight to the field on which their colony ship had first set down. The scars of its braking thrusters were still visible there even after all these months. Beyond, to her right, was the straggle of colony cabins. The dim gray of the storm lessened the range of visibility, but Charis thought she could see a trail or two of smoke rising there.
If Tolskegg was following the usual pattern, he had already herded the majority of the adults into the fields in that race for planting. With the equipment destroyed, it would be a struggle to get the mutated seed in the ground in time for an early harvest. Charis did not move her head. From here the fields were masked by the rounded slope; she could not witness the backbreaking toil in progress there. But if the new ruler of the colony was holding to schedule, she need not fear the trailers would be early on her track—if they came at all.
Her head was heavy on her knee; the need for sleep was almost as great as the ache of hunger. She roused herself to open her bundle and take out the dry bread to gnaw. The taste almost made her choke. If she had only had warning enough to hide some of the trail rations the explorers had used! But by the time she had nursed her father to the end, the main stores had largely been raided or destroyed because of their “evil” sources.
As she chewed the noisome mouthful, Charis watched downtrail. Nothing moved in the portion of the settlement she could see. Whether or not she wanted to, whether or not it was safe, she must rest. And this was the best hole she could find. Perhaps the steady rain would wash away the traces she had left. It was a small hope but all she had left to cling to.
Charis thrust the rest of the bread back into her bundle. Then she strove to wriggle deeper into her half-cave. Spray from the rain striking the rocks reached her in spite of her efforts. But finally she lapsed into quiet, her forehead down on her knees, her only movements the shivers she could not control.
Was it sleep or unconsciousness which held her, and for how long? Charis rose out of a nightmare with a cry, but any sound she made was swallowed up by a roar from outside.
She blinked dazedly at what seemed to be a column of fire reaching from earth to gray, weeping sky. Only for a moment did that last, and then the fire was at ground level, boiling up the very substance of the soil. Charis scrambled forward on hands and knees, shouting but still blanketed by that other sound.
There was a spacer, a slim, scoured shape, pointing nose to sky, the heat of its braking fire making a steam mist about it. But this was no vision—it was real! A spacer had set down by the village!
Charis tottered forward. Tears added to the rain, wet on her cheeks. There was a ship—help—down there. And it had come too soon for Tolskegg to hide the evidence of what had happened. The burned bubble domes, all the rest—they would be seen; questions would be asked. And she would be there to answer them!
She lost her footing on a patch of sleek clay, and before she could regain her balance, Charis was skidding down, unable to stop her fall. The sick horror lasted for an endless second or two. Then came a sudden shock, bringing pain and blackness.
Rain on her face roused Charis again. She lay with her feet higher than her head, a mass of rubble about her. Panic hit her, the fear that she was trapped or that broken bones would immobilize her, away from the wonderful safety and help of the ship. She must get there—now!
In spite of the pain, she wriggled and struggled out of the debris of the slide, crawled away from it. Somehow she got to her feet. There was no way of telling how long she had lain there and the thought of the ship waiting drove her on to make an effort she could not have faced earlier.
No time to go back to the spring trail—if she could reach it from this point. Better straight down, with the incline of the slope to keep her going in the right direction. She had been almost directly above and behind the landing point when she had sheltered among the rocks. She must have slid in the right direction, so she only had to keep on going that way.
Was it a Patrol ship, Charis wondered as she stumbled on. She tried to remember its outline. It was certainly not a colony transport—it was not rotund enough; nor was it a regulation freighter. So it could only be a Patrol or a government scout landing off-schedule. And its crew would know how to deal with the situation here. Tolskegg might already be under arrest.
Charis forced herself to cut down her first headlong pace. She knew she must not r
isk another fall, the chance of knocking herself out just when help was so near. No, she wanted to walk in on her own two feet, to be able to tell her story and tell it clearly. Take it slowly: the ship would not lift now.
She could smell the stench of the thruster-burn, see the steam as a murky fog through the trees and brush. Better circle here; it no longer mattered if Tolskegg or his henchmen sighted her. They would be afraid to make any move against her.
Charis wavered out of the brush into the open and started for the village without fear. She would show up on the vistaplates in the ship, and none of the colonists would risk a hostile move under that circumstance.
So—she would stay right here. There was no sign of anyone’s coming out of the village. Of course not! They would be trying to work out some plausible story, whining to Tolskegg. Charis faced around toward the ship and waved vigorously, looking for the insignia which would make it Patrol or Scout.
There was none! It took a moment for that fact to make a conscious impression on her mind. Charis had been so sure that the proper markings would be there that she had almost deceived herself into believing that she sighted them. But the spacer bore no device at all. Her arm dropped to her side suddenly as she saw the ship as it really was.
This was not the clean-lined, well-kept spacer of any government service. The sides were space-dust cut, the general proportions somewhere between scout and freighter, with its condition decidedly less than carefully tended. It must be a Free Trader of the second class, maybe even a tramp—one of those plying a none-too-clean trade on the frontier worlds. And the chances were very poor that the commander or crew of such would be lawfully engaged here or would care at all about what happened to the representatives of government they were already aligned against in practice. Charis could hope for no help from such as these.
A port opened and the landing ramp snaked out and down. Somehow Charis pulled herself together, she turned to run. But out of the air spun a rope, jerking tight about her arms and lower chest, pulling her back and off her feet to roll, helplessly entangled, a prisoner. While behind she heard the high-pitched, shrill laughter of Tolskegg’s son, one of the five boys who had survived the epidemic.