Part 8 (1/2)
”Who's he?” St. Cyr asked.
”His name's Salardi. He came here with a team of archaeologists who were researching some native ruins, and when his job was done he decided to stay.”
”A wealthy man?”
”No. He lives with the natives, eats off the land.”
Salardi turned the corner at an orange and blue tent and disappeared.
”He doesn't seem to be happy here.”
Dane said, ”The word is that he's wanted in connection with a crime of some sort in the Inner Galaxy. He joined the scientific expedition to get free pa.s.sage out here toward the rim, away from the Founding Worlds' laws.” He started forward again, turned and said, ”Come on. Norya's waiting.”
Remember Salardi.
I will.
At the trailer door, which stood open, an old woman's voice greeted them before they had started up the steps. ”Welcome, Dane. Please bring your detective friend inside.”
Dane turned and smiled at St. Cyr. ”You see? She has powers.”
They went up the metal steps and into the main room of the trailer, closed the door after them. They stood in a candle-lighted chamber, the odor of incense heavy on the air. The furniture here looked hand-carved, each piece made from a ma.s.sive block of wood. Dead Men wood? St. Cyr wondered. In the largest of the chairs, at the far end of the room, sitting with a blanket across her lap and legs, Norya waited for them.
”Here,” she said, indicating a pair of chairs directly in front of her.
They sat down.
St. Cyr found it difficult to put an age to the alien face before him, though he was certain that Norya was old, inestimably old. Her eyes were nested in dark wrinkles; furrows cut her brown cheeks like wounds, bracketed her slit mouth. Her dark hair had long ago turned white, and it fell in ropy clumps over her narrow shoulders. When she smiled at St. Cyr, her lipless mouth looked like a gash made by a sharp knife.
”Norya, this is-”
Keeping her gaze fixed on the cyberdetective, she said, ”Baker St. Cyr. I know. I've seen this entire meeting in a vision.” Her voice was webbed with tiny cracks, like a piece of crumpled isingla.s.s, yet it was loud enough and clear enough to be easily heard.
”What are these-visions like?” St. Cyr asked.
”They come to me at odd moments, when I am unprepared. It is as though, for a few minutes or hours, I am living in the future, not the present.” She unfolded her six-fingered hands and placed one on each arm of the chair, as if she were bracing herself. ”But you did not come here to hear about my visions. You want to know about the du-aga-klava du-aga-klava.”
”Yes”-St. Cyr.
”Please, Norya”-Dane.
”Move your chairs nearer me,” she said.
They did this.
”Put a hand over my hand.”
St. Cyr covered her left hand, Dane her right.
Her hands were warm and dry.
She closed her eyes.
”Now what?” St. Cyr asked.
”Now I show you the wolf.” Crumpled isingla.s.s.
It began insidiously, with a steady dimming of the candles. St. Cyr looked around the room and saw that none of the tapers had been touched-and yet they threw considerably less light than they had only a moment ago. And what light there was had changed from yellow to a gray-green shade that depressed him.
”It happened in my fourteenth year, in the autumn, before the leaves fell, many decades ago.” Norya's voice was no more than a strained whisper now, faint, scratchy.
St. Cyr looked back at her, expecting some kind of change, though he could not guess what. She was the same as she had been: old.
He felt a breeze across his face, cool and pleasant.
When he turned to see if the trailer door had been opened, he found that he could no longer see a door. Midpoint in its length, the room grew hazy and metamorphosed into a forest, the slick trunks of the Dead Men rising on every side, spa.r.s.e vegetation tangled across the woodland floor.
A telepathic projectionist.
Yes, St. Cyr thought. And she's a good one.
A moment later, the entire room was gone. He could not see Dane or Norya any longer. He was a disembodied observer, standing several feet above the earth, watching what unfolded at the gypsy camp below.
He saw a child playing in the forest a quarter of a mile from the last of the tents and trailers, a boy no more than seven years old, darting in and out of peculiar rock formations, poking into cul-de-sacs in hopes of finding some adventure. St. Cyr was aware that the boy was Norya's brother. In one of his spelunking efforts, he came across a cavelet that served as a wolfs den. It was occupied. Terrified at the confrontation with the wolf, the boy turned and ran. He did not get too far from the den before the wolf was upon him. Much larger than the boy, the wolf sank teeth into his shoulder and dragged him down. They skidded on fallen leaves, rolled, the boy screaming and the wolf snarling furiously as he worked at the hold he had secured... Since the camp was so close by, several men soon reached the boy and drove away the wolf. Though they carried guns, and though several were good marksmen who placed bullets in the wolf, it loped away, apparently unharmed. The du-aga-klava du-aga-klava, unlike the ordinary wolf, can only be brought down with weapons that have been coated with the sap of the Dead Men... The rescuers carried the boy back to camp, where physicians stopped the bleeding and bandaged his arm. He had entered a coma, however, and he did not rise out of it for nearly two and a half weeks-except those times when his mother came upon him groveling on the floor like an animal. When she tried to touch him and put him to bed, he snapped at her, snarled like the wolf that had bit him. When these seizures took him, there was nothing to do but wait until they pa.s.sed and unconsciousness again claimed him. Then he would be put to bed again. The leaves fell from the Dead Men, souls expelled from purgatory into heaven... The air grew cooler as winter approached. For long days the camp was bathed in light-the whole while that the boy lay stricken... When the new leaves had interlaced and the familiar canopy of darkness lay over them once more, the boy began to improve. He no longer howled, and did not snap at his loved ones; he had ceased to froth at the mouth. He had lost a great deal of weight, but he gained it back swiftly, his appet.i.te ravenous. Completely out of his comatose state now, he slowly grew tolerant of bright lights, though he s.h.i.+ed away from them when it was at all possible to do so, always choosing to sit in the most dimly lighted corner. Within another month, his sickness was all but forgotten, except when the family prayed and gave thanks for his recovery. At about this time, the first of the children was attacked and killed by a wolf. It happened at night, when some of the children were playing a form of hide-and-seek in the backlot of the trailers, while the adults were all in towards the center of the camp for a celebration. A week later another child was killed, also at night, but this time while he slept alone in his mother's tent. Though the men banded together to hunt down the rogue wolf, they found no trace of the animal. All the nearby dens had been deserted earlier as the animals moved into the low country for the winter. Soon they began to murmur among themselves, form theories based on legends. The wolf, they said, was more than an ordinary wolf. The third child to be attacked was playing with Norya's brother when the wolf jumped her. According to the boy, he frightened the beast off before it could do the girl much harm. She was hysterical, but spoke lucidly enough to point the finger at the boy. He was the wolf, she said. They had been playing, and suddenly he jumped her and he had fangs and his hands had become claws, and he had almost killed her... It was necessary, then, to execute the boy by forcing him to consume a cup of poison made from the bark of the Dead Men. And when he was gone, there were no more murders, no more- The vision of the dead boy-face contorted by the poison, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling of the tent-faded from view, as if his flesh were nothing more than smoke.
It was, of course, even less than that.
Beyond the tent, the green-gray forest melted.
Reality intruded: heavy furniture, flickering candles, an old woman with a blanket across her knees...
”I would like to know-” St. Cyr began.
Dane said, ”She's sleeping.”
”When will she wake?”
”Perhaps not until morning. It was a hard thing for her to do, but she knew she had to warn us.”
”What now?”
”We leave. What else?”
Outside, they stood against a thick Dead Man's trunk and breathed the stale air out of their lungs. ”It meant nothing,” St. Cyr said.
”How can you say that?” Dane turned to face him, angry. ”You saw how the weapons had no effect on the wolf that bit her brother.”
”The marksmen were nervous-at least, they were in the re-creation that we saw. They could easily have missed and sworn they hit to preserve their reputations.”