“Nahani,” repeated the Terran deliberately. Then struck by a possible explanation for the other’s bewilderment, he added:
“Or did you never know the name of the man you killed at Los Gatos—?”
“Los Gatos?” Brad Quade stooped, as if striving to bring his blue eyes on a level with the dark ones Storm raised to meet them. “Who—are—you?” He spaced those words with little breaths between, as if each were forced from him by that sharp point still in Storm’s hold.
“I am Hosteen Storm—Nahani’s son—Na-Ta-Hay’s grandson—”
Brad Quade’s lips moved as if he were trying to shape words, and finally they came:
“But he told us—told Raquel—that you were dead—of fever! She—she had to remember that all the rest of her life! She went back to the mesa for you and Na-Ta-Hay showed her a walled-up cave—said you were buried in it—That nearly killed her, too!” Brad Quade whirled, his broad shoulders undefended to Storm’s attack. He balled his hands into fists, brought them down against the wall as if he were battering something else, a shadow not concrete enough to take the punishment he craved to deal out.
“Blast him! He tortured her on purpose! How could he do that to his own daughter?”
Storm watched that sudden rage die as Quade’s control snapped into place. The fist became a hand again, reached out to touch with delicate tenderness, the edge of the mural.
“How could he do it? Even if he were such a fanatic—” Quade asked again, wonderingly. “Nahani wasn’t killed—at least by me. He died of snake bite. I don’t know what you’ve been told—a twisted story apparently—” He spoke quietly and Storm slumped back against his pillows, his world unsteady. He could not fan dead anger to life. Quade’s sober voice carried too much conviction.
“Nahani was attached to the Survey Service,” Quade said tiredly. He pulled a chair to him, dropped into it, still eyeing Storm with a kind of hungry demand for belief. “I was, too, then. We worked together on several assignments—and our Amerindian background led us to close friendship. There was trouble with the Xik on some of the outer planets and Nahani was captured in one of their sneak raids. He escaped and I went to see him at the base hospital. But they had tried to ‘condition’ him—”
Storm tensed and shivered. Quade, seeing his reaction, nodded.
“Yes, you can understand what that meant. It was bad—he was—changed. The medic thought perhaps something could be done for him on Terra. He was sent home for rehabilitation. But during the first month, he got away from the hospital—disappeared. We learned later that he made his way back to his own home. His wife and son were there, a two-year-old child.
“Outwardly he appeared normal. His wife’s father—Na-Ta-Hay—was one of the irreconcilables who refused to acknowledge any change or need for change in the native way of life. He was fanatic almost past the point of strict sanity. And he welcomed Nahani back as one rescued from the disaster of becoming Terran in place of Dineh. But Raquel, Nahani’s wife, knew that he must have expert help. She got word of his whereabouts to the authorities without her father’s knowledge. I was asked to go with the medic to pick him up because I was on leave and I was his friend—they hoped I could persuade him to come in peaceably for treatment.
“When he discovered we were coming, he went on the run again. Raquel and I followed him into the desert. When we found his hidden camp, he was already dead—of snake bite. And when Raquel returned to her father’s place for her baby, he was like a wild man—he accused her of betraying her husband, of turning traitor to her people, and drove her off with a gun.
“She came to me for help, and with guards we went to get her child—only to be shown a grave, the walled-up cave. Raquel collapsed and was ill for months. Afterwards we were married, I resigned from the service and brought her to my home here, hoping in new surroundings she could forget. I think she was happy—especially after Logan was born. But she only lived four years—And that is the true story!”
The knife lay by itself on the blanket. Storm’s hands were over his eyes, shutting out the room, allowing him to see into a place that was dark and alive with an odd danger he must face by himself, as he faced Bister back at the Peaks.
A blurred column of years stretched out behind him—separating him from that long-ago day when Na-Ta-Hay had impressed his bitter will upon a small awed boy to whom his grandfather was as tall and powerful as one of the fabled Old Ones—between now and the day just after he had landed at the Center when Na-Ta-Hay’s spirit seemed to spread like a shadow across all his memories and dreams of Terra, his now destroyed homeland. He had clung to that shadow of a man, and to the oath he had given, making them anchors in a reeling world. Storm had fostered a hatred of Quade because he had to have some purpose in life, though even then something deep within him had tried to repudiate it. He saw it all now—so clearly.
That was why he had shrunk from pressing the dispute at his first meeting with the settler. As long as he could postpone this settlement, so could he continue to live. After it, his life would no longer have any purpose.
Na-Ta-Hay had stood in his memory as a symbol for all that was lost. To cling to the task the other had set him had, in a strange way, kept Terra alive. They had been right at the Center in their distrust of him, he had not escaped the madness of the worldless men, only his had taken another and stranger turn.
Now he was empty, empty and waiting for the fear that lurked just beyond the broken barrier to crawl in and possess him utterly. Na-Ta-Hay had left him no anchor, only delusion. Now he stood on the same narrow edge of sanity where Bister had walked. For his kind, like Bister, had to have roots. Roots of a land—of kin—
Storm did not know he was shivering, huddling down into his pillows, seeking oblivion, which would not come. His hands dropped from his face to lie limp on the lightning patterned slashes of the blanket, but he did not open his eyes. For he felt he dared not see that mural now, nor look at the man who had told the truth and made him face his own complete loss.
Warmth ringed his wrists, fingers tightened there as if to drag him out of the encroaching darkness.
“Here, too, is the family—”
At first the words were only sounds—then the meaning came, the words repeated themselves in his empty mind. Storm opened his eyes.
“How did you know?” He begged assurance that true understanding of what he needed had prompted the choice of just those words, not chance.
“How did I know?” Brad Quade was smiling. “Are the Dineh the only wise ones, son? Is there only one tribe who seek roots in their own earth? This was your home—always waiting. Your mother helped to make it. You have merely been a little late in arriving—about—let me see now—some eighteen Terran years!”
Storm did not try to answer that. His eyes went once more to the mural. But now it was only a painted wall, nostalgic, beautiful, not meant to hold a man in spell. He heard a quiet laugh from the doorway and glanced up. Logan must have gone—now he was back. He stood there with Baku riding his shoulder as she had so often ridden Storm’s, with Surra flowing about his legs. The big cat came and put her forepaws on the bed and surveyed Storm round-eyed, while Hing chittered from the crook of Logan’s arm.
“Rain is in the corral. He’ll have to wait a few more days for your reunion—” Brad did not yet loose his hold on Storm’s wrists. “Here is your family—this is also the truth!”
Storm drew a single, long, shaky breath that was very close to something else. His hands lay quiet, drawing strength from that warm clasp.