"He is not a machine—that one," she said. "The smux finds true life there and danger."
"Yazz, Bojor." The Lord-One looked to the two other animals.
"Live. Like Yazz. Live," answered that one at once. The bartle growled, sitting up on his broad and weighty haunches, making gestures of holding something in his front paws.
"I think," Lady Maelen said slowly, "that we may have our own warning alerts from directions which our new shipmates will not guess. They can accept animals performing because of threats or promises, but not little ones who share with us that true life of all that is equal in Molester's scales of being. We shall mount our safeguards. You have made your own lock installments on the cages?" She turned to Lord-One Krip.
"Yes; we shall test them this night. It will serve that our little ones are firmly housed and yet" – he smiled a little grimly – "that will be only a cover."
Farree had been in the ship before, but that had been a hurried visit and only to that section meant to house those the Lady Maelen called her "little ones." Though she used the same term for Farree himself, there was a difference which was subtle but which he had caught. He was perhaps as ignorant of worlds beyond this planet as the animals, or even more so, for those had roved the wilds far beyond the Limits. Yet to these two off-worlders he was common kin.
Now he lay in the bunk which had been assigned to him. For the off-worlders and their live companions had chosen to go within the ship though it was still fin down. However, what he was thinking had nothing to do with the events of the past two days. Rather he was caught up in what he had never experienced before: a waking dream of wonder. That was centered upon something he had seen in the Lady Maelen's quarters.
A cube which seemed transparent and clear of any content – one which was only slightly larger than what he could hold comfortably in his two hands. When the Lady touched it, there had come a swirl of color within as he watched in astonishment. He might have been poised in the air above another land – one so far different from the Limits that dream was all he could find to call it.
There were wide plains – small within the limits of the cube's space, yet the longer one looked at the scene the wider those spread, as if one became smaller than a sand jumper and had been pulled into the picture. There was green – great stretches of green growing things, starred here and there with brilliant splashes of color, some widely separated, some massed together. Growing things also, but the like of which Farree had never seen before.
Far down in his cramped memory something stirred even as it had when they had asked his true name. Color, growing things – There were none such in the Limits, yet he recognized them for what they were instantly: a mantling of rich, tall-growing grass and – flowers. Faltering memory produced a name for him.
His nostrils expanded. Yet there was nothing save the air of the ship to fill them. He had expected something else: clean, strong, unlike the sour stench of the Limits. Why did he think of that?
"Yiktor." The Lady Maelen's word had cut through his searching of memory. "The Thassa wander wide over these plains, though their own private place is near desert." She was, he saw by an upward glance, concentrating on the cube with an intent stare. "We shall be in Yiktor! In the circling of the rings."
The scene within the cube swirled again from clarity into a fog of mingled color. Farree gave a small exclamation of protest. But the cube did not clear entirely. Now there hung a ball of light within it, and around that three distinct rings of radiance grew and held.
He felt a greater wonder than even the flower-studded land had given him. This was a thing out of the sky – a miracle of light unlike any he could have imagined. The sight brought no faint recognition with it; it was totally alien to anything he even had heard described. The Lady reached out long fingers and caressed the cube as she had done at times the bartle and Yazz, as if she needed the reassurance that they did exist. Farree felt a strong wave which was both of sadness and of joy – though, before this moment, he could not have believed two such diverse emotions could be interwoven.
Then she lifted the cube and instantly the picture was gone. She took a soft piece of spider silk and wrapped what was now only a clear and colorless artifact, then placed it in one of the wall compartments.
Farree longed to see again that flowery land, to feel that he had been drawn into the dream and become a part of the whole, accepted and at – at home —
"You saw," the Lady spoke slowly as she turned from the compartment she had locked with her thumb seal. "Yiktor, which I ..." Now her voice failed for an instant before she added, "which I long for and to which we go."
She clasped her hands together, rubbing one over the other as if some substance had escaped the cube to moisten her fingers. "Yiktor," she breathed for the third time. Then her glance wavered from the compartment door, and she looked directly at Farree.
"You saw. But there was something else—you remembered."
Oddly enough he felt suddenly threatened by her words. It was as if her probe could pierce easily into an inner part of him – a far inner part which cowered away from light and knowledge. There was a growing pain within him, which he found hard to handle.
"I did not remember," he countered quickly. "There was always the Limits – just the Limits."
"Your kin – your father – your mother?" She was not going to let him escape. But she need only keep mind touch with him to know the answer to that. The Limits, always the Limits – but then the man —
For the first time in years Farree was remembering the man. He was only a shape, faceless, to be feared, yet all-powerful. He had died drunken and Farree had fled. He himself had been even smaller then, a misshapen lump of flesh which no one could look upon except with distaste or fear. Like Toggor, he had been alone. His kin? Who would claim kin with such as he? He had never seen his like even among the beggars, some self-mutilated to arouse pity. From them he had kept apart, moved by the queer feeling that were he to seek a place in their stinking, shambling guild he would be, in a strange way, lost.
He was stronger than he looked, and there was a core of determination within him to keep him going on his own. How long had it been? The refuse of the Limits did not reckon years, only seasons – hot and cold. And he did not add those up.
Before he realized what she was about to do, Farree felt the Lady's hands at the neck fastening of his robe. She pulled at the cloth, bringing it down to bare his hump.
He flared with a thrust of sick anger. Then her mind speech touched him quickly. At least she had not put hand to that monstrous roll of flesh which he bore always with him.
"This is no hurt, yet it looks as if it were old scarring." She shook her head. "A healer I once was – a Moon Singer who could bring good out of ill. And much have I seen of bad wounds and injuries. The Thassa have their own dangers, which do not equal those of other species. This looks more like a shell – "
Farree jerked the cloth of his robe, fastened it tightly once again. "No Singer can make me straight," he answered sullenly.
But she did not let him go. Though she did not touch him again, yet he realized that he must answer her. For the first time he resented with more and more bitterness this mind tie between them. What had once seemed to him to be an opening gate to understanding now took on the bars of a cage.
"No, I think not. But for everything there is a reason. Do you suffer pain?"