He wondered over that promise, if promise it had been. From Maelen, he might have believed in it and taken heart again. But from one he did not know – the many sorrows of the past made him doubt. They might wish to help him, he allowed that. But that they could do anything he did not believe.
Thus it was his own fight. He thought of that creature that had run in the walls – if there were many of them and if they could all be aroused to attack some food supply. What might he gain from such a skirmish? He had no idea but he filed that possibility away. There was at least one flying thing he had touched – though it might be wholly under the control of the Thassa and might not be within reach again. If only he had Bojor!
Though even if he could summon that giant to him he doubted that he would. A laser would bring the bartle quick and painful death and avail him nothing. Once more he rolled himself into a ball and tried to shut out the thoughts from his mind to sleep.
At first he thought that sleep was impossible. His mind kept repeating that interview with the Commander and his helplessness as a prisoner. But many times before he had carried fears and torments into sleep, and this time it was also in the past. This was as clear as a mind picture and very vivid, so that he saw it all sharply and knew also that this was no dream but a fragment of sleep-unlocked memory of a time which seemed to him utterly far in the past.
He was crouched upon a bundle of dirty carpets watching two men. One of them, wearing a crumpled and much stained spacer's coverall, was —
"Lanti." The other man spoke the name even as it had come to the dreaming Farree's mind and reached across the stained table to catch a fistful of Lanti's shirt at the neck to jerk up the head which rolled loosely on the man's shoulders.
Lanti's mouth was slack with a drool of spittle from one comer, and his eyes turned up in his head. He breathed noisily. The one who held him struck a sharp slap on each side of the face.
"You blasted fool—answer me! Where did you planet then?"
But the man who was Lanti only puffed his lips and then snored. With a grunt of obscenities, the other let go of him and allowed Lanti's head to fall forward onto the table. He pounded a fist on that dirty board before him and then reached within his own jerkin and pulled out a piece of cloth. From its wrapping he shook out a scrap of something which glittered and welcomed the light in the place.
Seeing that, the dream Farree made a small movement forward and the man was instantly alert, turning to look at him. Such was the expression of demand upon his hairy face that the very small Farree gave a tiny whimpering cry and waited helplessly for a blow to follow.
However, he dreamed – not one of those broken and distorted series of pictures that had been his uneasy nightmares
Chapter 10.
The man in one lumbering movement came to stand over him, scowling down at the small figure. He still held that glittering scrap between two fingers but Farree did not look at it.
"Dung." The big man slapped his face, even as he had done to Lanti, rocking him over so he lay nearly facedown on the filthy carpets. "What do you know about this? He has dragged you about with him so you must have some value. Is it that you know?"
He could sense the cruelty rising in the other. In one of those huge hands his brittle bones would snap easily; he could be turned into dead rubbish to be flung into the street.
"Far – " Almost he said the name which he must not. Lanti would beat him again if he did. If this bravo did not slay him first. "I – I know nothing, Lord-One." His voice was a harsh croak hardly above a whisper.
The second blow fell, only this bully mistook his strength and sent Farree speedily into unconsciousness. When he awoke once more he was sore, so stiff and sore that the slightest movement was a torment.
There was the gray light of morning around, but Lanti still sprawled across the table, his face turned away. Of the other man there was no sign. For several long moments, while feeling came back to his legs and arms, Farree waited.
Outside this hut he could hear the normal sounds of morning: the groans and oaths of men on their way back to ships, and the rattle of pots and pans in those eating places which sold first meals. But the hut inside was utterly silent.
At last Farree moved, humping himself off the carpets, daring to approach the table. That his first known enemy was unaware was a gift of fortune he would not throw away. He stood as tall as he might to survey Lanti. The bloated face was a grayish color, the pouting lips blue.
Greatly daring, ready to dodge if the man awoke, Farree put forth one hand to touch the other's dangling hand.
Slept? His flesh was cold. With even greater daring Farree tried to sense the other. There was nothing there – none of the faint traces of identity which one carried even into the deepest of sleeps. Lanti was – dead!
If he were now found here! Farree scuttled to his noisome carpet nest and brought out a square of cloth he had earlier garnered. He moved around the table, his small hunched form not unlike that of one of the sus-spiders, gathering up a half-gnawed slab of bread, the tail end of a flat eel, not pausing to eat, though his empty stomach yearned to be filled, but ready to take the food with him. A weapon? No – the two sheaths at Lanti's belt were empty. He had already been plundered of both his force knife and his stunner. Farree's only chance would lie in flight and hiding. He did not know why the other man had abandoned him – but perhaps he had discovered Lanti's death and had prudently put a distance between them. All this end of the Limits knew that Farree was Lanti's captive and the hunt might be up for him now.
Clutching to him with one hand the bundle he had made of the food, he slipped in the dawn light out of the hut and sought the shadows, speeding at his best hobbling pace away from the only place he had known on this world.
Before this world, before Lanti, what had there been? He turned to that over and over again. Always to meet with dark as if a part of his mind slept endlessly – or was reft from him by some form of small death. Almost, once, he had remembered – when he had seen that scrap of glittering stuff in the bully's hand. But even then there had been a barrier.
He had always guessed that he must have come from off-world, and he could not understand why Lanti had thought to bring such a miserable creature with him. Farree must have had some value beyond his own misshapen body. Some value beyond —
Farree awoke. For a moment or two he was disoriented. These chill stone walls about him – they were not of the Limits – then, even as he blinked his eyes, all which had happened came flooding back. The promise which had been made that the Thassa would help. How much dared he count on that?
He tried to school himself to forget it. Those to whom he was now captive could bring to their aid things he was sure the Thassa, with all their might of minds, had never thought of. No, he dared not depend on promises.
By the window so far above him, he thought the sky was that of morning. And he was very hungry and athirst. To ask – to beat on that door hoping someone would hear him – No, better to go without than perhaps make them remember that they had him to hand.
He had just made this woeful decision when the door did open and a man in a spacer's clothing, but one he had not seen before, came in. In his left hand he carried one of those cans of rations made for emergencies and in his right was a stunner. He said nothing but gestured with the weapon. Farree withdrew to the far wall and watched the other set down his burden and go out again. There was an audible thud which he believed signalled a bar on the other side of the door.