"What are you?"
"A hunchback." He made a true answer, trying to see if he could so limit their knowledge gained from him.
"And what else?" The Commander leaned a little forward on the table. He pointed his smoke stick straight at Farree as if he could use it at his wish as a laser to send the other into smoking refuse.
"Farree." That was also true. He held to the thought that if he limited any answer to the exact question he might not be so great a traitor after all.
"You were born in the Limits?"
"I do not know." Again the truth, and they could nor reach behind that for something he did not know himself.
"A man knows where he is born, unless he is an idiot," puffed the fat man. "We do not believe you are an idiot."
"Why do you say you do not know?" The Commander showed none of the irritation of the other, but he was the more dangerous of the two and Farree had known that from the beginning.
"I cannot remember."
"You were wiped?" The Commander no longer stared at him so intently, but was looking over his head at whatever there betrayed his speech as true or false.
Wiped – a memory erased for some reason. Was that the truth which he had not faced during all the seasons in the Limits?
"I do not know."
"What do you first remember?" The Commander had back his gentle, ruthless voice.
Because he dared not try any tricks with the truth this time, Farree spoke of that which had been in his dream – the death of Lanti and his own escape into the jungle of the Limits.
Chapter 11.
Lanti." Again the questioner repeated the name. He looked to the fat man who was still running his fingers around the edge of the visa-screen. That other shrugged.
"Who knows of the actions of one man among millions?"
"He had a purpose – "
"Do not we all unless we are being wiped into nothings? A kidnapping?"
"How could this" – the Commander indicated Farree – "be supposed to be anything worth the worry or a copper nick in any market, Sulve? Unless he knows something. This bit of something which was taken from Lanti – or which at least he knew about – what was it?"
"I do not know."
"You do not know!" parroted Sulve in his high voice. "There seems to be very little that you do know, doesn't there? Why did Vorlund and the woman take you with them?"
Why had they? Because he had touched minds with the smux? But he must keep Toggor out of this if it were possible.
"Russtif dealt in wild creatures, they were hunting such, and they discovered I could mind touch with some of them."
"Thassa reason right enough – perhaps." The Commander scratched a thumbnail across his chin. "It is known that the woman once showed trained beasts – and doubtless changed bodies with them from time to time as she did on Sehkmet."
Sulve's fat hands were suddenly still. "This one?" he jerked his fat-rolled chin toward Farree.
"No, the inquirer would have recorded that. Did they promise you a new body, a furred one. Dung?"
"No."
"But you dealt with the animals, that is so? And still you are human to the eighth – " The Commander's eyes had traveled from Farree's face to a point hanging above him – perhaps the indicator of this truth machine.
Human to the eighth point, Farree heard that clearly enough. Not human to the tenth and full! He looked down at his claw-thin hands and the greenish skin which covered them. Was he then no freak of human kind, but something else – something which was perhaps to all of these as Yazz and Toggor were to him? He considered that and shivered. Perhaps he was not so different from Yazz and Bojor as far as the Thassa were concerned after all.
He tried to straighten a little and the burden on his shoulders flashed a thrill of pain through him. Now the very question they had asked him became all important: Who WAS he?
"Why did they return to Yiktor? Was not the woman in exile?" Sulve took up the questioning.
"I do not know." The truth, always the truth. The Lord-One Krip had told him, but he had not yet heard it from the Lady herself.
Both of the men were staring at the point above his head now and a slight frown had returned to the Commander's face.
"What said they of Sehkmet then?" he asked abruptly.
"That they had helped to find a place of the Forerunners – a great treasure – and there were Guild men there who were defeated."
"Nothing more?"
"Nothing." Farree made quick reply.
"Ah." The Commander picked up a tube lying on the table before him, setting aside the smoke stick. He pointed it at Farree and the hunchback gave a cry he could not smother as a pain like a flow of skin-burning acid struck him full on.
"What said they of Sehkmet and this time the truth – "
"Only that the Lady Maelen is now wearing a body found there – that she defeated something strange and not of flesh and blood to claim it." Farree could not see that that was of any importance, but it was the rest of the truth about the past – something which these two might well know and so be able to check his word.
"You see, you can remember when you are prodded," the Commander commented. "Play no more games with me. Did this Maelen and Vorlund return here to gather a force to search elsewhere, hoping or knowing that such luck would continue?''
"I do not know. There were three rings and power – "
"We all know of the blathering about the three rings, Dung. And the Thassa have their own power. But this Maelen possesses something else, does she not?"
He was turning that rod of torment around in his fingers, playing with it as he divided his glances between Farree and what was overhead.
"I do not know." Farree tried to brace himself for another blast of that body-shaking pain. The frown was plainer on the Commander's face.
"What you know, it seems, is very little if at all what is needed. Let us take up the matter of Lanti."
For a moment it looked as if Sulve was going to protest, but if he was not in accord with his partner he did not voice any objection.
"Who was Lanti?"
Once more Farree told the story of his first memory – of the spacer who had died over a spilled drink and given him freedom of a sort.
The Commander stubbed out his smoke stick. "In other words. Dung, you know little or nothing which is of service to us. Why should we keep you alive?"
Farree made no attempt to answer that. He had in him still that core of belief which had not let him whine in the Limits and which, even in spite of the pain, kept him from crying out here. Human to the eighth point only was he? Then he would prove that his stock, whatever it might be, had some rags of courage.
Sulve tapped those rolls of fat which were his fingers on the edge of the viewer. "He is not worth two copper units – not even one of inguaw wood."
"Perhaps not in himself. But as bait – yes, as bait. They have been sending over those flying eyes of theirs. There may be some merit in keeping him a while longer."
He clicked his fingers, and the same guard who had forced the head circlet on Farree came to yank it off, his hair pulled painfully in the process.
"The tower again," the Commander ordered. "And the viewer for you, Sulve. If they come a-hunting this misshapen blotch, we can at least know it once when they are beyond that impenetrable wall of theirs. They will not remain there forever,"