"Go and find out," Dr. Jones said.
"But you agreed to help if I brought you these people!"
"And we shall. But of what use is it to rebuild Helicon if it remains liable to destruction by the forces that brought it down before? The human forces."
Neq had no answer for that.
"Forget the remaining names on the list," Dr. Jones said kindly. "The nucleus is almost sufficient now. Look instead for Sol and Sosa and Var, should he somehow have survived Sol's quest for vengeance. Learn whether Sos the Weaponless was more directly involved; perhaps his disappearance is relevant. Ascertain the truth--and suggest how we may prevent any conceivable recurrence. Only then will we be assured that our endeavor is secure."
CHAPTER TWELVE
The six year old spoor of both Var the Stick and Sosa had to begin at Helicon. The one had been with the nomads, the other with the underworld. Both had vanished in that final, devastating encounter. Probably both were dead--but then his quest for information was dead, too. Sol and the Weaponless had much better chances of survival--but neither would have been party to the heart of Helicon's failure: the inner workings of Bob's mind. For had Bob not sent an innocent child to her death, both he and Helicon might have weathered the siege. The underworld defenses were certainly formidable enough. Why had Bob, by all accounts a capable leader, erred so brutally and calamitously? Would the next leader err the same way? There was the key.
Helicon was as he had left it: tight and clean. He re-explored its several exits, pondering whether a woman might have used one to escape. Certainly she might! To this extent Sola's intuition must be correct: Sosa, with forewarning of Sol's intent, was the most likely of all the underworlders to have escaped cleanly. Sol could have been trapped in his own conflagration--and the Weaponless, outside, could well have entered Helicon in a desperate attempt to find Sosa... and failed, and died.
He scouted the exterior again, and made a trek to Mt. Muse, to see where a warrior might have gone after slaying a child. But he could not climb to the mesa--and anyway, Var had returned to the nomad camp to be feted for his barbarism. There was no answer there. Tyl himself had seen Var after the "combat of champions" but had only known that Var disappeared shortly thereafter, and then the Weaponless. Neither had given any advance hint of what was to happen. There had been no evidence of foul play.
There were outlaw tribesmen w this region. Some Neq and Dick had encountered before; no one had known of Var or Sosa. Of course there was considerable turnover here, for the outlaws warred constantly with one another in this land of no honor, and few lived long.
The locals were not eager to answer more questions. Neq's uncovered sword convinced them. Still he learned nothing.
He moved out, making great circles around Helicon, searching out men and tribes he had not met before. Many balked--but as the blood dripped from his sword, his questions were answered. Negatively. Only six years had passed, but many of these men did not know what he meant by "Helicon."
Months passed, his circles widened, and he accomplished nothing. But he would not stop. Instead he became more devious in his questioning. "Six years ago, perhaps seven--did a stranger pass through your territory? A lone sticker? A small woman? Someone masked or hidden or mysteriously wounded?"
And finally he got a meaningful response, from an old warrior of the defunct empire, who had drifted to this region before the siege and remained, retired. "I saw a stranger then--a pale, slender man who spoke no word."
This did not sound like Var the Stick, who was a large, grotesquely mottled youth. "What was his weapon?"
"I did not see it. But he hauled a barrow with a staff protruding, and he reminded me of--"
"Of whom?" Neq prodded, remembering a man who had hauled a barrow.
"Of Sol of All Weapons. But that could not be, for Sol went to the mountain half a dozen years before."
So he had looked for Sosa, but found Sol! But that was almost as good, for surely they had escaped Helicon together. His long search had been rewarded... perhaps.
Suddenly the trail was hot. There were passes where a man would normally travel, places where he might camp. Neq traced Sol's course, finding many who had seen the barrow-man pass. Some had challenged him to the circle, for that was before the effect of Helicon's fall had been felt in the nomad society and honor was strong, but the man had avoided all such contacts. No one Neq met claimed to have fought the barrow-man in the circle.
That proved they were speaking honestly. Sol had been the greatest circle warrior of all time, except for the artificially forged juggernaut of the Weaponless--and the battle between the two had been so even as to be merely chance in the decision. Sol might have lost his edge during six years in Helicon--but not much, if he were training his daughter regularly. Any man who brought Sol to combat against his preference must have paid the obvious penalty. Only those who had failed to fight him could have survived. And why had Sol avoided encounters? Obvious, now: because he had more important business. He was going somewhere.
But not, it seemed, with Sosa. No one had seen her. Sol was traveling alone. Why should that be?
Neq knew. Sol was following the man who had killed his daughter. Var the Stick. Vengeance.
A lone warrior would not have been remarkable. That's why Var himself hadn't been remembered. But the barrow--that stuck in many minds, because it was unusual. Because it brought to mind the one warrior everyone knew about. Now that Neq inquired about that specifically, the long faded memories returned.
Sol had departed Helicon and traveled northwest, detouring around badlands and avoiding established tribes. Why northwest? Because Var the Stick must have fled that way.
And he had! Neq picked up the memories now--the skin-mottled man, also no talker, deadly with the sticks... and his boy companion.
Boy companion?
And abruptly--the Weaponless. He was on this route too, incredibly. Was he following Var--or Sol? To protect the first from the second? What a battle of titans, if Sol and the Weaponless should meet again!
Yet none of them had returned. All the key figures had vanished, and not in the Helicon conflagration. Where had they gone?
And where had the boy come from--the boy with Var the Stick? Had he had a little brother? After months of finding too little, Neq had found too much!
He continued the chase doggedly. His hopes for the, restoration of Helicon were somehow bound in with this mystery, and he would not stop without the answer. His cast of characters remained set: three men and a boy, not together, traveling northwest. The riddle of Helicon's demise... perhaps.
But the trail faded near the northern limit of the former crazy demesnes. Neq cast about for a month in the increasingly bitter winter, but the natives knew nothing. He had either to give up, or to leave the territory of the nomad society, as his quarry seemed to have done.
He hesitated to go farther north. His metal extremities were excellent for combat and simple hunting, for he had a bow he could brace on his sword and fire lefthanded with the pincers with fair accuracy. But against true wilderness and snow he was weak, and he knew that guns were more common in the northern realm. He could not use a gun himself, and had to be extremely wary in the presence of such a weapon.
And so he continued his futile search in the land of the nomads long after his real hope of success was gone.
One day Tyl of Two Weapons appeared, alone. "Are you ready for help?" Tyl inquired as if this were routine.
Neq's pride had suffered with the winter. '"I welcome it," he said.
Tyl did not clarify the obvious: the word had reached him of Neq's futility. "I do not wish to bargain with a comrade of empire, but the crazy has laid his stricture on me as on you. My help is for a price."