The last paragraph was underlined heavily. “I can do nothing for you unless this is kept secret. Make sure that the man with you is dead before you go. The Firebird will give you enough energy to kill him. But open the Firebird only when you and the other Earthman are alone, or it will be taken from you by the Isier guards; and do not leave it open longer than is necessary to gain the energy you need.”
The signature at the end of this businesslike message was simply, “Nethe.”
Sawyer looked down at Alper and with a strong effort controlled the new impulse to kill him. He stopped and shook out the cloak. The thing was light and fine and of a smoothness and blackness so complete that even held this close he could not persuade his gaze to focus clearly on it.
He had no idea what lay outside or what Nethe’s real plans were, but anything seemed preferable to helplessness and captivity here. The only drawback was that no matter where he went or how successful he might be in winning his way to comparative freedom, he would have won nothing worth having if Alper could split his skull wide open whenever the whim seized him.
Sawyer shook his head again, hard, quite sure that there was an answer in it if he could only shake the right idea into place. And perhaps the shake did it. For in another moment he suddenly laughed, dropped the cloak, and stooped to roll Alper over, freeing his pockets. He found the golden Firebird device in the third pocket he tried.
With Alper’s own pen he wrote a note on the back of Nethe’s paper:
“Thanks for the cloak and the Firebird. I wish I could have killed you. I know my life depends on yours. I’m now putting you in a position where yours depends on mine—it’s safer for me than depending on any truces you make. Use the transceiver on me once more and you’ll never know what became of the Firebird. Let me alone and if my plan succeeds I’ll come back for you. This is the only bargain I can offer. Take it or leave it. But I warn you. If you touch the transceiver’s control again, you’ll never touch the Firebird. You have enough energy from it now to last you until we meet again. Whether you get any more depends on me. Remember that before you use the transceiver.”
There was no need to sign the note. Sawyer wrapped it around the control case in Alper’s pocket. Then he shook out the cloak, tossed it about his shoulders, pulled the hood over his head and ran the hem of the cloth through his fingers until he found a row of small, detachable studs.
The wall through which the Isier had come and gone glowed in one spot when the stud approached it. Sawyer touched stud to glow, felt it cling, and jumped back as fast as he could. The wall shimmered with crystalline patterns, the heat burst from it, the pale green vapor formed again and the air-pressure in the cell heightened as the wall grew volatile and the low gateway opened.
Through the haze of solid substance made gaseous enough to pass, Sawyer crawled rapidly. The Firebird in his pocket made a spot of faint, tingling warmth at his side. He had a moment’s regret that he had not opened the little, golden miracle to allow the flood of rejuvenating energy to pour through him—Nethe’s message had implied that the Firebird gave out no energy unless it was opened. He felt tired and hungry and thirsty, but these matters were not important, compared to the real problem. He had a job to do, and he did not quite know how to go about it.
Ahead glimmered light, and the drifting haze of rain.
Rain in long, slanting sheets fell sparkling along the streets in the light from curtained windows. It drummed on the hood Sawyer had drawn over his head, ran in cold streams from his shoulders, sometimes half drowned out the steady buzz that hummed in his ears to summon him to Nethe. He went slowly through the nearly deserted streets, keeping himself oriented by the humming noise that sounded from two small studs sewn into the hood in the vicinity of his ears.
He kept to byways when he could. He had suspended disbelief, because he had to. Obviously he was walking the streets of a city upon a world that could not be his own. The very existence of the Isier proved that. How very unlike his own planet it was he had not yet learned, but he knew enough to go warily.
The Isier seemed to have some command over a technological system. At least, they recognized the conductivity of copper, as in the Temple curtain, for a force which had behaved like electricity. And the vaporization of the cell wall was another trick behind which you would expect a whole recognizable technology to lie. The pressure of stud to wall had clearly excited very rapid molecular activity to the end result of producing heat enough for vaporization. How the reverse action was triggered remained obscure, but condensation certainly stopped the molecules dead in their tracks and restored the former state of matter in the wall.
Still, you couldn’t prove anything by the fact that they understood certain chemical and physical properties of matter. Societies may have some touching points in common and yet be totally unintelligible to each other on many levels. Perhaps in each, at sunset, fires would be lighted, meals cooked, lamps would burn, dogs would bark and women would call children in out of a sudden shower. But you could not, by these things alone, guess what values moved the people of an unfamiliar world.
Anyhow, Sawyer thought, somewhere among these wet rooftops was an old man’s house where Klai was at this moment probably sitting beside a fire, retelling her dreamlike experiences in a dream-world called Earth.
The humming in his ears hesitated suddenly and then seemed to shift direction. Sawyer turned his head from side to side, puzzled, in an attempt to orient himself by the sound. After a moment he turned at right angles to his original course. Nethe was on the move too, it seemed.
Where was he really going? Violently he wished for the ability to speak the local language. If he could get to Klai and Grandpa, half his problem would be solved. But he could wander forever before sheer chance took him where he wanted to go, and in the meantime Nethe or one of the other Isier would be certain to seize him.
If he didn’t turn up at Nethe’s rendezvous within a reasonable time, she would probably come to find out why. It seemed at least possible that she could trace him through this cloak as readily as he could trace her. And if he discarded it his only disguise was gone.
But he had something of immense potential value to Nethe—the Firebird. It seemed to Sawyer that the best bet might be to find a hiding place for the Firebird and then meet Nethe, keeping a safe distance from her—he had great respect for the strength in that tornado-like body—and bargain for whatever seemed most desirable. Information, for example, about how the Firebird could be made to open the Gateway back to Earth.
You couldn’t plan too far ahead under circumstances like these. There was too much that was totally unknown. It was always possible that Nethe might lean out of the next window he passed, knock him over the head and loot his unconscious body. All he could do was go warily, watch the shadows, and trust that providence would defend the right. Providence in this world seemed to be most unfairly on the side of wrong, though that was a matter of viewpoint.
The key was the Firebird. He didn’t dare keep it on him or hide it.
If only Nethe would stay still, he thought irritably, pausing again as the humming veered erratically in his hood. He waited in the wet, deserted street, under a lighted window behind which a baby was crying drearily, until Nethe seemed to halt again and send out the summons more steadily. From beyond a door a dog burst into hysterical yaps as Sawyer passed and scratched in a fury against the lower panels.