"Yes."
"You came to the Barrow, Tyr. Let us do what you would have done. Rumor
has it that there are weapons inside."
"Harl was the only one who knew their use."
She rubbed her arms with her palms, loving the bruise where his hands
had dwelt. She chided, "Fie, darling. A god can understand any weapon."
And when he glanced sharply to seek mockery in her eyes, she said
simply, "I mean it. You can understand them, if you will. Your mind is
different. Try it!"
As they went beneath the myriad arches, their feet stepping loudly on
the marble flooring in the stillness, Tyr said, "If I cannot use these
weapons the cause of the Trylla is forever lost."
A labyrinth of strange things and objects, set on shelf and counter,
under glass and on metal. Mazes of plasticine and steel, glittering and
glimmering, shadowing cones and tridents and metal circlets. And none
of it was even remotely understandable to the brown giant who stood and
stared.
Katha slipped a hand into his and said, "You can do it, Tyr. Yes, you
can!"
He shook his head, but he went and stood before the machines. With
narrowed eyes, he studied curving generators and domed turbines.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, he began to understand them. If only--
A beam of yellow sunlight swam through a glassine vent in the wall,
quivering, moving. It touched Tyr, laving his brown face and dark hair
in its radiance. The sunlight was hot and soothing. Tyr smiled faintly,
knowing that the light was opening the secret facets of his brain,
feeding energy to them, making his mind work whether he wanted it to or
not.
He was understanding these silent machines, now.
He touched a button, and watched an engine throb and hum, coming to
life. Where the blue discs were was its outlet. They turned red, and
glowed. When they went white, a blast of power would splay out, and he
did not want that to happen, yet. He shut the power off.
Katha walked with him. "You know?" she asked softly.
"I know."
"There is a kitchenette off to one side," she said. "I am going to
prepare food for myself. Then tell me your plans!"
When she left him, Tyr turned back to the metal giants, touching levers
and rods. He lost himself in their intricacies as a boy does with new
and complicated toys.
He did not hear Katha cry out from the next chamber. He did not hear
the footsteps. He did not see the girl who came with Gaarn and Texel
to stand in the doorway, a solar gun in her white hand.
* * * * *
A ball of flame exploded amid the coils and antennae of a big machine.
Another fell onto a huge dynamo. Still another whistled shrilly as it
clove a path through cones and hoops.
Tyr whirled, but it was too late. Fay was firing rapidly, as fast as
she could depress the stud. The yellow blasts ate and drank their way
through the machines until every one lay smashed and wrecked.
Tyr laughed bitterly.
"Destroy your every chance," he said. "Your freedom lies on the floor,
amid those twisted metal things."
Fay lifted the gun and aimed it at him. She said coldly, "The _ardth_
shall never receive our weapons, Tyr. I destroyed them before you could
bring the _ardth_ to them."
"I would never bring the _ardth_! What mad poison eats in your brains,
you Trylla? Without weapons, what may I do?"
"The Old Ones shall never get them!"
"The Old Ones do not need these things. They have better ones. A
hundred years ago they beat men who used these weapons. In that time
they have new weapons, better weapons! What would the _ardth_ want with
things like these?"
There was doubt in the eyes of some, but Fay lifted her gun. Tyr walked
toward her, seeing the red hate in her eyes. Her finger touched the
stud and balls of yellow fire leaped for him, splashed across his chest.
He went on, unstoppable. The energy from the yellow balls poured into
him. Muscles rippled on his arms as he reached out and took the gun
away from her.
With white hand pressed to her writhing mouth, Fay stared at him in
dumb awe. Tyr wrapped his fingers around the gun. The metal crumpled in
his hand. When he opened his hand the remnants bounced on the floor.
Tyr put a hand to Fay's shoulder and pushed her aside. Gaarn and young
Texel watched him with fascinated, frightened eyes. He lunged into the
chamber where Katha had cried out.
"Katha!" he called.
She lay on a long white table, and there were strong steel straps
holding her. Her clothing was somewhat torn. Her dark eyes met his from
the corners as her red mouth smiled a little.
[Illustration: _He lunged into the chamber where Katha lay. Her dark
eyes met his._]
"I tried to warn you. The Trylla do not like the _ardth_. They wanted
me alive to learn secrets from me." She made a grimace. "I don't know
whether I could have stood up to torture."
"There's no need of it, now," he grunted, putting his hands under the
straps and bursting them. He lifted her and held her on his chest.
"I am no longer god of the Trylla," he rasped bitterly, looking down at
her. "I am hated by them. Now I am--nothing!"
She was very round and soft on his ribs. Tyr tightened his arm,
watching her mouth. Katha made a face and mocked him.
"Man or god--you hurt!"
He eased his arms a little, still holding her tightly. He went down the
corridor of the arches as Fay and the others watched from the shadows.
His footfalls were soft, but deadly. It was as though his feet intoned
a _danse macabre_ for the Tryllan race.
Tyr carried the girl to her jet plane that had been hidden among the
rocks. He lifted her into it and swung up, both hands on the smooth
plasticine handles. The door clicked behind him.
Katha dropped into a red leather seat before an intricate
control-board. Her white fingers touched pins. The ship rumbled and
shuddered. Slowly it trundled forward, gathering momentum. From the
port window, Tyr watched the white dome of the Barrow falling away
below. He turned his eyes to the front, seeing her lift the plane over
a fringe of _hibithus_-trees to arrow into the cloudless sky.
"Katha, I am homeless."
Homeless and a wanderer, without a people. The Trylla had been his
people, if a god ever had people. Now they had turned against him,
broken with him, even tried to kill him. There was bitterness on his
tongue and in his heart. A bitterness that burned and galled.
From the depths of his anguish, he cried, "I want to be a part of
something, Katha! I am neither Tryllan nor _ardth_. What am I?"
The woman caught his hand and pressed it to her lips. She whispered
softly, "To me you are always a god, Tyr. I love you. You love me."
"I have you. Yes, that makes up for everything else."
He sighed, "But I keep telling myself that I have failed. That I have
not done all I could to free the Trylla."
"What of the tower, Tyr? You said it had strange things in it. Perhaps
it is a laboratory, of sorts. I might make tests there, of you, seek
to know your purposes, your abilities."
"Yes, the tower. I'd forgotten that. It could be a home to us. An
_ardth_-woman and a--an unknown!"
"I am _ardth_ no longer. I gave that up when I came after you. I knew
what I was doing."
He knelt and caught her to him, saying, "There is no place for either
of us, except with the other. Two wanderers."
"Two wanderers," she sighed. "With a purpose. A mad, insane belief in
themselves. To fight even when there is no chance of victory!"
* * * * *
The tower stood gaunt and lonely, rising up into a blue sky. Baked dirt
powdered into clouds under their feet as they walked toward it. The
tower was strong and thickly built, and it towered above the flat earth
in its loneliness. In that respect, it was a little like Tyr himself,
Katha thought. She studied the flat buttresses and arched windows.
"An _ardth_-man built that," she said.
"If he did, he made it a laboratory and home at the same time."
Katha furrowed her thin black brows. "But what _ardth_ ever built such
a tower on Lyallar?" she wondered.
Tyr pushed open the big wooden door. The round room was walled with
dials and panels, cool and dim. It gave off a faint and musky smell. A
circular table was covered with vials and belljars and retorts. Shelves
lined the walls, and bottles lined the shelves. At the far side of the
room, a metal stairway twisted its way to the upper floors.
Katha wandered around, delight shining in her eyes. She lifted vials
and smelled at chemicals. Laughter gurgled in her throat.
"But this is marvelous. It's almost as complete as my own lab. Now who
built this place, Tyr? Can you tell me?"
He showed her a big book bound in tooled leather.
"William Rohrig!" she cried at sight of the golden letters stamped into
the cover. "Why--why, he was an _ardth_ genius! We often wondered what
became of him! He was to travel to Antares, to study life conditions on
one of its outer planets. Commander Mason would be delighted--"
She broke off, glancing sideways at Tyr.
He said, "If it were not for me, you could go back. You could go
anyhow. I--"
Her white palm covered his mouth. "Don't say it, Tyr. We'll see this
through, you and I."
"If there were only some way in which I could convince the _ardth_ that
they and the Trylla could live in peace! The Trylla mistrust me and the
_ardth_ hate me, for I threaten their power. Katha, Katha! There is no
answer."
"There is always an answer to a problem. The only trouble is, it takes
a long time to see it."
While Tyr worked at the table, making tests and experiments under
Katha's guidance, to test the powers of his mind, Katha made the tower
her own. Sunlight bathed Tyr through an open window. Above him he
heard her footsteps going to and fro, heard her lifting things, and
the squeals of delight when she unearthed notebooks that had once been
Rohrig's.
They spent their days in work and laughter. Katha made many tests on
him, saying, "You are a biological miracle, darling. I don't know much
about miracles, so I have to learn, slowly and gropingly."
* * * * *
But she never completed her findings. For one day she discovered,
tucked into a corner of the big desk on the second floor, a dusty old
diary. For three hours she sat entranced with it, never stirring, until
Tyr came hunting her, anxious over her silence. He found her with tears
in her eyes, her white teeth nibbling at her full lower lip.
She looked up at his entrance whispering, "Do you know your name, Tyr?
Your full name?"
"Tyr. A ring round my neck bore it."
"Those were only your initials. Your real name is Theodore Young
Rohrig. Your father was William Rohrig. You are _ardth_, Tyr!"
He stared at her. She clapped her hands, black eyes glowing.
"He knew about you. Oh, he was brilliant, Tyr--or Ted! He knew your
function. He called you a mutant, darling. No stomach, no lungs, no
need for water. The future man! I can see, now that my eyes have been
opened. It is Nature, striving all the time for perfection, equipping
her products with the necessities to get along in their environments!
In you she is fitting man for space travel, darling!
"Out there among the stars, without lungs and with no need for food
or water, you could strip a ship down and really travel. Light-years
wouldn't mean a thing to you. Just a battery of sun-lamps to feed you.
You wouldn't age hardly at all, for you derive your heat from outside
sources, instead of generating it in your tissues, as normal men do!
Your organs merely transmit the heat and energy into your muscles and
brain. There is no food to be digested and churned into energy, to be
broken into heat-energy in the cells. Your energy comes from outside!"
"You make it sound important."
"It _is_ important! I feel I don't understand _how_ important you
really are."
Grimly he said, "Now if only we could convince the _ardth_ and the
Trylla of that!"
Katha caught his arm, saying fiercely, "Tyr--Ted--oh, I'll call you
Tyr! You can't give up. You must fight. The _ardth_ are fighters, Tyr.
Your father was a fighter. He came here with his wife because he had
space leprosy! That's right. And his wife came with him. You were born
on Lyallar--far, so far from your home planet. He died a long time ago,
did William Rohrig, but his fighter's heart didn't die."
A red fingernail stabbed into the flesh of his chest. "That heart is in
you, Tyr. It wants to fight. Maybe it doesn't know how, but you are sad
only for that reason. You aren't fighting!"