"Eat it anyway. You're still half doped, and the food will clear your
head." I picked up one mug of the coffee and drained it at a single
swallow. "What were you doing in that disgusting den?"
Without warning she flung herself across the table at me, throwing her
arms round my neck. Startled, I let her cling a moment, then reached up
and firmly unfastened her hands.
"None of that now. I fell for it once, and it landed me in the middle of
the mudpie."
But her fingers bit my shoulder.
"Rakhal, Rakhal, I tried to get away and find you. Have you still got
the bird? You haven't set it off yet? Oh, don't, don't, don't, Rakhal,
you don't know what Evarin is, you don't know what he's doing." The
words spilled out of her like floodwaters. "He's won so many of you,
don't let him have you too, Rakhal. They call you an honest man, you
worked once for Terra, the Terrans would believe you if you went to them
and told them what he--Rakhal, take me to the Terran Zone, take me
there, take me there where they'll protect me from Evarin."
At first I tried to stop her, question her, then waited and let the
torrent of entreaty run on and on. At last, exhausted and breathless,
she lay quietly against my shoulder, her head fallen forward. The musty
reek of _shallavan_ mingled with the flower scent of her hair.
"Kid," I said heavily at last, "you and your Toymaker have both got me
wrong. I'm not Rakhal Sensar."
"You're not?" She drew back, regarding me in dismay. Her eyes searched
every inch of me, from the gray streak across my forehead to the scar
running down into my collar. "Then who--"
"Race Cargill. Terran Intelligence."
She stared, her mouth wide like a child's.
Then she laughed. She _laughed_! At first I thought she was hysterical.
I stared at her in consternation. Then, as her wide eyes met mine, with
all the mischief of the nonhuman which has mingled into the human here,
all the circular complexities of Wolf illogic behind the woman in them,
I started to laugh too.
I threw back my head and roared, until we were clinging together and
gasping with mirth like a pair of raving fools. The _chak_ waiter came
to the door and stared at us, and I roared "Get the hell out," between
spasms of crazy laughter.
Then she was wiping her face, tears of mirth still dripping down her
cheeks, and I was frowning bleakly into the empty bowls.
"Cargill," she said hesitantly, "you can take me to the Terrans where
Rakhal--"
"Hell's bells," I exploded. "I can't take you anywhere, girl. I've got
to find Rakhal--" I stopped in midsentence and looked at her clearly for
the first time.
"Child, I'll see that you're protected, if I can. But I'm afraid you've
walked from the trap to the cookpot. There isn't a house in Charin that
will hold me. I've been thrown out twice today."
She nodded. "I don't know how the word spreads, but it happens, in
nonhuman parts. I think they can see trouble written in a human face, or
smell it on the wind." She fell silent, her face propped sleepily
between her hands, her hair falling in tangles. I took one of her hands
in mine and turned it over.
It was a fine hand, with birdlike bones and soft rose-tinted nails; but
the lines and hardened places around the knuckles reminded me that she,
too, came from the cold austerity of the salt Dry-towns. After a moment
she flushed and drew her hand from mine.
"What are you thinking, Cargill?" she asked, and for the first time I
heard her voice sobered, without the coquetry, which must after all have
been a very thin veneer.
I answered her simply and literally. "I am thinking of Dallisa. I
thought you were very different, and yet, I see that you are very like
her."
I thought she would question what I knew of her sister, but she let it
pass in silence. After a time she said, "Yes, we were twins." Then,
after a long silence, she added, "But she was always much the older."
And that was all I ever knew of whatever obscure pressures had shaped
Dallisa into an austere and tragic Clytemnestra, and Miellyn into a
pixie runaway.
Outside the drawn shutters, dawn was brightening. Miellyn shivered,
drawing her thin draperies around her bare throat. I glanced at the
little rim of jewels that starred her hair and said, "You'd better take
those off and hide them. They alone would be enough to have you hauled
into an alley and strangled, in this part of Charin." I hauled the bird
Toy from my pocket and slapped it on the greasy table, still wrapped in
its silk. "I don't suppose you know which of us this thing is set to
kill?"
"I know nothing about the Toys."
"You seem to know plenty about the Toymaker."
"I thought so. Until last night." I looked at the rigid, clamped mouth
and thought that if she were really as soft and delicate as she looked,
she would have wept. Then she struck her small hand on the tabletop and
burst out, "It's not a religion. It isn't even an honest movement for
freedom! Its a--a front for smuggling, and drugs, and--and every other
filthy thing!
"Believe it or not, when I left Shainsa, I thought Nebran was the answer
to the way the Terrans were strangling us! Now I know there are worse
things on Wolf than the Terran Empire! I've heard of Rakhal Sensar, and
whatever you may think of Rakhal, he's too decent to be mixed up in
anything like this!"
"Suppose you tell me what's really going on," I suggested. She couldn't
add much to what I knew already, but the last fragments of the pattern
were beginning to settle into place. Rakhal, seeking the matter
transmitter and some key to the nonhuman sciences of Wolf--I knew now
what the city of Silent Ones had reminded me of!--had somehow crossed
the path of the Toymaker.
Evarin's words now made sense: "_You were clever at evading our
surveillance--for a while._" Possibly, though I'd never know, Cuinn had
been keeping one foot in each camp, working for Kyral and for Evarin.
The Toymaker, knowing of Rakhal's anti-Terran activities, had believed
he would make a valuable ally and had taken steps to secure his help.
Juli herself had given me the clue: "_He smashed Rindy's Toys._" Out of
the context it sounded like the work of a madman. Now, having
encountered Evarin's workshop, it made plain good sense.
And I think I had known all along that Rakhal could not have been
playing Evarin's game. He might have turned against Terra--though now I
was beginning even to doubt that--and certainly he'd have killed me if
he found me. But he would have done it himself, and without malice.
_Killed without malice_--that doesn't make sense in any of the
languages of Terra. But it made sense to me.
Miellyn had finished her brief recitation and was drowsing, her head
pillowed on the table. The reddish light was growing, and I realized
that I was waiting for dawn as, days ago, I had waited for sunset in
Shainsa, with every nerve stretched to the breaking point. It was dawn
of the third morning, and this bird lying on the table before me must
fly or, far away in the Kharsa, another would fly at Juli.
I said, "There's some distance limitation on this one, I understand,
since I have to be fairly near its object. If I lock it in a steel box
and drop it in the desert, I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody. I
don't suppose you'd have a shot at stealing the other one for me?"
She raised her head, eyes flashing. "Why should you worry about Rakhal's
wife?" she flared, and for no good reason it occurred to me that she was
jealous. "I might have known Evarin wouldn't shoot in the dark! Rakhal's
wife, that Earthwoman, what do you care for her?"
It seemed important to set her straight. I explained that Juli was my
sister, and saw a little of the tension fade from her face, but not all.
Remembering the custom of the Dry-towns, I was not wholly surprised when
she added, jealously, "When I heard of your feud, I guessed it was over
that woman!"
"But not in the way you think," I said. Juli had been part of it,
certainly. Even then I had not wanted her to turn her back on her world,
but if Rakhal had remained with Terra, I would have accepted his
marriage to Juli. Accepted it. I'd have rejoiced. God knows we had been
closer than brothers, those years in the Dry-towns. And then, before
Miellyn's flashing eyes, I suddenly faced my secret hate, my secret
fear. No, the quarrel had not been all Rakhal's doing.
He had not turned his back, unexplained on Terra. In some unrecognized
fashion, I had done my best to drive him away. And when he had gone, I
had banished a part of myself as well, and thought I could end the
struggle by saying it didn't exist. And now, facing what I had done to
all of us, I knew that my revenge--so long sought, so dearly
cherished--must be abandoned.
"We still have to deal with the bird," I said. "It's a gamble, with all
the cards wild." I could dismantle it, and trust to luck that Wolf
illogic didn't include a tamper mechanism. But that didn't seem worth
the risk.
"First I've got to _find_ Rakhal. If I set the bird free and it killed
him, it wouldn't settle anything." For I could not kill Rakhal. Not,
now, because I knew life would be a worse punishment than death. But
because--I knew it, now--if Rakhal died, Juli would die, too. And if I
killed him I'd be killing the best part of myself. Somehow Rakhal and I
must strike a balance between our two worlds, and try to build a new one
from them.
"And I can't sit here and talk any longer. I haven't time to take you--"
I stopped, remembering the spaceport cafe at the edge of the Kharsa.
There was a street-shrine, or matter transmitter, right there, across
the street from the Terran HQ. _All these years...._
"You know your way in the transmitters. You can go there in a second or
two." She could warn Juli, tell Magnusson. But when I suggested this,
giving her a password that would take her straight to the top, she
turned white. "All jumps have to be made through the Mastershrine."