[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
turn their knives against our backs because they are slaves to a machine the
enemy controls."
The Tatar's long, slender-fingered hands opened and closed. "You are a wise
man, Apache, but sometimes more than wisdom alone is needed----"
"We are wise men, Shaman, let it rest there," Jil-Lee replied somberly.
Already the Apaches were on their way, putting two cliff ridges behind them
before they halted to examine and cover their wounds.
"We go." Nolan's chin lifted, indicating the southern route.
"Here we do not come again; there is too much witchcraft in this place."
Travis stirred, saw that Jil-Lee was frowning at him.
"Go--?" he repeated.
"Yes, younger brother? You would continue to run with these who are governed
by a machine?"
"No. Only, eyes are needed on this side of the mountains."
"Why?" This time Jil-Lee was plainly on the side of the conservatives. "We
have now seen this machine at work. It is fortunate that the Red is dead. He
will carry no tales of us back to his people as you feared. Thus, if we remain
south from now on, we are safe. And this fight between
Tatar and Red is none of ours. What do you seek here?"
"I must go again to the place of the towers," Travis answered with the truth.
But his friends were facing him with heavy disapproval--now a full row of
Deklays.
"Did you not tell us that you felt this strange thing during the night we
waited about the camp? What if you become one with these Tatars and are also
controlled by the machine? Then you, too, can be made into a weapon against
us--your clansmen!" Jil-Lee was almost openly hostile.
Sense was on his side. But in Travis was this other desire of which he was
becoming more conscious by the minute.
There was a reason for those towers, perhaps a reason important enough for him
to discover and run the risk of angering his own people.
"There may be this--" Nolan's voice was remote and cold, "you may already be a
piece of this thing, bound to the machines. If so, we do not want you among
us."
There it was--an open hostility with more power behind it than Deklay's
motiveless disapproval had carried. Travis
was troubled. The family, the clan--they were important. If he took the wrong
step now and was outlawed from that tight fortress, then as an Apache he would
indeed be a lost man. In the past of his people there had been renegades from
the tribe--men such as the infamous
Apache Kid who had killed and killed again, not only white men but his own
people. Wolf men living wolves' lives in the hills. Travis was threatened with
that. Yet--up the ladder of civilization, down the ladder--why did this
feverish curiosity ride him so cruelly now?
"Listen," Jil-Lee, his side padded with bandages, stepped closer--"and tell
me, younger brother, what is it that you seek in these towers?"
"On another world there were secrets of the old ones to be found in such
ancient buildings. Here that might also be true."
"And among the secrets of those old ones," Nolan's voice was still
harsh--"were those which brought us to this world, is that not so?"
"Did any man drive you, Nolan, or you, Tsoay, or you, Jil-Lee, or any of us,
to promise to go beyond the stars?
You were told what might be done, and you were eager to try it. You were all
volunteers!"
Page 58
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Save for this voyage when we were told nothing," Jil-Lee answered, cutting
straight to the heart of the matter. "Yet, Nolan, I do not believe that it is
for more voyage tapes that our younger brother now searches, nor would those
do us any good--as our ship will not rise again from here. What is it that you
do seek?"
"Knowledge--weapons, maybe. Can we stand against
these machines of the Reds? Yet many of the devices they now use are taken
from the star ships they have looted through time. To every weapon there is a
defense."
Nolan blinked and for the first time a hint of interest touched the mask of
his face. "To the bow, the rifle," he said softly, "to the rifle, the machine
gun, to the cannon, the big bomb. The defense can be far worse than the first
weapon. So you think that in these towers there may be things which shall be
to the Reds' machines as the bomb is to the cannon of the Horse Soldiers?"
Travis had an inspiration. "Did not our people lay aside the bow for the rifle
when we went up against the Bluecoats?"
"We do not so go up against these Reds!" protested Lupe.
"Not now. But what if they come across the mountains, perhaps driving the
Tatars before them to do their fighting--?"
"And you believe that if you find weapons in these towers, you will know how
to use them?" Jil-Lee asked. "What will give you that knowledge, younger
brother?"
"I do not claim such knowledge," Travis countered. "But this much I do have:
Once I studied to be an archaeologist and I have seen other storehouses of
these star people.
Who else among us can say as much as that?"
"That is the truth," Jil-Lee acknowledged. "Also there is good sense in this
seeking out of the tower things. Let the
Reds find such first--if they exist at all--and then we may truly be caught in
a box canyon with only death at our heels."
"And you would go to these towers now?" Nolan
demanded.
"I can cut across country and then rejoin you on the other side of the pass!"
The feeling of urgency which had been mounting in Travis was now so demanding
that he wanted to race ahead through the wilderness. He was surprised when
Jil-Lee put out his palm up as if to warn the younger man.
"Take care, younger brother! This is not a lucky business.
And remember, if one goes too far down a wrong trail, there is sometimes no
returning--"
"We shall wait on the other side of the pass for one day,"
Nolan added. "Then--" he shrugged--"where you go will be your own affair."
Travis did not understand that promise of trouble. He was already two steps
down his chosen path.
12
Travis had taken a direct cross route through the heights, but not swiftly
enough to reach his objective before nightfall. And he had no wish to enter
the tower valley by moonlight. In him two emotions now warred. There was the
urge to invade the towers, to discover their secret, and flaring higher and
higher the beginnings of a new fear.
Was he now a battlefield for the superstitions of his race reborn by the Redax
and his modern education in the
Pinda-lick-o-yi world--half Apache brave of the past, half modern
archaeologist with a thirst for knowledge? Or was the fear rooted more deeply
and for another reason?
Travis crouched in a hollow, trying to understand what he
Page 59
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
felt. Why was it suddenly so overwhelmingly important for him to investigate
the towers? If he only had the coyotes with him.... Why and where had they
gone?
He was alive to every noise out of the night, every scent the wind carried to
him. The night had its own life, just as the daylight hours held theirs. Only
a few of those sounds could he identify, even less did he see. There was one
wide-winged, huge flying thing which passed across the green-gold plate of the
nearer moon. It was so large that for an instant Travis believed the
helicopter had come.
Then the wings flapped, breaking the glide, and the creature merged in the
shadows of the night--a hunter large enough to be a serious threat, and one he
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]