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fought as best he could for his own people, was not dead.
Little was left, except skin drawn dry across the big arching bones. Tubes fed into him and kept the
organism together. Electrodes pierced the skull, jolted the brain and recorded what was brought forth.
For some reason of stimulus, the eyelids had been cut away and the balls of the eyes must stare into the
light overhead.
"I didn't know," Lockridge wept.
Tongue and lips struggled in the wreck of a face. Lockridge wasn't wearing his diaglossa for Brann's
age, but he could guess that a fragment of self pleaded, "Kill me."
While just beyond the curtain her and me
Lockridge reached for the machine.
"Stop! What are you doing?"
He turned, very slowly, and saw Storm and Hu. The man's energy gun was out, aimed at his belly. The
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woman said urgently: "I wanted to spare you this. It does take time, to extract the last traces of memory.
There isn't much cerebrum by now, he's really no more than a worm, so you needn't feel pity.
Remember, he had begun to do the same thing to me."
"Does that excuse you?" Lockridge shouted.
"Will Pearl Harbour excuse Hiroshima?" she gibed.
For the first time in his existence, Lockridge said an obscenity to a woman. "Never mind your fancy
reasons," he gasped.  I know how you kept yourself in my country . . . by murderin' my countrymen. I
know John and Mary gave me an honest look at the way you run your own territory. How old are you? I
got enough hints about that too. You can't have done every crime you have done, except in hundreds o'
years, your own time. That's why they've got the knife in you, back at the palace why everybody wants
to be the Koriach she's made immortal. While Ola's mother is old at forty."
"Stop that!" Storm cried.
Lockridge spat. "I've got no business wonderin' how many lovers you've had, or how I'm just a thing
you used," he said. "But you aren't goin' to use Auri, understand? Nor her people. Nor anyone. To hell
with you: the hell you came from!"
Hu levelled the gun and said, "That will suffice."
20
Rain started before dawn. Lockridge awoke to the sound of it, muffled on the peat roof of the cabin
where he lay, loud on the muddy ground. Through a lattice across the doorway, he looked over pastures
where Yutho cattle huddled as drenched as their herdsmen. Sere leaves dropped one by one off an oak,
under the steady beat of water. He couldn't see the rest of the village from this outlier hut, nor the bay.
That added to an isolation he had believed was already infinite.
He didn't want to put his Warden uniform back on, but once out from the skins, he found the air too chill
and damp. I'll ask for an Orugaray rig, or even a Yutho one, he thought. She'll give me that much, I hope,
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before she
Does what?
He shook himself, angrily. Having managed a few hours' sleep, after he was put here, he should now be
able to hold his courage.
Hard to do, though, when everything had broken in his grasp during a single night. To learn what Storm
and her cause really were-well, he'd had clues enough, had simply ducked his duty to think about them,
until the sight of Brann snapped the leash she had put on him. And to know what she would make these
people, whom he had become so fond of that was too deep a wound.
Poor Auri, he thought in his hollowness. Poor Withucar.
The remembrance of the girl was curiously healing. He might yet be able to do something for her, if no
one else. Maybe she could stow away on that fleet bound hither. It was evidently a joint Iberian-British
venture, to judge from some remarks that passed between Storm and Hu while they oversaw the
preparation of a jail for Lockridge. The size as well as composition was unique; but then, some rather
large events appeared to be going on in England these days, of which the founding of Stonehenge might
be one consequence. Storm was too preoccupied to care much. It satisfied her that everyone aboard,
seen through infrared magnifiers, was of archaic racial type, no agents from the future. Of course, in this
weather the fleet would doubtless heave to, and not arrive for an extra day or so. He might not be around
then. But he could, perhaps, find ways to suggest the idea of escape to Auri.
Purpose restored him a little. He went to the entrance and stuck his face out between the lashed poles,
into the rain. Four Yuthoaz stood guard, wrapped in leather cloaks. They edged from him, lifted their
weapons and made signs against evil.
"Greeting, you fellows," Lockridge said. Storm had let him keep his diaglossas. "I want to ask a favour."
The squad leader nerved himself to reply, sullenly, "What can we do for one who's fallen under Her
wrath, save watch him as we were told?"
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"You can send a message for me. I only want to see a friend."
"None are allowed here. She ordered that Herself. We've already had to chase away one girl."
Lockridge clenched his teeth. Naturally Auri would have heard the news. Many a frightened eye had
seen him marched off last night, by torchlight, under Yutho spears. You she-devil, Storm, he thought. In
the jail you hauled me out of, they let me have visitors.
"Well," he said, "then I want to see the Goddess."
"Hoy-ah!" The warrior laughed. "You'd have us tell Her to come atyour bidding?"
"You can tell her with respect that I beg audience, can't you? When you're relieved, if not before."
"Why should we? She knows what She wants to do."
Lockridge donned a sneer and said, "Look, you swine, I may be in trouble but I've not lost every
power. You'll do as I say or I'll rot the flesh off your bones. Then you'll have to pray for the Goddess'
help anyway."
They cringed. Lockridge saw foreshadowed the kind of realm that Storm would build. "Go!" he said.
"And get me some breakfast on the way."
"I, I dare not. None of us dare leave before we are allowed. But wait." The leader drew a horn from
beneath his cloak and winded it, a dull sad noise through the rain. Presently a gang of youths arrived,
axes in hand, to learn what the trouble was. The leader sent them on Lockridge's errands.
It was a puny triumph, but nonetheless drove some more hopelessness off him. He attacked the coarse
bread and roast pork with unexpected appetite. Storm can break me, he thought, but she'll need a mind
machine for the job.
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He was not even surprised when she came, a couple of hours later. What did astonish him was the way
his heart still turned over at sight of her. In full robe she walked over the land, big and supple and
altogether beautiful. The Wise Woman's staff was in her hand, a dozen Yuthoaz at her back. Lockridge
saw Withucar among them. From her belt of power sprang an unseen shield off which the rain cascaded,
so that she stood in a silvery torrent, water nymph and sea queen.
She halted before the cabin and regarded him with eyes more sorrowful than anything else. "Well,
Malcolm," she said in English. "I find I must come when you ask."
I'm afraid I ll never come to your whistle again, darlin'," he told her. "Too bad. I was right proud to
belong to you."
"No more?"
He shook his head. "I wish I could, but I can't." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]