Ice Crown - Andre Norton, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 1, pobierz pdf

Ice Crown

*1*

Roane fought against closing her eyes, tensed her slight body until it ached. One could argue intelligently (she could hear Uncle Offlas now with that odious patience which always colored his voice when making any explanation to her) that such discomfort was all mental. If you fastened your mind on something else, the sensation of being entombed alive while in the express bolt would disappear. But she lay now in the padded interior of the speeding bullet and tried to endure.

Though she did fight her fear—the thought of smothering here —Roane clenched her fists, bit hard on her under lip. The pain of that helped. According to Uncle Offlas you could overcome anything if you willed it. Unfortunately, she fell far below his standards. Now that she bad a chance to prove she was worth something to his plans, she must not spoil it.

Why, even the department head at Cram-brief had envied her this chance. And it was only because she was Offlas Keil's niece that she had it. The expedition to Clio would be a family affair

—Project Director Keil, his son Sandar, and Roane. She tried to breathe evenly and slowly, to keep her eyes shut, forget where she was now, and think only of the goal before her.

Maybe once in a hundred, no, closer to a thousand times, did something like this happen. And she was so lucky to be a part of it. Only right now, even her brain felt tired. All that cramming! She— Well, it was like being an osbper sponge set in a pool and given the command to absorb. Only she could not swell the way those did; she had to pack it all behind bone and flesh which was not able to expand. By rights her head ought to be so heavy with all that the briefing computers had hammered into it that she could not hold it upright.

Clio was one of the sealed planets. Yet because of the circumstances Uncle Offlas had definite orders to land there, to stay as long as it would take them to locate the treasure. Treasure! The very word gave one a shiver-though this treasure was nothing that anyone but a member of the Service would want.

Real treasure—precious, beautiful things—would not interest Offlas Keil at all. He might glance over it to classify it by historical period, but to him such would be toys. However, knowledge of the Forerunners—that was something else. And this treasure had been pinpointed by a hint there, a clue here, stretching over years of sifting, to a single general area on Clio.

Because Clio was a sealed world, the final stages of their search must be conducted in complete secrecy, as quickly as possible, using Service devices. And the Project demanded as small a task force as was necessary. Which had sent Roane to Cram-brief to learn as much of Clio as she might need to know.

She wondered what it would be like to live on a closed planet (not for the period of days they would set down there but for a lifetime). Of course, the whole theory which had established the closed planets was wrong; such manipulation of human beings broke the Four Laws. Clio had been settled two, maybe three hundred years ago when the Psychocrats dominated the Confederation, before the Overturn of 1404. It was the third such experimental planet rediscovered, though there were rumors that there had been more, no one knew how many. The blasting of the Forqual Center during the revolt of the Overturn had destroyed most records.

All those worlds had been chosen as sites for projects which were the particular interest of one of the Hierarchy of the Psychocrats. The original colonists, braincleared, given false implanted memories, were settled in communities which to their briefed minds seemed natural to their new worlds. They were then left to work out new types of civilization, or a lack of civilization—to be watched secretly at intervals.

When such inhabited test planets were now rediscovered, they were declared closed. For none of the authorities could be sure what the impact of the truth might do to their peoples. Less advanced they were, as well as mutated on at least one planet. But on Clio the inhabitants were entirely human, though they were living in an archaic way, much as Roane's ancestors had lived several hundred years before space flight

What the Psychocrat who had established Clio had been aiming for was now not certain. But the Service thought he had set up something akin to the old Europa plan known on Terra. The large eastern continent had been divided into an irregular pattern of small kingdoms. The two western continents had been otherwise "seeded" with "natives" at a far more primitive level of culture—wandering tribes of hunters. And then they had all been left to their own devices.

On the eastern continent a series of wars for territorial expansion had ended with the establishment of two large nations, fronting each other uneasily across a border of small buffer states which still possessed their freedom, mainly because the two great powers were as yet unready to strike at each other. Intrigues, minor skirmishes, the rise and fall of dynasties were all a part of life on Clio. It was, to an onlooker from the stars, a giant game, though one in which lives were lost by a badly managed stroke of play.

In the west the tribesmen, too, fought each other; but since they remained on a more primitive level, the cost in blood had not yet been so great. However, Roane need not consider them. It was on the eastern land mass that her party would make their secret landing, in one of those small buffer states between the great powers.

"Reveny," she said aloud now, "the Kingdom of Reveny." It was a strange word and she had had difficulty at first in pronouncing it. But no stranger than a lot of otherworld names, some of them so utterly alien they could not be shaped or voiced by human vocal cords.

She had viewed the tri-dees of the site where they would do their prospecting, often enough to make the countryside familiar. But this was an old duty, part of her wandering life. Uncle Offlas had taken her along, sometimes like excess baggage, from world to world during his own wanderings as an expert on Forerunner archaeology.

Roane liked what she had been shown of Reveny. The district they must comb for their purposes was, luckily, sparsely settled, being mountainous and forested. Part was a hunting preserve for the royal family. The only settlement was one of verderers and keepers. The rest of the inhabitants were shepherds who moved their charges seasonally from range to range. If the off-worlders had luck and were cautious, as they must be, they would have no contact with any of these.

In the tri-dees it seemed a story tape come to life. There were actual castles with sky-pointing towers, colorful towns with crooked streets (so unlike the ordered dwelling blocks of her own people), and—But she must remember that it was very primitive. Wars were still fought across those fields. Roane shuddered, remembering a couple of tapes which had revolted both her mind and her queasy stomach.

The people of Reveny were, as far as could be determined, still under some type of conditioning process. Or else the initial training had been so complete as to repersonalize their descendants as well. She would undoubtedly find them as alien emotionally and metally, as they were akin to her bodily. That if she had any meeting with them at all.

The sway of the bullet holding her slackened. She opened her eyes as it came to a stop. With a sigh of thanksgiving that that ordeal was behind her, Roane disembarked to look around.

"You're late-"

She turned eagerly, instinctively smoothing down the flare of her overtunic. Not that it would matter to Sandar whether she looked as rumpled as a wart skin, as she well knew. But it would be nice if he saw her, just once, as a girl and not an encumbrance.

"There was a delay at the Metro thrust," she said quickly and then felt provoked. Why was she always in the wrong with Sandar and his father? If there was any delay, any difficulty, it always involved her, never them.

She tried to put aside the need for apology as she looked at her cousin. He had not changed, not fallen from his normal superiority. Though why should he in a matter of only two months? There was no reason why he should have shrunk from the height he carried so well, grown irregular features in place of those almost- too-handsome ones, been denuded of the charm he was willing to exert for everyone but her. Sandar could wear the grimed coverall of a tubeman and still look like a tri-dee hero. In the Service tunic he was still Sandar the Great. She had heard him named that once by a girl she had met back on Varch. The fact that she was his cousin sometimes made her temporarily popular, just long enough for it to take other girls to learn how little influence she had with him.

"Come on!" He was already walking away and she had to trot to catch up. "We have just half an hour to reach the field before countdown."

He kept to that long stride and she had to hop-skip to match it. Resentment began to stir in her. When she was away from Sandar, Roane always hoped they could be friends. But when they were face to face again she knew how stupid that hope was.

"My kit-" she cried.

"It came through. I stashed it in a holder." "But we have to get it. Which way—" He was heading for the outside door.

Now he reached out and his fingers closed firmly, and none too gently, about her arm above the elbow.

"We haven't time, I told you. If you're late you'll have to take the consequences. And you won't need what's in it. There are full supplies on board ship."

"But—" Roane wanted to dig in her heels, pull back from his highhandedness. Only she knew he was perfectly capable of dragging her along by force. She saw the set of his mouth—Sandar was in a rage about something and he would make her the target of that anger if she gave him a chance.

Her shoulders sagged. Once more she was caught in the old pattern. Her two months at Cram-brief had given her a false confidence in herself. Just how false she now realized. She would have to leave her kit locked somewhere in this hateful building.

That she would not be bereft of necessities she knew. Uncle Offlas traveled with the highest degree of comfort any project allowed. But there were personal things—some which had been a part of her for a long time. It was hateful of Sandar, a bad start for the trip.

She stood quietly, still captive in his hold, as he hailed a transport flitter. Captive, yes; resigned, no. Somehow she was going to get the better of Sandar—somehow, someday. She stared down at her hands as the flitter spiraled up with them. They were small and brown; her skin was several shades darker than Sandar's. That both he and her uncle resented her mixed blood, she knew. Sometimes Sandar acted as if he did not even want to look at her.

The port was busy with four ships on the pads—one a stellar liner embarking a number of passengers. They swooped past its tall column to settle by a much smaller ship, which bore the insignia of Survey. Roane managed to avoid Sandar's hand and made for the ramp, trotting up it as she had so many times before.

She fed her ident into the port checker, saw the welcome light flash. A crewman stood a little beyond.,

"Gentle Fem Hume." He consulted a ship map. "Third level, Cabin 6, ten minutes to countdown,"

She made for the ladder hurriedly, wanting to reach the privacy of her own cabin with no more interference from Sandar. And she did, throwing herself on the bunk, although the warning bell had not yet sounded, snapping the protective take-off webbing into place.

The cabin was the standard one of a junior officer. There were cupboards in every possible section of wall space, plus a narrow slit of curtained door which must give on a cramped sliver of a stand-fresher. The bunk she lay on was comfortable enough, but the furnishings were all regulation. There was no sign of personal possessions about the dreary cell. If someone had been shifted for her, he had taken all his belongings with him.

Once more she wondered what it would be like to have a real, set-on-a-planet, immovable home where one dared accumulate things one fancied and enjoyed to look upon just because they were beautiful, or reminded one of some happy time, or were fun to own. If Uncle Offlas had ever had such desires, they were long since lost. And Sandar seemed not to care.

She hoped what he had said of complete equipment on board was true. Of course, on a dig one wore Service dress—a one-piece coverall of material suited to the climate, fashioned for hard use. And she had long known that any of the luxuries of feminine life, such as scents or the cosmetics that planet-rooted women dared to use, were not for her.

There was a warning clang overhead, the signal for last countdown. Roane snuggled deeper into the bunk's protective cocoon. Here they went again, for the—she was not sure she could even reckon now the number of times she had gone through the same procedure. Would there ever be an end to such wayfaring for her?

It was a voyage like any other. As soon as they were in hyper Uncle Offas sent for her to put her through a searching examination of what she had learned. He did not signify at the end any more than that she would do, providing she kept her mind strictly on her work. He then gave her a load of tapes and a reader and ordered her to make the best use of space time she could. She dared not protest, since she knew that sooner or later he would demand an accounting from her.

The voyage was as dull as most. On a liner, where there were many pastimes to amuse passengers, travel might be fun. But certainly Uncle Offlas thought that such intervals between jobs were for study only.

They made landfall at last—that is, their ship went into orbit well above Clio, and they packed themselves and their gear into an LB, the standard type of small lifesaving craft, which had been specially modified for a directed landing. It was twilight when their meticulously planned descent brought them to the surface of the planet.

All three of them hurried to unload the supplies and instruments, for the LB had a time setting to return it to the parent ship. And even that would then withdraw into a longer orbit. Though any sky watchers on Clio would not recognize a star ship, yet there might be talk of any strange appearance in their sky. The first thing Roane was aware of as she manhandled out the boxes and containers was the wonderful freshness of the air. After the stale, recirculated atmosphere of the ship this was like breathing a subtle scent. She drew it deeply into her lungs.

They had no time really to look about until the last of the equipment was out. Uncle Offlas slammed the hatch and jumped back as the LB bounded up. Even during the short time of the unloading, twilight had deepened into night. Roane sat back on a box and brought out from the inner pocket of her coveralls a pair of night lenses. With these on she looked around.

They were in a glade surrounded by tall trees. Several bushes had been squashed by the LB, splintered and flattened, and the boxes they had tumbled out had torh and gouged up chunks of moss.

Uncle Offlas had a small map and was glancing from it to the right and left as if he hunted landmarks. Meanwhile Sandar forced open one of the padded containers and brought out a box which he balanced on his knees, bending close to read the dials on its top. He set two of these, then reached for another twin box to do the same.

"Good enough. Put it about twelve—no, perhaps twenty paces in that direction." Uncle Offlas pointed left. Til do the same with this." He picked up the second box.

Once those distorts were working they could set up camp. The distorts would prevent any unauthorized invasion of either man or beast native to this planet. Each member of their own party wore, clipped to the front of his belt, the broadcast which would nullify the effect for him.

By midnight they were settled in. Under Uncle Offlas's expert handling a working laser had cut a pit as deep in the ground as Sandar was tall. Over this arose, for more than an arm's length, a weather dome, which in turn was concealed by greenery which had been stass-sprayed not to wither for days. Their equipment, moved within, formed narrow partitions for three small cubbies and one larger one. And they dared to turn on a camp-sized beamer there while each prowled in turn around the clearing to inspect for any betraying light.

For a time they must work by night, sleep by day. Roane was tired enough to yawn her way to sleep as soon as she was free to curl up in her own cubby. Near by were the detects and as soon as it became dusk again she would take one in hand and begin her first sweep of the area. Sandar would go in the opposite direction, while his father was in charge of assembling the com, setting out the other tools they would need as soon as a detect gave them a lead. It was apparent that Offlas seemed very sure they would find what they sought. In the past his confidence had never been so high. It was as if he had complete assurance they would make their find shortly.

Such belief was infectious. Roane almost expected to be able to report success on her first scouting trip. But she did not; neither did Sandar. And the third night they ranged farther afield, guided back to camp by distort signals. While it was impossible to get lost, Roane found that venturing alone into the wilderness made her slightly uneasy. She had never been completely by herself before. On board ship there was the cramped feeling, even in a private cabin, of other lives close by, just as the lifeless air one breathed had, as one well knew, been recycled many times. But here—with the night lenses to give her clear vision, she began to feel at last oddly free.

Midway through the fourth night she climbed a ridge, swinging the detect on its strap over her shoulder, using both hands to pull herself up. It had rained earlier and the grass tufts and the branches which slapped at her were moisture-laden. But the waterproofing of her clothing kept her body dry, and she relished the feel of the droplets on her face and hands, even though they plastered her short hair lankly to her skull.

Roane had passed by a road earlier, in fact had tumbled into it when a sleek clay surface made her slip. It had been an odd hollow, boring through greenery which grew on grassy banks taller than her head, and it was overarched with a lacing of boughs which roofed it. Whether this had been done by purpose to make a tunnel hidden from sight or was merely the result of unchecked growth she did not know. But the surface was rutted and scored with hoofprints to tell her it was in good use. And she had hurried to climb out, using a broken branch to sweep away her own tracks there.

This ridge lay at right angles to that road and well above it. She did not get to her feet as she reached its crest, but squirmed along so that she would not be silhouetted against the sky. The moon was now well up and bright.

Thus her sight of what lay below was very plain. Roane substituted distance lenses for the night ones to study the scene carefully. For there was a village-sized collection of buildings.

Almost directly below was the major one. It consisted of two square towers about five stories high, connected by a building looking to be no more than one room wide but rising three stories. The towers and the roof of the smaller portion were all parapeted and there was a tall outer wall completely encircling the building. Two or three of the very narrow windows showed faint gleams of light, late as the hour was. The tower nearest her had a gate giving on a garden which ran to the very foot of the ridge.

The garden itself was cut by walks gleaming white-bright in the moonlight and there were beds of flowers formally arranged. But what kept Roane from withdrawing at once was that there were men busy in the garden. They worked in pairs, six in all, and the couples were setting up in the ground posts which supported large grotesque figures. Each one of these weird effigies bore on one forelimb an oval shield painted with a complicated sign, while the other forepaw, or claw, gripped the pole of a small banner.

These were being placed in line to face the lower story of the tower, and the work seemed to be no light task. The effigies were of animals or birds, or in one case a crowned and shrouded human-oid thing. But all were strange to Roane and she wondered if they had some allegorical significance.

Why they must be put in place in the middle of the night was the puzzle, and she watched until the last was braced in place. Then the men disappeared toward the buildings along a single cobbled street running to the main gate in the wall. Outside the fortress-like wall there were two lines of houses built of the same stone as the keep, but they were much smaller, the largest only two stories high. Their roofs were slabs of stone slanting sharply from the peaks, the ends of those turning up to be carved into heads of beasts.

It was a keep, a village, in miniature. And though it looked different from the tri-dee she had been shown, she knew it for Hitherhow—the principal royal hunting lodge of Reveny.

Did the setting up of the figures mean that the King was coming? If so, what would such activity in the forest mean to her own party? Of course the distorts would protect them. But if there were many hunters abroad, they would have to hide until tiie chase was over, and Uncle Offlas was not going to take kindly to that loss of time.

*2*

"What did they say in briefing?" Uncle Offlas was pacing up and down, chewing at his thumbnail, an old sign of deep thought. Now he rounded on Roane with that question. "Who might be coming—the King?"

"King Niklas is an old man, judging by planet years—would he be hunting?"

"I am asking you. You saw the tri-dees the snooper robots brought in."

"They weren't sure about anything. If it isn't the King—" Roane thought of the possibilities. "His children are all dead. He has one granddaughter—Princess Ludorica—"

Sandar laughed. "Now that's a mouth filler! How do they think up such names?"

"Be quiet! A princess—who else?" Uncle Offlas demanded. "Why does it matter?" His son refused to be subdued. "It matters a great deal, you fool! The rank of the hunter can govern the number of followers he brings along." Sandar flushed. Uncle Offlas was really upset or he would never have been so short with his son. She hurried to tell the rest she knew. ,,

"There's a Duke Reddick, a distant cousin of the King but a lot younger. That's all the snoops picked up."

"With all the preparations you saw"—Uncle Offlas fretted his lower lip with the nail he had been chewing on earlier—"it has to be one of the royal line. If it's the Princess we may be a fraction safer—she might be less keen on hunting. But I don't like such activity so close. It might be well to take day watches until we do know who comes. Time!" He balled his right hand into a fist and brought it down forcibly into the palm of the left. "We have to make the best time we can. The longer we remain planet-planted, the better chance of discovery—"

Sandar's head was up, he was sniffing the rising wind. "There'll be cover today; storm coming. But it won't be good to be out in it-"

His father had swung around in the same direction. The thin gray of dawn did seem to be more dusky than usual. And they could all see massing clouds.

"Several hours before that breaks. Roane," he said to her, "you take first watch, before the storm. Report in with this if it is needful." He handed her a wrist com. "And work your way in from the north; these foresters are trained trackers. Sandar, you set out the extra distorts. I didn't want to use up the charges so fast, but now there is a need. Ill put a repell as well as a distort into working order."

Roane sighed but not audibly. She did not relish crawling the long way back to the ridge. But in spite of being tired, and chancing discovery by storm, the thought of watching the pocket castle was exciting. And inwardly she was surprised that Uncle Offlas had set her to it. Except that Sandar knew more about setting distorts.

She slipped inside the camp and crammed some of the sustaining, if tasteless, E rations into her coverall. There was no reason to go hungry, and her stomach already felt empty.

Circling north brought her into new territory. She could waste no time in exploration, but she did all she could to wipe out traces of her passing, being careful to snap no branch and to smear out any boot track in the forest muck. This delayed her, so that the gray was lighter when she again reached the ridge. She had made one discovery during her travels, a second tower set in the woods, brush growing so high about it that it was almost masked. There was no door closing the opening in its side and the place had the appearance of long disuse. Perhaps it was an abandoned ruin. She would have liked to explore it and promised herself she would when she had the chance.

Now she watched both village and castle. There were lights in plenty at the windows. And she could see people moving about. The wooden figures were bright with color, and the flags they held snapped in the wind.

Roane was so intent on the scene that she was startled by a rising call, saw a man on the castle parapet wearing a brightly colored overtunic raise a horn to his lips to answer that. Riders were coming down into the village, led by a man who managed his reins with one hand while he blew a horn for a series of calls. Behind him rode another in the same fantastic clothing, the tunic overlaid on the breast in an intricate design.

There was a small troop of six then, riding in military formation, wearing metal helmets and carrying bared swords in formal salute. Behind them came two riders, followed by a longer train of armed men. One of the riders was a woman, her long skirt flapping on either side of her mount as if it were slit. The skirt was of a deep forest-green, and her tight jacket was of the same shade, though it bore braiding of silver in spirals across the breast. From this height Roane could not see her face, for she had the collar of a cloak turned up about her throat, though the rest of its folds had been pushed well back on her shoulders. And on her head was a broad-brimmed hat ornamented with a cockade of long yellow feathers. Her companion was in the same green from the boots on his feet to the narrow-brimmed, high-crowned hat on his head. Roane could see little of his face either, though-by his dress he must be of the high nobility.

The villagers had turned out to greet the company. Men waved their caps, women curtsied. And the woman rider raised one hand in salute. All the mounts were Astrian duocorns and thus the fact was brought home to Roane that this was indeed a settlers' culture, established at the whim of a mind half the galaxy away, with the resources of many planets to call upon. These beasts were smaller and lighter than those Roane had seen before. But there was no mistaking their curved sets of horns as they tossed their heads, even danced a little.

Roane watched the party enter the courtyard of the keep, the woman and the green-clad man dismounting before the main door. He bowed from the waist and offered her his wrist, she touching her fingers to it formally. It was like watching a living story tape and Roane was enthralled. The brilliant colors, the people did not seem real, rather story-inspired, and she could not believe in them. It was one thing to have such reported on snooper tape, another to see it in action. She slipped away from her post reasonably sure of one thing, that it was the Princess Ludorica who had just arrived.

Who the man might be, Roane could not guess; any member of the Revenian nobility from Duke Reddick down. She held to caution in her retreat, knowing she must take the roundabout way back. And the time so spent brought the storm upon her.

Suddenly it was night-dark, so that if she had not had her night lenses she would have been lost. Wind caught the crowns of the trees with a fury which frightened her. Roane had been on many worlds; she had known storms of wind, of drenching rain, of whirling sand, wind-driven grit to scrape the skin raw. But then she had been in such cover as their camps afforded, sheltered from the full force of such gales.

Now, caught in the open, her nerve almost broke. She must find shelter. And for that there was only the ruined tower. With what strength she had left she headed for it.

Rain added to the hammer blows of the wind. Branches splintered and fell. Roane cowered away from one jagged club. The whip of lightning lashed across the dark, to be followed by a crack of deafening thunder. And the tree to which she now clung, thick and sturdy as it seemed, swayed under the pull of the gale.

She could not stay there, but dared she try to go on? There was another bolt of lightning, which found a target not too far away. Roane screamed, her voice swallowed by the thunder, and tried to run, beating at the bushes to force a path. Then she saw ahead the mouthlike doorway of the tower.

Once she gained that, she held tight, panting and gasping. Her clothing, meant to be waterproof, had kept her body dry. But her hair was plastered to her head; water dribbled across her face and into her half-open mouth. For a moment or two out there she had felt as if the force of the storm had torn away her breath.

Now she recovered enough to move on in, and then dared to use the beamer, set on its lowest power, to inspect what lay about her.

To her surprise there was furniture here. But as she went closer she could see that its presence was probably due only to the fact that it could not have been moved except by the greatest of effort. There was a table hewn from a single thick slab of dark-red stone which was veined with thin lines of gold that glittered even in the weak light when she smeared away a deposit of dust. Inset in the top of this was a series of squares, alternating red and white, perhaps to form a playing board for some game.

Facing each other across this slab, which was mounted on round balls of legs, were two chairs lacking legs at all, the seats being square boxes with the high backs and wide arms. Both arms and backs were carved, the gray dust filling the hollows of the patterns until they could hardly be distinguished. Against one wall was a massive chest, also carved. And beyond it was a stair set against the wall, the outer edge unguarded by any rail, fashioned of the same stone as the walls, not quite as ted as that of the table, but a dull rust shade.

There were, in addition, two tall standards of rust-encrusted metal, the tops of which were level with Roane's shoulder. Each of these held a lamp, a bowl with a support for a wick.

A drift of leaves and soil spread inward from the doorless entrance. Roane went to the stair and began to climb, pointing the b...

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