ORDEAL IN OTHERWHERE by Andre Norton
“I was naught, yet here I am now.” Shann sought Charis. “Link! Prove it to them—link!”
She tossed the mental cord to Tsstu, to Taggi, and then reached for Shann. They were as one, and as one Shann thrust at the Wyvern’s consciousness. Charis saw the spokesman for the natives sway as if buffeted by a storm wind. Then the off-worlders broke apart and were four again.
“Thus it is,” Shann said.
“But you are not as we are. With you, male and female may be different. True?”
“True. But also know this: as one, we four have broken the bonds of the Power. But can you live always with a machine and those who have brought you the machine? Can they be trusted? Have you looked into their minds?”
“They use us for their purposes. But that we accept for our freedom.”
“Turn off the machine,” Shann said abruptly.
“If we do, the witches will come.”
“Not unless we will it.”
Charis was startled. Was Lantee running his claims too high? But she had begun to understand what he was fighting for. As long as the cleft between male and female existed in the Wyvern species, there would be an opening for just such trouble as the Company men had started here. Shann was going to attempt to close that gap. Centuries of tradition, generations of specialized breeding, stood against his will. And all the terrors and fears of inbred prejudice would be fighting against him, but he was going to try it.
He had not even asked for her backing or consent, and she discovered that she did not resent that. It was as if the linkage had erased all desire to counter a decision she realized as right.
“Link!”
A crackling explosion, the stench of burning plasta-fab. The Company soldiers had turned blasters on the dome! What did Lantee propose to do about that? Charis had only time for one fleeting thought before her mind fell into place beside the others.
Again it was Lantee who aimed that shaft of thought, sent it out past the melting wall of the dome, straight at the enemy minds, open and ill-prepared for such attack. Men dropped where they stood. A still-spitting blaster rolled along the ground, spraying its deadly ray in a wave pattern along a wall.
Shann had had the courage to try that first gamble and he had won. Could he do the same again in the greater gamble he proposed?
The Wyvern spokesman made a slight motion with his hand. Those who walled the machine with their bodies stood away.
“That is not the Power as we know it.”
“But it was born of that Power,” Shann caught him up. “Just as other ways of life may issue from those now known to you.”
“But you are not sure.”
“I am not sure. But I know that killing leaves only the dead, and the dead may not be summoned back by any Power ever known to living creatures. You will die and others shall die if you take the vengeance you wish. Then who will profit by your dying—except perhaps off-worlders for whom you do not fight in truth?”
“But you fight for us?”
“Can I hide the truth when we touch minds?”
That curious quiet came down as a curtain between the off-worlders and the Wyverns as the natives conferred among themselves. At last the spokesman returned to contact.
“We know you speak the truth as you see it. No one before has broken the bonds of the Power. That you have done so means that perhaps you can defend us now. We brought our spears for killing. But it is true that the dead remain dead, and if we make the killing we wish, we as a people shall die. So we shall try your path.”
“Link!” Again the command from Lantee. He made a motion with his hand and the Wyvern pressed a lever on the installation.
This time they had not fashioned a spear of the mind-force but a barrier wall, and only just in time. As a wave of determined attack struck against it, Charis swayed and felt the firm brace of Shann’s arm as he stood, his feet a little apart, his chin up—as he might have faced a physical fight, fist against fist.
Three times that wave battered at them, striving, Charis knew, to reach the Wyvern males. And each time the linkage held without yielding. Then they were there in person—Gysmay, her brilliant body-patterns seeming to flame in her terrible anger, Gidaya—and two others Charis did not know.
“What do you?” The question seared.
“What we must.” Shann Lantee made answer.
“Let us have those who are ours!” Gysmay demanded in full cry.
“They are not yours but their own!”
“They are nothing! They do not dream, they have no Power. They are nothing save what we will them to be.”
“They are part of a whole. Without them, you die; without you, they die. Can you still say they are nothing?”
“What say you?” The question Gidaya asked was aimed at Charis, not Shann.
“That he speaks the truth.”
“After the manner of your people, not ours!”
“Did I not have an answer from Those Who Have Gone Before which you could not read, Wise One? Perhaps this is the reading of that answer. Four have become one at will, and each time we so will it, that one made of four is stronger. Could you break the barrier we raised here while we were one, even though you must have sent against us the full Power? You are an old people, Wise One, and with much learning. Can it not be that some time, far and long ago, you took a turning into a road which limited your Power in truth? Peoples are strong and grow when they search for new roads. When they say, ‘There is no road but this one which we know well, and always must we travel in it,’ then they weaken themselves and dim their future.
“Four have made one and yet each one of that four is unlike another. You are all of a kind in your Power. Have you never thought that it takes different threads to weave a real pattern—that you use different shapes to make the design of Power?”
“This is folly! Give us what is ours lest we destroy you.” Gysmay’s head-comb quivered, the very outlines of her body seemed to shimmer with her rage.
“Wait!” Gidaya interrupted. “It is true that this dreamer has had an answer from the Rods, delivered by the will of Those Who Have Dreamed Before. And it was an answer we could not read, but yet it was sent to her and was a true one. Can any of you deny that?”
There was no answer to her demand.
“Also, there have been said here things which have a core of good thought behind them.”
Gysmay stirred, none of her anger abating. But she did not render her protest openly.
“Why do you stand against us now, Dreamer?” Gidaya continued. “You, to whom we have opened many gates, to whom we gave the use of the Power—why should you choose to turn that same gift against us who have never chosen to do you ill?”
“Because here I have seen one true thing: that there is a weakness in your Power, that you have been blind to that which makes evil against you. As long as you are a race divided against itself, with a wall of contempt and hatred keeping you apart, then there is a way of bringing disaster upon your race. It is because you opened doors and made straight a road for me that I will to do the same for you now. This evil came from my people. But we are not all thus. We, too, have our divisions and barriers, our outlaws and criminals.
“But do not, I pray you, Wise Ones,” Charis hastened on, “keep open this rift in your own nation so that outside ill can enter. You have seen that there are two answers to the Power on which you lean. One comes through a machine which can be turned on and off at the will of outsiders. Another is a growth from the very seeds you have sown, and so it is possible for you to nourish it also.
“Without this man I have only the Power you gave to my summoning. With him and the animals, I am so much the greater that I no longer need this.” From her tunic Charis took the map sheet, holding it out so that the Wyverns could see the pattern drawn upon it. She crumpled the sheet and tossed it to the floor.
“This must be thought upon in council.” Gidaya had watched that repudiation of the pattern with narrowed eyes.
&n
“Will it work?” Charis sat in the commander’s quarters of the base. A visa-screen on the wall showed a row of Wyvern warriors squatting on their heels, guards for the still dazed Company men who had been herded into the visitors’ dome in temporary imprisonment, awaiting the arrival of the Patrol forces.
Lantee lounged in an Eazi-rest, far down on his spine, while across his outstretched legs sprawled two wolverine cubs now snorting a little from the depths of slumber.
“Talk out, won’t you?” Thorvald snapped in exasperation as he looked up from the emergency com. “I pick up only a kind of buzzing in the brain when you do that and it’s giving me a headache!”
Shann grinned. “A point to remember, sir. Do I think our argument will convince them? I’m not venturing any guesses. But the witches are smart. And we proved them flat failures, tackling them on their own ground. That rocked them harder than they’ve ever been, I imagine. Warlock’s been theirs to control; with their Power and their dreams, they have thought themselves invincible. Now they know they are not. And they have two answers: to stand still and go under, or to try this new road you’ve talked about. I’ll wager we may have a tentative peace offer first, then some questions.”
“They have their pride,” Charis said softly. “Don’t strip that from them.”
“Why should we wish to?” Thorvald asked. “Remember, we, too, have dreamed. But this is just why you will handle the negotiations.”
She was surprised at the tone of his voice, but he was continuing. “Jagan was right in his approach, a woman must be a liaison. The witches have to admit that Lantee and, to a lesser degree, myself have some small claim on their respect, but they will be happier to have you take the fore now.”
“But I’m not—“
“Empowered to act on a diplomatic level? You are. This mission has wide emergency powers, and you are to represent us. You’re drafted, all of you—Tsstu and Taggi included—to conduct a treaty with the witches.”
“And it will be a real treaty this time!”
Charis did not know how Shann could be so sure of that, but she accepted his confidence.
“Link!”
Automatically now she yielded to that unspoken order. It was a new pattern, flowing, weaving, and she allowed herself to be swept along, sensing there were treasures to be found so: the subtle skill and neat mind that was Tsstu, the controlled savagery and curiosity that was Taggi and sometimes Togi.
Then there was that other—closer in some ways, different in others, and fast becoming an undissolvable part of her—which was strength, companionship. Hand rising to clasp hand, falling away, but always there to reach and hold again when needed. This had she brought with her from the Otherwhere of the Wyverns and this she would need ever hereafter to be complete.
Andre Norton, ORDEAL IN OTHERWHERE