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Firehand by Andre
Norton and P.M. Griffin
1
ROSS MURDOCK'S EYES flickered to the dancing flames of the small
fire he had made. Fire. The ancient symbol of home and hearth. The
source of warmth and light. Humanity's ally against the dark and the
things, real and imagined, that haunted it. Man's friend. Man's enemy.
Fire could hurt, too, as evidenced by his scorched face and hands.
Even in that, it was his aide. Pain, clean physical agony, cut through
the chain of mental compulsion with which the starmen were attempting
to bind and draw him to their will.
Anger flickered inside him, leaping up like the tongues of his fire. The
aliens had hunted him for days now, followed him inexorably as he had
struggled downriver in his desperate effort to reach this rendezvous point.
They had sought him, and they had turned the awesome powers of their
minds against him in an attempt to break him, to force him to return to
them. Every step he had taken had been a battle against his own body, and
when he had been forced to yield to the need for sleep, he had been
compelled to bind himself to a tree or root so as not to turn back in his
unconscious state and deliver himself up to them.
His head raised. Injured, hungry, exhausted, he had still made it. He
had come too late, but he was here. He was free, and he had beaten their
first attack.
He would stay free. Whether he managed by some miracle to return to
his own time or was fated to remain in the Bronze Age, whether he lived
for long years more or died relatively soon from want or violence, he would
perish through an agency born of his own Earth. The Baldies would not
have him and would not rule him.
Murdock glanced at the weapon he grasped in his right hand. It did not
look like much to set against the crippling force of the aliens, only a
burning brand pulled from his driftwood fire, but it would do the job—if
he had the courage to use it.
They attacked again, determined to crush his inexplicable resistance,
but Ross had braced himself against the agony exploding in his head. His
mind remained his own. He could think, and he could control the muscles
he must use.
His left hand was splayed on the broad surface of the boulder beside
him. Deliberately, ruthlessly, he lowered the flaming head of the brand…
Ross sat up, stifling the cry that had shocked him awake. His heart was
still racing from the horror of the dream, and it was several moments
before he could completely grip himself.
Blast those Baldies! Blast every one of their thrice-accursed kind! He
had no trouble facing the memory of that first clash of wills during his
waking hours, but all too often, his sleeping mind seized on the terror and
the pain.
Well, this time, it had been his own fault. If he had been spent after his
morning's exertions, he should have refreshed himself with a swim instead
of stretching out under this tree like some tourist on holiday back on
Terra.
The Time Agent came to his feet and walked down the broad beach
until he reached the edge of the sea. He breathed deeply, letting the clear
air drive out the last clinging shadows of the unpleasant dream.
The scene before him was beautiful, but he studied it somberly, without
any feeling of the pleasure it would have invoked under other
circumstances.
Vivid blue sky merged at the horizon with endless blue ocean, which
tapered to an exquisite turquoise here in the shallows. The water was
warm, perfect for swimming with no even momentary shock of body heat
meeting chill liquid upon entering it. The air, too, was perfect, hot but so
freshened by the constant sea breezes that it never stifled or exhausted.
Everything was perfect on this Hawaika of the distant past. So damned
perfect…
Ross Murdock pressed the scarred fingers of his left hand against his
forehead, but then he took hold of himself. They were trapped, irrevocably,
and here they must stay for the remainder of their lives. He had to accept
that and do what he could to make the best of it, to make some sort of
meaningful life for himself.
He could not! He could and would pull his weight, right enough, but
there was nothing to hold him, absolutely nothing to which he could
devote himself heart and mind, not since he and his comrades, human and
dolphins, had joined forces with the local populace and driven off the
interstellar invaders bent upon the annihilation of all this world's major
life forms.
For an instant, fire stirred in his pale gray eyes. Ever since he had
perforce become part of the Project and traveled back to the dim past on
his native Terra, he had clashed with those ancient, deadly star-traveling
people he had called the Baldies from their enlarged, hairless heads. They
were the enemies of his nightmare and subjects fit for nightmare with
their high-tech weapons, their fearsome powers of mental control, and
their seemingly absolute disregard for life forms other than their own.
His head lifted. He had beaten them that time. He had been part of the
team that had taken one of their starships and given it to Terra, that and
a library of journey tapes which had opened for his own kind the stars and
the planets circling them. He had helped to beat those same killers here.
The light left him again, and he sighed. Hawaika had been one of the
worlds to which the Baldies' tapes had brought Terran explorers. They had
found a lotus planet lacking any large life forms or history of life—until he,
Gordon Ashe, Karara Trehern, and her dolphin companions, Tinorau and
Taua, had been drawn back into the planet's past, just at the time when
the vicious earlier race was culminating their inexplicable plan to wipe the
native life from existence. They had helped unite the peoples—for there
were two distinct races—living here and had spearheaded the final attack
that drove the invaders off. The loss of the gate through which they had
come was proof of their ultimate success. Success and life for Hawaika,
doom for him and his.
The young man drew a long, shuddering breath. With their gate gone,
they were sealed back in time, in this alien world's history, forever severed
from their own age, their own people, their own work. Three months had
passed since that great battle. Three months, and already it felt like three
years. Or thirty…
He scowled as a splash and laugh penetrated his reverie. A
slender-bodied woman rose, leaped, out of the water some twenty yards
out from him, followed in the next moment by two delighted silver-blue
forms, rejoicing as only dolphins can in play.
Ross waved because some reaction was expected of him, but he quickly
turned away and began walking toward a rock formation farther down the
beach where he might sit and think at peace for a while.
The mission fate had set them had not proven a disaster for all of them,
he amended his previous thoughts. The dolphins had adopted this time
and world for their own, and Karara…
Murdock shivered despite the heat of the day. This world and time had
quite literally been made hers.
In their battle to defeat the invaders, the human Terrans had joined,
melded, with the three Foanna, the last remnant of the old, magical race
who had once ruled Hawaika. Need had forced them to take that drastic
step despite the danger that the effort might leave them somehow altered.
He and his partner, Doctor Gordon Ashe, had come through whole. To be
more precise, they had been rejected, cast off, by the Powers they had
invoked. Not so Trehern. She had been judged and found worthy. Once
again, he shuddered, and his eyes closed. When she had stepped forth
again, she was something other than human.
Ross made himself watch the trio again. Her personality remained, or it
still remained. For that, he blessed whatever gods ruled the realms of time
and space. He had never been able to like the woman, although he
respected her skill and courage. That did not matter. They were comrades,
Karara had been human. Now she was Foanna, or a shadow of the
Foanna, and with every passing week, as she grew in the understanding
and knowledge of the mysterious three, that difference seemed to increase
within and about her.
At first, he had believed this accursed planet had changed Gordon as
well, not physically or in nature, but in the relationship they had shared
since their first mission together. He, too, had been able to deal easily with
the Foanna, and he was a scientist, eager to learn and able to throw
himself into the work of learning. It had seemed to him that without the
Project to bind them, Ross Murdock had very little to offer to such a man.
The Time Agent's fingers tightened against the sun-warmed stone. He
had little to offer Hawaika, either, now that her danger was over. He did
not fit. His mind would not link with those of the Foanna, though they
could read some part of his thoughts. Moreover, he did not want to give
them greater access to his inner being and grudged even what they could
take.
Murdock smiled sadly. In his selfishness and self-pity, he had
misjudged Ashe's response to their exile. Gordon might be able to use his
time better, but he was very nearly as unhappy as Ross was himself.
For starters, the man was an archeologist, not an anthropologist, and
he had never been one of those lovers of pure theory who could sit back,
joyfully pouring over the facts others had amassed as a miser did money
he would never spend. He, too, had given himself to the Time Project and
to the opening of the star worlds it had engendered. To be cut off from all
that, to be forced into an observer's place, less than that, was as killing to
him as it was to his more restless younger comrade.
As for the bond between them, he had been a proper ass about that. It
had not broken or lessened, merely altered in the manner of its
manifestation under the very different conditions under which they were
now compelled to function.
That the archeologist spent a considerable amount of time with the
Foanna was only to be expected given his education and interests and his
good fortune in being able to communicate well with them. Lord of Time,
Ross thought, unconsciously picking up Eveleen's phrase in the anguish
and shame suddenly sweeping him, he should be on his knees in gratitude
to them instead of nursing a jealousy even he recognized as childish. It
was they who had finally succeeded in healing completely the terrible
mental wound the older man had taken with the loss of Travis Fox and his
colony. Ashe, unjustly, had held himself responsible for that, and the guilt,
the pain of it, had very nearly destroyed him.
"Ross!"
He turned. "Gordon! Over here!"
The other joined him. Ashe was maybe a head taller than Murdock and
was some years his senior, but his body was as lean and hard, and as
browned now by exposure to Hawaika's sun, although he had insisted that
both of them keep covered for the most part lest rays stronger than nature
had meant their skin to bear prove deadly to them in the long run.
"Look at those three," Ross said, pointing to the woman and sea
mammals with apparent pleasure, as if he had only been enjoying their
antics. One thing for sure, he was not about to let himself be caught
whimpering over a fate he could not change like some blasted spoiled
adolescent.
"They've found their home," Gordon agreed, smiling.
He eyed his companion speculatively but then let his gaze wander along
the beach to the tall-masted ship berthed at its farther end. "I watched
you and Torgul today. It took you precisely two minutes and forty seconds
to disarm him, and he's been training with a sword since the day he could
first toddle. Even Eveleen would've been impressed."
A sharp stab of regret raked Ross at the mention of the Project's tough
little expert in ancient weapons and unarmed combat. He had to make
himself laugh. "She'd tell me fair enough and push me on to working with
some other instrument of mayhem."
Still, he was pleased. It was Ashe who had insisted that he learn all he
seafaring skills, as if he were preparing himself for another mission
instead of merely warding off the deadly weight of time and trying to
make himself a more salable commodity to better earn his keep…
He had obeyed willingly enough, although without real heart. It was
interesting work, at least, and the effort did keep his responses keen and
his mind sharp. It also effectively preserved his sanity. Between struggling
to acquire the fine points of the Rovers' weapons of war and self-defense
and the handling of the ships that were their lives, it was precious little
time he had to squander as he had this last quarter hour.
Suddenly, guilt filled him, and he looked somberly at the archeologist.
He owed this man so much. "I won't go back," he said abruptly, "not to
what I was."
"I never imagined you would." Murdock had been well on the road to
the life of a petty criminal when the Project had discovered him, some six
Terran years previously, a boy with the instincts of a clan chieftain or
commando in an age where such talent was a detriment to all but very
specialized groups such as theirs. Ross had proven to be one of the best
finds they had made, maybe the best. "You've grown up, my young friend."
His eyes sparkled. "Except in the matter of patience."
"We'll need a lifetime of that," he responded quietly, suppressing the
regret that threatened to flood his voice.
"I don't know about that," his partner told him. "If I were you, I'd plan
on exhibiting
my newfound abilities for Eveleen Riordan's approval a lot
sooner than that. A matter of days might be a more realistic target."
2
MURDOCK FELT HIS chest, his stomach, tighten. He took a deep
breath to steady himself, then met the other's blue eyes steadily. "Gordon,
don't joke about that. I don't find it funny…"
Ashe laughed. "Calm down, Ross Murdock. You've been feeling rather
sorry for yourself, I fear, to the detriment of your thinking."
"Go on." He would have liked to tell him in graphic detail where to put
that remark, but it was accurate, and he was more interested in an answer
right now than in verbally avenging the observation.
"Consider the matter from the Project's point of view. Five experienced,
very expensive Time Agents suddenly vanish, and in their place, a
full-fledged Hawaikan civilization complete with hitherto equally
nonexistent flora and fauna quite literally appears on the scene. What do
you imagine their response should be?"
"Put a gate up as fast as they could slap one together and get back to
us." The hope withered in him. He did not dare let it run, not yet. "It's
been three months, Gordon," he said simply.
"Our time. Besides, there would be the little matter of dealing with the
locals and then locating not only the right period but the precise time, the
month and week and maybe even the day within it."
Ross turned his gaze to the eternally tossing ocean. "Why didn't you say
something before?"
He sighed. "Because I couldn't be sure. There were so many ifs, so many
things I just didn't know, so many suppositions and out-and-out guesses.
You could accept permanent exile, Ross, but maybe years or a life of
uncertainty and waiting—I wasn't about to do that to you. I was having
too much of a taste of it myself."
Murdock looked swiftly at him. "I'm sorry." His head lowered. "I haven't
been much help."
Gordon smiled. "You've done your share."
"You said a matter of days?" the younger agent prompted, once more
feeling the eagerness rising in him. Eagerness? He felt as if he were
returning to life.
He nodded. "The Foanna shared my opinion and have been helping me
watch for some kind of signal that a breakthrough might be imminent."
He grimaced. "To put it more accurately, I've been trying to help them.
The Lady Ynvalda discovered something yesterday morning, the beginning