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horses, a camp for our visitors. They will wait here." He looked at Travis.
"You will wait with them, Fox, since you know their ways."
Travis' immediate reaction was objection, but then he realized Buck's wisdom.
To offer the proposition of alliance to the Apaches needed an impartial
spokesman. And if he himself did it, Deklay might automatically oppose the
idea.
Let Buck talk and it would be a statement of fact.
"It is well," Travis agreed.
Buck looked about, as if judging time from the lie of sun and shadow on the
ground. "We shall return in the morning when the shadow lies here." With the
toe of his high moccasin he made an impression in the soft earth.
Then, without any formal farewell, he strode off, the others fast on his
heels.
"He is your chief, that one?" Kaydessa asked, pointing after Buck.
"He is one having a large voice in council," Travis replied.
He set about building up the cooking fire, bringing out the body of a
split-horn calf which had been left them. Menlik sat on his heels by the pool,
dipping up drinking water with his hand. Now he squinted his eyes against the
probe of the sun.
"It will require much talking to win over the short one," he observed. "That
one does not like us or your plan. Just as there will be those among the Horde
who will not like it either." He flipped water drops from his fingers. "But
this I
do know, man who calls himself Fox, if we do not make a common cause, then we
have no hope of going against the Reds. It will be for them as a man crushing
fleas." He brought his hand down on his knee in emphatic slaps. "So
... and so ... and so!"
"This do I think also," Travis admitted.
"So let us both hope that all men will be as wise as we,"
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Menlik said, smiling. "And since we can take a hand in that decision, this
remains a time for rest."
The shaman might be content to sleep the afternoon away, but after he had
eaten, Hulagur wandered up and down the valley, making a lengthy business of
rubbing down their horses with twists of last season's grass. Now and then he
paused beside Kaydessa and spoke, his uneasiness plain to Travis although he
could not understand the words.
Travis had settled down in the shade, half dozing, yet alert to every movement
of the three Tatars. He tried not to think
of what might be happening in the rancheria by switching his mind to that
misty valley of the towers. Did any of those three alien structures contain
such a grab bag of the past as he, Ashe, and Murdock had found on that other
world where the winged people had gathered together for them the artifacts of
an older civilization? At that time he had created for their hosts a new
weapon of defense, turning metal tubes into blow-guns. It had been there, too,
where he had chanced upon the library of tapes, one of which had eventually
landed Travis and his people here on
Topaz.
Even if he did find racks of such tapes in one of those towers, there would be
no way of using them--with the ship wrecked on the mountain side.
Only--Travis' fingers itched where they lay quiet on his knees--there might be
other things waiting. If he were only free to explore!
He reached out to touch Menlik's shoulder. The shaman half turned, opening his
eyes with the languid effort of a sleepy cat. But the spark of intelligence
awoke in them quickly.
"What is it?"
For a moment Travis hesitated, already regretting his impulse. He did not know
how much Menlik remembered of the present. Remember of the present--one part
of the
Apache's mind was wryly amused at that snarled estimate of their situation.
Men who had been dropped into their racial and ancestral pasts until the
present time was less real than the dreams conditioning them had a difficult
job evaluating any situation. But since Menlik had clung to his knowledge of
English, he must be less far down that stairway.
"When we met you, Kaydessa and I, it was outside that valley." Travis was
still of two minds about this questioning, but the Tatar camp had been close
to the towers and there was a good chance the Mongols had explored them. "And
inside were buildings ... very old...."
Menlik was fully alert now. He took his wand, played with it as he spoke:
"That is, or was, a place of much power, Fox. Oh, I know that you question my
kinship with the spirits and the powers they give. But one learns not to
dispute what one feels here--and here--" His long, somewhat grimy fingers went
to his forehead and then to the bare brown chest where his shirt fell open. "I
have walked the stone path in that valley, and there have been the whispers--"
"Whispers?"
Menlik twirled the wand. "Whispers which are too low for many ears to
distinguish. You can hear them as one hears the buzzing of an insect, but
never the words--no, never the words! But that is a place of great power!"
"A place to explore!"
But Menlik watched only his wand. "That I wonder, Fox, truly do I wonder. This
is not our world. And here there may be that which does not welcome us."
Tricks-in-trade of a shaman? Or was it true recognition of something beyond
human description? Travis could not be sure, but he knew that he must return
to the valley and see for himself.
"Listen," Menlik said, leaning closer, "I have heard your tale, that you were
on that first ship, the one which
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brought you unwilling along the old star paths. Have you ever seen such a
thing as this?"
He smoothed a space of soft earth and with the narrow tip of his wand began to
draw. Whatever role Menlik had played in the present before he had been
reconditioned into a shaman of the Horde, he had had the ability of an artist,
for with a minimum of lines he created a figure in that sketch.
It was a man or at least a figure with general human outlines. But the round,
slightly oversized skull was bare, the clothing skintight to reveal
unnaturally thin limbs.
There were large eyes, small nose and mouth, rather crowded into the lower
third of the head, giving an impression of an over-expanded brain case above.
And it was familiar.
Not the flying men of the other world, certainly not the nocturnal ape-things.
Yet for all its alien quality Travis was sure he had seen its like before. He
closed his eyes and tried to visualize it apart from lines in the soil.
Such a head, white, almost like the bone of a skull laid bare, such a head
lying face down on a bone-thin arm clad in a blue-purple skintight sleeve.
Where had he seen it?
The Apache gave a sharp exclamation as he remembered fully. The derelict
spaceship as he had first found it--the dead alien officer had still been
seated at its controls! The alien who had set the tape which took them out
into that forgotten empire--he was the subject of Menlik's drawing!
"Where? When did you see such a one?" The Apache bent down over the Tatar.
Menlik looked troubled. "He came into my mind when I
walked the valley. I thought I could almost see such a face in one of the
tower windows, but of that I am not sure.
Who is it?"
"Someone from the old days--those who once ruled the stars," Travis answered.
But were they still here then, the remnant of a civilization which had
flourished ten thousand years ago? Were the Baldies, who centuries ago had
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