"Vandy! Vandy!"
Nik held the boy, wondering whether that violent retching would ever stop, whether the convulsions that shook the small body could be endured for long, his feeling of guilt rising like an answering sickness within him. He had never witnessed such a terrible attack of nausea before. It was as if the few bites of fish Vandy had taken had been virulent poison; yet they had had no similar effect on Nik.
Vandy lay limp now, moaning a little, and Nik hesitated. Should he try to get him to drink some water or would that bring on another attack? He feared another such violent upheaval might be truly dangerous. There was nothing he could do for Vandy—no medicine he could offer. Back at the refuge—
Back at the refuge—to return there—If Vandy's people had led the attack, or the Patrol—But suppose the other possibility was the truth, that the struggle had been some inter-Guild dispute? Or was Nik clinging to that merely because it was what he wanted to believe for his own safety? Vandy's head rolled on Nik's shoulder; the boy's breathing was heavy, labored.
In spite of the night, with the cin-goggles, he could start now, carry Vandy, retrace their journey, and find the hunters waiting out there while he was too burdened with the boy to make a fighting stand. Nik bit his lip and tried to think clearly. This could be only a passing illness for Vandy; the boy could have an allergy to the strange food. And to be caught by the hunters—
Perhaps to wait right here until any trailers from the refuge came would be the wise move. Nik could remain with Vandy until he saw them coming, then leave the boy to be found, always providing those trackers were friendly to Vandy. And he honestly doubted he could get far carrying the boy.
How long had that sound been reaching his ears without his being conscious of it? Nik shifted Vandy's body to free his right hand for the blaster. It came from the down side of their island hill where the rain lake washed—a splashing, not just the normal rippling of wind-ruffled water lapping the shoreline.
Nik inched along the ledge, hoping to see what lay below. And it was not too difficult to make out a bulk floundering there, not swimming, but wading through shallows, staggering now and then, once going to its knees and rising with an exclamation.
A man!
Nik stiffened, watched. By all he could discover, the wader was alone. Coming in that direction, he could well be from the flitter that had fled the refuge in the last moments of battle.
The man reached the shore of the rain lake and steadied himself with one outflung hand against a rock. He looked up as if searching the island hill for hand holds. Cin-goggles made a mask to conceal his face, but this was not Orkhad or any of his race.
Plainly, the stranger decided the rise before him unclimbable. He began to move along it, still supporting himself with one hand against the rock wall. Now that he was free of the water, Nik saw he was limping, pausing now and again as if the effort to keep moving was a heavy one.
He neared the place where Nik and Vandy had climbed. Would that tempt him also? Vandy was quiet. Carefully, Nik laid him down against the crest that crowned the hill. He waited in silence for the stranger's next move.
"Hacon?"
Startled, Nik glanced, at Vandy, but that had not come from the boy. The low hail sounded from below! And only one person other than Vandy would have called him by that name. Eagerly Nik leaned over the edge of the ledge and stared down at that goggle-masked, upturned face.
"Captain Leeds!"
"In person. But not quite undamaged. In fact, I don't believe I can make that perch of yours without a hand up—and we may all need a perch soon!"
"They're after you?"
"Oh, not the Patrol, if that's what you mean. No, this mismade hell world has its own hunters, and a couple of them have been sniffing up my trail for longer than I care to remember."
Nik scrambled down the slope. The captain's hand fell on his arm, and he gave support to the other's weight.
"You're hurt badly?"
"Wrenched my leg when I took a tumble some distance back there. Couldn't favor it much after I fought off that night lizard. Knew the rest of its clutch would be coming. And they were—at least two of them! You have any arms at all?"
"Two blasters. Don't know how much charge they have left."
"Two blasters—that's about the most comforting news I've had since I lifted off Korwar. Talk about luck—we've got a lot of it now—mostly all bad.
"First, that Patrol snoop ray picked me up on the big orbit in; then they were able to slam three ships after me before my rocket tubes had cooled. Feel as if I've been doing nothing but running for days now. Give us a hand up—"
Somehow, they made it up, but Nik sensed that Leeds must be close to the end of his strength. The captain gave a grunt as Nik settled him on their perch, but a moment later he crawled back to the edge and examined the terrain below.
"Couldn't have picked it better myself, boy. Any crawler trying to claw us out of here can only come up this way, and we'll burn out his engine before he gets within clawing distance. What's wrong with the boy here?" He looked back at Vandy.
Nik explained about the disastrous meal of Disian fish.
"No off-world supplies, eh?" Leeds asked.
"No. I left the containers I had back at the tunnel break." Hurriedly, Nik outlined the main points of their flight for Leeds.
"That's going to complicate matters," the captain said. "Vandy's conditioned—"
"Conditioned?" Nik repeated uncomprehendingly.
"I told you, he is conditioned all the way—against going with strangers, against everything that would make it easy to lift him out of HS."
"But he ate what was in those rations without trouble."
"Those are LB supplies—emergency food. No one of Terran ancestry can be conditioned against those. It's an elementary precaution rigidly kept. Suppose Vandy's spacer had been wrecked on the way to Korwar—there would be a chance of escape by LB. So he could eat LB rations. Now, he can't eat anything else—on this world."
"But—" Nik realized the futility of his protest. Without LB rations, Vandy would starve. And the LB rations, the cans he had driven into the wall of that cut to serve as a stairway and then abandoned thoughtlessly, were far behind. Those containers meant Vandy's life—unless there were other supplies he could tap.
"Yes"—Leeds pushed back from the rim of the ledge to set his shoulders against the crest rise—"it presents a problem, doesn't it? But there is a solution. Vandy's our way out of here."
"How?" Nik demanded.
"The Patrol—they've taken the refuge. Probably some scout squad is out there now hunting down my flitter. They'll track me here, and then—then we'll have our bargaining point, Vandy for our freedom. Boy, you gave both of us about the best break in this whole bungled job when you lit out with Vandy. Him for us—my spacer, free air out of here—Yes, I thought you were a gift from Lady Luck; now I know that's the truth! We have the boy—so all our comets slid over their stars on the table. You ever play star and comet, Nik?"
"No."
"Well, it's a game of chance they tell you—sure, it is. But there's skill to it—real skill—and most of that lies in selecting the right opponents and knowing just how far they're ready to plunge in answer to any bet you're reckless enough to make. I know how far the Patrol will go to get Vandy back—and it's pretty near all the way. He's about the most important pawn in a big-system game going on right now, so much so that the orders from our top were to erase him—"
"Erase him?" Nik echoed.
"Sure, the Guild deal was to take him out of the game permanently. These Gallardi—they're very family and bloodline conscious. The boy's father is the warlord who's holding the key stronghold on Ebo. To wipe out his family line would mean he would then make some suicide play—"
"But Vandy's father is dead—" Nik said bewildered. His hand was at his chin, cupping the firm bone and smooth flesh he needed for reassurance. Leeds' story, which had bought him that face—
"On the contrary, Jerrel Naudhin i'Arkrama was very much alive the last I heard. At least, he was to Lik Iskhag, which was the important point as far as the Guild was concerned. Iskhag paid to have the Naudhin i'Akrama line finished—"
"Then the story you told me—"
Leeds shrugged impatiently. "Was a story, a good one. I didn't know I had it in me to do a regular tape-type tale. Only now it's all worked out for the best, anyway. We can use Vandy to get out of here. And—believe me, Nik—I had my own ideas about the boy and this erase order all the time. Of course, his being conditioned meant trouble, but he could have been kept under wraps until Iskhag got what he paid for—the surrender of the garrison on Ebo. Then Vandy could have been turned loose. I don't hold with erasing children any more than you do. Orkhad's being here wasn't part of the plan as I was told it, either. But maybe it was good that he was—he made you take to the hills, and that certainly saved Vandy. Now, all we have to do is wait for the Patrol to get a direction on us and argue it out—"
"And if they do come," Nik asked, "do you plan to turn the boy over to them on their word to carry out their bargain?"
Leeds laughed. "No—I'm no fool, and neither do I think you're one, Nik. We get the spacer and free air, Vandy going with us. Outside, we put him in a suit with a beeper and space him. They can easily pick him up on a directional signal. And by the time they've retrieved him, we're in the clear and long gone. The plan isn't completely free of a misfire, but it's the best chance we have now."
"And if they don't find us, Vandy has to have food." Nik stated the immediate problem. Leeds had talked a lot, and he wanted to think it over.
The captain moved his shoulders against the rock support.
"Yes, let me think about that. I took a jump from the flitter, and she fire-smashed out there. The emergency rations on board must have gone up with the machine. Those you left back in the cut seem our best chance now. Of course, the Patrol might already have prowled that area and found your trail. But it's still the quickest way—"
"You mean—I go after them?"
"Seeing as how I can probably not even make it down from this ledge again for a while, I'd say you are Vandy's only chance of getting some food in the immediate future. If you are picked up by the Patrol, you still have your chance, and a good one. I'll be here with the boy, and I'll swear by anything you want that any bargain I'll make is for the both of us! That's the truth. I wouldn't be in any position to bargain if I didn't have Vandy. And who gave him to me—you did! We get out together. And if you are netted, you tell the truth—that you know where Vandy is and that he will be delivered safe and sound on our terms. Anyway, we're small fry in this as far as the Patrol is concerned. They want Iskhag, those behind him, the man who made the bargain in the first place. You can say I'll give some help in that direction—I don't like the erase plan enough to cover up for those who gave such an order.
"But you may be really lucky and get in and out of there without getting caught, or least only picking up a tracker, and if you do that, it will be just what we want, anyhow."
Leeds leaned over to touch Vandy's forehead.
"Guess he's asleep now, but you can tell them if they pick you up, that he's none too happy. Could just hurry the whole matter along, and that would suit us all."
Nik sat quietly. Again everything Leeds said made good sense, good sense if you accepted his new story and its logic. But to do so meant leaving Vandy here with Leeds—the two of them alone—and going straight back into trouble himself. And how could he be sure that this story was any more the truth than that other this same man had told him back on Korwar? Perhaps Leeds had followed that same thought, for now the captain said:
"Nik, you're rubbing that face of yours. Still smooth and real, isn't it? Mightn't be for long—remember? Of course, maybe Gyna did a lasting job, but she said the odds were against that. You want to go back to the Dipple and no face?"
"But if we get out of here, the Guild won't do anything for someone who has helped to spoil a job." Nik had found the flaw in that argument.
For a moment, he thought he had Leeds, but the silence did not last long enough to suggest that the captain did not have a ready reply.
"This was a job split—don't you think that an erase on a child has blast backs at the top? I had my backers, too—and you did just what you promised, brought Vandy here. The minute you landed on Dis, you'd done your part. Most of this mix-up was Orkhad's doing, and he was being watched already from above. You played straight, and that makes it a Guild promise for you. Just let us get off-world, and you'll keep your face. But if we sit this out too long or fail—" He shook his head slowly. "So, you see you have a big stake in this, too. You kept your part of the bargain; the Guild will keep theirs."
In the end, it all added up to just one sum, Nik saw, and that was his job. Vandy could not live without food; the nearest available food was back at the refuge. Leeds was too injured to make the trip, so Nik had to go. He looked out at the back trail.
Even with the goggles, the Disian night was too dark for him to see much, and there were hunters in that dark. He was tired from the long day's travel, and a tired man makes errors of judgment, is duller of sight and hearing. It was not going to be easy, and he wanted every possible advantage on his side.
"I'll go—in the morning."
"Fair enough!" Leeds moved against his back support. "No use going it blind. Maybe we'll be lucky and they'll reach us by then."
Vandy rolled over. "Hacon—" His voice was a husky whisper.
"Here," Nik answered quickly.
"I'm thirsty—"
Leeds pulled a canteen from his belt. "Filled this down there at the lake. Give him a pull."
Nik supported the boy with one arm and held the canteen to his lips whale Vandy drank in gulps. Then he pushed the container away.
"I hurt," he said, "right here." His hand moved across his mid-section. "Guess I was pretty sick."
"Yes," Nik agreed. "You try to get some sleep now, Vandy."
But the boy had struggled up a little. "There's someone else here." His head swung around toward Leeds, and his eyes were wide and staring. "There is, isn't there!" That was more demand than question.
"Yes," Nik told him. "Captain Leeds' flitter crashed out there. He just got here."
"Captain Leeds," Vandy repeated. "He's one of them, one of the men back in that tunnel place—"
"Not one of those who were there, Vandy. He's the one we've been waiting for."
Vandy pawed at Nik's arm and strove to raise himself higher.
"He's one of them!" That was accusation rather than recognition.
"No." Nik thought fast. If Vandy looked upon the captain as his enemy, he would not be willing to remain here while Nik backtracked in the morning. "No." He repeated that denial with all the firmness he could summon. "Captain Leeds was trying to find us, to get us out of here. He is a friend, Vandy."
"But he's one of them back there—"
"He only pretended to be, Vandy." Nik sought wildly for a plausible explanation. "He was coming here to help us; that's why we were hiding out here. Remember? We were waiting for Captain Leeds. And he was driven out by them, too. He's been hurt and can't walk far—"
"Hacon." Vandy turned in Nik's hold, his eyes now striving to the other's face above him. "You swear that—by the Three Words?"
All that past Vandy had created for his chosen companion tightened around Nik. Vandy's faith was not that of Nik Kolherne nor of the Dipple, but it was a firm bastion for him, and he had made it a part of the world he had imagined for Hacon. Now Nik found his indoctrination in that fantasy had brought a measure of belief to him. He dared not hesitate, but as he answered, he knew the bitterness of his lie.
"I swear it—by the Three Words!" His left hand at his face pressed tight enough against the rebuilt flesh to bring pain. Hacon's face—and to Vandy he was Hacon.
"Believe him now, Vandy?" Leeds asked, his voice holding the same light, cheerful note that Nik had heard in it at their earlier meetings. "It's true. I came here to help the two of you. But I ran into more trouble than I expected, so now I'm tied to this perch of yours for a while. We'll have to hold this garrison together for Hacon—"
"Hacon!" Vandy's fingers were a tight grasp on him. "Where are you going?"
"As soon as day comes, I'm scouting." Nik had no idea whether or not Vandy was aware of his conditioning. At least, the boy had not mentioned it when Nik had urged the fish on him. And if he did not know, there was no good reason to frighten him when off-world supplies were still out of reach.
"But why?" Vandy was protesting, his tight clutch on Nik continuing.
"Because Captain Leeds may have been trailed. We need to know just how much trouble to expect." That was thin but the best Nik could concoct at that moment.
"Yes, just to scout and to pick up some supplies I cached when my leg gave out," Leeds added with his usual facility for invention.
"Oh." A little of that desperate grip lessened, and Vandy's head fell back on Nik's arm. "In the morning—not now?"
"In the morning," Nik agreed, "not now."