The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

slowly. “Remember!” Travis made that an order, an emphatic appeal to the mind under the influence of the caller.
    She frowned, the struggle she was making naked on her face. Then she answered:
    “You—Fox—”
    Travis grunted with relief, his alarm subsiding. Then she could remember.
    “Yes,” he responded eagerly.
    But she was gazing about, her puzzlement growing. “Where is this—?”
    “We are higher in the mountains.”
    Now fear was pushing out bewilderment. “How did I come here?”
    “I brought you.” Swiftly he outlined what had happened at their night camp.
    The hand which had been at her head was now pressed tight across her lips as if she were biting furiously into its flesh to still some panic of her own, and her gray eyes were round and haunted.
    “You are free now,” Travis said.
    Kaydessa nodded, and then dropped her hand to speak. “You brought me away from the hunters. You did not have to obey them?”
    “I heard nothing.”
    “You do not hear—you feel!” She shuddered. “Please.” She clawed at the stone beside her, pulling up to her feet. “Let us go—let us go quickly! They will try again—move farther in—”
    “Listen,” Travis had to be sure of one thing—“have they any way of knowing that they had you under control and that you have again escaped?”
    Kaydessa shook her head, some of the panic again shadowing her eyes.
    “Then we’ll just go on—” his chin lifted to the wastelands before them—“try to keep out of their reach.”
    And away from the pass to the south, he told himself silently. He dared not lead the enemy to that secret, so he must travel west or hole up somewhere in this unknown wilderness until they could be sure Kaydessa was no longer susceptible to that call, or that they were safely beyond its beamed radius. There was the chance of contacting her outlaw kin, just as there was the chance of stumbling into a pack of the ape-things. Before dark they must discover a protected camp site.
    They needed water, food. He had a bare half dozen ration tablets. But the coyotes could locate water.
    “Come!” Travis beckoned to Kaydessa, motioning her to climb ahead of him so that he could watch for any indication of her succumbing once again to the influence of the enemy. But his burdened early morning flight had told on Travis more than he thought, and he discovered he could not spur himself on to a pace better than a walk. Now and again one of the coyotes, usually Nalik’ideyu, would come into view, express impatience in both stance and mental signal, and then be gone again. The Apache was increasingly aware that the animals were disturbed, yet to his tentative gropings at contact they did not reply. Since they gave no warning of hostile animal or man, he could only be on constant guard, watching the countryside about him.
    They had been following a ledge for several minutes before Travis was aware of some strange features of that path. Perhaps he had actually noted them with a trained eye before his archaeological studies of the recent past gave him a reason for the faint marks. This crack in the mountain’s skin might have begun as a natural fault, but afterward it had been worked with tools, smoothed, widened to serve the purpose of some form of intelligence!
    Travis caught at Kaydessa’s shoulder to slow her pace. He could not have told why he did not want to speak aloud here, but he felt the need for silence. She glanced around, perplexed, more so when he went down on his knees and ran his fingers along one of those ancient tool marks. He was certain it was very old. Inside of him anticipation bubbled. A road made with such labor could only lead to something of importance. He was going to make the discovery, the dream which had first drawn him into these mountains.
    “What is it?” Kaydessa knelt beside him, frowning at the ledge.
    “This was cut by someone, a long time ago,” Travis half whispered and then wondered why. There was no reason to believe the road makers could hear him when perhaps a thousand years or more lay between the chipping of that stone and this day.
    The Tatar girl looked over her shoulder. Perhaps she too was troubled by the sense that here time was subtly telescoped, that past and present might be meeting. Or was that feeling with them both because of their enforced conditioning?
    “Who?” Now her voice sank in turn.
    “Listen—” he regarded her intently—“did your people or the Reds ever find any