Norton, Andre - Brother To Shadows

"It was good, lord," he glanced over his shoulder at the now closed door of the fresher, "my thanks for your offering—"

The Zacathan had already seated himself and whipped the cover from the largest of the bowls so that steam and a smell, which made Jofre suddenly very aware how long it had been since he had last eaten, filled the air.

"I am no lord." Zurzal was now busy ladling some of the contents of the bowl onto the plate before Jofre as the younger man slipped rather awkwardly onto that elevated seat. "I am Zurzal, I do have a title—which means nothing on most worlds other than my own. I am called a Histechnic which only means that I have completed a series of studies to the satisfaction of my elders and betters. I am Zurzal. And you?"

"The Master named me Jofre."

"Jofre—" repeated the Zacathan, "sky given. Because of your finding, I suppose."

Jofre was again a little shaken at Zurzal's quick grasp of his name meaning, for that was a word of the high country and not the lowlands where a visitor might have traveled enough to learn something of the native tongues.

"Yes—" He eyed his plate now, drawing his knife to cut at the generous portion of smoking vespar which had been served him.

"Your Master made no attempt to report your finding to the port authorities?"

Jofre shook his head. "The Lairs have their own ways. He could have sent me to one of the valley lords but he did not. He was a man who kept his thoughts much to himself."

"I have heard that the Brothers are indeed secret in their ways; it is part of the faces they turn to the world. At any rate he gave you a trade, this Master of yours."

"He judged me issha," Jofre said and remembered his inner pride, which he had taken precautions to hide on the day he had received the Three Weapons and the Cloak. Not that any of those had come with him on his being exiled.

He was having a hard time curbing his hunger now, making himself chew and swallow slowly. The food was diverse. As he had spoken, Zurzal had heaped on the plate before Jofre large portions from at least five of the dishes.

"You need my services—" Jofre was perhaps too abrupt in turning from his past to the immediate present but he had no wish to dwell now on what lay behind him.

"I do."

"What lord has declared blood price against you?"

"It is no feud, as I have said, like those of your nobles. There are those who are opposing me openly, and recently I have learned that there is an even greater problem in the nature of some who want what I am working upon for their own purposes. Those you took me from tonight might well not have been seeking my life, but rather my person and what I know."

Though earlier he had admitted hunger, Zurzal seemed more intent now on talking. He sipped from his drinking vessel, but, though he stabbed at a portion of vespar on his plate with one of the pointed pieces of cutlery, he did not yet raise it to his mouth.

"You must understand those of my stock," he said. "To us knowledge is everything. And one of the sources of knowledge which we hope to find are records—records of the Forerunners—"

"Forerunners?" That was one term Jofre had not heard before.

"We did not come first into space. There are worlds upon worlds, some very old. It is a pattern with sentient people that they rise to a high point of civilization and then some inner lack or flaw within them saps the energy which sent them climbing and they decline, sometimes to actually disappear and be forgotten. So we are not the first rovers of the lanes; there were others before us and they left their traces here and there. There is a great reward posted for any major find which is made of such peoples— for they certainly were not all of the same stock or even the same time. Their civilizations may well have been as varied as our present ones. You saw in the lobby below life-forms which did not share a common beginning with yours. Yet all those are now citizens and equal under the galactic laws.

"Thus we have tantalizing hints on this world and that of other peoples, some we are sure were not native to the planets where they left these remains, but space rovers such as ourselves. One of my colleagues was able to find an entire planet city, stretching completely round the world which supported it, of a highly technical civilization. There are experts there now studying it under supervision.

"So many finds come by chance alone—but if there were some way that such could be traced—" There seemed to be tiny cores of light in the Zacathan's eyes; his neck frill was rising to frame his head and shading into a green-blue.

"And there is a reward for such discoveries?" Jofre thought he understood.

"Yes—but greater than any reward is the knowledge itself!" Now Zurzal's frill was a vivid fan.

"You are hunting such? But I have never heard of any old things on Asborgan and the Shagga priests have very ancient records. If there was knowledge, they would have sought it out."

"No, I am not hunting Forerunners here—rather a man. I was in trace of him this evening. He may be the key to a great discovery— We have records and also we have access to special knowledge. I have a discovery I must try. At present I am not well accepted by my people; they believe that my research for the past few years has been for a very childish and no-purpose reason. I am young, as my people count years, and oftentimes the young are dismissed for thinking something can be done in a different way.

"There was a discovery made and ill-used on a world named Korwar. The results were so terrifying at the time that the man who backed that expedition saw that—or thought he saw that—the instrument used was destroyed and all the plans from which it had been manufactured were completely wiped from the records.

"But the idea of what had been done could not be denied and there was an undercover rumor of what had happened which spread. That there could be an artifact which would summon up an accurate picture of the past had now to be accepted. But the machine was gone and even mention of it was thoroughly suppressed.

"Not so well suppressed that it was totally forgotten, however. Two planet years ago those plans were rediscovered in a mass of material turned over to my home section of the archives by the Patrol after they had raided a Jack outfit. There was a mixture of reports, some log books of old ships taken by Jacks—and it needed sifting for anything of value. I was given the task of that sorting—mainly because I was the youngest member of our group and considered the least responsible.

"But what I found was a complete plan for a probe, such a probe as would make any Histechnic give perhaps all his fangs for. I took this to my superior. He was not interested, pointing out this had been tried once with dire results and that my people would not tamper with anything of the sort. He confiscated what I had found and told me to keep quiet.

"I did. But I had those plans here." Zurzal laid aside his eating tool and tapped his forehead. "And keeping quiet I went to work until I had that scanner rebuilt. I ran one trial in a place I knew of and the result was astonishing, but it came and went in a flash and I knew that the remains on which I tried it were so well-known that I could be accused of falsifying evidence—which among my people, Jofre, is akin to oath breaking, if you can imagine that. Therefore, I must find someplace unknown where I could hope to tap into history totally newfound, and I also worked steadily on a true scanner, hoping to produce a way for it also to make a permanent record of what it draws from the past."

That the Zacathan believed in what he was saying was very apparent. That it could be done—well, Jofre would want to see for himself. Meanwhile it was more important to know who might be the enemy.