Eye of Cat Part 14

Anyway, there was a group of us and we were tracking the thing that's tracking Singer. Now the others want to quit, but I won't. That's why I want your help."

The rain continued as he talked. When the callbox buzzed, Yellowcloud switched it off. Later he got them coffee.

Running now, into the bowels of the earth, it seemed.

Darker and darker. Soon he must slow his pace. The world

had almost completely faded about him, save for the sounds - of wind, water, his drumming feet. Slow now. Yes.

Now.

Ahead. Something in that stand of trees. Not moving. A light.

He advanced cautiously.

It appeared to be - But no. That was impossible. Yet.

There it was. A trip-box. He was positive that it was against regulations to install one in the canyon.

He moved nearer. It certainly looked like a trip-box, there among the trees. He advanced and looked inside.

A strange one, though. No slot for the credit strip. No way to punch coordinates. He entered and studied it more closely. Just an odd red-and-white-flecked b.u.t.ton. Without thinking, he moved his thumb forward and pushed it.

A mantle of rainbows swirled before his eyes and was gone. He looked inside. Nothing had changed. He had not been transported anywhere. Yet - A pale light suffused the canyon now, as if a full moon hung overhead. But there was no moon.

He looked again at the box, and for the first time saw the sight on its side. SPIRIT WORLD, it said. He shrugged and walked away from it. Save for the light, nothing seemed altered.

After some twenty paces, he turned and looked back. The box was gone. The stand of trees stood silvery to his rear, empty of any unnatural presence. To his right, the water gleamed in its rippling progress. The rain which fell into it seemed to be descending in slow motion, more a full-bodied mist than a downpour. And the next flash of lightning seemed a stylized inscription on the heavens.

Plainly marked before him now was the trail he must follow. He set his foot upon it and the wind chanted a staccato song of guidance as he went.

He moved quickly, approaching a bend in the canyon; more slowly then, as his slope steepened and narrowed. He dropped to a wider shelf as his way curved, hurried again as he followed it.

As he made the turn, he saw outlined to his right, ahead, a human figure standing on the opposite bank of the stream, at the very tip of a raised spit of land which projected out into the water. It was a man, and he seemed somehow familiar, and he had a kind of light about him which Billy found disturbing.

He slowed as he drew nearer, for the man was staring directly at him. For a moment, he was not certain how to address him, for he could not recall the circ.u.mstances of their acquaintance, and a meeting here struck him as pecu- liar. Then suddenly he remembered, but by then the other had already greeted him.

He halted and acknowledged the call.

"You are far from home," he said then, "from where I met you just the other day, in the mountains, herding sheep."

"Yes, I am," the other replied, "for I died that same evening."

A chill came across the back of Billy's neck.

"I did nothing to you," he said. "Why do you return to trouble me?"

"I have not returned to trouble you. In fact, I have not returned at all. It is you who have found your way to this place. That makes it different. I will do you no harm."

"I do not understand."

"I told you to follow a twisted way," the old singer said, "and I see that you have. Very twisted. That is good."

"Not entirely," Billy told him. "My chindi is still at my back."

"Your chindi turned right instead of left, following the false trail into Black Rock Canyon. You are still safe for a time."

"That's something, anyway," Billy said. "Maybe I can do it again."

"Perhaps. But what is it exactly that you are doing?"

"I am following a trail."

"And it brought you here. Do you think that we have met by accident?"

"I guess not. Do you know why we met?"

"I know only that I would like to teach you an old song of power."

"That's fine. I'll take all the help I can get," said Billy, glancing back along the way. "I hope it's not a real long one, though."

"It is not," the old singer told him. "Listen carefully now, for I can only sing it three times for you. To sing it four times is to make it work."

"Yes."

"Very well. Here is the song...."

The old man began chanting a song of the calling of Ikne'etso, which Billy followed, understood and had learned

by the third time he heard it. When the singer was finished he thanked him, and then asked, "When should I use this song?"

"You will know," the other answered. "Follow your twisted way now."

Billy bade him good-bye and continued along the northern slope. He considered looking back, but this time he did not do it. He trekked through the sparkling canyon and images of other worlds and of his life in cities rose and mingled with those about him until it seemed as if his entire life was being melted down and stirred together here. But all of the a.s.so- ciated feelings were also swirled together so that it was an emotional white noise which surrounded him.

He pa.s.sed a crowd of standing stones and they all seemed to have faces, their mouths open, singing windsongs. They were all stationary, but at the far end of the group something came forward out of darkness.

It was a man, a very familiar man, who stood leaning against the last windsinger, smiling. He was garbed accord- ing to the latest fas.h.i.+on, his hair was styled, his hands well manicured.

"h.e.l.lo, Billy," he said in English, and the voice was his own.

He saw then that the man was himself, as he could have been had he never come back to this place.

"That's right. I am your shadow," the other said. "I am the part of yourself you chose to neglect, to thrust aside when you elected to return to the blanket because you were afraid of being me."

"Would I have liked being you?"

The other shrugged.

"I think so. Time and chance, that's all. You and Dora would eventually have moved to a city after you'd proved to your own satisfaction how free you'd become. You took a chance and failed. If you'd succeeded you would have come this route. Time and chance. Eight inches of s.p.a.ce. Such is the stuff lives are bent by."

"You are saying that if I'd proved how free I had become I still wouldn't really have been free?"

"What's free?" said the other, a faint green light beginning to play about his head. "To travel all good paths, I suppose.

And you restricted yourself. I am a way that you did not go, an important way. I might have been a part of you, a saving part, but you slighted me in your pride that you knew best."

He smiled again, and Billy saw that he had grown fangs.

"I know you," Billy said then. "You are my chindi, my real chindi, aren't you?"

"And if I am," the other said, "and if you think me evil, you see me so for all of the wrong reasons. I am your negative self. Not better, not worse, only unrealized. You summoned me a long time ago by running from a part of yourself. You cannot destroy a negation."

"Let's find out," Billy said, and he raised the laser snub- gun and triggered it.

The flash of light pa.s.sed through his double with no visible effect.

"That is not the way to deal with me," said the other.

"Then the h.e.l.l with you! Why should I deal with you at all?"

"Because I can destroy you."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"I am not quite strong enough yet. So keep running, keep regressing into the primitive and I will grow in strength as you do. Then, when we meet again..." The other dropped suddenly to all fours and took on the semblance of Cat, single eye glistening, "... I will be your adversary by any name."

Billy drew the tazer and fired it. It vanished within the other's body, and the other became his double again and rose, lunging at him, the dart and cable falling to the ground and rewinding automatically.

Billy swung his left fist and it seemed to connect with something. His double fell back upon the ground. Billy turned and began running.

"Yes, flee. Give me strength," it called out after him.

When he looked back, Billy saw only a faint greenish glow near the place of the windsingers. He continued to hurry, until it vanished with another turning of the way. The voices of the windsingers faded. He slowed again.

The canyon widened once more; the stream was broader and flowed more slowly. He seemed to see distorted faces, both human and animal, within the water.

He had felt himself the object of scrutiny for some time now. But the feeling was growing stronger, and he cast about, seeking its source among fugitive forms amid shadow and water.

Cat?

No reply, which could mean anything. But no broadcast

apprehensions either - unless they came on only to be lost amid the emotional turbulence.

Cat? If it is you, let's have it out. Any time now. I'm ready whenever you are.

Then he pa.s.sed a sharp projection of the canyon wall and he knew that it was not Cat whose presence he had felt. For now he beheld the strange ent.i.ty which regarded him, and its appearance meshed with the sensation.

It looked like a giant totem pole. His people had never made totem poles. They were a thing of the people of the Northwest. Yet this one seemed somehow appropriate to the moment if incongruous to the place. It towered, and it bore four faces - and possibly a shadowy fifth, at the very top.

There were the countenances of two women, one heavy- featured, one lean, and two men, one black and one white.

And above them it seemed that a smiling masculine face hovered, smokelike. All of their eyes were fixed upon him, and he knew that he beheld no carving but a thing alive.

"Billy Blackhorse Singer," a neuter-gendered voice ad- dressed him.

"I hear you," he replied.

"You must halt your journey here," it stated.

"Why?" he asked.

"Your mission has been accomplished. You have nothing to gain by further flight."

"Who are you?" he said.

"We are your guardian spirits. We wish to preserve you from your pursuer. Climb the wall here. Wait at the top. You will be met there after a time and borne to safety."

Billy's gaze s.h.i.+fted away from the spirit tower to regard '

the ground at his feet and the prospect before him.

"But I still see my trail out within this canyon," he said finally. "I should not depart it here."

"It is a false trail."

"No," he said. "This much I know: I must follow it to its end."

"That way lies death."

He was silent again for a time. Then, Still must I follow it," he said. "Some things are more important than others.