The Forerunner Factor Read Online Free PDF

keeping well within it shade. As a Burrower, she had long since learned to stifle discomfort herself.
    Opening her packet of food, she ate, sharing bites with Zass who was too sleepy to eat much and only wanted to be left alone. As she drank sparingly, Simsa’s other hand sought within her coat for that packet of jewelry she had stowed in the safest keeping she knew. She had prudently kept two of the best picture fragments belonging to Ferwar. Those would be her come-on. Then, if she could judge the interest of any those attracted, she could produce the cuff armlet, which to her own valuing was the least important of her other wares.
    The pieces of stone she brushed off with the edge of her sleeve and set out just beyond her knee near the ramp. One was the likeness of some kind of a winged creature, time-worn so that only the general outline could be seen. The stone on which it had been engraved was a light green, veined with yellow—the veins having been cleverly used by the unknown artist to outline wings and form a crest for the figure. Simsa had never seen such stone hereabouts, or even in the city. However, it might have traveled many days from the place where men had freed it from the earth and fashioned it to their fancy.
    Beside it, the other piece was in direct contrast for it was a velvety black, and it was not just a tracing upon a flat piece, but worked into the crouching form of an animal with one paw upraised, claws spread—though several of those had been broken off. Only half of the head remained also and that was time-worn so that one could see only a thick mane, the splintered stub of what must have been an ear, and a portion of face. For face it was, more than a beast’s mask, having an eye, a nose, and a bit of mouth which was not too far different from her own.
    The substance of the stone was somehow pleasant to the touch. Simsa discovered that rubbing fingers back and forth across it gave one the same feeling as one might have caressing finely woven material. This she had felt when she had been able to hold and finger lovingly a fragment of some rich fabric found among the rags the Old One had dealt in as long as she could still hobble about raiding the dumps and trash places of the upper town.
    Now Simsa sat, rubbing her black stone, thinking and planning. Though now even her thoughts came more slowly; she had to make an effort not to drift into drowsiness. Even her long-cultivated patience was beginning to wear thin by late afternoon. The cargo had come out of the ship, been transported city-wards.
    Along the way leading from ramp to ship, people were stirring, shifting their bits and pieces, hoping to catch the eye more quickly with this adjustment or that. Simsa stood up, moving about, loosening her legs from their cramped position. She could see the sky turning orange red and that worried her. If the crewmen did not come soon, dusk would fall when they came and she would have no side lamp to show her wares. This would be a race between the setting of the sun and the ways of the starmen, a race which could disappoint her after all.
    Zass poked her head from out of the bundle nest. The sensitive antennae on the furred head were half uncurled, an action which surprised the girl a little, for she would have believed that the subdued roar of the alerting market would have been too much for the zorsal. Now she noted that the creature’s head had swung part way around so that it faced, not the line of merchants with the ship, but rather the ramp itself as that same small head was forced up and back to allow the creature as much seeing vantage in that direction as she could achieve. On impulse, the girl swept Zass unceremoniously out of her bundle hiding place and brought the zorsal once more to perch on her shoulder.
    Still the head was turned back and up towards the city, a certain intensity of that small body about which the wings were gathered like a night cloak developed as if she were about to be