Free Breed to Come by Andre Norton Page A

outerroom and looked through a wall (for it was the truththat here you could see through certain walls). Within was a pallet and on it lay the tribesman.

    The lighting in the room differed from that whereFurtig stood with Liliha. Also it rippled just as windrippled field grass. Furtig could find no explanation ofwhat he saw there. There was light, and it moved inwaves washing back and forth across Foskatt.
    The wounded warrior's eyes were closed. His chestrose and fell as if he slept, rested comfortably withoutpain or dreams. His wounded leg was no longerbloody, the fur matted with clots. A scar had begun toform over the slash.
    Furtig, knowing how it might have gone had Foskatt lain so in the caves, how many died from lesserwounds in spite of the best tending their clans peoplecould give them, drew a long breath. It was but onemore of the wonders he had been shown, yet to him,because he could best appreciate the results, it wasone of the most awesome.
    "This can be done for the coughing sickness?" heasked. He had set his two hands flat on the surface ofthat see-through wall; pushed so close even his nosetouched it.
    "This can be done for any illness," Liliha told him,"as well as most hurts. There is only one it cannotcure so."
    "That being?" A certain shading of her voice hadmade him turn his head to look at her. For the firsttime he could see uneasiness in her expression, the superiority gone.
    "Gammage found a thing of the Demons. It spoutsa mist—and when that meets flesh—" She shuddered."It is the worst handwork of the Demons we haveseen. There is no halting what happens to one unfortunate enough to be caught in the mist." She shiveredagain. "It is not even to be thought upon!
    Gammagehad it destroyed!"
    "Ah, and what do you think now of the lairs. Furtig?"
    Gammage stood behind them. His sudden appearances—how did the Ancestor manage thus to arrivewithout warning?
    "They are full of marvels."
    "Marvels upon marvels," the Ancestor agreed."And we have hardly touched the edge of what is stored here! Given time, just given time—" Oncemore he stared at the wall, as if his thoughts set abarrier between him and those he addressed.
    "What I do not understand"—Furtig dared now tobreak in upon that withdrawal—"is why, when theDemons knew so much, they came to such an end."
    Gammage looked at him, his gray frost-furred facealight.
    "It was because they were greedy; they took andtook, from the air, the earth, the water. And whenthey realized that they had taken too much and triedto return it, they were too late. Some went—we cannot yet read their records well enough to know how orwhere. They seem to have flown into the sky—"
    "Like birds? But they were not winged, were they?Those I have seen represented..."

    "Just so," Gammage agreed briskly. "But we havegood evidence that they had some means of flight. So,a number of them flew away. Of those who were left—well, it seems that they worked very hard and fast tofind some way of restoring the land. One of their attempted remedies became instead their doom. Wehave found two records of that.
    "What developed was an illness like our coughingsickness. Some it killed at once. Others—it alteredtheir minds so they became like those Barkers whofoam at the mouth and tear madly at their own kin.But with all it had one sure effect: They bore no moreyounglings.
    "Also—" Gammage hesitated as if what he wouldsay now was an important thing, a wise utterance ofan Elder. "This sickness had another effect. For itmade us, the People, the Barkers, the Tusked Ones,even the Rattons, what we are.
    "This is the thing we have learned, Furtig. We wereonce like the rabbits, the deer, the wild cattle we huntfor food. But we had some contact with the Demons.There is good evidence that some of us lived withthem here in the lairs, and that"—his voice grew deeper, closer to a warrior's growl—"that they usedus to try out their discoveries, so we were their servants to be used, killed, hurt,