around big brains. If so, however, the owners looked nothing like men.
Or angels, for that matter. Nothing! The most anthropoid
reconstruction I've seen shows a kind of two-legged crocagator.
"Wait, let me finish. The stories about the Outlings-oh, I've heard them
too, plenty of them. I believed them when I was a kid -the stories tell
how there're different kinds, some winged, some not, some half human,
some completely human except maybe for being too handsome-It's
fairyland from ancient Earth all over again. Isn't it? I got interested
once and dug into the Heritage
Library microfiles, and be damned if I didn't find almost the identical
yarns, told by peasants centuries before spaceflight.
"None of it squares with the scanty relics we have, if they are relics, or
with the fact that no area the size of Arctica could spawn a dozen
different intelligent species, or . . . hellfire, man, with the way your
common sense tells you aborigines would behave when humans arrived!"
Sherrinford nodded. "Yes, yes," he said. "I'm less sure than you that the
common sense of nonhuman beings is precisely like our own. I've seen
so much variation within mankind. But, granted, your arguments are
strong. Roland's too few scientists have more pressing tasks than
tracking down the origins of what is, as you put it, a revived medieval
superstition."
He cradled his pipe bowl in both hands and peered into the tiny hearth of
it. "Perhaps what interests me most," he said softly, "is why-across that
gap of centuries, across a barrier of machine civilization and its utterly
antagonistic world view-no continuity of tradition whatsoever-why have
hardheaded, technologically organized, reasonably well-educated
colonists here brought back from its grave a belief in the Old Folk'"
"I suppose eventually, if the University ever does develop the
psychology department they keep talking about, I suppose eventually
somebody will get a thesis out of your question." Dawson spoke in a
jagged voice, and he gulped when Sherrinford replied:
"I propose to begin now. In Commissioner Hauch Land, since that's
where the latest incident occurred. Where can I rent a vehicle?"
"Uh, might be hard to do-"
"Come, come. Tenderfoot or not, I know better. In an economy of
scarcity, few people own heavy equipment. But since it's needed, it can
always be rented. I want a camper bus with a ground-effect drive suitable
for every kind of terrain. And I want certain equipment installed which
I've brought along, and the top canopy section replaced by a gun turret
controllable from the driver's seat. But I'll supply the weapons. Besides
rifles and pistols
of my own, I've arranged to borrow some artillery from Christmas
Landing's police arsenal."
"Hoy? Are you genuinely intending to make ready for . . . a war . . .
against a myth?"
"Let's say I'm taking out insurance, which isn't terribly expensive,
against a remote possibility. Now, besides the bus, what about a light
aircraft carried piggyback for use in surveys?"
"No." Dawson sounded more positive than hitherto. "That's asking for
disaster. We can have you flown to a base camp in a large plane when
the weather report's exactly right. But the pilot will have to fly back at
once, before the weather turns wrong again. Meteorology's
underdeveloped on Roland; the air's especially treacherous this time of
year, and we're not tooled up to produce aircraft that can outlive every
surprise." He drew breath. "Have you no idea of how fast a whirly-whirly
can hit, or what size hailstones might strike from a clear sky, or-P Once
you're there, man, you stick to the ground." He hesitated. "That's an
important reason our information is so scanty about the outway and its
settlers are so isolated."
Sherrinford laughed ruefully. "Well, I suppose if details are what I'm
after, I must creep along anyway."
"You'll waste a lot of time," Dawson said. "Not to mention your client's
money. Listen, I can't forbid you to chase shadows, but-"
The discussion went on for almost an hour. When the screen finally
blanked, Sherrinford rose, stretched and walked toward Barbro. She
noticed anew his peculiar gait. He had come from a planet with a fourth
again of Earth's gravitational drag, to one where weight was less than
half Terrestrial. She wondered if he had flying dreams.
"I apologize for shuffling you off like that," he said. "I didn't expect
to reach him at once. He was quite truthful about how busy he is. But
having made contact, I didn't want to remind him overmuch of you. He
can dismiss my project as a futile fantasy which I'll soon give- up. But he
might have frozen completely, might even have put up obstacles before
us, if he'd realized
through you how determined we are."
"Why should he care?" she asked in her bitterness.
"Fear of consequences, the worse because it is unadmitted fear of
consequences, the more terrifying because they are unguessable."
Sherrinford's gaze went to the screen, and thence out the window to
the aurora pulsing in glacial blue and white immensely far overhead. "I
suppose you saw I was talking to a frightened man. Down underneath
his conventionality and scoffing, he. believes in the Outlings-oh, yes,
he believes."
The feet of Mistherd flew over yerba and outpaced windblown
driftweed. Beside him, black and misshapen, hulked Nagrim the nicor,
whose earthquake weight left a swath of crushed plants. Behind,
luminous blossoms of a firethorn shone through the twining, trailing
outlines of Morgarel the wraith.
Here Cloudmoor rose in a surf of hills and thickets. The air lay quiet,
now and then carrying the distance-muted howl of a beast. It was
darker than usual at winterbirth, the moons being down and aurora a
wan flicker above the mountains on the northern world edge. But this
made the stars keen, and their numbers crowded heaven, and Ghost
Road shone among them as if it, like the leafage beneath, were paved
with dew.
"Yonder!" bawled Nagrim. All four of his arms pointed. The party had
topped a ridge. Far off glimmered a spark. "Noah, hoah! Ull we right
off stamp dem flat, or pluck derv apart slow?"
We shall do nothing of the sort, bonebrain, Morgarel's answer slid
through their heads. Not unless they attack us, and they will not unless
we make them aware of us, and her command is that we spy out their
purposes.
"Gr-r-rum-m-m. I know deir aim. Cut down trees, stick plows in land,
sow deir cursed seed in de clods and in deir shes. 'Less we drive dem
into de bitterwater, and soon, soon, dey'll wax too strong for us."
"Not too strong for the Queen!" Mistherd protested, shocked.
Yet they do have new powers, it seems, Morgarel reminded
him. Carefully must we probe them.
"Den carefully can we step on dem?" asked Nagrim.
The question woke a grin out of Mistherd's own uneasiness. He slapped
the scaly back. "Don't talk, you," he said. "It hurts my ears. Nor
; think; that hurts your head. Come, run!"
Ease yourself, Morgarel scolded. You have too much life in you,
human-born.
Mistherd made a face at the wraith, but obeyed to the extent of
slowing down and picking his way through what cover the country
afforded. For he traveled on behalf of the Fairest, to learn what had
brought a pair of mortals questing hither.
Did they seek that boy whom Ayoch stole? (He continued to weep for
his mother, though less and less often as the marvels of Carheddin
entered him.) Perhaps. A birdcraft had left them and their car at the
now-abandoned campsite, from which they had followed an outward
spiral. But when no trace of the cub had appeared inside a reasonable
distance, they did not call to be flown home. And this wasn't because
weather forbade the farspeaker waves to travel, as was frequently the
case. No, instead the couple set off toward the mountains of
Moonhorn. Their course would take them past a few outlying invader
steadings and on into realms untrodden by their race.
So this was no ordinary survey. Then what was it?
Mistherd understood now why she who reigned had made her adopted
mortal children learn, or retain, the clumsy language of their
forebears. He had hated that drill, wholly foreign to Dweller ways. Of
course, you obeyed her, and in time you saw how wise she had been ....
-
Presently he left Nagrim behind a rock-the nicor would only be useful
in a fight-and crawled from bush to bush until he lay within man-
lengths of the humans. A rainplant drooped over him, leaves soft on
his bare skin, and clothed him in darkness. Morgarel floated to the
crown of a shiverleaf, whose unrest would better conceal his flimsy
shape. He'd not be much help either. And that was the most
troublous, the almost appalling thing here. Wraiths
were among those who could not just sense and send thoughts, but cast
illusions. Morgarel had reported that this time his power seemed to
rebound off an invisible cold wall around the car.
Otherwise the male and female had set up no guardian engines and
kept no dogs. Belike they supposed none would be needed, since they
slept in the long vehicle which bore them. But such contempt of the
Queen's strength could not be tolerated, could it?
Metal sheened faintly by the light of their campfire. They sat on
either side, wrapped in coats against a coolness that Mistherd, naked,
found mild. The male drank smoke. The female stared past him into a
dusk which her flame-dazzled eyes must see as thick gloom. The
dancing glow brought her vividly forth. Yes, to judge from Ayoch's
tale, she was the dam of the new cub.
Ayoch had wanted to come too, but the Wonderful One forbade.
Pooks couldn't hold still long enough for such a mission.
The man sucked on his pipe. His cheeks thus pulled into shadow while
the light flickered across nose and brow, he looked disquietingly like a
shearbill about to stoop on prey.
'-No, I tell you again, Barbro, I have no theories," he was saying.
"When facts are insufficient, theorizing is ridiculous at best, misleading
at worst."
"Still, you must have some idea of what you're doing," she said. It was
plain that they had threshed this out often before. No Dweller could be
as persistent as she or as patient as he. "That gear you packed-that
generator you keep running-"
"I have a working hypothesis or two, which suggested what equipment
I ought to take."
"Why won't you tell me what the hypotheses are?"
"They themselves indicate that that might be inadvisable at the
present time. I'm still feeling my way into the labyrinth. And I haven't
had a chance yet to hook everything up. In fact, we're really only
protected against so-called telepathic influence-"
"What?" She started. "Do you mean . . . those legends about how they
can read minds too . . ." Her words trailed off and her gaze sought the
darkness beyond his shoulders.
He leaned forward. His tone lost its clipped rapidity, grew earnest and
soft. "Barbro, you're racking yourself to pieces. Which is no help to
Jimmy if he's alive, the more so when you may well be badly needed
later on. We've a long trek before us, and you'd better settle into it."
She nodded jerkily and caught her lip between her teeth for a moment
before she answered, -'I'm trying."
He smiled around his pipe. "I expect you'll succeed. You don't strike
me as a quitter or a whiner or an enjoyer of misery."
She dropped a hand to the pistol at her belt. Her voice changed; it
came out of her throat like knife from sheath. "When we find them,
they'll know what I am. What humans are."
"Put anger aside also," the man urged. "We can't afford emotions. If
the Outlings are real, as I told you I'm provisionally assuming, they're
fighting for their homes." After a short stillness he added: "I like to
think that if the first explorers had found live natives, men would not
have colonized Roland. But too late now. We can't go back if we
wanted to. It's a bitter-end struggle, against an enemy so crafty that
he's even hidden from us the fact that he is waging war."
"Is he? I mean, skulking, kidnapping an occasional child-"
"That's part of my hypothesis. I suspect those aren't harassments,
they're tactics employed in a chillingly subtle strategy."
The fire sputtered and sparked. The man smoked awhile, brooding,
until he went on:
"I didn't want to raise your hopes or excite you unduly while you had
to wait on me, first in Christmas Landing, then in Portolondon.
Afterward we were busy satisfying ourselves that Jimmy had been
taken further from camp than he could have wandered before
collapsing. So I'm only now telling you how thoroughly I studied
available material on the . . . Old Folk. Besides, at first I did it on the
principle of eliminating every imaginable possibility, however absurd. I
expected no result other than final disproof. But I went through
everything, relics, analyses, histories, journalistic accounts,
monographs; I talked to outwayers who happened to be
in town and to what scientists we have who've taken any interest in
the matter. I'm a quick study. I Hatter myself I became as expert as
anyone-though God knows there's little to be expert on. Furthermore,
I, a comparative stranger to Roland, maybe looked on the problem
with fresh eyes. And a pattern emerged for me.
"If the aborigines had become extinct, why hadn't they left more
remnants? Arctica isn't enormous, and it's fertile for Rolandic life. It
ought to have supported a population whose artifacts ought to have
accumulated over millennia. I've read that on Earth, literally tens of
thousands of paleolithic hand axes were found, more by chance than
archaeology.
"Very well. Suppose the relics and fossils were deliberately removed,
between the time the last survey party left and the first colonizing
ships arrived. I did find some support for that idea in the diaries of the
original explorers. They were too pr
eoccupied with checking the
habitability of the planet to make catalogues of primitive monuments.
However, the remarks they wrote down indicate they saw much more
than later arrivals did. Suppose what we have found is just what the
removers overlooked or didn't get around to.
"That argues a sophisticated mentality, thinking in long-range terms,
doesn't it? Which in turn argues that the Old Folk were not mere
hunters or neolithic farmers."
"But nobody ever saw buildings or machines or any such thing," Barbro
objected.
"No. Most likely the natives didn't go through our kind of metallurgic-
industrial evolution. I can conceive of other paths to take. Their full-
Hedged civilization might have begun, rather than ended, in biological
science and technology. It might have developed potentialities of the
nervous system, which might be greater in their species than in man.
We have those abilities to some degree ourselves, you realize. A
dowser, for instance, actually senses variations in the local magnetic
field caused by a water table. However, in us, these talents are
maddeningly rare and tricky. So we took our business elsewhere. Who
needs to be a
telepath, say, when he has a visiphone? The Old Folk may have seen it
the other way around. The artifacts of their civilization may have
been, may still be unrecognizable to men."
"They could have identified themselves to the men, though," Barbro
said. "Why didn't they?"
"I can imagine any number of reasons. As, they could have had a bad