"Would you prefer her? I won the toss, but I'll fetch her if you like."

"Lena! What-can I do for you?"

Dwer made out a white glint-her rare smile.

"Well, you could invite me in from the cold." Her voice sounded soft, almost shy.

Lena was buxom and sanguinely female, yet soft and shy were two words Dwer had never linked with her before. "Uh-sure. . . ." Am I still dreaming? he wondered as she slid alongside, strong hands working to loosen his clothes. Her smooth skin seemed to blaze with ardent heat.

I must be. The Lena I know never smelled this good.

"You're all knotted up," she commented, kneading his neck and back with uncanny, forceful accuracy. At first, Dwer's gasps came from released muscle strain. But Lena somehow also made each jab or digging twist of her calloused fingers seem feminine, erotic.

She got halfway through the ma.s.sage before Dwer pa.s.sed his limit of self-control and turned over to gently but resolutely reverse their positions, taking her beneath him, repaying her vitality with a vigor that welled from weeks of pent-up" tension. h.o.a.rded worry and fatigue seemed to explode into the air, into the forest, into her as she clutched and sighed, pulling him closer.

After .she slipped away, he pondered muzzily-Lena thinks I may die, since my job is to be up front in any fight. This might be the last . . . the only chance. . . .

Dwer drifted into a tranquil, dreamless repose-a slumber so blank and relaxing that he actually felt rested by the time another warm body slid into the bedroll next to him. By then, his unconscious had worked it out, crediting the women with ultimate pragmatism.

Danel will probably be around later, so it makes sense to use whatever I have to give, before it's gone.

It wasn't his place to judge the women. Theirs was the harder job, here in the wilderness. His tasks were simple-to hunt, fight, and if need be, to die. Theirs was to go on, whatever it took.

Dwer did not even have to rouse all the way. Nor did Jenin seem offended that his body performed but half awake. There were all sorts of duties to fulfill these days. If he was going to keep up, he would simply have to catch what rest he could.

Dwer woke to find it already a midura past midnight. Though he felt much better now, he had to fight a languid lethargy to get dressed and check his gear-the bow and quiver, a compa.s.s, sketch pad, and hip canteen-then stop by the dim coals to pluck the leaf-wrapped package Jenin left for him each night, the one decent meal he would eat while away.

For most of his adult life he had traveled alone, relishing peace and solitude. Yet, he had to admit the attractions of being part of a team, a community. Perhaps, under Ozawa's guidance, they might come to feel like family.

Would that take some of the bitter sting out of recalling the life and loved ones they had left behind, in the graceful forests of the Slope?

Dwer was about to head off, following the urrish track farther in the direction of the rising moons, when a soft sound made him pause. Someone was awake and talking. Yet he had pa.s.sed both women, snoring quietly and (he liked to imagine) happily. Dwer slipped the bow off his shoulder, moving toward the low speech sounds, more curious .than edgy. Soon he recognized the murmured whisper.

Of course it was Danel. But who was the sage talking to?

Beyond the bole of a large tree, Dwer peered into a small clearing where satiny moonlight spilled over an unlikely pair. Danel was kneeling low to face the little black creature called Mudfoot. Dwer couldn't make out words, but judging from tone and inflection, Ozawa was trying to ask it questions, in one language after another.

The noor responded by licking itself, then glancing briefly toward Dwer,' standing in the shadows. When Ozawa switched to GalTwo, Mudfoot grinned-then twisted to bite an itch on one shoulder. When the beast turned back, it was to answer the sage with a gaping yawn.

Danel let out a soft sigh, as if he had expected to fail but felt it worth an effort.

What effort? Dwer wondered. Was the sage seeking magical aid, as ignorant lowlanders sometimes tried to do, treating noor like sprites in some fairy tale? Did Ozawa hope to tame Mudfoot, the way hoon sailors did, as agile helpers on the river? Few nonhoon had ever managed that feat. But even if it worked, what use was one noor a.s.sistant? Or would Dwer's next a.s.signment-after dealing with urrish sooners and then Rety's band-be to run back and collect more of Mudfoot's kind?

That made no sense. If by some miracle the Commons survived, word would be sent calling them all home. If the worst happened, they were to stay as far from the Slope as possible.

Well, Danel will tell me what he wants me to know. I just hope this doesn't mean he's gone crazy.

Dwer crept away and found the urrish trail. He set off at a lope that soon strained forward, pulling him with unwilled, eagerness to see what lay beyond the next shadowy rise. For the first time in days, Dwer felt whole and strong. It wasn't that all worries had vanished. Existence was still a frail, perilous thing, all too easily lost. Still, for this narrow stretch of time he pounded onward, feeling vibrantly alive.

Rety THE DREAM ALWAYS ENDED THE SAME WAY, JUST before she woke shivering, clutching a soft blanket to her breast.

She dreamed about the bird.

Not as it appeared the last time she had seen it-headless, spread across Rann's laboratory bench in the buried station-but as she recalled first glimpsing the strange thing. Vivid in motion, with plumage like glossy forest leaves, alert and l.u.s.trous in a way that seemed to stroke her soul.

As a child she had loved to watch native birds, staring for hours at their swooping dives, envying their freedom of the air, their liberty to take wing, leaving their troubles far behind. Then one day Ja.s.s returned from a long journey to the south, bragging about all the beasts he had shot. One had been a fantastic flying thing that they took by surprise as it emerged from a tidal marsh. It barely got away after an arrow tore one wing, flapping off toward the northwest, leaving behind a feather harder than stone.

That very night, risking awful punishment, she stole the stiff metal fragment from the tent where the hunters snored, and with a pack of stolen food she ran off, seeking this fabled wonder for herself. As luck had it, she guessed right and crossed its path, spotting the fluttering creature as it labored onward with short, gliding bounds. In a throat-catching instant of recognition, Rety knew the bird was like her-wounded by the same man's taste for senseless violence.

Watching it hop-glide ever westward, never resting, she knew they shared one more trait. Persistence.

She wanted to catch up with it, to heal it, talk to it. To learn its source of power. To help it reach its goal. To help find its home. But even disabled, the bird soon outdistanced her. For a heart-aching time, she thought she had lost it forever . . .

At that point of harsh emotion, without transition, the dream shifted to another scene. Suddenly, the bird was right in front of her, closer than ever, fluttering inside a jeweled cage, dodging a mist of golden, cloying drops . . . then cowering away from searing knives of flame!

Frustration choked Rety, unable to give aid. Unable to save it.

Finally, when all seemed lost, the bird did as Rety herself would have done. It lashed out with desperate strength, dying to bring down its oppressor, the agent of its torment.

For several nights in a row the dream ended the same way, with someone's insistent arms holding her back in shameful safety while the bird fired its own head upward toward a hovering, shadowy form. A dark rival with dangling, lethal limbs.

It seemed revenge was going to be another of those things that didn't turn out quite the same in real life as she'd imagined.

For one thing, in her heart, Rety never reckoned on Ja.s.s taking pain so well.

The hunter lay strapped to a couch inside the scout aircraft, his ruggedly handsome features twisting as Kunn kept the promise he had made. A promise Rety regretted a bit more each time Ja.s.s clamped back another moan, choking it behind gritted teeth.

Who would've thought he'd turn out to be brave, she pondered, recalling all the times Ja.s.s used to brag, bl.u.s.ter, and hara.s.s other members of the tribe. Bullies were supposed to be cowards, or so one of the tribe's aged grandfathers used to mutter when he was sure the young hunters wouldn't hear. Too bad the old geep would never know how wrong he'd been. That battered patriarch had died during the months since Rety left these hills.

She tried steeling her heart during the contest of wills between Kunn and Ja.s.s, one Ja.s.s was bound to lose. You want to find out where the bird came from, don't you? she asked herself. Anyway, don't Ja.s.s deserve everything he's getting? Ain't his own stubborn-headedness bringing this on himself?

Well, in truth, Rety had played a role in stiffening the hunter's resistance, thus extending his torment. Kunn's patient, insistent questions alternated with grunts of pure glaverlike obstinacy from Ja.s.s, sweating and contorting under jolts applied by Kunn's robot partner.

When she could take no more without getting sick, Rety silently slipped out the hatch. If anything changed, the pilot could call her on the tiny comm b.u.t.ton the sky-humans had installed under.the skin near her right ear.

She set off toward the campsite, trying to appear casual in case any sooners watched from the shrubby undergrowth.

That was how she thought of them. Sooners. Savages. No different in kind from those puffed-up barbarians on the Slope, who thought themselves so civilized with their fancy books but who were still little more than half-animals, trapped on a dirty world they could never leave. To a sky-being like herself, they were all the same, whichever side of the Rimmers they led their dirt-scratching lives.

She smelled the camp before reaching it. A familiar musty blend of wood smoke, excrement, and poorly tanned hides, all mixed with a sulfury pungence rising from the steam pools that always drew the tribe here this time of year-a fact that had made it easy to guide Kunn to this pocket canyon, high in the Gray Hills. Rety paused halfway to the campsite, smoothing down the sleek jumpsuit Ling had given her, soon after she became the first Jijoan to enter the underground station, that wonderland of luxuries and bright marvels. Ling had also bathed Rety, treated her scalp, and applied potions and rays to leave her feeling cleaner, stronger, even taller than before. Only the livid scar on one side of her face still marred the mirror's transformed image, and that would be tended, she was a.s.sured, when they all went "home."

My home too, Rety mused, resuming a brisk pace until all moaning traces of the hunter's torment faded behind her. She drove out memory of Ja.s.s's squirming agony by calling to mind those images the sky-foursome had shown her-of a splendid, jewellike city, tucked inside a steep-walled valley. A city of fairy towers and floating castles, where one lucky branch of humanity lived with their beloved patrons, the wise, benevolent Rothen.

That part didn't quite appeal to her-this business of having masters who told you what to do. Nor did the Rothen themselves, when she met the two living aboard the station, who seemed too pretty and prim, too smugly happy, by far. But then, if Ling and Besh loved them, she supposed she could get used to that idea too. Anyway, Rety was willing to do or put up with anything to reach that city of lights.

I always knew I belonged someplace else, she thought, rounding a bend in the forest. Not here. Not in a place like this.

Before her stretched a debris-strewn clearing dotted by half a dozen ragged shelters-animal hides thrown over rows of bent saplings-all cl.u.s.tered round a cook fire where soot-smudged figures hunched over a carca.s.s. Tonight's meal. A donkey with a neat hole burned through its heart. A gift, courtesy of Kunn's handy hunter-killer robot.

People dressed in poorly tanned skins moved about at ch.o.r.es or simply slouched through the middle of the day. Their complexions were filthy. Most had matted hair, and they stank. After meeting the Slopies-and then Ling and Besh-it was hard to picture these savages as the same race as herself, let alone her own tribe.

Several male figures loafed near a makeshift pen where the new prisoners huddled, having barely moved since they were herded into camp a couple of nights back. Some of the men chopped at tree stumps with machetes swiped from the newcomers' supplies, marveling at the keen blades of Buyur metal. But the men kept well away from the pile of crates Kunn had forbidden them to touch, awaiting his decision which to destroy.

A handful of boys straddled a new fence of laser-split logs, pa.s.sing the time by spitting, then laughing as angry complaints rose from the captives.

Shouldn't let 'em do that, Rety thought. Even if the outlanders are nosy fools who oughtn't have come.

Kunn had a.s.signed her the task of finding out what brought the prisoners to these parts, violating their own sacred law. But Rety felt reluctant, even disgusted.

Dawdling, she turned to survey a way of life she once thought she'd never escape.

Despite the tumult of the last few days, tribal life went on. Kallish, the old clubfoot, still labored by the stream bed, hammering stone cores into flake arrowheads and other tools, convinced the recent influx of iron implements would be a pa.s.sing fad. He was probably right.

Upstream, women waded through shallows, seeking the trish.e.l.led juice oysters that ripened in volcanic heat this time of year, while farther upslope, beyond the steamy pools, a cl.u.s.ter of girls used poles to beat Illoes trees, gathering the tart fallen berries in woven baskets. As usual, females were doing most of the hard work. Nowhere was this more evident than near the cook fire, where grouchy old Binni, her arms b.l.o.o.d.y past the elbows, took charge of preparing the donkey for roasting. The headwoman's hair was even grayer than before. Her latest baby had died, leaving Binni irritable with swollen, tender b.r.e.a.s.t.s, hissing at her two young helpers through wide gaps between yellow-brown teeth.

Despite such signs of normality, most tribe-folk moved in a state of sluggish distraction. Whenever anyone glanced Rety's way, they flinched, as if she were the last thing on Jijo they ever expected to see. More shocking than a glaver standing upright.

Rety, the G.o.d.

She held her head high. Tell your stinky brats about it by the campfire, till the end of time. Tell 'em about the girl who talked back to big mean hunters, no matter what they did to her. A girl who wouldn't take it anymore. Who dared to do what you never imagined. Who found a way to leave this stinking h.e.l.l and go live on a star.

Rety felt a thrill each time someone briefly met her gaze and quickly looked away.

I'm not one of you. Never was. And now you know it too.

Only Binni showed no trace of being overwhelmed by the deity Rety had become. The same old disdain and disappointment lay in those metal-gray eyes. At age twenty-eight, Binni was younger than any of the foray-ers, even Ling. Still, it seemed nothing on Jijo, or in heaven, would ever surprise her.

It had been years since Rety last called the old woman "Mama." She wasn't tempted to resume now.

With her back straight, she walked past the chefs and their grisly work. Inside, though, she wavered.

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to come back here. Why mix with these ghosts when she could be in the aircraft, relishing victory over her lifelong enemy? The punishment being executed on Ja.s.s seemed rightful and good, now that she didn't have to face his agony up close. That contradiction made Rety nervous, as if something were missing. Like trying to use moccasins without laces.

"wife! there you are, wife! bad wife, to leave yee alone so long!"

Several clansmen scurried out of the way, making room for a four-legged creature, galloping past their ankles like some untouchable, all-powerful being. Which the little urrish male was, in a sense, since Rety had loudly promised horrors to anyone laying a hand on her "husband."

yee leaped into her arms, squirming with pleasure even as he scolded.

"wife leave yee alone too long with female foes! they offer yee soft, warm pouch, temptresses!"

Rety flared jealousy. "Who offered you a pouch! If any of those hussies-"

Then she saw he was teasing. Some of the tension in her shoulders let go as she laughed. The little critter was definitely good for her.

"relax, wife," he a.s.sured her. "just one pouch for yee. go in now?"

"In now," she replied, unzipping the plush hip bag Ling had provided, yee dove inside, wriggled around, then stuck out his head and long neck to peer at her.

"come now, wife, visit Ul-Tahni. that sage ready talk now."

"Ah, is she? Well now, isn't that awfully nice of her."

Rety didn't relish going to see the leader of the out-landers. But Kunn had given her a job, and now was as good a time as any.

"All right," she said. "Let's hear what the hinney has to say."

Dwer THE URS, IT APPEARED, HAD DONE THE SMALL human expedition a favor. In receiving death and devastation, they had left a warning.

A tale of callous murder was clear to read through the dawn light-in seared and shattered trees, blackened craters, and scattered debris, pushed by a gusty, dry wind. The violence that took place here-just a few days ago by Dwer's estimate-must have been brief but horrible.

The plateau's terraced outlines were still visible after ages of softening by erosion and vegetation. It was a former Buyur site, going back to the last race licensed to use this world-legal residents dwelling in heavenlike towers, who went through their daily lives unafraid of the open sky.

Dwer traced the terror that recently fell upon this place. All too vividly he pictured the panicked urrish settlers, rearing and coughing with dread, coiling their long necks, with slim arms crossed to shield their precious pouches as the ground around them exploded. He could almost hear their screams as they fled the burning encampment, down a steep trail leading into a narrow defile-where human footprints swarmed in abruptly from both sides, tracked by crude moccasins, mingling with urrish hooves chaotically.

He picked up shreds of home-twisted twine and leather cord. From countless signs, Dwer pictured ropes and nets falling to trap the urs, taking them prisoner.

Couldn't they tell they were being herded? The aircraft aimed off to the sides and all around, to drive them. So why didn't the urs scatter instead of clumping in a ma.s.s to he caught?

Several patches of sticky sand gave him an answer. The overall intent might have been capture, but the flying gunner had few qualms about enforcing the round-up with a corpse or two.

Don't judge the urs too harshly. Do you know how you'll react when lightning bolts start falling all around? War is messy, and we're all out of practice. Even Drake never had to cope with anything like this.

"So, we're facing an alliance between the human sooners and the aliens," Lena concluded. "Kind of changes things, don't it?"

Danel Ozawa wore a bleak expression. "This entire region is compromised. Whatever fate befalls the Slope will now surely happen here, as well. Whether by plague, or by fire, or hunting their victims one at a time with machines-they'll scourge the area as thoroughly as back home."

Danel's task had been to carry a legacy into the wilderness-both knowledge and fresh genes to invigorate the human tribe already living here-to preserve something of Earthling life in case the worst came to pa.s.s. It was never a joyous enterprise, more like the mission of a lifeboat captain in some ancient tale about a shipwreck. But at least that endeavor had been based on a slim hope. Now his eyes lacked all trace of that emotion.

Jenin protested, "Well, didn't you just say the sooners and aliens were allies against the urs? The star-G.o.ds wouldn't turn on the tribe now, would they?"

She stopped as the others looked at her, their expressions answering better than words.

Jenin paled. "Oh."

Moments later, she lifted her chin once more.

"Well, they still don't know we exist, right? So why don't we just leave, right now? The four of us. What about north, Dwer? You've been up that way before. Let's go!"

Danel kicked some debris left by the urs' riotous flight and the looting that followed. He pointed to a narrow cleft in the rocks. "We can build a pyre over there."

"What are you doing?" Jenin asked, as Dwer led the donkeys where the sage indicated and began unloading their packs.

"I'll set the grenades," Lena said, prying open a container. "We'd best add some wood. I'll gather these broken crates."

"Hey! I asked you guys-what's going on?"

Danel took Jenin's arm while Dwer hauled a portion of their supplies to one side-food and clothing plus a few basic implements, none containing any metal. Left behind in a stack were all the books and sophisticated tools they had taken from the Slope.