Alea breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, she’d been afraid she’d have to go back to her gilded prison. The caress of the night wind on her cheek seemed even sweeter.
“I shall do as you say,” Herkimer said, “as soon as you are out of range of my sensors.”
“Good idea,” Gar said. “Let me know how you’re doing.”
“I shall,” the computer said. “Good hunting.”
Its infrared sensors watched as its humans crossed the meadow and disappeared into the trees. It waited a moment longer.
Actually, it waited quite a few moments, enough to make up several minutes, enough for a huge-headed, stumpy-legged, catlike alien to waddle down the gangway and follow the humans into the forest. Herkimer wasn’t aware of the delay, though, since Evanescent used her projective telepathy to make him forget everything from the moment the alien appeared in his field of vision until she vanished into the shadows beneath the trees.
The time wasn’t forgotten so much as edited out—and this time, the alien remembered to reset Herkimer’s clock so that the spaceship wouldn’t know it had lingered more than a few seconds longer than it had to.
Then it was up and gone, rising on pressor beams until it was safe to use atmospheric drive. Up it spun into the stars, a disk of darkness against the splendor of the heavens, until it rose out of the shadow of the planet into the light of the sun and seemed one more star itself.
Gar and Alea didn’t see, of course. They were already under the canopy of leaves, searching for a smaller clearing where they could pitch camp and light a fire.
Evanescent, though, found the nearest thicket and bedded down. She had no need to shadow her humans; she could follow their thoughts and find them whenever she wanted. Not that she intended to let them get too far ahead, of course. She wanted to stay close enough to get in on the fun.
Magnus and Alea kindled a fire and settled down for the night. Gar claimed first watch, but Alea was too excited to sleep. After half an hour of trying, she gave up and came to join him by the fire.
“What do you make of their clothing?” she asked Gar.
“I’d guess it’s homemade versions of what was everyday wear on Terra, from back when their ancestors left to colonize this planet,” he answered. “Probably looser to give more freedom of movement—after all, most of the city people did their work at desks, and when they did want to work out, they wore special exercise suits.”
“Even the broad-brimmed hats?”
Magnus shrugged. “They’re practical—keep the sun out of your eyes and the rain out of your face. Their coats, though, those are what interest me.”
“Why?” Alea asked. “Their being hip length shows it doesn’t get terribly cold, but that’s about all—unless you mean the patterns.”
“I do,” Gar said. “It’s as good as livery to show which side you’re on.”
“Yes, I suppose when you’re fighting people your own size, you do need some way to tell friends from enemies.” Alea came from a normal-sized people whose hereditary enemies were giants and dwarves. “Those sort of patterns look easy for weavers to make. I’m surprised there are so many variations, though.”
“A people called Scots wove such plaids on old Earth,” Gar mused. “They called them ‘tartans.’ When their history became fashionable, people pretended every clan had invented its own tartan.”
“They didn’t really, though?”
“It wasn’t cast in iron,” Magnus said, “nothing to prevent one clan from using cloth with a dozen different patterns—or none. Still, these people seem to have heard of the idea.”
“They might,” Alea said, “or they might have invented it on their own. It would be a natural thing for a weaver to hit upon, after all—bright, attractive, and not terribly difficult.”
“That’s true,” Gar said thoughtfully. “I suppose these people don’t have to be descended from Scots at all.”
Alea frowned, looking closely at him. “There’s another reason you think so, isn’t there?”
Magnus sighed. “The Scots had a reputation for feuding, and that would explain all those skirmishes we saw on the screen as we orbited the planet.”
“Feuding? What tribal society didn’t?” Alea demanded. “I’ve been reading your history books. All your peoples had feuds before they settled down to farming. Some kept it going after that, too.”
“Yes, and it’s bad enough when people only have swords and axes,” Magnus said. “These people, though, all have rifles.”
“Appalling.” Alea shuddered. “Absolutely appalling number of casualties. Thank Thor they take so long to reload!”
“Maybe we just came along when they happened to be at war,” Gar said. “Maybe it doesn’t really go on all the time.”
“We can hope,” Alea said darkly. “After all, if it does go on all the time, what can we do to stop it?”
“Oh, we’ll think of something,” Gar said softly.
Alea gave him a sharp look; his face had turned dreamy, and she could hear his thoughts clicking into place. If he couldn’t start a revolution this time, he’d settle for bringing peace. Somehow, she had a notion that this trip wouldn’t be wasted.
Gar yielded the watch to her, slept four hours, then took up his vigil again—which was just as well, because the excitement had finally worn off, and Alea managed a few hours’ sleep.
“A nap is better anyway,” she told him over their breakfast of journeybread and coffee. “We’d only been awake ten hours when we landed.”
“It will take a day or two to turn our inner rhythms around,” Gar agreed. “Well, let’s see what this planet holds, shall we?” They drowned and buried the fire, then went off down lanes of fir trees with very little underbrush to impede them. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the forest was still filled with gloom-light enough to see where they were going, but dark enough to be dusk more than day.
“What’s that glow in the air ahead?” Alea asked.
“Probably a rotten tree gone phosphorescent,” Gar said, and changed course toward the luminous cloud. They’d only gone another dozen steps before he stopped dead, staring. “It can’t be!”
Alea’s eyes were wider than his. “It is!”
The cloud moved toward them with the angry hum of a dozen wings. The foot high humanoids hovered before them, six-foot spans of gauzy wings forming a semicircular wall around the humans, some with arms folded, some with hands on hips, but all with fists, their faces glowing with anger.
2
Why come you hither, mortals?” the foremost demanded. “Your mind what madness fills?”
They looked as humans might have if they had evolved from flying cats, very small cats with very large wings. Pointed ears poked out of flowing manes atop their heads, the only hair on their bodies. Their eyes were large with vertical pupils, noses small and triangular, mouths lipless. Below the leaves and flowers that served them as clothing, their legs hung flexed by powerful thighs and calves.
“Know you not that the deep forests are ours?” the leader demanded. “Are not the rolling meadows and the woodlands enough for you?”
“Actually, we’re strangers who don’t know our way,” Alea said. “We have traveled far, and didn’t know your customs.”
“Traveled far! Whence upon this world can you have come and not known of us?”
“Your ancestors crowded into this land unasked,” another fairy said, eyes bright with anger. “Ours were loathe to wreak ill upon others, so they retreated from the coming of the strangers, then retreated again—but when the human folk began to bring their golden sickles deep within our forests in search of the oaks and mistletoe whose seed they had themselves brought, we cried ‘Enough!’ and taught them our anger.”