The morning seemed suddenly filled with amazing tension. Kerlew’s voice was low, “Be careful what you say. This is no summer’s jaunt we’re setting out on. There’s no way out once we start it. If we’re into this at all, we’re into it for life.”
“We’re already into it.” Moira clasped his hands with both of hers. “For all our lives.”
“Together,” he whispered.
They stood in silence, staring into one another’s eyes.
“At least you gave me more of an option than that,” Alea said to Gar with an impish smile.
Shutters seemed to come down behind his eyes; he nodded gravely. “Of course. Any planet you choose to stay on, you shall. I’d never try to haul you off against your will.”
Alea stared up at him, appalled, and thought came in a rush of feeling, but she was careful to shield the words from his mind. Blast! Now I’ve gone and hurt him again! A curse on she who shattered his fragile heart!
Moira turned to them with a smile. “And if she chooses to stay with you?”
Gar stared at her, taken aback, then slowly smiled. “I’ll rejoice in her company, of course.”
Alea flashed the younger woman a grateful smile. But Kerlew frowned. “What’s a planet?”
“A wandering star,” Gar answered, “a world, like this one.” Moira stared, then darted a glance at the paling vault above them, the scattering of stars still visible. “Each one of them a world?”
“Most of them are suns,” Gar corrected, “but there are many, many planets, as well.”
Kerlew stared upward, too. “You don’t mean you travel from planet to planed”
“We do,” Alea said with a gentle smile. “But how?”
“In a ship that sails between the stars.” Gar pointed at the sky. “That one.”
Moira and Kerlew stared up in disbelief as the great golden disk spun lower and lower.
In a grove at the edge of the hilltop, an elf protested, “But we won’t have strength enough to stop the feuds without you!”
“You won’t,” Evanescent acknowledged, “but the New People won’t know that. Just pick out the odd rifle-bearer now and then, gang up on him, and send him into half a minute of agony. The tale will run and the New People will obey the laws of bard and seer, for fear of you.”
“And of their gods,” sang a fairy by the alien’s brow. Evanescent nodded. “After a while, they’ll even begin to believe in their gods again, yes.”
“Still, you can’t leave us,” the elf pointed out. “How will you climb aboard that ship without their knowing?”
“Why, like this.” Evanescent watched Gar and Alea stop at the top of the boarding ramp to wave at Kerlew and Moira, then turn to go into the ship. The younger couple turned to talk to one another in stunned amazement as the ramp started to lift. Then, suddenly, they froze, and so did the ramp.
“You can control their minds that well!” the fairy marvelled. “And their ship’s,” Evanescent said, “though it hasn’t a mind, really, only a machine that imitates one.”
“But it will remember.”
“No, I’ll erase all memory of me from the ship’s data banks,” Evanescent explained. “From the minds of the bard and seer, too. That’s a trick you might want to learn; it can come in handy from time to time.”
The fairy exchanged a surprised glance with the elf. “Yes, I can see that it would.”
“Good luck to you, then.” Evanescent shouldered out of the shrubbery. “Now I must go. I really shouldn’t keep them waiting.”
“May you fare well,” the fairy told her, and the elf agreed, “May your journey be light.”
Or light-years, Evanescent thought smugly. Then she waddled over to the ramp, leaped up onto it, and scuttled aboard. Seconds later, the ramp slid back into the ship and Moira looked up. Kerlew followed her gaze, and the two of them stood watching as the golden disk rose slowly, then suddenly streaked back into the sky, alight with the sunrise.
Aboard the ship, Alea came into the lounge in her robe, a towel wound turbanlike around her hair, to find a tall iced drink waiting next to her lounger. She slid into it, took a long sip, then looked up at Gar, secure and amazingly relaxed in a velvet robe, one hand on his iced glass, head leaning back against the padding, eyes closed.
“Where to next, O Mighty Hunter?” Alea asked.
“Why, where you will,” Gar replied, not opening his eyes. Alea stared. “You expect me to choose the next planet? All on my own?”
“If you want to.” Gar’s eyelids cracked open to gaze at her, a peaceful smile on his lips. “If you don’t, give me a week or two to rest and look through the database.”
“Well … I could use a rest, too.” Alea eyed him with concern. “Somehow I thought you already had the look of a man on the brink of his next journey, though.”
“Perhaps I am.” Gar closed his eyes, and the image of the rag-and-bone man rose unbidden behind his eyelids. “There is an unknown land I need to explore. I’ve been putting it off a while.”
Alea tried to keep the concern out of her voice. “You’ll need a companion, then.”
“Perhaps I will.” Gar opened his eyes again just enough to give her a lazy, trusting smile. “But I can wait. There will be time.”
“There will be time,” Alea echoed him in a whisper and, since his eyes were closed, let herself simply sit and gaze at his rough-hewn features in a very rare moment of tranquility.
In the ship’s hold, in an area where Herkimer’s sensors had strangely ceased to send signals to the computer’s CPU (and, more strangely, Herkimer wasn’t aware of the fact), Evanescent the alien settled down to hibernate, gleefully remembering that Alea hadn’t realized the extent of the alien’s meddling. None of them had so much as guessed that it was she who sent the disorientation that had broken up the battle between the Belinkuns and the Farlands, she who had sent Kerlew a vision of a sick woman miles away, she who had helped Gar confuse the members of the large outlaw band who chased him and Kerlew, she who had made Kerlew’s satire of the clan leader produce pain, she who had helped the fairies and Wee Folk stop this last battle. Her absence wouldn’t matter, though—she had already told the Old Ones how to cope without her, and Kerlew’s latent psi talent had burgeoned with her help. His satires would be quite effective with no power but his own now.
Of course, Alea couldn’t have guessed at the alien’s efforts, since Evanescent never let her remember their encounters. She toyed with letting the young woman recover those memories for a little while aboard ship, then rejected the plan. Time enough to let Alea remember when Evanescent needed another conference with her.
All in all, the alien reflected, it had been a most enjoyable interlude, a delightful relief from boredom, but tiring, too. She was looking forward to a nice long nap. Lazily, she directed one last thought at Gar and Alea, making them want rest as much as she did, then let herself sink down through layers of dwindling consciousness to the land of very exotic dreams that no human being could possibly have understood.