Once he had been lost in the woods after a dragon had been busy in a clearing, and he was worse off now than then in that he was now naked. But in everything else he was, he reflected, hopefully, better off. For one thing, he was only a foot-journey away from the town instead of a flight-journey. For another, should he find himself again among Doghunters, he could count on aid instead of capture.
But most of all he was better off now because he had already had the experience. And he was where he now was — and how he now was — not because he had fled in numbness from a scene in no way of his own making, but because he had brought himself out of danger into safety. He was mother-naked and alone, there was a wild beast to one side of him and men who sought his life to another. But — he found to his astonished and his marveling delight — he was no longer afraid.
The clean sweet smell of the woods was all around him. A tiny gray creature for which he had no name paused on its way up the side of a leaning tree and regarded him curiously.
“When in doubt,” Jon-Joras said aloud, “do as the natives do.”
He followed the gray one up the tree and looked all around him.
The trees here on Prime World — at least, in this particular area of Prime World — were not as tall as he had seen elsewhere. On Dondonoluc, for one example, or on its mirror-twin-world, Tiran-lou, with their incredible depths of top-soil, the mastadonic trees towered several hundred feet high. But, as though in keeping with the foliage, if Prime World’s trees were not tall, neither were Prime World’s buildings. How far he might be from the nearest settlement, Jon-Joras did not know. The oozy green gum of this one, rank and odorous but by no means offensive, ebbed out onto his flesh as he pressed against the bole and craned, and mingled with the hair. A breeze met his inquiring face, a little wind rich with the smell of sap and earth and plants. But all he could see, whichever way he looked, were more trees, and yet trees.
Not altogether realizing what he was doing (and, afterwards, somewhat surprised that he had in any way thought of doing it), Jon-Joras let his eyes go out of focus. The trees blurred, trunks and crowns and branches. And, in the corner of his eye, something which had not been there before… or which had not appeared to be there before… took shape… a wide, shallow concave arc… a tall, abrupt and flaring fin…
Slowly and carefully, as though fearful that the new shapes had newly materialized from the ambient ether and might, if he were incautious, take fright and vanish away again, he turned his head so that he might see clearly where they were and mark their location. He did, and they stayed where they were and then he climbed down the tree.
Despite his having taken a careful sight on it he still had a hard time finding the flyer. There were not many around, that he had seen; this depleted world could afford, neither materials nor fuel, and the cost of importing made it impossible there should be many. He had seen them, silver and gold and several other colors; no where on Prime World had he seen another one camouflaged. In fact, nowhere did he know of this being done at all… except, of course, on the so-called War Worlds, which did not form part of Confederation.
But he found the flyer at last.
The door was open, as though someone on guard had just slipped out, but if there had actually been someone on guard, and where or what he slipped out to, Jon-Joras never learned. It is only in fiction that all loose ends are always neatly tied up. A tiny nameless creature with stripes along its little back looked up with bright, blank eyes to see the naked man flitting from tree to tree all around the clearing and then dash across it and up and into something for which the small creature had no familiar image. It blinked, instantly forgot, and scurried on, looting for nuts.
There were many things on Jon-Joras’s mind, but one of them was a firm resolution that first things had now to come first. He padded quickly to the controls and he took the flyer up and up until he saw nothing but a green blur beneath him. Then he put her on Hover and locked her so. Then he sat down to consider things.
There was food and drink in the proper compartment and the greedy way he ate informed him that, for one thing, he had been quite hungry, and that, for another, he seemed now to be all better. He thought about this as he gobbled and gulped and picked at something which proved to be a bolus of sticky tree-sap entangled in the hair of his leg. This, in turn, reminded him that he was still naked. He stood up and patted his stomach and stretched and gave vent to an enormous and enormously satisfying eructation. Then he started rummaging around. He found clothes and those items which weren’t clean were clean enough to suit him now. He had a dim recollection of the fastidious Jon-Joras of M.M. beta-world who shifted himself from head to foot three times a day and tossed the discarded items in the incinerator; but he did not pause even to smile. He suddenly had something else on his mind. The under-tunic stayed for a moment just where it was on his arms about to slip over his shaven head. For in that moment everything stayed where it was. Then he lowered his arms and slipped the under-tunic off and held it in his hands, staring, staring at it. Then he brought his face close to, next to it. He did not really think that he was mistaken, but he thought that he might perhaps… just possibly… perhaps… be. So, slowly, one by one, he picked up the other articles of clothing and one, by one, he smelt them.
They smelled, every one of them, faintly, faintly, but definitely perceptively, of that ancient musty odor of the Kar-chee Castle.
But it had burned — had it not? It had. And he had seen it burning. Had… whomever these clothes belonged to… had he been there then or since, it was inconceivable that his clothes should not be smelling of smoke. Reeking of smoke. But it reeked of nothing, had merely the normal smells of man and of flyer fuel and (not, hardly normal, this—) the alien and shadowy scent of the old ruin’s ill-frequented lower passageways. Therefore—
Therefore the man who had worn these clothes there had worn them there and had been himself there before it had burned. And not too very long ago, either, or they would not still retain the scent.
Which made no sense at all.
Hue might not be there now, in the black basalt shell of a ruin, but he… and his people… had been there, steadily, for at least some period of years before. And Aëlorix… and his people… were Hue’s enemies. Jon-Joras stopped here and carefully considered all his thoughts. For one thing, what made him so certain that this flyer belonged to or had at least been used by Aëlorix? Its mere proximity?
Once again he explored the small cabin, this time not looking for anything in particular and therefore looking for everything in particular. The chart-cabinet, the gear-locker, the food compartment, the spaces under the seats, the boot — all yielded nothing in the way of information. Certainly, it was not certain that Aëlorix or any of his men had been the ones who brought the flyer here into the woods. But, if not them, who then? Who else had reason to camouflage the craft and secrete it here, so far from anything? He had no answer, and yet he would not accept that there should be no answer. So once again he began looking slowly through everything. And this time he found something.
It was only a small something which might turn out to be a nothing. The pile of charts was neatly stacked, perhaps a trifle too neatly. For the regularity of the pile disclosed one tiny irregularity which he would have failed to notice if the charts had been shuffled up in a disorderly manner — and this was the fact that one corner of one chart protruded just the slightest from the neat arrangement of the rest. As if the stack above it had been removed very carefully and then the one chart extracted and subsequently replaced with an elaborate care which had not quite come off. Was it so? Jon-Joras lifted up the charts above and removed this single one.