“You mean you will use the blood-metal,” said Pallol.
Chief Burke was silent for a dozen seconds. “You know about the iron.”
“The senses of the torc-wearers may be so puny that they require machines to sniff the deadly metal out, but not those of the Firvulag! Your camp reeks of iron.”
“We will not use it against our friends. Unless you plan betrayal, you have nothing to fear. The Firvulag are our allies, our brothers-in-arms.”
“The Tanu Foe are our true brothers and yet we are fated to contend with them eternally. Could it be otherwise between Firvulag and humanity? This Earth is destined to belong to you, and you know it. I do not believe that humanity will be satisfied in allowing us to share. You will never call us brothers. You will call us interlopers and try to destroy us.”
“I can speak only for myself,” Burke said, “since my tribe, the Wallawalla, becomes extinct upon my death. But there will be no treachery by human against friendly Firvulag as long as I am the general of the Lowlives, Pallol One-Eye. I swear it on my blood — which is as red as your own. As for our never being brothers… this is a matter I’m still pondering. There are many different degrees of kinship.”
“So thought our Ship,” sighed the old champion. “It brought us here.” He tilted his huge head toward the sky. “But why? With so many other yellow stars in the universe, so many possible planets, why here, with you? The Ship was instructed to find the best.”
“Perhaps,” said Peopeo Moxmox Burke, “the Ship took a longer view than you.”
All day long the birds of prey had circled.
They rode thermals above the Vosges woodland in a neat stack, holding most of the time at altitudes appropriate to their species. Lowest was a wheeling flock of small swallow-tailed kites; above them soared a mated pair of bronze buzzards; the fire-backed eagles came next, and then a lone lammergeier vulture, mightiest of the bone crackers. Most lofty of all the circling birds was the one that had initiated the daylong vigil and attracted all of the others. On motionless wings, it orbited at a height so remote that it was barely visible to watchers on the ground.
Sister Amerie watched the birds through the sparse branches of a stone pine, her tawny cat resting in her arms. “ ‘Wherever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’ ”
“You quote the Christian scriptures,” said Old Man Kawai, who was shading his eyes with a tremulous hand. “Do you think the birds are truly clairvoyant? Or do they only hope, as we do? It is late, so late!”
“Calm yourself, Kawai-san. If they get here tonight, there’ll be a whole twenty-four-hour day for the Firvulag to join in the assault. That should be enough. Even if our allies withdraw at sunrise day after tomorrow, we can still win with the help of the iron.”
The ancient continued to fret “What can be keeping Madame? It was such a slim hope. And such hard work we have done here in expectation that the hope would be fulfilled!”
Amerie stroked the cat. “If they arrive before dawn tomorrow, the attack can still proceed according to the second alternative.”
“Ifthey arrive. Have you considered the navigation problem? Richard must come first to Hidden Springs. But how will he find it? Surely these tiny mountain valleys must look much alike from the air, and ours is hidden because of the Hunt. Richard will not be able to distinguish our canyon, even in daylight, if he approaches at a high altitude. And he does not dare to fly a low-level search, lest the enemy observe him.”
Amerie was patient. “Madame will conceal the ship mentally, of course. Calm yourself. This constant worry is bad for your health. Here, pet the cat. It’s very soothing. When you stroke the fur, you generate negative ions.”
“Ahsodesuka?”
“We can hope that the flyer would be equipped with an infrared scanner for night flight, just as our eggs of the twenty-second century were. Even with all of our fighters gone, there are still more than thirty warm bodies here in Hidden Springs. Richard will sniff us out.”
Old Man Kawai sucked in his breath. A horrible thought of a new sort crossed his mind. “The metapsychic concealment of the aircraft! If its volume is more than about ten cubic meters, Madame will be unable to render it invisible! She will only be able to disguise it somehow and hope that the Tanu do not concentrate their perceptive powers too closely upon it. What if the machine is so large that her faculties are insufficient to invest it with a plausible illusion?”
“She’ll think of something.”
“It is a great danger,” he moaned. The little cat gave him a long-suffering glance as his hand essayed a few nervous pats. “The Flying Hunt could even discover the aircraft while it rests here! All that is needed is for Velteyn to descend for a close look at my poor camouflage nets. They are pathetic things.”
“Adequate for night concealment. Velteyn has no infrared, thank God. And he almost never comes this far west nowadays. Stop your fussing! You’ll stew yourself into cardiac arrest. Where’s your jiriki?”
“I am a foolish, useless old man. I would not be here in the first place if I were able to rule myself through Zen… The nets, if they fail their purpose, the fault will be my own! The dishonor!”
Amerie gave an exasperated sigh. She thrust the cat at Kawai “Take Deej into Madame’s cottage and give her some leftover fish. Then hold her on your lap and close your eyes and pet her and think of an those lovely Tri-D’s that used to come rolling off your assembly lines in Osaka.”
The old man giggled. “A substitute for counting sheep? Yatte mimasu! It may serve to tranquilize me, at that. As you say, there is still time to mount the attack… Come, kitty. You will share your valued negative ions with me.”
He pottered off, but turned after a few steps to say with a sly grin, “However, one incongruity remains. Forgive my flaunting of the obsolete technology, Amerie-san, but even the lowliest electronicist knows that it is quite impossible for negative ions to be cat-ions!”
“You get out of here, Old Man!”
Tittering, he disappeared into the cottage.
Amerie walked down the canyon past the huts and cottages, nodding and waving to the few people who, like herself, could not resist watching the sky while they waited and prayed. The last of the able-bodied men and women had marched off under Uwe’s command three days ago, and the deadline for the optimal two-day assault had come and gone. But there was still time to execute the one-day attack. At dawn tomorrow, it could be that human beings would unite together for the first time on this Exile world to challenge their oppressors.
Oh, Lord, let it happen. Let Madame and the rest of them get here in time!
It was getting cooler as the sun descended, and soon the thermals, those buoyant upwellings of heated air, would fade away completely and the soaring raptors would have to come back to earth. Amerie came to her secret place beneath a low but open-armed juniper and lay down, face to the sky, to pray. It had been such a wonderful month! Her arm had healed quickly and the people… ah. Lord, what a fool she had been to think of becoming a hermit. Hidden Springs folk and the other Lowlife outlaws of the region had needed her as a physician and counselor and friend. Among them she had done the work she had been trained for. And what had become of the burntout case with the self-punishing compulsion to flee into a haven of solitary penitence? Here she could even pray her Divine Office, contemplate in the forest stillness; but when the people needed her, she was there ready to help. And they were there to help. And he was there in the midst of them. It was her dream fulfilled, even in its changing, only now the language that she prayed in was a living one.