Sherrinford nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I’m less sure than you that the common sense of nonhuman beings is precisely like our own. I’ve seen so much variation within mankind. But, granted, your arguments are strong. Roland’s too few scientists have more pressing tasks than tracking down the origins of what is, as you put it, a revived medieval superstition.”
He cradled his pipe bowl in both hands and peered into the tiny hearth of it. “Perhaps what interests me most,” he said softly, “is why—across that gap of centuries, across a barrier of machine civilization and its utterly antagonistic world view—no continuity of tradition whatsoever—why have hardheaded, technologically organized, reasonably well-educated colonists here brought back from its grave a belief in the Old Folk’”
“I suppose eventually, if the University ever does develop the psychology department they keep talking about, I suppose eventually somebody will get a thesis out of your question.” Dawson spoke in a jagged voice, and he gulped when Sherrinford replied:
“I propose to begin now. In Commissioner Hauch Land, since that’s where the latest incident occurred. Where can I rent a vehicle?”
“Uh, might be hard to do—”
“Come, come. Tenderfoot or not, I know better. In an economy of scarcity, few people own heavy equipment. But since it’s needed, it can always be rented. I want a camper bus with a ground-effect drive suitable for every kind of terrain. And I want certain equipment installed which I’ve brought along, and the top canopy section replaced by a gun turret controllable from the driver’s seat. But I’ll supply the weapons. Besides rifles and pistols of my own, I’ve arranged to borrow some artillery from Christmas Landing’s police arsenal.”
“Hoy? Are you genuinely intending to make ready for… a war… against a myth?”
“Let’s say I’m taking out insurance, which isn’t terribly expensive, against a remote possibility. Now, besides the bus, what about a light aircraft carried piggyback for use in surveys?”
“No.” Dawson sounded more positive than hitherto. “That’s asking for disaster. We can have you flown to a base camp in a large plane when the weather report’s exactly right. But the pilot will have to fly back at once, before the weather turns wrong again. Meteorology’s underdeveloped on Roland; the air’s especially treacherous this time of year, and we’re not tooled up to produce aircraft that can outlive every surprise.” He drew breath. “Have you no idea of how fast a whirly-whirly can hit, or what size hailstones might strike from a clear sky, or—Once you’re there, man, you stick to the ground.” He hesitated. “That’s an important reason our information is so scanty about the outway and its settlers are so isolated.”
Sherrinford laughed ruefully. “Well, I suppose if details are what I’m after, I must creep along anyway.”
“You’ll waste a lot of time,” Dawson said. “Not to mention your client’s money. Listen, I can’t forbid you to chase shadows, but—”
The discussion went on for almost an hour. When the screen finally blanked, Sherrinford rose, stretched and walked toward Barbro. She noticed anew his peculiar gait. He had come from a planet with a fourth again of Earth’s gravitational drag, to one where weight was less than half Terrestrial. She wondered if he had flying dreams.
“I apologize for shuffling you off like that,” he said. “I didn’t expect to reach him at once. He was quite truthful about how busy he is. But having made contact, I didn’t want to remind him overmuch of you. He can dismiss my project as a futile fantasy which I’ll soon give up. But he might have frozen completely, might even have put up obstacles before us, if he’d realized through you how determined we are.”
“Why should he care?” she asked in her bitterness.
“Fear of consequences, the worse because it is unadmitted fear of consequences, the more terrifying because they are unguessable.” Sherrinford’s gaze went to the screen, and thence out the window to the aurora pulsing in glacial blue and white immensely far overhead. “I suppose you saw I was talking to a frightened man. Down underneath his conventionality and scoffing, he believes in the Outlings-oh, yes, he believes.”
The feet of Mistherd flew over yerba and outpaced windblown driftweed. Beside him, black and misshapen, hulked Nagrim the nicor, whose earthquake weight left a swath of crushed plants. Behind, luminous blossoms of a firethorn shone through the twining, trailing outlines of Morgarel the wraith.
Here Cloudmoor rose in a surf of hills and thickets. The air lay quiet, now and then carrying the distance-muted howl of a beast. It was darker than usual at winterbirth, the moons being down and aurora a wan flicker above the mountains on the northern world edge. But this made the stars keen, and their numbers crowded heaven, and Ghost Road shone among them as if it, like the leafage beneath, were paved with dew.
“Yonder!” bawled Nagrim. All four of his arms pointed. The party had topped a ridge. Far off glimmered a spark. “Noah, hoah! Ull we right off stamp dem flat, or pluck dem apart slow?”
We shall do nothing of the sort, bonebrain, Morgarel’s answer slid through their heads. Not unless they attack us, and they will not unless we make them aware of us, and her command is that we spy out their purposes.
“Gr-r-rum-m-m. I know deir aim. Cut down trees, stick plows in land, sow deir cursed seed in de clods and in deir shes. ’Less we drive dem into de bitterwater, and soon, soon, dey’ll wax too strong for us.”
“Not too strong for the Queen!” Mistherd protested, shocked.
Yet they do have new powers, it seems, Morgarel reminded him. Carefully must we probe them.
“Den carefully can we step on dem?” asked Nagrim.
The question woke a grin out of Mistherd’s own uneasiness. He slapped the scaly back. “Don’t talk, you,” he said. “It hurts my ears. Nor think; that hurts your head. Come, run!”
Ease yourself, Morgarel scolded. You have too much life in you, human-born.
Mistherd made a face at the wraith, but obeyed to the extent of slowing down and picking his way through what cover the country afforded. For he traveled on behalf of the Fairest, to learn what had brought a pair of mortals questing hither.
Did they seek that boy whom Ayoch stole? (He continued to weep for his mother, though less and less often as the marvels of Carheddin entered him.) Perhaps. A birdcraft had left them and their car at the now-abandoned campsite, from which they had followed an outward spiral. But when no trace of the cub had appeared inside a reasonable distance, they did not call to be flown home. And this wasn’t because weather forbade the farspeaker waves to travel, as was frequently the case. No, instead the couple set off toward the mountains of Moonhorn. Their course would take them past a few outlying invader steadings and on into realms untrodden by their race.
So this was no ordinary survey. Then what was it?
Mistherd understood now why she who reigned had made her adopted mortal children learn, or retain, the clumsy language of their forebears. He had hated that drill, wholly foreign to Dweller ways. Of course, you obeyed her, and in time you saw how wise she had been…
Presently he left Nagrim behind a rock—the nicor would only be useful in a fight-and crawled from bush to bush until he lay within man—lengths of the humans. A rainplant drooped over him, leaves soft on his bare skin, and clothed him in darkness. Morgarel floated to the crown of a shiverleaf, whose unrest would better conceal his flimsy shape. He’d not be much help either. And that was the most troublous, the almost appalling thing here. Wraiths were among those who could not just sense and send thoughts, but cast illusions. Morgarel had reported that this time his power seemed to rebound off an invisible cold wall around the car.