“Lovely here,” Sherrinford said. They had risen from their supper and not yet sat down again or kindled their fire.
“But strange,” Barbro answered as low. “I wonder if it’s really meant for us. If we can really hope to possess it.”
His pipestem gestured at the stars. “Man’s gone to stranger places than this.”
“Has he? I… oh, I suppose it’s just something left over from my outway childhood, but do you know, when I’m under them I can’t think of the stars as balls of gas, whose energies have been measured, whose planets have been walked on by prosaic feet. No, they’re small and cold and magical; our lives are bound to them; after we die, they whisper to us in our graves.” Barbro glanced downward. “I realize that’s nonsense.”
She could see in the twilight how his face grew tight. “Not at all,” he said. “Emotionally, physics may be a worse nonsense. And in the end, you know, after a sufficient number of generations, thought follows feeling. Man is not at heart rational. He could stop believing the stories of science if those no longer felt right.”
He paused. “That ballad which didn’t get finished in the house,” he said, not looking at her. “Why did it affect you so?”
“I couldn’t stand hearing them, well, praised. Or that’s how it seemed. Sorry for the fuss.”
“I gather the ballad is typical of a large class.”
“Well, I never thought to add them up. Cultural anthropology is something we don’t have time for on Roland, or more likely it hasn’t occurred to us, with everything else there is to do. But—now you mention it, yes, I’m surprised at how many songs and stories have the Arvid motif in them.”
“Could you bear to recite it?”
She mustered the will to laugh. “Why, I can do better than that if you want. Let me get my multilyre and I’ll perform.”
She omitted the hypnotic chorus line, though, when the notes rang out, except at the end. He watched her where she stood against moon and aurora.
She laid the lyre aside. A wind rustled leaves. After a long quietness Sherrinford said, “And tales of this kind are part of everyone’s life in the outway?”
“Well, you could put it thus,” Barbro replied. “Though they’re not all full of supernatural doings. Some are about love or heroism. Traditional themes.”
“I don’t think your particular tradition has arisen of itself.” His tone was bleak. “In fact, I think many of your songs and stories were not composed by human beings.”
He snapped his lips shut and would say no more on the subject. They went early to bed.
Hours later, an alarm roused them.
The buzzing was soft, but it brought them instantly alert. They slept in gripsuits, to be prepared for emergencies. Sky-glow lit them through the canopy. Sherrinford swung out of his bunk, slipped shoes on feet and clipped gun holster to belt. “Stay inside,” he commanded.
“What’s here?” Her pulse thuttered.
He squinted at the dials of his instruments and checked them against the luminous telltale on his wrist. “Three animals,” he counted. “Not wild ones happening by. A large one, homeothermic, to judge from the infrared, holding still a short ways off. Another… hm, low temperature, diffuse and unstable emission, as if it were more like a… a swarm of cells coordinated somehow… pheromonally?… hovering, also at a distance. But the third’s practically next to us, moving around in the brush; and that pattern looks human.”
She saw him quiver with eagerness, no longer seeming a professor. “I’m going to try to make a capture,” he said. “When we have a subject for interrogation— Stand ready to let me back in again fast. But don’t risk yourself, whatever happens. And keep this cocked.” He handed her a loaded big-game rifle.
His tall frame poised by the door, opened it a crack. Air blew in, cool, damp, full of fragrances and murmurings. The moon Oliver was now also aloft, the radiance of both unreally brilliant, and the aurora seethed in whiteness and ice-blue.
Sherrinford peered afresh at his telltale. It must indicate the directions of the watchers, among those dappled leaves. Abruptly he sprang out. He sprinted past the ashes of the campfire and vanished under trees. Barbro’s hand strained on the butt of her weapon.
Racket exploded. Two in combat burst onto the meadow. Sherrinford had clapped a grip on a smaller human figure. She could make out by streaming silver and rainbow flicker that the other was nude, male, long-haired, lithe and young. He fought demoniacally, seeking to use teeth and feet and raking nails, and meanwhile he ululated like a satan.
The identification shot through her: A changeling, stolen in babyhood and raised by the Old Folk. This creature was what they would make Jimmy into.
“Ha!” Sherrinford forced his opponent around and drove stiffened fingers into the solar plexus. The boy gasped and sagged. Sherrinford manhandled him toward the car.
Out from the woods came a giant. It might itself have been a tree, black and rugose, bearing four great gnarly boughs; but earth quivered and boomed beneath its leg-roots, and its hoarse bellowing filled sky and skulls.
Barbro shrieked. Sherrinford whirled. He yanked out his pistol, fired and fired, flat whipcracks through the half light. His free arm kept a lock on the youth. The troll shape lurched under those blows. It recovered and came on, more slowly, more carefully, circling around to cut him off from the bus. He couldn’t move fast enough to evade it unless he released his prisoner—who was his sole possible guide to Jimmy.
Barbro leaped forth. “Don’t!” Sherrinford shouted. “For God’s sake, stay inside!” The monster rumbled and made snatching motions at her. She pulled the trigger. Recoil slammed her in the shoulder. The colossus rocked and fell. Somehow it got its feet back and lumbered toward her. She retreated. Again she shot, and again. The creature snarled. Blood began to drip from it and gleam oilily amidst dewdrops. It turned and went off, breaking branches, into the darkness that laired beneath the woods.
“Get to shelter!” Sherrinford yelled. “You’re out of the jammer field!”