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  She tolerated his pronunciation. Few Sassenachs or squareheads knew any better. “Aye, for I’m only here at the turning of the sun, when all the province is one great shebeen. It’s a fine country you have, and dear people, but there’s too much else of the planet to be traveling in. Who might you be, now?”

  “Elias Daukantas. Of Vilnyus Farm.” He jerked a thumb backward. Above a windbreak of poplars rose what must be chimney smoke. Shyly: “I’ve heard much about you, and wish Trollberg was in my neighborhood. Or, leastwise, that I’d had hap to see you come by afore. Uh… walk you always?”

  She nodded. “What for would I be driving, and never knowing through what I passed?”

  “But where stay you the nights over? I’ve heard nil talk of your visiting our scant inns, though more than two landlords tell how they’d pay you well for an evening’s entertainment.”

  She smiled to show she took no offense as she replied, “Bards sing not for gain, Freeholder Daukantas, and a bard I reckon myself to be, if scarcely any Brian Merriman. We may receive gifts, but we sing for love or hospitality. I stay where they give me welcome, else spread my sack on the lodix.”

  In his awkwardness he exclaimed, “But what live you on?” and then burned in the cheeks at his gaucherie.

  “Are you embarrassed, now?” she said cheerfully, with a pat for his hand where it clenched the rail. “Why, they all ask me that.” She shifted on purpose into flat Eopolitan. “I’m medically trained, though no physician. Winters, I work in the city and its hinterland, out of St. Enoch Hospital. The doctor shortage pretty well lets me set whatever terms I want. Of course, were I a decent person, I’d work full time. But when my lifespan won’t reach to exploring Demeter—” She tautened. “And when I have to see people hurting—” She broke off, shivered the tension out, and laughed. “Mercy alive, but I’ve talked about myself, right enough! Shall we be speaking of you?”

  “There’s naught to tell, my lady. This is my father’s stead, and I his third son.”

  She cocked her head. “You’re a bachelor, then?”

  He nodded. “Tja, you know our custom in the uplands. When I am married, we can stay in the big house as partners, or we can get help to clear land and raise a dwelling for ourselves. I, I think I’ll pick that. The new start.”

  “And you’ve no girl to tell you her wishes in the matter?”

  “No. Someday—But this is a scoopful about me, uh, uh, Cathleen,” he said in a rush. “Will you spend the night with us? I promise the whole gang will be delighted.”

  She glanced west. Though shadows were getting long and the mountains turning purple, Phoebus had an hour or better before the horizon captured it. “I thank you and I thank your kin,” she answered. “But I should be at Trollberg inside three days, and my plan was for keeping on past sunset, since Persephone will be rising full, big and bright as Luna over Earth.” Erion, half that apparent size, was already up, its curve ivory upon indigo.

  “I’ll drive you tomorrow, as far as you like,” he offered. Her expression betokened reluctance. He grew clever. “Yes, you want to be near the land. Well, here’s a family in it you’ve nay met. Our home, our manners, they should interest you, they’re unusual, I swear; we’re no Swedes or British or—Please! You’d make us hurrah. We’d never forget.”

  “We-ell….” She eased, smiled, moved closer, fluttered her lashes the least bit. “It’s too kind you are, Elias Daukantas, and sure I’d be of a good evening, stayed I there. So if you are certain that himself will not object—”

  A whirr loudened. Turning, they saw a small car approach. Its air cushion threw dust right and left like the foam at the bow of a speeding boat. It reached them and braked in a roar. Tripods slammed down. The bubble top dilated. A big man tumbled out. “Caitlín!” he bawled.

  She dropped her sonador. “Dan, oh, Dan!” She sped to him.

  They grabbed each other. After a while his mouth left hers and sought her ear. “Listen, macushla,” he whispered. “I’m on the run. Hunted. My name is Dan Smith. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she breathed back. He felt the elastic slimness of her, smelled sunlight odors of hair and warmer odors of flesh. “What is your wish, my heart?”

  “Get the devil out of here, to some safe hiding place. Then we’ll talk.” Brodersen had all he could do to stay wary, rather than cast her down and him above.

  The same effort shuddered in her, stronger than his. She pulled free, wrenched herself around, and said waveringly to the gaping farmer: “Elias, dear, it’s a grand surprise I’ve had. Here is my own fiance, Daniel Smith. We’d looked not to meet before the festival; he’s been upon the road. But since the gods are so kind—Can you pardon me at all, at all? I’ll be back, the Powers willing, and then I’ll sing for you.”

  He and he shook hands and uttered clumsy politeness. Caitlín snatched up her instrument and tugged on Brodersen’s sleeve. He and she scrambled into the car. It leaped onward. Daukantas stood for a long while staring the way it had gone, before he raised his horn and summoned the cattle.

  A moon and a half shining. Phoebus not far out of sight, the sky was violet more than black and showed few stars. Of the constellations, only Medea and Ariadne appeared complete. Aphrodite and Zeus., sister planets, stood candle-bright. Three small clouds glowed. Silver washed across treetops and splashed on the ground beneath, which lay in a translucent dusk. Through a break in the forest shimmered Mount Lorn. Torchflies flitted about like tiny lanterns. Choristers trilled in their tens of thousands, calling from among stalks and leaves for their mates; a starlark chanted; near the cave, a spring flowed forth in crystalline clinking.

  Caitlín had guided Brodersen here, down a game trail after he parked the car. He had brought outdoor kit of his own, including a fuel-cell heater which gave the shelter a welcome warmth. Sleeping bags on mollite pads made the floor comfortable. But they two did not sleep. After a while, amidst tender jesting, they cooked and ate dinner. When that was done, they did not sleep either.

  Toward dawn, she raised herself on an elbow, the better to regard him. The cave faced west, and Persephone’s beams were now streaming straight in, so eerily bright that against the whiteness of her he thought he could see how rosy were her nipples. He reached up to cup a heavy softness; it pressed itself around his hand as she leaned down to kiss him, a kiss which lingered.

  “My love, my darling, my life,” she nearly sang, “had I words to tell the wonder of you, humans would remember me when Sappho and Catullus lie forgotten. But not Brigit herself commands that magic.”

  “Oh, Christ, how I love you,” he said, hoarse from the power of it. “How long for us? Three years?”

  “A snippet more. I count months as well, from when first I knew what you were doing to my soul, till the chance came for me to be seizing you.”

  “And I thought it was only another romp. How fast you proved me wrong! You, not just a delicious body and hell on wheels in bed, but everything that’s you.”

  “Were it not trouble that brought you on my trail, I would be in isotopically pure bliss, Dan, my Dan. And as is, I praise your enemies for that much while scheming how to cut the guts out of them. I’d no idea I’d see you before fall.”

  “If you stayed in Eopolis—”

  The lustrous locks moved, shadowing her features, as she shook her head. “No.” She became altogether serious. “Haven’t we worn this question bare yet? It would not be fair to Lis. Or you. You love her too, as well you should. I do myself, and would never cause her more sorrow than I must, and hope the friendship she gives me is not from duty alone—for sure it is she knows what’s between us, though she’s never spoken aloud of it to me.”

  Caitlín sat straight, hugging her knees, looking over him to the argent wilderness. “Also, because I lack her gift for figures and organization, I couldn’t share in the adventure of your enterprises,” she said. “I’ll not be a parasite. And a steady, safe job in a single place would soon have me daft. A bird of passage have I been since
the hour I was born.”

  Mirth crowed from her: “Och, I’m moonstruck! How would a bird get born?”

  He hoisted himself to sit cross-legged beside her. “The same way an idea gets hatched,” he suggested.

  “Aye,” she responded quickly, “see, Einstein brooded long over his—they had to bring him his food and tobacco where he sat—until one fine day the egg went crack and a little principle of special relativity peeped forth, all wet and naked, and then the poor man must scurry to and fro fetching long wiggly equations to stuff down its beak, but at last it was grown to be a grand big cock of a general relativity theory and the quantum mechanics came to build a proper perch for it.”

  “Ye-es.” He laid an arm around her. “As for launching a project, I see it lying on the greased ways, and you come and break a bottle of champagne across the director—he’s the figurehead, of course—”

  Their foolishness went on. Her merriment was an indivisible part of what he held dear about her.

  “Hey,” he remarked eventually, “you haven’t told me how you found this cave. Not that I wasted time asking. But since we’re taking a rest, how did you?”

  She grinned. “How do you think?”

  “Uh—”

  “The handsomest hunter last year… Do you know, my treasure, I could almost wish—almost—you’d set out a single day later? I was developing designs on that lad when you came by. Ah, well, no doubt he can bide for a bit.”

  He tried not to stiffen. She felt it, embraced him, and said, “I’m sorry. Have I hurt you? I mourn.”

  “Well, naturally, I can’t expect you to stay celibate months on end,” he made himself reply. “You’ve got too much life in you.”

  “You are him I love, Daniel. True, there’ve been past loves, and they flamed too, but none like this. Your strength, your knowledge, the skill in your darling hands, och, you are wholly a man, and yet you are kind and generous and caring. You I will love till they close my eyes. The rest… some few turn out bad, most are good, none have been dull, but frolic is all they really ever are. Or, at most, a making of closer comradeship.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’m not exactly a monogamist either.”

  She tried to get past the barrier in him: “I’ve told you, my heart, I’m no she-cat. An impulse now and again, aye, but mainly I must think well of him first, and after that reckon I would not be the harm of anybody else, before I will give more than a kiss. It’s no vast number of lovers I’ve had. A score, maybe, since I turned sixteen on Earth?”

  “And me, I’ve not always been choosy,” Brodersen admitted.

  He caught her to him and held her there a minute. “Forgive me,” he said thereafter, shakenly. “I didn’t mean to react like that to a little teasing. But—”

  “But?” she urged, seconds later.

  “I think what did it was your kidding me that I might’ve left home today instead of yesterday. Suddenly I remembered that I did leave home, and why.”

  “And you stepped back into jealousy because the real thought pained you too much. O beloved.” She knelt before him, stroked his face, regarded him through tears.

  “Could be,” he said. “I’m not in any habit of probing my psyche.” He pulled his lips upward. “As long as the damn thing runs, not rattling a lot, I’ll simply give it an occasional change of oil. Okay, let’s drop this subject with a dull, sickening thud.”

  She remained grave. “No, Dan. You are in danger, and everything you care about is, Lis and the children foremost. How could I deserve being your mistress if you must shelter me from your griefs? Tell me.”

  “I did while we drove here.”

  “You laid out a skeleton for me. Breathe on it now, that it may rise alive.”

  “I, uh, I don’t know what to say, Pegeen.” That was a name for her which they had private between them.

  “Let me lead you, then.” She settled beside him fresh; they touched, arm to arm and flank to flank, while they gazed outward at torchflies, trees and fugitive stars. Save for the springwater, the night was growing still as it grew old. “Why are you in rebellion?” she asked. “Sure, and I hunger to explore yonder suns myself. But you have Chinook, that you got remodeled and crewed for the same purpose.”

  “Yeah, after the alien ship passed through the Phoebean gate. Have you forgotten, though? Only a watchship was around, to see what precise guidepath she followed—which, actually, only a couple of specialist officers did. Damn them, they didn’t release the information except to their high command, and the Union government promptly declared it super top secret. Don Pedro himself—the Señor, the head of the Rueda clan and combine—he’s never managed to pry the data loose. If the rest of the crew hadn’t babbled, maybe you and I would still not know that an outworld vessel ever did come by.

  “Oh, yes,” Brodersen went on, out of the acridness in his gullet; “I could see the reasoning. Why, I could agree, sort of, would you believe? We’d no idea what kind of beings were at the far end of that gate. We couldn’t let any random team charge through, to raise any possible kind of havoc. That had to include me and my company. When I commissioned Chinook, I did it on sheer hope, that the official expedition would come back bearing good news, so the government could freely let responsible private parties go. Or else, if the expedition did not come back, the Union Council would some year let me make a second attempt. At that, I kept her fully stocked, so I could take off too fast for a politician or bureaucrat to get my clearance cancelled.

  “And God damn it, Emissary did return! And they’re suppressing the fact! They want to kill our chance for going, ever—”

  He slumped. “Hell and damnation,” he said, “you’ve heard me drone on, over and over, about what’s common knowledge. Last time we met, you heard me talk about my earliest suspicions. Today you heard me rant about what’s happened since. Why do you put up with my repeating like this?”

  She laid her head against his shoulder. “Because you have the need, my dear, my dear,” she answered. After a moment: “But tell me next, what was the need in you to charge forward like O’Shaughnessy’s bull? You steer yourself well. Why could you not be patient and cunning, till at last you held the truth gathered between your fingers for a noose to do hangman’s justice?”

  More than the words, her tone calmed him. “Well,” he said, “I’d already compromised myself to a degree. Then I trusted Aurelia Hancock too much, and look what happened.”

  “You could have outwaited that. How many years, or millions of years, blew by while the Others were growing into the galaxy and we abiding blind on our single globe? Would a few more matter?”

  “They will to the Emissary crew,” he grated. “You know that the mate, if he’s alive, is family to me. And another is a, a good friend of mine. Not to mention the rest. They have their rights too.”

  “Aye. Yet against this you surely set the welfare of Lis and Barbara and Mike, to say naught of hundreds who get their livelihood from Chehalis.” Caitlín gripped his nearest hand. “Dan, dearest, something beyond is driving you. What might that be? Yes, many a time you’ve told me how marvelous it will be for humans to have the freedom of the stars, more than fire or writing or the end of disease. And have I differed with you? But why this terrible haste, at whatever cost? We’ll die, darling, old and wicked if I have my desire, before we’ve known all there is to know here on Demeter by herself.”

  He knotted his fists while his mind groped for clarity. “Pegeen, on Earth I saw too much of what big, passionate convictions do to people, especially when governments have them. Then I started reading history, and found what horrors they’ve brought in the past. That made me swear I’d stay objective. If nothing else, I figured I could keep from orating at everybody in sight.

  “Except… I guess when we get right down to bedrock, I can no more set my strongest beliefs on a shelf to wait for a convenient moment than anyone else can.”

  Briefly, a part of him wondered if she noticed the mixed metaphor. Probably.
But she kissed him and requested, “Tell me them. How I wish you had earlier.”

  He heard how strained his voice was but couldn’t amend that: “This is what I’m afraid of. If the human race doesn’t take off soon for the stars, it dies.

  “The Union is in bad trouble. I thought, when I quit the Peace Command as a young fellow, that we’d pretty well worked ourselves out of a job. Earth looked orderly and sane. Well, I was wrong. Too many two-legged animals are jammed onto the planet. More and more lunacies keep boiling up. Religions like Transdeism. Heresies like New Islam. Political faiths like Asianism. Nations where mobs, or cabinet ministers, scream for secession if they can’t get what they want when they want, no matter if it’s feasible. And the worst is, a lot of those grudges against the Union are legitimate. More and more, the world government is trying to run everything—everything—from the center. As if an Oceanian mariculturist, a Himalayan knight, a businessman in Nairobi, and a spaceman working out of an Iliadic base didn’t know best what their special problems are and what to do about them. Judas priest, are you aware that dead-serious talk is going on in the Council about resurrecting Keynesian fiscal policies?

  “I suppose you’ve been spared the knowledge of what those were.

  “The point is, whenever I visit Earth, I see it more sick. A lot of sociologists claim that the revelation about the Others, a completely superior race of beings, had considerable to do with bringing on the nuttiness that led to the Troubles. I dunno. Maybe. But if that’s correct, then the Covenant didn’t buy us anything except a breathing spell. We haven’t yet come to terms with the fact of the Others. We never will, either, unless we can get out there. No, I’m sure that the way things are going, Earth will explode pretty soon. The best result of that would be a kind of Caesar; and the Caesars weren’t really very durable. The worst that can happen—the worst doesn’t bear thinking about, Caitlín.

  “And don’t suppose we can safely sit out the disaster here. My personal experience, these past several weeks, says different. Demeter may be two hundred and twenty light-years from Earth—the latest estimate I’ve seen from the astronomers—but that’s just a skip through the gate for a ship armed with fusion missiles.