After repeated trials, she seemed to get the idea across, and an approximation of her name. The hunter took off northward. God willing, he’d ask around in the bayshore towns till he found the right person; and while this would make the dwellers curious, none should see reason to phone Imperial headquarters. God willing. She ought to kneel for a prayer, but she was too tired; Mary who fled to Egypt would understand. Kossara sat down on what resembled pale grass and wasn’t, hugged herself against the bitter breeze and stared across treelessness beneath a wan sun.
Have I really won through?
If Eonan still had his life and liberty, he might have lost heart for his revolution—if, in truth, he had ever been involved; she had nothing more than a dream-vision from a cave. Or if he would still free his people from the Empire, he might be the last. Or if cabals and guerrillas remained, he might not know where they hid. Or if he brought her to them, what could she hope for?
She tossed her head. A chance to fight. Maybe to win home in the end, likelier to die here: as a soldier does, and in freedom.
Drowsiness overflowed. She curled herself as best she could on the ground. Heavy garments blunted its hardness, though she hated the sour smell they’d gotten. To be clean again … Flandry had saved her from the soiling which could never be washed off. He had that much honor—and, yes, a diamond sort of mercy. If she’d done his bidding, tried her best to lead him to whatever was left of her fellows, he would surely have sent her back, manumitted—he’d have the prestige for such a favor to be granted him—unscathed—No! Not whole in her own honor! And release upon a Dennitza lashed to the Empire would be a cruel joke.
Then rest while you can, Kossara. Sleep comes not black, no, blue as a summer sky over the Kazan, blue as the cloak of Mary … Pray for us, now and in the hour of our death.
A small callused hand shook her awake. Hunger said louder than her watch what a time had passed while the sun brooded nightless. She stared into yellow eyes above a blunt muzzle and quivering whiskers. Half open, bat wings made a stormcloud behind. He carried a blaster.
His face—She sat up, aware of ache, stiffness, cold. “Eonan?”
“Torcha tracked me.” Apart from the piping accent, mostly due to the organs of speech, his Anglic came fluent. “But you do not know him, do you?”
She struggled to her feet. “I don’t know you either, quite,” she got out. “They made me forget.”
“Ungn-n-n.” He touched the butt of the gun, and his crest erected. Otherwise he stood in taut quietness. She saw he had arrived on a gravsled, no doubt to carry her.
Resolution unfroze him. “I am Eonan Guntrasson, of the Wendru clan in the Great Flock of Lannach. And you are Kossara Vymezal, from the distant planet Dennitza.”
Gladness came galloping, and every weakness fled. “I know that, barem! And you dared meet me? Then we are not finished yet!”
Eonan drew the membranes over his eyes. “We?”
“The revolution. Yours and mine.” She leaned down to grip his upper shoulders. Beneath fur and warmth, the flight muscles stood like rock.
“I must be careful.” His tone underlined it. “Torcha said you promised him a reward for fetching me. I paid him myself, not to have him along. Best we go aside and … talk. First, in sign of good faith, let me search you.”
The place he chose was back in the highlands. Canyon walls rose darkly where a river rang; fog smoked and dripped till Kossara was soaked with chill; at moments when the swirling grayness parted, she glimpsed the black volcanic cone of Mount Oborch.
On the way, Eonan had fed her from a stock of preserved Terran food, and explained he was the factor for Nakamura Malaysia in the area where he dwelt. This gave him wide contacts and sources of information, as well as an easy excuse to travel, disappearing into the hinterland or across the sea, whenever he wished. Thursday Landing had no suspicion of his clandestine activities. He would not speak about those until she related her story in full.
Then he breathed, “E-e-e-ehhh,” and crouched in thought on the gravsled bench. Finally, sharply: “Well, your Terran officer has likeliest concluded you slipped off in search of the cloudflyers—the, keh, the underground. A spacecraft was seen to lift from hereabouts not many sunspins ago. When I heard, I wondered what that meant.”
“I imagine he went to warn the resident and start a hunt for me,” Kossara said. “He did threaten to, if I deserted.” Anxiety touched her. “Yes, and a tightened space watch. Have I caused us trouble?”
“We shall see. It may have been worth it in all events. To learn about that spy device is no slight gain. We shall want your description of the place where you threw the ring away. Perhaps we can safely look for it and take it to study.”
“Chances are he’s recovered it. But Eonan!” Kossara twisted around toward him. “How are you doing here? How many survive? With what strength, what plans? How can I help?”
Again the third lids blurred his gaze. “Best I keep still. I am just a link. They will answer you in the nest where I have decided to take you.”
The hideout was high in a mountainside. Approaching, Kossara felt her eardrums twinge from pressure change and cold strike deep. Snowpeaks, glaciers, ravines, cliffs, crags reached in monstrous confusion between a cloud ocean which drowned the lower slopes, and a sky whose emptiness the sun only seemed to darken. Silence dwelt here, save for ah- booming over the windshield and a mutter of native language as Eonan radioed ahead.
Why am I not happy? she wondered. I am about to rejoin my comrades and regain my past—my purpose. What makes me afraid?
Eonan finished. “Everything will be ready,” he informed her. Was he as tense as he looked? She must have come to know Diomedeans well enough during her stay that she could tell; but that had been robbed from her. What had he to fear?
“I suppose,” she ventured, “this is headquarters for the entire mission. They tucked it away here to make it undiscoverable.”
“Yes. They enlarged a cave.”
She recalled another cave, where she and Trohdwyr and a few more had huddled. “Were we—those who died when I was captured—were we out in the field—liaison with freedom fighters whose homes were below timber-line? Maybe we were betrayed by one of them”—she grimaced—“who’d been caught at sabotage or whatever, and interrogated.”
“That sounds plausible.”
“But then nobody except us was destroyed! Am I right? Is the liberation movement still healthy?”
“Yes.”
Puzzlement: “Why didn’t I tell the Impies about our main base when they put me under hypnoprobe?”
“I do not know,” Eonan said impatiently. “Please be quiet. I must bring us in on an exact course, or they will shoot.”
As the sled glided near, Kossara spied the defense, an energy cannon. It was camouflaged, but military training had enhanced her natural ability to notice things. A great steel door in the bluff behind it would go unseen from above, should anyone fly across this lofty desert. Instruments—infrared sensors, neutrino detectors, magnetometers, gravitometers, atmosphere sniffers, a hundred kinds of robot bloodhound—would expose the place at once. But who would think to come searching?
The door swung aside. The sled passed through and landed in a garage among several aircars. Here were warmth, echoes, a sudden brilliance of light better suited for eyes human or Merseian. Kossara shed her parka before she stepped off. Her pulse raced.
Four stood waiting. Three were men. She was not surprised to see the last was a big green heavy-tailed person, though her heart said O Trohdwyr—and for an instant tears stung and blurred.