When St. Cyr asked what the trees were called, Dane said, "These are Dead Men."
"Because of their color?"
"Partly that." He hunched against the wheel and took his eyes from the road long enough to look at the low-hanging branches. "There's a native legend that says the souls of the dead pass from their graves into the roots of these trees, are drawn up the tree and sprout as leaves on the branches. When a leaf falls, it is indication that a dead man has been released from — well, purgatory."
"Quite fanciful."
"Anyway, since the natives call the trees Dead Men, we colonists have done the same. Somehow, even without the legend, it seems to fit them."
St. Cyr leaned back and stared at the road, trying to forget the trees. "Anyway, I wish it were autumn. I could do without this sort of foliage."
"They're never without leaves — except for two weeks in early spring and two more in late autumn. They grow two complete sets of cover in each calendar year."
"No rest for Dead Men."
"That's it."
The trees closed in as if in response, blocked the sun as the road grew worse. The graveled path had abruptly given way to a muddy dirt track full of ruts, potholes and sucking pits of black muck. The Rover plowed forward through it all, whined as it shifted its own gears, roared farther up into the mountains, where it was always early evening.
Two hours later, Dane said, "Not much farther now."
They had traveled slightly more than forty miles on a hideously inadequate switchback road that always appeared to be crumbling dangerously on the outer edge whenever it was flanked by a precipice of any depth. Now, far up the mountain but beginning to descend into a hidden pocket in its interior, they left the valley and the last vestiges of daylight far behind. A roof lay over them, a great arch of gray leaves interlaced like handwoven thatch. Now and again a hole opened in that canopy, never larger than a yard square and generally much smaller than that. Where there was a break in the cover, the sunlight came down like liquid, cutting straight through the unrelieved darkness and illuminating only the spot on which it splashed.
Dane had long ago turned on the headlights. The road had gotten progressively worse until it occasionally dropped a foot or more without warning. They ran into cross-ruts that jolted them like railroad ties, or like regular waves smashing beneath a ship.
"If you've got to have werewolves," St. Cyr said, "this is the best place for them."
Dane glanced at him, perplexed at his tone, decided not to answer.
"Doesn't the family have a helicopter — with all else it has?"
"Yes," Dane said.
"Why not come up here in that?"
"We couldn't put down anywhere nearer the village than an hour's walk; the trees are everywhere in these altitudes."
St. Cyr closed his eyes and imagined that he was somewhere else, anywhere else.
Shortly, Dane said, "Here we are."
St. Cyr opened his eyes and saw a tiny round valley, the brink of which they had just passed. Dozens of neat campfires filled it, threw flickering shadows on colorfully painted trucks, trailers and tents. Now and then, as fuel was added to a fire and the flames leapt higher, a tongue of yellow light licked the low, gray roof of vegetation, ruining the illusion of a vast hall with a ceiling several miles overhead.
"I'll bet Norya's expecting us," Dane said.
St. Cyr had not seen him this enthusiastic before, grinning, his eyes bright.
"You sent word that we'd be coming?" St. Cyr asked.
"No. But Norya will know about us. She has certain powers…"
The intelligent species native to Darma was not, in appearance at least, greatly different from mankind. They were of the same approximate height as a man, and of similar weights. They walked on two legs, one knee joint per limb, and they had two arms and two hands for the manipulation of tools. Each hand had six fingers, though this deviation from the expected was so inconspicuous as to hardly cause comment. They were dark-skinned, but so were a number of races of mankind. All of them that St. Cyr encountered were dark-haired, though they may have harbored a few blonds among them. Their eyes seemed either to be gray, the same shade as the leaves on the Dead Men, or a startling amber that caught the firelight like cat's eyes. Their ears lay flat against the skull and contained very little cartilage. Their noses were short, flattened, the nostrils somewhat ragged. Their mouths were not rimmed with lips but were sudden, dark gashes in the lower third of their faces, placed somewhat closer to the chin than in a human face. When they spoke Empire English, as St, Cyr and Dane did, their words were muffled, drawn thin and flat by the lack of lips to help shape the vowels. Their own language was one of consonants, clicks, and whistles that sounded to St. Cyr even more complex than formal Mandarin Chinese.
As the cyberdetective and the Alderban boy passed between the gaudy tents and trucks, walking briskly toward the silver trailer in which Norya lived, the Darmanians smiled and nodded, spoke an occasional greeting — but were, on the whole, watchful.
St. Cyr saw now that they had larger eyes than men, with enormous, pebbly lids.
They moved with feline grace as they passed the men, and often they seemed to go out of their way to avoid encountering the humans.
As they reached the silver trailer, the door opened. A stocky man, clearly of Earth-normal human blood, came down three metal steps and brushed by them without a word. He wore a full beard, odd in this day of electrolytic beard removal at puberty, and that bush of facial hair made his scowl seem twice as fierce as it was.
"Who's he?" St. Cyr asked.
"His name's Salardi. He came here with a team of archaeologists who were researching some native ruins, and when his job was done he decided to stay."
"A wealthy man?"
"No. He lives with the natives, eats off the land."
Salardi turned the corner at an orange and blue tent and disappeared.
"He doesn't seem to be happy here."
Dane said, "The word is that he's wanted in connection with a crime of some sort in the Inner Galaxy. He joined the scientific expedition to get free passage out here toward the rim, away from the Founding Worlds' laws." He started forward again, turned and said, "Come on. Norya's waiting."
Remember Salardi.
I will.
At the trailer door, which stood open, an old woman's voice greeted them before they had started up the steps. "Welcome, Dane. Please bring your detective friend inside."
Dane turned and smiled at St. Cyr. "You see? She has powers."
They went up the metal steps and into the main room of the trailer, closed the door after them. They stood in a candle-lighted chamber, the odor of incense heavy on the air. The furniture here looked hand-carved, each piece made from a massive block of wood. Dead Men wood? St. Cyr wondered. In the largest of the chairs, at the far end of the room, sitting with a blanket across her lap and legs, Norya waited for them.
"Here," she said, indicating a pair of chairs directly in front of her.
They sat down.
St. Cyr found it difficult to put an age to the alien face before him, though he was certain that Norya was old, inestimably old. Her eyes were nested in dark wrinkles; furrows cut her brown cheeks like wounds, bracketed her slit mouth. Her dark hair had long ago turned white, and it fell in ropy clumps over her narrow shoulders. When she smiled at St. Cyr, her lipless mouth looked like a gash made by a sharp knife.
"Norya, this is—"
Keeping her gaze fixed on the cyberdetective, she said, "Baker St. Cyr. I know. I've seen this entire meeting in a vision." Her voice was webbed with tiny cracks, like a piece of crumpled isinglass, yet it was loud enough and clear enough to be easily heard.