"Acting." She nodded ruefully. "That's what everyone expected of me. Well it's
easy for me, and it lets me concentrate on the harder work involved in my minor.
I didn't have the math for astrophysics or tensor analysis or any of that, so
I'm doing business administration. Between that and the theater arts I'm hoping
I can get in on the public relations end of the space program. That's the only
way I ever thought I'd have a chance of getting close to the frontiers. Even so,
no one takes me seriously."
"I take you seriously," he murmured.
She stared at him sharply. "Do you? I've heard that before. Can you really see
beyond my face and body?"
"Sure." He hoped he sounded sincere. "I don't pretend that I can ignore them."
"Nobody can. Nobody!" She threw up her hands in despair. "Professors, fellow
students: it's hell just trying to get through an ordinary class without having
to offend someone by turning down their incessant requests for a date. And it's
next to impossible to get any kind of a serious answer out of a professor when
he's staring at your tetas instead of concentrating on your question. You can
call it beauty. I call it my special deformity."
"Are you saying you'd rather have been born a hunchback? Maybe with no hair and
one eye set higher than the other?" '
"No." Some of the anger left her. "No, of course not. I just could have done
with a little less of everything physical, I suppose."
"Asi es la vida," he said quietly.
"Si, es verdad." She sat down on the grass again, crossing her legs. "There's
nothing I can do about it. But here"--and she gestured at the dark forest and
the huge serpentine shape coiled nearby--"here things are different. Here my
height and size are helpful and people, furry or human, seem to accept me as a
person instead of a sex object."
"Don't rely on that," he warned her. "For example our otter friend Mudge seems
to have no compunctions whatsoever about crossing interspecies lines. Nor do
very many others, from what I've seen."
"Well, so far they've accepted me as a warrior more than a toy. If that's due to
my size more than my personality, at least it's a start." She lay down and
stretched langorously. The fire seemed to spread from the burning embers to
Jon-Tom's loins.
"Here I have a chance to be more than what heredity seemed to have locked me
into. And it's like my childhood dreams of adventure."
"People get killed here," he warned her. "This is no fairyland. You make a
mistake, you die."
She rolled over. It was a warm winter night and her cape was blanket enough.
"I'll take my chances. It can't be any worse than the barrio. Good night,
Jon-Tom. Remember, when in Rome..."
He kicked dirt over the fire until it subsided and wished he were in Rome, or
any other familiar place. All he said was, "Good night, Flor. Pleasant dreams."
Then he rolled over and sought sleep. The night was pleasant, but his thoughts
were troubled.
The following day found them climbing and descending much hillier terrain. Trees
were still plentiful, but on the higher knolls they tended to be smaller and
with more land between. Occasionally bare granite showed where the ground cover
had thinned, though they were still traveling through forest.
And the gneechees were back. Even when Jon-Tom was not strumming his duar,
swarms of almost-theres were clustering thickly around the little party of
travelers.
He explained to Flor about gneechees. She was delighted at the concept and spent
hours trying to catch one with her eyes. Talea mumbled worriedly about their
inexplicable presence. Clothahump would have none of it.
"There is no room in magic for superstition, young lady," the turtle admonished
her. "If you would learn more about the world you must disabuse yourself of such
primitive notions."
"I've seen primitive notions kill a lot of people," she shot back knowingly. "I
don't mean to question you, but I bet you'd be the last person to say that we
know everything there is to know."
"That is so, child," agreed the wizard. "If the latter were true we would not be
making our way to this glade." He snapped irritably at Pog. The bat was diving
and swooping above their heads.
"You know you'll never catch one, Pog. You can't even see one."
"Yeah. Dey don't even react to my headseek either." He snapped at empty air
where something might have been.
"Then why do you persist?"
"Gives me somethin' ta do, as opposed ta idly dancin' in da air currents. But
dat's a thrill you'll never know, ain't it?"
"Do not be impertinent, Pog." The wizard directed Talea to stop. He dismounted,
looked around. "We walk from now on."
Packages and supplies were doled out, stuffed into backpacks. Then they started
uphill. The rise they were ascending was slight but unvarying. It grew dark, and
for a while they matched strides with the mounting moon. Clouds masked its
mournful silver face.
"We are close, close," Clothahump informed them much later. The moon was around
toward the west now. "I have sensed things."
"Yeah, I just bet ya have, boss," the bat muttered under his breath. He snapped
hungrily at a passing glass moth.
If the wizard had heard, he gave no sign. In fact, he spent the next two hours
in complete silence, staring straight ahead. No conversational gambit could
provoke a response from him.
A subtle tingling like the purr of a kitten began to tickle Jon-Tom's spine.
Tall trees closed tight around them once again, ranks of dark green spears
holding off the threatening heavens. Stars peeked through the clouds, looking
dangerously near.
A glance showed Talea looking around nervously. She reacted to his gaze, nodded.
"I feel it also, Jon-Tom. Clothahump was right. This is an ancient part of the
world we are coming to. It stinks of power."
Clothahump moved nearer to Jon-Tom. Clouds of gneechees now dogged the climbers.
"Can you feel it, my boy? Does it not tease your wizardly senses?"
Jon-Tom looked around uneasily, aware that something was playing his nerves as
he would play the strings of the duar. "I feel something, sir. But whether it's
magical influences or just back trouble I couldn't say."
Clothahump looked disappointed. Somewhere an anxious night hunter was whistling
to its mate. There were rustlings in the brush, and Jon-Tom noted that the
hidden things were moving in the same direction: back the way the climbers had
come.
"You are not fully attuned to the forces, I expect," said the wizard,
unnaturally subdued, "so I suppose I should not expect more of you." He looked
ahead and then gestured pridefully.
"We have arrived. One corner of the subatomic forces that bind the matter of all
creatures of all the world lies here. Look and remember, Jon-Tom. The glade of
Triane."
XIII
They had crested the last rise. Ahead lay an open meadow that at first glance
was not particularly remarkable. But it seemed that the massive oaks and
sycamores that ringed it like the white hair of an old man's balding skull drew
back from that open place, shunning the grass and curves of naked stone that
occasionally thrust toward the sky.
Here the moonlight fell unobstructed upon delicate blue blades. A few darker
boulders poked mushroomlike heads above the uneven lawn.
"Stop here," the wizard ordered them.
They gratefully slid free of packs and weapons, piled them behind a towering
tree that spread protective branches overhead.
"We have one chance to learn the nature of the great new evil the Plated Folk
have acquired. I cannot penetrate all the way to Cugluch with any perceptive