Such an environment! What did it suggest, anyhow? Cultivation? Or a plant that permeated its environs with poison, as Earth’s redwood its woody body. He grinned at the chill that flashed along his spine.
And, if there were no animal life, what the devil were the thorns for?
A ridiculous forest! In its simplicity suggesting the enchanted forests of ancient Earthly fairy tales. That idea should please witch doctor Fedris!
If only he had some notion of the general location of the planet he was on, he might be able to make better guesses about its other life forms. Life spores did drift about in space, so that solar systems and even star regions tended to have biological similarities. But he’d come too fast and too curiously, too fast even to see stars, in the Wild Ones’ fastest and most curious boat, to know where he was.
Or for Fedris to know where he was, he reminded himself.
Or for any deep-space approach-warning system, if there were one on this planet, to have spotted his arrival. For that matter he hadn’t foreseen his arrival himself. There had been just the dip up from subspace, the sinister black confetti of the meteorite swarm, the collision, the wrecked spaceboat’s desperate fall, clutching at the nearest planet.
He should be able to judge his location when night came and he could see the stars. That is, if night ever came on this planet. Or if that high fog ever dispersed.
He consulted his compass. The needle of the primitive but useful instrument held true. At least this planet had magnetic poles.
And it probably had night and day, to support vegetable life and such a balmy temperature.
Once he got out of this forest, he’d be able to plan. Just give him cities! One city!
He tucked the compass in his tunic, patting the locket at his neck in a strangely affectionate, almost reverent way.
He looked at the laced boughs ahead. Yes, it was exactly like those fairy forests that cost fairy-book knights so much hackwork with their two-handed swords.
Easier with a dustgun—and he had scores of miles of cleared path in his store of ultrasonic refills.
He glanced back at the slightly curving tunnel he’d made.
Through the slaty ashes on its floor, wicked green shoots were already rising.
He snapped on the duster.
The boughs were so thick at its edge that the clearing took Elven by surprise. One moment he was watching a tangled green mat blacken under the duster’s invisible beam. The next, he had stepped out— not into fairyland, but into the sort of place where fairy tales were first told.
The clearing was about a half mile in diameter. Round it the thorn forest made a circle. A little stream bubbled out of the poisonous greenery a hundred paces to his right and crossed the clearing through a shallow valley. Beyond the stream rose a small hill.
On the hillside was a ragged cluster of gray buildings. From one of them rose a pencil of smoke. Outside were a couple of carts and some primitive agricultural implements.
Save for the space occupied by the buildings, the valley was under intensive cultivation. The hill was planted at regular intervals with small trees bearing clusters of red and yellow fruit. Elsewhere were rows of bushy plants and fields of grain rippling in the breeze. All vegetation, however, seemed to stop about a yard from the thorn forest.
There was a mournful lowing. Around the hillside came a half dozen cattle. A man in a plain tunic was leisurely driving them toward the buildings. A tiny animal, perhaps a cat, came out of the building with the smoke and walked with the cattle, rubbing against their legs. A young woman came to the door after the cat and stood watching with folded arms.
Elven drank in the atmosphere of peace and rich earth, feeling like a man in an ancient room. Such idyllic scenes as this must have been Earth’s in olden tunes. He felt his taut muscles relaxing.
A second young woman stepped out of a copse of trees just ahead and stood facing him, wide-eyed. She was dressed in a greenish tunic of softened, spun, and woven vegetable fibers. Elven sensed in her a certain charm, half sophisticated, half primitive. She was like one of the girls of the Wild Ones in a rustic play suit. But her face was that of an awestruck child.
He walked toward her through the rustling grain. She dropped to her knees.
“You. you—” she murmured with difficulty. Then, more swiftly, in perfect English speech, “Do not harm me, lord. Accept my reverence.”
“I will not harm you, if you answer my questions well,” Elven replied, accepting the advantage in status he seemed to have been given. “What place is this?”
“It is the Place,” she replied simply.
“Yes, but what place?”
“It is the Place,” she repeated quakingly. “There are no others.”
“Then where did I come from?” he asked.
Her eyes widened a little with terror. “I do not know.” She was redhaired and really quite beautiful. Elven frowned. “What planet is this?”
She looked at him doubtfully. “What is a planet?”
Perhaps there were going to be language difficulties after all, Elven thought. “What sun?” he asked. “What is sun?”
He pointed upward impatiently. “Doesn’t that stuff ever go away?”
“You mean,” she faltered fearfully, “does the sky ever go away?”
“The sky is always the same?”
“Sometimes it brightens. Now comes night.”
“How far to the end of the thorn forest?”
“I do not understand.” Then her gaze slipped beyond him, to the ragged doorway made by his duster. Her look of awe was intensified, became touched with horror. “You have conquered the poison needles,” she whispered. Then she abased herself until her loose, red hair touched the russet shoots of the grain. “Do not hurt me, all-powerful one,” she gasped.
“I cannot promise that,” Elven told her curtly. “What is your name?”
“Sefora,” she whispered.
“Very well, Sefora. Lead me to your people.”
She sprang up and fled like a doe back to the farm buildings.
When Blven reached the roof from which the smoke rose, taking the leisurely pace befitting his dignity as god or overlord or whatever the girl had taken him for, the welcoming committee had already formed. Two young men bent their knees to him, and the young woman he had seen standing at the doorway held out to him a platter of orange and purple fruit. The Conqueror of the Poison Needles sampled this refreshment, then waved it aside with a curt nod of approval, although he found it delicious.
When he entered the rude farmhouse he was met by a blushing Sefora who carried cloths and a steaming bowl. She timidly indicated his boots. He showed her the trick of the fastenings and in a few moments he was sprawled on a couch of hides stuffed with aromatic leaves, while she reverently washed his feet.
She was about twenty, he discovered talking to her idly, not worrying about important information for the moment. Her life was one of farm work and rustic play. One of the young men—Alfors—had recently become her mate.
Outside the gray sky was swiftly darkening. The other young man, whom Elven had first seen driving the cattle and who answered to the name of Kors, now brought armfuls of knotty wood, which he fed to the meager fire, so that it crackled up in rich yellows and reds. While Tulya—Kors’ girl—busied herself nearby with work that involved mouthwatering odors.
The atmosphere was homey, though somewhat stiff. After all, Elven reminded himself, one doesn’t have a god to dinner every night. But after a meal of meat stew, fresh-baked bread, fruit conserves, and a thin wine, he smiled his approval and the atmosphere quickly became more celebratory, hi fact quite gay. Alfors took a harp strung with gut and sang simple praises of nature, while later Sefora and Tulya danced. Kors kept the fire roaring and Elven’s wine cup full, though once he disappeared for some time, evidently to care for the annuals.