Desai stirred. “I don’t want to be irreverent,” he said uncomfortably, “but, well, while apparently a starfaring civilization did exist in the distant past, leaving relics on a number of planets, I can’t quite, um-m, swallow this notion I’ve heard on Aeneas, that it went onto a more exalted plane—rather than simply dying out.”
“What would destroy it?” she challenged. “Don’t you suppose we, puny mankind, are already too widespread for extinction, this side of cosmos itself endin’—or, if we perish on some worlds, we won’t leave tools, carvin’s, synthetics, fossilized bones, traces enough to identify us for millions of years to come? Why not Builders, then?”
“Well,” he argued, “a brief period of expansion, perhaps scientific bases only, no true colonies, evacuated because of adverse developments at home—”
“You’re guessin’,” Tatiana said. “In fact, you’re whistlin’ past graveyard that isn’t there. I think, and I’m far from alone, Builders never needed to do more than they did. They were already beyond material gigantism, by time they reached here. I think they outgrew these last vestiges we see, and left them. And Didonian many-in-one gives us clue to what they became; yes, they may have started that very line of evolution themselves. And on their chosen day they will return, for all our sakes.”
“I have heard talk about these ideas, Prosser Thane, but—”
Her look burned at him. “You assume it’s crankery. Then consider this. Right on Aeneas are completest set of Builder ruins known: in Orcan region, on Mount Cronos. We’ve never investigated them as we should, at first because of other concerns, later because they’d become inhabited. But now … oh, rumors yet, nothin’ but the kind of rumors that’re forever driftin’ in on desert wind … still, they whisper of a forerunner—”
She saw she might have spoken too freely, broke off and snapped self-possession into place. “Please don’t label me fanatic,” she said. “Call it hope, daydream, what you will. I agree we have no proof, let alone divine revelation.” He could not be sure how much or how little malice dwelt in her smile. “Still, Commissioner, what if bein’s five or ten million years ahead of us should decide Terran Empire is in need of reconstruction?”
Desai returned to his office so near the end of the posted working day that he planned to shove everything aside till tomorrow and get home early. It would be the first time in a couple of weeks he had seen his children before they were asleep.
But of course his phone told him he had an emergency call. Being a machine, it refrained from implying he ought to have left a number where he could be reached. The message had come from his chief of Intelligence.
Maybe it isn’t crucial, went his tired thought. Feinstein’s a good man, but he’s never quite learned how to delegate.
He made the connection. The captain responded directly. After ritual salutations and apologies:
“—that Aycharaych of Jean-Baptiste, do you remember him? Well, sir, he’s disappeared, under extremely suspicious circumstances.
“ … No, as you yourself, and His Excellency, decided, we had no reasonable cause to doubt him. He actually arranged to travel with a patrol of ours, for his first look at the countryside.
“ … As nearly as I can make out from bewildered reports, somehow he obtained the password. You know what precautions we’ve instituted since the Hesperian incident? The key guards don’t know the passwords themselves, consciously. Those’re implanted for posthypnotic recognition and quick reforgetting. To prevent accidents, they’re nonsense syllables, or phrases taken from obscure languages used at the far side of the Empire. If Aycharaych could read them in the minds of the men—remembering also his nonhuman brain structure—then he’s more of a telepath, or knows more tricks, than is supposed to be possible.
“Anyhow, sir, with the passwords he commandeered a flyer, talked it past an aerial picket, and is flat-out gone.
“ … Yes, sir, naturally I’ve had the file on him checked, cross-correlated, everything we can do with what we’ve got on this wretched dustball. No hint of motivation. Could be simple piracy, I imagine, but dare we assume that?”
“My friend,” Desai answered, while exhaustion slumped his shoulders, “I cannot conceive of one thing in the universe which we truly dare assume.”
VIII
“Hee-ah!” Mikkal lashed his statha into full wavelike gallop. The crag bull veered. Had it gone down the talus slope, the hunters could not have followed. Boots, or feet not evolved for this environment, would have been slashed open by the edges of the rocks. And the many cinnabar-colored needles which jutted along the canyon would have screened off a shot.
As was, the beast swung from the rim and clattered across the mountainside. Then, from behind an outcrop striped in mineral colors, Fraina appeared on her own mount.
The bull should have fled her too, uphill toward Ivar. Instead, it lowered its head and charged. The trident horns sheened like steel. Her statha reared in panic. The bull was almost as big as it, and stronger and faster.
Ivar had the only gun, his rifle; the others bore javelins. “Ya-lawa!” he commanded his steed: in Haisun, “Freeze!” He swung stock to cheek and sighted. Bare rock, red dust, scattered gray-green bushes, and a single rahab tree stood sharp in the light of noontide Virgil. Shadows were purple but the sky seemed almost black above raw peaks. The air lay hot, suckingly dry, soundless except for hoof-drum and human cries.
If I don’t hit that creature, Fraina may die, went through Ivar. But no use hittin’ him in the hump. And anywhere else is wicked to try for, at this angle and speed, and her in line of fire—The knowledge flashed by as a part of taking aim. He had no time to be afraid.
The rifle hissed. The bullet trailed a whipcrack. The crag bull leaped, bellowed, and toppled.
“Rolf, Rolf, Rolf!” Fraina caroled. He rode down to her with glory in him. When they dismounted, she threw arms around him, lips against his.
For all its enthusiasm, it was a chaste kiss; yet it made him a trifle giddy. By the time he recovered, Mikkal had arrived and was examining the catch.
“Good act, Rolf.” His smile gleamed white in the thin face. “We’ll feast tonight.”
“We’ve earned it.” Fraina laughed. “Not that folk always get paid what’s owing them, or don’t get it swittled from them afterward.”
“The trick is to be the swittler,” Mikkal said.
Fraina’s gaze fell tenderly on Ivar. “Or to be smart enough to keep what you’ve been strong enough to earn,” she murmured.
His heart knocked. She was more beautiful than she ought to be, now in this moment of his victory, and in the trunks and halter which clad her. Mikkal wore simply a loincloth and crossed shoulderbelts to support knives, pouch, canteen. Those coppery skins could stand a fair amount of exposure, and it was joy to feel warmth upon them again. Ivar struck to loose, full desert garb, blouse, trousers, sun-visored burnoose.
That plateau known as the Dreary of Ironland was behind them. There would be no more struggle over stonefields or around crevasses of a country where nothing stirred save them and the wind, nothing lived save them alone; no more thirst when water must be rationed till food went uncooked and utensils were cleaned with sand; no more nights so cold that tents must be erected to keep the animals alive.
As always, the passage had frayed nerves thin. Ivar appreciated the wisdom of the king in sequestering firearms. At that, a couple of knife fights had come near ending fatally. The travelers needed more than easier conditions, they needed something to cheer them. This first successful hunt on the eastern slope of the Ferric Mountains ought to help mightily.