“We know not to this day how he discovered whatever he did discover. He may have had other, more secret friends among us. Ormer was not the sole Kithperson for whom he did favors. Somebody may have heard something in our camp and passed it onward to him. Or he may simply have guessed. Bodies—stance, gait, glance, tone—often say what tongues do not. We know only that of a sudden Valdi Ronen grew most kind to little Alisa Du, she of the brown bangs, freckled nose, and great black cat.”
“The captain’s daughter, and the midpoint of his universe,” Shaun explained. “Nothing untoward took place, nothing erotic at all. She was half his age. But she’d been fascinated by him ever since he made himself a fixture amongst us. To her he was as strange and romantic a figure as any of us was to him. She’d follow him around whenever and wherever she possibly could, maybe lugging Rowl in her arms.”
The bard smiled. “Rowl was a ship’s cat, a tom, but pleasant enough when chemically neutered as he usually was, quite intelligent, with a mortgage on Alisa’s love second only to Daddy’s and Mommy’s. He shared her bed and each night purred her to sleep. Yes, she became Valdi’s adoring admirer, her violet eyes never let slip of him when he was nigh, but Rowl was whom she went back to.”
Shaun resumed. “Till now, Valdi hadn’t been more than polite to her. That couldn’t have come easy to him, but he knew what she meant to the captain—well, to quite a few of us. So he spoke kindly, and sometimes told her a story or sketched her a picture. He had a talent for drawing, among other things. If he expected that’d stop her tagging after him, he was wrong. Talk about counterproductive! However, he bore with the nuisance, because he must if he wanted to stay welcome in our camp.
“Suddenly this changed. He didn’t seek her out or anything, no need of that, but he let her come to him and received her gladly. He’d hunker down and listen to her chatter, carry on a straight-faced conversation like with an equal. He spun longer yarns and drew fancier pictures than before. He showed her flowers and wildlife, took her for a ride in an open hover-car, led her through local skipdances and games like bounceball, till her laughter trilled. And, yes, he took special pains to make friends with Rowl. He brought treats stolen from the castle kitchen, he stroked the cat under the chin and down the belly, he’d sit for an hour or two after Rowl got on his lap and fell asleep, till Rowl deigned to jump off—Ah, every ship has cats. You know what I mean.
“I couldn’t quite figure this out. Surely he didn’t imagine it would butter Captain Du into approving his adoption—which d call for a vote anyway, of course. At best, he made the Old Man and the Vanguard Lady regard him as less of a lout. What use that? Vacuum, poison air, hard radiation, celestial mechanics, they’ve got no respect for niceness.”
The music went briefly sinister. “I wondered also,” Erody related. “Could it be a subtle vengeance, striking out at the thwarting of his hopes? Soon we would depart. None now alive on Aerie would see us again, nor would we ever see them. Did he mean to send Alisa off with her heart ripped asunder?” The notes gentled. “No, I could not believe that. Valdi had no cruelty in him—”
“No more than most boys,” Shaun muttered.
“—and besides, he must realize it would not happen. Alisa would miss him for a while, but she was healthy and a child; new adventures awaited her; and she had her Rowl.”
“Then things exploded,” Shaun said. “The sun was going down, it was getting bedtime for kids—Aerie’s got a twenty-six-hour rotation period, you may recall, so we’d easily adapted—and all at once Rowl wasn’t to be found. Consternation!”
“The news spread among us like waves over a pond where someone has thrown in a stone,” Erody adjoined. “No enormous matter, no crisis of life and death. But throughout our camp, we began to peer and grope about. The bleak eventide light streamed over us, casting shadows that went on and on across the grass, while the castle hulked ever more darkling to north and beyond it night welled up in the forest. ‘Here, kitty, kitty!’ we cried, ridiculously to and fro, around the shelters, probing under cots and into crannies, while the sun left us, dusk deepened from silver-blue to black, and the rings stood forth in their ghostly magnificence. It mattered not that Captain and Lady Du had offered a reward. Alisa wept.”
“No luck,” Shaun said. “The cats had roamed freely. They seldom wandered far outside our perimeter, and never toward the woods. Things there probably didn’t smell right. Rowl, though, even when his tomhood was suppressed, had always been an active and inquisitive sort. Had he, maybe, come on something like a scuttermouse and chased it till he couldn’t find his way home? I don’t think Alisa’s parents suggested that to her. Nor do I think she slept well through the night.”
“In the morning, we did not entirely go on preparing for departure,” Erody told. “Some who found time to spare went more widely than before, into the very forest. None entered it beyond sight of sunlight aslant between those hunched boles and clutching boughs, down through that dense, ragged leafage. If nothing else, the brush caught at a man, slashed, concealed sucking mudholes, while the bloodmites swarmed, stung, crawled up nostrils until breath was well-nigh stopped. Noises croaked, gabbled, mumbled from the shadows. Hunters in these parts had means and tricks for coping, yet they themselves never ranged deeply. When Captain Du asked whether any of them would help search, they said nay. If Rowl had strayed into the wildwood, whatever got him could too easily take a human. Those creatures can eat our kind of flesh.”
“Just a cat gone,” Shaun said. “The girl would get over it. We had work to do.
“About midday, Valdi arrived. I asked where he’d been. He told me his school had gotten flappy about him skipping too many lessons, and he’d had to take a remedial session at the instruction terminal. Once free, he’d come straight to us. I gave him the news, not as any big thing.”
“I was there,” Erody said. “I saw him flush red.” A note twanged. “ ‘I will go look!’ he cried. ‘I know the forest, I’ll find him!’ ” Her instrument sounded a bugle call.
“The boy’s voice cracked again,” Shaun observed anticlimactically. “Sure, I thought, sure; adolescent heroics. He dashed off. After a while he returned, outfitted like a huntsman—green airbreath skinsuit, canteen and ration pouch and knife at hip, locator on right wrist and satphone on left, rifle slung at shoulder, and a plume in the hat on that unkempt head of his. Ho, how dramatic! ‘I will find Rowl,’ he promised Alisa, who’d heard he was there and come out in fairytale hopes. And off he loped.”
“Stars kindled in her eyes behind the tears,” Erody said. “I thought how callous he was to raise her spirit thus, when it must be dashed down again onto the stones. Heedless, rather—a boy, a boy.”
“I sort of thought the same,” Shaun went on. “However, like the rest of us, I was busy readymaking. Besides, Alisa’s no crybaby.”
“A gallant little soul. As the day wore on, she swallowed her sorrow and took up her own duties. But she did not smile. Often and often I saw her gaze stray northward to the forest.”
“I glanced that way myself, now and then,” Shaun admitted. “More and more, I fretted. How long did the pup mean to try? What sense did it make? Had he quit, slunk into the castle, not wanted to tell us he’d failed? Really, he couldn’t have expected to succeed. He wasn’t that stupid-cocky. Or might he also have come to grief?”
“It was an evil wood.” Music hissed.
“Hostile, anyway. You and I weren’t the only Kithfolk who worried. Most of us liked Valdi Ronen. We called an inquiry to the castle. Had he checked in? No, he had not.”
“Once more, darkness crept over us. The evening star glowed in western heaven. The rings were a banded bridge of pallid hues, around them the true stars and beyond those the galactic belt, as chill as the airs that sent mists aswirl about our ankles. Afar, some animal howled. Did it crouch above its prey? Windows and windows glowed yellow on the black bulk of the castle. Lights flickered like glowflies in the hands of servants and soldiers, out searching for Valdi. Their shouts drifted to us faint and forlorn.”