“We Kithfolk huddled in. Our blundering efforts couldn’t help. The boy hadn’t phoned. No satellite had spotted anything. Well, Aerie didn’t have many in orbit. Besides, the leaf canopy hindered their spying. Come morning, when a wider spectrum was available, we’d see what they could see.”
“I have heard that now Alisa wept for her friend. Her mother rocked her in her arms for hours before she won to sleep. A psychodrug wouldn’t have been the same.”
“Me, I lay awake too, thinking some harsh thoughts. I recollected tales of what could find a human lost in those woods. And night whistlers, clingthorn—I didn’t care to go through the list. Finally I took a soporific. My wife was smarter; she’d already done that.
“Our clock roused us when dawn was sneaking up into the eastern sky. We threw our clothes on and stumbled out, aimed more or less at the nearest mess cabin, desperate for coffee. People grunted and stirred in the shadows around us. Not that I was eager to be fully conscious. When the sun rose, its rays felt as cold as the lingering night-mists.
“And then… there across the wet, trampled ground came Valdi Ronen.”
“His hair hung drenched with dew, his clothes dripped, he snuffled and sneezed,” Erody said. “But pressed to his breast he carried a cage, rough-made of withes, and in it stirred and yowled a black furriness.”
“We crowded around, jolted wide awake. Huh? He’d found Rowl? How ever? By what crazy chance? And why hadn’t he called home? We babbled. He looked straight at me in particular—”
“The level young sunlight blazed from his eyes.”
“He answered us quietly, the way a man should. Yes, he’d assumed the cat had strayed into the forest. Being a better woodsman than average, he knew what traces to look for, bent twigs, pug marks in the duff—Well, I’m no tracker myself. I can’t detail it. He didn’t actually go any big distance away, he said. But the hunt was slow, with many false leads. By the time he’d found the beast, night was falling.
“Then he discovered his satphone was dead. Sometimes on Aerie, in spite of every safeguard, metalmites get into equipment. He should have checked before he started out, but didn’t. A boy in a hurry.
“To stumble back through the dark would be too risky. He wove a cage for Rowl out of shoots, so the idiot animal wouldn’t wander off once more, and settled down as best he could. Once, he said, something huge passed by—he didn’t see, he heard the brush break, felt the footfalls through the ground—and he unslung his rifle; but nothing happened. At daybreak he started home.”
“Alisa jubilated. Will I ever again see such utter happiness, and afterward such adoration?” wondered Erody. “Alisa’s mother hugged Valdi to her and kissed him in sight of every soul. Her father wrung his hand, while swallowing hard.”
“Oh, yes,” Shaun said. “Only a cat rescued, a pet. The Dus, the ship, owed Valdi the reward, our thanks, and nothing else. Still, the lad had proven himself. Maybe he’d been reckless, but that goes with being a boy. Besides, he had in fact carried out a difficult operation. Taking a chance when you have to goes with being Kith.
“And, then, we were in turmoil, also in our feelings—close to departure, we’d nevermore see the friends we’d made, this or that love affair was ending—You understand.
“The upshot was, we adopted Valdi Ronen. He’s apprentice crew. And, I may say, in spite of his handicaps, quite promising.”
“Which pleases Alisa and Rowl,” Erody laughed.
For a short span there was silence, beneath the rollicking of the Fair.
Shaun grinned at his audience. “No doubt you’re puzzled what the point of the story is,” he said. “And no doubt, we being a race of traders, some of you suspect.
“If so, you’re right. I’d had my own suspicions—not unique to me, but I was the officer who took Valdi aside and braced him after the ship was outbound.”
“The sun of Aerie lost to sight,” Erody murmured, “and around us, anew, the stars.”
“ ‘This was too convenient,’ I told him. ‘I am now your superior and you will obey orders. I want to know what really happened to that poor cat.’
“He laughed. Not a cackle; a man’s laugh, from down in the chest and straight out the throat. ‘What poor cat?’ he answered. ‘A victim? Why, sir, I lured him with delicacies my father enjoys only on feast days. Yes, then I caged him and kept him hidden away till I could carry him off to the woods. But I kept him fed with the same treats.’
“And in fact,” Shaun remarked, “it took Rowl a while before he stopped turning up his nose at his regular rations.
“ ‘Didn’t anybody notice that when I let him out he didn’t race for food or water?’ Valdi asked me. ‘I was three-quarters afraid somebody would. But with you about to leave forever, what had I to lose? Uh, sir.’ I saw him struggle to keep a sober face.
“ ‘Well, it was an emotional scene, as you’d counted on,’ I said. ‘We Kithfolk are slobbery sentimental about things like that.’ I gave him my sternest look. ‘They include the welfare of an innocent little girl.’
“He had the grace to stare down at the deck. ‘I’m sorry about that, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t really think of her, how hurt she’d be, till too late.’ Maybe this was true, a boy, raised in hard company, often neglected, and possessed by a demon. ‘I will try to make it up to her, sir,’ he finished.
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘those of us who guessed have kept quiet, which may count as conniving. Punishment would make Alisa cry more. No society could run for long without a certain amount of hypocrisy to grease the wheels. But you had better justify our estimate of you, Apprentice Ronen.’ ”
Shaun paused. His glance roved through the pavilion entrance, past the dancing and hallooing, to the sky.
“I didn’t spell out that estimate for him,” he said. “He needed chastening. But our ship needs more bold, clever rascals than she’s got.
“Valdi’s rambling about the Fair today, in the middle of all the glamour he ever wished for. I imagine he’s observing too, learning, thinking. I hope so.”
Erody’s instrument clanged.
Shaun brought his attention back to the people who had come to hear him and began another story.