green ocean. Great herds of animals grazed on this richness. Here and there were lines of trees along a river bed, or isolated clumps that gave the cattle shelter. The shadowy, whale humps of distant ridges rose out of the grass and away behind them rose the smoke of little hamlets or scattered steadings. At the farthest reach of vision, hanging like dreams in the dusky sky, were the high peaks of mountains wrapped in eternal snow.
They stopped on the crest of the hill, to look over over this their world, and Flay looked up at the old red sun as a man looks at his father.
'He will last out my time,' said Flay, 'and the time of my youngest children's grandchildren, and they tell me perhaps a thousand or two years beyond. Why should a man worry longer than that?'
'Why, indeed?' said Kettrick, and they rode down into the city.
The houses were more like warrens of stone, some of them sunk into the ground like windowed storm cellars, others one or two or even three stories high, all huddled together as though for warmth and mutual assistance against snow and bitter winds, clambering in rows up and down the hills, thrusting their backsides into the slopes behind them. Chimneys poured up smoke. The most sheltered places were not for human habitation but for winter pens and cave shelters for stock. Shaggy creatures of various breeds and sizes clattered or rooted about in the straggling lanes. There were forges and tanneries, industries of various sorts geared to the materials and the needs at hand. It was the Firgals' boast that they were completely self-sufficient.
'We do not need the traders,' Flay had told Kettrick on his first landing here. 'We would live just as well if none of you ever came again.' Kettrick had found that this was true, and he thought they were a very wise people.
The wisdom of their insistence on staying here was another matter, but that was their own business. And perhaps it was not as foolish as it seemed. Here they had the pick of what there was. On another world, they would have to fit themselves to what was left after others had already settled their order of dominance. Kettrick thought that any planet that took the Firgals in would live to regret its generosity.
People passing in the streets looked at Kettrick and Boker with polite unconcern. Meanwhile, Kettrick was chafing with impatience, sweating to ask Flay whether the last ship had been Seri's, and resolutely forcing himself to silence. These were not the little butterfly people of Gurra. One wrong word could finish
Of course the Firgals might not be involved at all with Seri and the Doomstar. But Kettrick thought there had been an odd note to Flay's question about their being in a hurry.
The cavalcade began to break up. The parts of the broken bar were taken off to one of the forges. Flay halted in front of a three-storey dwelling, one of a long rambling line, its back wall melting into the hill behind it. They dismounted and went inside.
The room within was low and smoke-smelling, the blackened roof beams close over Kettrick's head. Low doorways led into other chambers at the back and at either end, and on to still other chambers. Flay's clan inhabited a considerable stretch of housing, and it seemed to Kettrick that the clan had grown since he had been here last.
Flay's brawny wives and daughters and daughters-in-law and their innumerable young swarmed about busily. From one room came the mingled clacking of looms and female tongues. In another place a group of youngsters were carding wool, making a game out of it with a singsong chant and much laughter, and another group, slightly older and stronger, took turns thumping at a churn. The one who first made butter got a special reward, and the children kept shouting, 'Let me, it's my turn!' The older boys and the men were out with the stock now, or gathering fuel, or working in the forges or the tannery or some other industry. Four old women sat by a fireplace spinning yarn, their dark faces strong as weathered wood, their voices cheerful. Only the very little children tumbled about the floors like puppies with nothing to do.
Flay steered the two outlanders through the rooms and up a narrow flight of stairs that turned upon itself at right angles, requiring some nimble footwork. The upper levels were quieter. In a room with little shuttered windows Flay motioned them to seats in comfortable hide-frame chairs, and set a tall clay bottle and cups before them on a table.
Kettrick resisted the impulse to gulp down the fiery liquor. It was not proper manners. Even so, the warming sips steadied his nerves. The Firgals didn't fool around with effete wines and the like. They lived a hard life in a hard world, and when they wanted a drink they wanted a drink. They made the best whiskey in the Cluster, and kept it, being too short on grains for export.
'Well,' said Flay, 'and welcome.' He filled their cups again and then said quite casually, 'Seri didn't tell us you were back, Johnny.'
Kettrick made a show of being surprised. 'Seri? Seri Otku, who used to be my partner? Has he been here?'
'Only a day and a half ago.'
'Well,' said Kettrick, 'if that isn't a strange coincidence!' He was afraid to pick up his cup, much as he wanted the drink. He was afraid his hand would shake.
'Coincidence?'
'Yes. That we should come so close to meeting here.' Eagerly, with all the false sincerity he could muster, he asked, 'How is Seri? Is he well and flourishing?'
'He is well,' said Flay. 'He did not tell us you were back.'
'He doesn't know it.'
'Oh?' said Flay. 'Well, it is different in different lands. With us, a friend and partner would be the first to know.'
'Not,' said Kettrick, 'if your friend and partner is an honest man and wishes to stay that way…and you contemplate a crime.'
Now he reached resolutely for the cup and laughed to cover his unsteadiness.
'You knew, perhaps, that the I–C drove me out of the Cluster, under pain of arrest if I ever came back.'
'I knew that. Seri himself told me when he first came here.'
'Ah,' said Kettrick. 'Then you must understand that I came back secretly.'
He drank, aware that Flay was watching him with eyes like two little bright hard stones. Aware of Boker drinking, desperately silent. Aware of Chai in a corner, always in a corner watching, and her muzzle twitching as it did when something smelled wrong to her.
'Secretly?' said Flay. 'And yet you are trading.'
'Boker is trading. My friend and I are only shadows.' He grinned at Flay. 'Boker is transporting shadows to a certain place, and in the meantime we're depending on my friends to keep the secret in case the I–C asks.' He leaned a little closer. 'Because of that the trading will be extra good…if you haven't already stripped yourselves for Seri. We can afford it, you see, because in a very short while we'll be rich.'
'Shadows,' said Flay. 'Well, well. And when will the shadows come out into the light? Where does a trader who cannot trade go to get rich in the Cluster?'
'To the White Sun,' said Kettrick, 'to buy heartstones from the Krinn. That's where I was going when they caught me, just a hair's breadth away from a million credits. I couldn't forget that, Flay. That's why I came back, and that's why Boker is risking a stretch at Narkad to help me.'
Flay's eyes opened wider, losing some of their hard glaze. 'A million credits,' he repeated. Suddenly he was roaring with laughter. 'We don't give a hang for money here, but we like courage, and we like independence, and we don't greatly like the I–C, who come meddling with their damned spot-checks every so often to see if we're sending out drugs or poisons.'
He leaned over and shook Kettrick by the shoulder. 'Good luck, Johnny. I'm glad to see you again, and since I will not see you again after you go, we must make this week a special one, a sort of hail and farewell from the Firgals.' He filled the cups again, all bluff good fellowship and honest joy. 'How's that? We'll hunt, and eat, and drink, and shower each other with gifts, and we'll trade, even though Seri was just here. We'll do you better than you did on Gurra.' He thrust the cup at Kettrick and another at Boker. 'The women have been weaving a great deal of cloth, and last winter's pelts were especially…'
Kettrick caught it. 'Gurra?'
'You just came from there, didn't you?' asked Flay. 'I thought you said…'
'No,' said Kettrick. 'We came from Pellin—' naming one of the alternates to the Gurra route ' — and the trading was good there.'
