loss, grief, and the only sureness that of the final nothingness. No. You too, Wanderfoot who is to be, will jubilate when the banners of the Outworld come flying into the last of the cities and man is made wholly alive. Now go with those who will teach you.”
The Queen of Air and Darkness lifted an arm in summons. It halted, and none came to answer.
For over the fountains and melodies lifted a gruesome growling. Fires leaped, thunders crashed. Her hosts scattered screaming before the steel thing which boomed up the mountainside. The pooks were gone in a whirl of frightened wings. The nicors flung their bodies against the unalive invader and were consumed, until their Mother cried to them to retreat.
Barbro cast Jimmy down and herself over him. Towers wavered and smoked away. The mountain stood bare under icy moons, save for rocks, crags,. and farther off a glacier in whose depths the auroral light pulsed blue. A cave mouth darkened a cliff. Thither folk streamed, seeking refuge underground. Some were human of blood, some grotesques like the pooks and nicors and wraiths; but most were lean, scaly, long-tailed, long-beaked, not remotely men or Outlings.
For an instant, even as Jimmy wailed at her breast-perhaps as much because the enchantment had been wrecked as because he was afraid—Barbro pitied the Queen who stood alone in her nakedness. Then that one also had fled, and Barbro’s world shiverered apart.
The guns fell silent; the vehicle whirred to a halt. From it sprang a boy who called wildly, “Shadow-of-a- Dream, where are you? It’s me, Mistherd. Oh, come, come!”—before he remembered that the language they had been raised in was not man’s. He shouted in that until a girl crept out of a thicket where she had hidden. They stared at each other through dust, smoke and moonglow. She ran to him.
A new voice barked from the car, “Barbro, hurry!”
Christmas Landing knew day: short at this time of year, but sunlight, blue skies, white clouds, glittering water, salt breezes in busy streets, and the sane disorder of Eric Sherrinford’s living room.
He crossed and uncrossed his legs where he sat, puffed on his pipe as if to make a veil, and said, “Are you certain you’re recovered? You mustn’t risk overstrain.”
“I’m fine,” Barbro Cullen replied, though her tone was flat. “Still tired, yes, and showing it, no doubt. One doesn’t go through such an experience and bounce back in a week. But I’m up and about. And to be frank, I must know what’s happened, what’s going on, before I can settle down to regain my full strength. Not a word of news anywhere.”
“Have you spoken to others about the matter?”
“No. I’ve simply told visitors I was too exhausted to talk. Not much of a lie. I assumed there’s a reason for censorship.”
Sherrinford looked relieved. “Good girl. It’s at my urging. You can imagine the sensation when this is made public. The authorities agreed they need time to study the facts, think and debate in a calm atmosphere, have a decent policy ready to offer voters who’re bound to become rather hvsterical at first.” His mouth quirked slightly upward. “Furthermore, your nerves and Jimmy’s get their chance to heal before the journalistic storm breaks over you. How is he?”
“Quite well. He continues pestering me for leave to go play with his friends in the Wonderful Place. But at his age, he’ll recover—he’ll forget.”
“He may meet them later anyhow.”
“What? We didn’t—” Barbro shifted in her chair. “I’ve forgotten too. I hardly recall a thing from our last hours. Did you bring back any kidnapped humans?”
“No. The shock was savage as it was, without throwing them straight into an… an institution. Mistherd, who’s basically a sensible young fellow, assured me they’d get along, at any rate as regards survival necessities, till arrangements can be made.” Sherrinford hesitated. “I’m not sure what the arrangements will be. Nobody is, at our present stage. But obviously they include those people—or many of them, especially those who aren’t full-grown— rejoining the human race. Though they may never feel at home in civilization. Perhaps in a way that’s best, since we will need some kind of mutually acceptable liaison with the Dwellers.”
His impersonality soothed them both. Barbro became able to say, “Was I too big a fool? I do remember how I yowled and beat my head on the floor.”
“Why, no.” He considered the big woman and her pride for a few seconds before he rose, walked over and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’d been lured and trapped by a skillful play on your deepest instincts, at a moment of sheer nightmare. Afterward, as that wounded monster carried you off, evidently another type of being came along, one that could saturate you with close-range neuropsychic forces. On top of this, my arrival, the sudden brutal abolishment of every hallucination, must have been shattering. No wonder if you cried out in pain. Before you did, you competently got Jimmy and yourself into the bus, and you never interfered with me.”
“What did you do?”
“Why, I drove off as fast as possible. After several hours, the atmospherics let up sufficiently for me to call Portolondon and insist on an emergency airlift. Not that that was vital. What chance had the enemy to stop us? They didn’t even try—But quick transportation was certainly helpful.”
“I figured that’s what must have gone on.” Barbro caught his glance. “No, what I meant was, how did you find us in the back-lands?”
Sherrinford moved a little off from her. “My prisoner was my guide. I don’t think I actually killed any of the Dwellers who’d come to deal with me. I hope not. The car simply broke through them, after a couple of warning shots, and afterward outpaced them. Steel and fuel against flesh wasn’t really fair. At the cave entrance, I did have to shoot down a few of those troll creatures. I’m not proud of it.”
He stood silent. Presently: “But you were a captive,” he said. “I couldn’t be sure what they might do to you, who had first claim on me.” After another pause: “I don’t look for any more violence.”
“How did you make… the boy… cooperate?”
Sherrinford paced from her, to the window, where he stood staring out at the Boreal Ocean. “I turned off the mind-shield,” he said. “I let their band get close, in full splendor of illusion. Then I turned the shield back on, and we both saw them in their true shapes. As we went northward, I explained to Mistherd how he and his kind had been hoodwinked, used, made to live in a world that was never really there. I asked him if he wanted himself and whomever he cared about to go on till they died as domestic animals—yes, running in limited freedom on solid hills, but always called back to the dream-kennel.” His pipe fumed furiously. “May I never see such bitterness again. He had been taught to believe he was free.”
Quiet returned, above the hectic traffic. Charlemagne drew nearer to setting; already the east darkened.
Finally Barbro asked, “Do you know why?”
“Why children were taken and raised like that? Partly because it was in the pattern the Dwellers were creating; partly in order to study and experiment on members of our species—minds, that is, not bodies; partly because humans have special strengths which are helpful, like being able to endure full daylight.”
“But what was the final purpose of it all?”
Sherrinford paced the floor. “Well,” he said, “of course the ultimate motives of the aborigines are obscure. We can’t do more than guess at how they think, let alone how they feel. But our ideas do seem to fit the data.
“Why did they hide from man? I suspect they, or rather their ancestors—for they aren’t glittering elves, you know; they’re mortal and fallible too—I suspect the natives were only being cautious at first, more cautious than human primitives, though certain of those on Earth were also slow to reveal themselves to strangers. Spying, mentally eavesdropping, Roland’s Dwellers must have picked up enough language to get some idea of how different man was from them, and how powerful; and they gathered that more ships would be arriving, bringing settlers. It didn’t occur to them that they might be conceded the right to keep their lands. Perhaps they’re still more fiercely territorial than we. They determined to fight, in their own way. I daresay, once we begin to get insight into that mentality, our psychological science will go through its Copernican revolution.”
Enthusiasm kindled in him. “That’s not the sole thing we’ll learn, either,” he went on. “They must have science of their own, a nonhuman science born on a planet that isn’t Earth. Because they did observe us as profoundly as we’ve ever observed ourselves; they did mount a plan against us, one that would have taken another
