done; he being a beast operatof himself. “Are they domesticated and conditioned?”
“No, I wouldn’t call them that, exactly,” Noach replied. “Not like horses or dogs. We use the proper stimuli on them. Those vary, depending on what you’re after and where you are. For instance, in Brenning Dales you can unstopper a bottle of sex attractant, and every gruntleboar within ten kilometers rushes straight toward your bow. Around the Mare we’ve bred instincts into certain species to come when a sequence of notes is played on a trumpet. If nothing else, you can always stalk for yourself; any place. Hunting isn’t difficult when critters are abundant. We don’t want to take the .
time on tms journey, though, so Mistress Jenith has been driving those cragbuck with her fire bees.” He shrugged. “There are plenty of other ways. What you don’t seem to realize, as yet, is that we’re descended from people who applied scientific method to the problem of living in a wilderness.”
For once, the night was clear above Foulweather Pass. Snow glistened on surrounding peaks, under Selene, until darkness lay drenched with an unreal brilliance. Not many stars shone through. But Karlsarm scowled at one, which was new and moved visibly, widdershins over his head.
“They’ve put up another satellite.” The words puffed ghost white from his lips; sound was quickly lost, as if it froze and tinkled down onto the hoarfrosted road. “Or moved a big„ spaceship into near orbit without camouflage.Ohy?”
“The war?” Evagail shivered beside him and wrapped her fur cloak ;tighter about her. (It was not her property. Wartn.outfits were kept for travelers in a shed at the foot Of the pass, to be returned on the other side, with a small rental paid to the servant of the landholder.) “What’s been happening?”
“The news is obscure, what I get of it on that mini-radio we took along,” Karlsarm said. “A major fight’s developing near Sluicegate. Nuclear weapons, the whole filthy works. By Oneness, if this goes on much longer we won’t be left with a planet worth inhabiting!”
“Now don’t exaggerate.” She touched his hand. “I grant you, territory’s that’s fought on, or suffers fallout, is laid waste. But not forever; and it isn’t any big percentage of the total.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you were the owner. And what about the ecological consequences? The genetic? Let’s not get overconfident about these plant and animal species we’ve modified to serve our needs while growing wild. They’re still new and unstable. A spreading mutation could wipe them out. Or we might have to turn farmers to save them!”
“I know. I know. I do want you to see matters in perspective. But agreed, the sooner the war ends, the better.” Evagail turned her gaze from that sinister, crawling spark in the sky. She looked down the slope on which they stood, to the camp. Oilwood fires were strewn along the way, each economically serving a few people. They twinkled like red and orange constellations. A burst of laughter, a drift of song came distantly to her ears.
Karlsarm could practically read her thought. “Very well, what about Ridenour?” he challenged.
“I can’t say. I talk with him, but he’s so locked into himself, I get no hint of;what his real purpose may be. I could almost wish my Skill were of the love kind.”
“Why yours?” Karlsarm demanded. “Why don’t you simply wish, like me, that we had such a Mistress with us?”
Evagail paused before she chuckled. “Shall I admit the truth? He attracts me. He’s thoroughly a man, in his quiet way; and he’s exotic and mysterious to boot. Must you really sic an aphrodite onto him when we reach Moon Garnet?”
“I’ll decide, that at the time. Meanwhile, you can help me decide and maybe catch forewarning of any plot against us. He can’t hide that he’s drawn to you. Use the fact.”
“I don’t like to. Men and women—of course, I mean women who don’t have that special Skill—they should give to each other, not take. I don’t even know if I could deceive him.”
“You can try. If he realizes and gets angry, what of it?” Beneath the shadowing carnivore headpiece, Karlsarm’s features turned glacier stern. “You have your duty.”
“Well…” Briefly, her voice was forlorn. “I suppose.” Then the wide smooth shoulders straightened. Moonfrost sparkled on a mane lifted high. “It could be fun, too, couldn’t it?” She turned and walked from him.
Ridenour sat at one campfire, watching a dance. The steps were as intricate as the music that an improvised orchestra made. He seemed not only glad but relieved when Evagail seated herself beside him.
“Hullo,” she greeted. “Are you enjoying the spectacle?”
“Yes,” he said, “but largely in my professional capacity. I’m sure it’s high art, but the conventions are too alien for me.”
“Isn’t your business to unravel alien symbolisms?”
“In part. Trouble is, what you have here is not merely different from anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s extraordinarily subtle—obviously the product of a long and rigorous tradition. I’ve discovered, for instance, that your musical scale employs smaller intervals than any other human music I know of. Thus you make and use and appreciate distinctions and combinations that I’m not trained to hear.”
“I think you’ll find that’s typical,” Evagail said. “We aren’t innocent children of nature, we Free People. I suspect we elaborate our lives more, we’re fonder of complication, ingenuity, ceremoniousness, than Terra herself.”
“Yes, I’ve talked to would-be runaways from the Cities,”
She laughed. “Well, the custom is that we give recruits a tough apprenticeship. If they can’t get through that, we don’t want them. Probably they wouldn’t survive long. Not that life’s harder among us than in the Cities. In fact, we have more leisure. But life is altogether different here.”
“I’ve scarcely begun to grasp how different,” Ridenour said. “The questions are so many, I don’t know where to start.” A dancer leaped, his feather bonnet streaming in Selene light, flame light, and shadow. A flute twittered, a drum thuttered, a harp trilled, a bell rang, chords intertwining like ripple patterns on water. “What arts do you have besides… this?”
“Not architecture, or monumental sculpture, or murals, or multi-sense taping.” Evagail smiled. “Nothing that requires awkward masses. But we do have schools of—oh, scrimshaw, jewelry, weaving, painting and carvings, that sort of thing—and they are genuine, serious arts. Then drama, literature, cuisine… and things you don’t have—to call them contemplation, conversation, integration—but those are poor words.”
“What I can’t understand is how you can manage without those awkward masses,” Ridenour said. “For example, everyone seems to be literate. But what’s the use? What’is there to read?”
“Why, we probably have more books and periodicals than you do. No electronics competing with them. One of the first things our ancestors did, when they started colonizing the outback in earnest, was develop plants with leaves that dry into paper and juice that makes ink. Many landholders keep a little printing press in the same shed as their other heavy equipment. It doesn’t need much metal, and wind or water can power it. Don’t forget, each area maintains schools. The demand for reading matter is a source of income—yes, we use iron and copper slugs for currency—and the transporters carry mail as well as goods.”
“How about records, though? Libraries? Computers? Information exchange?”
“I’ve never met anybody who collects books, the way some do in the Cities. If you want to look at a piece again, copies are cheap.” (Ridenour thought that this ruled out something he had always considered essential to a cultivated man—the ability to browse, to re-read on impulse, to be serendipitous among the shelves. However, no doubt these outbackers thought he was uncouth because he didn’t know how to dance or to arrange a meteor- watching festival.) “Messages go speedily—enough for our purposes. We don’t keep records like you. Our mode of life doesn’t require it. Likewise, we have quite a live technology, still developing. Yes, and a pure science. But they concentrate on aFeas of work that need no elaborate apparatus: the study of animals, for instance, and ways to control them.”
Evagail leaned closer to Ridenour. No one else paid attention; they were watching the performance. “But do me a favor tonight, will you?” she asked.
“What? Why, certainly.” His gaze drifted across the ruddy lights in her hair, the shadows under her cloak, and hastily away. “If I can.”
“It’s easy.” She laid a hand over his. “Just for tonight, stop being a research machine. Make small talk. Tell me a joke or two. Sing me a Terran song, when they finish here. Or walk with me to look at the moon. Be human, John Ridenour… only a man… this little while.”
