took a year to regain my health. But you have not heard of the quest.
“I spent three years merely readying. First the dauri took food of mine and made caches for me along the way. In the Starklands it would not rot, nor would beasts eat it. Regardless, I almost starved. They had laid down too little; the load a daur can carry is small, and I had not foreseen how grim that country is. Still nearer did I come to death by thirst. It is not a desert northward, or was not before the Red One returned. But it is dry, its life needs less water than ours does, and this too we had not allowed for.
“Yet in the end we won to certain ruins. I groped half mad among them, until a daur showed me the Thing that is full of unknown stars. I clutched it to me and sent my feet back across the land which scorned and scorched them. Somehow they bore me.
“Since, the dauri and I have grown closer. We have secrets I am not free to share. But their will toward me is good; and my will toward you is good. My friends they will help, my foes they will harm. This is enough to say. I have spoken; and you will understand.”
Later, as he drifted toward sleep, Arnanak thought:
Enough to say to him. Humans would surely pay well to hear more. What I can tell them about the dauri might buy me their abandonment of the Gathering.
SIX
Anu was a few hours under the horizon and Bel quite low above. Light streamed yellow under the trees along Campbell Street. Where it passed through the translucent leaves of jackfruit, it flecked the shade beneath with spots of coral. The air lay quietly cooling, hill of spicy autumn fragrances from across the river. Several children played hopscotch on the pavement. Their shouts flew thin and sweet to Ian Sparling’s ears. A bicyclist dodged around them. Otherwise nobody was in sight. The laboratories and industries whose low, garden-surrounded buildings lined this thoroughfare were closed for the evening, their workers at home or—a few score—outside the mayor’s house to see the Earthlings come forth and hope for a scrap of news.
Actually, that first conference was finished. The Hanshaws had invited participants to stay for dinner. Sociability might ease a little of the stress between them. Sparling had excused himself on the ground that his wife would be disappointed if he didn’t return for a special dish she’d prepared. He suspected Hanshaw knew it was a lie, but he didn’t care. By taking the rear exit to an alley, and thence a roundabout way home, he avoided questions from the crowd.
Pipe cold between teeth, fists jammed into pockets, he scissored space with his legs, scarcely aware of the world. Fingers must close on his arm and shake before he noticed. But then he saw Jill Conway. He stopped. The blood quickened and sang in him.
“Wow,” she said. “What’s the hurry? You’re traveling like the devil to a tax collector’s wake.” Scant mirth was in her tone, and after a second she added, “Bad. huh?”
“I shouldn’t—” He nearly lost his pipe, crammed it away, and swallowed before he demanded, “What’re you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
He stared at her slendemess. Light ran down the street and struck gold from her hair. “Huh? But why—?” No, obviously she didn’t wait for me. Just for a chance to talk to me. Sparling collected himself. “How did you know when or where?”
“I asked Olga Hanshaw to phone me as soon as the official discussion ended. She wasn’t forbidden to, and she feels she owes me a favor.” Jill had rescued the couple’s youngest child from drowning a couple of years before. This was the first time Sparling had heard of her claiming any reward. “Don’t mention it, please, Ian.”
“No,” he promised at once; then: But God did request we keep things confidential till he’s planned how to tell Primavera and… the whole Gathering. Then: Well, I won’t go back on my word to Jill. I can’t. It’s harmless. If anybody on this planet can be trusted, she can. She should’ve been invited to sit in on the conference. Though that would’ve roused jealousies, and distracted me—or inspired me— Throttle that nonsense! he ordered himself. You old fool!
“As for how I knew where to wait,” Jill told him, “why, I know you. Campbell to Riverside and on home. Right?”
He attempted a smile. “Am I that transparent?”
“No.” She regarded his gaunt features carefully “No, you’re a mighty private person. However, chances were you’d leave early; you’re never much for polite banalities. You’d choose a route which avoided people. At this hour, it has to be this way. Primavera isn’t exactly a labyrinth.” Her voice snapped: “You know my methods, Watson. Apply them!”
He couldn’t but chuckle and shake his head. “Why not loosen your collar?” Jill suggested. “You don’t have to choke any more to impress the Navy with our earnestness. Besides, that cowlick of yours spoils the effect.”
“Well—okay.” When he had done, she took his arm again, tucked hers beneath, and started them off in the free-swinging stride they both favored.
“What happened?” she asked after a while.
“I’m not supposed to—”
“Yeh, yeh, yeh. You’re not under oath of secrecy, are you? I’ll give you my promise if you like, not to let anything go any further.” She was silent for a space, during which he heard their boots thud and felt her touch. When she spoke anew, it was most softly. “Yes, Ian, I am presuming, I am begging for a privilege. But I’ve got a brother in the Navy. And Larreka’s always been like a second father to me. The night he stayed at my house… hardest to take was the way he kept working to crack jokes, tell anecdotes, whatever he hoped might amuse me. I wanted to cry. Except naturally he’d’ve known what that meant, and soldiers’ daughters don’t show grief.”
“The legionary tradition,” he said for lack of better words. “It’d be dangerous to morale if allowed. We’re different, we humans.”
“Not that different. And if I knew what—The sooner I know, the sooner I can start thinking about something real to do, not sit inside myself and gnaw my guts.”
He must look at her then, less far downward than a man of his height need do with the run of women. Her blue gaze was steady, yet she smiled no more and the level sunbeams caught sparks in her lashes.
“You win,” he rasped. “Though you won’t like the news.”
“I didn’t expect to. Oh, Ian, you’re such a laren!” The word meant, approximately, “good trooper,” overtones of kindliness as well as strength and fidelity. She let go his arm and took his hand. He checked a wish to squeeze back. No use, worse than useless, to let her guess how she had altogether gripped him. But he could keep a very gentle hold, couldn’t he?
They reached the landing and turned north onto Riverside, a road cut from the left bank of the Jayin. On their right, trees screened them from view of town, a long row of deep-rooted swordleaf, preserved amidst this terrestrialized ecology to be a windbreak when tornados whirled out of the west. Opposite, the stream flowed broad, murmurous, evening ablaze upon it. Snags and shoals made ripples; an ichthy would leap in a gleam of silver and a clear splash; rocket flies darted brilliant. On the farther shore, native pastureland rolled’ into blue remoteness—tawny turfoflia, scarlet firebloom, scattered trees crowned with copper or brass. In the middle distance a flock of owas grazed, and the larger els individually, six-legged kine in a peacefulness that Sparling wished Constable could have painted.
Here the air was cooler still, damp, breezy, many-scented. Westward under sinking Bel, a few clouds glowed orange. Elsewhere the sky stood unutterably clear. A ghostly, waning Caelestia drew eastward. Beneath, so high as to be only a pair of wings, hovered a saru. It did not stoop on any of the iburu which flapped along lower down; maybe it waited for easier prey than those big bronzy-green ptenoids. A cantor sat on a bough, small, gray- feathered, fearless, and sang its autumn song.
Sparling remembered how Jill had continued the work of her mentor, old Jim Hashimoto, on the many functions of song in the cantor and related species, for her first serious research project, and how she’d run whooping across his sight in the joy of a breakthrough idea. Had that been when he first—No, probably not. She was a long-legged youngster then, six or seven years older than his, merely one of three kids born to the Conways. Since, Alice had married Bill Phillips, and Donald had followed Becky to college on Earth till the Navy pulled him
