females took goods for barter across the home country. They feared no assault. While they stayed on the marked routes, their persons and burdens were sacred. Jill asked if that law was ever violated. “I have heard of it, very rarely.” Innukrat said. “The neighborhoods tracked down the doers, slew them, and pickled them in brine.”
Initially Jill, fascinated by her surroundings, enjoyed herself, until in abrupt guilt she would remember how those who cared for her must be worrying, and how she had become a high card in the hand of Larreka’s enemy. The steading alone was worth days of exploration. Its basic layout resembled that of a southland ranch, but everything else was quite foreign. A hall formed one side of an adobe-paved courtyard, a great single-storied building of undressed stone, massive logs, sod roof, half of it a chamber where the household gathered for meals or sociability, the rest given over to service rooms and private cubicles. When she had grown used to their angular style, she deemed the carvings on roof pillars and wainscots as good as she had ever seen. The remainder of the court was defined by smaller, plainer structures: sheds, workshops, housing for subordinates and a few domestic animals. It always brawled with activity here, a hundred individuals going about their labor or their pleasures; Jill found the little ones as irresistible as they were at home. But without a common language, she was barred from doing much more than watch. The Valenneners soon came to take her for granted.
Ulu lay in the eastern foothills of the Worldwall range. Forest all around gave some shielding from the suns, though most trees were scrubby and this year their red or yellow leaves drooped, curled, withered. The occasional blue T-plants looked better, and in places a phoenix loomed magnificent. The household held frequent fire drills, and Jill recollected that the phoenix had its name, translated from a native equivalent, because its reproduction depended on the conflagrations which devastated these lands every millennium.
A trail into the woods soon ended at a cabin. Two armed guards waved her off. She asked Innukrat why and got an uneasy response: “Best not talk of that till the Overling comes back, if he then chooses.” Jill decided probably it was a shrine or a magical site. And yet nobody minded her inspecting the family dolmens, though oracular dreams were supposed to come from them.
This was the single restriction on her freedom of movement. Every other path she could follow as long as hunger or weariness allowed. Ten kilometers southeast the forest came to a halt and she looked widely from mountain peaks sheer in the west, across umber hills and down over a remote veldt, ashimmer in the heat which billowed from the two suns.
Here and there she saw crofts. The social system appeared to rest on a kind of voluntary feudalism. An Overling dominated a region, led its fighters in battle or its workers in civil emergency, tried lawsuits upon request, officiated at the major religious rites. Lesser families could stay independent of him if they chose, but most found it preferable to become his “oathgivers,” pledge him certain services and obedience in exchange for the protection of his household troops and a share in his food stores when times got hard. Either party could annul the contract for cause, and it was not binding on the next generation—after the latter had passed that sixty-fourth birthday before which the power of the parents was absolute.
Innukrat spoke of killings, especially among the young. Both sexes were raised haughty and quarrelsome. “They must be ready to fight, and know how, when raiders come or when we ourselves go raiding; for you see what a niggard land ours is.” Nevertheless Overlings and oldsters kept bloodshed within bounds and eventually got unfriends reconciled. Well, Jill thought, Ishtarians aren’t human.
Her loneliness began to press in on her. She craved language lessons from Innukrat, and the female obliged as much as possible. That was no large amount, a wife’s duties being countless. Jill offered to help, but soon discovered she was merely in the way. Beside lacking the strength to use these crude implements, she hadn’t the skill.
She took to spending most of her daytimes outdoors, The open country threatened sunstroke; and besides, the woods held more nature to study. It was sparse compared to that in the southern hemisphere, but as she gained a little familiarity, she found herself just as captivated, and frequently stayed out late.
Thus it was that she had her encounter.
She was returning after both suns, now close companions, had set. Tropical twilight was brief. However, the moons sufficed through this scanty foliage. Often her trail went through what she would have called a meadow were it less parched. Entering one such, the path curved sharply around a canebrake, to bring her out in a single stride.
Low, gnarly trees made shadow masses around. Behind them on her right, the battlements of the Worldwall glimmered gray into a black-purple sky where stars burned fewer than usual. For Caelestia was rising near the full, and Urania at the half hung close by. No longer did either have two clear phases at once or avoid regular eclipse. Apart from a thin edging of silver, they shone pale red. Their glow upon dead lia and dry thornbushes made the air feel more hot than it was. Silence lay like a weight.
Jill stopped noticing, stopped moving. Her pulse alone jumped, a knock-knock-knock through head and throat, as she and the creature stood confronted. It had been crossing the meadow when she surprised it.
No—can’t be—trick of moonlight—I’m hungry, heat-exhausted, my brain’s gone into free fall—
The shape bounded from her.
“Wait!” she cried, and stumbled after. But already it had disappeared among the trees.
A moment’s dread made her grip the dagger Arnanak had given her. No, it fled, not I… Regardless, I’d better get on back.
While she strode, faster and faster, she tried to conjure the shape forth as it had stood in the red beams. A T-beast, beyond a doubt. Whatever life had been like on Tammuz a billion years ago, when it started anew from microbes on Ishtar it did not follow the same course as ortho-life, or Earth’s. There were three sexes. There was no elaborate symbiosis, nor hair or milk; and instead of plant chemistry or perspiration, the homeothermic animals, like many plants, controlled temperature by changing color. There were vertebrates of a sort, but none descended from an ancient worm, rather from a thing like a starfish—no true head but a branch, the fifth limb changed into a carrier of mouth and sensory organs. There were a few bipeds—
But they were small. This had been a giant of its kind. The petals atop its branch would have reached to her chest. On the abdomen she thought she had made out three eyes above the central bulge of the genital sheath.
Legs had been long and powerful for the size; it was more a leaper than a strider. Yet the boneless-looking arms were well developed also, ending in a hand of five fingers arranged in a star.
Hands? Fingers?
Yes, if she wasn’t crazy. She’d seen the right arm lifted, digits spread, as if caught by astonishment at sight of her. The left had been carrying what seemed to be a knife.
Illusion. Got to’ve been. I’ve made a remarkable discovery, sure, a T-beast never suspected before. Probably come down from the north because of changing conditions. Only a beast, though!
Windows appeared yellow ahead of her. She burst into the hall, pushed through its crowdedness, blurted to Innukrat what had happened.
The female traced a sign. “You met a daur,” she said uneasily.
“A what?” Jill asked.
“I think best we wait for Arnanak about this, too.”
“But—” Memory stirred. Primavera did have xenological data on the Valenneners, mostly taken secondhand from members of the Gathering, yet filling a few books which she’d read. “Daur. Dauri.” Yes, I seem to recall, they believe in a kind ofelfor pooka or minor demon—“Are those, uh, are they beings that haunt the wilderness— magical powers—?”
“I told you, wait for Arnanak,” said the chieftain’s wife.”
He returned some days later. Jill didn’t know how many; she’d ceased keeping count.
She chanced to be home when he arrived. To save her human clothes, she’d begged a length of the coarse cloth the natives wove from plant fibers, and stitched together several knee-length shifts caught by a rope belt. She was no Ishtarian whose life depended on ample sunlight; hereabouts, Bel could bum off her skin. Head, arms, and legs were sufficiently tanned to be safe if she took due care. Next she wanted footgear. Her shoes stank from overuse.
The household produced most of what it consumed. Occasionally Valenneners needed boots. The female who was best at leatherwork proved quite willing to make Jill two or three pairs—maybe because that got her out of her ordinary chores, maybe because it was a challenge, maybe from simple kindliness, or a combination of these. She required the girl on hand, to be a living dummy and to explain with gestures and a few Tassu words how the things
