He was silent a while before he said: “I do know you are a most extraordinary person, Jannika.”

  She had regained enough equilibrium to control their talk until they reached the lake. There, for a moment, she felt herself shaken again.

  A canebrake screened it from them till they had passed through, to halt on a beach carpeted with mosslike amber-hued turf. Untouched by man in its chalice of forest, the water lay scummy, bubbling, and odorous. The sight of soft colors and the smell of living things were not unpleasant; they were normal to Medea—yet how clear and silver-blue the Neusiedler See gleamed in Danubia. Breath hissed between her teeth.

  “What’s wrong?” Piet followed her gaze. “The dromids?”

  A party of them had arrived to drink, some distance off. Jannika stared as if she had never seen their kind before.

  Nearest was a young adult, presumably virgin, since she had six legs. From the slender, long-tailed body rose a two-armed centauroid torso, up to the oddly vulpine head, which would reach to Jannika’s chest. Her pelt shimmered blue-black under the suns; Argo was hidden by trees.

  Four-legged, a trio of mothers kept watch on the eight cubs they had between them. One set of young showed by their size that their parent would soon ovulate again, be impregnated by a mating, shortly thereafter shed her second segment, and attend it until it gave birth. Another member of this group was at that stage of life, walking on two legs, no longer a functional female but with the male gonads still undeveloped.

  No male of breeding age was present. Such a creature was too driven, lustful, impatient, violent, for sociability. There were three postsexual beings, grizzled but strong, protective, their biped movements fast by human standards though laggard compared to the lightning fluidity of their companions.

  All adults were armed with stone-age spears, hatchets, and daggers, plus the carnivore teeth in their jaws.

  They were gone almost as soon as Jannika had seen them, not out of fear but because they were Medean animals whose chemistry and living went swifter than hers.

  “The dromids,” she got out.

  Piet regarded her awhile before he said gently: “They pursue your dear ouranids. You tell me that will get worse than ever on the night when the glitter bugs rise. But you must not hate them. They are caught in a tragedy.”

  “Yes, the sterility problem, yes. Why should they drag the ouranids down with them?” She struck fist into palm. “Let’s get to work, let’s collect our samples and go home, can we, please?”

  He was fully understanding.

  —She cast the memory out and flung herself back into preparations for the night.

  Hugh Brocket and his wife departed a while after sunset. Their flitters jetted off in a whisper, reached an intermediate altitude, and circled for a minute while the riders got bearings and exchanged radioed farewells. Observed from below, catching the last gleam of sunken Colchis on their flanks, they resembled a pair of teardrops.

  “Good hunting, Jan.”

  “Ugh! Don’t say that.”

  “Sorry,” he apologized in a stiff tone, and cut out the sender. Sure, it had been tactless of him, but why must she be so goddamn touchy?

  Never mind. He’d plenty to do. Erakoum had promised to be on Shipwreck Cliffs about this time, since her gang meant to proceed north along the coast from its camp before turning inland. Thereafter her location would be unpredictable. He must lock onto her transmitter soon. Jannika’s craft dwindled in sight, bound on her own quest. Hugh set his inertial pilot and settled back in his safety harness to double-check his instruments. That was mechanical, since he knew quite well everything was in order. Most of his attention roamed free.

  The canopy gave a titanic vista. Below, hills lay in dappled masses of shadow, here and there relieved by an argent thread that was a river or by the upheaving of precipices and scarps. The hemisphere-dividing Ring Ocean turned the eastern horizon to quicksilver. Westward in heaven, the double sun had left a Tyrian wake. Overhead reached a velvety dark, becoming more starry with each of his heartbeats. He saw a pair of moons, close enough to show discs lighted from two sides, rusty and white; he recognized more, which were mere bright points to his eyes, by their positions as they went on sentry-go among the constellations. Low above the sea smoldered Argo—no, shone, because its upper clouds were in full daylight, bands of brilliance splashed over sullen red. Jason was close to transit, with angular diameter exceeding twenty minutes of arc, and nevertheless Hugh had trouble finding it amidst that glare.

  The shore came in view. He activated the detector and set his craft to hovering. An indicator light flashed green; he had his contact. He sent the vehicle aloft, a full three kilometers. Partly this was because he would be concentrating on encephalic input and wanted plenty of room for piloting error; partly it was to keep beyond sight or hearing of the natives, lest his presence affect their actions. Having taken station, he connected and secured the receiver helmet to his head—it didn’t weigh much—and switched it on. Transmitted, amplified, transformed, relayed, reinduced, the events in Erakoum’s nervous system merged with the events in his.

  By no means did he acquire the dromid’s full awareness. Conveyance and translation were far too primitive. He had spent his professional lifetime gaining sufficient fellow-feeling with the species that, after as much patience as both individuals could maintain over a span of years, he could barely begin to interpret the signals he gathered. The speed of native mental processes was less of a help—through repetition and reinforcement—than an added hindrance. As a rough analogy, imagine trying to follow a rapid and nearly inaudible conversation, missing many a word, in a language you do not know well. Actually, none of what Hugh perceived was verbal; it was sight, sound, a complex of senses, including those interior like balance and hunger, including dream-hints of senses that he did not think he possessed.

  He saw the land go by, bush, branch, slope, stars and moons above shaggy ridges; he felt its varying contours and textures as feet went pacing; he heard its multitudinous low noises; he smelled richness; the impressions were endless, most of them vague and fleeting, the best of them strong enough to take him out of himself, draw him groundward toward oneness with the creature below.

  Clearest, perhaps because his glands were stimulated thereby, was emotion, determination. Erakoum was out to get herself a Flyer.

  It was going to be a long night, quite possibly a harrowing one. Hugh expected he’d need a dose or two of sleep surrogate. Humans had never gotten away from the ancient rhythms of Earth. Dromids catnapped; ouranids went—daydreamy? contemplative?

  As often before, he wondered briefly what Jan’s rapport with her native felt like. They would never be able to describe their sharings to each other.

  Well into the hills, A’i’ach’s Swarm found a grand harvest of starwings. The heights were less densely wooded than the lowlands, which was good, for the bright prey never went far up, and below a forest crown, the People were vulnerable to Beast attack. Here was a fair amount of open ground, turf-begrown and boulder-strewn, scattered through the shadowing timber. A narrow ravine crossed the largest of those glades, a gash abrim with blackness.

  Like an endless shower of sparks, the starwings danced, dashed, dodged about, beyond counting, meant for naught save the ecstasy of their mating and of the People who fed upon them. Despite the wariness in him, A’i’ach could resist no more than anyone else. He did refrain from valving out gas in his haste to descend, as many did. That would make ascent slow. Instead, he contracted his globe and sank, letting it reexpand slightly as varying air densities demanded. Nor did he release gas to propel himself. Rhythmically pumping, his siphon worked together with the breezes to zigzag him about at low speed. There was no hurry. The starwings numbered more than the Swarm could eat. Plenty would go free to lay their eggs for the next crop.

  Among the motes, A’i’ach inhaled his first swallow of them. The sweet hot flavor sang in his flesh. Thickly gathered around him, bobbing, spinning, rippling and flailing their corybantic tendrils, filling the sky with music, the People forgot caution. Love began. It was not purposeless, though without water to fall into, the pollinated seeds would not germinate. It united everyone. Life-dust drifted like smoke in the radiance of Ruii; the sight, smell, taste made feverish that joy which the starwing feast awakened. Again and again A’i’ach ejaculated. He went past his skin, he became a cell of a single divine being which was itself a tornado of love. Sometimes when he felt age upon him, he would drift westward across the sea, into the cold Beyond. There, yielding up the last warmth of his body, his spirit would take its reward, the Promise that forever and ever it would be what it was now in this brief night…

  A howl smote. Shapes bounded from under trees, out into the open. A’i’ach saw a shaft pierce the globe next to his. Blood spurted, gas hissed forth, the shriveling form fell as a dead leaf falls. Tendrils still writhed when a Beast snatched it the last way down and fangs rent it asunder.

  In the crowd and chaos, he could not know how many others died. The greatest number were escaping, rising above missile reach. Those who were armed began to drop their stones and ü boughs. It was not likely that any killed a Beast.

  A’i’ach had relaxed the muscles in his globe and shot instantly upward. Safe, he might have joined the rest of the Swarm, to wander off in search of a place to renew festival. But rage and grief seethed too high. A far-off part of him wondered at that; the People did not take hard the death of a Person. This thing he wore, that somehow whispered mysteries—

  And he carried a knife!

  Recklessly spending gas, he swung about, downward. Most of the Beasts had vanished back into the woods. A few remained, devouring. He cruised at a height near the limits of prudence and peered after his chance. Since he could not drop like a rock, he must feint at one individual, then quickly jet at another, stab, rise, and attack again.

  A wan beam of light struck toward him. It came from the head of a Beast which emerged from shadow, halted, and glared upward.

  His will blazed forth in A’i’ach. Yonder was the monster which had his kind of bond to humans. If he had already gained a knife thereby, what might that being have gotten, what might it get, to wreak worse harm? If nothing else, killing it ought to shock its companions, make them think twice about their murderousness.

  A’i’ach moved to battle. About him, the starwings happily danced and mated.

  Jannika must search for an hour before she made her contact. An ouranid could not undertake to be at an exact spot at a given time. Hers had simply informed her, while she fastened the transmitter on him, that his group was currently in the neighborhood of Mount MacDonald. She flew there and cast about in ever-deepening darkness until her indicator shone green. Having established linkage, she rose to three kilometers and set the autopilot to make slow circles. From time to time, as her subject passed northeast, she moved the center of her path.

  Otherwise she was engaged in trying to be her ouranid. It was impossible, of course, but from the effort she was learning what could never have come to her through spoken language. Answers to factual questions she would not have thought to ask. Folkways, beliefs, music, poetry, aerial ballet, which she could not have known for what they were, observing from outside. Lower down in her, dimmer, but more powerful—nothing she could write into a scientific report: a sense of delights, yearnings, wind, shiningness, perfumes, clouds, rain, immense distances, a sense of what it was to be a heaven-dweller. Not complete, no, a few wavery glimpses, hard to remember afterward; yet taking her out of herself into a new world agleam with wonder.

  The thrill was redoubled tonight by A’i’ach excitement. Her impressions of what he was experiencing had never been stronger or sharper. She floated on airstreams, life-scents and song possessed her, she was a drop in an ocean beneath Ruii the mighty, there was no home to hopelessly long for because everywhere was home.

  The Swarm came at last upon a cloud of glitter bugs, and Jannika’s cosmos went wild.

  For a moment, half-terrified, she started to switch off her helmet. Reason checked her hand. What was happening was just an extreme of what she had partaken in before. Ouranids seldom took much nourishment at a single time; when they did, it had an intoxicating effect. She had also felt their sexuality; A’i’ach’s maleness was too unearthly to disturb her, as his dromid’s femaleness had disturbed Hugh when she mated and later shed her hindquarters. Tonight the ouranids held high revel.

  She surrendered to it, crescendo after crescendo, oh, if she only had a man here, but no, that would be different, would blur the sacred splendor, the Promise, the Promise!

  Then the Beasts arrived. Horror erupted. Somewhere a strange voice screamed for the avenging of her shattered bliss.

  —As she trotted along a bare ridge, Erakoum had thought, with a leap of her pulse, that she spied afar a faint blue ray of light in the air. She could not be certain; through the brilliance cast by Mardudek, but she altered her course in hopes. When she had scrambled a long while among stones and thorns, the glimmer disappeared. It must have been a trick of the night, perhaps moonglow on rising mists. That conclusion did nothing to ease her temper. Everything about the Flyers was unlucky!

  Because of this, she was behind the rest of the pack. Her first news of quarry came through their yells, “Hai-ay, hai-ay, hai-ay!” echoed around, and she snarled in bafflement. Surely she would arrive too late for a kill. Nonetheless she bounded in that direction. If the Flyers did not get a good wind, she could overtake them and follow along from cover to cover, unseen. Maybe they would not go further than she had strength for, before they chanced on a fresh upswelling of firemites and descended anew. Breath rasped in her gullet, the hillside struck at her feet with unseen rocks, but eagerness flung her on till she reached the place.

  It was a glade, brightly lit though crisscrossed by shadows, cut in half by a small ravine, The firemites swirled about against the forest murk, like a glinting dust-cloud. Several females crouched on the turf and ripped at the remnants of their prey. The rest had departed, to trail the escaped Flyers as Erakoum planned.

  She stopped at the edge of trees to pant, looked up, and froze. The mass of Flyers was slowly and chaotically streaming west, but a few lingered to cast down their pitiful weapons. From the top of one, dim light beamed aloft. She had found what she sought.

  “Ee-hah!” she screamed, sprang forward, shook her javelin. “Come, evilworker, come and be slain! By your blood shall you give to my next brood the life you reaved from my first!”

  There was no surprise, there was fate, when the eerie shape spiraled about and drew nearer. More would be settled this night than which of them was to survive. She, Erakoum, had been seized by a Power, had become an instrument of the Prophet.

  Crouched, she cast her spear. The effort surged through her muscles. She saw it fly straight as the damnation it carried—but her foe swerved, it missed him by a finger breadth, and then all at once he was coming directly at her.

  They never did that! What sheened in his seaweed grip?

  Erakoum grabbed after a new javelin off her back. Each knot in the lashing was supposed to give way at a jerk, but this jammed, she must tug again, and meanwhile the enemy loomed ever more big. She recognized what he held, a human-made knife, sharp as a fresh obsidian blade and more thin and strong. She retreated. Her spear was now loose. No room for a throw. She thrust.

  With crazy glee, she saw the head strike. The Flyer rolled aside before it could pierce, but blood and gas together foamed darkly from a slash across his paleness.

  He spurted forward, was inside her guard. The knife smote and smote. Erakoum felt the stabs, but not yet the pain. She dropped her shaft, batted her arms, snapped jaws together. Teeth closed in flesh. Through her mouth and down her throat poured a rush of strength.

  Abruptly the ground was no more beneath her hind feet. She fell over, clawed with forefeet and hands for a hold, lost it, and toppled. When she hit the side of the ravine, she rolled down across cruel snags. She had an instant’s glimpse of sky above, stars and firemites, the Mardudek-lighted Flyer drifting by and bleeding. Then nothingness snatched her to itself.—

  Folk at Port Kato asked what brought Jannika Rezek and Hugh Brocket home so early, so shaken. They evaded questions and hastened to their place. The door slammed behind them. A minute later, they blanked their windows.

  For a time they stared at each other. The familiar room held no comfort. Illumination meant for human eyes was brass-harsh, air shut away from the forest was lifeless, faint noises from the settlement outside thickened the silence within.

  He shook his head finally, blindly, and turned from her. “Erakoum gone,” he mumbled. “How’m I ever going to understand that?”

  “Are you sure?” she whispered.

  “I…I felt her mind shut off…damn near like a blow to my own skull…but you were making such a fuss about your precious ouranid—”

  “A’i’ach’s hurt! His people know nothing of medicine. If you hadn’t been raving till I decided I must talk you back with me before you crashed your flitter—”

  Jannika broke off, swallowed hard, unclenched her fists, and became able to say: “Well, the harm is done and here we are. Shall we try to reason about it, try to find out what went wrong and how to stop another such horror, or not?”

  “Yeah, of course.” He went to the pantry. “You want a drink?” he called.

  She hesitated. “Wine.”

  He fetched her a glassful. His right hand clutched a tumbler of straight whiskey, which he began on at once. “I felt Erakoum die,” he said.

  Jannika took a chair. “Yes, and I felt A’i’ach take wounds that may well prove mortal. Sit down, will you?”