He did, heavily, opposite her. She sipped from her glass, he gulped from his. Newcomers to Medea always said wine and distilled spirits there tasted more peculiar than the food. A poet had made that fact the takeoff point for a chilling verse about isolation. When it was sent to Earth as part of the news, the reply came after a century that nobody could imagine what the colonists saw in it.

  Hugh hunched his shoulders. “Okay,” he growled. “We should compare notes before we start forgetting, and maybe repeat tomorrow when we’ve had a chance to think.” He reached across to their recorder and flicked it on. As he entered an identification phrase, his tone stayed dull.

  “That is best for us too,” Jannika reminded him. “Work, logical thought, those hold off the nightmares.”

  “Which this absolutely was—All right!” He regained a little vigor. “Let’s try to reconstruct what did happen.

  “The ouranids were out after glitterbugs and the dromids were out after ouranids. You and I witnessed an encounter. Naturally, we’d hoped we wouldn’t—I suppose you prayed for that, hm?—but we knew there’d be hostilities in a lot of places. What shocked the wits out of us was when our personal natives got into a fight, with us in rapport.”

  Jannika bit her lip. “Worse that that,” she said. “They were seeking it, those two. It was not a random encounter, it was a duel.” She raised her eyes. “You never told Erakoum, any dromid, that we were linking with an ouranid too, did you?”

  “No, certainly not. Nor did you tell your ouranid about my liaison. We both know better than to throw that kind of variable into a program like this.”

  “And the rest of the station personnel have vocabularies too limited, in either language. Very well. But I can tell you that A’i’ach knew. I was not aware he did until the fight began. Then it reached the forefront of his mind, it shouted at me, not in words but not to be mistaken about.”

  “Yeah, same thing for me with Erakoum, more or less.”

  “Let’s admit what we don’t want to, my dear. We have not simply been receiving from our natives. We have been transmitting. Feedback.”

  He lifted a helpless fist. “What the devil might convey a return message?”

  “If nothing else, the radio beam that locks us onto our subjects. Induced modulation. We know from the example of the glitterbug larvae—and no doubt other cases you and I never heard of—how shall we know everything about a whole world? We know Medean organisms can be extremely radio-sensitive.”

  “M-m, yeah, the terrific speed of Medean animals, key molecules more labile than the corresponding compounds in us…Hey, wait! Neither Erakoum nor A’i’ach had more than a smattering of English. Certainly no Czech, which you’ve told me you usually think in. Besides, look what an effort we had to make before we could tune them in at all, in spite of everything learned on the mainland. They’d no reason to do the same, no idea of scientific method. They surely assumed it was only a whim or a piece of magic or something that made us want them to carry those objects around.”

  Jannika shrugged. “Perhaps when we are in rapport, we think more in their languages than we ourselves realize. And both kinds of Medeans think faster than humans, observe, learn. Anyway, I do not say their contact with us was as good as our contact with them. If nothing else, radio has much less bandwidth. I think probably what they picked up from us was subliminal.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Hugh sighed. “We’ll have to sic the electronicians and neurologists into the problem, but I sure can’t think of any better explanation than yours.”

  He leaned forward. The energy which now vibrated in his voice turned cold: “But let’s try to see this thing in context, so we can maybe get a hint of what kind of information the natives have been receiving from us. Let’s lay out once more why the Hansonian dromids and ouranids are at war. Basically, the dromids are dying off; and blame the ouranids. Could we, Port Kato, be at fault?”

  “Why, hardly,” Jannika said in astonishment. “You know what precautions we take.”

  Hugh smiled without mirth. “I’m thinking of psychological pollution.”

  “What? Impossible! Nowhere else on Medea—”

  “Be quiet, will you?” he shouted. “I’m trying to bring back to my mind what I got from my friend that your friend killed.”

  She half-rose, white-faced, sat down again, and waited. The wine glass trembled in her fingers.

  “You’ve always babbled about how kind and gentle and esthetic the ouranids are,” he said, at her rather than to her. “You swoon over this beautiful new local faith they’ve acquired—the wind-borne flight to Farside, the death in dignity, the Nirvana, I forget what else. To hell with the grubby dromids. Dromids don’t do anything but make tools and fires, hunt, care for their young, live in communities, create art and philosophy, same as humans. What’s interesting to you in that?

  “Well, let me tell you what I’ve told you before, dromids are believers too. If we could compare, I’d give long odds their faiths are stronger and more meaningful than the ouranids’. They keep trying to make sense of the world. Can’t you sympathize the least bit?

  “Okay, they have a tremendous respect for the fitness of things. When something goes seriously wrong—when a great crime or sin or shame happens—the whole world hurts. If the wrong isn’t set right, everything will go bad. That’s what they believe on Hansonia, and I don’t know but what they’ve got hold of a truth.

  “The lordly ouranids never paid much attention to the groundling dromids, but that was not symmetrical. The ouranids are as conspicuous as Argo, Colchis, any part of nature. In dromid eyes, they too have their ordained place and cycle.

  “All at once the ouranids change. They don’t give themselves back to the soil when they die, the way life is supposed to—no, they head west, over the ocean, toward that unknown place where the suns go down every evening. Can’t you see how unnatural that might seem? As if a tree should walk or a corpse rise. And not an isolated incident; no, year after year after year.

  “Psychosomatic abortion? How can I tell? What I can tell is that the dromids are shocked to the guts by this thing the ouranids are doing. No matter how ridiculous the thing is, it hurts them!”

  She sprang to her feet. Her glass hit the floor. “Ridiculous?” she yelled. “That Tao, that vision? No, ridiculous, that’s what your…your fuxes believe—except that it makes them attack innocent beings and, and eat them—I can’t wait till those creatures are extinct!”

  He had risen likewise. “You don’t care about children dying, no, of course not,” he answered. “What sense of motherhood have you got, for hell’s sake? About like a balloon’s. Drift free, scatter seed, forget it, it’ll bud and break loose and the Swarm will adopt it, never mind anything except your pleasure.”

  “Why, you—Are you wishing you could be a mother?” she jeered.

  His empty hand swung at her. She barely evaded the blow. Appalled, they stiffened where they stood.

  He tried to speak, failed, and drank. After a full minute she said, quite low: “Hugh, our natives were getting messages from us. Not verbal. Unconscious. Through them—” she choked—“were you and I seeking to kill each other?”

  He gaped until, in a single clumsy gesture, he set his own glass down and held out his arms to her. “Oh, no, oh, no,” he stammered. She came to him.

  Presently they went to bed. And then he could do nothing. The medicine cabinet held a remedy for that, but what followed might have happened between a couple of machines. At last she lay quietly crying and he went out to drink some more.

  The wind awakened her. She lay for a time listening to it boom around the walls. Sleep drained out of her. She opened her eyes and looked at the clock. Its luminous dial said three hours had passed. She might as well get up. Maybe she could make Hugh feel better.

  The main room was still lighted. He was asleep himself, sprawled in an armchair, a bottle beside it. How deep the lines were in his face.

  How loud the wind was. Probably a storm front which the weather service had reported at sea had taken a quick, unexpected swing this way. Medean meteorology was not yet an exact science. Poor ouranids, their festival disrupted, they themselves blown about and scattered, even endangered. Normally they could ride out a gale, but a few might be carried to disaster hit by lightning or dashed against a cliff or hopelessly entangled in a tree. The sick and injured would suffer most.

  A’i’ach.

  Jannika squeezed her lids together and struggled to recall how badly wounded he was. But everything had been too confused and terrible; Hugh had diverted her attention; before long she had flitted out of transmission range. Besides, A’i’ach himself could hardly have ascertained his own condition at once. It might not be grave. Or it might. He could be dead by now, or dying, or doomed to die if he didn’t get help.

  She was responsible—perhaps not guilty, by a moralistic definition, but responsible.

  Resolution crystallized. If the weather didn’t preclude, she would go search for him.

  Alone? Yes. Hugh would protect, delay her, perhaps actually restrain her by force. She recorded a few words to him, wondered if they were overly impersonal, decided against composing something more affectionate. Yes, she wanted a reconciliation and supposed he did, but she would not truckle. She redonned her field garb, added a jacket into whose pockets she stuffed some food bars, and departed.

  The wind rushed bleak around her whoo-oo-oo, a torrent she must breast. Clouds scudded low and thick, tinged red where Argo shone between them. The giant planet seemed to fly among ragged veils. Dust whirled in the compound, gritty on her skin. Nobody else was outdoors.

  At the hangar, she punched for the latest forecast. It looked bad but not, she thought, frightening. (And if she did crash, was that such an enormous loss, to herself or anyone else?) “I am going back to my study area,” she told the mechanic. When he attempted to dissuade her, she pulled rank. She never liked that, but from the Danubian ghosts she had learned how. “No further discussion. Stand by to open the way and give me assistance if required. That is an order.”

  The little craft shivered and drummed on the ground. Takeoff took skill—with a foul moment when a gust nearly upset her but once aloft her vehicle flew sturdily. Risen above the cloud deck, she saw it heave like a sea, Argo a mountain rearing out of it, stars and companion moons flickery overhead. Northward bulked a darkness more deep and high, the front. The weather would really stiffen in the next few hours. If she wasn’t back soon, she’d better stay put till it cleared.

  The flight was quick to the battleground. When the inertial pilot had brought her there, she circled, put on her helmet, activated the system. Her pulse fluttered and her mouth had dried. “A’i’ach,” she breathed, “be alive, please be alive.”

  The green light went on. At least his transmitter existed on the site. He? She must will herself toward rapport.

  Weakness, pain, a racket of soughing leaves, tossing boughs—“A’i’ach, hang on, I’m coming down!”

  A leap of gladness. Yes, he did perceive her.

  Landing would be risky indeed. The aircraft had a vertical capability, excellent radar and sonar, a computer and effectors to handle most of the work. However, the clear space below was not large, it was cleft in twain, and while the surrounding forest was a fair windbreak, there would be vile drafts and eddies. “God, into Your hands I give myself,” she said; and wondered as often before how Hugh endured his atheism.

  Nevertheless, if she waited she would lose courage. Down!

  Her descent was wilder still than she had expected. First the clouds were a maelstrom, then she was through them but into a raving blast, then she saw treetops grab at her. The vehicle rolled, pitched, yawed. Had she been an utter fool? She didn’t truly want to leave this life…

  She made it, and for minutes sat strengthless. When she stirred, she felt her entire body ache from tension. But A’i’ach’s hurt was in her. Called by that need, she unharnessed and went forth.

  The noise was immense in the black palisade of trees around her, their branches groaned, their crowns foamed; but down on the ground the air, though restless, was quieter, nearly warm. Unseen Argo reddened the clouds, which cast enough glow that she didn’t need her flashlight. She found no trace of the slain ouranids. Well, they had no bones; the dromids must have eaten every scrap. What a ghastly superstition—Where was A’i’ach?

  She found him after a search. He lay behind a spiny bush, in which he had woven his tendrils to secure himself. His body was deflated to the minimum, an empty sack; but his eyes gleamed, and he could speak, in the shrill, puffing language of his people, which she had come to know was melodious.

  “May joy blow upon you. I never hoped for your advent. Welcome you are. Here it has been lonely.” A shudder was in that last word. Ouranids could not long stand being parted from their Swarm. Some xenologists believed that with them consciousness was more collective than individual. Jannika rejected that idea, unless perhaps it applied to the different species found in parts of Nearside. A’i’ach had a soul of his own!

  She knelt. “How are you?” She could not render his sounds any better than he could hers, but he had learned to interpret.

  “It is not overly ill with me, now that you are nigh. I lost blood and gas, but those wounds have closed. Weak, I settled in a tree until the Beasts left. Meanwhile the wind rose. I thought best not to ride it in my state. Yet I could not stay in the tree, I would have been blown away. So I valved out the rest of my gas and crept to this shelter.”

  The speech held far more than such a bare statement. The denotation was laconic and stoical, the connotations not. A’i’ach would need at least a day to regenerate sufficient hydrogen for ascent—how long depended on how much food he could reach in his crippled condition—unless a carnivore found him first, which was quite likely. Jannika imagined what a flood of suffering, dread, and bravery would have come over her had she been wearing her helmet.

  She gathered the flaccid form into her arms. It weighed little. It felt warm and silky. He cooperated as well as he was able. Just the same, part of him dragged on the ground, which must have been painful.

  She must be rougher still, hauling on folds of skin, when she brought him inside the aircraft. It had scant room to spare; he was practically bundled into the rear section. Rather than apologizing when he moaned, or saying anything in particular, she sang to him. He didn’t know the ancient Terrestrial words, but he liked the tunes and realized what she meant by them.

  She had equipped her vehicle for basic medical help to natives, and had given it on past occasions. A’i’ach’s injuries were not deep, because most of him was scarcely more than a bag; however, the bag had been torn in several places and, though it was self-sealing, flight would reopen it unless it got reinforcement. Applying local anesthetics and antibiotics—that much had been learned about Medean biochemistry—she stitched the gashes.

  “There, you can rest,” she said when, cramped, sweat-soaked, and shaky, she was done. “Later I will give you an injection of gas and you can rise immediately if you choose. I think, though, we would both be wisest to wait out the gale.”

  A human would have groaned: “It is tight in here.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean, but—A’i’ach, let me put my helmet on.” She pointed. “That will join our spirits as they were joined before. It may take your mind off your discomfort. And at this short range, given our new knowledge—” A thrill went through her. “What may we not find out?”

  “Good,” he agreed. “We may enjoy unique experiences.” The concept of discovery for its own sake was foreign to him…but his search for pleasures went far beyond hedonism.

  Eager despite her weariness, she moved into her seat and reached for the apparatus. The radio receiver, always open to the standard carrier band, chose that moment to buzz.

  Argo in the east glowered at the nearing, lightning-shot wall of storm in the north. Below, the clouds already present roiled in reds and darknesses. Wind wailed. Hugh’s aircraft lurched and bucked. Despite a heater, chill seeped through the canopy, as if brought by the light of stars and moons.

  “Jan, are you there?” he called. “Are you all right?”

  Her voice was a swordstroke of deliverance. “Hugh? Is that you, darling?”

  “Yes, sure, who the hell else did you expect? I woke up, played your message, and—Are you all right?”

  “Quite safe. But I don’t dare take off in this weather. And you mustn’t try to land, that would be too dangerous by now. You shouldn’t stay, either. Darling, rostomily, that you came!”

  “Judas priest, sweetheart, how could I not? Tell me what’s happened.”

  She explained. At the end, he nodded a head which still ached a bit from liquor in spite of a nedolor tablet. “Fine,” he said. “You wait for calm air, pump up your friend, and come on home.” An idea he had been nursing nudged him. “Uh, I wonder. Do you think he could go down into that gulch and recover Erakoum’s unit? Those things are scarce, you know.” He paused. “I suppose it’d be too much to ask him to throw a little soil over her.”

  Jannika’s tone held pity. “I can do that.”

  “No, you can’t. I got a clear impression from Erakoum as she was falling, before she cracked her skull apart or whatever she did. Nobody can climb down without a rope secured on top. It’d be impossible to return. Even with a rope, it’d be crazy dangerous. Her companions didn’t attempt anything, did they?”

  Reluctance: “I’ll ask him. It may be asking a lot. Is the unit functional?”

  “Hm, yes, I’d better check on that first. I’ll report in a minute or three. Love you.”

  He did, he knew, no matter how often she enraged him. The idea that, somewhere in the abysses of his being, he might have wished her death, was not to be borne. He’d have followed her through a heavier tempest than this, merely to deny it.

  Well, he could go home with a satisfied conscience and wait for her arrival, after which—what? The uncertainty made a hollowness in him.