Occasionally she tried to call to her the winged creatures she saw, and
twice she succeeded; a bright guest sat on her finger and seemed
content, till she told it to continue toward its hibernation. To her,
the use of her power felt like being a child again–she had been,
briefly, once in a rare while–and wishing hard. Ydwyr guessed that it
was a variety of projective telepathy and that its sporadic appearance
in her species had given rise to legends about geases, curses, and
allurements.
But I can’t control it most of the time, and don’t care that I can’t. I
don’t want to be a superwoman. I’m happy just to be a woman–a full
female, no matter what race–which is what Ydwyr made me.
How can I thank him?
The compound court was deserted when she entered it. Probably all
personnel were fraternizing with the ship’s crew. Dusk was falling,
chill increased minute by minute, the wind grew louder and stars blinked
forth. She hurried to her room.
The intercom was lit. She punched the replay. It said: “Report to the
datholch in his office immediately on return,” with the time a Merseian
hour ago. That meant almost four of Terra’s; they split their day
decimally.
Her heart bumped. She operated the controls as she had done when the
nightmares came. “Are you there, Ydwyr?”
“You hear me,” said the reassuringly professional voice he could adopt.
By now she seldom needed the computer.
She sped down empty halls to him. Remotely, she heard hoarse lusty
singing. When Merseians celebrated, they were apt to do so at full
capacity. The curtain at his door fell behind her to cut off that sound.
She held fist to breast and breathed hard. He rose from the desk where
he had been working. “Come,” he said. The gray robe flapped behind him.
When they were secret among the torches and skulls, he leaned down
through twilight and breathed–each word stirred the hair around her
ear–
“The ship brought unequivocal orders. You are safe. They do not care
about you, provided you do not bring the Terrans the information you
have. But Dominic Flandry has powerful enemies. Worse, his mentor Max
Abrams does; and they suspect the younger knows secrets of the older. He
is to go back in the destroyer. The probing will leave mere flesh, which
will probably be disposed of.”
“Oh, Nicky,” she said, with a breaking within her.
He laid his great hands on her shoulders, locked eyes with eyes, and
went on: “My strong recommendation having been overruled, my protest
would be useless. Yet I respect him, and I believe you have affection
for him yourself. This thing is not right, neither for him nor for
Merseia. Have you learned to honor clean death?”
She straightened. The Eriau language made it natural to say, “Yes,
Ydwyr, my father.”
“You know your intercom has been connected to the linguistic computer,
which on a different channel is in touch with the expedition he is on,”
he told her. “It keeps no records unless specifically instructed. Under
guise of a personal message, the kind that commonly goes from here to
those in the field, you can tell him what you like. You have thus
exchanged words before, have you not? None of his companions know
Anglic. He could wander away–‘lost’–and cold is a merciful
executioner.”
She said with his firmness: “Yes, sir.”
Back in her room she lay for a time crying. But the thought that flew in
and out was: He’s good. He wouldn’t let them gouge the mind out of my
Nicky. No Imperial Terran would care. But Ydwyr is like most of the
Race. He has honor. He is good.
XV
—
The fog of autumn’s end hid Mt. Thunderbelow and all the highlands in
wet gray that drowned vision within meters. Flandry shivered and ran a
hand through his hair, trying to brush the water out. When he stooped
and touched the stony, streaming ground, it was faintly warm; now and
then he felt a shudder in it and heard the volcano grumble.
His Merseian companions walked spectral before and behind him, on their
way up the narrow trail. Most of them he could not see, and the Domrath