Less and less often did my seasons come upon me. Less and less eager for movement, I took to staring outward from the troop, into shadows or rain, across open land, upward at night to the stars, full of a feeling that more lay yonder than we had wind of.
Suddenly, from darkness, the Summoner came. I was borne off and became One, as it were with dawn and lightnings. The tree among whose limbs I leaped was the tree which bears the worlds. I would be returned to live out my chimpanzee days, unharmed, but would ever be haunted by joy I could not really remember. I was Mammal.
XXX
Waning from half phase, the red sun ever closer to its illuminated crescent, Danu remained sublime to the eye. Opposite, a pair of moons stood forth among the brilliances that filled the firmament.
Martti Leino could not bear to watch. Alone in his cabin, he hung tethered, for his hands were clasped white-knuckled together except when he smote the bulkhead and rebounded, his legs kicked at nothing except when they trailed helpless. Tears bobbed glittery around his head.
“No, God, Lord, no,” he croaked. “Please. You know not what You do if You let her die-” Horrified: “Forgive me! Lord, I spoke ill there. But save her.
You can. You will, nay? Please-”
He drew lungful after lungful of air till his head spun, his limbs tingled, but he could at least say in a flat voice, in Finnish:
“Martti, boy, you are developing a classic case of hysterics. Do you know that? Very well, stop. It isn’t helping Caitlin a bit. Offer an orderly prayer if you wish, but don’t tell God His business, and do be about yours.
“Ow-w-w-w!” he howled and writhed about.
He was halfway back under control when the door chimed.
“Hoy?” he asked aloud, stupidly. The chime repeated. “Come in,” he hiccoughed. The chime sounded again. He remembered he had locked himself in, to be undisturbed after he began to tremble. Well- Slipping his leash, he went through a set of rookie mistakes before he got the latch released.
Frieda von Moltke entered, checked her flight at the jamb, had a good look at Leino, and secured the door behind her. Since he merely gaped, she took the initiative: “Hell and damnation, you are worse off than I expected.”
He closed his jaws. “What do you want?” he managed.
She clasped him by the upper arms. They drifted off, a slight rotation Side 124
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The making the room wobble slowly around them. “I saw how you were getting frantic,”
she said. “You went away. Good, I thought, maybe a drink, a tranquilizer, a nap; he calms down when nobody watches. But you were gone too long.”
He turned his face from hers. “They are gone too long.”
“Yes, communication broken for hours, and now they must be blasting from the planet, if they are still alife, without guidance, yes. It is very bad for us if we haff lost our boat.”
“Jesu Kriste, believe you that matters?”
She gripped him harder. “Martti, dear, listen. My family were soldiers from as long ago as we haff chronicles. They knew what it is to lose a friend.
Ich hat’ einen Kameraden… ja. You mourn. But you go on.”
He knotted his fists. “If you think- simply a friend-”
Frieda nodded to herself. She checked their flight as they passed a chair, hooked an ankle behind it to hold them, kept him by her left and, and used her right to cup his chin.
“You are being no use to anybody, you
know,” she said mildly.
“Yes? Who is not? The whole crew is waiting, only waiting. What else can we do?”
“We can hearten us, to be ready for tomorrow,” she said. “We can comfort each other. I came to you for that. Cry if you want. It will not make you small.
I saw my father cry more than once, when we went to lay flowers in the cemetery for his old guerrilla corps.”
“Frieda, Frieda.” He clasped her, buried his face in her bosom, and shuddered. She stroked him.
“ATTENTION!” the intercom boomed. “All hands! Listen!”