“Oh, do you know it?” Romon asked, in surprise of his own.
“Yeah, sure, and a bunch of other mostly forgotten stuff. I may not be any literary type, but I do go a long way back, and there’s been plenty of time with nothing better to do than read.”
“Well, well. I hope we can get together over drinks now and then and cap quotations.”
Esker broke in. “This is very fine, no doubt, but it makes me wonder still the more why you’re trying to understand astrophysics and cosmology.”
Hebo decided to smooth things over. “Just incidental, as I thought you realized.” The hell it is. “A change of pace from the Freydis work. And just in short little forays.”
“A hobby?” said Romon, likewise anxious to maintain politeness. “Good for you. To get practical, though, I repeat, possibly we can help each other as regards Freydis.”
“Possibly.” As he thought about it, Hebo felt more and more that the possibility might well be very real. Don’t tip the hand, though, especially bearing in mind that Lissa Windholm once mentioned having a certain coldness toward House Seafell. “I’ll have to see, or try to gauge, how things are developing. Maybe I’ll decide the business is not for me at all, and go away before I go broke. If something positive should occur to me, sure, I’ll let [177] you know.” He knocked back his beer. “Before we have another round, what say we screen the menu?”
“Sheer genius!” Romon exclaimed with a bonhomie that Hebo didn’t think came natural to him. “Yes, indeed.”
The rest of the time passed fairly pleasantly, since Esker didn’t say much.
And then the next five years were amply eventful. And then Lissa returned.
XXXIV
AT first the aircraft shone above the sea so much like a star that she felt something catch at her throat. Freydis was beautiful in the morning and evening skies of Asborg, but on Freydis itself there was never a glimpse of the sister planet, nor of anything in the heavens other than a vague sun-disc when clouds thinned to an overcast. Suddenly, sharply, a longing seized her for the cool green hills of home.
She thrust it away. Ridiculous. She’d had three months in them after her return from Jonna—when she wasn’t elsewhere boating or skiing or among the pleasures of the cities—and then barely as many weeks at New Halla and here. And right now she had a life to save.
If she could.
Recognizing the approaching object for what it was, she turned and trotted off the headland toward the landing strip. At her back, the ocean murmured against cliffs. It glimmered yellowish-green close in, darkened to purple farther out. A storm yonder hulked black and lightning-streaked, but overhead and eastward stretched silver-gray blankness. Before her rose forest, a wall of great boles, vines, brakes, foliage in hues of russet and umber, brilliant blossoms, shadowful depths. It dwarfed the clearing where the Susaian compound stood. The multitudinous smells of it lay heavy in the heat and damp.
Long, limber bodies were bounding from the huts. Glabrous hides sheened in a variety of colors; the New Hallan colonists were from many different ancestral regions, alike only in their faith and hopes. Several still clutched tools or instruments in their delicate [179] hands. Excitement often spread with explosive speed through beings so directly perceptive of emotions. Not that it wasn’t justified. Lissa’s own eagerness had driven her onto the promontory to stare southwestward, once the curt acknowledgment came that help was on its way.
She reached the strip. It lay bare, soil baked bricklike. A hangar of wood and thatch gaped empty. The camp’s flyer had borne casualties away to medical care or eventual cremation, after leaving off the uninjured here. Impatient, she squinted up. “C’mon, move it,” she muttered. “What’re you dawdling for?” A drop of sweat got past her brows, into an eye. It stung. She spoke a picturesque oath.
Coppergold arrived and joined her. The botanist had thought to bring a translator. It rendered rustles, hisses, purrs into Anglay. “That is a cautious pilot, honored one.”
Lissa replied in her language, which the Susaian understood though unable to pronounce it intelligibly. “Well, I suppose this area is new to him, and he doesn’t want the airs to play some trick that catches him off guard. I’ve learned to fly warily myself.” She begrudged the admission, and knew that Coppergold felt that she did.