Maeve (6 page)

Then he came back to the small open space. Under the starwoman's bloody hands the grisly wounds were healing, the new flesh growing visibly to fill the torn places. The small contorted body was slowly straightening, the taut knotted muscles relaxing as the pain went away and strength flowed back.

Aleytys looked up as she pulled her hands away. Gwynnor stood beside her, dart gun out, eyes warily searching the shadows under the trees. “Thanks, friend.”

At the sound of her voice he started and turned to face her. “If you're finished, we'd better get moving.” Without looking at the child, he said, “It's healed. It'll be all right now.”

“He,” she corrected quietly. “I still have to fix his leg. It's broken. Help me hold it straight while I heal the break.”

Reluctantly, Gwynnor thrust the gun behind his belt and knelt beside the child who was awake, staring at them out of frightened, unblinking eyes. Aleytys frowned at the top of Gwynnor's curly head, worried now about his instinctive repulsion when he touched the cludair child.

He swallowed his disgust and did what she asked, quietly and competently, straightening the leg carefully, gently, firmly, holding it still when pain made the child cry out and try to twist away from him.

Aleytys set her hands on the break and called down the healing power.

When she raised her head again, she looked into a ring of stern faces covered with the fine mottled greenish-brown hair. The tallest male wore a leather loincloth and held a short bow with arrow nocked and ready to shoot. He advanced to stand in front of her.

“Ineknikt nex-ni-ghenusoukseht ghalaghayi.”

Aleytys heard the sounds as a string of nonsense syllables, then a knife pain stabbed through her head and the meaning slid like white beads on a string against the blackness in her mind.
The people do not know your smell, younger sister of fire
. She nodded quietly. “I pass through your world, father of men.”

“The child.” He pointed a long, thin forefinger at the small version of himself now crouched on the earth. “It is son to me.”

“I heard a cry and came to see if help was needed. A woodcat had attacked the child. I am healer. I must heal.” She flipped a hand at the big-eyed child. “Ask.”

He dropped with easy grace beside his son. “Little brother, what happened?”

“Father of men, the gasgas sang to me of strangers in the forest. I came to see.” Sheepishly, he dug at the gritty soil with long, double-jointed thumbs, eyes avoiding his father's stern face. “In coming …” He hesitated, fingers twisting in the sparse grass. “In coming I was careless and let the cat get above me. Sister of fire was bending over me when I woke. I was hurting.” He touched his stomach where the fur was gone, showing the pinkish silver of the bare flesh. “I was torn here, my entrails coming out through the hole. And here,” he touched his head, “there was much pain. At times, I saw two of everything. And my leg was broken below the knee, the bone a white stub sticking through the flesh. Sister of fire put her hands on me. Fire came and burned me but it burned the pain out of me and drove the death snake back. Then the plainsman came and took hold of my leg. Sister of fire put her hands on me again. And see, my leg is whole. It is a great mystery, father of men.”

The male's round dark eyes lifted to Aleytys. “I am healer,” she repeated quietly. “Where there is need, I must heal.”

He stared at her a moment, the nostrils of his long nose moving rapidly in and out, measuring her odors, testing for truth in the scents her body released into the air. After a minute, he dropped his eyes and inspected the boy's stomach and head where the hair was gone, then felt along the leg, grunting as the strong slender bone slid under his fingers without a sign of a break knot. He stood. “Get you home, fingerling, and take more care this time.”

In seconds, the boy had vanished onto the woven way high in the upper sections of the trees. Aleytys watched with astonishment. She had noted the presence of the vine complex but thought it a natural formation. Now, as the boy darted silently and invisibly away, she realized that the vine trail was part of a complex of ways that webbed the upper levels of the forest. She turned back to face the cludair.

Eyes gleaming a dark red-brown snouted, nearly chinless, face intently serious, he stared gravely at her. “Sister of fire, my gratitude you have earned. What I have is yours without measure.”

She shook her head. “You owe roe nothing.”

He looked down at his hands clutched tightly about the limbs of his short bow, showing a hesitancy clearly foreign to him. After a short, tense silence, he said slowly, “Will you come with me, sister of fire? Only the great need of my people can justify my breaking of courtesy to one of great power and great heart. The house of cludair is being destroyed and we are powerless to stop it. As father of men, I must seize on whatever might be able to help us.”

Chapter VI

The noise was deafening. Trees crashing, saws whining, wood screaming under lathes—slaughtered trees evaluated as worthless, chewed into chips and spat out behind. The squat, ugly machine ate at the forest like a monstrous locust.

A skimmer hovered over the anal orifice of the metal locust, scooping up the end products of the machine's digestion, hanging the processed lumber in a bulbous cluster beneath its flat bottom. As they watched, it reached its lifting limit, rose, and darted off to the south. The machine inched along without taking the slightest notice of this visitation.

Tipylexne touched her on the shoulder. When she turned, he bent down so that his mouth was close to her ear. “You see, fire sister?” She could barely hear the words over the raucous din from the machine. “That thing,” he went on, “has been eating at the forest for the past year.” His face pinched with pain as if the devastation before them was perpetrated on his own body. “This is the second time it has passed, leaving dead land from sea to stone.”

Aleytys nodded, got silently to her feet and followed the cludair back under the trees. As they moved away from the clearing, the forest blocked out some of the noise so that it was possible to talk. She thought over what she had seen as she followed the silent, grieving forest man. Then she quickened her pace until she was walking beside him. “I suppose you tried driving it off.”

“Too many died. Uselessly.” She could hear the pain in his voice. “We couldn't touch it.”

Aleytys frowned at the leaf-padded earth that muffled the sound of their feet. “I see. You want to know if I might have a way to kill the machine.” She rubbed her throat and considered the problem. “I think I do. They'd repair it, you know.” She shook her head as he caught eagerly at her arm. “They will repair whatever I do. And they'll retaliate, hunter. Are you ready to face what that would mean for your people?”

His first elation faded, replaced by a thoughtful optimism. “The forest is large. And you can break the machine again.”

“I don't know this Company, Tipylexne. They might keep fixing the machine for months. I can give you a little of my time but I can't stay forever.”

Tipylexne nodded briskly. “I understand. The council will consider.”

Gwynnor watched the two emerge from the shadows, walking quickly together in quiet companionship. He clenched his fingers into fists until his knuckles ached, wanting to drive them into that exotic face, wanting to hit hit hit the starwoman until she lost that bone-deep certainty that marched her imperiously toward some goal; that gave her power over men who fumbled about in pain and confusion for the little self-knowledge that life seemed willing to allow them.

Unconsciously, he drew his body in on itself, wrapping his arms around his knees, untying his fists and wrapping hands tautly about his calves, pulling himself as far as he could from contact with the silent cludair beside him. The slight, sweet oily smell of their mottled fur nauseated him. He tautened the muscles of his throat rather than humiliate himself by vomiting in front of them. He pressed his face against the hard bone of his knees and cursed the peithwyr whose attack had forced them off the plateau into this mess. A sharp spasm of shivers went through his crouching body and he wanted desperately to be back on the open plain, the gentle welcoming maes where yellow broom glowed like butter tucked in amid the grassy swells.

The forest men drifted, silent as motes in a light beam, to cluster around Aleytys and Tipylexne. They spoke briefly, then Aleytys moved past them, coming to stand over him, eyes irritated, amused, understanding. He resented her understanding even while he desired it. The ambivalence she generated whipped him to and fro.

She spoke. “You can return to your people, Gwynnor, if you want to.” Her voice caressed his ears. Again … again … the tart sweet fragrance from her body nearly brought him to sexual readiness. In a total embarrassment, tears gathering in his eyes, he fought for some kind of equilibrium. Leave her … leave … go back to the simple, uncomplicated life on the plains. Or stay … and endure the continual vertigo from having his world turned upside down repeatedly … and suffer … continual uprootedness as his certainties were undermined. Go? He struggled with the idea until he knew that there was no way he could force himself to do what he knew he should do.

Aleytys looked down into the flat green eyes, all surface with no depth to them. She sighed, annoyed by his persistent abhorrence for living beings other than his own cerdd. Even her empathetic outreach that brought his stomach churning, disgust vibrating into her nerves along with his alternating surges of desire and despair, didn't help her understand what created this furor in the cerdd. She felt his head jerk as she touched him. Letting her fingers move down over his ears to his neck, she wondered if she should try to heal that sickness in him. Then she looked into his eyes again.

He watched her with a kind of puzzlement in his face, the brief sexual response dying with the anger it provoked.

She pulled her hand away, shaking her head with disgust at herself. What right did she have to rearrange his personality without his consent and understanding? She stepped back and rubbed her hands down the sides of her tunic. “Well, if you want, come with us.” She jerked her head at the waiting cludair. “There's a problem with starmen from the city. I think I can help. So. We go to talk over the implications of interference.” She smiled at him. “You've done all you need for me, my friend. I know you don't like being here.”

“You want me to go?” In spite of his obvious effort to speak calmly, his voice shook. She had to block out the blast of anguish flooding suddenly from him.

“No. Of course not,” she said quickly. She dropped to her knees so that her eyes were closer to a level with his. “Gwynnor, I have to admit I don't understand why you want to stay since you don't even like me and you find the cludair repulsive.” She stared into his unresponsive face and shook her head. “Gwynnor, they're people. Like you and me. People. Not animals.”

He wrenched his eyes away. “They smell bad,” he muttered.

“Damn.” Aleytys dropped back onto her heels. “How do I deal with that?” His sense of smell was considerably keener than hers. She glanced over her shoulder at the cludair waiting patiently for her. Their noses, though broader and less defined than Gwynnor's suggested that they, too, had a strong dependence on odor for information. She sighed, recognizing her inability to understand a world where the nose was as important as the eyes in making value judgments. “It's up to you, Gwynnor. I'll be sorry to see you leave, but if you can't endure these people, it would be better for you to go.”

Gwynnor hugged his knees tighter. He felt hunted. He couldn't explain to her that he wanted desperately to go away, but knives turned inside him whenever he thought of leaving her. Biting his lower lip, he turned his head and met the eyes of one of the cludair males. He jumped up. “I contracted to take you to the sea, gwerei. A matter of honor.”

The starwoman stood. “I see,” she said. “If you think you can manage.” She nodded at Tipylexne. He turned and strode arrogantly down a nearly invisible trail, his hunters falling into line behind. As they followed, the starwoman turned to him. “Remember, my friend, I'm a healer. If this gets too bad, I can help.”

He shivered and walked faster.

“Gwynnor.”

“What?” He threw the word back over his shoulder without slowing. He didn't want to listen to her.

“Smell works below the level of consciousness so you'll be feeling queasy awhile.”

“Huh?” Distracted, he tripped over a root and nearly fell. She caught hold of his arm, steadying him on his feet. Embarrassed, he walked beside her, staring fixedly at the green haze that shrouded everything more than a few meters off.

“What I'm trying to say is you'll get used to these strange smells quickly if you don't keep tensed up all the time. Let yourself relax. Remember, even though you're a stranger here, the cludair accept you.”

“Because of you.”

“So?” She chuckled suddenly, the sound startlingly loud against the background of small constant rustlings. “You ought to be cheering the cludair on, Gwynnor. They want to get the aliens off Maeve as much as you do. Maybe more.”

He looked thoughtfully at the back of the cludair just ahead, feeling a little lightheaded as she forced him to examine once again the beliefs that ruled his life.

Silence settled thickly around the line of walkers.

Chapter VII

“I see them, Lee. Give me time, will you?” Shadith's purple eyes narrowed in a thoughtful frown. Using Aleytys' farseeing gift, she probed into the machine as it ate slowly through the forest, spewing out lumber and debris. The sawteeth ripped through the scent glands in the wood, releasing gouts of odor until the stench was as overwhelming as the noise.

Aleytys followed Shadith's exploration, understanding nothing, feeling bewildered and lost in the complex of lines and forces the singer was sorting out to her obvious satisfaction.