Boxmaster's Home
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Chapter Four

The Perfect Sibling

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Yran surfaced into a misty dream of waking to avian ral melodically commanding their mates in a woodland permeated with sweet, fresh odors, the rush of a nearby stream, a gentle symphony of delights.

But that wasn't his life now. That had been on a faraway world that had rejected him utterly. The nostalgic ache burgeoned alarmingly, paralyzing his lungs and heart.

He woke curled around a disabling attack of homesickness such as he hadn't experienced since he had entered the Guild Academy. Head tucked into his bedroll, right hip digging into the hard ground, he opened his eyes.

The tent glowed with muted dawn colors. The smells didn't change. It was real, not a dream. He was home. Physically, anyway.

He was camped in a familiar woods, hearing and feeling with the sensorium of childhood, a time of delight and discovery, a time of security in the love of a big, boisterous, and ever growing family, a family that respected his talents if not his interests. He was home, but he couldn't return home, couldn't feel the vital roots of clan heritage going back hundreds of generations. Ever again. And it was by his own choice. Right or wrong, it didn't matter. It was too late to change it now. Dusondain considered him dead and buried decades ago.

He shoved the old issues aside with adult pragmatism and sat up in the chill air. Suddenly he knew why his sleep-clogged brain had miscued him. The familiar scents of the Kendai at the brink of winter were laced with undertones of human as they hadn't been in those years when the family had been on the way home after a summer touring as the Mystic Storm singing troupe.

In this present reality, Yran knew that the serious part of the screaming ache inside him was for Lii, not his birth family. And this human's scent was deeply associated with Lii.

Because of the surgical work done on Odirin, the human scent was vague, blurred, faint, but it had spelled home to Yran's sleeping mind. And so had the fragrant woodland. With both homes beyond reach, his sleeping mind had resurrected the old familiar dream - nightmare - of welcome forever lost and only now treasured properly.

It took several minutes to shake the disorientation. For just those few seconds of dreamtime, memory of the far distant past, singing with Mystic Storm, had been more real than reality. He shook out his sarone, and let the chill wake him fully.

Odirin - Ayyl, he corrected himself sternly - was buried deep in his bedroll, prone, face turned away from Yran. His deep breathing showed no signs of rising consciousness. A few wisps of the artificial sarone protruded limply from the bedroll. If the implant was at all like the real thing, the human would be sorry for that position when he woke. His scalp would ache all day.

Shivering, Yran pulled himself out of the snug bedroll, stowed it carefully, set out some food for breakfast, and decided the smell of ripe rilla berries was too much to resist. The air was so pungent, they had to be nearby. He took a woven sack - it had been synthesized on Hytril but he'd made them do it over until it looked and smelled real - and went looking for the ripe patch.

Outside, he found only a few of their neighbors stirring at dawn. Upwind, someone had started a fire, probably expecting fresh fish from the stream. He went to look down into the creek bed which ran only a few steps away from the rover.

It had cut its bed a bit deeper than he remembered from camping here with Storm. The water burbled vigorously over the rocks, still deep enough to harbor good eating.

A few strides upstream, one of the oldest trees, a favorite of his because of its majesty, had fallen across the creek and was now covered with growths and insects all enthusiastically destroying their woody home. The gap in the overhead canopy had let sunshine in, and a V shaped area of wild underbrush had developed, home to myriads of small, noisy creatures. Lii would love this place. Or maybe not. Lii loved deserts best.

On the upstream side of the fallen log, the water had backed up to form a deep pond that must be teaming with fish and other good things, along with the bad. On the downstream side, the swift current having dug a deep channel under the log had scoured a large, placid pond then spilled vigorously downslope, whipped white by the rocks. The deep pools sparkled in the dawn sun. The dardchen would be thick in the placid water on the downstream side of that trunk. And there had to be some on the upstream side, too.

With a respectful shudder, he stepped back from the undercut bank. If you don't bother them, they won't bother you. That had been the first rule of the wilderness his parents had impressed on him along with Watch where you're putting your feet, and Don't tease the gritsh.

He turned away to survey the clearing under the ancient trees where they were the only campers. The beauty of the place struck through him all the way to his bone marrow. There was nothing like this on any planet he'd ever visited. In the years he'd been setting his boxes, he'd taken time to explore a variety of worlds. But Terrel's never known anything like this.

Unless they completed their mission, he never would.

Shaking himself free of the spell, he turned toward the thicket down the slope that separated them from their nearest neighbors. Ripe rilla sweetened the air. Following his nose he pushed into the thicket. Taking care where he was stepping, he found the berry bush that was frantically advertising for all-comers, and began picking - and tasting. He still had the knack of gleaning the sweetest, ripest ones.

With the air wafting vague hints of contented ral, echoes of far-ago happiness verging on delirium filled him, sending his mission and his human charge into the background. There had been so few moments like this in his life. He gave himself up to it.

"You have a lovely voice. Are you with the Mystic Breeze?"

Yran realized he'd been singing aloud, an old family favorite. He turned to find he had company in the thicket, a neral perhaps a year or two older than Terrel. Mountain bred by the look of him. Silently berating himself for inattention - the way boxmasters got themselves killed - he apologized with a gracious wave. "I didn't notice you there. I was just remembering my last visit to this berry thicket - I was about your age at the time."

"That was forever ago!"

Yran swallowed hard. It was true. In several ways.

"I'm sorry," apologized the child brightly.

Disorientation again. Among galactics, he could keep his reactions to himself. Here, everyone could read him. If this mission was to succeed, he'd have to get on top of himself.

The child deposited a handful of berries into Yran's container. Graphic apology. He accepted by eating one.

"You're right, it was forever ago. But I haven't forgotten how to choose the best berries. Does your family like tart ones?" The child's container was barely half full.

"No, but I can never tell unless I eat them. Then it's too late."

The neral child's mouth was smeared with yellow juice, proving he took his responsibilities like a neral. "That's a problem," agreed Yran with equal gravity. "But watch. If the top of the berry is this color, and the little thorns on the stem are soft - after the first autumn frost, the berry will be sweet. Before the first autumn frost, soft thorns mean tart. We had a frost last night." He plucked one sweet one and another with the same top color but stiff thorns, showing it was tart. "Taste. Compare."

The avid young mind instantly applied the lesson. With just a bit of practice under Yran's guidance judging thorn softness, he had the problem whipped. "You better get back now. One of your ral said Breeze would be leaving early."

"Oh. I'm not with Breeze." He recalled the billing on the wagons they'd passed on the way in. The traveling troupe of Mystic Singers had camped the druchdrun drawn wagons just down the hill and around the bend.

Glancing pointedly at the base of Yran's neck which was bare of any medallion, he said, "But you sing just like a recording - even better than Breeze. They'd take you in for sure." The neral child leaned in close to say with the hushed gravity of an adult intimating a bit of sensitive gossip, "They just came from the capital. They lost eight of their troupe when the offworlders blasted their hotel. They sang the memory last night. I cried. They need people."

"Times have been very bad in the capital," Yran prompted making a mental note not to sing out loud. He'd fallen into the habit when he was alone on his ship in transit from one box station to another. But on Kethsem his voice could betray his identity. During his previous visits, that hadn't been a problem. Everyone had known who he was just from his boxmaster's uniform. If he'd been in uniform, this child would never have spoken to him.

"They could tell you all about the capital. I have to go now. I'm supposed to get some cones from the grove, too, and the jgigs will be all over them if I don't hurry."

Yran checked the rising sun. "Better hurry, then."

The child tromped headlong through the thicket, and Yran automatically called, "Watch where you're putting your feet!"

As if chastised by his own parent, he stopped, cast Yran a grin, put his eyes down and proceeded with exaggerated care.

Yran debated. Likely the human would sleep for another hour or so. He could learn what they needed to know from the troupe. Plucking berries as he went, he made his way down the hill, and emerged from the thicket beside the trash containers that served the lower campsites.

People were stirring here. Judging by the general aroma coming from the tents, an aroma that had also clung to the neral, this was the child's family. Pulling Lii's medallion out of a pocket, he looped the chain over his head. He'd promised Lii, and he'd keep that promise. Given the child's instant assumption about his being alone and bereft, looking for a new family, the medallion was necessary. But it just didn't feel right. A fabricated medallion would have felt even worse, though.

I'm not cut out to be a spy. It wasn't a question of training or ability - not for this mission - it was temperament. I'm a boxmaster. It was more than identity. It was reality. He wanted to retrieve his box because he wanted contact with his shard just as much as his deeper mind had wanted a family's welcome. Given time, his shardless nightmares would become even worse than his clanless nightmares. So. Get the job done.

He followed the path through a stand of trees and came out at the edge of the Mystic Singers' circle of wagons. The draft animals looked thin and weary, the wagons drab. And the air coming from the camp throbbed with pain. The singing last night hadn't finished the grieving.

A ral was bent over the fire in the stone pit at the center of their circle tending a pot of boiling water beside which there was already a neat pile of blanched cones. A scal dropped an armload of deadfall branches beside the ral, then noticing Yran, came toward him, wiping her hands on the hem of her shirt. Her clothes fit too loosely. These people were not prospering.

"Can I do something for you? I don't recall your attending the performance last night."

Yran placed the backs of his hands together and gave her a reverential bow, self-consciously displaying the medallion. "It was after midnight when we pulled in. I understand you've come from the capital. That's where we're headed, so we'd be grateful for any news."

She stood aside to invite him into their camp area, and said, "The news is not good."

He accepted the invitation, made a polite reverence to the ral, greeted the others who were striking camp, helped himself to a seed cone from the ral's stack, and sat down across the fire from the ral.

When he had completed this mannerly display of respect, the ral finally acknowledged him and everyone gathered about, offering formal greetings.

The ral added water to the pot and dumped the remaining cones in. Yran picked up the scooping tool and waited for peeled cones to float to the top. The ral accepted his help graciously. Then a neral child knelt beside the pot to skim the peels off the top of the boiling water. Meanwhile, the ral scrubbed more cones and stacked them.

The cones were ripe and delicious. As they ate them, conversation flowed in the oblique way typical of mystic singers everywhere. It was painfully familiar from his far ago childhood, the phrasings, the philosophy, the careful mannerisms. He let his responses label him as a trouper, trying to suppress the automatic signature of Storm itself without actually dissembling. It wasn't hard. When their questions drew forth the abysmal ache of nostalgia, they stopped probing for his personal history.

So without actually identifying himself, Yran was accepted within minutes, and before long had elicited thorough answers to his questions, answers no outsider would have gotten so easily.

Despite appearances in the countryside, the invaders were indeed devouring this world. But, sorely puzzled and alarmed by the lack of a visible resistance, the invaders moved nervously, even skittishly - sometimes refraining from action, sometimes attacking with crushing force. No one could discern a pattern behind the erratic behavior.

While Yran was in hot pursuit of hard data about the spaceport and the capital building, he glimpsed Ayyl peering into the camp from across the road. Yran let the human know he'd seen him, then pointedly ignored him. Ayyl turned back toward the rover.

The sight of the human wandering around jarred Yran out of the conversation, surprised at how much he had enjoyed it.

He took his leave with all ceremony. As he rose, a piercing scream split the air, silencing the birds.

It was a neral child's scream. From the direction of the rover. Ayyl!

Yran ran, outpacing everyone by dint of reaction time and athletic condition, not to mention sheer panic.

Another scream. A ragged cry for help.

Yran emerged into the clearing by the rover just as Odirin leaped up onto the fallen tree, ran out over the creek, and dove off on the upstream side. Odirin had gone straight down into the deepest part of the pond. At that depth, the current would surely carry him through the gap under the tree into the dardchen infested pond.

Without breaking stride, Yran snatched a bedroll from the cargo Odirin had been stowing and pelted toward the fallen log. He leaped onto it and as he ran, he jerked the ties of the bedroll. By the time he reached the center of the tree where the stump of a branch jutted up, he had joined ground cloth and blanket into a rope of sorts.

As he searched the downstream side of the log, he spiked the blanket onto the branch stump and tossed the ground cloth end of the rope, with the ties dangling to increase it's length. The current pulled it out.

With precision timing a dance choreographer would have envied, two heads bobbed to the surface. Odirin's legs shot out and belayed their collision with a boulder. He held the neral Yran had taught to pick berries with his forearm under the child's chin.

Yran shouted and gestured, "Line left!"

Odirin maneuvered the small body he'd captured into towing position and fought the current. The human spotted the trailing ground cloth tie lines and crawled against the current toward the line. I forgot how strangely humans swim. With luck, nobody would notice.

A crowd had gathered on the bank, the singers raising a chant. The child's family clutched each other. Waves of their fear reached Yran and lent him strength.

The moment Odirin looped the tie line of the ground cloth around his wrist, Yran braced his feet and hauled. The current fought. Odirin went under, but managed to keep the child's head above water. He never lost hold of the line.

Another pair of hands grabbed the blanket between Yran's. A tall scal with the forearms of a blacksmith. She had the mass Yran lacked. They heaved in unison.

She took up slack. "Again!"

Odirin screamed, looking startled and offended.

"They're biting. Hurry!" gasped the scal.

The human voice didn't escalate into upper register as a Kethsem ansha voice should. And there would be human blood.

Two more straining heaves, and Odirin looped an elbow over one of the lower tree branches. The scal went belly down to fetch the child as Odirin lifted the limp body.

Yran kept the tension on the improvised rope. The scal wrestled the child up, and other hands pulled him the rest of the way. The group raced for the stream bank with the unresponsive child. A neral shouted instructions. People scattered to the urgent first aid tasks.

In that moment of inattention, Yran pulled his mentor out of the water, fumbling the blanket free of its spike and wrapping him in it. Then he waved away the strong scal's assistance and bent to examine Ayyl's legs.

The human calves were bitten, the trousers slashed. But there wasn't much blood. Ayyl huddled in the blanket, shuddering. Poison or chill? That water was frigid.

"Got to get you into the tent," said Yran. "Quickly."

"The kid. Is he alive?"

"I think so. Up, now." He heaved the larger body up, balancing Odirin onto his feet. "I've no idea how a human reacts to dardchen bites."

"I'm fine. Just cold."

"Come on. You're bleeding."

They hobbled back, and Yran had a time getting the heavier human down off the tree trunk. Two of the group around the boy started forward to help the heroic rescuer. Yran waved them off, lifting his voice as he scolded Ayyl. "And you'll get yourself into that tent right this minute or I won't be responsible!" He paused as if Ayyl had protested, and then answered, "Don't argue with me. Strip every last shred off and wash with the halipin, and I don't care how you hate the stench. Pull a damnfool stunt like that and you get what you deserve."

By this time, they'd reached the tent and Yran pushed the human inside. He whispered, "Get your clothes off, fast. They could be full of tiny insects that will eat you alive, and - well, never mind what else." He didn't want to visualize the wounds infested, and Odirin didn't need that image right now. "I'll get the halipin."

They did have some, he was sure, but he couldn't recall where. Hytril, the pride of the Union of Stars fleet, had been designed to cater to all the species of the Union. As a result, the data banks contained patterns for everything a Kethsem might possibly want, which was why they had equipment that looked authentic. He had ordered halipin, and he remembered seeing it delivered. But where had they put it?

Frantically searching, he found it in his personal toiletries not the first aid kit. He brought water from the barrel that had been sitting overnight and was thus clean, and a double handful of moss from a huge old tree's trunk.

The human stood naked in the tent, clutching the blanket around him. Yran tossed the clothes out to be burned, and worked the soap with the moss until he had a lather. "Soap all over with that, and don't miss a single fold or crack or orifice, even your nose, mouth, anus and especially the wounds. Lather up your sarone, too - I know it's not real, but don't be careless. Let the lather dry on you." He left to fetch their tent heater, set it on high, then shoved it into the tent. "Make it as hot as you can stand it and stay in there as long as you can stand it - and a little longer. Heat kills the little monsters."

The family was carrying the child back to their camp, stripped naked and shuddering convulsively as he moaned and wailed. Yran went over to them and asked the muscular scal who had helped him, "Is he all right?"

"He only got bitten once. I think he'll make it. Your sotain saved his life. Is he all right? I couldn't believe what I was seeing when he jumped in there."

Me, neither. "He's - uh - " impulsive, no watch the dialect - "rash sometimes." He offered the mountain scal the same cover story he'd given the singers. "He married into my family just recently, after he lost his family to the invaders." Well, to luphire fever when he was eleven, not so different. "He's not typical of the rest of us," What an understatement! "but that'll make his children interesting to raise." Very true.

"That's all too common lately," she sympathized. "I've never seen an ansha react so quickly - and effectively - to a child's peril. It seems you've chosen exceptionally well."

"My ral thinks so." Does he ever!

She looked toward the rover curiously.

Yran supplied, "He's at home. With the children. We're on our way to place memorials - " She filled in the rest for herself, relieving him of spinning elaborate tales.

She glanced at her family's tent where everyone was inside fussing over the neral child. "I should go help."

"I have to make sure he's been thorough. Ansha."

She laughed, knowing exactly what he meant. "It's the same on the mountain as anywhere else. I'll take care of burning the clothes for you," she offered.

"Be very careful," Yran advised, accepting her kindness.

"Oh, I will. I do understand low Kendai dardchen."

Yran retreated, again bemused by the sensation of being regarded as an ordinary person with ordinary attitudes, especially by a mountain clansman. From her accent and the neral child's, these people had to be near neighbors of his own birth clan, the Dusondain of High Kendai.

As Yran brought the clean garments into the tent, he kicked the vile mess of sodden material into the sun where the larvae might go dormant for the day. Then he cleaned up and sterilized every drop of water in that tent hoping he wouldn't be imagining himself itching at night for the rest of the mission.

Odirin had done precisely as ordered, much more meticulously than Yran had followed the human's apparently absurd orders when he had been Odirin's apprentice. The overheated tent reeked of the dry lather. Yran found only one bite had penetrated through Odirin's layer of artificial padding and into living human flesh.

Odirin showed him the slice, laying it open to display how well the yellow foam had been worked into the raw flesh. "Are you sure this is necessary?"

"It's the only thing I know of that really works."

"It hurts like crazy."

"I'd expect so. The wound's not bleeding much."

"The cold kept the bleeding down. I made it bleed before I soaped it. I think this stuff stops bleeding."

"Odd side effect." Yran saw the blood soaked moss sponge beside the basin of water. He looked up into human eyes that looked normal because of the surgical implants. Would the pupils react even if the human had taken toxins into his blood? "That has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen you do."

"The kid reminded me of Terrel."

"How could a neral remind you of Terrel? Unless you mean of Terrel's problems?" The mountain child was only a little old for Terrel. It could work. But a mountain family would never send him offworld into exile. Besides, he surely had a kessich already. Unless his older ral sibling is dead.

Ayyl snapped with weary annoyance, "So I can't tell gender in children. I still couldn't let a child die just to preserve my cover, no matter the kid's gender."

"So you decided to die with him? Bright."

"I didn't know there was anything lethal in that stream. It goes right through a developed camping site!"

Yran sat back on his heels surveying the human's lacerated leg. "And to think I trusted you to teach me to camp on strange worlds. It's amazing I lived through it."

Odirin cocked his head to one side, getting a faraway, thoughtful look followed by sudden comprehension. "Yran, you're really upset by this, aren't you?"

Upset? No not at all. Just terrified. Now even the human was reading his body scents. Next thing you know, I'll be homesick for galactic worlds that have never heard of Kethsem. "Yes, I am upset, but it doesn't have anything to do with you. It's not important right now. We've got a long way to drive today. I'll get some water for you to wash that off in." He stood up.

The human examined his own scratched, abraded and dardchen nibbled legs. He poked at the one serious bite. "They said wounds would heal in the padding, but it would take longer than flesh. I'll need some bandages."

"We've got some."

It was nearly noon by the time they were rolling again. But Odirin was glad they had refueled. Yran drove because Odirin was still feeling a little strange from the poisonous bite. At least sarone doesn't hold water and drip like my own hair. But that was small consolation. He'd known better than to jump in after a drowning person since well before he'd entered the Guild Academy. And there he'd learned not to jump into the water on a strange world.

Odirin had not seen the pyrhanna-like fish that had bitten him, but Yran had described what their fangs and the venomous bites could do to a Kethsem. And he'd detailed the result of infestation by the insect larva that lived on the fish and the microbes the larva spread.

If it had happened an hour later, none of those wilderness horrors would have been in attack-mode and any child could swim in the calm parts of the stream. Odirin couldn't blame Yran for not warning him. He'd rarely warned Yran when training him.

But Yran had not omitted the warning on purpose. Yran had never considered the dangers of the place because they were dangers as familiar to him as those in Lii's living room. As often as Odirin had been on Kethsem, he had never camped out here. He told himself once again to regard the countryside as a strange planet and mind his steps. Once they got to the city, he'd be on more familiar turf.

When they had settled in with the afternoon traffic flow - sparse traffic in their direction, heavier going the other way - they both relaxed and the acrid tang of Yran's irritation subsided. Yran began to impart what he'd learned at the campsite about the invaders but interrupted immediately to say, "Ayyl, look at that truck. It's seared!" Yran paced beside a painted van with scorch marks splashing down from the roof.

Odirin asked, "What local weaponry could do that?"

"None I know of. There's a tool for removing paint."

"No, look. The metal has been slightly melted."

Now that they were watching for it, they spotted damage to other vehicles, too, mostly going away from the city. "Weapons fire," identified Odirin grimly. "They're trying to smoke out the opposition. On other worlds where people seemed passive, the Sxome have suffered serious losses from overconfidence. Anybody but Kethsem would be organizing a strike against the invaders and the longer it's delayed, the more scared they become because they've lost worlds back to us before when the resistance and the Union struck at once."

Yran was silent.

Odirin asked, "What did you learn from those people this morning? Or were you just gossiping?"

"Gossiping? With Mystic singers? Gossiping?"

There was a whiff of the same odor with which Yran had addressed Odirin's jumping in to save the child. "Well, Yran, you looked like you were having a great time."

Yran drew breath, then threw Odirin a cryptic look and subsided, emitting a complex medley of fragrances. After a bit, he admitted, "I was having a good time, in a strange sort of way. They weren't reacting to the Kethsem Boxmaster, or the disgraced outcast. I was just an ordinary person to them." He paused. "But I felt like a fraud."

After a brief language lesson, Odirin understood Yran's discomfort. "It's probably going to get worse before we get through this. We're not cut out to be spies."

"True" Yran fingered Lii's token where it dangled around his neck. "But now I know why Lii wanted me to wear this. At least it reminds me who I really am."

Privately, Odirin thought it had been more a matter of ral possessiveness. "So what else did you learn?"

"We can get into the city, I think. Out again may be another problem."

Odirin listened to Yran's conjectures drawn from the highly slanted observations of a troupe of itinerant religious entertainers. When the Kethsem explained the mystic singer mindset by singing a couple of their songs, Odirin identified them as gospel singers who hadn't ever heard of the gospel. Yran had no idea what he was talking about. Odirin privately concluded the mystic singers were spiritual ministers for whom God and religion were irrelevant, something like a cross between a good bartender and a psych counselor with stage training. But it was the closest thing to a religious organization Odirin had yet discovered among Kethsem.

Using what Yran had learned, they concocted tentative plans.

By mid-afternoon, Odirin felt better and took a turn behind the wheel while it was still light enough for him to see. "I've got to master the trick of this thing in case I have to do it under fire." But driving from the middle of the raised back seat was weird.

Yran never relaxed a muscle all the while the vehicle moved under the human's guidance. Leery because the rover was too stupid to stop before running into solid obstacles, Odirin listened carefully to Yran's muttered cautions about sudden steering changes, Yran's unreal estimates of braking distances, and his cautions about how to handle stupid brakes on slick road. Exhausted, Odirin surrendered the driver's seat when the shadows lengthened so that Yran could get some rest by driving.

The Kethsem drove as if oblivious to all the dangers, the same way he wandered negligently around the woods.

Well after sunset, Yran said, "The traffic is so light, and you drove too fast, so I think we're on the edge of our map already." And he began to describe their location, pointing out landmarks Odirin couldn't see.

But it was true, according to the map Odirin deciphered with a small light.

Yran said, "Good, then in about an hour, we should come to another zhi-orca. It's at a junction where there are businesses clustered to serve the highway. We could sleep indoors tonight, if you like. Hot running water."

Intelligence had provided them with sufficient cash to cover such things, and the idea sounded good to Odirin. He found the junction on the map, but no indication of what was there. Far off the road, there was a small town that had a name, but he couldn't read it in the poor light. There were many hamlets out there, connected by unpaved roads.

The traffic died down to virtually nil as they approached the crossroads. When they topped the last rise before the junction, Yran peered through the front windshield, squinting into the gloom. "Sign says this is it, but it's all dark up there. It shouldn't be that dark."

He slowed until the headlights picked out the off-ramp he wanted. Following the ramp up and around, leaning forward over the wheel to peer into the darkness, suddenly, he braked, pumping his foot madly. The safety harnesses locked with a loud thunk. The tires screeched. They came to rest with the front end of the rover canted down sharply.

Yran pushed back from the wheel, blowing out a heavy sign. The engine had stopped. He doused the lights.

"What happened? I can't see a thing."

"We're hanging over the lip of a hole wide enough to swallow the rover."

"How deep is it?"

"I have no idea. But we were on an overpass."

"I think we better get out and look."

"Very gingerly."

With smooth, quiet movements, they eased out their respective doors. Odirin inched forward, feeling low to find the front tire on his side. The road surface under it was in little chunks. He stopped moving forward. Yran produced a hand torch from the storage compartment on his side.

The cone of light searched out the front of the rover and then the hole. The beam showed the main highway far below them. Odirin said mildly, "Nice driving."

"I almost killed us, speeding."

"Almost is the operative word there, Boxmaster."

Yran flashed the light about them.

Charred skeletons of trees.

"Aerial bombardment," identified Odirin, "or maybe orbital. Maybe both. Definitely energy weapons."

Yran left Odirin's analysis unchallenged. "No lights. They've destroyed the whole crossroads service area. Small wonder there was no traffic on the road after the last turnoff. No fuel here, either."

"They're taking control of transportation and communication. Can we make it to the next service area?"

"Yes, but there may be nothing there."

"Well, then let's get this - rover - back down on the road."

As they worked, Yran inadvertently instructed him in the appropriate invective, all of it having to do with scents, and most of it pronounced above Odirin's vocal range.

It was almost dawn before they finished. They parked the rover beside the road and, sitting on a scorched rock, they ate and planned. As soon as there was enough light for Yran to see, he checked the undercarriage of the vehicle for damage and checked the case welded to the frame which held their monitor shards. He replaced a hose, tightened connections and pronounced the rover road-worthy.

Meanwhile, Odirin climbed the hill to pick over the remains of the buildings and look down on the glade that had been a popular campsite. There was nothing left. Charred ash covered the hills, caked and hardened by a recent rain. The devastation had a cleanly defined rim beyond which vegetation thrived. Definitely Sxome weapons.

He wondered how many Kethsem had died here. If anyone had done this on a human-settled planet, the residents would have raised the militia. The militia would have sold their lives dearly, then noncombatants would retreat, reorganize and mount a guerrilla war of harassment and attrition until help came. But Kethsem weren't human. They flinched, retreated, and grieved, they hurt like humans but they hadn't come back fighting. Or at least they hadn't yet.

The strangest thing he'd noticed was the total lack of refugees along the roadside. On any other planet, major population centers would have bled refugees into the countryside in copious streams. The whole planet would have bled refugees into space in anything that could make orbit.

They were close to the largest city on the planet, but this little crossroads settlement was nestled among verdant, rolling hills and thick virgin forest. As far as the eye could see, there was no hint of civilization - not even a farmstead - though the map showed scattered villages.

They'd been driving through similarly empty countryside the whole way. The only hint that there was anything at all off the road was the occasional junction with another major highway. And from time to time, they passed dirt tracks leading off across the hillsides. Firebreaks scarred the forest carpeted hills in the distance. Here and there, he'd spotted fence lines, and an occasional tall pole carrying a single strand of wire off into the wilderness. Most of the land was virgin, empty, wild. No people. No domesticated animals. No refugees. No gathering militia.

How miserable did the ral have to become before everyone else went out to do something about it?

If the Union liberating force arrived and fought and died to liberate this planet only to find the Kethsem hadn't lifted a finger against the invaders, anti-Kethsem sentiment would erupt and the Union might throw this world back to the enemy and good riddance. Or - it might if humans had the only voice in Union policy.

He explained this to Yran as they drove away, but the Kethsem only said, "Well, I suppose anyone who wanted to leave the city left when the invaders came. They would have gone to their clans.

"Ayyl, nobody here understands what's happening or why, never mind what to do about it. When the Union arrived, everyone expected them to behave like the Sxome have. Even now, some people believe this is being done by the Union."

"It's a good thing those campers didn't see my blood!"

"A very good thing."

Near noon, Odirin spotted a car tilted into the ditch on the other side of the road. They stopped. At this point, as along much of the road, the "highway" consisted of one lane in each direction. Odirin had nearly died of fright the first time Yran had swooped up to the rear of a slow truck, swerved into the oncoming lane, and back again in front of the truck. The Kethsem had only looked at him strangely and said, "She was very polite to help me pass."

Now he wondered if this vehicle had met an impolite truck driver. Driving a car not smart enough to stay on the road, what in the world could you do about anything?

The single occupant, an ansha, was draped over the steering wheel, dead, covered with crawling insects. They pulled the body out and examined the car.

"No skid marks. He just drove into the ditch. Amazing the car didn't explode."

Explode?!

Yran squatted over the body. "Impact crushed his chest," he observed. He glanced up and down the deserted highway. "I guess there are no more patrols or this wreck would have been taken care of. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a single official patrol in all the time we've been driving."

"They're too busy with civil disaster to patrol the roads." They ought to be fighting the damn Sxome.

They buried the body and stole all the fuel out of the nearly full tank. When Yran suggested the driver had gone off the road because he was too tired to see straight, Odirin insisted they stop to rest. Yran rolled off the road into a grove of trees and they pitched camp.

They slept until midnight, struck camp in a downpour, and arrived at the far-flung outskirts of the urbanized area of the capital near dawn, though you couldn't tell it by the light-level. The rain had barely slackened for hours.

The capital city was the only city worthy of the term on the entire continent. There was one other in the southern hemisphere a galactic might recognize as a city, but in general the Kethsem population preferred low-density living. Now that Odirin an idea how sensitive a Kethsem's sense of smell was, he understood why.

The light was increasing as they came over a rise and suddenly the road swooped down and away in front of them revealing a huge bowl of a valley, the far edge lost in the rainy gloom. But Odirin could make out the hint of the rough, jagged mountain peaks on the other side, mountains that bordered the Kendai plateau just on the other side of the capital city where they should have landed. It was the eastern skirt of a majestic, soaring, tectonically active mountain chain that marked the collision zone of two continental plates.

The mountains, he recalled, were absolutely spectacular on a sunny day, a tourist attraction if the Kethsem would ever allow it. Odirin, personally, knew researchers who were dying to get into those extinct volcanoes - and the not-so extinct ones. If the Kethsem would allow that, it would solve their power problem and they could get rid of these fossil fuel burners - at least on the Kendai plateau.

They drove down into the outskirts of the city and Odirin got to test his disguise in a restaurant. It was warm and steamy inside, ripe with the odors of overheated Kethsem bodies, gender mixed. Yran called an order to the scal behind the counter as he headed for the lavatory, Odirin on his heels. The single lavatory was not gender-differentiated, nor was there any privacy. While Yran stood guard just inside the door, Odirin did his business in haste.

There were only two other customers, ansha who looked like local roughnecks, sitting at a table and talking in low, earnest tones. They never even looked at Odirin when he came out of the facility. Yran picked up their order, bowls of hot mashed roots mixed with something crunchy and drinks, and led the way out a side door.

They sat at a table under a wide overhang extended from the edge of the roof forming a kind of attached shed in the open air. The rain pounded the roof relentlessly with no sign of even momentary slackening, but their table was dry. The warm, humid air seemed more like the tropics than the mountains in autumn.

"Does it always rain like this around here? I seem to remember it raining every time I had to come to tend my box."

"Just be glad it's not coming down as snow." Suddenly thoughtful, Yran squinted up at the dark sky. "On the other hand, snow might be better. At this time of year - a rain like this portends an early, prolonged, and very severe winter. But that's what everyone expects, of course."

"Of course? What do you mean, of course?"

"It's why nobody is trying to do anything about the invaders." Odirin caught a whiff of a new scent from Yran, or a medley of scents. "I couldn't begin to explain it. It wouldn't make any sense to you. It would sound like primitive superstition, but it's really a very sophisticated philosophical system."

"Try me. I've studied a lot of belief systems."

Yran sniffed him as if trying to judge another Kethsem. "We don't have war as a form of diplomacy, but we have disputes over land proprietorship. Ral are very possessive of land. Such disputes are not settled by force of arms. They are settled by the land itself. The invaders will attempt to take over the land, and then the land will either accept or reject them. If it rejects them, they will die, and the former owners will return to rebuild."

"The land will reject them? All by itself. No gods involved?"

"Not that I know of, though I suppose that might be one explanation for why it invariably works out." Yran seemed to be considering a new idea, staring off in the direction of the sprawling metropolis.

"Works out?"

"Historically. The founding residents of this city have never been displaced for much more than a year. Tornadoes or other storms, famine, flood, drought, quake, eruptions, crop blight, or a combination - sometimes unique, unseasonable, or geographically unlikely disasters kill the invaders or drive them away.

"If the portents have been for a truly severe winter, the comments I heard at the camp make sense. Nobody expects the invaders to be here very long. People already feel sorry for them as one does for the terminally ill. These people are doomed in less than a year, probably because they've been so wantonly destructive."

Suddenly aware of the people inside staring in their direction, Odirin put his whole mind on his table manners and began eating. "This is good. Better than the synthesizers came up with on Pylant." Just saying the name of his ship gave Odirin a strange emotional jolt.

"Yes, it's the fresh syrup that brings out the flavor. Of course, it might be your sense of smell has changed."

"Someone's coming out here."

A neral who worked behind the counter pushed out through the door and came toward them. Odirin addressed his meal, letting Yran handle it.

"You have business in the city?"

"Yes, why?" replied Yran.

"It's not safe."

"Is the road into the city passable?"

"Maybe. But the city isn't safe. I wouldn't take an ansha in there if I were you. They're killing people. At random. Gets worse every day. Whole families have been wiped out."

"I've heard about that. But there's been nothing on the radio."

"I think they smashed the tower. This stop won't be here when you get back. We're leaving. Today."

"Where will you go?"

"Tybrim, or Rilla Gorge, or someplace out of their way."

"We have a memorial duty, but after that, we'll definitely be going as far away as possible."

"A memorial? Out by the Enclave port?"

"Right. They haven't destroyed the monuments, have they?" There was a whiff of fear from Yran.

"I don't know. But they're making the landing field bigger, and they don't care about what they do to anybody. It's as if they have no neral."

"I know for a fact, they don't," affirmed Yran.

"That explains it. Animals. You shouldn't go in there. Surely your dead will understand if you delay to spring. Those pathetic offworlders can't last long and it isn't right to interfere in such a desperate search for death."

"That's true. But we have to go. We promised our ral."

"Well, in that case, you don't have much choice."

The conversation was cut short by a huge truck that rolled in, engine roaring, undercarriage squealing, and tires crunching the gravel. The three scal who piled out of the cab swept the neral inside, calling him by name and demanding road information. They were bringing a load of baby food into the city, but had no intention of ever trying this road again. The two ansha customers inside rose to meet them.

"Let's get out of here," said Odirin. "There's work to do and it won't wait."