The Many Worlds of Poul Anderson

by Roger Elwood

  “Can’t I?” Sherrinford smiled. “Several generations’ worth of reports shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Especially not when they become more frequent and consistent in the course of time, not less. Nor can we ignore the documented loss of babies and small children, amounting by now to over a hundred, and never a trace found afterward. Nor the finds which demonstrate that an intelligent species once inhabited Arctica and may still haunt the interior.”

  Dawson leaned forward as if to climb out of the screen. “Who engaged you?” he demanded. “That Cullen woman? We were sorry for her, naturally, but she wasn’t making sense, and when she got downright abusive—”

  “Didn’t her companions, reputable scientists, confirm her story?”

  “No story to confirm. Look, they had the place ringed with detectors and alarms, and they kept mastiffs. Standard procedure in country where a hungry sauroid or whatever might happen by. Nothing could’ve entered unbeknownst.”

  “On the ground. How about a flyer landing in the middle of camp?”

  “A man in a copter rig would’ve roused everybody.”

  “A winged being might be quieter.”

  “A living flyer that could lift a three-year-old boy? Doesn’t exist.”

  “Isn’t in the scientific literature, you mean, Constable. Remember Graymantle; remember how little we know about Roland, a planet, an entire world. Such birds do exist on Beowulf—and on Rustum, I’ve read. I made a calculation from the local ratio of air density to gravity, and, yes, it’s marginally possible here too. The child could have been carried off for a short distance before wing muscles were exhausted and the creature must descend.”

  Dawson snorted. “First it landed and walked into the tent where mother and boy were asleep. Then it walked away, toting him, after it couldn’t fly further. Does that sound like a bird of prey? And the victim didn’t cry out, the dogs didn’t bark!’’

  “As a matter of fact,” Sherrinford said, “those inconsistencies are the most interesting and convincing features of the whole account. You’re right, it’s hard to see how a human kidnapper could get in undetected, and an eagle type of creature wouldn’t operate in that fashion. But none of this applies to a winged intelligent being. The boy could have been drugged. Certainly the dogs showed signs of having been.”

  “The dogs showed signs of having overslept. Nothing had disturbed them. The kid wandering by wouldn’t do so. We don’t need to assume one damn thing except, first, that he got restless and, second, that the alarms were a bit sloppily rigged —seeing as how no danger was expected from inside camp— and let him pass out. And, third, I hate to speak this way, but we must assume the poor tyke starved or was killed.”

  Dawson paused before adding: “If we had more staff, we could have given the affair more time. And would have, of course. We did make an aerial sweep, which risked the lives of the pilots, using instruments which would’ve spotted the kid anywhere in a fifty-kilometer radius, unless he was dead. You know how sensitive thermal analyzers are. We drew a complete blank. We have more important jobs than to hunt for the scattered pieces of a corpse.”

  He finished brusquely. “If Mrs. Cullen’s hired you, my advice is you find an excuse to quit. Better for her, too. She’s got to come to terms with reality.”

  Barbro checked a shout by biting her tongue.

  “Oh, this is merely the latest disappearance of the series,” Sherrinford said. She didn’t understand how he could maintain his easy tone when Jimmy was lost. “More thoroughly recorded than any before, thus more suggestive. Usually an outwayer family has given a tearful but undetailed account of their child who vanished and must have been stolen by the Old Folk. Sometimes, years later, they’d tell about glimpses of what they swore must have been the grown child, not really human any longer, flitting past in murk or peering through a window or working mischief upon them. As you say, neither the authorities nor the scientists have had personnel or resources to mount a proper investigation. But as I say, the matter appears to be worth investigating. Maybe a private party like myself can contribute.”

  “Listen, most of us constables grew up in the outway. We don’t just ride patrol and answer emergency calls; we go back there for holidays and reunions. If any gang of … of human sacrificers was around, we’d know.”

  “I realize that. I also realize that the people you came from have a widespread and deep-seated belief in nonhuman beings with supernatural powers. Many actually go through rites and make offerings to propitiate them.”

  “I know what you’re leading up to,’’ Dawson flared. “I’ve heard it before, from a hundred sensationalists. The aborigines are the Outlings. I thought better of you. Surely you’ve visited a museum or three, surely you’ve read literature from planets which do have natives—or damn and blast, haven’t you ever applied that logic of yours?”

  He wagged a finger. ‘Think,” he said. “What have we in fact discovered? A few pieces of worked stone; a few megaliths that might be artificial; scratchings on rock that seem to show plants and animals, though not the way any human culture would ever have shown them; traces of fires and broken bones; other fragments of bone that seem as if they might’ve belonged to thinking creatures, as if they might’ve been inside fingers or around big brains. If so, however, the owners looked nothing like men. Or angels, for that matter. Nothing! The most anthropoid reconstruction I’ve seen shows a kind of two-legged crocagator.

  “Wait, let me finish. The stories about the Outlings—oh, I’ve heard them too, plenty of them. I believed them when I was a kid—the stories tell how there’re different kinds, some winged, some not, some half human, some completely human except maybe for being too handsome— It’s fairyland from ancient Earth all over again. Isn’t it? I got interested once and dug into the Heritage Library microfiles, and be damned if I didn’t find almost the identical yarns, told by peasants centuries before spaceflight.

  “None of it squares with the scanty relics we have, if they are relics, or with the fact that no area the size of Arctica could spawn a dozen different intelligent species, or … hellfire, man, with the way your common sense tells you aborigines would behave when humans arrived!”

  Sherrinford nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I’m less sure than you that the common sense of nonhuman beings is precisely like our own. I’ve seen so much variation within mankind. But, granted, your arguments are strong. Roland’s too few scientists have more pressing tasks than tracking down the origins of what is, as you put it, a revived medieval superstition.”

  He cradled his pipe bowl in both hands and peered into the tiny hearth of it. “Perhaps what interests me most,” he said softly, “is why—across that gap of centuries, across a barrier of machine civilization and its utterly antagonistic world view—no continuity of tradition whatsoever—why have hard-headed, technologically organized, reasonably well-educated colonists here brought back from its grave a belief in the Old Folk?”

  “I suppose eventually, if the University ever does develop the psychology department they keep talking about, I suppose eventually somebody will get a thesis out of your question.” Dawson spoke in a jagged voice, and he gulped when Sherrinford replied:

  “I propose to begin now. In Commissioner Hauch Land, since that’s where the latest incident occurred. Where can I rent a vehicle?”

  “Uh, might be hard to do—”

  “Come, come. Tenderfoot or not, I know better. In an economy of scarcity, few people own heavy equipment. But since it’s needed, it can always be rented. I want a camper bus with a ground-effect drive suitable for every kind of terrain. And I want certain equipment installed which IVe brought along, and the top canopy section replaced by a gun turret controllable from the drivers seat. But 111 supply the weapons. Besides rifles and pistols of my own, I’ve arranged to borrow some artillery from Christmas Landing’s police arsenal.”

  “Hoy? Are you genuinely intending to make ready for … a war … against a myth?”

  “Lets s
ay I’m taking out insurance, which isn’t terribly expensive, against a remote possibility. Now, besides the bus, what about a light aircraft carried piggyback for use in surveys?”

  “No.” Dawson sounded more positive than hitherto. “That’s asking for disaster. We can have you flown to a base camp in a large plane when the weather report’s exactly right. But the pilot will have to fly back at once, before the weather turns wrong again. Meteorology’s underdeveloped on Roland; the air’s especially treacherous this time of year, and we’re not tooled up to produce aircraft that can outlive every surprise.” He drew breath. “Have you no idea of how fast a whirly-whirly can hit, or what size hailstones might strike from a clear sky, or—? Once you’re there, man, you stick to the ground.” He hesitated. “That’s an important reason our information is so scanty about the outway, and its settlers are so isolated.”

  Sherrinford laughed ruefully. “Well, I suppose if details are what I’m after, I must creep along anyway.”

  “You’ll waste a lot of time,” Dawson said. “Not to mention your client’s money. Listen, I can’t forbid you to chase shadows, but—”

  The discussion went on for almost an hour. When the screen finally blanked, Sherrinford rose, stretched, and walked toward Barbro. She noticed anew his peculiar gait. He had come from a planet with a fourth again of Earth’s gravitational drag, to one where weight was less than half Terrestrial. She wondered if he had flying dreams.

  “I apologize for shuffling you off like that,” he said. “I didn’t expect to reach him at once. He was quite truthful about how busy he is. But having made contact, I didn’t want to remind him overmuch of you. He can dismiss my project as a futile fantasy which I’ll soon give up. But he might have frozen completely, might even have put up obstacles before us, if he’d realized through you how determined we are.”

  “Why should he care?” she asked in her bitterness.

  “Fear of consequences, the worse because it is unadmitted— fear of consequences, the more terrifying because they are unguessable.” Sherrinford s gaze went to the screen, and thence out the window to the aurora pulsing in glacial blue and white immensely far overhead. “I suppose you saw I was talking to a frightened man. Down underneath his conventionality and scoffing, he believes in the Outlings—oh, yes, he believes.”

  §

  The feet of Mistherd flew over yerba and outpaced windblown driftweed. Beside him, black and misshapen, hulked Nagrim the nicor, whose earthquake weight left a swath of crushed plants. Behind, luminous blossoms of a firethorn shone through the twining, trailing outlines of Morgarel the wraith.

  Here Cloudmoor rose in a surf of hills and thickets. The air lay quiet, now and then carrying the distance-muted howl of a beast. It was darker than usual at winterbirth, the moons being down and aurora a wan flicker above mountains on the northern world-edge. But this made the stars keen, and their numbers crowded heaven, and Ghost Road shone among them as if it, like the leafage beneath, were paved with dew.

  “Yonder!” bawled Nagrim. All four of his arms pointed. The party had topped a ridge. Far off glimmered a spark. “Hoah, hoah! ’Ull we right off stamp dem flat, or pluck dem apart slow?”

  We shall do nothing of the sort, bonebrain, Morgarels answer slid through their heads. Not unless they attack us, and they will not unless we make them aware of us, and her command is that we spy out their purposes.

  “Gr-r-rum-m-m. I know deir aim. Cut down trees, stick plows in land, sow deir cursed seed in de clods and in deir shes. ’Less we drive dem into de bitterwater, and soon, soon, dey’ll wax too strong for us.”

  “Not too strong for the Queen!” Mistherd protested, shocked.

  Yet they do have new powers, it seems, Morgarel reminded him. Carefully must we probe them.

  “Den carefully can we step on dem?” asked Nagrim.

  The question woke a grin out of Mistherd’s own uneasiness. He slapped the scaly back. “Don’t talk, you,” he said. “It hurts my ears. Nor think; that hurts your head. Come, run!”

  Ease yourself, Morgarel scolded. You have too much life in you, human-born.

  Mistherd made a face at the wraith, but obeyed to the extent of slowing down and picking his way through what cover the country afforded. For he traveled on behalf of the Fairest, to learn what had brought a pair of mortals questing hither.

  Did they seek that boy whom Ayoch stole? (He continued to weep for his mother, though less and less often as the marvels of Carheddin entered him.) Perhaps. A birdcraft had left them and their car at the now-abandoned campsite, from which they had followed an outward spiral. But when no trace of the cub had appeared inside a reasonable distance, they did not call to be flown home. And this wasn’t because weather forbade the farspeaker waves to travel, as was frequently the case. No, instead the couple set off toward the mountains of Moonhorn. Their course would take them past a few outlying invader steadings and on into realms untrodden by their race.

  So this was no ordinary survey. Then what was it?

  Mistherd understood now why she who reigned had made her adopted mortal children learn, or retain, the clumsy language of their forebears. He had hated that drill, wholly foreign to Dweller ways. Of course, you obeyed her, and in time you saw how wise she had been… .

  Presently he left Nagrim behind a rock—the nicor would only be useful in a fight—and crawled from bush to bush until he lay within man-lengths of the humans. A rainplant drooped over him, leaves soft on his bare skin, and clothed him in darkness. Morgarel floated to the crown of a shiverleaf, whose unrest would better conceal his flimsy shape. He’d not be much help either. And that was the most troublous, the almost appalling thing here. Wraiths were among those who could not just sense and send thought, but cast illusions. Morgarel had reported that this time his power seemed to rebound off an invisible cold wall around the car.

  Otherwise the male and female had set up no guardian engines and kept no dogs. Belike they supposed none would be needed, since they slept in the long vehicle which bore them. But such contempt of the Queen’s strength could not be tolerated, could it?

  Metal sheened faintly by the light of their campfire. They sat on either side, wrapped in coats against a coolness that Mistherd, naked, found mild. The male drank smoke. The female stared past him into a dusk which her flame-dazzled eyes must see as thick gloom. The dancing glow brought her vividly forth. Yes, to judge from Ayoch’s tale, she was the dam of the new cub.

  Ayoch had wanted to come too, but the Wonderful One forbade. Pooks couldn’t hold still long enough for such a mission.

  The man sucked on his pipe. His cheeks thus pulled into shadow while the light flickered across nose and brow, he looked disquietingly like a shearbill about to stoop on prey.

  “—No, I tell you again, Barbro, I have no theories,” he was saying. “When facts are insufficient, theorizing is ridiculous at best, misleading at worst.”

  “Still, you must have some idea of what you’re doing,” she said. It was plain that they had threshed this out often before. No Dweller could be as persistent as she or as patient as he. “That gear you packed—that generator you keep running—”

  “I have a working hypothesis or two, which suggested what equipment I ought to take.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what the hypotheses are?”

  ‘They themselves indicate that that might be inadvisable at the present time. I’m still feeling my way into the labyrinth. And I haven’t had a chance yet to hook everything up. In fact, were really only protected against so-called telepathic influence—”

  “What?” She started. “Do you mean … those legends about how they can read minds too—” Her words trailed off and her gaze sought the darkness beyond his shoulders.

  He leaned forward. His tone lost its clipped rapidity, grew earnest and soft. “Barbro, you’re racking yourself to pieces. Which is no help to Jimmy if he’* alive, the more so when you may well be badly needed later on. We’ve a long trek before us, and you’d better s
ettle into it.”

  She nodded jerkily and caught her lip between her teeth for a moment before she answered, “I’m trying.”

  He smiled around his pipe. “I expect you’ll succeed. You don’t strike me as a quitter or a whiner or an enjoyer of misery.”

  She dropped a hand to the pistol at her belt. Her voice changed; it came out of her throat like knife from sheath. “When we find them, they’ll know what I am. What humans are.”

  “Put anger aside also,” the man urged. “We can’t afford emotions. If the Outlings are real, as I told you I’m provisionally assuming, they’re fighting for their homes.” After a short stillness he added: “I like to think that if the first explorers had found live natives, men would not have colonized Roland. But it’s too late now. We can’t go back if we wanted to. It’s a bitter-end struggle, against an enemy so crafty that he’s even hidden from us the fact that he is waging war.”

  “Is he? I mean, skulking, kidnapping an occasional child—” ‘That’s part of my hypothesis. I suspect those aren’t harassments; they’re tactics employed in a chillingly subtle strategy.” The fire sputtered and sparked. The man smoked awhile, brooding, until he went on:

  “I didn’t want to raise your hopes or excite you unduly while you had to wait on me, first in Christmas Landing, then in Portolondon. Afterward we were busy satisfying ourselves that

  Jimmy had been taken farther from camp than he could have wandered before collapsing. So I’m only now telling you how thoroughly I studied available material on the … Old Folk. Besides, at first I did it on the principle of eliminating every imaginable possibility, however absurd. I expected no result other than final disproof. But I went through everything, relics, analyses, histories, journalistic accounts, monographs; I talked to outwayers who happened to be in town and to what scientists we have who’ve taken any interest in the matter. I’m a quick study. I flatter myself I became as expert as anyone— though God knows there’s little to be expert on. Furthermore, I, a comparative stranger to Roland, maybe looked on the problem with fresh eyes. And a pattern emerged for me.