The Girl Who Heard Dragons

The Bones Do Lie

Vale was standing on Elric's shoulders, reaching for clumps of deep red cherries on the upper boughs when he thought he saw a wavering in the air. He went rigid with fear.

"Danger?" The Viking might speak bad English but he knew body language well.

"I thought I saw something!" Something like a shift ripple"

"Shift?" The Viking's fingers clenched Vale's knee so hard that he yipped in protest. "Elric turn?"

"No. Just hold still."

Vale parted the branches obscuring his view of the valley. It was so peaceful, with no suggestion of the ripple, like a flood of water on a glass pane, that preceded a shift. And Chloe was watching. Chloe was always on watch. She wouldn't let anything happen to her people. That was the one constant for Vale since he had got caught in a time shift.

He had so hoped that there wouldn't be a shift for a long, long time. That they'd have the summer in the valley and he'd be able to leave the cellar all day long, to explore a region so familiar in contour, so differently habited in this kind shift by wood and meadow. He seemed to spend so much time gathering stuff to be synthesized. The Fooder was great but, after a while, everything you put in it tasted the same when it came out. To have fresh water whenever you wanted it would be great. It'd be good to clear his lungs of the fetid cellar air, which stank of damp stone, fear, and too many people. If he ever got back to his Born-time, he wouldn't complain about a Dorm again! There'd always been light and windows, and warmth and space. Space - that was the other chore that always faced them. He wished that the power cutters had lasted longer. It'd be so much easier, almost fun, to slice stone like fish - so hard to have to chip- chop it out sliver by sliver. But Chloe wouldn't let them go back out in that time. She'd said it was one of the most dangerous in spite of all the marvelous things they'd been able to plunder. She'd know. She'd watched the time stream for centuries and centuries. Chloe was old. As old as Time itself.

"See?" Elric asked, patient, but there was a hint of concern in the deep bass rumble.

"No. I don't see anything now," Vale said grudgingly. The ripple had looked just like a shift. Vale narrowed his eyes and stared down the valley again, half-scared, half hoping the wavering would manifest itself.

Where the city sometimes was, or the little town, or the great sheet of glazed stone or, once, the orderly urban complex of his Born-time, there was only the convergence of the two rivers, peacefully flowing down to the sea. (Vale had been to the ocean once, on a Dorm trip.)

He couldn't be mistaken this time. The landscape leaked and swam. Maybe Chloe wasn't at the window slot. Maybe she'd fallen asleep. She'd been watching constantly since this shift had settled.

"My basket's full, Elric. Down please." He tried to keep his voice calm, though he wanted to shriek out an alarm. If he scared everyone like the last time he thought he saw a shift starting, and it was only heat refractions, he'd get beaten by Steven when Chloe wasn't nearby.

"Mein alzo." Elric grinned down at him, looking like something from a disturbed night, with his lip half sheared off from an old sword blow. Vale dutifully inspected the enormous can that the Viking had filled, his scoop-sized hands red-stained with bruised fruit-bloodlike juices dribbling down his beard.

"You're not supposed to eat half you pick, Elric," Vale told him. "We need all we can get for the Fooder. You eat more'n any of us and you get dam' uncongenial when you're hungry in a long shift."

Elric understood the scolding tone and he looked away, just like a Dorm-mate avoiding the Mother's interrogation. Vale thrust that thought away. "C'mon, Elric. Let's get these back to the cellar." He set as fast a pace as he could, swinging the heavy basket from one hip to the other. It was an awkward burden to lug up the steep slope, and he had to take care not to spill any. Elric, his big can balanced with negligent ease on one broad shoulder, strolled leisurely up the incline.

Vale glanced back over his shoulder, anxiously spotting the others. Would they have time to make it safely in if it really was a shift? Steve was working at the pool below the falls with Fateri, the breed. Teo-somoli, the squaw, was gutting twice as many fish as Jean. (Well, she was city-bred, from a time like his own.) Peter, Grace, and Samuel ranged the stream banks for herbs and cress. Down the valley, more figures were bobbing up and down, picking dandelion greens. They tasted bitter but Chloe made everyone eat them. Except Elric, who only grinned at anything besides meat, or Fooder slabs when he couldn't stand the hunger pains any longer.

Chloe had sent a crew into the woods, too, to trap and forage. She certainly wouldn't have done that if there'd been any sign of a shift. And she knew. She knew in her bones. Vale wondered what it felt like to have your bones know something…

It was a shift! And it was something you felt, like the most horrible, wrenching, vomit-causing, bone-moving, earth-shuddering, mind-grabbing terror!

Elric let out a roar and began charging up the slope, cherries pelting down on Vale. Mindlessly clutching his basket, Vale staggered and clambered on, keeping his eyes on the one thing not rotating, the threshold of the cellar. He heard the keen of the time-winds but if they buffeted him, he was too fear-ridden to notice in the total cataclysm. One minute it seemed he and Elric walked the sky, with the earth threatening to slam them on the head; the next, the grassy slope had turned to solid ice and they grabbed at burning-cold sheaves of dead grass, or lost their grip in mounds of snow-fluff. Chloe was in the threshold now, calling to them, her eyes wide, like blue beacons, her arms outstretched as if she could somehow stave off the fearsome currents that could lock them away for all eternity into that time stream.

As long as Vale could hear her, as long as he could see her tall figure, an orange wraith by the black basalt safety of the cellar, he was all right. As long as she remained there, they had not slipped into another current of time. They had not shifted.

Elric's can was knocked from his shoulders as he plunged through the doorway. Chloe grabbed the giant Viking as if he were no more than Vale himself. The sight of her making the blubbering warrior scoop up the now doubly precious fruit gave Vale the steadying he needed. He found his second wind, tightened the hold on his basket, and forged on. It got harder, for the slope had altered, a rocky face forming where the upland meadow had been.

"Chloe!" Vale screamed, tortured with the knowledge that she might not help him: that she rarely moved from the cellar and he desperately wished that she would. For him. She loved him best - she always said she did. He was her boy, son of her heart. "Chloe!"

"Throw the basket in," someone yelled in his ear above the shrieking wind. He was seized and thrown, arms flailing in terror that the breathless wind of time might blast him into another stream. Then Chloe's fingers caught his and dragged him, wailing, across the grooved basalt threshold. Someone else yanked him to his feet, propelling him down the corridor until he fetched up hard against the far wall and lay, sobbing, scarcely aware of being kicked, of a heavy foot grinding his fingers into the stone floor. He only knew he was safe, that Chloe had pulled him through the door. The yelling and screaming, the cries and angry shouts, even Elric's roar of outrage and the splat of fist against flesh failed to penetrate his hysterical relief as Vale pressed his cheek against the cold damp stone. It was a bad shift but he was safe, safe, safe!

Suddenly the awful caterwauling of the shift lessened as the iron-banded, studded door thudded into position.

"Boy saw. Boy saw!" Elric was shouting.

"If Vale saw something," Steve's voice cut through Elric's chant, "then, by God, you must have, Chloe. You must have! Who's missing? Who did you jettison this time, you witch? Who did you dump?"

"Burleigh and Travers aren't here," Jean cried, "nor the three new ones…".

"Burleigh and Travers?" Steve's echo hung, a scorn-laden accusation in the supercharged atmosphere.

Muffling his sobs of terror, Vale struggled to a sitting position, trying to focus through tears on the tense knot of dimly seen figures.

"What's bothering you now, Chloe?" Steve demanded in a harsh, bitter voice. "Your magic slipping? Don't your spells work on Nuclear Age minds? Or is it that you can't run philters through a food synthesizer?"

"Thee had best leave off nattering, Steven, and get this fruit to the machine. Happen thee brought any of the fish?"

The icy fear in Vale's chest was dispelled by the calm unruffled tone of Chloe's voice. Why was Steve so angry with her? Even if Vale had cried alarm the moment he saw the first ripple, there would not have been enough time to save Burleigh and his work party. Sudden shifts had happened before. Why didn't Jean stop crying?

"Is food all you can think of, you… you black witch?"

"Shifts can be frightening times for us all. I am not without compassion and true understanding, Steven…"

"Don't try that crap on me anymore, Chloe!"

Vale gasped, for he could see that Steve had Chloe by the arm. Elric, who had slumped to his knees after getting the heavy door closed, stood up, growling. He had been uncongenial to Steve ever since Chloe had taken Steve into the front room.

"Unhand me, Steve!" For all she had neither changed tone or volume, Chloe was to be obeyed. "Vale sweeting, compose thyself. Bring us light. We must salvage the fruit. Ah, Teo-somoli, we shall thank thee for the fish before this shift is over. 'Twill be a long one, I fear."

As much to be out of the tension as to do Chloe's bidding, Vale ducked past Steve, into the front room. The shelf where the power beams were kept was to the right of the door. His hand unerringly closed on the smooth rectangles of plastic. He fumbled slightly for the notched edge of the switch. Light blinded him momentarily. He adjusted the strength down. You so often saw much more in less light. And learned more in total darkness.

Vale shivered. He didn't want to think about that now. He spotted a twig of three cherries and picked it up. There was bruised fruit all over the floor. Teo-somoli was waddling to- ward the Fooder room, her buckskin skirt gathered before her, showing her knock knees. Fascinated and hopeful, Vale stared until she turned the corner. He wondered what Chloe's…

"Yes, let's save the fruit and give thanks for the fish," Steve was saying now. Of those in the chamber only he and Chloe did neither. "We're one big happy family again, aren't we? Who else was with Burleigh and Travers? Did Grace make it back? She was farthest down the stream."

"No, she stumbled and got pulled back," Peter's choked voice said from the dark.

"We tried, but she was too soon pulled beyond our reach," Samuel added.

"Neatly done, Chloe. Neatly done," Steve said. "All the dissidents have been sloughed. Well, nearly all." Steve strode after Teo-somoli, his boot heels clacking on the stones.

It was a bad shift, a deep one, and Vale tried hard, very hard, not to listen to himself. Deep shifts were always preceded by many flickerings and waverings. Chloe had told him that time and time again, after she realized that he actually could see what only her eyes had been able to discern before. It was such a bad shift that even the cellar rocked under the impact of time distortions.

Elric chanted constantly, but that was better than the girls' hysteria. Couldn't they try to be congenial? Chloe finally dosed them. Vale half hoped that she'd offer him some of the cup, but he was relieved when she didn't.

She sat by him instead, which was infinitely preferable. And when he had to put his hands to his ears against the high whines of time, she pulled his head to her bosom. He wondered fleetingly why Burleigh had called her a "cold bitch." She was so warm and there was always a lingering spicy smell about her, so different from a Mother's astringent purity.

The shift went on and on, with dead still periods that were worse than the roaring currents. Reassured by Chloe's soothing nearness, Vale tried to sleep during the calms. But everyone talked then, trying to break that horrible quiet with the sounds of humanness. Everyone, except Steve and Jean, who had pointedly moved into the unfinished back room: another fact that others tried to ignore. Vale thought it was awfully brave of them, and very uncongenial. Chloe was angry with them. He could feel her body go hard though her hands remained gentle as she stroked his head.

In such times, you ought to be congenial, even if you didn't feel like it. Vale thought. It was your duty to the Dorm in which you lived. And this cellar, with mixed sexes and ages, was still a Dorm situation.

If only he'd been congenial that day, centuries back and across time, he'd be a Guidance Aide by now. That is, if he had turned fourteen. Subjective time was impossible to measure but his body was manifesting certain changes that marked the onset of puberty. At that point of his Born-time, you could be a G.A. and have access to the File Banks. He might even get lucky and have a chance to find out who his dam and sire were from the Dorm Files. Traffer had. Or said he had.

Then Vale, Dorm 143, M-82, had to pull an antisocial and get caught up in a time Shift - without even knowing such a thing existed until it swooped him away from everything familiar and known. But here, Chloe called him "her" boy, son of her heart, and she'd find the perfect time for him, the shift that gave him the best possible chance of making something of himself, instead of being pounded and chipped into a congenial mold. A time shift. Vale hoped wistfully, when he could have a family, a mother and a sister… Though he only thought such blasphemy. Vale shivered with delight. He might even have grandparents, whatever they were. But could they compare - ever - to a Chloe? Grace had said she had had grandparents, and aunts and uncles and cousins.

Well, all those relatives hadn't made her quick and clever. She'd been sobby and clumsy, silly nonconforming behavior. And that's why she'd got caught in the shift, not because Chloe hadn't warned…

The banshee wail of the time-winds rose to make even thought impossible.

They couldn't go out when the shift was completed. Not even to get water. Chloe removed the tiny plug set in the door and hastily bunged it up.

"Inferno," she said in her calm voice and sat down, her hands folded in her lap, as she composed herself to wait again. Vale had kept close to her when he felt that the shift was ending, just to be sure his hunch was accurate. He'd said nothing, of course, and hadn't looked at anyone, trying to keep his face expressionless, but pleasant, the way Chloe did, so no one would guess what he was thinking. And he'd known the shift ended badly. Even before Chloe announced it.

These were the times Vale hated most of all: the wait between shifts, with the water getting foul, the air fouler, and the Fooder slabs thinner and thinner… as well as people's tempers. This time, though, Chloe, didn't insist that they work on enlarging the back chamber. They didn't need it now. Vale reflected, not with so many gone. He fell to wondering what time stream had swirled away Burleigh and Travers and Grace and the others. A natural one, or a warring one? It was amazing how Chloe could tell from just looking into the valley. Maybe she'd meant to leave Burleigh and Travers, even Grace, in that lovely era, with cherries in the trees and fish in the stream, rabbits jumping about in the woods and singing birds.

Burleigh had been in the cellar when Vale arrived. He'd been in the front room with Chloe for a long time… until Steve had come, if Vale remembered rightly.

But Burleigh had been from a high-tech time. He hadn't been much good with his hands, being used to servo-mechs, until Chloe made Fateri teach him how to trap small game. Everyone had to help in the cellar. Particularly when they got to a good time with cherries and rabbits.

Some times there wasn't even any fish, just grass and trees, or rock, glazed and dead.

Why had Steve accused Chloe of ditching them? She never told anyone when she was going to leave them. She'd question everyone thoroughly when they first arrived. It was exciting to get a newcomer and listen to the weird tales they told about their times. Vale had often wondered if they were really telling the truth of just suffering from desynchronization. Some of the eras hadn't seemed too bad to Vale. Like Steve's. And some of the times they'd like to live in sounded far worse - to Vale - than what they'd come from. Maybe that's why Elric had stayed with them so long: he wanted a time of much battling and sailing, brawling and drinking. There wasn't any such asocial behavior in Vale's time, with what drone sea-miners and a congenial society of nations. Still, Chloe said that, in the cellar, they crisscrossed the time sea, like a suspended weight, hitting different arcs of its circle as it swung back and forth, around and around.

Vale wondered what time Chloe had come from. She'd never say, only smile. And when would he make the final shift in to his proper time?

The second one did not seem to be as long a shift, fortunately, for Steve had turned very uncongenial, and Jean kept crying and wouldn't drink the sleep inducer that Chloe offered everyone.

And it was winter, cruel, cold, with snow clogging the cellar entrance. There was a settlement at the river, a good-sized one with buildings spread out in concentric circles. No vehicles were visible, no smoke. In fact, no activity at all could be seen in the field glasses and Steve turned them up to their highest power.

"There is life," Chloe said. "And we must have water and provender. We shall wait upon the darkness and then thee shall forage in the settlement, Steven."

"Oh?"

At such an impudent rejoinder, Chloe gave Steve a sharp and penetrating look. Her large blue eyes were steady, with that inner fieriness that scared Vale more than her most icy voice.

"Thee will go, Steven, and, because thee does not trust me, thee may take Vale with thee. Bring the boy back safely! If harm befalls him…"

All Vale could understand was that he was going to be allowed to go on a search party, and he could barely contain his jubilation. He'd begged and begged to be able to go but Chloe had never permitted him beyond the range of her naked eye.

"We'd better use protective suits, Chloe," Steve was saying. "The layout down there, the buildings themselves suggest a high-level technology. Converted heat… which we could do with."

"Our requirements are not technological, Steven," Chloe interrupted sharply, her eyes locking with Steve's. "Thee will remember that. We become far too dependent on the gimcracks and novelties of passing ages."

"The food synthesizer? The air purifiers? The clothes we stand up in?" Steve mocked her.

"Aye, all of them," she answered him in her steady voice, and she turned abruptly and reentered the cellar.

"I can really come, Steve?" Vale demanded.

"Oh, Steve, don't go!" On his other side, Jean was pulling urgently at his arm.

Steve laughed and hugged her. Vale wondered that he was so permissive with such a weepy girl. "I'm in no danger as long as their heir apparent is with me."

Jean stared at Vale so hard, so coldly, the oddest expression on her face, that Vale backed away. All the joy of the raiding was replaced by a distasteful confusion he couldn't understand.

"Yes, very apparent since this last change."

Then Chloe returned to say that there was time before dark to trap, if they could, or gather evergreen limbs for a good sustaining meal before dark. Teo-somoli was sent to the pool. She chopped a hole in the ice and stolidly settled down to fish. Elric, using one of the big cans like a shovel, began to fill the cisterns with water.

"If you'd just let us get a pump, Chloe," Peter argued again, "we could always tap the stream." "Thee knows full well that only water kept safely in the cellar is free of the contaminations of time," Chloe answered and in such a way that Peter did not persist.

But he could grumble as they plowed and slithered down the slope to the edge of the forest.

"What makes her the authority?"

"Her witch's bones," Steve replied, his eyes gleaming.

"She is not a witch," Vale said. "The concept of a witch is the product of a superstitious, untutored society, ignorant of scientific lore, too primitive to relate cause and effect…"

"Out of the mouths of babes," Steve laughed back at Vale, and tousled his hair in the teasing way the boy both resented and sought.

"He's a babe no longer," Samuel said maliciously, "for look you, there were many changes these past shifts."

Vale shot Samuel a resentful look. The man had no right to be uncongenial just because he'd come upon Vale in the jakes when he was… Vale squirmed around to hide his fiery face.

"It happens to all of us, Vale," Steve said, and, although his voice was kind, his eyes were very thoughtful. "Chloe's not a witch. She does have some knowledge or skill denied us which enables her to perceive shifts. However, I defer to the rationale of your Born-time. There are no witches. But… Chloe…"

"I can see shifts." Vale glared at Samuel and Jean.

Steve gave him another long deep look. "Yes, you do. If…"

"If, if, if." Peter muttered bitterly.

"If Vale really can," Jean said, gasping the words out as she trudged through the snow, "we could all get out in a good time."

"What is your good time, Jean of the City?" Steve asked, extending a helping hand to her. His whole face had changed. Vale noticed, when he looked at Jean.

"My own time," Jean said with such uncharacteristic firmness that they all stopped and stared at her. She glared back. "And I know how good it was. Now!"

"By m'bones, the gel's a realist," Samuel said. "But, could we trust the lad to be captain of our fate, fellow voyagers? Vale, since you are rehearsed in one mystery, have you become versed enough in the others Chloe practices to recognize a truly congenial time?"

"Congenial time?" Vale repeated the phrase in astonishment. Samuel wasn't the least bit congenial.

"Young Vale… vale, that's Latin for farewell… and farewell we ought to say to that bitch of time's hell, or is it hell's time? And we ought to take the lad with us when we run to save him his virginity. Otherwise he'll soon miss it. She hungers for a mate as she fishes in the sea of time, with chance her bait and arrant flattery her line."

"Shut up, Samuel. Let's get this chore done!" Steve said, for they'd reached the forest now.

Samuel leaned against the nearest tree, panting from the double exertion of talk and walk. Samuel rarely said so much.

"Why fool with these?" he demanded, "when there's a fine good town, with solid rib-clinging victuals…"

"We don't know that," Steve interrupted him. "We'd better be sure of some food first."

"But if we're going to raid the town at dark," Peter said, grumbling as he stripped off boughs, "I don't see why we have to fool with vegetation. The synthesizer's still half-full. I checked it myself."

Steve turned and frowned at Peter. "Good point, boy. Good point." He went right back to cutting but he didn't say anything, even after they got back to the cellar with their harvest. He said nothing until they were getting ready for the raid, when Chloe told them which buildings to investigate.

"Been shifted here before, Chloe?" he asked then, staring at her with hard eyes.

"I could not say," Chloe replied without hesitation. "The type of structure and the form of the settlement are familiar. But then all times begin to have similarities to one who has circled the present for centuries."

"How long have you been here, Chloe? Who ensorcelled you?"

Chloe met Steve's hard glare.

"I chose my fate."

"So you prefer us to think."

"The shift may not hold long. Be sharp-eyed. Vale. Warn the others the instant thee sees a ripple. I'd not risk it but we must have more protein. I like not the patterns of these past few shifts. Try either the first or second building to the left of the center…"

"Shouldn't I remember to check for breaker boxes or eye circuits?" Steve asked mockingly.

Chloe gave him a long studied look. "Thee knows well how to approach a strange place, Steven, else thee would not have returned so often."

Samuel chuckled.

"Will I return from this one, Chloe?"

She gave him a longer stare. "In the fullness of time."

Then she stepped aside to let them pass. When Vale surreptitiously touched a fold of her dress for good luck, she caught his hand.

"Stay close to Elric and Fateri, Vale," she whispered, and made as if to kiss his cheek. Then, as both realized their eyes were level, she drew in her breath with a hiss, and stepped back. All the long trek down to the rivers, Fateri and Steve took turns checking on the settlement through the binoculars.

"How long ago was the snow, Fateri?" Steve asked once.

The breed jammed his fist through the crust, fingered the snow. "Three-four days."

"Any sign of people?"

Fateri shook his head slowly. Steve peered at the settlement for another long moment and then gestured the party on. ';••

Full dark had fallen by the time they reached it, and Vale was tired. They huddled together, chafing cold faces and frost-clogged nostrils as Fateri crept around the outskirts. Vale wished they'd have time enough for Fateri to teach him how to move so easily through snow, and creep around noiseless and unseen.

When the breed returned, shaking his head, Steve motioned to Peter and Samuel. They walked right up to the nearest building, then cautiously inspected it. Peter tossed twigs toward it but nothing happened. Finally Peter walked right up to one. Peered around its corner, disappeared behind it, and then reappeared on the other side. Just then lights began to appear on all the buildings like an advancing wave. Instinctively they all ducked down, to be roused by Peter's shout.

"It's automatic. C'mon, cowards."

Cautious still, Steve rose, motioned the others toward Peter and Samuel.

"There's no one here. I tripped an automatic relay when I reached the front," Peter said, grinning.

"What kind of place is this, then?" Samuel asked, peering closely at the doorway.

"Could be some kind of unmanned power station," Steve said, but his tone was dubious. He stood squarely in front of the door now, examining the frame, the inset handle. He looked around at the other buildings in the same circle, their blank door-mouths indistinguishable from the one he faced.

He hunkered down, eyeing the doorframe until, with a grunt, he passed his hand over the threshold. Nothing happened. He rose and, using the handle of the power beam, touched the door handle. He gave another grunt and then, as if he expected no result, tried the door.

He dropped where he stood. So did Peter and Samuel. A huge hand grabbed Vale by the shoulder. He was pulled violently off his feet and propelled back the way they had come so fast that his head rocked on his neck. He had kaleidoscopic jumbled impression of Peter, Samuel, and Steve sprawled in the snow by the door, of the circle of lights, of the dark slopes beyond the settlement, of Elric's staring eyes and gaping mouth on one side of him, of Fateri, plunging and lurching through the snow on the other.

This confused him, for he distinctly remembered seeing Fateri, flat on the snow, and Elric staggering and shouting. Now the three of them were racing away from the others as fast as they could. By the time they reached the safety of the darkness beyond the ring of automatic lights, Elric was gasping and groaning. Here Fateri stopped them, pushing Elric and Vale flat into the snow while he crouched, his attitude one of intense concentration. Vale made himself look back, where Peter, Samuel, and Steve lay, plainly visible and just as plainly motionless.

"Are they dead?" Vale asked, trying to keep his voice a whisper, only it came out in a broken rasp.

Fateri gestured abruptly, listening. Suddenly he whirled, his eyes so wide they seemed all whites. He pointed urgently up the slope, pulled at Elric, who was heaving for breath, and taking Vale's arm in cruelly tight fingers, led the way up to the cellar.

"We can't just leave them," Vale protested, trying to pull free. "They may not be dead." "Bad sound," Fateri said, jabbing a finger to the southern sky.

"We can't leave them!" Vale struggled harder.

"No! Chloe say you come. You safe!" Elric said, capturing Vale's other hand and yanking him along.

"Go!" the half-breed urged. "Fast!"

There was no use resisting, so Vale tried to keep up with Elric's long stride and Fateri's jog trot. They did not relinquish their tight holds on him, though he reassured them he wouldn't be silly anymore. It was doubly humiliating: to be half helped along because his legs were shorter than Elric's and less powerful than Fateri's, and because they wouldn't trust him to walk… to run… alone.

They had reached a concealing slope when the bad sound Fateri had heard materialized into a stolplane. It circled the settlement twice at low altitude before squatting down, blocking from the watchers all sight of the fallen men, and of whoever emerged from the vehicle.

Fateri waited no longer but renewed his grasp on Vale's right hand and started to move. Elric did not, and Vale felt as if his other arm would come out of its socket. His cry of pain stopped Fateri, and both of them stood looking down at the fallen bulk of the Viking, his fingers seemingly welded to Vale's forearm. Fateri knelt down and began to slap the man's face.

"What's wrong?" Vale asked, his voice breaking again as he imagined himself forever locked to the giant.

Fateri grunted as he rose and began to pry the thick fingers loose.

"Is he dead?" Vale demanded, slapping at Fateri's hands.

"Not dead. Sleep. Not duck good."

"Asleep? We can't leave him. He'd die in the snow."

"He not die. They find. We go. Go fast."

Fateri got Elric's fingers loose but their viselike grip was nothing to Fateri's claw-hold, nor the supple strength of the breed as he dragged the reluctant Vale onward.

"We can't leave them all. We can't, Fateri. I'll help you with Elric. We can't leave him."

Fateri only grunted at his protests, jerking him roughly forward if he slowed so much as half a step behind. Suddenly Vale realized that Fateri was striking off to the lower end of the forest, where they had been garnering boughs scant hours before.

"That's not the way, Fateri. Where are you taking me?"

"They follow. No find track."

Fateri was jogging faster now, because the thick ever-greens had kept the ground remarkably clear of snow. Fateri came up against a huge trunk and stopped. He motioned for Vale to climb up into the tree and then roughly boosted the boy to the splintered end of the first limb.

"They'd find us here, Fateri," he protested. His buttocks were sharply prodded to make him climb higher.

"Stop." Fateri reached the same limb and then stepped around him. The breed took one of Vale's hands and fastened it around his wide leathern belt. Then guided the other to the limb directly below them. "Hold. Follow."

Scared, resentful. Vale did as he was told. At least Fateri moved cautiously, giving Vale time to find his own footing before moving on. Then suddenly, they were both in the air, a scream wrenched from Vale's mouth, to be cut off abruptly as he hit the ground. Or rather the thick myrtle bushes into which Fateri had launched them.

"Hurt?" Fateri asked with no sympathy in his voice.

"No!" Vale was too filled now with hate and anger to allow room for pain.

When he would have waded out of the thicket, Fateri directed him deeper into the growth, carefully moving the branches so as not to leave further evidence of their passage. Twice more, Fateri had them aloft and once, when they had to traverse a wide clearing, he pushed Vale on ahead, then brushed the snow with an evergreen branch to cover their footsteps.

Once Fateri was evidently satisfied that they had confused pursuers, he began to trot purposefully through the still dark forest. Shaken emotionally by the double desertion. Vale doggedly kept up.

Suddenly they emerged on a slope, the ridge that sheltered the cellar, black above them. Below, the settlement was still bathed in light. It was too far away for them to make out details such as bodies by an entryproof door, but the thud-whomp of the stolplane was audible on the thin cold night air. Fateri grunted, then pointed out the cluster of colored winkers that outlined the stol as it quartered the slope they had left.

"They'll find Elric!"

Fateri grunted and, taking Vale's hand, jerked him forward. Vale didn't take his eyes from the winking lights: red/ green/blue/white, the blue delineating a narrow PVA as the stol went into hover.

Was Steve inside that? And Peter and Samuel? Wasn't it better for Elric to be found than for him to freeze to death? Why had they all so easily assumed that the people of this time were unfriendly? Surely property must be protected from asocial activities but that did not mean general inhumanity. The thought of the cellar without Steve, even without Peter and Samuel - with Fateri the only other male - was suddenly unbearable.

As if Fateri sensed Vale's thoughts, his grip tightened and he gave him an admonitory yank.

"Fast!"

They were nearly to the cellar. He could see the narrow line of light. Would Chloe be watching? Had she seen? Had she known what would happen? The thought burned Vale's mind so fiercely that he gave a cry and stumbled.

"Vale! Thou'rt not hurt?"

Chloe's voice was clearly audible. Audible, too, in Vale's mind was Steve's mistaken assurance. "I'm in no danger as long as the heir apparent is along."

Stunned by the realization of what Steve had meant, Vale did not resist as Fateri pulled him up the final snow-slick rise to the cellar.

"Elric, too, Fateri?" Chloe asked as the breed dragged Vale the last few feet.

"You knew!" Vale found his voice. And found strength enough to free his arm. "You knew what would happen to Steve. And Peter and Samuel."

"Vale, sweeting." In Chloe's soothing voice was an oddly disturbing note. "Vale, come in, dear heart. Come, we've hot fish stew to give thee strength."

Chloe even took a step toward him… a step out of the cellar! She took another step and grabbed his hand, sweeping him into her arms and back into the cellar. As she pressed his cheek against hers, her hands were burning warm on his half-frozen flesh. They ran up and down his body before embracing him tightly again.

Chloe was glad he was home. She had hot food for him. She had actually stepped out of the cellar to greet him.

Then she held him from her and looked deeply into his eyes. Looked with an expression in their blue depths that made him very nervous somehow. And he was frightened. More frightened than he had been when the last shift started, or when Steve had fallen by the door, or Fateri had pushed him off the tree branch. Frightened to the very marrow of his bones. He had seen that look before, seen Chloe look at Steve that way, and Burleigh, and, once, even Elric. And each of them had been shifted, with no warning. Shifted into a time not their own.

Before either Chloe or Fateri could stop him, he ducked out of the cellar, his feet skidding on the trampled snow. Even as he stumbled and slipped, sobbing, his only thought was that in a society that protected its belongings, there would be order and congeniality. There would still be a Mother for him somewhere.