The Tale of the Cat

Illustration by Janet Aulisio

Earth was the mother and her Kith Town the small motherland of every starfarer; but there were other worlds where humans dwelt. At those the ships were almost always welcome, bearers of tidings and wares that bridged, however thinly, the abysses between. It was not perennially so on Earth.

Thus, over the centuries, Tau Ceti became the sun to which voyagers from afar often sought first. Its Harbor was as homelike as any known extra-solar planet, and usually at peace. News beamed from Sol arrived only eleven and a half years old; if you had felt unsure, you could now lay plans. Whether or not you went on to that terminus, here was a good place to stop for a while, do business, make fresh acquaintances and breathe fresh winds. A Kith village grew up, stabilized, and settled into its own timelessness.

Spanning the distances they did, zero-zero drives running them on the heels of light and time aboard dilated by gamma factors in the hundreds, vessels could hardly ever prearrange a rendezvous. It was occasion for rejoicing and intermingling when two happened to be in the same port. When three or more did, it meant a Fair.

Fleetwing came to Harbor and found Argosy and Eagle in orbit. Argosy was about to depart, but immediately postponed it. Profits could wait; they were no longer large anyway. Fellowship, courtship, exchange of experiences, renewal of ties, the rites that affirmed and strengthened Kithhood, mattered more.

Ormer Shaun, second mate aboard Fleetwing, and Haki Tensaro, who dealt in textiles wherever Eagle might be, walked together through the village, bound for the story circle. Tensaro wanted to hear what Shaun would tell; they had become friendly in the past few days, and besides, a real yarnspinning with a bardic accompaniment was an art practiced in just four ships, which did not include Eagle. The two men had met for a beer in the Orion and Bull before starting out, and continued their conversation as they proceeded. It had gradually, unintendedly, gone from merry to earnest.

“A disappointment, I admit,” Shaun said. Sounds of revelry beat beneath his words. “Not so much for me, or most of our crew. But the boy, he was really looking forward to all the ancient marvels.”

“We’re quite safe on Earth nowadays, I tell you,” Tensaro argued. “No more persecution.”

“They still don’t like us, though, do they? To go by what everybody’s been saying.”

Tensaro shrugged. “I’ve seen things better there, but I’ve seen them worse, too. I think the next generation will be pretty tolerant.”

“Up to a point. I doubt we’ll ever again be exactly popular, anywhere on Earth outside of Kith Town.”

“Why not?”

Shaun paused to marshal words. He contrasted with Tensaro, who was slim and intense, clad in formfitting lusterblack with white sash and cloak, and a headband on which a miniature light fountain made a dancing cockade. Shaun stood bigger than most Kithfolk, stocky, his features rugged and his hair a dark mahogany. For his garb today he had chosen a blouse that slowly shifted color across the visible spectrum, a vest of silver links, a broad leather belt studded with Aerian eyestones, a shaggy green kilt, and knee-length boots. A beret slanted across his brow. Both outfits were traditional festival garb, but the traditions belonged to two different ships.

“Earth doesn’t have enough to do with space any more,” Shaun said. “People get in the habit of taking their ways to be the only right and decent ways. Governments feed on that. Meanwhile we insist on being peculiar, and bringing in unheard-of notions from elsewhere, and asking troublesome questions.”

The street down which they passed seemed to belie him. Turf covered it, springy and pebble-grained underfoot, breathing a slight odor not unlike rosemary into cooling air. On one side a lyre tree curved its double trunk and feathery foliage aloft, on the other side an arachnea spread its web across a cloud tinted gold by the westering sun. The houses that lined the street stood each on its piece of lawn, among its flowerbeds. They were of archaic styles, tending to pastel walls and red-tiled roofs; time had softened their edges. All were currently vacant. Most of the families that owned them were afar among the stars, leaving machines to tend the property. Everyone staying here, whether as transient or permanently, had flocked off to the Fair.

Between the houses glimmered a glimpse of water. Beyond it the cliffs of Belderland rose white. Opposite, native forest spread red-splashed ochers and golds above the roofs. Long since deeded to the Kith, the Isle of Weyan retained much wilderness.

“Yes,” Shaun said, “I think Fleetwing’ll elect to make another swing from here—not as long as last time, of course, but we can give Earth forty or fifty years more to mellow further before we show our noses there again. The boy’ll be disappointed, like I said. But, what the gyre, learning how to wait things out is part of becoming a Kithman.”

“Well, if that’s what your crew favors, so be it,” Tensaro replied. “I expect you can sell what you’re carrying on Aurora or Maia as well as here. It’ll probably be exotic enough to fetch a price. But really, you’re too pessimistic. I can understand how your last visit to Earth was embittering and made you decide on a long cruise. Nowadays, though—”

A trumpet cut him off. The noise from ahead had been waxing as they walked: voices, foot-thuds, song, boom and bang, the racket of merriment. Shaun and Tensaro came abruptly out onto open ground, where the Fair was. It surrounded the village. They had crossed from the tavern on one edge to this side.

Shaun threw up his hands. His laugh rang. “Haki, us old fools, we’ve gotten serious! What ails us? Did the beer wear off that fast? Come on, let’s get back to our proper business today.”

He quickened his pace. His companion grinned wryly and trotted along.

People swarmed about. Folk costumes from the separate ships mingled with gaudy individual choices, often inspired on other worlds in other eras. A middle-aged couple strolled by, he in the blue-and-gold tunic and flowing white trousers, she in the red frock, saffron cloak, and massive jewelry of Eagle. Shaun smiled at a young woman he knew aboard Fleetiving. Her brief and gauzy gown twinkling with star-points, she walked hand in hand with a young man whose fringed yellow shirt and black knee breeches said Argosy. Memory stirred—courtships flowered like fire when crews met, and if the marriages that followed took place quickly, they endured, for the elders of both families had first considered what was wise. Shaun’s wife was a Flying Cloud girl; but his brother had joined his own bride on High Barbaree, because that seemed best… Children dashed around, shouting, marveling bits of rainbow.

Pavilions had been erected throughout the area, big and gaudy. Banners above them caught the sea breeze and the evening light. From one drifted savory smells and the sounds of clinking cups and cheery chatter. In another, a benched audience watched a classic drama, performed live; in another they heard a concert, which included music brought back from artists who were not all human; in another, visual artworks were on display, created aboard ship as well as on remote planets, and in this quiet atmosphere a few officers took the opportunity to discuss business or exchange information. In a clear space, a band played lustily for scores of dancers. Mirth whooped as some tried to learn, from others, measures new to them—the sarali, the Henriville, the double prance.

Nearby stood the Monument Stone. The bronze plate on it shone bright, having lately replaced a worn-out predecessor. The inscription was the same, Here camped Jean Kilbirnie and Timothy Cleland of the first expedition to Harbor, afterward of Envoy and our future in the cosmos, with a date in a calendar long superseded. Likewise, only scholars could read the language, ancestral to Kithic, but everybody knew what it said. A few meters off, wood was heaped to be burned after dark—fire, evoking prehistoric memories and instincts older still, doubly strong in a people who rarely saw it.

The narrators’ pavilion lay a little distance onward. About a hundred persons sat inside waiting, mostly adults, mostly from Eagle and Argosy, though several youngsters and Fleetiving crew also felt they would enjoy the performance. They gave Shaun the salute of greeting as he entered, came down an aisle, and mounted the stage. Rusa Erody was already there. She made a striking sight, clad in a long dress of scales that glittered in the subdued light, herself a genetic throwback, tall and blonde. Her fingers drew vigorous chords from the polymusicon on her lap. The song she sang was as ancient as her looks, translated and retranslated over the centuries, because it spoke to the Kith.

“—The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,

And the Deuce knows what we may do—

But we’re back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,

We’re down, hull down, on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new!”

Words and notes clanged away. Shaun took the chair beside hers. The tumult outside washed like surf around sudden silence.

He lifted a hand. “Good landing, friends,” he drawled. A comfortable informality was his style at these events. “Thanks for coming, when you’ve got so much else you could be having fun with. Well, you men have had my partner to admire, Rusa Erody, biosafety technician and bard. I’m Ormer Shaun, second mate and occasional storyteller. Those of you who docked here earlier have heard others tell of things that Fleetwing did or encountered or got wind of, sometimes generations ago. Rusa and I will relate a happening on our latest voyage, just finished.”

“But it was well-nigh a hundred years agone, for Aerie is the farthest of all worlds where humans dwell, our last lonely home in the heavens,” the woman half sang. Music wove low beneath her voice. Her role was to call forth a mood and bring a scene to life. If she deemed that meant repeating common knowledge, it worked as a refrain or a familiar line of melody does. “Not even our explorers have quested much beyond, where time must sunder them from us more than the hollow spaces themselves.”

Shaun frowned slightly. A storytelling was not rehearsed, but improvised. The hint that outwardness was faltering fitted ill with the lightness he intended. But Rusa generally knows what she’s doing, he thought. A touch of sad or anxious, like a pinch of sharp spice—He decided to follow suit for a moment, in prosaic wise, before he went on to his tale.

“Well, being that distant, Aerie gets visitors few and seldom. Previous one, as near as we could learn, was about a century before. We figured to do a brisk trade in the goods and information we offered.

“But also, after what we’d just been through on Earth, we didn’t care to see it again soon. Insults, restrictions, place after place that didn’t want us for customers, throat-grip taxes—yes, once a mob threw rocks at some of us, and I saw a woman of ours bleed and heard little children of ours crying—but many of you know this, maybe better than we do. To the Coal Sack with ’em. We’d come back after they were dead, if they hadn’t meanwhile spawned too many like themselves.”

A smile crinkled his face. His tone eased. “Moreover, frankly, a lot of us were curious. What’d been going on, way out at Aerie? What new and odd might we find? We’d been in the Quadrangle Trade for some while and were getting a tad bored with it. Time for a change of scene, a real change.”

“The Quadrangle Trade,” Erody chimed in. “Biochemicals from the seas of Maia’s uninhabitable sister planet Morgana, worth harvesting and transporting because it costs more to synthesize them. Rare, useful isotopes from the system where Aurora orbits. Arts and crafts from Feng Huang. Biostock from Earth, to nourish the Earth life on yonder worlds.”

This was not entirely another chorus for Shaun. Neither Eagle nor Argosy had plied that circuit, and crew-folk of theirs might know it only vaguely. She did not add that it too was declining, losing profitability as the demand for such cargoes diminished. “We fared from the Quadrangle toward the Lion,” she finished.

“A long haul, aye,” Shaun said. “Considering how scarce traders had been on Aerie, and how small the population and industry probably still were, we loaded a lot of stuff more massive than usual, machinery and so on.

“Besides our several hundred men, women, and children as always, their life support, their household treasures, their tools and weapons that they may have need to wield when we arrive, their need to be together, to be families, and thus keep the life of the ship alive.” Not information, for those who sat listening—affirmation, for every Kith member, living, dead, and unborn.

“So our gamma factor was well down, seeing as how our quantum gate’s no bigger than anybody else’s.”

“Not like Envoy’s, for none of our ships is Envoy, crossing five thousand light-years to seek the next nearest starfarers and bearing no more crew than her fabled ten. Well could we wish for an engine like hers, but the gain and loss of trade say no, it cannot pay, and though we travel not for trafficking alone, it is by the traffic that we abide as the Kith.” More rituality, as a priest at a service may recite an article of the creed to strengthen feeling in a congregation that may know it word by word.

“Ninety-seven light-years took us eight zero-zero months. Oh, we were good and tired when we got there-tired, anyway, and cramped and grubby and ready to settle in for a spell.”

“Where ground and grass were under our feet, a breeze and unfeigned odors of growth in our nostrils, heaven blue overhead, and strangers around us, new souls for us to know.”

“Who hadn’t heard every joke and anecdote we could tell, folks who’d think we were glamorous and our wares were marvelous. And they ought to be interesting to us, of course, and have things to trade that’d fetch decent prices back at the heart stars.”

“Yet theirs is a harsh holding.”

“You know Aerie’s not just far off from anywhere else human, it’s a lump that never would’ve been settled if planets where people can settle at all weren’t scarce.”

“Vanishingly scarce. The sun of Aerie dim, its light across the lands of summer like the light of hazy autumn over Earth. The glaciers north and south, mountain-high. The cold seas that clash around the one tropical continent that our race could make its own. But the rings, the remnants of a shattered moon, the rings on a clear night are very beautiful.”

“Well, the land’s not that bad everywhere. The region where we set up our pitch, after Fleetiving took orbit, was shirtsleeve in its fashion. Naturally, that was the spot we negotiated to stay at, and, naturally, it belonged to the grand high rambuck.”

Shaun continued with incidents from first contact, the establishment of groundside camp, trade, personal encounters, mostly as amusing as he could make them. Erody filled in descriptions.

“Our cabins were on pastureland, for they keep herds and sow crops on Aerie,” she explained. “They dare not trust entirely to robotics and synthesis, when quake or storm or meteorite or the mites that gnaw metal may strike terribly in any year. Terrestrial grass stretched away southward from us, deeply green in the pale day, on one side the neatly arrayed houses and shops of the Magistrate’s retainers and their kindred. Northward persisted native forest, a murky realm into which few ventured and none deeply. The castle loomed between us and the wildwood, its towers stark athwart the clouds, No need for curtain walls, when aircraft, missiles, and armed men stood watch. The castle was a community in itself, homes, worksteads, chapels, stadium, even laboratories and a museum.”

“Aerie’s not under a tyranny,” Shaun said. “The way things had worked out—at least, as of when we were there—government was mainly by town meetings scattered around the continent. The Magistrate provided peace and order, police, through his militia, and higher justice—court of appeal, court of legal review—through his telepresence. Otherwise he generally left people alone, which most times is the best thing government can do. But after several generations had passed the office down from one to the next, he held a huge lot of assorted properties, and people didn’t give him much backchat. He was a reasonable sort, though, in his rough-hewn style. We had no trouble ranging about in our own flitters, seeing things and making deals. And we were on a live, uncluttered world. Yes, that was a good three-four months.”

“For us,” Erody laid to this. Her music throbbed and keened. “We were not wholly benign. In some whom we met, we from the stars awakened dreams forgotten, wishes un-grantable, and belike we will never know what has afterward brewed from that discontent.”

“One boy in particular,” Shaun said. “Valdi Ronen, his name was. A bastard son of the Magistrate, raised at the castle in a hit-or-miss way, but with fairish prospects ahead of him. He might become an officer in the militia, for instance, or a rancher or an engineer, he being bright and lively. By Earth reckoning, he was about fourteen.”

“A thin lad, shooting upward, his hands and feet too big for him, though he was not overly awkward,” Erody remembered. “Pale-skinned, like most on Aerie, hair a flaxen shock, large blue eyes, sharp features. He often went hunting in the wilderness—sometimes alone, despite his mother’s command that he have ever a companion or two; and we gathered that at those times he traveled farther in than men thought wise.”

“He didn’t after we arrived,” Shaun said. “No, he hung around us like a moon around a planet. Most of us had studied and practiced the local language en route, of course. It hadn’t changed a lot from what was in the database. I got pretty fluent, myself. We could talk, we two.

“I was willing to put up with him when I wasn’t too busy, his countless questions, his bursts of brashness, everything that goes with being that age. My son had been too, not terribly long ago, and had metamorphosed into a presentable human being. Besides, Valdi told me and showed me quite a bit, better than grownups probably could, about native wildlife and youngsters’ games and lower-class superstitions and whatnot. Some of that might well go into the documentary our production team was planning, might help it sell when we got back. In fact, Valdi couldn’t do enough for us. If we asked anything of him, he’d try his best, no matter how tough or dirty a chore it was.”

“We meet not wondersmitten youth like that on worlds elsewhere as often as erstwhile, do we?” Erody asked low. “That may be as well. It has been painful to see the grief in them when we bade good-bye.”

“Yes, I saw what was coming, and tried to head it off,” Shaun continued. “ ‘Valdi,’ I told him, ‘starfaring is our life and we wouldn’t change if we could, but we were raised to it.’ ”

“ ‘We were born to it,’ I told him,” the woman recalled. “ ‘Our forebears for many generations were those who wanted it. They who could not endure it left, taking their genes with them. Kithfolk today are as chosen for space as birds are chosen to wing aloft.’ His ancestors had brought some birds here, and several species had flourished.”

“ ‘But people don’t grow wings!’ he argued,” Shaun added. “His voice broke in a squeak. He went red. Just the same, he pushed on. ‘People build ships and, and l-l-learn to sail them.’

“I hadn’t the heart to answer that nobody but a groundhugger would speak of sailing a spaceship. Instead, I set out the grim side for him. I talked about weeks, months, maybe years crowded into a metal shell or into still more cramped sealdomes, never able to step outside for a breath of clean air, only in a suit—because, I reminded him, planets where humans can walk freely are bloody few, and to make the profit that keeps us going we often have to call at other kinds. I talked about danger, death, and the worse than death that environments may bring down on us, bodies crippled, minds gone to ruin, and little our meditechs can do to remedy things. And coming back from even a short voyage, after ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred or more years have gone by, the people you knew old or dead, and every voyage leaves you more and more an alien. And how they react to this on the planets—Earth—Oh, I laid it on kind of thick, maybe, but I was trying to convince him he’d better be content with what he had.

“No use. ‘You have each other,’ he said. ‘And you go to all those worlds, you go to the stars. Everything here is always the same.” Shaun sighed. “When did a fourteen-year-old boy ever listen to reason?”

Erody nodded. “Yes, he dreamed of joining us.” Her hand struck a chord that was like a cry. “Or else it was the vision that dreamed him, for he came to be consumed by it; nothing else was quite real to him any longer.”

“M-m, I don’t know about that,”

Shaun countered. “He stayed smart and cocky. In fact, once in a while he’d revert to his age and be downright obnoxious, like when he slipped what they called a squishbug into Nando Fanion’s shoe or, guiding me around in the woods, got me to fall into a lurkfang’s muckpit, and in either case stood there cackling with laughter. I’d have decked him if he hadn’t been the Magistrate’s son.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. A boy, after all, hopelessly in love with what he could never have.”

“Our scoldings eventually stopped the pranks,” Erody said. “He came to me and asked my help in learning our language. I warned him that would be pointless, but he begged, oh, so winningly clumsily, until I set up a program for him. He applied himself as if he were attacking a foe. I was amazed at how quickly be began to speak some Kithish and how fast he improved. And when he heard how widely used Xyrese is around the heart stars, naught would do but that he study this also, and again he was on his way to mastery.”

Shaun nodded. “It got me wondering if he might not actually be recruitable. Planetsiders had joined the Kith now and then in the past. And… some fresh DNA in our bloodlines wouldn’t hurt.

“I hinted to his father, and gathered that he wouldn’t mind. He’d never see his son again, but on the other hand, wouldn’t have to worry about providing for him or sibling rivalry or whatnot. So I put it to Captain Du one day, privately, just for consideration. He wanted no part of it, though. We were too close-knit, he said, our ways too special, a newcomer would have too much to learn. And supposing he could—which I did believe Valdi was able to—would whatever he contributed during the rest of his life be enough to make up for the time and trouble his education, his integration with us, had cost?”

“Our margin is thin at best,” Erody whispered through a rippling of cold string-sounds, “in material profits and still more in the spirit.”

“I tossed the notion aside. Naturally, I didn’t mention any of this to Valdi. But I felt kind of glad that we’d be leaving soon.”

“We know not to this day how he discovered whatever he did discover. He may have had other, more secret friends among us. Ormer was not the sole Kithperson for whom he did favors. Somebody may have heard something in our camp and passed it onward to him. Or he may simply have guessed. Bodies—stance, gait, glance, tone—often say what tongues do not. We know only that of a sudden Valdi Ronen grew most kind to little Alisa Du, she of the brown bangs, freckled nose, and great black cat.”

“The captain’s daughter, and the midpoint of his universe,” Shaun explained. “Nothing untoward took place, nothing erotic at all. She was half his age. But she’d been fascinated by him ever since he made himself a fixture amongst us. To her he was as strange and romantic a figure as any of us was to him. She’d follow him around whenever and wherever she possibly could, maybe lugging Rowl in her arms.”

The bard smiled. “Rowl was a ship’s cat, a tom, but pleasant enough when chemically neutered as he usually was, quite intelligent, with a mortgage on Alisa’s love second only to Daddy’s and Mommy’s. He shared her bed and each night purred her to sleep. Yes, she became Valdi’s adoring admirer, her violet eyes never let slip of him when he was nigh, but Rowl was whom she went back to.”

Shaun resumed. “Till now, Valdi hadn’t been more than polite to her. That couldn’t have come easy to him, but he knew what she meant to the captain—well, to quite a few of us. So he spoke kindly, and sometimes told her a story or sketched her a picture. He had a talent for drawing, among other things. If he expected that’d stop her tagging after him, he was wrong. Talk about counterproductive! However, he bore with the nuisance, because he must if he wanted to stay welcome in our camp.

“Suddenly this changed. He didn’t seek her out or anything, no need of that, but he let her come to him and received her gladly. He’d hunker down and listen to her chatter, carry on a straight-faced conversation like with an equal. He spun longer yarns and drew fancier pictures than before. He showed her flowers and wildlife, took her for a ride in an open hover-car, led her through local skipdances and games like bounceball, till her laughter trilled. And, yes, he took special pains to make friends with Rowl. He brought treats stolen from the castle kitchen, he stroked the cat under the chin and down the belly, he’d sit for an hour or two after Rowl got on his lap and fell asleep, till Rowl deigned to jump off—Ah, every ship has cats. You know what I mean.

“I couldn’t quite figure this out. Surely he didn’t imagine it would butter Captain Du into approving his adoption—which d call for a vote anyway, of course. At best, he made the Old Man and the Vanguard Lady regard him as less of a lout. What use that? Vacuum, poison air, hard radiation, celestial mechanics, they’ve got no respect for niceness.”

The music went briefly sinister. “I wondered also,” Erody related. “Could it be a subtle vengeance, striking out at the thwarting of his hopes? Soon we would depart. None now alive on Aerie would see us again, nor would we ever see them. Did he mean to send Alisa off with her heart ripped asunder?” The notes gentled. “No, I could not believe that. Valdi had no cruelty in him—”

“No more than most boys,” Shaun muttered.

“—and besides, he must realize it would not happen. Alisa would miss him for a while, but she was healthy and a child; new adventures awaited her; and she had her Rowl.”

“Then things exploded,” Shaun said. “The sun was going down, it was getting bedtime for kids—Aerie’s got a twenty-six-hour rotation period, you may recall, so we’d easily adapted—and all at once Rowl wasn’t to be found. Consternation!”

“The news spread among us like waves over a pond where someone has thrown in a stone,” Erody adjoined. “No enormous matter, no crisis of life and death. But throughout our camp, we began to peer and grope about. The bleak eventide light streamed over us, casting shadows that went on and on across the grass, while the castle hulked ever more darkling to north and beyond it night welled up in the forest. ‘Here, kitty, kitty!’ we cried, ridiculously to and fro, around the shelters, probing under cots and into crannies, while the sun left us, dusk deepened from silver-blue to black, and the rings stood forth in their ghostly magnificence. It mattered not that Captain and Lady Du had offered a reward. Alisa wept.”

“No luck,” Shaun said. “The cats had roamed freely. They seldom wandered far outside our perimeter, and never toward the woods. Things there probably didn’t smell right. Rowl, though, even when his tomhood was suppressed, had always been an active and inquisitive sort. Had he, maybe, come on something like a scuttermouse and chased it till he couldn’t find his way home? I don’t think Alisa’s parents suggested that to her. Nor do I think she slept well through the night.”

“In the morning, we did not entirely go on preparing for departure,” Erody told. “Some who found time to spare went more widely than before, into the very forest. None entered it beyond sight of sunlight aslant between those hunched boles and clutching boughs, down through that dense, ragged leafage. If nothing else, the brush caught at a man, slashed, concealed sucking mudholes, while the bloodmites swarmed, stung, crawled up nostrils until breath was well-nigh stopped. Noises croaked, gabbled, mumbled from the shadows. Hunters in these parts had means and tricks for coping, yet they themselves never ranged deeply. When Captain Du asked whether any of them would help search, they said nay. If Rowl had strayed into the wildwood, whatever got him could too easily take a human. Those creatures can eat our kind of flesh.”

“Just a cat gone,” Shaun said. “The girl would get over it. We had work to do.

“About midday, Valdi arrived. I asked where he’d been. He told me his school had gotten flappy about him skipping too many lessons, and he’d had to take a remedial session at the instruction terminal. Once free, he’d come straight to us. I gave him the news, not as any big thing.”

“I was there,” Erody said. “I saw him flush red.” A note twanged. “ ‘I will go look!’ he cried. ‘I know the forest, I’ll find him!’ ” Her instrument sounded a bugle call.

“The boy’s voice cracked again,” Shaun observed anticlimactically. “Sure, I thought, sure; adolescent heroics. He dashed off. After a while he returned, outfitted like a huntsman—green airbreath skinsuit, canteen and ration pouch and knife at hip, locator on right wrist and satphone on left, rifle slung at shoulder, and a plume in the hat on that unkempt head of his. Ho, how dramatic! ‘I will find Rowl,’ he promised Alisa, who’d heard he was there and come out in fairytale hopes. And off he loped.”

“Stars kindled in her eyes behind the tears,” Erody said. “I thought how callous he was to raise her spirit thus, when it must be dashed down again onto the stones. Heedless, rather—a boy, a boy.”

“I sort of thought the same,” Shaun went on. “However, like the rest of us, I was busy readymaking. Besides, Alisa’s no crybaby.”

“A gallant little soul. As the day wore on, she swallowed her sorrow and took up her own duties. But she did not smile. Often and often I saw her gaze stray northward to the forest.”

“I glanced that way myself, now and then,” Shaun admitted. “More and more, I fretted. How long did the pup mean to try? What sense did it make? Had he quit, slunk into the castle, not wanted to tell us he’d failed? Really, he couldn’t have expected to succeed. He wasn’t that stupid-cocky. Or might he also have come to grief?”

“It was an evil wood.” Music hissed.

“Hostile, anyway. You and I weren’t the only Kithfolk who worried. Most of us liked Valdi Ronen. We called an inquiry to the castle. Had he checked in? No, he had not.”

“Once more, darkness crept over us. The evening star glowed in western heaven. The rings were a banded bridge of pallid hues, around them the true stars and beyond those the galactic belt, as chill as the airs that sent mists aswirl about our ankles. Afar, some animal howled. Did it crouch above its prey? Windows and windows glowed yellow on the black bulk of the castle. Lights flickered like glowflies in the hands of servants and soldiers, out searching for Valdi. Their shouts drifted to us faint and forlorn.”

“We Kithfolk huddled in. Our blundering efforts couldn’t help. The boy hadn’t phoned. No satellite had spotted anything. Well, Aerie didn’t have many in orbit. Besides, the leaf canopy hindered their spying. Come morning, when a wider spectrum was available, we’d see what they could see.”

“I have heard that now Alisa wept for her friend. Her mother rocked her in her arms for hours before she won to sleep. A psychodrug wouldn’t have been the same.”

“Me, I lay awake too, thinking some harsh thoughts. I recollected tales of what could find a human lost in those woods. And night whistlers, clingthorn—I didn’t care to go through the list. Finally I took a soporific. My wife was smarter; she’d already done that.

“Our clock roused us when dawn was sneaking up into the eastern sky. We threw our clothes on and stumbled out, aimed more or less at the nearest mess cabin, desperate for coffee. People grunted and stirred in the shadows around us. Not that I was eager to be fully conscious. When the sun rose, its rays felt as cold as the lingering night-mists.

“And then… there across the wet, trampled ground came Valdi Ronen.”

“His hair hung drenched with dew, his clothes dripped, he snuffled and sneezed,” Erody said. “But pressed to his breast he carried a cage, rough-made of withes, and in it stirred and yowled a black furriness.”

“We crowded around, jolted wide awake. Huh? He’d found Rowl? How ever? By what crazy chance? And why hadn’t he called home? We babbled. He looked straight at me in particular—”

“The level young sunlight blazed from his eyes.”

“He answered us quietly, the way a man should. Yes, he’d assumed the cat had strayed into the forest. Being a better woodsman than average, he knew what traces to look for, bent twigs, pug marks in the duff—Well, I’m no tracker myself. I can’t detail it. He didn’t actually go any big distance away, he said. But the hunt was slow, with many false leads. By the time he’d found the beast, night was falling.

“Then he discovered his satphone was dead. Sometimes on Aerie, in spite of every safeguard, metalmites get into equipment. He should have checked before he started out, but didn’t. A boy in a hurry.

“To stumble back through the dark would be too risky. He wove a cage for Rowl out of shoots, so the idiot animal wouldn’t wander off once more, and settled down as best he could. Once, he said, something huge passed by—he didn’t see, he heard the brush break, felt the footfalls through the ground—and he unslung his rifle; but nothing happened. At daybreak he started home.”

“Alisa jubilated. Will I ever again see such utter happiness, and afterward such adoration?” wondered Erody. “Alisa’s mother hugged Valdi to her and kissed him in sight of every soul. Her father wrung his hand, while swallowing hard.”

“Oh, yes,” Shaun said. “Only a cat rescued, a pet. The Dus, the ship, owed Valdi the reward, our thanks, and nothing else. Still, the lad had proven himself. Maybe he’d been reckless, but that goes with being a boy. Besides, he had in fact carried out a difficult operation. Taking a chance when you have to goes with being Kith.

“And, then, we were in turmoil, also in our feelings—close to departure, we’d nevermore see the friends we’d made, this or that love affair was ending—You understand.

“The upshot was, we adopted Valdi Ronen. He’s apprentice crew. And, I may say, in spite of his handicaps, quite promising.”

“Which pleases Alisa and Rowl,” Erody laughed.

For a short span there was silence, beneath the rollicking of the Fair.

Shaun grinned at his audience. “No doubt you’re puzzled what the point of the story is,” he said. “And no doubt, we being a race of traders, some of you suspect.

“If so, you’re right. I’d had my own suspicions—not unique to me, but I was the officer who took Valdi aside and braced him after the ship was outbound.”

“The sun of Aerie lost to sight,” Erody murmured, “and around us, anew, the stars.”

“ ‘This was too convenient,’ I told him. ‘I am now your superior and you will obey orders. I want to know what really happened to that poor cat.’

“He laughed. Not a cackle; a man’s laugh, from down in the chest and straight out the throat. ‘What poor cat?’ he answered. ‘A victim? Why, sir, I lured him with delicacies my father enjoys only on feast days. Yes, then I caged him and kept him hidden away till I could carry him off to the woods. But I kept him fed with the same treats.’

“And in fact,” Shaun remarked, “it took Rowl a while before he stopped turning up his nose at his regular rations.

“ ‘Didn’t anybody notice that when I let him out he didn’t race for food or water?’ Valdi asked me. ‘I was three-quarters afraid somebody would. But with you about to leave forever, what had I to lose? Uh, sir.’ I saw him struggle to keep a sober face.

“ ‘Well, it was an emotional scene, as you’d counted on,’ I said. ‘We Kithfolk are slobbery sentimental about things like that.’ I gave him my sternest look. ‘They include the welfare of an innocent little girl.’

“He had the grace to stare down at the deck. ‘I’m sorry about that, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t really think of her, how hurt she’d be, till too late.’ Maybe this was true, a boy, raised in hard company, often neglected, and possessed by a demon. ‘I will try to make it up to her, sir,’ he finished.

“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘those of us who guessed have kept quiet, which may count as conniving. Punishment would make Alisa cry more. No society could run for long without a certain amount of hypocrisy to grease the wheels. But you had better justify our estimate of you, Apprentice Ronen.’ ”

Shaun paused. His glance roved through the pavilion entrance, past the dancing and hallooing, to the sky.

“I didn’t spell out that estimate for him,” he said. “He needed chastening. But our ship needs more bold, clever rascals than she’s got.

“Valdi’s rambling about the Fair today, in the middle of all the glamour he ever wished for. I imagine he’s observing too, learning, thinking. I hope so.”

Erody’s instrument clanged.

Shaun brought his attention back to the people who had come to hear him and began another story.