Poul Anderson - Hunter's Moon

By no means did he acquire the dromid’s full awareness. Conveyance and translation were far too primitive. He had spent his professional lifetime gaining sufficient fellow-feeling with the species that, after as much patience as both individuals could maintain over a span of years, he could barely begin to interpret the signals he gathered. The speed of native mental processes was less of a help—through repetition and reinforcement—than an added hindrance. As a rough analogy, imagine trying to follow a rapid and nearly inaudible conversation, missing many a word, in a language you do not know well. Actually, none of what Hugh perceived was verbal; it was sight, sound, a complex of senses, including those interior like balance and hunger, including dream-hints of senses that he did not think he possessed.

He saw the land go by, bush, branch, slope, stars and moons above shaggy ridges; he felt its varying contours and textures as feet went pacing; he heard its multitudinous low noises; he smelled richness; the impressions were endless, most of them vague and fleeting, the best of them strong enough to take him out of himself, draw him groundward toward oneness with the creature below.

Clearest, perhaps because his glands were stimulated thereby, was emotion, determination. Erakoum was out to get herself a Flyer.

It was going to be a long night, quite possibly a harrowing one. Hugh expected he’d need a dose or two of sleep surrogate. Humans had never gotten away from the ancient rhythms of Earth. Dromids catnapped; ouranids went—daydreamy? contemplative?

As often before, he wondered briefly what Jan’s rapport with her native felt like. They would never be able to describe their sharings to each other.

Well into the hills, A’i’ach’s Swarm found a grand harvest of starwings. The heights were less densely wooded than the lowlands, which was good, for the bright prey never went far up, and below a forest crown, the People were vulnerable to Beast attack. Here was a fair amount of open ground, turf-begrown and boulder-strewn, scattered through the shadowing timber. A narrow ravine crossed the largest of those glades, a gash abrim with blackness.

Like an endless shower of sparks, the starwings danced, dashed, dodged about, beyond counting, meant for naught save the ecstasy of their mating and of the People who fed upon them. Despite the wariness in him, A’i’ach could resist no more than anyone else. He did refrain from valving out gas in his haste to descend, as many did. That would make ascent slow. Instead, he contracted his globe and sank, letting it reexpand slightly as varying air densities demanded. Nor did he release gas to propel himself. Rhythmically pumping, his siphon worked together with the breezes to zigzag him about at low speed. There was no hurry. The starwings numbered more than the Swarm could eat. Plenty would go free to lay their eggs for the next crop.

Among the motes, A’i’ach inhaled his first swallow of them. The sweet hot flavor sang in his flesh. Thickly gathered around him, bobbing, spinning, rippling, and flailing their corybantic tendrils, filling the sky with music, the People forgot caution. Love began. It was not purposeless, though without water to fall into, the pollinated seeds would not germinate. It united everyone. Life-dust drifted like smoke in the radiance of Ruii; the sight, smell, taste made feverish that joy which the starwing feast awakened. Again and again A’i’ach ejaculated. He went past his skin, he became a cell of a single divine being which was itself a tornado of love. Sometimes when he felt age upon him, he would drift westward across the sea, into the cold Beyond. There, yielding up the last warmth of his body, his spirit would take its reward, the Promise that forever and ever it would be what it was now in this brief night…

A howl smote. Shapes bounded from under trees, out into the open. A’i’ach saw a shaft pierce the globe next to his. Blood spurted, gas hissed forth, the shriveling form fell as a dead leaf falls. Tendrils still writhed when a Beast snatched it the last way down and fangs rent it asunder.

In the crowd and chaos, he could not know how many others died. The greatest number were escaping, rising above missile reach. Those who were armed began to drop their stones and boughs. It was not likely that any killed a Beast.

A’i’ach had relaxed the muscles in his globe and shot instantly upward. Safe, he might have joined the rest of the Swarm, to wander off in search of a place to renew festival. But rage and grief seethed too high. A far-off part of him wondered at that; the People did not take hard the death of a Person. This thing he wore, that somehow whispered mysteries—

And he carried a knife!

Recklessly spending gas, he swung about, downward. Most of the Beasts had vanished back into the woods. A few remained, devouring. He cruised at a height near the limits of prudence and peered after his chance. Since he could not drop like a rock, he must feint at one individual, then quickly jet at another, stab, rise, and attack again.

A wan beam of light struck toward him. It came from the head of a Beast which emerged from shadow, halted, and glared upward.

His will blazed forth in A’i’ach. Yonder was the monster which had his kind of bond to humans. If he had already gained a knife thereby, what might that being have gotten, what might it get, to wreak worse harm? If nothing else, killing it ought to shock its companions, make them think twice about their murderousness.

A’i’ach moved to battle. About him, the starwings happily danced and mated.

Jannika must search for an hour before she made her contact. An ouranid could not undertake to be at an exact spot at a given time. Hers had simply informed her, while she fastened the transmitter on him, that his group was currently in the neighborhood of Mount MacDonald. She flew there and cast about in ever-deepening darkness until her indicator shone green. Having established linkage, she rose to three kilometers and set the autopilot to make slow circles. From time to time, as her subject passed northeast, she moved the center of her path.

Otherwise she was engaged in trying to be her ouranid. It was impossible, of course, but from the effort she was learning what could never have come to her through spoken language. Answers to factual questions she would not have thought to ask. Folkways, beliefs, music, poetry, aerial ballet, which she could not have known for what they were, observing from outside. Lower down in her, dimmer, but more powerful—nothing she could write into a scientific report: a sense of delights, yearnings, wind, shiningness, perfumes, clouds, rain, immense distances, a sense of what it was to be a heaven-dweller. Not complete, no, a few wavery glimpses, hard to remember afterward; yet taking her out of herself into a new world agleam with wonder.

The thrill was redoubled tonight by A’i’ach’s excitement. Her impressions of what he was experiencing had never been stronger or sharper. She floated on airstreams, life-scents and song possessed her, she was a drop in an ocean beneath Ruii the mighty, there was no home to hopelessly long for because everywhere was home.

The Swarm came at last upon a cloud of glitterbugs, and Jannika’s cosmos went wild.

For a moment, half terrified, she started to switch off her helmet. Reason checked her hand. What was happening was just an extreme of what she had partaken in before. Ouranids seldom took much nourishment at a single time; when they did, it had an intoxicating effect. She had also felt their sexuality; A’i’ach’s maleness was too unearthly to disturb her, as his dromid’s femaleness had disturbed Hugh when she mated and later shed her hindquarters. Tonight the ouranids held high revel.

She surrendered to it, crescendo after crescendo, oh, if she only had a man here, but no, that would be different, would blur the sacred splendor, the Promise, the Promise!