Queen Of Air & Darkness Read online

  POUL ANDERSON

  The Queen of Air

  and Darkness

  The last glow of the last sunset would linger almost until midwinter. But

  there would be no more day, and the northlands rejoiced. Blossoms

  opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steelflowers rising blue from

  the brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-me-

  never down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them in iridescent

  wings; a crownbuck shook his horns and bugled. Between horizons the

  sky deepened from purple to sable. Both moons were aloft, nearly full,

  shining frosty on leaves and molten on waters. The shadows they made

  were blurred by an aurora, a great blowing curtain of light across half

  heaven. Behind it the earliest stars had come out.

  A boy and a girl sat on Wolund's Barrow just under the dolmen it

  upbore. Their hair, which streamed halfway down their backs, showed

  startlingly forth, bleached as it was by summer. Their bodies, still dark

  from that season, merged with earth and bush and rock, for they wore

  only garlands. He played on a bone flute

  and she sang. They had lately become lovers. Their age was about .

  sixteen, but they did not know this, considering themselves Out..lings

  and thus indifferent to time, remembering little or nothing of how they

  had once dwelt in the lands of men.

  His notes piped cold around her voice:

  "Cast a spell, weave it well of dust and dew and night and you."

  A brook by the grave mound, carrying moonlight down to a hillhidden

  river, answered with its rapids. A flock of hellbats passed black beneath

  the aurora.

  A shape came bounding over Cloudmoor. It had two arms and' two legs,

  but the legs were long and claw-footed and feather covered it to the end

  of a tail and broad wings. The face was half, human, dominated by its

  eyes. Had Ayoch been able to standwholly erect, he would have reached

  to the boy's shoulder.

  The girl rose. "He carries a burden," she said. Her vision was not.. meant

  for twilight like that of a northland creature born, but she had learned

  how to use every sign her senses gave her. Besides the,fact that ordinarily

  a pook would fly, there was a heaviness to his haste.

  "And he comes from the south." Excitement jumped in the boy, sudden

  as a green flame that went across the constellation Lyrth. He sped down

  the mound. "Ohoi, Ayoch!" he called. "Me here,: Mistherd!"

  "And Shadow-of-a-Dream," the girl laughed, following.

  The pook halted. He breathed louder than the soughing in the growth

  around him. A smell of bruised yerba lifted where he

  stood.

  "Well met in winterbirth," he whistled. "You can help me bring this to

  Carheddin."

  He held out what he bore. His eyes were yellow lanterns above. It moved

  arid whimpered.

  "Why, a child," Mistherd said.

  "Even as you were, my son, even as you were. Ho, ho, what a snatchl"

  Ayoch boasted. "They were a score in yon camp by Fallowwood, armed, and

  besides watcher engines they had big ugly dogs aprowl while they slept. I

  came from above, however, having spied on them till I knew that a handful

  of dazedust "

  "The poor thing." Shadow-of-a-Dream took the boy and held him to her

  small breasts. "So full of sleep yet, aren't you?" Blindly, he sought a

  nipple.

  She smiled through the veil of her-hair. "No, I am still too young, and you

  already too old. But come, when you wake in Carheddin under the mountain,

  you shall feast."

  "Yo-ah; " said Ayoch very softly. "She is abroad and has heard

  and seen. She comes." He crouched down, wings folded. After a

  moment Mistherd knelt, and then Shadow-of-a-Dream, though

  she did not let go the child.

  The Queen's tall form blocked off the moons. For a while she regarded the

  three and their booty. Hill and moor sounds withdrew from their awareness

  until it seemed they could hear the northlights hiss.

  At last Ayoch whispered, "Have I done well, Starmother?"

  "If you stole a babe from a camp full of engines," said the beautiful voice,

  "then they were folk out of the far south who may not endure it as meekly

  as yeomen."

  "But what can they do, Snowmaker?" the pook asked. "How can they track

  us?"

  Mistherd lifted his head and spoke in pride. "Also, now they too have felt

  the awe of us."

  "And he is a cuddly dear," Shadow-of-a-Dream said. "And we need more like

  him, do we not, Lady Sky?"

  "It had to happen in some twilight," agreed she who stood above. "Take

  him onward and care for him. By this sign," which she made, "is he claimed

  for the Dwellers."

  Their joy was freed. Ayoch cartwheeled over the ground till he reached a

  shiverleaf. There he swarmed up the trunk and out on a limb, perched half

  hidden by unrestful pale foliage, and crowed.

  Boy and girl bore the child toward Carheddin at an easy distancedevouring

  lope which let him pipe and hey sing:

  "Wahaii, wahaii!

  Wayala, laii! -

  Wing on the wind

  high over heaven,

  shrilly shrieking,

  rush with the rainspears,

  tumble through tumult,

  drift to the moonhoar trees and the dream-heavy

  shadows beneath them,

  and rock in, be one with the clinking wavelets of

  lakes where the starbeams drown."

  *

  As she entered, Barbro Cullen felt, through all grief and fury, stabbed by

  dismay. The room was unkempt. Journals, tapes, reels, codices, file boxes,

  bescribbled papers were piled on every table. Dust filmed most shelves and

  corners. Against one wall stood a laboratory setup, microscope and

  analytical equipment. She recognized it as compact and efficient, but it was

  not what you would expect in an office, and it gave the air a faint chemical

  reek. The rug was threadbare, the furniture shabby.

  This was her final chance?

  Then Eric Sherrinford approached. "Good day, Mrs. Cullen," he said. His

  tone was crisp, his handclasp firm. His faded gripsuit didn't bother her.

  She

  wasn't inclined to fuss about her own appearance except on special

  occasions. (And would she ever again have one, unless she got back Jimmy?)

  What she observed was a cat's personal neatness.

  A smile radiated in crow's feet from his eyes. "Forgive my bachelor

  housekeeping. On Beowulf we have-we had, at any ratemachines for that, so

  I never acquired the habit myself, and I don't want a hireling disarranging

  my tools. More convenient to work out of my apartment than keep a

  separate office. Won't you be seated?"

  "No, thanks. I couldn't," she mumbled.

  "I understand. But if you'll excuse me, I function best in a relaxed

  position."

  He jackknifed into a lounger. One long shank crossed the other knee.

  He drew forth a pipe and stuffed it from a
pouch. Barbro wondered why

  he took tobacco in so ancient a way. Wasn't Beowulf supposed to have

  the up-to-date equipment that they still couldn't afford to build on

  Roland? Well, of course old customs might survive anyhow. They

  generally did in colonies, she remembered reading. People had moved

  starward in the hope of preserving such outmoded things as their

  mother tongues or constitutional government or rational-technological

  civilization ....

  Sherrinford pulled her up from the confusion of her weariness. "You

  must give me the details of your case, Mrs. Cullen. You've simply told

  me your son was kidnapped and your local constabulary did nothing.

  Otherwise, I know just a few obvious facts, such as your being widowed

  rather than divorced; and you're the daughter of outwayers in Olga

  lvanoff Land who, nevertheless, kept in close telecommunication with

  Christmas Landing; and you're trained in one of the biological

  professions; and you had several years' hiatus in field work until

  recently you started again."

  She gaped at the high-cheeked, beak-nosed, black-haired and gray-eyed

  countenance. His lighter made a scrit and a flare which seemed to fill the

  room. Quietness dwelt on this height above the city, and winter dusk

  was seeping through the windows. "How in cosmos do you know that?"

  she heard herself exclaim.

  He shrugged and fell into the lecturer's manner for which he was

  notorious. "My work depends on noticing details and fitting them

  together. In more than a hundred years on Roland, tending to cluster

  according to their origins and thought habits, people have developed

  regional accents. You have a trace of the Olgan burr, but you nasalize

  your vowels in the style of this area, though you live in Portolondon-

  That suggests steady childhood exposure to metropolitan speech. You

  were part of Matsuyama's expedition, you told me, and took your boy

  along. They wouldn't have allowed any ordinary technician to do that;

  hence, you had to be valuable

  enough to get away with it. The team was conducting ecological'

  research; therefore, you must be in the life sciences. For the same

  reason, you must have had previous field experience. But your skin is

  fair, showing none of the leatheriness one gets from prolongedexposure

  to this sun. Accordingly, you must have been mostly

  indoors for a good while before you went on your ill-fated trip. As: for

  widowhood-you never mentioned a husband to me, but you have had a

  man whom you thought so highly of that you still wear both the

  wedding and the engagement ring he gave you."

  Her sight blurred and stung. The last of those words had brought Tim

  back, huge, ruddy, laughterful and gentle. She must turn from this other

  person and stare outward. "Yes," she achieved saying, "you're right."

  The apartment occupied a hilltop above Christmas Landing Beneath it

  the city dropped away in walls, roofs, archaistic chimneys and lamplit

  streets, goblin lights of human-piloted vehicles,' to the harbor, the

  sweep of Venture Bay, ships bound to and from the Sunward Islands and

  remoter regions of the Boreal Ocean, which glimmered like mercury in

  the afterglow of Charlemagne. Oliver was swinging rapidly higher, a

  mottled orange disc a full degree wide; closer to the zenith which it

  could never reach, it would shine the color of ice. Alde, half the

  seeming size, was a thin slow crescent near Sirius, which she

  remembered was near Sol, but you couldn't see Sol without a telescope

  "Yes," she said around the pain in her throat, "my husband is about four

  years dead. I was carrying our first child when he was killed by a

  stampeding monocerus. We'd been married three years before. Met

  while we were both at the University-'casts from School Central can

  only supply a basic education, you know-We founded our own team to

  do ecological studies under contractyou know, can a certain area be

  settled while maintaining a balance of nature, what crops will grow,

  what hazards, that sort of question-Well, afterward I did lab work for a

  fisher co-op in Portolondon. But the monotony, the . . . shut-in-ness .

  . . was eating me away. Professor Matsuyama offered me a position on

  the team he was organizing to examine Commissioner Hauch Land. I

  thought, God help me, I thought Jimmy-Tim wanted him named James,

  once the tests showed it'd be a boy, after his own father and because of

  'Timmy and Jimmy' and-oh, I thought Jimmy could safely come along. I

  couldn't bear to leave him behind for months, not at his age. We could

  make sure he'd never wander out of camp. What could hurt him inside it?

  I had never believed those stories about the Outlings stealing human

  children. I supposed parents were trying to hide from themselves the fact

  they'd been careless, they'd let a kid get lost in the woods or attacked by

  a

  pack of satans or- Well, I learned better, Mr. Sherrinford. The guard

  robots were evaded and the dogs were drugged and when I woke, Jimmy

  was gone."

  He regarded her through the smoke from his pipe. Barbro Engdahl Cullen

  was a big woman of thirty or so (Rolandic years, he reminded himself,

  ninety-five percent of Terrestrial, not the same as Beowulfan years),

  broad-shouldered, long-legged, full-breasted, supple of stride; her face was

  wide, straight nose, straightforward hazel eyes, heavy but mobile mouth;

  her hair was reddish-brown, cropped below the ears, her voice husky, her

  garment a plain street robe. To still the writhing of her fingers, he asked

  skeptically, "Do you now believe in the Outlings?"

  "No. I'm just not so sure as I was." She swung about with half a glare for

  him. "And we have found traces."

  "Bits of fossils," he nodded. "A few artifacts of a neolithic sort. But

  apparently ancient, as if the makers died ages ago. Intensive search has

  failed to turn up any real evidence for their survival."

  "How intensive can search be, in a summer-stormy, wintergloomy

  wilderness around the North Pole?" she demanded. "When we are, how

  many, a million people on an entire planet, half of us crowded into this

  one city?"

  "And the rest crowding this one habitable continent," he pointed out.

  "Arctica covers five million square kilometers," she flung back. "The

  Arctic Zone proper covers a fourth of it. We haven't the industrial base

  to establish satellite monitor stations, build aircraft

  we can trust in those parts, drive roads through the damned darklands and

  establish permanent bases and get to know them and tame them. Good

  Christ, generations of lonely outwaymen told stories about Graymantle,

  and the beast was never seen by a I proper scientist till last year!"

  "Still, you continue to doubt the reality of the Outlings?" -

  "Well, what about a secret cult among humans, born of isolation and

  ignorance, lairing in the wilderness, stealing children when they can for-"

  She swallowed. Her head dropped. "But you're supposed to be the expert."

  "From what you told me over the visiphone, the Portolondon

  constabulary questions the accuracy of the report your group ` made,
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  thinks the lot of you were hysterical, claims you must have omitted a due

  precaution, and the child toddled away and was lost beyond your finding."

  His dry words pried the horror out of her. Flushing, she snapped, "Like

  any settler's kid? No. I didn't simply yell. I consulted Data Retrieval. A

  few too many such cases are recorded for accident to be a very plausible

  explanation. And shall we totally ignore the frightened stories about

  reappearances? But when I t went back to the constabulary with my facts,

  they brushed me off. _ I suspect that was not entirely because they're

  undermanned. I think they're afraid too. They're recruited from country

  boys, and .. Portolondon lies near the edge of the unknown."

  Her energy faded. "Roland hasn't got any central police force," she

  finished drably. "You're my last hope."

  The man puffed smoke into twilight, with which it blent, before he said in

  a kindlier voice than hitherto: "Please don't make it a high hope, Mrs.

  Cullen. I'm the solitary private investigator on this world, having no

  resources beyond myself, and a newcomer to boot."

  "How long have you been here?"

  "Twelve years. Barely time to get a little familiarity with the relatively

  civilized coastlands. You settlers of a century or more- ' what do you,

  even, know about Arctica's interior?"

  Sherrinford sighed. "I'll take the case, charging no more than I must,

  mainly for the sake of the experience," he said. "But only if you'll be

  my guide and assistant, however painful it will be for you."

  "Of course! I dreaded waiting idle. Why me, though?"