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home! Go home! Go home!"
They tossed their woolly manes and waved their rumps, not certain he meant it. Then
when we did nothing, they skittishly tripped here and there, wheeeing and whoooing. Finally,
after Tober admonished them again, they lined up, bowed their heads as if to say
"good-bye," and left us-single file. Henery being the last, he sounded a final, echoing,
"aloha" whooo, and disappeared over the bluff.
Rawl tossed his leathern bottle of converted sviss to me and said bluntly, "What now,
Collin?"
They all waited, flat-eyed; even Murie. "Well," I said, "there's nought for it, is there-but
to go where the climate's warmer."
I took Murie's hand, bade the others follow. We stumbled through the deep snow to
the back of the hill. The storm had died again. An odd "earth light" illuminated the frozen
hummocks, great conifers, and endless stands of deciduous quasioaks-all phantom-like in
their barrenness. The question suddenly plagued me; the one I'd dared not think about:
What if they hadn't given me the ship after all?
I'd soon find out!
I waved them to the protection of an overhanging rock, pressed the proper stud for
field activation and pronounced the numbers loudly and clearly (an embryo galactic parallel
of Camelot's magick): "Three-seven! Two-nine! Four-one!" And I waited.... And slowly,
slowly, the little scoutship phased in, snub-nosed and competent. I called again, and its door
opened....In utter silence I herded them into it, Hooli riding on Murie's shoulder. I then
switched the entire ship to "null," switched off the belt-and breathed a sustained sigh of
relief.
I explained nothing. I simply gave orders to strip and to relax, setting the example
myself. We unburdened ourselves of furs and armor, keeping only our jupons, linen breeks
and boots. A scoutship's built for four, I settled to the masterswivel, put Murie, Rawl and
Caroween in the remaining three. Griswall and our swordsmen I consigned to "steerage," in
the combined relax-eat-and-sleep quarters. The bunk beds unfolded for them.
They showed no awe at the coming of the scoutship. Indeed, they entered it with a
certain Marackian savoir-faire. After all was I not the Collin? The greatest "warlock" of them
all? Such magick could be expected. But then, as I lifted to a hundred thousand feet;
continued on to an orbit of fifty miles, the enormity of what was happening began to reach
them. They stared, wide-eyed, through the little craft's translucent nose.
Space, from orbit, is but an infinity of blackest black. It has long been known in
deep-space psychiatry that if there were only that to see, a sentient with knowledge of what
he saw could not survive the experience.... But to see also within that great and awful abyss,
ten thousand times ten million spheres of light, in clusters, whirls, pinwheels-to see those
planets, suns, those sparkling islands in diamond colors, all hard and brilliant-to see all
that-was to witness infinity; to know, for the first time, that there was a final answer to the final
question...
Rawl, staring, said quietly, "A memory comes back, Collin."
"I guessed it would."
"And will you take it from me this time, too?" "No. Nor did I ever."
"Then who-or what?"
I ignored his question. "What do you remember?"
"All that." He gestured toward the stars. "I've seen it all before-and from a 'thing' like
this."
"And so have I," Murie said softly. And the others chorused, "And me, and me...."
"What else?" I asked, curious. "What more do you remember?"
But that was it Just a hint of race memory, which the Pug Boos had kept alive.
They were silent then, just looking, staring, hardly breathing, at all that beauty.
Then finally Murie asked with a small subdued voice, as if now I was a stranger to
them all, "Well, my lord? I would imagine that you know the 'why' of all this too?"
"There's little time," I said. "But-would you like to know?"
They nodded mutely.
And so I told them; risking nothing, since I could indeed remove their memory again.
And I broke out a few bottles of Terran wine to ease the pain, or the joy of it.
"To know the 'why' of it all," I explained solemnly, "is to know yourselves and the Dark
One, too; for your fate has been linked with his for a full five thousand years."
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