Dark of the Woods

III

The days seemed to pass as swiftly as the leaves fell from the yellow trees. One fled after the other with such rapidity-that autumn was soon fast upon the fringes of winter and the air was nipped with the chill of coming snow. They were usually oblivious to the cold, for there was the warmth between them, the heat of their bodies. Occasionally, as the afternoon waned beyond the portals of the aviary and she would be required to return to the Sanctuary, he would begin thinking of the hopelessness of the situation and a chill would work its way into the base of his spine and crawl upwards along his back like a spider. It was in the fifth week of their lovemaking that time jerked to a halt in its rush past them, and he was forced to confront the nature of their future in a responsible manner.

“When must you leave?” she asked, her head against his chest, her lips trembling on his skin with the words she spoke.

“My notes are pretty complete.”

“Soon, then?”

“I can't put them off much longer. Suspicions will grow.”

“What can we do?”

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, trying to clear his head to think. “There are two possibilities, I guess. First, I could fight the miscegenation laws through the courts. That's going to take most all the money I have. And I still might lose — most likely will lose — and go to jail anyway. The other way is for me to leave, have you smuggled off Demos, smuggled onto another world — some backwoods place — and buy a place deep in some wildland area where the neighbors wouldn't be a problem. Then live in secrecy. There are a good many danger points, like smuggling you off, getting you onto a second world without customs finding you

“The first would not be so criminal. Maybe they would take that into consideration.”

He said nothing, suddenly filled with a panic that threatened to take control of him. It had been all right to theorize about what they could do, to let plans roil over one another in his mind — but to speak them, to talk about them as if a decision must be reached, was more than he could stand up to. He lit a cigarette, savored the smooth smoke of the drug weed, hoping it would relax him more quickly than usual. He tried to speak, to talk over the problem with her, but the words wouldn't come. When she asked what was the matter, he found he could not even look at her. A coldness, a terror, a calculated emotionlessness had seeped into his mind and was struggling to take over the reins and guide his actions.

For a long while, they lay together, saying nothing, listening to the occasional noise of animals in the trees outside and the far and melancholy cry of the Wintercrest, a white, lavishly feathered bird common in the cold months on this part of the continent.

Finally, she asked, “Are you married?”

His voice bounced into his throat unbidden, “Yes.” It fell into the air like hot, smoking lead. It was the way out, the way to avoid losing everything. He was not married, of course. But if he could lie, if he could say that he was, if he could dismiss all of this so swiftly with that one, three-letter word, didn't that prove that there wasn't the kind of love here that he had once thought there was? Yes. That was it. He had been following along a dangerous trail with only disaster at the end, lulled by infatuation and mistaking that for love. If he had really loved her, he would not have hesitated a moment to risk everything to have her. He would not have lied so glibly, so quickly, so easily. He had very nearly blown everything for infatuation, for lust mixed with curiosity, and that had been sheerest folly.

They were silent a time.

“It's just as well,” she said at last. She hesitated, blushed for the first time since he had known her. “So am I.”

He tensed against her. “You're married?”

“Do you mind?”

“Uh—”

If you do—” She started to move as she spoke.

“No. Don't go yet.”

Silence. Time passing. The roar of the future speeding darkly on to meet the present and be thrust into the past.

“Is he — a winged man?”

“One of my own? Of course, yes.”

“Then why—”

“What?”

“Why leave him to love me like this. I couldn't compare with—” He was furious, and the words stuck in his throat, clung to his lips and would not come forth. He felt that she had been making a fool of him. Surely, loving a man as free as the birds, being enfolded within his wings in joy, could be much better, much more fulfilling than anything a cumbersome, landbound brute such as he. could offer. His tenderest movements would seem gross and stupid in comparison.

“He isn't impotent,” she said, “but sterile, just as I am sterile. You are not. I wanted a fruitful man, even if I cannot bear children.”

“Then it wasn't me — but simply my juices?”

She squirmed away, stood. “I better be leaving now,” she said in her elfin voice. She slipped her heavier winter toga on and walked quickly toward the portal.

He heard her wings.

Proteus came alert at the sound, looked about for an enemy.

Davis rolled onto his face, filled with anger and a sense of loss — and chiefly relief.

The next day came and went, and she did not appear as she had for so many days in the recent past. He made a pretense of correlating his notes, but his mind was elsewhere, tangled in memories of her, lost in the alleyways of her smile. He tried to convince himself that a longing of the flesh could be overcome easily, and that such was all this was. The second day without her was worse. He gave up the phony facade of writing and patrolled the woods about the towers, hands in his pockets, head bent to the chill wind of early winter. Why had he told her he was married? And why, most of all, had he felt such overwhelming relief when he had watched her leave and known it was forever? And why, if he was relieved, did he now ache emptily, like a drained can of fruit left to rust in the ditch, with only particles of sweetness still clinging to the corroded metal? Was it only relief that he was no longer a criminal and only the ache of the aftermath of his fear — or was there, as he suspected, some deeper reason for it?

On the third day, he got in the grav car and set the coordinates for the port, for he had an appointment to keep with Mrs. Bunter's reading club. She had called the previous evening, and he had accepted, anxious to have some reason to flee the confines of this aviary. He sat in the front seat brooding, watching the leaves smack wetly against the windscreen, watching the sky cloud and pack itself for snow.

The club meeting was held in the squat woman's home: a rather palatial mansion with a large drawing room where a podium had been placed before five rows of ten chairs each. He was playing to a full house by the time he began his lecture. They were quite intent, and soon he got wrapped up in telling of the trials and tribulations that had gone into the construction of Lilian Girl, Dark Watch on the River, and other famous Stauffer Davis novels.

Afterwards, there was a social hour with the traditional lightly alcoholic punch and homemade cookies. Mrs. Bunter had corralled him and was leading him about, showing off. Proteus followed close to his left, constantly on guard.

“I hope he's been recarded,” Mrs. Bunter (who kept telling him to please call her Alice) said, eyeing Proteus cautiously. “I'm wearing a new brooch.” She raised a protective hand to the live beetle that skittered across her lapel, straining to the end of its tiny golden chain, then back again.

“Yes,” Davis assured her, “he has.”

Still, they both noticed the way the machine's plasti-plasma sloshed inside whenever he came near the bug.

Up and down the room, back and forth, corner to comer they went until he had met nearly everyone. He was arm in arm with Alice Bunter now as she exhibited him like a mother with a son freshly graduated from college. The light alcoholic punch only served to bolster his spirits and make him quite talkative. These people were really not so bad, he decided. Wasn't that what he usually discovered? Weren't they always nice when he met them personally in the social period after the lecture? He had a fondness for them, a somewhat paternal affection that made their company desirable.

They came, in time, to the mustached Alliance rep who had secured Davis's aviary and grav car and had ordered Matron Salsbury to deliver food once a week. “My wife thanks you for the autograph,” he said, his voice level, harsh, cold, and much more self-possessed than it had been previously.

Davis's head was spinning from too much punch. He had drunk so much that the room danced up and down and the rep kept melting and solidifying in front of him. “Think nothing of it,” he said magnanimously.

“Don't worry,” the rep said, smiling icily. “I think nothing at all of it. You will be moved into the city tomorrow. Be ready when the van comes for your car and equipment in the morning.”

Davis stood, dumbfounded even through the liquor haze. “Why?”

“You should not drink in public, Mr. Davis,” he snapped. “You like to boast too much.”

“Boast?”

“About the book's deep philosophic themes, about the manner in which you will so brilliantly destroy the Alliance policy of genocide.”

Had he said that? And why? Why blurt that out after all the work he had gone to, after all the careful planning he had done to get onto this world and receive the cooperation he needed? Why to these Alliance-oriented people of all he might have told?

“We don't have to cooperate with those intent on defaming us,” the rep said. “You will get a bill for government services. And I should advise that you act more like a god if you wish to play the part.” And he was gone.

“Never mind him,” Alice Bunter cooed, tugging at Davis's arm to draw him across the room to meet someone else she had just spied. She was too excited about having a celebrity by the arm to consider the consequences of the revelations he had apparently made about his next book.

But he stopped her, stood swaying like the drunk he was. Was the rep right? Could he possibly have been right? Did Davis the author love the worship of these reading club people? Yes. Yes, he did. He erected a facade of disdain in order to delude himself, acted just the slightest bit snobbish with them in order to give credence to that facade; but the cold hard facts said that he had always accepted lecture requests, had always been more than willing to mingle socially afterwards, had always talked about his work to anyone who would listen. He boasted. Old, successful Nobel-winner, Alliance-Literature-Prize-contender Stauffer Davis was looking for the approval of the masses, though he denied it heartily to the academic world and to himself. But he was seeking the droplets of envy, worship, and appreciation that were to be found in the hearts and minds of his fans, was trying to synthesize love out of that mixture. The Alliance rep had been correct.

“There's Mr. Alsace,” Mrs. Bunter said. The beetle crawled on her breast.

Suddenly, whatever these people had done to fill the empty can of his soul was drained away. He felt rusted again, dying. Had that been why he had told Leah he was married? If he fought this in court or smuggled her out of Demos and was discovered, the masses would look down on him, disapprove of his racially mixed marriage. By marrying the winged girl, he would be giving up the worship of the reading club people all over the Alliance worlds. So he had lied to her, trying to hang on to the only thread of appreciation he could rely on. He had chosen the adoration of historical novel fans over the love of a woman.

The ceiling bobbled dangerously close.

Vomit tingled in the back of his throat. He forced it down, tore himself free of Alice Bunter.

“Mr. Davis! Stauffer!”

But he was out the door, staggering, leaving them behind to discuss the strange behavior of the Nobel winner who was long overdue for the Alliance Literature Prize.

Proteus floated next to him.

He found the car, almost closed the robot out. It was fortunate that he had not, for the machine would have vibra-beamed the door away if he had. He pulled the grav car onto, the highway, ignoring the coordinates and taking manual control. The port city whizzed away and was replaced by grassy hills. The trees came, still dropping leaves. It began to snow…

How long had he been fooling himself? Years. Many of them. He had played the role of the uncaring, the isolationist without need for human companionship. Give me my typewriter, he cried, and I will converse with my own soul! That is sufficient! he had shouted. But it had never been sufficient, not for a second. He had accepted the adulation of his fans, relied upon it. It had become his only contact with people, and without it he would have been shallow and incomplete. He realized now that he had been searching for love, searching for what two dead parents had never given him, had denied him in their bitterness and their determination to destroy one another no matter what the cost. Stauffer, Stauffer, Stauffer… Wife against husband, both of them against the son. When he had grown and they could not live to see his accomplishments, to see that he had made it despite them, he had turned to the masses, opened his heart and wrote for their pleasure and their praises. That had become so important to him that the true love of a winged girl had been momentarily displaced, lost in the greater need for acceptance. But not now. Not any longer…

He drove faster.

Proteus gurgled noisily.

Snow bulleted the windscreen, danced whitely across the hood. It covered the leaves along the road, began decking the trees in soft shrouds…

What would he say to her? Could he make her reject her winged angel to come with him? Could he convince her that he would love and cherish her more than her Demosian lover? He would have to. There was nothing else he could imagine now. There could be no going back to the reading clubs for a hint of love, admiration, appreciation. He knew the phoniness of that, at last, and it was not going to be possible to delude himself with the same routine any longer.

The gyros whined to keep the car as stable as possible while he poured the stress power from the grav plates into the propelling mechanism.

They swept past the towers of the aviaries and onward toward the Sanctuary. The twin breasts were the breasts of a fair maiden now, frosted with snow. He turned toward the ugly black block of the “orphanage” and accelerated. He was afraid she would say no, would stay with the winged boy, leaving him without anything but his loneliness and longing. He constructed arguments as sound as those required to breach the gates of Hell or Heaven, repeated them to himself to get them perfectly in mind. Somehow, they all sounded like pieces of broken glass dropping off his tongue.

He swung the car in front of the steps of the main promenade before the huge double doors of the Sanctuary. He got out, rushed up the steps, through the portals and into a well-lighted lobby.

Proteus hurried behind.

Davis crossed the carpeted floor to where a woman sat behind a reception desk, a gray-haired matron with enormous fallen breasts. “I'm looking for Matron Salsbury,” he said, panting.

“You've found her, then,” she said, smiling. “I'm Matron Salsbury. And you must be Mr. Stauffer Davis.” She rose, trembling visibly with excitement.

Before his encounter with the League rep at Alice Bunter's house, he would have held Matron Salsbury's hand, talked of his books, charmed her with his tales of writing and publishing. Now, all of that was behind him. To engage in any of it would have driven him quite mad. Instead, he snapped, “The girl. Leah. The one who was my guide. Could I see her, please?”

“I'm sorry, but she's not here at the moment.”

The alcohol was gone, but he was drunk with fear, fear that she had gone off for an idyllic holiday with her smooth-skinned young angel and that even now they were tangled in love.

“Her husband,” Davis said. “Could I speak to him?”

She looked at him blankly. “What?”

He was enraged by her inability to understand so simple a request at so urgent a moment. “Her husband, woman! I want to speak to her husband!”

“I don't understand,” she said, looking a bit frightened. “She has no husband. There are only sixteen winged people left. They are all women.”

He felt his mouth unhinge,

Exterminated…

He closed his mouth, licked his lips with a tongue that felt swollen and dry. She had known what he felt! And to save him the pain and the loss of public respect, she had cunningly offered him this out. If they were married, they were better apart. And each had been lying to the other. She had known it, but he had been ignorant. She had taken steps to insure his career and his ego. To hell with those! he thought.

“Where has she gone?”

Matron Salsbury looked flustered. “I don't know. She sat here in the lobby for two days. She even took her meals here, slept here. She watched those doors as if she were waiting for someone or—” She stopped as if understanding had struck like lightning inside her head. “And then, just an hour ago or so ago, she left without saying where she was going.”

She was still talking as he ran across the lounge, out the doors and down the steps. Proteus came after him, barely bobbling inside before he slammed on the grav car's stress power, kicked at the accelerator and shot across the field between the two hills, not bothering to use the much longer road that connected them. A hundred feet from the temple, the grav plates gave up trying to adjust to the varying distances to the ground and blew on him. The car jolted up the base of the second hill and came to a noisy halt, settling ruggedly to the ground where the rubber rim was sheared away. He opened the door and ran.

Just as he entered the main hall of the great cathedral there was a flapping of wings. Leah departed from one of the teardrop portals high in the walls. The base of the Face of God was open, the chin now a door. She had been into the corridors of the idol's mind, looking out through its eyes, waiting for Stauffer Davis, the famous novelist, the love-seeker, the — he cursed himself — stupidest man in the Alliance! But he had come in just a moment too late, and she had left without seeing him.

He turned, ran down the echo-sharp hall and out onto the rounded dome of the snowy breast, leaving his footprints in its white skin. He looked for her, searched the sky.

She was flitting off toward the yellow mountains.

He called to her, but she was too far away. She could not hear him.

And the car was useless. He could only run.

He ran.

She flew.

The distance between them grew.

She settled before the trees, stepped into the dark of the woods and was gone from sight.

He screamed, but she was too far away to hear.

He ran.

His chest ached. A fire had been set to flashing life in his lungs. He sucked in cool air and blew out steam. Still, he ran, faster and faster — but not as fast as he thought he had to. He was over the edge of the temple hill, streaking along the fields toward the trees. Minutes passed before he reached them.

He called her name.

She was too far ahead. The thickness of the trees soaked up his words. There was no echo. The snow drifted down around him, filtered through the tight web of branches and sifted the forest floor.

Proteus came behind.

Which way? Would she go straight. ahead or slant to the left? To the right? He sobbed, moved straight on, leaping over fallen logs, kicking piles of leaves up around him as he went. He skidded on the snow once, sprawled onto his face, skinning his cheek. He lay for a moment, tasting dirt and blood. Then he shoved up and went on, aware that a moment's delay might mean the difference between success or failure.

He called her name again.

Silence.

He hurried on.

Then a cry and the howl of wolves. A scream!

He stopped and listened, head cocked to catch the exact direction of the noise. There was a second scream, one that trailed off like a dying siren. It was to his left. He started in that direction. In a moment, a baying of savage hounds moaned through the cold air and snow slithered like thick, cold oil between the trees.

Proteus moved up beside him.

In the darkness ahead, two glimmering red eyes the size of walnuts peered at Davis between the thick trunks of the yellow-leafed trees. A wolf loped closer, skidded to a stop and stared at what it evidently hoped might be its supper. Its jaws hung open, dripping saliva onto the frosted ground. It growled deep in its thick throat, spat, blew snot from its nose.

Proteus opened with his vibra-beam weapon, blasted the darkness with blue flames.

The wolf danced onto two legs, twirled, collapsed onto the snow. Blood spattered outward from the charred body and patterned the whiteness.

Davis stepped over the corpse and moved on. Please, he thought, don't let her be dead…