No, what had been more important was coming to grips with what he was as a man. That was an exploration he had only just begun, but Robert liked the direction the journey seemed to be heading.

He jogged around a bend in the mountain trail and came out of the hill’s shadow with the sun on his back. Ahead, to the south, lay the craggy limestone formations concealing the Valley of Caves.

Robert stopped as a metallic glint caught his eye. Something sparkled over the prominences beyond the valley, perhaps ten miles away.

Gasbots, he thought. Over in that area Benjamin’s techs had begun laying out samples of everything from electronics to metals to clothing, in an effort to discover what it was the Gubru robots homed in on. Robert hoped they had made some progress while he was away.

And yet, in another sense he hardly cared anymore. The new longbow felt good in his hand. The chims in the mountains preferred powerful homemade crossbows and arbalests, requiring less coordination but greater simian strength to crank. The effect had been the same with all three weapons… dead birds. The use of ancient skills and archaic tools had turned into a galvanizing theme, resonating with the mythos of the Wolfling Clan.

There were disturbing consequences as well. Once, after, a successful ambush, he had noticed some of the local mountain chens drifting away from camp. He slipped into the shadows and followed them to what appeared to be a secret cook fire, in a side canyon.

Earlier, while they had stripped the vanquished Gubru of their weapons and carried off the bodies, he had noticed some of the chims glancing back at him furtively, perhaps guiltily. That night he watched from a dark hillside as long-armed silhouettes danced in the firelight under the windblown stars. Something roasted on a spit over the flames, and the wind carried a sweet, smoky aroma.

Robert had had a feeling there were a few things the chims did not want seen by their patrons. He faded back into the shadows and returned to the main camp, leaving them to their ritual.

The images still flickered in his mind like feral, savage fantasies. Robert never asked what had been done with the bodies of the dead Galactics, but since then he could not think of the enemy without remembering that aroma.

If only there were a way to get more of them to come into the mountains, he pondered. Only under the trees did it seem possible to hurt the invaders.

The afternoon was aging. Time to finish the long jog home. Robert turned and was about to start down into the valley when he stopped suddenly. He blinked. There was a blur in the air. Something seemed to flutter at the edge of his vision, as if a tricky moth were dancing just within his blind spot. It didn’t seem to be possible to look at the thing.

Oh, Robert thought.

He gave up trying to focus on it and looked away, letting the odd non-thing chase him instead. Its touch laid open the petals of his mind like a flower unfolding in the sun. The fluttering entity danced timidly and winked at him … a simple glyph of affection and mild amusement. . . easy enough for even a thick-thewed, hairy-armed, road-smelly, pinkish-brown human to understand.

“Very funny, Clennie.” Robert shook his head. But the flower opened still wider and he kenned warmth. Without having to be told, he knew which way to go. He turned off the main trail and leapt up a narrow game path.

Halfway to the ridgetop he came upon a brown figure lounging in the shade of a thornbush. The chen looked up from a paperpage book and waved lazily.

“Hi, Robert. You’re lookin’ a lot better’n when.I saw you last.”

“Fiben!” Robert grinned. “When did you get back?”

The chim suppressed a tired yawn. “Oh, ’bout an hour ago. The boys down in th’ caves sent me right up here to see her nibs. I picked up somethin’ for her in town. Sorry. Didn’t get anythin’ for you, though.”

“Did you get into any trouble in Port Helenia?”

“Hmmm, well, some. A little dancin’, a little scratchin’, a little hootin’.”

Robert smiled. Fiben’s “accent” was always thickest when he had big news to downplay, the better to draw out the story. If allowed to get away with it, he would surely keep them up all night.

“Uh, Fiben …”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s up there.” The chim gestured toward the top of the ridge. “And in a right fey mood, if you ask me. But don’t ask me, I’m just a chimpanzee. I’ll see you later, Robert.” He picked up his book again, not exactly the model of a reverent client. Robert grinned.

“Thanks, Fiben. I’ll see ya.” He hurried up the trail.

Athaclena did not bother to turn around as he approached, for they had already said hello. She stood at the hilltop looking westward, her face to the sun, holding her hands outstretched before her.

Robert at once sensed that another glyph floated over Athaclena now, supported by the waving tendrils of her corona. And it was an impressive thing. Comparing her little greeting, earlier, to this one would be like standing a dirty limerick next to “Xanadu.” He could not see it, neither could he even begin to kenn its complexity, but it was there, nearly palpable to his heightened empathy sense.

Robert also realized that she held something between her hands… like a slender thread of invisible fire — intuited more than seen — that arched across the gap from one hand to the other.

“Athaclena, what is—”

He stopped then, as he came around and saw her face.

Her features had changed. Most of the humaniform contours she had shaped during the weeks of their exile were still in place; but something they had displaced had returned, if only momentarily. There was an alien glitter in her gold-flecked eyes, and it seemed to dance in counterpoint to the throbbing of the half-seen glyph.

Robert’s senses had grown. He looked again at the thread in her hands and felt a thrill of recognition.

“Your father… ?”

Athaclena’s teeth flashed white. “W’ith-tanna Uthacalthing bellinarri-t’hoo, haoon’nda!…”

She breathed deeply through wide-open nostrils. Her eyes — set as wide apart as possible — seemed to flash.

“Robert, he lives!”

He blinked, his mind overflowing with questions. “That’s great! But… but where! Do you know anything about my mother? The government? What does he say?”

She did not reply at once. Athaclena held up the thread. Sunlight seemed to run up and down its taut length. Robert might have sworn that he heard sound, real sound, emitting from the thrumming fiber.

“W’ith-tanna Uthacalthing!” Athaclena seemed to look straight into the sun.

She laughed, no longer quite the sober girl he had known. She chortled, Tymbrimi fashion, and Robert was very glad that he was not the object of that hilarity. Tymbrimi humor quite often meant that someone else, sometime soon, would definitely not be amused.

He followed her gaze out over the Vale of Sind, where a flight of the ubiquitous Gubru transports moaned faintly as they cruised across the sky. Unable to trace more than the outlines of her glyph, Robert’s mind searched for and found something akin to it in the human fashion. In his mind he pictured a metaphor.

Suddenly, Athaclena’s smile was something feral, almost catlike. And those warships, reflected in her eyes, seemed to take on the aspect of complacent, rather unsuspecting mice.