Ilse was back. “I can only stay for a moment,” she thought to him. “I’m in labor and it’s coming fast. I… ” She was gone, drawn by the pain in her body.

Fifteen grueling meters higher, his shoulders felt the edge of another side duct entering the shaft; he slid into it and rested. After several minutes he continued upward, stopping in yet another duct not far above.

Ilse was with him again. “Rest well here,” she told him. “There won’t be another chance and you have a long way to climb. The top is in a roof garden. When you get out, circle the shaft-it’s like a chimney-keeping one hand on it and reaching out low with the other. You’ll find a low-walled thing of soil there, with thick bushes growing in it. Crawl beneath the bushes and hide. I’ll try to have someone come down and get you.”

He was alone again. Wriggling back into the shaft, he started climbing. Warm air moved softly upward around his sweating body. His shoulders soon were raw from rubbing on rough dry stone; his legs and back were tired again. It was far. The dungeon was deep underground and the roofs high. He could not rest braced within the shaft; it would take strength to stay in place, draining his energy without progress. His sense of time blurred as he labored upward; there was only long concentration, and pain, and growing fatigue. Very largely he could put himself outside the pain, but exhaustion progressively slowed him.

At length he had to stop. There was no way to tell how much farther it was. With an effort of will he gathered himself, then jacked himself higher, half a meter, a meter.

And smelled fresh air! In moments his back-pressed head reached an opening.

The shaft was capped and the side-ports small. He reached an arm out, and then the other, exhaling and pushing powerfully with his legs to force his chest through. After pausing for a moment on the small of his back, he grasped the cap of the shaft, pulled, wriggled, and tumbled to the roof. For scant seconds he lay there, greasy with sweat, then turned over and crouched. There was no watchfulness nearby-no mind of any kind except for insects and sleeping birds. The planter was in front of him, fragrant with blossoms, and after standing for a moment, Nils crawled beneath its cool-leaved shrubs, to lay on the dry-surfaced soil.

A part of him watched while he slept.

The hull was on one-way transparent and Ram reached out to the instrument panel. Although it was against safety regulations, he pressed the key that slid the door open, to feel the air.

The City swung closer beneath, its rows of buildings defined by black shadow and the weak light of a slender, newly-risen moon. This was night on a planet, not the perpetual blackness of space, and it felt rich and beautiful, with an unreal reality that tingled. There were people down there, too, breathing, sleeping, dreaming-people whose existence was not quite real to him.

The whole scene felt unreal; he was acting in a dream fantasy at the request of his own hostage. Perhaps she had hypnotized him; the story she’d told between contractions sounded like sheerest lunacy. Though Celia had urged him, she hadn’t needed to. This was action, something to do about something, something to accomplish after the waiting and frustration.

He maneuvered by thin moonlight rather than radar. The palace was easy to find, its tower and multiple roofs rising well above the buildings around. The cover of night wouldn’t last long; it might be he could see a suggestion of dawn already, a possible lightness on the northeastern horizon. And it wouldn’t do to be seen, to be associated with the escape. They still had hostages down there, unless they were dead.

Their spiral had brought them down until the tower loomed above them as they circled. Ram leveled off, gave the controls to his copilot, and crouched in the door. How in the world do you find a man hiding in the night beneath a bush on one of a multiplicity of roof gardens? A man that can’t see you?

“Nils! Nils Jarnhann!” he called with his mind. Penthouses, planters, small trees and shadowed shrubs swung silently beneath, and the man at the controls took her lower while Ram’s eyes strained to see. “Nils! Nils Jarnhann!”

“Here!” The answering thought was faint but distinct.

Ram commanded the copilot and they stopped, locked on a gravitic vector.

“Where?”

“Here!”

This time Ram was ready for the answer, and his psi-sense gave him a bearing on the silent call. He moved to the controls himself, silently slid Beta into position twenty meters above a roof, then gave them up again. From the door he saw a figure step out of shadow.

“I see him,” he said quietly, and closed the switch that lowered the short flight of landing steps. “There! See? Take her down slowly until I say stop.”

The barbarian stood like a statue, face aimed at the open door as the Beta settled. Ram knew the man was orienting himself through his eyes.

“Stop,” Ram murmured, and crouched on the upper step. The air was sweet here, with a fragrance like pink lularea. He kept his eyes directed at the Northman to guide him, and could see the darkness of sunken sockets. A chill passed through him. The man moved deliberately to the ladder, reached for the hand rails, and pulled himself onto it with startlingly muscular arms. Ram reached out to him, their hands met, and he backed into the cabin with Ilse’s husband following. Gooseflesh crawled on the captain’s skin.

The door slid shut and Ram stood in the darkness smelling the barbarian’s stale sweat. There was something different in it, a taint that some long-buried memory in Ram’s mind identified. It told of terrible injury and pain. The body seemed strong now but the odor lingered.

“You’re a father,” Ram said quietly. “It’s a healthy girl. Willi, let’s get our tails out of here before someone spots us.”

XXIV

Kniven lag i slappa sommen, sov pa sidan a sin stridshass, sov iblann sin dromna kjamper slumranne pa stilla sletten i d’ lagren trygg a sikker, slutan om a vakna posser

a a smylla hasspatryller.

I knivens panna pette viske, snydde va a blaste dromen bort, da satt han upp a starde.

Ingen vaken sag de onar.

Plyssli i d’ morka natten, nagon vita, jenomsynli, vista sej t’ Knivens springor.

Sag han makti Jarnhanns spoke, kjennte Ynglingen i annen viskanne i sjaanli stillen.

[Listi lay relaxed and sleeping, lay beside his horse in slumber, lay among his dreaming warriors sleeping on the silent prairie in their war camp strong, protected, guarded round by watchful sentries and by stealthy scouts on horseback.

In his mind there came a whisper, touched and broke his fragile dreaming, sat up then and looked about him.

Nothing waking caught his vision.

Then within the darkness flickered something thinly white, transparent.

As he stared with eyes thin-slitted, saw the ghost of mighty Ironhand, saw the spirit of the Youngling whispering in the starlit stillness.]

From THE JARNHANN SAGA, Kumalo translation.

“Nils! Have you seen her?”

“Yes, through Ram’s eyes before I slept. She’s beautiful. Not all red like many newborns.”

Ilse held out her hands and he took them, smiling down at her. “Darling,” he said, “you are as remarkable at growing a baby as at every other thing.”

Celia left them, closing the door behind her while the two conversed silently in a rich and subtle mixture of images, feelings, and unspoken words. After a bit Ilse showed him how to leave his body. He lay down on the deck of the small sick-room and after a minute she could not detect him; only his body was there. Then he returned.

“Was he aware of you at all?” she asked.

“Not consciously.”