Uwe said, “That nunnie is some medic. She shrank Max! so we don’t have to keep him locked up anymore. And poor Sandra, no more suicidal threats now that the fungus is cured. Then there’s Chaim’s eyelid, all rebuilt, and she healed that big mother of an ulcer on Old Man Kawai’s foot.”
“That’ll make for quieter meetings,” Khalid remarked. “One less thing for the old boy to complain about. This nun sounds like a handy lady to have around.”
The Chief chuckled. “I didn’t even mention the way she cleaned up sixteen cases of worms and almost all the jungle rot. Madame might have to do some fancy politicking in the next election if she wants to hold on to the freeleadership of this gang of outlaws.”
“It never struck me that she relished the honor.” Khalid was acerbic. “Any more than you did when you were in the hot seat.”
They plodded along, making almost no sound on the path that wound beneath the sheltering trees. The long canyon had many little dead-end tributaries from which the numerous springs debouched. Most of the cottages had been built close to these natural water supplies. There were some thirty homes altogether, in which dwelt the eighty-five human beings who made up the largest Lowlife settlement in the known Pliocene world.
The four men crossed a rill on stepping-stones and headed up one of the rocky clefts to where a distinctive little house stood under a huge pine. The cottage was not built like the others of prosaic logs or wattle and daub, but of neatly mortared stone, washed white with lime and reinforced with dark half-timbering. It was eerily evocative of a certain elder-world dwelling in the hills above Lyon. Madame’s rose cuttings, nourished by the manure of mastodons, had burgeoned into rampant climbers that all but smothered the thatched roof in blossoms. The night air was heavy with their perfume.
The men came up the path, then halted. Standing in their way was a tiny animal. Stiff-legged, its oversized eyes gleaming, it growled.
“Hey, Deej!” Burke laughed. “It’s just us, pupikeh. Friends!”
The little cat growled louder, the low nimble moving up the scale to become a threatening howl. It stood its ground.
Chief Burke put down his burden and knelt with one hand outstretched. Khalid Khan stepped behind Sigmund, a memory and a terrible suspicion crowding to the fore of his mind. A memory of a rainy night inside a Tree when the cat had growled like this before. A suspicion of a valued companion who had been too good a woodsman to be surprised by the relatively sluggish attack of a giant salamander…
Khalid slipped open the mouth of his sack just as the cottage door swung wide to show Amerie’s veiled figure silhouetted against dim lamplight.
“Dejah?” the nun called, rattling her rosary beads in what was evidently some signal. She caught sight of the men. “Oh, it’s you, Chief. And Khalid! You’re back! But what…”
The turbaned metalsmith seized the hair of the one they had called Sigmund. With his other hand he pressed something gray and hard against the man’s throat.
“Do not move, soor kabaj, or you are dead, even as your brother before you.”
Amerie screamed and Uwe uttered an obscenity, for Khalid was suddenly struggling with a gorgon. Instead of hair, the Pakistani clutched writhing little vipers growing from Sigmund’s scalp. These struck, sinking tiny fangs into flesh that puffed up, throbbed, as quasidcadly venom flooded the blood vessels and went racing toward Khalid’s heart.
“Stop, I say!” roared the anguished smith. Involuntarily, his right arm tightened, driving the dull point of the iron lance-blank into the soft hollow below the monster’s voicebox.
The thing emitted a gurgling squeal and went limp. Khalid sprang away from the falling body, dropping the iron. It hit the earth with a dull thud and came to rest close beside the dead shape-changer. Amerie and the three men stared down at the creature, which could have weighed no more than twenty or thirty kilos. Flattened little dugs identified it as a female. Its bald cranium was monstrously compressed just above the eyes and elongated backward into a triangular bony collar. It had a mere hole for a nose and a massive lower jaw with loose, peg-like teeth. The body was almost globular, the limbs spiderishly thin, with the left forepaw missing.
“It’s not… a Firvulag,” Amerie managed to say.
“A Howler,” Burke told her. “Some biologists believe they’re a Firvulag mutation. Each one is supposed to have a different true shape. All hideous.”
“You see what she was trying to do, don’t you?” Khalid’s voice was shaking from reaction and chagrin. He felt his left hand, which was now completely normal. “She saw us kill her mate with iron, and had to find out what the new weapon was. So she must have crept up on Sigmund as he marched at the end of the line and… she took his place. Cut off her hand so she wouldn’t have to carry the iron.”
“But they’ve never masqueraded as humans!” Uwe exclaimed. “What could have been its motive?”
“Look at her, dressed in rags,” Amerie said. She knelt down in the light from the doorway to examine the goblin body. One of the Howler’s crude skin boots had dropped off in the struggle, exposing a humanoid foot, miniaturized but as perfectly formed as that of a child. There was a pathetic blister at the heel; evidently the little being had had to hurry to keep pace with the faster humans.
The nun replaced the boot, straightened the pipestem legs, closed the glazed eyes. “She was very poor. Perhaps she hoped to discover information valuable enough to sell.”
“To the normal Firvulag?” Burke suggested.
“Or to the Tanu.” The nun got up and dusted the front of her white habit.
Khalid said, “There might be others. Others who watched us at the smeltery. If this one could change to human shape, how will we ever be sure…”
Burke picked up the iron blade, grasped the metalsmith’s arm, and drew the rough lancehead across the skin. A few drops of dark blood sprang from the abrasion. “You’re real enough, anyhow. I’ll go test the rest of the crew right away. Later, we’ll work out something a little less crude. Pinprick, maybe.”
He limped away toward the bathhouse. Uwe and Khalid hauled the precious bags of iron into the rose-covered cottage, then returned to where Amerie stood over the body. She held the cat, which was still gently growling.
“What shall we do with her, Sister?” Khalid inquired.
Amerie sighed. “I have a large basket. Perhaps you can put her in the springhouse for me. I’m afraid I’ll have to dissect her tomorrow.”
As the Steering Committee waited for Chief Burke to return to the cottage, the Victualer in Chief offered samples of a new beverage. “We took some of that lousy raw wine of Perkin’s and steeped this little forest wildflower in it.”
Everybody sipped. Amerie said, “That’s nice, Marialena.” Uwe said something in German under his breath. “You know what you’ve done, woman? You’ve reinvented Mai-wein!”
“That’s it! That’s it!” Old Man Kawai piped. He was only eighty-six; but since he had declined rejuvenation on a matter of principle, he resembled an unwrapped Oriental mummy. “Most refreshing, my dear. Now if we can only produce a decent sake…”
The cottage door opened and Peopeo Moxmox Burke stooped to enter. The other committee members sat stark still until the red man gave a nod. “They were all kosher. I tested not only the smelters, but all the rest of the folks in the bathhouse as well.”
“Thank heaven,” said the Architect in Chief. “What a thought, shape-changers infiltrating our people!” He wagged his neatly trimmed muttonchops, managing to look like an accountant who had discovered that a valued client was cooking the books.
“Neither Firvulag nor Howlers had any reason to try this trick before,” the Chief warned. “But now, with the attack coming up and the iron as a maybe not-so-secret weapon, we’re going to have to be alert for other attempts. When the volunteers start arriving, every single one must be tested. And we’ll test all participants before every important meeting or briefing.”