“Actually,” the elder continued, surprising his human audience, “there are times when we trade peacefully with the Na.”

“I’d been told the Tsla served as a conduit between Mai and Na, but for some reason it just slipped my memory.”

“You must not judge them only by this unusual attack,” Ruu-an advised him. “There are many times when the Mai also prefer to fight instead of to trade.”

Etienne was glad Homat was still back at the boat. “Listen, I’m standing here taking in all this information and it isn’t even my department. Lyra’s the one who should be making a record of your ways.” He looked past them, making a perfunctory survey of the battlefield. “Where is she, anyway? I haven’t seen her since we split up to try and flank the two Na we first encountered.”

“Ah, Learned Teacher Lyra,” Tyl murmured.

“Yes. Didn’t she stick with you, Tyl?” Suddenly he was very cold, the kind of coldness that comes from inside the body and makes the muscles of one’s arms and legs start to cramp.

“No. We became separated during the fight. I have not seen her since. Perhaps we ought to return to the place where we began the combat.” He sounded concerned.

There was no sign of Lyra. Not where Etienne and the farmers had slain the two Na, not in the streets nearby, not before the gate. The word was passed among the townsfolk. Surely they’d know her whereabouts. An alien fighting among them would stand out immediately.

When the word came it was devastating in its finality.

XIII

The expedition’s aims, his hopes for a personal rapprochement, the papers they planned to present to various scientific societies, the acclaim and acknowledgment and honors, all suddenly meant nothing beside the hollowness in his heart. Ten years of hard work had been shattered like that gate which had so ineffectively protected Jakaie.

Several of the townsfolk had seen the alien female disappear into a Na sack. They were positive she was alive at the time. Two or three Tsla had been stuffed in the sack with her.

Etienne and Tyl, accompanied by the First Scholar, rushed to the narrow street near the gate, following the lead of two young Tsla. A quick search turned up several raggedy fragments of Lyra’s shirt—and something more significant. Battered but still functional, her pistol lay dark against the paving stones where she’d dropped it.

Asking without wanting to ask, he looked despairingly at Ruu-an. “Why would they take her alive?”

The elder glanced at Tyl, who knew the strange creature better than he, but no enlightenment was forthcoming. So he answered.

“I told thee, Learned Etienne, that when times on the Guntali are difficult the Na come here to find food. They are not selective in their diet. Meat is meat to them, whether recently killed on the Guntali or traded to them by some merchant … or the merchant himself. They take live captives to prolong their supply of fresh food, as we do with our domestic animals.”

The sudden irony of it made Etienne want to laugh, but he couldn’t, any more than he could cry. All he could do was stare silently through the broken gate toward the rampart marking the rim of the Guntali, more than a thousand meters higher than Jakaie.

Lyra was up there somewhere, no doubt occupying her thoughts with the unprecedented opportunity granted her to study the culture of the Na at close range. Probably she was bouncing around in her sack with her fellow captives and cursing the lack of a recorder. She’d be doing exactly the same thing when they slipped her on the spit. Her last notes would detail the eating habits of the Na. He was sure it would be a paragon of scientific explication and his wife’s final thought would be regret over the fact no one else would be able to read them.

“Damn them,” he muttered. “Damn her!” He let all his anger and hate and frustration flow out over the stones and an occasional curious onlooker and when he finally concluded the tirade he was ashamed of himself, because there still were no tears.

As he turned back to the patient Tyl he discovered he could speak with extraordinary calmness. It was the peace of the resigned.

“Do you think they will eat her soon, or save her for a while?” How easily the words came now, the absurd words.

Tyl looked to Ruu-an instead of replying. “It is hard to say. Certainly they have sense enough to wonder at the differences between her and us. If any among this tribe has ever seen a Mai, they may think she is kin to them, albeit from a larger tribe. They may want to sample this new food right away, but I think they may choose to make a special feast around her. Thus they would save her for a last meal.”

“I have to proceed on that assumption.”

Tyl eyed him curiously. “What can thee do, Learned Etienne? I am wounded for thee. I was very fond of Learned Lyra. I learned much from her and enjoyed our sharing of customs and knowledge. Both pupil and teacher she was, but there is nothing to be done for her now.”

“You and your damn fatalism! She’s my wife, damn it, and as long as there’s the slimmest chance she’s still alive I have to go after her. It’s her own damn fault for being so careless and putting me in this position, and she knows it. She’s probably laughing over my predicament right now knowing that I have to come after her or risk everything going down the drain. Months of work, years of preparation all at risk because she didn’t have a care for her fat rear and let some big dumb cretin of a native stuff her in his shopping bag. Lost her pistol, too.” He shoved the other asynapt into his belt.

“I’m going to go back to the boat for our cold weather gear. Lyra’ll be lucky if she doesn’t freeze to death before she finds herself on the menu. Or maybe she won’t be lucky. It depends on how right your assumptions are and how fast I can move up there.” He scanned the rock wall.

“One thing I can tell from here; I’ll have to hike it. No way the repellers will last long enough to get me up that. What about trails? Are there foot trails leading to the plateau, or do they just follow the easiest route down?”

“Always they follow the easiest,” Ruu-an said. “That is their way. They make no attempt to hide themselves, for they have nothing to fear from us. But I do not understand what thee intend, Learned Visitor. The captured are already lost. Whether alive or dead this moment matters not. Thee saw how the Na fought here in our homeland, constrained by our walls and overheated as their bodies were. Think what they will be like to confront on the Guntali, where they are at home and in comfort. I will meditate on thy mate’s behalf.”

“Thee meditate thy butt off. I’m still going after her.” He turned to their guide. “Tyl, you’ll come with me, won’t you?”

“As the First Scholar tells, the captured are already lost to us. In any case we can do nothing against the Na in their own land. To do so would only be to add to the rolls of the departed.”

“How do you know you can’t do anything if you’ve never tried?”

“Logic, Learned Etienne, and common sense, dictate our actions. We are calm because we are sensible, content because we understand our role in the scheme of existence.” He reached out to try and comfort his distraught hairless friend.

“Please, Etienne, friend, thee must continue with thy work. Thy Lyra would have wished it. Thee must not grieve for her.”

“I’m not grieving for her, you gutless wonder. I’m going after her because she may still be alive.” Then, more quietly, “I mean no insult, Tyl. I won’t grieve for her unless I know for a fact that she’s dead.”

“If thee wish to perish alongside her, why, that could be understood,” said Ruu-an, attempting to make some sense of an alien reasoning that flew in the face of all logic.

“I’ve no intention of committing suicide.”

“That is what thee will do if thee persist in following the Na onto the Guntali,” Tyl insisted. “I am sorrowed, Etienne, but I cannot follow thee. My teachings, my beliefs, will not allow it. You may ask of any others thee wish.” He did not add that such a request would be a waste of time.

Etienne forced himself to reply as courteously as possible. “I respect your beliefs, Tyl. I don’t understand them and I don’t sympathize with them, I don’t even like them, but I can respect them. But I’m wasting time standing here trying to convince you.” He wondered what Lyra would say if she could hear Tyl’s refusal.

“I’ll go after her myself.”

“Thee will not return,” Tyl warned him.

“Oh, I’ll come back. Look at it like this: I’m going to acquire additional knowledge. It will be a learning experience.”

“Death is learned soon enough,” Tyl said. “They who—”

“I will go with thee.”

So intent was he on his mental preparations and his frustration with the Tsla that Etienne didn’t hear the voice.

Again it said, “I will help thee.”

“Who said that?” He turned, to find himself confronting one of the porters. The last porter anyone expected to say anything: Yulour.

“If thee will have me, Learned One.”

“Have you, yes, and glad of it.” He didn’t think Yulour could think fast enough to be of much help in a fight, but if supplies could be piled on that willing, powerful back they would make much better time. And it would be good to have company. In that respect the porter’s slowness did not concern him. He doubted he’d be much in the mood for extended conversation atop the Guntali.

“Why? Isn’t it against your spiritual principles?”

“I have no spiritual principles, Learned One.” Yulour fought with the large Tsla words. “I do not have sense enough to have them.” He looked hesitantly past the human. “Teacher Tyl must allow. I am bound to him.”