The Winds of Altair Read online

  "Wolfcat," Jeff corrected automatically. "Yeah, I think maybe you're right. It's kind of scary, though. I didn't simply make contact . . . I was him!"

  Laura looked up at him, her green eyes searching. If she was fearful about the future, she did not show it.

  Jeff fell silent, his mind filled with the memory of being down in that forest, of having immense strength at his command.

  "They're going to need more volunteers," Laura said.

  It was an effort to bring himself back to reality. "I suppose they will. Do you want to try it?"

  Her eyes went wide. "Me?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

  She shook her head. "Dr. Carbo won't take women volunteers. He's such a male chauvinist!"

  "No," Jeff laughed. "He's just Italian."

  "It's more than that," Laura said testily. "Several women have already volunteered, you know. He turned them all down. Said it was too dangerous."

  "Well . . . it could be dangerous."

  "You're doing it."

  "Yes, but . . ." Suddenly Jeff felt confused. He didn't know which side of the argument he wanted to be on.

  Less sharply, Laura said, "I'm going to volunteer anyway. And if he turns me down I'll take him before the Council and charge him with prejudice."

  "And what'll you do if he accepts you?"

  For a moment Laura said nothing. Then, eyes suddenly sparkling, she replied, "Why, then we can be down on the surface of the planet together, Jeff."

  "Together," he murmured. Holding her closer, he gazed into her upturned face and kissed her. Laura twined her arms around him. He could feel her heart pounding against him; his own pulse thundered through him. Everything else vanished from his mind: the ship, the planet, the universe disappeared and there was only Laura and himself alone together in an infinite breathless moment.

  "UNAUTHORIZED CONDUCT," the Village computer's flat impersonal voice blared through the loudspeakers set into the tube's ceiling. "UNAUTHORIZED CONDUCT. STOP AT ONCE OR BE REPORTED TO THE COUNCIL."

  Jeff gazed bleakly up at the loudspeaker's grill as Laura pushed slightly away from him.

  The computer was silent for only long enough to scan their faces. "JEFFREY HOLMAN AND LAURA MCGRATH, YOUR CONDUCT IS IN VIOLATION OF YOUR OATHS OF CELIBACY. BE WARNED."

  They looked at each other, a mixture of guilt and relief on their faces.

  "Maybe I can figure out how to turn off the cameras, someday," Jeff muttered.

  Laura giggled. "If you do, the Village will vibrate itself out of orbit inside of ten minutes."

  Hand in hand, they made their way back onto the greenpath and headed down the tube back toward their dome.

  Halfway home, they saw Brunhilda hurrying toward them, her face florid with unaccustomed exertion as she lumbered along the greenpath.

  "There you are!" She pointed a thick, blunt forefinger at them. "You should both know better. I'm ashamed of you! Curfew time is almost here and you're off in the bushes, making the computer sound warning alarms!"

  Towering over them, Brunhilda separated Jeff from Laura and walked between the two would-be lovers.

  They expected a lecture and grim threats of punishment, but instead Brunhilda was almost mild as she told them, "Just because he is such a hero right now, Ms. McGrath, is no reason to succumb to temptation. And you, Mr. Holman, don't think you're too important to be disciplined."

  Jeff said nothing, and neither did Laura. They had learned that arguments and protests simply made things worse with Brunhilda.

  As they neared the portal to their dome, the giantess said, "If you've got to smooch, at least do it in the privacy of your dorm rooms. If the computer warning had been picked up by one of the Council members instead of just me . . ." She shook her head.

  As they entered their own dome, Bishop Foy himself passed by, heading toward the greenpath they had just come in from. He nodded at them unsmilingly, his thoughts obviously elsewhere as he walked past in his lean, loose-jointed amble.

  Jeff looked up at Brunhilda as Bishop Foy passed. She caught his stare and slowly closed one eye in a solemn wink. Jeff was so startled that he nearly tripped and fell.

  Jeffrey Holman had been born into the Church of Nirvan. His father, director of the leading bank in the Nevada town where they lived, had used the Church as a social and business tool. He Believed, of course; everyone in the town Believed or they moved elsewhere. But Jeff's father expected God to show some faith in Mr. Holman, too. When the town's copper and molybdenum mines closed down in the face of competition from the asteroid mines out in space, Mr. Holman (as everyone in town called him) brought the Church Elders together with the Los Angeles corporation executives who actually owned the bank and arranged a multi-million-dollar deal that turned the town into a "premier residential center" where executives from Los Angeles, Phoenix, and other crime-infested mega-cities could find a safe home for themselves and their families, far out in the desert.

  The town quadrupled in size, the bank prospered, and Mr. Holman was elected mayor—proving that God had faith in him.

  It was Jeff's mother who Believed in the Church of Nirvan with the simple abiding faith that demanded nothing in return. She bore eight children, fulfilling the Church's demand for fruitfulness. Jeff was her oldest son; her first three babies had been daughters.

  Jeff seemed to slide through life as if God had intended him never to stub a toe. He was a happy, plump baby. He never had a sick day in his life. Once he started school, he charmed his teachers with his quiet, modest behavior and his quick, eager mind. He was always first in class, first in anything he chose to do. The only trouble with Jeff was that he chose to do so little. He liked to read, to sit alone and daydream, to think.

  "Some days, Jeffrey, I worry that you're going to turn into a tree stump," his mother often chided him. Jeff would smile at her and offer to help her with the household chores.

  "You've got to show more drive, son!" his father would admonish. "Get out of the house and meet people, make friends, do things."

  Jeff would agree and take a walk down to the town library, to lose himself in books for hours on end.

  In high school he steered away from sports. "Too much work," he said. "And for what? So you can get to date a cheerleader?"

  Mr. Holman warned his wife, "If he doesn't show any interest in girls at this age, Martha, I seriously think we should . . ."

  "Be patient, Mr. Holman," his wife said. "You just be patient with the boy."

  Jeff easily won a full scholarship to the state university, but asked his father to pay tuition for a friend of his who had barely failed to qualify and couldn't afford college. Mr. Holman, like most bankers, did not like to spend money on people who actually needed it. But between Jeff and his wife—and their use of Church pressure—he became magnanimous. The local TV station was apprised of his open-hearted gesture and did a four-minute feature on the subject as a sidebar to its coverage of the high school graduation.

  The weather fascinated Jeff, and after his first two years at the university, he decided to specialize in meteorology.

  "We know so much about science," he explained eagerly to his father, one weekend when he had driven home for some solid cooking, "yet we still haven't been able to figure out how to make the weather behave the way we want it to."

  "Perhaps God doesn't want us to tinker with the weather?" his mother suggested.

  Jeff smiled at her. "If He doesn't, then He'd better let me know pretty soon. I'm going to study weather modification."

  It was in his senior year that Jeff heard the call to colonize the stars. The campus was abuzz with the excitement: the Church had taken a contract with the world government to tame one of the outer worlds and make it ready for colonization. Students were being allowed to volunteer for the grandest adventure of all time.

  When Jeff went home for Christmas vacation that year, he found his father adamantly opposed to sending students off to strange worlds beyond the solar system.

  "I've let
the Elders know how I feel about this," Mr. Holman said firmly. "Cannon fodder! That's what they're after. Those old men want to send kids your age out to the stars—they'll never come back. Mark my words. They'll all get themselves killed out there."

  "But the Church would never deliberately send young Believers into mortal danger," Jeff's mother protested mildly.

  "Oh wouldn't they? There's money involved, Martha. Billions of dollars. Trillions! And the chance to proselytize millions of poor people from all over the world. Do you think the Church is going to pass up such an opportunity just because a few thousand youngsters will get killed?"

  Jeff listened intently, saying nothing.

  "And those old men get an extra bonus out of it, too. They get rid of the next generation of natural leaders. They ensure their own hold on the Church by sending off all the idealistic youngsters to the stars."

  "You're probably right, Dad," Jeff said at last. "But I'm going to volunteer anyway."

  And nothing his parents could say or do would deter him. For easy-going, quiet, studious Jeffrey Holman had learned one basic lesson from his hard-driving father and his steadfast faithful mother: once you've made up your mind to do something, do it.

  By the fourth time Amanda strapped him down in the couch, Jeff was completely at ease. Dr. Carbo hovered over him, one eye on the monitor gauges, as Amanda fitted the helmet onto Jeff's head.

  "Today is going to be different, Jeff," Dr. Carbo said, his round dark face totally serious, unsmiling. "You have made contact with this wolfcat three times now . . ."

  "Crown," Jeff heard himself say. "His name is Crown."

  Carbo glanced at Amanda, then looked back at Jeff, an odd expression on his face. "You've given the animal a name?"

  "That is his name. I didn't give it to him."

  Carbo fell silent.

  "Crown," Amanda said, smiling. "That's a good name."

  Jeff tried to nod but the helmet was too heavy and fitted so snugly he could barely move his head. He hadn't realized that the wolfcat had a name until the word popped out of his mouth. Did I make it up, he wondered, or did Crown really have that name before I linked up with him?

  "Okay," Dr. Carbo said finally, "his name is Crown. Today we want to see if you can get Crown to do some scouting for us. We're going to head off toward the east . . ."

  He droned on, his voice very serious, his face grim. Amanda fussed around Jeff, checking all the connections, telling him without words that if he ran into any trouble they would be here to pull him out of it. Jeff gave her a fleeting grin, and she arched an eyebrow to show him that she had caught it.

  Jeff found himself drumming his fingertips on the cushioned fabric of the armrests, impatient to get Carbo's briefing over with. He felt eager to be back on the world below them, to get back to being Crown.

  At last Dr. Carbo finished. He and Amanda left the chamber and went into the control room. Jeff could feel the surge of electrical excitement that rushed through him as they turned up the power on the equipment. He closed his eyes and forced himself to relax on the couch.

  Carbo stood beside Amanda and watched the young student seemingly fall into an instant sleep. Easily. Too easily. He had seen people embrace drugs and the direct cortical stimulation that his neuro-electronic probe could provide with the same happy, beatific smile on their lips. He tried to put that worry behind him. This is something very different, he told himself. The boy shows no evidence of addiction. Not yet, at least.

  Jeff seemed to be in a deep slumber, totally relaxed, every muscle slack. Then the closeup monitoring viewscreen showed that his eyes began to move rapidly behind his closed eyelids. His fingers clutched at empty air. His head jerked and twisted. On the main control panel the data monitors whined to life. The central viewscreen glowed and formed the scene from the hilltop that was becoming familiar to them.

  "He's done it again," Amanda whispered.

  With a curt nod, Carbo replied, "It gets easier for him each time."

  She made a small movement that might have been a shake of her head. "It looks as if it puts him in pain."

  "There's no trace of pain on the monitors."

  "I know," Amanda said. "But . . ."

  "He's enjoying the experience. He's a hero. Every young man wants to be a hero."

  "Maybe so. But he's losing weight. Have you noticed that?"

  "A kilo or so. Nothing to worry about."

  "I worry," Amanda said.

  Crown awoke instantly. Not that he was ever deeply asleep. A wolfcat has no natural enemies, but still there are dangers: a brainless serpent, a hungry pack of scavengers, another wolfcat challenging him for his hilltop.

  He got up on all sixes and stretched, catlike, before trotting out from under the rock ledge where he had slept the night. In the gentle, diffuse light of early morning he gazed out from the top of his hill. The forest beckoned, with its scents of food.

  No, not the forest. Eastward, across the grasslands, toward the rising sun.

  Crown grunted. Food was in the forest, but there would be food in the grassland, too. He had eaten well the day before. Hunger could wait. For a while.

  Still, it felt strange to turn his back on his own hunting territory, to leave his hill and the forest. With a final glance over his shoulder, he lumbered down the hillside and turned off toward the grassy open land that stretched out to the horizon and the morning sun.

  He's doing it! He's controlling the beast.

  There were new odors in the grassland. Strange scents. The area was fairly flat, with nothing more than a gentle roll here and there to break the monotony. No trees at all, although there were some clumps of shoulder-high brush, and the grass itself came up to Crown's knees. The wind was strong. With nothing to get in its way, the wind no longer sighed; it gusted and shouted as it whipped Crown's fur and made the grass bow down in waves that he could follow from the horizon right up to where he was walking.

  By midmorning Crown's innards were a massive empty cry of hunger. But there seemed to be no prey in sight. There were scents aplenty, but he could not see any animals.

  He stopped and turned to face the wind. The food smells were strong, fresh. Not the same scents as those back in the forest, though. Different odors. Different animals.

  Crown crouched down on the grass, flat on his empty belly, low enough so that his huge bulk was almost entirely hidden by the grass. Nothing but the gray unmoving curve of his back showed above the tops of the waving fronds. Unmoving, unblinking, hardly breathing, he watched and waited.

  Gray clouds were building up overhead, lower than the perpetual deck of smooth pearly cloud that Crown knew as the sky. These were like angry fists of darkness, and they dotted the plain with scurrying shadows as they blew past on the urgent wind. Crown watched the grass, now bright in daylight, now dark in shadow.

  Something moved! A small, brown, furry thing, only about as big as one paw. But food.

  More than one! A brown furry head poked up over the tops of the grass, looking around nervously, nose twitching as it sniffed for danger. Crown was downwind, it couldn't catch his scent. The head went down and another one popped up, off to the right.

  Not much food, but better than none at all. Crown waited, not moving a muscle, a gray silent hill hidden by the grass. The little things were scampering through the waving fronds, coming closer, closer. Crown tensed. Closer . . .

  He leaped, roaring, landed on one animal, killing it instantly, then leaped again and caught another. The grass was suddenly alive with them, jumping and scattering in all directions, chittermg, screaming shrilly as they raced to escape the huge roaring death that had pounced into their midst.

  Crown dashed this way and that, trying to catch a few more of them, but they easily eluded him. Some of them skittered right under his belly and out of reach before he could swat them. For several foolish minutes he thrashed through the grass, roaring, twisting, jumping, and got nothing. It was like trying to pick up water with your fingers.

>   With a final growl of exasperation, Crown returned to the two creatures he had killed. Not much food for a morning.

  A ground-shaking roar made him look up.

  A huge wolfcat stood several leaps away, staring at him with huge, dagger filled jaws. His muzzle was white with age, but the strength of his roar and his massive size showed that he was still powerful, more powerful than Crown.

  Crown had no intention of giving up his kill, small though it was. He growled back at the intruder.

  Another wolfcat rose out of the grass beside the first one. A female. She growled too. And a third, on the other side of the old male. Then behind him, Crown heard more warning growls. He turned to see two more males, smaller and younger than he. That made five against him.

  Crown understood their growls and roars. It wasn't the food they were after. Crown was in their territory. He was the intruder, and this family of wolfcats was going to get rid of him.

  They were circling around him, eyeing him warily and snuffling, grunting. But the circle was drawing tighter, closer, with every step they took.

  Crown stood over his two tiny kills, a rumbling growl filling his throat. The elder male halted his pacing and roared his full fury. From a scant ten meters away, his bellow was shattering.

  Crown snatched at one of the furry things and scampered away, dashing between the two younger males, clutching his tiny kill in his right forepaw and running crookedly on his other five legs.

  They chased him for a few minutes, roaring after him. Then, satisfied that Crown was leaving their territory, they let him go with nothing more than a few more warning roars.

  Crown dashed over the grassland, loped up a slight rise, then stopped to look back at the wolfcat family. The old male was still standing stiffly, fur bristling, facing directly toward Crown. But the others had already started back toward wherever they had come from. Crown snarled his anger and frustration, then resumed his pace across the grass, away from the other wolfcats.

  They're territorial animals. He won't be able to hunt for food wherever there are other wolfcats.