Masters of Everon by Gordon R. Dickson

Author:Gordon R. Dickson [Dickson, Gordon R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9780575112568
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-09-29T22:20:25+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Jef walked for some distance, staying some fifteen meters inside the edge of the woods country, before it began to dawn on him that in stalking off from Jarji he had overlooked one small item. Even after this occurred to him, he still kept on walking, taking his course from the glimpses of grassland he could see occasionally through the trees, and hoping to come up with some solution other than the obvious one. Finally, his feelings, as slow to cool as they were to kindle, got down to a temperature of reasonableness and he found himself at last ready to admit that he would be making himself more ridiculous by keeping on like this than he would be by admitting he had gone off half-cocked in the first place. At the same time there was still enough sense in him of having been mishandled so that he found it difficult to make the first move.

He halted finally in a convenient open space with a boulder to sit down on, sat down, took off his pack and began to unseal some food for himself and Mikey. After a bit Jarji's voice sounded behind him.

"Forgot I had the mapcase, didn't you?" she said. "Yes," he answered.

She came around in front of him and sat down cross-legged on the ground, frowning at him. "You ready to get back on route, then?"

"That's right."

She continued to frown at him.

"It's not your fault," she said. "I don't mean to say it is. It's just that you don't know a thing about what you're mixing in."

He grinned at her, unexpectedly. Now that they were talking again, it was amazing how much easier he found it to be undisturbed by her way of saying things.

"I take it that's your version of an apology?" he asked.

"Apology?" She started as if to spring from the ground. "Save your damn life and you want an apology—"

She broke off and settled back down, staring hard at him.

"All right," she said. "I suppose you can't help it. Listen to me, Robini—and try to understand what I'm telling you. This isn't your territory. It's nobody's territory but ours, us who live here and know our way around. Now, something's working for you. I don't know what it is. At first I thought it was all the maolot and you were just riding along on him; but it's something more than that. You and this upcountry are somehow taking to each other more than you ought to be able to do, by rights. But—"

She leaned forward and jabbed a forefinger at him.

"That's got nothing to do with what I'm talking about now. God knows why I should worry my head about you. But there's some hard people on both sides of any question you run into up here; and there's some questions—there's one question in particular—anybody'd be wise to step around. You've got plenty to do with your maolot and finding that grave, if that's what you really want. Just you forget to worry about whether elands get poisoned, or how it happens, or anything at all of that sort.

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