Orion Shall Rise by Poul Anderson Page B

about, and think hard,’ Benyo Smith added, ‘is whether, in that atmosphere, at your age, you can keep the greatest secret on the planet. If you have any least doubt, say no, and we’ll thank you.’
    ‘Couldn’t you teach me, you people?’ Ronica wondered.Though this interview was not altogether unexpected, she was half stunned by the implications. ‘My brother Bill – he’s already vanished across the water, into the mountains.’
    ‘And your brother Zakki
is
reasonably content to be a lumberman,’ Tom said. ‘Yes, we do have in-house facilities for education, and that’s where Bill is, but – You’re different, Ronica. If you join, you’ll need to know more about the world outside.’
    Of course she accepted.
    Four years passed before she returned, and then she was soon off again, this time northward and into wilderness.
    2
    She came afoot and alone over the Chugach Mountains and down to the peninsula. Her entire journey she had made thus, for it was through country where none but a few hunting tribes dwelt. Except when she happened on one of these and took hospitality, she herself traveled as a hunter and gatherer.
    That did not slow her much. Her rabbit stick knocked down small game along the way; her eye was quick to find berries, roots, every edible that the land yielded so abundantly; water was never a problem; in the evenings, after she had spent maybe half an hour putting together a brushwood shelter, collecting fuel, starting a fire, she might construct a deadfall while her dinner cooked, with a good prospect of finding a squirrel or the like in it next morning. When perchance she went hungry for a day or two, it was the sort of minor discomfort that she ignored. Occasionally she stopped to wash and dry her clothes, or to inquire among natives in what pidgin she and they could improvise. Otherwise she strode.
    Nevertheless, hers became a three months’ faring. The subarctic fall was well along when she reentered the tamed country. Here forests had dwindled to woodlots while meadows grew into pastures. Down the shore road she went, Cook Inlet aglitter on her right and snowpeaks rising sheer behind, aspen and birch still yellow amidst the darkling spruce on her left, more mountains beyond them, smoke blowing ragged from the chimneys of stoutly timbered houses, sometimes an eagle at hover with its wings golden against sky and clouds, and past this the ramparts of the peninsula itself, staving off the bleakness of the sea – this and more she saw, when rain was not falling. Rain fell most of the time, but sheignored it too; else she would never have gotten far.
    Now she could spend her nights beneath roofs, among friends. Dwellers were not so many but that everybody knew almost everybody else. Folk were eager to have company. In Ronica’s case, the older sons of a household were especially happy.
    At twenty-two years of age, she was tall, long-limbed, broad in shoulders and hips, full-bosomed; her face was wide, with green eyes under level dark brows, blunt nose, strong mouth and chin, fair and slightly freckled complexion; wavy amber-colored hair, contained by a beaded headband, fell to the base of her neck. Not that she was anything exotic. Her woolen shirt, trousers, and hat were battered and travel-stained, and scarcely more was in her backpack than a change of clothes and boots, a couple of utensils, and her prospecting gear. In these parts she had discarded her rabbit stick and fire drill, which she could make anytime.
    Regardless, she was handsome, and lately come back from her studies in Vittohrya,
the
city. Young men speculated about her morals, were disappointed, and settled down with their kin to hear whatever she chose to tell of her experiences outside these horizons. She gave them gossip, generally amusing, from the South, and they were content. Of her present expedition, begun shortly after she returned home, she said nothing specific, and nobody inquired. For nearly two decades, Wolf