Read Online The Avatar by Poul Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

to stay wary, rather than cast her down and him above.
    The same effort shuddered in her, stronger than his. She pulled free, wrenched herself around, and said waveringly to the gaping farmer: “Elias, dear, it’s a grand surprise I’ve had. Here is my own fiance, Daniel Smith. We’d looked not to meet before the festival; he’s been upon the road. But since the gods are so kind—Can you pardon me at all, at all? I’ll be back, the Powers willing, and then I’ll sing for you.”
    He and he shook hands and uttered clumsy politeness. Caitlín snatched up her instrument and tugged on Brodersen’s sleeve. He and she scrambled into the car. It leaped onward. Daukantas stood for a long while staring the way it had gone, before he raised his horn and summoned the cattle.

    A moon and a half shining. Phoebus not far out of sight, the sky was violet more than black and showed few stars. Of the constellations, only Medea and Ariadne appeared complete. Aphrodite and Zeus., sister planets, stood candle-bright. Three small clouds glowed. Silver washed across treetops and splashed on the ground beneath, which lay in a translucent dusk. Through a break in the forest shimmered Mount Lorn. Torchflies flitted about like tiny lanterns. Choristers trilled in their tens of thousands, calling from among stalks and leaves for their mates; a starlark chanted; near the cave, a spring flowed forth in crystalline clinking.
    Caitlín had guided Brodersen here, down a game trail after he parked the car. He had brought outdoor kit of his own, including a fuel-cell heater which gave the shelter a welcome warmth. Sleeping bags on mollite pads made the floor comfortable. But they two did not sleep. After a while, amidst tender jesting, they cooked and ate dinner. When that was done, they did not sleep either.
    Toward dawn, she raised herself on an elbow, the better to regard him. The cave faced west, and Persephone’s beams were now streaming straight in, so eerily bright that against the whiteness of her he thought he could see how rosy were her nipples. He reached up to cup a heavy softness; it pressed itself around his hand as she leaned down to kiss him, a kiss which lingered.
    “My love, my darling, my life,” she nearly sang, “had I words to tell the wonder of you, humans would remember me when Sappho and Catullus lie forgotten. But not Brigit herself commands that magic.”
    “Oh, Christ, how I love you,” he said, hoarse from the power of it. “How long for us? Three years?”
    “A snippet more. I count months as well, from when first I knew what you were doing to my soul, till the chance came for me to be seizing you.”
    “And I thought it was only another romp. How fast you proved me wrong! You, not just a delicious body and hell on wheels in bed, but everything that’s
you.”
    “Were it not trouble that brought you on my trail, I would be in isotopically pure bliss, Dan, my Dan. And as is, I praise your enemies for that much while scheming how to cut the guts out of them. I’d no idea I’d see you before fall.”
    “If you stayed in Eopolis—”
    The lustrous locks moved, shadowing her features, as sheshook her head. “No.” She became altogether serious. “Haven’t we worn this question bare yet? It would not be fair to Lis. Or you. You love her too, as well you should. I do myself, and would never cause her more sorrow than I must, and hope the friendship she gives me is not from duty alone—for sure it is she knows what’s between us, though she’s never spoken aloud of it to me.”
    Caitlín sat straight, hugging her knees, looking over him to the argent wilderness. “Also, because I lack her gift for figures and organization, I couldn’t share in the adventure of your enterprises,” she said. “I’ll not be a parasite. And a steady, safe job in a single place would soon have me daft. A bird of passage have I been since the hour I was born.”
    Mirth crowed from her: “Och, I’m moonstruck! How would a