The Metal Maiden Collection

  What could he say to her? Shep looked instead at the ewe. “Are you really as dull as you look, Lamb-chop?”

  She ignored him, chewing her cud.

  Brett returned with backpack and staff. Shep donned the one and took the other in his hand. It was a solid pole about six feet long, with holes carved in the side. “Just call me Shepherd,” he said wryly. “Literally.”

  “Farewell, Shep,” Brett said. “It is a necessary thing you do.”

  “I hope so.” Shep looked at the ewe. “Lead on, McDuff.”

  To his surprise the ewe started walking. Bemused, he followed. Other villagers gazed at them from their yards, seeming interested but not completely surprised. They had evidently seen this before, and might not realize that he was not Brian. But apart from the massive inconvenience, it was curious: why should the sheep choose an alien visitor? Did they really know, or was it sheer mischance?

  Shep shook his head. He did not believe in weird coincidence. There had to be a reason. He just hoped it made sense in human terms.

  The ewe led him out of the village and into a nearby meadow. There were five other ewes grazing placidly. His ewe joined them, but another stepped forward, glancing at Shep. Then she walked away. When he did not follow, she paused and bleated authoritatively.

  “So I am to follow you now, while the other catches up on her grazing?” Shep sighed. “Okay, wool-mind.” He followed her.

  She led him into the forest. The trail was rough, and now he had use for his staff, bracing himself, pushing aside brush. It was light and well balanced, weighted at the ends; it was surely effective for self defense too. His muscles handled it almost effortlessly, being attuned. Yes, his host was an experienced hiker.

  Soon they pushed through a thicket of yellow saplings. There in a glade was days-old carrion, the rotting body of some animal. Several vultures were picking at it. They were surely aware of the intruders, but not alarmed, which was odd.

  The ewe went to one particular vulture and bleated once to get its attention. The vulture looked at her and seemed to sigh, as if saying Oh, no! Not this. Shep had a notion how that was.

  The vulture spread its wings as if to take off and fly away. But the ewe bleated again, imperatively, and the other vultures took note. They faced the selected one as if about to attack it. Shep could almost hear their silent dialogue: You have been summoned. You must go. Just as the Petersons had told Shep.

  The one vulture capitulated. It walked to the ewe, then jumped, half spreading its wings, and landed on her back. It was not an attack, and no knife flashed. She turned and walked back the way they had come, carrying the big bird.

  Shep realized that this was another protocol. By allowing the sheep to carry it, the vulture was acknowledging her dominance. Hereafter it might fly, but not to flee the responsibility it had taken on. But why did the sheep need a carrion eater? This continued weird.

  They returned to the small flock. Then a third ewe—though he could not be quite certain, as they all looked alike to him—came out of the group, while the second one resumed grazing. The vulture flew to a nearby tree and perched on a branch, evidently for a snooze.

  Shep followed the third ewe in a new direction. She found a rocky ravine and made her way down into it with sure hooves. Shep started to follow, but she glanced at him and bleated once. This was plainly a negation. So he sat down and waited, his staff across his knees, and looked around. The base of the cleft was dry, a mass of rocks and boulders with little vegetation; in a storm there would be a rushing torrent of water here.

  The ewe reached the bottom of the gulch and bleated again, commandingly. And to Shep’s amazement a huge snake emerged from a crevice between stones masking a hole in the ground. It was a python, maybe fifteen feet long, probably weighing more than Shep did, with a patterned hide. It did not attack the sheep; instead it glanced at her, then turned to slither away. It seemed that sheep were not its prey. No surprise there.

  She bleated a third time. Shep could feel the voice of command. She was ordering the python to attend. And, reluctantly, it did. It slithered to her, lifted its head to hers, and froze in place. Some serpents were reputed to have a deadly stare, but the sheep was evidently immune. The python was first to break the gaze. Then the ewe turned and climbed up out of the gulch, and the snake followed. Here was another recruit to the mission, amazingly. How many more would there be?

  They returned to the herd. The others were still grazing, unalarmed by the python. The vulture still snoozed in the tree. It was a peaceful scene.

  A fourth ewe emerged from the pack, heading in a new direction. Shep, having learned the way of it, followed her. For some reason he was expected to attend the recruitments, maybe because he was the designated shepherd. She took him some distance along a trail only she could fathom, over a hill, through a neck of the woods, and to a small village of thatched cottages. Shep saw that these were elves, smaller than people but human in form, going about their business. They looked at the visitors but made no move either to greet or challenge them. It seemed that the sheep went where they would without hindrance.

  The ewe stopped beside one cloaked female elf child playing with a collection of beads on strings. Her dark hair was bound back in a careless bun, and her small hands were nimble as they moved the beads. Shep realized with a start that she had a crude abacus, so must have been calculating something.

  The elf looked at the ewe, who had plainly come for her. “Oh, piss!” she swore, evidently no more pleased to be chosen than any of the others were.

  What a menagerie!

  Chapter 2:

  Elf

  The elf child bid parting to her family, fetched a pack similar to Shep’s and joined them. She was a couple of inches below five feet tall, and seemed thin under her voluminous cloak. Would he have to be taking care of her?

  The ewe walked on out of the village, and the man and elf followed. What else could they do?

  “This is an outrage,” the elf muttered. “I have no interest in guiding these animals to their rutting place.”

  So she knew some of the adult facts of life. “It’s not exactly my choice either,” Shep said. “But it seems we are obliged.”

  She flashed him a withering look. “And even less interest in ruining my life by taking up with a town lout and herding sheep.”

  Lout? She evidently took him for the native man, understandably. “With whom do I have the dubious honor of associating?” he inquired with sarcastic flair.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m stuck for it regardless.”

  This was one rebellious child! “It matters to me. We’re both stuck with this crazy mission, and will have to call each other something if there is not to be confusion.”

  “Call me anything you like, yokel,” she snapped. “We don’t use names in the manner you do.”

  It was a kind of challenge. So he rose to it. “Then I will call you Elen, spelled E L E N. It’s Welsh, I believe. Elen Elf, for the alliteration. Meanwhile you may call me Shep.”

  “Maybe I’ll just call you Hick.”

  “You are not exactly the friendliest child,” he said, letting his irritation show.

  She took brief stock, as if he had said something significant. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here, oaf?” she demanded.

  “Very little,” he admitted. “I arrived on this planet only an hour ago.”

  Now she looked at him with real interest. “You’re not a local lout?”

  “I am not. I am an exchange student from Earth, here for a semester in a local host body to study the planetary culture. This sheep business is a nuisance.”

  “Earth? You have an Earth education?”

  “I do, for what little it’s worth here in the hinterland.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Why should I? What does it matter to you?”

  “It matters. Let me ask you three questions.”

  “Ask, child,” he said, resigned.

  “What is
a googolplex?”

  He was surprised, but answered. “It is ten to the googol power. A googol is ten to the one hundred power. That is, the number one with a hundred zeroes following it. So a googolplex is written as ten to the tenth power, to the hundredth power, a double exponent. It is a very large number.” He suspected that this was a good deal more detail than she could comprehend, which was why he offered it. It was a brushback pitch.

  “What is the cube root of minus one?”

  Or did she actually have an interest in math? The abacus suggested that. “Minus one. That number squared would be a plus one, but cubed becomes minus one again. The square root of minus one, in contrast, is indeterminate.” Now he was curious whether she would understand.

  “What is a logarithm?”

  Shep had to pause, remembering that one from his historical math class. “It is an old system once used to facilitate calculations. It is an exponent, usually to the base ten, but not always; some are to the base e, or another number. There are printed logarithm tables. You use them by obtaining the logs of two numbers, adding them together, then translating the result back to a real number, which will be the product of the original two numbers. You can accurately multiply any numbers that way. But like the slide rule, this system has fallen out of use, because calculators and computers do it so much more readily.”

  “Oh, piss! You are from Earth.”

  He eyed her skeptically. “You do understand what I told you?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m a math major. I was testing you, thinking you’d flounder. Instead you gave informed answers no local lout would know. Now I have to apologize.”

  A math major! At her age? He had assumed that education was primitive, on a primitive planet. That was not necessarily the case. But she could be bluffing him with set childish riddles she thought had no answers. “No need, Elen. I feel exactly as you do about this mission. I have better things to do than herd sheep or take care of an ignorant child.” He was needling her, but she had started it. “So let’s just try to get along when we can’t ignore each other.”

  She gazed at him with disconcerting appraisal. “I called you names. You refuted me. Now I’ll refute you, and we can call it even without apologies.”

  Was she ready to become halfway sociable? That would help. “Agreed.”

  “You call me child. Look at me.” She opened her cloak and revealed her body beneath it. He gazed at her, amazed. She was a fully mature human female, small but obviously of age. In fact she was just about the most shapely woman he had seen, with well formed breasts and an hourglass torso. “I am twenty years old, or nineteen in Earth years. I am no child.”

  “I stand refuted,” he said. “I was guilty of judging by superficial appearance, just as you were. I do apologize.”

  “We agreed no apologies!” she said, closing the cloak.

  “None required. I do this without coercion, being governed by my standard rather than yours. You have no need to reciprocate.”

  For the first time, she smiled. Her face was lovely too. “I think I like your standard. I will apologize by kissing you once.”

  “No need,” Shep repeated, embarrassed. He was still getting used to the idea of her being woman rather than child.

  “My standard rather than yours,” she said. “Get down here.”

  Bemused, he leaned down toward her. She caught his head in her hands, oriented it just so, and kissed him. The impact was immediate and powerful; he felt as if he were floating despite his hunched position. She was no amateur kisser.

  A moment or an eon later he found himself standing facing the sheep, Elen beside him. They must have completed the return trip during his daze. “Perhaps you should introduce me to the other members of the flock, Shep,” Elen suggested.

  Oh. “Six ewes. One vulture. One python.” They walked to the tree to meet the vulture, and found the python curled around the base of it. Neither evinced any concern for their proximity. “I suspect that none of them will harm any other member of the party. All were recruited the way you and I were.”

  “Of course. It is the way of the flock.” She lifted her hand for the vulture to inspect, then lowered it for the python to sniff, thus silently introducing herself to each. “I did not want to be a part of it, but now I am resigned.” She glanced sidelong at him. “Maybe even accepting.”

  “What now?” he asked. “Assuming the party is complete.”

  “It is. They don’t all resume grazing until things are in order.” She looked around. “I think we’ll have the night here, and start traveling in the morning. But that is for you to say.”

  “Me? I have no idea.”

  “You’re the shepherd, the one male in a female flock. They will mind you, to a degree.”

  “You know the gender of the vulture and python?”

  “Didn’t you see me meet them?”

  Evidently there was more going on than he had picked up on. What was the significance of being male in such company?

  “It’s a cultural thing,” she explained. “Every person, every creature has its position, but the leader must be male. I do not object to that.”

  “Even though I don’t know where to go?”

  “I know where. That is my position: guide.”

  “Ah. And Python is for protection that we might need even if the sheep don’t. And Vulture is for observation, in case there is something ahead we need to know about, like an erupting volcano.”

  “Yes. The sheep make sure to cover the party’s needs. Now they are filling up for what may be a grueling excursion.”

  “So we better start tomorrow morning.” Shep looked around. “Where do human folk sleep?”

  “On the ground beside the flock. There’ll be a sleeping bag in your pack. I have one too.”

  “But what of predators in the night?”

  “There will be no predators. Python will be on guard. And of course the sheep. Have you seen them in defensive action?”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. They have bone knives. Next question: what of human type food?”

  “Packs,” she repeated. She took hers off, opened it, and brought out a sandwich.

  Shep checked his own, and found a similar sandwich. The parents had known exactly what to pack. They dug out the sleeping bags, which were amazingly compact balls that opened out and puffed up into full size, set them on the ground, sat on them, and at their sandwiches.

  “Suddenly I am very glad to have you here, Elen,” Shep said.

  “Because I showed you my body?”

  He had to laugh, embarrassed. “That too, maybe. Or that potent kiss. But if you know the ways of the planet, and the ways of the flock, that will really compensate for my ignorance.”

  “Yes, that is part of my role as guide. Now I understand that aspect.”

  “Then maybe you can clarify something else for me. I understand why you didn’t want to be co-opted into this sheep mission. But I had the impression that you also had a personal animus toward me, for no apparent cause, that now is gone. In fact you have become more than friendly. Is there a reason?”

  “Yes. It is that traditionally when a man and a woman are selected for sheep duty, their lives are changed. Often they marry. I did not want to have my aspirations thwarted in this manner. I long to visit Earth and obtain an education in higher math. I thought this was being dashed.”

  Shep was for the moment speechless. He had had no thought of marrying an elf, or any colonist, quite apart from the impracticability of it when any physical visit here was essentially impossible. The spaceship voyage to Colony Jones was twenty years one way. “Oh, Elen, I’m sorry! I didn’t know.”

  She put her hand on his. “I know you didn’t. You thought I was nine years old.”

  “I did,” he admitted.

  “And I thought you were a horny village lout.”

  “We were similarly guilty,” he agreed. “But at least now we know better.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

 
“When the sheep choose, much follows. We may indeed marry.”

  “Elen, there’s no way! I don’t mean to insult you, as I’m sure you are well worth any man’s interest, but you have to know that that kind of relationship is out of the question.”

  “Is it?”

  “Is this rhetorical? I now know you are not stupid or ignorant. What am I missing?”

  She shrugged. “Let it be.”

  Nonplussed, he dropped the subject. But it bothered him. Why would she ask such a question, if she lacked an answer? He and she lived on different worlds, literally; this encounter in a different body was the only way they could interact. He could not overstay his semester; the mind transfer was not permanent, and would slowly dissolve.

  Unless she was thinking short-range. A six months marriage, more mental than physical? That was impractical.

  They went to separate bushes for natural functions; Shep was glad to confirm that Earth privacy custom prevailed in this respect. Then they settled down for the night in their sleeping bags. There was really nothing to do here and now but sleep.

  Shep saw a motion. Python was slithering toward them. That made him nervous. Would the truce of the sheep hold?

  Elen reached out and took his hand. “Trust the sheep,” she murmured.

  That actually reassured him. She trusted the sheep, and he was coming to trust her.

  Python paused to inspect them, then actually slithered across their linked hands and moved on. It was almost like a benediction of their union.

  There it was again. There was something he was not getting. Was Elen angling for an affair? Why would she bother? Sure he would like to have sex with her; any man would. But she could hardly desire sex with the body of a “lout,” or with the physically anonymous man who inhabited this body. She had spoken of marriage, not sex. And that was impossible.

  He expected Elen to let go of his hand after the serpent passed, but she didn’t. She was not being seductive or possessive, merely reassuring. But could that be the whole of it? What was on her mind?

  Troubled, he slept, still holding her tiny hand.