The Metal Maiden Collection

  “Yes, not far ahead, a meadow with decent grazing for the sheep.”

  “What about Vulture and Python?”

  “Python will not need to eat during the journey. Vulture can last another day.”

  “And us?” He put on his boots, which were now cool.

  “There’s a pear-apple tree there too that will do for us, as well as providing a roost for Vulture.”

  “Good enough. Let’s go there now.” Shep blew a note on the mirliton.

  Elen walked, and the sheep followed. Python paced them, while Vulture flew ahead. Soon they came to the meadow. The sheep immediately started grazing.

  Elen picked several of the fruits, which did indeed seem to be a cross between a pear and an apple. The two of them settled down by the trunk and ate. Vulture did find a suitable perch, and Python circled the trunk in the manner she liked.

  “One thing I should say,” Elen said. “A real oaf would have grabbed.”

  Was she about to explain her attitude? “How would you have reacted?”

  She twitched her hand and a knife appeared in it. “Like the sheep.”

  “You were testing me?”

  The knife disappeared. “Not really. Merely verifying.”

  “You have succeeded in making me desire you, but I will never try to force anything of that nature on you. It’s another cultural thing.”

  “I like your culture.”

  “I don’t properly understand yours. I don’t know what you want of me.”

  “That is not feasible to tell yet.”

  So it seemed. “The pond is safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am grimy from that sand crossing. I need to strip and wash up. Then I will turn in for the night.”

  “I will join you.”

  He had been trying to give her a chance to absent herself. “As you wish.”

  He walked to the pond, set down his knapsack, stripped, and waded in. Elen matched him, as lovely in her nudity as in her cloak. Soon they were splashing water on each other’s backs. He did not suffer any masculine reaction, fortunately. He had heard that it did not occur in nudist camps, and maybe this was similar.

  In due course they spread their sleeping bags and settled down under the tree for the night. Elen reached out to take his hand. It seemed this was just one of her ways, and not to be taken as anything more.

  “You hardly even looked,” Elen said petulantly.

  Shep had to laugh. “Did that score me a point?”

  “No. You were avoiding the issue.”

  He refrained from asking what issue, knowing her response would be as cryptic as ever. “You said you wanted me to tell you about Earth.”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Any particular aspect?”

  “Begin with your body there, and spread out to your home and village.”

  So she wanted the homey personal details, rather than global politics. That was easy. Shep began talking about the routine of his life at home. Elen listened raptly.

  This time the sheep did not come in to protect them, and there were no odd dreams. It was a peaceful, normal night. Shep was satisfied with that.

  Chapter 4:

  Trust

  In the morning they resumed the trek. This section was nice, with easy slopes, no apparent threats, and moderate weather. “It gets more difficult,” Elen said cheerfully. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”

  “More difficult? We barely made it through some sections yesterday!”

  “We’ll make it. Trust the sheep.”

  “I am much impressed with the sheep. But less impressed with myself. I fear their trust in me is misplaced. The local yokel would have done better.”

  “Not with me.”

  “I mean, leading the sheep.”

  “Shep, face it: the sheep are precognitive. They know what works. There’s a reason they chose you.”

  “Precognition is fantasy,” he said, troubled. “Because if the future is known, people will try to change it, which invalidates it. The mere knowledge of the future would affect the present, modifying it. So it can’t logically work.”

  “Unless only the sheep know it, and they don’t reveal it.”

  “If they are using it to change their own future, it’s a dangerous illusion. This journey could be a death trap.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Shep did not need his staff to support him in this pleasant section, so he inspected it more closely. He saw that there were several holes in addition to the one he blew into to make the mirliton sound. One was a whistle type aperture; when he blew into it he got a flutelike note. Another had an embedded reed; that made a hornlike note. There were a number of smaller holes that could be covered with the fingers. “This may be quite a musical instrument.”

  “It is,” Elen agreed.

  “I may have underestimated Brian Peterson, my host. He evidently knows more about music than I do. He’s on Earth now, surely studying music.”

  “That is a worthy study.” She was no longer condemning the lout.

  Shep set his hands and played the monstrous flute. A rich series of sounds emerged. He was far from a musician, but he did know how to play a normal flute, having been subjected to training as a child. Once he got the fingering right, he settled on a favorite melody and played it as he walked.

  “That’s lovely,” Elen said. “What is it?”

  “A song from my childhood, titled ‘He Who Is Noble.’ The idea is that the truly noble man needs not a weapon, needs no man to guard him, because virtue defends him. It’s nonsense on today’s Earth, but I always loved the sentiment.”

  “So do I.” She began to hum along with him. She had a fine clear voice and good pitch. “And it’s not nonsense, any more than precognition is. Maybe you just don’t have many truly noble men on Earth.”

  “That’s for sure! We have greed-heads and power-corrupts and crooked politicians galore. I don’t know much of Colony Jones culture, but I suspect it is cleaner than Earth’s.”

  “Maybe so,” she agreed. “Yet Earth has the knowledge, the universities, and the power to accomplish things. I want to visit Earth for its knowledge, though not to stay.”

  “That would be possible via their student exchange program. That’s what brought me here.”

  “But a person needs an authority to speak for her. I don’t have one.”

  “Exchange spots are limited. My family has a connection, so I got one. It wasn’t merit, unfortunately.”

  “You’re not one of the nobles?”

  “Not a noble man in the manner of the song,” he agreed. “Just a lucky one.”

  “Yet the sheep chose you.”

  “Maybe they know something we do not,” he said.

  “They do.”

  “That was wry humor.”

  “They do know, regardless.”

  He let it drop. He liked her faith, but did not share it.

  Vulture became agitated, pausing before what appeared to be a low-lying fog bank in a small valley. Elen sniffed. “There’s carrion there, but it’s not safe to enter.”

  “How about Python?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sheep, can you tell whether Python could go in there?” Shep thought she was half joking.

  A sheep bleated affirmatively.

  Python slithered into the fog and disappeared. Shortly later she reappeared with a decaying body in her jaws. She dropped it down before Vulture and moved away. Vulture happily started picking at it.

  “They have become friends,” Elen said. “They do each other favors.”

  “We’ll move on,” Shep said distastefully. “You catch up with us later, okay, Vulture?” Then the rest of the party resumed walking.

  And hour later, Vulture did catch up with them. All was well.

  They descended into a shallow valley with a rocky floor and scattered patches of sand, but very little vegetation. Hot air shimmered above it. Beyond it Shep could see the gentle green slope of a verdant meadow, surely i
deal for grazing and rest. “If we move on immediately, we can reach the nice region before the heat of midday,” Shep said. “So we won’t have to burn our feet again.”

  But the sheep milled about uncertainly. “Something’s bothering them,” Elen said. “We’d better wait.”

  “They’re hungry. We’ve been traveling instead of grazing. But in half an hour we can be in plush turf.”

  “They don’t want to cross yet. There must be a reason.”

  “If we wait, it will soon be too hot to cross, and we’ll have to wait until evening. If this is like the sand, that will be too late.”

  She considered. “What you say makes sense. But the sheep prefer to wait. I trust the sheep.”

  “Because of their precognition? I have told you what I think of that.”

  “You have,” she agreed. “But you have not spent your life on this planet, as I have, with the sheep and their legends. They must be respected.”

  “They asked me to be their shepherd. I am trying to do that. I can see what they don’t: that it is better to cross now, and be in some discomfort, then to wait and get hung up for a day and maybe go hungry when it isn’t necessary. We need to cross now.”

  “You will not be moved?”

  “Not by some nameless hesitancy. Why do they even need a shepherd, if not to get them past this sort of thing?”

  “Then we must settle this in the traditional way,” she said seriously. “Physical combat.”

  Shep stared at her. “What?”

  “You and I, naked. If you beat me, then your will prevails. Otherwise, we wait on the sheep.”

  “Elen, this is preposterous. I’m not in the business of fighting women, and even if I were, it would not be fair. You are only half my mass, and less of yours is muscle.”

  “Yes. I can not match you in physical strength. But I can do a holddown.”

  “A holddown,” he repeated. “You mean as in judo or wrestling, where one competitor takes his grip, and the other has a certain amount of time to break it?”

  “Yes. Except there’s no time limit.”

  “Elen, I could lift you over my head with one arm! How could you ever hold me down even thirty seconds, let alone indefinitely?

  “I can do it, with the right hold.”

  “Oh, a pain hold?”

  “Not exactly. I would not want to cause you pain.”

  Shep was becoming intrigued. “Okay. You take your hold, and I’ll see about breaking it. That will determine whose decision about the sheep governs.”

  “Exactly.” She removed her cloak.

  She had said naked. Shep removed his own clothing, then lay on the ground. The thought of wrestling nude with her caused a reaction, but that couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t as if she did not know her effect on a man.

  She got on him. Her bare breasts against his chest really made him react. Then she put a hand down and lifted her body slightly.

  “Hey!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking my hold.”

  “That’s not a hold. That’s sex!”

  “Not exactly.” She settled back down on him. His member was now inside her. She was small, but not where it counted. “Now you have to break free of me without leaving anything inside me. Only a clean break counts.”

  Anything inside her. Like semen. What a notion! But he could do it. All he had to do was withdraw. Lift her up off him.

  He put his hands on her hips and lifted. Immediately she did two things: clasped his shoulders tightly with her hands, and his member with her canal. She was anchored to him in three places.

  Still, his strength was vastly greater than hers. He lifted harder. She gripped him harder in all three places. Not only did the grip of her hands cause her breasts to press against him, her canal gripped him like a hand around a teat. His effort to escape was arousing him more than freeing him.

  He relaxed, and she did also. Then he made a sudden effort, but she clamped down instantly. That warm wet pressure brought him close to climax.

  He tried slow sustained pressure, lifting her up. She not only tightened around his member, she kneaded it. She could make it perform any time she chose. The only way to avoid that was to relax completely, not fighting her at all. And that was to lose the match.

  Now he saw the way of it. The more he struggled, the more he would be aroused, and the closer he would come to having an orgasm. Which would cost him the match. He was bound to lose. Better to do it gracefully.

  “I yield,” he said.

  She released him instantly, letting go and getting off him. She got back into her cloak, facing away so he could dress without further embarrassment. He was charged with desire, but had not wanted it to be abated in this particular manner. It would have been akin to rape, of him by her.

  “We will wait on the sheep,” he said.

  There was no reaction from any of the others. They merely waited.

  Twenty minutes later, about the time they would have been midway through the valley, there was a stirring in the air. Then it convulsed. A whirling cloud formed, sucking up sand and rocks, shaping them into a funnel of flying debris. It was a dust devil, expanding into a tornado, forming from the heat and sending it into the sky. Shep felt the formidable wind as the air was sucked in from the sides, feeding into the spinning maw.

  It would have been death to be there when it happened. The sheep had known. Maybe they had smelled the hot air and known from experience. Maybe they had precogged it. But they had known.

  “I think I am becoming a believer,” Shep said. “To trust the sheep.”

  Elen caught hold of him and kissed him. “I’m so glad you gave them a proper chance.” As if it had been purely his own decision.

  The tornado raged for several minutes, then evaporated as swiftly as it had come. Now the air was cooler.

  “I think we can cross!” Shep said, surprised. “The hot material was dissipated. We can walk there before the sun heats it up again.”

  “Good choice,” Elen said.

  Shep blew a note, and the sheep stepped smartly forward. Python slithered onto the rock, finding it bearable, and hurried ahead. Vulture flew. Shep and Elen walked.

  “My choice would have killed us all,” Shep said.

  “This is your choice,” Elen said. “You trusted the sheep.”

  “And you had nothing to do with it?”

  “Nothing important.”

  She was not teasing, rebuking, or embarrassing him about his awkward loss. She was pretending that he had trusted the sheep throughout. That there had been no contest, no holddown. “This is the way you want it?”

  “Of course. You’re the shepherd. I am only the guide.”

  Shep experienced burgeoning emotion, but kept it to himself. This was not the occasion for it.

  They reached the other side safely. Now the sheep spread out to graze, and the others located a fruit tree suitable for food and perching. “We’ll rest for an hour, here,” Shep said belatedly.

  When all parties were ready, they resumed their hike. The scene was deceptively pleasant. They were making good time.

  Shep had gained real respect for the sheep. They had known, whatever the mechanism. But also for Elen Elf, who had done what she had to do, in the manner she had to, and sought no credit for it.

  The easy landscape abruptly gave way to seriously difficult terrain. A mountain rose ahead of them with a bare tilted slope that disappeared into roiling clouds above and turbulent water below. “I hope you’re not going to say what I’m afraid you will say,” Shep said.

  “I’m saying it. Our way leads past this tilt, and there’s no feasible way around it. But the sheep can handle it.”

  Shep put a foot on the polished slope. The moment he put weight on it, his boot slid downward. “I can’t navigate this, and I doubt you others can.”

  “We can’t, but the sheep can. They will have to portage us across.”

  Shep inspected the situation more closely, and realize
d that the water below was not water, but boiling lava. This was volcanic terrain. Any creature who attempted to walk the obsidian slope would slide down into that inferno of doom.

  “Elen--” he said.

  “Trust the sheep.”

  She had trusted the sheep before, and they had saved them all from likely death. But that was one time. Could he afford to trust them? Yet what choice did he have? He saw no other way to cross.

  Elen looked at him with compassion. “If you would like to have me first. . .”

  So that if he died in boiling lava, at least he would have had some joy of sex? That actually was tempting. But it was an offering from something akin to pity. “No. I have not earned it.” He took an unsteady breath. “I will trust the sheep.”

  She smiled, and that almost made it worth it. “Three will carry Python. Two will carry you. One will carry me. Vulture will fly. It really isn’t far. Thereafter the way is easier.”

  “That’s good to know,” he said somewhat hollowly. “I’m terrified.” He hoped that admission did not turn her off.

  “I will go first,” she said. “You can follow.”

  “Yes.” It was about the only word he could squeeze out.

  One ewe stepped forward. Elen climbed onto her back, naked but for the pack, holding on to the fur of the animal’s neck, her knees clamping the sheep’s haunches. No bone knives were in evidence. The ewe stepped out onto the slope. Her hooves were sure and she walked without hesitation. The sheep could indeed handle the slope, even heavily loaded.

  Two more ewes stepped forth, standing nose to tail. It was Shep’s turn. He climbed on, gripping the wool of the first sheep’s shoulders, swinging his knee over the second sheep. Their backs were broad and stout; it was easier support than he had expected. When he was set, the two moved forward in lockstep, onto the slope.

  Shep closed his eyes, then forced himself to open them. He saw the descending obsidian surface, dropping toward the swirling lava. He felt waves of heat coming from the lava, and smelled its acrid fumes. He cringed. Then he nerved himself and looked forward, moving his head slowly so as not to unbalance the sheep. Elen was there, her shapely bare bottom above the sheep’s rear. What a sight, in what a situation! Then he slowly looked back. Python was there, stretching lengthwise across the last three sheep. Elen and Python had faith; Shep had mainly dread.