Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read Free

the entire perimeter of Christmas Landing. But this rover and the area in between is not. You probably won’t see anything, but just in case you do, be aware that the illusion is not real. Most of the Rollies can’t project farther than three or four feet, but a few can. The talented ones, if you call that talent.” She had snorted derisively and made a gesture considered filthy in Portolondon. That, plus the dismissive “Rollies,” made him dislike her. However, he kept an open mind. For one thing, the outlying settlements had been losing their children to the natives for nearly twenty years, and anger was to be expected. For another, he was paid to keep an open mind.
    So he said mildly, “What might I see?”
    She scowled. “I thought they briefed you.”
    “They did. I’d like to hear it from your perspective.”
    “My perspective is that the Rollies are kidnappers who used brain-washing to steal away our kids, less than half of which have been recovered. Your perspective is to straighten out the ones who have.” She jerked the rover into motion.
    Definitely dislikeable—and to call the aliens “brain-washers” was to call a tsunami a “beach wave.” Luke had turned his attention to the countryside, in case he might “see something.” He had not, except for the wild beauty of the largely unexplored and completely untamed northern wilderness. Such an alien wilderness, bright with strange summer colors, even though Luke Silverstein had been born in Portolondon, in the second generation of settlers on Roland. But Portolondon was far from any native sentience. Not even Christmas Landing had believed there was any native sentience on Roland, until recently. All the stories from outwayers had been dismissed as folk tales, superstitions, fanciful embroideries by humans living too much in isolation on their remote farms and ranches and trapping posts.
    Nor had Luke “seen anything” in the month since. The elusive natives with their peculiar talent came nowhere near Christmas Landing. Meanwhile, the recovery teams had gone out twice and brought back six children, all under two years old. These six, like the others recovered so far, had gone back to the outwayer farms from which they’d been stolen. Luke had started therapy with the four older ones who had not gone home. And also with Anne, who was Police Chief’s Halford’s unlikely daughter.
    Mistherd, Fire-Born, Cloud, Shadow-of-a-Dream. Or: Terry Barkley, Hal DiSilvio, Laura Simmons, Carolyn Grunewald. Terry had completely renounced his other name, a renunciation that was part of the extreme bitterness the police chief considered normal and Luke considered problematic. Hal, an exuberant eight-year-old orphan with astonishing adaptive capacity, was adjusting well to human life. Laura, eleven, said little and cried at night, although not for the parents whom she didn’t remember and who were too afraid to reclaim her. But she, too, was coming along, having attached herself to a kindly refectory cook who was teaching her to bake. It was Carolyn—Shadow-of-a-Dream—who genuinely worried Luke.
    She stood now, lovely in her nakedness that was both more innocent and more sensual than merely an unclothed human body. Every taut muscle strained toward the approaching figure. Every muscle—and what else? The shield deflected electromagnetic radiation, including brain waves, but Luke was not convinced that humans knew as much about their own brains as researchers claimed. Who, for instance, had known that what the aliens had done was even possible?
    The figure stopped. Through the shimmer of the shield Luke saw an upright, vaguely reptilian creature: lean, scaly, long-tailed, big-beaked, with two small forearms and two heavy hind legs meant for speed. Behind the beak, its face was flat, with two eyes at the front and a third on the top of its head. Once there were aerial predators on Roland , he thought, inanely. In a curious way, the ugliness of the native