Earthfall Page 0,68

He wouldn't have been able to see anything, anyway. If a devil was very close, he was doomed whether he looked or not; and if the devils were farther off, stopping and looking for them through the impenetrable grass would merely have given them time to get closer.

How many stalks? One. Two. Three. Each one took its moment to break off, to lay down next to the first; how many moments did he have? Four. Five. How many stalks did he need? Six. Seven. Were they all ripe? Or would he be bringing home only immature ones, which would embarrass him? Eight. Nine.

Enough. Done. Fly.

Gathering the stalks in one foot, he squatted, then jumped upward with all his might. His wings could barely spread in the grass, so that he had to fling them out to full length after he rose above the stalk, and then it took all his strength to dig into the air and rise. For a terrifying moment he hovered at the level of the tops of the stalks, moving forward but not rising. Under him, he could see eyes-four, six, eight-flowing in the moonlight, leaping upward toward him as he passed. If they had been taller, or if pTo had been slower, he would now be lying amid the stalks as they tore his body to pieces and carried the bits of him down into their holes to share with their filthy dirt-eating mates.

But they were not taller, and pTo was not slower, and so he rose into the air and flapped his way toward the village of the Old Ones. He had to touch one of the buildings that was not made of wood. This was safer, though. None of the devils had moved into the village, and the Old One with the lamp would probably not see him. He would be on the roof, too, with nothing to hinder him from taking flight.

The roof gave way slightly under his weight. Since he could only hold his place with the foot that wasn't gripping the stalks of grain, he had to bend down and use his hands to feel the texture of it. Woven like a temporary nest, like a basket, only the weave was astonishingly tight and fine. Even water couldn't pass through a weave as dose as this. And what the fibers were made of he could not begin to guess. They had shone in the sunlight. Why would the Old Ones kill trees to build their houses, when they could weave a roof as fine and perfect as this one?

One last temptation, after the smooth house: He flew to the base of the tower and touched it. Not like the woven house at all. There was no give to it; it was like stone, except not as cold to the touch. When he struck it lightly with his knuckles, he could hear a faint ring to it, like several of the artifacts of the Old Ones in the village trove. This much, then, was still true of the Old Ones: They built music into the things they made.

He was startled by a noise-like a voice, only loud and deep. He was so frightened that he took flight without thinking. Only when he was airborne could he turn and overfly the place and see who had spoken. It was a voice. One of the Old Ones. A male. How had it come upon him so quietly? The Old Ones were noisy in everything they did, like deaf people. This one shouted like a deaf person, too, his voice so loud and booming. And yet he had been able to come upon pTo so quietly that-

So quietly that he obviously must not have "come upon" pTo at all. He must have been sitting there in the shadow of the tower. Sitting there all along. How much did he notice? Did he see the stalks of grain that pTo had stolen? Would he be angry now? Would this theft make the Old Ones enemies of the people?

For a moment pTo thought: I won't tell anyone that the Old One saw me.

But he discarded the idea at once. If we ever become friends with the Old Ones, they will remember the stalks that I stole from their meadow. I will bear the penalty for it then. But my people will already have known that my theft was noticed. They will know that I told them the truth about everything I did-even the mistake of being