Gweanvin sat up groggily on the spot she had bounced to, ten feet from where Marvis was stretched out. Where was the pistol? Oh, there it was, beyond Marvis. She leaped across the woman and grabbed it just as Marvis began to stir.
Gweanvin tucked the pistol in her belt and watched the Lontastan warily. How knocked out was she? Badly hurt or playing possum?
Although she had no intention of aiding her traumatized enemy, Gweanvin exteriorized and moved into the woman to check on her injuries. That was something an ego-field could do far better than physical hands, because the care of bodies was a prime ego-field skill, and . . .
Stunned, Gweanvin withdrew and stood staring at the older woman.
Marvis was not badly mangled. A couple of broken ribs, a little internal bleeding, and an arrow through the left shoulder. Nothing her life-support maintenance system could not mend in a few hours, once that arrow was out of the way. After a moment, Gweanvin stepped forward and gently pulled the arrow free.
Oh, yes. Marvis would be fine. And so would her baby.
Pregnant!
By about two weeks, as near as Gweanvin could guess.
Oh, my, what a fine country bumpkin Holm Ocanon had turned out to be!
"Marvis," she said.
The woman roused slightly. "Uh-huh."
"You'll be okay in a little while. I removed the arrow. I'd better run along now."
Marvis managed to open her eyes and stare questioningly up at her. "Where are you going?"
"To the Commonality, naturally. I have a report to make, in case you've forgotten."
"Uh. See you again?"
"Not if I can help it. So long."
Gweanvin lifted off. She decided not to bother retrieving the bow she had left back by the rill-cliff. But before warping out of the Arbora system, she paused in thought. Despite what the pregnancy of Marvis told her, the point remained that she had promised to return in about three years . . .
She tongued her toothmike to nonspecific frequency and called, "Holm Ocanon?"
Silence.
"Speak up, Holm," she snapped. "I've caught on."
"Hi, Gweanny," his voice sounded in her left ear. "I'm sorry."
"I'll just bet you are!" she scolded, narrowing down to his comm frequency. "Quite a set-up you arranged for yourself. Not that I really blame you of course. Males of our species probably have polygamous instincts, just like homo sap, I suppose. Too bad for you your scheme didn't work. Wow, how you had it made!"
"Uh . . . how's Marvis?"
"Oh, don't fret! She's out cold at the moment, but she'll come limping back in a few hours."
"Does she know as much as you do?"
"Not from anything I said. But you won't gain anything from your masquerade now, Holm, so why not be honest with her?"
"Maybe I should," he replied glumly. "How did you catch on?"
"From her being pregnant. How stupid I was, admiring your woodsmanship! Wild chicken nests, indeed! What farmer did you buy those eggs from, Holm? Did you pick up that bow at a sporting-goods shop in Lopat, or did you have to hop on semi-inert to a bigger town to find it? Maybe a town halfway around the planet from where I was stuck, but close to the nest you shared with Marvis? Did you have to go all the way to Bernswa to pick up that recharger? Damn! No wonder that map you drew had me mired in bogs and scratched in briar thickets! The least you could have done was to survey it at a lower altitude!"
"Gweanny, I set things up like this because I'd given it years of thought, along with a lot of patient waiting for the right opportunity. Try to understand, won't you?" he urged. "We're a new species, too new to know what we really are, or even have a name for ourselves. We and our children should develop as much as possible on our own, not as members of the econo-war society of humanity. We should find our own paths and goals, Gweanny, as we can on a world like Arbora. Don't you see the reasonableness of that?"
"I decided earlier today not to be reasonable," she replied. "In any event, I don't see the reasonableness of starting our species off with personal relationships based on deception. Damn it, Holm, I wouldn't treat anybody but a Lontastan in the tricky, scheming way you've handled Marvis and me! I wouldn't . . ."
She paused as another light dawned on her. "But of course, you'd be good at things like that, as a former frontliner! Were you Primgran or Lontastan?"
"Primgran," he grunted.
"I'll be interested in looking up your personnel file, when I get home," she mused. "I want to see how you doctored your genetic chart to conceal yourself. And how you managed to keep tabs on Marvis and me, without us ever dreaming you existed! Very cleverly, I'm sure. You had to be bright indeed to anticipate by several hours that she and I might come to Arbora, so you could be on hand to welcome us separately. Well, so long, Holm. Fess up to Marvis, and have plenty of kids."
"You'll be back, Gweanny," he told her.
"Don't count on it."
"It pleases you now to be unreasonable, but in the long run you won't be unrealistic." He chuckled. "And the reality is that I'm the only available male."
"Don't count on that, either. You concealed yourself. Maybe another is somewhere around, doing the same. Not likely, maybe, but even so I'd prefer to spend my whole life waiting for him rather than be your second-stringer."
"I don't understand you," he complained.
"My unreasonableness. If you understood that, you would have anticipated my unreasonable decision to decoy Marvis away from Arbora when I left. If I hadn't tried that, I wouldn't have gotten wise to you."
"Well," he said confidently, "jealousy on your part was hardly expected. And, of course, feeling that way, you'll surely return."
"Meaning I love you?" she sneered. "Hah! If I did, do you think I'd fret over competition from Marvis? I'd just blow a hole through her! I was trying to prevent a competition I didn't care about enough to win! Love you? Hell, Holm, I don't even like you!"
With that she warped for home. She had meant what she said, but, golly, how she was going to need a male when she reached Marvis' age!
Hours later, and far from Arbora, a voice piped in her left ear: "Nice going, Gweanvin Oster."
"Huh? Who's that?"
No response.
Who could it have been? It had sounded like the voice of a boy, perhaps twelve years old. But what would a kid be doing way out here, and how could he have known of her?
She guessed the answers, of course, long before she knew them for sure nearly a decade later. By then the boyish voice had deepened and matured.
Gweanvin never returned to Arbora. Her children did.