Star Hunters by Jo Clayton

them to wear out?”
    Aleytys shivered. She stroked her temples and grimaced when she felt no response. “I’ve read the Chwereva reports. Plotting the direction of the walks told you nothing. And the explorations you Rangers made have turned up no other form of intelligence.” She paused, then grinned. “Except a children’s tale of a wise old tree. No truth in that, I suppose.”
    â€œWe looked and found no tree.”
    His serious answer surprised a laugh out of her. “You’re certainly thorough.” She sobered. “Is there anything else? Anything you can tell me that wasn’t in the reports, or you haven’t had time to report yet? Feelings? Little things apparently insignificant? Wild guesses?”
    She could feel him prodding at his memories, could feel a growing impatience and a growing sense of frustration. “Nothing,” he said slowly. Then he lifted his head. “Except … coming back across the Jinolimas from the mapping swing this time, I saw hares coming down from the mountains.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œThere were no hares in the mountains before.”
    â€œAh!” She felt a glow of excitement. “Any other Rangers come in recently? Have they too seen hares where no hares should be?”
    He was on his feet and for a moment he stood over her, forgetting his dislike of her. “The first walk,” he said. “It was there, by the Chumquivir. And it was by the Chumquivir I saw them four days ago. And I never thought of that. I never thought of that.” He stretched his arms toward the empty sky, toward the jewel band of the moonring. “Ahhh! Meme Kalamah be blessed, it’s a chance. A chance!” He ran to the door, turned there. “I have to go, Hunter. Thanks.” He plunged through the drapes. A moment later she heard the outer door of the apartment slam shut.

Chapter V
    The hares moved slowly over the plain, a great white flood eating anything their teeth could tear out of the red earth. They swarmed over planted fields, stripping the plants from the earth, digging out even the roots. They tore at the juapepo, ignoring the blasts of pain and fear that ordinarily drove off attackers. They flowed along, leaving desert behind, eating, eating, eating, day and night, never stopping, swarming over the empty Holdings, leaving only the poison-thorned emwilea, turning the fragile valley from dry land to desert, on and on, endlessly, mindlessly moving north, flowing toward Kiwanji.
    In the Fa shrine, high above the valley floor, the Fa-men gathered and beat their drums and looked down at the creeping hoard with fear and a queasy satisfaction. For them Fa was purifying the land, purging from the Sawasawa the weak-willed and the evil, leaving the strong survivors to throw aside the last remnants of corrupting technology. When the great haremarch was done, they would start the Vodufa again, living by the work of their hands, working with stone and iron and bronze. The Fa-men watched and saw themselves as the inheritors of the people, the blessed of Fa, the pure ones divinely destined to mould the remnant into a great people. And in the meantime, the Kichwash of the Fa-bands maneuvered subtly for higher places in the pecking order.
    On the plain the two wings of the hare herd creeping down both sides of the river began to curve around to circle Kiwanji, visible in blue distance a day or two away.
    Aleytys sat still for some time after Manoreh had charged off. The breeze was cool and the sharp green smells of the garden pleasant. She was very tired. The trip out had been difficult. Grey had been distantly friendly, a colleague not a lover. As if he’d never been a lover. She found it harder to flush out of her memory the good times and the bad. Especially the bad times. The quarrels and his demands on her, demands she could not really understand or respond to, that she was unwilling even to try to respond to. Sitting in