Atlantis Endgame by Andre Norton, Sherwood Smith Page B

from the faint, acid-tangy breeze and the slowness of those clouds, it would not arrive until sundown.
    Ashe drew in a breath. He stepped aside from the street into an angle of the low wall that guarded the street from the sheer fall to the next level below. He leaned over, looking down, concealing his actions as he raised the glasses again, mostly covering them with his palm so it looked as if he were shading his eyes.
    "I should have expected that," he murmured. "Right out in sight. Of course. People will see what they expect to see."
    Silently he handed Linnea his glasses, and she copied his movement, covering them with her palm to shade her eyes as she scanned.
    The shoreline seemed curiously flattened, colors muted. But there, not far from their anchorage (was that chance?), where the road from the city to the harbor passed close to the shore, there stood a group of slender hairless humanoids, all dressed alike in rich, glimmering fabric that changed from blue to green to purple depending on how the wearer moved.
    The Kallistans walking past looked at them but did not linger or approach them. It was as though an invisible line were inscribed in the sand around them.
    "I wonder if they have the same effect going as at that apparently abandoned building?" said Linnea in a bare whisper. "But what are they doing?"
    For much of the time the Baldies did nothing, standing in silence, watching, as people streamed by. But occasionally, more often when the crowds moving between the city and the harbor were thickest, one of their number would step forward and stop a group of people. As they watched, the alien stopped a pair of young men.
    The men looked up at the Baldy, their body language, even flattened by the distance, eloquent of fear and respect. The Baldy spoke, gestured; the men nodded and replied, then hurried away at a dismissive motion by the alien. The other Baldies paid no attention to the exchange, instead watching intently the people all around.
    "They're looking for us."
    "Or, if not us, anomalies among the people walking about?"
    "They must know we won't expose ourselves in any way that the locals would notice," Ashe murmured, as around them, people exclaimed in worry about the poor catch and fishermen in approaching boats tried to gather crowds to them by calling out what was in their nets.
    "How will we eat if the fish all die?" a woman exclaimed in Ancient Greek.
    "No, they're probably not so much interested in the answers they get from people as in their reactions and those of the people around them," Ashe murmured. "We're not really clear on the capabilities and limitations of their suits, but I wouldn't be surprised if they could detect our subliminal awareness of who they are, the way we focus on them in a way different from the locals, who just think they're priests from some strange country."
    Linnea nodded. That would certainly be true of an entrepot like Kalliste, where people were used to strangers and wont to assume that any out-of-the-ordinary behavior could be ascribed to foreignness.
    The women around them, waiting for the fishermen to unload their nets on the sand and spread out the fish, paid the two of them no attention.
    "I think we are being punished," an older woman said.
    "For what?" exclaimed the first. "I am a good wife; my husband is a good artisan; my children sing to the gods."
    "But I think we'd have to be a lot closer," Ashe continued. "The Baldies cannot really control minds, or send messages, unless you wear their fabric, which has some sort of communication built in," Ashe murmured. "But they can certainly influence people, probably the more so when they're grouped together, as now. I'm sure there're some advanced statistics that guide the way they search. After all, time is on their side, no matter what they intend."
    "It is the gods who fight one another," a third woman said, pointing up at the mountain.
    "If they cast fiery stones at one another, it is we who are struck," said the