The sun gleamed against her hair, and her eyes were very blue and
steady as they watched Caine. She took one step and then another, her
eyes never wavering from Caine. The blue dress disappeared into the
liquid, inch by inch, and Caine noticed the glitter of the silver
buttons that ran down the front of it.
The girl moved slowly, and the liquid reached her shoulders and her
chin, and then it was rippling against her lower lip. She was half-way.
She came up carefully. Her eyes were still steadily watching Caine.
It was a moment when the tenseness disappeared out of him, and the time
and situation went out of his mind. It was a moment when there was
nothing but the girl with the steady eyes and the shining hair, coming
slowly out of the liquid, dress open, and golden-tan body rippling with
each movement. Time stopped and silence hung in the air, broken only by
the sound of her bare legs going through the liquid.
Caine watched, feeling his pulse beating in his temples and the girl
stood before him at the edge of the liquid, her tan skin wet and shiny.
She took a quick breath and Caine felt his nails bite his palms.
Then she swept the dress together and held out her hand. "Give me your
belt, Driver." Her face was expressionless.
He slipped the clasp-less belt from his trousers and handed it to her.
She circled it around her waist and tied the ends together.
They both turned and looked back to the thin creature crouched on the
hill across the acid canal.
Again the still silence of the jungle was heavy and each movement of a
leaf or the bend of a vine stalk echoed and magnified its echo through
the wild growth. The sun reached the tips of the vine-trees.
"We'll give you three minutes," Caine called to the boy. "If you don't
get over by then you can stay there by yourself."
The boy leaped up and ran to the edge of the liquid. His face was a
white flashing movement and his hands flew as though the joints in his
arms had turned to rubber. His voice screeched. "You won't leave me,
damn you. You won't leave me!" He moved along the edge of the liquid as
though he were doing a crazy dance.
"One minute," Caine said. "Two to go."
The boy skittered up the side of the hill and held his camera against
his eye, pointing it at Caine. He ripped the picture out and ran back
to the bottom of the hill, throwing it at Caine. It fluttered short,
drifting for a moment on the liquid, and disappeared. The boy fell on
his knees and hammered his fists against the rock.
"Two minutes gone," Caine said.
"Oh, you're rotten, curse you!" the boy yelled, and Caine could see
tears glistening on the shallow cheeks. The boy crouched then, frozen,
his eyes and tears glittering, his hands like claws against the rock.
"Three," said Caine, swinging around.
The boy's cry went into the air, a long, shrill whine. He stood up and
through his open mouth came the cry, steady, monotonous. A weird crazy
cry that stung Caine's brain and made him want to crash through the
liquid all over again, to squeeze the skinny throat until the sound was
gone.
The girl clenched her fists and Caine waved his hand at the thick green
growth behind them. "Let's go," he said.
All at once the boy was in the liquid, hands clutching his camera in
the air, moving, his screaming voice rising, piercing the air until
there was nothing else but the hysterical sound. His eyes widened and
his mouth was open and he kept screaming. It was a pulsating sound,
like a siren, over and over. The liquid splashed and the boy moved, and
finally he found the opposite edge of the liquid and he fell onto the
ground and lay there, still screaming.
Caine watched him for a moment while the girl stood, as though frozen
out of motion by the terrible sound.
Suddenly Caine stepped forward, jerked the boy up by the collar and
slapped his hand back and forth across the wet, insane face.
The screaming stopped, and Caine let the boy drop back to the ground.
"I didn't make you mad, did I?" Caine said, his lips against his teeth.
The boy huddled, his eyes narrow darting slits.
Caine turned to the girl. "Do you want to go with me, or do you want to
stay here with your jibbering friend?"