With the cool air and firmly packed sand under foot walking should have
been easy. Lea spoiled that. The concussion seemed to have temporarily
cut off the reasoning part of her brain leaving a direct connection to
her vocal cords. As she stumbled along, only half conscious, she mumbled
all of her darkest fears that were better left unvoiced. Occasionally
there was relevancy in her complaints. They would lose their way, never
find the city, die of thirst, freezing, heat or hunger. Interspersed and
entwined with these were fears from her past that still floated,
submerged in the timeless ocean of her subconscious. Some Brion could
understand, though he tried not to listen. Fears of losing credits, not
getting the highest grade, falling behind, a woman alone in a world of
men, leaving school, being lost, trampled among the nameless hordes that
struggled for survival in the crowded city-states of Earth.
There were other things she was afraid of that made no sense to a man
of Anvhar. Who were the alkians that seemed to trouble her? Or what was
canceri? Daydle and haydle? Who was Mansean whose name kept coming up,
over and over, each time accompanied by a little moan?
Brion stopped and picked her up in both arms. With a sigh she settled
against the hard width of his chest and was instantly asleep. Even with
the additional weight he made better time now, and he stretched to his
fastest, kilometer-consuming stride to make good use of these best
hours.
Somewhere on a stretch of gravel and shelving rock he lost the track of
the sandcar. He wasted no time looking for it. By carefully watching
the glistening stars rise and set he had made a good estimate of the
geographic north. Dis didn't seem to have a pole star, however a boxlike
constellation turned slowly around the invisible point of the pole.
Keeping this positioned in line with his right shoulder guided him on
the westerly course he needed.
When his arms began to grow tired he lowered Lea gently to the ground,
she didn't wake. Stretching for an instant, before taking up his burden
again, Brion was struck by the terrible loneliness of the desert. His
breath made a vanishing mist against the stars, all else was darkness
and silence. How distant he was from his home, his people, his planet.
Even the constellations of the night sky were different. He was used to
solitude, but this was a loneliness that touched some deep-buried
instinct. A shiver that wasn't from the desert cold touched lightly
along his spine, prickling at the hairs on his neck.
It was time to go on. He shrugged the disquieting sensations off and
carefully tied Lea into the jacket he had been wearing. Slung like a
pack on his back it made walking easier. The gravel gave way to sliding
dunes of sand that seemed to continue to infinity. A painful, slipping
climb to the top of each one, then and equally difficult descent to the
black-pooled hollow at the foot of the next.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
With the first lightening of the sky in the east he stopped, breath
rasping in his chest, to mark his direction before the stars faded. One
line scratched in the sand pointed due north, a second pointed out the
course they should follow. When they were aligned to his satisfaction he
washed his mouth out with a single swallow of water and sat on the sand
next to the still form of the girl.
Gold fingers of fire searched across the sky, wiping out the stars. It
was magnificent, Brion forgot his fatigue in appreciation. There should
be some way of preserving it. A quatrain would be best. Short enough to
be remembered, yet requiring attention and skill to compact everything
into it. He had scored high with his quatrains in the Twenties. This
would be a special one. Taind, his poetry mentor would have to get a
copy.
"What are you mumbling about?" Lea asked, looking up at the craggy
blackness of his profile against the reddening sky.
"Poem," he said. "_Shhh._ Just a minute."
It was too much for Lea, coming after the tension and dangers of the
night. She began to laugh, laughing even harder when he scowled at her
angrily. Only when she heard the tinge of growing hysteria did she make
an attempt to break off the laughter. The sun cleared the horizon,
washing a sudden warmth over them. Lea gasped.
"Your throat's been cut! You're bleeding to death!"
"Not really," he said, touching his fingertips lightly against the
blood-clotted wound that circled his neck. "Just superficial."
Depression sat on him as he suddenly remembered the battle and death of
the previous night. Lea didn't notice his face. She was busy digging in
the pack he had thrown down. He had to use his fingers to massage and
force away the grimace of pain that twisted his mouth. Memory was more
painful than the wound. How easily he had killed. Three men. How close
to the surface of the civilized man the animal dwelled. In the countless
matches he had used those holds, always drawing back from the exertion
of the full killing power. They were part of a game, part of the
Twenties. Yet when his friend had been killed he had become a killer
himself. He believed in nonviolence and the sanctity of life. Until the
first test when he had killed without hesitation. More ironic was the
fact he really felt no guilt. Shock at the change, yes. But no more than
that.
"Lift your chin," Lea said, brandishing the antiseptic applier she had
found in the medicine kit. He lifted obligingly and the liquid drew a
cool, burning line across his neck. Antibio pills would do a lot more
good, since the wound was completely clotted by now, but he didn't speak
his thoughts aloud. For the moment Lea had forgotten herself in taking
care of him. He put some of the antiseptic on her scalp bruise and she
squeaked, pulling back. They both swallowed the pills.
"That sun is hot already," Lea grumbled, peeling off her heavy clothing.
"Let's find a nice cool cave to crawl into for the day."
"I don't think there are any here, just sand. We have to walk--"
"I know we have to walk," she interrupted angrily. "There's no need for
a lecture about it. You're as seriously cubical as the Bank of Terra.
Relax. Take ten and start again." Lea was making empty talk while she
listened to the memory of hysteria tittering at the fringes of her
brain.
"No time for that. We have to keep going." Brion climbed slowly to his
feet after stowing everything in the pack. When he sighted along his
marker at the western horizon he saw nothing to mark their course, only
the marching dunes. He helped Lea to her feet and began walking slowly
towards them.
"Just hold on a second," Lea called after him. "Where do you think
you're going?"
"In that direction," he said pointing. "I hoped there would be some
landmarks. There aren't. We'll have to keep on by dead reckoning. The
sun will keep us pretty well on course. If we aren't there by night, the
stars will be a better guide."
"All this on an empty stomach? How about breakfast? I'm hungry--and
thirsty."
"No food." He shook the canteen that gurgled emptily. It has been only
partly filled when he found it. "The water's low and we'll need it
later."
"I need it now," she snapped. "My mouth tastes like an unemptied ashtray
and I'm dry as paper."
"Just a single swallow," he said. "This is all we have."
Lea sipped at it with her eyes closed in appreciation. He sealed the top
and returned it to the pack without taking any himself. They were
sweating as they started up the first dune.
The desert was barren of life; they were the only things moving under
that merciless sun. Their shadows pointed the way ahead of them, and as
the shadows shortened the heat rose. It had an intensity Lea had never
experienced before, a physical weight that pushed at her with a searing
hand. Her clothing was sodden with perspiration, and it trickled burning
into her eyes. The light and heat made it hard to see and she leaned on
the immovable strength of Brion's arm. He walked on steadily, apparently
ignoring the heat and discomfort.
"I wonder if those things are edible--or store water?" Brion's voice was
a harsh rasp. Lea blinked and squinted at the leathery shape on the
summit of the dune. Plant or animal, it was hard to tell. The size of a
man's head, wrinkled and gray as dried-out leather, knobbed with thick
spikes. Brion pushed it up with his toe and they had a brief glimpse of
a white roundness, like a shiny taproot, going down into the dune. Then
the thing contracted, pulling itself lower into the sand. At the same
instant something thin and sharp lashed out through a fold in the skin,
striking at Brion's boot and withdrawing. There was a scratch on the
hard plastic, beaded with drops of green liquid.
"Probably poison," he said, digging his toe into the sand. "This thing
is too mean to fool with--without a good reason. Let's keep going."
* * * * *
It was before noon when Lea fell down. She really wanted to go on, but
her body wouldn't obey. The thin soles of her shoes were no protection
against the burning sand and her feet were lumps of raw pain. Heat
hammered down, poured up from the sand and swirled her in an oven of
pain. The air she gasped in was molten metal that dried and cracked her
mouth. Each pulse of her heart throbbed blood to the wound in her scalp
until it seemed her skull would burst with the agony. She had stripped
down to the short tunic--in spite of Brion's insistence that she keep
her body protected from the sun--and that clung to her, soaked with
sweat. She tore at it in a desperate effort to breathe. There was no
escape from the unending heat.
Though the baked sand burned torture into her knees and hands she
couldn't rise. It took all her strength not to fall farther. Her eyes
closed and everything swirled in immense circles.
Brion blinking through slitted eyes, saw her go down. He lifted and
carried her again as he had the night before. The hot touch of her body
shocked his bare arms. Her skin was flushed pink. Wiping his palm free
of sweat and sand he touched her skin and felt the ominous hot dryness.
Heat-shock, all the symptoms. Dry, flushed skin, the ragged breathing.
Her temperature rising quickly as her body stopped fighting the heat and
succumbed.
There was nothing he could do here to protect her from the heat. He
measured a tiny portion of the remaining water into her mouth and she
swallowed convulsively. The thinnest of the clothing protected her
slight body from the direct rays of the sun. After that he could only
take her in his arms and keep on toward the horizon. An outcropping of
rock there threw a tiny patch of shade and he walked toward it.
The ground here, shielded from the direct rays of the sun, felt almost
cool by contrast. Lea opened her eyes when he put her down, peering up
at him through a haze of pain. She wanted to apologize to him for her
weakness, but no words came from the dried membrane of her throat. His
body above her seemed to swim back and forth in the heat waves, swaying
like a tree in a high wind.
Shock drove her eyes open, cleared her mind for the instant. He really
was swaying. With sudden horror she realized how much she had come to
depend on the eternal solidity of his strength. Now it was failing. All
over his body the corded muscles contracted in ridges, striving to keep
him erect. She saw his mouth pulled open by the taut cords of his neck
and the gaping, silent scream was more terrible than any sound. Then she
screamed herself as his eyes rolled back, leaving just the empty white
of the eyeballs staring terribly at her. He went over, back down, like a
felled tree, thudding heavily on the sand. Unconscious or dead she
couldn't tell. She pulled limply at his leg, but couldn't drag his
immense weight into the shade.
Brion lay on his back in the sun, sweating. Lea saw this and knew that
he was still alive. Yet what was happening? She groped for memory in the
red haze of her mind, but could remember nothing from her medical
studies that would explain this. On every square inch of his body the
sweat glands seethed with sudden activity. From every pore oozed great
globules of oily liquid, far thicker than normal perspiration. Brion's
arms rippled with motion and Lea stared, horrified as the hairs there
writhed and stirred as though endowed with separate life. His chest rose
and fell rapidly, deep, gasping breaths wracking his body. Lea could
only stare through the dim redness of unreality and wonder if she was
going mad before she died.
A coughing fit broke the rhythm of his rasping breath, and when it was
over his breathing was easier. The perspiration still covered his body,
the individual beads touching and forming tiny streams that seeped down
his body and vanished in the sand. He stirred and rolled onto his side,
facing her. His eyes open and normal now as he smiled.
"Didn't mean to frighten you. It caught me suddenly, coming at the wrong
season and everything. It was a bit of a jar to my system. I'll get you
some water now, there's still a bit left."
"What happened? When you looked like that, when you fell--"
"Take two swallows, no more," he said, holding the canteen to her mouth.
"Just summer change, that's all. Happens to us every year on
Anvhar--only not that violently, of course. In the winter our bodies
store a layer of fat under the skin for insulation and sweating almost
ceases completely. Lot of internal changes, too. When the weather warms
up the process is reversed. The fat is metabolized and the sweat glands
enlarge and begin working overtime as the body prepares for two months
of hard work, heat and little sleep. I guess the heat here triggered off
the summer change early."
"You mean--you've adapted to this terrible planet?"
"Just about. Though it does feel a little warm. I'll need a lot more
water soon, so we can't remain here. Do you think you can stand the sun
if I carry you?"
"No, but I won't feel any better staying here." She was light-headed,
scarcely aware of what she said. "Keep going, I guess. Keep going."
As soon as she was out of the shadow of the rock the sunlight burst over
her again in a wave of hot pain. She was unconscious at once. Her slight
weight was no burden to Brion and he made his best speed, heading toward
the spot on the horizon where the sun would set. Without water he knew
he could not last more than a day or two at best.
When sunset came he was still walking steadily. Only when the air
chilled did he stop to dress them both in the warm clothes and push on.
Lea regained consciousness in the cool night air and finished the last
mouthfuls of water. She wanted to walk, but could only moan with pain
when her burned feet touched the ground. He put ointment on them and
wrapped them in cloth. They were too swollen to go back into the ragged
shoes. Lifting his burden he walked on into the night, following the
guiding stars.
* * * * *
Except for the nagging thirst, it was an easy night. He wouldn't need
sleep for two or three days more, so that didn't bother him. His muscles
had a plentiful supply of fuel at hand in the no longer wanted
subcutaneous fatty layer. Metabolizing it kept him warm. By running at a
ground-eating pace whenever the footing was smooth he made good time. By
dawn he was feeling a little tired and was at least ten kilos lighter
due to the loss of the burned up fat.
There was no sight of the city yet. This was the last day. Massive as
the adaptation of his body was to the climate, it still needed water to
function. As his pores opened in the heat he knew the end was very
close. Weaving, stumbling, trying not to fall with the unconscious girl,
he climbed dune after unending dune. Before his tortured eyes the sun
expanded and throbbed like a gigantic beating heart. He struggled to the
top of the mountain of sand and looked at the Disan standing a few feet
away.
They were both too surprised by the sudden encounter to react at once.
For a breath of time they stared at each other, unmoving. When they
reacted it was with the same defense of fear. Brion dropped the girl,
bringing the gun up from the holster in the return of the same motion.
The Disan jerked a belled tube from his waistband and raised it to his
mouth.
Brion didn't fire. A dead man had taught him how to train his empathetic
sense, and to trust it. In spite of the fear that wanted him to jerk the
trigger, a different sense read the unvoiced emotions of the native
Disan. There was fear there, and hatred. Welling up around these was a
strong desire not to commit violence this time, to communicate instead.
Brion felt and recognized all this in a small part of a second. He had
to act instantly to avoid a tragic accident. A jerk of his wrist threw
the gun to one side.
As soon as it was gone, he regretted his loss. He was gambling their
lives on an ability he still was not sure of. The Disan had the tube to
his mouth when the gun hit the ground. He held the pose, unmoving,
thinking. Then he accepted Brion's action and thrust the tube back into
his waistband.
"Do you have any water?" Brion asked, the guttural Disan words hurting
his throat.
"I have water," the man said. He still didn't move. "Who are you?"
"We're from offplanet. We had ... an accident. We want to go to the
city. The water."
The Disan looked at the unconscious girl and made his decision. Over one
shoulder he wore one of the green objects that Brion remembered from the
solido. He pulled it off and the thing writhed slowly in his hands. It
was alive. A green length a meter long, like a noduled section of a
thick vine. One end flared out into a petallike formation. The Disan
took a hook-shaped object from his waist and thrust it into the petaled
orifice. When he turned the hook in a quick motion the length of green
writhed and curled around his arm. He pulled something small and dark
out and threw it to the ground, extending the twisting green shape
towards Brion. "Put your mouth to the end and drink," he said.
Lea needed the water more, but he drank first, suspicious of the living
water source. A hollow below the writhing petals was filling with
straw-colored water from the fibrous, reedy interior. He raised it to
his mouth and drank. The water was hot and tasted swampy. Sudden sharp
pains around his mouth made him jerk the thing away. Tiny glistening
white barbs projected from the petals, pink tipped now with his blood.
Brion swung towards the Disan angrily--and stopped when he looked at the
other man's face. His mouth was surrounded by many small scars.
"The vaede does not like to give up its water, but it always does," the
man said.
Brion drank again then put the vaede to Lea's mouth. She moaned without
regaining consciousness, her lips seeking reflexively for the
life-saving liquid. When she was satisfied Brion gently drew the barbs
from her flesh and drank again. The Disan hunkered down on his heels and
watched them expressionlessly. Brion handed back the vaede, then held
some of the clothes so Lea was in their shade. He settled into the same
position as the native and looked closely at him.
Squatting immobile on his heels, the Disan appeared perfectly comfortable
under the flaming sun. There was no trace of perspiration on his naked,
browned skin. Long hair fell to his shoulders and startlingly blue eyes
stared back at Brion from deep-set sockets. The heavy kilt around his
loins was the only garment he wore. Once more the vaede rested over his
shoulder, still stirring unhappily. Around his waist was the same
collection of leather, stone and brass objects that had been in the
solido. Two of them now had meaning to Brion. The tube-and-mouthpiece; a
blowgun of some kind. And the specially shaped hook for opening the
vaede. He wondered if the other strangely formed things had equally
realistic functions. If you accepted them as artifacts with a
purpose--not barbaric decorations--you had to accept their owner as
something more than the crude savage he resembled.
"My name is Brion. And you--"
"You may not have my name. Why are you here? To kill my people?"
Brion forced the memory of the last night away. Killing was just what he
had done. Some expectancy in the man's manner, some sensed feeling of
hope prompted Brion to speak the truth.
"I'm here to stop your people from being killed. I believe in the end of
the war."
"Prove it."
"Take me to the Cultural Relationships Foundation in the city and I'll
prove it. I can do nothing here in the desert. Except die."
For the first time there was emotion on the Disan's face. He frowned and
muttered something to himself. There was a fine beading of sweat above
his eyelids now as he fought an internal battle. Coming to a decision he
rose, and Brion stood, too.
"Come with me. I'll take you to Hovedstad. But wait, there is one thing
I must know. Are you from Nyjord?"
"No."
The nameless Disan merely grunted and turned away. Brion shouldered
Lea's unconscious body and followed him. They walked for two hours, the
Disan setting a cruel pace, before they reached a wasteland of jumbled
rock. The native pointed to the highest tower of sand-eroded stone.
"Wait near this," he said. "Someone will come for you." He watched while
Brion placed the girl's still body in the shade, and passed over the
vaede for the last time. Just before leaving he turned back, hesitating.
"My name is ... Ulv," he said. Then he was gone.
Brion did what he could to make Lea comfortable, but it was very little.
If she didn't get medical attention soon she would be dead. Dehydration
and shock were uniting to destroy her.
[Illustration]