They waited in the mouth of their new cave. The sun set. The stones
cooled so that one could walk on them. It was almost time for the
leaping out and the running toward the distant, glittering metal seed
that lay on the far mountain.
Soon would come the rains. And Sim thought back over all the times
he had watched the rains thicken into creeks, into rivers that cut
new beds each night. One night there would be a river running north,
the next a river running north-east, the third night a river running
due west. The valley was continually cut and scarred by the torrents.
Earthquakes and avalanches filled the old beds. New ones were the order
of the day. It was this idea of the river and the directions of the
river that he had turned over in his head for many hours. It might
possibly--Well, he would wait and see.
He noticed how living in this new cliff had slowed his pulse, slowed
everything. A mineral result, protection against the solar radiations.
Life was still swift, but not as swift as before.
"Now, Sim!" cried Lyte, testing the valley air.
They ran. Between the hot death and the cold one. Together, away from
the cliffs, out toward the distant, beckoning ship.
Never had they run this way in their lives. The sound of their feet
running was a hard, insistent clatter over vast oblongs of rock, down
into ravines, up the sides, and on again. They raked the air in and out
their lungs. Behind them the cliffs faded away into things they could
never turn back to now.
They did not eat as they ran. They had eaten to the bursting point in
the cave, to save time. Now it was only running, a lifting of legs, a
balancing of bent elbows, a convulsion of muscles, a slaking in of air
that had been fiery and was now cooling.
"Are they watching us?"
Lyte's breathless voice snatched at his ears, above the pound of his
heart.
Who? But he knew the answer. The cliff peoples, of course. How long had
it been since a race like this one? A thousand days? Ten thousand? How
long since someone had taken the chance and sprinted with an entire
civilization's eyes upon their backs, into gullies, across cooling
plain. Were there lovers pausing in their laughter back there, gazing
at the two tiny dots that were a man and woman running toward destiny?
Were children eating of new fruits and stopping in their play to see
the two people racing against time? Was Dienc still living, narrowing
hairy eyebrows down over fading eyes, shouting them on in a feeble,
rasping voice, shaking a twisted hand? Were there jeers? Were they
being called fools, idiots? And in the midst of the name calling, were
people praying them on, hoping they would reach the ship? Yes, under
all the cynicism and pessimism, some of them, all of them, must be
praying.
Sim took a quick glance at the sky, which was beginning to bruise with
the coming night. Out of nowhere clouds materialized and a light shower
trailed across a gully two hundred yards ahead of them. Lightning beat
upon distant mountains and there was a strong scent of ozone on the
disturbed air.
"The halfway mark," panted Sim, and he saw Lyte's face half turn,
longingly looking back at the life she was leaving. "Now's the time, if
we want to turn back, we still have time. Another minute--"
* * * * *
Thunder snarled in the mountains. An avalanche started out small and
ended up huge and monstrous in a deep fissure. Light rain dotted Lyte's
smooth white skin. In a minute her hair was glistening and soggy with
rain.
"Too late now," she shouted over the patting rhythm of her own naked
feet. "We've got to go ahead!"
And it was too late. Sim knew, judging the distances, that there was no
turning back now.
His leg began to pain him a little. He favored it, slowing. A wind
came up swiftly. A cold wind that bit into the skin. But it came from
the cliffs behind them, helped rather than hindered them. An omen? he
wondered. No.
For as the minutes went by it grew upon him how poorly he had estimated
the distance. Their time was dwindling out, but they were still an
impossible distance from the ship. He said nothing, but the impotent
anger at the slow muscles in his legs welled up into bitterly hot tears
in his eyes.
He knew that Lyte was thinking the same as himself. But she flew along
like a white bird, seeming hardly to touch ground. He heard her breath
go out and in her throat, like a clean, sharp knife in its sheathe.
Half the sky was dark. The first stars were peering through lengths of
black cloud. Lightning jiggled a path along a rim just ahead of them. A
full thunderstorm of violent rain and exploding electricity fell upon
them.
They slipped and skidded on moss-smooth pebbles. Lyte fell, scrambled
up again with a burning oath. Her body was scarred and dirty. The rain
washed over her.
The rain came down and cried on Sim. It filled his eyes and ran in
rivers down his spine and he wanted to cry with it.
Lyte fell and did not rise, sucking her breath, her breasts quivering.