by Brian Daley
Unless, of course, some gawklegs elected to come up from the plains and romp and stomp on them, in which case even a tree probably wouldn't be much protection and they'd all three very likely become so much toe-jam.
Floyt's thoughts strayed to their conversations in the night. Alacrity had questioned Paloma and combed her proteus for all the local data he could find. Floyt mentioned general survival rules and Alacrity explained, "General survival rules that don't stand a chance of making you die young, you can count on one hand."
"I heard this story once, when I shipped in the Salty Dog. Guy was one of a survivor party, so this big whatsit comes charging outta the brush and he shinnies up a tree. Well, who wouldn't? Besides, he was from Adam's Apple, and that was what he was used to."
"Only, it turns out, the thingie he was running from was this harmless spore-strainer, but the tree he picked out was a carrion eater with toxic bark. So his account got stamped closed brother."
Floyt sighed. "At least I wish we had our guns. Especially the Captain's Sidearm, with those pouches. We could certainly use more equipment, survival equipment."
Alacrity had half turned to him in the firelight. "What survival equipment? Those pouches are just for cleaning equipment and ammo and a lanyard and like that, Ho. The Captain's Sidearm's not meant for survival ground-side; it's meant to keep you from losing your ship!"
And then Alacrity looked out into the darkness, adding softly, "Goddammit anyway … "
"Oh! Sorry, Alacrity."
"Forget it, Ho. Wait'll you see what we do when I've got that Ship back."
* * * *
Bigger scavengers were done with the leavings of the cricket-fawn's carcass; the smaller and smallest were almost finished. Bones were cracked, marrowlike contents gone. Most tissue and skin had vanished, too.
"Thank goodness," Paloma breathed. "That foreleg's still here." She grabbed the defeated scare-flare's dismembered leg and began knocking tiny feeding things loose from it with her spearpoint and by banging it against a tree.
"What would you want that for?" Floyt asked, thinking of fishhooks and arrowheads.
Alacrity was watching with an air of knowledgeability.
"Like she sez: we're gonna see to it the scare-flares stay clear of us."
Paloma glanced to him suspiciously. "Now, how would you know about this? I thought you'd never been to Lebensraum before—and this trick isn't in the proteus."
Alacrity tested the wicked needle claw with his thumb. Its tip was as sharp as his brolly's. "S'right. But the trick's a classic and it translates well, Paloma."
Floyt almost shouted out a demand to know what in the world they were talking about, then decided not to give them the satisfaction. Instead, he scanned the countryside, spotting the gawklegs a kilometer and a half down the valley.
"First things first. You two stay together, here, for a second," Alacrity bade, checking out a nearby asparagus-tip tree to see if anything dangerous was hanging around it looking for a meal. Then he sauntered off around it. Paloma muttered something about "pushy"; the awareness that he'd have to wait his turn made Floyt's bladder that much more insistent.
Paloma went next without asking, the two men standing guard. "Although pity the poor thingie that jumps her," Alacrity muttered.
To take his mind off his own urgent need, Floyt said, "Alacrity, have you noticed anything about Paloma's, um, 'look'? I mean, the high-allure outfit and the two horse-pistols—it puts me in mind of crazy Constance." Floyt was referring to the woman who'd served Dincrist and tried to end their lives several times.
"Yeah, but you got it backward," Alacrity answered. "Both of 'em are copying the figure Hecate cut in her heyday. People patterned themselves after her then and they still do. I wonder what they'll think when the truth comes out."
Floyt reached the limits of his endurance and went off before Paloma got back, heedless of Alacrity's objections. When Floyt returned, vastly relieved, Paloma and Alacrity were talking almost civilly.
"How shall we do this?" Floyt inquired. "All go house hunting together? Split up, with someone beginning the headcount?" He didn't admit that the idea of dividing forces upset his stomach. He'd gotten over much of his Terran prejudice against intelligent XTs in the course of his wanderings with Alacrity, but any animal too big to fit in a carport still made him queasy. "After all, we're working against time."
"No, we'll stay together for now, until we know the land and what the dangers are around here," Alacrity decided.
Paloma stared at him for a moment before she said, "Yes, that's correct," as if she were grading him on a test.
They're both so used to giving orders, Floyt thought resignedly. Tao, give me strength!
Paloma led the way without any argument or advice from Alacrity. They went off along the valley's slope in the opposite direction from the onetime Precursor site. At last she stopped where an outcrop of rock thrust out of the hillside like an enormous, layered chisel blade. Foliage and undergrowth were darker and more lush there. Following the others' lead, Floyt helped pull back masses of netvine, cutting bushes out of the way with his survival tool, probing carefully with his spear before he touched anything, trusting Paloma to know what plants were unsafe. They uncovered not one but two tiny water seepages.
One was useless for the time being; it ran down a rock face from higher up and they had no way to collect it short of licking the rock. The second dripped and dribbled in a deep, vertical cleft only a few centimeters wide. There was one small catch pocket ten centimeters or so back, where a teacupful of water accumulated. Floyt gazed at it hopelessly, licking dry lips.
Paloma looked around, then borrowed the survival widget and cut a length of reed, trimming it as a drinking straw. Alacrity and Floyt wouldn't hear of her not going first. The survival tool had a built-in water purifier of questionable efficacy, but there wasn't any way to use it in configuration with the drinking tube. Floyt was so thirsty that he didn't give a damn, trusting to his immunities and eagerly awaiting his turn at the reed.
Fortunately, the catch pocket refilled quickly, ready for a second emptying almost as soon as Paloma made way for Floyt. Alacrity drank next, then they all had a second go-around and a third, longer turn.
Eventually they started off again, working their way along low cliffs, moving cautiously, spears up. They noted a few outcroppings and eroded crevices, but nothing that offered decent protection against weather, predators, or drillbugs. Once or twice, though, they saw trees marked by scare-flares.
In time, they came across an overhang of blue-gray rock under which a low, narrow opening stretched back into darkness. It looked to Floyt unpleasantly like prime housing for something large, aggressive, and carnivorous, like a scare-flare.
"I think this was the loser's lair," Paloma said, gesturing with the amputated foreclaw. She glanced around; several trees in the neighborhood were claw-marked. "Yes; it must be."
She shied a stone into the cave, then, when that brought no response, fired some light effects into it with her target pistols. Alacrity and Floyt fronted for her nervously, spears ready.
"Nobody home," she concluded, "or it'd be out here facing off with us by now. The wounded one either died or moved on." She looked around at the nearby trees. "Time to advertise. Can you hold me up on your shoulders, Alacrity?"
"Relax; I'll do the honors," he said.
She handed him the claw and he put his brolly and spear aside. Floyt finally began to understand. Alacrity knelt and did something to the expensive pathfinders he wore; climbing spikes clicked into place at both insteps. Paloma gave a whistle of admiration. "Best damn boots in the universe," he said simply.
He didn't bother improvising a climbing belt; he wasn't going far. He went up quickly but very carefully while Paloma and Floyt kept watch to all sides and stole periodic glances up at him. Alacrity came to a stop with a grip on the lowest branch, climbing spikes seated firmly.
He started scraping at the bark with the claw a meter above
the previous scare-flare marks. "So," Floyt said, back to back with Paloma. "Now the biggest, meanest scare-flare there is, is warning all the others to stay away, hmm?"
"You hit it. We've got a lot of marking to do, though."
"This bark's thicker than a landlord's wallet," Alacrity reported. "Ho, toss up that hip-pocket hardware store, will you? I'm gonna cheat." The tool had a V-gouge wood chisel blade on it.
It was nevertheless more than ten minutes by Floyt's proteus before Alacrity came down again, after dropping the claw to Paloma and the tool to Floyt.
"Well, it seems like some monster scare-flare about the size of a hovercab with claws like augers just took up residence in these parts." He looked up, admiring his work.
"I just hope the scent pads hold their smell long enough for us to mark a perimeter," Paloma said. "That shouldn't take us more than two days at this rate, I should think."
"What about the smell in the cave?" Floyt thought to ask. "Won't rivals know that it's no longer a scare-flare headquarters?"
"There're ways to cover that," Paloma dismissed the matter. Alacrity had opened the crotch of his shipsuit, facing the tree he'd just marked. When he turned back, its base was damp.
He smirked. "Picture some newcomer sizing up the territory. 'Holy Buddha in a bunnysuit! This local scare-flare's a thyroid case! And what's he been eating? And drinking, ugh?' "
As a last precaution, Floyt tossed a couple of lichen torches into the cave from a distance. When nothing happened, they braved to look in. Flashes from Paloma's pistols showed that the place was empty, a low crawl-space reaching back four meters, with less debris in it than Floyt had feared.
"I saw some knucklenut trees as we came along," Paloma said. "I propose that Alacrity and I go gather breakfast while Hobie builds another of those great fires."
It was agreed, and Floyt set to work, careful to keep vigilance all around. No fire except natural ones had ever burned on that part of Lebensraum; the place was a deadwood supermarket. He began with a small blaze, feeding bigger and bigger pieces of fuel, then saw things were getting out of hand. He built a ring of stones under the overhang and transferred operations there.
Floyt found a powerful, difficult-to-understand fascination in the work, something strong and vastly comforting. The phrase keeper of the flame kept recurring to him. The fire seemed so ephemeral, the dangers of the wilds so close to hand.
It took him some time to realize how much time had passed. He checked his proteus, then tried to picture the distance they could've traveled and estimate the time it would've taken to collect the nuts, whatever that entailed. The whole effort was hopeless and dispiriting.
He tried to raise Alacrity by proteus but got no response. Nothing ominous about that necessarily; land features might be interfering, or Alacrity could be busy, or in a situation where he didn't want to make noise. Floyt kept working, glancing around every few seconds in hopes of seeing them return. His stack of firewood grew high.
At last he gripped wooden spear and survival knife determinedly and set off to find them. His first few paces back under the tree canopy brought him to a halt as it occurred to him that he didn't know where he was going or how to get back.
Wasn't there something—oh, yes! He checked his compass to see in which direction he was headed, proud of himself. Then, even prduder, he recalled how Scagway Scanlon had dealt with this sort of thing in the deathless penny dreadful, Scagway Scanlon, Wilderness Wildcat.
Floyt made a very unpracticed blaze in the soft, flaky bark of a slender tree. Drawing a deep breath, he sighted on the tree where he would make his next blaze. Just as he was about to sally forth, Alacrity and Paloma came into view not ten meters away, slightly uphill from him.
"Oh! I was—"
He stopped before he could tell them how relieved he felt. He saw from their faces that something had happened, that they shared some knowledge from which he was excluded. He exchanged looks with them, thinking All right; now everybody understands what everybody understands. It was beyond the realm of possibility that he was wrong.
He abruptly felt left out and resentful, betrayed really, not from envy or desire for Paloma—though those were there, too—but because it wasn't a trio anymore but rather a couple with a satellite. And because some accord had plainly been struck around and above him, which pointed up a certain disregard he found it hard to endure.
Oh, swell! And here we are, the three slap-happy throwbacks—two lovebirds and an irate spare wheel, just waiting around for trouble in paradise.
Well, not a chance! I like them both too much.
So he twirled his spear and said lightly, "There was a commo call while you were out. The neanderthals in the next cave invited us over for toddies and an evening of grunting."
Alacrity's face broke into a skewed grin. "What, on a school night?" He came Floyt's way with a certain swagger.
But Paloma rammed him aside. "Oh-hh, no!" She walked toward Floyt with wide paces, leaving Alacrity to catch up. "Now, hear me, Hobie: this is strictly an alliance for survival purposes. I'm nobody's cuddle or camp follower. That's what I told libido brain over here and that's what I'm telling you, so we're clear on it all around.
"We're three partners. Equals. If either of you tries to act hypermasculine or change the bargain I'll strike out on my own, I swear it, and leave the pair of you to poison yourselves on the wrong kind of berries or disappear under the mire because you can't read bogsign!"
Floyt saw he'd gotten things wrong. "That's fine with me, Paloma. Just so long as you stop hollering."
She guffawed and got herself under control at the same time, looking at Floyt in a way she hadn't looked at him before. Alacrity was red-faced and sheepish, but he was laughing, too, and for a strange but wonderful moment they were all on an equal footing, alive and hoping, companions, with something quintessentially human and rueful floating in their laughter.
Back at the den, Alacrity and Paloma emptied their pockets. Demonstrably, they'd been busy doing other things beside establishing social boundaries. There were dozens of the little shining-bronze knucklenuts—the size and shape of a periwinkle—and some roots they'd found, shaped something like ginseng but looking like they were made of black iron.
The nuts were a disappointment, hard to crack and dig the meat from, and tasting like gravel. Paloma's sculpted glamornails of superhard duraglaze turned out to be a lot more than fashion embellishments; they were like a fingertip tool kit, very useful for nut-picking, among other things.
The roots, formidable as they looked, turned out to be juicy and crisp, with a flavor somewhere between radish and celery. Floyt bit into one; the juice squirted across his mouth and down his chest. He hummed with delight at the flavor. Paloma showed them the proper technique so as to waste none.
But when it was all gone they'd barely cut their hunger pangs and thirst was on them again. The good news was that Alacrity and Paloma had found a tiny runnel not far off, making water less a problem.
"This is gonna be a very tough day," Alacrity said. "So, if nobody objects, we can try to gather more food and do the tree markings at the same time. If it doesn't work out, we just go back to concentrating on one thing at a time; mark fewer trees and eat less."
All three of them had eaten well on the day Hecate showed up to Oz them away to her Precursor lair. Real hunger hadn't begun to hit them yet. The plan was carried unanimously.
Floyt regretfully banked his fire and they moved out with Paloma at point once more. Floyt was again amazed at how long a day could be—in this case the Lebensraum day, some twenty-seven Standard hours. As a comfortable Earthservice accessor—if not a free or happy one, or permitted much dignity—Floyt had lived a not-much-varying routine that, mercifully, made time not seem to hang heavily upon him. At least, not unless he thought about it.
He worked a straight day schedule and that was a tremendous plus, going from his apt to his work carrel and back. There was his accessing, a succession of minor absorptions
, broken up by periods of light office exercise and a midday meal. In the evening he returned home to watch media with his family, indulge his hobby of genealogical research, or occasionally have a night out at some recbureau function. Freedays, he liked to bicycle, his worst eccentricity.
But for the most part days had drifted together in a comfortable routine sameness, blurred so that they passed with an easy timelessness. Only now and then would Hobart Floyt get the twinge, in his carrel in the morning or his apt living room at night, Didn't I just leave here?
That first morning, like Floyt's experience on a couple of other worlds, was utterly different from functionary life. To the distant booming, belching, and flatulence of the gawklegs, he and his companions stole through the brush, alert to peril, watching for trees to mark, searching for scare-flare signs, careful of their footing, wary of noxious plants and insects. The first half hour had them perspiring in spite of the morning chill and was so uncomfortable, demanding, and fatiguing that it seemed to Floyt longer than a workweek, even a dull and toilsome one, back on Terra.
They found another knucklenut tree but passed it by when Paloma Sudan judged that the nuts were unripe enough to make them sick, possibly be lethal. A midge-like thing tried to crawl into Alacrity's ear to explore, others being drawn to mouths and nostrils by warmth and smells. Less than two hours after dawn, the temperature was already 20° C by Paloma's proteus. They paused for a long drink at a runnel. Just after that, Floyt stepped in some unidentified fewmets.
They came to a tree that seemed suitable—the scare-flares only used certain types—and Alacrity borrowed Floyt's web belt to join with his own and use as a climbing belt. After extending the climbing spikes, Alacrity took position while the other two stood guard.
Most wildlife was unfrightened of them, but none they saw was inclined to attack. Three adult humans were too much for any rock-eel, ringwing, flapcat, or kobold to tangle with.
They passed the day marking out territory around the lair, gathering food when they could, eating most of it on the spot. They also discussed the gawkleg census.
