Finally, after nearly two hours of this torturous routine, Jask had endured enough punishment. Weakness rose through him like dirty floodwater over the banks of a creek. He swayed as they were weaving down a steep ruby incline, lost sight of the bright walls as the perfect darkness of unconsciousness roared over him. He fell, hard, and rolled until he came up against a green-and-gold-speckled outcrop. He lay there, unmoving, as Tedesco continued to the bottom of the run, unaware of his companion's predicament.
A few minutes later, however, the bruin realized that he was alone. When he called Jask's name and received no reply, and when a telepathic probe brought him only muddled, unclear thoughts from the other man, he went back, climbed the corridor he had just come down and located Jask's body.
He knelt, fighting to maintain balance on that slippery floor, and checked the smaller man's pulse. It was faint but adequate, and fortunately not irregular. He tried slapping the unconscious man to wake him, shouted his name, and even poured a few drops of precious drinking water on Jask's face, all to no avail.
For a short moment he considered taking one of his power rifles and putting an end to the small man's troubles. If Jask were not only unconscious but comatose, there was little else he could do for him. Yet there was always the chance that Jask might revive and be able to go on…
Sighing, Tedesco took off his rucksack and let it slide, along with the rifles, to the bottom of the incline. Lifting Jask as if the man weighed as little as the lights that flickered in the walls, he carried him to the bottom of the corridor. Thereafter, for a grueling hour or more, he lugged Jask for several hundred yards at a time, put him gently down, went back to fetch supplies, alternating the two loads until he had brought everything out of the jewel formation and into the center of another precious pocket of open air, where two small pine trees fought for existence and where the grass, though a sickly yellow-brown, was at least soft and cool.
He lay Jask on the soiled cloak and wrapped the garment around him so that he would not catch a chill in the brisk evening air that wafted down from above.
He permitted himself a small drink from the wooden flask, rolled the water over his tongue as if he were savoring wine, swallowed, and carefully stoppered the container.
He looked at the pale-faced man in the cloak and wondered why he was going to so much trouble for him. He could as easily have turned the power rifle on him and eliminated the Jask Zinn problem altogether. Yet, even as he wondered about his motivations, he knew what they were. Despite his years of self-reliance, his ability to go it alone no matter what the situation, he now felt that he needed someone to face the Wildlands beside him — even if that someone were a worthless, skinny Pure. He had left his entire life behind him, his possessions and his future. What lay ahead was frightening: either sudden death or the stars. He did not want to go at either thing by himself. It was a weakness he despised the moment he recognized it, and he turned away from Jask.
He looked at the rapidly darkening sky where it was visible at the top of the encircling jewel walls, then lay back, his entire body shaking with fatigue, and went instantly to sleep.
When Tedesco woke seven hours later, dawn was still a long way off. The sky, directly overhead, was black, while the walls on both sides exploded with countless lights.
He sat up, turned to Jask Zinn, and found the small man watching him. “How long have you been awake?”
“Not long,” Jask croaked. He looked thinner and paler than ever.
“Hungry?”
Jask said, “No.”
“You've got to eat.”
“Later.”
Tedesco saw that he was shivering badly. When he put the leathery palm of his black hand against Jask's forehead, he found that his companion had a fever. He said, “I'll get you some water.”
Jask nodded.
Tedesco poured an inch of water into a wooden cup, raised Jask's head with one hand and tilted the cup to the parched lips.
Jask sucked weakly at the water, blinking with each swallow as if it pained him.
“Good?”
Jask nodded, tried to smile.
' 'Take some more,'' Tedesco urged, pouring another inch of water into the cup and offering it.
“Thanks.”
Jask's voice was as soft as a whisper, all but inaudible.
“Don't mention it.”
Jask began to swallow a bit more greedily than he had at first, but he suddenly choked as he took too much in at once and spat water over Tedesco's hand.
“Easy now!” the bruin said. He took the cup away from his companion's lips, held his head a little higher, and waited for the choking to stop.
It did not stop.
In a moment, as Jask's eyes rolled smoothly back into his head, the mutant realized that these were nothing so simple as choking noises, but convulsions. Jask was trying to swallow his tongue.
“Jask!”
The small man, frail as he was, rose up onto his head and heels until he was arched like a human bow. Blood trickled in a thin stream from the corner of his mouth, so dark it looked black and not red. He had already bitten into his tongue.
“No!” Tedesco shouted.
He grabbed Jask's head, levered his mouth wide open, and, sticking a single, fat finger between Jask's teeth, pressed down on the man's tongue and kept him from swallowing it and smothering himself.
In another minute the seizures passed, leaving Jask limp and unconscious. He looked very much like a small child, wrapped tightly in the cloak, his hair tousled, face slack, weak and defenseless but somehow curiously trusting.
Shaking, with fear and not fatigue now, Tedesco lowered Jask's head to the ground. In his rucksack he located a number of squares of cloth, dumped out the items they enfolded, and used them, with several fistfuls of the aapless grass, to make a reasonable pillow for his companion's head.
When that was done, he did not know what he should do next. He had no medicines, no herbs or roots from which to make drugs that might combat a high fever. He had intended to flee alone, before he had met Jask, and he was never ill.
For something to do, he rose and paced the length and breath of their roughly circular, roofless cell, searching the earthen floor for plants that he might recognize, healing plants that he could process into tonics and powders and syrups. He did not find anything useful.
He returned to Jask and saw that the smaller man was still unconscious and trembling uncontrollably. His teeth chattered, and his breath was drawn much too rapidly, as if each inhalation were predestined to be his last.
Tedesco poured water into the cup and tried to wake Jask.
But he would not be wakened.
“Damn it all!” Tedesco roared. His voice squeaked in response from the jeweled cliffs around him, cleansed, softened and made less forceful by the light.
He began to pace once more, and he was on the far side of the clearing, standing before a purple and orange sunburst in the wall, when he realized that Jask might have further convulsions while he was away and might die before anything could be done for him. He hurried back, his huge feet thumping the hard earth, and he sat down facing the recumbent man, studying him intently.
“You okay?”
Jask did not respond. At least his breathing was normal, and he was not choking on his tongue.
That was the longest night of Tedesco's life, all of it passing on the razored edge of anticipation.
Jask perspired, droplets beading on his chalky forehead so rapidly it seemed some magic trick must be employed. They coursed down his face, stained the cloak drawn under his chin. He soaked the cloth that bound him, turning it a darker color. Tedesco watched, afraid to unwrap him lest he get a chill from the night air.
Time passed in series of colors.
Jask took to shivering, his teeth chattering audibly in the still night, his breath jerky and shallow. The droplets of sweat ceased to pop out on his head, and he felt cold and nearly dead. Tedesco, helpless, could do nothing then but lif
t him and hold him, like a mother might hold a child, share bodily warmth, murmur to him… and hope.
Perspiring, chilled, perspiring and chilled again. From one extreme to the other, Jask passed the hollow night.
An hour before the first light of the new morning Jask suffered another series of convulsions, not so bad as the first, but not at all reassuring. He cried out and writhed beneath his confining covers.
Tedesco depressed his tongue the way he had done before, spoke softly to him, waited out the seizure, held him to be certain it was all over, then slowly lowered his head back onto the makeshift pillow.
For a while there was nothing more ominous than perspiration and chills. Then, near dawn, as the sky was growing more purple and less black, Jask began to gnash his teeth together, grinding them so loudly that Tedesco felt as if someone were standing beside him and making the noise in his ear. He tried to stop Jask from doing this, but he made no headway.
The sky continued to lighten.
Jask screeched unintelligible curses, flailed madly about him on all sides, rose up and beat at the air, all the while holding his eyes squinted tightly shut.
He fell back, exhausted, still grinding his teeth, gathered his strength and flailed some more, hooted and whimpered, kicked at the earth and the air. He seemed to be fighting some monstrous battle with an awful but invisible enemy meant only for his eyes.
After dawn his behavior was better. He stopped moving so much and settled into a calm, sound sleep.
Or a deeper coma.
Tedesco wished he knew which it was.
Three hours after dawn Jask stirred uneasily, groaned deep in his throat and blinked his red, swollen eyes, tears sliding like beads of oil from the corners of them. When Tedesco leaned over him, he seemed to stare through the bruin as if he were not there. He was delirious, rolling his head agitatedly from side to side, licking his lips, mumbling incoherently to himself.
He drank passively, allowing Tedesco to force two ounces of water between his pale, cracked lips, and then he began to splutter and refused to take anything else.
He called Tedesco's name, his voice shallow and sibilant.
“Yes?” the bruin asked. He leaned closer, waiting, staring into those shiny, fevered eyes.
“Tedesco?” Jask repeated.
“I'm here.”
But it was clear that Jask was still talking only to himself, for he gazed through the mutant, and his call was not one of recognition, merely the fragment of a dream.
The morning passed.
Tedesco was not hungry, though he had last eaten quite some time before. He knew he would need strength, and he unwrapped a meat stick for his lunch. After a few bites he could not swallow any more. He rewrapped the meat, put it in the rucksack, and sat by the sick man, watching for trouble.
The night air warmed as the day progressed, and the myriad colors rippled on all sides.
In the middle of the endless afternoon Jask began to perspire again, though this attack of fever went unrelieved by the periodic chills he had endured earlier. He soaked the garments in which he was wrapped and continued to sweat, until Tedesco began to fear that he would eventually dehydrate.
When he drank now, he consumed far more than an ounce or two of water, sucking greedily on whatever the bruin put in his cup, though he was still not free of his fevered delirium or genuinely conscious of what was happening.
When the flask was empty, Tedesco began to pour from the fat leather water bag. Worriedly, he watched Jask drink, checked the slowly but certainly decreasing level of their last water supply, and looked anxiously at the sky, hoping for rain.
As darkness settled overhead and the intensity of the lights from the bacteria jewels increased, with two-thirds of the water gone from the leather bag, Jask's fever broke. One moment the beads popped and ran on his face — the next he was no longer sweating. In a few minutes he was cool and dry.
Tedesco was still sitting by him when, an hour later, Jask opened his eyes and looked blearily around the clearing. He smiled tentatively at the bruin and said, “I feel terrible.”
“But better?”
He smacked his gummy lips. “Better, yes. How long was I asleep?”
Tedesco said, “Too long.” He grinned with relief.
Tedesco would have liked to make soup for their supper, because he knew that Jask would benefit by having something warm in his stomach. But he dared not risk using the last of the water, for some of it would inevitably boil away and be lost in the making of the broth. Unless it rained they were going to need every precious ounce in their water bag. Instead of soup, then, they ate the remaining fresh fruit as they talked about Jask's weakness and subsequent illness.
“It couldn't have been sheer exhaustion that laid you up like that, my friend,” Tedesco said. “You were feverish and delirious. I'd say you picked up a bug of some sort, a kind of flu that you had never been subjected to in the filtered air of your fortress and in your few ventures out of it. Not a serious bug, mind you, but one just bad enough.”
“Not serious? You said that I almost died,” Jask reminded him, squirming to take the pressure off his left buttock. He ached from head to foot.
“And that you did. But you're from Pure stock — which means you come from people who are so inbred that they've become weak and susceptible to the slightest infection.”
Jask thought about that for a while, did not like the implications, but restrained himself from making a hasty and belligerent reply. He did, at least, owe Tedesco that much courtesy. He said, '' You used most of the water on me and lost a couple of days' traveling time. Why?”
“You couldn't go on,” the bruin said.
Jask shrugged, found that the simple gesture required more effort than it reasonably should have, and said, “Why not kill me, then? You threatened to kill me before this.”
“Would you rather I had?” Tedesco asked, avoiding the question.
“It might have been for the best,'' Jask said, considering his answer carefully. He thought of how far they were from Lady Nature, the enclave, everything he knew and trusted. “I certainly can't go on for a few days yet; I'm too weak to stand, let alone walk. Unless it rains, we're going to be in dire need of water because my illness required so much… Yes, you should have killed me.”
Tedesco was frozen for a moment, staring hard at the smaller man, then stood so abruptly that he startled his sick companion.
“You ungrateful, cowardly shit! You stupid, sniveling, self-pitying little bastard!'' His voice was quite a bit above a scream and just less than a roar of thunder. “You people in the enclaves look down your noses at the 'tainted' and loudly proclaim your superiority, but you couldn't survive a minute in a fair contest with any mutated man. Every last one of you is a vampire, sucking life from what the prewar men left you, leeches that don't contribute anything!”
“I—” Jask began.
Tedesco shouted him down. “You say that muscles are a sign of the primitive, that a civilized man should be puny while machines do all his work and protect him. That's nothing more than a cheap philosophical excuse for what you people have let yourselves become. What are your people? Slugs, degenerates, maggots, turds, all of you!”
“Really, you can't say that—”
Tedesco whirled, swooping in at him, reached for him with a suddenness that was terrifying, his lips drawn from his teeth, eyes wide. He grasped Jask's shoulders and lifted him half off the ground, held him up so that they were face to face.'' Maybe I should have let you die. And if I had any common sense, maybe I should have put a power bolt through your brain!” As the bruin spoke, he sprayed Jask's face with warm saliva. “But I didn't! And since you pulled through whatever it was you had, you might as well be made useful.”
Jask tried to pull free, couldn't manage it.
“Starting tomorrow,” the mutant said, “we're going to take that scrawny, underfed, undermotivated body of yours, and we're going to turn it and you into a valuable part of this e
xpedition. We're going to get you up and moving. We're going to start you on an exercise program — push-ups, sit-ups, knee-bends, the whole works. We're going to put muscle where there isn't any, whether you think it makes you primitive or not. You're going to start eating well. If you can keep breakfast down, you'll take a full stick of meat, half a loaf of bread and canned fruit for lunch. You'll have two sticks of meat and a quarter pound of cheese for supper. Protein and more protein—”
“I don't like that meat,” Jask said.
“Tough luck,” the bruin said, letting him fall back to the ground. “Starting tomorrow, you're going to do a lot of things you don't like.”
“You're just wasting your time,” Jask said. “You could go on by yourself and cover more ground then—”
“No.”
“I'm only a hindrance.”
“You're coming along.”
Angry, Jask recovered more of his strength than he had possessed ever since he'd come out of his fever dreams. He sat up, swaying, his lips tight and his hands fisted. “There's no good reason for me to go!” he screamed, his voice not unlike that of a petulant child. “I'll be in your way. I don't want to go deeper into the Wildlands, away from Lady Nature. I don't want to go through any rigorous exercise program. You see? There simply isn't any reason for you to make me do all this.”
“There is,” Tedesco said, savagely, furious for being forced to reveal his reasons but left with no other response. “I don't want to have to go all that way alone.” He turned away from Jask and stalked to the other side of the clearing where he stood for a long while, watching the colored lights in the jewels.
15
For the following twenty days they lived by strict routine. They rose early and breakfasted in whatever clearing they had spent the night, then set out on their trek into the jeweled sea. Each day they walked not fewer than ten kilometers and not more than fifteen, choosing another campsite — with larger-than- average trees — by noon or shortly thereafter. They ate lunch. They rested to permit proper digestion. Then, Tedesco became a taskmaster without equal, daily increasing the number of exercises Jask was to do, stretching his pupil's endurance, building his strength. At supper they talked about what they had seen during the day's walk, about what they might expect ahead of them. After an hour's rest the evening was passed in weaponry instruction. In just two weeks Jask had become quick enough and sure enough to rate Tedesco's approval as a knife fighter — and in another week he was fairly accomplished with the throwing knife as well, striking the trunks of the trees eight times out of every ten tosses. They went to bed early and slept soundly and began the routine all over again. And again.
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