Beck reached over and took my hand in hers. “Did she hurt you?”
“No, she gave me tea. The tea-welcoming ceremony. She had a leather-wrapped bowl. With beads. She had beads on her dress and in her braids. And feathers. And when I thanked the Mother, she seemed surprised. She didn’t say a blessing of her own, so I don’t think she likes the Mother very much.”
Beck squeezed my hand. “Smiller will not like hearing this. What else?”
“Um. She didn’t believe in the Mother. She said she didn’t pray. And she didn’t think the Mother could solve anyone’s problems. She said making rules doesn’t work. You have to make promises instead. And then, all of a sudden she heard something and made me leave.”
“What else, Kaer? Think hard.”
I tried to remember what else. It felt so much like a dream now, that strange conversation in front of the fire, I wondered if I’d imagined it. But I couldn’t have. The rope wasn’t clipped to my belt anymore.
“I can’t remember anything else. Oh, wait. She said that too many people live in the grass already. She doesn’t want anyone else living in the grass. Something like that. It all happened so fast.”
“Kaer—even a crazy person represents a danger to us. What if she wanders over to the tracks when the caravan comes along, what if she talks to the magistrates and tells them she saw a strange child in the sea and heard strange noises and strange voices? What if the Hale-Stones hear that?”
“Will they believe a crazy person who lives in the sea of grass?”
“If they think she carries a message from the Mother, who knows what they’ll believe or not?”
I hung my head in the dark. “I apologize, Beck. I didn’t think.” And then I added, “I wouldn’t have spoken to her, but she saw me first. But I didn’t forget about you. I left the other end of the rope at the clearing so I could take you back to her, so you could meet her. And see. Because I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you I met an old woman living in the grass. You’d say I’d had a dream—”
“All right, stop.” Beck exhaled loudly. “I apologize for yelling at you, Kaer. Maybe I’ve overreacted.” She started moving around, gathering up her equipment. “Come on, we’ll follow the rope. Let’s go meet your wild woman.”
She looped the rope through her belt and clipped the end of it to mine, linking us together again.
By now, the faintest intimation of light made it possible for me to see shapes and shadows. I followed her through the dark black grass. Hand over hand, she traced the rope, back to where I’d buried the other end in the good dark earth.
And just beyond it—just more grass.
There was no clearing.
I Have Spoken
“Now, I feel stupid,” I said. “You must think me a jerk.”
“No,” said Beck, patiently winding up the rope. “I don’t.”
“I must have gotten turned around. Maybe she’s that way—” I started to push through the grass.
Beck reached out and caught my arm. “No. We will not stumble around in the grass, looking for her.” Her voice was firm.
“Maybe I dreamed the whole thing,” I said.
“No, you didn’t.” She held up the rope. “How did the end of the rope get all the way out here. Nearly twenty meters. Nobody sleepwalks twenty meters through the grass.”
“Then where did she go?”
“She didn’t go anywhere, Kaer. She moved the end of the rope, so you couldn’t find her again. You did say she noticed your rope when you sat down, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, obviously, she doesn’t want any more visitors.”
“She made that clear enough,” I said. “I don’t think she likes people very much.”
Beck finished rolling up the rope. She was becoming clearer as the dawn grew warmer. “Well, Kaer—either you met a very crazy lady, or you met a very clever spy. I vote for crazy lady as the best explanation. A spy would have asked you a lot more questions about what you knew.”
She flicked her radio on. “Cee Oh. Broomstick.” We’ve completed our mission. We have to come in now.
“Copy that. Stand by.”
“Oh my.” This is important.
“Copy that too.” A short pause, then: “Who rang that bell?” Need more information.
“Lions and tigers and bears.” Unknown persons.
“We copy. Stand by.” Another short pause. Finally, “Hobnob.” We’re building a balloon. And then, “220, if you can.” A heading. And then one more: “I have spoken.” I didn’t know that one.
“Copy that!” Beck turned around quickly and pointed. “That way.” She pushed into the dark wall of foliage without hesitation. I had to hurry to follow in her footsteps. She was moving a lot faster than before and it was hard to keep up. The grass kept snapping back into my face, slapping against my hands and arms and head. Now I knew why they called it razor-grass. It hurt.
“Wait! Slow down!”
“Keep up with me, Kaer!”
“I thought they said they’d come to get us!”
“They will, they want us to meet them. We’ll get there faster.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing! I don’t know. They just said to hurry. I have spoken!”
“Oh,” I gasped. “But why—?”
“Boffili! I think. I can’t think of anything else—”
“Oh, God—”
“Don’t panic on me, Kaer! Come on! We can make it!”
I was already out of breath and she was almost running now. I stumbled and almost fell. The long stalks of grass whipped across my face and eyes. It stung! I couldn’t see where I was going! Only Beck’s impatient tugs on the nylon cord kept me headed in the right direction, sometimes almost pulling me off my feet. She was running too fast! How did anyone run through this grass? My boots kept sliding across the wet waxy blades. I slipped and skidded—I fell and the nylon cord dragged me a meter deeper into the grass—I sprawled on my face, scrambled like a lizard for a moment, then found purchase and stumbled forward again. I don’t know how long it went on—plunging through the stinking damn razor-grass! I was angry and hurt and tears of frustration and pain ran down my cheeks. And always it kept slap, slap, slapping at my face! As if punishing me for everything! I was running with my eyes shut now, gasping and choking on the stinking air. I didn’t even have the breath to shout to Beck to stop—and even if I had, she wouldn’t have. Every time I stumbled, she just pulled me harder! A thick bundle of razor-grass hit me in the face with the force of a punch and I went down, choking and spitting. The grass had gone deep into my mouth. I gagged with the impact and the nasty taste—like someone had thrown up into my mouth. I fell down and the cord tugged me along while I choked and vomited. Only when I didn’t scramble back to my feet did Beck stop and come back for me. “Oh, good God, Kaer! Get up! We don’t have time for that crap!” She yanked me to my feet while I was still retching. She pushed me forward ahead of her now—and the grass slapped me even harder. Now, I was her shield—I could barely lift my feet, she half-carried me, half-pushed. And I wondered if I was going to pass out from sheer over-exertion—or maybe my heart would just stop from the strain. How did she do it? My eyes were watering profusely. I was beyond tears now—I must have been bleeding from exhaustion and pain—I still had grass and vomit in my mouth and my body was still trying to reject the dreadful mass. Every time I tried to breathe, it sucked back into my mouth, making me gag even more—and I still couldn’t get any air. My chest ached so badly, I felt paralyzed. I finally tried to let go and just went limp, collapsing—Beck came tripping down on top of me, but it didn’t stop her. She pulled me back up—almost pummeling me forward. “No, goddammit, no! We will not quit! You do not quit on me, Kaer! I will not have your death on my conscience!” And after that, all I wanted to do was just get away from her, this crazy mad harpy who pursued me like vengeance personified. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. My chest was racking—
&nbs
p; And then suddenly, I collided with a wall! It grabbed me and held onto me tightly! For a moment, I fought—“Kaer! I have you, Kaer! Stop running! I have you!”—and then I collapsed, unable to breathe—choking for air, I felt myself thrashing into a seizure—someone clamped a mask over my mouth, then pulled it away—fingers probed, wiped, pulled the yuck away from my throat—rolled me over on my side—sudden punching up pressure in my belly—I retched and vomited, again, again—choked and retched and seized—blacked in and out of consciousness—came back up screaming, fighting, slashing my arms and legs in wild frenzy—someone grabbed my legs, others grabbed my arms—and then I recognized the voice! “Da!”
“I have you, Kaer!”
And then, I don’t know how I did it, I was in his arms again and he was holding me tightly and I pulled the mask away from my face and sobbed and cried against him, unable to say anything more than, “Da! Da!” My fingers clutched against his shirt, his equipment harness poked into me, I didn’t care. I held him as tight as I could—
I knew what I wanted to say—“You scared me! What happened? I worried so much! I thought I’d lost you! I love you so much! Please forgive me! I didn’t mean to screw it all up! Don’t talk! Just hold me!” But I couldn’t say any of it. It didn’t matter. He didn’t talk. He just held me close and repeated over and over, “All right, Kaer. All right. I have you, I have you now.”
Someone wrapped a blanket around me, I hardly noticed. At last, I pulled away and looked up at him in the grayish morning light. The tears of pain had now become tears of overwhelming joy. His face was streaked too. He pushed my hair off my forehead. I didn’t even remember losing my helmet. Someone must have pulled it off me. “I worried so much—all night long!” He hugged me again. “Can you walk? We have to get everyone back to the boulder as quickly as possible.”
I managed to nod. Still holding onto him, I looked around. The morning light was turning from gray to yellow. There were armed men all around. We were on a narrow slice of metallic-looking that led off through the grass. I looked at it curiously. My frown must have shown, because da said, “As soon as we had light, we put out a roll-down path to get to you quicker.” He pointed. I looked. A funny-looking rolling-machine waited nearby. It had handlebars and two steamroller barrels, and a great roll of heavy-duty metallized plastic planking mounted on a rotating axis between the two barrels. The way it worked was instantly obvious. The first barrel flattened the grass, the planking unrolled, and the second barrel flattened it more. Clever. But dangerous. If the bad guys found the path, it would lead them straight to the boulder.
“Come on,” said da, turning me back the other way. “The team will roll it up. We have to get back. Can you walk?”
“Huh. Uh-huh.” I nodded.
“All right.”
I managed about four steps before collapsing. My legs were as limp as noodles. Da scooped me up in his arms as if I were still a baby and began to carry me. I opened my mouth to protest, but I didn’t have any air left at all, so I buried my face in his shoulder and just let it happen, just let him carry me all the way home to the lonely boulder in the deep green sea of grass.
The Boulder
I was sorry I’d missed the assembly of the boulder. I’d wanted to see how it was done. Back in the Hole, Jake had told me that it was possible to put both vehicles on the ground and link them in less than six minutes. A heavy steel base would be dropped into place first. This helped flatten the grass and it would provide a floor inside the station. The two halves of the shell could be lowered and fitted into place almost as fast as the tractors rolled up onto the base. According to the manual, the boulder could be assembled in fifteen minutes, fully operational and online five minutes after that.
But Smiller’s team had cut a few corners and had practiced getting the station up and running in twelve. Even though it was against regs, the teams would ride with the vehicles and begin powering up as they approached the target zone. If they timed it right, the engines would be running before the treads hit the ground. They’d practiced pulling the buses into side-by-side positions on the boulder-floor and linking them as soon as the choppers released the carry cables. The pieces of the shell would be lowering into place just as the first cross-links were clamped into place.
Only the grass here was so thick that one of the buses nearly toppled on its side when it touched down, and the other one jammed a tread. So the first one had to circle around through the grass behind it and push it into place on the base before they could make the linkup. And that meant that the heavy-lifters with the shell pieces had to hover and wait. And even though they all had night-goggles and computer-guidance operating, the height of the grass confused the instruments, and they almost broke the shell when they lowered it. The whole operation took thirty-five minutes and when they were finished, Smiller and Jake practically had a fist-fight until Byrne and Alex had stepped between them. And they still had to jack up the jammed tread and see if they could repair it. They were working on it all night and still hadn’t finished.
And the wind had pushed our chopper a little too far to the north, so we landed off-zone and had to struggle through the grass like bugs stuck in syrup. And something went wrong with the monitoring, because a third of the helmets failed in the grass—not just mine and Da’s. And maybe it was sabotage, and maybe it wasn’t, nobody knew yet, and there were still three members of the assault team trying to make their way to the boulder. A second roll-down path was being laid down toward them. I wondered where the roll-down machines were stored in the buses, but they weren’t; they were mounted on the inside of the boulder shells, along with a lot of other heavy-equipment. Clever.
“Almost there, Kaer. You can look now.”
I lifted my head and opened my eyes, but the way da was holding me, all I could see was Beck and the others following us. We were hurrying through a long dark tunnel of grass with a metallic floor. Beck looked like hell. The others looked somewhat better. I wondered what I looked like. Da turned around briefly so I could see, but all I saw was more green morning gloom.
From head on, and if the grass weren’t in the way, the boulder would look like a lopsided gray biscuit, sticking up out of the ground like the tip of somebody’s thumb. From the side, it would look like two or three rocks had been taken and squoodged together, so it had lots of several deep crannies and crevices. The deepest of these divisions went all the way up and over and down again the opposite side, completely disguising the seam where the two halves of the shell were fitted and locked together.
Da turned around to head toward the open door at the base of the boulder and my view rotated again. I didn’t want to look at Beck, so I closed my eyes against the oppressive green murk and mumbled something into his shoulder. I lifted my head and tried again. My voice scratched and cracked, but da understood. “The rail-tracks are another half-klick south. As soon as we have everyone safe inside the boulder, we’ll lay down paths as close as we can. We have a lot of work to do. The rail-caravan travels with extra horses, so they can keep traveling well into the night. They’ll arrive at this position earlier than we expected. Not tomorrow. Sometime this afternoon. We have spybirds tracking them. You’ll see. Let’s get you inside. You’ll want to clean up first. Why do you cry, Kaer?”
I couldn’t say it aloud, so I just held him tight.
“All right, all right, I have you. I love you, Kaer, so much you can’t imagine. It scared me so badly to think of you out there. I’ll never let go of you again, sweetheart—”
“Da—” My throat still hurt so bad, I choked trying to get the words out.
And then da was stepping up a ramp—one, two, three steps, four—and abruptly everything turned brighter. The underwater murk of the yellow-green sea of grass gave way to a brilliant white wash of light that woke me up instantly. We were inside the boulder and all the overhead lights were blazing in the warm friendly colors of Earth. Thank God. The tears started streaming down my cheeks again.
Ins
ide the boulder, there was a real floor. A metallic deck. Da put me down and it felt strange to stand upon a solid surface again. Beneath the grill, I could see dark grass flattened into a thick angry mat. It stank of flame-retardant chemicals that had been sprayed into it. If the boulder were going to stay on-station for a long time, the grass would have been cut and the deck would have been anchored in the soil. But Smiller wanted to have the boulder out of here as quickly as possible, so nothing was permanently installed if it would later slow down the evac.
I looked up and saw a couple of people on catwalks above. I saw two machines that looked like dune buggies and another that looked like a hang-glider with a propeller. They were lowering one of the buggies, but the stopped to wave at me. Gingerly, I waved back. My arm felt sluggish. But their smiles felt good.
Keeping one arm close around me, da walked me up into the closest of the buses. All the screens inside were lit. Da wrapped the blanket around me again, told me to hold onto a stanchion for a moment, and then started clearing things off a bunk for me—so I had a chance to peer at some of the images while I waited. Mostly scenes of dawn, and most of them were augmented. We must have had twenty spybirds circling. Two or three of the images showed a caravan of horse-drawn rail-wagons moving slowly through the sea of grass. The rails were barely visible as a line of demarcation in front of and behind the caravan. Now I knew why the rail-wagons had to be so high. Back in the Dome, I’d thought it was because the horses were so big.
Several screens showed boffili. The view was straight down and the spybirds were lower than the choppers had been, so the boffili looked huge. They were great shaggy lumps, grumbling forward through the yellowing dawn. They pushed through the grass like ships plowing through an olive sea. The grass parted before them and closed up again behind them.
Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two Page 19
