Stress Pattern

by Barrett, Jr. , Neal

  Only—did that make sense? I stopped and thought about it. If the creatures wanted to come after us, what difference did it make how far we went? I had made a mistake. Thinking in terms of a rational enemy. If this group got it into their dun heads to follow, distance would have no bearing on the problem. Would it bother them to pound along the beach and thump their poles against the sand for a couple of days? What the hell. else did they have to do?

  I frowned down at the sand.

  "What's the matter, Andrew?"

  "In a minute, Melisa. I'm thinking."

  "Oh."

  Oh, indeed.

  "You think they're going to get us, don't you?"

  "No. Of course not, Melisa."

  "Yes you do." Her voice told me the tears were on the way again.

  "Now look." I held her shoulders firmly. "We beat them once. We can beat them again." Even I didn't believe that. "We'll find a way," I said. "Don't worry, Melisa."

  She didn't answer.

  There was more than a hint of morning in the sky and I didn't like that. Choices, then: the beach and the water to the left. More coastline straight ahead. Whatever lay inland behind, and bamboo wielders where you find them. I did the whole compass again, inland, the coast—the beach. My eyes stopped at the beach. Moved past the dun sand and over the water. I pulled Melisa along for a closer look.

  "Andrew," she said, "what are you doing?"

  "Looking at something."

  "What?"

  "I'm not sure. There's something out there. It's too dark to tell."

  "I don't like it."

  "What?" I turned to her. "You don't like what?"

  "This place," she said absently. She laid the child down on the beach and walked a few steps away from me. She hugged her shoulders, and one long leg curled around the other. Wheat hair fell over one eye and she stared at me balefully from the other.

  "What's the matter with you?" I asked her. "What do you mean you don't like 'this place'? It's just a place. Sand and water. Are you cold or something? You're going to pull your shoulders out, Melisa."

  "I'm not cold." She pouted. Oversized eyes met mine. "I'm scared, Andrew."

  I walked over and tilted her chin. "OK. I don't blame you. I'm scared, too."

  "No." She shook her head. "I don't mean them. I mean right now. Here."

  "What about here?"

  She didn't answer. She simply thrust her head under my chin and trembled. I held her and looked over her shoulder. There was more light, now—and there was something out there. Humps in the water. Like whales asleep in the shallows. . . . Islands. Of course! A string of small, sandy islands stretching out to sea. I gave Melisa a reassuring pat and moved past her a few steps. Hope springs eternal, as they say. The nearest was no more than thirty meters offshore. The next, closer to the first. Sandy stepping-stones leading out over brown water.

  Surely, I thought, the water's shallow enough to wade from one to the other. Thirty meters offshore. And the beach maybe a hundred from where we stood.

  "Melisa—"

  "No, Andrew."

  "No what?"

  "No, I won't go out there."

  I stared at her. "Melisa, it's just a string of islands. That's a pretty rigid bunch of maniacs back there—the odds are fair they won't follow us, even if they guess where we've gone."

  "They won't."

  "Won't what?"

  "They won't follow us, Andrew," she said flatly.

  I let out a breath. "Well, great, Melisa. I'm glad to hear that. Someone told you this?" I was getting a little impatient with this business. It was light enough to see clearly, and be seen.

  "Look—"

  "Andrew." A weary smile. Why didn't I understand? "This is not a good place. I can't go out there."

  "Right here is going to be a very bad place," I said sharply, "if those characters catch us arguing on the goddamn dunes. And what's that supposed to mean—it's not a 'good place'?"

  "I don't know. I just can't—go out there."

  A question in the eyes. "What?"

  "You don't have to, Melisa," I said, and grabbed the child and handed it to her and lifted her off her feet before she figured it out.

  "Andrew!" Legs flailed and little fists protested. I moved out of the dunes toward the beach.

  "Andrew—"

  "Melisa, be still and shut up."

  "I can't!"

  "We'll talk about it later."

  "You don't know what you're doing!" she wailed.

  I did, though. I had taken a quick glance up the beach. The sun was touching the rim of the world, and long shadows were running before it. Long shadows with clubs. A hundred meters. Maybe ninety. And we were maybe seventy-five from the water. I have never been a great sprinter, and carrying an obstinate female who doesn't want to go where you want to go tends to cut into your time.

  Never mind, Andrew, I told myself. Remember how the Business School faculty clobbered Engineering. I remember, I answered. I went in for Grundig at the half and broke my ankle.

  Melisa saw them, too, and I was hoping she wouldn't. She screamed in my ear and caught my neck in a stranglehold. A little quick physics problem in the head: The bamboo wielders would not beat us to the water. It would be a tie, and of course ties went to them.

  "Melisa," I said, "I'm sorry. I love you very much and I'm sorry."

  "Oh, Andrew, no!"

  I stopped, put her down, and held her shoulders until they hurt. "Now listen to me and don't argue. They're too dense to split their forces. At least I think they are."

  Her eyes widened and she shook her head dumbly.

  "Yes, damn it'!--I shook her—"you will!"

  I pushed her aside. The first pair, twenty meters. I clutched the bamboo pole and slapped it against my palm. A sickening sound, and I examined it hurriedly. Oh, Jesus. Cracked. Two dozen clubs back there on Gavin's Hill and I picked this one.

  OK. More dirty fighting, then. Some, but not a lot. Not with a whole beach full of the bastards. Shoving Melisa behind me, I regretted scorning an invitation to take Karate lessons at the university gym, at greatly reduced rates.

  It was taking a long time. What the hell was keeping them? And then I realized it was taking a long time because no one was moving. They had all stopped in their tracks. Stock still. Then, one of the creatures broke the silence—hooted like an owl and tossed his weapon in the air and left it there. The others took up the cue and turned heel, making for high ground.

  I stared after them. Now, what?

  Melisa made a sound behind me and clutched my arm. I turned, looked past her, and threw back my head and laughed.

  She looked at me strangely. "My God, Andrew!"

  "It's OK"—I grinned at her—"they're friends."

  Another strange look. And then they came loping over the dunes, yelling, waving their arms about, and kicking their Bhanos to death. Crazy Sterzet, fat Mhar, and the whole unlovely crew. A bizarre troop of cavalry to the rescue, but mine own. Melisa looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

  "Funny peoples, Andrew," said Sterzet, "you knowin' that?"

  "No," I said, "not terribly funny."

  "They's crazy," he giggled, "pretty crazy!"

  I let that pass. We were cross-legged under one of Sterzet's dirty lean-tos, liberated, no doubt, from some poor soul who no longer needed it.

  Melisa was down the beach with the child, under a mat of her own. She would have nothing to do with Sterzet. The whole bunch horrified her.

  "Very funny peoples, Andrew." Sterzet was enlarging upon his theme. "This be one fine place, you know?" He smacked his lips, a gesture I could do without.

  I looked at him. "What's so fine about it?"

  He rolled lopsided eyes. "Ground's bad here, Andrew." He shook his head. "Not too many bulbs growing."

  "That's good?"

  "Sure! Them crazies"—he pointed down the beach—"all time fighting and killing each other for bulbs. They's huntin' each other. We's huntin' them."

  A mental
picture flashed on my screen, but I let it pass.

  "Sterzet—" I leaned forward and made scribbles in the sand. "Sterzet, if there aren't enough bulbs here, why don't both settlements just get up and leave? All they'd have to do is walk about a half a day or so. There are plenty of bulbs everywhere."

  Sterzet frowned painfully. "Andrew, they's not doin' that."

  "Why not?"

  "They's livin' here. Always bein' in this place. Why they goin' 'nother place?"

  All right, I thought. Why indeed? I refused to pursue that. Instead, I gazed out at the brown sea. The sandy islands were still there. In full daylight there seemed no end to them. Dun stepping-stones that marched with military precision toward the horizon.

  "Nice," I said almost to myself. "A pretty scene, even if the sea's brown instead of blue."

  Sterzet looked up warily. "Andrew. What's bein' pretty?"

  "The beach, Sterzet. The sea and the islands. You don't think so?"

  "Huh?" He spat past me in disgust. "Andrew, I think you bein' a crazy, too."

  I sat up. "Why? Because I like the scenery?"

  He grinned patiently. "Andrew. Islands is pretty?"

  "To me, anyway."

  "Ugly's better," he grunted, and looked right at me. "Them's not good places, Andrew. You know that?"

  I closed my eyes wearily, then opened them and glanced down the beach at Melisa. Why in hell did everyone know, everything except me?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I squatted down outside Melisa's shelter and dropped my offering of waterbulbs.

  "I thought you might be hungry or thirsty. It's been a hard night."

  "Thank you, Andrew," she said wearily. She didn't drink herself, but she fed the child, letting him suck moisture from the wet petals. He glanced up at me with wide, curious eyes from under his crimson helmet. A star fullback in the making. All suited up and not a game in sight.

  "He looks OK," I said. Meaning he didn't seem sick or anything.

  "He's fine. Just tired."

  "Yes. Well, I guess he should be." I leaned over and ran some beach sand through my fingers.

  "You've been talking to him," she said. "About the islands."

  "Yes."

  "I saw you pointing out there."

  "He said they were bad places. Or not good places, anyway."

  "He's right."

  I squinted at her. "Now how do you know that, Melisa? You kicked up a hell of a fuss about this—when that bad place looked awfully good to me."

  "He's right, Andrew," she repeated firmly. Her mouth twisted in that nervous little way that told me she didn't want to talk about this.

  "OK," I insisted, "but how do you know that? You've never seen them before. You've never even been here."

  She turned on me and glared. "How does he know? Ask him, Andrew!"

  I reached over and took her hand. She didn't pull away. "Melisa, that's why I'm asking you. You've seen him. Sterzet's not exactly college material."

  "I don't know what that means."

  "I'm sorry. Melisa—"

  "I don't like him, Andrew. I don't like any of them."

  "I don't much either. But I was very glad to see him this morning. This is the second time he's showed up at very ugly moments. I told you about that. Whatever his faults, there's nothing wrong with Sterzet's timing. Why don't you want to talk about the islands?"

  She gave me a quick little laugh, somewhere on the edge of irritation. "Andrew, there's nothing to tell."

  "You don't know anything."

  "You just—have a bad feeling about them."

  "Yes."

  I suppose I looked frustrated, and her own impatience fell away for the moment.

  "We talked about that. Remember? How there were things I felt that you didn't because I was born here. You said you understood, or that you'd try to understand."

  She touched my cheek and made me face her. "Andrew, that's all I can say. I don't like that place." She started to look out at the islands, but didn't. "Do you see?"

  I did, but of course I didn't understand any more than I had before.

  Past Melisa's shelter, Sterzet's crew plodded about the landscape, making dizzy circles in the sand. They carried bundles from one unruly pile to another, frequently dropping things, forgetting them, and punching each other with smug giggles. As if they knew the secrets of the universe, but had promised not to tell.

  "You think that's where you're supposed to go, don't you?" she said suddenly. "Why we couldn't just stop and stay in one place, like everyone else."

  I was a little surprised, and had to think about that a minute. "Melisa," I told her finally, "when I spotted the islands they were a convenient place to hide. I can't honestly say I have any feelings about them beyond that. OK. I'm not entirely uninterested. But I don't feel anything, no." I shrugged. "I told you men are strange creatures. They spend part of their short lives looking for places they haven't seen."

  Melisa looked at me. Telling me she could hear what I was saying, but didn't have the slightest idea what I was talking about.

  "It might be a place I want to see," I admitted. "I don't know if it is or it isn't."

  "It's not, Andrew," she said firmly.

  "Oh?"

  She put the child down and rolled over on her stomach, legs in the air, chin in her palms. A delicious portion of bare bottom peeked from under the shirt.

  "Andrew. It's easy to see why that is not a place you want to be. If men on your world are always looking for places, they'd look for places they liked. You can't like a place if it's a bad place instead of a good place. She smiled and spread her bands. "See?"

  I guess I was supposed to fall apart under this relentless assault of logic.

  "Melisa." I pushed myself up. "I'm going to go. You know this and I know it and we are just batting the ball back and forth."

  She sat up and looked at me. "Well, good-bye, Andrew. Come back when you're through doing whatever it is you're going to do. The child and I will be here."

  "No." I shook my head firmly. "I wouldn't leave you here on a bet. For God's sake, Melisa—are you really that frightened? Of a—a string of sandpiles in the water? You'd rather stay here and wait for those bamboo freaks to beat you and the child into flat little mounds?"

  She let out a breath. "Your friends will take care of me."

  "Oh, no. My friends are totally unreliable. They might vanish over yon dune any minute." I didn't add that they might also decide she looked good enough to eat, once I was out of sight and they forgot what good buddies we were.

  "Well, I'm not going, Andrew."

  "You are sure as hell not staying here, Melisa."

  The evening was almost pleasant.

  An hour or so before sunset, and a reasonable breeze topping the water.

  "Andrew, I don't like sitting on top of this thing," Melisa complained. "I'm going to fall off. I know I am going to fall off!"

  "No you're not. Just relax. Nobody ever fell off a Bhano."

  "Remember, you said I could go back any time I got scared."

  "That was the agreement."

  "I'm scared."

  I ignored her. We were four islands from the gray shore. So far, so good. As I'd guessed, the islands had all the characteristics of an offshore sandspit. That is, the chain was essentially a serpentine extension of the continent, with some areas just above the water, and some below. Which meant we could probably explore them for a considerable distance The deepest water we'd run into had only wet the Bhano's knees.

  Good old Sterzet. Could friend Andrew borrow two Bhanos to check out the islands? Andrew could, though there were many expressions of dismay, regret, etcetera. Why would Andrew want to go to such a bad place? He wouldn't wait around to claim the Bhanos, he said. The implication being that we would not be coming back from such a disastrous journey.

  It was relaxing to lie under the stars and hold Melisa without digging a burrow. The sea breeze now made it easier to travel by day, and we were both get
ting used to the sun, and had turned as brown as berries. Melisa looked twice as inviting. She had discarded the shirt and turned it into a wrapping for the child. I watched her, riding splendidly naked over the sand, sitting straight atop the Bhano with those incredibly long legs against the animal's flanks, wheat-colored hair curling over golden breasts. A delightful, distracting picture.

  "Did you sleep all right?"

  "All right, I guess."

  Which wasn't true. She had tossed half the night, and cried out once and come into my arms and trembled against me. Truthfully, I hadn't slept much myself. The dream was with me again—much the same as ever—fear, falling through space, great loneliness. And with the loneliness, an awesome feeling of time, as if I were experiencing the age of the planet itself. An inconceivable press of the ages. The dusty weight of a billion summers.

  "You've seen them now, haven't you, Andrew?"

  "What?" I turned and she was riding beside me.

  "The islands. We've seen seven islands." She squinted her eyes toward the horizon, then back to me.

  "OK," I said, and pulled the Bhano to a halt. "I get the point, Melisa. I can't argue with you. It's a classic example of 'if you've seen one you've seen 'em all.' Seven islands very much alike, and a whole sea-full ahead. So what's the point of going farther."

  She didn't comment. Just looked at me.

  "I don't know. It doesn't make a great deal of sense, does it?"

  "But that doesn't mean you'll go back now."

  "No. I don't think it does."

  She looked down at her hands and covered the child from the sun. "You'll have to go on without us, Andrew."

  "Why, Melisa? Nothing's happened to us. Nothing's going to.

  She reached over and absently touched my leg with hers a couple of times. But still looking at her hands, and not at me.

  "I understand," she said simply. "I mean I understand that you have to do what you have to do. But I have to do that too, Andrew. And I'm terribly frightened and I can't go any farther and please don't ask me what I'm frightened of because I don't know that!"

  And I didn't doubt her or ask her more. The fear was there in her eyes and in the strained little lines about her mouth. I got off the Bhano and buried my head against a warm and golden thigh and told her I loved her, and asked her to try to understand, and forgive me, if she could, and that I would be back and then everything would be all right.