Searching out the signs of a trail was slowing their pace. She was finding it difficult to spot the tracks; by the time they reached a place where a dead tree had fallen, she was convinced that they had lost the trail.
Sven leaned against the fallen tree. “I can’t see the tracks anymore,” he said. “Might as well admit it before we lose any more time.”
“It was worth trying,” she said.
“I should have known I couldn’t follow a trail.”
“You did the best you could.”
They turned south once more, moving carefully along the sloping ground.
They spent the night at the base of a hill; finding dry wood for their fire had taken them longer than usual. When Nita’s turn came to sit by the fire, she saw a pair of eyes gazing at her from under the trees; the eyes gleamed in the reflected light. She froze, keeping her hand near her wand until the eyes vanished. By dawn, her body was stiff with tension.
As they walked, she relaxed a little; her body was not aching so much today. Her pack was lighter, but that was because she had eaten some of the food and drunk more of her water.
The air was filled with the songs of birds; there seemed to be more of them than usual. Tiny insects hummed near her face; she swatted at them with one hand, then halted while she and Sven waited for the robot to clear away some brush.
The boy frowned, then held up a hand. “Do you hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?”
“That sound.” He gestured to his left. “It’s coming from over there.”
She ordered the robot to be still, and strained to hear. The birds were still singing. She held her breath. He was right; she could hear a faint trickling.
“The river?” she whispered.
“Follow us,” he said to the gardener. They hurried in the direction of the sound and soon came to a small brook. Two deer were drinking on the other side; they lifted their heads and vanished into the wood. Nita let out a cry, then knelt to splash cold water on her face; she was about to drink and then remembered what the records had advised. “Do you think it’s safe?”
Sven stared at the stream. “The animals were drinking it. It seems fresh enough, and it’s running. I don’t think we have too much to worry about.”
“Maybe we ought to boil some later, just to be safe.” She recalled the map. “Was there a brook like this marked on the map? Maybe we can finally figure out how far we’ve come.”
He pulled out the map. “I don’t see one. There’s the river, and a smaller stream in the western part of the forest, but we’ve been going south. Either this brook wasn’t here before or the map doesn’t show streams this small.” He put the map away. “We’ll have water, though. It means we can keep going.”
She grinned. “It also means we can wash.”
They cleared a space not far from the bank, built a fire, and boiled water in their helmets, letting it cool before they poured it into their bottles. While Sven kept watch, Nita pulled off her clothes and made her way down to the stream.
Even when she knelt, the water came only to her waist. She washed quickly, then rinsed out her coverall. Being naked out here made her feel vulnerable in a way she had never felt inside the Institute; her body seemed fragile and unprotected.
She wrung out her coverall, draped it over a branch near the fire, then quickly pulled on her silver suit. Sven blushed a little as he watched her. “You don’t have to hide yourself from me,” he said. “I’m not about to—”
“I wasn’t even thinking of that. I just feel more exposed out here. Sometimes I still wish I had fur the way our guardians do.”
“You’re fine the way you are.” He slipped out of his garments and went into the water. He ducked down, then rubbed at his hair. She noticed again how broad his shoulders were and how the muscles of his back moved when he lifted his arms. She had tried not to stare at him too blatantly during the times they had swum in the pool together, but she felt some pleasure in seeing how his body differed from hers. She wondered if he had the same warm feeling when he looked at her.
They might find other people; surely some females would be among them. They were likely to know more about love than Nita did, and Sven might want to go to one of them. She felt a twinge; for a moment, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to find others. She stood up, forcing her eyes from him; she was supposed to be standing guard.
When their coveralls were dry, they dressed again and walked on. The stream meandered, sometimes to the east and then to the west. Occasionally, they had to leave the bank and meet the brook around another bend, but they continued to follow it. Other creatures came to the banks. They frightened off a few deer; she was sure that she had also seen a big cat slink away. Frogs broke the silence with croaking; beneath the stream’s surface, she caught glimpses of darting minnows.
They could not relax their vigilance now, and moved without speaking. They had water, but might be in more danger near the brook, where animals would come to drink.
They had another reason for their fire that evening—to keep away the tiny insects that now swarmed around them. Nita stretched out near the flames, exhausted by the day’s efforts. Following the stream had led them farther south. The brook might lead them to the river, and the river to their people. She turned onto her side; she had nearly dozed off when she felt a hand on her head.
She opened her eyes a little. Sven was sitting next to her. His hand stroked her hair lightly; she thought she heard him sigh. She closed her eyes again, feigning sleep until sleep came.
Rain came again two days after they had discovered the brook. They put on their helmets and moved through the wood as if they were visitors from another world, cut off from the forest as they breathed filtered air.
As they walked around a bend, a large horned animal lifted its head and gazed at them with dark eyes. Nita froze; the creature was much larger than a deer and had thicker, flatter antlers. Her hand dropped to her wand.
“Don’t move,” Sven’s voice said inside her helmet. The animal seemed to be studying them, as though wondering what such strange beings were doing there, then vanished into the forest.
“We’d better stop,” Nita said. “We should rest, any way, and we can’t hear anything with these helmets on.”
They climbed up to a higher place on the bank, where they could see more of what lay around them. The rain was falling steadily; even the branches above provided little protection. Sven sat with his back to her, watching the east and south while she faced north.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about Llare and Llipel.”
She felt a pang as she thought of their guardians. “What about them?” she asked.
“Maybe they didn’t leave for good. They might come back.”
“Do you really think so?” she said. “They didn’t sound as if they were ever going to return. Oh, Sven, if they do come back—”
“That might not be so great. We don’t know what they wanted here in the first place.” He was silent for a moment. “They might not have meant us harm, but the rest of their people could feel differently. What if they do come to Earth? And if we find our people, what do we tell them—that they don’t need to fear our guardians and their kind? We could be wrong about that. Even if we aren’t, our people might not believe us. We’ll have to tell them where we came from and how we were raised, and then they might think that Llipel and Llare sent us to lure them out.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“That our people might not be so happy to see us. Maybe they won’t want us when they find out who raised us.”
“Do you want to go back?” Nita said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’d be the easiest thing to do. But they’re our people—they have a right to know what we’ve found out.”
“Then we should keep searching,” she replied. “At least we will have tried.” She lifted her head. There was still a chance that her people would welcome them and that they were h
iding only out of fear. She would cling to that hope.
The rain had become a drizzle. They took off their helmets and followed the stream until they came to a rocky hill where it flowed underground. They continued south, but they had lost the brook.
The forest was growing darker by the time they came to more sloping land; rain fell more heavily, trickling down on them from the leafy limbs overhead. Nita crept down a hill behind Sven, keeping her eyes lowered, afraid she might slip on the muddy ground.
Sven halted behind the robot; she nearly slid into him. “Look!” he shouted. He pointed ahead; she lifted her eyes.
A body of water was below them. They inched toward it along the slope and at last stood on a bank above a river so wide that she could barely see the trees on the opposite side.
“The river,” Sven gasped as he pulled out his compass. “And it’s flowing southwest. I think we’ve found it.”
Rain fell in sheets on the river; lightning flashed in the dark sky overhead. The river flowed on, beckoning them to the distant city and the people they hoped to find.
15
A storm raged during their first night by the river. Wind tore through the branches overhead while Nita and Sven huddled under a tree with the cloth covering pulled over their heads. The robot sat on the ground next to Nita; its tiny lights were the only illumination they had. It was not possible to build a fire, and impossible to sleep as the wind howled.
The storm died down during the night. At dawn, they saw that the river had swelled; branches and pieces of wood were being carried downstream. More tree limbs littered the banks, and they were often forced to stop so that the gardener could clear them away.
They came to gorges where the river had carved its way through steep inclines. Its roar was deafening; walking so near the edge of cliffs dizzied Nita and made her feel as though she might fall. They retreated from the bank and followed the river’s sound. By evening, they had left the gorges behind, but the high banks were too steep for them to climb down for water.
Night had come by the time they found enough wood for their fire. “I’ll keep watch first,” Sven said. “You don’t look as if you could stay awake.”
She was too tired to argue with him. She lay down near the fire, feeling more miserable than she had ever been in her life. Her head throbbed, while her insides felt knotted; her legs ached from their exertions. She tried to imagine living like this all the time, without comfort and shelter.
Her dreams that night were of the Institute’s warm rooms and peaceful garden. When Sven woke her, she opened her eyes, expecting to see her old room, then felt dismay as she recalled where she was.
Let’s go back, she wanted to say; I can’t take any more of this. Sven stretched out and closed his eyes. I want to go home, she thought.
Sven would be disappointed in her. That suddenly mattered as much to her as finding more of her people. She shut out her thoughts of the Institute, then fed more wood to the fire.
Sunlight glistened on the water below; Nita glanced at a piece of wood as it drifted past. She climbed onto a rocky ledge and gazed down at the water; the current seemed to be even stronger here. The bank was not that high, but it was steep. They would need more water soon; she wondered if one of them should chance climbing down the bank to get it.
Sven was walking behind her; the robot floated on ahead. As she turned from the ledge, she saw something move under the trees.
A short, fat creature was suddenly rushing at her. She froze at the sight of the sharp tusks on either side of its snout, then fumbled for her wand. A beam shot toward the animal from her right; she saw the beast drop as another beam struck it.
She staggered back, teetered on the edge of the rock, and then she was falling. Her body slapped against the water, knocking the air out of her.
She sank, came up just long enough to gulp some air, and then was submerged again. The current dragged at her, too strong for her to fight it. She struggled up and took another breath.
“Nita!” Sven’s voice seemed far away. “Nita!”
Silence surrounded her as she was swept underwater; her lungs nearly burst before her head bobbed above the water once more.
She took a deep breath. A wave slapped her; she swallowed water and choked. She was being carried downriver and could not tell how far she had already come. The helmet at her waist was filled with water, pulling her down. She loosened the tape that held it, let it go, then rose to breathe more air. She was too far from the bank to reach safety; she kicked helplessly against the undertow.
I’m going to die, she thought dimly. The possibility of death seemed oddly distant. I’m going to die because I was careless for one instant. Her leg scraped against a submerged rock; she was suddenly afraid that she would be dashed against a boulder.
She had to save herself somehow. She could not battle against the current and had to find something she could hold that might keep her afloat. She bobbed up and caught a glimpse of a large rock ahead before the water covered her.
The current swept her near the rock; she grabbed at it with her gloved hands, then felt it slip from her grasp.
A thick tree limb floated near her; she threw herself toward it and held on. Waves slapped her face, but she was able to keep her head above water. The banks were not as high here; if she could get to one, she might be able to crawl out. She kicked her legs while pushing at the limb, but the current swept her toward the river’s center.
She tried to steady herself. She was afloat now, and in the middle of the river there was less chance of being swept against rocks.
She swirled through an eddy and was tugged downriver again; the banks were sloping, as though the river was coursing downhill. The branch buoyed her up; she spotted a tree lying in the river, with its trunk against the western bank. She could not see the river beyond the tree and suddenly realized what that meant.
A waterfall lay ahead. If she could not grab at the downed tree, she would be swept over the precipice. A wave struck her as she tried to breathe. She coughed out water, then kicked with all her strength, struggling to reach the tree.
She let go of the drifting branch and grabbed at a leafy limb. She heard it snap, then caught another and held on. The driftwood she had been holding disappeared over the waterfall.
She was caught in the branches, unable to climb up to the trunk. She clung to the limbs while the current dragged at her feet. Her shoulders ached; the river and the weight of her pack kept threatening to drag her under.
I’ve got to hang on, she thought; I can’t get out by myself, so I’ve got to hang on. She wondered if Sven knew she was still alive. The current was a rapid one; Sven might not reach her in time.
She sucked in air, then let it out in one long scream. “Sven!” The river roared past her. “Sven!” She gasped for breath. Her back and arms were tight with pain; she would not be able to hold on much longer. She longed to move and release the tension, but feared that the current would capture her once more.
She waited, her body rigid with fear and the effort of clinging to the tree. For a moment, she thought she heard an answering cry in the distance.
She summoned her strength to call out again. “Sven! I’m here!”
“Nita!” His voice was faint, but she was sure she could hear him now. “Nita!”
At last she saw him above her on the bank, running toward her as the gardener floated behind him. He was panting as he came to the tree. “Can’t you get out?” he shouted.
“No.”
“Hang on. I’ll come and get you.” He took off his pack, then began to crawl toward her along the trunk. A look of fear crossed his face as he glanced toward the precipice; he looked away, keeping his eyes on her. When he was near the branches, he straddled the trunk and held out a hand while gripping one limb with the other.
“Take my hand,” he said.
“I can’t reach it.”
He leaned forward. “You can reach me now.”
“I’m afraid to
let go. If you don’t catch me—”
“I’ll catch you. Try.”
She let go and stretched her arm toward him. He grabbed her wrist, wrenching her shoulder; she could see him strain as he pulled her toward him. She grabbed at the trunk with her other hand; he dragged her up beside him.
He backed toward the bank; she followed, refusing to look at the waterfall. Sven climbed up, then collapsed on the ground above the sloping bank. Nita sat near him, her back against one of the tree’s roots.
She was numb, unable to speak. The robot settled on the ground near them. “I thought I’d lost you,” Sven said at last.
She was trembling; he put his arms around her, holding her tightly. She felt cold; her teeth chattered as Sven stroked her hair. “You took a chance,” she said, “climbing out on that tree. I might have pulled you in.”
“You didn’t.”
“You shouldn’t have crawled out yourself. The gardener could have floated out over the tree and helped me out.”
“I didn’t think of that.” He paused. “And if I’d lost the gardener, I would have had a hard time finding the way back to the Institute.”
She drew back. “So the gardener’s more important than I am!” She choked, then shook as she began to laugh, struck by the joy of being alive at all. “I found out one thing,” she managed to say. “The water’s probably safe to drink. I swallowed enough of it, so if I don’t get sick—” A fit of laughter seized her; her eyes stung with tears.
“Nita.” She calmed herself as he embraced her again. He stretched out; she rested her head against his chest. Birds were singing near them; their song suddenly seemed one of the most delightful things she had ever heard.
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