17
They mingled briefly with throngs of arriving and departing traders, and one at a time they joined groups heading for ships parked near the one they had selected as a rendezvous. Arluklo went first, a comically unusual-looking klo with a large, flopping pack on his back, but no one gave him a second glance. The kloa were so ubiquitous that they went about unnoticed. Malina and Darzek carried their packs and equipment as bulky packages wrapped in cloth. Miss Schlupe accompanied them - not because she was needed, but because she desperately wanted to do something to speed them on their way.
At the rendezvous point, standing in the broad shadow of the most remote spaceship on the field, Malina and Darzek donned their packs and draped coils of rope, tools, and handlights about their persons. Miss Schlupe handed each of them a package of food to be handcarried until it was eaten. She took the cloth used to wrap the packages, folded it up, and tucked it under her arm.
"Well - good luck," she said. She started off obliquely toward a remote cluster of ships, from which she could approach the mart from the opposite direction to the one she had set out in.
They stood for a moment, watching her go, and then they turned their backs on the soft glow of light that suffused the landing field and headed off into the chill, overcast night.
It was much darker than the previous night. The overcast blotted out the ring of artificial moonlight and the stars, and as the glow of the mart and the occasional sparks of light from ascending or descending ships slowly receded, the uncertain footing became treacherous. When Malina nearly fell while stumbling down a steep descent into a dry stream bed, Darzek called a halt to suggest, politely, that they don their infragoggles.
Malina had not thought of them. She had associated this equipment with their invasion of the caverns and placed the goggles in the depths of her pack. After an embarrassing search she found them and the impenetrable darkness gave way to dim outlines and enough detail to make walking much easier. There were no goggles for Arluklo, but his natural night vision seemed better than theirs with goggles.
They started off again, crunching along the impacted gravel of the dry stream bed. Arluklo led the way, Darzek followed, and Malina it was her preference - brought up the rear. The going was easy for a time, with only an occasional treacherous pothole to avoid, and Malina was able to plod along mechanically, almost oblivious to the others, and keep her thoughts on her children.
Then the stream began to meander, and gradually it curved away from their course. They left it behind and made their way along a stone-strewn valley, where in low places thick vines thrust out long, firmly anchored shoots to trap an unwary foot. Unfortunately, the infragoggles did not pick up the low-lying vines. Once all three of them went down in a heap, after which they raised their feet high when they heard the metallic clicks of vine leaves stirring in the dry, cold wind.
Darzek, who had helped Arluklo to his feet, muttered in English, "He's heavy!"
"I know," Malina answered, "but he's not indestructible. We shouldn't be walking so close together."
They changed their formation to a wedge, with Arluklo at the point and Malina and Darzek walking on either side and slightly behind him.
As they moved up out of the shallow valley and into the wind, the chill night became bitterly cold. Malina was grateful for Miss Schlupe's last-minute suggestion that she wear ski pants and a heavy jacket; but the exertion of picking her way through uncertain footing soon had her perspiring. Once she tripped and was saved from falling only when Darzek adroitly caught her. She said, "Thank you." His muttered reply was indistinct.
Arluklo did not speak at all, but he seemed to know their route unerringly. To Malina's surprise, once away from the crumbling ground near the mart, he had less difficulty scurrying along on his clusters of spidery legs than they did on their two. His pace was slower than that of a human in a hurry, but for a long trek Malina thought it much less tiring, and it might even get them to their destination faster.
At dawn the footing became much easier. They could see rocks and vines and washes of gravel and avoid them; but they went no faster, because Arluklo held them to the same steady pace.
At full daylight, Malina called a halt. She had a decision to make.
It had been necessary to travel at night until they were safely away from the mart. They still could see ascending and descending shuttle ships high above it, but it seemed unlikely that anyone aboard would observe them or - even if he did - imagine that persons abroad in that barren land would not have a compelling and legal reason for it.
Now they could travel when they chose - when she chose - but they could not travel a hundred and forty or two hundred kilometers without a rest, and neither she nor Darzek had had much rest for more than two days. Should they prepare themselves for the risky foray underground with long rest periods, or should they push on to the limit of their endurance, risk arriving at their destination in a state of exhaustion, and hope there would be opportunity for rest on the way back?
Darzek had discovered a nest of tiny, scurrying ground creatures.
Little had been known about Montura's flora and fauna at the mart, so Malina went to examine these curiosities. There was something oddly familiar about them.
Then Arluklo came over to see them, and she realized :what it was.
The creatures looked like a klo's smaller relatives a multiplicity of times removed. Was Arluklo a native Monturan? And had the planet spawned two intelligent life forms, one above ground and one below?
Malina and Darzek had a few mouthfuls of food and a swallow of water while Arluklo sat nearby with the air of patiently waiting for them. Then, having made her decision, Malina made ready to move on.
They would go as fast as they could, as far as they could, and rest as little as possible. Better to arrive in time, even if exhausted, than to be well rested and late.
The decision was hers, but again she had no choice.
For daylight travel, they spread out to make themselves less conspicuous. Arluklo, his elongated pack beating a muffled tattoo on his back with every one of his multiple steps, plodded far ahead. Malina and Darzek walked on opposite sides of a ravine. Probably the infrequent rains sent torrents of surface runoff down this deeply eroded watercourse. Here and there rocks had been tumbled into heaps that formed natural dams, and the water, seeping into the porous ground, produced deep sinkholes behind them. They circled the sinkholes and clambered over the piles of rock and the sunbaked, decaying rock often crumbled under their weights. If they'd had a year or two in which to search, they might have found a natural entrance to the natives' cavern world - or dug one of their own.
Malina, finding the responsibilities of leadership a heavier burden than her pack, wrenched her thoughts from her children and began watching the others concernedly. Arluklo's multiple limbs worked as smoothly as an infinitely complicated machine. If one foot stumbled, several others were planted to keep him moving steadily forward. Only a slide that cut the ground from under him or two clumsy humans falling on top of him would unbalance the little klo. It disturbed her that she knew almost nothing about him. How far could he walk without tiring? Did the cold night air bother him? Now the rising sun was becoming uncomfortably warm, and he was walking hatless through an unshaded wasteland. Would he be subject to sunstroke? Did his pack really carry enough sustenance to support him through their long trek? Would he tell her the truth if she asked him, or would he attempt to match strides with them until he dropped?
Jan Darzek represented a different sort of problem. She suspected that she knew him too well. His physical condition certainly was poor, but he would be even less likely to confess to fatigue than Arluklo. She could only wait and see what mental problems she might have to cope with. For the moment, he seemed completely cooperative, even submissive.
He looked ridiculous. He wore clothing of his own design, and the outer garment was a fur-lined overall. The fur, he informed her, was a discovery of his on a world whose name
meant nothing to her. It had some remarkable property of keeping the body warm while not permitting it to overheat, and the garment, turned inside out, was just as effective at keeping one cool. He had a monstrous fur-lined hat that supposedly functioned on the same principle. At dawn he had ceremoniously reversed this outer clothing, and the miraculous fur was a patchy, off-color white. Now he pranced along, looking like a hyperactive fur-bearing animal with a slight case of the mange.
She had noticed, though, that he did not perspire as she did; and now, with the temperature climbing, she could remove her jacket, but the ski pants were uncomfortably warm and she had brought no others.
Darzek's impulsive curiosity both irritated and worried her. It was worse than that of her son Brian. He would not conserve energy and march in a straight line. He wandered about in all directions, here examining a fungus like fuzziness around the base of a rock, there studying a plant or something resembling the footprint of an animal. Once he crossed the ravine to show her a rock that had some kind of geological significance not entirely clear to her. Brian would have brought it to her because it was pretty. It amounted to the same thing.
But all of these concerns were peripheral to the one worry that consumed her. Were Brian and Maia treated kindly? Were they fed properly? The Monturans surely had children of their own. They were a civilized people, after their own fashion. They had some kind of ethical standards, or they would not have evolved that strange doctrine of intent. She prayed that they would treat her children with kindness and consideration and understanding, and at the same time she was desperately fearful that they would not.
Darzek, who had wandered so far off course that he disappeared behind a hill, returned to halt Arluklo with a shout. She hurried to him, and he showed her the mute marks of tragedy - the large footprints of a carnivore, the small footprints of a victim, and a scattering of scales and gnawed bones.
"If it's possible to estimate size by footprints, the winner was as large as a lion," Darzek said.
There seemed to be a superabundance of footprints for one lion.
She puzzled over them for a moment, and then she looked about her. "What does it live on?"
"There's always a lot more life in a place than one sees when clomping through it," Darzek said. "If its prey weren't numerous, the carnivore wouldn't be here. Did you notice that the victim seems to have four legs? That would connect it with the evolutionary line of the two-legged, two-armed natives, but how will we classify a carnivore with at least eight legs? And both of them have the same kind of foot-round, with a rim on the outside like a concave hoof. Very peculiar."
"Is the thing likely to attack us?" Malina asked.
"I don't know. We can't resemble its natural prey, which seems to be quite small. Fortunately it's a solitary hunter. A pack of these things could constitute quite a menace."
Arluklo had joined them. They questioned him, but he knew nothing at all about Montura's wild animals.
"What should we do?" Malina asked.
"There's probably very little danger during the day," Darzek said.
With a swift movement he plucked a small pistol from an inner pocket. "I brought this just in case. The caliber is too small for elephants, but it makes a noise, and it's a bit more reassuring than having nothing at all. If you see one of these things, holler."
They plodded onward. When a ravine twisted aside, they mounted to the dismal plateau surface until they encountered another headed in the proper direction. Arluklo led them as confidently as a navigator with a gyroscopic compass. Even in a meandering ravine he cut across loops and seemed to deviate from his course very little.
Peering across the bleak, wind-swept plateau, Malina experienced a flash of revelation. She was looking at this land wrong side to. She was seeing what would be, in most places, the ungainly underside - because this land was upside down. The lush, watered, life-sustaining side was here to be found under the surface, in the cavern world of the Monturan natives. No wonder they rarely came to the surface!
By afternoon Malina felt exhausted, and Darzek had stopped wandering about. He walked wearily with his eyes fixed on the ground ahead of him. Arluklo's flow of steps seemed as rhythmic as when he started, but Malina thought he had to be tiring. She wanted desperately to continue while the light lasted, because the going was so much easier in daylight, but long before dusk she realized that she could go no farther.
They stopped by a crumbling embankment that provided illusory shelter, and Darzek rolled up in a blanket and went to sleep at once. Arluklo, declining the use of a blanket, seated himself dog fashion, half leaning against the embankment, and seemed to go into a trance with his eyes open. She unrolled a blanket for herself and lay down.
Immediately she was beset with the cares of leadership. Should one of them be standing watch against multi-legged lions?
She lay listening to Darzek's noisy breathing. She had half expected sexual advances from him. As a widow, she had learned to expect them, to scrutinize every friendly gesture, every tendered favor as a possible prelude to an attempted seduction. Jan Darzek, however honorable, was a man; moreover, he was one who had not seen a human woman for years, and he was far too good-looking to have been a hermit on Earth. She thought she could have written his script for him: "We're all alone in the universe. It's going to be destroyed anyway. No one will know. What else matters except us?"
The heavy breathing continued with a slight, almost imperceptible snore. She tucked the blanket around her and fell asleep.
A cry awakened her. For a dazed moment she thought it was Brian's cry. She threw off the blanket and leaped to her feet. It was dusk, and she could barely see Arluklo sitting motionless against the bank. Darzek's still form was a shadow - enshrouded shadow, but his breathing was rapid and irregular. Then he cried out again, and she knelt beside him and gently shook him awake.
He sat up and stared at her for a moment. "Time to go?" "No."
"Was I making noises? Sorry."
He flopped down again, and she returned to her blanket, wondering if some past horror had shaped his nightmare or if he were counting off the worlds that were dying while he slept - one, two, ten; banishing the universe was not enough. She should have exorcised it.
She slept longer than she had intended, and when she awoke she was still tired. She stumbled through the darkness to shake Arluklo. He made no response until she spoke his name, and then he jerked erect. Darzek heard her and began rolling up his blanket. In a few minutes they were ready to move on. She spoke to Arluklo, and obediently he started out. Malina and Darzek donned infragoggles and followed him, munching on Miss Schlupe's compressed meat candies. Malina's thoughts again were on her children. The closer she came to them, the more remote they seemed.
The terrain was changing. From the level plateau, riddled with its eroded and crumbling dry watercourses and sinkholes, they were moving into an area of genuine hills. Walking became more difficult. The watercourses were crossing their route, which meant that they were following the terrain's most rugged profile. Their pace slowed as they stumbled laboriously up ever steepening hills.
Suddenly an enormous shadow leaped up almost at Malina's feet and bolted off into the night, its flight marked by thudding footsteps and a rattle of dislodged stones. Before she could react, Darzek was at her side.
"Good show," he said, returning the pistol to his pocket. "It's afraid of us."
They caught up with Arluklo and took up their formation again. Twenty minutes later Darzek said resentfully, "You were supposed to holler."
She did not answer.
Through the night they struggled over increasingly difficult terrain with an ever-slowing pace. At dawn they stood on an eminence and surveyed the land about them. Malina saw nothing but a barren, eroded land, and although the hills seemed to gradually level toward the horizon ahead of them, she feared that it was an optical illusion.
She could not contain her disappointment. "I thought
we'd be able to see something."
"What sort of thing?" Darzek asked.
She looked about her again. "It was silly of me. Just because there's a park at that entrance near the mart doesn't mean there has to be one at every entrance. I'll settle for a hole in the ground if it leads to the right place."
Darzek turned to Arluklo. "It is out there somewhere, isn't it?"
"The place you marked on the map. Yes. We are approaching it." "Maybe the reason we don't see anything is because there's nothing to see. Remember - we're only guessing that there's an entrance there. Shall we go?"
Shortly after midday they found it.
They came abruptly on a steep-sided canyon. At its distant head, a dry stream bed ended where a waterfall had once tumbled precipitously into it. Below, from an enormous opening, the stream gushed forth from its new underground course and raced away between lush, cultivated fields that extended almost to the canyon walls. Machines were at work in the fields, but there were no natives to be seen.
[Jan Darzek 03] - This Darkening Universe Page 19
