It watched her suspiciously, nervously. Then its feet pushed against the ridged sides of the boat, claws splintering green wood, and it moved its shoulders, jerked them up against the prow until it was sitting at a seemingly impossible angle, its legs bound beneath it, its tiny, weak, vestigial arms, too short to reach its muzzle, clasping and unclasping across the muscled, heavily furred keg of its chest. Suddenly it dipped its head and caught the cloth in its muzzle. Dorthy was distracted for a moment by Kilczer’s sharply renewed attention (although the steady aching rhythm of his rowing didn’t falter). The herder mouthed the cloth, watching her from beneath its swollen brow.
“See if it is hungry,” Kilczer suggested.
“It isn’t,” Dorthy said, but pulled out a strip of jerky anyway, tossed it over. The herder eyed it, Kilczer’s top still dangling in its mouth, then looked at Dorthy. Then with a smooth toss of its head it threw the sodden cloth at her; she caught it one-handed, the garment’s remaining sleeve slapping her breasts. The herder tossed its head again and subsided. It was thinking of the tower again, but with a kind of qualification, a wistfulness Dorthy didn’t quite understand.
Her Talent, now that the implant had recovered from the counteragent, faded quickly. Soon all that she could sense was that faint wistful longing, no longer specific, mixed with Kilczer’s steadfast stubborn determination as his body protested against his hours of labour at the oars. Dorthy offered to take over for a while, but she wasn’t tall enough to work the oars properly. Sprawled on the decking at her feet, picking at the chevron marks left at the edge of each plank by the stone tools of the herders, Kilczer smiled at her efforts. Behind him, huddled at the prow, the herder was watchfully still.
Dorthy sat down, too. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“You will not worry. I manage it.” His bare chest and white, bony shoulders glistened with a fine sheen. He rolled over and leaned at the edge of the platform, reaching down to scoop water to his mouth, splash it over his face. Then he looked sideways and asked, “Does our friend there need another drink?”
“I can’t tell anymore.”
“Ah. Well, never mind.” Kilczer sprang up and briskly took hold of the oars again.
“You should rest,” Dorthy told him.
“We are in the current from the river that feeds this lake now, do you not see how we are drifting?” He bent to examine the bindings on his hands, then adjusted his headband and feathered the oars, began to row with long slow steady strokes, each bringing the boat a fraction closer to the broad mouth of the river, the shore on either side near enough now for Dorthy to be able to see the trees that ran down to the edge of the water, the white boulders piled up along the shore. The clear, dark water was beginning to be clouded, and soon Kilczer had to pull close to one of the banks, where the current was weaker. Now the water was the colour of the milky tea favoured by native Australians. A cold breeze blew down upon them; ahead, high above the stepped pine forest, the bare rimwall rose into cloud tinged pink by the vertical sun.
More and more often, Kilczer paused between strokes, rubbing at his brow. Once he stopped altogether to cough into his fist, a deep, dry, dragging cough that went on for more than a minute. But he shrugged off Dorthy’s concern and resumed rowing.
In the midstream of the river—for they were between the forested banks of the river now—swift currents humped and swirled. The low trees shed dark shadows in which anything might have been watching. Kilczer rowed on, his strokes slow and laborious. At last he said, “I will rest a little, I think.”
“Perhaps we should leave the boat. We’ve done the worst part, crossed the lake. You were right, by the way.”
He pulled, feathered the oars, pulled. “I was lucky, we both were. No, we stay with this boat we fight so hard to take. I would not trust our friend there, in the forest.”
“We could let it go.”
“No, I do not wish that. Perhaps you try to find out more from it.”
“I’ve done my best. There’s hardly anything to find out.”
Pull, feather, Pull. Kilczer was angling towards the rocky shore, where dark trees leaned over huge boulders. He said, “Deep down there is knowledge, you said.”
“But I haven’t access to it. You know that I can only see what it’s thinking. Equivalence is electrical, not chemical.”
“This knowledge is waiting to be released, yes? Our friend is only a few days old, at least in its present form. In a few days more…” He pulled heavily on the port oar and the boat hit something. Dorthy looked around, saw the herder crouch low as fans of needle-leaves scraped over the bow which had lodged against a tree leaning horizontally across the water. Kilczer unshipped an oar and used it to pole the boat parallel to the trunk; Dorthy tied the severed hawser as best she could to one of the main branches.
Kilczer stretched, working his arms. The herder watched him, crouched now beneath a bower of pine branches. “Do not think of escaping, little monster,” Kilczer said, and picked up the rifle. Claws scraped wood as the herder hunched lower. “Ah yes, you understand. Dorthy, you can watch our friend if I rest?”
“Of course,” she said, and when he lay down she began to massage his shoulders, working the tense muscles until they loosened under her fingers. “That is good,” Kilczer said, as she kneaded him. His cool, somewhat waxy skin, the ladder of his bony back: her thin white lover.
Presently he slept, his head cradled on his crossed arms, face turned sideways, half hidden by tangled black hair. Dorthy sat beside him, the rifle on the planking by her hand. In the bow, the herder was still, its large eyes pools of unfathomable shadow. Perhaps it slept, too.
Hours passed. Dorthy watched the river run past, red light glittering on the reticulations of its skin, her anxiety dissolving in its ever-changing unchanging now.
Once, a raft of vegetation moved past, performing a stately waltz in the grip of the swift central current.
Once, a flock of flying things burst from the trees on the far bank, circling the boat—the herder’s glance flicked up—before swooping away downstream. The herder watched them go, then subsided, a mass of dark fur, its face almost hidden within the shadow of its hood.
Some time later Kilczer stretched, then sat up, scrubbing at his eyes. “How long did I sleep?” he asked.
Dorthy glanced at her timetab. “Four hours or so.”
“I did not mean it.” He stepped to the edge of the platform and pissed over the stern, his back to Dorthy and the herder. “We will go on. You can sleep now, Dorthy. I watch as I row.”
“I’m all right. I’ve done nothing.”
“Nonsense,” Kilczer said cheerfully. After wrapping the binding around his hands, he returned to the oars. When Dorthy had untied the boat he swung it out and resumed his steady rhythm.
The banks on either side rose higher, near vertical rock walls hung here and there with black vegetation, shingle beaches at their feet and at their tops pines etched against the dark sky. The red sun shone directly into the canyon. The river threw a loop around a gravel bank. As the boat rounded the bend, Dorthy heard the roar of falling water, and then saw the great waterfall half a kilometre upstream, smashing down from a lip as smooth as glass into the churning bowl. A touch of the billowing mist that boiled around the foam where it fell kissed her face. Kilczer grunted behind her, feathered the starboard oar, and turned the boat into a little cove. Wood scraped on gravel and he poled down until the prow grounded. The herder shifted, looked around, its hood flaring.
Kilczer pulled on his coveralls top (one arm bare), picked up the rifle, and handed it to Dorthy, then fumbled in the sack of orange fabric, came up with his knife. “Cover me,” he said, shouting to clear the roar of the waterfall, and jumped into the well of the boat.
The herder tried to stand, kicking its bound feet. Its claws drew long weals from the unseasoned wood.
Kilczer bent and slashed the binding around the herder’s black-pelted legs. “Damn you, come on! Stand!”
The herder pressed its back against the prow, convinced, Dorthy was sure, that it was about to die, its hood of skin flared out fully around its face. Kilczer reached to grip the angle of a bound arm and the herder kicked out: Kilczer danced back, staggering, the small of his back slamming into the edge of the stern platform. Dorthy jerked up the rifle, her heart pounding.
But the herder subsided, watching them both warily.
“You would think I was going to kill it,” Kilczer said. “The rifle, please.”
“As long as you don’t kill it.”
“Of course not,” he said, and sent a single shot into the sky. The flat crack was hardly audible above the pounding of the waterfall. The herder twitched, then was still again.
Dorthy felt a spasm of angry impatience and snatched at the rifle. Surprised, Kilczer let her take it. “You get out of the boat now,” she told him. “Go on.”
“What—What are—”
“Just go!” After a moment he picked up the orange sack and jumped ashore. Dorthy aimed at the lapped planking in front of the recalcitrant herder’s feet and loosed a close pattern of shots. The herder began to scramble up as chips of wood flew around it. Dorthy fired again, the rifle butt slapping and slapping her shoulder, saw, with a pang of almost physical relief, water well up around shattered planking, then quickly turned and jumped into chill, waist-deep water, waded to the gravel beach where Kilczer stood. The boat was beginning to settle, stern first. A moment later the herder sprang over the side, lithe despite having its arms bound behind its back, splashed into the river up to its thighs. It looked downstream, then at Dorthy, at the rifle she casually held. Stolidly, as if resigned, it plodded out of the water.
The boat began to slide away from the shore, only the oars and the stern platform showing above the water as, turning, it moved into the central current. One oar drifted free, spinning. Soon it and the boat were out of sight.
“‘A rotten carcass of a butt,’” Dorthy quoted, “‘not rigg’d, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively have quit it.’”
“I am sorry to lose it,” Kilczer said. “The way will be harder for us now.” He was looking at the tumbled slope of shingle and boulders that rose to the top of the cliff, a couple of hundred metres above.
Dorthy could sense the herder’s distress. She asked, “Can’t we just let it go?”
“And let it find its friends? Let it tell them in which direction we are going? That I do not believe a wise course of action.”
“But we can’t take it all the way up to the keep!”
“That is the way it wishes to go, is it not? Or would you prefer to shoot it here?”
“Arcady, of course not. But I don’t know if we can trust it all the way up.”
“We do our best.” Kilczer looked at the herder. “Up, now.” He pointed. “Up. Understand? Dumb beast, this is. It respects the rifle at least. I will take the lead, Dorthy. You make sure our friend follows.”
The way was easy at first. Tumbled boulders formed an irregular giant’s staircase, the gaps between them packed with sandy gravel. Feathery sprays of vegetation, dark and tough as old leather, grew from cracks and provided convenient handholds. Pools of water had collected here and there, rimmed with a froth of bubbleplants that popped wetly underfoot. The herder clambered clumsily in front of Dorthy, elbows sticking out for balance; its hands were still bound behind its back. Leading it, Kilczer kept glancing around to make sure it followed, his white face luminous in the violet shadow. Once, when the herder stopped, he yelled at it, made as if to throw a rock. The herder didn’t flinch, but when Kilczer tossed away the rock it lowered its hooded head and began to climb again, its claws scratching on rock, deeply scoring packed gravel.
Higher up, loose scree made the going more difficult. Dorthy’s feet kept slipping because she found it hard to balance while carrying the rifle, and she scraped the palm of her free hand raw. Then the top surprised her, a wide pocket of lush grass surrounded by pine trees. The waterfall flickered no more than a hundred metres beyond trees that leaned over the edge of the drop, water falling as smoothly as silk, the sound of its continual impact terrific, shaking the air and the ground. The wind generated by its fall shook the stiff needle-clusters of the trees; clouds of spray fine as mist blew up, drenching everything.
Kilczer stood at the far edge, in a gap where a tree had fallen away. Mist blew around him and he coughed, pounding at his chest with the flat of his hand as if to drive out something. A little distance away the herder looked at Dorthy, standing up to its knees in the grass.
Kilczer turned, shook back black hair, still coughing. After a moment he said, “I suppose we can rest a little while,” then began to cough again, bending over his fist.
“Let’s get away from here,” Dorthy said, shouting over the waterfall’s roar. And then the herder’s intention struck her and she started forward, yelling, “It’s going to—”
It did.
Head down, hood fully flared, the herder charged across the grassy space. Before Kilczer could straighten up it smashed into him and without pausing ran over the edge.
Dorthy reached the gap in time to see them hit a clump of trees far down the sheer rock face, spinning apart, dwindling and vanishing into the boiling mist. She shouted after them in despair, shouted Kilczer’s name over and over, shaking as mist drenched her, her voice swallowed in the indifferent roar of the waterfall.
At last she looked away, her throat raw, breath driven from her. She had dropped the rifle and bent to pick it up, saw in the grass three trails, darker where stems had bent over: Kilczer’s, the herder’s, and her own. It was only then that she realized that she was alone.
She prowled the edge of the small clearing for a long time, watching the strong foaming currents of the basin at the foot of the waterfall, the dark water of the river running swiftly between high rock walls. Wind plucked her wet coveralls. Over and over she rehearsed the informed intuition she’d felt the moment before the herder’s charge. She couldn’t remember if she had sensed anything before then. Perhaps the herder itself hadn’t known what it was going to do before it charged, and certainly it was comforting to believe that, because it meant that even with her Talent she couldn’t have prevented it.
But something she couldn’t quite pinpoint suggested that this might not be so. She remembered the enemy around BD twenty, the way they always committed suicide when capture seemed inevitable; every crippled ship or englobed asteroid blew all its power sources in a single surge, very often taking their would-be captors with them. The enemy, the enemy…but surely the new male herders, hacking crude boats into shape with stone implements, lacking even the rudiments of language, couldn’t be the enemy. The enemy…Whatever it was, it evaded her, but thinking about it kept her mind off the terrible instant when the herder had collided with Kilczer, the way his head had snapped around, white face vivid, the moment before they both plunged beyond the edge, the moment before his death. For he had to be dead, she told herself, as she stared downstream. She had seen his fall, and nothing could survive that, let alone the churning currents at the foot of the waterfall. But still she prowled, half expecting Kilczer to appear at the top of the track, smiling wearily, his black hair plastered back from his high forehead.
More than two hours passed before Dorthy turned reluctantly and quit the little clearing. The forest sloped upward as she left the roar of the waterfall behind. Her soaked coveralls clung to her chilled skin. The trees were widely spaced and pools of red light sank between them, on to a carpet of fallen pine needles or clumps of dark-leaved plants that sometimes took advantage of these little glades.
She stopped in a larger than usual clearing where pocked black rock, some crumbling lavic outcrop, thrust up as high as the trees around it. She cast down the rifle and lay beside it in warming sunlight on the soft layer of needles and fell asleep almost at once, a deep dark sleep with no remembered dreams.
When she awoke, she felt a warm weight on her belly,
and thinking it was Kilczer’s hand reached out for it sleepily. Short fur pricked her fingertips and she opened her eyes, then scrambled to her feet. The creature dropped and uncoiled at her feet, long-bodied with fur a lustrous red shot through with gold, large black eyes that looked at her as if in reproach. Gasping with shock she reached for the rifle, and the creature fled, its long body weaving sinuously as it scuttled away on three pairs of legs, so comical that her repugnance vanished and she began to laugh, still dazed with sleep, looked around for Arcady Kilczer and remembered what had happened.
Later, as she walked through the forest, between tall trees that were almost but not quite like the pine trees of Earth (but perhaps they were ancestors of the trees that cloaked the steep mountains of Thrace where she had worked for a brief, hot, thyme-scented week), she regretted having scared off the creature that had crept on to her while she had slept, out of need for warmth, perhaps even companionship…it would have been company for her. She, who had so often spurned company, yearned for it more and more during her solitary journey upward through the forest, missed Kilczer with a sense of loss that was not quite grief. Sometimes she imagined him to be walking a few paces behind her, nervous in the wilderness and impatient to be moving on, an impatience tempered with kindliness—and she would turn and the simple fact of her solitude would again be made apparent.
For the most part the climb through the forest was uneventful. She had long before lost track of the diurnal rhythms her timetab faithfully marked. She ate at no fixed interval but simply when she was hungry, first exhausting the store of jerky before beginning to hunt again—if that was the right word for it, for although animal life was sparse it was quite oblivious to the danger Dorthy represented: humanity, almost the destroyer of a world. Most often her quarry were small, short-haired creatures striped like bandicoot but with a long narrow head and spindly legs. They trotted across Dorthy’s path quite fearlessly and she potted them without remorse, broiled their lean flesh over small fires she lit by exploding a strip of azide tape in a bed of crumbling bone-dry punk. Mostly she kept as close to the canyon as possible, twice having to ford white-water tributaries. As she climbed, the trees became smaller and more widely spaced, growing in definite clumps separated by open spaces or masses of coarse bush, a myriad thorny tendrils interwoven like tangled barbed wire, or massed conglomerations of bubbleplant, spheres of delicate tissue-thin octagonal panes as big as her head or larger piled one atop the other, trembling in the breeze. Sometimes she saw great flying creatures hanging in the wind from the rimwall peaks on double pinions a dozen metres across; superstitiously, she never shot at these huge wind-riders.
Four Hundred Billion Stars Page 16
