by Nancy Kress
“Yes,” Enli said, and it was a relief made somehow possible because of the strange buoyancy of her body.
“Is it because of us?” Bazargan again.
“No,” Enli said. “It is because of Tabor. My brother.”
“Ahmed,” Pek Sikorski said, “she’s drugged. Don’t ask her questions now, it’s not fair.”
“One question I must ask. Enli, we are going to the Neury Mountains. There are many reasons, but one is so that your people will not follow us inside to destroy us. Do you want us to take you with us, or to leave you here for Worlders to find? If you aren’t unreal because of us, then perhaps you are best left here to continue with … with whatever arrangements you had made with Reality and Atonement.”
Best left here. Continue with Reality and Atonement. Was that possible? Reality and Atonement had made her an informant, but not one who killed, as the old-man informant had tried to kill her. Did she and the unreal old man thus share the same reality? Or the same unreality? Did she share either with the Terrans, who were all so unreal that their own people had told them truth was not true?
Were there, then, many realities? But how could that be? How could people exist if that were true, living separately in different realities, isolated and alone?
It was the aloneness, then, that was real.
Her head didn’t hurt. Here she was, Enli Pek Brimmidin, lying under the cold stars and thinking the unthinkable, and her head did not hurt. That must be because of the drugs the Terrans had given her. All of this was because of the Terrans, who had brought the new reality, or unreality, into the old, and so shattered the World. If they had not come, she would have served out her term as an informant, been declared once more real, and been allowed to release Tabor to join their ancestors. All these different realities, these isolations that carved and severed people apart and left them writhing alone, had happened because of the Terrans.
She hated them.
She did not hate them. They were her reality.
“Don’t push her, Ahmed,” Pek Sikorski said in her gentle, kind, unreal voice. “You’ll give her a headache. Enli, sleep now, and you can decide afterward if you want to come with us.”
As if sleep, the little peaceful sojourn with one’s ancestors, would ever be possible for her again.
Pek Sikorski adjusted the warming blanket over Enli, tucking it under her toes, pulling it up to her chin. She was like a mother fussing over a child: like Ano with small Fentil. But it was Pek Bazargan who leaned close to her ear and said, “I’m sorry, Enli. This was not the way it was supposed to be.”
Bazargan swiped his hand across his forehead. He was sweating, even though the night air was cold. They were none of them used to this much walking, this fast. The muscles of his calves ached.
“How much farther, Dieter?” he asked.
Gruber sat close to Ann beside the powercone. “Another twelve or thirteen kilometers. We can cover that by noon, if we start at dawn.”
“Even carrying Enli?”
“I think so. But, Ahmed, if they come after us it will be on bicycles, and we can’t outdistance those.”
“I don’t think they will start out until daylight, and with luck we’ll just outpace them,” Bazargan said. “Now we need to sleep, but first tell me exactly what you packed in that emergency sack.”
Gruber grinned. He was in the best physical shape of the four of them and, Bazargan suspected, had the most relish for physical danger. A good person to have along if you got into a spot like the one they were in now. “Four s-suits—I didn’t know we’d have Enli along.”
“Of course not.” Bazargan glanced at the sleeping alien. Any of their s-suits would fit her, but that would leave someone else without one. At the moment Enli lay wrapped in the thermal sheet Dieter had also brought, warm in its self-generating heat. But the Neury Mountains were highly radioactive, and nothing but an s-suit would protect against that.
“The power cone, some p-torches, thermal sheet, gun,” Dieter went on. “The food powders you just ate—”
“How much?”
“Supplies for four for about a week. If we’re careful. Ann’s medkit, my portable geologue, some simple spelunking tools. That’s about it.”
“No wonder that pack weighs so much.”
“Survival’s heavy. But I’m getting point nine gee to help carry it.” Gruber grinned again.
Something moved beyond the circle of light from the powercone. David Allen, returning from his solitary sulk. Barzagan watched him stretch out on the ground without speaking, face turned away from his colleagues, and pretend to go to sleep.
“In the mountains,” Gruber said, acting as if Allen didn’t exist, “the comlink may not work. Depends on how deep the rock cover is at any given point.”
“We’ll try to radio again before we go in,” Bazargan said.
“Why? To tell them what? Unless the Zeus wins out over both the Fallers and that moon they’re playing with, nobody’s coming back for us.”
“Then,” Bazargan said quietly, “we’d better hope the Zeus wins.”
The Neury Mountains rose abruptly from the plain. They had trudged for the last two hours down a long gentle slope and then up a steeper one, and at the top of the rise Bazargan got his first good look at their uncertain refuge. Panting, sweating, the four humans and Enli paused to stare at the home of the First Flower, whose unfolding petals had created World.
The mountains looked, Bazargan thought, as if a manic child had drawn them: uneven, jagged in places and rounded in others, broken at their bases into rifts, passages, humps like a paintpen gone wild. They were covered with the ubiquitous lush “grass” of World, dotted with the equally ubiquitous wildflowers, here grown more stringy in the rockier soil. Great outbreaks of gray rock splotched the foliage.
“They look like regular mountains,” Ann said.
“Relatively new, geologically,” Gruber answered. “This was all underwater in the last major geologic age. Tectonic plate subduction lifted the whole basin millions of years ago. But wait until you see inside.” His tone was enthusiastic.
“Enli,” Bazargan said, “can you walk farther?”
“Yes,” the girl said. Ann had drugged her; she felt no pain. But that must mean she wasn’t feeling her own exhaustion, either, or at least not until she fell asleep on her feet. She’d already done that once, falling to the ground and further bruising her head. After that David and Gruber had taken turns carrying her for a while, but she had proved heavy even for their young strength. Bazargan, feeling his age on this long forced march, had not even attempted it.
“But this is … is …”
“Yes, Enli?” Ann said.
“This is forbidden. The mountains. We cannot go in.”
Ann took Enli’s arm and drew her gently forward. Enli resisted.
Suddenly David Allen spoke, the first words he’d uttered since his outburst last night. “People just came over that low ridge behind us.”
Bazargan whirled around. Ten or fifteen Worlders strode purposefully in pursuit, no more than a kilometer behind.
“Let us move,” Gruber said, with his unflagging energy, and took Enli’s arm from Ann. Gruber pulled Enli along, half running, at a pace the others were forced to match.
After a few minutes, Bazargan looked back. The Worlders were gaining.
“Faster,” Gruber said, and broke into a run, pulling Enli along with him. To Bazargan’s surprise, she was able to keep up. They had underestimated her toughness.
But not his own. Bazargan felt his chest ache as he ran along behind the young people. Ache, and then burn. He couldn’t keep this up very long. His heart …
“You … you go on,” he gasped, doubled over. “Use … my suit … Enli …”
“Come on, Ahmed,” Dieter Gruber said mercilessly. “It’s not that far now.”
It looked very far to Bazargan. Pain crawled leisurely through his chest and legs, making itself at home. His vision blurred. His heart, his h
eart …
Gruber dropped Enli’s arm and grabbed Ahmed’s. In that strong grip—what the hell had Gruber’s parents done to his genome, anyway?—Bazargan stumbled and ran, stumbled and lurched, every gasping breath a torture. Stumble, breathe, stumble, he couldn’t breathe, stop please stop—
“They’ve stopped,” David Allen said, and Dieter let go of Bazargan’s arm. He fell into a heap, all consciousness focused on the exquisite pain in every rib, every fiber of his chest. Breathe, pain, breathe …
“Just catch your breath a bit, Ahmed,” Gruber said, and the bastard wasn’t even gasping.
When he could stand, hands still supporting himself on his bent knees, Bazargan looked around. They had passed the first of many huge fallen boulders littering the ground before the mountain’s abrupt rise. Evidently the boulder was a marker of some sort; their pursuers had stopped a quarter kilometer behind, milling around in what looked like consternation. As Bazargan watched, wheezing and panting, the aliens again started forward, all together. Shared reality.
“Scheisse!” Gruber said. “We must go deeper in.”
“No,” Enli said, but she didn’t struggle when David Allen picked her up bodily and carried her forward.
They reached the base of the towering gray rock and moved along it, Gruber muttering, “Here, here, soon …” Bazargan saw the alien death squad—that’s what it must be—swing around to parallel their path. And draw closer.
They were armed with spears.
Ahmed had never seen these before. There was no hunting on World; the diet was mostly vegetable, supplemented by meat from animals long domesticated into docile herds. Predators had been eliminated millennia ago. Vermin were handled by poisons created by the healers. Worlders seldom killed each other, and then only in moments of passion or for unreality, and then knives were used. Where had the spears come from?
Bazargan lagged behind the others, still panting. A spear sailed past his head and hit the gray rock.
“Down!” Ann cried, grabbing his hand and yanking. Bazargan fell to his knees, scraping them. A smear of blood followed him as he scuttled forward, a wheezing crab, behind the others. They clung to the base of the enormous cliff face, now shielded by fallen boulders, now exposed. Bazargan saw a second spear narrowly miss Gruber, in the lead.
“Ja!” he cried. “Here!” And vanished into the mountain.
Bazargan scuttled forward. Ann was disappearing now, only her scratched and bleeding legs visible. Bazargan saw the hole. No more than a meter high, it was overgrown with grass and scrub. David Allen shoved Enli through the plants, into the rock. Then, to Bazargan’s surprise, Allen crouched behind an inadequate boulder and waved Bazargan on.
It was not a time to argue precedence. Bazargan squeezed through. A moment later, Allen followed.
Bazargan had never liked tunnels. This one was a little more than a meter high, barely enough to crawl through, and nearly dark. The five of them were stuffed into the narrow space like sausages in a casing. The hair on the back of Bazargan’s neck lifted. Something light crawled over his arm; he tried to shake it off.
“It gets better,” Gruber called from up front. “Follow me.”
As if there were a choice! Bazargan crawled forward, trying to calm his ragged breathing, telling himself it was due solely to his frantic running. The tunnel grew darker. The old irrational fear came back to him, crushing him … He would get stuck, unable to move forward or back, buried alive as millions of tons of rock settled onto his body, compressing his flesh and bones …
Breathe deeply. Focus on a still quiet spot in the mind. Breathe—
“Almost there,” Gruber called cheerfully.
Bazargan could see nothing. He crawled blindly over jagged rock, until the tunnel turned again and he could see the faint outline of Enli’s rear end. He followed it until it disappeared and the light suddenly brightened. Bazargan crawled faster. Breathe … breathe … Then he was out.
He emerged into a cavern the size of his personal room at the Voratur household, lit by a tall chimney through the rock. In the gray half-light Bazargan could see another tunnel, mercifully larger, branching from the cave’s far end. The five people, the pupils of their eyes enormous, looked at the irregular walls, the second tunnel, each other.
“Enli,” Ann said urgently in World, “is there any chance your … the people will follow us in here?”
Enli shook her head mutely. She seemed unable to speak.
“When I explored the mountains before,” Gruber said in English, “I went a short way into a lot of these tunnels, and a long way into two. This wasn’t one of them, but the whole system is basically homogenous.”
“Tell us what to expect,” Ann said. She smiled. “Briefly, Dieter.”
“Yes. Well. A million years ago all this was underwater, in a shallow basin. The asteroid impact penetrated deep enough to hit magma, and the eruption of rock was full of gas. That’s why you have so much pumice—this light and porous rock here.” He picked up a stone from the cavern floor and held it out to them. Bazargan could see that it was shot with holes.
“Eventually,” Gruber continued, “tectonic plate subduction raised the whole basin into mountains. The mountains still rested on—or maybe they drifted slowly toward—a hot spot in the crust. There was extensive volcanic activity, creating lava tunnels like the one we’re standing in. We’re still over the hot spot, which is why there are underground hot-water springs. And over time the soft pumice eroded by water and wind into more caves and chimneys and tunnels. Plus, of course, the whole system is radioactive.”
“How radioactive?” David Allen demanded.
“Varies with location.”
Bazargan straightened. It was time for him to resume command. “We have four suits to handle radioactivity, and five people. I suggest we rotate suits and keep a careful eye on how many rads everyone is accumulating. Enli, put this on, please.”
He peeled off his s-suit. Enli looked at him dumbly. The drugs Ann had given her were probably wearing off.
“Do it, please,” Bazargan said in World, and Enli responded to his tone as he had intended. Clumsily she pulled the thin flexible suit up over her legs and torso, onto her arms. Ann showed her how to fasten it, and pulled out the porous, inflatable helmet from the pocket.
Gruber said, “We don’t need helmets here.”
“Good,” Bazargan answered. “If I stand directly under that rock chimney, can I raise the Zeus on the transmitter?”
Gruber squinted at the weak shaft of light. “No. But farther in, you can.”
Allen said, “Farther in?”
“Yes. Come. But this time we will have light.” Gruber took the p-torch from his pack, turned it on, and started forward. The rest followed him into the second tunnel, all of them but Enli stooping to fit. First Ann, limping slightly, her face calm. Enli, dazed, looking ridiculous with her tangled mousy neckfur sticking out over the neck of the s-suit. Allen, glaring at the walls. And Bazargan in the rear, steeling himself for another tunnel.
This one wasn’t as cramped as the first one, but it was darker. Gruber’s light didn’t seem to illuminate much for Bazargan, at the end of the hunched procession. “Hold hands,” Gruber called. Bazargan felt David Allen’s hand grasp his own. Allen’s fingers trembled slightly, and this, paradoxically, steadied Bazargan.
The tunnel went on, it seemed, for kilometers. Bazargan’s shoulders began to ache from stooping. A few times he thought he heard water somewhere behind the dark walls of rock. Once a few pebbles fell from the ceiling, and his heart leapt into his mouth. Erosion, Gruber had said. Soft rock.
Gradually he became aware that he was climbing. The tunnel angled upward. It also grew smaller. Just as Bazargan was beginning to feel panic push at his mind, the tunnel turned abruptly and suddenly he could see the others in front of him, a shuffling stooped line clinging to each other’s hands like worn-out elephants. Then Gruber was through, and Ann, and Bazargan heard her gasp.
He em
erged into an open basin about twenty meters in diameter. Rock overhung the south side, but the north was open to the equatorial sun. In the center of the basin a spring bubbled up from the rock. The light, vertical in the open and diffused under the overhang, illuminated dozens of species of flowers of every color.
Ann darted forward. Bazargan flexed his knees, rolled his aching shoulders. He followed Ann, but Gruber abruptly pushed him back.
“Wait, Ahmed. The count is high here. Too high!”
Radiation. And now that Bazargan looked more closely at the flowers, he saw that many of them had mutated. A pajal bush with elongated leaves instead of the usual rounded clusters. A blue vekifir lying on the ground, too heavy for its spindly stalk. A monstrous huge red-brown flower like coagulated blood, one side bulging and the other stunted.
“The radiation source is the spring,” Gruber said, frowning. “But … never mind. Ahmed, you can raise the Zeus from here, I think.”
Bazargan moved another cautious step away from the rock face and pulled the comlink from his pocket. He felt curiously naked, the only one without an s-suit. It was like those dreams in which everyone else at a scientific conference is clothed and he stood nude, trying to give a presentation.
“Zeus, this is Dr. Bazargan. Respond, please.”
“Colonel Johnson here. Yes, Doctor?”
“We’d like an update on what’s happening out there,” Bazargan said, not without harshness. Why did Syree Johnson think he was calling?
He knew the answer: Johnson wasn’t thinking about the team planetside at all.
“We are towing the artifact toward Space Tunnel 438,” Johnson said crisply. “No sign of enemy craft. No change in status.”
“But there has been a change down here,” Bazargan said, even more harshly. “The natives have declared humans unreal and have tried to kill us. They did kill Ben and Bonnie Mason. The rest of us have fled to the Neury Mountains, where we are now. We cannot leave them without being hunted again. Food is limited. We tried to raise you last night to tell you all this, but you didn’t answer. Can you send a shuttle for us?”