by Speer, Flora
“How can they all be growing on one planet?” she asked. When he did not answer at once, she found the explanation herself. “It’s unlikely they would all grow here naturally. Someone must have brought them here.”
“And?” He was watching her the way her favorite teacher used to do, waiting until she worked out the problem in her own mind and found the solution for herself.
“That means there are intelligent life forms here.” She paused, looking at the tall trees. “Or once there were. Those trees have been growing for a long time. But if the people who planted them are still here, it means our chance of finding someone with communications equipment is fairly good.”
“Can’t you just enjoy the journey?” he asked. “Narisa, look around you. Are you blind and deaf?”
“I’ve been on guard, Commander Tarik.” That was not entirely true. She had been thinking, and not paying much attention to where they were going. It was the journey’s end that interested her.
“Being on guard means being observant.” Tarik caught her shoulders and pushed her to the edge of the rock. She knew he was annoyed with her and briefly she thought he was going to throw her into the stream, but instead he held her at the very brink and made her look into the water. ‘Tell me what you see,” he commanded.
“Water. And rocks. A few green things growing in the water. That’s all,” she said stubbornly. But something caught her eye. “Wait, what’s that? That silvery thing, there by the round stone.”
“Fish. There are schools of them in every quiet pool,” Tarik told her, and turned her to look elsewhere. “See there? It’s one of those creatures we saw the first evening, the little furry thing with six legs. I don’t know what it is, but it seems harmless enough. And see that vine draped over the stream from one tree to another? We could use those yellow flowers for drinking cups, except they’re too beautiful to destroy. And the blue butterflies, have you noticed them? I’ve seen at least a dozen.”
“I haven’t noticed any,” Narisa admitted.
“Open your eyes, woman. This is an incredibly lovely world. I’m beginning to think someone deliberately planted it this way.”
“Who? For what purpose? To trick us? Don’t forget, we are in the Empty Sector, Commander Tarik.”
“I haven’t forgotten. I’m on guard as much as you are, but that doesn’t stop me from delighting in the things I see here.”
“There might be large predators.” Narisa eyed the thick forest before them. “Or the birds might come back.”
“I hope they do. Let’s stop for a while, shall we?” Tarik dropped to sit on the rock, sliding off the straps of the packages he had been carrying over one shoulder. He pulled off his boots, rolled up his trouser legs and stuck his feet into the water. Then he took off his jacket and dumped it on top of his boots. Narisa stood watching him while he fumbled at the safety harness still wrapped about his ribs.
“You should leave that on for a few days,” she said. “Just to be certain you have healed. That’s the sensible thing to do.” When he did not answer, she reluctantly sat beside him.
“Put your feet in,” he advised. “We’ve been walking all morning. It’s refreshing.”
“Commander Tarik,” she began sternly. He stopped her.
“No more commander or lieutenant,” he said quietly but decisively. “On this world you are simply Narisa, and I am Tarik.”
She absorbed that a moment or two, considering the implications and trying not to notice the way the sunlight played over the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms. It took a great effort to stop looking at his sleek, hard body and consider his words instead.
“You don’t believe we will be able to leave here, do you?” she said at last. “What’s more, you don’t care.”
He said nothing. He was watching the water flow across his bare feet and wriggling his toes in pleasure. Narisa remembered her childhood, and wading in Beltan rivers. She pulled off her own boots and stuck her feet into the stream beside his.
‘This,” she stated, “is dereliction of duty. We could both be court-martialed. We ought to be trying to find a way home, not playing.”
“No one will ever know,” he promised. Then, more seriously, “Narisa, you must understand, although we will keep searching, it is possible we won’t find anyone here who can help us. We might find those who will be our enemies. In either case, it is unwise for us to quarrel. We will need to trust and depend on each other, whatever happens.”
“I understand. It’s just that you are so different now from the way you were on the Reliance, and you won’t pay any attention to regulations. It’s as though you are happy we’ve been marooned here.”
“I suppose I do appear to be different. I’m certainly not pleased about the loss of all those lives on the Reliance, but there is nothing I can do to change what has happened, and I see no point in scrupulous adherence to rules that don’t apply here.
“Did you know this was to be my last voyage?” Tarik heaved a sigh that might have come from inside his very soul. “The truth is, I ought to have left the Service long ago. I’ve always had an independent streak. One of my ancestors was an anarchist who was punished for his crimes by being pushed out the hatch of a prison ship into deep space without an air supply. My family has become more respectable in the centuries since then, but sometimes when I was naughty as a child, my father accused me of being like that ancestor. I suppose I did inherit a need to go my own way, and I have always been skeptical of anything I was told I ought to believe without question. Those traits did not make me a likely candidate for the Service, but somehow I managed to keep myself under control and not cause scandal to my family. I would have been captain of my own ship one day, but I’ve seen and heard too much, in the Service and in the Assembly. My older brother is also in the Service, and my father is a Member of the Assembly. Whenever we were all at home, I listened to them talking together. I want no part of Service, or Capital, or Assembly. Not any more. I’d like to find a quiet world outside the Jurisdiction where I could live, and someone to live with me, to be my companion.”
“A world like this one?” Narisa wasn’t certain she could live on a world without the strict regulations she was accustomed to after so many years in the Service. The thought was frightening. How could people know what to do without regulations to guide them? Yet somewhere deep inside, she felt strangely excited by the idea.
“Well,” Tarik said with a crooked smile, “you must admit this world is outside the Jurisdiction.”
He would want Suria to live with him, of course, not Narisa. Beautiful, flame-haired Suria, with her sensuous body and her sultry voice that could make the simplest navigational instructions sound like an erotic invitation. Narisa had met Suria when their duties had overlapped for one day so Suria could fill her in on the eccentricities of Reliance’s navigational instruments. The woman had been friendly enough, but she had made Narisa feel totally unfeminine and incompetent. No wonder Tarik resented Narisa, considering what he’d had to give up when Suria left the ship.
Narisa looked at Tarik. They sat shoulder to shoulder, and he was staring into the stream, presenting his profile to her. He had such sharp, clear-cut features, only slightly blurred by three days’ growth of beard. Whereas Narisa was partly in shadow, the orange sun shone directly on Tarik’s face, and his shoulders and arms glowed with the golden light. Dark hair grew on his forearms and chest, and his hands were long and slender, and very strong. She remembered the touch of his hand on her breast, and began to feel the same warmth she had felt then.
He must have sensed her close observation, for he turned his head suddenly. They gazed directly into each other’s eyes for a long, breathless moment. Then Tarik bent toward her. He did not have to move very far before his mouth lightly touched hers, withdrew, and returned for a deeper kiss. Narisa sat perfectly still, unable to respond.
It had been years since anyone kissed her in that way. The last time it had been one of those laughing playmates o
n Belta, a boy with silver hair and soft gray eyes, and he was long dead, gone with all the others the Cetans had killed ten years ago, and no man had kissed her since. That had been largely her own doing. She wanted it that way. A tear rolled down her cheek. Tarik wiped it away with one long finger.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. `’I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
‘I wasn’t weeping,” Narisa snapped at him in sudden irritation. “I never cry. Tears are a sign of weakness. It’s the sunlight. I’m not used to it after so long on a spaceship. It’s so terribly bright.”
Tarik looked hard at her, opened his mouth to speak, but what he would have said she never knew, for suddenly one of the birds was there. It was the blue one this time, and it glided along the stream, its great wings barely missing the trees and bushes on either side.
Tarik jumped up and stood on the rock in his bare, wet feet, watching it. The bird flew past them, heading downstream to disappear around a bend. There was complete silence after it had gone, as though the very forest held its breath. Then they heard it far above their heads, the beat of its wings followed by the call Narisa had heard the day before.
`’Chon. Chon-chon. Chon.”
It approached again from upstream, flying along the same route as before, until it was hidden from sight at the bend of the stream. A third time the bird repeated its performance, and by then Tarik had his boots and jacket on, and was urging Narisa to hurry with her own boots.
“We’ve been going in the right direction,” he said excitedly. “Come on, Narisa.” He grabbed one of her hands, pulling her to her feet and dragging her after him.
They reached the bend in the stream. There was no sign of the bird, but they kept going, and Tarik saw to it that they moved faster, as though he knew something important lay ahead.
Where they now found themselves, the forest grew ever thicker with no clearings at all. Underbrush constantly blocked their way, and Tarik and Narisa had to frequently hold back branches, or sometimes large bushes, so they could force their way through. Above them huge vines hung from tree to tree. Several times Narisa thought she saw movement among them, or between the bushes or trees, but she could not stop to investigate. She did not want to lose sight of Tarik.
The forest was so dense that there were long stretches when they could not see the stream, but had to listen for it so they could follow its direction. In spite of all the obstacles, Tarik pressed on. After an hour or so of the rapid pace he had set, Narisa was gasping for breath.
“Could we stop?” she panted. “Just for a little while, please. You should rest yourself, or you will be sick again.”
“No, I won’t. I’m perfectly healthy now. I feel wonderful. We might eat something, though.”
He brought out the wafers of compressed food, and they sat between two bushes in a space so small their knees were touching. They ate quickly, then drank a little water.
“I’ll leave you for a few minutes.” Tarik rose.
“Wait.” She wanted to say, don’t leave me, but could not bring herself to admit she was afraid of the forest, which now pressed closely upon them. And she, too, wanted a few minutes alone to attend to personal needs. “I’ll go to the stream. I’d like to put some cool water on my face. I’ll stay there, right by the stream, until you come, so we won’t lose each other.”
Tarik nodded and moved off into the thick greenery. Narisa headed toward the stream. It was a short time later when, on the narrow, muddy verge, she bent to wash her hands and then her face, that she became aware the bird was flying along the stream once more. She watched it, thinking this was no special guidance for herself and Tarik, but only the bird’s daily habit. It was probably looking for food. Perhaps it ate the fish Tarik had shown her earlier. She knew little about birds, but it seemed to her this one’s long, toothed beak would be well suited to catching fish. She wondered how they tasted, and whether she and Tarik might catch and eat them when their wafers were all gone.
She watched the bird as it disappeared downstream, then glanced around to see if Tarik had appeared yet. She saw that one of the thick green vines had dropped off a nearby tree and had begun crawling toward the stream. Narisa stared at it. She stood in its way, and even as she heard Tarik’s tense voice, she recognized it for what it was.
“Snake,” Tarik said from some distance behind her. “A poisonous one, I think. Stay where you are. It may pass by you if you don’t startle it.”
Narisa could not have moved if she had wanted to. There was no place to go in that tiny area between dense undergrowth and stream, and she was too frightened to do anything at all. The snake was large, with black spots along its green body, and she thought it was looking directly at her. It was big enough to strike well above her protective boots. She stood frozen, waiting.
“Don’t move,” Tarik said.
“No.” Her own voice sounded surprisingly calm. “No, I won’t.”
From high overhead she heard the beat of wings. She could not look up. Her eyes were fixed with hypnotic intensity upon the snake. There was a flurry of blue feathers, and the bird stood perched precariously upon a rock in midstream. The snake slithered closer to Narisa.
The bird surged off the rock and pecked at the snake. The snake twitched, turning toward the bird, its path diverted from Narisa. The bird pecked again, drawing blood this time, and the snake reared upward to strike its attacker. The bird was now standing in the shallow water at the edge of the stream, and as Narisa watched in horror, it stepped to one side, spreading its wings. The snake struck with lightning speed. The bird, equally as fast, took the blow on the edge of one extended wing. The snake fell back and the bird pounced upon it with beak and outstretched talons. In an instant the snake was dead. The bird dropped it, but continued to stand over its prey.
Narisa felt Tarik’s arms around her as she slumped backward against his chest.
“Don’t faint,” he warned her wryly. ‘There’s no place to lay you down except in the stream.”
“I’m not going to!” Terror was replaced by anger at his suggestion that she was weak and liable to faint. She pulled away from him, but staggered as dizziness overcame her. Tarik swept her off her feet and held her. “Put me down,” she ordered.
At that he gathered her more closely to himself and pressed his rough-bearded cheek against hers, holding her captive in a warm embrace.
“If you weren’t frightened,” he said, “I was.”
She felt her anger evaporating at his words, and raised her arms to circle his neck, finding safety and comfort in his strength.
The bird stood at the water’s edge, watching them. Tarik loosened his grip on Narisa.
“Look at it.” He set her down slowly, his eyes and mind now on the bird. “It saved you. That was a deliberate act, Narisa. You can’t deny there is intelligence of some kind at work here.”
Narisa was too grateful to be alive, and too touched by his open concern for her, to argue with him. She steeled herself and stepped forward. She did not want to go anywhere near the dead snake, but there was something she must do. She had recognized the bird by the jagged scar on its beak. It was time to say thank you, and to help if she could.
She put out both hands, reaching toward the wing the snake had hit. It was spread a little awkwardly, as though the bird was deliberately holding it away from its body, but Narisa could see no sign of blood or other damage. The three clawed fingers at the last joint of the wing were curled slightly and looked relaxed rather than tense with pain. Narisa should have been afraid of the bird’s dangerous talons and beak, but she was not. She put both hands on the wing at the spot where the snake had sunk its fangs. Behind her she heard Tarik gasp.
There was no sign of injury. The feathers were smooth and stiff to the touch, their radiant blue color glowing against her own pale skin. Narisa stroked downward gently, then lifted her fingers and stroked again. The bird cocked its head, watching her closely, but did not move away. Narisa wanted to stroke its chest feath
ers, too, and wondered if she would be permitted. She lifted one hand. The bird side-stepped her, turned toward the stream, and, opening its wings, took off, flying straight downstream as it had done before.
Tarik was staring at her in amazement.
“What made you do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I simply had to do it. I don’t think the wing was hurt at all. You saw how easily the bird flew.”
“The snake may have struck the outer edge of the feathers instead of flesh. Are you all right, Narisa? Can you go on?”
“Certainly I can. I’d like to get away from that snake at once.” Her voice was crisp, as if she were in complete control of herself, though inwardly she was intensely moved by what had happened, and confused by her own reactions. Deep in her mind she was now certain Tarik was right about the birds; they were intelligent, and they did communicate in some way. She had known the bird wanted her to touch it, and she had not wanted to resist. Accepting these factors meant going against all her training, and against Jurisdiction laws. This strange planet, combined with Tarik’s dangerously subversive ideas, were changing her thought patterns, and it was most unsettling.
They resumed their journey downstream, Narisa keeping a wary eye on the overhead vines as well as looking for unfriendly beasts on the ground, but they saw nothing, nor did the bird return.
The sun had set into a lavender and orange dusk when the forest ended abruptly and they found themselves at the edge of an immense lake. In the far distance a purple mountain rose, crowned in white. To their left the stream they had been following turned into a low waterfall, then wended its way through a brief stretch of grasses and blossoming water plants, and at last emptied itself into the lake. Beyond the stream the land rose in rocky tiers until tall cliffs loomed over the lake. To the right of where they stood, the land was flat and heavily forested, edged all along the shore by clean white sand. Narisa thought there was an island in the lake, but it was growing too dark to see well. All was still. Not even a breeze stirred the placid water of the lake. There was no sign of life.