The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls

by Anissa Gray

  An animal I haven’t even seen.

  Forget the animal. Just get off the face of this rock.

  No, I’m stronger than that. I need to get the food for the family—I won’t go back and say we’ll have no meat today because I was afraid to wait in stillness on a rock.

  He could hear Vas moving behind him, traversing the rock. That was stupid—why was Vas doing that?

  To kill me.

  Why couldn’t he shake that idea? No, Vas was coming because he could tell that Nafai hadn’t seen the animal yet, and he wanted to point it out. But how would he do that? Nafai couldn’t turn to look at him, and Vas couldn’t pass him to get into his field of view.

  Oh, no. Vas was going to talk to him.

  “It’s too dangerous,” said Vas. “You’re going to slip.”

  And just as he said it, the friction holding Nafai’s right foot in place suddenly gave way. His foot slipped inward and down, and now with the abrupt movement, his left foot couldn’t hold and he began to slide. It must have been very quick but it felt like forever; he tried to dig in with his hand, with the butt of the pulse, but they both just rubbed along the rock, doing almost nothing even to slow his fall. And then the rock grew steeper and he wasn’t sliding, he was falling, falling, and he knew he was going to die.

  “Nafai!” screamed Vas. “Nafai!

  Luet was at the stream, washing clothes, when suddenly there came a clear thought into her mind: 〈He’s not dead.〉

  Not dead? Who’s not dead? Why should he be dead?

  〈Nafai is not dead. He’ll come home.〉

  She knew at once that it was the Oversoul speaking to her. Reassuring her. But she was not reassured. Or rather, she was reassured to know that Nafai was all right. But now she had to know, demanded to know what had happened.

  〈He fell.〉

  How did he fall?

  〈His foot slipped on the face of the rock.〉

  Nafai is sure-footed. Why did his foot slip? What is it that you’re not telling me?

  〈I was watching Vas very carefully with Sevet and Obring. Watching all the time. He has murder in his heart.〉

  Did Vas have something to do with Nafai’s fell?

  〈Not until they were traversing the rock did I see the plan in his mind. He had already destroyed the first three pulses. I knew he meant to destroy the last one but I wasn’t concerned because there are alternatives. I never saw it in his mind, not until the last moment, that the simplest way to destroy the last pulse was to lead Nafai to a dangerous place and then push his foot so he would fall.〉

  You never saw a plan like that in his mind?

  〈All the way down the mountain he was thinking of a route to the sea. How to get down to the bay so he could walk to Dorova. That’s all that was in his mind as he led Nafai after quarry that didn’t exist. Vas had remarkable powers of concentration. He thought of nothing but the path to the sea, until the very last moment.〉

  Didn’t you warn Nafai?

  〈He heard me, but he didn’t realize it was my voice he was hearing. He thought it was his own fear, and he fought it down.〉

  So Vas is a murderer.

  〈Vas is what he is. He will do anything to get his vengeance on Obring and Sevet for their betrayal of him back in Basilica.〉

  But he seemed so calm about it.

  〈He can be cold.〉

  What now? What now, Oversoul?

  〈I will watch.〉

  That’s what you’ve been doing all along, and yet you never gave any of us a glimpse of what you saw. You knew what Vas was planning. Hushidh even saw those powerful bonds between him and Sevet and Obring and you never told her what they were.

  〈This is how I was programmed. To watch. Not to interfere unless and until the danger would damage my purpose. If I stopped every bad person from doing bad things, who would be free? How would humans still be human, then? So I let them plan their plans, and I watch. Often they change their minds, freely, without my interference.〉

  Couldn’t you have made Vas stupid and forgetful long enough to stop this?

  〈I told you. Vas has a very strong ability to concentrate.〉

  What now? What now?

  〈I will watch.〉

  Have you told Volemak?

  〈I told you.〉

  Should I tell anyone?

  〈Vas will deny it. Nafai doesn’t even realize that he was the victim of a would-be murderer. I told you because I don’t trust my own ability now to predict what Vas will do.〉

  And what can I do?

  〈You’re the human. You’re the one who’s able to think of things that exceed your programming.〉

  No, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that you don’t have a plan.

  〈If I have a plan, it includes you making your own decisions about what to do.〉

  Hushidh. I have to tell my sister.

  〈If I have a plan, it includes you making your own decisions.〉

  Does that mean I mustn’t consult with Hushidh, because then my decision wouldn’t be my own? Or does it mean that consulting with Hushidh is one of the decisions I need to make on my own?

  〈If I have a plan, it is for you to make your own decisions about your own decisions about your own decisions.〉

  And then she felt that she was alone again; the Oversoul was not talking to her.

  The clothes lay in the grass beside the stream, except for the one gown of Chveya’s that she had been washing; that one she still held in the stream, her hands freezing cold now because through all this conversation with the Oversoul she had not moved.

  I must talk to Hushidh, and so that’s the first decision I will make. I’ll talk to Hushidh and Issib.

  But first I’ll finish washing these clothes. That way no one will know anything is wrong. I think that’s the right thing to do, to keep anyone from knowing that something’s wrong, at least for now.

  After all, Nafai is all right. Or at least Nafai is not dead. But Vas is a murderer in his heart. And Obring and Sevet are in danger from him. Not to mention Nafai, if Vas even suspects that Nafai knows what Vas tried to do to him. Not to mention me, if Vas realizes that I also know.

  How could the Oversoul have let things get to such a point? Isn’t she responsible for all of this? Doesn’t she know that she has brought terrible people along with us on this journey? How could she make us travel and camp for so many months, for a year and more, for many years ahead, with a murderer?

  Because she hoped that he would decide not to murder after all, of course. Because she has to allow humans to be human, even now. Especially now.

  But not when it comes to killing my husband. That is going too far, Oversoul. You took too great a chance. If he had died I would never have forgiven you. I would refuse to serve you anymore.

  No answer came from the Oversoul. Instead it came from her own heart: An individual’s death can come at any time. It isn’t the task of the Oversoul to prevent it. The Oversoul’s task is to prevent the death of a world.

  * * *

  Nafai lay stunned in the grass. It was a ledge invisible from above because of the way the cliff bowed out. He had fallen only five or six meters, after sliding down the face of the rock for a while. It was enough to knock the breath out of him; enough that he blacked out. But he was uninjured, except for a sore hip where he landed.

  If he had not fetched up on the ledge, he would have plummeted another hundred meters or more and surely died.

  I can’t believe I lived through this. I should never have tried to kill the animal from that position. It was stupid. I was right to be afraid. I should have listened to my fears and if we lost that animal, fine, because we can always find another beast to follow and kill. What we can’t find again is another father for Chveya, another husband for Luet, another hunter who isn’t needed for other tasks.

  Or another pulse.

  He looked around and realized that the pulse wasn’t on the ledge. Wasn’t anywhere that he could see. He must h
ave let go of it as he fell, and it must have bounced. Where was it?

  He crept to the lip of the ledge and looked over. Oh, yes, straight down, except for a few small outcroppings—if the pulse struck them, then it would have bounced and kept on falling. There was nowhere that the pulse could have fetched up and stopped except at the bottom of the cliff. If that’s where it was, Nafai couldn’t possibly see it from here—it would be lost in the bushes. Or were those treetops?

  “Nafai!” It was Vas, calling for him.

  “I’m here!” Nafai cried.

  “Thank God!” cried Vas. “Are you injured?”

  “No,” said Nafai. “But I’m on a ledge. I think I can get off to the south. I’m about ten meters below you. Can you move south too? I may need your help. There’s nothing below me but a deadly fall, and I don’t see any obvious way to get up to where you are.”

  “Do you have the pulse?” asked Vas.

  Of course he had to ask about the pulse. Nafai blushed with shame. “No, I must have dropped it as I fell,” he said. “It’s got to be at the bottom of the cliff, unless you can see it somewhere up there.”

  “It’s not here—you had it with you as you fell.”

  “Then it’s at the bottom. Move south with me,” said Nafai.

  He found, though, that it was easier to talk about moving along the face of the cliff than it was to do it. The fall might not have injured him seriously, but the terror of it had done something to him, oh yes—he could barely bring himself to get to his feet for fear of the edge, for fear of the fall.

  I didn’t fall because I lost my balance, thought Nafai. I fell because friction simply wasn’t strong enough to hold me in that dangerous place. This ledge isn’t like that. I can stand securely here.

  So he stood, his back to the cliff, breathing deeply, telling himself to move, to sidle south along the ledge, around the corner, because there might be a way to get up. Yet the more he told himself this, the more his eyes focused on the empty space beyond the edge of the cliff, not a meter from his feet. If I lean just a little, I’ll fall. If I fell forward now, I’d plunge over the side.

  No, he told himself. I can’t think that way, or I’ll never be good for anything again. I’ve taken ledges like this a hundred times. They’re nothing. They’re easy. And it would help if I faced the cliff instead of facing the empty space leading down to the sea.

  He turned and stepped carefully along the ledge, pressing himself rather closer to the cliff than he would have in former times. But his confidence increased with every step he took.

  When he rounded the bend in the cliff, he saw that the ledge ended—but now it was only two meters from this ledge to the next one up, and from there it was an easy climb back to where he and Vas had come down less than an hour ago. “Vas!” he called. He continued until he stood directly under the place where the ledge above was nearest. He could almost reach far enough onto the ledge to lift himself by his own arms, but there was nothing to hold on to, and the edge was crumbly and unreliable. It would be safer if Vas helped him. “Vas, here I am! I need you!”

  But he heard nothing from Vas. And then he remembered the thought that had come into his mind as he was starting the dangerous traverse: Don’t go on. Vas is planning to kill you.

  Is it possible that that was a warning from the Oversoul?

  Absurd.

  But Nafai didn’t wait for Vas to answer. Instead he reached his arms as far as they could go onto the ledge above, then dug his fingers into the loose grassy soil. It slipped and came away, but by scrabbling constantly, grabbing more and more, he was able to get enough of a purchase that he could get his shoulders above the edge of the cliff, and then it was a relatively easy matter to swing a leg up onto the ledge and pull himself to safety. He rolled onto his back and lay there, panting in relief. He could hardly believe that he had done such a dangerous thing so soon after falling—if he had slipped at any time while clambering up onto his ledge, he would have had a hard time catching himself on the ledge below. He was risking death—but he had done it.

  Vas came now. “Ah,” he said. “You’re already up. Look—this way. Right back to where we were.”

  “I’ve got to find the pulse.”

  “It’s bound to be broken and useless,” said Vas. “It wasn’t built for a fall like that.”

  “I can’t go back and tell them that I don’t have the pulse,” said Nafai. “That I lost it. It’s down there, and even if it’s in forty pieces, I’ll bring those pieces home.”

  “It’s better to tell them you broke it than to tell them you lost it?” asked Vas.

  “Yes,” said Nafai. “It’s better to show them the pieces than have them always wonder whether, if I had only looked, I might have found it. Don’t you understand that this is our families’ meat supply we’re talking about?”

  “Oh, I understand,” said Vas. “And now that you put it that way, of course I see we must search for it. Look, we can come down this way—it’s an easy enough path.”

  “I know,” said Nafai. “Right down to the sea.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Vas.

  “Down that way, and jogging to the left—see?”

  “Oh, that would probably work.”

  It make Nafai faintly ashamed, that he had noticed the route to the sea, while Vas had not even thought of it.

  Instead of going down to the sea, however, they scrambled down to the brush where the pulse must have fallen. They didn’t have to search long before they found it—split in half, right down the middle. Several small internal components were also scattered here and there in the bushes, and without doubt there were others that they didn’t find. There would be no repairing this pulse.

  Still, Nafai put the pieces, large and small, into the sling he had made for carrying the pulse, and tied it closed. Then he and Vas began the long climb up the mountain. Nafai suggested that Vas should lead, since he would do a better job of remembering the way, and Vas agreed at once. Nafai didn’t give the slightest hint that he didn’t dare let Vas walk behind him, where he couldn’t see what he was doing.

  Oversoul, was that warning from you?

  He didn’t get any answer from the Oversoul, or at least not a direct answer to his question. What he got instead was the clear thought that he should talk to Luet when he got back to camp. And since that was what he would have done anyway, especially after an experience like this, being so close to death, he assumed that it was his own thought, and the Oversoul had not spoken to him at all.

  SEVEN

  THE BOW

  The loss of the pulse was such a blow that neither Volemak nor Elemak made any effort to keep the situation calm—not until it was already almost out of control. There lay the pieces of the pulse, spread out on a cloth; nearby were the two water-damaged pulses that Elemak had saved. Zdorab sat by them, the Index in his lap, reading out the numbers of the broken parts. Almost everyone else stood—few were calm enough to sit—waiting, watching, pacing, grumbling as he tried to find out if one whole pulse could be salvaged from the parts.

  “It’s no use,” said Zdorab. “Even if we had all the parts, the Index says that we don’t have the tools that would be needed, and no way of making them without spending fifty years achieving the appropriate level of technology.”

  “What a brilliant plan the Oversoul had,” said Elemak. “Keep all of humanity at a low level of technology—so low that even though we can manufacture pulses, we don’t understand how they work and can’t repair them if they break.”

  “It wasn’t the Oversoul’s plan,” said Issib.

  “Does it matter?” said Mebbekew. “We’re going to die out here now.”

  Dol burst into tears, and for once they sounded real.

  “I’m sorry,” said Nafai.

  “Yes, well, how glad we all are that you’re remorseful,” said Elemak. “What were you doing in a dangerous place like that anyway? You had the sole surviving pulse, and that’s what you do with it?”
/>   “That’s where the animal was,” said Nafai.

  “If your quarry had leapt from the cliff, would you have followed?” asked Volemak.

  Nafai was devastated that Father had joined in with Elemak’s tongue-lashing. And Elemak himself was far from finished. “Let me put it to you plainly, my dear little brother: If you could have chosen whether you or the pulse would land on the ledge instead of bouncing down to destruction, it would have been more convenient to everybody if you had arranged for it to be the pulse!”

  The unfairness of it was almost unbearable. “I’m not the one who lost the first three.”

  “But when we lost the first three, we still had a pulse left, so it wasn’t quite as serious,” said Father. “You knew it was the last pulse, and still took such a chance.”

  “Enough!” said Rasa. “We all agree, including Nafai, that it was a horrible mistake to put the pulse at risk. But now the pulse is gone, it can’t be repaired, and here we are in this strange place with no way to kill meat. Perhaps one of you has thought of what we’re going to do now, besides heaping blame on Nafai’s shoulders.”

  Thank you, Mother, said Nafai silently.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said Vas. “The expedition is over.”

  “No, it isn’t obvious,” Volemak answered sharply. “The Oversoul’s purpose is nothing less than saving Harmony from the same destruction that came to Earth forty million years ago. Are we going to give that up because we lost a weapon?”

  “It’s not the weapon,” said Eiadh. “It’s the meat. We need to find meat.”

  “And it isn’t just a matter of having a balanced diet,” added Shedemei. “Even if we made camp right here and planted crops immediately—and it’s not the season for it, so we couldn’t anyway—but even if we did, we’d have no harvest of basic protein crops until long after we suffered from serious malnutrition.”

  “What do you mean by serious malnutrition?” asked Volemak.