She gained the second entry and crouched by the lit doorway of the watchpost. Her leathers glistened in the lamplight like the carapace of a drenched insect. She spoke, listened, then nodded and moved methodically on to the next.
10
Susannah’s knees sagged at the top of the steep flight of entry stairs. “Can’t make it, Meg, not without a rest.” She slipped from Megan’s grasp into a limp pile on the stone floor. Liphar stumbled up the last step and collapsed beside her, his final reserves of energy burned out in chatter and worry.
“I’d go for help but I hate to leave you alone,” fussed Megan.
“I’ll be all right,” Susannah murmured thickly. “Liphar’s here.”
Megan eyed the dazed and bleeding little Saw!. “He’s hardly in any shape to… wait, here comes someone.”
Tyril padded around the corner bearing a large bowl of hot water and strips of clean linen cloth. The man who followed was a stranger. He was tall for a Sawl, with the stoop-shouldered posture of one uncomfortable with looking down on the rest of his world. His glance met Megan’s at eye level. He studied her with brief intensity while she hesitated protectively between him and Susannah. Then he smiled reassuringly.
My god, he’s beautiful, this one, thought Megan with some surprise.
He had a long, thoughtful face dominated by a wide mouth. He did not wear his hair in loose ringlets like most Sawls, but pulled back and knotted at the back of his neck with an air of precision. He wore a long linen tunic, unbelted, with many pockets. The soft unbleached fabric bore the ghosts of laundered bloodstains. He carried a lidded wicker basket slung from a canvas strap. He nodded to Tyril, who urged the uncertain Megan aside to let him pass.
He knelt between Susannah and Liphar. The younger Sawl greeted him and answered his murmured questions with wan cheer. He uncovered his basket and took out a corked ceramic jug, then gestured to Tyril to bring the cloth and hot water. Megan moved to kneel at Susannah’s other side.
“One of their healers?” she muttered as the Sawl uncorked his jug and poured warm amber liquid into two small bowls. He put one into Liphar’s hands and after the slightest hesitation, offered the other to Susannah.
Susannah blinked and struggled to sit upright, but the Sawl laid a restraining hand on her shoulder and held the bowl to her lips with such gentle and professional solicitude that she could not bear to insult him by refusing his aid. She took only a meager sip but he seemed satisfied.
“How do you know what he’s feeding you?” hissed Megan, who had seen her fill of local witch doctors.
“It’s just an herbal tea,” returned Susannah. “Besides, what harm can he do? This is hardly major surgery.”
“I don’t know—you’re bleeding pretty badly.”
“You could go get my medikit,” suggested Susannah to distract her. Meg nodded but did not budge an inch as the Sawl healer fed Susannah another sip of tea, then wrung out a cloth over the steaming bowl and prepared to wash the mud and rain from her face. “Really, it’d be a good idea; just to be sure,” Susannah insisted. Her tongue felt thick and lazy. The warm cloth was soft on her battered skin. Though she winced as the healer probed the deeper cuts for ground-in dirt and gravel, his touch comforted her with its skill. He was no brash inexperienced youth, and was, in a way, her colleague. Susannah felt she owed him at least the beginnings of trust but wanted also the reinforcement of her own medicine.
“Meg, please…”
“Oh, all right. I’ll get it.” Megan rose stiffly. “If I can find it in all that mess coming in from the Lander.” Reluctantly, she plodded away up the passage, followed by Tyril, her patient shadow.
The Sawl healer murmured to himself and put his cloth aside. He poured hot water into a flat dish, tempering it with cold from another jug. He held it in his lap to help Susannah wash her hands. The scent of the water was reminiscent of mint and lemon. It tingled in her wounds but did not sting. When he was done, he presented the tea bowl again with such authority that Susannah drank deeply this time, even as she realized that more than simple warmth was seeping through her frozen limbs and dulling the ache in her bruised joints.
What has he fed me? she thought with a sudden thrill of fear. She tried to ease it by reminding herself that he had given Liphar the same concoction. She was too weak to do otherwise, feeling herself begin to float. She leaned back against the rough stone wall and smiled uncertainly at Liphar as the healer rinsed out a clean cloth and went to work on him.
Some time later, she awoke lying on her back. Liphar was gone. She was cradled in a leather stretcher that creaked rhythmically to the step of its bearers. She was being carried down a narrow shadowed tunnel. She could not move or call out, but to her surprise, it was not an uncomfortable sensation. The Sawl healer glided beside her. He seemed to loom very tall in his rough linen smock. His hand lightly clasped the pulse point on her wrist. Susannah lay quietly, wrapped in the wooly cocoon of his mysterious sedative, listening to passing voices, to the bustle of people moving through the tightness of the passageway, to the occasional rattle of cartwheels at tunnel intersections.
The stretcher tilted as they climbed a ramp. When it leveled again at the top, the tunnel walls were no longer visible even from the corners of her vision. She studied what her eyes received, as one will mechanically study the details of a dream, with scant belief in their reality. The ceiling confused her. It was a delicately chiseled barrel vault, a graceful arch of pinkish stone too lofty and finely finished to be the tunnels she had spent the last six weeks in and out of. Greenish light pooled along the shadowed vault from sources outside her range of view.
Her absence of fear interested her in the same languid way as the unlikely vaulting. She wondered again, with a more professional curiosity, what magic local ingredient the tall Sawl had added to his herbal tea.
The walls closed in again as Susannah was tilted up another long incline. The passage wound a tight spiral and opened into another, taller corridor. Susannah would not trust her counting in her present state, but she thought that they had ascended one more level than she had known existed in the Caves. The bustle and cart noise increased, but voices were hushed, in a way that was somehow familiar to her. The pools of light on the ceiling were broader, closer together. The vaulting was finished to a high polish that brought out the serpentine rose-and-lavender graining of the stone. What a pleasant dream, she thought, bemused.
The stretcher bearers took a turn. The semicircular reveal of an arch passed above Susannah’s head. She had a fleeting impression of elaborate carvings that made the friezes at the cave mouths look like the crude dabblings of an amateur, and then there was no ceiling overhead, only blackness and two long rows of hanging oil lamps. Each was a great wheel with a central ceramic reservoir and a broad circle of lighted wicks at the ends of wooden spokes. The air was dry, a refreshing mixture of cool and warm. It smelled exotic but again, familiar—of strange herbs cooking, of hot wax and steam and blood. Sounds were muted within the vast space but resonant with urgent comings and goings. Dimly, Susannah heard a baby crying.
Then in her dream, the crying faded. Walls rose to either side, tiers of long shelves lined with thick books and tall glass jars. Blue flames burned under steaming kettles. Liquids bubbled up in transparent flasks. Susannah gave herself up to the dream with a slow unresisting smile. Her drowsiness was overpowering. The stretcher was laid on a smooth surface whose hardness through a thick layer of padding suggested stone. A huge lamp wheel burned overhead. She heard soft orders being given, the clink of glassware, the rustle of clothing. The Sawl healer leaned over her, adjusting the oil lamp so that its light fell more evenly. The light haloed him in gold. Gazing down at her, he had the solemn smiling face of a da Vinci angel. He brushed a strand of damp hair from her face as if she were a child, and went away.
Susannah understood the familiarity at last. She was somehow back home on Terra and in the doctors’ care. All would be well. She fell asleep to the well-rememb
ered sounds of a surgeon washing his hands.
11
In the MeetingHall, the wagonwheel chandeliers were unlit. From a vast fireplace at one end of the cavern, orange firelight danced across the bare stone walls and flickered into the shadowed corners. Stavros added another category to his list, stacked three crates together and pushed them against the wall.
Sounds of chanting and cracking ice still rang in his ears. He kept his back to the temptations of the roaring blaze. The great stone fireplace was one of two that dominated the short walls of the hall. The heavy sculpted mantel framed an opening twice the height of the average Sawl and wide enough for twenty to stand shoulder to shoulder within it. The entire wall above the mantel was carved in shallow bas-relief: a crudely represented landscape of rugged mountains, a faceless crowd milling about lost in their shadow, and a single giant figure striding among them with seeming unconcern. The darkened fireplace at the other end of the hall was also surmounted by a wall-sized frieze. The composition was identical but the background was a storm-tossed ocean. Feeling similarly lost among the piles of crates and loose equipment in the middle of the cavernous space, Stavros shivered.
I wonder what pneumonia feels like.
Scattered groups of Sawls lounged on the stone floor warmed by the blaze, their chatter subdued by exhaustion. Several had fallen asleep stretched out on the stone benches that lined the deep angled sides of the fireplace. One of the men called to Stavros and waved at him to join them in the warmth, but he shook his head with a gesture at the mess that surrounded him. The slightly sour smell of hot Sawl beer cut through the smell of burning dung cakes. His eyes watered and his lungs hurt, and more than anything else he wanted to sleep. But as he put the jumbled salvage to order, drawing up lists, making piles, deciding what could stay in the MeetingHall and what must go to their new living quarters, he could pretend to put himself to order, of a sort, and at the moment he needed that pretense very badly. If I could just get on with life as easily as the Sawls do. They take a risk, they’re scared, but it’s business as usual.
His shivering rendered his handwriting more illegible than usual. His wool Sawl tunic clung with clammy insistence to his aching shoulders. It dripped on the minute scrawl of his inventory so that the paper wrinkled and the ink ran. Stavros threw his clipboard down on a box and shed the tunic to knot a somewhat drier blanket around his neck. But the blanket’s weight was worse than the tunic. He shrugged himself free in exasperation and continued his stacking and counting half-naked in his ship’s pants, leaving muddy puddles on the floor as he moved about. He hefted a huge spool of nylon climbing rope and felt the muscles in his back rebel.
“But Commander!” McPherson dogged Weng’s elbow as they came into the cavern. Two Sawl women followed a few paces behind, shaking their heads at each other. “How do we know there’s even gonna be a break in the weather?”
“Lieutenant, I cannot allow you to risk your life out there until we are sure there is no other option.”
McPherson struggled against her habit of respect for a superior officer. “Commander, they could be dead by then!”
Weng crossed the hall, stiff-necked, to the piles of equipment. “The living quarters are a trifle dank, Mr. Ibiá. Not much in the way of amenities, but they will certainly do until the Lander is available to us again. Dr. Levy is getting them organized as best she can.”
“You can fly it outta here just as good as I can, dammit!” McPherson exploded. “You don’t need me around to do it!”
Weng turned to face her calmly. “I think I am the best judge of that, Lieutenant.”
McPherson glowered. “Yes, Commander.”
“Our first order of business will be the homing beacon,” said Weng. She returned her attention to Stavros with a nod toward the waiting Sawl women. “I’ve located a decent site at the cave mouth. These ladies will help carry the equipment if you have it sorted out, Mr. Ibiá.”
“Right over here, Commander.” Stavros handed two neatly packed carryalls to the Sawls and shoved a third into McPherson’s arms with a glance of sympathetic reproof. The little pilot returned a sullen glare but said nothing. Stavros suspected she was on the verge of tears. He did not want to see that. He needed McPherson to be, like the Sawls, an image of stability. He pushed her gently in the direction of the door.
He was relieved when they were gone. He had gotten used to having the Caves and the Sawls nearly to himself, his private laboratory. His constant presence in the Caves and his gift with the language had by default put him in a position to control his colleagues’ access to the Sawls. This might require a more conscious effort, with the other Terrans moved into the Caves.
He sneezed and could find nothing but the back of his hand to wipe his nose on. The chill in his feet was creeping into his knees. The fantasy element of this adventure was dying fast. To his relief, he did not mourn its demise. He sneezed again and brushed his knuckle across his face with self-conscious intent.
The Sawls manage to survive here… we’re going to have to learn to live as they do.
He moved on to the next heap of unsorted salvage. On top was a file drawer of Danforth’s papers. Stavros had packed it himself, thrown in everything loose in the cubicle. He sifted through the top layers of photos and data printout, and pulled out a bundle of notes. He leafed through pages of quick hand calculations and annotated data sheets. Danforth’s numbers were neat and precise, his script the drawn-out scrawl of one easily made impatient with the slowness of writing by hand.
Though the figures meant nothing to Stavros, his linguist’s instincts could read the subtler signs, the language of scale and placement of marks upon the page. Apparently, Danforth had been worried about the calibration of his instruments. He had spent time hand-checking the accuracy of his incoming data, falling back on his trust of his own brain when all else seemed to be in doubt. Stavros could feel his struggle with the data in the brutality of his cross-outs and underlining, could see where incredulity had weighted the pen as Danforth resisted results he didn’t want and couldn’t explain.
A note scrawled on the bottom of one page read:
“CRI—crosscheck all ground stations against orbital measurements.
and then:
“Run model with known data sets: Earth. Yirkalla. VENUS??”
The first two names had been crossed out, and Venus scrawled in later. Stavros tossed the pages back into the drawer as a quartet of tired Sawls arrived with the last load of salvage. Two of them lovingly cradled a monitor screen from Danforth’s cubicle. One led a small goatlike beast which the Sawls called a hakra. Its larger, more placid relations, the hekkers, made up the dairy herds housed in the lower caverns. The hakra was harnessed to a two-wheeled cart that was piled high with a rattling cargo which the fourth Sawl struggled to keep in place. The first two set down their burden to help unload bins of plastic eating utensils and bundles of sectioned eating trays. Underneath lurked a portable sonic cleaner from the Lander’s galley. Stavros shut his eyes in a spasm of confusion.
I’m not doing this right. If we’re going to learn to live like the Sawls, why in hell did I make them drag all this shit up here?
He tapped the sonic indecisively. Perhaps it was not totally useless. Perhaps he could scavenge its power supply.
His self-recriminations were broken by an impatient tug at his elbow. A still-bedraggled Liphar stood before him, his long ringlets caked with drying mud. A heavy knitted blanket covered him from neck to toe. He had gathered it like a toga over one wrist. “Look for you, I! All everywhere!” he expostulated.
Stavros stared. “What happened to you?” Then he remembered. He cuffed the little Sawl gently across the jaw, then threw an arm around his shoulder, careful to avoid his bandaged chin. “Bad shit out there, Lifa?”
“Bad shit, Ibi!” the youngster agreed delightedly. His fists rolled and his teeth gnashed in imitation of the storm until Stavros laughed aloud and pushed him playfully aside. “Na mena, Ibi,” he continue
d eagerly. “To sukahir le gin Susannah. To min!” He assumed a hero’s stance and beamed proudly.
Stavros’s grin twisted. “Not my gin, Lifa,” he murmured. “Not yet, at least. But I’m glad you saved her.” He took up his clipboard and pen again, “You better go get cleaned up.”
Liphar shook his head. “Come you, Ibi.”
“Lifa, I’ve got work to do here.”
“No, no, no.” Liphar grabbed Stavros’s wrist and rubbed it with his own warm hands. “Cold you. Be sick, ah?” He glanced across the cavern toward the main entry where the four helpers were leaving with the emptied cart. He lowered his voice. “Come you, Ibi.” His head twitched in negation. He corrected himself. “You come.”
“Where?”
Liphar put his palm to his mouth. “No say, you, ah?”
Intrigued, Stavros repeated the gesture, promising secrecy. He let himself be lured away from his precious cache of hardware, grateful in his exhaustion for Liphar’s insistence. A left-hand turn at the archway to the outer corridor confirmed his hope: Liphar was leading him inward, where remained those parts of the Caves still unknown to him.
It was Stavros’s secret that he had been allowed to wander far deeper into the maze than any of his colleagues. Because Liphar had chosen, often at the risk of disciplining from his elders, to return the linguist’s obsession with the Sawls with an adolescent devotion amounting to total trust, Stavros was not led the merry chase that the others were in order to confuse them into thinking that they had been everywhere in the Caves that there was to go. As far as the others knew—though Stavros was sure that Clausen suspected the truth—each cave mouth led up a flight of stairs to one or two of the halls, which were large caverns occupied by the guilds or given over to a specific purpose such as the MeetingHall and MarketHall. Around these, a warren of corridors connected the adjacent living quarters.
The Wave and the Flame Page 10