by neetha Napew
“I was far too busy hanging on to talk. And when we got to the compound, Tor began to search for the core so I went looking for the sleds. I’d just found them when I heard Tor blasting off.” He shook his head as he remembered his unworthy thoughts at that moment. “When I got back to the compound, I saw it’d left the power pack with a lifter, and the cavity where it’d found the core.”
“It never even waited to see if the sleds were operable?” Portegin asked.
“Well, those sleds are built to withstand tremendous pressures and adverse conditions,” Kai replied, temporizing.
Lunzie snorted.
“Then Tor may be back?” asked Portegin.
“I wouldn’t count on it, Portegin,” Lunzie said. She had been busy
at the hearth and now brought a filled shell to Kai. “I know it tastes vile but it brought your temperature down. Drink up.”
“It smells vile, too,” Kai said, regarding the purple liquid with distaste.
“Which means it does you more good,” said Varian with a laugh.
Kai drank it all in one gulp. His violent shudder was no
affectation and to take the taste away he quickly sucked at the slice of fruit Lunzie handed him.
Varian covered her smile. Kai was becoming dependent on natural foods despite his aversion to them. She was a bit startled to realize that Lunzie was advancing on her with a stern air. The medic’s fingers closed on the younger woman’s wrist, timing pulse rate.
“I’d prefer it, Varian, if you could take a full day’s rest after
your exertions—“
“We both know I can’t, Lunzie. Triv and I have got to retrieve the other sleds.”
“I could go along and dismantle what we need,” Portegin suggested.
“You’re not ready for that sort of exertion yet, my friend,” Lunzie
said.
“I’d rest easier if we got all the sleds here.”
“Don’t see any problem in that, Kai.” Triv rose to his feet and
extending a hand pulled Varian to hers. “That four-man sled will easily take the other two, lashed into the cargo bed. All Varian ‘ll have to do is watch out for the fringes.”
“You can smell them coming,” Kai said.
“That’s why Varian has to come along,” Triv said. “I can’t smell
anything but Ireta yet.”
“From which direction did it attack you, Kai?” Varian asked.
“Behind.” Kai grimaced. “I’d just locked the power pack into
position and turned when it rushed me. I thought it was just a larger dose of Ireta’s usual stink.”
“Wait a minute,” Lunzie called as Triv and Varian moved toward the sled. She rummaged under the stores and then held both hands high. From one hung a thick coil of rope, from the other what could only be a force-field unit and, more miraculous still, a wrist comunit.
“Where did you find those?” Varian leaped over the fire in her eagerness to examine the prizes.
Lunzie permitted herself a grin at the effect of her treasure trove.
“Bonnard had the unit and the forcebelt on. Remember the mutineers never caught him so he had all his gear. You wear the forcebelt, Varian. I doubt the fringe would suck electrical impulses for long. The rope,” which she tossed to Portegin, “I synthesized out of our very plentiful vine.”
Varian buckled the forcebelt on and felt reassured by its weight about her waist. Lunzie strapped on the wrist unit.
“Now, you can keep me informed. Time’s a wasting.”
Lunzie gave Varian an encouraging grin.
“Just don’t forget the odor, Varian,” was Kai’s parting advice.
Varian and Triv hauled the sled to the lip of the cave on the far
left so the air cushion would not throw dust on the fire and the convalescents. Just as they dropped over the edge, a treacherous draught caught the sled and Varian had all she could do to correct the downward plunge of the craft. Immediately they were surrounded by giffs, heads anxiously pointing seaward, although what the creatures thought they could do to save the sled, Varian didn’t know.
“How could they spot that we’re in trouble?” Triv cried, straining backward in his seat, his eyes glued on the water rushing to meet them.
Out of the corner of her eye, Varian caught a flash of thick, suckered tentacle, felt it bang against the sled’s rear flange. Then the giffs attacked the appendage, their sharp beaks slicing into the flesh until it fell away.
“By the first Disciple, that was too ruddy close,” Triv exclaimed as Varian fought for an upward air passage. They had skimmed the surface of the sea itself.
Circling up and back toward the cliff at a safer height, they looked down. The tentacled monster, propelling itself after the vague shadow cast by the sled, writhed as the giffs continued to dive until it was forced to submerge.
“I think I better rig some sort of wind indicator at the mouth of the cave,” Triv said, more to himself than to her. “If it hadn’t been for those giffs . . .”
Varian, aware that she was trembling from reaction, heartily endorsed Triv’s idea of a wind indicator. Then they were above the cliffs and suddenly drenched by the torrential rains that had accompanied the treacherous wind squall.
The rains had passed by the time they had reached the first compound. The sun was having its noon time look. Steam rose from drying foliage, which encouraged the myriad biting, sucking, buzzing insects to swarm about the sled as Varian made her landing. Triv was silent beside her, but it wasn’t until they were down, that she realized why.
“It seems only yesterday . . .” he said in a low voice, staring about the deserted natural amphitheater. His gaze went from the spot where the main dome had been, to Gaber’s cartography unit, to where the mutineers’ accommodation had been. Then his lips thinned and his eyes hardened.
“The here-and-now is more important, Triv,” Varian said.
Because she had the belt, Varian insisted that Triv stay in the
safety of the canopied sled while she attacked the vegetation that covered the remaining sleds. She found the stick Kai must have used, its point dug deep into the soft loam. She flailed away at colonies of slugs, worms, and multilegged insects which had made burrows between the sleds: a mini-ecology that at another time she would have enjoyed examining. When she had the worst of the vegetation cleared, Triv emerged. It took their combined efforts and much sweaty heaving to lift the sleds free of a dirt that had a consistency of hardened adhesive. But then the sleds had been settled deeply on their edges for over four decades.
“I can’t see any breaks in the substructure,” Triv said, running knowledgeable hands along the side panels.
“This model sled’s come out operational from worse battering, not to mention the slime sand on Tenebris V,” Varian said, settling herself at the control console of the four-man sled. “Now, for the tricky part.” Turning off the forcebelt, she wet her finger to test the prevailing wind. “You stand well to my right and move when the wind shifts. The purple mold ‘ll bubble up like Divisti’s moss tea.” She retrieved another feather from her breast pocket and saluted Triv with it before she reactivated her forcebelt. “Don’t let this stuff touch you, even if it gets me,” she added as she used Portegin’s seal breaker along the line. She strained her body away from the console as the mold boiled from its prison. Varian kept the panel in front of her face as the light winds dispersed the frothy fungi. She prodded with her feather at clumps momentarily caught on the lip of the unit. When she was sure that the worst had been blown away, she began to clear the delicate matrix panels, tickling the corners where fungi might hide, and slipping the tip of her feather in and under, back and forth into every part of the console. Then she dusted the control panel.
When she had refitted and scaled the unit, she motioned to Triv to install the power pack.
“I won’t take time to dust the other panels now, Triv. Let’s strap ‘em in the cargo bed and get out of here.” V
arian felt uneasy. She could smell nothing unusual, even when she turned off the forcebelt to be sure it was not filtering the nauseating sea odor that would herald the arrival of a man-enveloping fringe.
The two sleds fitted easily across the cargo section and Triv secured them deftly with stout twists and knots. After two hours of intensive labor, they had accomplished their task. How oddly comforting to know what time had passed again, Varian thought. She frequently consulted the console chrono during their labors. She asked Triv to take the four-man sled, since he was stronger and more rested than she. She maintained a position to his port so that she could see both his hand signals and watch the lashed sleds in case they should shift in adverse winds.
She caught Triv’s first signal the moment they were fully airborne but she saw no shift in the sleds. Then she saw him pointing upward and noticed the three giffs veering in to take up their escort positions. She’d had such a fright with the marine beast that she hadn’t even noticed their out-going escort. She chuckled to herself, wondering if these were the same three, or if they flew escort in rotation. Had their discreet surveillance somehow prevented a fringe attack? She must remember to ask Kai if the giffs had accompanied Tor’s craft, though she doubted it, at the rate of speed Tor could travel.
Their return journey was without incident. Varian took the small sled in first, reversing at the hover and getting as close to the space shuttle as possible to give Triv sufficient room to maneuver. He parked the four-man sled neatly against the left-hand side of the cave. Lunzie and Portegin, moving with some residual stiffness from his long sleep, helped to unload.
Portegin was for starting his project immediately but Varian cautioned him about the purple fungus. So they positioned a sled with its nose well over the cave edge, secured by rope to the heavier craft so that the wind, now sweeping down over the cliffs, would blow the fungus away from their living quarters.
“I see how to do it, Varian,” Portegin told her a bit impatiently.
“Let him do it,” Lunzie said, unbuckling Varian’s forcebelt even as
she protested.
“I feel fine.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen yourself,” Lunzie replied with a
disparaging sniff. “You need as much restorative as I can pump into you.”
“I’m tougher than I look,” Varian said. She whirled around when she heard Kai laugh.
“If I have to listen to Lunzie, so do you, co-leader. Now sit down here, take your medicine, and suffer with me.” Kai motioned her to sit beside him.
Varian did so, thinking it was the first time she’d had a chance to look at him since his injury. He seemed better but red blotches still marred his forehead and hands. Lunzie handed them each a shell bowl.
“More moss?” Varian asked seeing the color of Kai’s.
“I’ve fixed the taste,” Lunzie said.
Varian sniffed at hers, expecting the rich smell of the morning’s
stew. “Krims! What’d you put in this?’
“What’s good for you! Drink it.” And she turned away to ladle portions for everyone else.
“She has fixed the taste,” said Kai after a sip and pulled himself to a sitting position. “But only after I made her sample it.” Kai grinned. “Whatever she added makes me hungrier than ever. I’d eat anything handed to me and ask for more.” He drained his bowl and picked a small red fruit from the pile beside him.
“Kai! You’re eating fruit! Fresh fruit!”
“I told you I was hungry enough to eat anything! Even this—this
natural stuff!”
By the time the two sleds had been cleared of fungi, with Triv’s assistance, Portegin had began to reassemble the available communications matrices. While Triv and Varian had been away, Portegin dismantled the damaged shuttle comunit. The slabs were laid out under more of Lunzie’s plasfilm to protect them from the dust and debris that the wind blew about the cavern. Portegin shortly began muttering about doing delicate work with a hammer and tongs. He crouched like a troglodyte while Triv suggested that he transfer his operation into the big sled and the protection of the transparent canopy. Lunzie grudgingly surrendered one of her few medical probes to be heated to seal the connections.
“The joints won’t last as long as they would if I had the proper equipment but they ought to hold well enough,” Portegin announced after thanking Lunzie for her sacrifice.
Triv offered to assist Portegin as the man’s small-muscle control showed the effects of long disuse. They rearranged the seats in the larger sled and came across unexpected riches. Tucked between the seat back and the curve of the hull were two stunguns, three force belts, and a lift unit for power packs, rolled tightly up in a spare coverall.
“Bonnard, that clever scamp. He must have hidden them, while the mutineers were mauling us in the shuttle,” Varian cried, dancing about with the belts and guns held high in jubilation.
“D’you suppose he hid anything else in the other sleds?” Kai asked.
They searched thoroughly, but the food packs which Bonnard had
secreted had been penetrated by insect or fungi and were empty.
“Disinfected, these tubes’ll make good containers,” Lunzie said.
Portegin was to make the last find, the most important one, and
that only by chance, for the curve of the blunt sled had concealed it well. His hands found the real treasures: eight matrices, still in a film coating which even the purple fungus had been unable to penetrate, five tiny separators, several dozen stun-capsules, and another wrist unit. The items had been glued to the surface by some gummy substance that had long since hardened. Over the decades it had become brittle so that Portegin’s touch had loosened the riches from their unlikely hidey-hole. The five surveyed their wealth in a silence broken when Varian laid tentative fingers on the stun gun.
“In forty-three years, they would have exhausted all their supplies. No matter how clever they are, they couldn’t achieve the technology to produce more.”
“Not if they hunt that thunder lizard of Trizein’s with a crossbow and lance.” Lunzie said. “Nice to have an advantage again.”
Varian hated weapons but was exceedingly grateful to see them. The discovery also lifted from her mind the depression that had plagued her. She was far more tired than she cared to admit and not even Lunzie’s nutrient soup had reduced that weariness. In her present state, she’d never be able to use Discipline effectively for any long period, and any encounters with Aygar and his peers presumed full Discipline on her part. To have such accouterments when she kept that appointment gave her the psychological advantage she needed.
“If they’re metal-working and smart,” Triv noted as he hefted a stunner in his hand, “they’ll have found the ingredients for primitive explosive weapons. This stunner doesn’t have the effective range of a projectile weapon, even of that crossbow.”
“Strategy can make up for shortcomings—or short ranges,” Varian noted in a light tone.
“Even if you have to crash and destroy them, those sleds aren’t to fail into the mutineers’ hands,” Kai said force-fully, swearing again as his voice cracked.
“We don’t necessarily have to bring the sleds into sight,” said Varian, “not when we have lift belts.”
“Let’s not talk of destroying the sleds,” Portegin urged holding up both hands in dismay at the notion. “I can bypass the start switch so that only we’d know how to start one.”
“Can you patch a line from wrist unit to the shuttle or the sled?’
“You’re not taking the four-man sled are you, Varian?” Kai asked.
“Krims! no, but you’ll want to hear what’s going on, won’t you?’
“If I only had some sort of a magnifier . . .” Portegin was
muttering under his breath. “Lunzie, you must have something? . . .”
She handed him a loupe but warned Portegin of the dire consequences of chipping or breaking one of her precious few medical aids.
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When Kai volunteered to help Triv and Portegin, Lunzie would have none of it. She forced him to alternate bathing his injured hands in the sap with wringing out cloths for his face wounds. Then she made Varian lie down for an hour’s rest before having her go on a provisions hunt. With all the ravenous appetites she had to satisfy, Lunzie needed more raw vegetable matter for the synthesizer, and she also wanted to locate more of the edible fruits, pods, and herbs nearby.
Varian thought she’d be unable to sleep with Triv’s and Portegin’s murmuring and swearing, the sound and rustle of the wind through the vine screen, and the odd sounds made by Kai and Lunzie, but it seemed she’d only closed her eyes when Lunzie was shaking her awake again.
Since Triv seemed to have little to do while he watched Portegin assembling a matrix comb, Varian was a bit grumpy when Lunzie hustled her to the sled. Varian’s temper was not much improved by the drizzling rain that made visibility poor, but Lunzie pointed curtly to the brighter skies to the southwest and told Varian to make for a spot where they could see what they picked without getting drenched in the process.
Immediately three giffs curved away from those few idly circling the caves. It was well past the return of the fishers, and most adult fliers were already inside their caves, sleeping off their meal, or what ever they did.
“Do they do any more than follow?” Lunzie asked after observing them for a time.
“Not when I’m airborne . . .”
“When they consider you safe?” Lunzie asked with a wry grin.
“Come to think of it, when the scavengers began to circle in on
that dead beast, the giffs were picking up speed.”
“That could be useful.”
Something in her idle tone, that of a woman not much given to chit
chat, warned Varian that Lunzie had several purposes in the flight.
“How seriously ill is Kai, Lunzie?’
“Hard to say with no way of testing. Feeling is returning to his
hands and the skin of his face isn’t as numb, or so he tells me. There’s no question that he’s suffered some motor impairment in his hands. I’m hoping that will pass once the last of the toxic fluid is flushed out of his system. I want to get more of that moss if we can find it, and I want a store of those succulent leaves around at all times.” Lunzie showed Varian a long red weal on her hand. “The sap is analgesic. I’m not used to dealing with raw fire.”