by John Rickham
“No broken bones. She’s had a bad crack on the head, but nothing broken there, either, so far as I can tell.”
“You’ve got blood all down your back.”
“That’s hers. Just a nosebleed from pressure, and a little strangling. She’s breathing loud and clear now. You want to take over?”
“Not me,” he said, and smiled carefully. “You’re doing fine. Make her as comfortable as you can, Alan, she’s earned it. I’ll be stowing the gear.”
He went away, leaving me to fumble and curse my unsteady hands, but I still bad that urgent clarity in my mind. And something else, a curious blend of cold and simmering anger on the one side, and humble adoration on the other. She lay quite still, quite peacefully, like a child, but no child was ever so beautifully and wonderfully designed, nor so satin-silken to touch. I admit freely that the care with which I anointed her bruises was as much from the pleasure of caressing her curving beauty as from a need to render medical aid. I think it came to me then, what I had been frying to hide from myself for so long, that this girl was everything in my life. That awareness was at once a delight, and a terror, so that I was thoroughly confused and hardly to be blamed if I took innocent advantage of this opportunity to pay homage to her loveliness. It was as I worked carefully over a long and painful-looking graze on her right shin-bone that I detected something odd about her breathing. And I stopped quite still, keeping my eyes down.
“How long have you been conscious?” I asked.
“Quite a while. Please don’t be angry, I didn’t want to spoil it. You have such a delicate touch!”
“I’ve been told I’d make a good vet.”
“You are angry. Please don’t stop!”
“You can manage the rest yourself, quite well.”
“But I don’t want to. Alan, I ache all over, but I don’t mind, so long as you are taking care of it for me.” She moved now to prop herself up on her elbows, and I raised my head to meet a curious, wondering light in her eyes. Before,“ she demanded, “do I have to get myself hurt so you’ll be nice to me?”
“That’s not why you did it.”
“No, but it seems to be one of the fringe benefits, so don’t be mean. I need attention, darn it, so attend to me!”
“You’re no helpless female,” I muttered, finishing off that raw scrape and reaching for the can of collodion spray. “But you shouldn’t be sitting up, not yet. Keep still.”
“I gave up the idea of being helpless a long time ago,” she murmured, settling back again. “Times like this, I think I made a bad bargain.”
“Shut your eyes,” I ordered, bringing the spray up to her forehead. She obeyed, keeping quite still while I sealed off the bruise and then moved to places further down.
In a while her breast heaved gently and she said, “Don’t you want to know what I found down there?”
“I don’t give a damn what you found. You came back up, safe and alive, and that is about as much as I can handle right now.”
She went quiet again, and in a while I helped her to turn over on her face while I completed my work. “You’re going to ache quite a bit for a while,” I told her, “but I’m going to warm up some soup, and lace it with a sedative, You’ll take it, and rest for about an hour, to give this ointment a chance to work, and the worst will be over.
“Yes, sir!” she murmured, and I could have smacked her. She was in just the position for it, too. By the time I went hack to her with the soup she had eased herself down from the table and was stretched out on her bunk, propped on one elbow, watching me.
“Tell me just one thing,” she said, as I put the bowl in her hands. “I really don’t know this bit, honestly, but I suppose I did swallow quite a bit of water. Part drowned, you would say?”
“That, and other things.”
“Did you have to give me the kiss of life treatment?”
“No. It wasn’t necessary. I jogged you over my shoulder, and that shook up all the water.”
“Sounds horribly practical, but thank you. And I’m glad you didn’t have to give me the kiss of life, after all.”
“Why?” I asked, walking right into it.
“Because I should hate to think that I’d been unconscious and missed it!”
That was where I left her and went shambling up to the upper deck, all at once almost falling down with fatigue, and other things. For a moment I thought my vision had failed me, but then I realized it was sunset. And there, in the pastel-tinted gloom, Carson sat silent, smoking a rare cigarette.
VIII
“HOW IS SHE?” he asked, looking up.
“Conscious, rational, a bit shaken but nothing serious. I’ve given her some soup, with a sedative. She’ll be all right for an hour.”
“Good. Something on your mind, Alan? You sound short.”
“Damn right there is.” I settled beside him. “Just one thing. The treasure. I’m through with it. Finish!”
“Spoken like a rich young man.”
“I am not that rich,” I said, still with that abnormal clarity of mind, “that I can buy back Fiona’s life. Are you?”
“I’m sorry. I asked for that one. No, I’m not that well off. I’m comfortable. I’ll never starve, so to speak.”
“Then what?” I demanded harshly. “Are you stuck with some semantic hold up on the idea of quitting?”
“Not that either. I know when I’m beat. But you’re overlooking a point, Alan. We’re partners, aren’t we? All three of us? What about Fiona? After all, she went down there. Doesn’t she get a say?”
Somehow, that simple question hit me like a splash of cold water. Of course he was right. As I tried to adjust my thinking, he went on quietly.
“Let me tell you something about her. She resents being a girl, simply because it means being tied down someday, to a home and family. She wants to be free to do whatever the feels like doing.”
“That makes sense. So do I. That’s why I can’t stand an office.”
“Me too. We’re three of a kind. And we have to think in threes, or we’ll ruin the whole thing. I know that’s not easy. I muffed it myself, in that argument about who should go down. You can muff it too if you get to thinking in terms of marrying and settling down with her.”
“I’m not the marrying kind,” I mumbled, glad of the dark that hid my hot face, “although she makes it difficult.”
“Neither is she, Alan, and she is not being difficult, just natural. I’ve known her since she was a tot, and I’ve never known her to take to anyone as she has done to you. I’m glad about that, but forget any old-fashioned ideas you may have about being the big strong protective male. That would really tear everything up between you. She has met men, plenty of them, and run them into the ground, just to prove she can do it. Don’t try to beat her at her own game. Let her he herself, as good as you.
“Probably better.” I sighed. “You make me feel a bloody fool.”
“Forget it,” he said, and we sat in silence and watched the spectrum-play of the glorious twilight. Out of some rosy dream, Lowloo stirred me with a throaty whimper, and the deck-door swung open behind us.
“Well, well!” Fiona remarked. “Two old men sitting out on the stoop. May I join you? I bring cheer.”
She had, too, in the shape of a bottle and glasses. And a cushion to sit on, to spare her bruises. “That water,” she said, “falls like hell on the backflow. I can’t be sure about depth, so I have to guess I went down about twenty feet before my light struck a hole in the glassy wall, right under the chair nook. There’s a little light from the cleft opposite, so I could place myself near enough. You slung me across all right, and there was room to duck inside, but from there it was hairy. The hole is about six feet by three, and boned. Cross bars that look exactly like the white metal of the ring-bolts, as thick as my thumb. About a foot apart.”
“As close as that?” I gasped. “You were stopped, then?”
“I thought maybe I was.” She put her hand on my wrist. “But then
I thought, after coming all that way, it was worth a try. So I slipped out of the harness, hooked it securely to one of the bars, and—well—that’s how I got all the scrapes. That’s the very first time in all my life I’ve really regretted that I’m a big girl, with such outstanding developments. But I got through, just!”
“I can feel my hair turning gray,” Carson muttered, and I agreed with him on that. She laughed.
“It wasn’t that bad. I only took the gear off long enough to get through, then I could get that through easily, and put It on again. It was me, and that damned cylinder, we had to part. We couldn’t make it together. Anyway, by the time I had unfastened, and squeezed myself through the bars, and then done it all up again, the second spout came and shot me along that passage like a cork. There’s a point, here. Below the entry-point, as we guessed, the turbulence is mild, but that inflow sets up a devil of a pressure for a moment. I almost blacked out. Anyway, I went back to the bars and then swam the passage again, to check the stretch of it. I make it all of a hundred feet long, same size as the original opening, about six by three, and it slopes up steeply. I'd say about one in three. I broke surface a few feet short of the hundred and had to crawl the rest. Slippery as anything. Then I was in a chamber about eight or nine feet a side, on the level. And I was up against what felt like a sheet of plate glass, only I’ll bet it isn’t. Still, it’s transparent, and I could put my light through it. The stuff is there, all right.”
“What kind of stuff?” Carson sounded no more tense than I was.
“My light showed what could have been bags or boxes once, but now only decayed remains. And scattered messes of the gem-things. I have to guess, but I’d say at least a couple of hundred. And, Neil, they were dark and still when I saw them first, but as I stood there and took a careful look around, not wanting to miss anything important, they started to come alive. They were drinking up the light I was casting on them, and starting to glow and glitter, and the more I looked the brighter they got, until all I could see was rainbows!”
“So much for that,” he said, in relief. “At least it’s not a mare’s nest. And then?”
“Well, that chamber scared the pants off me after a while. I tried a sniff of the air without my mask, and it was cold— and old. Ages old.”
“Did your ears pop?”
“Just a little, when I came up out of the water into the chamber. Why?”
“Just a datum. You came back, then?”
“Right. I couldn’t see anything else to do, so I back-tracked. And that’s where I ran into trouble. Those bars again. I was half-way through, easing myself as gently as possible, with the gear all hooked on to the outside, when that awful spout came and caught me. It’s a down-squeeze at first, and it scooped me out like meat through a mincer, clouted my head against that cylinder, and tangled me up. Then, while I was struggling to get loose, it hiked me up and I almost strangled on the ropes. I don’t know how I got free, really. Somehow I got buckled in again, just in time for the backwash to slam me down and bash my head against the side of the hole—and that’s about all I remember until I felt Alan here taking lovely liberties with my abraded dimensions.” She squeezed my arm, and laughed.
Carson got up and moved, saying over his shoulder. “I’ve got something to show that will put the final touch to it,” and he flicked on the deck-light as he came back to settle beside her. “You saw me brace that metal tube in the notch of the rock,” he said. “Tubes like that are used a lot in machinery work. We call them ‘samsons,’ and they are used to give extra leverage to a wrench, or as extensions to a chisel, stuff like that. In short, they are tough, intended to stand up to hammering and strain. Now look!” and he showed us the tube. It had been folded neatly in half, and there was rope still trapped in the fold. “I had to cut it free. It wouldn’t yield otherwise. So I’m to blame for underestimating the power of that water.”
“Nonsense!” she cried. “You weren’t to know. I’m as much to blame as anyone. I’ve been in deep water often enough. I should have anticipated the pressure effect. I paid for it.”
“And I paid for mine,” he grinned. “I was holding that rope when the tube folded. This is what I got,” and he showed us his palms. Right across each one was an angry red rawness where the skin had been stripped off. The raw flesh gleamed under a layer of ointment and collodion, but it looked as painful as an open wound. Fiona caught her breath, but he put his hands away again, and added, “It’s nothing. Be as right as rain in a day or two. Just making a point. I do not know it all. I do make errors. I have to say that, because Alan, here, has been bending my ear with a decision. On his own, that is.”
“Let me guess,” she murmured, turning to look at me in the gloom. “You want to call it off. Let’s go borne, eh?”
“That’s right,” I said. “No amount of treasure is worth one square inch of this,” and I touched her lightly on her knee.
“I thought so. But you forget this much. It’s mine, not yours. I’m quite willing to trust it to you when I have to, when I want to, but it’s still mine. Let’s not say any more about that, please. Let’s think together?”
“All right, but on your own showing, we’re stuck! You’ve done better than either Carson or I could have done, but you failed!”
“Perhaps not,” Carson put in mildly. “Let’s put it this way. We’ve won a grace period. If Fiona had to struggle to get through those bars, it is certain none of Zeb’s men will manage it, if any of them get that far. You see, the snag with being a crook is that you’re limited in your choice of staff. Nor do I think that Zeb will be able to turn up anything to cut those bars, either, not if they are the same metal as those ring-bolts. I’ve tried, and they defeat anything I can turn on them. So we’ve won a little time, and we have brains. In the meanwhile, you, young lady, need sleep. I know I do, and so does Alan. So that’s the program for the next four hours or so. We’ll grab a quick bite and then rest. I’ll go fix it, right now.”
He flicked off the deck-light as he went, and I said, “That was tactful of him, perhaps?”
“You learn fast,” she murmured, with a hint of mirth. Neil tactful? I doubt it. I’ll bet he’s already planning some other way of lifting that loot. When he sets his mind to something, mountains move over, if they’re wise.”
“You really admire him, don’t you?”
“He is the only man I ever met who is so far ahead of me that I haven’t a ghost of a chance of overtaking him.”
“You set a pretty killing pace yourself, for anyone to keep up with. When I think of you down there, in that water—”
“Don’t think for one moment,” she whispered, “that I would have even given the idea a second thought with anyone else on the other end of the line. I said that Neil is out of sight. He is for most people. But you manage to keep up to him all right within your scope. You’re ahead of me—”
“Rubbish! Ahead? I have the sensation of panting along at your heels, always seeing the obvious when it’s put under my nose, wondering where you’ll lead me next, and always out of breath.”
“You need practice, that’s all. You’ve never lived at top speed before. You’ll find, after a while, that you get hooked on it. Then you’ll shoot off and I’ll be the breathless one, watching you fade into the distance.”
“I can’t see that. I’m pretty breathless right now.”
“As I said,” she murmured, “you need practice. You could try your kiss-of-life technique now, for instance. After all, even if Neil did put the light out because he’s naturally cautious and doesn’t want us to be seen from the sea, there’s no point in wasting it, is there?”
I was really breathless by the time I’d passed the first lesson, and she sighed, deep in her throat. “You pick the most unfortunate times, my dear, to discover things. Chewed over by insects the first time. Now I’m so tender all over that I feel like a raw egg. Or is it deliberate? Do you prefer your women helpless and handicapped?”
“I can’t imagine y
ou ever being helpless, Fiona.”
Whatever she was about to reply to that got caught in the forming, for at that moment Lowloo stirred by my side and said, quite distinctly, “Fiona.”
There was difficulty with the first letter, the labial stop, but there was no mistaking the word. As we stared in surprise, Lowloo tried again.
“Alan.”
Here again she had trouble with labials, and it came out more like Ahan, hut there was no possible doubt of what she meant.
“That’s very good!” Fiona declared excitedly. “I wonder how many more words you know, child?”
“Not like that,” I cautioned her, regaining my wits. “Understanding what somebody says is a damn sight easier than twisting your own tongue around the same words. I know. I’m no linguist in performance, but I can catch what others are saying reasonably well. Try it this way. Lowloo, can you point? Anywhere—to the sea, for instance? Show me.
Quite distinctly and immediately she lifted her slim arm and pointed out to sea, making a pleased little yelp.
“That’s good, but now we will try something harder. Let me see you point to Lowloo.”
This time she yipped in delight and patted herself on the head.
“That tells me a lot. You are one very smart young lady. Dr. Gallint should he here now. Or, rather, his critics should be.”
“You’re pretty smart yourself.” Fiona punched my arm. “Knowing that hit about understanding faster than you can speak.”
“I was raised with animals”—I reminded her—”and it has been a belief of mine for a long time that animals, particularly dogs, cats and horses, can and do understand what we say quite well. The trouble is, we expect them to talk back as proof, all the time. And, of course, they can’t do that very well.”
Carson put his head out of the deck-door and called us to come and get it, and I made a point of inviting Lowloo to join us. He was most intrigued at our discovery, and the fact, as we proved beyond all doubt, that Lowloo had plenty of intelligence. She even had the wit to copy our ways of using a spoon, and drinking from a cup, although she drew the line at coffee. Fiona made a wry joke out of my gentle persistence—which is just another habit of mine. To get anywhere with an animal, you have to at least be as patient as you would be with a child. I have never understood why most people assume that shouting and waving will work where simple repetition is all that is needed.