And if hin dies during the Change, he realized, hin will have met death without being prepared.
"Eerin, I'm sorry," Mark whispered. "We can try going back into the woods.
Can you dance without the music?"
"Do not worry. Hin is watching the Mortenwol and dancing
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in hin's heart," Eerin said. The Elpind's courage touched Mark. Clumsily he patted the alien's shoulder.
Hearing the change of melody that signified the end of the Mortenwol, Mark looked back at the dancers. In unison, the circle made that final leap and wafted back to the ground. One, the glistening one, sagged to hin's knees.
That's right, Mark thought, Eerin said they wait until the last minutes to dance their last Mortenwol as neuters. In response to an imperious gesture from a large, darkish-colored neuter, several Wospind dashed over to the fallen Wopind and lifted hin. In seconds, carrying the one-who-was-to-Change, the group was heading away, out the other end of the meadow.
"Hin is the leader of the group," Eerin said, indicating the one who'd made the commanding gesture and who now walked alone at the head of the disappearing column. Then the Elpind gasped and sagged against the rock.
"It is time," hin whispered.
"Thank God the Wospind are going to be stopping for the same reason we are," said Mark. "At least it gives us time to plan. Let's go back a little way. I want to be damn sure this mountain is between us and them tonight."
Cara looked at him sharply. "You think they're looking for us?" She hadn't understood the overheard Elspindlor, of course.
"I know they are," Mark said grimly, and explained.
"Damn! Mark, we can't hole up and hide from them, we have to keep going! If everyone else has been captured, that means it's really up to us to notify the CLS about the Asimov! They're depending on us!"
Mark indicated Eerin, who was gasping shallowly, hin's golden eyes glassy with shock or pain. "We've got to stop for a while, Cara," he said.
Looking somewhat abashed, she nodded. "You're right. Maybe by tomorrow they'll be gone."
Mark nodded and helped Eerin stand. "Eerin, do you want to ride on Hrrakk's--"
But the Simiu didn't wait for a response. He simply marched over and stood waiting. Mark picked up the limp Elpind, placed hin on the Simiu's back, then prepared to walk alongside to hold the alien on. By that time, Eerin was unconscious.
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* * *
Cara and R'Thessra led the group to shelter in the shadow of the huge cliff, behind two huge rocks that formed a natural windbreak. Cara gazed
apprehensively up at the rocky expanse towering over them. I hope nothing drops down on us during the night, she thought, then realized suddenly that the same hope held true for the Wospind.
We're really in a mess, she thought with a sigh. After Eerin goes through the Change, what are we going to do?
"Here we are, Eerin," Mark's voice reached her, still hushed even though they were some distance away from the meadow now, and the Wospind had been traveling in the opposite direction. "Let me help you off."
She watched as Mark and Hrrakk' eased the Elpind down on the grass within the shelter of the boulders. Eerin trembled violently. In the moonlight hin gleamed with moisture.
The journalist moved over to the Elpind. "Eerin, is it all right to film you during the Change?" she asked.
Eerin tried to speak, but no sounds emerged. Instead hin's long, broad tongue shot out like a snake's. It was furled so deeply that the two edges met at the top of the curl and the whole formed a small, hollow tube. Then the tongue snapped back into the Elpind's mouth.
Cara gasped and recoiled.
"It's okay, that's normal," said Mark quickly, though he looked a little shaken himself. "It's the beginning of the breathing reflex, that's all."
"The what?"
"You'll see. Eerin told me last night what to expect, more or less. This means hin's pretty far along. It really is time!" He gave a quick glance at her camera.
"Go ahead and film this, if you want. If Eerin doesn't want it recorded, you can always erase the footage later."
Eerin thrashed, turning on hin's side. Hin's legs drew up, the sharp knees pressed against the downy chest. The Elpind's arms wrapped around hin's legs. Eerin's eyes were wide and abstracted, almost glassy. The two humans watched in mingled fascination and anxiety. The Simiu and the Apis stayed on the other side of the clearing, but they, too, watched.
"Going inward," Cara whispered.
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"What?"
"Eerin's eyes. Like hin's looking inside instead of out."
"Oh. Yeah."
But at that moment, the Elpind squeezed hin's eyes shut. Strain wrinkled the round face, and then Cara couldn't see Eerin's expression anymore because the head pulled down, tucking in tighter and completing the curved shape of the Elpind's body.
A sharp, quick tremor, different from the other trembling, raced over the alien's form. Suddenly thick, milky fluid sprayed up from the hollow between Eerin's neck and shoulder.
"Oh, God, Mark!" Cara jumped as the liquid spattered over Eerin's body and the ground, almost hitting her shoes. She backed away, wide-eyed, as the miniature geysers continued to erupt, spraying out in rhythmic pulses.
"That's the eleventh slirin," said Mark. "The big one."
Smaller jets of fluid began to spurt from points all over Eerin's body. The breeze shifted a bit, and the odor reached Cara. She clapped a hand over her mouth, gagging, fighting not to be sick. The exudate smelled like a cross between badly soured milk and cheap perfume.
Beside her, Mark was also trying to control his nausea as he grabbed her arm and pulled her back, upwind.
Tears flooded Cara's eyes, and she suddenly found herself crying. She sank down on a low-lying rock, sobbing bitterly. Mark put an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned against him, gasping out words between sobs.
"Oh, Mark, I'm sorry ... but I just realized ... this whole thing is so ... so ...
strange, and Eerin might die-- and the poor thing didn't even ... get to dance ... the last Mortenwol!"
He hugged her. "I know. I feel bad for hin, too."
She burrowed her face against him. "It's not ...just Eerin. Mark, what if the Wospind find us? How did they find out about us ... from torturing the others?
Maybe they killed them!"
"I don't know," he said softly. "Eerin told me that Orim was the one who inspired them to violence, and Orim's dead. Who knows what that new leader we saw today is like?"
Cara blotted her tears on his shirt, snuffling as she fought to stop weeping. "I keep thinking I'm never going to see home again, Mark."
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"I know." He pulled her close to him, so her head rested against his chest.
His heartbeat was strong and somehow comforting. "I've been worrying that I'll never see StarBridge or Rob again. That's the closest thing I have to a home or a family now."
Suddenly something poked Cara's cheek, and she drew back, startled, choking on a last, strangled sob. It was Terris, who'd awakened from a sound sleep to find something strange invading hinsi's territory. Hinsi squawked indignantly.
'Terris, Terris, Terris," Mark complained, "the first time I get this woman in my arms this whole trek, and you wake up and spoil it."
Cara managed a feeble smile, then she remembered something. "Oh, damn!" she muttered furiously, turning back to the Elpind.
"What is it?"
"I just realized that for the last five minutes I've been wasting footage on your shoulder and my sniffling."
"Everybody Hendricks is back on the job," Mark said dryly. "I knew my grimy charms couldn't distract you from your journalistic duties for long."
Cara barely heard him, fascinated as she was by what was happening to Eerin. The geysers were sputtering out. The fluid that came from the slisrin now was even thicker, and it poured steadily instead of spurting.
The Elpind's body moved slightly, and Cara held her breath
. What now? But the movement was only a relaxation of the tight muscles, a boneless abandonment so complete that Cara knew she'd just seen Eerin lose
consciousness.
Oh, God, she thought. What must it be like to undergo something like this?
Like giving birth ... only you're even more helpless ... "Is Eerin breathing?"
she whispered.
"The tongue makes a breathing tube," said Mark. "That's how they keep from smothering in the fluid, which Eerin said is called lacmore. It's a survival reflex."
Yes, she could see now. With the loosening of the taut curl, Eerin's face was no longer totally buried in hin's chest. Thick, milky fluid had already seeped over the facial features, obscuring them, but the long orange tongue stuck out, furled into a tube.
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As far as Cara was concerned, that frozen tongue just added to Eerin's overall deathlike appearance, but she didn't say so. At least the regular whistling sound of the Elpind's breath was comforting.
The liquid flowed steadily over Eerin's body. Hin lay in a white, viscous puddle, but the puddle was no longer spreading. The minute Eerin had become totally soaked with it, the fluid had begun to adhere to itself, it seemed. It no longer seeped onto the ground.
Layer by layer the exudate built up, until all the scoops and hollows of Eerin's outline were filled in. Hin became a featureless, slightly oblong shape on the ground, nothing more.
"I'm going to take a closer look," Cara said.
Hrrakk' and the Apis were also moving in for a closer inspection. She'd nearly forgotten about them in her absorption with what was happening to the Elpind.
The Simiu circled the cocoon, looking it over thoroughly, then nodded in seeming satisfaction. Cara realized he'd probably seen this before, if not firsthand, then at least in holos his colleagues would have made on Elseemar and sent to him on Hurrreeah. Hrrakk' would know if anything wasn't happening the way it should.
Cara moved closer, trying to breathe through her mouth. The smell was still appalling, and her stomach churned, but she was determined to get a close-range look.
The lacmore no longer flowed; it had hardened. No, Cara decided, not hardened, exactly. It's jelled!
Now Eerin was nothing more than a dark, indistinct shape in the center of the gelatinous mass. The only break in the surface of the cocoon was where the orange tongue poked through.
Cara listened for a minute to the rhythm of the whistling breath that came through the tongue-tube. "Eerin's breathing seems slower now than at first. A lot slower!" she said in careful, worried Mizari to Hrrakk'.
"That is normal," the Simiu grunted. He went to sit against a rock on the other side of their windbreak and R'Thessra followed him. Cara went back to Mark. She glanced back at Eerin one more time. No change. She waved her camera off, her stomach rumbling suddenly with hunger. The journalist fetched the canteen and some of what she'd dubbed the
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flame-grapes that she'd gathered as they walked along the lake boundary after the Shadowbird's death plunge. She and Mark shared them silently.
Time went by, and Cara slipped off the rock to sit on a piece of the sheeting to protect her from the damp ground. Eerin's cocoon remained the same, only that whistling intake of breath indicating that their friend still lived inside there. Thinking of such profound changes made Cara shudder, even as a huge yawn caught her unawares.
"So what are we going to do about the Wospind?" she asked, swallowing another yawn.
"I think the best thing you can do is get some sleep," Mark said. "The time Enelwo takes varies, but it should be over by late tomorrow, if not before. We can talk about what to do in the morning."
She gave him a surprised glance. "Aren't you going to sleep?"
"No, I promised Eerin I'd take the place of hin's older siblings and keep a vigil. I couldn't sleep anyway," he said.
"But we walked all day," she protested.
"If I find myself getting sleepy, I'll wake Hrrakk'," Mark promised.
"Okay," Cara murmured. "Wake me ... if anything happens."
Lying down, she pillowed her head on her arms, then lay watching Eerin's cocoon until she fell asleep.
Mark's concentration on the problem of the Wospind was compromised by his fear for Eerin. Every time the shadows played over the cocoon Mark thought he saw movement of the dark shape within, but it was always just a trick of the moonlight. His body ached with tension, and he could think of little besides the question uppermost in his mind: Will Eerin survive?
He let his gaze shift thoughtfully to the Simiu. Hardly more than an hour had passed since Cara went to sleep and already Hrrakk' had gotten up twice to check the cocoon. Eerin had told him there was nothing anyone could do if something went wrong during this stage, but it was comforting to Mark to know that if it did, he and the Simiu would discover the fact together.
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We're both keeping vigil, he realized. I wonder whether Hrrakk' gave Eerin a formal promise, too?
Rising, he strolled around the small, sheltered nook that Cara and RThessra had found, grateful for the huge rocks that kept the night breeze off. His clothes were finally dry, but it was cooler tonight. His shadows leaped and rippled around him.
The Simiu looked up as Mark squatted in front of him. "What is it, human?"
He kept his voice low in deference to the Apis, who slept, wings stilled, on the ground next to him, but it was still gruff, still cold and noncommittal.
Mark sighed. "Good evening, Honored Hrrakk'," he said, determined to be polite, even if the Simiu wasn't. "You might notice that I don't address you as
'Hey, Simiu!' "
"That word is one that your kind saddled my people with," the alien said coldly. "Unfortunately, since my language is difficult for most species to pronounce, that distasteful human appellation has fallen into common usage throughout the CLS."
Mark was taken aback. "None of my Simiu friends at Star- Bridge ever said they found it distasteful."
"It likens my people to animals that live on your world," Hrrakk' said scornfully. "Animals that your kind ate in some cultures, and used to perform vivisection on in others. Would you be flattered, in my place?"
"I guess I wouldn't," Mark said, shaken. He knew that Simiu were strictly vegetarian and were repelled by the human habit of eating meat (though synthetic protein had almost replaced that practice, at least for those living off-planet; shipping animal products was prohibitively expensive). "I'm sorry, I never thought of it that way. If you'll teach me how to say your species'
name properly, I promise I won't use that word again."
Hrrakk' shrugged. "You might as well. Everyone else does."
"Uh ... listen, Honored Hrrakk' ..." Mark hesitated, then brought up the subject on his mind. "We need to figure out how we're going to elude the Wospind and still get help from the nahah. Have you given it any thought?"
The Simiu nodded. "I have a plan."
Damn, but he's so self-righteous! "Okay, let's hear it."
"The Elpind will be very weak, unable to walk for at least a full day, after heen or han emerges from the cocoon."
"Go on."
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"If Enelwo continues to go well, Eerin will emerge shortly after dawn. I will carry the Elpind, and we will walk most of the day. That should bring us nearly to the nahah. At that point we will split up; R'Thessra and I will leave the group."
Mark was already shaking his head no. He was faintly surprised at himself, because a few short days ago he'd wished the Simiu would stay with the ship, join another group, do anything but come with him. But despite the alien's continuing distaste for humans, he'd proved an invaluable help, and Mark knew it.
Hrrakk' ignored his protest. "I am sure Eerin has told you by now that I am one of the researchers connected with the development of Elhanin. My name is known to many of the Wospind. If they discover me, my life is forfeit, just as Sarozz's was."
"Couldn't you give them a false name?" Mark suggested.
The Simiu's glance was scathing. "My name is an honored one! I will not dishonor myself or my clan by doing such a cowardly, honorless thing!"
"Okay," Mark backed down in a hurry. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to impugn your honor."
"After you have left R'Thessra and me behind, the Apis and I will head for a prearranged meeting place, known only to you," Hrrakk' said. "You and the others will continue to the nahah. Then you humans will hide outside, sending the Elpind in alone. Eerin will determine whether the nahah is safe.
If it is, heen or han will return for you. You will send a signal to me--a fire made with green branches, for example--so I can see the smoke from a distance. Then R'Thessra and I will wait for CLS pickup by shuttle at the spot we have agreed upon."
"And if the nahah is in Wospind hands?"
"Then you must lead Cara to join R'Thessra and me in the mountains. At that time, we can determine what to do next."
"Where does that leave Eerin?"
"Wospind are also Elspind; I do not believe they would harm one of their own. Eerin can deny all knowledge of the group, claim that after the crash hin walked alone to the nahah. Later, after the Wospind are no longer suspicious, Eerin can leave, try for another, non-Wospind refuge, then contact the CLS."
"What about Terris? I can't take hinsi into hiding."
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"Eerin can take the child into the nahah. There will be a family who will take hinsi."
It was a decent plan, Mark had to admit. It smacked a little too much of sacrificing Eerin for his taste, but nothing was perfect.
"Okay," he said, and stood up. "It's a good plan."
Mark turned to go, then stopped. "One more thing. About RThessra ..."
"Yes?" Hrrakk' was impatient.
"Is she a researcher, too?"
"No. But her younger hive-sister was. I held an honor-bond with R'Fissis, who was killed in the Wopind attack on the lab. RThessra was on her way to Elseemar so that she could mourn her sister and end her days on the same world where R'Fissis died. When I learned RThessra's identity, honor demanded that I protect her, as I was not able to protect R'Fissis." Hrrakk's crest flattened. "I fail to see that this concerns you, human."
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