America 2040 - Golden World Part 19

Rodrick was working detection instruments. "Nothing larger than a rabbit down there," he said, when the life-sign monitors showed nothing.

"Should we head home now?"

Rodrick checked his watch. "I haven't seen the western continents. "

"You're the boss," Clay said.

Rodrick checked the maps and gave the correct lat.i.tude and longitude readings to Clay. Once again the rockets fired, and when the vast land area was below their bow, the far western ocean behind them, Rodrick got a quick impression of the size of the continent. Then Clay was going down and down and doing a fast survey run at Mach three toward the east across the thick body of the continent.

"Clay," Rodrick said musingly, "there's enough land area on Omega to make a good life for all of Earth's surplus population and not even make a dent in it. " "Now that we know we don't have to cruise at sublight before activating the Shaw Drive, we could make several trips a year, sir."

"As fast as we could load 'em and unload 'em," Rodrick said.

"All we need is rhenium."

"All we need is rhenium," Rodrick agreed, but he added, in his mind,and some sane people left on Earth .

There would be one more requirement, too. There would have to be men and women to come after the first generation of settlers. There was going to be a severe generation gap, because Clay was an exception, one of the few teenagers in the group. It would be a long wait for the babies born during the trip and the ones being conceived and born now to mature.

Rodrick had liked Clay from the first time he ever saw the boy, when Clay had stood up to authority-after having had the guts to stow away-and said, flatly, that he would not let anyone do away with the small dog he'd smuggled aboard. Rodrick had watched Clay go through one of those growth spurts, and now he was man-tall, if still teenager thin. Rodrick felt a closeness to and a responsibility for all of the people of the colony, but he had a special interest in Clay. It had been almost like watching the son he did not yet have mature past childhood and childish things and begin to take on the appearance and, in Clay's case, some of the responsibilities, of manhood.

"Clay," Rodrick said, "have you given any thought to what place you'd like to have in our community?"

"Yes, sir. I've thought a lot about it," Clay answered. "People keep trying to pump science into my brain, but it doesn't seem to take. I do all right on mechanics and math, though, and I do love flying. I'd like to be a scout, sir."

Rodrick smiled. "You have a feel for it. You've got some time to make a final decision, and we're all going to have to be sort of jacks-of-all-trades for a while, but if that's what you want, I'll have Jack Purdy start you on some training."

Clay said, beaming, "Thank you, sir!"

"And if you ever have any problems, Clay, need someone to talk with, my door will always be open to you."

"I appreciate that, sir."

The scout streaked through the thin, upper air at three times the speed of sound. The jungle was below them, cut here and there by wide, lazy rivers.

When the scout blasted over one particular southerly flowing river, it was too high to be seen with the naked eye. At first Theresita Pulaski thought that the sound she heard was thunder, but it had been too sharp, too attenuated. The sky was clear. She leaped to her feet on her raft and shaded her eyes with one hand to scan the sky. She'd heard that sound too often to mistake it. There was an aircraft up there.

She was not, after all, alone.

"You! Whoever you are! I am here!" she shrieked, although she knew that her voice would not beheard.

Nothing was left of Theresita's uniform but the thickest seams of her tunic and the waistband of her skirt.

Her shoes were still wearable, and for that she was grateful. There was no reason to be modest, there on that great, brown jungle river, and there were times when she drifted totally in the nude, lying in the shade of her lean-to with her head cus.h.i.+oned on leaves.

Her thoughts and memories were her only company, and she'd taken to talking aloud. Somehow the sound of a human voice, even that of her own, did something to bring that green, damp, often roaring jungle down to manageable size.

She had not heard another aircraft. Several times she'd seen river dragons, as she had come to think of the huge underwater serpents. Once one had leaped after a fleeing fish quite close by the raft, close enough to splash her when it fell back with the fish in its mouth, but so far none of them had threatened her. And on sh.o.r.e one day, when she was experimenting with making clothing from the big, tough leaves of the low-growing plants of the jungle floor, she had witnessed a frightening battle between one of the tanklike tree crashers and a creature out of prehistory, a thing as huge and as deadly as tyrannosaurus rex himself. Although the battering creature knocked the bigger, taller, more agile creature off its feet several times, the outcome was preordained. The long neck of the killer would lance down, and sparks would actually fly as tooth met scale, but each tremendous blow of the huge head, driven by a thick, powerful neck, cost the tanklike creature scales and flesh until, finally, Theresita watched as the predator ripped and tore with tooth and claw to expose the white meat and eat a bathtub-sized portion, leaving the rest.

She ate some of the white meat herself and became violently ill, vomiting throughout the night as her raft drifted southward. She was weak and very thirsty the next morning. There were times, when she hadn't been able to steer the raft toward the bank, that she'd had to drink the river water, and although it had a muddy taste, it hadn't hurt her.

There was a sameness about her existence that gradually deadened her senses and drove her to spend the long, sweaty, steamy hours lying on her back and remembering every incident of her life, every conversation, every word. She would tell herself aloud that there was no way she could remember when she was four years old, back in Poland, but she did, and her memory was, at times, so accurate that she wondered if she were already insane. And then one morning she said, "Theresita, there are low mountains off to the right."

"It can't be," she answered herself, "I am actually dead, and have gone to h.e.l.l, the h.e.l.l of the Christians, perhaps."

"Don't be an idiot, Theresita. Your eyes are not lying. The jungle rises there; you can see a horizon.

There, over the trees. Hills. Wooded, green, jungle still, but hills. And the river is moving faster, you've known that for days."

And a day later: "Theresita, the river is narrowing. The banks are high over there. Look, you can see mud and reddish earth where the bank has given way."

The low mountains were closer. They paralleled the river to the west, and on a very clear day she thought she could see, far in the distance, mountains of great height. But then the inevitable, swift, hard-hitting thundershower blotted out her view and peppered her naked body with rain. She used the rain to wash, catching it in her hands, rubbing her bronzed body briskly. The character of the jungle itself was changing: The canopy was not as densely matted, and here and there a giant tree found freedom for its topmost branches and actually towered over the canopy. The showers that had kept her thoroughly wet for weeks and weeks had become much less frequent, and as the days pa.s.sed and the river ran between high banks covered with profuse growths of vines and flowers, she began to see trees along the bank. And it was not as hot. She knew that she had traveled an incredible distance, something on the order of three thousand miles on the river.

Another mighty river joined the one she'd come to think of as her own, and the stream widened again, so that in midcurrent, the banks were a full mile away on either side. She awoke one morning and was thrilled to see an area of lushly gra.s.sed plains studded with huge, spreading trees. Theresita began to use her sweeps to bring the raft to ground on a sandy beach, wanting to set foot on that gra.s.sy, beautiful land, to be able to walk for the first time in months without pus.h.i.+ng herself through rank undergrowth.

She wore only a skirted arrangement of big, flexible leaves and a halter strung from a length of raveled cloth, the last of the waistband of her skirt, hanging around her neck. The Slavic darkness of her skin had been baked by the sun into a golden, tawny brown.

"d.a.m.ned jungle," she said, turning to look back up the river where, in the distance, the low-hanging clouds on the horizon spoke of the steaming, sweaty, always sodden h.e.l.l shed endured for so long.

"But what do we eat?" she asked herself.

The jungle's fruit and nuts had been her sustenance. They had made for a healthy diet, for she felt as fit as she had ever felt in her life, and the calisthenics she'd done during the long, boring hours on the raft had toned her muscles to an athletic hardness. She was as slim as a girl of eighteen, but with the flaring hips and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a woman.

Dry! She was dry, and it felt wonderful. She walked a few hundred yards from the river through knee-deep, lush purplish-green gra.s.s. A small animal was startled out of a gra.s.sy nest at her feet and went leaping away on long rear legs, clearing the tall gra.s.s now and again to twist its rodentlike head to get its bearings. After her one attempt to eat flesh, the meat of the battering beast, she had no desire to try other animal flesh, but in the absence of the jungle fruit, she thought she might have no other option.

When she walked up a long slope, however, and gained the crest of the rise, she saw reddish-gold berries growing on low vines clinging to rocks. The berries were delicious. She cautiously ate a few and waited for some adverse reaction. When they did not make her ill, she gobbled double handfuls, then went back to the raft to st.i.tch together four of the large jungle leaves to form a carrier. She picked enough berries to last a couple of days and put them into the carrier.

The view from the ridge was pleasant. Rolling, gra.s.sy plains extended far and away toward the mountains in the distance, and there were definitely, on the far horizon, taller mountains with snow-covered peaks. To the east the view was of rolling plains.

Since she had no desire to spend the rest of her life alone in the jungle, Theresita had two choices: one, to stick with the river, which would have to run into an ocean somewhere, with sh.o.r.eline creatures and shallow waters; two, to strike out overland, either toward the mountains or the rolling plains. Since water was more regularly required than food for survival, she chose, quite naturally, to stick with the river.

The tall gra.s.s made her bed aboard the raft much more comfortable. She slept with the raft tied up to the bank and cast off next morning with her larder still stocked with the thin-sh.e.l.led nuts, a couple of fruits,and the carrier of berries. The river water was drinkable, even more so than back in the jungle-when she put her hand into the river now, she could see it through two feet of the clearer water.

Just in case she had to try animal flesh, she spent most of the day fas.h.i.+oning long throwing spears, using the battering beast's scales for the spearheads. She saw the first gra.s.s-eating animals that day, goat-sized antelopes with silver-colored horns. Late in the day, when she took advantage of having drifted near the sh.o.r.e to ground the raft and search for more berries, she witnessed a kill as tawny-green animals as big as any Earth lion brought down one of the steer-sized gra.s.s eaters within a hundred yards of the riverbank and hissed and spat at each other while they gorged on the meat. She cast off. She didn't want to have to face one of those predators, with their long legs, tufted ears, and enough stamina and speed to chase down the gra.s.s eater.

The next morning, two things awakened her. First, she had started conserving the few remaining nuts, so she was hungry. Second, there was a difference in the motion of the raft. The river had narrowed considerably, and the constricted flow pushed through with a speed that pleased her. She didn't know where she might be going, except possibly to the sea, but she'd been drifting at a snail's pace for so long that the new speed of the current excited her, gave her a feeling of being on the verge of something different. From being pleased, she quickly felt concerned. To the west, the mountains were nearer.

Weather on the planet would surely follow the rules. If, as she suspected, the clouds were bled of their moisture as they tried to cross that range of high mountains, the result would be semiarid or desert conditions. If there was a desert ahead of her, and if it extended even a fraction as far as the jungle had extended, she'd never survive crossing it unless she could find a source of food.

The current was moving even faster now, the banks constricted by the ridges to the south and rolling hills to the north. She couldn't work her way toward sh.o.r.e. Abruptly the river turned again, and the stream began to cut its way through ever more rocky and ever more arid land. It was growing late when she began to hear the sound of low thunder, steady, frightening, for she was caught by the swift current, unable to maneuver the clumsy raft to one bank or the other.

Steadily the low thunder grew louder, and she realized that the stream, less than a quarter of a mile wide, was rus.h.i.+ng through a gorge with barren, rocky cliffs rising fifty to a hundred feet on both sides.

"Well, Theresita," she said, "you're in for it. Nothing to do but ride it out."

She took what precautions she could. She tied her ax, spear, and bow and arrows into a bundle and lashed it to her back with her remaining lengths of vine, then ate the last of the nutmeats and the berries.

No need to waste food if that thunder came from what she was afraid it was coming from.

With a suddenness that brought her to her feet, the walls of the gorge dropped behind her and the river burst out into a wilderness of exposed rock. It was going to be worse than she had feared. She leaped to the sweeps, and now it became a matter of survival for her to reach the rocky, sandy bank fifty yards to her right. Water-smoothed boulders were beginning to appear in the river, and the swift waters swirled around them, piling up whitely. Ahead of her the river was broadening, spreading out into a boulder-studded, roaring, white-capped emptiness.

Now a large, smoothed boulder was dead ahead, and Theresita pulled hard on the sweeps. One of them broke. The raft crashed into the boulder, and the st.u.r.dy vines parted. The raft broke up, and Theresita was hurled into the water. She went under, pushed herself away from the rock with her feet, and surfaced, gasping for air and swimming for sh.o.r.e.

Twice she narrowly avoided being dashed against boulders, and then she managed to fight her way tothe slower-moving current along the bank and gained sandy footing, her chest heaving with the effort. Her leaf clothing and bundle of weapons were torn from her-and the last of civilization went with it, for the remnants of the waistband of her skirt had been torn off.

She lay p.r.o.ne on the pebbly sh.o.r.e, breathing hard. When she had her wind back she began to walk along the riverbank. There was a green belt near the river, mostly gra.s.s, a few low-growing shrubs. The river itself was quite spectacular, spreading for miles to the east, roaring and cras.h.i.+ng past the protruding boulders.

Intrigued by the cloud of vapor sitting on the river and by the thunderous roar, she walked downstream.

She began to bless the boulder that had destroyed the raft. She stood on a rock ledge and looked down five hundred feet over a sheer precipice. Ahead of her lay the true desert, a limitless waste of rugged, barren stone and gleaming sands. As the river appeared out of the mists below, flowing southward, it was wide and placid. Its banks were reordered in green, and there were tall, swaying trees, dwarfed by height and distance.

She scouted westward along the cliff. There were a few hours of daylight left when she found a place where she might be able to climb down. There was a steep, rocky slope, but good hand- and footholds on the barren rock. She made it down with only skinned knees, then picked her way over hard, pebbly, barren earth to the lower margin of the pool formed by the huge waterfall, her ears now numbed by the cascade's roar.

She was thirsty and lay on her stomach and drank from the pool. And as she lay there she saw movement in the water, froze, and watched as a large bluish fish with a white belly moved its gills lazily and flipped its tail only enough to hold itself motionless against the current. Theresita moved slowly, cautiously, and then, poised, lunged and grabbed the fish.

She flipped it out onto the bank. It was two feet long, had a streamlined, ovate body, and a skin that was slick and slightly slimy.

She found a sharp rock, chipped off a sharper edge with another rock, and cleaned the fish beside the pool. The meat was white and firm. Her mouth was watering with the thought of flesh after so many weeks of nothing but fruit and nuts. She would not have to eat this fish raw, for she had noted that there were, along the sh.o.r.es of the pool, lengths and pieces of driftwood bleached by the sun. She gathered wood and dry gra.s.s, then whittled very small, dry shavings from a piece of driftwood. She tried the friction method of making a fire first, whirling a stick between her palms, but although the end of the stick she turned between her palms would get hot, she couldn't quite make it hot enough to start a fire.

After she rested, Theresita walked along the rocky edge of the pool, saw stones that looked much like flint, and experimented until she had two pieces that, when struck together, made sparks.

It wasn't as easy as the survival booklets she'd studied in the Red Army made it sound. It was growing dark when, at last, her little pile of tiny shavings and dried gra.s.s gave off a tiny tail of smoke and, after three more false starts, glowed red. She blew on the gra.s.s gently and smoke rose to tickle her nose, and then, as darkness came, she had a briskly burning fire, which she fed with driftwood. She made a spit with two forked branches of driftwood that she stuck into the ground. She used a long, slender green stick to impale the fish, the ends resting in the driftwood forks. The smell of the cooking brought copious quant.i.ties of saliva into her mouth until she could stand it no longer. She ate the fish from the stick with which it was impaled, biting gingerly into the hot, sweet flesh, and saying, "Mmmmm."

"If it poisons you," she said, the words drowned out by the mighty roar of the cascade, "it'll be worthit."

It didn't. She ate until her flat, muscular stomach was distended, then kept what was left for breakfast, after a night during which she'd had to keep the fire going, for the temperature fell to a chilling coolness.

She slept in a hollow in the sand near the fire, waking at times s.h.i.+vering to throw on more wood.

She set herself a goal to cover fifteen miles a day, which meant long hours of walking. She searched the riverbank, moving south, looking for logs to make another raft. She found wood but had nothing to lash it with. She made herself a new spear, however. Hull-less nuts formed in cl.u.s.ters on some of the trees, and although not as delicious as the jungle nuts, they were edible.

The water of the river was quite clear now, and Theresita enjoyed wading in the edge, plunging into the waters to cool herself as the sun warmed the day. Tuberous plants growing in the edge of the river had a bland, starchy taste, did not make her ill, and became a part of her diet. Now and then, in the green, gra.s.sy belt near the river, she found the same low-growing berries she'd eaten back on the plains. She was not going to starve, especially when she found that fish were plentiful, quite unwary, and relatively easy to spear.

She became quite accomplished at striking fire from her firestones, which she carried with her in case she would be unable to find more. Each night she s.h.i.+vered until she learned to dig a bed in the sandy soil and cover herself with a large blanket of gra.s.s. Even then she'd awake, chilled, and would start the fire up from its embers in the early dawn, squatting beside it to eat her breakfast of nuts and fruit, or fish when she had it.

Her shoes lasted only six days. They literally fell apart, and she reluctantly discarded them. The worn and frayed pieces of leather might have come in handy, but she had to carry her firestones and spear. She broadened her diet to include the eggs of waterfowl, cooked on a heated, flat rock, but found the flesh of the birds themselves to be very tough and stringy. Given a choice between bird flesh and fish, she chose fish.

Her adventure nearly ended one morning when she was standing in thigh-deep water, waiting for an unwary fish to swim within range of her spear. The wide river flowed lazily, the surface smooth and unbroken. At first she didn't notice the rippled surface twenty feet from her, for her eyes were on a two-foot-long fish which was browsing on the bottom, seen dimly through the water. When, out of the corner of her eye, the approaching ripples caught her attention, she almost waited too long. She saw that the ripples covered an area of several feet and, heart pounding, moved as fast as she could toward the bank, although impeded by the thigh-deep water. She ran with high steps through knee-deep and finally ankle-deep water, when a bellow of sound caused her to run wildly, looking over her shoulder as she raced up the gently rising bank.

The water behind her had erupted, and the thing that threw itself onto the bank in pursuit was legless, a ma.s.s of black, which ended in front in a T-shaped head, the bar of which was split open in a three-foot grimace of fanglike teeth. The thing moved onto the bank by vertical ripples of its long, black, slimy, flat body, and she outran it easily, going all the way to where the gra.s.s ended and the hot sands of the desert began.

Thus her pleasurable swims in the river became a swift dash to knee-deep water, where she quickly washed away the perspiration of the day's walking. Until the huge, flat, wormlike thing had almost caught her unaware, she had been lulled by the narrow valley and peaceful river.

The days became weeks. Her legs were hardened now, calf muscles p.r.o.nounced. She often fanciedherself to be undisputed master of a world, alone there, except perhaps for whoever had flown the aircraft she'd heard weeks ago. The distant memory of that sonic blast was dim, and there were times when she wondered if she had imagined it. She strode proudly, bronzed and naked, southward, ever southward, the desert around her extending endlessly on both sides of the river ever more barren and arid. Once a dust storm clouded the air, and her eyes and nose were tortured by it until she gave up, dug a bed in the sandy soil, and covered herself, head and all, with freshly cut gra.s.s.

With a fresh roar and much white water, the river narrowed into another cataract as it made its way down a sloping drop. The desert was the same, but below the cataract, the valley widened between two cliffs a full five miles apart. A herd of gra.s.s eaters watched her walk toward them, moved aside, heads all turned toward her in wary curiosity. She considered, briefly, an attempt to take one of the animals, but she would have had to get near enough to use the spear, and a nonlethal throw would, in all probability, cost her her best defensive weapon, so she continued to walk down the beautiful, wide valley, her daily goal now increased to an estimated twenty miles. She made her estimate by rule of thumb, known speed of a brisk walk, the hours estimated from sunrise to the time when the sun was at its zenith.

She knew that she was not getting enough to eat, for her ribs began to show in bony ridges, and she was more exhausted after a day s walking. And yet there was no end in sight, for when she detoured away from the river to climb to the top of the sun-heated cliffs, she could see the river, its green valley, and the desert, too, extending into infinity.

The carnivore began to stalk her as she angled away from the cliffs back toward the river. She saw it rise from the shadows under the cliff, stretch, and sniff the air as she hurried away. She didn't know it was following her until, almost back at the riverside, she turned and saw a movement in the gra.s.s, which stilled immediately. The animal blended so well with the gra.s.s that she could just make out the outline.

She broke into a trot. There was a herd of gra.s.s eaters ahead, so she aimed for them, scattered them with her approach, and mingled her tracks with theirs, thinking that if the predator was following her, he'd lose interest in her as her spoor mixed with that of the gra.s.s eaters.

It seemed to work. As the afternoon shadows lengthened there was no sign of the carnivore behind her.

She found a good campsite and was lucky to spear a fish quickly, Refreshed by the water, she built her fire and ate half the fish, saving the rest for breakfast, and dug her bed, lined it with gra.s.s, and piled up gra.s.s for a covering as the night grew chilly. She was so tired that she was asleep before the sun went down and, as darkness came, the fire had burned to a glowing bed of embers.

She awoke with the feeling that she was being watched. She threw fresh wood and dead gra.s.s onto the fire, and as it blazed up she saw the glow it reflected in the eyes of the carnivore. She threw a rock and yelled, "Get out of here!"

She stayed awake all night, keeping the fire going, thankful that she had gathered so much driftwood.

She ate the leftover fish at daybreak. The carnivore was lying in gra.s.s fifty yards from the fire. She threw stones, and one small one hit close enough to make the animal rise and slink back into the gra.s.s.

She was using her spear to knock down the hull-less nuts from one of the riverside trees, having covered about three miles with no sign of the predator, when the beast decided it was time for its breakfast. She saw a slink of movement out of the corner of her eye. She held her spear in both hands and yelled, "I told you to get the h.e.l.l out of here! Go eat a deer or something!"

His answer was a roar, which started low and raised itself in pitch to a scream as the animal launched itself on a thirty-yard charge toward her. Razor-sharp flakes of bark made it impossible for her to climb the tree-she knew; she'd tried it before, when she had had her shoes. The animal was closing the gapswiftly. She had an instantaneous understanding of its speed and knew it would be senseless for her to run.

She crouched, digging the b.u.t.t of her spear into a hard spot on the ground, and aimed the spearhead in the direction of the beast's breast as it launched itself from the ground a full ten feet away, its huge, tawny-green eyes wild and its sharp teeth bared. It came at Theresita as if in slow motion, and she centered the spearhead, braced herself, heard the spitting snarl, and felt the jolt of impact on her taut arms holding the spear in place. The point buried itself, and she heard a scream and a sharp snap as the spear broke. The full weight of the animal came down on her even as she fell away, and pressed all the breath from her lungs. The beast's gaping mouth closed on her shoulder, and she felt a numbing shock as teeth pierced and crushed. But her spear had done its work, and the animal, in pain and dying, loosed her mangled shoulder, screamed, and began thras.h.i.+ng, its claws drawing a line of fire down the front of one of her thighs as Theresita rolled away to leave the animal clawing and twitching, its arterial blood spouting around the broken spear shaft in its chest.

She crawled away, her own blood reddening the sand. Her left arm was numb, and when she tried to move it, a terrible pain in her lacerated shoulder made her cry out. The blood spurted anew.

She fell onto her stomach and fainted. When she awoke, she was weak. Sand had clogged the teeth holes on the front of her shoulder, so the blood only oozed. She reached back with her right hand and could feel the tears in her shoulder there, and her hand came away wet with fresh blood. A darkness in the sand around her told her she'd lost too much blood.

She remembered the healing quality of the river mud in the jungle. A vague hope, plus thirst, gave her the strength to crawl to the water, where she first drank and then dug into the sandy mud and daubed the stuff on the wounds on the front and rear of her shoulder. She fainted again, then came to with her face lying partly in the water.

She knew she was not going to make it this time. She'd traveled so far, through jungle and desert, and it was going to end here, with her blood still oozing from the deep wounds left by the carnivore. The sun was hot on her back. She felt feverish. She drank more water, daubed more mud on her wounds, and seeking relief from the sun, crawled toward the tree, came into its shade near the dead animal.

"Killing," she said, shaking her head weakly. "Always killing. You must be a communist, my dead friend."

She knew, when next she awoke, that she'd made a mistake. Her throat was dry, her lips parched, and she was too weak to crawl back toward the river.

"Best," she whispered. Best because water would merely prolong the agony of dying. Best to lie quietly in the shade and sleep, letting the blood ooze until the sleep was permanent.

She heard flappings, opened her eyes. In the tree above her two of the scavenger birds perched, with their beady eyes and animallike teeth and leathery skins.

"Eat well, my friends," she whispered.

Between death and life she heard flappings, flutter-ings, and soft, ripping sounds. She opened her eyes to see the scavengers, a dozen of them, ripping and tearing at the body of the dead predator that had killed her. There was a certain element of justice in it, the killer killed, first to be eaten, with his slayer to follow. At least the scavengers were kind enough not to rip out her eyes and tear her flesh while she wa.s.still alive.

"Patience," she whispered, and there was a buzzing in her ears. She was dizzy; her head weighed nothing and seemed to float. She could hear the lapping ripple of the river at the bank, and she was desperately thirsty.

She closed her eyes, willing death to come. She felt so weak, the pain in her shoulder hardly felt. More scavengers were coming, these for her, coming with a swift clip-clop of wings. No... wrong sound...

must be death, the pale horseman. Death was a blur of color and motion, and it towered over her, drawing closer and closer until, blurred and indistinct, it halted and, two-headed, looked down upon her.

She closed her eyes, welcoming it. She had come so very far, and she was tired-tired to the death, having come over eleven light years on a s.h.i.+p of death, a dying, destroyed planet behind her, Ivan dead at the bottom of a jungle river, beasts seeking her, a long, black, fang-toothed horror coming for her in a blaze of many-hued, two-headed color.