10000 Light Years From Home Part 2

She speeded up and held the s.p.a.ce between them almost constant for a kilometer before he began to gain. She forced her legs. It was wind against wind now across the barren amba. The amba was sliced with deep gullies. As her speed failed she was able to take advantage of the remembered course,doubling to lure him into hidden ravines. At two of the deepest cuts she found the wolf waiting for her and crossed by springing to his back where her pursuer would have to clamber up and down.

But for all she could do the man gained steadily. Between gusts of wind she heard the slap and pound of his hard feet. She was gasping when she reached the tumbled hummocks at the foot of the crags. He was close, closer. She leaped desperately up the rocks, remembering the stone that had been flung at the dog. How far could that powerful strange limb propel a missile? She could only dodge upward with searing lungs, all her hopes focused on the tunnel.

That was the crucial part. If he should know these cliffs!

But he was coming straight up after her, not stopping to throw, closing fast. Gravel rattled. She could hear his grunts above her own breathing. He was only paces behind now.

Suddenly shadow was ahead-the old culvert mouth. A rope loop hung inside. She flung her weight into it, spun dizzily for an instant. Then everything gave and she struck ground in a rain of dirt. At her heels, the rockslide cascaded into the culvert, walled him out.

She panted for a time in the choking darkness and then started up the culvert's floor. It was steep; she scrabbled, sprawled, pus.h.i.+ng herself up on her shoulder pads. This was an old skill; as an infant she had rubbed her shoulders raw. Presently there was gray light above. The wolf's head was waiting for her at the top.

She emerged onto the old road bed and they went together to look over the brink of the cliff. It was blowing hard here. She leaned against him as they peered down.

Far below, a red figure worked at the rocks before the culvert. The cliff between them hung sheer, he could not get up this way. The girl sighed, grinned, still breathing hard. She nosed the wolf's back, found the canteen mouth and sucked. He whined softly, open-mouthed.

They went again through the ritual of exposing her body. As he dragged down her breeches she giggled. He growled and nipped at her belly. Then he reared up and pulled off the cap to let the blonde silk blow free.

She advanced to the cliff edge, called into the wind. A red face turned up to her. Its mouth opened.

She motioned with her head, stepped to her left. In that direction the roadway had been breached by a rockslide, leaving a moraine he could climb.

He left off staring and mouthing and began to circle toward the moraine, stopping often to look up.

She paced along above him until rocks came between.

Then the wolf dressed her peremptorily and sent her staggering down the road in the other direction, away from the man. She took up a steady jog, going northwest now with the sun and the wind in her face. Soon the old highway left the cliffs and cut inward between wind-sliced turrets. There were higher crests beyond these to her right, the hills that had once been called Harar. Then she was past the outcrops. The road stretched straight across another mesa top. There were ruins here, adobe sh.e.l.ls, ditches, littered yards under occasional huge eucalyptus trees. Metal fragments lay on the roadside. A rusted gas pump stood like a man as she jogged by. Dust blew. She was beginning to limp.

Now and then the wolf ranged alongside her, then slipped aside to watch her pursuer pa.s.s. The man was on the straight behind her now, coming on doggedly, veering from the strange shapes by the road.

Pursuer and pursued slowed to walking as the light began to change. The distance between them shrank steadily, faster.

The girl was hobbling when she reached a ravine where the road lay in wreckage. A little time gained here, but not much; She was spent. Beyond the wrecked bridge she limped between walls. The road curved around a dead village, ran into an old square. Here the girl turned aside and fell to her knees.

Behind her the man was already leaping through the fallen bridge. It was sunset. The wolf appeared, grunting urgently. She shook her head, panted. He snarled and began to yank at her clothing, shouldering her up.When the man came into the square she was standing alone, her body brilliant in the level light. He stopped, eyes rolling white at the alien walls. Then he took a step toward her and was suddenly in charging onrush. She stood quiet. He leaped, arms grappling her, and she went down under him into the hard dirt.

As they fell together a jet of gas came from between her lips into his face. He convulsed, crushed her. The wolf was on them, dragging the flailing giant off by the arm while the girl coughed and gagged.

When the man had flopped to inertness the wolf pounched over her and nosed her head.

Her gagging changed timbre, she wrapped both legs around the wolf and tried to roll him. He roughed her face with his tongue, planted his paw in her navel and pulled free. When she quieted he was holding the transmitter in front of her face. A snoring noise was coming from the man on the ground.

They looked together at the big body. He was nearly twice the wolf's weight.

"If we tie him to you and drag him he'll get all torn," the girl said. "Do you think you can drive him?"

The wolf laid the transmitter down and grunted non-committally, frowning at the man.

"We're only at that place west of Goba," the girl told the transmitter. "I'm sorry. He's much stronger than we thought. You-wait!"

The wolf was in the road, standing tense. She listened too, heard nothing... then a s.h.i.+ver in the ground, a tiny rumble. The transmitter began to squawk.

"It's all right!" the girl told it. "Bonz is here!"

"What do you mean, Bonz is there?" demanded the distant voice.

"We can hear him coming. He must have got through the break."

"d.a.m.n idiots," said the voice. "You're all wasting energy. Base out."

Girl and wolf squatted together in the dusk beside the snoring man. She prodded at him briefly with her booted foot. Her teeth began to chatter.

The throbbing turned into a clas.h.i.+ng roar and a fan of light swung around the far end of the square.

Behind the light was the dark nub of a small tractor cab. It was towing a flat wagon.

The girl stood up, swung her hair.

"Bonz! Bonz, we've got one!"

The tractor rattled up beside them and a pale head leaned out. The dashlight showed a boy's face, a bony knife-edged version of the girl's.

"Where is he?"

"Here. Look how big he is!"

The tractor's light swung, flooded the supine man.

"You'll have to get him on the wagon," the boy said. His eyes were hollow with fatigue. He made no move to leave the cab.

The wolf was at the side wall of the wagon, pulling a latch. The wall clanged down to form a ramp to the low cart bed. Girl and wolf began to roll the red body sideways toward the ramp.

"Wait," the boy said suddenly. "Don't hurt him. What have you done to him?"

"He's all right," the girl told him. The man's shoulders were lolling against her knees, his upper arm slashed red where the wolf had gripped him.

"Wait, let me look," said the boy. He still did not get out but sat staring, Licking his thin lips.

"Our savior." His voice was harsh and high. "There's your d.a.m.ned Y chromosome. He's filthy."

He pulled his head back and they tumbled the unconscious man up onto the cart. There were hasps and straps on the floor. The girl's boots were got off and she fastened him down, her bruised toes clumsy. As they got him secure he began to groan. The girl pulled back her lips to reveal the syringe fastened between teeth and cheek and carefully jetted more vapor on his face.The boy watched them through his rear window, twisted in his seat. He was drinking from a canteen. On the wagon the girl unhitched her companion's harness pack and they ate and drank too.

They grinned at the boy. He did not grin back. His eyes were on the great red-gold man: The girl toed him idly, jostling his thick limbs, his genitals.

"Don't do that!" the boy called sharply. The air was cold.

"Do you think he needs a blanket?" asked the girl.

"No! Yes," he said exhaustedly.

When the wolf reared up beside the cab door the boy was bent over, hauling blankets from behind his seat. The cab's interior was cluttered with tubing and levers. On the floor, where the boy's feet should have been, was an apparatus from which tubes led upward. When he straightened up it could be seen that he had no legs. His torso was strapped to the seat and ended in a coc.o.o.n of canvas into which tubing led. His face was wet-streaked.

"We can all go die, now," he pushed the blankets out the window, ramming with sinewy arms.

Wetness ran down his thin jaw, fell on the blanket. The girl peered around the side, said nothing. The wolf grabbed a double fold of blanket and slung the rest back over his shoulder as he dropped to all fours. The boy hung his arms around the steering wheel and let his head go down.

Girl and wolf covered the man on the cart and fastened up its side. He draped a blanket on her, leaped to the ground. The boy's head came up. He started the tractor and they lurched out onto the road. Above them no bat flew, no night bird hunted, here or anywhere in the empty world. Only the tractor moved across the moonlit plain, a gray beast trotting behind. No insects came to the yellow headlight beam. Before them the road stretched away neutrally to the crests above the Rift, in the land that had been Ethiopia.

THE PEACEFULNESS OF VIVYAN.

The newsman had come a long way, studied by small s.p.a.ceburnt men who wore their lasers against naked callus. And he in turn had stared at his first sealmen, the natives of McCarthy's World. The newsman had been careful not to call it McCarthy's World now, but Sawewe. Sawewe meaning of course Freedom.

For another long wait all the newsman had seen of Sawewe was the dilapidation of the old Terran Enclave; a perfectly flat view of sea on one side and tropical scrub on the other. The surface of Sawewe was a limestone plain pitted with sinkholes which led-some of them-to the continent-wide cavern system in which the sealmen lived. Worthless, except that those gray-green spikes stretched unharvested to the horizon were silweed. The newsman, whose name was Keller, blew out his lips when he saw it.

Back in the Empire a gram bag of silweed was worth half his pay-voucher. He knew now why the planet-burners had been held off.

Finally, because Keller was patient and tough and his credentials were good there came the long trip in the sealed floater, and the blindfold, and the longer hours of stumbling down and down. Sawewe was not trusting toward Terrans. Keller tripped, heard a faint splash echo. Sealmen hooted, a scanner clicked. He trudged on, hoping he would not have to swim.

At last a hard woman's voice said, "Leave him here. You can take that off now."

He bunked into an enormous green dimness, a maze of terraces crumbling into water, low walls, incongruous wires, a plastic console in a carved niche. Folds of rock hung from the sky. This was a very old place.

"He will be here in an hour," said the woman, watching him. "He is on the reef."

Her hair was gray. She wore a wetsuit but no weapons and her nose had been slit and crudely repaired. An Empire prisoner, one of the Terran traitors who had worked for Sawewe."Did they tell you about the contamination?"

Keller nodded.

"The Empire had no need to do that. We never had weapons there. If he talks to you will you tell lies like the others?"

"No."

"Maybe."

"Did I lie about Atlixco?"

Her shrug conceded nothing. Keller could see that her face had once been very different.

"That's why he decided to see you."

"I'm very grateful, Mamsen."

"No t.i.tles. My name is Kut." She hesitated. "His wife Nantli was my sister."

She went away and Keller settled on a stone bench beside an ancient stalagmite frieze. Through the fins of a fish-G.o.d he could see two sealmen wearing headsets: a communications center. The pavement in front of him ended in a natural pool which, s.h.i.+mmered away into gloom, lit here and there by yellow light-shafts from the stone sky. Water chuckled, a generator keened.

Suddenly Keller was aware that a man was squatting quietly by the poolside, looking at him. When their eyes met the man smiled. Keller was immediately struck by the peaceful openness of the stranger's face. His smile was framed in a curly black beard. A gentle pirate, Keller thought, or a minstrel. A very tall man hunkered down like a boy, holding something.

Keller rose and sauntered over. It was a curious sh.e.l.l.

"The carapace has two openings," the man told him, turning the sh.e.l.l. "The animal inside is bimorphic, sometimes a single organism, sometimes two. The natives call it Nos.h.i.+ngra, the come-and-go animal." He smiled up at Keller, his eyes very clear and defenseless. "What's your name?"

"Keller, Outplanet News. What's yours?"

The man's eyes softened as though Keller had made him a present and he continued to gaze at Keller in a way so receptive and innocent that the newsman, who was very tired, found himself speaking of his journey and his hopes for the coming interview. The tall man listened peacefully, touching the sh.e.l.l with his hands if it were a talisman that could protect them both from war and power and pain.

Presently the woman Kut came back with a mug of mate and the man unfolded himself and drifted quietly away.

"Biologist?" Keller asked. "I didn't catch his name."

The woman's face went bleaker.

"Vivyan."

The newsman's memory hunted, jarred.

"Vivyan? But-"

She sighed. Then she jerked her head, motioning Keller to follow her. They went along behind a wall which became an open fretwork. Looking through, Keller could see the tall figure ambling toward them across a little bridge, still holding his sheel.

"Watch," the woman told him.

The boy Vivyan had noticed the brown man first around the ski-fires of the snowy planet Horl.

Vivyan noticed him particularly because he did not come to talk as most people did. Better so, Vivyan felt obscurely. He did not even learn the brown man's name then but simply saw him among the flame-lit faces, a stocky gray-brown man textured all over except for two white owl-rings around his eyes which meant he wore goggles a lot.

Vivyan smiled at him as he did at everyone and when the singing was over he skiied out across themoonlight to the ice-forests, pausing often to touch and examine lovingly the life of this mountain world. It was not long before certain snow-creatures trusted him, and the even shyer floating animals who were Horl's birds. The girl who had been with the brown man came to him too. Girls usually did.

Vivyan found this delightful but not remarkable. People and animals always came to him and his body knew the friendly and joyful ways to touch each kind.

People, of course, seemed to need also to talk and talk, which was a pity because their talk was mostly without meaning. Vivyan himself talked only to his special friend on Horl, the man who knew the names and hidden lives of the snow world and accepted all that Vivyan had observed. Thus should a man live, Vivyan knew, questing and learning and loving. He always remembered everything he encountered; his memory was perfect, like his eyes and ears. Why not? It pained him to see how other humans lived in dimness and distraction and he tried to help.

"See," he said tenderly to the brown man's girl, "each branchlet has one drop of sap frozen on the tip of the bud. That makes a warming lens. It is called photothermal sap; without it the tree cannot grow."

The brown man's girl looked, but she turned out to be a strange tense girl preoccupied with hurtful things. She became preoccupied also with Vivyan's body and he did all he could for her, very enjoyably.

And then she and some of the others weren't around any more and it was time to move on.

He didn't expect to see the brown man again. But some while later in the cantinas of McCarthy's World he did. McCarthy's World was the best yet-its long bright beaches, the hidden marvels of its reefs by day and unending welcome in its nights. He had a special friend here too, a marine zoologist who lived up the coast beyond the Terran Enclave. Vivyan never went into the Enclave. His life was in the combers or drifting through the redolent cantinas, moving with the music and the friendly flow. Young people from countless Terran worlds came to McCarthy's beaches and many short, excitable s.p.a.cers on leave from the Terran base and even a few real aliens.

As always, arms and lips opened to him and he smiled patiently at the voices without hearing the words that his memory could not help recording. It was while he was being harangued by one of the s.p.a.cers that Vivyan saw white owl-eyes watching from the shadows. It was the brown man. A new girl was with him now.

The s.p.a.cer pulled at him, inexplicably and drunkenly outraged. Something about the natives of McCarthy's World. Vivyan had never seen one. He longed to. His friend had told him they were very shy.

And there was something negative connected with them which he did not want to know. It was tied in some way to a large badness-the lost third planet whose name Vivyan did not recall. Once, he knew, all these three worlds, Horl and McCarthy's and the nameless one, had been all together and all friendly until the wrong thing had occurred. Terrans were hurt. A pity. Vivyan did not probe into negative, angry things.

He smiled and nodded gently at the s.p.a.cer, longing to share with him the reality of sunlight on the reef, quietness in the wind, love. The brown man was as before, remote. Not in need. Vivyan stretched and let arms pull him out to fly firekites on the murmuring beaches.

On another evening they were all linked in a circle singing one of the aliens' songs when the brown man's girl began to sing to him with slow intensity across the shadows. Vivyan saw she was a delicate cool girl like the fire-lace on the reefs and hoped she would come to him soon. When she sought him out next day he learned that her name was Nantli. To his delight she spoke very little. Her eyes and her red-gold body made him feel enveloped in sun-foam.