Fall of the White Ship Avatar (26 page)

Then Paloma accepted her proteus back and set off, the eggs clutched to her chest, her spear held ready.

Pokesnout said something; by now it was second nature for Alacrity to hold up his proteus and listen for the translation.

"So you Other Male and Female like the eggs as much as Digger?"

"Digger, Ho?" Alacrity puzzled.

"Well, 'Hobart' didn't translate, and 'Digger' is close enough to 'Delver.' " That was Delver as in Delver Root-nose, Floyt's alias among the Foragers of Luna.

"So I'm just 'Other Male'?" Alacrity asked Floyt.

" 'Alacrity' doesn't translate so well either. I would suggest 'Speed.' "

"Mmm. All right."

Pokesnout had been absorbing the running translation, looking from one to the other, his semiprehensile upper lip curling, flapping, and everting. "Speed, eh? A good name. I will tell everyone, and that will be your name for always. Does Female have a name, too?"

Alacrity gazed after Paloma. She was moving lithely up the hill, very much aware of her svelte, glamorous appeal, secure in it and proud of it.

"Her name's 'Babyfat,' " Alacrity said spitefully. "Make sure everybody knows. That will be her name for always."

"So, Digger, that is why Babyfat was trying to hit Speed in the head with her wooden branch and kill him? Because of her name?" Pokesnout snorted a vast breath and rolled around in the mud some more.

He was a lot more confident and relaxed now that he was a breeding male.

Floyt lay stretched out on his back on the warm boulder, head pillowed on his arms, basking in the sunlight after a chilly bath in the river, gazing up at the peaceful Lebensraum sky. All around him, his rock-pounded clothing was drying. Alacrity's proteus was loose around his lower forearm.

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"I don't think she was
really
going to kill him, Pokesnout. But yes, she was quite angry about the name he gave her."

Pokesnout tossed his tail, flinging mud droplets into the air. "That is what I thought, although it is very hard for us to understand. I could try to get the herd to call her something else, but 'Babyfat' is woven into the New Verities now, and it would probably only confuse things; it would muddle everyone's mnemonics terribly and disorder their thinking and, in the end, not work."

Actually, Floyt didn't much care to think about troublesome sociodynamics just at the moment. With gawklegs having accepted them and begun helping them, the humans had a much easier life, and he felt like enjoying it. Using the swift-moving part of the river to bathe, for example, where there was no danger from sliverworms, bloodflukes, and similar perils, and not having to worry about manglejaws because he had a gawk for a bathing companion, was a luxury to be savored singlemindedly.

Preparations for a recon were going well. The Verities weren't much use in guessing what the scuttle-death was, and both Pokesnout and the humans wanted to know before the main herd moved up into the high desert. Floyt had worked hard helping gather food and fashion equipment, and intended to enjoy his restful interlude.

Except that the problem of the Lake Fret, the last major barrier along their way, still bothered him.

Neither Alacrity nor Paloma had come up with a workable way to negotiate it. Floyt had been accessing the subject, a large body of water in the middle of a region of Karst topography—limestonelike substrata. There was a tiny drone substation racking-and-launching point not too far from their route of march, stocked with seismic charge robos, but it was of no use to the strandees; shaped explosive charges weren't much good as weapons, and the drones were much too small to use as transportation.

But he didn't want to think about that anymore either. He answered Pokesnout lazily, "Oh, I'm sure she'd be grateful if you'd see what you can do about it, but not if it's going to make communications all mixed up."

"Hobie, you wouldn't be so casual if
you
were the one being slandered!"

Floyt rolled over onto one elbow and Pokesnout shot to his feet in the mud. Seeing it was only Paloma, the gawk sank back down, grunting and sending out waves. "Greetings, Babyfat!"

"Hi, Poke," she said dispiritedly, her proteus putting it into gawk for her. "And relax, Hobie; don't throw a vertebrae being body-shy on
my
account. I grew up on a ranch."

Floyt realized he looked silly trying to cover himself with contortions and damp clothes. He stopped, and settled for rolling onto his stomach on his boulder, a few meters out in the river. Paloma seated file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (132 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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herself under a cirrous tree on the bank. Her hair was combed out and she looked more bewitching than ever.

"Anyway, thanks for trying to straighten things out," she said, digging her heel at the turf. "But this Babyfat business has a life of its own." She smiled cheerlessly. "That vindictive
filho-puta!
It's just like Alacrity to be at his most inventive at a thing like this!"

"Actually, that's true. Um, I was right, wasn't I? You didn't kill him, did you?"

"I might have, except those damn climbing spikes gave him an edge. It'll serve him right if he sits up in that tree until the drillbugs drain him dry. Damn him and his White Ship and his damn Precursors!"

Floyt was toying with an Inheritor's belt warmed by the rays of Invictus, studying the strange symbols that had saved his life from Hecate. "I never asked you this, Paloma, but what do you think the Precursors were? Or who?"

She'd been frowning at the water; even that expression looked tantalizing on her. But she brightened, looking back to Floyt.

"Us."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Precursors. They're us, Hobie. And sweet old Poke there, and the grass and trees. And even that treacherous
cazzo
sitting back up there in his tree. See what I'm getting at?"

"I suppose." Neither of them paid any attention to Pokesnout, who lay there in the mud waggling his ears and listening to the running translations the humans had come to ignore as background noise.

"Now I get to ask you one, Hobie. What's Heart like? The Nonpareil? In the news she always looks friggin' killer-gorgeous."

"She's—sometimes I find myself looking at her and I think, 'I'll memorize her, so that I won't stare so much.' And then I look away, but when I look back, I find that the memory's pale by comparison, and she bowls me over again. I end up staring—"

"I'm sorry I asked."

"No, no; I was going to say—it's the same with you." His face reddening, he averted his eyes. "And she's bright and courageous and compassionate like you, too."

Paloma was silent for a long time, staring at him. Then she said, "Well, who does
Heart
think the Precursors were?"

"I never asked her, Paloma. Is it too trite a question?"

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She considered that. "Not from an Earther. From you, it comes honestly, not labored. You make me rethink the answer. You're from somewhere beyond the clichés and commonplaces. Or maybe it's got nothing to do with Earth. Maybe it's just you, Hobie."

Her dark eyes made a lasting contact that had him fibrillating. "It's Alacrity I'm drawn to but—you, I like better."

She got up suddenly, dusting herself off. "Drillbug time's coming up. Don't stay here too long."

"I won't, Paloma."

"How soon will we be in danger of being attacked?" Alacrity asked, leaning toward Pokesnout, holding his proteus out for translation. Alacrity was seated high on the withers of Treeneck, erstwhile alpha-male of the herd.

"Oh, back where we came up onto the high desert, the Verities say," Pokesnout answered without breaking stride. He was moving at a slow lumber, the gawkleg version of a wolf-trot, across the easy-roll planetscape of hard-packed pink sand glittery with infinitesimal specks of mica, marked by jutting prows of mauve basaltic rock. There were infrequent clumps of red or red-brown plant life—fiendishly spiny, spikey stuff more daunting than anything Floyt had yet seen in his travels.

Pokesnout led the recon party, with Floyt astride him and clinging to a rough surcingle improvised from tight-rolled netvine. Floyt's hands were raw from gripping the surcingle, and he'd taken to wrapping a cloth around whichever hand was doing the holding. The cloth had become available because Floyt found that his stylish but tight underdrawers tended to chafe in the rigorous outdoor life he was leading, and a crotch rash was something devoutly to be avoided.

At least the gawks' withers were comfortable for riding, almost made for it. All three humans had taken to their new mounts, and carried long, sharpened saplings as lances.

Treeneck was slightly behind Pokesnout and to his right. Alacrity was surprised at first how quickly and without qualm the herd accepted the little maverick as leader. Apparently something in the droning Verities covered the situation—or, at least, Pokesnout's clever arguments convinced the herd it did—and the gawks' reaction became just about a reflex: crisis made them close ranks behind their leader literally and figuratively. Treeneck became a loyal lieutenant, if a bit slow on the uptake.

Strung out behind them were three more gawk bulls, one carrying Paloma, who had devised the surcingles. Jets of air from the gawks' nostrils and mouths steamed in the cold air, as did the humans'

breath. The gawks had become saddle animals without much problem; chief virtues of having a sophant file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (134 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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for a mount were companionship and matchless cooperation.

An expedition like the recon, away from the herd, went against instinct, but Pokesnout and his Shadow Verities and New Verities had overruled that. Alacrity had begun wondering if the new herd leader was a mutant, some sudden jump in evolution. Certainly, aside from him, there was a striking uniformity to the herd. It was Pokesnout who'd given an explanation for something that bothered Alacrity.

As Alacrity put it, "Why, of all the wide-open spaces on this planet, should one of the last remaining gawk herds be here, now? I mean, it's a lifesaver for us, but it's too big to be called a coincidence."

"We like the Tingling Mountain," Pokesnout told him. "The one you three came out of. It was a special place for the herd and gave us good feelings, until it got smaller."

So the Precursor site co-opted by Hecate somehow attracted them until it rabbit-holed. That set Alacrity wondering about Precursor influence on the gawks. It wasn't unknown for herbivores to develop intelligence, but it was unusual enough to insure that the creatures would be studied carefully if and when the truth and the Lebensraum Company's misdeeds came to light.

Paloma's mount and the two riderless bachelor males were gawks who'd become disciples to Pokesnout, enthralled by his Shadow Verities and odd ways of seeing and doing things. The two riderless ones carried net-vine paniers of leaf-wrapped food and water gourds. The gawks were well adapted for going without food and water for long periods and for scrounging even in a Lebensraum desert.

"Whoa. If we're in a danger zone, let's call a halt and look the place over," Alacrity said.

Pokesnout slowed up. Treeneck veered off to come up even with him. Rockhorn, Paloma's mount, almost rear-ended Pokesnout until he realized the group was stopping. A snort from Treeneck had Rockhorn and the two behind him hurrying to sort themselves out. Things got straightened away in another couple of seconds, with Paloma drawing up next to Floyt on the other side and the two riderless gawks looking around grazing fashion, finding nothing to eat nearby except pink sand.

"What's our next move?" Floyt asked. He was feeling better than he had on the morning's long final ascent through chilly shadow to the high desert. Alacrity had the thermal insert in his shipsuit against the cold, and the hood unrolled from its compartment in his collar. Paloma's sheer bodysuit insert, its decolletage flap closed, appeared to be keeping her comfortable, besides which she had the shawl. But Floyt's outfit just wasn't as heavy as it should have been for the weather, and the cold was giving him problems though he didn't mention it. Invictus had started warming him, though, and Pokesnout's body heat helped.

"Whatever this scuttle-death is, it killed a lot of the gawks when they fled here," Alacrity said. "Let's not file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (135 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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get too far away from safe ground until we know what we're dealing with."

"I agree," Paloma said. "Anything that can give gawks a hard time is something to be wary of."

They peered into the distance. The high desert crossing wasn't too wide, twenty kilometers or so according to the maps, but it loomed in the Verities as a killing ground.

Treeneck exhaled like a storm. "I'm not afraid." His horns churned the air.

"Why didn't scuttle-death follow the herd down to its new home range?" Paloma asked.

"It couldn't. That is all that we know," Pokesnout said.

"But it's up here blocking the way back," Alacrity mused.
Maybe what we've got here is a bogeyman?

Invented to keep the gawks from going back to be slaughtered by the company?

"I like this place," Pokesnout proclaimed, looking around and sniffing. "And yet I do not trust it. Shall we go a little farther? The edge of the desert isn't far behind, and you know how fast we can move."

"Yeah; like a flea on a hot griddle." Alacrity swept the place with his eyes, shifting uneasily. The high desert looked unthreatening, but then again he didn't know what he was trying to spot.
Maybe it's some
kind of seasonal critter that's not around right now. We could bring the whole herd over the high desert
in one day, if we moved hard
—