Heris Serrano (40 page)

Sleep came to them slowly, with many starts and twitches, but they were both still tired from the night before, and finally slept. I'm not Bubbles any more, was her last conscious thought. I'm grown up now—I'm someone else, named Brun.

What woke them was the sound of rock falling someplace. In the echoing darkness, they could not tell how far off it fell, only that it was inside and not outside. Bubbles had slept with the goggles on, and when she woke could just make out a paler smudge beyond the rock buttress. Raffa's hand reaching for hers almost made her squeak, but she managed to stay silent. She squeezed Raffa's hand and then put it aside. She would have to crawl to the edge of the buttress, and look around, to see how near daylight it was.

The pool of water tinkled pleasantly, as if it were being rained on, and when she got to the corner of the buttress, she could see light seeping in from the entrance. Not as bright as the day before (if it was the day before—had they slept the clock around?) but enough to show that no one was in the visible part of the cave. If someone had caused the rockfall, they were now out of sight. She started to creep around the buttress, and realized suddenly that her knees were wet—the pool was rising. Yesterday there'd been at least two meters between the buttress and the pool, and a meter between the pool and the entrance. Now the gleam of light reflecting from water extended to the entrance . . . perhaps even outside. She backed up until her feet bumped into Raffa.

"I think it's raining," Bubbles said softly. The cave felt slightly less resonant, or perhaps the tinkle and chime of dripping water, and its echoes, covered her voice. "The pool's up."

"Can we get out?" Raffa asked.

"For now, yes. . . . It's probably not more than a couple of centimeters at the entrance. And I doubt it goes much higher for long—that's never a large creek out there."

"The creekbed—yes." Raffa sounded pleased. "If it actually flows, it'll take care of our tracks coming in."

"What about our tracks going out? And with water coming out there, it'll be obvious something's inside."

"Maybe we won't have to go out. . . . Let's look." Raffa lighted the candle-lantern again, and they peered at the water, then the cave walls. A pale streak topped by a dark one ran along the wall perhaps knee-high. Farther up, a blurrier mark showed.

"That's common—probably a seasonal flood. And the other is older, and rare. Didn't you say there were seasonal rains?"

"Yes—and this is supposed to be the dry season."

"Well, then: I'll bet it won't get that high." Raffa pointed to the lower mark. Bubbles thought she sounded entirely too cheerful.

"That's our lives you're betting," Bubbles said.

"That sounds like Bubbles and not Brun. It's our lives either way—if we go out now, they'll have nice muddy footsteps to show where we were. How long do the off-season rainstorms last?"

"Only a few hours, usually, but they can drop a lot of rain when they hit." Bubbles sighed. "I'm not used to being Brun, you know. It's going to take some getting used to. You're right—it's not likely to come up even as high as the wet-season floodmark. And even if it does, we can climb—there are ledges. . . ." They looked big and high enough. In the meantime. "We can use Kell's floaters and weights to mark the pool's edge and see how fast it's rising." She took down the pile of floats, and poked the weight tied to one at the edge of the water. Luckily they had a supply of candles for the lantern, and need not sit in the faint light that came from around the buttress.

Several hours passed with only the musical tinkling of water falling into the large pool. A bar of concentrate eased the hunger pangs, but Bubbles would have been very glad of a hot breakfast. The cave's damp coolness no longer seemed a comfortable refuge from the heat outside. Slowly, in tiny lapping ripples, the water rose. Each hour, Bubbles put another weight at the edge of the water. The first one now lay two centimeters under; the last, as the third hour came to an end, was hardly covered by a skim of water.

"Made it," Raffa said, giving Bubbles an affectionate shove. Then they both heard the voices. Raffa reached out and snuffed the candle in the lantern; darkness closed around them. They dared not move, lest they trip on something and make a noise. Bubbles slipped the dark goggles back on, to find her vision just as black.

Then a ray of light flared across. . . . Someone had flashed a light inside. A man's voice, magnified and distorted by the cave's echoes, boomed from the entrance. "Nothing. There's water right up to the entrance; if anyone had come inside, we'd see the marks."

Another voice. "—got here before the rain?"

"Not likely. Nothing—no sounds, no movement—nothing on IR scan." Bubbles blessed the thick rock that lay between them and the entrance, and the cold cave water that had covered any mark they'd left. She had thought of the hunters having dark goggles; she'd forgotten the special equipment on the rifles.

"—those weapons?"

"Nah. They'll be basic by now—they don't have any way to revalidate them. C'mon." The light vanished, and the voices faded. Bubbles realized she was shaking, and tried to take deep slow breaths. What had they meant, the weapons would be "basic" by now? She reached out and found Raffa's shoulder; Raffa grabbed her back and they hugged, both of them still trembling. For an unmeasured time they clung together, until they were both breathing normally.

"We were stupid," Raffa murmured in Bubbles's ear. "We didn't even have our weapons within reach."

"It's so hard to believe," Bubbles said. "I keep remembering the old camping trips: we played at chase and smuggling and capture . . . but it was just play, though we took it seriously then. Now—it's real, but it's hard to keep remembering that."

"I'm going to check that rifle." Raffa stood up and reached for it. "It can't have a locator, or they'd have known it. Must have been something else." Bubbles heard soft noises, Raffa handling the weapon, and then a grunt. "Ah. I see. That socket in the side must be for a computer link—probably an ID chip. That's what they meant by validation. None of the good stuff works now—the range finder, IR scope, all that—but it'll still fire."

"Which means?"

"It can't see in the dark. We have to be better. But if we avoid them completely, we won't need them anyway."

Bubbles had forgotten the earlier alarm, the sound of falling rocks, but when it came again, an echoing clatter and roar, she remembered.
Something
was in the cave with them. Her mind pictured all the large predators on the planet, even though she knew none were on the island.

"What was that?" asked Raffa. Her voice sounded shaky and breathless.

"Rocks," Bubbles said. "I guess." She lifted the rifle, although she had no target at all. "Maybe the water loosened something, and it just fell."

* * *

Ronnie had found the meager cache of food and water, and a couple of swallows restored some of his wits. He couldn't move George alone. Even if he got the vines woven the right way, dragging the travois alone would leave obvious tracks. He would have to find Petris and the others, even though that had been against his orders. He sucked at a ration bar, letting the surface coating of salt and sugar revive him, then took another swig from the safe bottle. He shouldn't eat much, he remembered, if he was short of water.

A gust of wind stirred the trees overhead, and its warm moist hand brushed his face. If only it weren't dark—if only his head didn't hurt—if only he had someone to help him . . . but reality settled on his shoulders like a cloak of misery. Dark, hurt, alone; either he figured it out, or no one would.

He made his way back to George's unconscious body in the dark, tripping more than once on unseen roots and stones. How long would the drug or poison keep George unconscious? He wished he knew more about drugs. He tried to redo the vines, in the dark, by feel, but his heart wasn't in it. A drop of cold water flicked his hot neck, and he jumped. Then another. Now he could hear the spatter of rain, as well as the rush of wind gusts in the trees.

If it rains,
he thought,
if I can pull George along, the rain will wash out our tracks.
He didn't let himself think how much harder it would be to pull the travois through mud. Instead he yanked at the poles, straining, staggering uphill, away from the creek. Suddenly it was easy; he lurched forward, almost jogging, then realized that must mean George had fallen off, or through, the vine webbing. He was almost sobbing as he turned back. It was too much, the pain in his head, the rain, the danger, the uncooperative vines.

He had just found George's body when he saw the lights in the sky. A flitter, its searchlight directed into the forest. . . . He threw himself back, away from George. They had IR sensors, of course, and night-vision goggles. They could see George. They could see him. He crouched, shaking from fear and exertion both, dithering. Above the wind and thickening rain, he could just hear the flitter's drone. Its searchlight flicked among the trees, probing, but the canopy was thick here near the stream, and the light never touched him. It did flick across George, and that garish beltpack he'd refused to bury . . . and it came back, and centered there. Ronnie bit back the groan he wanted to utter. Why hadn't he taken the thing off? He'd known it was stupid . . . too late now.

The flitter sank into the canopy, its searchlight illuminating slanting lines of rain above, and drips below. He heard the squeal and clunk of a hatch opening. They would have a ladder or line, he realized, for dropping hunters directly into the forest. If he stayed here . . .

He took a deep breath and plunged away, into darkness. Upslope, upstream, into the thicker forest and more broken country. If he could get rock between him and the IR scans, they couldn't see him. He picked his way from tree to tree in the dim radiance of the flitter's light. It would do no good to hurry; he must not fall and make a noise. He had a few seconds perhaps, as someone came down the line from the flitter, someone who surely must be concentrating on a safe descent rather than a possible fugitive.

He heard the metallic clatter of someone landing, a weapon (he was sure) rattling against something else, the cable or a ladder. Light brightened behind him; he dared a peek and saw a lightsource at head level. A helmet light, feebler than the flitter's searchlight, but perfectly adequate for close work. It lowered, as if its bearer crouched. Over George, Ronnie was sure; he struggled against the desire to go back and protect his friend. He heard the peculiar squawk of a badly tuned comunit, then another clatter as if someone else had come down. Now two helmet lights glowed back there. The flitter's engine whined—retracting its cable?—and then moved off, to the east. He heard voices, muted by wind and rain.

He had to leave. He had to go now, while they did whatever they were doing to George, because they must not catch all four of them. That was the only chance. But he had never imagined that he might have to leave a friend behind. He made himself move, one slow step after another, away from the lights.
I'm sorry,
he let himself say to George in his mind.
I'm sorry.
 

He had covered perhaps fifty meters when he heard the shout behind him. Reflex threw him forward, into a wild panicky run. The shout came again, then a shot smacked into a nearby rock. Ronnie fell over another rock, banging both shins, and scrambled up. Too late for silence, for subtlety; only speed would help him now. Lightning flashed overhead, blinding him momentarily. He tried to move faster through his memory of what it revealed and fell again. He was in the creek, now only a meter wide; rain lashed at him as he climbed, stumbled, climbed again. Another shot rang out, but he never heard it hit anything. Surely, the one rational corner of his mind thought, surely the lightning will blind those in night goggles even worse. . . .

Ronnie struggled on, uphill, ignoring everything but the need to get away. His feet slipped on wet rocks, in mud; rain beat in his face, plastering his hair down, dragging at his shirt and trousers. Flash after flash of lightning revealed a grotesque landscape of wind-whipped foliage, ragged rocks, wind-tossed rain. He followed the creek, no longer worried about the poison in its water, until he reached its source. Behind him, he could see flickering lights . . . the hunters, following what must be an obvious trail. He licked his lips, grateful for the pure rainwater that drenched him. Where now?

The next flash of lightning showed him a narrow black cleft, above and to his right. He clambered over the wet rocks, hoping it was deep enough to hide in, hoping it wasn't just a trick of lightning. Thunder shook the ground, trembled in his breath. Behind him, a shout and a stab of light; his shoulder burned. He plunged to the ground, behind a rock, and tried to see where the cleft had been. Lightning again; there, only a jump and stretch. It still looked deep, a black gash in the rocky slope. Rain poured down, even harder now. He forced himself to stand, to take those few steps, to reach up and haul himself into darker darkness.

When the next lightning came, he saw it as a blue-white flash against dark walls. Limping, staggering, he tried to work his way further in. Water trickled along between his feet, getting deeper; pebbles rolled and he lurched against the rocks, biting his tongue at the pain in his shoulder. Then the ground fell out from under his feet, and he slid down a crumbling slope into black oblivion.