On Blue's waters (26 page)

“You want our blood, I suppose.”

“Exactly. You are our cattle.”

I had expected him to fly, but he swarmed up the smooth stone side of the pit as a squirrel climbs a tree, making it look so easy that for a moment I almost imagined that I could do it myself. My thumb was on the safety; but without him I could not escape. Nor could I escape the memory of a time when Sinew was not yet born, and Hoof and Hide not even thought of, when Nettle and I had worked frantically to free someone else’s cow from a quagmire in the vain hope that her owner would give her to us if we succeeded.

Then he was gone; and I, using the slug gun for a crutch, got to my feet and was so foolish as to try to climb out as he had, struggling in that way until I was utterly exhausted and never getting half as high as my own head.

* * *

Last night I stopped writing because I could not bring myself to describe the rest of that day, or the night that followed it, or the day that followed that, the day on which I licked dew from the sides of the pit, lying on my belly at first, then kneeling, then standing-and at last, when the Short Sun peeped over the rim and the dew was almost gone, wiping the stone above my head with fingers that I thrust into my mouth the moment they felt damp. Altogether I got two mouthfuls of water, at most. No more than that, certainly, and very likely it was less.

Earlier I had prayed, then cursed every god in my heart when the rescuer they sent had proved to be Krait. On that day I did not pray, or curse, or any such thing.

This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished.

I was standing in Nettle’s kitchen. She was making soup, and I watched her add a whole plateful of chopped meat to her kettle and shake the fire. She turned and saw me, and we kissed and embraced. I explained to her that I was not really in her kitchen at all, that I lay at the bottom of a pit in a ruin of the Vanished People on an island far away, and that I was dying of thirst.

“Oh,” Nettle said, “I’ll get you some water.”

She went to the millstream and brought back a dipper of clean, cool water for me; but I could not drink. “Come with me,” I told her. “I’ll show you where I am, and when you give me your water there I’ll be able to drink it.” I took her hand (yes, Nettle my darling, I took your hard, hardworking little hand in mine) and tried to lead her back to the pit in which I lay. She stared at me then as if I were some horror from the grave, and screamed. I can never forget that scream.

And I lay in the pit, as before. The Short Sun was burning gold.

It had crossed the pit and vanished on the other side an hour or two before, when the inhumu returned. He stood with his toes grasping the edge and looked down at me, and I saw that he was wearing one of my tunics and a pair of my old trousers, the trousers loose and rolled up to the knee, and the tunic even looser, so that it hung on him as his father’s coat does on a child who plays at being grown. “Horn!” he called. And again, “Horn!”

I managed to sit up and to nod.

“Look, Horn, I’ve brought you a bottle of water.” He held it up. “I carried an empty one, and filled it to the top at a spring I’ve discovered not far from here. Wasn’t that clever of me?”

I tried to speak, to beg him for the water; but I could not. I nodded again.

“You’d promise me anything for this, wouldn’t you?” He leaped into the pit with it. “I’ll trade you this bottle for your slug gun. Will you trade?”

I must have nodded, because the bottle was in my hands, although he held it too. I put it to my lips and drank and drank; I would not have believed that I could drink an entire bottle of that size without ever taking it from my mouth, but that was how I drank that one.

“You feel better now,” the inhumu said. It was a statement, not a question.

I found that I could speak again, although the voice did not seem mine. “Yes. Thank you. I do.”

“I know. I’ve been in exactly the same position myself. I not only got you that bottle of water, Horn, but I brought you a coil of rope. It’s small, but I think it may be strong enough. It’s very hard to carry anything when you fly. It keeps pulling you down, and you’ve got to hold it with your feet.” He held up one foot in a way that very few human beings could have imitated, and I saw that his toes were as long as my fingers, and tipped with claws.

“Thank you,” I repeated. “Thank you very much.”

“I’ll get you out, or my rope and I will. But you’ll have to help us, and I’ve got to get your promise first. Your solemn oath.”

I nodded and tried to smile.

“A question.” He leveled a forefinger longer than mine; it, too, was claw-tipped. “Are you a logical, unemotional sort of man, would you say? Are you willing to follow reason wherever it takes you?”

Halting and stammering, I tried to say that I made an effort to be, and thought that I was.

“Then let’s go back. Not to the boat, we don’t have to back up that far. The other day I wanted to know why you hated me, and you explained that it was because I wanted to drink your blood, and because one of us had deceived you into thinking he was one of you up there. Do you remember that?”

“Yes.” I could not imagine what he was getting at.

“You drove me from your boat, despite the fact that I didn’t try to deceive you. If I would not drink your blood-I will pledge myself not to-would you still drive me away?”

My thirst had been quenched, but I was weak and sick. “If I could.”

“Why?”

“One of you nearly killed my son.”

His head wagged. “That wasn’t me. Haven’t you any better reason?”

“Because you drank Babbie’s blood, and would glut yourself on Seawrack’s if you could.”

“I pledge myself not to drink theirs either. I warn you, I won’t go any further. I have to eat, just as you do. Now, if I get you out, will you let me remain on board?”

Quite certain that he would never rescue me, I said that I would.

“You have a good reputation in your town. Are you a man of your word? Is your word sacred to you, even when it’s given to me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You lack conviction. Listen to me. You are going to Pajarocu.”

My eyes must have opened a little wider at that.

“The men on the other boat told me. You’re going to Pajarocu. Acknowledge it.”

“We are trying to get to Pajarocu.”

“That’s better. You’re going to board a lander there, and fly up to the great ship.”

I nodded, and seeing that a nod would not be sufficient, said, “We’re hoping to fly back up to the
Whorl
, as you say. I certainly am, and I’ll take Seawrack if she wants to go and they’ll allow me to.”

The inhumu pointed to himself, his wrist backbent in a fashion that no human being could have managed. “I want to go with you. Will you help me, if I help you get out of this place?”

“Yes,” I said again.

He smiled wryly, swaying as Patera Quetzal used to. “You don’t mean it.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’ll have to give a better pledge than that. Listen to me, Horn. I’ll do everything I can to help you get there before the lander takes off. You think I’ll obstruct you. I won’t. I’ll help all I can. We’re strong, you say. Won’t I be a strong friend to you? You praised our cunning. It will be at your service. Don’t say you don’t; trust me. You must trust me, or die.”

“I trust you,” I said, and I meant it; that is the measure of a man’s desire to live-of mine, at least. An inhumu had demanded that I trust him if I wanted to live, and trust him I did.

“Better. Will you let me go with you and help you? Will you pledge yourself to reveal my nature to no one?”

“Yes, if you’ll get me out.”

“You still don’t mean it. Do you believe in gods? Who are they?”

I rattled off the names of the Nine.

“Which means the most to you? Name him!”

“Great Pas.”

“You’re holding something back. Do you think you can trick me because I can trick you? You’re wrong, and you’d better learn that from the beginning. Which means most to you?”

It was the end of my resistance. “The Outsider. And Pas.”

The inhumu smiled. “I like you, Horn. I really do. I’m growing fond of you. Now listen to this. I swear to you by Pas, by the Outsider, and by my own god that I will not feed upon either you or Seawrack, as you call her. Neither will I take the blood of your pet hus, ever again. I further swear that there will be no trickery or double-dealing in the keeping of this oath I give, no sophistry. I will keep the spirit as well as the letter. Is that satisfactory?”

I nodded.

“Then I’ll be wasting my time with the rest, but I’m going to waste it. I further swear that as long as I’m on your boat I’ll never deceive you into thinking that I’m one of you, or try to. What more do you want me to say?”

“Nothing,” I told him.

“I’ll continue just the same. Listen to me, Horn. What does it matter to you whether I prey on your kind here or there? Is their blood more precious aboard the void ship?”

“No.”

“Correct. It doesn’t matter in the least. I’ll have an easier time of it up there with less competition, that’s all. And there’ll be one fewer of us down here preying upon your friends and family.” He was silent for a few seconds, gauging my reaction. “Suppose I leave you where you are. Who will prey upon your family then, Horn? That nice woman I saw, and whatever children the two of you have back home on Lizard Island? No doubt you’ve thought about it?”

I shook my head.

“Why, I will. I’ll leave you in here, but I won’t just leave you here and forget you. I’ll go back there bringing word of you, and you won’t be there to protect them. Do I have to speak more clearly tian that? I will if I must.”

I shook my head again. “I’ll swear to whatever you want me to swear to, by Pas and the Outsider, and your god, too, if you’ll let me.”

“You’ll have my friendship and assistance. Do I have to go through that again?”

“No,” I said.

“Then swear you’ll accept both. You’re not to kill or injure me, or drive me away, or betray me to anyone else for any reason whatsoever. You’re to do everything you can to see to it that I’m on the lander when it takes off. That we both are.”

I swore, stumbling at times over the phrasing but corrected by him.

When I was finished, he turned away. “I’m sorry, Horn. I really am. That was close. You tried very hard. If I can, I’ll be back tomorrow.” Before I could say a word, he had begun to climb the wall of the pit.

I broke. I am a coward at heart, I suppose. Perhaps all men are, but I certainly am. I pleaded. I begged. I wept and shrieked aloud, and wept again.

And when I did, he turned back. Krait the inhumu turned at the edge of the pit, and looked down upon me in my misery. He may have been smiling or grinning or snarling. I do not know. “Horn?” he said.

“Yes!” I raised my arms, imploring him. Tears streamed down my face as they had when I was a child.

“Horn, your oath didn’t convince me. I don’t think any oath you could give would. Not today, and probably never. I can’t trust you, and I don’t know of anything that would…” He stopped, perhaps only to watch me weep.

“Wait!” My sobs were choking me. “Please wait. Will you let me talk?”

He nodded. “For a minute or two, as long as you don’t talk nonsense.”

“Hear me out-that’s all I ask. My house is on the Lizard. You’ve seen it. You said you flew over it and saw Nettle on the beach.”

“Go on.”

“I built it, and we’ve lived there for years. I know how things are done in our house. Isn’t that obvious? You’ve
got
to believe me.”

He nodded again. “I do, so far.”

“There are bars on the windows and inside the flue. There are good locks on both doors, and bars for them as well. Heavy wooden bars that you put up and lift down. When conjunction is near-”

“As it is. Go on.”

“When conjunction’s near, we always bar the doors. My wife bars them at shadelow, even if I’m still working in the mill. I have to knock and be let in.”

“You’re proposing that I knock and imitate your voice. I could doit.”

“No,” I said, and shook my head. “Let me finish, please. It-it’s something better.”

In his own voice, which might have been Sinew’s, he said, “Let’s hear it.”

“When conjunction’s past, she forgets. She never bars them then. I’ve spoken to her about it, but it didn’t help. Unless I bar them, they aren’t barred.”

I reached into my pocket, got the key, and held it out. “You want to go to the
Whorl
. But if you don’t go-if we don’t-you’ll be here. And you’ll have the key.”

He hesitated. Perhaps his hesitation was feigned; I do not know.

I said, “If we get to the
Whorl
, you and I both, I want you to promise me you’ll give it back.”

“You trust my promise?” His face was as expressionless as the face of a snake.

“Yes. Yes, I must.”

“Then trust this one. I’ll get you out at once, as soon as you throw me that key.”

I did. I was too weak to throw it out of the pit the first time; it rang against the stone side a hand’s breadth below the top, and fell back in. I tried to run and catch it in the air, and nearly fell myself.

“I’m waiting, Horn.” He was kneeling at the edge, his hands ready.

I threw again, and watched those scaly hands close around it.

Without a word, he stood, dropped the key into his pocket, turned, and walked haltingly away.

There are times when time means nothing. That was one. My heart pounded like a hammer, and I tried to clean my face with my fingers.

When he came back, it might almost have been a theophany. I had wanted to see him so much that when I did I was horribly afraid that I was imagining it. “Get my slug gun,” he said. “We may need it.”

I did as I was told, slinging it across my back.

“I’m not heavy enough to pull you up. You’d pull me in.” He tossed down a coil of rope. “I’ve tied the other end to one of these little bushes. If you can climb up, you’ll be out. If you can’t…” He shrugged.