Rift (55 page)
Authors: Kay Kenyon
math.>
Here was that word,
know
. It held special meaning for orthong.
Then she took a risk. It was hard to judge this orthong’s reaction when Nerys was so intent on the form of the
dance. But when she finished she found the female watching her with stony eyes.
Nerys felt a moment of astonishment, that the orthong could be unaware of this basic fact.
Nerys recognized the signs of exasperation.
The old orthong query. Her new answer was:
The orthong stood immobile a long time. Behind her, Tulonerat had closed her eyes and appeared to have fallen asleep. The garden pressed down on Nerys, and her face felt hot with exhaustion. After a time, she saw that an attendant had come forward with a small tray. On it was a morsel of food. It looked like a small sweet cake.
Her arm hung at her side like a pipe. She knew the polite thing to do, but somehow her arm wouldn’t move. She was becoming orthong, she thought, for movement to have such meaning. Nerys longed to turn around to Salidifor, but he was, she knew, facing away.
Give me permission not to eat this
, she would have asked him,
let me say I’m not hungry
. But it was her own decision to make—when to be polite, when to
offend. It was a privilege she savored for a few moments.
Then, with great effort, her arm obeyed her mind and her hand reached out for the cake, and she picked it up and took a bite.
Salidifor fairly dragged her back through the outfold.
They were alone now, so Nerys spoke out loud: “I ate the damn cake.” It had not gone especially well, but they had taunted her, called her a liar. Why was she taking the blame?
“Your Tulonerat is rude. Her assistant was better, but she thinks we’re dumb.”
Nerys related the exchange between herself and Divoranon. When she had finished, Salidifor seemed somewhat calmer.
“Thank you, I guess.”
Salidifor stared into the outfold, contemplating. Then he said,
freewomen
. He repeated:
“Surprised?”
He looked down at her for a long moment.
For some reason, she found herself smiling.
But Salidifor was serious, still standing there in the path, gazing into the outfold.
“What is it, Salidifor? Is it not well for Divoranon to learn more about humans?”
They resumed their walk down the path.
creatures, what will happen?>
“What
will
happen?”
After a moment he said,
The way he said it, with a strong undertone of unease, discouraged any flip response from Nerys. They continued down the path without talk.
1Day sixty-one
. The only sound of their vehicle was the hissing of wind outside as they sped up-valley. Reeve sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, hungry for oxygen, sapped of energy. The inside of the transport car was stripped of seats but, oddly, the controls were in perfect condition, and the elevator rails had functioned so far without a lapse.
Spar stood by a window, infused by a new eagerness, his eyes squinting against the afternoon sun. From the moment they’d entered the personal rapid transport car and discovered it worked, Spar was like a kid on a circus ride. He laughed and hooted when they gathered speed out of the station, and seemed to take it as a great turn in their fortunes.
A cough shook Reeve’s chest, a bad, dry cough that sounded like the squawk of an angry bird. Loon winced as he leaned into the spasm. She took his hands in hers, patting them absently, staring past him out the windows, as though she would rather be running up-valley than riding.
“We’re ’bout there, Reeve,” Spar said. “I can feel it.” He nodded for a moment, looking out at the red wash
of scenery. In the lee side of rocks and on lower levels of the platform trees, a dusting of snow took refuge from the sun, throwing the vermilions and red-browns into high relief. “Bound to be our people out there somewheres. Bound to be.” Sometimes he called Loon’s people
our people
, a simple mixing of what was Loon’s and what was Spar’s.
Loon and Reeve exchanged miserable glances. If she thought to bring up Pimarinun’s story now, Spar wasn’t helping her any.
“Who else fixed this here railroad? Tell me that?” Spar laughed quietly, as if to confirm his opinion. “Somebody been tinkering with it, yes sir, and it got to be somebody who likes it here in the bloodlands.”
Spar had a point. It was hard to believe the transport car could function after hundreds of years of rust and vandalism. And it was a saving thing, since Reeve didn’t know if he could make it up-valley very far on his own legs, in this meager air.
Spar gazed back out the window, muttering: “That’s where we’ll find ’em, I figure. At the end of the line.”
Reeve’s thoughts turned to his fellow Stationers, and where exactly their camp might be. From what he remembered of the Station plans for the reterraforming expedition, they were to set up camp on the valley rim, using shuttles to and from the main valley lava vents. If their shuttles were damaged in the Station breakup, though, they might have been forced to camp in the valley. Reeve hoped their shuttles worked, since sighting a shuttle flight path would be his best chance to zero in on Bonhert’s camp.
And once there, he would stop them—if not by persuasion, then by whatever means it took. He didn’t know if he had murder in him, but figured that most people did, even those without half the reasons he had. Oddly, it wasn’t revenge and colder thoughts that gave him his courage—it was an upwelling of hope, the hope he’d glimpsed since that night in Brecca’s
escape room, the hope to find a place, a home on Lithia. So love, he figured, drove him to do what he must do, and though it didn’t make it any easier, he felt more at ease with himself, with the man he had become.
He knew the choice was harsh: to become like Loon, in all her strangeness. To one who loved her, it was not so great a jump, but Stationers might react like her own Stoneroot Clave and drive her out. Even if they didn’t, though, there was no guarantee on the orthong side of things. Far from it.
All humans had ever traded with the orthong were women and rocks. Now he would see if they would bargain for something new: information. If they meant to make Lithia their home, what might they pay to know of Gabriel Bonhert’s plans?
Another fit of coughing came over him, scraping his throat as if he’d swallowed pins.
Spar handed him the water pouch and urged him to drink. “That’s right,” he said, nodding as Reeve managed to stifle his cough long enough to swallow. “Couple more days, after we whup that Station Captain, we got to get you out of here. Maybe go back to Stillwater, eh? I walk back into that clave, folks’ll call me a liar for sayin’ I been to the sea and the Rift. That I been on a pirate ship and to a clave of monsters. That I got snatched from a bad orthong death by a princess of the stony world.” He grinned with relish. “You gotta come with me, Reeve, to tell ’em Spar’s no liar.”
“No man’s ever going to call Spar a liar if I’m around,” Reeve said, and fiercely meant it.
Spar slapped himself on the knee. “Yeah, you a scrappy fellow all right. You gonna do OK in the world, Reeve. It took all my teachin’, but you gonna do OK.”
They stood on the train platform. The tracks ended at a deserted landing overgrown with ropy red weeds.
Spar pursed his lips, searching. If he expected a welcoming party, he didn’t admit it, but a sense of anticlimax gripped them. Ominously, Spar coughed. For the first time, Reeve thought about how limited Spar’s days were, like any claver’s. Like his own days.
Loon quietly took Spar’s hand, gripping it. Reeve thought she might tell Spar who she was, freeing him of his myth. But her words were fewer than ever, as though she had started to run out of them. Yet even in their predicament, Reeve could still look at her and find her lovely. She had submitted to Spar’s fussy insistence that she use some of their drinking water to wash up. Her slicked-back hair made her look fresh and honed down: no frills, just the essential new human.
In the distance stood a rambling three-story building that still bore itself upright, though hugged by brown moss until it looked like an animal, the eyes of its windows glowering down on them. It clearly had once been a grand place—with the look of a hotel, Reeve thought, if he was any judge of such things. A stream of cloudy water had cut a gorge down the slope from the ruined building, spiking the air with its sulfur fumes.
They hiked in silence up to the building, turning to note its commanding view over the Rift Valley, with the Gandhi River a flash of silver in the distance.
Spar looked up at the overgrown palace, frowning. “Ain’t nobody in
there
worth talkin’ to,” he declared.
“Might be some supplies we could use, though,” Reeve said.
Spar chewed on his cheek a moment. “You go ahead, then. I’ll check out what else we got.” His voice still held hope that there
was
something else. He turned to go, then looked back to see if Loon was following, but she was disappearing into a tall stand of platform trees, her sling drawn in the expectation of a kill. Spar wandered off, leaving Reeve alone.
