Shadow World (27 page)

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I was just thinking the same thing,
Mark thought sourly. "Well, unless you want to kill him now in cold blood, that opportunity is past," he said bitterly. "I guess we're stuck with him. We'll have to tie him up and take him along."

"We could leave him here in the desert," Hrrakk' suggested.

"We could, but how do we know he won't sneak up on us again?" Mark asked. "Besides, Honored Hrrakk' "--he held the alien's gaze with his own--"that would be the same thing as murder, and you know it as well as I do."

The alien nodded. "I do," he conceded. "My honor would not permit that, even had you been willing."

He was testing me.'
Mark's lips tightened angrily. "Sorry to disappoint you,"

he said aloud. "Maybe I have my own kind of honor, ever think of that?"

The man did not resist as they hauled him to his feet and bound his hands behind him, nor did he speak again. His eyes seemed slightly more lucid, however. "Do you know what you've done?" Mark demanded angrily. "You destroyed all the babies' food! Now they may die!"

The man's expression remained blank. Mark could not tell if he even heard the accusation.

"Why did heen do it?" Eerin asked, speaking for the first time as Cara returned with the food.

"I think he's cracked from the grief," Mark said, taking a bite from the concentrate bar the journalist held out.

Elpind curiosity surged forth. "Hin does not see cracks," said Eerin, looking hard for some.

"Mark means that he's gone insane," Cara translated automatically. She waved a hand before the man's face, trying to get his attention. "Hey, what is your name? I'm Cara. Can you hear me?"

No response.

The next half hour was a flurry of activity. They took down and stowed the sheeting. Cara and Mark ate several of the dry, tasteless food bars that were standard survival ration while the Apis sucked juice from a hydroponics-grown orange, and Eerin stuck the sucked-dry pulp under hin's tongue after the Apis was through. Everyone except Hrrakk' drank several healthy swallows of water, including Terris and the new addition to their group. Misir took only two tiny sips, despite all their efforts.

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Both babies adamantly refused the liquefied concentrate. Terris made a face and spat it back out, then turned hinsi's head away. Misir simply would not suck, and drops they squeezed into hinsi's mouth drooled or gagged back out, even when Hrrakk' stroked the downy throat to engage the swallowing reflex. In Misir's case, Mark suspected the results would have been the same, whatever the food.

Hrrakk' gently rubbed the baby's fragile arms and legs. The massage started Misir's limbs moving feebly. Next the Simiu held the infant up to his massive shoulder, rubbing the tiny body against his fur. He was trying to encourage the child to take hold with hands and feet for transport.

Misir nuzzled hinsi's head against the Simiu's thick, coarse hair. Instinct stirred, and all four limbs reached out and grasped as they were supposed to.

But only for a second.

Misir's body sagged and fell. Fortunately, Hrrakk' had cupped one huge hand beneath the child, and caught hinsi. (

No one spoke as Hrrakk' rigged a small sling from the blue jersey, knotted it around the strap of his travel pack, hung it over his shoulder against his chest, then slid the baby inside.

Eerin pulled out hin's kareen. "Hin wishes to dance the Mortenwol," the Elpind said hesitantly.

Mark could think of several reasons to object: time, further depletion of Eerin's water reserves, the possibility that hin's dancing would set their captive off again. But he remembered how important this was to Eerin and merely nodded silently.
We all need a boost,
he thought.
Maybe it will help.

Out came the feathers of red and green and blue and that breathtaking white one. Eerin flicked them this way and that, and they were a headpiece. Hin wound, then activated, the music board. The first sweet, high-pitched note swelled out.

Eerin dipped hin's downy head in an oddly moving gesture that Mark realized was directed at the two hinsi, then bent, turning slightly. Halfway through the turn, hin rose cleanly, gently into the pellucid air of sunset.

Joyfully the music gathered strength, tumbling and trilling and leaping over itself with melodic runs. The Elpind somehow both followed and soared over the patterns. Every movement seemed both crisp and

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subtle, controlled and yet so free, so known and dearly familiar to the dancer and yet so just-born new.

Mark watched, feeling sadness instead of the energy boost he'd hoped for.

Today it's particularly important to perform the Mortenwol,
he thought, remembering Eerin's half salute at the beginning, then glancing at the feebly moving bundle slung against Hrrakk's broad chest.
Misir may need it ...

As he watched, he also remembered last night's conversation with Eerin.

Given the choice, his friend would choose an early over a postponed death.

He knew the Elpind didn't quite look at it that way, but that's how it seemed to him.
Don't judge,
he reminded himself fiercely.
It's not your place to judge.

"I wonder," Cara said quietly, watching as Eerin began the final leaps,

"whether all Elspind revere life so much."

"Seems to me they revere death," Mark said bitterly.

She shook her head. "I know that's how it seems, but, Mark, that dance is about
life.
That it's good and filled with hope ... and that today will be a joy to live."

Mark sighed. Cara obviously understood far better than he did--and
he
was the one with the training in relating to alien cultures.
Just more proof that I
was right in deciding to leave StarBridge,
he thought. I
really
have
lost the empathy that it takes to be a good interrelator.

The group walked fast and hard, as evening darkened around them, driven by memories of the
Asimov's
survivors, and by the needs of the hinsi. The mountains loomed over them.

Cara had worried that the bound man
(I'm really tired of thinking of him as

"the man,"
she thought once, exasperated.
If he doesn't tell us his name
pretty soon, I'm going to give him one!)
would slow them down, but he kept up.

Mark and Hrrakk' flanked him, one on each side ... and Hrrakk's presence, even more than the stranger's, was the difference in this portion of their journey. Though he'd had absolutely nothing to say since they'd captured the intruder, and regarded all of them, except for the Apis, with an aloof disdain, the Simiu was
there.

Another difference, this one hard to bear, was Terris. Soon after they set out, hinsi began to cry and whimper in earnest.

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Butting a fluffy head against Mark's chest, the baby scrabbled up and down the sweater with demanding fingers and toes. Mark talked to the child and petted it and shifted it to different parts of his body, but nothing worked. Both he and Terris were worn out by the time the group paused for a water break.

But only Terris received sips from their dwindling supply this time. Misir could not be roused. The others had to make do with a less-satisfying source of moisture.

Having noted the sap in the tasrel plant when they were pulling the big one up yesterday for Hrrakk's shelter, Mark tested the vegetation with the analyzer in the survival kit, then, finding that tasrel leaves were not harmful, he used their knife to lop off leaves for them to chew and suck.

"Ugh!" Cara chewed, swallowed, then spat the pulp out on the ground. "It's so bitter." That sounded like whining; something her pride wouldn't allow.

"Hey, but it's
wet!"
Resolutely she popped another piece of the stuff into her mouth.

Mark grimaced. "I'll see your 'ugh' and raise you a 'yech.' " He spat out his chewed-up wad with a theatrical shudder.

By the time they had finished with their "plant break," Terris, exhausted from wailing, finally fell asleep. Cara walked more briskly in the silence, and thought they all did.

With the rising of the moons, true night arrived, and, suddenly, so did the edge of the desert.

The desert floor literally ran smack into a wall of reddish rock. The wall stretched as far as the travelers could see on either side, rising straight up for fifteen or twenty meters. Over centuries the desert winds had blasted it with sand, polishing it into smoothness, broken by only a few outcroppings. The moons had risen and shadows danced crazily over the cliff.

"Looks like we climb," Cara said, staring up at it.

"Yeah, and even with the rope and in Elseemar's lighter gravity, it may not be easy." Mark moved along the wall of rock, feeling it with his fingers. "Not much in the way of footholds."

Their team had been given a short length of thin, plastic cord that now bound the man's hands, as well as a much longer piece of the same material that Mark took out. Very lightweight, it was nevertheless as strong as plas-steel cable.

Line in hand, Mark turned, looking thoughtfully at the Apis.

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She fluttered excitedly, then darted forward and grasped the end that the human extended.

Hastily, Cara signaled her camera on. She had let the auto- cam trail along at her shoulder tonight, unused, but now, sensing drama, she began filming again.

With a furious blur of wings, the small and delicate-looking being rose straight into the air. In only a second or two she was higher than the lip of the cliff. Her wings slowed, and lightly she touched down.

Cara beamed. "There are distinct advantages to traveling with an Apis."

Mark was watching RThessra move back and forth along the treeless top.

"That's step one solved," he agreed, "but if she can't find anything to tie that end around, we're no better off. She's not strong enough to hold it for us."

But apparently the Apis was able to find a projection of some kind to anchor the rope, for she appeared on the edge of the cliff, wings and antennae waving. Hrrakk' picked up the rope and gave it a couple of sharp yanks, then hung his weight on it for a second. It held.

"That's a relief," Mark said. "Who wants to go first?"

"I wil go," Hrrakk' said.

"You'll need to rig a climbing harness," Mark said. "I think I remember how.

You just--"

The Simiu gave him a contemptuous glance, then, without a word, took off the sling that held Misir, handed the baby to Cara, and swarmed hand over hand up the cliff face. In what seemed like only seconds, he was pulling himself over the top. Mark looked over at Cara and shrugged, grinning. "As I was saying, climbing harnesses are for sissies, right?"

"Or for humans," she amended dryly. "Who's next?"

Eerin stepped forward. "Hin will go."

Hrrakk' leaned over and shouted something down.

"He wants the packs." Mark began quickly tying them to the rope. "He'll empty one up there, send it back down, and we can hoist Misir up in it." In minutes the baby had been hauled to a reunion with hinsi's adoptive heen.

"I think Terris can hang on to me while I climb the rope," Mark decided, buttoning his outer shirt into a sort of pocket to cradle the Elpind baby.

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Eerin, in the meantime, had grasped the rope. "Eerin's so light," Cara said, looking up, "that maybe Hrrakk' can just pull hin up."

"That's not a good idea," Mark said. "What you need to do, Eerin, is to pass the rope behind you like this, so you're almost sitting on it, then you just sort of
walk
your way up, leaning back against the rope. Use your feet to fend you off the cliff, as well as find footholds." Eerin tested hin's balance for a moment, then, quickly, effortlessly, the Elpind was climbing.

Cara watched and sighed. "I don't know whether to be envious or disgusted," she complained. "Hin tries something
once
and hin's a master at it!"

Mark nodded. "I guess that's what comes of being a professional athlete," he said.

"Professional?" Cara repeated, surprised at his choice of words.

"Anyone who can dance the Mortenwol every day of their adult lives is the equivalent of a champion gymnast crossed with a prima ballerina," Mark pointed out. "Right?"

"I see what you mean ..." Cara said, staring up at the clifftop where Eerin was being helped over by the Simiu's firm grasp. She turned back to Mark, a look of near panic on her dark features. "Oh, God, Mark, I'm not sure I can do that."

"You can," Mark said firmly. "You
have
to."

"I guess I do." She fingered the cord lying before her. "Mark ... what about
him?"
she asked, nodding at the man with no name. He stood passive, empty-eyed, off to one side. There was no sign he'd noticed the struggles of his companions to get up the cliff face--he showed no reaction to anything.

"He goes up, too. If we have to tie the rope around him and haul him up,"

said Mark. "But quit stalling. You're next."

"Okay. I'll film the rest of this team effort from the top; it'll make a nice change of perspective." They walked over to the dangling rope together, and Mark began rigging it as he had for Eerin. "I'll steady you until you're over my head," he promised, "and Hrrakk' will be there to help you when you get within arm's length of the top. The important thing to remember is to keep your feet between you and the rock when you

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lean back and let the rope harness support you, so you don't start spinning and bang into a projection."

"Okay," she said nervously, then stepped into Mark's cupped hands, reaching upward for the first handhold.

"Good!" Mark encouraged her. "Test each foothold and handhold ... the shadows can fool you! Good, that's right ..."

Cara's world narrowed to the feel of the rope cutting into her shoulders, and running across her rump, reassuring in its strength. Slowly, feeling the rock score her palms and fingers, she climbed, moving from handhold to

handhold, foothold to foothold. She was careful not to look down.

It seemed to take forever, but finally, she heard the scuffle of feet just above her head, and looked up to see that she was almost there. As she reached up for the next handhold, an incredibly strong, leathery-palmed hand closed over her wrist and yanked just as she boosted upward off her foothold.