Stardogs (29 page)

They’d crash-landed in the tropics of the Denaari-motherworld, a harsh area, always poorly populated because local geological stability meant mineral-nutrients were scarce. It meant that the party did not encounter any other native lifeforms. There was no water in this valley so they did not encounter any of the zoo-biolab escapees from the colony worlds. It also meant that when they rounded a corner and found themselves in a bowl surrounded by vast cliffs, that night fell abruptly. The twin moons weren’t up yet and the darkness was deep. The stars shone down from an alien heaven, innumerable and clear.

“Look! That’s the Salamander!” Lila pointed at the stars. “It’s not quite the same as from New Texas…” She choked up, remembering a boy who’d taken her out into the soft night to show her the stars, and a great many other things. She hurt. It was just… the stars had suddenly been so familiar she could almost have been at home, without the passage of the intervening seven years of hell.

The star-formations meant a great deal to three other people. Martin Brettan, Johannes Wienan, and the girl who had been called Una Quail all knew now almost exactly where they were. How close to the Empire. The first two were intensely frustrated by it. The girl was just afraid. But then, she was usually afraid.

“Yes. I’m sure that as the Stardog flies we’re near your homeworld. Unfortunately, we’ve no way of ever reaching it, as far as I can see. Right now, I’m more concerned about these cliffs. I don’t see any possible way up them either. Point is, do we wait for daylight or start walking back now?” enquired the Viscount, frustration putting a snappy edge on his voice.

Several of the party groaned. Shari realized yet again that leadership was fraught with unpopular decisions. Yet… it had seemed a choice between riding the tiger or being eaten by it. “We might as well start back now. The ridge must be lower in the other direction.”

“Then why did you bring us this way in the first place? You are supposed to be leading us.” Shilo Kadar was tired, thirsty and irritable in the extreme.

“Very well, Leaguesman. You show us the way back down then,” she said with careful evenness.

He snorted, and led off too fast in the darkness. Inevitably he fell down a small rock-slip. After that he was a lot more cautious.

Eventually, when the last after-tremors had died away, Juan had resumed his walk. There was a spring in his step now. There was a way out of here. As he got hotter and thirstier his steps became less eager. He wondered about going back to the pool Rat had led him to. His mouth was terribly dry. It was late afternoon before he came to a place of choices. The valley forked. To the left lay a steep, narrow canyon. The other valley was wider, easier going and also lead, it seemed, directly in the direction he needed to go.

The space-born and reared boy didn’t recognize the signs of water-erosion that were present on wall of the steep canyon. They were absent from the valley he chose. His valley was merely the byproduct of an intrusive dyke of volcanic rock, and a fold in the sedimentary stuff through which the canyon cut.

It took the other party two days to reach this point. They had passed the hidden pool where Rat had found water without an inkling of it having once been there. The tremor had cracked the dolerite sill that had held the water in its impermeable grip. There was nothing there now.

Already, some of the members of the party had dropped into distinct roles. Lila and Sam walked a scouting prowl ahead. Already both had proved their worth, Sam in refusing to allow them to go into a narrow steep walled section of the lower valley. He’d insisted on climbing laboriously around that part, and despite the rash of protest, Shari had backed him up.

“Oh please, not out into the sun again!” Caro found the heat debilitating.

“I can’t see why.” Back at the rear of the party Kadar was once again flexing his muscles.

“You’ll do it because we have a leader.” The big-framed Brettan was also finding the heat exhausting. Kadar’s constant sniping was getting to him. “If you want to go on you’ll have to go through me,” he said, positioning himself across the valley. Nobody had tried it.

The detour took two hot, difficult clambering hours to skirt the narrow section of shady, even-floored valley that would have taken them ten minutes to walk.

When they’d got back to the valley floor a shouting-match had ensued. The noise alone had been enough to trigger a thunderous rock-slide into the section they’d avoided. The quarrel had stopped abruptly.

Lila had produced the first food the castaways had taken from the Denaari Motherworld. She could throw rocks with some skill. Some of the party had balked at raw snake, even if the creature was not a true reptile but merely pseudosnake. Mark Albeer had then produced a number of small pieces of long-ago-flood debris he had been steadily and methodically collecting as they walked. Nothing big had washed down this far, but he had a good three double handfuls of fragments. They were dry and burned well, if rather fast. Half-cooked snake, Shari told herself as she ate her piece, carefully avoiding any sign of distaste, was still a big step up on raw snake.

When they walked on the next morning, she had them all looking for and gathering fragments of wood. There was no protest at this. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who thought half-cooked snake was better than the alternative. Besides, the sight of those small flames had been deeply comforting at a primal level.

“You can see how the water has cut into the rock here. Look at those stones piled up on that bank there. They’re rounded. Water comes down that canyon” said Lila.

“But the main valley’s bigger. Surely that means more water?”

“I don’t see any sign of it myself.”

Shari sighed. She looked at Sam. He shook his head. Shrugged. “The canyon looks as steep as hell. Let’s all search the next hundred yards or so of the main valley. If we find any water-borne debris then we’ll go on up it.”

They spread out in a long skirmish-line, Deo being positioned with a gentle push. She doubted he even understood what was happening. In the last day he seemed to have retreated deeper into a sort of melancholia. They pushed on up the wider valley, without finding any sign of anything which could have been carried there by a flood. A geologist would have found the change in the nature of the material on the valley floor obvious. The xeno-archaeologist had also trained herself to spot detail. “I don’t think this is a water-cut valley,” she said, peering at walls. “Everything is too angular.”

Shari had managed to inconspicuously take up station next to the small Yak soldato. “What do you think, Teovan?” she asked quietly

He gave her the benefit of his wry grin. “This ain’t the streets or the dumps, lady. What do I know? Both feel bad.”

She took a deep breath. “All right. Back to the canyon.”

As usual this produced a rash of protests from Kadar. Johannes, in whom the latent Wienan political strain was beginning to assert itself, said nothing. Kadar’s other supporter, Prince Jarian, was oddly silent too. His eyes were narrowed, focused on the water bottle that protruded from the bodyguard’s rough pack. It was a fairly distinctive bottle, with the apple-green glass deeply etched in a grape-vine pattern.

The ridergirl, who certainly never questioned or protested, also stared intensely at something. It wasn’t the water bottle, but a clear footprint left in the fine ashy-dust on the section of sheet-rock in front of her. Another human had walked here, going up-valley, recently. Very recently. The wind had not even blurred the dust-edges. But as was her habit, she said nothing. Just turned and followed the rest of them, leaving her own even smaller footprints beside it, pointing back to the canyon.

Canyon was an inadequate descriptive term. Semi-vertical polished chute would have done better. For a leisurely scramble with a swim and a large supply of cold beverages at the end of it, the water-cut winding slash through the ruddy layers of aeolian rock would have been beautiful. Thirsty, hot, and knowing the canyon took them off at right angles to their destination the friable group found it another version of hell. The nature of the terrain split them into various fractions based on the clambering skills and determination of each person. Walking was made even more difficult by the newly fallen debris. In places there were huge new chocks across the valley that had to be climbed over or squeezed around or under.

Shari found herself chivvying tail-enders along and then trying to catch up with the front-runners to tell them to slow down. It was an exhausting and unrewarding pastime. Somewhere along the way on one of these jaunts the man she called Deo detached himself from the rest of them and disappeared. It was nearly twenty minutes before she realized he was missing.

There was only one possible place he could have left the party. She struggled back down. Jarian was keeping up well, she noticed. He was just behind Caro and the bodyguard, who,
just
per chance, was travelling at the same speed as the well-endowed Countess. The bodyguard should be careful, she thought. The lean leaguesman could easily try to murder him at this rate. Caro and the bodyguard had just climbed up a narrow crack at the side of a new chock-stone, and he was just reaching down to take the packs from the Prince when she reached them. The Emperor’s eldest surviving son was struggling to lift Mark Albeer’s pack. Shari noticed the apple-green bottle protruding from it. It didn’t seem well stoppered.

“Better push that cork in a bit more.” Her voice startled them. The bodyguard nearly dropped the pack on Jarian’s head, as he attempted to stand hurriedly, years of habit reasserting themselves. “Er… Yes, your Highness. I don’t know how it got like that. I’m sure it was much deeper in.” He rammed the cork in to flush with the neck of the bottle with one of his big hands.

Shari had a good idea how it got like that. The man she was looking for had trained her in the minutiae of observation. There had been teeth-marks on the cork. So that was why the little skiver had caught up.

“You haven’t seen Deo, have you?”

Caro shook her head. “Not since we left the big valley. He’s not lost, is he?”

Shari bit her tongue and avoided raising her eyes to the narrow strip of pale-blue heaven far above. There was no doubt that the countess
meant
well.

“Only place he could have gone was into that cave we passed about three bends back,” said Mark slowly. “Do you need some help, Princess?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so right now. It didn’t look deep. He’s probably just asleep. He is confused and seems to want sleep a great deal. He never seemed to ever sleep… before. Well, if I have a problem I’ll come and fetch someone.”

“Don’t you want a drink before you go, Aunt?”

There was a greasy sheen to the little Prince’s eyes, as he looked at her attempting to drip sincerity. So he had been stealing water, again. Little toad.

“No thank you. I will manage with my ration, the same as everyone else,” she said evenly, trying to refuse him the satisfaction of letting him see how angry she was.

“Really, you should, Aunt Shari. You deserve it. Go on. Perhaps a bit for Otto? Good dog.” The good dog growled at him.