Whispers on the Wind (6 page)

She was clearly insane.

But...If you thought you were crazy, could you be? Probably not. She could take some comfort in that.

“All right,” she said aloud, “let’s sort out the dreams then, find a satisfactory explanation for them, if being nuts isn’t it.”

She’d known for a long time that she wanted a long, secure, satisfying relationship and ultimately, a child, maybe more than one. That could account for the fantasies, for their graphic eroticism. She simply had needs that weren’t being met, especially in the months since she’d broken up with Frank. No, for much longer than that, which was why she had broken up with him. Making love for five or ten minutes every Thursday evening after watching a holo Frank claimed would get him “in the mood” simply hadn’t been adequate for her. She wanted more. Much more.

She blew out a long breath. Frank had not been the right one for her and she doubted, deep inside where most doubts lay, that the right man had ever been born. For that reason, her mind had created him out of whole cloth. She smiled wryly, wondering if, during one of those dreams, she and the man ever actually made love, she would end up with a phantom pregnancy?

She’d once known a woman whose poodle had suffered from the delusion that it was pregnant. It showed all the signs and symptoms, got fat and waddled, but never produced a litter.

It was time she faced up to the undeniable facts that her dreams had about as much chance of being met, given her age, as that poodle’s did, given its owner’s vigilance. Besides, who in their right mind ever really wanted to get fat and waddle?

Weary from her day’s exertion, from the long, hard hike, still fighting a disturbing sense of loss, she pulled out her floatpad, unrolled it, and stretched out on it. It maintained her body temperature, conformed to her shape, and kept her a comfortable few inches off the rock. She set her pack behind her and leaned her head and shoulders on it to rest for the trek down the mountain. She slumped farther down, extended her aching legs, turned off the light and laid it close at hand in case she needed it. She let weariness overcome her and closed her eyes.

Closed her eyes, sensed his presence, opened them again and he was...
there
. There...and yet not there, more like one of the imperfect holo-images projected by a toy one of her friends had owned during their childhood before such things had been perfected.

Except...she saw his dry, cracked lips move, she heard as if he had spoken, a glad, echoing cry:
Minton!

M
INTON DRAGGED HIMSELF THROUGH
the field in which he had materialized. His skin burned from the coarse vegetation scraping his belly and limbs. He cast out a beam, searching for Wend, who was much more to him than just the Octad’s healer, but his own birth-mate. He needed her, sought the solace and belonging he would find with her or, in a lesser way, with the others, even one of the others, but there was none, no one.

Then, for a startling instant, he sensed Jon! He tried to focus, but the ephemeral touch was already gone. He knew it had been real. His
Kahinya
told him it had, exulted with him that the Octad’s leader lived, however precariously. There was hope!

He crawled on as moonlight flooded around him. He knew not where he was going, nor really where he was, except half-buried in vegetation that scarcely struck him as edible. He was hungry, thirsty, and his
Kahinya
provided just barely enough warmth to keep him alive. That he was naked suggested he had completed the translation alone. But...translation from where? To where? He had only vague memories of other places, of day, of night, of day again, and now, here he was in another night with dawn again approaching. He recalled other times of being naked and alone, of translating again and again in the ever-fainter hope of finding someone of his own on the vastness of this alien planet, Earth.

How could this, his first venture into joining an Octad, have gone so terribly wrong? Was it his lack of training? Was it because he’d been too anxious, too eager, too hopeful of finding Zenna, his bond-mate? Had his been the faulty concentration that broke the connection with the others, sending them all whirling away into a black abyss? If only he had dared use the second version of the amplifier he and Zenna had invented! But he had not. He knew it was too unstable, for the same reasons the prototype had been, which was why he was certain, had always been certain, she wasn’t using it willingly to translate with Rankin. Those who knew and loved her, but especially himself and Jon, her birth-mate, were sure of her innocence, and feared for her.

Jon! He sent forth another probe into the night, felt it shoot away and dissipate into nothingness, meeting no other mind, no other soul, nothing to catch it, hold it, enhance and return it to him. He was blind, helpless, alone but for his
Kahinya
.

It subtly directed him to turn to his right, to keep crawling. Head down, he obeyed and was stopped suddenly when his skull connected with something solid. Looking up, he saw what he at first thought was a man towering over him, but on second look proved to be a doll of some sort. A very large one made of cloth, he realized, struggling to his feet and examining it more closely. It wasn’t as large as he had thought, merely high, held off the ground a distance equal to its height by the pole his head had bumped into. Its feet, had it been so equipped, would have been about at his shoulder level. It was dressed in a one-piece garment from which some ragged, pale colored material protruded at both arm and leg openings. It wore a hat, but no shoes, and its arms and legs flapped in the chill breeze.

Nevertheless, clothing was clothing, and since this...creature was not a human, but a parody of one, he felt no compunction in knocking it to the ground. He tore it apart, watching the hat, a gray thing with a wide brim, roll away in the wind. He lacked the strength to chase it. He struggled to tug out the stuffing that formed the creature’s body within the garment, then struggled even harder to get the clothing onto himself. Once pulled up, it covered his legs only to his shins. The back of it strained as he shoved his arms into the sleeves, pulling it up over his shoulders. It was far too tight, but he was grateful nonetheless for the covering it provided. He could zip it only halfway up his chest.

The effort of clothing himself had exhausted him. He lay back down in the dry vegetation he had pulled from the doll, letting his
Kahinya
replenish him as best it could. Light would help, and heat. To generate the latter, he crawled on.

Presently, there was also light, and faint warmth from a rising sun. He lay still, absorbing it.

The ground under him vibrated. A humming sound filled his ears. He struggled to sit, fighting against the weakness that still held sway over his limbs. The act of sitting sent his brain swirling away into darkness again for long, unbearable moments where all he was aware of was being lost, being alone, being one, not part of a community of souls, not even part of the all important Octad. Falling back into the greenery, he shook his head, rose up more slowly, and sat, peering through the stalks of the plants at a large, orange machine. It bore down on him, creating detectable tremors in the ground, indicative of its weight and power—and danger.

He fought to collect himself, to translate out of its way, but he had not enough strength left.

Forcing his battered body, his bewildered mind, to action, he staggered to his feet, reeled sideways and stumbled out of the path of the machine. Before he fell again, he heard a shout. The noise of the machine changed, it came to a halt and the ground tremors stopped.

A man leapt down from a high perch atop it, strode through the vegetation and stopped before him, looking up at Minton from under the brim of a hat.

“Well, hell!” He planted large, work-worn hands on his hips. “What have we here? What are you, some kind of nut? Trying to make crop-circles or something in my winter rye? Gotta tell you, buddy, it works better when the stuff is ripe, like grain in the fall. Gotta tell you, too, it’s crazy to do it barefoot here in northern Minnesota, even in May. There was ice on the pond this morning and—hey, are those my old coveralls from the scarecrow I left out last fall?”

The man waited for a moment, then tapped Minton on the chest, between the sides of the garment that failed to cover him. “Hey! You listening to me?”

“I am...listening.”

“Yeah, but are you understanding? What are you doing out here, anyway, dressed only in my scarecrow’s suit and your diamonds, Susie?”

Minton tried to make sense of the man’s words.
Scarecrow?
“Diamondsusie?” he said aloud.

“This.” The man reached for Minton’s
Kahinya
and Minton stepped back, clapping a hand to his necklace as he finally developed enough presence of mind to know he must not tell this man the truth. Or let him see it. All he said was “Please. Do not touch my
Kahinya.”

“Your...kah-what-a?”

“Kah-
heen
-yah.”

Desperately, weakly, he sought answers from within the man himself, chose one of the wild speculations from the brain that was spilling them out in an unending, uncontrolled stream.

“I picked up a hitch-hiker. He knocked me out, high-jacked my...rig, stripped me and dumped me at the side of the road.”

The man shook his head in disgust. “Too much of that happening nowadays. Used your chip to key your rig to his own, I suppose.”

Not quite certain of how to answer, Minton shrugged noncommittally.

“So here you are, two full sections away from the road. Whyn’t you stay where he put you? Better chance of getting help out there than in here. When this all take place, anyway?”

Minton was unsure of the concept of time as it might be seen here. “Long...time.”

“Like, last night? This morning? Yesterday some time?”

“Uh...last night, I think. Maybe the night before.” How long would it take a man to find help in this part of Earth if he’d been dumped on the side of the road? He knew he couldn’t tell this man about the other solo translations he vaguely recalled having made, or how long he suspected it had been since his Octad had broken contact. “Maybe...longer,” he said.

Another chill gust of breeze pushed against Minton. He wrapped his arms around himself, as closely as the too-tight garment across his shoulders would permit.

The man gave his head a hard shake and reached up onto the machine, bringing down a jacket, similar to the one he wore, but heavier, longer. “Better put this on,” he said, tossing it to Minton. “Then climb on up there.” He stepped on a metal stair that lifted him easily aloft. He stepped off it, took his seat behind the controls, and the step sank back down. Minton clutched the side of the machine as he swayed with sudden weakness.

“Hey! You gonna pass out on me?” The man looked sharply at Minton. “You sick? Hurt?”

Minton steadied himself. “Hungry,” he said.

“Well, come on,” the man said with an impatient bark of laughter. “That’s something can be dealt with easy enough, but I haven’t got all day. Get on up here. I’ll take you back to the house. My wife will feed you.” He grinned. “And she won’t even debit your chip.”

Chip...that was something he should know about, but what, exactly, escaped Minton at the moment.

“We can call the cops and get a line on your rig. What was it, anyway?” the man asked, as Minton allowed the step to lift him to the operator’s platform. There was only one seat, so he stood, clinging to the clear shield in front.

“What was...what?” he asked, pulling the man’s jacket more tightly around him. Its warmth was welcome. Already he felt stronger, but only slightly less confused.

“What kind of rig you drive?”

Again he grabbed at a stray thought. “A...reefer. Taking Alberta beef to New York.”

“Yeah. That’s what I figured. Price of beef nowadays, only politicians and the like can afford it. It’s worth anybody’s while to highjack a rig. Anybody ever tell you picking up a hitchhiker’s not smart? You shoulda just stayed on the main glideway all the way across the country.”

He gave Minton a piercing look. “How come you left it in the first place? Got friends or family hereabouts?”

Minton shook his head. “No. I just wanted to see some of the countryside.” That much, at least, was true. This, his first trip off Aazonia. It was also what he was supposed to say in such situations.

The man laughed. “Not a hell of a lot to see, is there? Just fields and sky. Lots of that. In my old man’s day, there were telephone poles, too, and electrical lines. Not now, though.” He pulled up between two large buildings, one of which had a series of windows sweeping across its façade and a long stage, about shoulder-height, accessed by stairs. On that, visible through a clear barrier beneath a railing, Minton saw chairs and a table, both of which he recognized from the images experienced Earth-visitors had fed him, Jon, and the others during the few hours leading up to the abortive translation. People on Earth ate sitting on chairs, with their bowls on tables before them, not, as was the custom on Aazonia, reclining comfortably, sharing in a civilized manner.

Much good all that information had done him. He was as lost as he would have been without the bits of useless knowledge he had garnered.

He knew that he was going to have to come up with a better, more believable explanation for being found in the man’s field before the authorities were called. What his rescuer believed would not satisfy anyone who probed any deeper into the event. Jon, and the other law-enforcement officers who had helped train him for this mission, as well as more seasoned travelers, had impressed upon him the need for adequate “identification” in this society where mental communication and hence instant knowledge of who each person encountered was sadly lacking.

The chip! It was coming back to him now as warmth and a small sense of security assisted his
Kahinya
in healing him. The identification used on the planet Earth in this time consisted of a chip that was implanted in a wrist bone of every individual on this planet at birth. It credited and debited its owner’s accounts, activated all manner of devices keyed to that individual—and identified its wearer to proper authorities.