Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra (47 page)

“Hmmm,” agreed Yarden, “I see what you mean. Some people are like that, too.”

There was something in her tone he had not heard before. He turned to look at her face, but could not read her expression in the starlight. Is she talking about me, he wondered, or herself?

Before he could wonder further, she said, “You're very different than I first thought. There's a lot to you, but you don't make much of it. Most men, I've found, have an erroneously high opinion of themselves and don't mind sharing it at every opportunity. But not you. That's just one way you're different.”

“There are others?”

“Oh, yes, Orion Treet. There are lots of others. I have not discovered them all yet. But give me time …”

She paused. Treet saw the liquid glint of her eyes as she gazed at him. He reached out and touched her arm, soft and pliant and warm. He pulled her to him.

“No,” she whispered, tensing.

He put his lips to hers. She did not return the kiss, but pushed against him.

He held her in a tighter embrace. She struggled in his arms. “Stop!”

“It's all right—” he persisted.

“Let me go!”

She stiffened and pushed him away as he let go. Off balance, he fell backward onto the sand. She stood over him, her eyes flashing in the starlight. “You're no different!” she said harshly. He felt the bristling heat of her anger.

“Yarden, I—” he began, but she was already gone, confusion hanging in the air where she had been. Treet picked himself up and slip-walked despondently down the dune to his tent.

Yarden's wild screech brought
Treet out of a deep sleep. He was on his feet outside the tent, Crocker and Pizzle stumbling out behind him, before he knew what it was that had summoned him. The sky was light, but the sun was not yet up. A second later he heard a strange whimpering sound coming from the women's tent. He went to it and said, “It's Treet. What's wrong?”

Calin answered, “Don't come in here!”

The three men looked at each other uneasily. Crocker responded, “We won't come in, but you're going to have to tell us what's wrong.”

“My—it's my … Ooohh!” Yarden moaned.

The men waited. Presently the tent flap opened and Calin stepped out, then stooped to help Yarden, who came out slowly, doubled over. She straightened, and Treet's heart dropped a beat. Pizzle sucked his breath in sharply.

“Good Lord, girl!” gasped Crocker.

Treet took a step closer.

“Don't touch me!” warned Yarden. “I might be contagious. Please, stay away.”

“We need to see—how else can we help you?”

“I'll show you,” she said, “but just don't touch me, whatever you do.”

She raised her face and stretched forth her hands. Angry red blisters pimpled every square millimeter of skin, including eyelids and fingertips. The only places where the blisters were not in evidence were the crevices between fingers, the triangular expanse of skin under her chin, and the crescent folds behind her ears.

The blisters were raised bumps with translucent, fluid-filled caps, elongated rather than round, red at the base, but yellow at the top. They looked as if the slightest touch would burst them and disperse the fluid.

“What are your symptoms?” asked Pizzle. “Fever? Itch?”

“No fever.” Yarden shook her head. “No itch. They don't hurt, although my skin tingles like crazy. I didn't feel anything or notice anything until I woke up like this. Oohh!” She raised her hands to her eyes. “What am I going to do?”

Treet could see that she was close to hysteria. He desperately tried to think of something comforting to say. “It isn't so bad,” was the best he could come up with.

“Not so bad!” she wailed.

“That fog!” cried Pizzle. “Look, the blisters only cover the exposed places—wherever the mist touched. Everywhere else is normal—I mean, I assume it's normal?”

Yarden nodded. “Nothing so far. Only where the mist touched me.”

“Then how come none of the rest of us have any blisters?” asked Treet.

Pizzle shrugged. “Different genetic makeup, different body chemistry—who knows? Maybe Yarden was allergic to whatever was in the mist and the rest of us aren't.”

“I'm not allergic to anything,” replied Yarden petulantly.

“That you know of,” said Pizzle.

“It doesn't look like any kind of allergic reaction I ever heard of,” observed Treet. “More like a disease.”

“Thanks,” muttered Yarden, chin quivering.

“Are you suggesting we quarantine her?” Crocker appraised her with narrowed eyes. “It might not be a bad idea.”

“What good would it do?” objected Treet. “We all rode through the mist. It's just a matter of time until the rest of us come down with it.”

“Oh, great!” Pizzle frumped. “Let's look on the bright side.”

“Well, what do we do now?” wondered Crocker.

“Yarden, do you feel well enough to travel?” asked Treet. “One of us could drive for you.”

Yarden nodded silently.

She's more shook up than she lets on, thought Treet. Why did this have to happen to her? All that flawless, porcelain skin now blotched and swollen and … ugly!

They struck camp and skimmed over a gray land into a hard pewter sunrise. The blades cut grooves in the fine sand as they rode the lift and fall of the round dunes like the swell of an ocean. They stopped once midmorning for a drink of water and a survival wafer. Yarden showed no change in her condition. She said she still felt okay, though worried.

When they stopped a few hours later to take a direction check. Pizzle's rubbery face showed distinct discoloration— clumps of spots on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. Crocker mentioned that his throat felt dry. Calin seemed okay, but said little. Treet noticed that his skin was tender where the mist had made contact. He knew it was just a matter of time.

Next morning three bloated and blistered faces peered at one another fearfully in the orange halflight of their tent. After a moment's examination of hands and a tentative exploration of facial features, Treet sighed. “It looks like we're in the game, gentlemen. What's our move?”

Crocker thought for a minute and said, “I say we keep going— as long as we can. We don't know the course of this … this condition, but if we could reach the Fieri we'd be better off.”

“Keep going till we drop, eh?” cracked Pizzle.

“It's our best chance,” snapped Crocker. “What do you suggest—that we just lie down and scoop the sand over our heads?”

“Stop it, you two. We've got to think about this. I agree with Crocker—we don't know anything about this malady, so we might as well keep going. Maybe it will go away in a day or two.”

“Then again, maybe not.”

“Yes, Pizzle. Maybe not. But lying around here won't get us anywhere. And as long as we don't
feel
sick, there's no reason to sit around wallowing in self-pity.”

All day long the company monitored themselves for minute changes in their conditions. Calin, too, had fallen victim to the malady; but other than tingly, tender, blistered skin and dry throats, no one had anything new to report. By nightfall, however, Yarden had developed new blisters on her arms and chest. The condition, whatever it was, was spreading.

Then the itching started.

At first it was merely an upgraded version of the tingle they had become used to, but by morning the intensified tingle was a fire on the blistered hide, impossible to ignore or satisfy. Scratching didn't help—made it worse, in fact. The pustules burst at the slightest touch, oozing their syrupy contents onto the surface of the tortured epidermis, spreading the contagion,

“Don't scratch!” Treet shouted through clenched teeth. “You'll only make it worse.” They were sitting in the shade of a dune near the tents, each with a helmetful of water within reach.

“Thank you. Doctor Feelgood,” grumbled Pizzle. “Ooo! I'll go insane if this doesn't stop.” He squirmed and writhed like a worm in hot ashes in an attempt to refrain from scratching his sores.

“I say we get on the skimmers and ride,” offered Crocker. “It will help take our minds off the itch.”

“Go kill yourself!”

No one else felt like traveling either; each nursed his agony in his own way. Yarden and Calin slept fitfully. Pizzle flailed and cursed, and at one point attempted to burrow into a dune headfirst. Crocker paced and moaned, clenching and unclenching his fists. Treet walked, swinging his arms and striding long strides, counting each step, willing himself not to scratch.

But scratching was inevitable. The blisters burst, and a yellowish purple crust formed on the pitted skin. The crust hardened and cracked, fluid oozed between the cracks, and the itching increased. They took off their clothes so the material would not stick to the skin and pull it off.

All night long Pizzle howled and thrashed. Treet and Crocker whimpered in their own misery and kept an eye on him so he didn't injure himself with his maniacal gyrations. The sound of weeping emanated from the women's tent—the soft, blubbery sobbing of utter despair.

By morning the blisters were so numerous over the rest of their bodies that no one got up. They all lay flat on their backs, sniveling, scratching until fingernails bloodied and pus ran red.

Treet slept—a nightmare-ridden, fevered torpor that gave no rest or relief. He dreamt of preying birds picking flesh from his bones, of steam springing from superheated rocks to scald him, of sitting up suddenly in bed and leaving his skin behind, stuck to blood-caked sheets.

When he woke he could not open his eyes, the crust was so thick. His throat felt shredded, as if he had been gargling hot razor blades. Breathing through his nostrils was difficult; the air wheezed in his lungs. In his groggy, partially coherent state he feared that the pustules were now forming in the soft mucous tissue of his breathing passages. He tried to speak, to cry out, but his voice would not come.

Then he noticed that the itching had stopped.

With quivering fingertips he explored his ravaged face. The crust was a lumpy shell, seamed over where, through some movement, he had cracked it and the fluid had bubbled out and dried. He could no longer feel the pressure of his fingers on his skin. Either the crust was thick enough to insulate feeling, or the delicate nerve endings were numbed … or destroyed.

From the nape of his neck to the balls of his feet, his whole body was now covered with the suppurating crust. Treet was literally encased in a cocoon several millimeters thick. Every movement cracked the cocoon and made the fluid run into the crevices. Underneath the crust the skin was dead, but at least that was better than the maddening itch.

The day passed—maybe two or three days, for time melted together to become a solid, ill-defined mass. Treet vaguely remembered rolling himself up with a tremendous effort, grappling with his empty helmet, and stumbling outside to get a drink, cracking his cocoon in a million places, making the foul yellowish fluid drip from him like poison rain. When he came to again, he was back in the tent as before; maybe it had been a dream after all.

He faded in and out of consciousness. Once he awoke to a bone-parching fever and imagined he was wrapped in foil and lying on red-hot coals. Another time the sound of his heart drumming double-time wakened him, and he was certain his heart had burst through his papery skin and was beating outside his body. He lay like a mummy. Inert. Unmoving. More dead than alive. Waiting for his vital functions to falter and stop. The sound of his heartbeat eventually dwindled away, and he knew he was dead.

Waking or sleeping, the terrible, fever-induced hallucinations continued. But as Treet sank further into unconsciousness; the nightmare images and sensations dwindled to dull discomfort. The fever raged, but Treet was beyond its reach.

Some time later the fever broke, and the weltering heat gave way to cool relief. He felt as if his withered body had been dipped in thick, cooling menthol balm. For the first time since the blisters appeared, he relaxed and slept peacefully.

The coolness persisted, and when Treet came to awareness once more he realized that the worst was over. This he knew instinctively. He listened for his heartbeat and heard a regular, strong thump-a-lump rhythm. He was hungry and achingly thirsty, but clearheaded and calm. The cobwebs and cloudiness had vanished from his brain, and along with them the gnawing fear. He still could not open his eyes, and breathing was difficult. He felt weaker than he ever had in his life, but he was, despite these modifications, himself again.

He must have slept again, without knowing it, for when he woke he could open his eyes—or at least open them inside the cocoon. Weird purplish light filtered through the crust, which seemed to have ballooned like an expanding foam. He felt a sudden urge to move, to break out of the cocoon.

Starting with his right hand, he wiggled the fingers and found that after a moment the interior of the casing loosened and he could move his fingers. With a little more effort he could twist his hand. Balling his fist, he succeeded in cracking the casing a little, then punched through it.

The cocoon came away in chunks after that—first the right arm and then the left. Then, hands pounding at the dense, pebbled surface, he cracked the area over his chest and peeled it away upward toward his throat and head until he was able to pull it from his face in one masklike section. With an Atlaslike shrug, his shoulders broke free and he sat up and looked around, blinking in the early morning light.