Eye of Flame (14 page)

Alia looked around at the mountain, then back at the man. “Halfway up it gets hard,” he went on. “But I know a quick way.”

“All right,” said Alia. It would be safer going up with someone anyway, whether the old man could take her up more quickly or not. “All right, old man.”

“I could use some more food first and water too.” She took out another apricot bar and a packet filled with water.

“Where are you from, old man?”

He squinted at her. “None of your business.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be acquainted with Eta’s place?”

“I’m not acquainted with anybody. I keep to myself and you should do the same.” The old man finished his food and got to his feet. “Come on,” he said. He began to climb over the rocks. Alia followed him, then noticed that there was a clearly defined path through the rocky slopes.

“I could have found this path myself, you old fraud,” she shouted at the figure ahead of her.

“I told you,” he shouted back, “it’s halfway up you run into trouble.” Alia sighed and kept going. Her muscles soon began to knot painfully.

“I don’t suppose you could help carry this knapsack for a while,” she shouted.

“Why the hell should I? It isn’t mine.”

“What’s over the mountain?”

“You’ll find out.” His voice was faint. He was getting ahead of her.

She kept climbing, trying to ignore the hot sun. She could go on for another two days before heading back to the hospital, maybe longer on short rations. She should have brought more. She wiped the sweat from her face and wished for a bath. Tamu’s mindless song circled her mind once more as she climbed, stopped to rest, then climbed some more. The old man had disappeared.

At last she came to the end of the path. A smaller path forked to the right between two boulders. Alia looked up and saw only sheer cliff surface above her.

The old man had apparently been waiting. He sat on the ground, smiling complacently.

“What now?” she asked.

The old man groaned and got up. “And I just got comfortable too,” he grumbled. He turned and she followed him along the small path until they reached a cave in the side of the mountain.

“Here we are,” said the man. Above the cave in large letters someone had painted:

ENTER CAVE.

CLIMB STAIRS TO TOP.

“You old fraud,” said Alia. She grabbed the man by the shoulders and pushed him against a boulder. “I could have found this cave myself.” He twisted loose and ran past her back along the path. “Come back here,” she shouted after him. “Aren’t you going to the top?”

“Why bother?” The old man’s voice floated back to her. “There’s nothing up there.”

She stood beside the cave, feeling angry and foolish, then walked inside. Someone had carved a flight of stairs in the rock; the steps curved around the cave walls in a spiral. She looked up and saw a speck of light above her.

She chuckled, then began to laugh. This is too easy, she thought; they’re not making it hard enough; anyone can just walk out of the hospital and keep going. It wasn’t consistent with the doctors’ desire to prevent the exposure of susceptible people to disease.

On the other hand, she thought as she began to climb the stone steps, I haven’t really seen anybody I could get a disease from except a couple of lunatics. Suddenly she felt cold. Maybe they
were
sick; maybe they, like her, had left the hospital and become ill, losing their minds in the process. Her stomach turned. She should go back.

She kept going up the steps. She would at least see what was over the mountain first. The stairway was dark and only intermittently lighted by phosphorescent green bars attached to the walls. She kept close to the wall, not wanting to lose her balance too close to the edge of the steps, which had no rail.

Alia climbed, stopping frequently to rest. She began to count steps and lost track of the number. She started to sing and lost track of the time. She was almost hypnotized by the time she reached the top of the stairs and could at last see the sky clearly. It looked like late afternoon.

Above her was a small metal ladder. It was attached to the wall and would take her out of the mountain. She hurried up the ladder. As she climbed out, a breeze wafted past her, and she smelled salty air.

She stood at the summit and looked around. A path had apparently been carved in this side of the mountain also; she could see its clearly defined boundaries among the rocks and boulders. At the bottom of the mountain there was a large expanse of white sand and beyond that a body of water stretching to the horizon. Even at this distance, she could hear the thunder of breakers as waves rolled toward the shore. An ocean, she thought. Tomas had shown her a picture of one in the library and had told her that it was thousands of miles wide, with salty water unfit to drink.

Alia sat down and stared at the grey sea. There was nowhere to go from this point. The mountains extended along the shore for as far as she could see. She could not get across the ocean. She would have to go back, get more supplies, try a different route. But maybe the doctors, who hadn’t had to restrict anyone up to now, wouldn’t let her leave again. They might be searching for her.

She considered the hospital. Perhaps there was nothing outside the hospital, and no one except a few demented individuals such as Eta or the old man. The doctors themselves might be susceptible to disease. But that wouldn’t explain why some doctors disappeared for weeks at a time, or how supplies got to the hospital. No, there had to be other people somewhere.

If I’ve been exposed to disease, she thought, I’m already dead. I might as well go on, or the whole trip is for nothing. I’ll walk till I drop, I’ll stretch the food and water, I have to know. The image of Tomas flickered across her mind, and she felt a pang of regret, then shrugged it off.

Alia started down the mountain.

Four more sunrises, four sunsets; on the fifth day she was still walking, seeing nothing but white sand and ocean on her left, white sand and mountains on her right. The arc of the red sun marked time for her now; she no longer divided her days with meals, eating only when she grew weak. She was almost out of food and water. She could not turn back; she would not even get to the desert.

A crab scuttled past her. She stared at it as it scurried beneath a wave, then heard a cry above her. She looked up. Three gulls circled overhead. She turned to the mountains and saw trees and bushes growing on the slopes. The landscape around her had changed. She had left the barren mountains and arid desert behind.

Her tired feet carried her on. Two days before, she had washed her feet in the ocean, crying out in pain as the salty water washed over the bleeding blisters. She glanced at the ocean. It was receding from her as if it had postponed its apology until now. It withdrew from her and began to creep toward the horizon, leaving behind beached crabs and fish.

Food. It would be simple to gather up some of the fish and store them in empty food packets. With luck, she might be able to start a fire with some wood from the mountain slopes. If necessary, she would eat the fish raw. The ocean kept retreating, leaving behind an almost unnatural silence. Alia began to walk toward some beached fish, squashing the wet soft sand under her feet.

“Hey!” a voice shouted. She turned and saw a figure running across the beach toward her. It was a young man with black hair; he was well-tanned, clad only in a pair of ragged blue shorts. He waved his arms frantically as he ran.

He stopped near her, panting for breath. “Run!” he shouted. “Run for the mountains, run!”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask, run!” The young man took off. She looked toward the ocean.

A wall of water was on the horizon. It was coming toward the shore, threatening to smash her and everything on the beach. She ran after the young man, her terror making it easy for her to catch up with him. She ran, pounding through the sand, ignoring the knapsack on her back, not even looking over her shoulder at the wave. She could hear it now, a low distant rumble coming ever closer to them. They reached the mountain, and she followed the man up the slope, ignoring the tree branches and bushes which clawed at her arms and legs. They stopped on a small ledge, and the young man turned to the sea. He stared at it intently. His jaw muscles tightened.

Alia saw the wave sweeping across the shore toward the mountain. “Come on!” she screamed at the man. “We’ve got to climb higher, come on!” He ignored her and continued to stare at the wave. It began to slow down, diminishing in size. By the time it reached the foot of the mountain it was a feeble sight, lapping gently at the trees there and then retreating, until the ocean was again where it should be.

The man relaxed, leaning against a tree behind him. “I’m tired,” he said. “It’s hard to stop them by yourself.”

She was puzzled. She remembered reading something about tidal waves and knew that this one had not behaved normally.

“Don’t worry about it,” the man went on. “Someone was just fooling around.” He smiled at her, showing even white teeth. “It happens sometimes.”

Alia loosened the straps on her knapsack, letting it fall to the ground. “You’re going to get awfully sick, wandering around like this,” said the young man. “Don’t you think you should go back?”

“Go back to where?” she asked warily.

“You know where. Whatever institution you wandered out of. Didn’t they tell you that you might get sick?”

“Yes. I don’t know if I believe it any more.” She watched the young man carefully. “I’ve walked a long way. I don’t think I want to turn back just yet.”

“But I’ll take you back. I’m sure it’s much nicer there than here. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Alia thought of Tomas and Tamu and her life at the hospital, free from any demands. The older patients had been there for fifty years or more and seemed content; in fact, one old man had grown terrified of the thought that a vaccine might be found for the patients and they would be forced to leave. The doctors had to tell him that no one would be forced out, and everyone else had been as relieved as the old man.

“I suppose it is nicer,” she said to the young man. “It’s easier at least.”

“Don’t you miss all your friends? They’ll be so happy to see you again.”

“How would we get there?”

“Oh, it’s easy, and it would be fun too. I’ll show you.” The young man started to climb the mountain. Alia followed him, dragging the knapsack. As she scrambled over some rocks, she noticed a huge red globe hovering above some trees on a ledge just above her. The young man reached out a hand, she grabbed it, and he pulled her up. She saw a huge balloon, bright red and attached to a large basketlike bottom. The young man had apparently tied it to one of the trees.

“We can go back in my balloon,” the young man said, walking toward it.

“How?”

“It’s simple. When we want to descend, all I have to do is pull this—” he pointed to a rope attached to the balloon “—and we land; it lets some air out. To go up, I just pour some sand out of one of those bags there.” He grinned at her. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“Sure does.”

“We can have a great time on the way back,” said the young man. “Come on, let’s go.” He turned toward the balloon. Alia raised her arm quickly and chopped him on the back of the neck. He toppled forward with a soft moan and lay silent.

She quickly climbed into the basket, cut the rope holding the balloon down with her knife, and poured sand out of one of the bags. The balloon rose, grazing some tree-tops on the way. She was soon above the mountains and could see the desert on her right. The balloon hovered above the mountains, and she waited for it to start drifting.

“What now?” she muttered. The vehicle was of no use to her if it stayed here. She felt a warm breeze on her face; then she began to move. The balloon drifted to the north. At least, she thought, it won’t go back to the hospital.

Ahead, she noticed that the mountains had started to curve to her right, surrounding the desert. She moved further away from the sea and was soon over a thick green forest. She had left the desert behind.

Deer were leaping through the underbrush below her, waving their small white tails at the balloon. A slender river wound through the trees, and she could see two horses, black and chestnut, on its banks. A flock of crystalline birds, with feathers that were prisms, swam in the river. Alia, clinging to the side of the basket, gazed happily at the forest. It was worth it, she told herself, it was worth it for this.

Then she glimpsed something on the edge of the forest. She squinted as the balloon floated on, and was able to discern large crystalline structures just beyond the wooded land. The crystals were green, gold, silver, blue and pink; some were spirals; others were slender towers. They glittered in the sunlight. As she came closer, she saw large golden insects buzzing softly in the sky over the crystal buildings. A city, she thought, and something jarred her mind.

Home,
her mind whispered.
She was a child again. She stood in a garden while her mother made the roses grow.
She was over the city now and could see people moving through the streets on silver bands. A few people were floating over the city, apparently unsupported by anything.
Her father was giving a concert with his mind, and people gathered near the house to listen. Alia heard only silence and the rustle of leaves.
Silvery vines formed patterns on the sides of some of the crystals, wrapping themselves around the buildings, then unwinding and forming new patterns. There were parks scattered throughout the city with trees and ponds, and she could see children playing in them.
The other children wouldn’t play with her. She could not float up to the treetops or make the thunder roar.
One of the golden insects passed near her, and she saw people inside it. They gazed at her through the transparent golden walls of the craft and waved.