Rift (71 page)

Loon’s attention was distracted by the way the outer wall of the outfold lay sagging in places, creating rents through which the morning sun poured its cold yellow light. The outfold seemed to be turning sere with the onset of winter. But Loon knew it was the whole place collapsing under the strain of the hardening. For days, ever since the orthong had won the battle against Gabriel Bonhert, Loon expected that the outfold would spring back to its former glory. But it had not.

Golanifer stood beside her, along with young Mitya, who had been among them for a day and a half.

“Can I come back sometime?” he asked.

It was time for Mitya to leave. He had to return to the human habitat, the odd half bubble where they’d built their machine of destruction. Loon wondered if they would survive the winter so far north, but Mitya said they had plenty of supplies from the great ship, meaning primarily that they had food to ingest. Loon was grateful she need never watch that ritual again, of creatures pushing chunks of vegetative and animal matter into their faces.

“Can I?”

Mitya was saying something again. He seemed to be asking if he could return to the outfold.

Loon interpreted:

Golanifer turned to Mitya. she answered.

Loon doubted they would let Mitya come back: the weavers had studied him long enough. But for his act
of volunteering to come to the outfold, Golanifer might allow him some small favor in return. Perhaps it would be a visit, given that this human seemed to like everything he saw and showed not the slightest fear of being around the orthong. They were reluctant to allow adult males into the outfold, but since they had to closely study some male in order to finish the human outfolding task, the weavers had been delighted that it was an adolescent who’d volunteered.

“We will see,” Loon interpreted, and he seemed content with this answer. Loon took pity on him as he stood there, a boy who had lost both his parents, and who had shown courage and resourcefulness at the great battle. “Learn to sign,” she told him. “Learn to speak for yourself.”

“I’ll be ready.” He turned to Golanifer and said, “It was nice getting to know you.”

Loon would have found this a humorous remark if she were human.

They had wound their way deeper into the outfold when they heard the soft
whoosh
of the airship passing over them, but Loon had already forgotten about the boy. It made her sad to look on the ruins of the outfold. Hour by hour the forest was cracking apart, drying up and paling from its former glorious colorations. Many of the growths had turned gray, and if any color remained it was only in the occasional seam or fold. The stalks cracked under their feet as they walked south toward the meeting place.

Some of the raiment bushes were split down the middle, revealing half-formed garments with yokes, hems, and sleeves sagging from their templates. These aborted forms filled Loon with a slight uneasiness, and she reached for Golanifer’s hand. Golanifer allowed this contact, and they proceeded through the forest, avoiding the taller growths, which at any moment might topple and crush an unwary traveler. Admiring Golanifer’s placidity and confidence, Loon watched as
the orthong strode gracefully among the ruins of the forest. Golanifer did not grieve over the forest, and Loon decided not to grieve, either, but to her dismay tears welled in her eyes anyway. Whether it was the outfold, or Golanifer’s grace, or the coming winter, or nothing whatsoever, she couldn’t tell. Golanifer squeezed her hand. They continued on.

Loon noticed a wrong smell. Golanifer pointed to a long, low mound. On closer inspection it looked like a mole’s burrowing, or like a wave of soil, frozen in place as it crested. Covered with a pulsating foam, it sparkled here and there with neon colors.

They followed the line of the mound until they approached a patch of unnaturally bright forest. Loon stared at this foreign-looking grove. It was an area of melted and asymmetrical shapes, some elongated as though pulled and stretched, others interlocking like off-kilter spiderwebs. Loon’s impulse was to touch and investigate, but Golanifer warned her away, peering deep into the fantastical realm, where colors skimmed along wires and threads as though carrying messages.

She turned to Loon.

Loon nodded.

Golanifer began backing away.

Loon looked at the ruins, the transformation of a once-grand berm, where Tulonerat still sat in her courtyard, knowing more and more about less and less. As they watched, a web fell of its own weight, and the glittering waves of soil lapped up the remains. Loon shivered, and they moved past this region. Already a hardened perimeter was forming around Tulonerat’s abode, and would soon fence in her creations. Maybe this was the reason the females were so eager to leave the outfold, Loon thought. But Golanifer did not seem willing to discuss it, and so they left the deforming region behind and hurried onward.

When they reached the meeting place, Reeve was waiting there, a small sack at his feet as he peered into the outfold from the open valley.

He looked startled to see them, so clearly he hadn’t picked up their scent as they had picked up his. Very thin and oddly pink-colored, Reeve looked sick, but his smell was similar to Mitya’s, and Mitya claimed to be well. Reeve’s face was covered with a black growth, and he wore many layers of clothes against the cold.

Loon stepped to the edge of the outfold and placed her hand on a bleached remnant of a tree to steady herself. She looked back at Golanifer, who gave her a gesture of encouragement.

She took a step forward, away from the outfold and into the direct sun.

Reeve drew closer, saying something.

4

He had almost given up hope that she would come. When she appeared at the edge of the outfold, Reeve hesitated to move, as though the merest step toward her would send her fleeing into the forest. She looked gaunt and wide-eyed. She was completely bald. The orthong attendant stood just in back of her, and Reeve wondered if she was free to come and go, or if they restrained her.

Loon stepped forward.

He hadn’t planned what he would say. Out came the simple truth: “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

She looked in back of her at the orthong guard, as though for permission to speak. Sign language flashed between them. Then Loon faced Reeve again, saying something in sign.

The hell with this. Reeve strode up to her. “You know I don’t speak that way. Lord above, Loon, look at me.”

She nodded at him. “I remember you,” she said.

He couldn’t answer. Lord of Worlds, that it should come to this, all their journey and everything they had shared. Turning to face the valley for a moment, he steadied his nerves. He had come here to say goodbye, but good-bye wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Turning back to her, he said: “Sit with me, Loon.” He took her by the elbow and drew her down onto the hard-packed soil. She was compliant, but wary. The irises of her eyes were green, and no lighter in the brilliant sun than they had been that night she’d announced the orthong decision to trade. It was as though nothing penetrated them, nothing got through except what she chose to notice, and that didn’t seem to include him.

“I’m leaving now, Loon. I’m on foot, heading for the Gandhi River and the
Cleopatra
. Salidifor says I have safe passage through orthong lands, but I’ll be avoiding the Stationers’ dome. They have no love of me, those folks.” He looked over at her to see if she was listening. She gazed out placidly at the valley, seeming to relax a little. “I heard you’ll be traveling as well. Back to the east side of the Stoneroots, eventually … your home territory, Loon. Where you and Spar set out in the first place.”

At Spar’s name, Loon snapped her head around to stare at him.

“I hope you remember Spar,” he said. “He’d want to know you were happy. Are you?” He looked up to the white shadow just inside the broken outfold. “Are you free to come and go?”

“Spar …,” she whispered.

“Yes, Spar. If you come across the Stillwater Clave, tell them about Spar. Perhaps there are others who loved him like we do.” He looked at her and wouldn’t release her until she acknowledged him.

To his surprise, she said: “I will tell them.”

He smiled to hear her voice. “Yes.” His own voice was husky, not up to the job.

“Loon,” he said finally. “Are you happy? If you want me to leave you alone, you have to answer me. Because if they’re messing with you, I’ll have to do something about it.”

Loon turned around to look at Golanifer.

“No, don’t look over there,” Reeve said. “You just answer me, face-to-face.”

Loon gestured at the silver and gray wall of the forest. “This,” she said, “is all my happiness.” She smiled at Reeve, and turned him around to look at the outfold. “This.”

From deep within the forest came a cracking sound, followed by a muted crash.

“Sloughing,” she said, unperturbed.

It was what he wanted to hear, he supposed. But it lay on his chest like a heavy rock. Several minutes passed as he struggled for control, gazing at the valley with its burnt umber shrubs dotting black scrub grasses. He found himself asking the thing he’d promised himself he wouldn’t: “Do you care for me, Loon? Tell me you don’t, so I can be free of you.”

When he looked back at her, he was stunned to find that tears were rolling down her face. It was the surest sign of her humanity, of the Loon he knew. She was still in there, somewhere.

She whispered: “Reeve, you go now. Yes.”

Almost the very words she had said to Spar that awful last day. Reeve wondered if he was also dead in her eyes. But he decided to take it as a blessing instead. He opened his mouth to speak, but she put her hand on his lips to stop him. Whether by accident or design, she left a few crumbs of soil on his mouth.

Standing up, she began backing away toward the outfold. Reeve sprang to his feet, trembling, thinking he would just grab her and run with her down the valley. But she stepped into the forest, and by the time he reached the spot where she had stood, all he could
see were the gray bones of the outfold and, here and there, motes of sun slanting in from the outside.

Where she had stood was a string sack, weighted down by four, large smooth stones.

His health was returning. The breathers helped, as did the decent food packed away in his backpack, and even the hike through the blackened forest and into the Rift Valley. He had turned down the offer of the airship. A long cold walk through the countryside was what his heart needed. Time enough to face Kalid and his jinn and make plans. For now, it was only solitude he wanted, and the simple challenges of setting up camp each evening and finding his way each day.

As was happening so often lately, Spar’s voice found him, and gave him confidence:
You keep on, boyo. For Lithia. She got all the strength you need. You lay yourself down every night in her lap, and rise up in the morning. By the Lady
.

And that is what he did. The simple rhythms of waking and sleeping and walking under his own power were enough for him. His thoughts strayed to Loon now and then, but he’d known she was lost to him, known it since that day in the center of the dome when she’d gone mute. When, at the edge of the outfold, she’d given him leave to go, it was only the final measure of leave-taking. It hurt, but he would bear it.

His pack was very heavy with the extra weight of the geodes. They weren’t ordinary geodes. Lining the cavity of each stone was a crystalline lattice which, the orthong assured him, they had coded with information. There were no instructions, but within the four round stones lay the folded secrets of the change. It was Divoranon’s test: Humans must figure out the genetic instructions; if they could not, then the orthong disdained to help them. By Divoranon’s standards she had fulfilled her side of the trade. Reeve had to admit
it was more than he thought the orthong would do. But he suspected that decoding and following the genetic instructions wouldn’t be the greatest challenge. Harder by far would be persuading people to undergo the changes. Without Loon by his side to show what a hybrid might be, few would wish to intermingle with things orthong.