Shadow World (24 page)

"According to the map," Mark was saying, "we'll only have one hard night's hike in the desert to contend with. We'll have to take shelter during the day, but tomorrow night another few hours should see us into the heights. We've got sufficient supplies to take us that far, and there ought to be water in the mountains."

The journalist nodded, thinking of the supplies her work group had divided among the walking teams. Knives, fire- starters, a folding multitool, lightweight plastic rope, dual- purpose sheeting, water purification tabs--

even makeshift diapers for the babies. The
Asimov's
large and well-stocked survival kit had provided enough that each of the three teams had a fair share.

"Does anyone have any questions?"

The Simiu did not deign to answer. Contemptuously, he tossed the map back at Mark, who fumbled and nearly dropped the little instrument. The young man flushed, but said nothing.

"I have a question, Mark," Cara said. "Can I carry Misir until hinsi wakes up?"
If hinsi wakes up,
she amended the question silently. She knew that if Misir awoke, she'd have to give the baby to Mark, so he could try to feed hinsi.

Mark nodded, and Cara went to pick up the child, wrapped in one of Mark's blue pullover shirts. Reyvinik came by to wish them luck, then they were ready to leave.

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"Let's go," Mark said quietly, then turned and walked slowly away, checking the little plotter. He glanced back once to see whether they were following.

They were. Hrrakk' was last of all, but finally he rose off powerful haunches and strode forward on all fours, moving, as Simiu did, like a big dog ... or a lion. Mark turned back to the ragged line of mountains and began walking in earnest.

Cara followed, and did not look back.

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Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12

The Desert

Hrrakk' might have been the last to get moving, but Cara soon found herself bringing up the rear. Mark and Eerin set the pace, though the Elpind's tendency to bound rather than walk meant that hin often paused impatiently while Mark caught up.

The Simiu overtook the group easily, loping four-footed, but then he ranged far out to the side. He was neither leading nor following, and his aloofness proclaimed that while he might be going in the same direction, he did not necessarily view himself as a member of the group.

The Apis stayed with Cara, alternately skimming close to the ground, then lifting higher into the air and circling, as if scouting their path. Cara suspected R'Thessra was deliberately holding back to keep her company.

It was a relief to be away from the dead, a relief that Cara guiltily admitted to herself. She felt less tired, more hopeful, and she looked down at the unconscious baby in her arms and sent it a strong thought.
Live, Misir! Try!

Life's worth it!

Cara watched the scenery around her ... not that there was much to see.

Scattered rocks, with occasionally one large enough to qualify as a small boulder, studded the flat, sandy

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ground. Pale greenish gray tubular plants that fanned out at the top like the Simiu's tail were the only vegetation, and appeared drab and ugly in the failing light.

She liked the mountains, however. As the sun slipped out of sight behind them, the wavering illusion of distance that glare and heat haze had cast vanished. Appearing much closer now, the mountains stood in sharp relief against the darkening sky.

Cara's eyes searched the sky as evening progressed, and she was finally rewarded. There it was, the first of Elseemar's four moons, already up and well into its nightly journey across the sky. It had been too pale to notice before, but now it cast a weak light. She knew from Eerin that when all four moons were up, the night would be brighter than the brightest moonlight back on Earth. Cara was eager to see the multishadow patterns that gave Elseemar its name--"Shadow World."

After the first three hours, Mark called a water break. "Everybody thirsty?" he asked rhetorically, unfastening his canteen. It was one of five allotted to them from the ship's emergency supply.

"We're not counting swallows," Mark told them. "In survival class they teach that you actually need less water if when you do take some, you drink until your thirst is satisfied."

He called out an invitation to the Simiu while Cara drank, but there was no answer from Hrrakk'. The alien had paused when they did, but sat some distance away, his back to them.

"I don't think he'll stay with us long," Cara muttered. "We're going too slow for him."

"As long as the Apis is with us, I think the Simiu will be nearby," Mark said. "I think he must feel some sort of obligation toward her, the way he acts."

"Maybe. Any ideas as to what that obligation could be? I mean"--she smiled--"they're not exactly related."

He shrugged. "I'm betting that there's some story between them, but she
can't
tell us"--he glanced at R'Thessra, delicately sipping from a cup with her long, tubular tongue--"and Hrrakk'
won't,
so we'll probably never know."

"I know that honor is important to Simiu," she said. "But ..."

"Honor isn't just
important
to them, it's
everything--
their whole culture is based on it," Mark said. "The ancient Japanese

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honor-code couldn't even begin to approach the way Simiu regard it, although it's the closest parallel we have on Earth."

"We should have given him one of the canteens to carry, if he's too damned stubborn to accept water from us," Cara said, with mingled irritation and concern.

"I guess he'll take it when he gets thirsty enough," Mark said, then glanced sideways at the big alien. "I've got to quit letting his attitude get to me. I'm just not used to aliens disliking me merely because I'm human. That's something I never encountered at StarBridge ... guess I'm getting my eyes opened."

He pulled a pair of socks out of his knapsack and the hijacker's map out of his pocket. "Let's change socks, Cara. The more frequently you change, the less chance you'll get blisters, and we can't afford any. How are your feet?"

She burrowed through her own pack. "Tired, but not sore."

"How about your feet, Eerin?" he asked.

"Hin has walked farther than this at one time before."

"Not on sand, I'll bet."

"Mark is correct. But hin's feet are fine."

He glanced at R'Thessra. "How about you? Doing okay?"

The winged alien wriggled her antennae vigorously and buzzed.

He smiled at her. "Does that mean yes?" She repeated the motion and sounds, and he grinned and nodded. "I guess it does. Let's check the map."

Cara peered over his arm at the small instrument. Mark had set it for hourly input and update, so now their own position glowed on the map as a tiny red dot. It looked impossibly far from the white flicker that was the mountain nahah. But at least they were on course.

"Everybody okay? Ready to go?" Mark asked.

The journalist wished grumpily that he'd quit prefacing his questions with

"everybody." The Apis couldn't answer, the babies couldn't answer, Eerin was uncharacteristically silent, and the Simiu wasn't present to answer.

"Ready," she said with a sigh.

The little group walked steadily for hours in the vast quiet of the desert. As the night and the silence grew deeper, Mark began to feel that even his breathing was too loud.

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The four moons in their separate orbits were all up, each at a different point in the sky. Their light was far easier to bear than the eye-hurting glare of day, but it seemed unnaturally bright, and thus disturbing to a human. It brought home as nothing else could have done that he was here, on an alien world, one of only a handful of his own people. He felt very isolated.

The moons' light was so bright it washed out all but the brightest of the stars, and Mark found himself missing those points of light. At StarBridge, he'd gotten used to having the stars as constant, close-appearing friends. Their lack made him feel even lonelier.

It's the shadows,
he thought.
They're the most alien thing of all ...

The intensity of the moons' light gave them a sharp-edged clarity, and as the moons moved, objects cast multiple shadows ... double, triple, and even quadruple shadows, each cast in a slightly different direction. They shifted and flowed eerily in the colorless clarity of the night, sometimes overlapping to form pools of lightlessness deeper than dark.

As he walked, pushing himself to maintain a steady pace, feeling the brief surge of energy that eating and resting before embarking on their journey had given him trickle away, Mark found himself wondering whether Elspind believed in the supernatural.

Are there ghosts on Elseemar?
he mused groggily, half drunk with weariness. I
never saw a more appropriate place for them. And even if the
Elspind don't become specters after death, there are certainly enough offworlders who died here today to provide plenty of haunts ...

Biting his lip, he brought himself up short.
Talk about morbid, Kenner!

To distract himself, he pulled back his shirt flap and checked Terris. The baby slept soundly. No distraction there.

Mark looked ahead thoughtfully at Eerin's back, silvered by the moonlight.

As the hours had passed and Mark tired, the Elpind's light, quick step kept hin ever farther ahead of the human.

"Eerin," Mark called softly. His voice sounded strange, echoing in the silence. Eerin dropped back to his side.

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"We haven't had a chance to really talk since the hijackers pulled me and Cara out of hibernation," Mark said. "Let's use Elspindlor, okay? I need to keep practicing; it will probably be useful at the nahah."

Eerin nodded, but waited for the human to speak first.

"Uh ... tonight, you've seemed kind of ... quiet," Mark began. "Is everything okay? Are you sure that guy didn't hurt you?"

"Hin is not hurt," Eerin hesitated. "But ... Mark was correct to advise hin not to dance. Hin thought hin was only risking hin's own life. But Cara could have been hurt ... or the hinsi."

"But they weren't," Mark reassured the alien. "And I have a feeling you needed to dance the Mortenwol very badly. For yourself, not for the hijacker,"

he clarified.

Amazement colored the Elpind's tone. "Mark knew that?"

"Not at the time. I didn't stop to think about the hell you'd been through and the fact that you probably hadn't had the chance to dance it in several days, not since the Wospind boarded. But even before I went into hibernation, the Mortenwol was something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Hin thought that Mark did not enjoy discussing the death dance, or the reasons for it."

"Well ... I didn't," Mark confessed. "But I was wrong not to be more accepting.

The Mortenwol is an important part of your culture ... and I'm trying to understand it, I really am. Death just isn't something I'm handling very well these days." He took a deep breath. "The only way I got through the hijacking and the events of today was concentrating on saving those who stil lived--and not thinking about the ones who died."

"Today was difficult for all, including hin," the Elpind said gently. "Mark must believe that hin's people do not rejoice in death. But Elspind try to be ready, more so than Mark's people ... that is the largest difference between us."

"It's certainly a big one," Mark admitted.

"But it is not death that Mark is having a difficult time accepting," Eerin added quietly. "It is life. Mark cannot celebrate life when heen is running from it.

Running from everything, even StarBridge."

Mark gaped at the Elpind, speechless.
Damn! Rob Gable

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couldn't have put it any more plainly!
"I didn't think you knew that I was leaving the Academy," he said finally.

"Hin knew. But that decision is only the most visible sign of Mark's running, is it not?"

The human studied the Elpind thoughtfully. The huge eyes shone back at him in the bright moonlight, steady, full of faith. "I hadn't really thought about it like that," he said at last.

They walked together in silence for a while.

"Eerin?"

"Yes?"

"Is it my trouble accepting your beliefs that's bothering you, making you so quiet?"

"No. That is not it."

"Then what's wrong? Can you tell me?"

The Elpind hesitated, obviously distressed, then finally blurted, "Hin is sorrowful and angry that hin's own people would intentionally harm others,
kill
others. It is shameful!"

"There are twisted criminal people on every world," Mark told the Elpind.

"I've even heard legends that the person who controls Sorrow Sector, the big boss, is a Mizari, so even
they
aren't perfect--though most of them I've met seem to come damn close. But Orim's and the other Wospind's actions don't mean that off-worlders are going to judge the Elspind by them."

The Elpind gave a very human-sounding sigh of relief. "That is comforting to hear. Tell hin, Mark ..."

"Yes?"

"During the meeting after the crash, Mark told of how Orim's decision to kill two passengers ahead of the deadline brought about hin's downfall, and the crash of the ship. But what caused the Wopind's sudden anger, hin's decision? Mark did not say."

"I guess I can tell you in private," the human said, lapsing into English. "I'm afraid your WirElspind really made a mess of things, Eerin."

"Explain, please."

Mark did. Eerin shook hin's downy head sorrowfully. "Hin has no difficulty seeing how it must have been. Hin has known Alanor for years. Now hin must also feel shame for the stupidity of hin's people. The First Speaker has never been what

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hin would call ... insightful." Eerin's voice was dry.

"Well, stupidity was certainly not Orim's problem. It's a shame that hin was so radical," Mark said. "Hin was obviously extremely intelligent, organizing the Wospind the way hin did, plotting to steal the shuttle and figuring out how to lure in the
Asimov
... I suppose Orim made the Heeyoon pilot tell hin everything about how the weapons worked."