Wizard (42 page)

The little luminescent animals were unafraid of them but avoided areas of activity. While they moved around in their camp, the glowbirds would not come near, but when they settled down to sleep, the creatures flew in and perched within meters of them.

Robin had been able to approach one that first “morning,” even go so far as to reach out and touch it. They had been thankful for the light cast by the dozen or so glowbirds until a few minutes later they began to drift away. Robin caught the last one and tied it to a stake, where it fluttered all day, and the next morning another dozen had returned. She caught them all this time because they did not make any strong attempts to escape.

They were globular creatures puffed up with air. They had beady eyes with no heads to speak of, wings thin as soap bubbles, and a single two-toed foot. Try as he might, Chris could find nothing resembling a mouth, and all his efforts to feed them came to nothing. They died if kept captive more than two sleeps, so he and Robin used them only during one waking period, catching a fresh group every morning. A dead one had no more presence than a punctured balloon. If touched in the wrong place, they could give a nasty electrical shock. Chris had a theory that they contained neon—the orange light looked very much like it—but it was so wildly unlikely he kept it to himself.

He and Robin had moved Valiha one day fairly early in their stay. They all had grown tired of perching on a twenty-degree slope with a ten-meter drop below them. Chris had worried a long time about the best way to move her. To his surprise, it worked. They fashioned a stretcher and shifted her a few meters at a time until they had reached the plateau above. In the one-quarter gee the two of them could just lift the Titanide, though they could not carry her far.

It was on the plateau that they established their camp and settled in for the long wait. At the time of the move they were still far from optimistic about their chances for survival, for even with the most severe rationing they had food for no more than five or six hundred revs. But they went about making a home as though they expected to stay the six or seven months it would take Valiha to heal. They erected
the tent and spent a lot of time in it, though there was no weather and the temperature was an even twenty-eight degrees. It simply felt good to get in from the echoing cavern.

Valiha began to carve things for them. She did so much of it that Robin was kept busy hunting for the scarce, stunted trees which had the only wood worth carving. The Titanide seemed the least affected by boredom; to her, this was simply an extended rest period. Chris thought it must be what a six-month sleep would be to a human.

They were in the west end of an irregular cavern that averaged one kilometer in width and stretched an unguessable distance to the east. The floor was a hopeless jumble of fallen rocks, crags, spires, pits, and slopes. They could deduce from the dimensionless points of light the glowbirds became when festooning the ceiling that it was at least a kilometer high, possibly more. To the north and south was a bewildering variety of openings. They were tunnel mouths that led to corridors much like the one they had fled through. Many of these looked as if they had been bored through the rocks; some actually had timber shorings. Some went up, and others down. Some stayed level, but all of them branched within a hundred meters into two or three other tunnels, and if they were followed for any distance, the branch tunnels divided again. In addition, there were fissures in the rock walls of the sort found in natural caves. The environment beyond these cracks was so chaotic it seemed pointless to explore them. A promising path would dwindle to a passage so narrow even Robin could barely squeeze through, then open into a chamber the size of which she could only guess at.

At first Chris went with Robin on her explorations, but when he returned, he always found Valiha in such a state of despair that he soon stopped. After that Robin went alone, as often as she could talk Chris into agreeing.

Chris was impressed with the change in Robin. It was not a revolutionary one, but to anyone who knew her it was dramatic. She listened to him and would usually do as he said, even if it went contrary to what she wished to do. He was astonished at first; he had never expected that she would take orders from a man. On more careful reflection he decided that his being male was not the crux of the issue.
Robin had functioned reasonably well as part of a group with first Gaby and then Cirocco as the leader, but Chris suspected that if either of them had told her to do something she strongly did not wish to do, she would have left them on the spot. She would never have done anything to harm the group—unless leaving it could be called harm—but she always had the option in her own mind of striking out on her own; she was not a team player.

Nor had she magically transformed herself into a follower under Chris’s leadership. Yet there was a difference. She was more willing to listen to his arguments, to admit it when he was right. There had been no struggle. In a sense, there was little need for a leader when their group had been reduced to three, but Robin seldom initiated anything, and Valiha never did, so the role, such as it was, devolved on Chris. Robin was too self-centered to be a leader. At times it had made her insufferable to those around her. Now she had added something, which Chris thought was a little humility and a little responsibility. It was humility which allowed her to admit she might be wrong, to listen to his arguments before making up her mind. And it was responsibility to something larger than herself that made her stick with Chris and Valiha day after weary day instead of striking off on her own to bring back help, which was all she really wanted to do.

They compromised on many things. The most trouble was caused by Robin’s exploration of the cavern. They had the same argument countless times, in almost the same words, and neither of them really minded it. Boredom had become intense, they had talked out every subject they held in common, and even disagreement became a welcome diversion.

“I don’t like it when you go out there alone,” Chris said for what might have been the twentieth time. “I’ve read a little about caving, and it’s just not something you do, like swimming in deep water by yourself.”

“But you can’t come with me. Valiha needs you to stay here.”

“I’m sorry,” Valiha said.

Robin touched the Titanide’s hand, assuring her she didn’t blame her and apologizing for bringing
up the touchy subject. When Valiha had been soothed, she went on.

“Somebody has to go out. We’ll all starve if I don’t.”

What she said was true, and Chris knew it. There were animals other than glowbirds living in the cavern, and they, too, lacked both fear and aggression. They were easy to approach and easy to kill, but not so easy to find. Robin had discovered three species so far, each about the mass of a large cat, slow as turtles, all without hair or teeth. What they did with their lives was anyone’s guess, but Robin always found them lying immobile near conical gray masses of a warm, rubbery substance that might have been a sessile animal or a plant but that was firmly rooted and almost certainly alive. She called the rubbery masses teats because they bore a resemblance to the udders of a cow, and the three sorts of animals cucumbers, lettuce, and shrimp. It was not for the tastes—they all tasted more or less like beef—but after the three Terran organisms they mimicked. She had walked by the cucumbers for weeks before she accidentally kicked one and it opened big, mooning eyes at her.

“We’re doing all right,” Chris said. “I don’t see why you think you have to go out more often than you already are.” But he knew it was not true even as he said it. They had some meat, it was true, but hardly enough for Valiha’s huge appetite.

“We can always use more,” Robin argued, indicating with her eyes that they would not talk about what they both were thinking while Valiha was present. They had discussed her pregnancy and mentioned some of their fears to her, to find out she shared them and was worried she was not getting enough food, or enough of the right diet, for proper development of her child. “Those things are hard to find,” Robin went on. “I’d almost like it better if they ran from me. As it is, I can walk within a meter of one and never see it.”

The discussion went on and on, and nothing was changed when it was over. Robin went out every other day, half as much as she wanted to and a thousand times more often than Chris liked. Every moment she was gone he saw her lying broken at the bottom of a pit, unconscious, unable to shout for help, or too far away to be heard. Every moment she was in camp she squirmed, paced, shouted at them,
apologized, shouted some more. She accused him of acting like her mother, treating her like a child, and he retorted that she
was
acting like a child, and a wild, willful one at that, and each knew both allegations were true, and neither could do anything about it. Robin ached to strike out for help but could not so long as they needed her to hunt, and Chris wanted to go nearly as badly but could not say so for Valiha’s sake, so they both seethed and fought, and there seemed to be no solution to the problem until the day Robin angrily plunged her knife into one of the gray teats and was rewarded with a faceful of sticky white liquid.

* * *

“It is the milk of Gaea,” Valiha said happily and immediately drained the waterskin Robin had filled. “I had not expected to find it so deep. In my homeland it flows two to ten meters below the ground.”

“What do you mean, ‘the milk of Gaea’?” Chris asked.

“I don’t know how to explain further. It is simply that: Gaea’s milk. And it means my worries are over. My son will grow strong on this. Gaea’s milk contains everything needed for survival.”

“What about us?” Robin asked. “Can pe … can humans drink it, too?”

“Humans thrive on it. It is the universal nutrient.”

“What’s it taste like, Robin?” Chris asked.

“
I
don’t know. You didn’t think I’d just drink it, did you?”

“The humans I know who have tried it say it has a bitter flavor,” Valiha said. “I myself find some of that but believe its quality varies from one rev to the next. When Gaea is pleased, it becomes sweeter. In times of Gaea’s anger, the milk thickens and cloys but is still nourishing.”

“How would you say she’s feeling now?” Robin asked.

Valiha upended the skin again, letting the last drops fall into her mouth. She tilted her head thoughtfully.

“Worried, I would say.”

Robin laughed. “What would Gaea have to worry about?”

“Cirocco.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. If the Wizard still lives, and if we live to tell her of Gaby’s last moments and her last words, Gaea will tremble.”

Robin looked dubious, and Chris privately agreed with her. He did not see how Cirocco could ever present a threat to Gaea.

But the significance of her discovery had not been lost on Robin.

“Now I can go get help,” she said, beginning an argument that would last for three days and that Chris knew from the start he was certain to lose.

* * *

“The rope. Are you sure you have enough rope?”

“How can I know how much is enough?”

“What about matches? Did you get the matches?”

“I have them right here.” Robin patted the pocket of her coat, tied to the top of the pack they had improvised from one of Valiha’s saddlebags. “Chris, stop it. We’ve been over the supplies a dozen times.”

Chris knew she was right, knew that his last-minute fussing was simply to delay her departure. It had been four days since his final capitulation.

They had located the nearest of Gaea’s teats and laboriously moved Valiha. Though it was only 300 meters from the old camp in a straight line, that line had crossed two steep ravines. They had taken her half a kilometer north to find passable land, then a kilometer south, then back again.

“You have the waterskin?”

“Right here.” She slung it over her shoulder and reached for her pack. “I have everything, Chris.”

He helped her get it settled on her back. She looked so small when it was in place. She was weighted down with gear and reminded him with an irresistible protective tug of a toddler dressed to go out and play in the snow. He loved her at that moment and wanted to take care of her. That was exactly what he could not do, what she did not want him to do, so he turned away before she could see the look on his face. He did not want to get the argument started again.

But he could not keep his mouth shut.

“You’ll remember to mark the trail.”

Wordlessly she held up the small pick, then slipped it back into a belt loop. It was a wonderful belt, fashioned from cured cucumber hide by Valiha’s skilled hands. The plan was that when Valiha got well enough to move with crutches, she and Chris would follow the trail Robin had blazed. Chris did not like to think about it, for if Robin had not made it out and returned with help long before that, it would be because calamity had befallen her.

“If you stop finding the teats, you can go three sleeps beyond the point when your waterskin is empty, then turn back if you don’t find another.”

“Four. Four sleeps.”

“Three.”

“We agreed on four.” She looked at him and sighed. “All right. Three, if it’ll make you happy.” They stood looking at each other for a moment; then Robin went to him and put one arm around his waist.

“Take care of yourself,” she said.

“I was about to say the same thing.” They laughed nervously; then Chris embraced her. There was an awkward moment when he did not know if she wished to be kissed; then he decided he didn’t care and kissed her anyway. She hugged him, then backed away with her eyes averted. Then she did look at him, smiled, and started moving away.

“’Bye, Valiha,” she said.

“Good-bye, little one,” Valiha called back. “I’d say, ‘May Gaea be with you,’ but I think you prefer to go alone.”

“That’s exactly right.” Robin laughed. “Let her stay in the hub and worry about the Wizard. I’ll see you people in about a kilorev.”

Chris watched her out of sight. He thought he saw her stop and wave but could not be sure of it. Soon there was nothing but the bobbing light of the three glowbirds she carried in a cage woven of reeds, and then even that was gone.