Deathworld (26 page)

Time was slipping away. He would have liked to bury Ihjel and the
men from the car, but the night hours were too valuable to be
wasted. The best he could do was put the three corpses in the car,
for protection from the Disan animals. He locked the door and threw
the key as far as he could into the blackness. Lea had slipped into
a restless sleep and he carefully shook her awake.

"Come," Brion said. "We have a little walking to do."

With the cool air and firmly packed sand under foot, walking should
have been easy. Lea spoiled that. The concussion seemed to have
temporarily cut off the reasoning part of her brain, leaving a
direct connection to her vocal cords. As she stumbled along, only
half conscious, she mumbled all of her darkest fears that were
better left unvoiced. Occasionally there was relevancy in her
complaints. They would lose their way, never find the city, die of
thirst, freezing, heat or hunger. Interspersed and entwined with
these were fears from her past that still floated, submerged in the
timeless ocean of her subconscious. Some Brion could understand,
though he tried not to listen. Fears of losing credits, not getting
the highest grade, falling behind, a woman alone in a world of men,
leaving school, being lost, trampled among the nameless hordes that
struggled for survival in the crowded city-states of Earth.

There were other things she was afraid of that made no sense to a
man of Anvhar. Who were the alkians that seemed to trouble her? Or
what was canceri? Daydle and haydle? Who was Manstan, whose name
kept coming up, over and over, each time accompanied by a little
moan?

Brion stopped and picked her up in both arms. With a sigh she
settled against the hard width of his chest and was instantly
asleep. Even with the additional weight he made better time now, and
he stretched to his fastest, kilometre-consuming stride to make good
use of these best hours.

Somewhere on a stretch of gravel and shelving rock he lost the track
of the sand car. He wasted no time looking for it. By carefully
watching the glistening stars rise and set he had made a good
estimate of the geographic north. Dis didn't seem to have a pole
star; however, a boxlike constellation turned slowly around the
invisible point of the pole. Keeping this positioned in line with
his right shoulder guided him on the westerly course he needed.

When his arms began to grow tired he lowered Lea gently to the
ground; she didn't wake. Stretching for an instant, before taking up
his burden again, Brion was struck by the terrible loneliness of the
desert. His breath made a vanishing mist against the stars; all else
was darkness and silence. How distant he was from his home, his
people, his planet! Even the constellations of the night sky were
different. He was used to solitude, but this was a loneliness that
touched some deep-buried instinct. A shiver that wasn't from the
desert cold touched lightly along his spine, prickling at the hairs
on his neck.

It was time to go on. He shrugged the disquieting sensations off and
carefully tied Lea into the jacket he had been wearing. Slung like a
pack on his back, it made the walking easier. The gravel gave way to
sliding dunes of sand that seemed to continue to infinity. It was a
painful, slipping climb to the top of each one, then an equally
difficult descent to the black-pooled hollow at the foot of the
next.

With the first lightening of the sky in the east he stopped, breath
rasping in his chest, to mark his direction before the stars faded.
One line scratched in the sand pointed due north, a second pointed
out the course they should follow. When they were aligned to his
satisfaction he washed his mouth out with a single swallow of water
and sat on the sand next to the still form of the girl.

Gold fingers of fire searched across the sky, wiping out the stars.
It was magnificent; Brion forgot his fatigue in appreciation. There
should be some way of preserving it. A quatrain would be best. Short
enough to be remembered, yet requiring attention and skill to
compact everything into it. He had scored high with his quatrains in
the Twenties. This would be a special one. Taind, his poetry mentor,
would have to get a copy.

"What are you mumbling about?" Lea asked, looking up at the craggy
blackness of his profile against the reddening sky.

"Poem," he said. "Shhh. Just a minute."

It was too much for Lea, coming after the tension and dangers of the
night. She began to laugh, laughing even harder when he scowled at
her. Only when she heard the tinge of growing hysteria did she make
an attempt to break off the laughter. The sun cleared the horizon,
washing a sudden warmth over them. Lea gasped.

"Your throat's been cut! You're bleeding to death!"

"Not really," he said, touching his fingertips lightly against the
blood-clotted wound that circled his neck. "Just superficial."

Depression sat on him as he suddenly remembered the battle and death
of the previous night. Lea didn't notice his face; she was busy
digging in the pack he had thrown down. He had to use his fingers to
massage and force away the grimace of pain that twisted his mouth.
Memory was more painful than the wound. How easily he had killed!
Three men. How close to the surface of the civilized man the animal
dwelled! In countless matches he had used those holds, always
drawing back from the exertion of the full killing power. They were
part of a game, part of the Twenties. Yet when his friend had been
killed he had become a killer himself. He believed in nonviolence
and the sanctity of life—until the first test, when he had killed
without hesitation. More ironic was the fact he really felt no
guilt, even now. Shock at the change, yes. But no more than that.

"Lift your chin," Lea said, brandishing the antiseptic applicator
she had found in the medicine kit. He lifted his chin obligingly and
the liquid drew a cool, burning line across his neck. Antibio pills
would do a lot more good, since the wound was completely clotted by
now, but he didn't speak his thoughts aloud. For the moment Lea had
forgotten herself in taking care of him. He put some of the
antiseptic on her scalp bruise and she squeaked, pulling back.
They both swallowed the pills.

"That sun is hot already," Lea said, peeling off her heavy
clothing. "Let's find a nice cool cave or an air-cooled saloon
to crawl into for the day."

"I don't think there are any here. Just sand. We have to walk—"

"I know we have to walk," she interrupted. "There's no need for a
lecture about it. You're as seriously cubical as the Bank of Terra.
Relax. Count ten and start again." Lea was making empty talk while
she listened to the memory of hysteria tittering at the fringes of
her brain.

"No time for that. We have to keep going." Brion climbed slowly to
his feet after stowing everything in the pack. When he sighted along
his marker at the western horizon he saw nothing to mark their
course, only the marching dunes. He helped Lea to her feet and began
walking slowly towards them.

"Just hold on a second," Lea called after him. "Where do you think
you're going?"

"In that direction," he said, pointing. "I hoped there would be
some landmarks, but there aren't. We'll have to keep on by dead
reckoning. The sun will keep us pretty well on course. If we aren't
there by night the stars will be a better guide."

"All this on an empty stomach? How about breakfast? I'm hungry—and
thirsty."

"No food." He shook the canteen that gurgled emptily. It had been
only partly filled when he found it. "The water's low and we'll need
it later."

"I need it now," she said shortly. "My mouth tastes like an
unemptied ashtray and I'm dry as paper."

"Just a single swallow," he said after the briefest hesitation.
"This is all we have."

Lea sipped at it with her eyes closed in appreciation. Then he
sealed the top and returned it to the pack without taking any
himself. They were sweating as they started up the first dune.

The desert was barren of life; they were the only things moving
under that merciless sun. Their shadows pointed the way ahead of
them, and as the shadows shortened the heat rose. It had an
intensity Lea had never experienced before, a physical weight that
pushed at her with a searing hand. Her clothing was sodden with
perspiration, and it trickled burning into her eyes. The light and
heat made it hard to see, and she leaned on the immovable strength
of Brion's arm. He walked on steadily, apparently ignoring the heat
and discomfort.

"I wonder if those things are edible—or store water?" Brion's voice
was a harsh rasp. Lea blinked and squinted at the leathery shape on
the summit of the dune. Plant or animal, it was hard to tell. It was
the size of a man's head, wrinkled and grey as dried-out leather,
knobbed with thick spikes. Brion pushed it up with his toe and they
had a brief glimpse of a white roundness, like a shiny taproot,
going down into the dune. Then the thing contracted, pulling itself
lower into the sand. At the same instant something thin and sharp
lashed out through a fold in the skin, striking at Brion's boot and
withdrawing. There was a scratch on the hard plastic, beaded with
drops of green liquid.

"Probably poison," he said, digging his toe into the sand. "This
thing is too mean to fool with—without a good reason. Let's keep
going."

It was before noon when Lea fell down. She really wanted to go on,
but her body wouldn't obey. The thin soles of her shoes were no
protection against the burning sand and her feet were lumps of raw
pain. Heat hammered down, poured up from the sand and swirled her in
an oven of pain. The air she gasped in was molten metal that dried
and cracked her mouth. Each pulse of her heart throbbed blood to the
wound in her scalp until it seemed her skull would burst with the
agony. She had stripped down to the short tunic—in spite of Brion's
insistence that she keep her body protected from the sun—and that
clung to her, soaked with sweat. She tore at it in a desperate
effort to breathe. There was no escape from the unending heat.

Though the baked sand burned torture into her knees and hands,
she couldn't rise. It took all her strength not to fall further.
Her eyes closed and everything swirled in immense circles.

Brion, blinking through slitted eyes, saw her go down. He lifted
her, and carried her again as he had the night before. The hot touch
of her body shocked his bare arms. Her skin was flushed pink. The
tunic was torn open and one pointed breast rose and fell unevenly
with the irregularity of her breathing. Wiping his palm free of
sweat and sand, he touched her skin and felt the ominous hot
dryness.

Heat-shock, all the symptoms. Dry, flushed skin, the ragged
breathing. Her temperature rising quickly as her body stopped
fighting the heat and succumbed.

There was nothing he could do here to protect her from the heat. He
measured a tiny portion of the remaining water into her mouth and
she swallowed convulsively. Her thin clothing was little protection
from the sun. He could only take her in his arms and keep on towards
the horizon. An outcropping of rock threw a tiny patch of shade and
he walked towards it.

The ground here, shielded from the direct rays of the sun, felt
almost cool by contrast. Lea opened her eyes when he put her down,
peering up at him through a haze of pain. She wanted to apologize to
him for her weakness, but no words came from the dried membrane of
her throat. His body above her seemed to swim back and forth in the
heat waves, swaying like a tree in a high wind.

Shock drove her eyes open, cleared her mind for an instant. He
really was swaying. Suddenly she realized how much she had come to
depend on the unending solidity of his strength—and now it was
failing. All over his body the corded muscles contracted in ridges,
striving to keep him erect. She saw his mouth pulled open by the
taut cords of his neck, and the gaping, silent scream was more
terrible than any sound. Then she herself screamed as his eyes
rolled back, leaving only the empty white of the eyeballs staring
terribly at her. He went over, back, down, like a felled tree,
thudding heavily on the sand. Unconscious or dead, she couldn't
tell. She pulled limply at his leg, but couldn't drag his immense
weight into the shade.

Brion lay on his back in the sun, sweating. Lea saw this and knew
that he was still alive. Yet what was happening? She groped for
memory in the red haze of her mind, but could remember nothing from
her medical studies that would explain this. On every square inch of
his body the sweat glands seethed with sudden activity. From every
pore oozed great globules of oily liquid, far thicker than normal
perspiration. Brion's arms rippled with motion and Lea gaped,
horrified as the hairs there writhed and stirred as though endowed
with separate life. His chest rose and fell rapidly, deep, gasping
breaths racking his body. Lea could only stare through the dim
redness of unreality and wonder if she was going mad before she
died.

A coughing fit broke the rhythm of his rasping breath, and when it
was over his breathing was easier. The perspiration still covered
his body, the individual beads touching and forming tiny streams
that trickled down his body and vanished in the sand. He stirred and
rolled onto his side, facing her. His eyes were open and normal now
as he smiled.

"Didn't mean to frighten you. It caught me suddenly coming at the
wrong season and everything. It was a bit of a jar to my system.
I'll get you some water now—there's still a bit left."

"What happened? When you looked like that, when you fell...."

"Take two swallows, no more," he said, holding the open canteen to
her mouth. "Just summer change, that's all. It happens to us every
year on Anvhar—only not that violently, of course. In the winter
our bodies store a layer of fat under the skin for insulation, and
sweating almost ceases completely. There are a lot of internal
changes too. When the weather warms up the process is reversed. The
fat is metabolized and the sweat glands enlarge and begin working
overtime as the body prepares for two months of hard work, heat and
little sleep. I guess the heat here triggered off the summer change
early."