Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra (40 page)

Treet fought the pain, pushing it down with an effort. He opened his eyes and saw Yarden bending over him, her eyes bright, coaxing him with encouragement. “You're almost through the worst,” she said in a voice frayed and ragged.

He drew another shallow, shaky breath and felt his scorched tissues wilt. The pain seared through his lungs; it felt as though they had been turned inside out and singed with acid. He coughed and moaned.

His next breath was better, and the next better still. The pain subsided to a sharp tingle. He raised himself slowly, wiping the tears from the side of his neck. Calin sat looking at him, panting lightly as if she'd run a sprint to reach him. Yarden smiled. “Not so bad,” she said hoarsely.

“Not if you're used to eating fire,” replied Treet, his throat raw as frazzled wire.

Yarden motioned to Pizzle and Crocker to remove their helmets, but the two refused, backing away cautiously. Treet did not blame them in the least; in fact, he marveled at himself for acquiescing so readily to Yarden's request. Why had he done that?

“Let them keep them
on if
they want,” rasped Treet. He drew a tentative deep breath and though it still stung fiercely, the pain was not what it had been moments before. He could bear it. “Why did you do that, Yarden?”

She looked perplexed. “I don't know. I had a feeling about it—a strong feeling that we should do it. Calin had to have help in any case. I had to get to her.”

“What do you mean we
should
do it? How could you know that?”

“I don't think I can explain it to you. It just seemed right, that's all. Besides, I couldn't bear the thought of being trapped in that thing for the rest of my life.”

“Come on—the rest of your life?”

“I'm never going back to the colony.” Yarden said this with utmost self-assurance, as if stating the most evident fact.

Before Treet could ask her about her declaration, Crocker tapped him on the shoulder. Treet glanced up into the faceplate and saw the Captain's mouth forming broad, muted words which he couldn't read. Treet shook his head. “You're going to have to spell it out! I can't hear you,” he shouted.

“He says we should put our helmets back on. It's dangerous without them,” offered Yarden.

Treet straightened and slipped his helmet on briefly. “I really don't think it's dangerous,” he said into the mike. “I think you should take yours off—both of you.”

“Funny, you don't
look
crazy,” quipped Pizzle.

“Suit yourselves. I don't care what you do. But I think Yarden is right—this way is better.”

Pizzle and Crocker swiveled to look at one another. They shook their heads, and Pizzle spoke for both of them. “No way. We saw you jerking around on the ground.”

“No pain, no gain,” said Treet, removing the headpiece once more.

He turned to the woman. “You gave us a scare, Calin. Do you feel any better now?”

The slender magician nodded slightly. “I was afraid.”

“I'll say. But what were you afraid of?”

She looked at him blankly and made no answer.

“Well, I guess it doesn't matter. We can talk about it later. Right now we need for you to get in touch with Nho and ask him about direction.”

Calin went still and her eyes lost their focus. Yarden looked at her and said, “You shouldn't make her do that.”

“She does it. I don't make her,” Treet replied. “You act as if all this is my fault somehow. Let me tell you—it's not my fault!”

Calin came to herself again. “Nho says we are going the right way.”

“That's all? Would he care to elaborate?”

“There is nothing else to say now.”

They each took a sip of water, Pizzle and Crocker looking on thirstily, then remounted the skimmers again to slide even further into the hill-rumpled waste.

That night Yarden sat
alone on the hillside just below the hoop-shaped tents. Pizzle and Crocker were sealed in their tent, and Calin, who had earlier decided to join Yarden, was asleep in hers while Treet walked the tightness out of his legs and shoulders, striding up and down the nearby hills, swinging his arms. His lungs still ached—as if he'd run a very fast ten thousand meters—but the sharp burning sensation was gone. He came upon Yarden and flopped down beside her. Neither spoke for a long time.

“It's amazing, isn't it,” he said at last. “The quiet. It's so … profound.”

The air was still and deathly silent. He had never heard such an absolute absence of sound in the outdoors: no piping birdcalls, no burring insects, no rustling leaves or ticking branches. Nothing.

This is what it's like to be deaf, thought Treet.

“Not deaf,” said Yarden. “More like immune.”

Treet thought about asking her what she meant, then thought that she already knew he was thinking about asking her and decided not to. Instead, he leaned back and gazed upward at the stars beginning to glow in the deepening twilight. Empyrion had no moon, so the stars shone especially bright in the darkening heavens. “Do you realize we're looking at constellations we have no names for?”

“Mmm,” said Yarden, “stars should have names. We could make some up.”

“It wouldn't be official.”

“Why not! Ours would be as good as anybody else's.”

“Okay, see that wobbly string of stars just above the horizon, with that bright one at the head? We'll call that one Ophidia—the snake.”

“How about that one with the brightest star directly overhead? It looks like a bird—there's the head, and those stars sweeping down on either side are the wings. A pretty bird—a nightingale, I think.”

“Make that one Luscinia, then.”

“Ophidia and Luscinia,” said Yarden softly. “I like those. You're good with words.”

“I'm a writer—or used to be.”

“Used to be? What are you now?” she asked lightly. Treet could feel her eyes on him, but kept looking at the sky.

“I don't know what I am. Right now I seem to be an explorer.”

“Yes, I see what you mean. None of us are exactly playing our usual roles.” She lay back on an elbow. “I know I never will again.”

“Fatalism?”

“No, I don't think so. More like realism. It's a feeling.”

“Like the feeling you had about taking off our helmets?” Treet turned to look at her, noting her reaction.

“Something like that. Why did you do it? Pizzle and Crocker wouldn't, I knew that.”

“I guess I'm easily influenced.”

Yarden laughed, her voice still hoarse. “You are many things, Orion Treet. Easily influenced isn't one of them. I'm serious—why did you do it? Crocker is right; it could have been dangerous.”

“Maybe I just wanted to be free of that blasted bubble.”

“Your freedom is important to you.”

“It is, now that you mention it. I guess that also explains why we're out here scooting across these God-forsaken hills.” Treet pushed himself up on one elbow to face her. “I answered your question, but you still haven't answered mine.”

“Which question was that?”

“The one I asked earlier: why you think you're not going back to the colony.”

“You never asked me that,” she said, giving his arm a push. It was the first truly spontaneous gesture Treet had ever seen her make.

“I thought about it—which is the same thing with you, isn't it?”

“I told you it doesn't work like that—I can't read minds. I just get thought impressions, that's all.”

“You're evading the question.”

She looked at him intently, eyes luminous in the dying light, and said, “Empyrion is an evil place. I won't go back there.”

Her answer surprised him. He replied, “I'll grant it could be better, but evil? It's not
that bad.”
The look she gave him told him the subject was not open for debate, so he tried a different tack. “You were pretty shook up when they brought you to Tvrdy's kraam. What happened?” When she did not answer, he added, “You don't have to tell me if you don't want.”

“It isn't that. I'm afraid you won't understand—I'm not sure I understand it all myself.”

“I know that feeling, at least.”

“Yes. Well, for me it was like this,” she said, and began relating all that she remembered of her captivity among the Chryse. She told of the plays they'd performed and of the flash orgy and finally of the Astral Service. When she described the Service, Treet noted her voice growing smaller, fainter.

“If this hurts, we don't have to talk about it. Forget I said anything,” offered Treet.

“I don't
want
to forget. I want to remember how close I came to giving in. I don't ever want to get that close again.”

“Giving in?”

“To the evil of Empyrion.” Her tone became intense, insistent. “I felt it in that Service, as I have never felt it in my life until that time—an overwhelming presence of inestimable hate, a force of pure, unremitting malevolence. Trabant, they call it—the name chills me! And this thing, this being is the essence of evil. It wanted me—
demanded
me. I resisted. If the Service had lasted any longer, I would not have been able to hold out.”

“But you did hold out.”

“Yes, and I never want to be tested like that again.”

Treet looked at her a long time, considering her words. “You saved Calin's life this morning. I still can't figure out what happened to her.”

“The same thing that happened to me.”

“You lost me there.”

“Fear.”

“She said she was scared. I thought she meant scared of what we were doing.”

“Put yourself in her situation. They have lived for untold generations under that dome of theirs. They never leave it for any reason—they view the outside world as an enemy. How would you feel if you lived your whole life believing that and were suddenly thrust out? The land is so big, so empty. It must have terrified her, and that terror worked on her mind until finally she just snapped.”

“The same thing might have happened to you in the Service.”

“Exactly.”

They fell silent after that and just lay quietly in each other's company until Yarden got up and started toward her tent. Treet watched her go, called "Good night" after her, but received no reply. He glanced heavenward and saw that Ophidia had risen higher in the night sky, then he got up and went to his tent and fell asleep pondering all Yarden had told him.

Early
the next morning the company came in sight of the river. Yarden, with Calin riding behind her, was the first to spot it. She sped up and pulled the skimmer to a halt on the crest of a hill, allowing the others to catch up.

“Do you see it?” she asked.

“See what?” asked Treet. Pizzle and Crocker pulled up and sat staring from inside their helmets, looking at the others.

“The river. See? Down there beyond those hills. You can just see a little sliver of it shining through there.” She pointed, and Treet followed her elegant finger to see a glittering spangle threading through the hills.

“Jackpot!” said Calin with a smile. She seemed wholly recovered from her ordeal of the day before—almost a completely different person. Yarden had apparently had a most beneficial effect on her.

“Yes, jackpot.” Treet turned to Pizzle and Crocker, shouted at the top of his lungs, and pointed out the river. They looked and responded by nodding vigorously and giving him the A-OK sign. He squinted his eyes and estimated that the river lay at least four kilometers away. “We can be there in five minutes. Let's go. It'll be time for a rest stop when we get there.”

They pushed off again and rode the hill swells to the river's edge. There they stopped and looked out over a broad expanse of flowing water, silver blue in the sunlight, its gentle, gurgling music a welcome relief from the skimmers' scream.

They dismounted and walked down to the water's edge. Treet squatted, stretched out his hands, and plunged them in. The water was cool and clear, the bottom fine-grained sand. He cupped his hands and raised a mouthful to his lips, sipped cautiously, tasted, and then swallowed. The water had a slight astringent quality, but tasted as fresh and clean as its sparkling clarity promised.

“I say it's okay,” said Treet over his shoulder to the others watching him. “See what you think.” He dipped his hands and drank again and again and was immediately joined by Calin and Yarden. When he had drunk his fill, Treet rose, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and beckoned to Pizzle and Crocker, who stood looking on like poor relations at a posh family picnic.

He pantomimed taking off a helmet and pointed at them. They stared doubtfully back at him, but made no move to remove the bubbles. Treet shrugged and turned back toward the water. The river stretched a good sixty meters across, flowing southward in unhurried ease, shimmering like quicksilver beneath a blue-white canopy. Although the channel appeared to deepen quite gradually, Treet estimated from its width that at midstream the water would be well beyond a skimmer's ability to navigate—even if the heavy machines had not already foundered in the soft river bottom.

Getting their transportation across would be a trick, no doubt about that. Just how it might be accomplished he could not imagine—until his gaze fell upon Calin, kneeling at the water's edge, drinking.