Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra (52 page)

Yarden jumped to her feet; her dark eyes narrowed in quick anger. “I defy you to give up on us!” she shouted. Treet swiveled around to see her face livid with rage, fists clenched and shaking. “It is a sacrilege!”

Crocker looked properly chastised, but Pizzle glared back defiantly. “Bitch!” he spat.

Yarden's slap sounded like the retort of a gun. The white imprint of her hand on Pizzle's cheek was already turning deep red before Pizzle knew what happened. A rich interplay of emotions—shock, bewilderment, outrage, innocence, guilt—pinwheeled over his homely features. He settled on an expression of unalloyed astonishment. “You hit me,” he observed softly.

Yarden's eyes flared, but she answered coolly, “I'm not sorry. You deserved it. Get on your feet, and let's get moving.”

Calin rose and came to stand beside her, saying nothing, but showing quiet courage in the gesture. Treet, still on his feet, took a half-step closer. The three of them waited, looking down at the two men.

“Looks like we're bound for a little more sightseeing, Pizzy old boy,” said Crocker. He got up slowly, patting dust from his clothes.

Pizzle climbed to his feet, now contrite and apologetic. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Why's everybody always taking these things so seriously?”

Yarden's lips remained pressed firmly into a straight line. But the hard light in her eyes softened, and satisfaction radiated from them. She spun on her heel and stalked down the face of the dune, starting off once more across the desert.

Yarden's steely determination carried
them three more days. On the fourth no one got up. They lay in the tents, too weak to move, too demoralized to care, merely waiting for the end, hoping it would not be too painful.

Treet drifted in and out of consciousness. The last two days had been cruel torture. Simple thirst had ceased, only to be replaced by a most compelling agony: his tongue swelling in his mouth, every tissue giving up its stored water, internal organs shutting down for lack of moisture. He and the others had nevertheless stumbled on doggedly, dimly aware of where they were and what they were doing.

Nothing mattered. Beyond care, beyond regret, beyond every other human response, now only the slow, inexorable approach of death held any interest for him. To be alive and know you were dying and know too there was nothing you could do about it, thought Treet in one of his lucid moments, was surely the worst trick of a whole universe full of lousy tricks.

By the fevered whispers and the soft sighing moans emanating from those around him, Treet knew that he was still in the land of the living. But as the day progressed, the hours dragging by in leaden succession, each one too long and too laden with the thick, foul presence of death, the moans and whispers gradually ceased.

The
bright orange light inside the room was fading when Treet roused himself from a trancelike stupor in which he imaged the deep pulsing thunder of airship engines as the great spheres passed, one after another, oblivious overhead. He rolled weakly, painfully onto his side and listened. He heard a droning buzz and could not place the sound. He listened for a moment, and the sound resolved itself into voices—Yarden was talking to someone in the hallway outside. They were talking about him.

“He is dying,” she said. “We're all dying, don't you see. It's okay though—really it is.” She was obviously trying to convince herself as well as her companion that death was an acceptable outcome of their ordeal. “Actually, I could have predicted it from the beginning. Failure is nothing to be ashamed of. It happens. Anyway, we all have to die sometime.”

There was more that Treet could not get. Such stupid talk, thought Treet. Odd coming from Yarden. She was the one who had used every ounce of her own stubborn will to urge them all on when nothing else would have kept them going. Now here she was telling whoever she was talking to, most matter-of-factly, that it was perfectly proper to lie down and die. That wasn't like Yarden at all.

Tears came to Treet's eyes, hardly more than a mist wetting his hot, dry eyes. I've lost her, he thought. I should have told her I loved her. Not that it would have made a difference—but no, it always made a difference. I should have told her. Now she would die without knowing … but it didn't matter. He would die without saying it, so they were even.

“You know what burns me,” Yarden was saying to her listener. Her voice came from just outside the curtained door. “I could have sworn that Orion Treet and I were friends—more than friends, if you know what I mean. I mean, I did everything I could to let him know how I felt. A girl can only do so much though. It was up to him to meet me halfway, but he never did.”

“I can't understand it,” the stranger's voice replied. “It was obvious to everyone else how you felt about him. But look at it this way—you're probably better off the way you are.”

“Dead?” Yarden asked in mild surprise.

“No, I mean better off without him. He wasn't much after all. You could have done much better. You were young, you had lots of other opportunities.”

“Had,” huffed Yarden softly.

“Yes, had. Well, like you say, it can't be helped. You certainly did all you could. No one could have done more, I must say.”

Treet groaned. Why were they talking like that? It was life and death they were talking about, not the price of eggs in Egypt. This was
his
life,
his
death—he wanted it treated with a little respect.

“Stop it…” he murmured.

But the voices went on talking in that odd, insane way. He could no longer distinguish the words, but he heard their buzz and at one point recognized Calin's voice among them—a man's voice, too, but not Crocker's or Pizzle's—his father's voice. They were all talking about him, about his miserable life and even more miserable death—he knew it and resented it. “Stop!” he said again, his voice rasping in a dry throat, the mere rush of wind over desert sand. “Stop, damn it!”

Treet pushed himself up on his elbows and inched toward the tent flap. His muscles, stiff and unyielding, trembled and resisted the feeble effort, which was, he knew, his final mortal act. They can't talk about me like that, he thought. I'm dying. It isn't right…

He flopped forward and reached the door, pushed his head through the curtain. Though it nearly exhausted his ebbing strength, he stretched his arms forth and hauled himself halfway through the opening, where he stopped. The air was cool on his skin, the light dim. Either it was getting dark or his eyesight was going, probably the latter. He didn't care. The voices stopped as he emerged from his room, he noted with grim satisfaction.

Good, he thought, I've given them something to think about. They didn't know I could hear them; now they'll think twice before writing anyone off quite so casually. But there was something else he wanted to do—one final thing. It was why he'd crawled out into the hallway. What was it? His head was no longer clear; the thoughts wouldn't come.

Fog-wrapped images played before him. He saw once again the face of his father, looking at him in frank disgust over a priceless M'yung Dynasty perfume jar smashed into smithereens. He was seven years old and had not meant to break the ancient thing; it slipped while he was looking at it. “You'll never learn, will you?” said his father. “You're hopeless.”

It would have been better if his father had hit him, walloped him a good one for his clumsiness. That he could have accepted. But the once-and-for-all pronouncement was too severe and unremitting. There was no appeal.

“I'm sorry,” breathed Treet. “S-sorry …”

The drone of the voices returned again, more insistent. He'd given them something to think about. Treet smiled, feeling his lips crack as the skin stretched. He tasted blood on his tongue. The taste brought him around somewhat—at least to the point of remembering why he had crawled from his deathbed. He had a message.

“Yar-den … I… love you.”

Again the voices buzzed over his head. Dark spots swam in the air above him. Flies, he thought. Not voices … flies. They were only flies all along.

Pizzle
heard the sound of his heart beating in his brain. It thumped with a droning monotony on and on and on. Beating, beating. Growing louder and ever louder. The sound reminded him of the Fieri airship's engines beating in his dreams—the airship that had passed over them, thus condemning them to death. The sound made him angry. His anger propelled him up through unconsciousness, fighting through layers of heaviness like a swimmer ascending from cold, obscure depths.

With an effort he pushed himself up on his elbows; Crocker lay beside him. Treet lay half in, half out of the tent. Both were still, barely breathing, the light inside the tent making their faces livid and grotesque.

He licked his lips with a thick, dry tongue. The sound of the thrumming engines persisted. Now it came from outside. The sound became a hateful thing—a mocking, ugly thing. He would silence it.

With a groan he lurched over Treet's body and out into bright sunlight, where he lay on his back with his arm flung over his face. But the sound, the sound of the airship engines, grew louder. He roused himself to look up.

The hot white sun dazzled his eyes. When his eyes could take the light, he saw an empty, uncaring sky, the blazing disk of the sun the only feature. As he watched, the sun went into eclipse. How strange, he thought, to witness a solar eclipse. I'm dying and I see an eclipse.

Since when do eclipses make noise? he wondered. Wait … wait … this is not right … Muddled thoughts surged around in his head. What is it? What is it about this that is not right?

Pizzle was on his feet now, swaying, peering through his shielding hands at the sun. An airship! It had to be. He had one more chance. One more chance to show the others, one more chance to survive.

He staggered to the tent and thrust his arm in, dragged out the sling, and opened it. Out tumbled the smoke canister he'd made. He picked it up and knelt over it. His eyesight wavered, but he forced himself to concentrate on jamming the wires down inside the container. He held the fragment of solar cell toward the sun and felt the wires grow warm in his hand.

Last time it had failed and he had let everyone down. It would not fail this time; he would not be the butt again.

“Go-o-o,” he cooed, his voice a breeze through dry grass. “Ple-ease, go-o-o.”

A fizzing sound came from the canister. “Go-o-o!” He willed the canister to ignite.

Smoke started pouring from the top of the cylinder. But it wasn't enough. The hole in the top was too small and only a thin, wispy trail of gray smoke emerged.

“No!” he cried, jerking the wires out. Pizzle grabbed the top of the canister, but the cone-shaped top was hot and the metal seared his hands. He yelped and dropped it in the sand.

He scooped it up again and scratched at the top, heedless of the hot metal or the pain. His fingernails tore, but the lid refused to budge. “Arghh!” he roared, scrabbling with his bloody fingers on the burning canister.

His hands were blistered now. The airship was closer, almost directly above him. He held the smoke bomb in the crook of one arm and braced it there, screaming in pain. “Ahh-hh!” He placed all four fingers on the ragged edge of the lid, gritted his teeth, and pulled. “Off! O-off-ff!” he cried in agony.

The stubborn lid finally loosened and spun off. Oxygen flooded in to touch the solid fuel inside, and the canister erupted like a small, mobile volcano.

F-f-f-whoosh!

Smoke and fire spurted out in a huge fireball that rolled up into the sky. Pizzle fell back, reeling, dazed, his face burned and blackened, his hair smoking.

The orange-and-black fireball rolled heavenward—up and up—higher and higher, passing right in front of the airship.

Pizzle rubbed the ashes of his eyelashes out of his eyes and looked up. The airship's shadow passed over him, and he saw it glide by. He fell back, exhausted by his futile last attempt.

It was then that he noticed the absence of sound.

He had gone deaf?

He shouted and heard his voice croak. No—not deaf! The engines had stopped! He squirmed and rolled over on his stomach, raising his head weakly. The airship, totally silent now, was heeling majestically around. It was coming back!

Pizzle lay facedown in the sand and cried.

“What do you think
that is?” asked one of the Fieri pilots idly. He leaned over his instruments, gazing down at the immense white sheet of desert beneath them.

“Where?” his copilot responded.

“There—just off beamline to the south. I thought I saw something—a glint of color. It's gone now.”

“You'd better tell Bohm.”

“I don't know. It was probably nothing. You look too long and you start seeing things down there.”

“I know what you mean. Still,” the young man peered down at the dunescape as it rippled beneath the airship, “let's take it down a bit closer and see. Bohm's instructions are explicit.”

“Do you really think they saw something?”

“Oh, they saw something. But they should have turned back to check it out.”

“Would you? Look at it down there. As many times as I've flown this route I've never seen anyth—” He stopped in midsentence to watch a bright red-orange and black ball of flame billow up right in front of the craft. “Now that was something! I'm turning back. Get Bohm—I think we've found what he's looking for.”