Skeen's Search (11 page)

“We better be.” Rifle ready, Skeen went trotting off, heading for the lake.

They reached the lake in a gust of wind and rain; the sun was up and the darkness was diluted to a mottled gray; the water was gray, the jewel colored reeds were dark grays and light, the water was a choppy hard gray, small wrinkled chop that struggled with wind and gravity; the rain was gray, hard hammering drops that catapulted from the clouds with force enough to bruise Timka through her fur. Rostico Burn's body shielded her from some of it; for one fleeting moment she wondered what the beating was going to do to his already battered flesh, but the smell of blood, feces and mud that clung to him was powerful enough in spite of the rain to wipe away whatever charity she had for him; what she wanted most of all was to get him off her so she could shift and leave the stench behind.

She slid him off onto the hard dirt of the lakeshore, sighed with relief as she straightened.

Skeen knelt beside him, touched his face, tucked fingers under his chin to check his pulse. “Tough kid. Got fever but going strong.” She scowled at the icy gray water. “Though what swimming the lake's going to do to him, I don't know. Or me. Djabo, that stuff is cold.”

Timka glanced at the gray anonymity of the trees a few meters off, then at clouds that looked close enough to touch. “Not much choice,” she said. “The sooner we get him to the miniskip the sooner you can do some temporary repairs on him.” She waded into the water, shifted to her dolphin form and waited, jolted about on the rough surface, for Skeen to pull Rostico Burn into the water so she could take them across the lake.

Cross the lake. Skeen half-drowned and chilled to the point she is close to losing control of her fingers, her legs. Rostico Burn's pulse turning thready and uncertain, his body shuddering with waves of chill. Skeen swarms up the knotted rope, tosses the ground sheet down to Timka. Timka wraps it around Burn, ties the end of the rope about him, then scrambles up the rope to join Skeen and help her haul the man up the face of the scarp. Load Burn on Timka's back (still wrapped in the ground sheet which gives Timka a lot of trouble since it makes him slippery and less flexible), run recklessly downslope without caring what noise they make or what predators they stir up. Shoot him full of antibiotics, turn on a small heat radiator, fold him up in the cargo-pod, slam it shut over him and take off, vanishing into the clouds to begin the dangerous flight back, tossed about by the powerful but erratic winds, dipping into swift dangerous slides, only Skeen's quick reflexes and the longago craftsmen who built the miniskip for her keeping them off the rocks, eight hours of storm and slide, roller coaster ride, gravity exaggerating every drop and drift. Eight hours, eyes burning, head aching, body almost forgotten so intense her concentration on the sensor readings. Tempting to put down for a while, a rest, she can't maintain her alertness that long, so long since she's slept and the sleep so disturbed, yet if she stops to rest, Rostico Burn will surely die, he needs food and relief from the pull of the gravity, he needs his wounds cleaned out and bandaged, he needs plasma and more than the rough guess and go for it medicine she'd pumped into him so he wouldn't die on them right there. Eight hours, she felt her age as she hadn't felt it in years, so weary, so sore, so feeble, feeble as Mamarana, are the ananile shots being eroded? should she get them redone? they were supposed to last another ten years, all this effort, this drag of a planet, were those nullifying the shots? Don't get off on that, Skeen, don't let your mind wander. Pull up and away from the cliff that almost sucks them in, almost feel the surface of the miniskip scraping on the granite. Keep your mind on what you're doing, Skeen, you can worry about this nonsense later. If it is nonsense. Eight hours, interminable hours, then, finally, the crater and the round lake below them. Glide down beside the mound that was the Lander and hope, pray, will the camouflage to be sufficient, hope, pray that the Kliu have not located them and aren't waiting there, spider for the draggle flies they were.

They landed at the lake in a gray afternoon hush, high clouds, no rain, and the wind had dropped to a whisper.

Rostico Burn was babbling with delirium, fighting feebly against the constriction of the ground sheet and the four intrusive impertinent hands that struggled to pry him out of the cargo-pod. He shrieked and drooled and clawed at them with fever-driven strength, but they finally peeled him out and got him on Timka's back. With Skeen trotting beside her, the stun rifle ready, Timka hauled him to the shelter.

The tall spikes of the guard ring were kicked over, more than half of them with the caps knocked off and carried away, the hard packed earth was clawed into tatters, but the shelter stood where they'd left it, somewhat frayed and dusty but intact. The small clearing was empty. Skeen unsealed the entrance, Timka dumped her burden on the floor of the common room and shifted to Pallah to rid herself of the man's stink. Burn gabbled and clawed at the floor, managed to get onto hands and knees and started crawling toward the entrance. “Idiot,” Timka said, “doesn't he realize he's been rescued?” Face twisted with distaste, she put her foot on his flank and pushed him over.

“Obviously not.” Skeen was bending over the sensor board, waking up the facilities of the shelter. “We're going to need plenty of hot water and the medkit.” She sneezed. “Djabo's drippy nose, not just for him.” She shivered. “A bit more and I'm coming down with pneumonia. Ti, you think you could set up the water comber? We all need baths. Here.” She gave the small combox to Timka. “You mind? Go talk to the Lander, she'll get things ready for you, tell you what to do if you run into trouble. I want to get some hot soup ready. And there's enough water for me to clean the boy up some so your tender nostrils won't be offended.” She gave Timka a weary smile to take the sting out of her words.

“Lifefire, yes.” Timka closed her fingers about the combox, concentrated and grew a covering of short thick fur. “I'll bring the medkit.” A last glance at the feebly scrabbling form, then she left.

Skeen touched the back of her hand to her own forehead, grimaced as she felt the warmth there, acknowledged the boiled onion feel to her eyes and the prickle at the back of her nose. No help for it, she was in for a bout of coughing and sneezing and general misery. Ananile shots to retard aging, regrowing limbs and organs, meddling with genes, but still no cure for the common cold. She yawned, stretched, slouched across the room to the kitchen nook, sidestepping as Burn reached for her ankles. She dialed hot broth and a tubful of water. Sipping at the broth she ambled back to Burn, wrinkled her nose at the stench rising from him. The bruises were coming up nicely, plum purple with tinges of red and ocher. The rain had washed some of the mud and blood away but streaks and stains of both wound about his body in a lazy calligraphy of violence. He was quieter now, weaker. She emptied the mug of broth, wiped her mouth and knelt beside him; setting the mug on the floor, she twisted her fingers in black hair that felt distractingly like her own when it was long unwashed and turned his head so she could see his face.

She stopped breathing, closed her eyes but couldn't erase the image. This was her uncle as she remembered him, maybe a little younger, a little leaner. Opening her fingers, she let his head thud down, she couldn't bear to touch him a moment longer. They kept telling me he looked like me, I couldn't see it, not in the fots. Ay, Djabo Djabo, Mala Fortuna, I can't.… She swallowed, her throat pricking with the developing cold, her eyes prickling with tears she refused to shed. He muttered, his hand came round and slapped down on her knee. She struck it away and started to get to her feet, changed her mind and settled back. Shivering convulsively, she forced herself to look at him. Slack mouth moving, half open eyes glistening wetly, swollen nose. Tongue clamped between her teeth, she lifted his head again and examined his face more carefully. He wasn't as much like her uncle as she thought, not really. Not when she took his features apart. Her stomach stopped knotting and she could breathe again instead of gasping. She set his head down, more gently this time, got to her feet. Poor young Rostico Burn, kicked about and left to welter in his gore. Time and more than time to clean him up a bit. She took him by the wrists and dragged him into the bathroom. By the time Timka got back with the medkit, she had him cleaned up and stretched out on a pair of towels. He was unconscious, breathing hoarsely, his pulse thready and uncertain.

Timka passed her the black box and stood behind her, staring down at Burn. “Now that you've got him washed up, he looks worse.”

“Hmm. I've about used all the water in the reservoir.”

“If that's a hint …”

Skeen moved her shoulders impatiently, opening the kit.

Timka scratched at her thigh. “Lander says the sky has been buzzing since morning, but there's no sign she's been noticed. Those were supposed to be fugitives, weren't they? It looks to me like they are in oddly close touch with the Kliu if that's so.”

“Mmm.” Skeen was working down the man's back, spraying every cut, scrape and bruise with a whitish mist from a small squat can. She paused a moment to rub the back of her hand across her nose, waited out a sneeze, then she was at work again on the lacerated flesh. She heard Timka go on talking then her voice fading; when she finished with Burn's backside, she rolled him over and straightened up and sat on her heels, shutting her burning eyes, letting herself feel the aches and rheums that filled her body. After a moment she looked around, but Timka was gone. She shrugged and went back to work tending the boy's hurts. Not really a boy, she thought, he'd reject the term with vociferous disgust, but he couldn't be more than a third of her age. And I'm feeling every year, this fuckin' cold, this Djabo-cursed world that never lets up. I swear, once I get off here, I swear by my soul or what's left of it, I'll never set foot on a heavy world, it's g or less for me, for sure. She set the kitprobe to dealing with the pneumonia flooding his lungs and the rest of the ailments inflicting his inside and went to check the water supply. Timka had managed, with or without the Lander's help. The reservoir was filling quickly. She drained off a tubful into the heating chamber and started the pulser.

With the prospect of a hot bath sparking a new surge of energy, she finished bandaging the boy, muscled him into one of the bunks and set the heaters going. The kitprobe was buzzing softly, steadily, not throwing one of its hiccupping fits; that meant most of the infection and the illness was cleaned out of his system and what he needed now was what he'd get, uninterrupted sleep. Something she wouldn't mind for herself after the bath. For sure, after the bath. She didn't want to leave before dark, not after what Timka said about the sky sweep. Even with Lipitero's shields there was always the possibility one of those flying eyes would pop up close enough to get a good look at them; the Lander wasn't invisible, far from it. She went back into the bathroom, stripping as she walked, smiling with pleasure as the heat from the radiators and the steam rising from the tub began to work on her stuffed head and sore body.

Timka lounged in a pneumatic chair, stun rifle across her knees; she was back in Pallah form, wearing tunic and trousers, small slim feet buckled into heavy sandals. She scratched idly at her wrist and watched Rostico Burn snore. He was lying on the floor, a pair of blankets under him, another drawn over him; the grayness was gone from his face; apart from the snorting snores, his breathing was slow and steady. The bruises on his face and arms were developing lurid colors, but the worst of the swelling was gone after six hours of deep healing sleep and the efforts of Skeen's medkit.

Skeen came yawning in, mug in one hand, the other rubbing at her nose; her hair stood in soft crumpled peaks about her thin face, her eyes were shiny with the cold that was fruiting in her, her eyelids heavy, the tip of her nose red. She stood a moment looking down at him, sniffed and rubbed her nose again. “You talk to the Lander recently?”

“A few minutes ago. The sky has been clear since sundown except for some activity north of here close to the horizon.”

Skeen emptied the mug, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I don't know, Ti, every time I think about it I change my mind. What do you think? Question him here before he's had a chance to get his defenses working, or get him back to Picarefy where we'll have time and room and, well, be a lot less likely to kill him getting the data out.” She looked at the mug and at the man, sighed and sank to the floor, all elbows and knees until she was settled beside the large black medkit. “He looks too much like someone I … I loathe, Ti, I don't trust myself on this. What do you think?”

Timka produced claws and clicked them on the stun rifle's latticework stock. “What I think is we should get out of here. I know, I know. Listen, from what Mamarana said, more than one has tried to get Rallen's location out of him and it hasn't worked all that well. Give him time to get organized and I wouldn't play Picarefy down, but I doubt if she's mean enough, you see what I mean.” She turned a hand over and contemplated her claws. “Two things. One, he's never going to get off Pillory without you, make him buy his way off. Two, there's a reason for the shape he's in and why he was in that cage. Maybe the reason comes in two words. Abel Cidder. Uh-huh. Not so big a coincidence, don't you think? Given the interest he has in you with lagniappe like Rallen thrown in to sweeten the bait? Ah! Three things, this being the third: turn him over to me if nothing else works. Remember, I've got the Min mindreach, I'm fairly sure he's too weak to keep me away from whatever I want to know.”

“Even with a mindlock?”

“I don't know mindlocks, but mindlocks don't know Min.”

“True.” Skeen ran her hand through her hair, towsling it yet more. “We'll need him awake. Um, Ti?”