Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) (27 page)

KWAIDE WAS MUCH cooler and wetter than Coriolis. Grace shivered as the bubble surrounding them vanished, leaving them exposed to the chill night air.

“The uninhabitable zone!” said Six, happily. “Know it like the back of my hand.” He plunged into the undergrowth. “Just follow me!”

The four remaining Kwaidian apprentices looked for a moment at the trail he had left, and then shook their heads. They clearly didn’t agree with the direction he had taken. The tallest managed to blurt out a goodbye to Diva and Grace, and then they were gone, taking a track in the opposite direction.

“Thank Lumina for that!” said Diva. “They were really beginning to get on my nerves. You’d think they could have been a bit happier at having their miserable lives saved. Honestly, they were a pretty sad bunch.”

Grace nodded. “We did put them through rather a lot, though.” She began to giggle. Diva looked at her, and then saw the funny side of it too, and joined in. “They were transported, attacked, nearly asphyxiated and nearly bombed.” She chuckled. “And then, to top it off they were instantaneously brought half-way across the system in a sentient bubble!” The two girls clutched each other.

“I think he is just a little bit more than just a sentient bubble!” Six complained. That only made the two girls laugh even more.

“Are you coming?” Six was not pleased at having had to track back to find them. “We are only about thirty kilometers from the place I left my sisters.”

“Thirty kilometers?” wailed Grace.

“Baby!” Six said. “I used to do that every day.”

Diva gave Six a look.

“So sorry, your highness,” he said, “but we use these long bendy things called legs in this part of the binary system.”

Diva gave a sigh. “I should have guessed. Let’s go then.” She rolled her eyes at Grace and the two girls tramped off into the bushes in Six’s wake.

Any remaining good humour had worn off long before they reached the hideaway Six had spoken of. They were tired, cold, hungry and thirsty, and for Grace the novelty of being able to breathe out of doors had worn off.

“Are we nearly there?” she said, for the tenth time.

“Yes.” Six gave the same answer each time, which wasn’t helping.

“You always say that!” she wailed.

“Well stop asking!” he said calmly.

“Are you sure you know where you are?” asked Diva.

“Well of course I do!” Six put his head on one side. “More or less.”

“More or less!”

“I must say, it has been a long time since I was last here,” he said, “and everything looks different. But I’m almost sure that if we keep going in a northerly direction we will get there in the next hour or so.”

“Terrific!” said Diva. Not! she thought.

There was a major crashing in the undergrowth and a huge pig-like creature with three horns erupted out of the bushes and charged past them. Grace gave a scream.

“Now, that’s lucky,” said Six. “The famous Kwaidian warthog. Don’t see many of them about nowadays. I take that as a very good sign.”

“It nearly spitted me!” Grace was indignant.

“Don’t exaggerate, Grace. It was only being friendly! Look! It is coming back!”

True enough, the grunting monstrosity was barreling towards them, the fearsome snout tight to the ground. It trundled right up to Grace and then stopped in front of her, snorting slightly.

“Wha . . . what does it want?” she stammered.

“Probably wants its back scratched.” Six was unconcerned. “Just pick up a twig and run it up and down the backbone. That’ll do it.”

“It’s huge!” she said.

“It won’t hurt you.”

“It might.”

“They are quite harmless. Girls!” he said, shaking his head.

Diva walked over and scratched the monster’s back. It gave a heavy grunt of pleasure and rolled over. She dutifully scratched its belly too. It got up, shook enormously, and then trotted off.

“Made a friend there, Diva,” said Six.

“Why don’t you use them as pack animals?” she asked.

“They’re protected!” He was shocked.

“You mean they protect warthogs and throw children out in the uninhabitable zone?”

“If you put it like that . . .”

“. . . You are worth less than a warthog.”

“Kwaidians rate warthogs very high,” he said defensively.

“Sure. The literati of your society, perhaps?”

He grinned. “Maybe. Don’t expect me to know. I am just a no-name, remember?”

“I bet they name their warthogs.” Diva didn’t want to let it go.

“That one was ‘Diva’,” he said, and laughed until she threw a stone at him.

It was nearly nightfall when Six at last found himself on a track he knew for sure led to the hideaway, and had been dark for some time before they reached it.

It was an abandoned stone dwelling, long left to the elements. There was no roof, and a tree the size of three Sell floors was growing inside the walls. Creepers were entwined in the stones, and there was an overgrown stone drinking trough, once used to tender to vaniven.

There was nobody there. Nor had there been for some time. Six inspected every cranny by the light of Lumina, which happened to be full in the Kwaidian sky. The reflected sunlight from the huge planet bathed everything in ghostly silver.

The girls went to collect wood, and then made a fire. There was no way they were going any further that night. They found an old forgotten can, fetched water from a nearby stream, and put the pot over the fire to boil.

Six was desolated. “They are not here. There is no note.”

“There will be.” Diva was certain. “We may be missing it in this half-light. We will look again in the morning. Isn’t there anything to eat?”

Six disappeared for ten minutes, and then came back with his arms full of fruit. “That’s why this was such a good hideout,” he explained. “There was always plenty of fruit.” Diva raised one eyebrow. That would have told him what she thought of the hideout, if he had been looking in her direction.

They made a belated picnic, and then lay down to sleep. It was even colder now, so they huddled together in the lee of one of the walls. It was not the best night that any of them had spent.

The next morning they searched the whole ruin meticulously. It wasn’t until the very end of the search that they found anything. Scratched into one of the walls, through the moss, were some words which had been nearly covered by that year’s growth. Six tore the moss off the stones, until they could read the message.

“Gone to Rexel. Eight sick.”

Six had to sit down. He was shaking all over. Grace put her arms around him, and hugged him close to her. He shook his head, unable to speak.

“How far is it to Rexel?” asked Diva.

Six bit his lip. “About sixty kilometers,” he said. “It’s where we lived until we were four. They will have gone back to the birth shelter. It’s on the edge of the habitable zone. It’s the only place they could have got medicine. But I don’t think the matron would give them any, not at our age.”

“Well?” said Diva coolly. “What are we waiting for?”

“If Eight was sick, how could she have walked sixty kilometers?” He gave a swallow.

“‘If Sacras were Almagest, would Lumina exist?’” she quoted, and then answered her own question. “Nobody knows.” She thought for a moment. “Let’s gather as much fruit as we can, and then make a start. The longer we hang about here, the longer it is going to take to get the answers you need, Six.”

He nodded. They spent the next hour getting provisions, and then struck camp. It was still early in the morning, and a fine mist was hanging over the rough terrain. Grace thought of the eerie clarity of Valhai, and her heart contracted. She wondered when she would see it again. It was great to be visiting other planets; something she had never dreamed of, but she missed Valhai so much it was a physical pain, a dull throb that never went away. She concentrated on putting foot after foot, and tried to like the dense vegetation of Kwaide.

It took them two days to reach the birth shelter; drab, damp days that made only Six feel at home. He seemed to soak up the dampness like a sponge; despite the worry about his sisters something inside him thrived on the moisture and the cold.

Towards the end of the second day a low building came into view. It was made of concrete slabs, grey and forbidding. There was a metallic mesh running around it to keep its occupants inside. Six made them go all around it warily first. When he was satisfied he led them up to the front gate, and rang a large electric bell, which they could hear faintly ringing inside the building.

After some minutes a thin, scared woman came to the gate.

“What do you want?” she whispered. She kept her head down, and avoided looking at them directly.

“Matron,” said Six.

“Matron is not available,” she said by rote, and gave a practiced little curtsey.

Six narrowed his eyes. “Fifteen?” he asked, hardly able to believe that this was the same girl that he had known ten years ago. Then, she had been six, two years older than himself. Now, the thin white face was lined and drained of all feeling. She looked about forty.

She seemed to shrink into herself. “Don’t know,” she whispered.

“Don’t you remember me? Six?”

“Don’t remember, sir.” And she gave another little curtsey.

Six touched her arm, which caused her to cringe away from him. “Please, Fifteen, please help me, I am looking for my sisters.”

The girl started and her eyes moved from side to side, still looking at the floor.

“You must remember me, we used to play together.”

“Don’t remember, sir.”

“What on earth has happened to you? Why won’t you speak to me?” he asked. “Where are my sisters? You must have seen them. I know they came here.”

“She is terrified, Six,” said Grace. “Let me talk to her, maybe she won’t be so scared of me.”

“I used to play with her!” Six said, standing back, feeling useless.

“Yeah,” drawled Diva, “you probably leave all your playmates in a catatonic state. She only had to put up with you for four years, which explains how she survived at all.”

Six gave her a look.

“What?” asked Diva.

“Just looking at a person whose parents wanted to throw her to the Tattula cats, is all.”

“Not true. My mother didn’t!”

“. . . Since we’re on the subject of success,” added Six.

“Why don’t the two of you go and find us some food for tonight?” suggested Grace. “And leave me alone with this girl, to see if I can find out what happened to your sisters?”

They went off, still hotly debating the point.

Grace took the girl by the hand and led her over to a rock, just beside the gate. The girl submitted meekly to her guidance; she wasn’t scared of Grace.

“I won’t hurt you,” Grace told her. She thought the girl seemed simple, rather than maltreated.

They sat down and Grace made the girl a chain of the little flowers which grew all around them. The girl managed a smile as she put her hands out to receive it.

In return, Fifteen passed over a bunch of clover to Grace, who smiled her thanks. Things, she felt, were progressing. After another brief wait, she spoke to the girl out loud.

“Do you remember Six?” she said in her soft voice.

A brief pause . . . and then a brief nod.

“Ah, I thought so. Then you must have known Seven and Eight too?”