Winter Song (23 page)

THIRTEEN

Karl awoke at first light to find Bera already moving around, her breath streaming in the freezing air. At some point she must have eased out of his arms without waking him.

    They had slept fully clothed, and though she had stayed in his embrace, he had felt the tension in her body. So now he watched her silently, not wanting that tension to find a reason to give voice.

    She must have sensed his gaze, but didn't look up. Taking the hint that she didn't want to talk, Karl rose and rounded up the horses, which had stayed near, as if seeking reassurance after Skorri's death.

    Bera passed Karl some more of the cooked rockeater. "No ill-effects?" she said.

    "Nope," he said, but didn't add, I just wish this stuff didn't taste like something I just threw up. He paused, wondering where an image of him eating vomit came from.

    "Good," Bera said. "It'll make the meat we took from Skorradalur last longer." She saddled up, signalling the conversation was at an end.

    They rode at a slower pace than before, needing to pace the horses. The clouds had lifted and Gamasol shone brightly. Karl removed his shirt, shivering despite the comparative warmth, and soaked up the rays.

    Bera – as always – wore several layers of furs, although even she removed the outer layer as the suns climbed in the sky and warmed the land to almost above freezing. Even on this frozen semi-desert world there were traces of water; just not enough to make life viable.

    The curse of Isheimur, Karl thought. Never quite enough – that should be the Isheimur mantra: just not quite enough gravity to permanently hold on to the atmosphere, not enough carbon dioxide to hold on to the heat, and too little water to allow planet-wide settlement. The numbers may only be fractionally outside the parameters, but those fractions will kill these people's children or grandchildren.

    The morning passed uneventfully.

    The meandering path climbed so gradually that it wasn't until mid-morning, when Karl looked behind him, that he saw that they were over a hundred metres above Salturvatn, which glistened in the sunshine, offering no clue to the danger lurking round its shore.

    Bera spoke little, and Karl rode in silence, concentrating on watching for lurking dragons and any other predators Isheimur might hurl at them. But this morning Isheimur's ferocious wildlife left them alone.

    The sun was high in the sky when the slope gradually flattened out and then the path forked. Bera said, "Let's allow the horses a little rest. Now we only have two, they'll get no relief from carrying us."

    Karl said, "And we can decide which fork to take. They don't seem to diverge much from here, but the fact that there's a fork at all seems significant."

"Don't read too much into it."

    Bera rummaged in her saddlebags. "I didn't have much time that morning we left, so I just threw everything in." She grunted. "Hah: here we are." She pulled out battered sheets of coarse-looking grey paper. "I printed some of the Oracle's answers." She smiled at his raised eyebrow. "When I was drudging at Skorradalur, I used to dream of all the places that I could go. It made it seem less like a prison. Whenever things were quiet, late at night, I would sneak onto the Oracle. Sometimes, if I didn't have much time, I'd print its answers and sneak them off to my room." Bera laid the tattered pieces of paper flat on the ground, and smoothed them out.

    Karl had an image of her poring over the maps by the light of a candle; more likely by natural light, if his first nights at Skorradalur had been any indication of summer evenings. "Didn't they miss the paper?" Karl smiled to make the question a joke. "I thought that everything was in short supply?"

    He may have been joking, but Bera took it seriously. "It's moss-paper, recycled to the point where it's all but unusable. And I made sure that I took the very worst pieces over the years," she said. "And I limited myself to one piece a week." She stared at him levelly. "Do you think that I've only recently become unhappy? You're the excuse I've waited years for, to actually give me the nerve to walk away from Skorradalur."

    "Glad to have been useful."

    She flushed at the implied rebuke. "It wasn't as calculated as that."

    "I guess not," he said, embarrassed at his own gracelessness.
Whatever her motives, she's handed you a lifeline.
Remember that.

    "Here's the fork." Bera pointed at the map, all business again. "On one side it leads to a desert, while the other leads up into the mountains. Hmm: it looks a pretty steep path and the mountains are high." She pursed her lips. "We should take the desert path."

    "Is it longer?" Karl said.

    "It is," Bera admitted. "But it looks less hazardous."

    "Desert it is," Karl said.

The afternoon passed without incident.

    The night was cold enough that Bera again huddled close to him, although she barely relaxed at all until she slept. Karl wrapped his arms around her; it was only to stay warm, after all. Both suns had shone brightly all day, which was probably why he felt better than he had in weeks, he decided.

    The next day Bera said no more when they arose than she had the previous morning. Nor did they talk much as they rode. Partly that was to conserve energy, for talking while aboard a trotting horse required a degree of shouting.

    But when she did speak, she seemed more at ease, and Karl realised that he didn't feel the need to chatter. There had been times back on Avalon when he had longed to be aboard the peace and tranquillity of Ship, just as he had longed while away in space to be back with his loveable but sometimes overwhelming family.

    Bera seemed also not to feel the need to talk endlessly about minutiae, although periodically she would surprise him with an unexpected question: "Have you ever tasted chocolate?" was one such poser. He had to tell her that at least four worlds claimed to have the secret recipe of true chocolate. Another was "What's your favourite colour?"

    "Not brown," was his terse reply as he looked about him, which tickled a giggle from her. For there wasn't much to occupy them on the ride, just hour after hour after unending moorland, hills and valleys, dark greens, blacks, purples and the white of snow sometimes speckling the landscape; but mostly it was every conceivable shade of brown. Tan, russet, coffee, umber, ochre, khaki, buff; everywhere were shades of brown.

    Toward noon Bera said, "We're going into one last valley soon, before we enter the desert proper. The lake is called Sofavatn." He wondered at a lake called sleep water, and her next words only fuelled his curiosity: "You need to hold your breath for as long as you can when we pass the waters of the lake."

    "Gases?" Karl said.

    "Yes," Bera said. "They knock you out. When you're revived – if you come round – you may start raving. If you're left in there long enough, you may die."

    "What about the horses?" Karl said.

    "They don't seem as badly affected, though I don't think anyone's hung around long enough to research the effects on them of the gases that come off the lake."

    An hour or so later, as they entered the valley which was fringed with bushes, Karl fancied that he could see the fumes rising from the waters, but when he asked Bera, she said, "You're imagining it. Or you're picking up something outside my range of vision."

    He was about to ask her what the fumes were, then remembered her jibe back at Salturvatn about his curiosity and contented himself with, "I'd love to come back with a research team and analyse it."

    She gave him a smile. "I like that. You coming back, I mean." She added hastily, "With others, of course."

    "Of course." It surprised him too, that he'd consider coming back. The truth was that when the sun shone, Isheimur didn't seem quite so ferociously alien and unpleasant.

    As they neared the lake, Bera said, "Shallow breaths. Yes?"

    "OK," Karl said.

    When they were close to the lake – barely a few metres from the gleaming green surface – Bera said, "One deep breath, and hold it for as long as you can."

    She spurred Taitur on, and Karl did the same with Grainur.

    Afterward, Karl was unsure whether she had left it too late to take her lungful of air and inhaled fumes with it, or whether she simply hadn't been able to hold her breath for long enough.

    Whatever the reason, Bera swayed in the saddle as they passed the lake-shore, but stayed mounted. But just as Karl relaxed, he noticed the secondary pools – perhaps they were part of the main lake during wetter periods – from which he again fancied that vapour rose from the surface of each.

    Bera swayed and toppled into a pool. Karl jumped from his saddle, and whacked each horse on the hindquarters. The horses responded and Karl jumped in.

    His boots weighed him down, so he held his hands up, using them to guess the depth, which was about two or three metres deep in places. The water was murky, and for a few horrible moments he couldn't find her. He wondered how long he'd have to hold his breath – his record was nine minutes, but that was in a controlled environment, without the stress of a life-ordeath situation.

    Then he felt something, and grabbed her under her arms. His heart hammered as he hauled her up, partly from exertion, but mostly from fear that he might be too late.

    When he broke surface he just managed to not take an involuntary breath; the days in the lifegel had taught him to better control his autonomic functions.

    He waded up what felt like a set of natural steps beneath the water line, onto land. For a moment he froze, unable to decide. Should he resuscitate her here? No, better to get her further away.

    Taking the first steps, he staggered, and couldn't help taking a breath. Even that was enough to make his thoughts fuzzy for just a moment. Then he heaved her across his shoulders and tottered up the slope toward where the horses had stopped and were grazing as if nothing had happened. When he reached them, he decided that he'd gone far enough for Bera to be safe, and dropped her onto a clump of lichens.

    He breathed out until he was sure that his lungs were empty, then took deep breaths of the feeble atmosphere, until he felt that he would keel over, and gave Bera mouth-to-mouth. Nothing happened, so he tried again. She jerked and yanked her mouth away, thrashing about underneath him, coughing and spluttering.

    He pulled away hastily. "It was mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! It wasn't what you think!"

    He stared at her through narrowed eyes, studying her for the signs of mania that she'd sketched on the far side of the lake.

    After a few seconds her glare softened, but she said nothing.

    "What's your name?" Karl said.

    Bera frowned. "What?"

    Karl said, "What's your name? I need to test that you're not suffering damage, either from hypoxia or the fumes."

    "Bera Sigurdsdottir," she said. "I'm fine."

    "What colour is that bush?" He pointed at a low, purplish shrub.

    "Purple."

"Any tunnel vision?" Karl said.

"No."

"Where are we?"

    "Sofavatn. Karl, I'm fine. Look." She stood up and walked an invisible straight line, one heel against the toes of her other foot, then the other way around. She shrugged. "What else can I say? I'm fine."

    That in itself worried Karl slightly. Sometimes happiness – or at least quasi-drunken high spirits – and light-headedness were symptoms of hypoxia. And he had no idea of the effects of the gases. Inhalation was a frustratingly inexact science. A dose that could leave one person unscathed could flatten another.

    But Bera was adamant that she was OK, and Karl couldn't really argue. He mentally shrugged, and reclaimed the horses, trying not to feel hurt at the violence of Bera's reaction to the mouth-to-mouth.

    He led Grainur back to her, and offered the reins.

    She didn't look at him but mumbled, "Thanks."

    Karl sighed. "I'm guessing that you were raped, Bera. And I am truly, truly sorry for whatever happened."

    "I don't want to talk about it."

    "But," Karl said, holding up a finger to interrupt. "I can't spend the whole journey guessing what may or may not offend you, Bera. You needed resuscitating."

    "You could have leaned on my chest–"

    "And you'd have accused me of feeling your tits!"

    Still not looking at him, Bera opened her mouth, then closed it again.

    "Wouldn't you?" Karl said, making the question as gentle as possible. Then adding, impishly, "Not that there's much to feel. Flat as a pancake–"

    "Oi!" She punched his shoulder with her free hand. "That's not true!" She looked down at her breasts. "Is it? I thought I was quite big–"

    "Oh, now you're worried about whether your potential rapist thinks you've got large enough breasts?"

    Her laugh was close to a nervous sob. Still holding onto the reins, Bera picked at the quick of one of her fingers. "You were right, Karl. But I still don't want to talk about it." Abruptly, she grabbed him in a hug. "Sorry. About…" She released him as quickly as she'd clasped him.

    "Don't worry," Karl said. "And yes, they're like bloody melons. I'm amazed even an idiot like you would've missed the irony, even for a moment."

    "Bastard."

    Karl sniffed. "Typical woman, always has to have the last word."

    Bera was silent for thirty seconds. Then, "Yep."

    An hour later they climbed gradually to a set of unremarkable foothills. "Not many people come this way." Bera indicated the low brown hummocks, almost bare of vegetation. "So if we run into trouble…"

    "And that's different from that last part?" Karl asked, mock-bewildered.