Farseed, page 11
A circle of rocks lay on a patch of ground near the lake, around a small hole in the ground. The few blackened fragments among the ashes in the small hollow looked like bits of burned wood.
Everyone gathered around the hole. A few thin blades of yellow grass had sprouted among the ashes. “It’s where they must have stopped,” Trevor said, “my mother and Tonio and Chiang.”
Hateya stepped closer to him, with Chiang’s daughter Tala right behind her. “Do you think so?” Hateya asked, gazing intently at the ashes as though searching for evidence that her father Tonio had actually camped here.
“Has to be,” Yukio replied. “The outsiders haven’t been back this way for ten years. This fireplace looks like it was put together a lot more recently than that.”
Trevor was biting his lip; his eyes glistened. Leila moved to his side and put a hand on his arm. He looked down at her and offered her an uneasy smile.
“They must have been moving at a faster rate than we are,” Gervais said. “I’m guessing that this is where they made their first stop for the night, since we didn’t see anything like this earlier.”
Leila stared into the pit. They might find other signs along the way, since they would be following the same route the three lost people had planned to take. She shivered, wondering again what they would find at the end of their journey.
By late afternoon, they had come to the low hill where they were to set up their first base. The lake stretched on to the west, but below the hill, a wide river flowed to the southeast. The same native shrubs grew along the riverbanks as did around the lake, but the reeds were thicker at the water’s edge, a few of the taller reeds as hard and as thick around as poles. The expanse of plain to the south had patches of an unfamiliar pale greenish grass amid the yellow and darker green grasses.
The images of Ship’s early scans that Leila had seen had shown only plains covered with the yellow grass, so the pale green grass had to be a hybrid. Near the settlements, their green grass had displaced the native growth; here, they seemed to be interbreeding. Presumably the horses would be able to graze on the hybrid grass, since neither of the other grasses was harmful to them, but they would have to make certain of that.
Hateya would be staying behind at the first base with three others. She had already confessed to Leila that she now wished she had not agreed to stop there and would have preferred to go on, but she had promised her mother that she would go only that far, while her brother Gianni would stay with the expedition only until it set up the second base.
They raised their tents, gathered fuel and rocks, dug a pit for their fire and a small ditch for their latrine, then ate their evening meal while Zoheret and Haidar reminded everyone about the tasks that lay ahead: Water the horses; gather fuel for the fire; boil water; check your feet for swelling and blisters; decide on which six people would keep watch tonight. The four who were to remain there would be left with enough food to last them for a few days, but would have to send one or two of their number back to the settlements for more supplies. They would have two horses, could ride back for more horses if they needed them, and could bring other people back to the base to take their places if necessary. Within seven to ten days, someone would ride back here from the second base to let them know how things were going. Their most important tasks would be to maintain the base and remain in contact with the settlements and with the second base while they waited.
“And when the cool weather comes,” Sultan said, “we pack up and go home.” Sultan, a thin, wiry, dark-haired young man of nineteen, was one of the young people from the eastern settlement.
“We should all be back by then,” Haidar said.
“And what if you’re not?”
Edan shook his head at Sultan. “If we’re not,” Haidar answered in his deep voice, “you go back to the settlement anyway. You abandon this base even if everybody from the bases farther south isn’t back here yet. You go home even if nobody from the other bases has returned. Understood?”
Sultan nodded.
“Anyway,” Haidar continued, “there’s no reason to think that we won’t all be back by then.”
“But if you don’t come back,” Sultan said, “maybe it would make more sense for us to send an expedition after you, while we still might be able to help, instead of waiting until—”
“No,” Zoheret said, with an edge in her voice. “Everybody here has agreed to follow the plans that we laid out. If you’re not willing to do that, head back now and let somebody else come out here to take your place.”
“I was only making a suggestion,” Sultan said hastily.
“You’ll know if we run into trouble anyway,” Zoheret said, “because people at the other bases should be able to relay that information to you. Somebody will ride back here and tell you if our plans have to be changed—you’ll know then if we need your help. Right now we have to count on you to do what you’ve promised and not to take unnecessary chances.”
“We will.” Sultan looked down for a moment. “Sorry, Zoheret. You can rely on me.”
“I know I can.”
No one said much after that. After eating, Trevor and Edan went off with a few of the other boys to soak themselves while the lake water was still warm; that might be as close to bathing as they would get for a while. Leila noticed that none of the girls followed them. The other girls probably felt the same way she did, suddenly shy and awkward with themselves. Once the girls and the boys had splashed around together in the lake without thinking, but that was before their bodies had started to change, before her breasts swelled and hair sprouted between her legs. She had been careful not to look at Trevor too often during their last overnight at the lake with Rosa and a few of her friends, but could not help noticing that his body had changed, too. It was ridiculous to feel so uneasy around people she had known all her life.
Leila turned away and wandered down the hill with Sofia, Oni, and Hateya, gathering more dry brush. The boys had finished bathing by the time they returned with the fuel. Shannon and Mai were in the water, splashing water at each other as if they were still small children instead of young women nearly nineteen years old. Leila shed her clothing and joined them, wishing that she could feel that carefree.
Sultan and Hannah took the first watch. Leila was tired by the time she went inside her tent, and the other girls seemed ready for sleep. She lay there, arms wrapped around herself, listening to the soft sound of the night wind.
“Leila,” Hateya whispered in the dark, “are you still awake?”
“Shh,” Leila whispered back, not wanting to disturb the others.
“It’s all right,” Shannon said in a soft voice. “I’m awake.”
“So am I.” That was Sofia.
“I wish I didn’t have to stay here,” Hateya said. “I wish I hadn’t promised my mother that I would.”
“I know,” Leila said.
“It’s going to be hard, just waiting here, wondering what you might find out about my father and not knowing.”
“You won’t just be waiting here,” Sofia said. “You’ll have to get more supplies and keep in contact with the second camp, along with making whatever observations you can.”
“That isn’t the same,” Hateya replied. “I’d rather keep moving. Staying here gives me too much time to worry. I don’t know what would be worse, never finding out what happened to my father or finding out for sure that he’s…gone. I think I could stand finding out whatever happened, it’s better than never knowing, but I don’t know if my mother could take it. At least now she can keep believing that Tonio’s out there somewhere, that he’s somehow managed to survive, I mean, it’s at the point where Gianni and I don’t dare say anything to her, because she just keeps saying, ‘We don’t know, and as long as we don’t know, I refuse to believe Tonio isn’t alive. I know he’s alive, he has to be alive, because I’d feel it if he weren’t.’ And that’s the end of the discussion. I think years could go by and she’d still keep thinking he was alive as long as nobody could tell her otherwise. So part of me’s hoping that we find out what’s happened to him and part of me never wants to know.”
“We might find out that he’s alive,” Shannon said. “A month from now, we may be on our way back with him.”
“I don’t think so,” Hateya murmured. “I don’t think we’re going to find him. I could hope for a while, but not anymore, I think I knew he was gone for good months ago. But it was easier to pretend, to play along with my mother, no matter what I thought.”
“You can’t give up yet,” Leila said, “not until you know for sure.”
“I’d rather expect the worst. Hoping gets too painful after a while.” Hateya’s voice sounded shakier; Leila wondered if she was crying. “But I don’t know if my mother can handle it if the worst is what we end up with. Every day, she makes sure there’s just a little extra food in our cupboard in case Tonio suddenly comes through the door. She won’t give the clothes he left behind to somebody else who could use them because she just knows he’s going to need them again. She won’t even sleep on his side of their mat. She’d rather imagine that he’ll suddenly show up in the middle of the night. Maybe she even imagines that he’s there, still sleeping next to her.”
“That’s crazy,” Shannon whispered.
“It’s not crazy,” Leila replied, even though she’d had her doubts about Hateya’s mother Roxana herself. Lately, Roxana had looked so thin and worn that Zoheret had advised her to have Kagami examine her thoroughly, but Leila did not know if Hateya’s mother had followed that advice.
“You should have heard her after the meeting,” Hateya said. “She was laughing when we got home, going on and on about how we’d be sure to find Tonio now, that we’d find out that there’s some perfectly good reason why he hadn’t been able to get back home to us, and then later on I could hear her crying after she thought we were asleep. And then the day we were ready to leave, she was smiling again, telling Gianni and me that we’d have a big celebration when Tonio came home. If we come back without him—”
“It’s too soon to worry about that,” Leila said. “In a way, your mother’s right. As long as we don’t know what’s happened to him, there’s no reason to think that he might not be alive.”
“That’s not how Roxana sees it. She’ll keep thinking he’s alive right up until she can’t believe that anymore, and I don’t know what she’ll do then. Maybe she’d just go completely insane and refuse to believe he’s lost, or maybe—”
There was a long period of silence, punctuated by small gasps that might have been sobs.
“Look,” Leila said at last, “a couple of you will have to ride back for more supplies, so you can see how your mother’s doing then. Have Salim take a look at her, he’s almost as good at healing as Kagami is. You can tell him that you need her at this base camp and have her come back with you for a while. That way, you could watch out for Roxana here.”
“Zoheret didn’t say anything about bringing somebody back with us.”
Leila thought for a moment. “She didn’t say you couldn’t, either. Seems to me that having one more person here for a short time, or even a couple of people, isn’t going to matter all that much.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Hateya said.
“Go to sleep,” Shannon murmured.
8
They were four days south of their second base camp and Leila ached more than she ever had, even after days of hard labor in the stables or during a harvest. A large and painful blister had formed on one of her feet, and Kagami’s medication and dermal tape had not entirely eased her discomfort. She ached when she went to sleep, and even though exhaustion made her sleep more deeply, her muscles were often agonizingly stiff when she awoke. In spite of the tiny implant Kagami had embedded in her right arm to suppress her menstrual cycle temporarily, as the healer had done for all of the women and girls on the journey, her abdomen was knotted with cramps. Her hips and her lower back ached almost constantly; she felt as though she had been walking for years rather than only days.
Riding one of the horses might provide some relief, but she doubted that she could grip a horse’s barrel very easily with her pained knees and aching legs. The animals had enough to carry already, and riding a horse over a long distance would only produce a different set of aches and pains. But she would not complain, and neither had anyone else yet; only the sullen silence of the others told her that her weariness and discomfort were shared.
Gianni, Curt, and Mai had been left behind at the second camp, along with two more of the horses, and had been told to expect a rider in a few days, after the third base had been set up. By now, the three had probably recovered from the days of marching. Leila wondered which would be more boring, days spent on the move or days passed while waiting at a base for a rider from the next base farther south, and decided that she preferred the tedium of marching in spite of the discomfort. During all the days she and Trevor had discussed their plans, she had never anticipated that the journey would be so monotonous.
Leila shook her head. Given the dangers that might still lie ahead, maybe she should be grateful for her current boredom.
Large treelike plants, taller and thicker than any of the trees that had been planted near the settlements, grew near the riverbanks along with the familiar shrubs, reeds, and occasional patches of colulos. The river still wound through green and yellow grassland, the flatness giving way here and there to gentle hills, but the bluish bark of the plants and the purple gourds that hung from their leafless limbs suddenly seemed completely out of place, strange, alien.
Her neck prickled; her boredom vanished. Leila looked away from the plants, keeping her eyes on the ground. The native trees had their uses; the dried out gourds that covered the ground under them, when chopped into pieces, made good fuel for a fire. Tonio, Bonnie, and Chiang had apparently made that same discovery, since fragments of the gourd had been found next to another small pit of ashes surrounded by rocks. That had been the second campsite of theirs they had found, three days ago, but since then, they had spotted no sign of the three lost people. Zoheret and Gervais had been encouraging them to cover the ashes of their fires with dirt after making sure that the fires were out; perhaps the three lost people had done the same. It was also possible that all of them were far too inexperienced in this wilderness to read any but the most obvious signs that others had passed this way.
Leila lifted her head. The river had grown wider; the opposite bank was now cut off from them by a broad grayish-green expanse of water. Across the river, two deer had come down to the bank to drink; they lifted their heads, apparently unafraid of the people passing by on the other side of the water. The land had flattened out again, stretching from east to west, the grass rippling slightly as a gentle wind blew. She glanced up at the vast green sky, empty of clouds, that hung over the plain of grassland, and suddenly felt as though she was falling.
“Leila.” She found herself lying on her back, looking up into the narrow face of Gervais. His teeth caught at his lower lip. “Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing.”
“I’d better make sure it’s nothing,” Kagami said as she came up behind Gervais.
“It’s nothing, really,” Leila said. “Just a little dizziness, that’s all.” Kagami pulled a scanner out of the small bag that hung at her waist. “You don’t have to scan me.”
“Are you sure?” Kagami asked.
“Yes.” Leila forced herself to sit up. “There’s nothing the matter with me, just this feeling—” She realized that the people up ahead had stopped and were looking back at her; Zoheret and Trevor were already walking toward her.
She managed to get to her feet. “I’m fine,” she shouted to her mother.
Kagami passed the scanner over her head and chest, then peered at the readings. “She’s all right,” Kagami called out. “Let’s get going.” Zoheret and Trevor turned back and rejoined the others.
Without speaking, Leila followed Kagami along the riverbank, with Gervais close behind, still leading one of their horses. After they had gone a short distance, Gervais moved to her side and murmured, “I think I know what happened to you back there.”
“No, you don’t,” Leila said, halting. “It was nothing, really.”
The horse lowered its head and nibbled at some of the light green hybrid grass, which had proven to be safe for the animals to eat and which they seemed to prefer to the other grasses. “When we first came here,” Gervais responded, “I could hardly leave my dome at all, couldn’t stand to have all that space around me. Can’t tell you how many times I went outside only to feel as though everything was spinning around me, that being in the open might even kill me.”
Leila stared at him, surprised. Zoheret had always claimed that Gervais was one of the bravest people she knew.
“Thought I got past that long ago,” he continued, “but being out here reminds me of it, and of how alone we are.”
She smiled at the tall thin man, grateful for his understanding.
“But I won’t let it get to me again,” Gervais said.
“Neither will I.”
They set up their third base camp near an outcropping of rock fifty paces away from the river. Leila’s cousin Oni would remain there with Ali and Kwesi.
Everyone was up before dawn. Zoheret stood with Kwesi, who as the oldest of the three would be in charge of this base, going over everything with him yet again.
“Hard to believe,” Oni said, “that just a few days ago, I was annoyed that I wouldn’t be going on with the rest of you.” She lifted a foot and flexed it tentatively. “But maybe after a couple of days here, my feet won’t feel as if they’ve swollen to twice their size.”
“I’d almost be willing to trade places with you,” Leila said.
“Be careful,” Oni said.
Trevor, who was saying his farewells to his dome mate Ali, turned toward them. “Be careful? Of what?” He shook his head. “The only thing that’s really surprised me is how little trouble we’ve had so far. I’m beginning to think that my mother and her comrades must have decided to stay with the other group after they found them.”
