“I don't like that meat,” Jask said.
“Tough luck,” the bruin said, letting him fall back to the ground. “Starting tomorrow, you're going to do a lot of things you don't like.”
“You're just wasting your time,” Jask said. “You could go on by yourself and cover more ground then—”
“No.”
“I'm only a hindrance.”
“You're coming along.”
Angry, Jask recovered more of his strength than he had possessed ever since he'd come out of his fever dreams. He sat up, swaying, his lips tight and his hands fisted. “There's no good reason for me to go!” he screamed, his voice not unlike that of a petulant child. “I'll be in your way. I don't want to go deeper into the Wildlands, away from Lady Nature. I don't want to go through any rigorous exercise program. You see? There simply isn't any reason for you to make me do all this.”
“There is,” Tedesco said, savagely, furious for being forced to reveal his reasons but left with no other response. “I don't want to have to go all that way alone.” He turned away from Jask and stalked to the other side of the clearing where he stood for a long while, watching the colored lights in the jewels.
15
For the following twenty days they lived by strict routine. They rose early and breakfasted in whatever clearing they had spent the night, then set out on their trek into the jeweled sea. Each day they walked not fewer than ten kilometers and not more than fifteen, choosing another campsite — with larger-than- average trees — by noon or shortly thereafter. They ate lunch. They rested to permit proper digestion. Then, Tedesco became a taskmaster without equal, daily increasing the number of exercises Jask was to do, stretching his pupil's endurance, building his strength. At supper they talked about what they had seen during the day's walk, about what they might expect ahead of them. After an hour's rest the evening was passed in weaponry instruction. In just two weeks Jask had become quick enough and sure enough to rate Tedesco's approval as a knife fighter — and in another week he was fairly accomplished with the throwing knife as well, striking the trunks of the trees eight times out of every ten tosses. They went to bed early and slept soundly and began the routine all over again. And again.
Water was no problem, for rain had fallen seven times in those twenty days; the channels in the jeweled sea acted as drainage spouts for the storm, gushing white water up to their ankles. They found it a simple enough matter to fill their containers whenever this happened.
Food was a knottier problem, for they rapidly depleted what Tedesco had packed and what Jask had crammed into the gray cloth sack in the warehouse. Tedesco used the power rifles to shoot at some of the larger birds that nested in the jewels and that sometimes flew low over the roof of a clearing. Now and then he bagged one of them, though the power bolt often tore them or charred them so badly that they were not fit to eat. The bruin eventually rationed his own food and cut back on his intake, but continued to force Jask to consume his limit and then some.
One night, when he had eaten more than Tedesco and thought he saw a glint of hunger in the mutant's dark eyes, Jask said, “This isn't right. It's plain that you've lost twenty pounds during the last two weeks, while I've been gorging myself.”
“Don't forget,'' Tedesco said, “that you're the one doing all the exercises; you need to eat more than I do.”
“That doesn't alter the fact that you're beginning to look positively emaciated.”
“I can stand the loss,'' Tedesco growled, though his coat of fur was hanging loosely on him, as if he had purchased it two sizes too large in some odd clothing store.
“I could stop exercising for a while and cut back on what I eat.”
“No,” Tedesco said. “We'll be out of these jewel formations soon, and we'll find wildlife and fruit, berries and nuts and vegetables enough for an army.”
“Will we?” Jask asked, clearly disbelieving.
“Yes.”
“In the Wildlands?”
“Why not?”
“How do you know that anything that grows in the Wildlands is safe to eat?” Jask inquired.
Tedesco harumphed and said, “Don't come on with that religious crap again, please. Not everything that grows and walks in the Wildlands is evil or poisonous. The place may be less hospitable than the lands we come from, but it is not the private domain of any supernatural being like the Ruiner.”
“But you've never been even this far into the Wildlands,” Jask persisted. “How can you be sure what lies ahead?”
Tedesco stood and slapped his meaty hands together. “Let's go, my friend. It's time to give you a little training in the martial arts. I think tonight we'll try teaching you the fundamentals of wrestling.”
Despite the fact that Tedesco was half-starving himself, he pinned Jask Zinn with little trouble, repeatedly, laughing loudly every time he triumphed, immensely pleased with himself.
As the days passed, the soft flesh in Jask's arms and legs became stringy, then tough and taut, with balls of hard muscles where — Tedesco said — a man should have them. He had put on twenty pounds for those the bruin had lost, without adding any fat. His stomach was flat. A few thin bands of muscle tissue had begun to cross his stomach, creasing it in tight ripples. He was still no match for many of the men who existed outside the Pure enclaves, but he was at least adequate to the challenge that lay ahead. And he had come to take pride in his fitness, something he would have thought impossible. He liked the look of his new arms and was not the least disgusted by this reversion to primitiveness.
Because his afternoon exercise sessions were strenuous and caused him to perspire rather heavily, Jask had taken to going nude during those times, and he had been steadily baked by the sun to a healthy golden brown, which did as much as all his newfound muscles to improve his looks.
Thirty-four days after they entered the jewel sea in flight from the Pure soldiers, they stepped from the end of a light-splashed corridor and found that they had walked the breadth of the blazing ocean and were now standing on its far shore, coruscating aureoles of light cascading down their backs. Before them lay a long, broad meadow carpeted in tall grass and buttercups, ringed in by dark, broad-leafed trees. The scene was so placid and common they might not have been in the middle of the Chen Valley Blight at all. As they walked forward, glad for the refreshing softness of the damp grasses, it seemed to Jask as if the jewel sea had been more than the first leg of their journey, had been a spiritual obstacle, the stage for a strange rite of passage that was to indicate whether either of them deserved to go on and, especially, to decide on the value and degree of his own manhood.
At several points the meadow was broken by thrusting limestone rocks, which, worn by wind and rain, curved and hollowed to look like folded gray cloth, provided excellent campsites for the travelers. Tedesco chose a three-peaked formation two-thirds of the way down the meadow, and here they dropped all their supplies.
“The first order of business,'' the bruin said, “is to replenish our food supply. Let's investigate these woods for fruit trees.”
Within a hundred yards of the forest's edge they found wild pears, huge raspberries and a species of apple that was purple instead of red and oval rather than round. They filled two sacks with these fruits, determined not to become paranoid about the possibilities of organic poisoning, anxious to enjoy the change in diet they had both desired for some long days now.
As they were carting their spoils back to their camp in the limestone, they flushed a herd of rabbitlike animals. The fat, furry creatures made noise like birds, chittering to each other as they skittered away on six firm legs, breaking from the cover of the trees into the meadow grass.
“Protein,” Tedesco said.
“The power rifles?” Jask whispered.
Tedesco thought a moment. “They didn't run very far before they stopped; they're apparently stupid animals. I'd prefer if we could sneak up on them and use throwing knives. We'd not be wasting meat like we would firing power bolts.”
