He glanced up and saw Kylis. His carriage changed; he straightened and waved. His blond beard was bristly and uncombed and his hair was plastered down with sweat. The waistband of his shorts was red with mud spattered onto his body and washed down by perspiration and rain. As he came closer she saw that he was thinner, and that the lines around his eyes had deepened. They had been lines of thought and laughter; now they were of fatigue and exposure. He hurried toward her, slipping on the clay, and she realized he, too, had been worried.
He heard I was in sensory deprivation, she thought, and he was afraid for me. She stood motionless for a few seconds. She was not quite used to him yet; his easy acceptance of her and his concern seemed innocent and admirable compared to the persistent distrust Kylis
had felt toward him for so long. She started forward to meet him. He stopped and held out his hands. She touched him, and he came forward, almost trembling, holding himself taut against exhaustion. His pose collapsed. Bending down, he rested his forehead on her shoulder. She put her hands on his back, very gently.
'Was it bad?' His voice was naturally low but now it was rough and hoarse. He had probably been directing his crew, shouting above the roar of machinery for eighteen hours.
'Bad enough,' Kylis said. 'I've been glad of the work since.'
Still leaning against her, he shook his head.
'I'm okay now. I've quit hallucinating,' she said, hoping it was true. 'And you? Are you all right?' She could feel his breath on her damp shoulder.
'Yes. Now. Thanks to Gryf.'
Jason had started this set on first day shift, which began at midnight and ended in the afternoon. Its members worked through the hottest part of the day when they were most tired. Halfway through his third work period Jason had collapsed. He was delirious and dehydrated, sunburned even through his shirt. The sun drained him. Gryf, just getting off when Jason fell, had worked through his own sleep period to finish Jason's shift. For them to switch shifts, Gryf had worked almost two of Redsun's days straight. When Kylis heard about that, she could not see how anyone could do it, even Gryf.
Gryf had broken the rules; but no one had made Jason go back to his original shift. The Lizard must never have said anything about it. Kylis could imagine him standing in shadow, watching, while Gryf waited for a confrontation that never came. It was something the Lizard would do.
Jason's shoulders were scarred where blisters had formed in the sun, but Kylis saw that they had healed cleanly. She put her arm around Jason's waist to support him. 'Come on. I found a place to sleep.' They were both sticky with sweat and the heat.
'Okay.' They crossed the barren mud where all the vegetation had been stripped away so the machines could pass. Before they turned off the path they drew rations from the mechanical dispenser near the prisoners' quarters. The tasteless bars dropped through a slot, two each. There were times in Kylis' life when she had not eaten well, but she had seldom eaten anything as boring as prison rations. Jason put one of his bars into his belt pouch.
'When are you going to give that up?'
Jason nibbled a corner of his second ration bar. 'I'm not.' His grin made the statement almost a joke. He saved part of his food against what Kylis thought ludicrous plans of escape. When he had saved enough supplies, he was going to hike out through the marsh.
'You don't have to save anything today.' She slipped her tag back into the slot and kept reinserting it until the extra points were used and a small pile of ration bars lay in the hopper.
'They forgot to void my card for the time I was in the deprivation box,' Kylis said. In sensory deprivation, one of the prison's punishments for mistakes, she had been fed intravenously. She gave Jason the extra food. He thanked her and put it in his belt pouch. Together they crossed the bare clay and entered the forest.
Jason had been at Screwtop only three sets. He was losing weight quickly here, for he was a
big-boned man with little fat to burn. Kylis hoped his family would discover where he was and ransom him soon. And she hoped they would find him before he tried to run away, though she had stopped trying to argue him out of the dream. The marsh was impassable except by hovercraft. There were no solid paths through it, and people claimed it held undiscovered animals that would crush a boat or raft. Kylis neither believed nor disbelieved in the animals; she was certain only that a few prisoners had tried to escape during her time at Screwtop, and the guards had not even bothered to look for them. Redsun was not a place where the authorities allowed escape toward freedom, only toward death. The naked volcanoes cut off escape to the north and east with their barren lava escarpments and billowing clouds of poison gas; the marsh barred west and south. Screwtop was an economical prison, requiring fences only to protect the guards' quarters and the power domes, not to enclose the captives. And even if Jason could escape alive, he could never get off Redsun. He did not have Kylis' experience at traveling undetected.
The fern forest's shadows closed in around them, and they walked between the towering blackish-red stalks and lacy fronds. The foliage was heavy with huge droplets formed slowly by the misty rain. Kylis brushed past a leaf and the water cascaded down her side, making a faint track in the ashes and mud on her skin. She had washed herself when she got off duty, but staying clean was impossible at Screwtop.
They reached the sleeping place she had discovered. Several clumps of ferns had grown together and died, the stems falling over to make a conical shelter. Kylis pulled aside a handful of withered fronds and showed Jason in. Outside it looked like nothing but a pile of dead plants.
'It isn't even damp,' he said, surprised. 'And it's almost cool in here.' He sat down on the carpet of dead moss and ferns and leaned back smiling. 'I don't see how you found it. I never would have looked in here.'
Kylis sat beside him. A few hours ago she had slept the soundest sleep she had had in Screwtop. The shade alleviated the heat, and the fronds kept the misty rain from drifting inside and collecting. Best of all, it was quiet.
'I thought you and Gryf would like it.'
'Have you seen him?'
'Only across the compound. He looked all right.'
Jason said aloud what Kylis feared. 'The Lizard must have had a reason for letting him take my shift. To make it harder on him.' He too was worried, and Kylis could see he felt guilty. 'I shouldn't have let him do it,' he said.
'Have you ever tried to stop him from doing something he thinks he should?'
Jason smiled. 'No. I don't think I want to.' He let himself sink further down in the moss. 'Gods,' he said, drawing out the word. 'It's good to see you.'
'It's been lonely,' Kylis said, with the quiet sort of wonder she felt every time she realized that she did care enough to miss someone. Loneliness was more painful now, but she was not lonely all the time. She did not know how to feel about her newly discovered pleasure in the company of Gryf and Jason. Sometimes it frightened her. They had broached her defenses of solitude and suspicion, and at times she felt exposed and vulnerable. She trusted them, but there were even more betrayers at Screwtop than there were outside.
'I didn't give you those extra rations so you could save them all,' she said. 'I gave them to you so you'd stop starving yourself for one day at least.'
'We could all get out of here,' he said, 'if we saved just a little more food.' Even at midmorning, beneath the ferns, it was almost too dark to make out his features, but Kylis knew he was not joking. She said nothing. Jason thought the prisoners who fled into the marsh were still alive there; he thought he could join them and be helped. Kylis thought they were all dead. Jason believed escape on foot possible, and Kylis believed it death. Jason was an optimist, and Kylis was experienced.
'All right,' Jason said. 'I'll eat one more. In a while.' He lay down flat and put his hands behind his head.
'How was your shift?' Kylis asked.
'Too much fresh meat.'
Kylis grinned. Jason was talking like a veteran, hardened and disdainful of new prisoners, the fresh meat, who had not yet learned the ways of Screwtop.
'We only got a couple new people,' she said. 'You must have had almost the whole bunch.'
'It would have been tolerable if three of them hadn't been assigned to the drilling rig.'
'Did you lose any?'
'No. By some miracle.'
'We were fresh once too. Gryfs the only one I ever saw who didn't start out doing really stupid things.'
'Was I really that fresh?'
