Chapter 13
Mischa picked slabs of edible fungus from the bank of a stinking creek and tossed them to Crab. He caught them, holding them against his squat body, and popped one into his mouth. 'Ugh,' Mischa said as he chewed noisily. 'Wait to wash them, at least.'
The stream continued a little way and spilled viscously down a fissure in the side of a cliff Mischa had climbed a few hours before. As she explored, she planned escapes and ambushes. She kept expecting Subone and Subtwo to come, but one after another periods of time resembling days were passing, without feel of the pseudosibs, or sound, or general alert. Though no one from Center had come hunting in a long time, the people always watched. All Mischa could do for now was wait, hoping the pseudosibs would not come before Jan could travel, yet wishing they would come and get it over with.
She and Crab stuffed the lumps of fungus in a sack and started back toward Val and Simon's cave. They met no one. The other people in the underground were widely separated, to make the best use of the food. Shelf fungus and mushrooms grew near the polluted streams, fish swam in the cleaner ones. All life in the deep underground was, finally, the result of Center's discards. The outcasts knew it and resented it.
They were still leery of Mischa, whose strangenesses were invisible. When Crab was with her, they accepted her. Her ability to get around unfamiliar places without a light astonished them. Somehow, no one had ever noticed that Crab could do it too.
She stopped in the entrance of the cave. 'Jan—'
Standing, bracing herself against the wall with one hand, he held off her objections with a gesture. 'I'm all right.'
'It's too soon.'
He looked down at himself, his trembling legs, his chest already filmed with sweat. 'This is ridiculous.'
'You almost died.'
He took his hand away from the stone. He closed his eyes, balancing without support, and his legs stopped shaking. Mischa expected him to collapse, but after a moment he stood quite steady. 'That's better,' he said.
He opened his eyes and smiled. 'I couldn't lie still anymore. I thought I was about to begin hallucinating.'
Mischa wondered if he were reacting again to the crystals, if a layer of solubility remained to affect him, this time like a stimulant. But when she was near enough to distinguish his pupils from the near-black of his irises, she saw that his eyes were not dilated. Though the pulse beat rapidly in his throat, it was not frenzied. Jan held out his hands and flexed his fingers: he had taken off the bandages. Scars striped his palms from lifeline to wrist. Mischa saw relief and something close to joy in his face: now he was certain no nerve had been cut. She smiled too, for just a moment almost able to comprehend how he could be glad he was not permanently hurt. Her own reaction was fury that he had been hurt at all.
'Nothing of Subtwo yet?'
'Neither one of them,' Mischa said.
'It's Subtwo who's dangerous.'
'Subone's the one who did all this!'
Jan nodded. 'And he did it for fun.'
Mischa started to object, but he was right. She did not want to admit that Chris had died for a man's amusement, but it was true. 'He's still dangerous,' she said sullenly.
'Yes,' Jan said, and hesitated, reached back to the wall, and lowered himself onto the tangled blanket before Mischa could help him. He rested his elbows on his knees. 'As long as he's interested, or pleased, or waiting for something to happen. But his attention span isn't very long. He gets distracted. Subtwo—I've seen Subtwo force himself to finish something he didn't want to start in the first place. You've seen it yourself. He has a compulsion to finish any task he begins. sometimes he fights it, but I don't know if he'll ever beat it.'
'If they don't come soon. I don't like so much waiting, either.'
'We might have to go after them,' Jan said. She had expected him to advise caution. 'They wouldn't like it here. If we could lure them far enough down and make them feel lost enough, we might get them to concede.'
'I don't want Subone to concede,' Mischa said.
'Why not?'
She looked at him, frowning, for though she sometimes did not understand him, he almost always seemed to understand her. 'I owe him.'
'Not enough for you to kill.' He stressed 'you' only slightly less than 'kill,' but Mischa chose to misunderstand his point. 'I can,' she said. 'I have to. I
will.'
'Whatever it does to you?'
'Life's not so important on earth,' Mischa said.
Jan reached absently up to massage the top of his shoulder, the trapezius muscle. 'Will you promise me one thing?'
'What?'
'Don't swear any unbreakable oaths.'
She saw what he was doing and hoping, and she did not want to be kept from her decision, but she felt she owed him that much: to delay a little while. 'All right. But I haven't changed my mind.'
'Thanks.' Suddenly he smiled, and began to chuckle. Then Mischa saw the humor of the situation: the two of them against the pseudosibs, against Center itself, deciding fates as they sat trapped in a cave. And she laughed too.
'Did you see when Crab left?'
'No,' Jan said. 'He came in with you, I think.'
'I can't feel him.'
'He must know his way around.'
'He does, but.' She had hardly been separated from Crab since he found her, and she missed not being able to touch his mind. The spaces he touched were not Chris's empty ones, but the contact was reassuring. She crossed her legs under her, and chewed on her thumbnail, and uncrossed her legs, and stood up. 'Maybe I better look for him—' They both heard Val's rare laugh. 'Maybe he's with Val,' Jan said.
Simon and Val came in together, damp and laughing from a swim in the fishing stream. Simon held out his hand, offering something to Mischa: a small mushroom, one with intoxicating effects. 'No, thanks,' she said. 'I can't find Crab.'
'Don't worry,' Val told her. 'He goes off alone sometimes.'
Even intoxicated, Val would be concerned if Crab could be in danger, so Mischa sat down again. Simon offered the mushroom to Jan, who looked at it doubtfully. 'Is it like the medicine you gave me before?'
Simon did not answer.
'That was a distillation,' Val said. 'This is much milder, much slower.' She had lost her suspicion of Jan, gradually, as she realized his honesty and his worth.
Jan accepted the gift and chewed it slowly. Mischa had not expected him to take it, but as she watched he relaxed, and the faint lines at the outside corners of his eyes, the lines pain had given him, disappeared. He leaned back and sighed.
A wind-chime voice floated to them, echoing gently. 'Aura!' Val called. 'Aura, come down, see what we have.'
Aura drifted toward them, laughing, giggling, keeping herself well beyond the circle of Val's light, even when she slipped into the cave. Mischa could see her, but not her shape or her face, for the veils she wore blurred her outlines. 'Tell me,' she said, almost singing.
Simon opened his belt-pouch and picked out one of the mushrooms with his claws. 'Ahh,' Aura sighed. 'A span of forgetfulness, however brief.' Her tears fell around them.
