'Come down.'
'No, no.' Her veils drifted past, wafting cool breezes against their cheeks. She held herself against the fissured walls by incredible physical strength, and she moved as quickly as anyone could walk. Simon reached toward her, and she brushed his hand with a veil. The mushroom disappeared. 'Thank you, my friends.'
'Stay,' Val said. 'Even in the dark. Talk with us. Sing to us.'
'All my songs are old,' Aura said, her voice fading as she moved away from them. 'When they are new, perhaps I will return.'
'She never sings anything twice,' Val said when she had gone. 'Even when we ask her.'
Jan, sitting very quietly on the blanket, leaning against the wall, opened his eyes, and closed them again; sadness formed in his expression, and left it, and he appeared content. Val lay down, her head in Simon's lap, and stretched, as feline as he. Mischa had never seen her happy before. Simon stroked Val's silky hair; she reached up and drew him down and kissed him. When they parted again, Val stroked his forearm. 'You are so beautiful,' she said. 'They were so stupid to put you down here.'
His voice was so low, and Mischa was so unaccustomed to hearing it, that she did not realize he had spoken until he was silent again. 'We are human beings.'
'As human as—' But Val cut herself off. 'Mischa, I told you Crab was all right.'
Crab scuttled through the entrance. Mischa could feel his excitement: triumph and some fear; adrenalin. He was dragging something behind him.
'What have you got?' Val asked in her fond parental way. Crab placed his trophy before her and stood back, blinking his green eyes, waiting for approval.
'Val—' Mischa did not know exactly what the battered machine was, but she was certain where it had come from. Bits of it fell to the cave floor, clinking metallically. Mischa glanced toward Jan, and he met her gaze: he, too, knew who had sent it, and he knew its purpose as well. 'Did Crab kill it?' He pushed himself to his feet and circled behind Val and Simon, approached the device, reached around it and unscrewed a lens. Rather abruptly, he sat down again. Val stared at the metal beetle as Jan picked it up and turned it over, and Mischa could feel her contentment dissolving.
Crab sidled up against Mischa, confused by Val's reaction. Mischa patted him, and he showed her the scuffle between himself and the looker; no other being entered the scenes he remembered: not Subone, nor anyone from Center, not even anyone else from the deep underground. Mischa had not known just how agile and strong Crab could be. The looker was not built for combat, but it was well defended. Crab had stopped it, crippled it, upended it, and smashed enough of its components so it could no longer move or see.
'It's from Center,' Val said, and she was suddenly very sober.
'It's quite dead,' Jan said, continuing his inspection. 'Crab did a good job.'
'But it is from Center. It—looks for people.'
'It's Subone's,' Mischa said. 'He won't bother you, he only wants me.'
'They'd kill or capture anyone they saw. It's always been that way.' By the entrance of the cave, Simon waited. Val glanced at him, and he nodded. She got up. 'We'll have to go down.'
Urgency and fear sparked soundless activity. Crab huddled against Mischa, upset by the change in routine, knowing that somehow he had caused it. Mischa patted him reassuringly, sitting on her heels to wait while Jan dressed. Only a small dim globe remained in the cave. It highlighted Jan faintly, but not enough to overpower the radiance of his body's warmth. He bent down to pick up his boot. His fingertips were black, his hands maroon, his arms and shoulders burgundy; just below his heart he was scarlet. He put on his mended jacket, and the ghostly glow disappeared.
'You should go with Val and Simon.'
'All things considered, that might be best.'
Mischa refused to let herself be surprised or disappointed. She knew he would stay if she asked him, but she would not ask, however much she
might wish him to remain. He really was not ready.
'But if I do, they'll just hunt us down one at a time, and Val and Simon and the others with us.'
'Can you—'
'If you don't think so, then you'll have to come too. That's the only way I'm going.'
'You think I should, don't you?'
'I don't know, Mischa,' he said. 'If I have to fight, I'd prefer to do it under better conditions. But if the pseudosibs are going to follow us, they'll follow us here, or with the others. The only difference is a little time, and I'm not sure it's worth it.'
'All right. I wish you were stronger, though.'
'I'm strong enough.'
Mischa picked up their sack of provisions, and she and Jan left Val's cave for the last time.
Light-globes radiated glimmering paths across the dark, still water. The outcasts launched rude rafts in spreading waves of ripples. The paths of light shuddered and grew indistinct.
Jan and Mischa stood with Val, watching the people climb gingerly onto unsteady floating platforms built of scavenged plastic bottles and cord. 'Even our escape is made of Center garbage,' Val said bitterly. The hunted look had left her face; she was always more comfortable with plans made and implemented. 'Well. I never thought about anything I threw away either, back then.'
The outcasts seldom gathered all together; some of the people Mischa had never met or seen. There were three infants, carried close. Even the mental defectives were guarded and cherished, though now they were confused and terrified, and one, very old, was crying. 'We choose not to bear children,' Val had once said. 'The chances against them are too great. And those of us who never grow, in their minds. they need our care and our love.'
The first raft, full, was poled and paddled away from shore. It faded into the black water until it resembled a small cluster of fireflies.
'What's on the other side?' Jan was leaning against the stone wall behind them, his arms folded across his chest. He had come unaided, as though forcing himself to move once had overcome what remained of the effects of his injuries.
'The desert caves. The rivers flow from another source, so the water's clean, but nothing grows.'
'You can't stay there long.'
'As long as our supplies last.'
Jan nodded.
The sobbing of the old man drifted across the water, recalling other lost sounds. 'If Center ever really wanted to hunt you,' Mischa said, 'they could starve you out.'
'They could.' Val's answer came slowly; she seemed to contemplate possibilities and disasters. 'But they never have. I don't think they could stand being in here that long.'
'They could do it. They could stay in shifts.'
'They hunt us as animals—we never do anything to frighten them, so they don't come to kill us, and I don't think they'd take that much trouble to catch us for a zoo.' That was the real bitterness in her, and the real fear: the memory of being exposed and displayed as an animal, less-than-human; the determination to keep that from happening to any of her people. 'But you should fight,' Mischa said. 'You shouldn't let them chase you. They think they're better than we are, Val, but they're not.'
'It's time for us to leave.' Val started down the beach toward Simon.
Crab followed her, then turned to Mischa, then scuttled back and forth on a middle ground between them. Val looked at him, sadly. Mischa went to him and knelt down.
'He doesn't know what to do. He hasn't got any way to decide.' She could feel that his mind did not and could not choose between strong loyalties. He moved faster, back and forth, back and forth, growing more frustrated, more frantic. Mischa tried to calm him. 'Crab, you've got to go with Val.' She said it in words and symbols, several times over. He slowly understood, but responded incoherently, as Gemmi might. Mischa pulled away from the entanglement, but made herself approach again. 'It's important. You'll know when it's safe to come back.' He huddled against her. She urged him toward Val, but he would not go. She took his hand and led him down the shore.
Val waited. Mischa reached her and stopped.
