beauty she’d found in it.
Mary was gone, but she had not fled. She had not run, screaming, into the wilderness. Her pack was gone. She had taken it and left. But why had she not left something to tell him where she’d gone? A note, perhaps, weighed down by a rock.
He rose to his feet and searched the area, finding nothing, then, to be certain, he searched it again and the second time found nothing.
She could have gone north, he thought, thinking to meet him and Jurgens on their way back. Or she could have gone west, hoping to find Jorgenson and Melissa, although that seemed unlikely, for she had not liked either one of them. Or perhaps she had taken the trail back to the second inn and was waiting there for him.
First things first, he told himself, surprised at how calmly he could think. First he’d go back to the beginning of the dunes and make a wide sweep to see if he could find her track. If she had gone north, she probably would have found their tracks and followed them, but if that had been the case, he’d have met her when he was coming back, for he’d backtracked all the way.
Still he went and made the sweep and found no tracks other than his own and Jurgens’s. He examined the tracks they had made carefully for evidence of a third person. There was no evidence. There were only their two tracks going north and his set of tracks on his return. No other person had passed that way.
Night was settling in when he returned to the camp. For a time he stood and thought, trying to reach some decision. At last he made one, and it was a hard one for him to make. But, trying to suppress his guilt at making it, he told himself it was the one thing he could do.
He was bushed. He had been four full days upon the trail with no rest and little sleep. He needed a chance to become whole again. He’d not be helping either Mary or himself by charging off again, half dead from sleep, his thinking dazed, his perceptions dulled. By morning Jorgenson and Melissa might have returned and could help him in his search. Although that, he told himself, was no great factor in his thinking; he thought no more of the two of them than Mary had. At best they were poor sticks.
He found wood and started a fire, boiled coffee, fried bacon, made some pancakes and opened a can of applesauce — the first square meal he had had for days.
The thought of Mary never left his mind, but he persisted in assuming that she was all right, that no matter where she might be she was safe. He tried to wipe the terror and the worry from his mind, but succeeded only partially.
He wondered what might have caused her to leave. Whatever the reason might have been, it must have been persuasive, for under almost any circumstance she would have waited his return. There must have been pressing reason for her going, and he tried to summon up in his mind some possibilities. But that was fruitless and sometimes terrifying and he did his best, once started, to quit thinking of it.
He wondered, too, about Sandra. Should he bury her, digging a hole and covering her and saying some awkward and futile words when it all was done? Somehow, for some reason that he could not clearly comprehend, it seemed not quite the thing to do. It seemed, the more he thought about it, that disturbing her in any way would be sacrilegious. Better, perhaps, to leave her as she was, a shriveled (and holy?) sacrifice at the base of the singing tower. He thought about it and his thinking made no sense at all, but in a crazy, convoluted way it seemed to have some logic in it. What would Sandra have wanted? he asked himself, and there was no answer. He had not known Sandra well enough to guess what she might have wanted, and that, he thought, was a pity. Perhaps he had not known any of them well enough, as well as he should have known them. Despite the many days he had spent with them, he had not known them well. Did it, he wondered, require a lifetime to know a person well?
Of the six of them, four were gone, only he and Mary left. Now Mary, too, was gone, but he’d find her, he told himself, he’d find her.
After he had eaten, he crawled into his sleeping bag and was almost asleep when he was jerked awake by the sobbing of the Wailer. The sobbing was not nearby; it came from some distance down the trail, but still, in the silence of the night, it was loud.
He sat and listened to it, remembering the night of that first day, going north with Jurgens, when he had thought he heard the crying and had asked the robot, who had said that he heard nothing.
When the wailing all was done, he lay down again, pulling the bag up around him. Before he went to sleep, the Sniffler came and prowled all about the campfire. He spoke softly to it and it did not answer him, although it kept on with its sniffling.
Before the sniffling ended, he had gone to sleep.
27
Early on the morning of the second day after Lansing had headed for the inn, the Wailer appeared. It was on the summit of a hill that paralleled the trail and as Lansing strode along, the Wailer kept slow pace with him. When, on occasion, Lansing fell behind, the Wailer halted and sat down ponderously to wait for him. When once he had forged ahead a little, the Wailer loped easily to catch up.
To say the least, this was mildly disconcerting. Lansing did his best not to let it show. Other than a sidelong glance from time to time to keep track of the animal, Lansing attempted to pretend that he was ignoring it. After a while, he told himself, it will give up the game it’s playing with me and go trotting off somewhere. The Wailer, however, did not appear to be of this mind at all.
The mighty beast, more wolflike than it had seemed when they’d seen it on the butte top, had a look of reprehensibility. It was, Lansing figured, an arrant vagabond. So far it had made no hostile move, but that was not to say it wouldn’t. Any moment it could turn into a raging fury. If such should happen, no one could hope to stand against it. Lansing undid the guard of his belt knife so it would be easy to his hand, but had no hope that it would count for much if the animal should charge.
Mary, he thought. Was this great beast the reason that Mary had left the camp? Had it harried her out of it? And where had she gone? Or had she gone anywhere? Had the beast, after playing a silly game with her, finally charged? He bent over, retching at the thought of it.
If she had fled under pressure from the beast, without doubt she would have headed for the inn, for that was the only place that would afford protection. God grant, he prayed, that she had reached it.
The beast was coming closer, edging down the hillside toward him, wagging its tail at him (and a wolf, he remembered, never wags its tail), laughing at him with its lips pulled back, showing a lot of teeth. To gain some distance from it, he left the trail, slanting south and east. The Wailer crossed the trail and followed, paralleling his progress, not coming directly at him but continually edging closer. It drove him south and east.
The game went on for hours. The sun reached noon and started sliding west. Somewhere ahead of him, Lansing knew, flowed the river that, coming from the west, flowed into the badlands stream they had followed. On the point of land between the two rivers stood the inn. He could not allow this beast to drive him beyond the river. If that happened, he would not reach the inn and it then could herd him on and on, until he dropped from exhaustion.
Topping a low ridge late in the afternoon, he saw the river. He went down the slope toward it, the Wailer following. When he reached the river he halted and faced about. The Wailer stood not more than fifty feet away. Lansing lifted the knife from his belt and stood waiting.
“All right,” he asked the Wailer, “what is it going to be?”
The Wailer was huge. It stood ten feet at the shoulder. It lowered its head and thrust out its muzzle and came toward him, pacing slowly, first one slow step and then another. It was shaggy and disreputable. It looked like an unmade bed. And it was big — God, was it big! One snap and it would have him.
Lansing tightened his grip upon the knife, but did not raise it. He did not move a muscle, standing rigid and rooted in the face of the beast’s advance. It edged closer and closer. It thrust out its muzzle, almost reaching him, and snarled.
With an effort, Lansing did not move. He wondered vaguely, marginally, what might have happened had he moved. And was surprised he hadn’t.
The beast took another step. The muzzle now was only a foot or so away. This time there was no snarl. Still gripping the knife, Lansing lifted his free hand and laid it on the muzzle. The ragged beast groaned with pleasure. It
