Rety never swallowed all the talk about “gene raiding”—that the Rothen expedition came looking for animals almost ready to think. When you grow up close to nature, scratching for each meal alongside other creatures, you soon realize everybody thinks. Beasts, fish … why, some of her cousins even prayed to trees and stones!
Rety’s answer was—so what? Would a gallaiter be less smelly if it could read? Or a wallow kleb any less disgusting if it recited poetry while rolling in dung? By her lights, nature was vile and dangerous. She had a bellyful and would gladly give it up to live in some bright Galactic city.
Rety never believed Kunn’s people came across vast space just to teach some critters how to blab.
Then what was the real reason? And what were they afraid of?
The robot avoided deep water, as if its force fields needed rock or soil to push against. When the river widened, and converging tributaries became rivers themselves, further progress proved impossible. Even a long detour west offered no way around. The drone buzzed in frustration, hemmed by water on all sides.
“Rety!” Dwer’s hoarse voice called from below. “Talk to it again!”
“I already did, remember? You must’ve wrecked its ears in the ambush, when you ripped out its antenna thing!”
“Well … try again. Tell it I might … have a way to get across a stream.”
Rety stared down at him, gripped by snakelike arms. “You tried to kill it a while back, an’ now you’re offerin’ to help?”
He grimaced. “It beats dying, wandering in its clutches till the sun burns out. I figure there’s food and medicine on the flying boat. Anyway, I’ve heard so much about these alien humans. Why should you get all the fun?”
She couldn’t tell where he stopped being serious, and turned sarcastic. Not that it mattered. If Dwer’s idea proved useful, it might soften the way Kunn treated him.
And me, she added.
“Oh, all right.”
Rety spoke directly to the machine, as she had been taught.
“Drone Four! Hear and obey commands! I order you to let us down so’s we can haggle together about how to pass over this here brook. The prisoner says he’s got a way mebbe to do it.”
The robot did not respond at first, but kept cruising between two high points, surveying for any sign of a crossing. But finally, the humming repulsors changed tone as metal arms lowered Dwer, letting him roll down a mossy bank. For a time the young man lay groaning. His limbs twitched feebly, like a stranded fish.
More than a little stiff herself, Rety hoisted her body off the upper platform, wincing at the singular touch of steady ground. Both legs tingled painfully, though likely not as bad as Dwer felt. She got down on her knees and poked his elbow.
“Hey, you all right? Need help gettin’ up?”
Dwer’s eyes glittered pain, but he shook his head. She put an arm around his shoulder anyway as he struggled to sit. No fresh blood oozed when they checked the crusty dressing on his thigh wound.
The alien drone waited silently as the young man stood, unsteadily.
“Maybe I can help you get across water,” he told the machine. “If I do, will you change the way you carry us? Stop for breaks and help us find food? What d’you say?”
Another long pause — then a chirping note burst forth. Rety had learned a little Galactic Two during her time as an apprentice star child. She recognized the upward sliding scale meaning yes.
Dwer nodded. “I can’t guarantee my plan’ll work. But here’s what I suggest.”
It was actually simple, almost obvious, yet she looked at Dwer differently after he emerged from the stream, dripping from the armpits down. Before he was halfway out, the robot edged aside from its perch above Dwer’s head. It seemed to glide down the side of the young hunter’s body until reaching a point where its fields could grip solid ground.
All the way across the river, Dwer looked as if he wore a huge, eight-sided hat, wafting over his head like a balloon. His eyes were glazed and his hair stood on end as Rety sat him down.
“Hey!” She nudged him. “You all right?”
Dwer’s gaze seemed fixed far away. After a few duras though, he answered.
“Um … I … guess so.”
She shook her head. Even Mudfoot and yee had ceased their campaign of mutual deadly glares in order to stare at the man from the Slope.
“That was so weird!” Rety commented. She could not bring herself to say “brave,” or “thrilling” or “insane.”
He winced, as if messages from his bruised body were just now reaching a dazed brain. “Yeah … it was all that. And more.”
The robot chirruped again. Rety guessed that a triple upsweep with a shrill note at the end meant—That’s enough resting. Let’s go!
She helped Dwer onto a makeshift seat the robot made by folding its arms. This time, when it resumed its southward flight, the two humans rode in front with Mudfoot and little yee, sharing body heat against the stiff wind.
Rety had heard of this region from those bragging hunters, Jass and Bom. It was a low country, dotted with soggy marshes and crisscrossed by many more streams ahead.
Alvin
I WOKE FEELING WOOZY, AND HIGH AS A CHIMP that’s been chewing ghigree leaves. But at least the agony was gone.
The soft slab was still under me, though I could tell the awkward brace of straps and metal tubes was gone. Turning my head, I spied a low table nearby. A shallow white bowl held about a dozen familiar-looking shapes, vital to hoon rituals of life and death.
Ifni! I thought. The monsters cut out my spine bones!
Then I reconsidered.
Wait You’re a kid. You’ve got two sets. In fact, isn’t it next year you’re supposed to start losing your first …
I really was that slow to catch on. Pain and drugs can do it to you.
Looking in the bowl again, I saw all my baby vertebrae. Normally, they’d loosen over several months, as the barbed adult spines took over. The accident must have jammed both sets together, pressing the nerves and hurrying nature along. The phuvnthus must have decided to take out my old verts, whether the new ones were ready or not.
Did they guess? Or were they already familiar with hoons?
Take things one at a time, I thought. Can you feel your toe hooks? Can you move them?
I sent signals to retract the claw sheaths, and sensed the table’s fabric resist as my talons dug in. So far so good.
I reached around with my left hand, and found a slick bulge covering my spine, tough and elastic.
Words cut in. An uncannily smooth voice, in accented Galactic Seven.
“The new orthopedic brace will actively help bear the stress of your movements until your next-stage vertebroids solidify. Nevertheless, you would be well advised not to move in too sudden or jerky a manner.”
The fixture wrapped all the way around my torso, feeling snug and comfortable, unlike the makeshift contraption the phuvnthus provided earlier.
“Please accept my thanks,” I responded in formal GalSeven, gingerly shifting onto one elbow, turning my head the other way. “And my apologies for any inconvenience this may have cause—”
I stopped short. Where I had expected to see a phuvnthu, or one of the small amphibians, there stood a whirling shape, ghostly, like the holographic projections we had seen before, but ornately abstract. A spinning mesh of complex lines floated near the bed.
“There was no inconvenience.” The voice seemed to emerge from the gyrating image. “We were curious about matters taking place in the world of air and light. Your swift arrival — plummeting into a sea canyon near our scout vessel — seemed as fortuitous to us as our presence was for you.”
