had no reason to think that was true, did he? The storm might be only weeks old. But if he'd guessed right, then there had to be a beach. Waves like this, pounding rock cliffs for centuries or millennia, would have smashed rock to sand.
The waves were lifting him and dropping him. He got to his knees. This oncoming mountain of water looked like it, and he paddled hard, then stood up and walked the board forward, sliding down, down. The nothing ahead was taking shape.
Alien-looking black cliffs.
He veered the board. The wave was trying to break.
Twerdahl Town surfers had given him a name for what he was doing now, but he couldn't remember. He rode the board parallel to shore with a wave breaking behind him and curling over him. He was losing ground, always closer to black rock, but that was sand, it had to be sand at the foot of those black cliffs. He veered straight toward land and ran ahead of the wall of water, as far as he could, before the wave broke over him.
He crawled onto a narrow band of black sand. He lay for a time, just breathing.
Choking on seawater, he'd still had the wit to hurl his pack at the rocks. It was beyond the waves. But the waves were playing with a shattered board, rolling it in and back out, shredding it. His four-meter weed cutter must be under the sea.
The border of sand had narrowed. When the moons lined up you could get tides a meter high. If this beach disappeared, he could drown yet.
The black cliffs loomed alien and dangerous, a type of rock he'd never seen on Destiny.
He donned his pack. It was incredibly heavy, the clothes within soaked with seawater. Presently he found something like a way up.
18
The Windfarm
Something in the ocean is absorbing or precipitating potassium. What it is doesn't matter: we couldn't possibly counteract it in time. We'll have to 100k elsewhere.
-Cordelia Gerot, Xenobiology
Ferocious winds and stinging rain held him crouched and crawling and nearly blind. Lightning sputtered continually, like settler magic gone bad. It was all black and gray rocks tilted at all angles, and it had gone on forever.
He slid on slippery smooth surfaces. In places he found a surface like foamy rock. Traction was good, but it lacerated his knees and would have torn bare hands and feet to ribbons. His shoes and gloves were worth his life here.
It was another world, as alien as pictures of Volstaag and Hogun taken by crawler probes.
Yet there was life all around him. The rocks were cracked everywhere; and wherever there were cracks, wherever mud could accumulate, dwarf forest clung to the cracks and the flats.
Jemmy found he could cling to the spiky plants and follow the cracks.
Shadows blew past him on the wind, like kites with broken strings. He couldn't spare attention for what must be fragments torn from Destiny plants. But he had to keep ducking to protect his eyes, so he never got a good look. Now flurries of shadows dipped and darted about him as if a malevolent whirlwind sought his death.
He ducked a shadow and it slashed his pack.
He'd barely glimpsed its shape. It was not an Earthlife bird.
He could huddle close to the black-and-bronze plants. Birds had to veer from the plants, and Jemmy got a better look at them. What seemed to be feathers certainly weren't. They looked more like a chicken than an eagle: more compact, less likely to fly. He ducked slashing claws, and peered after the bird as it wheeled and came for him again. How many legs did that thing have?
Furtive creatures were looking him over from within the brush. Maybe his scent would keep them clear... but it wasn't stopping the birds.
A lovely, brilliant creature posed on a rock to watch him crawl toward it.
In the sputtering blue-white light it stood out like a bonfire, scarlet and yellow with bands of electric orange. When he came close it stood upright and spread short wings, and now there were threads of blue in the pattern. It looked too big to fly. It was patterned like a butterfly, iridescent in this light. It turned its head sideways to look at him, and snapped a beak like needle-nosed pliers.
He stopped a few meters away, wondering what defense could give it such confidence. It never gave ground. Destiny birds veered clear of it, and so did Jemmy.
He was crawling blind along a curve like a huge snake. He forced his eyes open and found he'd run up against a smoothly curved surface, a tube of rock.
He crawled into it, out of the rain.
It ran for meters before it became too narrow. As soon as he stopped moving, he was asleep.
Thunder shaped nightmares. He'd wake with a scream he couldn't hear, and remember where he was, and sleep again.
Later, slept out and hungry in a black coffin of rock, he wondered what built tubes. Human engineers built pipes, aquaducts... but here? He pictured huge worms that ate rock.
He crawled out into a world much like the one he'd left, and kept moving. Water had drained from his pack. It was lighter, briefly.
Starvation and battered senses left him light-headed. It was only a day since he had eaten, but many days since he'd eaten anything but fish. Fruit and vegetables were a fading memory. There were potholes in the rock everywhere he went, and he drank rainwater to fill his belly.
He had no idea what he was crawling toward.
An orange glow....one now, as he crawled along the edge of a patch of forest... there again, orange to his left and a touch of heat on his cheek. He crawled toward that.
The warm rain wasn't warm enough. It was draining the heat out of him, easing him into death. He was shuddering with fatigue and hunger. Lightning sputtered continually: the world was dark and blue-white, and it wasn't much better than being blind. He couldn't recognize a single plant or tree in the Destiny forest. The air stank. But orange flashed and drew him.
Until warmth bathed him, and he turned himself like a roasting boar carcass to soak it in. The wind went up, carrying the rain away from him.
For a while, then, he could stop.
Curiosity brought him closer to the heat. Crawling over naked slippery rock, he looked down into a sea of red- orange light. It made him back up. He'd found what was only found in teaching programs. Lava- molten rock- volcano.
Destiny's crust had ripped here. That happened often on Earth, but nowhere else on Destiny.
An alien place indeed, where no food grew for Earthlife such as himself. He should go while he still had strength.
Wind howled in his ears beneath the crackle of lightning. It wasn't easy to walk; but he just couldn't crawl any more. His whole body screamed if he tried.
He walked directly into the wind, peeking between his fingers. He didn't remember why. He'd figured something out... he couldn't exactly remember, but this was right. Keep the wind in his face.
Plants drew him, color against the dark.
They covered the shallow slopes ahead of him. They stood out like settler-magic paint: green, orange, black. Black stalks split and split again to become orange thorns whose tips divided down to tiny green needles. Bristly plants hugged the ground, knee high and twice as wide as they were tall. Nothing grew around or between them.
