'That's lucky,' she commented. 'He's sure to be able to eat that. What's the other case?'
Vorkosigan was conducting his own experiment. He added water to his pouch, mixed it by squeezing, and sniffed the result.
'I'm not really sure,' he said, handing it to her. 'It smells rather strange. Could it be spoiled?'
It was a white paste with a pungent aroma. 'It's all right,' Cordelia assured him. 'It's artificial blue cheese salad dressing.' She sat back and contemplated the menu. 'At least it's high in calories,' she encouraged herself. 'We'll need calories. I don't suppose you have a spoon in that utility belt of yours?'
Vorkosigan unhooked an object from his belt and handed it to her without comment. It turned out to be several small useful utensils folded into a handle, including a spoon.
'Thanks,' Cordelia said, absurdly pleased, as if granting her mumbled wish had been a conjuror's trick.
Vorkosigan shrugged and wandered away to continue his search in the gathering darkness, and she began to feed Dubauer. He seemed voraciously hungry, but unable to manage for himself.
Vorkosigan returned to the spring. 'I found this.' He handed her a small geologist's shovel about a meter long, used for digging soil samples. 'It's a poor tool for the purpose, but I've found nothing better yet.'
'It was Reg's,' Cordelia said, taking it. 'It will do.'
She led Dubauer to a spot near her next job and settled him. She wondered if some bracken from the forest might provide some insulation for him, and resolved to get some later. She marked out the dimensions of a grave near the place where Rosemont had fallen, and began hacking away at the heavy turf with the little shovel. The sod was tough, wiry, and resistant, and she ran out of breath quickly.
Vorkosigan appeared out of the night. 'I found some cold lights.' He cracked one pencil—sized tube and laid it on the ground beside the grave, where it gave off an eerie but bright blue—green glow. He watched her critically as she worked.
She stabbed away at the dirt, resentful of his scrutiny. Go away, you, she thought, and let me bury my friend in peace. She grew self-conscious as a new thought struck her—maybe he won't let me finish—I'm taking too long … She dug harder.
'At this rate, we'll be here until next week.'
If she moved fast enough, she wondered irritably, could she succeed in hitting him with the shovel? Just once …
'Go sit down with your botanist.' He was holding out his hand; it dawned on her at last that he was volunteering to help dig.
'Oh …' She relinquished the tool. He drew his combat knife and cut through the grasses' roots where she had marked her rectangle, and began to dig, far more efficiently than she had.
'What kind of scavengers have you found around here?' he asked between tosses. 'How deep does this have to be?'
'I'm not sure,' she replied. 'We'd only been downside three days. It's a pretty complex ecosystem, though, and most imaginable niches seem to be filled.'
'Hm.'
'Lieutenant Stuben, my chief zoologist, found a couple of those browser hexapeds killed and pretty well consumed. He caught a glimpse of something he called a fuzzy crab at one of the kills.'
'How big were they?' asked Vorkosigan curiously.
'He didn't say. I've seen pictures of crabs from Earth, and they don't seem very large—as big as your hand, perhaps.'
'A meter may be enough.' He continued the excavation with short powerful bites of the inadequate shovel. The cold light illuminated his face from below, casting shadows upward from heavy jaw, straight broad nose, and thick brows. He had an old faded L—shaped scar, Cordelia noticed, on the left side of his chin. He reminded her of a dwarf king in some northern saga, digging in a fathomless deep.
'There's a pole over by the tents,' she offered. 'I could fix that light up in the air so it shines on your work.'
'That would help.'
She returned to the tents, beyond the circle of cold light, and found her pole where she had dropped it that morning. Returning to the gravesite, she spliced the light to the pole with a few tough grass stems and fixed it upright in the dirt, flinging the circle of light wider. She remembered her plan to collect bracken for Dubauer, and turned to make for the forest, then stopped.
'Did you hear that?' she asked Vorkosigan.
'What?' Even he was beginning to breathe heavily. He paused, up to his knees in the hole, and listened with her.
'A sort of scuttling noise, coming from the forest.'
He waited a minute, then shook his head and continued his work.
'How many cold lights are there?'
'Six.'
So few. She hated to waste them by running two at once. She was about to ask him if he would mind digging in the dark for a while, when she heard the noise again, more distinctly.
'There is something out there.'
'You know that,' said Vorkosigan. 'The question is—'
The three creatures made a concerted rush into the ring of light. Cordelia caught a glimpse of fast low bodies, entirely too many hairy black legs, four beady black eyes set in neckless faces, and razor-sharp yellow beaks that clacked and hissed. They were the size of pigs.
Vorkosigan reacted instantly, smashing the nearest accurately across its face with the blade of the shovel. A second one flung itself across Rosemont's body, biting deep into the flesh and cloth of one arm, and attempting to drag it away from the light. Cordelia grabbed her pole and ran full tilt upon it, getting in a hard blow between its eyes. Its beak snapped the end off the aluminum rod. It hissed and retreated before her.
By this time Vorkosigan had his combat knife out. He vigorously attacked the third, shouting, stabbing, and kicking with his heavy boots. Blood spattered as claws plowed his leg, but he got in a blow with his knife that sent the creature shrieking and hissing back to the shelter of the forest along with its pack mates. With a moment to breathe, he dug out her stun gun from the bottom of the too-large disruptor holster where, judging from his muttered swearing, it had slipped down and stuck, and peered into the night.
'Fuzzy crabs, huh?' Cordelia panted. 'Stuben, I'm going to scrag you.' Her voice squeaked upward and she clamped her teeth.
Vorkosigan wiped the dark blood from his blade in the grass and returned it to its sheath. 'I think your grave had better be a full two meters,' he said seriously. 'Maybe a little more.'
Cordelia sighed in agreement, and returned the shortened pole to its original position. 'How's your leg?'
'I can take care of it. You'd better see to your ensign.'
Dubauer, drowsing, had been aroused by the uproar and was attempting to crawl away again. Cordelia tried to soothe him, then found herself having to deal with another seizure, after which, to her relief, he went to sleep.
Vorkosigan, in the meanwhile, had patched his scratch using the small emergency medical kit on his belt, and returned to digging, slowing down only a little. Getting down to shoulder depth, he pressed her into hauling dirt up out of the grave using the emptied-out botanical specimen box as a makeshift bucket. It was near midnight before he called from the dark pit, 'That should be the last,' and clambered out. 'Could have done that in five seconds with a plasma arc,' he panted, recovering his wind. He was dirty and sweating in the cold night air. Tendrils of fog writhed up from the ravine and the spring.
Together they dragged Rosemont's body to the lip of the grave. Vorkosigan hesitated.
'Do you want his clothes for your ensign?'
It was an unavoidably practical suggestion. Cordelia loathed the indignity of lowering Rosemont naked into the earth, but wished at the same time she had thought of it earlier, when Dubauer was so cold. She horsed the uniform off over the stiffened limbs with the macabre sensation of undressing a giant doll, and they tipped him into the grave. He landed on his back with a muffled thump.
