‘You and the Tripmaster discussed it. He told Master General and Master General told me. I left a few hours before you planned to.’
‘I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask you to go back and say you couldn’t find me.’
‘Master General would just send me looking. He said so already.’ The boy turned away, gesturing toward the pile of wood laid by and the cookpot hung ready. ‘We’ve got some fresh meat.’
Tasmin followed him in a mood of some bewilderment. It had certainly not been his intention to travel in company, and had he chosen company, he would not have chosen Jamieson. Would he? ‘Master General didn’t say anything to me.’
‘He didn’t want to argue with you. He told us to make ourselves useful and not intrude on your privacy.’
‘Us?’
‘Me and Clarin, sir.’
‘Clarin!’
‘Yes, sir?’ The girl came out of the tent, touched her breast in a gesture of respect, and stood silently waiting.
‘You don’t have acolyte’s oath as a reason,’ he snarled, deeply dismayed. Clarin!
‘Master General said I might have oath, sir. If your journey takes you past Jamieson’s year, sir, then you would be starting on mine.’
‘I didn’t even say I’d take you as acolyte!’
‘Well, but you didn’t say you wouldn’t, sir, so Master General….’
Tasmin shook his head and said nothing more. He was too weary and too shocked to deal with the subject. The pins in his skull had set up a tuneless throbbing at the first sight of Jamieson, and he wondered viciously if the Master General would have been so generous with acolytes if he knew the effect they had on Tasmin’s injured head. He had been peaceful, settling into the wonder of Jubal, letting it carry him. Now … Damn!
He sat down beside the laid fire and watched while Jamieson and Clarin moved around the camp, making it comfortable. His acolyte seemed subdued, and Tasmin could appreciate why. An almost solitary trip into the wilds of Jubal would hardly appeal to Jamieson’s gregarious nature. Though it wasn’t mere social contact Jamieson craved. The boy would rather chase girls than eat, but he’d rather sing than chase girls, and he liked an audience when he did it. The thought of Jamieson’s discomfort and unhappiness damped his own annoyance with a modicum of sympathy. Obviously, this hadn’t been the boy’s idea.
Clarin led Tasmin’s mule off toward the patch of settler’s brush just beyond the trees. The mule would eat it now; they might be eating it later – the roots and stalks would sustain life for human travelers, though no method of preparation did much to improve the taste. Clarin returned, leaving the mule munching contentedly.
‘Why in God’s name …’ he muttered.
Clarin threw a questioning glance in Jamieson’s direction. The boy avoided meeting her glance. ‘I believe the Master General didn’t think you should be alone, sir.’ She was respectful but firm.
‘What did he think I was going to do? Throw myself at the foot of a Presence, like some hysterical neophyte or crazy Crystallite, and yodel for the end?’
Jamieson still refused to look at her. Something going on there, but Tasmin was too weary to dig it out.
‘I don’t know, sir. I think he just thought you needed company.’
Tasmin snorted. He didn’t want company. He wanted to sink himself in Jubal. Breathe it. Taste it. Lie wallowing in it, like a bantigon in a mudhole. Wanted to be alone.
Which, wasn’t healthy. Even in his current frame of mind, he knew that. Well, did he need company? Certainly it would be easier traveling with three. There were routes that were passable to a single singer, particularly a good singer – and Tasmin was good, his peers and his own sense of value both told him that. However, two or three singers could do better, move faster.
‘Did the Tripmaster enlighten either of you as to where I was going to end up on this trip?’ he asked resignedly.
‘No, sir.’ Jamieson was heating something over the fire, still subdued.
‘The Deepsoil Coast.’ Where Lim Terree had lived. Where he had talked to people, left clues to himself. Lim’s territory.
‘What!’ Jamieson turned, almost upsetting the pot, not seeing Clarin glaring at him as she set it upright once more and took his place tending it. ‘No joke? Apogee! I’ve always wanted to go there!’ His face was suddenly alive with anticipation.
‘We’re a long way from there. Weeks.’
‘Yes, sir. I know.’
‘What route?’ asked Clarin, stirring the pot without looking at it, the light reflecting on her hair. It had grown into tiny ringlets, Tasmin noted, and she looked more feminine than he had remembered. In her quiet way, she seemed to be as excited as Jamieson.
‘The only way I could get the Master General to agree to my going at all was to offer to do some mapping on the way. We’ve got some old scores he wants me to verify. Little stuff, mostly. Challenger Canyon. The Wicked Witch of the West. The Mad Gap.’
Jamieson put on his weighing look. ‘Mapping is Explorer business. Besides, nobody travels that way.’
‘Which is why he can’t get an Explorer to do it. They have more important things to do. For some reason, Master General wants the scores verified. Nobody’s been that way for ten or twenty years. Nobody’s used the Mad Gap password for about fifty. I had quite a hunt to find a copy of the score, as a matter of fact. We have no idea whether the Passwords will still work.’ It sounded weak, even to Tasmin, and yet Master General had been adamant about it. Something going on there? Tasmin would have bet his dinner that the hierarchy of the Order was up to something.
Jamieson was unaccountably subdued again. ‘It sounds like it will take forever,’ he said with self-conscious drama.
‘Not forever. A few weeks, which is what I said to start with. Good practice for you two.’
‘I suppose.’ The boy growled something to himself, and Clarin muttered a reply.
‘You don’t sound overjoyed.’
Jamieson grunted, ‘Right at
