‘In a way it was.’
‘Only a way?’ His irrationally hurt pride was giving way to curiosity.
She gave him a long, level look. ‘In a way it was because I forgot you aren’t Link. You’re not Link, Tasmin. You’re a lovely man and I think a dear friend, but you’re not Link.’
‘And you’re not Celcy,’ he said, wanting to get through her self-absorption, perhaps to wound her, only a little.
‘Celcy’s dead,’ she said flatly. ‘You need to forget. Part of you knows that, Tasmin. How long will you go on being married to Celcy? You called me by her name, you know. How long are you going to go on allowing yourself to love only if you pretend it’s Celcy doing it? There are other people, you know. Clarin, for instance. She’s in love with you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, thrusting his way through the stones that had hidden them. ‘She’s a child.’
‘Child my left elbow. What is she? Eighteen, nineteen?’ They slid down onto the trail, adjusting shoes and straps. ‘What are you? My age, about? Thirtyish?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘She’s no child,’ Donatella muttered.
He rejected all this. He had no intention of forgetting Celcy! ‘Don’t you need to forget Link and go on living, too?’
‘No!’ The cry came out uncontrollably, her hands went up in a pushing gesture, demanding that he take the words back. ‘He’s alive. If I could get him to Serendipity, if I could afford the fees, he could have regeneration. Everything that made Link himself is still there. It’s only his body that won’t let him out. It isn’t the same as if he were dead!’
He felt a wave of empathy. ‘Money? That’s it, isn’t it. That’s what love comes down to sometimes. A fortune to space him to Serendipity, and you’ll never have it. A fortune to get my blind mother to Splash One and pay for the treatment, and I don’t have that. So, your Link stays in a support chair and my mother can’t see.’
He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. ‘Have you stopped to think that if we’re successful at proving the Presences sentient, we’ll probably be shipped to Serendipity – for transshipment elsewhere, if nothing else. All of us. Every human person on Jubal. Which will include your friend Link, won’t it? And my mother.’
She looked dazed. ‘It … it never occurred to me.’
‘We’d still have the treatment to pay for, but at least we’ll be where it can be obtained.’ He laughed, a little harshly but with some satisfaction as he saw her look of concern for him turn to one of confusion and dismay, and then to irritation.
‘Oh, God, Tasmin, what are we talking about this for?’
‘Exactly,’ he murmured to himself, thankful that she was getting off the subject. Clarin! Of all idiotic …
‘I can’t handle all this,’ she went on. ‘We may not even be alive tomorrow. We’ve got to get to the Enigma and Deepsoil Five. It’ll take half a day to pick up the mules and get back where we are, and now they’re ahead of us.’ She shrugged her arms through the straps of the pack and started down the rocky shelf.
‘Yes, but they don’t know that yet,’ he said, trailing her a half step behind. ‘Which gives us the tiniest bit of an edge, Donatella. I think the time has come for us to break out of this valley and head straight for the Enigma.’
‘We have to backtrack for the mules anyhow, and there are some routes east. Rough transit, though. No Passwords for a good part of this country east of us. Let me think about it.’ She rubbed her head. ‘When we get to the mules, I’ll take a look at the charts.’
He agreed, shrugging the straps into a more comfortable position. The trail sloped downward to the place they had left the mules. And the mules would be rested. If they went to the east…. ‘Pray God Jamieson and Clarin get to Thyle Vowe….’
‘You’re placing a lot of hope in a couple of children,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Clarin’s no child,’ he said absently, only then realizing what he had said.
At that moment, Clarin and Jamieson were re-entering the north-south valley in a mood of defeat. Clarin was frankly crying, tears of weariness and frustration, and Jamieson’s face showed a similar, although more controlled emotion.
‘We’ll never catch up to them,’ she said hopelessly. ‘And now the trackers are between them and us.’
‘We know where they’re going,’ Jamieson replied. ‘So, we’ll meet them there. Or we’ll get ourselves to Deepsoil Five and ask the Master General to help us someway. I don’t know, Clarin. I wish you’d stop crying.’
‘I’m tired! We haven’t slept since we left Tasmin and Don, and there’s no point in trying to pretend I’m rested and cheerful. I’m scared, too. God, Jamieson, with what we found out, aren’t you? I’ll cry for a while and get it out of my system. A good cry is almost as good as a night’s sleep.’
‘It’s very hard for me to control myself when you do that. I find myself wanting to hug you.’
‘Up a gyre-bird’s snout,’ she remarked rudely, wiping her face with grubby hands. ‘Since when?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘You’re huggable.’
‘Not by you, Jamieson.’
He turned away so she would not see his face. ‘Got your mind set on him, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Up a bantigon’s end flap you don’t. You’re wasting your time, Clarin. He was brou-dizzy over his little wife when she was alive, and he still is.’
Clarin sighed and wiped her face on her sleeve. ‘All right, Reb. Just between us, yes. I’m tracked on the man. He’s a little stiff, a little humorless. Some days I think he’s got a Tripsinger score where his sex urge ought to be. But when he talks, it’s like he’s reading my mind.’
‘You’re what he ought to have had, Clarin. But he didn’t. He had a little girl who never had the least idea what
