Vivian was screaming silently into her hand, fighting to keep herself silent and unmoving in the grove. The Tripmaster had said no passengers. Why had he said that?
‘Well, you’re weeks too late, Bins. We had that lady with us for a time with her child, but she left us at the Deepsoil Twelve cutoff. There was a caravan there goin’ by the northern route, one with women and children on it, and she chose to go with them. Kind of lonesome lady, lost her husband recently. Wanted some other women around, and I can’t say’s I blame her….
‘By the way, that fella with you has that stun rifle pointed kind of in this direction. He plannin’ to shoot some of us, or what?’ The Tripmaster had been talking very loudly, loudly enough so that no one in the camp could have missed a word.
Hearty laughter. ‘He’s just mistrustful, Tripmaster. He wouldn’t put it past you to lie to us.’
‘Well, easy enough to prove,’ the Tripmaster bellowed. ‘There’s me and my backup ’Singer. There’s six drivers here, includin’ the cook, and there’s six wagons. You can look in all six of ’em.’
Vivian kept silent, thinking frantically. Had she left anything behind. Any toy? Any little shoe? Any blanket or bit of clothing?
‘He covered himself,’ she explained silently. ‘The Tripmaster said we were with the caravan for a while. If you left anything, it was from then. Be still, Vivian. Be very still.’
So she was still, though she could not even identify the threat. She had had nothing to do with the Crystallites. She had heard Chantiforth Bins in the temple. Everyone went to the temple. It was a major attraction. What was he doing here? Why was he looking for her, for the baby? Why was she shaking in fear he would find her?’
‘Be still,’ she ordered herself. ‘Trust the Tripmaster. Be very still.’
Chantiforth Bins was speaking again, over the sound of rummaging, over the muttering between him and his man … men? More than one. Two, maybe three. ‘I don’t find her, that’s for sure, Tripmaster. Well, since she left you so long ago, you won’t mind our going along with you into Deepsoil Five, will you? We can wait for her there.’
‘Suit yourself, Bins. But suit yourself with those rifles in their scabbards. We’ll have enough trouble gettin’ by the Black Tower without your making us nervous.’
There were multiple clicks and snaps as the rifles were put away. The men were staying. Staying. And when morning came, when light came, the Jubal trees would make fans of themselves, facing east. And Miles might jabber, she couldn’t stop him. Then they would find her.
The Tripmaster was leaving the vicinity of the wagons.
Bin’s voice called, ‘Where are you going, Tripmaster?’
‘I’m goin’ to do what I need to do, Bins. You want to come along?’
Bins motioned to one of the men with him, who sauntered after the Tripmaster into a small grove well to the north of the one Vivian occupied. The Tripmaster had carried a latrine spade. After a time, they returned to the wagons. There was desultory talk. The firelight dimmed. Silence came. Perhaps someone was on watch, perhaps not. She could not tell. Several of the drivers went to the grove also. The last time a driver went, no one went with him.
Before she had married Lim, Vivian had worked for the Exploration Division, a lowly job to be sure, though a registered one, requiring concentration and accuracy as she fed the reports of the Tripsingers and Explorers into the master library of BDL. Some of her co-workers did not even read what they transmitted, their fingers doing the job all by themselves. Vivian, however, had read a lot of it and lived every word. She had inside her head the experiences of half the Tripsingers and Explorers on Jubal. She knew what mistakes they had made, what errors of judgment. She knew when they had been clever, too.
Now she asked herself what one of the clever ones would have done, sitting with her head bowed on her clenched hands as she thought. After a time her face cleared and she released the valve on her mattress and allowed the air to bleed away, so slowly it seemed to take forever, not making a hiss. Then Miles’s mattress, slowly, so slowly. He slept on. Miles was a good sleeper. She picked him up, cradling him in her arms, his limp mattress under him, then crept through the grove to the side away from the wagons. She needed a declivity, even the smallest trough would do, and she needed distance, to the east.
Behind her someone coughed, and she stopped, agonized. Silence fell again and she went on, up the long rise of ground to the east. She went slowly, keeping her feet from crunching, yard after slow yard.
When she looked back, the fire among the wagons was only a dim star. Beside her were two Jubal trees, the out-lyers of a considerable grove, and behind them the ground fell away in a gentle bowl. At the bottom of the bowl, she laid Miles down and slowly, very slowly, reinflated his mattress.
She tucked the blanket loosely around him, then went back the way she had come, measuring the distance with frequent turns to look over her shoulder. When she returned, she carried her shoulder bag and dragged her own mattress behind her to wipe out the footprints she knew she had made.
When she settled into the hollow beside the baby, he murmured in his sleep. Exhausted, she lay beside him with her open eyes fixed on the eastern horizon.
Light came at last, waking her suddenly. Despite her apprehension, she had dozed off. She could not see the camp from where they were. Leaving Miles still deeply asleep, she crawled up the slope, poking her head up behind the lower fronds of a Jubal
