‘Lim Terree,’ another voice contradicted with a soft soprano warble. The mother said he called himself Lim Terree.’
‘So she did,’ the voices sang. ‘We search for the wife of Lim Terree.’
She did not answer, could not have answered. These were ghost voices from a world of spirits and haunts, a childhood world of reasonless fear.
‘Perhaps she is afraid,’ said the second voice. It sounded like a woman’s voice, or a child’s. Not a man’s voice. Vivian’s heart hammered. She had to say something. Perhaps they had come to help her. Help Miles.
‘What do you want?’ she called, her voice a thin shriek on the edge of terror.
‘Do not be afraid, please,’ the voices sang. ‘The mother of Lim Terree thought you were in danger. We have come to help you.’
‘Some men came,’ she cried. ‘Looking for me. For my little boy.’
‘Ah,’ the voices sang. ‘Can you move? Can you walk? Are you strong and well?’
‘Yes. Yes. I’m all right.’
The voices murmured in some other language. A few voices first, then several, then many. A chorus. Whatever it was they were singing, they did it several times over until it satisfied them. In some obscure way, it satisfied Vivian, too. When they were through with the song, it was completed. Even she could hear that.
‘We have sung this predicament,’ the voices told her. ‘You cannot walk in the dark. You have not the means, as we have. You would hurt yourself and the little one. So, when it is light, you must come to the red mountains. We will come behind and wipe away the tracks you will leave.’
‘The red mountain? The Enigma!’
‘Yes. So you call it.’
‘It’s where Lim died,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want to go there!’
‘Not quite there,’ they murmured. ‘Only near there. It is safe there. No Loudsingers … no humans come there.’
‘I wanted to go to Deepsoil Five,’ she cried. ‘Lim’s mother is there.’
‘We think the men who looked for you are also there. It is not safe there. Later we will take you there.’
The fog became silent once more. After a time, she thought she had dreamed it. When light came at last, she knew it had not been a dream. In the fine sand all around the edge of the hole were the strange four-toed prints of viggy feet. She had never heard that they could speak. In the light of day, she could not believe they had spoken.
Her disbelief immobilized her and would have kept her from moving, except for the light that came darting from the trail toward Harmony. Morning had come; the fog had slowly burned away; she had seen the tracks and marveled at them, uncertain whether to be curious or terrified. No one had ever alleged viggies to be harmful. The few specimens who had been caught in the early years of exploitation had all died, most of them very quickly. No rumor of violence attached to them at all. They were virtually unseen, a constant presence to the ear, an unconsidered irrelevancy otherwise.
But no one had ever said they could talk. It was this that made her suspicious. Suppose they were not really viggies at all.
‘But they were here,’ she told herself. ‘Right here, not four feet from me. If they’d wanted to, they could have snatched me up or killed me or whatever they wanted.’
Still, she was undecided. Then, as she was having a slow look around from the lip of the hole, she saw the glint of light up the trail toward Harmony. Flash. Then again, flash. She watched for a long time until it came again, three, four times. Light reflecting off lenses. Up that trail, at the limit of vision, someone was watching this place.
Had they been watching yesterday?
She slid down into the hole and began to pack their few belongings. A little way east of them was a narrow ridge, paralleling the trail, running eastward along it. If she could get behind that, no one could see her from the trail.
She watched first, waiting until the flashes came, then came again, then did not come. Then she was out of the hole and trotting toward the east with Miles staggering along behind. When they came to a grove of Jubal trees, she picked up Miles and darted into the grove to lie behind a tree and watch the Harmony trail.
After a time, flash, and flash again. This time she carried Miles as she trotted quickly away to the next grove. She had begun to get the feel of it. Someone was taking a look every quarter hour.
It took four more dashes between groves to attain the ridge. Then they were behind it.
‘More game,’ suggested Miles, who had become fond of diving behind trees.
‘Not right now, my big boy,’ she told him. ‘Right now, we’re just going for a long walk. Can you do that?’
He nodded, mouth pursed in a bargaining expression. ‘Cooky?’
‘When we stop for lunch, I’ll give you a cooky. How’s that?’
‘Fine.’
Long before they stopped for lunch he was worn out and asleep on her shoulder. Long before they arrived at the red mountains, while they were still miles from them, she was equally worn. Evening found them curled in a circle of settler’s brush, eating cold rations and drinking less water than they wanted, then falling into exhausted slumber.
‘Come,’ the voice said, almost in her ear. ‘You cannot sleep now. Men are seeking you. Come.’
This time she saw them, in the thinnest glimmer of New Moon light, occulted by the shadow of Serendipity to a mere scythe of silver. They were furred and large-eyed, with wide, mobile ears. Their necks were corrugated with hanging flaps of bright hide, shadowed red and amber and orange, and their heads were decked with long, feathery antennae that looked like nothing so much as the fronds of Jubal trees. They were all around her, singing, singing in her own language, and she was not afraid
