“Mar,” said a familiar voice. “Over here.”
Rei was standing in the stream, a pack on his back.
I went to join him. “I didn’t bring anything with me.”
“You didn’t have anything you’ll need,” he said. “Come, we go upstream. Stay in the water.”
The water was cool but not icy, coming only to our ankles. I put my head down and waded, occasionally turning aside from a large stone or dead tree that had been washed down during flood. The journey was hypnotic, the water gurgling around my feet, the plethers humming in the pastures we passed, the small creatures cheeping and chirping in scattered reed beds. I lost track of time and did not think of it again until I looked up through the branches of a shutter-leaf tree to see the sky growing light. The branches creaked, the leaves turned to face the sun, an eye at the end of a branch winked at me.
We had entered a low-walled canyon. Rei said, “Far enough! We will sleep through the daylight.”
“Where?” I asked wearily.
“My customary wayhalt. Up there.” He turned between two massive tree boles onto an almost invisible trail that led up the canyon wall to a small cave, well hidden behind a protruding outcropping of stone. We sat, Rei took food from his pack and handed it to me. We ate without speaking, and I fell into sleep the moment I lay down.
Rei’s hand over my mouth wakened me. “Shhh,” he whispered. “We have searchers down in the stream.”
Together we crawled to the mouth of the cave and peeked around the outcropping that hid the entrance from below. I saw torches and smelled their smoke. I heard the angry jabber of irritated Frossians.
“There’s no trail.”
“If there was a trail, we couldn’t see it in torchlight.”
“Better go back, get some provisions, come back and try again in the light.”
“The least overlord will kill us!”
The voices continued their jabber, becoming softer as they retreated, back the way we had come. Rei stood at the opening of the cave, reading the air as the Ghoss often did, for it was full of messages from their kinfolk, who might be anywhere on the planet at all.
“Deen says the Frossians are angry,” he reported, with an air of satisfaction. “They had a great deal of trouble rounding up the umoxen. Some of them think you were probably killed in the stampede. The least overlord, however, insists that they find your body. He has to tell his overlord that he has seen you dead with his own eyes. Your enemy, the herd overseer, thinks you have slipped away in the confusion. He has sworn to hunt you down. We must hurry to reach the falunassa.”
I puzzled at the word as I translated it into Frossian. Those in the faraway. “Is that their name?”
“It’s a descriptive term for people in hiding. Here, they are the Gibbekot. If humans live on a planet, the Gibbekot become falunassa in faraway mountains perhaps, or deep deserts, or great canyons, always in the most secret places. They are not fearful. They simply prefer not to have the problems that result from unlike creatures housed too closely together.”
I stared into the distance. “Won’t the Gibbekot object to my coming?”
“No. You’ve been described to them. We told them the umoxen had adopted you. That was sufficient endorsement.” He returned to the cave and picked up his pack. “Let’s put space between us and this place before those Frossians return.”
Luckily, we had a moon providing enough light to let us see our way on up the canyon, past confluences with other small streams, the wash growing narrower, shallower, and rockier the farther we went, at last dividing itself neatly into two tumbling brooks, left and right, both leading up stony channels.
“Here we go,” said Rei, as he turned to the right and began climbing up the stream, from rock to rock.
I followed. There had been a time, I reflected, when this journey would have been impossible for me. On Earth I would have been too weak and too flabby to have walked any distance at all carrying a pack. My flesh had grown hard during the years of bondage. Perhaps I should thank the Frossians for that.
During the next few hours, as we passed several other places where streams or dry washes came in from the sides and as the stream we followed became a mere trickle, I became less sure I should thank anyone. “Rei, how much farther do we climb?”
“Not far. You’re doing well.”
It still seemed a great distance. The sky was growing light when a breeze from behind us carried a great uproar to our ears. Shouting. Something mechanical, roaring.
“Aircar,” said Rei. “Hurry.”
I managed to be close behind him as he climbed the last plunging stretch of piled stone and stood erect at the top. “There,” he said, pointing. “Gibbekot country.”
We stood on a natural dike. The source of the stream we had followed was a small lake stretching from the dike at our feet eastward toward green pastures sloping upward to gently rounded hills, these backed in their turn by receding ranges of blue mountains. Umoxen grazed in the valley, but there was no sign of other inhabitants.
Rei moved to one side, thrust his hand into a crevice in the rock, and pulled. Somewhere wheels turned and creaked. Somewhere a valve opened and the lake before us developed an eddy that spun itself into a vortex. Below and behind us, a spate of water boiled out of the rivulet to gush wildly over
