He plunged into the shallow water and began to wade around its edge. “There are a dozen sizable streams entering the river we walked in. After rain, any of them might be in spate. There are about fifty little canyons and washes on this upper stretch, where we climbed, and the same is true of the other forks. Even if the Frossians have the patience to search them all, they are unlikely to get this far, and if they get this far, they will get no farther. Frossians like dampness, but they’re afraid of open water.” He raised his head and called across the valley. The echoes returned, amplified. An umox, the nearest, turned ponderously from its grazing and came toward us, down the left side of the lake. Rei plowed through the shallows to intercept it, with me close behind. The umox waded out to meet us; Rei grabbed handfuls of the creature’s long hair and pulled himself onto its back, then tugged me up beside him. The umox lumbered out onto the meadow and across the grasslands toward the nearest grove of trees. It did not speak to us, at least, not in any way I could hear.
“Scenters won’t be able to smell us,” I said.
“Not over the smell of the umoxen, no,” Rei agreed. “Here. Pull the back of my cloak up over yourself. It’s unlikely they will see us, and we will be under cover soon.”
I covered myself. Rei lay flat on the broad umox back, and I lay on his back, both of us covered in a cloak very much the color of the umox’s wool. The roaring came close, closer. The umox stopped, grazed, took a few steps, grazed again. I was about to panic when Rei murmured, “From above, the umox is one of a herd, all grazing. Hear them?”
I did hear them, all around us. Our own umox was working its way steadily through the herd toward the edge. Peeking from below the robe, I saw trees not far away. The herd leader snorted, and all of them moved into the trees, quite quickly, as the machine roared directly overhead, turning to return, even lower.
By that time, we were on the ground, lying in a hollow beneath a fallen tree, and the herd was moving into the open pasture once more. Rei said, “Anyone searching along the ground will find valleys full of umoxen on every side, streams everywhere, many little canyons and tricky places easy to get into and hard to get out of. Frossians have explored here from time to time, but none has ever left here to tell others what he may have found.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“We Ghoss were told to bring you, reason enough.”
“Told by whom, Rei!”
He shrugged. “Those who have the authority to do so.”
I gave up in frustration. Be thankful, I told myself. Be damned thankful you’re here instead of down there. The words resonated, bringing a childhood memory. Be thankful we’re up here, on Phobos, not in that windstorm down there on Mars. Be thankful you survived your bondage. Be thankful for your strength, your endurance. Be thankful you didn’t go with Bryan, wherever he ended up going. Be thankful you didn’t run off on the dragonfly, when you were a little girl. Be thankful the woods are all around us, for the aircar circled endlessly above us.
Be resentful about all those years of language study, however, for all they did was get you into trouble with the Frossians. Of course, I wasn’t dead yet. Language might still have some use.
“Here,” said Rei, pointing ahead once more. “Here is the Gate of the Gibbekot, and through it is the way to your freedom.”
Our way led into a shallow valley grown up in forest. On both sides the trees marched up slopes that grew gradually steeper. This was a new thing for me. I had labored for fifteen years among the riverside woods that drained the pastures of the umoxen: a few large purple-leaf trees, widely separated, with thin saplings and brush between, and never any feeling of being cut off from the light. Here, the darkness was a palpable presence even at the edge of the forest, a deepening reality as we went farther to be surrounded by many kinds of trees: the shutter-leaf, which seemed ubiquitous; silver-leaf, columnar black-bolled trees with leaves that were silver on the bottom; parasol-trees, with huge, tall green-gray trunks culminating in a flat canopy well above the general forest, some dark green, some laden with brilliant red fringes. We could see perfectly well, it wasn’t a question of being unable to see, but it was like seeing in late evening, bulks and masses of shadow, movement rather than form, a muffling of sound along with nose-filling, palate-touching smells, mostly resinous, occasionally threatening. I shuddered.
Rei patted my shoulder and pointed to a tree we were passing. “That’s what’s making you shiver. We call that Fros-bane. Take a good look at it. You don’t want to touch it, ever.”
The bole was a pale green, smooth as my own skin, with tiny beads of amber upon it, evenly spread as dew.
“See those drops? That’s the bad stuff. Like an acid. Eats your skin, gets into your blood, you end curled up in a circle, screaming at the pain. The Gibbekot have planted them all through the woods, along here. They’re immune to the stuff, but the Frossians aren’t.”
“The trees might work better if they didn’t smell so bad,” I opined. “I’d avoid them just because of the smell.”
Rei grinned. “Frossians have no sense of smell. Didn’t
