“That’s what I said, but she kept minimizing it. She said you were going to be fine and that the worm’s poison wasn’t enough to kill you.”
“The bitch! Of course it could have killed me.”
“Also she chided you for not using your defensive measures against the thunder worm,” TenSix added.
Kira buried her head in her hands. She might have started to cry. I wasn’t sure.
“Hey? You okay?”
“I need a leppie.”
“That would be a very bad idea.”
“I need something. I feel like crap. I can’t believe she told you I was going to be fine. What about my dad? Did you speak to him?”
“I asked to, but your mom wouldn’t put him on the comm. She said he was too busy.”
“Fuck. This is what I’m talking about.” Kira pulled her knees up to her chest and curled into a ball. “My mom should never have had kids.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I’m just a fucking inconvenience. Even at age twenty-eight.”
“There is one more thing,” I said.
“Great. What else did she say?”
“It wasn’t what she said,” TenSix interjected. “It’s how she sounded.” He went on to explain what he detected in Biella Lark’s voice.
“Are you sure about that?” Kira asked.
“I detected an unusual amount of stress in her voice, which was at odds with the literal sentences she was saying. I believe she was speaking under duress.”
Kira turned to me. “Did she sound weird to you?”
“Yeah, of course. The whole conversation was weird. She basically wanted you to wake up and care for yourself. Like your Uncle Dartoo.”
“What did you say?” All the color had drained from Kira’s face—not that there was much to begin with after her ordeal.
“She kept harping on your Uncle. Dartoo? Dantoo? Apparently he was half-eaten by a worm too and you helped him recover from—”
“Diento? Was that what she said?”
“Yes! Uncle Diento. Sorry, I don’t know where I got Dartoo from.”
Kira tried to stand. “We need to get back to my camp right away. That was our signal word. They’re in trouble. Really bad trouble.”
9
No matter how much I tried to convince Kira that she needed to rest—at least for a few hours—she wouldn’t listen.
“You don’t understand,” she said, as she stalked through the canyon with me and TenSix in tow. “Diento was one of our danger words from when I was a little kid. It’s like the worst level of danger. If she had mentioned Uncle Quando or even Obrigado, it would have been cause for alarm. But Diento is really bad.”
“So, what? They’re under attack?”
“Yes, they probably are.”
“By whom?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Kira was leading us to the west end of the canyon, where the way out was supposed to be—if you knew where to look.
I wanted to make sure I was clear on what had happened. “So if whoever was in your camp was making your mom say that stuff to me—”
“It is my belief that Dr. Biella Lark was not being told exactly what to say,” TenSix said.
“Right,” I said. “There would have been no way for anyone to prepare for that. But there was likely someone listening to what she was saying.”
“Of course,” Kira said. “That’s why she used the signal word. All the rest of that stuff was just bullshit she made up on the fly.”
“She was protecting you,” I said.
Kira didn’t have anything to say to that. She just urged us to keep up the pace. But I was worried about her. She looked kind of wobbly.
“How much further?” I asked.
“We’re almost to the switchbacks.” She pointed up ahead at a cut in the canyon wall. “There.”
It looked like a big rockslide had hit the area. A hill of boulders rose to meet the jungle on a ridge a hundred or two hundred meters up.
“We’re climbing that?” I asked in disbelief.
“It’s not bad if you know the route. Besides, you prefer going back through those thorns?”
“No thanks.”
Once we arrived at the base of the boulders, Kira spent a good ten minutes trying to find the entrance. Finally, she spied a narrow passage between two immense boulders. The way was marked with a big scratched X on one of the rocks, but it was hard to see.
“C’mon,” she said. “This is it.”
“How about we rest for a second?”
“We can rest when we get to the top.” She sounded annoyed.
“Says the woman who just spent her day as a giant worm’s lunch.”
“Seriously, I’m fine. They grow girls tough on Lussix.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
The switchbacks went on forever, winding along narrow game trails between boulders, back and forth up the hill. Halfway up, I could tell that Kira was almost done. She stumbled a few times and I had to catch her. Finally, I threw her over my shoulder.
“Hey!” She squirmed, but it was only half-heartedly.
“You don’t want to stop, that’s fine. Me and my high-gravity muscles can go all day, but you’re going to rest, Missy. Either on a boulder or on my shoulder. One way or another.”
“You’re smelly!” she teased.
“Tough.”
“Okay, maybe just for a little bit. I do, however, reserve the right to barf on you if I need to.”
“Deal.”
It wasn’t just my bravado talking. I really had no trouble carrying Kira over one shoulder and the supplies over another.
“How you doing, Short Stuff?” Kira called to TenSix.
“I have been thinking about who might have been threatening your mother,” TenSix said.
“Oh yeah?”
“I doubt it was either of the indigenous races. The Bondril would never enter the Rhinobo Basin for religious reasons—”
“Is that true?” I asked. “Never?”
“Yes,” Kira said. “Everything east of the Joodoon is considered taboo and unclean. They call it the ‘haunted land’ in their own language.”
“Mandru heimta. It means ‘cursed land,’ actually.”
“Thanks, Professor,” Kira said.
“What about the other ones?” I asked. “The other race that lives here?”
“The Naba-Sa’im,” Kira said. “I doubt it was them.”
“Why? Didn’t you say that they were worse than the Bondril?”
“They are, but they hate the jungle too,” Kira said. “Nabas are plains dwellers. Nomadic. They stick to the Wastes. And mostly spend their
