whether this was another civilized ritual. Then he sat down on the ground and looked unhappy.
The boy watched for a time, When the man did not rise, the boy began to walk away. Unchallenged, he ran swiftly back the way they had come. He was free!
About a mile away be stopped and threw off the fettering man clothing. Then be paused. He knew what was wrong with the giant. The man was not immune to the hot places; he simply hadn't been aware of them, so had exposed himself recklessly. Now he was coming down with the sickness.
The boy had learned about this, too, the hard way. He had been burned, and had become weak, and vomited, and felt like dying. But he had survived, and after that his skin had been sensitized, and whenever he approached a hot area he felt the burn immediately. His brothers, lacking the skin patches that set him apart, had had no such ability, and died gruesomely. He had also discovered certain leaves that cooled his skin somewhat, and the juices of certain fringe-plant stems eased his stomach of such sickness. But he never ventured voluntarily into the hot sections. His skin always warned him off in time, and he took the other medicines purely as precautionary procedure.
The giant man would be very sick, and probably he would die. At night the moths would come, and later the shrews, while he lay helpless. The man had been stupid to enter the badlands' heart.
Stupid-yet brave and kind. No other stranger had ever extended a helping hand to the boy or fed him since his parents died, and he was oddly moved by it. Somewhere deep in his memory be found a basic instruction: kindness must be met with kindness. It was all that remained of the teaching of his long lost parents, whose skulls were whitening in a burn.
This giant man was like his dead father: strong, quiet, fierce in anger but gentle when unprovoked. The boy had appreciated both the attention and the savage discipline. It was possible to trust a man like that.
He gathered select herbs and came back, his motives uncertain but his actions sure. The man was lying Where he had originally settled to the ground, his body flushed. The boy placed a compress of leaves against the fever-ridden torso and limbs and squeezed drops of stem-juice into the grimacing mouth, but could do little else. The giant was too heavy for him to move, and the boy's clubbed hands could not grasp him properly for such an effort. Not without bruising the flesh.
But as the coolness of night came, the man revived somewhat.
He cleaned himself up with agonized motions but did not eat. He climbed into his bag and lost consciousness.
In the morning the man seemed alert, but stumbled when he attempted to stand. He could not walk. The boy gave him a stem to chew on, and he chewed, not seeming to be aware of his action.
The food in the pack ran out on the following day, and the boy went foraging. Certain fruits were ripening, certain wild tubers swelling. He plucked and dug these and bound them in the jacket he no longer wore and loped with the bpndle back to their enforced camp. In this manner he sustained them both.
On the fourth day the man began bleeding from the skin. Some parts of his body were as hard as wood and did not bleed; but where the skin was natural, it hemorrhaged. The man touched himself with dismay, but could not hold on to consciousness.
The boy took cloth from the pack and soaked it in water and bathed the blood away. But when more blood cam; appearing as if magically on the surface though there was no abrasion, he let it collect and cake. This slowed the flow. He knew that blood had to be kept inside the body, for he had bled copiously once when wounded and had felt very weak for many days. And when animals bled too much, they died.
Whenever the man revived, the boy gave him fruit and the special stems to eat, and whatever water he could accept without choking. When he sank again into stupor, the boy packed the moist leaves tightly about him. When it grew cold, he covered the man with the bag he slept in, and lay beside him, shielding him from the worst of the night wind.
The dog crawled away and died.
Days passed. The sick man burned up his own flesh, becoming gaunt, and the contours of his body were bizarre. It was as though he wore stones and boards under the skin, so that no point could penetrate; but with the supportive flesh melting away, the armor hung loosely. It hampered his breathing, his elimination. But perhaps it had also stopped some of the radiation, for the boy knew that physical substance could do this to a certain extent.
The man was near death, but he refused to die. The boy watched, aware that he was spectator to a greater courage battling a more horrible antagonist than any man could hope to conquer. The boy's own father and brothers had yielded up their lives far more readily. Blood and sweat and urine matted the leaves, and dirt and debris covered the man, but still he fought.
And finally he began to mend. His fever
