Treasure Of The Stars

Chapter 7

Riyannah might be alert and watching him, but that didn't keep Blade from trying to find out who she was and where she came from. He tried three more times in the next few days as they marched deeper into the wilderness.

Once he tried drawing spaceships again. A second time he started a conversation on the stars in the night sky. A third time he tried to make a joke about her examination of his penis, wondering out loud what was wrong with it? She laughed and that lovely sensuous smile spread across her face again, but she didn't answer the question.

Once they'd passed through the canyon, they turned north away from the river and the cliffs along its south bank. The river was too easy a mark for anyone searching for them, and the cliffs seemed to shelter too many of the bat-cats. The country was so lush and green there had to be plenty of water and game everywhere.

If they got far enough from the river, it might also keep Riyannah from trying to run away. For all her courage, strength, and endurance, she seemed to be something of a babe in the woods when it came to wilderness survival. Apart from everything else, if she tried to run off, she would probably get lost. Then she might very well die before Blade could find her, if he could find her at all.

Blade didn't want that. She might be an enemy, or at least the friend and ally of the Menel, who certainly were enemies. He still didn't like to think of her fleeing into the forest, to die of exposure or starvation or being torn apart by wild animals. He was getting used to waking each morning and seeing her asleep in her blankets on the other side of the campfire. Asleep, her small face had an innocence that made it almost possible to believe she really was a child.

Four days march north of the river, Blade set up a permanent camp. The cliffs along the river were far out of sight to the south. The mountains to the north were looming higher and higher. Blade could see the blue-white shimmer of the glaciers along their flanks and feel a new chill in the air. The country was well-watered, with a spring or clear stream every mile or so. It had plenty of birds, small animals, and edible berries, and apparently no bat-cats. Finally, Blade hadn't seen or heard any sort of plane in two days. He and Riyannah might have been Adam and Eve, alone in a newly-created world.

The only serpent in their Eden was that each of them still had to learn the other's secrets without revealing their own.

For the first few days at the camp, Blade was too busy getting them settled in to worry about Riyannah's secrets. There was shelter to build, firewood to gather, snares to set for animals, and a water supply to establish. Blade could work beside Riyannah for hours on end without remembering that she was a mystery he had to solve.

If Blade suspected before that Riyannah didn't know much about living in the wilderness, he was now absolutely sure. She learned quickly what he taught her, but he had to teach her practically everything. She watched him building their shelter as if he'd been conjuring a palace out of the ground by waving a magic wand.

Within three days they were as comfortable and safe as they could hope to be. They had shelter, food, water, and weapons. The branches overhead grew so thickly that the shelter and even the fire were invisible from no more than a hundred feet up.

Their days settled into a peaceful routine. Every morning they washed in a nearby stream. Riyannah now stripped in Blade's presence as casually as if they'd been lovers for years. She never came close to him while they were bathing, though. Blade was quite willing to leave things that way.

After bathing, they ate a breakfast of leftovers from last night's dinner. Then while Riyannah tidied things up, Blade would go check his snares and the lines he'd left in a stream a mile to the west. He relied on them for most of the food. They had two hundred rounds of rifle ammunition and five grenades, but Blade wanted them saved for future emergencies. He doubted they'd have any serious trouble in the forest. They seemed to be outside the hunting grounds of the bat-cats and he hadn't seen anything else large enough to be dangerous. Leaving the woods might be another matter when it came to fighting.

Without those thoughts of the future, Blade might have been tempted to pitch the rifles, ammunition, and grenades into the nearest stream. It was getting harder to stay on his guard and keep all the weapons out of Riyannah's hands. At the same time she never made a single move toward any of them. Did this mean she could really be trusted, or was she playing an even deeper game than he suspected? Blade would have given a great deal to know-and even more not to have to ask the question at all.

Damn it, Riyannah was too pleasant a companion to be caught up in this «war of the worlds,» Menel or no Menel. To be sure, some of the most pleasant companions could also be deadly opponents. Blade learned that very young, and because of that lived to grow older. He didn't have to like it.

Blade always spent most of the morning collecting the night's catch and resetting the snares and lines. They spent the afternoon working around the camp, collecting wood, mushrooms, and berries, and cooking dinner. All this kept them so busy they seldom had to talk about anything except the «safe» topics-food, the weather, Blade's luck with the fish, the bugs in the bedding. Riyannah knew all the English she needed for this sort of talk. Sometimes the conversation flowed on pleasantly for half an hour, until suddenly one or the other realized they were drifting over toward dangerous ground.

They ate dinner as the forest darkened, then banked up the fire. By the time it was dark, they were both rolled up in their blankets, sound asleep on the opposite sides of the shelter. Each night the last thing Blade heard was Riyannah's gentle breathing. He was getting used to hearing it.

In the darkness of the seventh night at the camp, Blade awoke. Something was crying out in the forest, far off and distorted by distance but still loud enough to wake him. He sat up, throwing off the blankets with one hand and gripping his rifle with the other as he listened for the cries to come again.

They did. He heard a high-pitched screaming, something which might have been a growl, then a deep-toned bellowing. Another growl, fading away, then silence except for the wind and the call of a night bird.

Blade looked at Riyannah. She'd turned over, but her eyes were still closed and her breathing as slow and regular as ever. Even if she'd heard anything, she wasn't likely to remember it next morning.

The fire was down to a pile of dimly-glowing coals puffing up smoke. Chill air crept into the shelter and flowed across Blade's skin, biting in a way he hadn't felt before. The thought of going back to sleep was enormously appealing.

Instead he forced himself to stay awake for another hour, listening for more cries in the night. He only heard more night birds and the sigh of the wind, Riyannah's breathing, and the occasional pop of a live coal. At last he tossed another handful of sticks on the fire, wrapped himself up in his blankets, and slept peacefully until Riyannah shook him awake in a clear, cool dawn.

Blade spent the morning collecting the night's catch: four fish and something like a cross between a gopher and a duck-billed platypus. He spent the afternoon exploring the area around the camp almost tree by tree, looking for signs of whatever made the cries in the night.

Just before dinnertime he found what he was looking for. In the middle of a patch of churned-up earth, half buried in dead leaves and needles, sprawled a large animal. It reminded Blade of a short-legged moose with a shaggy coat and a long curling tail. Two pairs of broad antlers jutted out from either side of the narrow skull, bending upward at right angles. The animal looked as if it was wearing a pair of bookends on its head.

The animal was so badly mangled that Blade could hardly tell where one injury ended and another began. The neck was broken, the skull cracked and the brains eaten out, the belly slashed open and most of the internal organs gone, and the rump eaten down to the bone. The killers had been hungry as well as powerful.

Searching the area around the body, Blade turned up two kinds of footprints. One was broad and round, obviously the dead animal's. The other showed six long toes spreading out like a fan, each tipped with a claw. Blade counted at least three different sets of the second kind.

So much for his notion that this part of the forest was clear of dangerous animals. He looked around him carefully, estimating the size of the clearing. He wished now that he'd seen more of the bat-cats in action when he was in the wilderness the first time. Could they climb trees and glide across clearings, or could they attack entirely on the ground?

Blade snapped off the safety on his rifle and worked a round into the chamber. Then he headed back to camp, following a deliberately confused route, frequently stopping to listen, and trying to look in all directions at once. He heard and saw nothing, but suddenly the forest no longer seemed so friendly.

What next? Moving the camp farther north would take a lot of time and hard work, and might be wasted effort. If the bat-cats laired in the cliffs along the river, they might also nest along the slopes of the mountains to the north. Going north could be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

On the other hand, staying where they were meant arming Riyannah. She had to be able to defend herself against the bat-cats, and there was only one way to be sure of that. Forcing her to stay in camp wouldn't work even if she was willing. A pack of the big cats could rip the shelter apart and get at anyone inside it. So she'd have to take one of the rifles and a magazine of ammunition. That should be enough for dealing with the bat-cats.

It would also be more than enough to let her shoot him in the back if she felt like it. He had to take the chance. If the bat-cats killed Riyannah, her secrets would die with her. Blade didn't like the prospect any more than he liked the thought of being shot in the back.

In fact, he didn't like the thought of Riyannah dying at all. He had a duty to keep her alive, at least until something happened to make it an equally clear duty to kill her. It wasn't just a duty to Home Dimension, either. It was a duty to his own conscience. Blade knew he wasn't in love with Riyannah. He also knew that if he killed her or let her die through a mistake of his, he'd find it very hard to forget her or forgive himself.

Richard Blade, he thought. You are going to have to ask yourself whether you are getting too soft for this kind of work. Then he shrugged and put the question out of his mind. Whatever answer he got when he was safely back in Home Dimension, it would make no difference here and now.

Blade nearly ran the last few hundred yards to the camp. Riyannah was walking off toward the nearest spring to refill their canteens.

«Riyannah!» he shouted, waving furiously. She turned. «Come here!» As she hurried toward him, he pulled a magazine out of his pack and picked up her empty rifle. Then he shoved the magazine into place, snapped on the safety, pulled out the bayonet, and locked it on to the rifle's muzzle. By now Riyannah was back in the camp, looking curiously at him. Before she could say anything, he held the rifle out to her.

«Here, Riyannah. Take this. It is yours.»

Riyannah stared at it as if he'd slapped her, grabbed for the rifle, and missed. It fell to the ground with a thud. She knelt to pick it up, but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn't grip it. Her eyes shut, squeezing out tears which washed paths through the soot on her face.

«Why?» she said, in a voice so strangled that Blade could barely understand her.

«There are dangerous animals in this forest. I did not think there were any, but now I know I was wrong. You must have a rifle and ammunition, to defend yourself against the animals.»

«You did-I-«, then a wordless choking noise. For a moment Riyannah seemed too stunned and confused even to cry, let alone speak.

«I do not want you to be killed by the animals,» said Blade, smiling. «Why should I? That would make me stupid and cruel, like the soldiers.»

Slowly, as if all her joints were rusty, Riyannah stood up. Her fists were clenched and her eyes were open but staring blindly. Then she stepped forward, tripped over the rifle, and nearly fell into Blade's arms.

He held her gently and kissed her on the forehead and on the eyes until she stopped shaking. At last she straightened up and he let her go. She stepped back and nearly tripped over the rifle.

Blade laughed. «Riyannah, the first thing you must learn about this rifle is not to jump up and down on it.» She laughed in turn, bent down, and picked it up.

«You will teach me how to shoot the animals?» she said. «I know this gun, but only-«She fumbled for the words, then went through a pantomime of firing it from the hip on full automatic. «Is that good for the animals too?»

«No. With the animals, you must fire one shot at a time. But I will teach you that, and other things as well. Then you will be safe from the animals as long as we are in the forest.» This was the first time he'd even hinted they might sooner or later be moving on.

«What if there are more animals than there are shots for the rifles?»

«Then-«He hesitated, then decided to take the risk. «Then I suppose we will have to go somewhere else, where there are no dangerous animals. Do you know such a place?»

Only a trained eye like Blade's could have detected Riyannah's little gasp and the slight stiffening of the slender body. She licked her lips three times, one fist still clenched. For a moment Blade could have sworn she was going to answer, «Yes,» and perhaps say even more.

Then the moment passed. She frowned and slowly shook her head. «I do not think I know such a place. Do you?»

«No.»

«Then we must make this place safe for both of us. Is that not true, Blade?»

This time he reached out and drew her to him with one arm, to kiss her on both cheeks. She did not protest, but smiled up at him until he let her go.