source-cave. We spoke together a bit; I watched them thinking deeply about things I didn’t understand, about my bewilderment.
“You’re a good hunter, Lo Lobey,” Lo Hawk said at last, “and though a bit outsized below the waist, a fair specimen of a man. You have much danger ahead of you; I’ve taught you much. Remember it when you wander by the rim of night or the edge of morning.” Apparently Le Dorik’s death had convinced him there was something to La Dire’s suppositions, though I understood neither side of the argument nor the bridge between. They didn’t enlighten me. “Use what I have taught you to get where you are going,” Lo Hawk went on, “to survive your stay, and make your way back.”
“You are different.” This is what La Dire said. “You have seen it is dangerous to be so. It is also very important. I have tried to instruct you in a view of the world large enough to encompass the deeds you will do as well as their significance. You have learned much, Lo Lobey. Use what I have taught you too.”
With no idea where I was going, I turned and staggered away, still dazed by Dorik’s death before sunrise. Apparently the Bloi triplets had been up all night fishing for blind-crabs in the mouth of the source-cave stream. They’d come back while it was still dark, swinging their hand-beams and joking as they walked up from the river- Dorik behind the wire in a net of shadow, circled with their lights, face down at the grave’s edge! It must have been just moments after I first left.
I wheeled through the brambles, heading towards the noon, with one thought clearing, as figures on a stream bed clear when you brush back the bubbles a moment: if Le Dorik, dead, had walked with me a while (“I’m showing you now, Lobey.”), walked through dawn and gorse, curled on a stone under new sunlight, then Friza too could travel with me. If I could find what killed those of us who were different, but whose difference gave us a reality beyond dying-
A slow song now on my blade to mourn Dorik; and the beat of my feet on earth in journey. After a few hours of such mourning, the heat had polished me with sweat as in some funeral dance.
While day leaned over the hills I passed the first red flowers, blossoms big as my face, like blood bubbles nested
in thorns, often resting on the bare rock. No good to stop here. Carnivorous.
I squatted on a broken seat of granite in the yellowing afternoon. A snail the size of my curled forefinger doffed his eyes at a puddle big as my palm. Half an hour later, climbing down a canyon wall when yellow had died under violet I saw a tear in the rock: another opening into the source-cave. I decided on nighting it there, and ducked in.
Still smells of humans and death. Which is good. Dangerous animals avoid it. I stalked inside, padding on all fours. Loose earth became moss, became cement underfoot. Outside, night, sonic lace of crickets and whining wasps I would not make on my knife, was well into black development.
Soon I touched a metal track, turned, and followed it with my hands . . . over a place where dirt had fallen, across a scattering of twigs and leaves, then down a long slope. I was about to stop, roll against the cave wall where it was drier, and sleep, when the track split.
I stood up.
When I shrilled on my blade, a long echo came from the right: endless passage there. But only a stubby resonance from the left: some sort of chamber. I walked left. My hip brushed a door jamb.
Then a room glowed suddenly before me. The sensor circuits were still sensitive. Grilled walls, blue glass desk, brass light fixtures, cabinets, and a television screen set in the wall. Squinting in the new light I walked over. When they still work, the colors are nice to watch: they make patterns and the patterns make music in me. Several people who had gone exploring the source-cave had told me about them (night fire and freakishly interested children knotted around the flame and the
“You’re a good hunter, Lo Lobey,” Lo Hawk said at last, “and though a bit outsized below the waist, a fair specimen of a man. You have much danger ahead of you; I’ve taught you much. Remember it when you wander by the rim of night or the edge of morning.” Apparently Le Dorik’s death had convinced him there was something to La Dire’s suppositions, though I understood neither side of the argument nor the bridge between. They didn’t enlighten me. “Use what I have taught you to get where you are going,” Lo Hawk went on, “to survive your stay, and make your way back.”
“You are different.” This is what La Dire said. “You have seen it is dangerous to be so. It is also very important. I have tried to instruct you in a view of the world large enough to encompass the deeds you will do as well as their significance. You have learned much, Lo Lobey. Use what I have taught you too.”
With no idea where I was going, I turned and staggered away, still dazed by Dorik’s death before sunrise. Apparently the Bloi triplets had been up all night fishing for blind-crabs in the mouth of the source-cave stream. They’d come back while it was still dark, swinging their hand-beams and joking as they walked up from the river- Dorik behind the wire in a net of shadow, circled with their lights, face down at the grave’s edge! It must have been just moments after I first left.
I wheeled through the brambles, heading towards the noon, with one thought clearing, as figures on a stream bed clear when you brush back the bubbles a moment: if Le Dorik, dead, had walked with me a while (“I’m showing you now, Lobey.”), walked through dawn and gorse, curled on a stone under new sunlight, then Friza too could travel with me. If I could find what killed those of us who were different, but whose difference gave us a reality beyond dying-
A slow song now on my blade to mourn Dorik; and the beat of my feet on earth in journey. After a few hours of such mourning, the heat had polished me with sweat as in some funeral dance.
While day leaned over the hills I passed the first red flowers, blossoms big as my face, like blood bubbles nested
in thorns, often resting on the bare rock. No good to stop here. Carnivorous.
I squatted on a broken seat of granite in the yellowing afternoon. A snail the size of my curled forefinger doffed his eyes at a puddle big as my palm. Half an hour later, climbing down a canyon wall when yellow had died under violet I saw a tear in the rock: another opening into the source-cave. I decided on nighting it there, and ducked in.
Still smells of humans and death. Which is good. Dangerous animals avoid it. I stalked inside, padding on all fours. Loose earth became moss, became cement underfoot. Outside, night, sonic lace of crickets and whining wasps I would not make on my knife, was well into black development.
Soon I touched a metal track, turned, and followed it with my hands . . . over a place where dirt had fallen, across a scattering of twigs and leaves, then down a long slope. I was about to stop, roll against the cave wall where it was drier, and sleep, when the track split.
I stood up.
When I shrilled on my blade, a long echo came from the right: endless passage there. But only a stubby resonance from the left: some sort of chamber. I walked left. My hip brushed a door jamb.
Then a room glowed suddenly before me. The sensor circuits were still sensitive. Grilled walls, blue glass desk, brass light fixtures, cabinets, and a television screen set in the wall. Squinting in the new light I walked over. When they still work, the colors are nice to watch: they make patterns and the patterns make music in me. Several people who had gone exploring the source-cave had told me about them (night fire and freakishly interested children knotted around the flame and the
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