The Mystery of Ireta (31 page)

Varian was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to stroll nonchalantly up to them and say, “Well, fellows, it’s like this . . .”

Instead she savored the perplexed tableau and wished that there were some way in which she could explain to her puzzled hosts and protectors. They were noble creatures, elements of dignity were visible even in that moment of acute perplexity. Would they—could they—evolve further? Somehow she couldn’t imagine the Ryxi in a protective role toward another species of avian life. Fortunately, there was no way in which the Ryxi could jeopardize the giffs’ evolution! She smiled to herself, watching the giffs as they continued to debate the puzzle. Middle Giff turned from one sidekick to the other, gurgling softly under their more audible commentaries. Vrl would be furious, Varian thought. Another flying life-form capable of reasoning. Thank Krim that the Ryxi had refused to credit even the little Kai had reported of avian life on Ireta. Ryxi could hold lifelong grudges which, in this instance, suited Varian perfectly.

The examining committee waddled to the edge of the cave ledge and dropped off, spreading their wings to catch an updraft. She watched them from behind her screen as they circled and landed among those left on the council rocks. More harmonious noise. Could the musicality of a species’ utterances be an indication of their basic temperament? An interesting notion—harmony equated with rational thought? Discord with basic survival reactions?

She glanced at the sky, squinting as she found the sun. Kai and Tor had been gone a while. At the rate of speed Tor had left the cliffs, the trip back to the old compound would have required a fraction of the time needed to make the journey by sled.

Time! She scurried back to the shuttle and hastily checked her patients. She ought not to have been gone so long, yet she’d no way of measuring time. Lunzie felt warmer and her respiratory rate was quicker. Triv was all right, too. She couldn’t risk leaving them again. She settled down, drawing the thin thermal sheet about her.

Even if Kai found a sled in working order, it would take him some hours to return. To pass time, she carefully peeled and ate another of the fruits, chewing slowly to get the most of its taste and to draw out the task of eating. Mentally she rehearsed phrases of a report she’d make to the Xenobiological Survey on the cooperative tendencies of the golden fliers.

A long sigh nearly lifted Varian from the hard shuttle plasfloor. Lunzie! Yes, the medic’s head had turned and her right hand jumped, her feet twitched. It was time for the restorative. As she prepared Lunzie’s, she looked over at Triv. His head had fallen to one side, his lips parted and a groan issued from deep inside the man.

“Lunzie, it’s Varian. Can you hear me?”

Lunzie blinked, trying to focus her eyes. Varian remembered her own attempts and resisted the impulse to smile. Lunzie wouldn’t appreciate humor at the expense of her personal dignity.

“Hnnnnn?”

“It’s Varian, Lunzie. You’ve been in cold sleep. I’m reviving you and Triv.”

“Ohhhhh.”

Varian gave her the second of the two required shots and then turned to give Triv his shot. She could appreciate their sensations as long-unused nerves and limbs began to respond to mental dictates. Once the second shots had taken effect, Lunzie and Triv were soon sitting up.

“I only hope you took it easy at first,” Lunzie commented to Varian in her usual way.

“Oh yes,” Varian assured her blithely, aware that “easy” in Lunzie’s lexicon probably differed from her own interpretation. “I feel great.”

“So what happened?”

“That Thek, Tor—the one Kai knows—came.”

Lunzie’s eyebrows arched in mild surprise. “Not to our rescue, certainly—it wanted the old core!”

Varian grinned at the medic, pleased that someone else shared her cynicism about Thek. “Right! The one Gaber and Kai disinterred.”

“What would it want that for?” Triv asked, his words slurred in his first attempt at speech.

Varian shrugged. “A Thekian reason. But Kai went off with Tor to find it. I hope that wretched thing’s buried nineteen meters down. No, I don’t,” she contradicted herself quickly, “for that would mean we’ve been asleep far too long. At any rate, Kai took along a power pack to unearth a sled for us.”

“If the heavy-worlders didn’t wreck ’em ,” Lunzie said sourly.

“They wouldn’t do that,” Triv said. “They’d be too sure that they’d locate us and the power packs.”

“A sled would be a powerful encouragement.” Lunzie looked down at the darker mounds of sleepers. Then she began to manipulate her arms and legs in a Discipline limbering exercise.

“Do I smell fruit?” Triv asked, running his tongue over his lips.

Varian instantly set to peel fruit for Lunzie and Triv. While they ate slowly and appreciatively, Varian related the adventures she and Kai had had, and their conclusion that the heavy-worlders had penetrated to the giffs’ territory. With great relish she recounted the visitation of the Elder giffs after Tor had left the cave. Triv was amused, but Lunzie interpreted Varian’s report differently, though she offered no comment.

“Can we use the main cave safely?” she asked Varian as she rose stiffly to her feet. “Or are those fliers of yours apt to recon frequently? No matter, I’d rather be out in Ireta’s stink than sit in this morgue.” She gathered up the thermal sheet and stalked to the entrance.

Triv and Varian followed. Once outside, Lunzie regarded the vines for a long moment, her expression betraying nothing of her thoughts. Suddenly she began to sniff, at first tentatively, and then with deeper breaths. “What . . . the . . .”

Varian grinned at her consternation. “Yes, I’d noticed, too. We’ve got accustomed to Ireta.”

“Don’t those vines give you any idea how long we’ve slept?” Lunzie demanded.

“I wish my botanical expertise was not limited to edibility and toxicity,” Varian said, not wishing to add that the expedition’s botanist had mutinied. “Tropical growth has a vitality unlike others. Why don’t you limber up more? You could shower with the next rain . . .”

“Say, Tanegli broke your shoulder . . .” Lunzie’s strong fingers found the break point in Varian’s shoulder. Her expression was inscrutable. “Reabsorbed! How long ago did Kai leave?” she added in a quick shift of topic.

“Early morning. Before the net giffs left for fishing.” Varian swung a vine beyond the lip of the cave and, squinting against the sun which was burning through the heat haze, decided it must be midafternoon. “He could be back any time now.”

“We’ll hope so. D’you have anything more than fruit? Any protein? I feel an urgent need for something substantial.”

“Well,” Varian began brightly, “we were lucky enough to find hadrasaur nuts . . .”

“Were you now?” Lunzie’s dry humor had survived cold sleep.

While Varian tried to sell the two on the merits of the pithy nuts, she tried to hide her growing apprehension over Kai’s delay. Kai might ascribe some loyalty to Tor but she couldn’t. It would be just like the creature to find the bloody core and bounce off with its treasure, ignoring Kai’s welfare. Still, Kai would have had to disinter the sleds and check over the console. It could have taken a long time to find the sleds. Her anxiety sharpened her hearing and the giffs’ cries were audible. Without explanation to Triv and Lunzie, she made a sudden running leap to a vine, swinging out to see what alarmed them. The haze had thickened, but the muffled whine of a sled was music to her ears.

“He’s back. He’s back,” she cried as she ran to the vines anchored to the shuttle and began shinnying up. She was just pulling herself onto the cliff when the blunt snout of the two-man vehicle emerged from the obscuring haze and wobbled erratically in her direction.

Krims! Was the thing damaged? “Lunzie! Triv! Get up here!”

What was Kai attempting? The sled angled down, not as if he was attempting to circle and land in the cave. The flight angle was wrong. What was he doing? Reminding the giffs of the first peaceful visit they’d had from humans? No, not with the sled swinging like that. Glare kept her from making out the pilot behind the canopy. The giffs were alarmed, too, taking to the air in flocks. Some began to circle to investigate. The bow of the sled dipped again and, as Varian watched from the cliff edge, her heart in her throat, its forward motion was braked so fast that the vehicle fell rather than descended, bumping along the vines until she was afraid that momentum would carry it over the cliff. She even put out her hand in an unconscious gesture. With a final
grind
, the nose of the sled caught on the vines and it slowed to a halt. Then she could see that Kai was slumped over the console.

Forgetting any caution for the circling giffs, she clambered over the edge and reached the sled just as the first of the giffs landed. She eyed the creature over the stained and scratched canopy. The giff reared back, its wings half extended, the wing talons spread but, as she caught her breath and braced herself for an assault, a long warbling note restrained the giff. The creature’s talons closed and its wings relaxed slightly.

She had time, then, Varian thought, to get to Kai. She pressed the canopy release and, once the plasglas had cracked open, she pushed to speed the retraction.

“Kai! Kai!”

“Kaaaiiiii! Kaaaaiiiii!” The giffs mimicked her as more landed and ranged themselves on either side of the first one.

At that moment, Kai moaned. Ignoring the giffs, Varian bent into the sled to tend to his body slumped over the console. A putrid stench now rose from the opened cockpit. Shuddering in revulsion, she hauled Kai upright. And shuddered again, mastering the wave of nausea that swept her. Kai’s face was a mass of blood. What was left of his overall was matted against his bloodied flesh. The whole front of him was a bloody mess.

“LUNZIE! TRIV! HELP!” She screeched over her shoulder.

“UNNNNZZZZI IVVVVELLLLL.” The giffs picked up the sounds.

“Shut up! I don’t need a chorus!” Varian yelled at them to relieve the horror that she experienced looking down at her coleader. He moaned again.

Her fingers hunted for the pulse against the carotid artery. Slow, strong and regular. Strange. No, he’d been exerting Discipline. How else could he have returned to the cliffs in his condition?

Had Lunzie heard her? She glanced warily up at the giffs and was astonished to see that every head was turned away and the bodies seemed to be withdrawing from the sled. They looked, for all the world, as if they were avoiding an unpleasant smell. And so they were, for the stench still rose from the sled, and mostly from Kai. Could she risk leaving him and going to the cliff edge to hurry help?

“We’re coming!” Triv’s shout finally encouraged her.

She bent to look more closely at Kai’s wounds. He appeared to have been attacked by something or somethings that sucked blood for as she eased a shred of his coverall from his chest, she saw the pattern of pinpoint marks on his skin, each with its own jewellike teardrop of blood. And that awful stink! Worse than anything that Ireta had inflicted on her before except, she realized now, that she remembered that frightful odor. It was not easy to forget: oily, marine, and utterly disgusting!

“Is it safe to approach?” Triv asked, poking his head over the cliff edge.

“It hardly matters, does it?” Lunzie replied, heaving herself onto the vine-covered surface.

“They’re not aggressive now,” Varian said in a well-projected voice, keeping her tone sweet. “I’d just move slowly.”

“My intention, I assure you. How bad is Kai?”

“He’s unconscious now. Must have Disciplined himself to get back. He seems to have run into a bloodsucker.”

“Faugh!” Lunzie’s face wrinkled in distaste and she pinched her nostrils. “What’s that smell?”

“Kai.”

“Your fliers don’t seem to like the smell any more than we do,” Triv remarked.

“Let’s get him out of the sled while they’re snooting the wind,” Lunzie said. “I really can’t see enough through the blood.”

Triv and Varian slipped into the sled to hoist out the unconscious geologist. Triv grimaced at muscles slow to respond to his commands as they guided the limp body out to Lunzie.

“That stink would suffocate a man,” Triv remarked, taking deep gulps of fresher air. “Oh ho, what’s wrong here?” He bent back inside the sled. “Did he drop this thing? Every malfunction light on the control panel is lit!”

“Krims! I was hoping we could fly him down to the cave in the sled,” Varian said.

“I wouldn’t advise it until I can get behind the control panel.” Triv flicked off the power and closed the canopy.

Lunzie deftly peeled away the tatters of the coverall to disclose the hundreds of tiny punctures that had pierced Kai’s skin, each one filled with blood. Varian removed the trouser legs.

“Even his boots are perforated,” she told Lunzie. “I don’t remember telltagging anything that could do this.”

“You think he’d smell it coming,” was Lunzie’s dour comment.

“Watch it, girls, we’ve got company. Hey. . . .”

At Triv’s warning, Lunzie and Varian looked up and received a giff-borne shower in the face as a flight of giffs skimmed over them and each emptied its filled throat pouch on the little group. Most of the unexpected drenching fell on Kai’s exposed body, laving it clean of blood momentarily.

“Well, what d’you make of that?” demanded Triv. “Ah, there’s more coming! No, they’ve got leaves!”

As deftly as the shower had been delivered, the thick green leaves dropped about Kai.

“What are they trying to tell us, Varian?” Lunzie wanted to know.

“They know that stink, Lunzie. They could know what attacked him. They must be trying to help us.”

“They’d attack with claw and wing,” Triv said thoughtfully, “not water and leaves.”

“But they did attack you and Kai . . .” Lunzie began.

“This time they saw us all come from the cave.” Varian seized one of the leaves and held it up to the giffs remaining beyond the sled. “What do I do with it?”

Lunzie picked up a leaf, crushing the pulpy tip in her fingers, sniffing and sneezing at the odor of the sap.

“One thing sure, it smells a lot better than he does. A neutralizer?”