The Mystery of Ireta (35 page)

She ignored his feint to the right, but she was surprised as he launched himself into the air in an attempt to tackle her about the legs. Her reflexes were far quicker than his. She was above him as he dove and came down on his back, digging her fingers to the necessary nerve point through almost impenetrably hard muscles while she locked her other arm under his chin, forcing his head back. He tried to roll with her, but she caught her legs under his, forcing them with Discipline strength so far apart that a gasp of pain was wrung from him. She heard his ill-used garment split.

“In most cultures which settle differences by physical combat,” she said in an even voice that did not indicate the strain under which she labored, “two falls out of three—and I assure you there would be a third for you—generally result in victory for the quicker opponent. I use the term ‘quicker’ because that is basically one of the advantages I have over you: my training in hand-to-hand combat was conducted by masters of the martial arts. I will of course never mention this incident to anyone. I also cannot allow you to persist in your aggression toward me or any other member of my mission, which has been sent to discover the whereabouts of the previous expedition and/or its survivors. I can assure you that the policy of the FSP and EEC allows generous terms to people in your position. Will you accept release in good faith, or will I be forced to turn your head just that fraction more which will crack the first and second vertebrae?”

She felt him swallow in an agony not purely physical.

“Do you accept?”

“You win!” The reluctant admission came through gritted teeth.

“I don’t
win
anything.” She made due note of his phraseology—“you win” not “I accept,” and respected him. Slowly she released her grip on his legs, before loosening the neck lock and the nerve pinch. A tiny, additional squeeze on the nerve as she released her fingers insured her time to rise and move a suitable distance from him in case combat honor was no longer a principle in his adaptation.

He rose slowly, swallowing against a dry and strained throat. He made no move to massage the nerve pinch although his arm hung limply and ought to be painful. He also ignored his damaged clothing. She kept her eyes on his face, now somewhat obscured by the swarms of blooding insects whizzing about them and the carcass. He drew in deep breaths, his face expressionless, and she could easily understand her perturbation. The man was muscled, not as a heavy-worlder against the constant pull of gravity, but there couldn’t be a milligram of unnecessary flesh on him: he was truly one of the most beautiful men in form and face that she had ever seen. She regretted having had to best him with the unfair advantage of her Discipline. Raised by heavy-worlder notions, there would be no forgiveness in him, for her. Nor could she ever explain why she had been able to throw him.

“Your physical strength was unexpected, Rianav.”

“I have often found it so, Aygar, although I dislike having to resort to such exhibitions. I am a reasonable person, for reason tends to secure a more lasting outcome than a show of physical force.”

“Reason? And honor?” He gave a dry sour laugh. “To have abandoned a small geological group on a savage world.”

Varian opened her hands in a gesture of regret. “It is a risk of the Service which we all—”

“I did not. I had no option.”

“In justice, you have the right to be bitter. You are the innocent victim of circumstances beyond ordinary control. The
ARCT-10
, the vessel which landed the Iretan expedition, is still missing.”

“Missing? For forty-three years?” His contempt was obvious. “Were you looking for it when you found this beacon of yours?”

“Not exactly, but our code requires that we respond to your distress call.”

“Not mine. My grandparents—”

“The call was heard and our ship has responded,
whoever
made the original signal.”

“I’m supposed to be grateful for that?” He resumed his slicing of meat from the ribs of the monster, discarding the initial hunk, which was already crawling with winged vermin. Despite Discipline, Varian found herself revolted by his activity. “Forty-three years to answer a distress call? Mighty efficient organization, yours. Well, we’ve survived and we’ll continue to. We don’t need your help—now.”

“Possibly. How many are you after two generations?” With such a small gene pool, she wondered if they were already inbred.

He laughed, as if he sensed her thought. “We have bred carefully, Rianav, and have made the most of our—how would
you
term it, inadvertent plantation?”

“Ireta is not on the colonial list. We checked that immediately for we are under no compunction to aid a colony which can’t fend for itself.” Her Discipline must be dropping, Varian thought, from the sharpness with which she answered him. Gaber’s rumormongering had lasted unto the second generation.

“To be sure,” he said, angry sarcasm masking as courtesy. “So, what are your plans now, honorable Rianav!”

She gave him a long look, playing her role as rescuer to the hilt. “Instructions, rather. I shall return to our base with my report on your presence.”

“No need to concern yourself with me.”

“How can you possibly transport all that . . .”

“We’ve learned a trick or two,” and Varian was certain that his smile was faintly superior.

“May I have the coordinates of your present location?”

His grin was more amused than insolent but the mockery was in his reply.

“Run at a good steady pace to your right, through the first hills, turn right up the ravine, but mind the river snakes. Continue along the river course to the first falls, take the easiest route up the cliff—it’s pretty well marked by now, and follow the line of limestone—you do know limestone from granite, I assume? The valley widens. You’ll know when you’ve reached us by the cultivated fields.” There was pure malice in his grin now. “Yes, we find that vegetables, fruits, and grains are required to maintain a balanced diet, even if we can’t process our food.” He had been gouging past the ribs of the dead beast and now suddenly, his arms dripping with blood, he held up a huge dark brownish red lump. “And this, the liver of the thunder lizard, is the most nutritious meat available.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you slaughtered that creature just for its liver?” Her xenob training broke through her elected role.

“We do not kill indiscriminately, Rianav: we kill to survive.” Coldly he turned back to his task, leaning partly inside the ribs to reach more of the choice liver.

“The distinction is, of course, valid. However, we have no knowledge of the dangers of walking about this land of yours. Is the secondary camp of record far from your present location?”

“No.” He had removed the curious tube from his back. From the tube he pulled a tight roll of what appeared to Varian to be synthesized fabric, light, waterproof, and durable enough to have lasted forty-three years. He spread the fabric with a practiced flip on the ground, piling the choice chunks of meat and covering them quickly, folding over the edges of the fabric to prevent insects from attaching themselves to the meat. “I’ll meet you there in three days’ time.”

“Will it take that long to return to your base?” Varian could not keep the astonishment from her voice.

“Not at all,” he said, severing more choice morsels. As he added these to the pack and covered them, he glanced skyward. Varian followed his gaze and saw that the carrion fliers were massing in their circles. She also noticed the three giffs to one side of the others and wondered if Aygar did. “We have to be quick after a kill. Or be mistaken for the corpse by those. No, I shall be in my home before nightfall, but my fellow exiles must be told of this happy reestablishment of contact with other worlds.”

He had what Varian judged to be fifty or sixty kilos of meat. Lashing the tube to the base of the meat, he deftly added straps, padded where they would cross his shoulders, and made a portable package. One eye on the scavengers, he now rinsed his arms from a water bottle, then covered them with mud, scooped at a distance from the slaughtering ground. Then he swung the pack to his back, settling the pads properly. He stared at her so intently that a faint stirring of alarm prompted her next action.

From a pouch on her upper arm, she took out the dark plastic box in which she once carried stimtabs. He could see that she had something in her hand but not what. She pretended to depress a switch with her thumb, holding her hand close to her mouth.

“Unit Three to Base. Unit Three to Base.” She made a disapproving noise. “Recorder’s on. They’ve all left the encampment!” She gave Aygar an angry glance. “Base, I have made contact with survivors, coordinates 87.58 by 72.33. Returning to Base. Over.” She operated a thumb switch again and then replaced the box in her pocket. “Leaving for base at once. They’ll hear about this. In three days then, Aygar, and good luck!” She swung away from him, walking rapidly toward the sled.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him set off at a steady jog and sighed in relief. For a moment, it seemed to her as if he might do something. A glance at the sky showed her that Aygar’s departure might have been a signal and she a negligible danger, for the scavengers were backwinging to land. Out of the grasses other creatures slunk toward the feast. She was relieved to be so close to the sled but only felt completely safe when she had fastened the canopy overhead.

She guided into the clouds to head southwest. She caught sight of him again and marveled that he could run so easily, burdened as he was and after the exhausting chase. There might be something to say for implantation after all if the process resulted in such superbly fit people.

She wished she had a working wrist unit to tell Lunzie about the survival of the mutineers as well as the slanted account passed down to their descendants. She wished she could have figured out a way to ask Aygar if his people had encountered the creature that had attacked Kai, and if they knew what could be used to cure him. On the other hand, she now knew that the second camp had been abandoned. She debated the wisdom of continuing to it since it would be unlikely she’d find anything of value to her. Certainly none of the equipment Lunzie needed. Of course, if Kai were not considerably improved, and Varian refused to consider the worst, she had a good reason for approaching Aygar again today. Surely his people must have encountered the leech-creatures and might even have developed an antidote for the toxemia. She could say that another member of her landing party had been attacked—which was true enough anyhow. She grimaced at the comunit on her console and suddenly realized that the device was operative, even if there was nowhere to communicate to. But, Varian told herself cheerfully, there were four other sleds with equally undamaged comunits. They could wake Portegin, have him utilize what matrix slabs were necessary from one or two of the sleds and repair the shuttle’s smashed unit, at least for intership communications. That would give them two, maybe three sleds available for use. It might not be enough to reach a passing EEC ship outside the stellar system, but certainly they’d be able to reach the Thek again. Or the Ryxi.

Varian grimaced at the thought of having to appeal for help to the Ryxi: how they would flaunt that news about! More vital, she didn’t want the Ryxi to know more about the giffs than they already did.

Kai
had
to recover. After the mutiny of the six heavyworlders, their situation had been difficult at best, desperate at the worst. They had emerged from cold sleep in a very much improved position, despite Kai’s injury. The mutineers had had their own problems on Ireta, and Varian felt that her initial contact with the younger generation had established a position of undeniable superiority. Or had she? Something about Aygar’s manner toward the end of their encounter bothered her. That’s why she had instinctively invented a “contact” with a “base.”

She could feel the laxness of her muscles as Discipline eased. She ate the rest of the fruit, inadequate though it was to replenish her energies. Why hadn’t she thought to take a pepper with her, she wondered peevishly. Probably, she amended her own forgetfulness, because the last peppers had been used to overcome delayed shock after escaping the stampede of the herbivores.

She smiled as she recalled Aygar’s legend of that incident. Did he know how silly it was for
six
people to be deliberately abandoned to form a colony? He didn’t know the first thing about genetics. Well, yes, he must if he’d mentioned breeding.

It was fatigue more than curiosity that made Varian decide to continue on to the old camp. She’d be safe there and able to snatch an hour’s sleep before the return journey. She was so nearly there anyhow, she might just as well have a look.

4

T
HE
rain, combined with a dismal heat mist, made the site more desolate than she remembered it. She’d spotted a stand of fruit trees on the final leg of her journey and, hovering the sled, had picked the upper branches free of succulent ripe yellow globes. Consequently she felt less weary when she glided the sled to land on the square of the old secondary camp. And it did look ancient.

The original dome, which would have been comfortable for two people, was missing but the space it had occupied was an ovoid barren of all growth in the center of an octagon of long stone buildings. Tiny plants now grew in cavities where windblown dirt had accumulated. The buildings had been so well built that Varian wondered why the mutineers had moved. Of course, just then the rain kept the insects away, but there would be a superb panorama of the surrounding plains, not that she supposed the heavy-worlders had indulged themselves that way. Most of the visible buttes supported crowns of trees, heavily vined, but the area adjacent to the octagon had been cleared several meters on all sides and covered with a concrete which, to be sure, was now cracking as the more tenacious vines reclaimed their customary dominion. Beyond that apron was lush growth, but the buildings—she couldn’t call them homes or houses because of their forbidding aspect—claimed her attention first.