Yuen-Mong's Revenge (7 page)

 
     
"Yes, several. But for the last three years it has never been necessary.
They now avoid me."

 
     
"Even large groups?"

 
     
"Those even more, because that is when I may have to kill. With
small groups we simply go around each other. They have learned that."

 
     
She again knew that he did not believe her.

     
"When you said ‘for the last three years’, what kind of years did you
mean? Years of Aros?"

 
     
"No standard years." She noticed his surprised look. "It is easy to
convert Aros years to standard years. My father calculated that four Aros
years correspond very closely to three standard years."

 
     
"I see… How old are you? In standard years."

 
     
"A bit over 19."

 
     
"So you claim that you were sixteen and younger when you killed
savages? This is hard to believe."

 
     
"The savages killed my parents when I was twelve. I killed the first
three savages when I was fourteen." Again this hint of disbelief.

     
"How?"

 
     
"I shot them with my bow."

 
     
"Why?"

 
     
"To revenge my parents."

 
     
"Did they kill your parents? Why?"

 
     
"They tried to kidnap me and my mother, and my father came to my
help so that I could escape, knowing that it would be his death. There
were too many of them, and they always kill the males."

 
     
"But why didn’t your father kill some to scare them away."

 
     
"He did not believe in killing humans. He always tried to befriend
them."

 
     
"But they’re barely human. And your mother, didn’t she escape with
you?"

 
     
"No. They surrounded her and when she fought them off, they killed
her." In her mind, she again saw four of the savages wrestling her down,
while the headman tried to rape her. She closed her eyes, trying to block
out that image, trying to replace it with her mother’s loving face. She had
sworn then that she was going to revenge her mother and had burned the
faces of these men into her brain. It took her two years to achieve. The
headman was her first victim.

     
"How did you then get away?"

 
     
"I could easily outrun them even at that age."

 
     
She handed him a bread with a cold slice of yesterday’s meat on it. He
ate it, nodding approvingly.

     
In the afternoon, they fetched the remaining branches. They left the
trunk since cutting it into usable portions was far too difficult. While
Atun broke some of the branches into four to six pieces, she pounded
lime clumps into a fine powder in a deep wooden tub. Then she added the
squashed timoru fruit, covered them with water, and mixed the mash
thoroughly. She would let it leach for three or four days before washing
out the lime with clean water and allowing the mash to ferment for a day.

     
Over dinner, she learned a bit about him, his home world Palo, the
reason for coming to Aros, that he was 25. But by the end of the meal,
she again felt like being crushed by the unrelenting surge of the vibes
emanating from him, and when he went into the cave to refill his mug of
bark tea, she fled to her refuge on top of the rock. There she meditated,
ignoring his calls, slowly calming her mind and gaining back her inner
peace.

4

"Why didn’t you answer last night when I called?" He was still annoyed
that she had just disappeared without a word.

     
"I was up there, meditating. I needed to be alone."

 
     
"Why? Don’t you like company?"

 
     
"I have lived alone for seven years. It is hard for me to be with somebody for a long time. It feels a bit like being dragged under water, and I
need time to think and reflect."

 
     
He could understand that, but was surprised by her frankness. He
would hardly have admitted to something like this. "Why didn’t you tell
me? I wouldn’t have prevented you."

 
     
Her glance felt like she was reaching into his mind, and he reminded
himself that she was an empath. It unsettled him. "After breakfast, you’ll
take me back to my shuttle. You promised."

 
     
"I did not promise. I only said I would if it is safe. It is not safe today.
A storm is coming. We would not make it back again. Maybe tomorrow."
She went over to the cooking area.

     
"A storm coming when the sky is blue as far as the eye can see and
hardly a breeze," he protested. "This is just another excuse for not taking
me there. You’ll take me there today. I’ll make you do it even if I have
to force you."

 
     
Her glance betrayed mild amusement.
Is she laughing at me?
Enraged
he went quickly over to his sleeping alcove, took the laser gun, set it to
a minimum charge, and aimed it at her. "In fact, we will go right now,"
he shouted.

     
She briefly glanced over her shoulder and then turned back to mixing
nuts and sweetberries into the mash, ignoring him completely. "You want
to eat breakfast?" she asked, as she turned and offered him a bowl.

     
"Put that down. We’re going now. I’m not kidding."

 
     
She shrugged, put his bowl back on the shelf and started eating,
looking him straight in the face.

     
"Did you hear me?" he shouted again.

     
"I eat my breakfast now. Then we can go." She walked out onto the
balcony and sat.

     
He almost lost it then. That audacity of simply ignoring his threat as
if he were pointing a child’s imitation gun at her. For a moment it crossed
his mind to teach her a lesson, but then sanity returned. He grabbed his
bowl and started eating it, while standing.
This is what paper must taste
like
, went through his mind, although he had never tried, since in his
world paper was mainly used to wrap things, or for hand drawing. Then
he remembered to chew the berries fully, but even so he was finished
well before she was.

     
After cleaning out both bowls, she packed a few things into her carry
pack, quickly checked her bow and arrows, shouldered them and went
out to the rope. She was already below the canopy of the broadleaf by the
time he had shouldered his survival pack and gun and got to the rope. He
hurried after her, afraid that she might be playing a trick on him and
would disappear, leaving him stranded. But she was standing on the path
below the rope, her eyes closed, seemingly listening to something he
could not hear. She opened her eyes and said: "We have to go fast." Then
she was off in her graceful loping gait.

     
He tried to match her speed, but within a few minutes she was more
than a hundred yards ahead, running again just inside the trees along the
beach. His pack was bobbing up and down on his back, always a bit
behind each steps, making running all that much harder. After fifteen
minutes he was out of breath. He could feel every pulse beat on his neck
and knew that he could not keep up with her any longer. Humiliated, he
slowed to a walk. She had stopped and waited for him.

     
"You are overheating dressed like this. Take off that outer clothing."

 
     
When he had peeled off the jumpsuit garment, she took it and said,
touching a low broadleaf branch: "You can tie it to this branch and we
will pick it up on our way back."

 
     
"No, I’ll take it along. I won’t come back."

 
     
She only shrugged her shoulders, folded the garment tightly and
packed it under the flap of his survival pack. "I will carry this. We must
go fast." Before he could answer, she had shouldered his pack next to her
own and was off again. She maintained a pattern of alternating between
running and walking, until they reached the open estuary, where they had
met up with the giant bird.

     
"The craw is hunting. I will go out and I call you when it is safe." She
got the decoy he had seen her use last time from her carry pack.

     
This time he was going to show her how to deal with that vulture.
While she was busily assembling the spring mechanism, he set his gun
at maximum charge and ran into the open space. Almost instantly he
heard the bone-shattering scream coming from the sea. He turned, taking
aim at the fast-approaching bird as it swooped down. But before he could
press the trigger, he was bowled over, thrown into one of the few patches
of deep water and pulled under, feeling a sharp stab of pain on his
shoulder. Water immediately filled his mouth and nose. Then he was set
upright again, spluttering and coughing, and his head held above water.
No more than stone’s throw away, the dinosaur-like creature was
screaming and trying ineffectually to free itself from the muddy patch
where it had crashed.

     
Yuen-mong helped him get onto dry land. Recovering from his cough,
he found his voice. "You stupid woman! That bird was as good as dead.
You almost got us killed."

 
     
For the first time he saw her get angry. "You call me stupid? Don’t
you ever listen?"

 
     
She picked up the gun that he had dropped, pointed it at him and
pressed the trigger. He already anticipated the laser’s sharp burning pain.
But nothing happened.

     
"Here, have your useless toy." She threw it at him. "And from now on
you do what I say or I will deliver you to the savages. You can become
one of them. They are about equally stupid." She turned and went back
into the forest.

     
She must have done something wrong.
He aimed the gun into some
grasses and pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. He checked that it
was ready to fire, tried again, knocked the gun hard with his fist, tried
again. By then the creature had extricated itself and was getting threateningly closer. He retreated a few steps and aimed again, but the gun
remained silent. He became aware of the throbbing pain on his shoulder
and saw the bloody rip. Delayed fright shot into his guts. The monster
bird looked suddenly twice its previous size, and he ran quickly into the
forest.

     
Yuen-mong was just stowing the craw decoy into her carry pack. She
briefly glanced up. He did not dare to meet her gaze. She had risked her
own life to save his, and he had insulted her. Hadn’t she told him several
times that nothing using electronics worked here? As usual, he had
known better. And when she had agreed to take him to the shuttle this
morning, she had not done it out of fear, as he had thought. He felt
smaller and smaller, just thinking of how he had threatened her, of how
she must have laughed inside at him.

     
She finished packing and got up. "Come here. That scratch needs
cleaning or it will infect." Her voice had again its usual deep soft tone.

     
He went to her and murmured: "Yuen-mong, I’m sorry… I’m stupid."

 
     
"Take off the top," she ordered, not acknowledging his meek apology.
She inspected the deep scratch on his shoulder; it looked almost like a
cut. "Wait."

 
     
She ran back into the estuary. The craw was just making a run to take
off. A short time later she returned with a leafy plant, including its root,
similar to a dandelion. She poured water from her water container over
the cut and used the crushed leaves of the plant to wipe the wound clean
of any dirt. It stung terribly, and he squirmed.

     
"Hold still," she said, showing no sympathy. Then she broke the root
in two and dabbed the rubbery, milky liquid that oozed from the breaks
over the entire length of the cut. "Keep your top off for a while."

 
     
She shouldered her gear and his pack, stood quietly for a moment,
eyes closed, and then said: "We must hurry now. The storm will break
soon. Come."