“You’re right.” I thought for a moment. Could that be why I hadn’t reached Eddie? No one in their right mind would want to miss seeing a major eruption. “More trouble for the planetologists.”
“Uh-huh.” He laughed. “The poor fools. It serves ’em right. They worked out all their theories on the basis of one system.”
“They used what they had, Derek.”
He said, “I want to go to sleep. I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I lay back down. The wind had shifted. It blew out of the valley, bringing the smell of sulfur. I thought about the moon, which had an atmosphere. There was a lot of sulfur in it, as I remembered. It must really stink up there now.
The planetologists had not been happy when they saw the first long-distance holograms. The moon was too big, they told us. All the best theories said that Earth was an anomaly. Small planets didn’t have moons. Or if they did, the moons were tiny: pieces of captured space junk.
The ship got closer in. The planetologists discovered the surface of the moon was comparatively smooth.
The system was full of junk. The planet had twelve other moons, all of them clearly captured planetoids. The big moon should have been covered with impact craters. Instead there were wide plains of volcanic origin and some fairly impressive mountains, also of volcanic origin.
The moon was active, and the best theories said that small planets did not have active moons.
Which meant the planetologists had to start working on new theories. I’d heard a couple. One involved tidal pull. The other assumed a really odd composition for the body in question. They were too far outside my area of expertise for me to have an opinion. I simply enjoyed the strangeness of the moon.
I woke at dawn, got up, and went to find a place to pee. Then I did my exercises, ending with the solar salute. I timed it perfectly. When I finished the sun was fully up, round and crimson, right above the eastern wall of the valley.
Nia woke, and the oracle. Derek was the last person up. He stretched and groaned, then climbed to his feet. We ate. Nia went to saddle the bowhorns. The oracle followed after her.
Derek yawned. “Coffee. That’s what I need.”
“What did you find?”
“The lake is mud. Hot mud. Boiling. It’s an interesting sight. Bubbles appear on the surface. They get bigger and bigger, then—pssht. They’re gone. Exploded.” He yawned again. “The smell of sulfur is really offensive. And there are poles along the edge.”
“What?”
“Wooden poles. Maybe ten centimeters thick. About three meters high. They’re decorated with feathers and pieces of cloth. Some of them have horns on top made of copper. Really badly corroded. The gases from the lake must do that.
“I assume the lake has some kind of religious meaning. Wouldn’t you think? I found this on the edge in the mud.” He rolled up one sleeve. There was a bracelet on his arm. He pulled it off and handed it to me. It was gold, wide and heavy. I turned it and saw a design, repeated four times: a bowhorn with another animal attacking it, digging in with its claws and biting. What was it? The body was sleek like the body of a panther. The head was long and narrow with huge ears, and the tail ended in a tuft. “Nia?”
She came over.
“What is this?”
She took the bracelet. “Hu! This is good! One of my people made it. No one else can do work of this quality.”
“What is the animal? The one on top?”
“A killer of the plain.” She tilted the bracelet so the design was more visible. “A killer of the mountains is smaller and has scales as well as fur. I wonder how this got here? Where did you find it?”
“Derek found it in the valley, by the lake.”
“Then it is an offering. A gift to the demons of fire. You should not have taken it.” She handed the bracelet to Derek.
“Oh, no?” He put the bracelet on.
“I see you are going to keep the thing.” Nia made the gesture that meant “so be it.” “I think you are making a mistake.” She turned and walked away.
Derek grinned, then rolled his sleeve down and fastened it.
“There are times when I think you are crazy,” I said.
“No. Only badly alienated. Anyway, I don’t believe in demons of fire.” He glanced at the valley. “It’s a good thing I don’t. My own protection is too far away. The Gray Whale can’t help me here.”
The trail turned south, leaving the rim of the valley. Once again we traveled among hills. The day was overcast, and the sun was a bright white disk. In the diffuse light there were no shadows. I was pretty certain that we were traveling west, but I would not have bet on it. I thought—as well—that we were climbing, but I would not have bet on that, either. The trail wound up and down.
Gradually the slopes of the hills grew gentler. The valleys grew wider and more shallow. The bushes and trees—those few there had been—were gone.
“Nuh,” said Nia, sounding satisfied. “We are coming to the plain.”
We entered a new valley. A stream ran through the middle of it, and a flock of animals fed along the bank. They were bipeds, a new species, larger and heavier than any I had seen before. Only two were standing on their hind legs. Lookouts maybe. The rest had their front legs on the ground and their heads down, feeding.
Derek said, “They must be more efficient than our dinosaurs. They have competition from mammalian browsers. Or do I mean mammaloid? I don’t understand how they manage to survive.”
“There are—or were—a lot of odd birds on Earth. Ostriches. Emus. Cassowaries. How about the moa and the great auk? They survived into the age of mammals. In fact, I think they evolved in the age of mammals.”
He shook his head. “They evolved from ordinary birds to fill specific ecological niches—on islands, in at least two cases. The moa lived in New Zealand. The great auk nested in Iceland. These creatures are all over. They are obviously competing successfully. And I don’t think their ancestors were birds. They look reptilian, if that word has any meaning here.”
“They have feathers, and I’m willing to bet they’re warm-blooded.”
“So were the dinosaurs. Warm-blooded, I mean.”
One of the upright animals let out a bellow. The others reared onto their hind legs and moved away up the valley along the stream. They had a funny gait, a lumbering run. As awkward as it seemed, they covered a lot of ground. By the time we reached the bottom of the valley, they were gone.
Midway through the afternoon I looked around and realized the hills had ended. We were on a rolling plain, covered with pseudo-grass. It rippled in the wind, changing color as the leaves turned over: green, blue-green, tan, and gray.
Something rose above the horizon in the north. I shaded my eyes and stared. The thing was almost the same color as the sky and so distant that it was barely visible. A cone, wide at the base. The top of the cone—the point—was missing. Instead there was a horizontal line. The rim of a crater.
I turned and waited for Nia, who was riding some distance behind me. The oracle was behind her, also riding. “What is that?” I asked. I pointed.
She glanced, then reined her animal.
“I have not seen it before. But I have heard. That is Hani Akhar. The Great Mountain. The home of the Mistress of the Forge.”
The oracle came up beside us. He looked north. “Yes. That is the one. I can feel it even at this distance. It is a very holy place. Also dangerous. She is not always friendly, that spirit.”
“This is definitely the wrong trail,” Nia said. “We are way north of where I want to be.”
“We will end up in the right place,” the oracle said. “The route we take doesn’t matter.”
Nia scratched her nose. “There is no way to argue with a holy person. They are always certain they know more than we do. And if we say, ‘No,’ they say, ‘The spirits have spoken.’ ”